I'm at uni at the moment on a break between lectures and tutes so I'll have to make the intro to this one short and sweet. (I am also very hungry, so rather keen to get some of what passes for food here as soon as possible).
For your perusal today I have the second part of 'The Sudden Shore', which is the first half of an attempt to give Geoffrey some background, and to explain why it was that he was aboard the harlequin (not entirely happy with the second half yet, but will have that up soonish/once I am and then will get onto how the ship sunk and what happens from there, etc. etc. etc.)
Dialogue/play attempt will be the next thing up (basic idea is cemented, still working on the actual writing/fleshing it out).
Also, I have made an attempt to deviate with style a little with this one - feels sort of similar to 'The Bookshop' (except moving slightly quicker with a little less detail - might want to change that) which is good in a way, as I was rather happy with that story, but also makes me want to do something rather whacky just for fun in one of my next posts (The poetry unit I'm doing at the moment is throwing up a few ideas when it comes to thinking outside the box and it's only second week).
Anyway thoughts/advice and comments are as usual welcome - read, enjoy and no there are no pirates yet - but they will show themselves at some point and hopefully you'll be glad you waited.
Story:
The Sudden Shore (II)
He had first set eyes on the Harlequin several weeks, when the little ship had pulled into the port city which had until then been his home. His father had gone aboard before him and had bought and paid for Geoffrey’s passage. “I want you to see the world” he had said, before leaving for home, Geoffrey had instead heard “I don’t want you here anymore.”
To Geoffrey this had come as a sort of relief. For a long time life on his father’s estate had seemed like a prison, and there was nothing left that particularly interested him when he managed to pull off an escape. He wanted something new.
As the only son of a mother who had died in childbirth and a father who had shut himself away from the world not much long after he had come to crave adventure from an early age simply so that he could escape the sombre halls of the family estate. As soon as he was able he took to slipping away from his father’s world of rules and formality to wander the world outside the manor gates. He explored nearby forests, where his young mind populated the populated the leafy green hollows and gullies with both imaginary friends and dreamt up monsters in equal measure. He came to crave his time there more than anything else; in his mind he made a home amongst the trees and he was content.
Eventually however his father emerged from his self imposed exile and took on the opinion that it was ‘high time that the boy grow out of his childish games’ and so the outside world was promptly barred from him as scores of stuffy old men descended upon the estate with the apparent purpose of, as his father barked ‘giving the boy a decent education’.
Not long after that woodcutters were said to be seen amongst his favoured hideaways, the land of which his father had appropriated to support his new hobby: winemaking. Although Geoffrey never did see his father doing much of the ‘making’, he did seem to become rather keen on the ‘tasting’ and as such invited many guests around, as often as was possible, so that they too could share in his new discovery.
As his father’s parties slowly grew louder and more rapacious Geoffrey swore to himself that no matter what happened he would never end up like his father. Would never dwell. Would never drink.
He managed to keep the promise up until the very threshold of adulthood.
By the that time he had lost most of the fear he had once held for his father’s authority, and in turn his father had lost most of his ability to do much more than stumble between the many rooms of the house and roar groggily at the few remaining servants. So Geoffrey set out to explore the new freedoms of adulthood.
He came to frequent the all the taverns and inns in the nearby village. Taking to cards and women and drink with the most reckless abandon. Very quickly he came to be known less for his family’s wealth, but the way in which he insisted on squandering it. He gambled, he binged. He fought and whored. To the very exhaustion of what the monthly stipend that he had convinced his father to grant him when he was in one of his more infrequent ‘jolly’ episodes of intoxication.
It was about the same time that he started to borrow that his father made an attempt on his own life. Although unsuccessful it had the unfortunate consequence (as far Geoffrey was concerned) of still bringing his father to god, albeit in a spiritual sense rather than a physical one. This in turn led to a slow slog back into sobriety and the real world that he had been so keen to avoid for so many years.
Very quickly the relationship between father and son returned to how it had been before. His father, became convinced that it was his duty to save his son, just as he too had been saved. This was something that Geoffrey did not take to with much enthusiasm as his father’s view of one ‘being saved’ required attending the local church as often and seemingly as early as was humanly possible. To Geoffrey this was generally a far from enjoyable experience, as he had made it a point over the last few years to spend the majority of each morning sleeping of the effects of the night before. Yet seeing it as the route of least resistance (with his father’s hands being once again securely on his purse strings, and the dispensation of its contents relying so much on his father’s approval) he made the effort to attend, feigning as much interest as he thought was required and offering as little lip service as he thought that he could get away with.
Seemingly this was enough to fool his father, who, it appeared, had never been happier and announced, for the first time that Geoffrey could remember, that he was actually proud of his previously wayward son.
For sometime things remained as such. In the mornings Geoffrey would accompany his father to morning mass and nod and smile and tell anyone who asked how he had managed to dispense of his wicked ways through a life of quite prayer and contemplation, then in the evenings, once his father had retired for the evening to do just that, Geoffrey would slip away to the nearest tavern so that he could rediscover his ‘wicked ways’ anew.
Sometime later, on a particularly crisp morning where Geoffrey was nursing (and attempting to hide) a particularly bad hangover, a rumour began to circle amongst the local congregation that a newly made Earl had just this morning purchased a large parcel of land just on the other side of the village to his Father’s own and would be beginning the construction of a grand manor house as soon as he was able. He was said to be extremely wealthy and highly favoured in court, his family well know and well bred, and of more interest to Geoffrey he was supposed to have a daughter, who as chance had it was just shy of his own age and, if rumours were to be believed, was stunningly beautiful and just a little bit rebellious.
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