Chapter 12
Previously: Obsidian: Crystal Heart – Chapter 11
Fuck. How did he totally overlook that he had managed to keep that to himself up until now, only to ruin it all of a sudden? But if he stonewalls Arthur now, he knows he’ll get a pout and a huff. So fine, as long as the questions don’t become too personal, he can indulge their resident black hole of curiosity. “Born here. Grew up here.”
John nearly added a growled: “Got shipped off from here,” but he doesn’t really want to bring that up.
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“Oh,” Arthur says. “Um, sorry, that’s… probably bad memories?” He doesn’t know too much about how John ended up on that post boat, but he can make inferences. “We can talk about something else?”
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For several long moments, John hesitates, internally grumbles and groans, but his girl always treats Arthur so affectionately, and John isn’t ungrateful for everything Arthur has done for him, right from the start, so fine, fucking fine, they’re here anyway. “Want to see my favourite spot down at the harbour?”
“I’d like that,” Arthur answers, sounding hesitant as always, like he’s admitting to something. “But only if you don’t, uh, hate it.”
“That specific spot, no.” Shaking his head, John veers away from the train station down a side street. He’ll have to balance between going the routes he is familiar with and going along streets that are far too close to where he lived. He just can’t get over the irrational fear that he’d be recognised, and the not-so irrational fear that he’d murder his father on the spot if he ran into him.
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Arthur walks along, and considers what to say next. He doesn’t want to prod John about things he’s clearly not comfortable with, so instead he decides to offer: “Going back somewhere after meeting Darcy is weird, isn’t it? When I went back where I grew up the first time, everything looked a lot smaller and dirtier.”
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Right. John hadn’t even considered that Arthur has his own shitty memories of his past. Now he feels like a right arse. He stood honour guard at the gravestones in the London house. Arthur has had his nose pushed into his past much worse than John did. He needs to be the better man, the bigger man, and not just grunt and grumble through this. “Don’t think this shithole could look any dirtier than I remember it. Also… I never was as poor as you, sorry.”
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“It’s not a terribly nice town, is it?” Arthur asks, since John doesn’t sound fond of it, then shrugs. “I wasn’t as poor as the people living around us, either. Well, not until my father went to prison, anyway. So, uh… I guess being poor makes your life worse, but not being poor doesn’t mean it can’t be awful?”
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“It grew a lot I’ve been told. The railway and shipping industry brought a lot of people but maybe not a lot of wealth.” John stops for a moment because now he wonders… Sure, he doesn’t want to go anywhere near it, but maybe Arthur would like it. John looks down a street.
“My family had money, more for my father’s crooked business tricks, but don’t you fucking insist that’s what all of us… them are like!” Where did that come from? John blinks and runs his hand down his face. Fuck. This town is fucking with him. Old habits and assumptions bubbling up so he tacks on weakly: “So, yeah, still awful.”
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Arthur tilts his head, confused. “Er… all of who? Unless you don’t want to say,” he adds hastily. Obviously, John isn’t comfortable with this conversation whatsoever, but Arthur doesn’t quite know how to get them out of it now that they’ve started. Also, well, he is curious to learn more about John- he likes him.
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“Oh for fuck’s sake.” John kicks a stone down the street. It’s not Arthur’s fault, he doesn’t want to get grumpy at him, but he also really doesn’t want to bring up his ethnicity, especially because it feels as surreal and no longer him as everything else from his former life.
Problem is, Arthur’s curious, and he knows Arthur got in shit for it often enough, he doesn’t want to be one of those people who make him think he has to just always shut up. Okay, he can make statements without having to say something directly.
Fishing around in his pockets for some money, he points down the street. “You’ll get it in a moment. Go down the street here, take a right and then look until you see a shop window with mixed wares. Go in and ask for their walnut halva. Don’t let them talk you into the almond halva. Everybody knows which one is better, and they always try to sell it to the outsiders so they can keep the better one for the community.”
He hesitates for another moment, but come on, fuck it, he’s never again going to get his mother’s German version, so he might just as well get the closest he can get, and the other one he’s familiar with. “Get a pack of Mandel Brot, too.”
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“Walnut halva and a pack of Mandel Brot,” Arthur says, repeating the unfamiliar words carefully to make sure he’s got them right. He wonders what he’s going to ‘get’ through doing this, but he’s willing. “Um… how much of the walnut halva? What does it come in?”
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Now John nearly wanted to tell Arthur to haggle for a better price and get them a pound, but this is Arthur, sending the shy guy to haggle with a professional merchant, the thought is nearly funny enough to try but it would be an arse move, so, no. “Just get half a pound. It’s going to be us two eating it anyway, too sweet for the redheads.”
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“Okay,” Arthur agrees, and sets off on his adventure, repeats his short shopping list and how he’s going to ask for it in his head so he isn’t going to stand there stuttering when he reaches the shop.
The streets he heads down are looking like a slightly better part of town. There are nice, three story houses made of red brick with big windows, interspersed with smaller ones, and store fronts. Finding the shop window with the mixed wares isn’t difficult.
A bell jingles softly when he enters, and he blinks a time or two for his eyes to adjust.
It’s not very large inside, but shelves are neatly filled with goods and it’s clean and smells nice, sweet and aromatic.
“Hello,” he greets the man behind the counter. He has a small black cap on his head and a big bushy beard, and Arthur’s realizes that that’s the clue he’s looking for. The ‘community’ John talked about must be the Jewish one! He knows there’s one somewhere in East London with the rest of them, undesirables all together: poor people and Chinese people and Black people and all. Not that he’s ever had much to do with any of them, but he has seen them around.
The man indeed tries to offer him the almond halva instead, but Arthur politely insists on the walnut one. That makes the man give him a shrewd look, but he wraps Arthur’s purchases and rings up the money without further complaint, and says “And to you,” when Arthur thanks him and wishes him a nice day.
Once he’s on his way back without the need to think about shopping, he considers this new piece of information. He knows what the newspaper caricatures of Jewish people are like, which explains why John was defensive about his father’s shady business practises.
So he supposes that means John is Jewish? Or was? Which is interesting, but leaves Arthur at a bit of a loss anyway, because… he really doesn’t know the first thing about what that means.
So when he returns to John, he asks the important question first: “Is this the right stuff?”
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John had been trying his hardest not to look like a nervous vagrant loitering around the corner. Which he’s well aware of is somewhat ridiculous, given that he’s dressed well enough to put a huge target on his back. Still, he was worried what Arthur would say, what stereotypes he might now start in on when interacting with him. Maybe he’d even be wary of him all of a sudden.
So when that’s Arthur’s first question John can’t help the surprised sound escaping before he takes a look and isn’t sure about his own feelings. “Yes, it is. Thanks.” Arthur was nice about it, so he should be nice, too. “Thanks for getting me something I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy again.”
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Arthur smiles at him. “Happy to! Um… though the castle could probably make you some, I’d imagine?” Yes, he should probably ask about the Jewish thing now, but he doesn’t know how. Does he just come out and ask? What if he figured it out wrong? Or is he not supposed to ask?
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“It probably could, but it’s kind of not the same.” Sighing and taking the package from Arthur, because he likes carrying things and it occupies his hands, John looks down the street. Of course he can’t look around the corner, can’t see the street he grew up on, the house he grew up in, the house he wonders if he wants to burn down, preferably with his father in it. But instead, he goes for the thing that hurts rather than makes him angry, because being angry honours his father in the worst ways and he doesn’t want to be a man like that. “It’s not as if I’ll ever have my mother’s cooking again.”
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“Oh,” Arthur says. “Um… I’m sorry? I don’t suppose there’s anything I could do to help?” He doesn’t remember his own mother’s cooking, of course. But she must’ve done that, right? Mothers generally do? Now he wonders what it tasted like.
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“Don’t fucking tempt me to send you back down that street and ask you to glare at a house in a very fiery way.” The paper rustles in his hands, helping him to notice that he’s tensing up, so, with a concerted effort, he exhales and kicks the dark thought away. “Let’s go to the harbour and snack on this instead.”
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Arthur nods. “Yes, let’s. If I do any arson, I’d prefer to do it with, like, more of a plan and escape strategy and not in the middle of the day when someone could see me and all…” He gives John a half-grin- although he is serious, if John wanted him to do arson, he realises he’d do it.
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Well fuck, John can hear the sincerity in Arthur’s words and it puts a wobbly smile on his face, so he bumps their shoulders together as he starts walking towards the harbour. “I’ll remember that. And should I ask how close to combusting you are with asking the obvious question after I sent you down there?”
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“Um… Just a little close,” Arthur admits, with a little blush, but the way John puts it, and how he smiled at him, now he’s not feeling so awkward anymore as he walks along with him where he leads.
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“If you don’t mind then, can we leave it at, I feel as close to that now as I do to every other aspect of my former life. Ergo, don’t get any ideas about treating me as one of… them.” There, he said it, it feels a little bit weird, but well, he’s a British noble now. That’s how he has to behave, and the less he wonders about his old life, the easier that’ll be for him.
“Okay.” Arthur nods his agreement. “…Just, uh… did I correctly identify them as Jewish? Just so I know?”
That makes John snort. Only Arthur would ask like that. And really, it’s Arthur, what was he even worried about stereotypes for? Arthur’s a good kid, man, well, kind of bit of both. “Yeah, you did. Thought that would be fucking obvious.”
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“Eh.” Arthur shrugs sheepishly. “I’ve never actually met any Jewish people before, to talk to, that I know of. The only way I know is from seeing them on the street sometimes, and the newspaper caricatures, and those are hardly any sort of reliable source. Honestly, I don’t even know what ‘Jewish’ really means- like, it’s a religion, right? But also, sometimes the newspapers talk like Jewish people are foreigners or something? But they’ve always looked just the same as English people to me, you know?” He gestures at his features in illustration. “And I’m not so good on more recent history, but I think Jewish people have been around for, like, centuries? How can you be a foreigner if you’ve been around for centuries?”
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“Different religion, different culture. Or to put that in newspaper talk, refuse to integrate.” With a shrug and a headshake, John scoffs. “I’ve listened to a lot of talk about that my whole former life. Honestly, not worth all the debate. We’re both part of a British noble household, so that’s who we need to be and who I shall be. I mean, we just spent the day with my very British-noble future wife.”
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Arthur nods again- he still has questions, but clearly that’s very personal for John and he’s not too keen to get into it, so Arthur’s going to shelf that for a private future research project he does on his own just for curiosity’s sake. For now, he says: “She sure was very noble, wasn’t she?”
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Glad for the change of topic, even though he’s a bit amazed at himself that talking about his potential future fiancée is more comfortable than talking about his old life, John grins. “Has to be. She was showing it off, trying to convince me that she’s a good enough match. She got a lot riding on this, she wouldn’t have reached out otherwise. You were the one telling us about her background, you know she might not get another chance.”
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“I wonder why?” Arthur says, head tilted. “Like… there’s a suspicious lack of anything ‘wrong’,” he makes sure to include the air quotes, “with her by general societal standards? She’s good-looking, as far as I can tell, and does have all those conversation skills and what not. Sure, she isn’t very high nobility, but what’s making her desperate enough to court us?”
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“Scandal.” That one isn’t difficult for John to figure out. “The letter came after Quincy and I were at the ball with Darcy. Miss Powlett is ‘unmarriageable’ in many people’s eyes, so she went for the household that is stirring up the gossip.”
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“Yeah, I get that, what I’m wondering is why she’s ‘unmarriageable’ in the first place?” Arthur asks. “Now that it’s confirmed that it isn’t anything superficial on her looks, or that she’s as bad at manners or people as me or Darcy… Something’s got to have chased her first fiancé away? And knowing how judgemental people are, it’s probably not something we’d mind, but I’d still like to know. Like, is she an aberration, or does she have magic, or did she, I dunno, have a lover or something?”
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With a chuckle, John ponders it for a moment while he looks out at the now-visible harbour before shrugging. “It’s probably one of those, and frankly, if she’s something that normally would void her noble status, like the rest of us, good for us. Not going to say no to more firepower. If she has a lover, I’ll be more than happy to invite him in. I already, um, well, not sure I’ll ever love her, so I thought, only fair if she has an affair.”
“I’m kind of hoping it’s some sort of power,” Arthur admits. “Given the kind of shit we get into, it’d be good if she had extra ways to defend herself, maybe?”
“Great, now I need to decide how badly I want to be the big protector in the house.” Laughing and patting Arthur’s shoulder, John is glad to see that his spot only has some gulls around it, not a lot of people. That also means there is no fun ship anchored on that dock, but better that than having to constantly tell people to fuck off and leave them be. “You’re right, though.”
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“Oh, I’m sure there’ll still be plenty of protection opportunities,” Arthur assures him as he follows him out onto the pier, looks at the spread of the sea, the white dots of gulls in the air and on the waves. “This is nice,” he agrees.
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John’s glad that he has his hands full because he nearly, very nearly, out of long habit, wanted to sort his skirts before sitting down at the end of the wooden runway. Just about to answer Arthur, he startles before smiling down into the water. “Hey, don’t tell me you actually recognize me. I’m sorry, today I don’t have any fish for you.” Maybe it’s all the time he spent with his girl by now. How normal it seems to him these days to talk to animals, but this right here, the otter he knows lives under the pier, close to the edge of the harbour, this is the first person in Hartlepool he’s genuinely happy to see.
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Arthur peers over the edge and into a brown, furry, triangular face bopping in the water. “Oh, hello there!” he greets. “You’re really cute!” The otter flexes his whiskers, and Arthur grins. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an otter up close before!”
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“I wouldn’t want to be an otter in the Thames.” Laughing and finding himself relaxing, John looks up and yes, the fish stand is still open. “Be right back! Then you can show off that you can hold really still. She’ll take the fish from your hands if you don’t move.”
Getting back up again and setting the bag safely to the side, he dashes over to the stand as he’s done so many times before. But now it’s because he wants to, for no other reason than to indulge in feeding a night friend and probably getting Arthur to be really happy, too. Hartlepool is no longer a prison, it’s just a place he can visit if he wants to, or if he’s here on barony business. Just a town, like any other and that makes him way more okay with it.
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Darcy is so very glad she can remind herself of her drac on the way back to Whitby. Her sang du coeur’s hands tight in her fur and his weight on her back are as soothing as the smell of nothing but saltwater underneath them, no mean humans anywhere, well, on some boats, but those are closer to the coast, not out here where she’s flying far away from their eyes… and their rules.
Watching the Selkie play the perfect housewife for the doctor shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but Darcy couldn’t help but whimper at how familiar it felt. The mask on the Selkie’s face must have been as thick and cold as it ever was for Darcy.
Not having seen her husband for now two days is less than unimportant now, it’s good! She’s glad for it, the only thing she worries is whether he’s doing something that might hurt her household. It’s a very mean thought, but she kind of hopes that he gets lost and never finds his way back. That would be a good end for that gothic fairytale. Sometimes people also go up against the devil and are never heard from again, but he’s a demon, that probably doesn’t work.
Unless, of course, he gets called back or put under house arrest. How does that work? Are all demons the devil’s children? Could Gregory get grounded like that? She grounded him once and she still doesn’t regret it, he is a brat. And he’s mean towards Quincy, too. That means she is right in being mean to him. She might be his wife, but he can’t treat Quincy badly!
Not even the doctor with his selkie wife did as much as Gregory did to her. The mice told her. What she saw today was about how all days go. She makes food and does some cleaning and the doctor even talks to her. But apparently he doesn’t touch her.
Or the ones before her. She had to ask the rooftop cats about that, her mouse friends don’t really live so long and don’t pay that much attention to the people in the house. But the cats remember seeing other women. Not that they behaved any differently. It’s always the same, they arrive one night, stay for a while, and then leave with another man and a package under the man’s arm.
On that, her mice could help her, they like the heavy leather of the doctor’s bag and sometimes he has edible things in there for them to steal. So Darcy went to investigate the bag she’s seen him carry around all day long. And she knows a doctor’s bag! Her papa has one of them, he’s let her rummage around in it many times! This one is weird. There’s only some of the instruments in there she knows are used for checking up on patients. It’s too empty, even with the rows of that tincture Quincy handed her earlier.
Why is it this empty and why does it smell so much of selkie? Wait, in the village, the woman insisted on the pelts! Is there maybe one in here? She can’t see it, but what is she a rat for? Jumping fully into the bag, (it’s stored in a locked cabinet anyway, so she feels safe to rummage,) she soon finds the double liner. The bag isn’t insulated, it has the selkie pelt behind the inner lining!
But what was she supposed to do with knowing that? Sure, she could have turned human easily enough right in the cabinet, kicked the door open, stuffed the pelt under her arm, killed the doctor and marched the selkie to the harbour. But… that selkie isn’t the only selkie the doctor ever had. She doesn’t like it, she doesn’t like it one bit! But she needs somebody who’s smarter than her to think this through before she just lets her drac bite.
Still, she’s glad to get some distance between her and that doll’s house.
The doctor doesn’t touch the selkie… Not as if Gregory has touched her a single time since Quincy, either, and… At first, she felt sad about that as much as she was relieved, but now, now she never wants him to touch her again! Quincy said that what Gregory did to her was rape. And John agreed. Agreed bitterly, he was so upset.
She never meant to upset John, she just had tried to be a good wife to Gregory still. Be his whore when she couldn’t be anything else. But no more, a husband only gets his wife’s obedience and privileges when he fulfils his responsibilities. Quincy was very clear about that and that must mean it’s true!
It’s like when Papa tells her something, she just knows it’s true. She loves Papa and she loves Quincy. They both know better than her but Gregory doesn’t, and that’s that!
Like with the Selkies, Gregory doesn’t have her pelt, Gregory can’t keep her drac anymore. No, Quincy has it and Papa has it and she wants John to have it, too. She trusts them to let her have it any time she wants to put it on and be herself, rather than having to not have her fur on. Silly mask.
She’s so glad that she doesn’t have her mask on right now. No, all she has to do right now is fly the occasional loop to hear Quincy whoop and laugh and still berate her about all this sea air being bad for his hair. She knows he’s not saying it because she’s bad for him, no, John explained that to her, Quincy says things like that because he’s just letting her know how to be good for him. So she’ll just brush his hair lots later. She was on a date with John last night, so tonight is Quincy date night, and she very much prefers to think about that rather than about having to report on the selkie.
But she’ll still do it, and John and Arthur will know how to get to the Selkie’s happy ending!
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