BY PHILIP LOWE
My dearest wife has written her own memories in a book and has inspired me to write my own. I feel a little cautious in sharing my own memories of relationships and journeys. As long as everything I have experienced has brought me here, it is excusable.
I pray that our children do not experience the doubt, duplicity, and pain that I had.
I do not wish to deny the work my father must have effected, yet I believe, as my own future has taught me, he could have behaved differently—not only towards me.
My early teenage years became ripe picking fields. As I grew, my opinions changed.
At times, I recalled memories I thought were lost. Some were too uncomfortable. I have been able to reflect many times on motives and aspirations, yet it seems there has always been a different hand directing my path.
I do not know how my wife has relieved her life and her own difficulties. She must be so much stronger than me. Reader, I love her.
Brassey
Some weeks after the funeral, my brother and I were told we would be making a long journey abroad. So no more visits anywhere, least of all to Steven’s home. We had to pack our things. Rather, the staff packed while we watched.
I do not know what happened in my brother’s room, but I assume it was the same as my experience. I waited a long while to be tended by John and many others. However, the dog I had seen for the first time all that time ago trotted into my room. Completely unexpectedly, the dog looked at me and sat down. The dog seemed to be friendly and used to humans. Seeing that I would do it no harm, the dog responded to my invitation to join me, and so I stroked and loved that dog.
The dog heard noises before I did, rushing under my bed to avoid the approaching company. The woman who entered my room was very old—I had never seen her before. She started sniffing as if trying to locate the scent of the dog. Then she seemed to dismiss this plan and went straight to my armoire and looked in the wardrobe in my wall. I noted that she had atop her head the strangest coloured hair bun I had ever seen. The colour did not match the rest of her grey hair and totally stood apart from her yellowish skin.
She complained as she took out the clothing, about dubbin, the lack of shoe shining staff, the safety or lack thereof of packing razors and strops. She held clothes to her old nose and inhaled a great inhalation and talked of oiling and powdering my breeches. Just then, another member of staff looked in as she was rushing by and asked her if she’d seen “Brassey.” The old woman just looked at her in an impatient response. “Sorry to disturb, young master,” I was told before she ran off again with a pile of clothes. A bell rang from downstairs, and the dog shot off.
In my very limited experience, I have found that animals share unconditional love. Little Brassey here was a delight, and a member of the kitchen staff talked a great deal about her dog. She said it had lain with her father, comforting him in his dying hours. She said a friend’s dog had seen trouble in its owner’s leg that medicine saw was a cancer. If this is all true, dogs are amazing things.
We were never allowed pets at our house, much as we campaigned to Mother. Father had the last word on this matter, obviously. Because of my father’s unpredictable absences, it made some sort of sense, I assumed. However, I knew that somebody in the stables was allowed to keep a dog—which is where Brassey came from, I surmised.
Pierre and I were told that we were going to the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico. As far as I could see, it had yet to be decided, but my father had enjoyed the help of a man who came to our house at the last minute. My, he really smelt. He carried with him many maps; I tried to follow what he said, as did my young brother, but he spoke so quickly.
(John must have been cogniscant of him, certainly of his odour. He provided us all—my father first—with an invisible ointment that we smeared on our upper lips, following the example of my father. It smelled like mint, extremely powerful. Thank goodness.)
He warned of many things on the journey we were anticipating. He spoke of the many seas we would encounter—there I was thinking oceans did not contain seas. What a mistake. He spoke of the Labrador Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea and many more; I thought that even my father’s patience was tested. He used the floor to unroll a huge map—as he talked, my brother became sleepy after a while; so did I, and I concentrated more on his brown pegged teeth until he announced the dangers of a triangle you could draw in the Sargasso Sea—he referred to it mysteriously (and quickly) as the Devil’s triangle. He spoke of mariners encountering eels there and the seaweed grabbing men so they could not escape. He mentioned the ships and lives that had been lost there.
The smelly man grimaced, then rolled up his maps and went to leave. My father gave him an envelope, and he left. He then gave orders to a servant to bring a carriage to the front of the house. He looked at me and raised his eyes. I did not know what to make of him. As far as I know, neither did Pierre.
My father was almost friendly; I suppose once everything is made ready for a journey, there is nothing to do but experience it and smile, if possible. Maybe he was smiling at Mother’s passing and wished to let us know he was on our side. I had seen which side he was on in Cadiz. Despicable.
A carriage arrived at the front of the house. The badly scented man left, and I saw that it was dark outside.
A short time later, a small girl arrived at the great door at the front of Thornfield. Her yellow curls belied the bruises on her face and her bleeding nose.
I was encouraged to the top of the staircase by a great noise outside—from the balcony near my room, I saw these things:
About ten yards behind the girl, a massive man was shouting, clearly drunk, and the man whose dismally fragrant company we just entertained knew him. He began to greet him and to pull him away from his quarry. Yet the big man was too strong and loud. Many people came up from the kitchen as they heard him, one running into the hall with cutlery in a tea towel as she was drying it. She left the tea towel on the floor where it had been dropped. There was much noise and shouting and yelling. The stumbling little girl said, “Mama!” as one of the kitchen staff ran to her and hugged her, then took her out of sight. The vile big man was bellowing as he got further into the house.
Then my father had loaded his blunderbuss. Heaven knows where he got that from. I had only seen him, once briefly, with a musketoon before. He shot at the big man with cutlery from the tea towel, and the huge noise silenced everyone. The big man stopped in what looked like shock.
He was still for a while, and my father methodically loaded his weapon with more cutlery and a glass he had just broken (on purpose) and shot again. The big man’s right arm stopped flailing and fell out of his sleeve. He then followed his arm silently to the ground. The surrounding crowd left in amazement, and some male members of staff cleared the dead body from outside. Pierre had joined me, and we went to our rooms, although I stayed with my brother.
He was a known violent troublemaker, Leman Rede, or under a soubriquet, one being Terry Maidment or Terry May.
Very early the following morning, a carriage arrived for us and was already packed with trunks and other bags. My father, brother, and I climbed in. There was a commode facing the far door, surrounded by a black curtain. My father said, “It will be a long journey.” Sleep came easily after the concerns and worries of the previous night; the sun was just beginning to rise. I noticed the carriage moving around the pond; it stopped for some reason before going through the gate of the wretched wall, and I welcomed the move away from Thornfield.
There was an ingenious feature that I had not seen before on a carriage: from the seated driver’s station, there were a number of handles and footrests to the commode side of the carriage—in this way, someone could clamber around the carriage when the horses were flying at top speed.
At several times during the day, the driver or his colleague would knock on the commode side door and call “required?” and my father would reply “required” or “not required.” If required, a half-door would be opened, and the lid of the commode would click open. Then the container would be removed from the commode, the contents would be thrown to the road, the container would be replaced and a few sprays of Javel water would be applied. The commode closed with another click. Before he left, a few squirts of lavender scent would be sprayed. The whole business would take but a moment. I was amazed by all this. It had not been raining throughout the journey, thank goodness.
After some hours, I awoke briefly to find I had been sleeping, leaning on my father’s arm. He himself slept sitting in the centre of the seat in the carriage, and I assumed that Pierre was on his other arm. What a delicious, hot sleep I was having, surprisingly, on him.
As soon as I realised what I was doing, I jerked and sat upright, distancing myself from my father.
So we were on our way on a journey overseas. That is all we had been told.
Of course, I was glad to be leaving Thornfield. Yet the thought of being at the whim of and relying on my father was terrifying.
My experience of being overseas was not a happy one. One member of the kitchen staff spoke with a dreamy lilt about her time in the beauties of Italy, yet her talk was mostly about food—I remember her saying that the tomatoes she had tasted there were the best she had ever experienced. Yet I had never heard anyone effusing about Mexico or the Caribbean. Of course, I had heard that there were business interests to be had there. This, however, made me worry more about my father and his business there. I suppose now that my mother had passed, he would allow himself more of a free rein.
Pierre seemed to have become quieter after our mother’s passing. So my opinions of my father were to stay my own. At least for the present.
I thought a great deal about what my father had done. Undoubtedly he had done the right thing in protecting the little girl and ridding the world of the vile, hulking man. Yet I think that his motives were to protect the house and its name. Perhaps also his own standing. There would be no more horrible attempts to disrupt the peace of Thornfield—I wondered what kind of relationship the smelly man had with the horrible, large intruder.
I did not like to think of my father practicing heroic deeds or being thought of as a hero. It did not sit well with me.
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