At the Woodchopper's Ball Bk. 01 Ch. 01

Chapter 1

Sometimes when I wake up, in that interval before full consciousness, I experience an odd sensation. It is as though a thought from my dreams has lodged itself in my mind — echoing and repeating like a drumbeat.

"How did I imagine I stood a chance?" This was the question going through my mind this morning as I came awake. I opened my eyes and my bleary musings began to fade.

My gaze fixed on the figure lying beside me, with her morning hair and her morning scent, among crumpled morning sheets. I lay still, taking in her recumbent charms.

In hindsight, it now seems daft — absurd even — that for a while, I had tried to resist, had tried to forget. I'd told myself endlessly to leave well enough alone. I smiled as I thought back to my folly — I hadn't stood a chance.

I whispered, "Good morning," when I sensed a shift in her breathing. I leaned over and placed a kiss on her shoulder. The mass of her tresses spilt forward on her pillow. It made it seem as if a veil had been cast over her, concealing the delicacy of her features. Being as quiet as I could, I lowered my head to the exposed nape of her slender neck.

"Good morning," she murmured back. Even though I couldn't see her face, somehow I sensed her mouth curve into a languid smile.

Her presence was intoxicating, enlivening my sluggish senses. Her body formed a voluptuous curve as she lay on her side. I pulled her closer and we moulded instinctively to one another. I relished the feeling of her bare flesh against mine. She let out a satisfied moan as she exhaled.

"How's the weather?" she asked in a whisper, her voice still hoarse with sleep.

"Remarkably clement," I lied. The bedroom's heavy curtains were drawn and for all I knew, a blizzard could have engulfed us overnight.

"Anything new in the papers?" she inquired, though she knew full well I hadn't read them.

"There's been some turmoil overseas but nothing otherwise," I mumbled while raining kisses on her shoulders.

She shifted her body slightly, leaning closer into my embrace and whispered, "People are saying I should put everything I have on this horse — I forget the creature's name, but it is set to race at four o'clock this afternoon," she swept her hair away from her face. "What do you think?"

I laughed, struggling to remain quiet. I knew the source of this advice and that there was little chance she would be heeding it. "I wouldn't endorse it," I replied.

Now that we were both awake, some may question the need for all the whispering. But you see, another female figure, equally unclothed and just as beguiling, lay asleep beside me. Since the bed belonged to her, it would have been rather impolite to disturb her slumber.

One might, quite reasonably, wonder how I found myself in the enviable position of waking up in bed with not one, but two alluring women. In all honesty, I'm not certain I have a clear understanding of it myself. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of uprooted expectations, overturned assumptions and unforeseen revelations. I must admit, at times, it has been a real jolt, leaving me feeling a bit rattled.

It's now obvious that I shall have to rewind the clock a tad, establish the scene and begin afresh. You see, the tricky thing about telling a story is pinning down the precise moment and manner to start it. Sadly, I've already stumbled upon something of a narrative snag.

Let me start again.

- - - - - - - -

Shortly after my 13th birthday, I was sent to board at Fortunbrae Military Academy. The school has a reputation for rigour — the kind of institution the wealthy send their sons to in order to dispel any enervating sense of privilege. But Fortunbrae wasn't solely the preserve of the affluent. Each year, a fair number of students from less privileged backgrounds were able to enrol — after fulfilling the rigorous admission requirements, of course.

I suppose this might make the place seem rather grim. And then there are all those novels and memoirs that reinforce this perception. The nation's bookshelves seem to groan beneath the weight of tomes describing childhoods spent shivering in austere lodgings, enduring the demands of strict tutors while being menaced by older boys.

If you ask me, that kind of thing belongs to a bygone age. All in all, my friends and I had a cracking time at Fortunbrae.

While it's true that Fortunbrae has an ancient and storied military history and that martial attitudes are ingrained, they are not so severely enforced as to be considered excessive. Besides, we were also taught a broad, stimulating curriculum and helped to develop in other ways. There were always excursions and outdoor activities. My classmates and I went on mountaineering trips, sailed, played golf, had parties and lived in well-maintained quarters.

As my one of my form tutors, Dr. Primjll used to say, "A good education should cultivate men who would be acceptable at a dance and invaluable on the battlefield."

Did I miss home? Did I miss my mother and sister? Very much so, and quite terribly during the first few weeks when I was miserably homesick. It is odd, though, how quickly one adapts to a new situation and makes the best of it.

I was also fortunate that Mother's older brother, my Uncle Stegnas, lived nearby, only a half-hour away from the school. While attending Fortunbrae, I often spent my free days at his home, which helped alleviate the loneliness I felt during my early years.

The workload at school becomes rather demanding during the last two years, and fewer free days are available. Consequently, a brief, solitary visit home to Earnell was all I could manage during the last eighteen months of my tenure at Fortunbrae. Instead, my mother and sister would journey north by train and stay with my Uncle Steg for a few days to visit me.

All of this was now done with. There I was, heading back home after five years at school, examinations passed, secondments completed, university place secured, a glowing report from the headmaster obtained, and the good opinion of tutors earned.

I had thanked Uncle Steg profusely for all he had done for me and parted with my friends, tutors, and instructors with mutual expressions of esteem. I was at full stride, eager to spend long weeks enjoying nothing more arduous than whiling away my time in the beautiful town where I had been born.

On the train down, I saw no one I knew. The journey was pleasant enough, marred only by a jerky transit through the mountains and a protracted few hours during which the seat in front was occupied by a heavily respirating man whose last few meals had evidently been composed entirely of garlic.

By early evening, the train began to slow to a pleasant languor outside Earnell. As the carriages rolled through the outskirts of town, yellow squares of light filtered through the pale spring drizzle, until the station loomed alongside. As I waited for my trunk to be retrieved, the locomotive bellowed a tired plume of steam across the platform. The swelling eddies momentarily obscured people milling about on the platform but once it had cleared, I recognised my mother and sister as they approached.

As my mother walked through rising wisps of steam, I thought the scene had an almost celestial quality about it. Mother's alabaster skin contrasted strikingly against her dark tresses, and her erect bearing exuded a sense of dignified elegance.

My sister Mirrla walked alongside our mother. Her eyes scanned the carriages, perhaps unaware that I had alighted the train. At fifteen, Mirrla was blossoming into womanhood at a breathless pace. Seeing the two of them that evening filled me with an unexpected sense of pride. I hoped that somehow I had the requisite qualities to measure up to them.

Mirrla spotted me a beat or two after Mother. She hesitated for a moment but chanced a rebuke and burst forward toward me. What is it about a girl at a sprint that people find unbecoming? Anyone who saw Mirrla sprinting, her slender frame and fair limbs carrying her forward with her lush mane trailing behind, would know they were witnessing true grace.

My sister didn't reach me so much as use me as a buffer to decelerate against. She wrapped her arms around my torso in one fluid action, transforming forward momentum into an embrace. I closed my arms around her shoulders and nuzzled my face in her hair.

"Hello Mita," I murmured.

"You've grown," she observed by way of a reply.

"You too," I replied. My sister was distinctly taller than I remembered.

Mirrla tilted her head back to look up at me. I had the impression she wanted to be face-to-face with me, so I bent my knees a little, dropped my arms around her narrow waist and lifted her against me. She in turn wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, kissed me on the cheek and then pressed the side of her face against mine, her feet dangling above the platform.

I set Mirrla down just as Mother, having maintained a suitably decorous pace, reached us. Then suddenly, ladylike solemnity was forsaken while I was clasped into a series of erratically alternating embraces and kisses while simultaneously subjected to a blizzard of endearments and inquiries.

"How are you darling?" she wanted to know. Her heart was, "filled with joy," she announced. "Are you very tired?" she asked. "I am so proud of you Rody," she declared. "Are you hungry?" she wondered. "How handsome you look!" she exclaimed, and so on.

Try as I might, I failed to kiss her back or get a word in edgeways. Like a singularly dimwitted goldfish, I stood about with my mouth flapping as I attempted to return her greeting. If nothing else, I now have some inkling as to what shell-shocked troops endure. In the end, all I knew was that my face was almost certainly covered in smudged lipstick.

Somehow, the how or when of it being a touch blurred, I managed to attract the attention of a porter. After a bit of a scrum, the whole company — matriarch, offspring, and luggage — was crammed into mother's old motorcar.

We spent the evening at home eating, chatting, gossiping, and laughing together. I read aloud messages of congratulations, including a telegram from my father. The radio was switched on, though no one seemed to take heed of the music as we went on talking. I lit up the wood stove, even though the temperature did not warrant it.

I won't recount in detail how the three of us spent that first evening at home. Nothing terribly exciting occurred. It is unlikely that reading about it will be all that interesting to anyone who wasn't present at our house. For me, however, that evening was the most joyous and lovely night I could remember. It is a memory I will treasure and not take for granted.

A little later, I went outside and lit a cigarette. Mother had been angry when she discovered I smoked, but it was a foible we shared and she hadn't been able to leverage all the maternal disapproval and outrage ordinarily at her disposal.

There was a stillness to the night, an end-of-a-perfect day peacefulness which made me feel drowsy with contentment. My sister joined me with a blanket draped over her shoulders, snuggling against me on the narrow bench. Mirrla half-heartedly tried to bum a cigarette from me but I placated her by letting her take a few drags from mine. She scrambled to give it back when we heard Mother in the kitchen. She joined us on the bench and lit her own cigarette, then, not for the first time, made Mirrla promise solemnly to never pick up the habit.

Later still, after saying goodnight to my family, I went up to my old room, lay in my old bed and felt my heart swell.

- - - - - - - -

By force of habit, I was up early the next day, rising with the lark. I had no doubt the ladies of the household were still abed and would prefer to remain undisturbed. It would have been inconsiderate to stump around the abode early on a Sunday morning. Causing the least disturbance was uppermost in my mind as I stole out of my room to attend to my morning routine. Afterwards, I unpacked and busied myself with a handful of bland clerical matters.

Eventually, the time came to rouse the clan from their sleep. I left my room and while descending the stairs, heard a dim rustling. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of my sister crossing the landing, making her way towards the lavatory with feline-like silence.

In the kitchen, I filled the blue enamelled kettle and set it to boil, preparatory to making coffee. This had become a sort of ritual for me, something I did every time I was home for a visit. I used to chafe against routine and habit when I was younger. Now, without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak. "We underestimate the grace and power of habit," my Uncle Steg used to say.

I turned down the flame and wandered out of the kitchen, roaming the familiar house engrossed in my memories. The creak of the floor, the view from a window — the scent of home. Memories came rushing back in a flood of nostalgia. As I reminisced, happy memories intermingled with pangs of regret for all the things I had missed during my long absences, all the memories denied to me while I'd been away at school. I felt a renewed appreciation for the warmth and closeness of my family, for my home, realising how much I had taken them for granted.

Returning to the kitchen, I made coffee and arranged a cup, saucer, pot, and milk jug on a tray before ascending the stairs. All seemed still as I lingered in the corridor for a moment, listening, before I knocked on the door to my mother's bedroom. I smiled as she answered the instant my knuckles struck the door. She was expecting me. Routine and habit I suppose.

On these occasions, Mother would invariably be draped in one of her silk nightgowns while reclined nonchalantly against pillows propped up against the ornate metalwork of the headboard. This morning, she was brushing her dark, loose hair as she sat up in bed. The sun poured through thin curtains and cast an almost harsh light across her, making her pale green eyes seem blue.

Mother smiled at me brightly as I entered. As always, she made me feel as if this small gesture was an extraordinarily thoughtful act. I placed the tray on her bedside table and kissed her on the cheek, lingering suitably to convey my earnest affection. Before sitting on the dainty chair near her bed, I had to move her shimmering dressing gown aside. We both shared a distaste for people who lean against draped garments.

I felt rather pleased with myself. "What a fine cove that Fayard is," I thought. "Gliding up elegantly without spilling a drop. So thoroughly competent and compassionate in every respect."

Mother took a sip from her cup. "Thank you, my sweet. It's so good to have you home again. How did you sleep last night?"

"Very well," I replied. "Lay back like a feather on a soft pillow, snug as a bug and slept like a log."

Mother's lips curved into a waggish smile. "It's a tad too early in the morning to be throwing about figures of speech like a circus act juggling balls," she chided lightheartedly.

"Yes Mother, " I replied with a grin.

She took another sip and sighed, "It seems ages since you went away," but then something seemed to occur to her and she sharpened up. "Now then, what are your plans for the next few months?"

"I am eagerly anticipating the prospect of idleness," I confessed.

"I keep hearing about boys your age running aground," she confided. "Only the other day, I read something about it in an article ——" she paused, gesturing toward magazines on her nightstand. "Apparently, after leaving, boys accustomed to life at boarding school are prone to habits of quiet and solitude," She fixed me with a critical gaze, "I wouldn't want that happening to you."

Before I could offer a suitably droll retort, the door flung open and, like a scolded cat, Mirrla burst into the room. She bellowed a cheerful "good morning!" as she stomped up beside the bed, turned over the cover and — with kinetic panache — leapt onto the mattress. She ended up next to our mother, sitting in an identical pose in her pretty dressing gown.

The difficulty was that Mirrla's final flourish had resulted in mother and daughter bouncing up and down upon the sprung mattress. Inevitably, this also set in motion certain oscillations in the bosom area. In a bind like this, when one's own closest and dearest are the subject and object, I hardly think it is the done thing to describe an unnecessarily vivid image. I will confine myself to saying that my sister's modest chest and Mother's far less modest affair were set jiggling before me.

Mother glared at Mirrla.

I glared at an arbitrary point on the wall, approximately a foot above their heads.

Mirrla glanced over at the tray on the bedside table and pouted, "No coffee for me?"

This may not elicit much sympathy, but averting my gaze so resolutely had left me rather winded. After all, men are not by nature inclined to look away from such things. Women seem to find the reflex endlessly irksome, but the eye is drawn to where it is drawn to and in my experience, the cleavage is where the eye is inexorably drawn to most of the time. I had been forced to exert considerable willpower.

I looked at Mirrla with a sigh. She continued feigning a look of disappointment at finding herself coffee-less, but at least the two were no longer fluctuating.

"I didn't think you'd be up and about yet," I told her.

I am bound to say, I did not approve of the way Mirrla made bold with Mother's bedroom without so much as a knock. But, before I had time to dwell, Mother circled back to her previous line of inquiry.

"Rody, what are your plans for today?"

"Well now, let me see," I mused with affected indifference, "I thought I'd mooch about until lunch and afterwards, take a little nap. Then, if I can rouse myself sufficiently, I'll go to the club — see if anyone is around. After that, if I felt up to it, I might amble down to the Heath and partake in a bit of pastoral wandering."

Mirrla scoffed. Mother did not look amused.

"Mooch? Amble? I hardly think that's the attitude ——"

With a deft flick of the hand, I managed to curtail my mother, mid-lecture. "Just larking about Mother," I reassured her with a grin. I harboured no delusions that my dear mother would tolerate having me lazing about all day.

"Marvellous. Then you'll be joining us for lunch at Broni's?" my mother enquired.

"Of course... of course," I remarked offhandedly. "I assume Enide is here — in town I mean?" I wondered aloud and hoped I didn't sound too eager.

My mother and sister exchanged a brief, inscrutable glance. "Yes. I'm sure Enide will be there," Mother replied.

Mother and I continued our conversation, meandering from topic to topic. Meanwhile, Mirrla picked up one of the magazines from the bedside table and began flicking through the pages. Suddenly, she looked up from her lap. "You mustn't succumb to isolation and melancholy," she announced out of the blue.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you remember Urbie?"

"What? Urbie Minko — with the chin?"

This Urbie fellow was Anik's brother, who was in turn friends with Mirrla. He and I had a passing acquaintance though he was a few years older than me. His defining physical attribute was his tremendous chin. If you were to consult an illustrated dictionary — the kind with those sketch-like drawings under certain words — and happened to look up 'lantern-jawed', I'd bet my last Mark you'd find a likeness of Urbie Minko. So prominent was his chin that one could easily conceive of it having a personality of its own.

"Yes, he is the one," Mirrla confirmed. "His family are in despair. Urbie has become obsessed with philosophy."

I have to say, I couldn't follow her train of thought, although I recalled Urbie once complaining that a brass band playing outside his window had caused him to mangle his notes on metaphysics.