Post by Lorpius Prime on Jan 12, 2007 6:25:28 GMT -5
Jay stumbled and nearly broke his ankle stepping down onto the platform, but he caught himself at the last moment and merely twisted it uncomfortably. He gritted his teeth and hopped around for a few seconds, then rubbed his bleary eyes. Professor Bradshaw had finally left Jay's car and gone back to his own seat around nine o'clock, and the old man had been mercifully more subdued and polite afterwards. But Jay had still only gotten about two hours of sleep and he was not operating at peak performance.
He picked up the suitcase he'd dropped getting off and made his way towards the station exit. The gray sun-weathered wood of the platform gave way to a polished granite floor where hundreds of people stood in line for tickets or waited for their trains to arrive. A small cluster was waiting at the station to greet people coming off of his train, but it was a Thursday morning and most people would be working; the few that did come were mostly women.
It was marginally brighter this morning than it had been the previous day, the sun poked through just a little from among gray clouds. Exeter hadn't sprouted many of the smoke-belching factories—the city was too far away from the coal and iron mines—so the air was fresher here, although it stank something awful down by the river. Jay wrinkled his nose just at the thought. He descended the station steps and reached the cobblestones of Queen Street just as the great brass clock in the middle of the station finished striking Eleven.
"Welcome home, Jay Thomson!" a voice called from behind him.
Jay looked around. A young woman was walking down from North Road towards him, pushing a bicycle. A straggling church bell drowned out whatever she said next.
Jay blinked at the sight of the woman. "Hello, Margaret Joyce," he said when the bell stopped ringing.
Jay's sister narrowed her eyes and waved a threatening finger at him. Jay smiled.
She drew her bicycle up next to Jay and put one fist on her hip. "You're a real boor, you know that?" She said it as if she was doing him a favor by sharing this information.
Jay raised an eyebrow, "How did you know I was coming?"
"Well it certainly wasn't because you told us, you twit." She glowered. The look was surprisingly menacing coming from beneath her cheerful capeline hat. Jay rocked back on his feet a little and stuck his tongue into one cheek.
Margaret huffed, "Father sent you a telegram asking when you'd be home. Your boss wired back saying that you were on the train."
This threw Jay, "Barry sent you a telegram?" He couldn't imagine the chief editor spending a penny to keep in touch with his own family, much less the Blakes.
But Margaret rolled her eyes, "No, your new boss, Mr. Mills. He said you'd been given another assignment and took the four o'clock home already. Mr. Mills is your new boss, isn't he?"
"Er, yes," Jay said, "sort of." They started walking north together, towards the trail that would lead them out of town to their father's estate. "He's in charge of our little project."
Margaret nodded sharply, "Good, I like him. At least he takes the time to tell us what you're doing."
"Hey, I would have wired," Jay protested. "This whole thing was just sprung on me rather quickly. And everyone likes John, I tell you the man can do no wrong."
"We should have him over to dinner sometime," Margaret said casually. "What is he, thirty?"
Jay shot Margaret a dark look, "He's forty-one and he's married."
She stuck her chin up in defiance, "And since when does that stop most men from seeing other women?"
Jay was incredulous, "Aren't you seeing a man already yourself? Is he seeing another woman?" Jay thought he might have to confront the bloke if he were.
But he needn't have worried. "William would do no such thing," Margaret said confidently. "He knows I keep a very sharp pair of sewing shears."
Jay found it hard to speak after that, and they walked in silence for a few minutes.
Then he grimaced at a memory, "I met someone on the train who didn't seem to mind seeing other women."
"Oh?" Margaret turned her head. "Who was he?"
"Heh, he was my European politics instructor at Oxford, Professor Bradshaw."
Margaret screwed up her eyes, "I didn't think you took any political courses. Used to say you hated politics before you took that job traipsing about across the continent."
"I do hate politics, but I like foreign wine more," Jay put a hand on his stomach to indicate the reason he suffered through his job. He shook his head, "And I didn't take any courses on European politics; Professor Bradshaw's a bloody loon."
"Oh..." she gave him an odd look. Jay shrugged.
"So speaking of school, how is St. Mary's treating you?"
She let out a barking laugh, "Sister Clair was all over me a few weeks ago about my dress. She said I show too much of my ankles, can you believe it?"
Jay snorted, "Did she? And what'd you tell her?"
"Oh I smiled and nodded and then I wore pants for a week."
Jay burst out laughing.
His sister laughed too. "You should have seen her face," Margaret said. "She popped a vessel in her eye the next day and I'm sure it was because of me. She looked as if she'd been possessed."
Giggling, they turned off the main path onto a muddy trail which led to the Blake estate. An Indian gardener was attacking bramble canes with a single-minded ferocity and didn't seem to notice their passage. Jay plucked a few blackberries from the bushes and passed some to Margaret. The gardening staff might see the fast-growing plants as mere weeds, but the Blake children had been eating the semi-wild blackberries for nearly two decades. They were just another part of home.
"So how'd you know to come late?" Jay asked, licking dark juice from his fingers, "Some wreck stopped us back in Southampton. I thought we would be waiting forever."
"It was in the paper this morning," Margaret shrugged, "Father told me. Was it bad? They didn't say what kind of train it was."
Jay shook his head, "Nah, we couldn't see anything. Conductor said it was just some freight cars derailing, so I can't imagine many people were hurt. Took them long enough to clear it, though."
"Father says Southern Rail doesn't maintain their lines. He thinks Parliament ought to take over."
"Yeah? Father also thinks designing sewers makes for a great career," Jay gave his sister a doubtful smile. "I'm not sure he's the best man to judge the state of the railway."
She sniffed, "As a Civil Engineer I should think he knows a great deal more about the matter than you. And how can you say his work wasn't any good when it's gotten him all this. Where's your land and title, I'd like to know?"
The Blake mansion appeared from behind a grove of low trees. It wasn't a palace or the kind of enormous manor favored by the hereditary nobles, but with three stories of spacious and well-adorned rooms, it was no bourgeois tenement either. Baron Blake had purchased it from the widow of some other Life Peer who could no longer afford the tax. Jay wondered what would happen to it after his father was gone, too. Jay certainly didn't earn enough salary to hold onto it. He thought Margaret was likely to marry some rich noble just to keep the place. She didn't have any memories of their previous home and had grown very attached to the estate.
"Hmm..." Jay muttered absently. "Does William have money?"
"What?"
"Er, nothing, nevermind," Jay forced a nervous smile.
Margaret leaned her bicycle against the wall of a stable empty of horses but occupied by several other bicycles. She pointed a finger at him, "I'll thank you not to tell me how I should choose my men. What should it matter if he has money or not? I swear, you and Father both." She glared at Jay for a moment.
He shrugged and showed his open palms, "Forgive me. But I believe it was you who called me a boor."
She shook her head, "That's because you are one." They walked around the side of the stable and made for the front door of their house.
Margaret skipped up the steps and threw open the screen doors which kept out pests but let air flow through, Jay plodded along behind.
"Daddy! Dear Jay Thomson has returned to us!" Margaret changed her voice to speak in a higher, disgustingly sweet tone. Jay rolled his eyes behind her back.
Edward Blake, Baron of Upton Pyne, was sitting at a table in the drawing room, hidden behind the financial section of the Times. A few scattered crumbs on a white china plate were all that remained of some biscuits.
Jay walked up past Margaret and put a hand on the doorway, leaning inside, "It's true, Father," he called, without the falsetto. "I have returned."
There was a pause, and then the elder Blake folded down the paper and looked up at Jay. He gave a lopsided smile, causing his ears to poke up into his gray-blond hair, "Welcome home, son."
Jay smiled back and nodded. Baron Blake turned towards his daughter and said, "Margaret, could you run and tell your mother Jay Thomson's here, I think she's in the solarium."
"Yes, Daddy," there was that sickly sweet voice again. Margaret curtsied dramatically and then fluttered off.
Jay's father looked at him and rolled his eyes. Jay chuckled and shook his head.
The Baron sighed, "What is it about her? She hasn't an ounce of respect for her elders. You should see the letters we get from her school. And she's still running about with that tailor boy." He said it as if the world would be a far better place if there were no tailors and mankind lived in the nude.
"He's a tailor, then?" Jay raised an eyebrow.
His father frowned, "Or a baker or a cobbler or some such mundane thing. Really, you'd think I had raised you children to have more appreciation for your station."
Jay laughed, "You do remember, Father, that you're only a Life Peer, right? I don't get to keep the barony."
"All the more reason for the two of you to try and keep some respectability," he shook a finger at Jay. "You two need all the help you can get if you're to have some semblance of a chance of earning the Empress' continued favor." He narrowed his eyes a little at Jay's laughing grin, then sighed. "Oh I don't know why I bother at all anymore. My children are obviously determined to move down in the ranks. How was your trip?"
"Dull," Jay entered the room and plopped into a high-backed leather chair. "Sweden wasn't bad, but Denmark has become even more sleepy since the cartoon thing, if you can believe it."
Baron Blake muttered something like "bloody wogs" and then said, "Well, you know your mother is going to want to hear all about it."
Jay sank deeper into the chair, but nodded. "I brought back a watch with some nice engraving work from a shop in Copenhagen; but I'm telling you, the most interesting thing the Danes ever did was to get themselves written into a play."
"The Bard must have had some reason to put Hamlet there."
"I think he took pity on them. I do too for that matter: no country should be that boring."
"Well, at least they've got proper principles about them."
Jay rolled his eyes, "Principles have got nothing to do with it. Rose was just trying to stir up trouble."
His father was undeterred, "Sometimes troublemaking's called for when it comes to showing the uncivilized races what's what."
Jay sighed, the elder Blake always had been and it seemed always would be, a staunchly obstinate Tory.
Thankfully, he was saved by the return of Margaret leading their mother. Jay stood up to meet Lily Blake's embrace. From her dirty apron and the bonnet Jay surmised that she'd been in her garden, not the solarium.
"Hi, Mum."
After she'd hugged him, his mother grabbed Jay by the shoulders and looked him sharply in the eye. "Margaret tells me she's already scolded you about keeping in better touch, Jay Thomson," Lily Blake said, "but I think it bears repeating. You don't write or wire us nearly enough. Why, we went three weeks in March without hearing a word from you. Your father and I were so worried."
Jay doubted very much that his father had expressed even the slightest concern over the lack of correspondence. It would have taken away time better spent on derision for his son's choice of career. But Jay shrugged anyway, "I'm sorry, Mum. It won't happen again."
"Oh don't even bother lying to me," she crossed her arms. "I just want to make you feel as guilty as possible whenever you think about your poor old mother who never hears from her son anymore."
Baron Blake cleared his throat, "Jay Thomson was just talking about his time in Denmark, Lily. Apparently, he thinks—"
Lily Blake's arm shot out like a rapier to point at her husband, "I'll have no talk of politics from you, Edward, it's sinful. I want you decent tonight. Jay Thomson's home and Margaret's bringing William over for dinner, so I won't tolerate—"
"What?" both of the Blake men spoke at once, and turned to stare at Margaret. Jay's sister wore a maliciously innocent smile.
Mrs. Blake put her hands on her hips and looked among the three of them in exasperation. "Really, now!"
<<2<<_>>4>>
Book One, Chapter:
-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36-37-38-39-40-41-42-
-43-44-45-46-47-48-49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59-60-61-62-
Appendix: -A-B-C-
He picked up the suitcase he'd dropped getting off and made his way towards the station exit. The gray sun-weathered wood of the platform gave way to a polished granite floor where hundreds of people stood in line for tickets or waited for their trains to arrive. A small cluster was waiting at the station to greet people coming off of his train, but it was a Thursday morning and most people would be working; the few that did come were mostly women.
It was marginally brighter this morning than it had been the previous day, the sun poked through just a little from among gray clouds. Exeter hadn't sprouted many of the smoke-belching factories—the city was too far away from the coal and iron mines—so the air was fresher here, although it stank something awful down by the river. Jay wrinkled his nose just at the thought. He descended the station steps and reached the cobblestones of Queen Street just as the great brass clock in the middle of the station finished striking Eleven.
"Welcome home, Jay Thomson!" a voice called from behind him.
Jay looked around. A young woman was walking down from North Road towards him, pushing a bicycle. A straggling church bell drowned out whatever she said next.
Jay blinked at the sight of the woman. "Hello, Margaret Joyce," he said when the bell stopped ringing.
Jay's sister narrowed her eyes and waved a threatening finger at him. Jay smiled.
She drew her bicycle up next to Jay and put one fist on her hip. "You're a real boor, you know that?" She said it as if she was doing him a favor by sharing this information.
Jay raised an eyebrow, "How did you know I was coming?"
"Well it certainly wasn't because you told us, you twit." She glowered. The look was surprisingly menacing coming from beneath her cheerful capeline hat. Jay rocked back on his feet a little and stuck his tongue into one cheek.
Margaret huffed, "Father sent you a telegram asking when you'd be home. Your boss wired back saying that you were on the train."
This threw Jay, "Barry sent you a telegram?" He couldn't imagine the chief editor spending a penny to keep in touch with his own family, much less the Blakes.
But Margaret rolled her eyes, "No, your new boss, Mr. Mills. He said you'd been given another assignment and took the four o'clock home already. Mr. Mills is your new boss, isn't he?"
"Er, yes," Jay said, "sort of." They started walking north together, towards the trail that would lead them out of town to their father's estate. "He's in charge of our little project."
Margaret nodded sharply, "Good, I like him. At least he takes the time to tell us what you're doing."
"Hey, I would have wired," Jay protested. "This whole thing was just sprung on me rather quickly. And everyone likes John, I tell you the man can do no wrong."
"We should have him over to dinner sometime," Margaret said casually. "What is he, thirty?"
Jay shot Margaret a dark look, "He's forty-one and he's married."
She stuck her chin up in defiance, "And since when does that stop most men from seeing other women?"
Jay was incredulous, "Aren't you seeing a man already yourself? Is he seeing another woman?" Jay thought he might have to confront the bloke if he were.
But he needn't have worried. "William would do no such thing," Margaret said confidently. "He knows I keep a very sharp pair of sewing shears."
Jay found it hard to speak after that, and they walked in silence for a few minutes.
Then he grimaced at a memory, "I met someone on the train who didn't seem to mind seeing other women."
"Oh?" Margaret turned her head. "Who was he?"
"Heh, he was my European politics instructor at Oxford, Professor Bradshaw."
Margaret screwed up her eyes, "I didn't think you took any political courses. Used to say you hated politics before you took that job traipsing about across the continent."
"I do hate politics, but I like foreign wine more," Jay put a hand on his stomach to indicate the reason he suffered through his job. He shook his head, "And I didn't take any courses on European politics; Professor Bradshaw's a bloody loon."
"Oh..." she gave him an odd look. Jay shrugged.
"So speaking of school, how is St. Mary's treating you?"
She let out a barking laugh, "Sister Clair was all over me a few weeks ago about my dress. She said I show too much of my ankles, can you believe it?"
Jay snorted, "Did she? And what'd you tell her?"
"Oh I smiled and nodded and then I wore pants for a week."
Jay burst out laughing.
His sister laughed too. "You should have seen her face," Margaret said. "She popped a vessel in her eye the next day and I'm sure it was because of me. She looked as if she'd been possessed."
Giggling, they turned off the main path onto a muddy trail which led to the Blake estate. An Indian gardener was attacking bramble canes with a single-minded ferocity and didn't seem to notice their passage. Jay plucked a few blackberries from the bushes and passed some to Margaret. The gardening staff might see the fast-growing plants as mere weeds, but the Blake children had been eating the semi-wild blackberries for nearly two decades. They were just another part of home.
"So how'd you know to come late?" Jay asked, licking dark juice from his fingers, "Some wreck stopped us back in Southampton. I thought we would be waiting forever."
"It was in the paper this morning," Margaret shrugged, "Father told me. Was it bad? They didn't say what kind of train it was."
Jay shook his head, "Nah, we couldn't see anything. Conductor said it was just some freight cars derailing, so I can't imagine many people were hurt. Took them long enough to clear it, though."
"Father says Southern Rail doesn't maintain their lines. He thinks Parliament ought to take over."
"Yeah? Father also thinks designing sewers makes for a great career," Jay gave his sister a doubtful smile. "I'm not sure he's the best man to judge the state of the railway."
She sniffed, "As a Civil Engineer I should think he knows a great deal more about the matter than you. And how can you say his work wasn't any good when it's gotten him all this. Where's your land and title, I'd like to know?"
The Blake mansion appeared from behind a grove of low trees. It wasn't a palace or the kind of enormous manor favored by the hereditary nobles, but with three stories of spacious and well-adorned rooms, it was no bourgeois tenement either. Baron Blake had purchased it from the widow of some other Life Peer who could no longer afford the tax. Jay wondered what would happen to it after his father was gone, too. Jay certainly didn't earn enough salary to hold onto it. He thought Margaret was likely to marry some rich noble just to keep the place. She didn't have any memories of their previous home and had grown very attached to the estate.
"Hmm..." Jay muttered absently. "Does William have money?"
"What?"
"Er, nothing, nevermind," Jay forced a nervous smile.
Margaret leaned her bicycle against the wall of a stable empty of horses but occupied by several other bicycles. She pointed a finger at him, "I'll thank you not to tell me how I should choose my men. What should it matter if he has money or not? I swear, you and Father both." She glared at Jay for a moment.
He shrugged and showed his open palms, "Forgive me. But I believe it was you who called me a boor."
She shook her head, "That's because you are one." They walked around the side of the stable and made for the front door of their house.
Margaret skipped up the steps and threw open the screen doors which kept out pests but let air flow through, Jay plodded along behind.
"Daddy! Dear Jay Thomson has returned to us!" Margaret changed her voice to speak in a higher, disgustingly sweet tone. Jay rolled his eyes behind her back.
Edward Blake, Baron of Upton Pyne, was sitting at a table in the drawing room, hidden behind the financial section of the Times. A few scattered crumbs on a white china plate were all that remained of some biscuits.
Jay walked up past Margaret and put a hand on the doorway, leaning inside, "It's true, Father," he called, without the falsetto. "I have returned."
There was a pause, and then the elder Blake folded down the paper and looked up at Jay. He gave a lopsided smile, causing his ears to poke up into his gray-blond hair, "Welcome home, son."
Jay smiled back and nodded. Baron Blake turned towards his daughter and said, "Margaret, could you run and tell your mother Jay Thomson's here, I think she's in the solarium."
"Yes, Daddy," there was that sickly sweet voice again. Margaret curtsied dramatically and then fluttered off.
Jay's father looked at him and rolled his eyes. Jay chuckled and shook his head.
The Baron sighed, "What is it about her? She hasn't an ounce of respect for her elders. You should see the letters we get from her school. And she's still running about with that tailor boy." He said it as if the world would be a far better place if there were no tailors and mankind lived in the nude.
"He's a tailor, then?" Jay raised an eyebrow.
His father frowned, "Or a baker or a cobbler or some such mundane thing. Really, you'd think I had raised you children to have more appreciation for your station."
Jay laughed, "You do remember, Father, that you're only a Life Peer, right? I don't get to keep the barony."
"All the more reason for the two of you to try and keep some respectability," he shook a finger at Jay. "You two need all the help you can get if you're to have some semblance of a chance of earning the Empress' continued favor." He narrowed his eyes a little at Jay's laughing grin, then sighed. "Oh I don't know why I bother at all anymore. My children are obviously determined to move down in the ranks. How was your trip?"
"Dull," Jay entered the room and plopped into a high-backed leather chair. "Sweden wasn't bad, but Denmark has become even more sleepy since the cartoon thing, if you can believe it."
Baron Blake muttered something like "bloody wogs" and then said, "Well, you know your mother is going to want to hear all about it."
Jay sank deeper into the chair, but nodded. "I brought back a watch with some nice engraving work from a shop in Copenhagen; but I'm telling you, the most interesting thing the Danes ever did was to get themselves written into a play."
"The Bard must have had some reason to put Hamlet there."
"I think he took pity on them. I do too for that matter: no country should be that boring."
"Well, at least they've got proper principles about them."
Jay rolled his eyes, "Principles have got nothing to do with it. Rose was just trying to stir up trouble."
His father was undeterred, "Sometimes troublemaking's called for when it comes to showing the uncivilized races what's what."
Jay sighed, the elder Blake always had been and it seemed always would be, a staunchly obstinate Tory.
Thankfully, he was saved by the return of Margaret leading their mother. Jay stood up to meet Lily Blake's embrace. From her dirty apron and the bonnet Jay surmised that she'd been in her garden, not the solarium.
"Hi, Mum."
After she'd hugged him, his mother grabbed Jay by the shoulders and looked him sharply in the eye. "Margaret tells me she's already scolded you about keeping in better touch, Jay Thomson," Lily Blake said, "but I think it bears repeating. You don't write or wire us nearly enough. Why, we went three weeks in March without hearing a word from you. Your father and I were so worried."
Jay doubted very much that his father had expressed even the slightest concern over the lack of correspondence. It would have taken away time better spent on derision for his son's choice of career. But Jay shrugged anyway, "I'm sorry, Mum. It won't happen again."
"Oh don't even bother lying to me," she crossed her arms. "I just want to make you feel as guilty as possible whenever you think about your poor old mother who never hears from her son anymore."
Baron Blake cleared his throat, "Jay Thomson was just talking about his time in Denmark, Lily. Apparently, he thinks—"
Lily Blake's arm shot out like a rapier to point at her husband, "I'll have no talk of politics from you, Edward, it's sinful. I want you decent tonight. Jay Thomson's home and Margaret's bringing William over for dinner, so I won't tolerate—"
"What?" both of the Blake men spoke at once, and turned to stare at Margaret. Jay's sister wore a maliciously innocent smile.
Mrs. Blake put her hands on her hips and looked among the three of them in exasperation. "Really, now!"
<<2<<_>>4>>
Book One, Chapter:
-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-
-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31-32-33-34-35-36-37-38-39-40-41-42-
-43-44-45-46-47-48-49-50-51-52-53-54-55-56-57-58-59-60-61-62-
Appendix: -A-B-C-