Companion to "The Call of the Running Tide", discusses the ship and defines many terms.
Beginning, Section II, Next Section
Chapter Nine
That evening, Elizabeth's first stop on the Jane Gossip quest was Charlotte. But Charlotte was not very helpful, in Elizabeth's opinion.
"Well, I suppose I can see Charlie falling for Jane," the steward said, "but I don't really see much from Jane's corner."
"You haven't noticed how frequent and huge her smiles are around him?"
"Well, yes, but if she wants to get invited to join his research team, then being attractive can only benefit her."
"Are you kidding? Jane would never try to manipulate someone like that! She is way too honest to try to use anything but her own merit to get an advantage."
"Beauty is a merit."
Elizabeth sighed, exasperated with her friend's new mindset, "A relevant merit, Charlotte. Jane's looks do not in any way reflect on her academic ability, and she would never try to use them as such."
"Perhaps she should, or she might end up like me."
"Jane is not a-" Elizabeth bit back the word "coward" and lowered her voice back to an acceptable range. "Jane already has a job that she enjoys and is happy in. Any research would be icing on her cake at this point, but she doesn't need it. I'm not saying that the two of them shouldn't work together or anything; in fact it would probably make a huge amount of sense, but I really think there is more to it than that."
"Well, I'll pay attention now that you've said something, Lizzy."
"Okay, Charlotte, see you later." Elizabeth was discouraged as she stepped out of the galley, not about her quest for gossip, but about the state of her friendship with the steward. She simply could not understand the world from Charlotte's point of view any more. She shook her head and wondered what this monster was that ate people's dreams and joys and sense of awe and whether it would ever catch up with her. She ascended the main companionway and stuck her head in the lab, but Mary Kate was surrounded by students, and Elizabeth didn't see any reason why she should spread rumors over the whole ship. So she just said hello and inquired about the results of the hundred-count from their latest plankton tow. After poking around at a few amphipods and a crab megalops larva through the microscope, she bid her good-byes to the lab and headed for the quarterdeck. Conveniently enough, there she found Alice, the second assistant scientist, also off watch at the time. And even more convenient, neither subject of her quest was present. This time, however, she got a very different reaction to her inquiries.
Alice looked at her in disbelief, "Did you only just notice this, Lizzy? Mary Kate and I have been laughing about it for days."
"You have? Who else knows?"
"Well, we both discussed it with Ann, I talked about it with Spring, and I don't really know if Mary Kate has said anything to Paula."
Lizzy grinned and felt like she was watching colored dye spread out through the ship's gossip pathways. "I'm sure she has. I know that Jane would have been the first person I discussed this with if it hadn't involved her. Well, I guess I'm about the last to know. Except Charlotte. And the students. And maybe Liz."
"Nope, she was there too when we were talking to Ann."
No wonder there are never shipboard romances! What a network this place is. "So, do you think that she has fallen for him as well, or just he for her?"
"Lizzy, he had her laughing the other day. Really laughing. And once I saw her blush."
"What do you think will happen?"
"Well, I suppose they won't be able to pursue this very far on shipboard. Ever noticed how all they ever talk about is science? I think they're trying to stay on neutral, or professional, ground. And failing miserably, I might add. We'll just have to see what happens when the cruise is over, but I think I could venture a guess."
"Hmmm...well, thank you for your insight, o guru of love and human behavior."
Alice laughed and slapped her friend amicably on the back, "No problem, naïve one. Now, I have to visit my bunk, because I have dawn watch tomorrow."
"I'm on midwatch, so I'm going to stay up a little longer. Good night."
"Lucky. Have a nice sleep tomorrow morning."
"Have an nice dawn tomorrow morning."
"You do manage to find the best in everything, don't you?"
"Are you kidding? Dawn watch is my favorite. Besides, you slept in this morning."
"And you'll have dawn watch the day after tomorrow."
"I'm not the one complaining."
Alice laughed and waved dismissively at the mate, amused at Elizabeth's ability to have the last word in absolutely anything. Except her sister falling in love.
Chapter Ten
Author's Note: Elizabeth's story is dedicated to Kathlyn (you'll see why). It is a true story, told as accurately as I can make it, since it's second hand.
Elizabeth stayed on the quarterdeck contemplating the information Alice had given her. She was certainly struck by the irony of the fact that she was one of the last crewmembers to notice that her own sister appeared to be falling in love. But she also felt somewhat better after Alice's speculation that the two would wait for dry land before progressing with their relationship. Either her instinct or her dim view of love in general made her feel like living aboard a ship could get both stressful on a budding relationship and tiresome for the rest of the company.
She was awakened from her reverie when she noticed Darcy, Teg and Jimmy floundering in their attempt to sheet in the mainsail. They were undoubtedly undermanned for the task, but were also lacking in synchronization of their tugs. Jimmy was making a game effort at timing them by calling out the traditional "Two-six, HEAVE!" but it was quite apparent that more coordination was needed.
"Arrr...put yer backs inter it, yer pond scum!"
Darcy raised his head, surprised to find that this amusingly accurate pirate imitation was coming from Elizabeth.
"I'm thinkin' we need a chantey, do we mateys? Haul away on ther chorus parts."
She grasped the end of the sheet and broke into song. Teg and Jimmy had apparently heard it before, since they joined in singing the response and pulled at the appropriate moments, quickly bringing Darcy into the rhythm as well.
"Louis was the king of France before the revolution."
"WAY haul a-WAY, we'll HAUL away to-GE-ther."
"But then he got his head cut off it spoiled his constitution."
"a-WAY haul a-WAY, we'll HAUL away JOE."
Darcy's last four pulls were somewhat weaker than his first, as he was chuckling at her lyrics. Her next verse was so bawdy and off-color, and simultaneously so ridiculous to hear from a woman, that he was laughing out loud. Fortunately, the main was sheeted in, Teg called "Up behind!" and he was able to drop the line. He grinned to Elizabeth, "let me guess, that chantey was written when sailors were men?"
"They all were," Elizabeth replied noncommittally, "steamers began to roam the seas in the middle of the nineteenth century, and were the beginning of the end of the Age of Sail." She spoke the term reverently; he could hear the capital letters. "Apparently it was too difficult to climb the rigging in a corset."
He gave her a wry, crooked smile, "So I guess you're glad you were born now. Somehow I can't imagine you in a corset."
Did that mean I'm unladylike, Dr. Darcy? Very well, you are more than welcome to think what you will of me. "No, I suppose not. It's a hard battle to get me in a dress."
Without so much as a greeting to him she turned and moved away across the deck, leaving Darcy to contemplate this enigma of a person and why she fascinated him so. He had watched her that afternoon as she moved with her particular brand of grace and agility through the rigging. She was fearless, but always prudent, he noticed, clipping in her harness whenever possible. He did not get the impression that she had something to prove as she perched upon the yard, applying leather to a section that had been chafing the forestays'l when braced sharp. She was simply perfectly self-assured with her perch, and so focused on her task that she was unaware of the swinging leg that gave her a carefree appearance. He was learning to appreciate her humor. What he had originally marked as tasteless he now began to rethink. True, it was not fit for certain company, but he noticed that it never failed to be funny, and since everyone aboard were adults, what did it matter? Despite his initial reaction to it, he had used her "up your aft" mnemonic time and again when discerning the jib halyard from the jt halyard from the raffee halyard. It certainly was memorable, and wasn't that the point? He also admired her curiosity. From his initial shock at her scientific abilities when she discussed seabirds with him, he had noticed her constant interest not just in sailing, but in the results of their CTD casts, sediment grabs, plankton tows, chlorophyll samples, just about anything that science managed to throw at them. And she seemed to get particularly excited when she could wed information from the deck watch with information from the science watch to gain a more comprehensive picture of what the water-and air-around them was doing. And her excitement was infectious, it traveled straight into the smiles and minds of the students. Here was a teacher, a scientist, a humorist, all bound into the form of a sailor. He felt a little ridiculous now for the 180-degree shift his opinions had taken. I agreed to learn to be a sailor, he rationalized, shouldn't I appreciate a talented one when I see her? The research I can do falling off a log. Charles is right--the students' eyes are just as good as mine, they can collect data, and I will work on it when I get home. I am going to play sailor, and as long as I do, I am going to be a good sailor.
With this new agenda in mind he set off to join the rest of the crew.
As the sun sank below the horizon, several students were seated atop the doghouse, gathered around Dawn and Elizabeth who were strumming their guitars. William did not feel like he could actually join them, since he was on watch, but stood on the bench alongside the doghouse and rested his elbows upon the cabintop, watching her play. They sang mostly popular songs, but all ones with a sea theme. Dawn was well schooled in her Jimmy Buffet, and he found himself singing along with everyone else. Then Elizabeth played some older sea songs and he simply listened to her sing.
A lull in the music was filled by a request for Elizabeth to tell them a sea story.
"You mean a sea story, or something that really happened?" She asked. "Do you guys know the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale begins with 'once upon a time' and a sea story begins with 'this is no shit.' It's true, too."
William spoke up. "Why don't you tell us the most frightening thing that has ever happened to you at sea."
She eyed him warily, but since the idea was heavily endorsed by the others, she complied.
"All right. This really did happen, and it was on the Austen. Two years ago, we were sailing in the Sargasso Sea, en route from the Caribbean to Bermuda. We were having some really tropical weather, afternoon squalls and thunderstorms included. Most of these squalls we were seeing on our radar well in advance and just sailing around. But then a cold front came through and there was nothing we could really do but take in sail and wait for it to pass. Now, you guys all know that cold fronts bring severe weather with gusty winds and thunderstorms and everything, but an important thing here was that the cold front was moving into really warm, wet air, which makes the temperature and moisture gradient even bigger, cranks the wind and supercharges the air."
Elizabeth's brief weather review was not lost on William. He was also aware of the fact that her story would leave a more indelible imprint than any textbook could on the students minds. He realized how much her job must mean to her--just because she was off watch she did not stop teaching.
"I was off watch at the time, but we had all known that this front was coming through. We had been plotting it on the radar for hours, and the watch on deck had a plan and were prepared. My bunk was in the foc's'le cabin, and I woke up when they slammed the scuttle shut. That was how I knew that it had started to rain. I was going back to sleep, since after all I have slept through more cold fronts than I even know about, but the front started getting close and the thunder was keeping me awake. Thunder is weird in a steel ship--it sort of echoes and resonates through the hull. Finally I got up to watch the show. Most of the rest of the watches below were awake at this point, even though it was about midnight. Everyone was gathered around the main salon munching on midnight snack. Most of the students were a little nervous; most of the crew were pretty calm.
"I went up the midships companionway to watch the storm in the night, but the rain was pelting in, so we decided to shut the watertight door and I went below again. I'm glad I did, because about five minutes later the mainmast was struck by lightening. I'm glad I wasn't standing in the midships companionway, four feet away from the base of the mast. I'm not sure anything would have happened to me, but I'll leave it up to someone else to try it out. The only people on deck at the time were the helmsman and the bow watch, and they were fine, but it scared the hell out of the girl at the helm. She said the whole mast and stays and everything sort of lit up for a second.
"Now, even below we knew pretty quickly what had happened. The masts are very carefully grounded, or watered, or whatever, so no one got zapped from the actual lightening bolt, but the huge charge induced a current in the rest of the metal on the ship. Anyone touching anything metal got a mild shock. We heard the thunder, and we didn't need the watch on deck to tell us what had happened. We all split off and did a quick below boat-check for the deck and established that we were neither leaking nor burning nor anything else deadly. And all our rigging was still standing, so we considered ourselves pretty lucky. But there was one thing wrong. Most of the electronics in the engine room had survived, except for a few things that were fried by the induced current. But all of our navigational electronics were dead. Everything. They are all attached to antennae on the mast. Both GPS units, both radars, the loran, both high seas radios, all the VHF radios except one handheld unit with about a six mile range. So we still had a reefer and freezer, but we didn't have any electronics to tell us where we were, and, even more importantly, we couldn't communicate with LSO.
"You guys know how we call in to them every morning at 0800h? Well, if we miss a day, they start paying close attention but wait another day, because things happen at sea and it doesn't necessarily mean we're all dead. But if we don't call in the next day, they call the Coast Guard. This has never been done, of course, but that's the policy. So we knew that we had to find a way to get word to them within the next thirty or so hours. Since we were much farther than that from land, we were pretty much at the mercy of any ship that happened to come near enough to hear us on our little VHF. So we set a course for nearest land, the Bahamas, and began sending out PanPan messages requesting an answer from any ship that heard us. PanPan messages imply something serious, but not life-threatening. If you were sinking you'd use Mayday.
"So except for the radio, all was for the most part well. All of the deck crew were well schooled in celestial navigation, and since we were several weeks into our trip the students were pretty handy at it also. We figured with eight sextants aboard we could hardly go wrong as long as it stayed relatively clear. But as morning came the clouds behind the front began to clear out, and we noticed that the dawn was starting to glow off our port beam. That was all wrong, because we were headed west, to the Bahamas. The sun was rising in the south.
"It didn't take us long to figure out what had happened, but in the time that it did take, all four of us deck crew were just staring at the dawn, wondering if we were hallucinating, or asleep, or dead or something. The lightning had changed the deviation on the compass. It had realigned the iron atoms in the steel of the ship so that the compass was pointing west instead of north. And we didn't realize it, because in the immediate confusion after the lightening and the windshifts with the front passing through, no one noticed that it was the compass and not the ship that was off course.
"So we were left with the stars. We used them and the sun to work up a makeshift new deviation table so that we could keep using our compass to steer by, but we were continually checking and refining it. By the time the next evening rolled around we were established with our new routine of sunsights and deviation calculations, but we were starting to sweat over making contact with LSO. We knew that they would be pacing a hole in the floor, since they have eyes too and could read the weatherfaxes as well as we could. They knew that we had met up with a cold front, so our missing the call the next morning was probably their worst nightmare. Finally at about 2200h, only ten left to go, we were answered by a containership in our area. We asked them to call LSO for us, and we got an answer. It was the President--he had taken the high seas radio home with him. We told to him what had happened and what our plans were, but cautioned that we still would not have definite radio contact until we made port in the Bahamas. So we were left to our own devices.
"It was a fascinating cruise from there on in. I've been using celestial nav for as long as I have been sailing--I learned it on my student cruise just like you guys are. But until then I had never had to depend solely upon my sextant. They're enormously accurate, but to some extent they are at the mercy of the elements. I'd never had to worry about whether it would be clear or not when we passed through the Gulf Stream. Dead reckoned positions are really inaccurate in the Gulf Stream because the current is so strong that it can put you miles off your course. I'd never had to worry if it would be clear when we approached the Bahamas. They are full of reefs and sand and you want to know just where you are when you meet up with them. It was a very impressive lesson in self reliance."
A weighty silence greeted the end of Elizabeth's story as they considered that the implications of this mildly frightening event could have been exponentially more deadly if LSO did not believe in the absolute necessity of proficient celestial navigation. Elizabeth had deliberately played down the fact that they had no navigation devices, but everyone present had enough experience working with these instruments to appreciate the significance of losing them. William was mesmerized by the story. He realized that the reason that the mate came across as fiercely independent and capable was that she was just that. Set her loose anywhere on this ocean with a sextant and a few charts and she can find her way home, he thought. No wonder she is so confident. And yet, she tells the whole story from the perspective of "we," of everyone, of a crew. Never says that "she" did anything heroic at all. She shares everything; her knowledge, her laugh, her success.
Unexpectedly, Elizabeth spoke again. "Can you guys still see that weather vane up there at the top of the mainmast?"
They all peered into the growing darkness and could just make out a black arrow silhouetted against the navy blue sky.
"When it got light that first morning, we kept finding little blobs of melted and singed plastic stuck to the deck. We finally figured out that it had rained weathervane."
Chapter Eleven
"So he stares at you. And you think the only possible explanation for this is that he is repulsed by you? I must question the logic of that, Lizzy."
"But Paula, why else would he act like that? I think it's the novelty. Like this: he's a scientist, right? It's like he's found some new, bizarre species of cockroach and even though it's a disgusting thing in itself, he can't stop looking at it because it's so strange."
Paula gave her friend a disbelieving stare, as if questioning Elizabeth's sanity. "Ok, I'm with you on the novelty bit, but cockroach? No way, girlie."
The two mates were enjoying a crystal clear day from the fore topmast spreader. They sat side by side on the wooden planking far above the deck, legs hanging casually over the edge. The water, that astonishingly clear navy blue of the open ocean, stretched in all directions to a horizon drawn at last by the curve of the earth. The textured, moving blue was broken only by the rippling path of the sun, cheerful and blinding.
But the beauty of the scene was momentarily lost on Paula, who was more interested in her friend's internal blindness. How can you be this dumb about something you're normally so good at, Lizzy? First the thing with your sister and Charlie, she shook her head, amused. Mary Kate had told her what Alice had said about her conversation with Elizabeth on that particular topic. She had to wonder at the Mate's peculiar brand of insight. She never failed to be shrewd and penetrating with the students; she determined within days what made them tick, and what made them stop ticking. She was acutely aware of her watch's strengths and weaknesses, and when the time came to rotate watches and mates, as they had two days before, she always passed on a valuable portrait to the mate who was lucky enough to come after her. It seemed, however, that they had found her blind spot. Elizabeth understood the workings of courage, fear, joy, confidence, curiosity, leadership, and the myriad of other traits that were tested and proven at LSO. What she did not seem to have the slightest inkling of was the workings of the heart. Admittedly, William's case was somewhat complicated, especially having overheard as she did his initial impression. But Jane and Charlie? They were as transparent as they come.
"Well, third mate, do you have any better suggestions?"
"I would only say, o superior one, that I sincerely doubt he is repulsed by you."
"Then what possible motive could he have for staring at me all the time?"
Do I tell her? That might make things even more screwed up between the two of them than they already are. I think you're going to have to figure this one out on your own, my friend. "Well, maybe he wants to learn as much as he can about sailing," Paula returned evasively.
"Then wouldn't he look to you or Spring? I haven't been his watch mate yet. Besides, there is no way that guy could ever care a shred about sailing. He cares way too much about his lofty position as a professor. And he flunked the callus test." She added the last almost petulantly, like a little girl trying to justify herself.
Paula laughed, "but he didn't know then. I would be willing to bet that he looks upon his own newly hardened hands with a little more appreciation since he suffered the blister phase. And anyway, you're the chief mate, as you so tactfully pointed out a minute ago. Perhaps he's only looking for the best instruction."
"But what about Ann? She's the captain. More sea time and rank than me."
Paula sighed, "Lizzy, I must regretfully beg off this conversation because I go on watch in twenty minutes. I'll leave you with this," she swung herself onto the ratlines, clipped her harness, and added, as she disappeared from sight below the spreader, "If you have to ask..."
At 1500 hours, afternoon snack made its appearance. And as usual the tray was mobbed by thirty-six ravenous sailors. The fact that they had eaten only two hours before was inconsequential-it seemed that no matter how much food they poured into their bodies, they only became slimmer, more toned and hungrier. They quickly discovered that eating six times a day was not a luxury but a necessity.
As assistant steward, Laura had outdone herself. Snack was not cheese and crackers today, but a tray of hot crepes, each oozing with brown filling.
Elizabeth made her way to the front of the crowd and grinned. "Nice job, Laura. Crepes can not be easy to make while in motion."
Laura laughed, "Yeah, I gave Charlotte her entertainment for the day. It was touch and go at first, but I got better with practice."
"What's in here?" came a voice from behind Elizabeth; she turned in time to see William gesture at the filling.
"Nutella," Laura answered, "Chocolate hazelnut spread."
"It's great stuff," Paula's voice chimed in, "you can do anything with it."
Elizabeth's eyebrows knitted briefly. There was something about the way Paula had said "anything" that made Elizabeth think the mate had meant something else, or something more, than what she said. She was further convinced, and further perplexed, by the amused look that passed between Laura and Paula, and by Mark chiming in with, "Just wait 'til I'm assistant steward!" Elizabeth was well aware of the bent that the minds of these three tended to take, but this time she could not seem to find any logical progression from Nutella to there. William appeared to be oblivious to any innuendo, so Elizabeth was somewhat appeased by the fact that even if she was on the outside of a private joke, at least he was not included either. She shrugged, dismissed the interpretation as her imagination, briefly wondered why her imagination had come up with something so bizarre, and finally sat down on the break of the quarterdeck to enjoy her crepe.
But the crepe was warm and the Nutella runny. A little glob had dripped out of the bottom end and landed on the inside of her leg, just below the shorts line. She didn't notice it, though, as she was looking the Austen over, inventorying the work she hoped to accomplish before the end of the cruise. I still need to put some leather on the forestays'l where it's chafing against the yard...and the jibstay at least needs some lanolin-well they all do, but at lest the jib...
Her thoughts were interrupted by William's voice. He sounded a little strange; he seemed to be talking too fast. "UmElizabethyouhavesomeNutellaonyourleg." An before she could even look down and verify this claim, he had leaned over and was carefully wiping it off with one long finger.
"Uhhhh...thhhanks," Elizabeth spoke slowly, despite the fact that her mind was whirling in overdrive. What on earth was that?
Her bewildered gaze fell on Laura just in time to see that she was looking their way, before the assistant steward turned away and shared an inconspicuous high five with Paula. And what was that?
She turned her mind back to William Darcy. She just couldn't see him deigning to do her an offhand favor and wipe up her dribbled food. But she was well aware of the jolt that had passed through her at his touch...It was almost as if he were coming on to me. No Lizzy, don't be ridiculous. He would never be interested in someone so vulgar and low-class as a sailor. Thank goodness. She added the last to banish the part of her brain that had reacted the way it had. She decided that her eating habits must have offended his good breeding. Still, it did seen strange that he would personally remove the offending morsel.
Why is everyone acting so looney all of a sudden? Did they put something in the crepes?
Chapter 12
It was the kind of day that sailors dream about. The weather pushed the borderline of too windy, but in the sparklingly fresh sunlight it was closer to perfection. Fluffy cumulus clouds scudded hurriedly across the blue sky, and foaming white caps surfed lazily across the blue water.
The Austen was charging. She was heeling to 18 degrees, so the low edge of her deck cruised just above the water level, only occasionally dipping below a wave. The quarterdeck was the only remotely dry area of the ship, and most of the company was gathered there to spectate. Except for those intrepid few who were prepared to brave the spray for a special experience.
"Don't you want to go out on the bowsprit and watch her sail, Elizabeth?" William asked.
She smiled but was silent until he repeated his question.
"I heard you the first time, William, only I couldn't decide how to answer you. I know you expected me to say yes so that you could laugh at my childish appreciation for boats. However, I am in the mood to be difficult, so my answer is no, I can see perfectly well how she is sailing from here. Now try and laugh at me."
William gave her a strange look, but only shrugged, "Suit yourself. It's your loss, but I'm not laughing."
Elizabeth expected to have offended him and so was quite surprised at his unruffled tone. Her surprise grew as she watched him slip on his harness, exchange a word with Paula, and head for the bow. Did he actually mean that? He's going to go out there and get wet? Elizabeth knew from prior experience that the end of the bowsprit itself was a relatively dry place to be. The bow itself and the first eight or ten feet of the bowsprit, however, meant certain drenching. She watched him pause to evaluate this scene as he neared the splash zone. She had seen this unwieldy ballet and indeed performed it herself countless times, and it was almost inevitably unsuccessful. William timed his dash carefully, beginning as one wave crashed into the hull. But the elements were to thwart him at every turn. His run across the deck resolved itself into a rather undignified waddle, as he contended both with the sideways heel and the increasing upward pitch of the deck. He gained the bow just as the Austen reached the crest of the wave, reached over to clip in his harness, then swung one leg over the rail as she crashed into the trough. He was particularly unlucky here, as his position put him directly in the path of the impressive amount of water that was flung up by the collision between the hull and the wave. He held one arm in front of his face, ineffectively, while clinging to the rail with the other. Shaking the water out of his hair, he finished the trip with an ungainly dive onto the netting and crawled out to his place beside Teg before he could get hit again. Elizabeth derived considerable enjoyment from watching him get soaked, but her mirth was dampened somewhat by the fact that he didn't seem to care overmuch. She could not see his face from where she was, but Teg and Laura were looking back at him with smiles that looked fit to crack their faces open, so she surmised that he must have done something to warrant such a reaction.
Suddenly Elizabeth realized that in craning for a better view of the events taking place at the bow, she had wandered forward to the beginning of the foredeck. Knowing that she was in full view of most of the ship, she cast about for some excuse to have come forward. She noticed a balentine coil that had slid across the deck slightly when the ship rolled. She sighed. She hated balentining, but everything else was perfectly shipshape. Cursing William Darcy for existing, she kicked apart the remains of the coil and savagely formed it back into its Venn-diagram shape, with three overlapping circles. Having vented her frustration by handling the line with the finesse of a gorilla, she turned to resume her dubious position on the quarterdeck.
Spring was frustrated. And she was all the more annoyed by the fact that this frustration was not stemming from any of the usual places. The class was wonderful. Both watches that she had lead so far had been full of bright and interested people and had wonderful group dynamics. As was to be expected, some were better leaders and some were more comfortable being led. Some fell into the shipboard rhythm quickly, others struggled with the watch rotation. Some caught on quickly to the huge amount of information and procedure that was presented, others became somewhat overwhelmed. But the important part was that they dealt with all these things as a group, supporting each other's weakness and building off each other's strengths. That was the key quality that made them a watch, and she was very pleased with this group.
This was a lucky thing, she realized, because the person who always managed to smooth over the problems, to make a watch out of a group of individuals, was suddenly rubbing against the grain. The Band-Aid was not healing anything. The tension between Elizabeth and William was almost palpable at times, and Spring could find no logical reason for it. For the first time, Elizabeth seemed to be causing the very problems she usually solved.
Spring had overheard the interaction between the first mate and the scientist, and was now watching as Elizabeth paced the quarterdeck with a face like a thundercloud. William, she noticed with some feeling of irony, was lying on his stomach on the bowsprit with a handful of others, looking something like an enraptured eight-year-old. They were hanging their chins over the edge of the netting, watching with mouths agape as 270 tons of steel blasted its way through enormous waves. Good. He's the one who deserves to be enjoying this. Lizzy is being ridiculous.
She was not entirely sure what it was about William that Lizzy objected to so strongly. She was aware of what the mate had overheard at the very beginning of the trip, but that did not seem to be a hanging crime, particularly since he seemed to be trying his best to make peace with her. Of course, William did not possess the same easy people skills that Elizabeth had, but he seemed to be overcoming that as she watched. In the past the Elizabeth she knew would try to encourage these signs of his emergence from his shell, rather than trying to stifle them instantly.
In other areas, William seemed more like Elizabeth's ideal pupil than her arch nemesis. The cruise was approaching the end of its fourth week, and it would soon be time for Spring to turn William and the rest of C-Watch over to Elizabeth's care. She had had virtually nothing but good experiences with him during her two-week leadership of the watch. Admittedly, he was not the most motivated dishwasher in the world, and dawn clean-up was not his favorite part of the watch rotation, but she did not view those as condemnable offenses provided that he did what was expected of him, as was always the case. On deck, he was exemplary. He seemed determined to learn everything that any of them had to teach him. He was curious, asked questions, cared about doing everything in the most correct, efficient and graceful way possible. It went without saying that he was intelligent, but Spring added that to her portrait also. She enjoyed teaching him. He caught on quickly and cared about understanding concepts rather than simply memorizing procedures.
In all these characteristics, including the distaste for dishes, he and Elizabeth seemed to be cut from the same mold. The only difference Spring could detect between them was a rather subtle difference in outlook. While Elizabeth regarded her calling with almost religious seriousness, William seemed to be playing. He seemed to view their entire profession as an elaborate, grown-up version of make-believe, as if they had graduated straight from Cops and Robbers to Sailors without any type of reality check in the middle. His interest seemed to stem from some combination of a competitive tendency to want to do it better than the other person and a certain amount of curiosity despite his judgement of the profession he called "sailor." That he was proud of his intellect and position she had no doubt; but then, so was Elizabeth in a more subtle sense. Elizabeth tended to want to pass on the knowledge she had mastered where William seemed content simply to amass it in his own mind. I wonder if he's a good teacher, she thought doubtfully. The irony in all this was that Elizabeth, as far as Spring could tell, was the only one of them that William did take seriously. It was not that he didn't get along with the rest-he was liked by everyone aboard with one notable exception-but he gave the impression that he was humoring them in their game for the time he was at sea. Elizabeth, however, he seemed to recognize as an intelligent, adult human being. Paula was certain that he was attracted to her, and although Spring was not about to refute that claim, she believed that he also respected Elizabeth, perhaps even in spite of himself. She wondered if he didn't think Elizabeth's decision to become a sailor was a waste of a perfectly serviceable brain.
At any rate, Spring was looking forward to the upcoming watch change with no little apprehension. For the sake of the rest of those aboard, she hoped that Elizabeth would have the maturity to treat William at least neutrally for the two weeks in which they would have to work together.
Elizabeth was frustrated. She had been leading C-Watch for the past five days. Nearly all the students had taken their first turn as Junior Watch Officer ("J-Whoa!" as some of the mates liked to call it). As JWO, she took the job of deckhand, and the student stepped up as Acting Mate. Legally, of course, she was still the Mate, but the JWO was responsible for organizing the watch, getting them where they needed to go, making sure that hourly boat checks happened on schedule, rotating shifts at the helm and on bow watch, and communicating directly with the captain about any special procedures.
Everything had gone well so far. Too well. She had discovered almost immediately that making William suffer through giving him maid duty was not going to be an effective way of torturing him. She had piled every distasteful task she could think of on him but could not seem to ruffle his cool demeanor. Even when she had met him on the companionway as he carried a bucket of syrupy white juice wet-vacuumed from the bottom of the reefer, he had only grinned, "Sip?" She was perplexed. Although he never displayed any signs of unwillingness to perform his job, she couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't take her, or any of her colleagues, seriously.
William's first turn as JWO had been flawless. And he had not had it easy, either. The weatherfax map that had rolled in during morning watch had shown the tooth-like triangles of a cold front bearing down upon them. When William took over at 1300h, it was apparent that this piece of weather would fall to him to deal with. Although JWO's were not technically supposed to ask their Mates for support and advice during their watch, in extenuating circumstances such as this one Elizabeth was prepared to lend not just advice but a level head. But William had calmly switched on the radio, noted the characteristics of the front, and taken the information to Ann. They had formulated a plan which William had executed to the letter. The front was radar plotted, several sails came down, and William watched from the quarterdeck as the wind gusted and the rain began to fall. Elizabeth slacked the jt halyard and then helped to furl the fisherman stays'l.
Very well, Mr. Perfect, I will simply have to come up with a different strategy!
William was frustrated. Well, he wasn't always frustrated. He had become accustomed to the entire spectrum of emotions that seemed to characterize life at sea. He was also intrigued, sometimes overwhelmed, and recently even a little nostalgic. There were only four days left of the cruise, and he had started to realize that he would miss it. He had grown closer than he had ever thought possible to his shipmates, the very undergraduates that he had scorned less than two months before. He would miss them, he would miss being part of the team they called "watch," he would miss this exhausting and exhilarating life. The six weeks he had spent aboard the Pride of Austen seemed both an instant and an eternity. On one hand, it seemed only moments ago that he had been seated on the quarterdeck cursing his stomach for betraying him and himself for agreeing to come aboard. On the other hand, as he followed the now-logical paths of lines up and down the masts, it seemed inconceivable that only six weeks before he had not known the jib halyard from the jt halyard from the raffee halyard. Or even what a halyard was, he thought wryly. He remembered learning that in his first introduction to Elizabeth and her lively teaching style. I can't believe I called her Miss Bennet! He laughed at his own pompousness.
And thus his thoughts had come full circle for the hundredth time in the past few days. Elizabeth Bennet. A name, he realized, that he would not forget easily. But he certainly did not know what to make of that. He did not know what to make of her. She had treated him strangely from the beginning.
At first he only noticed that she treated him unlike anyone had ever treated him before. Especially single female anyones. It was not that she did not respect him, but she required that he prove himself to deserve her respect, instead of bowing and scraping to the great scientist at every turn. He supposed that a sailor would have no reason to respect a college professor, but at the same time he got the feeling that it was not their disparate professions which drove her lack of automated deference.
Since she had taken over his watch, however, he had noticed that she also treated him differently from any of his shipmates. She drove him harder, expected more out of him, and gave far less praise in the end. For a while she had seemed bent on making him scrub, polish, squeegee and vacuum every disgusting part of the ship she could come up with. He had spotted this as a test and never voiced a complaint or pulled a grimace. When the drudge work stopped, or at least slowed, he assumed that he had passed her test. She began to challenge him. She taught him more and more difficult procedures and techniques until he knew far more than any of the rest of his watchmates. When he was shooting the sun and the stars, she presented him with increasingly complicated methods until he was scrambling to conceptualize the trigonometry he had learned in high school in terms of the spherical Earth. When he was radar plotting, she taught him how this single tool could be used in a multitude of ways to gather information about their surroundings until he was struggling to track the relative motion vectors of neighboring vessels they happened across. When he took his second turn as JWO, she tossed the MOB buoy over the taffrail as they cruised along under sail and asked him to retrieve it. When he did she barely acknowledged him, except to suggest that next time they might not have to use the boat hook.
It wasn't the fact that she was exposing him to so many difficult things that frustrated him. On the contrary, he was pleased that she thought him capable of understanding them. He was annoyed with the fact that, try as he might, he could never seem to meet her standards. She drove him to try and be above her reproach, but she always found something to improve. And when she offered him a challenge it was exactly that: as if she were daring him to be able to perform it. Sometimes he was not even certain if she wanted him to succeed.
Perhaps, though, it was better that way. For he had to admit that the fascination he held for her did not stem from her independence and her spirit alone. He was attracted to her. Perhaps it was better that the smile with which she favored the rest of the watch so often was rarely directed at him. For it made his gut wrench. It threw him off balance more than ever the Austen's pitching could. Perhaps it was better that he would return to his safe world in only four days. In a sense he envied his friend, to whom everything seemed to come easy. Elizabeth is just as smart as Jane; why couldn't she have gone to school and studied something respectable as well? This last thought startled him. What am I doing falling for a sailor? What am I doing wishing she weren't a sailor?
Ann was flipping hamburgers. She wondered why this job always fell to the Captain. She saw no reason why she was any more qualified as grill master than the rest of the crew, but this was the tradition and she was not prepared to break it. So it had been on her student cruise; so had it been when she sailed as deckhand, as Engineer, as Mate, and finally on her first cruise in command and every one since. The last night was special, and the barbecue was part of it. So was the music, the dancing, the silly outfits, the pride, the elation and the tears. Every time she sailed, she felt this same sense of loss. It had been most acute the first time, just as she could see in the bittersweet expressions of the twenty-five who had come aboard students and developed into a crew. Or twenty-six, she thought with a glance at the tall scientist whose legs dangled from the topsail yard as he watched the setting sun with some shipmates. It was difficult for them to look shoreward once again, to return to life on land, to the friends and families who could not share their experience. Many would arrive at the reunion in the summer, glad to be once again in the company of those who understood. Some would undoubtedly sail again, unable to leave this strangely compelling lifestyle that had lodged itself in their hearts, never to be forced aside completely. But this group, this crew, after knitting itself so tightly by necessity, would never be whole again once the heaving lines reached the dock.
Sail the sea, follow your heart; no regrets. Sing and dance, laugh, love and cry; no regrets. Now turn away; no regrets. It is the hardest, that which is last.
Chapter 13
Woods Hole, MA
"LLLLLIIIIIIIIZZZZZYYYYYYYY!"
Elizabeth grinned and halted her walk through "downtown" Woods Hole. She was fairly certain already who she would see when she turned around. Who else would alert the entire town of his presence just to get her attention?
"Rich!" She spotted her friend waving to her from a seat on the steps of the WHOI/MBL Marine Sciences Library. His location immediately made her curious. When they had researched their oceanography project for their student cruise, he had complained about that building more than she had thought possible. She made her way back down the street toward him.
Woods Hole was a somewhat eccentric place as towns go. One end of its long main street was swarming with tourists. They came in flocks every few hours to catch the ferry to the Vineyard and Nantucket. Ice cream shops and kitsch boutiques catered to these migratory vacationers. Further down the street, however, the tourists thinned almost entirely. This was the realm of the scientist. To Elizabeth's left, along the harbor, were some Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute buildings. The balance of their facilities was located on their campus a few miles out of town. To her right, along salty Eel Pond, lay the Marine Biological Laboratory complex. Between these two behemoths of research, the main road took up all the land that was left of the narrow spit on which the town was situated. Ahead, at the far end of the street, was the government-run National Marine Fisheries Service. Every summer the population of the town grew exponentially, as researchers rolled in from all corners of the globe to take advantage of this oceanographic Mecca. And this weekend the population increased by several hundred more-the LSO alumni were arriving in droves for their reunion.
When she was within hearing range, Elizabeth greeted her old friend, "I thought you got enough of this place from doing our project."
He rolled his eyes, "Tell me about it," but did not offer an explanation until they had shared their customary bear-hug and greetings. She asked after his Coast Guard cadets from the Eagle, and he assured her that he had only killed three recently. He asked about her life and was informed that apart from losing one student off the bowsprit she had a clean record this year.
He nodded his head toward the library. "That's why I'm on the outside," he gestured for her to take a seat beside him. "I'm waiting on my cousin who wanted to peruse the science journals."
"You have a brainy cousin? What, did he get those genes from the other side of the family?" Elizabeth loved talking with Rich because his personality came with the assurance that he could take whatever she should choose to dish out.
"Maybe the science, yeah, but I think he's more like me than he wants to let on."
She elbowed him. "You would say that. Well, are you bringing him to the alumni party? You know he'd be welcome."
"I've been working on him, but somehow I don't think he'll show. He's not really the partygoer type, and those he does attend are usually black-tie fundraiser kinds of things. We're actually here to visit our aunt on the Vineyard. But if you met her you'd understand why I try to plan the visit when there are as many other diversions as possible."
Elizabeth jumped out of the way as the door opened and looked up in time to see William Darcy coming out of the building.
"Will!" Richard cried jovially, unaware of the surprised faces of his companions, "I've found an old friend of mine that I want you to m-wait, you guys know each other?
William was the next to find his voice, "You two know each other?"
Finally Elizabeth, most shocked of all, "You are cousins?"
"I think we have Lizzy convinced that one of us was fathered by the milkman," Richard said conspiratorially to William.
"That's not possible, Rich, because my mother was your-"
"Whatever, Will," Richard shut him down.
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and waited for the conversation to return to its original course. She was intrigued by the interplay between her friend and her...and William, and by the fact that William seemed to be the subordinate one in the relationship.
"Anyway," Rich gestured to her, "Lizzy and I were shipmates on the Austen way back when. We've been friends ever since, but I never introduced you to her because you never took much interest in my sailing friends."
William looked a little guilty and kept his mouth shut, so Elizabeth offered to keep the conversation going.
"I was Mate on William's cruise as Visiting Scientist."
Comprehension dawned on Richard, but only lead to greater surprise as he pieced this new information together with the stories he had heard of his cousin's cruise. He stared hard at Elizabeth and then at William.
"You are this mate that-" he caught his cousin's terrified gaze and stopped, "-that sailed with Will?"
Elizabeth missed neither the calculating stare nor the floundering retreat and wondered what Rich had opted not to say. She also wondered who "this mate" was, exactly. She looked at her friend, but his head was turned toward William as they walked three-abreast down the street. "Yes, why?"
But Rich seemed barely to be hearing her end of the conversation anymore. Without looking her way, he answered distantly, "Oh, it just seemed like a coincidence; that's all..."
Richard's mind, meanwhile, was whirling. He had been so certain that William had been attracted to, or possibly even fallen in love with, this mate he talked so much about. It had never even crossed his mind that this person might be his old friend, so he hadn't bothered to ask. The idea of Will falling for Lizzy still seemed so utterly ludicrous that he had to stop and rethink his cousin's description of the woman.
He realized that William had, in fact, given a very accurate portrait of Elizabeth-more accurate than Richard would have thought him capable of. He had spoken of her energy and enthusiasm. Of course, these were some of Elizabeth's most outstanding characteristics, but he was surprised that they had made a positive impression upon his more reticent cousin. He would have thought that William would be intimidated and ultimately put off by her tendency to be a dominant presence on shipboard.
William had also mentioned the Mystery Mate's wit. In truth, Richard doubted that his cousin could even keep up with Elizabeth's sense of humor, much less enjoy it. He assumed that she must have employed some of her favorite sailor cracks during the cruise, and very likely at William's expense.
He had said that one of her greatest characteristics was her curiosity about the world around her. Richard smiled, recalling the incessant string of questions that poured from Lizzy's mouth on their student cruise. He had to wonder, though, how apparent this characteristic was now that life at sea was familiar and relatively routine for her. He was rather impressed with William's astuteness.
And then there was the description that had stood out even before he knew the famous Mate's identity. William had admired her as a teacher. He spoke of her dedication, her genuine interest in sharing what she knew with anyone who was interested in learning. It struck Richard as odd from the very beginning that his cousin should value such a trait. Dr. Darcy had never cared a lick about his students, as far as Richard could tell. But now he realized just how perceptive William was. This was the core of Elizabeth's being. This was her single defining characteristic. This was how well William understood Lizzy.
And yet he did not. For the last thing he had said about the Mate was an expression of regret. Regret that she was who she was. "It is such a shame," he had said, "She is so intelligent. So talented. She could really go places if she were to get a real job. But instead she spends her life playing sailor. Pretending to live a life that ended a hundred years ago. "
With that, William missed the mark entirely. Perhaps William understood Elizabeth's personality, but he had no concept of her philosophy. At the time Richard had bitten back the urge to remind his cousin that he had effectively the same job as the mate. He knew that his own career only met the mark of "respectability" because it was recognized by the Coast Guard and therefore William saw it as a noble, if somewhat unusual, calling. He had never been able to change his cousin's ridiculous standards and had finally stopped trying.
But now Richard could explain something else his cousin had reflected near the end of their conversation , "You know, the funny thing is we really didn't get along that well." Richard could well imagine that if Elizabeth had merely caught some notion of William's view of her chosen life, she would never have bothered speaking to him again. The thing that puzzled him was that she apparently had paid attention to him. He would have expected her not to give the time of day to someone who meant so little to her as William if he didn't respect her. Now he reflected that he would have given an arm and a leg to be able to watch this unfold.
At the time, however, he had been distracted when William continued, "There was always this...something...between us. It was strained somehow. But when I look back...I don't think of it like that."
Richard had recognized something in his cousin's voice. It was something he had not expected to hear there. "I know Will. It's like Marlow says, 'and, tell me, wasn't that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks--and sometimes a chance to feel your strength--that only--what you all regret?'" William had looked a little surprised to hear his cousin quoting literature, but Richard had ignored him and continued, "It gets to you. You don't fit your old spot properly when you come back. The nostalgia hits as soon as you step ashore."
Then William had surprised him again. "No," he had said, "before."
Chapter 14
Author's note: The "royals" are the top set of sails on a square-rigged vessel. As you may (not) remember, the "yard" is the pole perpendicular to the mast that the squaresails hang from. Therefore, the "main royal yard" would be the top yard of the mainmast, which is the highest. The USCG Barque Eagle's rig is 147 feet high, and the main royal yard is probably a little less than ten feet below that. It's a heck of a long climb.
Elizabeth spent the day with Rich and William. This arrangement didn't suit her entirely, as she could have done without the latter, but she reasoned that she could tolerate Dr. Darcy for one more day if it meant that she could spend time with her friend. His cousin. Who would have thought?
They took a long walk down the bike path, along the beach, and on the way back hiked up the hill to the Nobska Point Lighthouse. From there they could see where they had anchored on the final night of their most recent cruise. William surprised his companions with his reminiscences of the evening. Elizabeth, like Rich, recognized the tone of his thoughts, and was also surprised at their source.
Back in Woods Hole, they stopped off at an ice cream shop near the Steamship Authority, better known as the ferry dock, and then ambled down the street, cones in hand. They were headed for a grass strip across the street from the library, where they could claim a park bench, watch the activity of the harbor, and catch ice cream as it dribbled off the cone. But as they approached their destination they found the bench in question occupied by an entangled couple whose Cape Cod t-shirts seemed to be very much in the way.
Elizabeth groaned, "Just what we need to watch-tourists making out. Lovely."
"We can sit on the sea wall in front of them. It's no big deal," Rich reasoned calmly.
"I guess so. Really, though-that's so tasteless. Thank goodness we're all clearheaded and uninvolved." Elizabeth fully expected to initiate a round of "no obligations" calling, as such a statement always had in the fast, and so was mildly surprised when her friend slowed and bit his lip. But she was still entirely unprepared for what he said instead.
Rich was silent a moment, regarding his friend. "Actually Lizzy, that's something I've been meaning to tell you," he spoke softly, "I'm in love."
Elizabeth stopped dead, jaw slack. She wondered if he were playing with her. But she couldn't begin to find the voice to ask.
William, however, was less affected. Surprised, yes; but speechless, no. "Richard Fitzwilliam is in love? With whom?" At the sound of his voice, Elizabeth snapped back into motion, and scurried to hear the answer to this.
"With a colleague of mine. Carter." Judging from the utter mush that had once been Rich's face, Elizabeth knew that this was for real; not some form of dark humor. She didn't notice anything else until she heard William repeat the name, "Carter?"
This time, apparently, it was William's turn to stop in shock. Both Rich and Elizabeth seemed to snap back to reality. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. She knew what William was thinking, but couldn't quite believe it. She had known Rich for a long time, and was very certain of his taste. It was obvious, however, that his cousin had leaped to a conclusion without second thought and was now experiencing the free fall. Elizabeth opted to keep both feet on deck and see where this went.
"Do you have a problem with that name, Will?" Rich's tone was offended, but there was something in his face that looked calculating, and his meaning suddenly dawned on Elizabeth. She shifted her weight to one leg, hip cocked, and crossed her arms. Rich noticed her movement, and, sizing up this jaunty, defiant posture, sent her a conspiratorial glance. She held his gaze levelly; neither cracking a smile nor changing her pose, and remained silent. Richard turned back to his cousin.
William looked like he smelled something repulsive. He avoided his cousin's gaze and mumbled an incoherent sentence, then pretended to notice his watch. "Oh! I have to go, um, I'm meeting an old colleague of mine while I'm in town."
"You are?" Rich asked innocently, "When did you cook that up?"
"I, uh, ran across him in the library this morning. He's going to show me his lab." William was backpedaling as he spoke, and upon finishing turned around and headed for the nearest building.
"Um, Will?" Rich called after him, "That's the visitor's center. I don't think you're going to find any labs in there!"
But William disappeared through the doorway.
"That wasn't very nice of you, Fitzwilliam," Elizabeth spoke at last.
Rich grinned, and gestured for Elizabeth to seat herself on the seawall before replying, "You know me too well, don't you?"
Apparently not. "Nope, I'm just too smart for you. Now what is her first name?"
The mush returned to his expression, disgusting Elizabeth to the point where she regretted having asked.
"Megan. Meg. And if Will had stuck around long enough, he could have found out that he knows her too, in a sense. Our families were great friends and we all grew up together. I have no idea when the last time they saw each other was, though. They didn't always get along very well. Meg used to beat on Will. I think he resented it."
Despite the turmoil of her mind, Elizabeth could not help but laugh at this image. "I'll bet he did!" Reluctantly, she turned her thoughts back to the original subject and asked the requisite question, trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "Well, what's she like?"
"She is an officer on the Eagle as well, though we try to work separate watches. That works out well for us, because it's about the only way we get to see each other." Elizabeth shuddered at the thought of sailing with this ridiculous looking caricature of Rich and the cause of his sentimentality herself. She tried not to listen as he expounded her virtues, ending with an enthusiastic, "I can't wait for you to meet! You'll love her."
I'm sure, Elizabeth thought acidly, but only asked "Does she pass the callus test?"
"Lizzy, she can beat me in a race to the main royal yard."
Perfect, Elizabeth thought, not Megan, Perfect. He's whipped forevermore. Look at him. Pathetic.
Elizabeth put on the bravest smile she could muster, "I guess that means yes. I'm happy for you, Rich. But I think you should go talk to William. That really wasn't very nice of you, and it's hardly going to reconcile him to her."
"I really didn't mean to do that. I was talking to you more than to him, and her last name just popped out automatically after I said she was a colleague. But once I realized what he was thinking I just couldn't resist! I'll be back." He retrieved his legs from their position hanging over the wall and levered himself to his feet. Elizabeth did not turn to see him off.
In truth she did not care a bit about Richard's deception of William. But she didn't think she could look her friend in the eye without revealing the hurt-the anger-she felt. She could not explain its sudden swelling in her chest, but she knew she needed a few minutes of introspection to examine this feeling, and grasped frantically at the first reason she could come up with for getting rid of Richard. As he departed she turned back toward the harbor and was startled to feel tears pricking in her eyes. It had been a very long time since she had cried over anything, and a startling thought struck her.
Am I jealous about Rich?
The notion seemed so unbelievably absurd that she almost laughed. No, this was not jealousy she was feeling, but something different. More like betrayal.
Betrayal? She asked herself caustically, How has he betrayed you? He's still here.
But he is not my carefree and unattached friend anymore, a petulant voice answered. So much for the motto. He has obligations now-emotional ones. I don't understand why everyone thinks they have to fall in love. First Jane, then Rich. I'm not in love, and I'm perfectly happy with my life! And I won't fall in love. I'm the only one left now with her head on straight. Apparently they've left it up to me to uphold the tenets of bachelorhood. Fine.
Elizabeth felt like shouting out a defiant, "I'll show you!" but doubted the maturity of such an act. Instead she clenched her fists and stared into the water below her feet, steeling herself against the feelings of loneliness she was suddenly experiencing.
Chapter 15
Elizabeth was wearing her Hawaiian shirt. The sun had sunk below the treetops of LSO's campus, and she was engaged in an after-dinner game of Ultimate Frisbee with an assortment of alumni and staff. They did their best not to crash into the stakes of the tent under which a steel drum band was setting up their array of harmoniously pockmarked metal. The reunion party was beginning.
The number of alumni from each class who arrived at the reunion was generally determined by the time elapsed since they sailed. Representatives from the more recent classes came in droves; they missed it most, and had fewest responsibilities to draw them away. Within this loose temporal pattern, however, classes varied dramatically in their attendance. The determining factor here was not something that Elizabeth could put any name to, but had to do with the chance workings of group dynamics. Some classes had a sense of "we" that persevered through years of separation. These were the ones that had large turnouts even when members were bringing along spouses and children to take part in the festivities. Elizabeth's class was one of these. Old shipmates had been turning up out of the woodwork all day, with an end total of ten-a good total for any class, and a remarkable total for one that sailed many years hence.
Elizabeth had pushed aside her former ill humor in favor of the celebratory mood of the evening. Tonight was the night to be free of all cares. Tonight was the night to revel in the bittersweet memories of the group that was once unified by circumstance into a smoothly functioning machine but would never be assembled as a whole again. Elizabeth generally found these evenings to be heady experiences, full of joy of reunion and regret at lack of it, until she wasn't sure if she was deliriously happy or on the brink of tears. She never seemed to remember these evenings as an individual string of events, but rather as a reeling kaleidoscope of colors, motion, smiles, plastic cups and the constant backdrop of music. This night unfolded the same manner, and much as Elizabeth tried later to piece together a clearer picture, she couldn't collect more than some photographic stills of the scene.
She remembered Rich arriving rather early with William in tow. "I don't know what you did to him, Lizzy! He actually wanted to come," Rich had jested. This had suited her quite well, as she was interested in seeing how he would manage to flail about the dance floor in the company of the group to which he now, if somewhat involuntarily, belonged. Then the plastic cups began to play a more prevalent role, and the kaleidoscope seemed to spin faster.
Mostly she remembered dancing; spinning amidst faces she recognized from countless sails. She distinctly remembered that freewheeling sensation of one of Rich's favorite dance moves: he twirled her in such a way that she was inexplicably arranged for him to lift her off her feet into a mid-air somersault, set her upon her feet again and continue without missing a beat. Rich had been doing this for as long as she had known him, but she had never quite puzzled out how he managed it. Then there was the memory, disconcerting in retrospect, of pulling into the dance none other than William Darcy. At the time she had thought it a wonderful joke; a chance to put the stuffy scientist on the spot. What she had failed to note that night but would see in her memory time and again, was the ease with which he complied.
Her next clear picture of the night was a memory of its cool, velvety summer darkness and soft smell. She was with a large group, but the contrast between the bright lights and music of the party tent and the dark road to Racing Beach subdued them. Elizabeth's mind began to clear. They were going swimming. It was an old post-reunion party tradition, and most of the alumni were pressed to go whether or not they had suitable attire. For Elizabeth's part, she was an old veteran of these trips and, reasoning that she had long since served her penance as a suitless wonder, had been wearing a swimsuit all evening.
Buzzard's Bay was calm as a mill pond, and the beach lighted only by the quarter moon which now hung low in the west. Dipping a toe in, Elizabeth was delighted to see the water glow green in expanding ripples from where she broke the surface. They had chosen this beach to swim for a reason: its water was always several degrees warmer than that of Vineyard Sound, and Elizabeth waded in quickly, opening her eyes to watch the bioluminescent pinpricks that flashed before her hands.
The swimming party, though merry, was short-lived. As the noisy group headed home, leaving the residents of the area in relative peace, few noticed the lone figure that remained seated motionless along the high-tide mark. Elizabeth was counting on their inattention and waited for them to leave her to her reflections. As usual, she was mourning the end of the night; it would be another full year before they would reassemble. And with these thoughts the events of the rest of the day had returned to her, and she dwelt darkly on Rich and his traitorous turn. Hardly in the mood for a party anymore, Elizabeth hoped not to be noticed as she remained on the strand. But this was a day when the unexpected prevailed. She was startled out of her reverie by a tall shadowy form. When it spoke she could barely recognize the voice of William Darcy.
"Thank you for staying behind."
Elizabeth was dumbfounded at this opening, both by its content and by his garbled and nervous delivery of it. Annoyance at the implication that she had intended for him to appear out of the darkness followed swiftly on this confusion, but before she could formulate a reply he continued.
"Elizabeth, I had hoped that I could leave this behind with my LSO adventure, but it looks like I won't do either. Ever since I saw you again I've needed to tell you that I have fallen in love with you."
Elizabeth's body tensed with shock and not a little bit of fear. She disliked being unprepared for anything, and this situation was alien enough to terrify her. But she was saved the trouble of having to pry her jaw out of its paralysis and make some reply when William went on.
"I confess I never intended for this to happen. Obviously falling for a sailor is hardly what a tenured university professor aspires to. But I can see that you are enamoured of your fairyland, as much potential as you may have. So I've thought about this, and I've decided that since I'm lucky enough not to have to work for a living I can give up my position at Cornell to be with you. Of course I could still do research, because I'm already respected enough to be published without-"
"Excuse me." William was cut short by Elizabeth's clipped tone. "But before you plan our entire life together, would you mind giving me the opportunity to answer what I am going to be liberal and call your 'request'? Do you think you can come up to me, make me an offer like that, and whisk me away without another thought? Well I have some news for you: First, I do not love you. I have more self-respect than to accept a proposal like that, and more sense than to accept any sort of proposal from someone I don't love. Second, if you have any delusions that you are saving me from the life of a poor sailor, you should know that I have no need of a knight in shining armor."
Elizabeth's words became more and more heated as she started to feel the necessity of defending herself, her livelihood and her philosophy. "From day one you have thought of me as a stupid failure who became a sailor for lack of anything better to do. Well guess what, this is the 1990's not the 1790's. I became a sailor because it makes me happy. I did the whole academia thing. I spent my share of hours in Uris Library. I chose not to become a scientist. I wanted something that would challenge me, fascinate me, mystify me and when the day is done leave me in awe. I found that in the sea. And you know what? I learned something. I learned that what I wanted was not a job but a way of life. You won't find life until it's passed you by. You are always looking outside, at what other people think of you, or ahead at what your next accomplishment should be. I live my life from day to day, and I enjoy every one of them. If there is a problem I will solve it. But if it's a beautiful day and the wind is fair and the sails are full then I will sit on the bowsprit and watch the sun set. And me, if I am lost tomorrow I will be happy with what I've done and who I am. Can you claim that? If you die tomorrow will there be enough papers with your name on them? Will you be mentioned in enough textbooks? Will there be enough mourners at your grave? And if you don't die tomorrow and you go through your life and write enough papers, what will you have? When you are old and exhausted will you be able to look back on memories of a fulfilling youth? How can you have any memories if you never took the time to watch the sun set? And with all this, you think you're doing me a favor?" Elizabeth's voice rose several decibels, "You think I'm the one living in a fairyland? Playing make-believe? There is nothing wrong with what I do or who I am, and I certainly don't need any help from someone as arrogant and narrow-minded as you!" Elizabeth broke off, winded by her fury. There was a moment's silence, and then she turned and fled. She fled from the source of her tumult, her anger, her confusion. Her Tevas pounded the long dark road, and she gasped raggedly for air through her gulping tears.
Chapter 16
"Lizzy."
Elizabeth didn't turn, but she knew that Rich was standing behind her. She would recognize his voice anywhere, of course, but he was also the only person who would think to come looking for her here. She was sitting on a rock below the Nobska Point lighthouse, looking eastward as the light from the setting sun diffused gently to the far horizon. The boats in Vineyard Sound had glowed golden and then faded, and now the horizon was a deep turquoise fading to muted pink over her head.
"No one ever looks east at sunset," she observed quietly, "it's underappreciated-so peaceful." She found the peace was exactly what she needed. Elizabeth had gone through the motions of her reunion today-attending parties, smiling, greeting, chatting. But she hadn't been there, really. She knew Jane had noticed, but she had managed to slip away when her sister was preoccupied by a certain scientist. No one had noticed her leaving-she had roused out of her lethargy to a certain level of bitterness at that. Rich's Megan had arrived that day, and Charles had gleaned the vast majority of Jane's attention. She had the distinct feeling of 3rd or 5th wheel, and convinced herself that she would not be missed. Obviously, she had thought wrong. "Where's Meg?" she asked, making a conscious effort to mask any bitterness her voice might betray.
"She's at Jane's house. I told her my friend needed a friend. Lizzy, can I join you?"
"Why would I stop you?"
Rich sighed at her uncharacteristically noncommittal attitude and joined her on her rock. "I spoke to Will, Lizzy." She stiffened, but kept silent, and Rich continued, "I noticed that you were both in something of a funk today, and finally he told me what happened. Or at least what happened in his eyes."
"Rich, I'm not sure if I've ever been so furious. Ever."
"I know. It sounded like he managed to push all the proper buttons. I've never known anyone who could dine on his foot in such gourmet style as Will. And to the extent that he understands the issue, I think he regrets how he acted. But he can't really grasp the magnitude of his offense, because he has never known anything that means as much to him as your daily life does to you."
"But how could he possibly...I've never had anyone approach me with two so different sentiments in one paragraph before. That somehow made it all the more infuriating. How could anyone think..."
"I don't know, Lizzy. I'm not here to defend my cousin, but I know from personal experience that Will has a very carefully structured world built for himself. When someone who breaks his mold appears, his defenses kick in. You, of course, are more than enough to challenge his comfort zone. What's really remarkable is that he is genuinely attracted to you. I couldn't believe it at first."
"You think he's sincere in that, then?" Elizabeth was a little incredulous.
"I knew he had something going for his chief mate long before I realized that you were that mate. Yesterday I put two and two together and it about knocked me flat then and there. Never would have thought. With all the ridiculous courting of His Professorship that goes on up there at school, it was our Lizzy that finally caught his attention. Maybe he is human somewhere down there. I have to admit he's got taste, even if he doesn't have the finesse to go with it."
"Flirt," Lizzy grinned genuinely for the first time that day. "Thank you, Rich. You are a wonderful friend."
"I guess that's really what I came here to talk to you about, Lizzy."
"What do you mean?"
"I try, Lizzy. I try to be your friend and keep up with you and be there when you need me, and this time I was. But if it had been anyone other than Will, or if it had been anytime other than now, I wouldn't have been able to be there for you. We just don't see each other enough, don't overlap enough, and now I've got Meg and I know that hurts you, but I am telling you from experience that it can't work forever."
"What can't?"
"The motto. 'No Obligations' is not the right creed. It makes a life like ours a whole lot easier, but eventually you must realize that it's possible never to be alone and still to be very lonely."
"Are you saying that I should have accepted William?" Lizzy asked hotly.
"Of course not. You had every right to give Will exactly what he had coming to him. And I know this is a weird time to bring this up, but maybe in a sense it is appropriate. Have you told anyone what happened?"
"No."
"Were you going to?"
Lizzy sighed. "Jane is in love, and never really understood me completely anyway, close as we are. Charlotte I don't even know anymore. That leaves you."
"Would you have told me?"
"If you hadn't been his cousin."
Rich waved away that technicality. "So I am still your confidant. Lizzy, I love being your closest friend, and I wish this weren't the way it was, but we never see each other. I won't always be there for you. I can't."
"Well what am I supposed to do about that?"
"Just be aware of it, Lizzy. That's all I'm asking of you. You can't be obligation-free forever and still be happy. You have to make a commitment. You've always made that to your job, and that has worked, but it may not work forever. I just want you to promise me that you'll be aware of that and not toss aside every relationship without a thought because of some creed we made up in college to help us justify our lifestyle. Please just think about it, Lizzy."
Elizabeth studied her friend carefully and saw the deep sincerity of his expression. "You really do love Megan, don't you?" He nodded but remained silent. "All right, Rich, I will remember what you said. Thank you for caring so much about me."
Rich reached out and drew her into an embrace. "You took that with a lot of maturity, Liz. No one likes being lectured to."
Elizabeth laughed without humor and buried her face into Rich's shoulder. "And if only I weren't so interpersonally backward I might even be called a grown up."
"Interpersonally backward? You're the wold's best people person; what do you mean?"
"That's the ironic part. I can give everything I have in me to my students without a thought. It's like breathing. But relationships-I don't know, Rich, I just can't do it. It's like I don't have anything to give."
Rich's arms tightened about her involuntarily and he shook his head slightly as he understood for the first time that Elizabeth's impenetrable self esteem did in fact have a flaw; one which she hid so well that her best friend had never even dreamed of its existence. "Please don't give up on yourself, Lizzy. No one could be as passionate about something as you are about sailing and not be able to hold up half a relationship. It's there Lizzy. Just be patient."
Elizabeth sighed and two tears squeezed out of her eyes and onto Rich's shoulder.