Bob Studholme's Blog

Prologue - The Castle.

The moon shines on the river and the castle. The day, June 2nd, 1915, has been unusually hot; the walls of the castle soaking up more sun than they can easily absorb. Windows gape wide to let the night's breezes cool the interior. Those asleep inside fall to more peaceful slumber as the walls breathe out heat and sweat dries from bodies.

Outside, the air turning cool and sweet, the moonlight glints on the river in slow dancing patterns. Owls fly; small animals scuttle; trees sway like graceful women who’ve forgotten the steps of the dance.

From out of the trees, walking slowly on the gravel path to the castle entrance, come two figures. Look at them, dear reader and tell me what you see.

One a man; the other a woman. True, but look closer; there is more to them than that.

Wearing clothes the silver white of the moonlight. Yes, yes. And do you see? These are not clothes worn by people of this time. But look more carefully. There is something else.

You have it now, don’t you? Subtle, isn’t it, the way the moonlight shines not on these two, but through them?

At the edge of the castle's gravel courtyard, both pause while the woman looks around at the scene. She looks down the small hill which the castle sits atop at the view of the river, the bridge and the distant mill. The hill forms a natural Amphitheatre; a grass-covered lap of earth leading away to the line of the woods.

The woman nods; pleased by the prospect? The man stands, arms akimbo, proprietorial pride written on him. He was on this hill before the building started, ordered the design of the castle, oversaw its furnishing, was the force behind it becoming a beautiful stately home, watched as it acquired a patina of age and is well pleased with what he's wrought.

He looks to the woman, makes a slight bow and extends his hand in a gesture of formal invitation. The woman gives him a smile, drops a playful curtsy and walks on towards the entrance. By force of habit, both enter through the door. A less remarkable feat this, had they opened it first. Perhaps you enjoy the sight of them passing through solid timbers on a tour of their new habitation. Or perhaps not.

Inside, they climb the stairs and survey the bedrooms. War has taken the men away and in the house, only women and girls remain, peacefully sleeping, unaware of the spectral forms moving amongst them.

At length the two stop. The woman nods, her face perhaps still slightly pensive, but content.

The man looks at the woman. "And, Miss Mason?"

"Perfect, Turing. They told me about this to get me to sign the contract…"

"But seeing it is different. Yes, I understand. Seeing is believing."

"Will he remember…?"

"Some things. They are what he is, not merely what he does. But have no concern. He will believe he is what they tell him he is. It is in the nature of the cure."

The man smiles. At his gesture, the two fade into the air.

***

Part One - Jack and the Women.

"Wentbridge, Wentbridge. All passengers for Wentbridge. Excuse me? Young sir? You're getting off here, aren't you?"

Jack heard the voice and felt it was dragging him up from the bottom of a black lake. Exhaustion crushed him like a weight of water. The surface still an impossible distance above his head and him wanting nothing more than to sink back into the darkness, the voice came again, injecting unwanted buoyancy.

"Are you alright, sir? You're looking very peaky. You are getting off here, aren't you?"

A sudden banging came from beside Jack's head. Glass, he thought. Someone’s rapping their knuckles against the glass of a window. He'd been asleep with his head resting against the window and now someone was knocking on its glass. He started and his eyes twitched, lids almost parting.

"Isaac! Isaac! He's mine darling. Can you be getting him up for me? I've to drive him to the house."

A woman's voice; Irish by the accent. Muffled by the glass, but still with a bubbling huskiness almost enough to make Jack prise open his eyes to see the owner.

"Trying Mrs Maguire, but I've seen slaughtered sheep faster to move than this one. He alright, is he?"

"Ah, the poor love's been ill with the scarlet fever, so he has. Can you give him a hand up, darling?"

"For you Mrs Maguire, the very shirt off me back."

"A thousand thanks Isaac, but the boy's what I'm after and not your laundry. Yer mammy can do your shirts for ye."

Someone chuckled and hands slipped under Jack's armpits from behind. His arm was raised and wrapped around skinny shoulders.

"Upsidaisy. Up you come now sir, can't be keeping Mrs Maguire waiting now, can we?"

Half lifted by Isaac; Jack pushed legs like dead meat against the floor to help raise himself. His eyes fluttered open and colours danced for a moment before shapes coalesced. An old, old lady, clothed in something last fashionable when Queen Victoria was single, sat facing. She looked at him with concern.

"Can someone get this young gentleman a glass of water? He looks faint. I fear the heat has been too much for him."

Cut-glass accent, Jack thought. Home Counties? Isaac sounded West Country. Mrs Maguire Irish. Where the Hell was he? Jack, lost in a mental fog, only knew he had to get off this train. He reached out a free hand and grasped the seat top. Wood. Solid and good to lean his weight on. Steadied between the seat and Isaac, he tried to pull his mind to the jobs at hand: standing first, walking next, getting off the train. Luggage? Did he have luggage? He couldn't cope with luggage.

"My bags?" His voice croaked with the rasp of a hinge never oiled. His mouth was dry and he wanted a drink. "Where are my bags, please?"

"Oh, don't you go worrying yourself over them, sir. They're in the guard's van and he'll get them off for you. Now, can you just come this way?"

Isaac was Jack's height, but a skinny youth, and Jack's weight caused him to struggle. Jack, ashamed of his weakness, marshalled his will and directed his legs to walk. They staggered instead, but, grasping for the support of the seat backs, he and Isaac lurched down the carriage to the door and the brightness of the sun beyond. He half fell into the arms of Mrs Maguire. Like falling into a warm bed, fresh laundered linen brushed his face and calmed his nerves. The flesh beneath smelled of lemons and sweet, summer sweat.

Isaac climbed down from the carriage and helped Mrs Maguire steer Jack to a small, horse-drawn … buggy? Has a name, thought city boy Jack, one I know, but it hid in his mind's fog. He tried to pull himself up to the passenger seat, but had to be wrestled aboard like a sack of onions. He slumped forward, elbows on knees, head in hands, fighting the fog and a wave of nausea. Why so sick?

Like an actor responding to a cue, a voice came out of the back of his mind.

"You're very lucky to be alive and have no complications, young man. Scarlet fever is easier to treat nowadays with Dr. Moser's horse serum, but still drags most sufferers to an early grave. You'll need weeks to recover and somewhere better than this wen, but you'll heal in good time, have no fear."

A face from another century, Jack thought, with a beard to rival Darwin's. The stethoscope around his neck confirmed the bedside manner. A doctor. His name? No, it was lost in the same fog. Finders? Something like that. The face was familiar; known from early childhood perhaps, but not seen for a long time. Gruff voice. A Lowlands Scot, with a reassuring aura of competence – someone to trust.

"His father's message came just this morning, doctor. His friend will put Master Jack up for the summer at his place in Devon while he recovers." The woman (a housekeeper?) looked at Jack. "You'll stay at the castle and can roam the grounds until you are well. It'll be an awful adventure for you. They say Wentbridge is a beautiful place. Quiet, but very lovely."

She smiled at Jack. Accent's from the Hebrides, he thought, face from an angel's grandmother. I've seen her before, somewhere. Grey hair, tightly bunned, grey eyes, lightly smiling, covering, barely, a worry. Not a woman to fret, said instinct, but concerned over him. He'd been, and surely still was, worse than they wanted him to know.

"Marvellous Janet, marvellous. Arrangements have been made; I take, for his travel?"

"Indeed, Doctor Cameron. He'll go by the morning train and be met at the station."

"Excellent, excellent. So we'll see you when you get back then Jack."

Memory closed there like a curtain, leaving nothing else but fog until he'd woken on the train. Before? Injections, hospital beds, pain and confusion. Darkness and people moving him around – getting him aboard the train? Shards of a story he'd rather forget.

" 'At's right Mrs Maguire. Eighteen tomorrow."

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Isaac blurted out.

"An' I'm joining the regiment on the weekend. They wouldn't take me before. Knew me proper age, see, and told me the railways needed men too. Can't stop me now, though."

Jack caught, though Isaac missed, the pain flashing across Mrs Maguire's face. She wiped it off almost before it registered, replacing it with a smile like the sun rising.

"And isn't my Seamus there as well? You must be looking out for him. Both in the same regiment, he'll look after you, sure an' he will. Tell him, when you see him, the odd letter will never be taken as an insult now, won't ye?"

"Well, I will if I do, but they're saying the fightin' won't last much longer now. Probably all.."

"…over at Christmas, I know. God willing it will."

Isaac's flushed face darkened a moment and Jack guessed the question he wanted to ask. It wasn't hard. Jack had seen the newspaper reports. So had Mrs Maguire.

"Ah, but you'll look the very devil of a handsome young buck in your uniform, an' you will so. Sure an' the girls will all be after ye. Well, never let anyone say Bridie Maguire got left at the back of the line. Come here an' give me a kiss now, for yer birthday an' going away an' all."

Isaac blushed red to the tips of his ears. He looked around. To note who was watching, Jack wondered, or for a place to run? A skinny, pimply, pasty-faced youth, the weight of rifle and pack would probably topple him. If this wasn't his first kiss… No, surely this was.
Bridie Maguire, even through the fog, struck Jack as a woman who knew about fun, and how to have it. Isaac had never been kissed by anyone like her before, Jack would bet.

She grabbed the youth by the shoulders and pulled him to her. He stood like a beast about to be slaughtered, not sure where to put hands and face. Bridie looked him coolly in the eye.

"Now ye'll need to be taking more of a grip on things, me lad. Try like this."

She took his hands and slapped them to her rump. The boy's eyes widened further than Jack thought possible, but before he'd the chance to say anything, she had his face between her hands and had plastered his mouth to hers.

A kiss, the voice in Jack's head said, to pour lust into the loins of a bronze statue. Can't argue, thought Jack. If eyes on train or platform missed it, Isaac surely burned every one of the heartbeats it lasted into his memory forever.

Jack remembered reading about a Confederate soldier who survived a tremendous battlefield blast to find himself utterly unharmed, though stripped of every scrap of clothing. Yes, he thought, Isaac's expression in front of him, that's how he must have looked.

Bridie released the boy with a hesitation, a near reluctance that didn't look part of an act. Husband at the war, came the voice from the back of his mind, hasn't in a while, I'll be bound.

"Woah, missus! I'll have a one o' them too an' you've got any to spare."

"Away wit ye," Maguire shouted to the driver. That grin, said the voice in his head, is one the devil'd buy at auction and keep for his Sunday best. "The lad's off to the wars and needs something to keep him warm of a night-time."

"Well, I'm off to Coventry tonight an' I've all the same needs, darling. If you've done with him, can I have him back? I've a train to run an' we're late already."

Isaac regained the train with a curiously crouched shuffle; Mrs Maguire the constant north to his compass's needle. She stayed on the platform to wave him off and give him a wink. What's the word for that one, wondered Jack? Lascivious, came the voice, and that's stretching the term tight. Bridie mouthed something Jack thought said: 'Come back for more'.

A ticker tape of thought crossed and recrossed the youth's face, repeating and repeating the only important idea in his mind. Jack read the message as the train pulled out. 'I did that, me. It was me did that, I did.' They'd likely need iced water to get his mind to anything else for the rest of the day. It's like watching Charlie Chaplin at the kinema, isn't it? said the voice from the back of Jack's mind. Words pop up occasionally, but the rest of the time, your eyes tell you the story.

Bridie stayed on the platform, waving, till the train rounded a bend, her radiant smile fading. She walked to the buggy, hitched skirts and swung herself up with athletic grace. She took the reins, shook the brown horse into movement and sank back into herself.

"That was kind."

She looked at him.

"I'm sorry young master, what was that?"

"He's worried about the fighting. You took his mind off it. That was kind."

She shrugged. "Ah, it's nothing. These boys are all after running off to the war, so they won't look like cowards. Isaac's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he can read. He knows how many are coming back with bits shot off them, or not coming back at all. I pray it's over before he finishes the training and gets shipped off to France."

Jack nodded. Dates and figures and names of battlefields hid somewhere in the fog, but he agreed with a line he'd read. The Western Front was a maw chewing up young men and leaving them to fertilise the ground they battled over.

"And Seamus? He's your…?"

"Husband."

Jack'd been raised by an army of aunts, so had heard the title pronounced as a curse before, but never such as Bridie Maguire made it. She'd slapped the word down like a fish full of lead weights on a filleting board.

"He's at the front?"

"Not yet, still at Aldershot going through his basic training."

"How long will that take?"

"Not sure. He's been gone a month and thinks he's eight weeks more before they'll ship to France, but says it's a terrible mess and not one of them knows how to find his arse with both hands… ah, excuse my French. God willing they'll never see the trenches."

"Volunteered, did he?"

Bridie laughed. "God bless you no, young sir. The magistrate did the necessary for him when he punched a copper. Said if he had such a taste for fighting men in uniform, he'd accommodate him with pleasure. Catch Seamus Maguire volunteering for anything more than another man's whiskey, an' it'd only be 'cos he'd another man's whiskey already inside him."

Jack looked sideways at her and his eye caught on the smooth swell of a breast half released by the opening of her blouse's top buttons.

Oh look, came the voice in his head, Moby Dick sighted on the starboard side.

Her eyes flicked sideways to his gaze and she smiled a small, but intensely knowing smile.

"Sorry," he said, catching her eye on him, "but isn't a young man supposed to admire the beauty of the hills and dales when he comes to the countryside?"

She snorted a laugh. She thinks you're a bold one, said the voice in his head, she'll have heard better lines than that, but she'll keep an eye on you now.

Jack found the movement of the shay lulling and had no argument with it pulling him back to sleep. His head sank to his chest. Only dimly aware of the ride to the castle, he missed the village entirely.

***

Sick, thought Bridie, looking at the dozing boy, but sharp and… strange. She was used to young guests to the house being confident beyond their years. You got that way, after all, when you'd been raised as gentry. And though some were thick as pig shite, you did get them bright as buttons too. Well, you can buy the best teachers when you've got money like the gentry.

Usually you could rely on the boys to be interested, but put a brazen face on it. The Quentins of the world knew the likes of Bridie were made for their pleasure and knew you were wrong to disagree. Shy ones pretended they didn't have any interest while sneaking looks they didn't think you'd see. This lad… there'd been honest appreciation in his look; no sign he thought himself on forbidden or dangerous ground. That was a look a man gave to a woman when he was interested and thought she might be too. How old was he? She met young ones who'd tumbled a daft young maid or two, but still they didn't have that much cop on.

She had to admit to being powerful curious. Where'd he come from and how'd he get to be like this? Good looking one, sure and he was. Another few years and he might be getting his look back and her confessor a story as could curl his hair.

God, she thought, Maguire hadn't been gone so long for her to be itching like this. Him and her had been in more rows before he went than she'd been able to count. Her saint's name, Helena, patron of troubled marriages, had been starting to look like a sign of her old mam having second sight. Still, her bed was too wide and too cold of a night without the bugger. Ah, naught to do about it, Bridie, she thought, drive on.

***

"Master Jack? Master Jack? Sorry darling, but we're here now and you're going to have to get down."

Jack opened his eyes, got his first view of Wentbridge Castle and liked it, instinctively. He couldn't have said why just then, but later put the pieces of it together. Someone's stately home, of a certainty, but with square built towers at each corner, crenellations atop the whole roof and the general air of a house giving injury if receiving insult. Later too, he'd wonder why such pugilistic architecture lived in Devon, but for now it gave him a solid sense of security.

His arrival had clearly been expected, a group of people came out of the front entrance as he stood by the shay, swaying lightly. No faces familiar to him, but picking out the lady of the house was as easy as picking out the lion in the pride. A handsome woman with an air of command, she looked him straight in the eye, shook his hand and welcomed him to the castle.

"Yes, you'll need time to recover from your journey, surely. The deck chairs are set up, so perhaps you'd like to take a rest in the fresh air until lunch. You can meet the others properly later."

The others took their cue from this and disappeared back into the house. Bridie led Jack around the side of the building to a walled area where two deck chairs looked the answer to a prayer. He slumped onto one and stammered out a half apology for his state. Bridie promised him a flask of beef tea and he drifted off in the silence when she left.

An indeterminate time later voices came back towards him, but he hadn't the energy to open eyes and engage in conversation.

"Ah, sound asleep again. So obviously most desperately ill, Bridie, why did they ever let him travel alone?

"Percival knows the father from the Army, apparently, respects him enormously, says William Fairbairn is quite the most dangerous man he's ever met. Scarred from face to feet from fighting with natives and knives, if you can believe such a thing. The family are Trade, but Percival says he's a good sort. Typical Percival. Apparently, the mother's dead and father's in the East. Singapore, he said, training troops, for goodness sake. The boy was at school when he fell sick and the father contacted Percival to ask for help, so… Oh, just leave the flask. He can have something when he wakes."

"Good looking young lad, he is ma'am, bright too from what I saw of him in the shay. Mind, twasn't much. Slept most of the way, he did. He'll need rest and feeding up if he's to even stay awake for the full day. To think, he's nigh on the only thing you'd call a man in the whole of the area now. Well, the only one not long since decrepit. Even the schoolboys is running off for being soldiers. I met Alice Buckland's eldest only this morning. He's finished with the railways and enlisting this weekend."

"Damn young fools. I know I shouldn't say so, but since they started using gas, I can't see any good end to this war. It's going to grind on until even fatuous idiots like French get tired. Why they can't end it all with a compromise I can't understand."

"How old is he ma'am?"

"Fifteen, Percival said. Looks older, but then… "

"Has he been out in the East, ma'am?"

"Honestly no idea. He'll have seen a bit more of the world than most his age if he has. I dare say we'll find out."

They drifted off, or Jack did, though his mind attached to what they'd said. Fairbairn, William E. Troops? No, he served with the police, training the riot squad in self-defence. He tried to put a face to the name and biography, but came up with nothing more than an image from a photo. A slim man, bespectacled, clearly hard as nails. Memories of him? So distant it was hard for Jack to think of him as father. All his tired mind could muster were scenes that might as well have been from the Saturday morning kinema. They lacked accompanying music, but equally, lacked any feeling. He couldn't find himself in any of those scenes.

Drills in fighting. Those he remembered. Playing with a knife. A slim, beautiful, vicious-looking knife. 'A thing forged in Hell and made for only dark deeds.' Who'd said? He had the knife in his luggage, where an instinct told him it was staying. There was something deeply wrong about that knife. Did it come from William E? And was that all? All he could find of a father –a picture on a bedside dresser and a knife for killing? Mother? No, nothing in his foggy memories. He'd been on his own for a long time. Well, never mind, he'd grown used to the independence and grown up faster. If you won them all, you'd get bored. Stiff upper lip, etc. etc. A face, a woman's, pretty and concerned, floated into his mind, but then the fog rolled over him again and he slept.

***

Look at the cracks in the ceiling: at the patterns on the bathroom tiles: at a splash of water on a concrete path. There will be faces in the dots and lines, patches and splashes. Perhaps also dragons and demons, but always faces. Human minds find them in things human eyes observe. On the wall behind Jack, in the lichen covering and the cracks and crevices faceting, were two. One a man's; the other a woman's. The woman's, pretty and concerned, turned to the man's.

"He looks like death!"

Jack slept, with nothing in his ears but the distant soughing of wind in branches.

"As close as he's been, how else would he? He will heal, though. This place, these people, they will do that for him. Rest assured, he'll get well here. A day, two, you won't recognise him. "

She knew it to be true. His opinion of the doctors of their time was low. 'Bloodletting leeches treat a patient only to find how many of the next nine they'll kill with the same poison.' Yet he'd trusted the Scot. This place offered a treatment their own time could not. She nodded her head. A tear might have run down her face, but it's hard to tell with cracks in a wall.

The faces faded and only cracks and lichen remained.

***

Eleonora walked out to the deck chairs and looked at the young man.

" Quel povero raggazo." she murmured. Handsome boy, she thought, but terribly ill. Something of the poet or warrior in the face. Dark hair, an expressive mouth. Young, but lean and shapely, unlike Quentin. She noted the beautiful confluence of line where his neck met his open collar and the swoop of the collar-bone. She wished for her sketchpad to draw it. Her eye traced his shoulders. Wide, proportionate to his frame, probably excellent definition to the muscle. He would make a beautiful study for a portrait. Perhaps he'd model for her sometime. The line of the eyebrows and the lips… She pulled her eyes away. No better. Now they caught a young man's flat stomach and slender waist. No, she did not wish to compare with Quentin. Two months gone and every second of his absence a blessing – she hadn't felt his hands on her, trying to enact his perverted ideas of love. This boy's hands… the fingers of a pianist, long, sensitive. She imagined them stroking the keys, she imagined them stroking…

Why? Why did this happen with almost every man not her fat pig of a husband? This boy, this sick, sick boy… She reached out a hand towards his face, but stopped herself before she touched him. No. No, not a good idea. She took a step back, her foot inadvertently scraping the gravel. She flinched, waited to see if he would wake, wanting and not wanting him to. The head moved, but the eyes didn't open. The lips parted and formed, perhaps, a name. They marked a line across her vision those lips, like charcoal marking paper, the shape of them captivating her. Imagining the pressure of charcoal stalk on paper, the pressure of finger onto skin… A single bead of sweat stood at his temple and Eleonora's hand moved to wipe it, stopped, started, stopped again. Her hand wanted to touch… she caught herself, turned quickly and walked back to the house.

***

Jack had no idea how long he’d slept when he woke, throat leather dry. The sun was high now, but he couldn’t remember where it had been, so the knowledge didn’t help. On a small table beside the deck chair stood a battered old flask. Something to drink. He opened it to a wonderful, warm, meaty smell. Bovril? Memories of football games in winter swung through his mind. Though no. This had something more. Bridie had said she’d made up some beef tea for him. He couldn’t remember ever having any before, but knew it was recommended for invalids. Well, that's me, he thought, so poured himself a cup of the still-warm brew and took a long swallow. As the liquid went down his throat, he felt every cell of his body greeting it like a Royal procession, with clapping, cheering and ecstatic flag waving. What on earth had she put in this? Put hairs on your chest and part ‘em down the middle that would, said the voice in his head.

He couldn’t argue with it. He must have been dehydrated and was surely starving. He’d no memory of eating, not even of which day he last had or what he'd eaten. He drained the cup and poured himself another. This one he sipped whilst gazing at cloud galleries.

Birds sang, the wind soughed, the clouds changed exhibits. Somewhere in the distance a cow passed a casual complaint to a friend. A decent time later, after careful reflection, the friend replied. Bees buzzed over his head and commented on this latest gossip. At length, the cows made more remarks on the gossiping bees, melodious birds and rustling leaves. Perhaps this was a busy day here.

Somewhere there had to be other people in the world and they had to be doing things; important, noisy, difficult and dangerous things. They weren’t doing any of them here and nor was he. Peace, and beef tea, soaked into Jack like warm rain into dry soil. He felt life return. When had he last felt so relaxed? Who cares, sang the birds. Enjoy it while you can, rustled the leaves. He felt himself in a pool outside the world of clock-ticking time. And it was good. He floated, exulting. He had nowhere to go and nothing to do beyond drink beef tea and relax, so, like a man climbing back into warm water, lowered himself once more into restful sleep.

***

He heard the clicking of heels and swishing of skirts coming towards him, opened his eyes and sat up. Um, easier than expected, he thought. The girl coming towards him was young, perhaps seventeen, dressed in something simple saying 'maid', casually pretty and, he'd swear on a stack of money, an outrageous flirt. Some things you just know, don't you? said the voice inside his head.

"Oh, you'm awake sir. How you feeling now, then? Lady Ambridge said I's to ask you if you'm well enough to take a bite for lunch with the family?"

Jack didn't fancy fighting dragons yet, but lunch and meeting his hosts...? He could do that.

"Well, that case, I laid out a change of clothes in your room. You can wash up a bit 'fore it's time to eat."

He followed her into the house and up the stairs. The view from behind was pleasant and, he'd swear, twitching more than nature intended. Farmer's daughter, came the voice in his head, knows what the bull is for and what tupping and covering mean.

She showed him into a room. Simple, but tastefully decorated with four blue walls, a change of clothing lay on the bed and a basin with a ewer of water stood on a small dresser near the window. He walked to the dresser and caught sight of himself in the mirror.
The face belonged to a stranger. Black-ringed, blood-shot, wasted eyes, sunken cheeks and, God, was there a blood cell left in his body? A line from a poem rattled in his mind, 'A face something, something, ghostly, something, whiter shade of pale.' Where did that come from? If in doubt, said the voice in his head, say Shakespeare. Bram Stoker hadn't made Dracula so pallid.

"They'm saying you was sick with the scarlet fever, sir. My mum says 'at took two of her sisters when they was young 'uns. Must have been awful. You feeling better now? "

She stood just a touch too close as she asked. Just a touch. Jack had a feeling she'd have been closer still, but that he was an obvious invalid.

"Well, if Dr. Frankenstein'd found that on his slab," he gestured with a thumb at the mirror, "He'd have burst into tears and taken up dentistry, but, yes, I suppose so. The fever's over, so I can only get better now, can't I?"

She grinned. " 'At's the spirit sir. You'll like here, I'm sure. Um, is there anything else I can get you?"

She twirled slightly as she stood, her skirts (petticoats under there?) moving and whispering. It's an excuse to stay longer, Jack thought. I haven't had enough beef tea yet, Jack thought.

"Ah, no, thanks, not for now. Though, sorry, what's your name, please?"

"Me sir? I'm Abigail, sir. Pleased to meet you, I'm sure."

She bobbed him a small curtsy, the smile on her face happy and saying, 'Knew you'd be interested.'

"And I'm Jack. Delighted to meet you."

She grinned again; twirled that tiny twirl again and paused for just a second, before bursting into giggles.

"Oh, sorry sir, you'm waiting to get changed, amn't you? I'll come back in just a bit and show you the dining room, then?"

***

The dining table was Jack’s image of a stately home's dining table. If Jesus had fed the five thousand here, he thought, they’d have mostly been seated. His hostess, Lady Charlotte Ambridge, was largely what he thought the lady of the Manor would be: business-like, in control and, since the men were away, in total charge. The sort of woman you'd describe as handsome and elegant, Jack imagined her fox hunting in the modern age, sharing a chariot with Boadicea in an earlier one.

He’d expected more servants than Bridie and Abigail, but, with the butler and all the other men gone; he wasn’t surprised the family had found little need (and fewer opportunities) to replace them. He hadn’t expected a governess, because he hadn’t known the family had a daughter, Deidre, absent for reasons he didn’t catch, but expected back at the weekend. Finding one, he wasn't surprised. That too fitted his preconceptions. The governess, Miss Brampton, wore her blonde hair in strict and uncomfortable-looking fastened-up braids, her mouth in a permanent moue of disapproval and, Jack decided after entire seconds of forced conversation, her mind in a strait-jacket of rules and restrictions.

The last member of the family, however, Jack had not expected to find in this country, or century, never mind this house. Eleonora Angela Ambridge, the Italian wife of Lord Percival’s younger brother, Quentin. If Janet from the doctor’s office was the grandmother, this was surely the angel granddaughter. If dictionaries had pictures, he thought, she'd be the one for gorgeous.

Strange then, he thought, that a woman who could stun most men into adoration by simply looking up at them through her long eyelashes was surely the most timid, shy and twitchy of Heaven’s inhabitants to ever exit the Pearly Gates. Afraid of her own shadow, her, he thought, a baby could see that.

Raised by a legion of aunts in houses where males were either husbands as absent as his own father or mere babies; Jack had been everyone's pet. He'd swum in a sea of other people's mothers, aunts, sisters and cousins. The married, the spinsters, the widows, the contented, the resentful: he thought he'd met the type of each one of these women somewhere before. If he didn't understand what made each one tick, he at least thought he knew the tick each would have.

Through the meal Eleonora avoided eye contact with him, whilst always giving the impression she knew where his eyes were and when they looked at her. She didn't seem any happier if he looked or didn't. If he didn't know why, Jack knew it was awkward and gave up on trying or caring until he was stronger. He concentrated his conversation on his hostess.

After the meal, Charlotte took him to the library, suggesting he'd find something interesting to read, then pointed out possible walks from the room's windows. The demesne included a holy well near the river, a pleasant walk to the mill, several places further upstream good for swimming from and a trail on the other side of the river which offered excellent views of the castle. None of them too far from the castle, she told him. Five minutes to the well, another five to either the mill or the farm on the other side of the river.

When asked, Jack admitted to enjoying sketching and was sorted out with sketchpad and pencils along with a shoulder bag to carry them in. Lady Charlotte told him to pick up sandwiches and a flask from Bridie before he went out and then left him to rest.

He took a lie down for a while and then returned to the library to pick out a book. The first thing to catch his eye was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. A book he'd heard of, but never read. Not one of the military histories he usually preferred, but snagging it saved him the energy he'd spend searching for anything else, so he dropped Jane Austin in his bag, collared sandwiches and a flask and headed out.

***

Charlotte found herself impressed with the boy. Surprisingly steady head on shoulders so young. She'd been prepared to put up with some Northern lout, but was charmed by his manners and the near-Scottish lilt of his accent. They discussed the War, of course, but he expressed her own idea that it should be finished by men sitting down around a conference table before the cataclysmic expense bankrupted everyone. He'd need to be careful where he expressed ideas like those. She was, certainly.

And a very handsome, athletic young man. He still looked ill, but had little of the deathly pallor which had made her wonder why he'd been put on a train at all yet. He'd asked if he'd be allowed to take a walk in the afternoon and she decided the risk to be negligible. Had boys of his age been so mature in her day, she wondered? Perhaps travel and a soldier father made the difference? She'd enjoyed talking with him. God knew it was difficult to have an intelligent conversation in the house nowadays and he was intelligent. Well, he agreed with her. But there was something more. He'd been polite, but a polite equal. And that, if she hadn't looked at the youth in his face, had been very welcome. You need to get up to Town, Charlotte, she thought, you're turning into mad Aunt Guinevere.

***

The faces on the wall monitored his progress across the grass.

"Isn't this too early?" asked the woman.

"He'll find he doesn't have the stamina he thinks he has, but he's no fool, he won't hurt himself. This is like him, isn't it?"

True, she had to admit. She might not want Jack up and walking around yet, but asking him not to was asking him not to be Jack.

"But why are they letting him do this?"

Did the crack forming the lips purse?

"They'll tend to let him have his head."

"He's controlling them?"

"No, no. Nothing so direct. He can't make them do anything they wouldn't normally. They aren't mesmerised by him. He'll merely get his own way a touch more easily. Though, you know him better than I, hasn't he always?"

Yes, she thought. Her darling boy had always been one of nature's princes. Born to lead and be followed, Jack had been talking people into doing what he wanted since he'd been able to talk.

She nodded.

***

The thing lurched, naked and ghastly white, through the shade of the trees. It looked, Turing thought, like the leavings from a shark’s interrupted feeding frenzy: dead, drowned and partly digested. The left eye was a ragged hole; the left side of the face a skinless mess of bloodless meat; the left arm a stump. The left leg was attached, but something had removed most of the quadriceps. It must once have been male, but the genitals were missing. Its skin had a look that suggested long immersion, seemed, indeed, to be dripping. The look in its remaining eye was one of tortured agony. The mouth moved, but no sounds came from it. The thing shuddered to a stop when it saw Jack on the grass, gave a soundless scream then staggered towards him. Turing caused his face to project from the trees between it and Jack. When it saw him, the thing stopped, writhing as if caught in a net, the mouth moving as though pleading.

“No,” Turing told it. “This is your place for now. Later you may go to him.”

The thing twisted in soundless agony, but could not break the line of Turing’s barrier. It turned and moved back, further under the trees, further from Jack.

Early, thought Turing. Too early. He’d not predicted there would be any yet, but he already knew there would be more by tonight. Even so, he could hold them back until Jack recovered his strength and was ready to battle them. Soon, however, Miss Mason would see them. And it wasn’t hard to predict that would bring trouble.

The Source is a local free magazine. My friend Khudayja works as an associate editor there and she got me writing for it. I've done a number of pieces for them and realised recently that it was those pieces which made me feel like a writer when the work on Virus was stalled and I could convince myself that someone who'd only had one idea for a story really qualified. now that I've had a second and am working on it, I still feel that getting published in The Source counts for something and am writing for them. these are my latest two bits. I'm going to go back through the other articles I've written and put them up here. It's more to fill in space than anything, but this is supposed to be my writing, so I should have been putting them up from the beginning.
This is on the issue of single sex education.



As a father of a 12-year-old daughter and as a teacher, I have mixed feelings about single-sex education. Girls definitely do better under it in terms of their results. Boys tend to grab more teacher time, both because they grab it and because teachers give it to them – studies confirm that. Girls tend to be less inclined to contribute to lessons because of the harassment they can get from the boys. In the teenage years, classrooms can become the stages where boys act out to show how independent they are, so disrupting lessons. They can also be just another place where potential girlfriends are and, since some boys' idea of wooing is to make a nuisance of themselves, can lead to individual girls being disturbed. However, that is the real world. So, creating an artificial space where girls might succeed in learning how to deal with fractions, but not the rest of the human race, might just move a problem to later in life. Girls become women who want to find jobs and most jobs mean interacting with men in the workplace. And, while most teenage girls find teenage boys to be immature, they can sometimes find that easier to deal with than the intensity of girls in groups. It also seems to be the case that girls who are continuously around boys are less interested in them. Since they aren't forbidden fruit, girls learn to be less fascinated. Well, I hope so, anyway. 
And this one on the importance of music education. Aki has studied piano since she was about five. It's a big part of her life now. Just hearing her play through her current pieces Habana and Toreador from Carmen, blows me away. Aki can work out songs she likes on both piano and flute. She played a Green Day number for her last performance (Boulevard of Broken Dreams). We pay for her to have lessons and we think it is worth it just to be able to have that contact with music. This is about some of the other things it can add. 


Music – an extra, or an essential?Unless your child is going to become a concert musician, argue some, then music lessons are only for fun and can distract children from 'serious' studies. In the case of classes which require the children to be pulled out of another class for individual tuition, these people would argue, it can positively hurt their education by taking time away from the real work.  The argument might seem to make sense, but research disputes it. Researchers in Hamilton, Ohio, USA, documented that students participating in a string pull out program scored higher on the reading, mathematics and citizenship portions of the Ohio Proficiency Test (OPT), than their non-music peers.This study paired string and non-music students based on their verbal Cognitive Abilities Test (COGAT). Four groups of string students were released two times a week for instruction. Later, two of those four groups scored significantly higher on the reading and mathematics portion of the OPT than their non-music peers. Additionally, 68% of the string students scored at grade level or higher on all four sections of the test compared to 58% of the non-music students. In high school, the results are also convincing. Every year juniors and seniors take the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) for college admissions . These scores reflect several years of education and are intended to judge a person's over-all education.SAT scores of students who studied music surpassed students who had not. Data collected from students taking the SAT indicated that students taking music and arts averaged scores that were higher than non-music students by 60 points on the verbal section and 43 points on the math section. The effect is cumulative with SAT scores improving for every year a student studies music. Additionally, studies have found that musicians tend to have better verbal memory and a better ability with learning foreign languages. Why this should be is not 100% clear. Partly, it seems to be with brain growth. The brains of kids who started music before the age of five show a thicker corpus colostrum – the link between the left and right sides of the brain. An argument is that certain neural pathways are strengthened by music study and that these pathways are shared with other skills. Another argument is that music training helps develop habits which transfer to learning other skills. In the case of foreign languages it can be the training of the ear to hear notes that allows a child to better hear things such as accent. With maths it could just be the discipline that helps a child go back to a difficult bit and practise it again and again until they've got it. And for English, it can't hurt that a student is routinely practising memorising sequences of notes that we name by the letters of the alphabet. Another argument is that student confidence is built up by the habit of success. Work on a piece of music and you demonstrate that you can master it. Someone who does this often can easily come to believe they can master anything if they work on it, an attitude that often proves itself true.Equally, children who study music tend to have more friends and, perhaps, more to talk with them about. Band members are forced into developing social skills, discipline and the ability to co-operate which are hallmarks of successful modern workers. Music students are also used to meeting with adults one-to-one and communicating and building relations with them. Such children are less likely to feel shy of asking questions to their class teachers.

One of the things I like to do with my stories is 'cast' them - pick people who could be the characters if it were filmed. This is day-dreaming as well, but it does help with characterisation. Niall Ferguson, one of the characters in my first book, was always Liam Neeson for me. If I could see Liam saying the line, then I tended to think it would work. If not, not.
I've been trying to do that with Shadowlands as well. To an extent, it's not too difficult as I took the bulk of the settings from a film I saw on Youtube - an Italian comedy which follows something close to the story as it appears to be happening to Jack. The one the other characters would see, rather than the one the reader is aware of, at least.
They give me an idea of it, but it doesn't work completely for me as some of those characters aren't the same ages as the people in my story need to be - they're also speaking Italian.
This is one face that I like for my character Abigail. The actress is Juno Templeton and she doesn't really help me with the lines question, as I've never heard her speak, or seen her in a film anywhere (that I know of, the newspaper article I read about her said she's a chameleon and people often don't recognise she's the same girl they've seen before).
Anyway, this is her. She works as the maid in a 1915 stately home in Devon for me.




This is how I currently imagine one of the other women of the house, the governess Fanny Brampton, to look. She probably won't change. This is a screen capture from the film I saw. Fanny should be blonde (I'm not sure why, that's just the way I thought of her). This lady - I'm not sure of her name - is supposed to be English, though, so she can stay.

One of the bits that's most fun for me is working on the voices of the characters. I'm obsessed by accents and the natural poetry that most ordinary people can come up with whenever they're not trying to sound like someone they've seen on TV. Well, perhaps that's not-so-ordinary people who just like to talk and play with the words. Anyway, in this extract, Abigail and Thomas are west country, Bridie is Irish and Jack is from the North-east (he's the hero, so where else?). He's from somewhere in Northumberland, though I'm honestly not sure where. He's moved around a lot and says, in another part, that nowhere feels like home, so his accent isn't strong.
Abigail knocked lightly on the door. Getting no answer, she put her head around it and, seeing Jack asleep, tip-toed in. Well, he wouldn't be coming down for the night, she reckoned. He must be knackered with the sickness and all the travelling. Good looker, though, she thought, and nice. Not stuck up like the usual guests here and not looking at her like Mr. Quentin used to. Porker that he was. Jack was quiet, sort of, but didn't look scared, or shy, just the sort her mum called a listener.  He'd asked her name all confident and such and looked her in the eyes when he'd talked to her. Hadn't done that Quentin trick of taking all her clothes off with his mind and then leering at his imaginings. That bugger probably couldn't remember her face, though he'd know her arse from a thousand foot away. Bridie reckoned Eleonora's family must have been strapped for cash and put her up to marrying money for her to be hitched to the likes of him. Toffs.Hard to believe he was Lord Percival's brother. His Lordship was a proper gent, really polite and very generous with all the staff. Even Lady Charlotte was alright, for a toff. Abby would feel a bit guilty to leave them and head off to the armaments factory like her sister, but a girl had to think of herself in times like this. The money there was heaps better than here and she'd be in the town. Better class of boys there, her sister said, well, some of 'em anyway. Pick yourself out something as'd make a better husband than some of these village sheep, said their Bertha, and go to shows and everything. Course, Bertha was going out with a union man and reading in the public library and supporting the Suffragettes and protesting about the war and all sorts of stuff she'd never thought about when she worked here. Ar, getting out was what she'd have to do, thought Abby. Couldn't give notice yet, though, not till Bertha moved into her new place and there was room for her, so couldn't be before the end of next month. She wondered how long it would be before this one got better from his scarlet fever. Might be a chance of some fun there before she got off. You never knew. She'd already done that trick of taking off his clothes with her mind and licked a lip at her imaginings. Lovely little bum he'd got. Nice strong shoulders, too. She lit his oil lamp and left, closing the door carefully behind her.***He awoke later to the feeling that someone had been at his door. He looked over his toes at it, slightly ajar, but couldn't remember if he'd fastened it on coming to the room or not. What time was it? No sun outside his window, sky almost dark and his alarm clock showed… after nine. Oh, goody, he thought, time for bed. Well, that wouldn't work, he simply wasn't tired enough to sleep after so much rest. He pulled Pride and Prejudice from his bag and was going to lie down on the bed again to read it when his eye caught an odd movement through the window. Difficult to see in the shadows, but there seemed to be figures moving out by the edge of the trees. Wearing white clothes? They seemed to be moving awkwardly, lurching almost. He pressed his nose against the glass, but the light was too poor and the figures too far away. In his bag he had a pair of binoculars. Bird watching for the use of, came his voice. He got the bag out and found the Ross prismatics. No use. By the time he got back to the window, the figures had gone. He left the binoculars on the windowsill just in case and then settled down with the book. Jane Austin was wickedly good fun, he decided, after only a few pages. She'd have been a lark at parties. Her writing almost took his mind off the figures outside. Almost. He read for a while until tired enough for sleep. There was still no sign of anything near the trees when he blew out the oil lamp and settled into the sheets. ***"What are they?" "Necessary. But don't worry. He will need to confront them, but I will hold them back until he is ready.""Confront them? Do you mean fight them.""I mean kill them. They are his own demons; his mind's knowledge of the true nature of his malady. He is not strong enough for them yet, but when he is, he will need to deal with them. While they haunt him, he cannot heal. As I said, do not worry. I will hold them back."The woman worried. With a past like Jack's, the demons might be difficult to contain and worse to confront. And Jack's past was something Jack could not be allowed to remember.***The next morning, Jack woke feeling someone had aired the morning well before letting him dress in it. The sun was high. He must have been left to sleep his fill. He rose, washed, brushed his teeth and examined himself in the mirror. Not a picture of health yet, but at least the eyes didn't look like something you'd play marbles with this morning. The beef tea and fresh air had put a trace of colour into his cheeks. He was mending. He was also very hungry. Breakfast. He dressed and went down in search of life.***Bridie was working at the table on a stew when the boy came in. He gave her an 'I'm-pleased –to-see-you' smile that she decided won him an extra sausage and told him she'd start on his breakfast. Seeing she was busy he insisted he'd fry up for himself. She wasn't going to hear of it and started to tell him so when he stopped her with a raised finger and a grin like a fox's. "I know that look," he said. "That's the look aunts give you when you suggest boiling an egg might be something a male is capable of without setting fire to the kitchen and causing a biblical plague. I learned to do an English breakfast from army cooks. They're men who can fry the tea, the porridge, the chocolate bar in your ration pack and the horse that carried it up to you. Eggs? Bacon? Sausages? We laugh at sausage, bacon and eggs, we do. Bacon that can give you shrapnel wounds, sausages ready to explode and eggs softer than a nursing mother's breasts. A thing of beauty, a joy till it gives you stomach ache. I can prove it. Just show me the frying pan."Bridie laughed and furnished enough food for a hurling team. She watched him start, prepared for disaster, but already thinking she'd not see it. Sure of himself more than cocky, the boyo was, and knew how to move in a kitchen with another person and not need elbowing out the way. He'd a way of doing the breakfast she'd never seen before, cooking everything in the one pan and using eggs to stick the lot into a plate-sized circle. "See," he said, "Good food, well burned."He'd made fried bread to clean the pan, set himself a place out of her way and started to tuck in like a lad who enjoyed his eating. Bridie'd met few men who wouldn't eat a hedgehog raw rather than cook. Might that husband of hers come back from the army not so useless a bugger? She asked Jack how he was feeling."Well, what I saw in the mirror this morning the cat wouldn't drag in, but I'm much better than yesterday. I think your beef tea has magic as one of the ingredients, Bridie. Sorry, do you mind if I call you that? Would you prefer Mrs Maguire?"She allowed that Bridie was her name and she'd no objection to him using it, while being pleased at the manners that had asked permission. You didn't get that with all the visitors here. Not even with all the family. While he was eating, they heard bicycle tyres on the gravel outside. "That'll be the post," said Bridie, wiping her hands and setting out a mug of tea. "Morning Thomas," she fairly bawled.  "And how are you this fine day?" "Well, I wokes this mornin', found meself not dead an' thought, thanks be. Some mornings, it's oh bugger. So I thinks I has to say I'm well, Bridie my lover. An' how be you? Oh, this be your visitor, eh? An' how be you, young sir? Jack got up, shook hands with Thomas, introduced himself and said his nice to meet you. Thomas looked surprised. Aye, thought Bridie, you might be Methuselah's older brother, but you'll never've had that before in this house. Not even from Lord Percival. Well,  'cepting Christmas when the hand always had a half-crown in it. Jack settled back to his mountain of food and Bridie and Thomas settled to gossip. Which of the local men was left and who'd returned and in what state was most of it. Thomas made suggestive remarks the while. She enjoyed the bit craic, telling him how slim his chances of surviving a roll in the hay were, him being the oldest man she knew as wasn't a statue in a church. Eventually, Thomas's cup was empty. He passed Bridie a handful of letters and she gave him back three with the coppers for stamps. He peered myopically at them. "Aha. Her Ladyship, Miss Brampton and the Eytie. First two to their men in the army, last one to her family. Small wonder there, eh?" As he was leaving, Thomas turned to Jack."Now, don't 'ee go wasting this chance now, young sir. All these lonely women about and you a big strong lad. You should be making the best of it while you can. Me, I got a bike an' a county like a nunnery for all the men that's in it, an' I can't do nothin' on account o' being ancient. Leaves me fair prostrate with dismal, it do. You make sure you gets yourself about a bit, see. Make hay while the sun shines, eh?" Jack waved him off laughing. Bridie looked at him. One of them lonely women wants to see how you take Thomas's advice, she thought, while he kept his eyes on Thomas's retreating back."Story from back home," he said, "Seems Geordie had a small shop in a village. Got away down south somewhere on holiday and saw a sign in a posh place. It said," he put on a southern accent, "'Please refrain from asking for credit, as a refusal often offends.' Someone has to translate it for Geordie, 'cos he thinks refrain means sing a song, but when he's got it, he likes it and decides he's going to put one up in his shop. Show a bit of class, y'see. But he has to change the words of course, so people can understand. So out comes his chalkboard and up goes his sign. Diven't ask for nowt on the tab, 'cos a slap round the gob often offends." He looked at Bridie sideways."From out the mouths of babes and Northumbrian shopkeepers, comes perfect wisdom." She laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Sure and you'd need to be up early to catch this one out. Maguire'd had the silver tongue like that when she'd first met him. Ignorant of the world, she'd married him for it, before finding out he'd nothing to him besides. She'd gained wisdom understanding he'd never change and could thank him only for getting her out of Moneygall. There was naught but the one thing she missed him for and Thomas had brought it to her mind now, damn him. There was already talk around the village about this one and that one who'd found a way of staying warm at nights with no husband to help. They'd need to be careful, or the‎y'd find those same husbands could count to nine with their boots on and it wouldn't go well for them. Of course, the same talk was all of the whores who were making an excellent living off of all those men in barracks. She didn't even need to ask herself if Maguire would. Hadn't she caught him once trying to fumble her own sister? The men were always the same. This young one too, for a guess, though she was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. More cop on than most, she thought.She asked him what his plans for the morning were and, when he admitted to having none, suggested he might climb the hill to see the standing stones on its top. It was a local attraction and he looked to be up to the climb today.

Shadowlands Reviewd by J. McGuire I enjoyed this very much. I am not a regular reader of science fiction, in fact it is more than twenty years since I read any, but I found this absolutely intriguing.

Of course the fact that it is extremely well written helps enormously. You have a wonderful way with words. Phrases like: '..trees swayed like graceful women...; 'That grin ...is one the devil'd buy at auction'; 'She'd slapped the word down like a fish full of lead weights' and in particular '..he knew the tick each would have' I love them all. Minor point: I'm not quite so sure about 'Sweet, summer sweat' Is sweat ever sweet?

The hero, Jack, is fascinating. Though obviously not at his physical best he is nevertheless attractive, possibly magnetically so, to women. This intrigues. There are intimations of sexuality to come which adds to the already potent mix. I want to read more.

Shadowland I absolutely loved this work. You write incredibly well, from the minute I started I was hooked in. The pace of the story is rather slow, although broken up by some different-and mysterious-points of view, however I was so in love with the characterisation and the description that I didn't care. What I like best about this is the wit and humour you write with. The ghostlike figures pop up enough to keep the reader wanting to know what happens next and I would love to read more about Mrs Maguire-by far my favourite character :-)
Thats not to say it was perfect, some of the description is a little overloaded with metaphors and adverbs and would benefit from you choosing the best and cutting the rest, however it wasn't enough to stop me reading. Best of luck, I hope this does really well.

I've had some very good feedback from a couple of people on You Write On. As a result, I've amended the sample there and had two very positive reviews. This is the modified version of the sample. I'll accept that it might still be a bit slow paced, but I haven't found many places where I can stick a big Hollywood explosion yet. My major problem with it is finding a voice for the narrator. Brendan was all first person, which made it easy to tell the story. I just thought my way into the character and told it the way they would. Now I have to find a voice for someone who isn't really a character, but can see what is going on. That's much harder for me.



The moon shone on the river and the castle. The day, June 2nd, 1915, had been unusually hot; the walls of the castle soaking up more sun than even they could easily absorb. Windows gaped wide to let the night's breezes cool the interior. Those asleep inside fell to more settled slumber as the walls breathed out heat and sweat dried from bodies.

Outside, the air turning cool and sweet, the moonlight glinted on the river in slow dancing patterns. Owls flew; small animals scuttled; trees swayed like graceful women who’d forgotten the steps of the dance.

From out of the trees, walking slowly on the gravel path to the castle entrance, came two figures. None watched, but had they; they'd have noted things, odd things, about the two. One a man; the other a woman. True, but neither odd, nor likely to be the first thing remarked on. Wearing clothes not of their era. More obvious, though not as much so as the fact the clothes were the silver white of the moonlight. Subtle, though somehow most certain to be first recognised, was that the moonlight shone not on these two, but through them.

At the edge of the gravel courtyard, both paused while the woman looked around at the scene. The castle sat atop a small hill which rose from the river and gave a view reaching down to the bridge and distant mill. The hill formed a natural Amphitheatre; a grass-covered lap of earth leading away to the line of the woods they'd just left. A few sleeping sheep dotted the slope.

The woman nodded; pleased by the prospect. The man stood, arms akimbo, a measure of proprietorial pride written on him. He'd been on this hill before the building started, had ordered the design of the castle, overseen its furnishing, been the force behind it becoming a beautiful stately home, watched as it acquired a patina of age and been well pleased with what he'd wrought.
He looked to the woman, made a slight bow and extended his hand in a gesture of formal invitation. The woman gave him a smile, dropped a playful curtsy and walked on towards the entrance. By force of habit, both entered through the door. A less remarkable feat this, had they opened it first. Our imagined watcher might have enjoyed them passing through solid timbers on a tour of their new habitation. Or perhaps not.

Inside, they climbed the stairs and surveyed the bedrooms. War had taken the men away and in the house remained only women and girls, peacefully sleeping, unaware of the spectral forms moving amongst them.
At length the two stopped. The woman nodded, her face perhaps still slightly pensive, but content.

"Perfect. They told me about this to get me to sign the contract…"

"But seeing it is different. Yes, I understand."

"Will he remember…?"

"Some things. They are what he is, not merely what he does. But have no concern. He will believe he is what they tell him he is. It is in the nature of the cure."

The man smiled. At his gesture, the two faded into the air; the thin, thin air.

***

"Wentbridge, Wentbridge. All passengers for Wentbridge. Excuse me? Young sir? You're getting off here, aren't you?"
Jack heard the voice and felt himself as if rising from the bottom of a black lake toward it. Exhaustion crushed him like a weight of water. The surface an impossible distance above his head and him wanting nothing more than to sink back into the darkness, the voice came again, injecting unwanted buoyancy.

"Are you alright, sir? You're looking very peaky. You are getting off here, aren't you?"

A sudden banging came from beside his head. Glass. Knuckles on glass. Someone rapping their knuckles against the glass of a window. He'd been asleep with his head resting against the window and now someone was knocking on the glass. He started and his eyes twitched, lids almost parting.

"Isaac! Isaac! He's mine darling. Can you be getting him up for me? I've to drive him to the house."

The voice was Irish, a woman's. Muffled by the glass, but still with a bubbling huskiness almost enough to make him prise open his eyes to see the owner.

"Trying Mrs Maguire, but I've seen slaughtered sheep faster to move than this one. He alright, is he?"

"Ah, the poor love's been ill with the scarlet fever, so he has. Can you give him a hand up, darling?"

"For you Mrs Maguire, the very shirt off me back."

"A thousand thanks Isaac, but the boy's what I'm after and not your laundry. Yer mammy can do your shirts for ye."

Someone chuckled and hands slipped under Jack's armpits from behind. His arm was raised and wrapped around skinny shoulders.

"Upsidaisy. Up you come now sir, can't be keeping Mrs Maguire waiting now, can we?"

Half lifted by Issac; Jack pushed legs like dead meat against the floor to help raise himself. His eyes fluttered open and colours danced for a moment before shapes coalesced. An old, old lady, clothed in something last fashionable when Queen Victoria was single, sat facing. She looked at him with concern.

"Can someone get this young gentleman a glass of water? He looks faint. I fear the heat has been too much for him."

Cut-glass accent, Jack thought. Home Counties? Isaac sounded West Country. Mrs Maguire Irish. Where the Hell was he? Jack, lost in fog, only knew he had to get off this train. He reached out a free hand and grasped the seat top. Wood, solid, good to lean his weight on. Steadied between the seat and Isaac, he tried to pull his mind to the jobs at hand; standing first, walking next, getting off the train. Luggage? Did he have luggage? He couldn't cope with luggage.

"My bags?" His voice croaked with the rasp of a hinge never oiled and not used for far too long. His mouth was dry and he wanted water badly. "Where are my bags, please?"

"Oh, don't you go worrying yourself over them, sir. They're in the guard's van and he'll get them off for you. Now, can you just come this way?"

Isaac was Jack's height, but a skinny youth, and Jack's weight caused him to struggle. Jack, ashamed of his weakness, marshalled his will and directed legs to walk. They staggered instead, but, by grasping for the support of the seat backs, he and Isaac lurched down the carriage to the door and the brightness of the sun beyond. He half fell into the arms of Mrs Maguire. Like falling into a warm bed, fresh laundered linen brushed his face and calmed his nerves. The flesh beneath smelled of lemons and sweet, summer sweat.

Isaac climbed down from the carriage and helped Mrs Maguire steer Jack to a small, horse-drawn … buggy? Has a name, thought city boy Jack, one I know, but it hid in the fog. He tried to pull himself up to the passenger seat, but had to be wrestled aboard like a sack of onions. He slumped forward, elbows on knees, head in hands, fighting the fog and a wave of nausea. Why so sick?

Like an actor responding to a cue, a voice came out of the back of his mind.

"You're very lucky to be alive and have no complications, young man. Scarlet fever is easier to treat nowadays with Dr. Moser's horse serum, but still drags most sufferers to an early grave. You'll need weeks to recover and somewhere better than this wen, but you'll heal in good time, have no fear."

Handlebar moustache; a beard to rival Darwin's; a face from another century. The stethoscope around his neck confirmed the bedside manner. A doctor. His name? Lost in the same fog. Finders? Something like. The face was familiar; known from early childhood perhaps, but not seen recently. Gruff voice, Lowlands Scot, with an aura of competence – someone to trust.

"His father's message came just this morning, doctor. His friend will put Master Jack up for the summer at his place in Devon while he recovers." The woman (a housekeeper?) looked at Jack. "You'll stay at the castle and can roam the grounds until you are well. It'll be an awful adventure for you. They say Wentbridge is a beautiful place. Quiet, but very lovely."

She smiled at Jack. Accent's from the Hebrides, he thought, face from an angel's grandmother. I've seen her before, somewhere. Grey hair, tightly bunned, grey eyes, lightly smiling, covering, barely, a worry. Not a woman to fret, said instinct, but concerned over him. He'd been, and surely still was, worse than they wanted him to know.

"Marvellous Janet, marvellous. Arrangements have been made; I take, for his travel?"

"Indeed, Doctor Cameron. He'll go by the morning train and be met at the station."

"Excellent, excellent. So we'll see you when you get back then Jack."

Memory closed there like a curtain, leaving nothing else but fog until he'd woken on the train. Before? Injections, hospital beds, pain and confusion. Darkness and people moving him around – getting aboard the train? Shards of a story he'd rather forget.

" 'At's right Mrs Maguire. Eighteen tomorrow."

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Isaac blurted out.

"An' I'm joining the regiment on the weekend. They wouldn't take me before. Knew me proper age, see, and told me the railways needed men too. Can't stop me now, though."

Jack caught, though Isaac missed, the pain flashing across Mrs Maguire's face. She wiped it off almost before it registered, replacing it with a smile like the sun rising.

"And isn't my Seamus there as well? You must be looking out for him. Both in the same regiment, he'll look after you, sure an' he will. Tell him, when you see him, the odd letter will never be taken as an insult now, won't ye?"

"Well, I will if I do, but they're saying the fightin' won't last much longer now. Probably all.."

"…over at Christmas, I know. God willing it will."

Isaac's flushed face darkened a moment and Jack guessed the question he was struggling to form. It wasn't hard. Jack had seen the newspaper reports. So had Mrs Maguire.

"Ah, but you'll look the very devil of a handsome young buck in your uniform, an' you will so. Sure an' the girls will all be after ye. Well, never let anyone say Bridie Maguire got left at the back of the line. Come here an' give me a kiss now, for yer birthday an' going away an' all."

Isaac blushed red to the tips of his ears. He looked around. To note who was watching, Jack wondered, or for a place to run? A skinny, pimply, pasty-faced youth, the weight of rifle and pack would probably topple him. If this wasn't his first kiss… No, surely this was.
Bridie Maguire, even through the fog, struck Jack as a woman who knew about fun, and how to have it. Isaac had never been kissed by anyone like her before, Jack would bet.

She grabbed the youth by the shoulders and pulled him to her. He stood like a beast about to be slaughtered, not sure where to put hands and face. Bridie looked him coolly in the eye.

"Now ye'll need to be taking more of a grip on things, me lad. Try like this."

She took his hands and slapped them to her generous rump. The boy's eyes widened further than Jack thought humanly possible, but before he'd the chance to say or do anything, she had his face between her hands and had plastered his mouth to hers.

A kiss, the voice in Jack's head said, to pour lust into the loins of a bronze statue. Can't argue, thought Jack. If eyes on train or platform missed it, Isaac surely burned every one of the heartbeats it lasted into his memory forever.

Jack remembered reading about a Confederate soldier who survived a tremendous battlefield blast to find himself utterly unharmed, though stripped of every scrap of clothing. Yes, he thought, Isaac's expression in front of him, that's how he must have looked.
Bridie released the boy with a hesitation, a near reluctance that didn't look part of an act. Husband at the war, came the voice from the back of his mind, hasn't in a while, I'll be bound.

"Woah, missus! I'll have a one o' them too an' you've got any to spare."

"Away wit ye," Maguire shouted to the driver. That grin, said the voice in his head, is one the devil'd buy at auction and keep for his Sunday best.  True, thought Jack. "The lad's off to the wars and needs something to keep him warm of a night-time."

"Well, I'm off to Coventry tonight an' I've all the same needs, darling. If you've done with him, can I have him back? I've a train to run an' we're late already."

Isaac regained the train with a curiously crouched shuffle; Mrs Maguire the constant north to his compass's needle. She stayed on the platform to wave him off and give him a wink. What's the word for that one, wondered Jack? Lascivious, came the voice, and that's stretching the term tight. She mouthed something Jack thought said: 'Come back for more'.

A ticker tape of thought crossed and recrossed the youth's face, repeating and repeating the only important idea in his mind. Jack read the message as the train pulled out. I did that, me. It was me did that, I did. They'd likely need iced water to get his mind to anything else for the rest of the day. It's like watching Charlie Chaplin at the kinema, the voice from the back of Jack's head said, words pop up occasionally, but the rest of the time, your eyes tell you the story.

Bridie stayed on the platform, waving, till the train rounded a bend, her radiant smile fading. She walked to the buggy, hitched skirts and swung herself up with athletic grace. She took the reins, shook the brown horse into movement and sank back into herself.

"That was kind."

She looked at him.

"I'm sorry young master, what was that?"

"He's worried about the fighting. You took his mind off it. That was kind."

She shrugged. "Ah, it's nothing. These boys are all after running off to the war, so they won't look like cowards. Isaac's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even he can read. He knows how many are coming back with bits shot off them, or not coming back at all. I pray it's over before he finishes the training and gets shipped off to France."

Jack nodded. Dates and figures and names of battlefields hid somewhere in the fog, but he agreed with a line he'd read. The Western Front was a maw chewing up young men and leaving them to fertilise the ground they battled over.

"And Seamus? He's your…?"

"Husband."

Jack'd been raised by an army of aunts, so had heard the title pronounced as a curse before, but never such as Bridie Maguire made it. She'd slapped the word down like a fish full of lead weights on a filleting board.

"He's at the front?"

"Not yet, still at Aldershot going through his basic training."

"How long will that take?"

"Not sure. He's been gone a month and thinks he's eight weeks more before they'll ship to France, but they say it's a terrible mess and not one of them knows how to find his arse with both hands… ah, excuse my French. God willing they'll never see the trenches."
"Volunteered, did he?"

Bridie laughed. "God bless you no, young sir. The magistrate did the necessary for him when he punched a copper. Said if he had such a taste for fighting men in uniform, he'd accommodate him with pleasure. Catch Seamus Maguire volunteering for anything more than another man's whiskey, an' it'd only be 'cos he'd another man's whiskey already inside him."

Jack looked sideways at her and his eye caught on the smooth swell of a breast half released by the opening of her blouse's top buttons.

Oh look, came the voice in his head, Moby Dick sighted on the starboard side.

Her eyes flicked sideways to his gaze and she smiled a small, but intensely knowing smile.

"Sorry," he said, catching her eye on him, "but isn't a young man supposed to admire the beauty of the hills and dales when he comes to the countryside?"

She snorted a laugh. She thinks you're a bold one, said the voice in his head, she'll have heard better lines than that, but she'll keep an eye on you now.

Jack found the movement of the shay lulling and had no argument with it pulling him back to sleep. His head sank to his chest. Only dimly aware of the ride to the castle, he missed the village entirely.

***

Sick, thought Bridie, looking at the dozing boy, but sharp and… strange. She was used to young guests to the house being confident beyond their years. You got that way, after all, when you'd been raised as gentry. And though some were thick as pig shite, you did get them bright as buttons too. Well, you can buy the best teachers when you've got money like the gentry.

Usually you could rely on the boys to be interested, but put a brazen face on it. The Quentin's of the world knew the likes of Bridie were made for their pleasure and knew you were wrong to disagree. Shy ones pretended they didn't have any interest while sneaking looks they didn't think you'd see. This lad… there'd been honest appreciation in his look; no sign he thought himself on forbidden or dangerous ground. That was a look a man gave to a woman when he was interested and thought she might be too. How old was he? She'd met young ones who'd tumbled a daft young maid, but still they didn't have that much cop on.

She had to admit to being powerful curious. Where'd he come from and how'd he get to be like this? Good looking one, sure and he was. Another few years and he'd be getting his look back and her confessor a story as might curl his hair. God, she thought, Maguire hadn't been gone so long for her to be itching like this. Him and her had been in more rows before he went than she'd been able to count. Her saint's name, Helena, patron of troubled marriages, had been starting to look like a sign of her old mam having second sight. Still, her bed was too wide and too cold of a night without the bugger. Ah, naught to do about it, Bridie, she thought, drive on.

***

"Master Jack? Master Jack? Sorry darling, but we're here now and you're going to have to get down."

Jack opened his eyes, got his first view of Wentbridge Castle and liked it, instinctively. He couldn't have articulated why just then, but later put the pieces of it together. Someone's stately home, of a certainty, but with square built towers at each corner, crenellations atop the whole roof and the general air of a house giving injury if receiving insult. Later too, he'd wonder why such pugilistic architecture lived in Devon, but for now it gave him a solid sense of security.

His arrival had clearly been expected, a group of people came out of the front entrance as he stood by the shay, swaying lightly. No faces familiar to him, but picking out the lady of the house was as easy as picking out the lion in the pride. A handsome woman with an air of command, she looked him straight in the eye, shook his hand and welcomed him to the castle.

"Yes, you'll need time to recover from your journey, surely. The deck chairs are set up, so perhaps you'd like to take a rest in the fresh air until lunch. You can meet the others properly later."

The others took their cue from this and disappeared back into the house. Bridie led Jack around the side of the building to a walled area where two deck chairs looked the answer to a prayer. He slumped onto one and stammered out a half apology for his state. Bridie promised him a flask of beef tea and he drifted off in the silence when she left.

An indeterminate time later voices came back towards him, but he hadn't the energy to open eyes and engage in conversation.
"Ah, sound asleep again. So obviously most desperately ill, Bridie, why did they ever let him travel alone? Percival knows the father from the Army, apparently, respects him enormously, says William Fairbairn is quite the most dangerous man he's ever met. Scarred from face to feet from fighting with natives and knives, if you can believe such a thing. The family are Trade, but Percival says he's a good sort. Typical Percival. Apparently, the mother's dead and father's in the East. Singapore, he said, training troops, for goodness sake. The boy was at school when he fell sick and the father contacted Percival to ask for help, so… Oh, just leave the flask. He can have something when he wakes."

"Good looking young lad, he is ma'am, bright too from what I saw of him in the shay. Mind, twasn't much. Slept most of the way, he did. He'll need rest and feeding up if he's to even stay awake for the full day. To think, he's nigh on the only thing you'd call a man in the whole of the area now. Well, the only one not long since decrepit. Even the schoolboys is running off for being soldiers. I met Alice Buckland's eldest only this morning. He's finished with the railways and enlisting this weekend."

"Damn young fools. I know I shouldn't say so, but since they started using gas, I can't see any good end to this war. It's going to grind on until even fatuous idiots like French get tired. Why they can't end it all with a compromise I can't understand."

"How old is he ma'am?"

"Fifteen, Percival said. Looks older, but then… "

"Has he been out in the East, ma'am?"

"Honestly no idea. He'll have seen a bit more of the world than most his age if he has. I dare say we'll find out."

They drifted off, or Jack did, though his mind attached to what they'd said. Fairbairn, William E. Troops? No, he served with the police, training the riot squad in self-defence. He tried to put a face to the name and biography, but came up with nothing more than an image from a photo. A slim man, bespectacled, clearly hard as nails. Memories of him? So distant it was hard for Jack to think of him as father. All his tired mind could muster were scenes that might as well have been from the Saturday morning kinema. They lacked accompanying music, but equally, lacked any feeling. He couldn't find himself in any of those scenes.

Drills in fighting. Those he remembered. Playing with a knife. A slim, beautiful, vicious-looking knife. 'A thing forged in Hell and made for only dark deeds.' Who'd said? He had the knife in his luggage, where an instinct told him it was staying. Did it come from William E? And was that all? All he could find of a father –a picture on a bedside dresser and a knife for killing? Mother? No, nothing in his foggy memories. He'd been on his own for a long time, aside from the aunts. Well, never mind, he'd grown used to the independence and grown up faster. If you won them all, you'd get bored. Stiff upper lip, etc. etc. A face, a woman's, pretty and concerned, floated into his mind, but then the fog rolled over him again and he slept.

***

Look at the cracks in the ceiling: at the patterns on the bathroom tiles: at a splash of water on a concrete path. There will be faces in the dots and lines, patches and splashes. Perhaps also dragons and demons, but always faces. Human minds find them in things human eyes observe. On the wall behind Jack, in the lichen covering and the cracks and crevices faceting, were two. One a man's; the other a woman's. The woman's, pretty and concerned, turned to the man's.

"He looks like death!"

Jack slept, with nothing in his ears but the distant soughing of wind in branches.

"As close as he's been, how else would he? He will heal, though. This place, these people, they will do that for him. Rest assured, he'll get well here. A day, two, you won't recognise him. "

She knew it to be true. His opinion of the doctors of their time was low. 'Bloodletting leeches treat a patient only to find how many of the next nine they'll kill with the same poison.' Yet he'd trusted the Scot. This place offered a treatment their own time could not. She nodded her head. A tear might have run down her face, but it's hard to tell with cracks in a wall.

The faces faded and only cracks and lichen remained.

***

Eleonora walked out to the deck chairs and looked at the young man.
" Quel povero raggaza." she murmured. Handsome boy, she thought, but terribly ill. Something of the poet or warrior in the face. Dark hair, an expressive mouth. Young, but lean and shapely, unlike Quentin. She noted the beautiful confluence of line where his neck met his open collar and the swoop of the collar-bone. She wished for her sketchpad to draw it. Her eye traced his shoulders. Wide, proportionate to his frame, probably excellent definition to the muscle. He would make a beautiful study for a portrait. Perhaps he'd model for her sometime. The line of the eyebrows and the lips… She pulled her eyes away. No better. Now they caught a young man's flat stomach and slender waist. No, she did not wish to compare with Quentin. Two months gone and every second of his absence a blessing – she hadn't felt his hands on her, trying to enact his perverted ideas of love. This boy's hands… the fingers of a pianist, long, sensitive. She imagined them stroking the keys, she imagined them stroking…

Why? Why did this happen with almost every man not her fat pig of a husband? This boy, this sick, sick boy… She reached out a hand towards his face, but stopped herself before she touched him. No. No, not a good idea. She took a step back, her foot inadvertently scraping the gravel. She flinched, waited to see if he would wake, wanting and not wanting him to. The head moved, but the eyes didn't open. The lips parted and formed, perhaps, a name. They marked a line across her vision those lips, like charcoal marking paper, the shape of them captivating her. Imagining the pressure of charcoal stalk on paper, the pressure of finger onto skin… A single bead of sweat stood at his temple and Eleonora's hand moved to wipe it, stopped, started, stopped again. Her hand wanted to touch… she caught herself, turned quickly and walked back to the house.

***

Jack had no idea how long he’d slept when he woke, throat leather dry. The sun was high now, but he couldn’t remember where it had been, so the knowledge didn’t help. On a small table beside the deck chair stood a battered old flask. Something to drink. He opened it to a wonderful, warm, meaty smell. Bovril? Memories of football games in winter swung through his mind. Though no. This had something more. Bridie had said she’d made up some beef tea for him. He couldn’t remember ever having any before, but knew it was recommended for invalids. Well, that's me, he thought, so poured himself a cup of the still-warm brew and took a long swallow. As the liquid went down his throat, he felt every cell of his body greeting it like a Royal procession, with clapping, cheering and ecstatic flag waving. What on earth had she put in this? Put hairs on your chest and part ‘em down the middle that would, said the voice in his head.

He couldn’t argue with it. He must have been dehydrated and was surely starving. He’d no memory of eating, not even of which day he last had or what he'd eaten. He drained the cup and poured himself another. This one he sipped whilst gazing at cloud galleries.
Birds sang, the wind stirred leaves, the clouds changed exhibits. Somewhere in the distance a cow passed a casual complaint to a friend. A decent time later, after careful reflection, the friend replied. Bees buzzed over his head and commented on this latest gossip. At length, the cows made more remarks on the gossiping bees, melodious birds and soughing leaves. Perhaps this was a busy day here.
Somewhere there had to be other people in the world and they had to be doing things; important, noisy, difficult and dangerous things. They weren’t doing any of them here and nor was he. Peace, and beef tea, soaked into Jack like warm rain into dry soil. He felt life return. When had he last felt so relaxed? Who cares, sang the birds. Enjoy it while you can, rustled the leaves. He felt himself in a pool outside the world of clock-ticking time. And it was good. He floated, exulting. He had nowhere to go and nothing to do beyond drink beef tea and relax, so, like a man climbing back into warm water, lowered himself once more into restful sleep.

***

He heard the clicking of heels and swishing of skirts coming towards him, opened his eyes and sat up. Um, easier than expected, he thought. The girl coming towards him was young, perhaps seventeen, dressed in something simple saying 'maid', casually pretty and, he'd swear on a stack of money, an outrageous flirt. Some things you just know, don't you? said the voice inside his head.

"Oh, you'm awake sir. How you feeling now, then? Lady Ambridge said I's to ask you if you'm well enough to take a bite for lunch with the family?"

Jack didn't fancy fighting dragons yet, but the prospect of lunch and meeting his hosts held no pain.

"Well, that case, I laid out a change of clothes in your room. You can wash up a bit 'fore it's time to eat."

He followed her into the house and up the stairs. The view from behind was pleasant and, he'd swear, twitching more than even generous nature intended. Farmer's daughter, came the voice in his head, knows what the bull is for and what tupping and covering mean.

She showed him into a room. Simple, but tastefully decorated with four blue walls, a change of clothing lay on the bed and a basin with a ewer of water stood on a small dresser near the window. He walked to the dresser and caught sight of himself in the mirror.
The face belonged to a stranger and gave him instant pause. Black-ringed, blood-shot, wasted eyes, sunken cheeks and, God, was there a blood cell left in his body? A line from a poem rattled in his mind, 'A face something, something, ghostly, something, whiter shade of pale.' Where did that come from? If in doubt, said the voice in his head, say Shakespeare. Bram Stoker hadn't made Dracula so pallid.

"They'm saying you was sick with the scarlet fever, sir. My mum says 'at took two of her sisters when they was young 'uns. Must have been awful. You feeling better now? "

She stood just a touch too close as she asked. Just a touch. Jack had a feeling she'd have been closer still, but that he was an obvious invalid.

"Well, if Dr. Frankenstein'd found that on his slab," he gestured with a thumb at the mirror, "He'd have burst into tears and taken up dentistry, but, yes, I suppose so. The fever's over, so I can only get better now, can't I?"

She grinned. " 'At's the spirit sir. You'll like here, I'm sure. Um, is there anything else I can get you?"

She twirled slightly as she stood, her skirts (petticoats under there?) moving and whispering. It's an excuse to stand there longer, Jack thought. I haven't had enough beef tea yet, Jack thought.

"Ah, no, thanks, not for now. Though, sorry, what's your name, please?"

"Me sir? I'm Abigail, sir. Pleased to meet you, I'm sure."

She bobbed him a small curtsy, the smile on her face genuinely happy and happily saying, 'Knew you'd be interested.'

"And I'm Jack. Delighted to meet you."

She grinned again; twirled that tiny twirl again and paused for just a second, before bursting into giggles.

"Oh, sorry sir, you'm waiting to get changed, amn't you? I'll come back in just a bit and show you the dining room, then?"

***

The dining table was Jack’s image of a stately home's dining table. If Jesus had fed the five thousand here, he thought, they’d have mostly been seated. His hostess, Lady Charlotte, was largely what he thought the lady of the Manor would be: business-like, in control and, since the men were away, in total charge. The sort of woman you'd describe as handsome and elegant, Jack imagined her fox hunting in the modern age, sharing a chariot with Boadicea in an earlier one.

He’d expected more servants than Bridie and Abigail, but, with the butler and all the other men gone; he wasn’t surprised the family had found little need (and fewer opportunities) to replace them. He hadn’t expected a governess, because he hadn’t known the family had a daughter, Deidre, absent for reasons he didn’t catch, but expected back at the weekend. Finding one, he wasn't surprised. That too fitted his preconceptions. The governess, Miss Brampton, wore her blonde hair in strict and uncomfortable-looking fastened-up braids, her mouth in a permanent moue of disapproval and, Jack decided after entire seconds of forced conversation, her mind in a strait-jacket of rules and restrictions.

The last member of the family, however, Jack had not expected to find in this country, or century, never mind this house. Eleonora Angela Ambridge, the Italian wife of Lord Percival’s younger brother, Quentin. If Janet from the doctor’s office was the grandmother, this was surely the angel granddaughter. If dictionaries had pictures, he thought, she'd be the one for gorgeous.

Strange then, he thought, that a woman who could stun most men into adoration by simply looking up at them through her long eyelashes was surely the most timid, shy and twitchy of Heaven’s inhabitants to ever exit the Pearly Gates. Afraid of her own shadow, her, he thought, a baby could see that. Perhaps she'd stunned them from too early on, been too nice to talk to for too many, never learned how to deal with men as a result and now found herself scared even of him. And even if I look like a decaying corpse, he thought, I know I'm nothing to be scared of.

Raised by a legion of aunts in houses where males were either husbands as absent as his own father or mere babies; Jack had been everyone's pet. He'd swum in a sea of other people's mothers, aunts, sisters and cousins. The married, the spinsters, the widows, the contented, the resentful: he thought he'd met the type of each one of these women somewhere before. If he didn't understand what made each one tick, he at least thought he knew the tick each would have.

Through the meal Eleonora avoided eye contact with him, whilst always giving the impression she knew where his eyes were and when they looked at her. She didn't seem any happier if he looked or didn't. Jack knew it was awkward even if he didn't know why, and gave up on trying or caring until he was stronger. He concentrated his conversation on his hostess.

After the meal, Charlotte took him to the library, suggesting he'd find something interesting to read, then pointed out possible walks from the room's windows. The demesne included a holy well near the river, a pleasant walk to the mill, several places further upstream good for swimming from and a trail on the other side of the river which offered excellent views of the castle. None of them too far from the castle, she told him. Five minutes to the well, another five to either the mill or the farm on the other side of the river.
When asked, Jack admitted to enjoying sketching and was sorted out with sketchpad and pencils along with a shoulder bag to carry them in. Lady Charlotte told him to pick up sandwiches and a flask from Bridie before he went out and then left him to rest.
He took a lie down for a while and then returned to the library to pick out a book. The first thing to catch his eye was a copy of Pride and Prejudice. A book he'd heard of, but never read. Snagging it saved him the energy he'd spend searching for anything else, so he dropped Jane Austin in his bag, collared sandwiches and a flask of beef tea from Bridie's kitchen and headed out.

***

Charlotte found herself impressed with the boy. Surprisingly steady head on shoulders so young. She'd been prepared to put up with some Northern lout, but was charmed by his manners and the near-Scottish lilt of his accent. They discussed the War, of course, but he expressed her own idea that it should be finished by men sitting down around a conference table before the cataclysmic expense bankrupted everyone. He'd need to be careful where he expressed ideas like those. She was, certainly.

He still looked ill, but had little of the deathly pallor which had made her wonder why he'd been put on a train at all yet. He asked if he'd be allowed to take a walk in the afternoon and she decided the risk to be negligible. Had boys of his age been so mature in her day, she wondered? Perhaps travel and a soldier father made the difference? She'd enjoyed talking with him. God knew it was difficult to have an intelligent conversation in the house nowadays and he was intelligent. Well, he agreed with her. But there was something more. He'd been polite, but a polite equal. And that, if she hadn't looked at the youth in his face, had been rather too  welcome. You need to get up to Town, Charlotte, she thought, you're turning into mad Aunt Guinevere.

***

The faces on the wall monitored his progress across the grass.

"Isn't this too early?" asked the woman.

"He'll find he doesn't have the stamina he thinks he has, but he's no fool, he won't hurt himself. This is like him, isn't it?"

True, she had to admit. She might not want Jack up and walking around yet, but asking him not to was asking him not to be Jack.

"But why are they letting him do this?"

Did the crack forming the lips purse?

"They'll tend to let him have his head."

"He's controlling them?"

"No, no. Nothing so direct. He can't make them do anything they wouldn't normally. They aren't mesmerised by him. He'll merely get his own way a touch more easily. Though, you know him better than I, hasn't he always?"

Yes, she thought. Her darling boy had always been one of nature's princes. Born to lead and be followed, Jack had been talking people into doing what he wanted since he'd been able to talk.

She nodded.

It strikes me as odd, in some ways, but the first Holding in Abeyance post is one of this blog's most popular pieces. That's a bit of a cheat, really, and I almost feel bad about it. No, that's almost, that's not feel. For those who've never read Orson Scott Card's book on writing Sf and Fantasy, I might have given them a valuable pointer to a really good work on the subject by someone who (don't argue about this one, I'll find out where you live) knows what he's talking about.
But, to be honest, most of that post was about Brendan Earle and if you've never heard of him (join the rest of the world) that might not have helped you much.
Two paragraphs in and it's time to tell you that this post won't either. Sorry, but Shadowland (I'm going to do a post on the story of it's name and how I managed to not realise I was quoting one of my favourite singers - Steve Earle, but later. Hang on a bit.) doesn't have much of this. Brendan Earle did. By the bucket load.
Shadowland - OK, it's got sex in kilotonnes, so one of the possible titles was going to be, 'In a place of Shades', doesn't.
And then again, that's not true. Shadowland - it's really cool to have a title that you can't and don't need to shorten - makes a point of telling you that something is going on here that isn't what it should be. And it regularly tells you that what you see isn't all that it looks to be. Still and all, it tells the story of a 15-year-old who is in Devon, in a stately home during the first world war. And getting laid. A lot. (I'm a Brit, we do understatement. Massive understatement.)
You do have to hold the idea in abeyance that what you see is not what you are going to get, but sadly, that's it.
I think, and I described this all to my 12-year-old daughter tonight, that the reader will be happy to follow the story of Jack and his adventures (for those who aren't 12, read sexual conquests) up to the point where he understands what he is in, whereupon the whole story will start to zip back up with the parallel story that has been going on in plain sight all the while and the reader will understand why there have been so many anachronisms. (You think I'm going to tell you what they are just 'cos you read this blog? Hah, dream on kid.).
Long sentence that one, so let me recap. There is a story going on that you can read for fun. It's how Jack gets laid, Works for you? Great.
While you are reading it, you will become aware that something else is going on - the ghosts who comment on Jack's progress, state of health and general condition are a dead giveaway. You will know that there is something you are going to have to wait to find out. As I said with Brendan, I don't think that Agatha Christy ever felt the need to tell anyone that it was the butler what did it in the first chapter. You will NOT get the answer to what is happening until the end. Take my word for it, mind, I really love it. The only thing you can be sure of is that what seems to be happening, isn't.
I mean that. I really hope that when you get to the end of the story, I will have sent you in the wrong direction so completely that you'll still find yourself thinking, 'I didn't see that one coming.'
What can I tell you? I like stories that make you think and work for your fun, that's why I write them like that.
Anyway, after I told my (very, very smart) 12-year-old about this, she said, "That's really interesting Dad, but I'm tired and need to go to bed now."
You should feel free to do the same. 'Cos this post doesn't tell you much more about Holding the Reader in Abeyance than that. I think it is not just fine to do that, I think it is essential. If you have explained everything to your reader, they are in the position of a kid who knows what they are getting for Christmas. Things to look forward to? Uncheck that box, 'cos there's bugger all at the bottom of the sock. (I'm British, use Google if that doesn't mean anything to you.)
I tell my Academic Writing students that the thing to emulate is the GPS (I live in the UAE, you might call it the satnav - its a free world except where it isn't, so go ahead, live a little).
"In 1.5 kilometres, enter the roundabout and take the first exit.
Enter the roundabout and take the first exit." 
(If you are travelling in Dubai, this is usually followed by: 'Recalculating, recalculating.")
That's great if you are writing non-fiction, or if you want a job as a GPS. Should you be writing fiction, I think you need to get over this idea that your reader wants to know where they are going exactly. Your reader wants to look out of the windows and think, "Shit a brick, look at the scenery! (Really necessary exclamation mark.)
Your reader wants to know where they are going only in as far as they want to have brought their swimming costume with them. They might be OK with the idea that they are going to Atlantis, (If I've told you once to bring your swimming costume, I've bloody told you a million times - you need one in Atlantis. Go back, get it now and don't arse about in the future) but they'll be pissed off if you give them directions to the Atlantis HSBC (product placement there) ATM machine. Well, you'd be too, would you?
Your reader does not want and will not appreciate your telling them what is going on in detail every few seconds, pages or even, maybe, chapters. Your reader is into SF and so has a brain, has an appreciation of the fact that the world (this one, the one you are writing, all of the above and then some) is as lot more weird than they know or can imagine. AND THEY LIKE IT LIKE THAT!!! (Three really necessary exclamation marks.)
It's not like wanting to pee and not being able to find a toilet (why do Americans pee in the bath?)
It's like Tantric sex. (Do you know the joke about the Tantric position called the Plumber? You stay in all day and nobody comes.) It's fun. And maybe a bit kinky. Go for it.

First YWO review.

Hi Bob. I liked your story very much. There are some things that bugged me and made it difficult to read but I gave you fives for Plots and Themes and Ideas. A haunted castle, a chap who's been close to death and all set in a calm English village with the carnage of the first world war across the channel sets the scene beautifully.

Some other things I noted as I read was:

Would they put Jack on the train by himself when he is so ill that he can't get off it on his own? Then in the afternoon he seems to have gotten a lot better as he is now going for a walk. Maybe you want to give him a couple of days of fresh country air and beef tea before sending him off out into the countryside.

The women in this story comes across as sex mad, and unless that is the kind of story you're looking to write, I think it takes something away from the actual story. I'm sure in 1915 there would not be that many tarty maids or Ladies for that matter.

The sentences are in my opinion too short and choppy and thus restricting the flow of the story. Some of the sentences are also unfinished. I expect that this has been done on purpose but please try to edit them so that they make some kind of sense.

(My comments on the following are in caps. I'm not shouting at you or trying to be horrible in any way, it's just that italics don't work.)

<Jacob climbed down from the carriage and helped Mrs Maguire steer Jack to a small, horse-drawn buggy. Has a name, thought Jack, one I know, but it hid in the fog.> WHAT HAS A NAME?

<"Marvellous Janet, marvellous. Arrangements have been made; I take, for his travel?> THERE ARE A LOT OF THESE RATHER CONFUSING SENTENCES AND LOCAL ACCENTS. I THINK WRITING ACCENTS ARE FINE BUT NOT IF THEY MAKE THE READER RE-READ THE SENTENCE SEVERAL TIMES TO GET THE MEANING OF IT.

<If this wasn't his first kiss, then surely it claimed the best second place Jack had ever seen.> THIS IS A CONFUSING SENTENCE. Even if this wasn't Jacob's first kiss it would be etched on his memory forever. A keepsake to bring out when the muddy trenches and the fear that he may never return home threatens to overtake him.

All in all it's got the basis for a good story and I good luck with the editing.

Thank you for letting me read it.

Second YWO review.

I have to say the first read of this chapter was difficult for me. The authentic language threw me off a bit. After reading it a second time it's a true gem. The story/ plot is great! Though I can't imagine what happens next. The pace? Once I slowed down and enjoyed the content I found the pace just right. I loved the dialogue and the inner thoughts going on throughout. The setting was perfectly described. The surpriise ending to the chapter was great too, leaves one wondering if the two will mate later. The two ghosts, one man and one woman entering the castle scene ,"shone not on them but through them, and if one were watching they'd notice, nice! Great work!
 
 

These two scenes are a tiny bit out of order. I haven't yet written the scene where Deirdre comes into the story and I haven't got a link between them. They are both pivotal to the tale, though, and have been on my mind for a while. I'm not really sure how well I can write this material (yes, that does mean that comments would be appreciated). I do want to write up a post about the MENAWCA conference last weekend (in case you aren't sure - I don't believe for a nanosecond it will be as sexy as this even if this isn't sexy). I enjoyed it and it was interesting, even if very tiring.
Anyway, here goes.


The door opened and Deirdre (slinked, slank, slunk?) in. Gagging for it, said the voce in Jack’s head. Bollocks, thought Jack, she’s here to tease.  He was fast developing a strong dislike to this child. She might be physically older than him, but he’d met more mature nine-year-olds. He gave her a questioning look, making sure his face didn’t give any sign of his feelings.“I saw your light. Wondered what you might be doing  up at this time of night.”The top three buttons of her nightdress were undone. Warm tonight, he wondered, or unfastened just before she came through the door?“Oh, I couldn’t sleep, so I’m reading Jane Austin, do you know this?”He held up the book to show the cover. She undulated closer, playing with a lock of hair.“A girl comes into your bedroom late at night and the only thing you can think of is talk to her about Jane Austin?” She tutted and sat down on the edge of his bed.Jack closed the book, a finger inside to mark the page, and gave the matter a show of serious thought.“A girl, with the top three buttons of her nightdress undone, comes into my room in the middle of the night. Can I think of anything," he paused and looked her in the eye, "Fun to do?” A moment’s thought and then a nod.“Yes, actually, I can think of a number of things.  They'd all be more fun.”  He opened the book again. “But I’m not going to do 'em. “ “Scared, are you?”He closed the book, the finger placemarking again, and considered the question.“Of your mother… Umm, me caught in your room by her and yes, I'd be scared. I can picture your mother doing things with a horse whip if she caught me in your room at this time of night. Of course, since this is my room, I don’t think I’ve got so much to worry about if she hears voices and comes in to investigate. She’ll find me reading and you out of place.”He leant forward.“If I were the sort to look for my fun in the risk of being caught, I might, might try something inside the house, but I’d do it further from the bedrooms even then. Risk is one thing, you see, near certainty quite another. “He looked her straight in the eyes.“I’m the sort who regards getting caught as an interruption of the fun, not the cause. If naughtily inclined, I’d manage to accidentally run into a young lady of  similar mind somewhere out there.” He nodded out of the window. “Miles and bloody miles of Devon, full of quiet places where you can have lots of privacy, lots of time and no need to whisper at all. Yes, if I was naughtily inclined, that’s what I’d do.”Deirdre didn't know how to take this, by her expression. She moved onto the defensive, wrong footed here.“How?” she asked.“Oh, depends on the young lady, really. I might have to follow her when she went out some time and catch her up in a spot where no one would find us. Or then again, just make an arrangement to find a place. She probably knowing more of 'em than me. Then we might see,” he looked her straight in the eye for the space of two heartbeats, “what we might see.” He opened his book again. Deirdre hesitated. Jack had outflanked her. She hadn't expected the dance to go this way and now had either to make a virtual promise of…. Or back out and admit she wasn’t ready to go so far. “In the meantime, of course, I’m going to discuss Jane Austin with you. Partly in case there's a third insomniac who might drop in on us, but also because she's so good. Do you know this story?” She admitted she didn’t, glad of the change of subject.  Jack read her excerpts he particularly liked and was gratified when she laughed and began comparing the Bennets to families she knew in the area.  Deirdre’s stories confirmed Jack's own prejudice - rural Devon hadn't changed much since Austen’s time. The place only needed a decent chronicler and best-sellers would fall off the presses. The conversation went on for longer than he’d expected and both were laughing when the door opened and Miss Brampton entered. Oh God, thought Jack, she’s been watching the villain in far  too many melodramas. Deirdre froze, painfully aware she’d been caught in a boy’s bedroom after midnight and probably thinking of her mother and horse whips too. Miss Brampton stalked up to the bedside and pointed an imperative finger back towards the door, righteous indignation personified.“To your room miss!” she hissed, “I will talk to you later and your mother will hear of this in the morning.”Deirdre opened her mouth to protest, but her governess jerked the finger again. “Not a word. Go!”Deirdre rose and scuttled out. Jack realized Brampton intended to stay and have a go at him. She’d enjoy her power, threaten and try to cow him. He'd no great fears of Lady Ambridge’s reaction. It was his room and he'd probably get her to believe they’d been innocently talking about literature. Umm, depending on how well she knew her daughter. He didn’t feel like it, though. Brampton rubbed him up the wrong way and needed taking down a peg or twelve. As Deirdre ran out he rose from the bed, planting himself with care and as unobtrusively as possible between Brampton and the door. Cut her line of retreat. “And where do you think you’re going young man?”“Nowhere Miss Brampton, but it’s hardly mannerly for me to remain seated when a lady enters the room, is it?”She smirked at him. She really has this coming. “You don’t imagine that you can get around me by pretending to be a gentleman, do you?”Jack shook his head. “No, Miss Brampton, I don’t.”He stepped forward and grasped her shoulders firmly then pushed with the left hand and pulled hard with the right, spinning her around. Before she had a chance to even gasp, he put his left hand over her mouth and the right into her solar plexus, preventing her from taking in enough of a breath to be able to scream. Her legs had crossed when she spun, making turning her towards the bed and pushing her face down simple. He pinned her to the blanket by lying on her back. His arm partly under her trapped her right arm wile his elbow blocked her left from moving from her side. Her feet were off the ground and she couldn’t get leverage to push up with her knees. His hand and the bed sheets muffled any attempt to make a noise and his weight immobilised her. Miss Brampton could wriggle, and did, but couldn't escape. Jack gave her a second or two to appreciate the fact. He spoke quietly and calmly into her ear. “I will apologise for this behavior in a moment Miss Brampton, but I really don’t believe you were going to give me a fair hearing. You took my options away and left me with only this choice. Now, what you walked in on might have been more appropriately done, I accept. Deirdre shouldn’t have been in my room at this time of night, but neither of us could sleep, she saw my light, came to ask me how I was and stayed to talk about Jane Austin. Nothing more untoward. I have to insist you believe me.  Please consider. You would have told Lady Ambridge about me holding a book, not Deirdre, and us holding a conversation, not an orgy. Now, I want to take my hand away so we can talk, but I have to warn you against taking my options away again. Should you make any noise, I will raise the devil’s own row. I guarantee everyone in the house will wake. When they come in,  they'll find you and I,  on the bed, together, in a state of disarray. Deirdre will be gone and I’m sure she'll deny ever having been here. Of a certainty, I'll swear she wasn’t and that it was you who came to my room with bad intent. I’m not sure how you'll explain, but I don’t think it'll look at all good.”He paused a moment to give her time to think. She froze beneath him and he decided she couldn’t see any positive way for the situation to be interpreted if it were her word against both of theirs. Jack’s tone told her she'd been promised not threatened. He’d do exactly what he said. For her part, she had time to decide this boy would not have let her catch him doing anything wrong and that she’d been about to commit a terrible faux pas. A scene in which she denounced Deirdre to Lady Ambridge and Jack quite calmly proved her to be an hysterical fool seemed very, very  possible.  “Forgive me for the rough treatment, but I’m going to take my hand away now. Can you promise me you won’t cause us all distress?”She nodded. He removed his hand. She let out a shuddering breath. “Please do believe me Miss Brampton, I have no intention of causing anyone any trouble, you included. If I did allow you to complain to Lady Ambridge, I think I'd come out of the row well. You…I don’t know. After all, what could you say other than you found us sitting on a bed talking? In my room, not hers. Deirdre could be in trouble, which she doesn’t really deserve, this time anyway. I might be wrong of course, and then I might be seen as having offended against a house which has offered me hospitality. I don’t do that anyway, but I've no intention of getting involved with Deirdre. Not to make too fine a point, but she isn’t my type. Having all of the above because of a misunderstanding would be a tragic error, so I apologise again, but I couldn’t allow it.” There was a pause, a time when thought was clearly taken.“No, I, I think, I think  I must be the one to apologise. I was about to do something silly and, and you have stopped me doing that. Deirdre… she can be…just sometimes, she is…”“A royal pain in the arse, I’d imagine.” There was a sharp intake of breath at the vulgarity, followed by what sounded like a quickly suppressed snort of laughter. “She came here to tease, I’d swear. I can easily imagine her being a handful and taking pleasure in making your life difficult."As he said the words, Jack surprised himself with how true they must be. Deirdre probably gave Brampton hell. "I can’t blame you for coming to the wrong conclusion and I wouldn’t object to her being taken down a peg or two, but, there was nothing going on and I don’t want a scandal” “Yes, yes I do appreciate that. She’s been quite awful since, well, always, but especially since my fiancé left to join the Army. I think I’ve been rather on edge with her and, erm, perhaps, perhaps I owe you something of an apology. I feel I’ve been rather, erm, rather er, stiff with you since you arrived here. I, I..”Bugger, thought Jack, just when you think you’ve got people pigeonholed… Brampton put up with Deirdre all of the time and had a fiancé in the trenches. No wonder she was tense and tetchy.“Um, would it be possible for you to let me up now?”Jack realised they were still lying together, his arms around her, his mouth close to her ear, his nose tickled by a cascade of clean –smelling hair.“Ah, yes, sorry.”He wriggled a hand, which had been resting over her lower abdomen, low over her lower abdomen, out from under and rolled to one side. Miss Brampton sat up, straightened her hair and nightdress and put one hand in another, looking for something to say.Before she found it she saw Jack’s crotch and a gasp escaped her.“Ah, yes. I think you lit a small candle.” said Jack, discovering that lying on top of the governess, with his loins in direct contact with her buttocks, had provoked a reaction. He reached over to pick up a pillow and cover his erection. “My apologies for him. Both he and I regard you as an attractive woman. He’s a touch uncouth about his way of expressing it, however.” Miss Brampton’s hand covered her mouth and she blushed, finding it hard to suppress a giggle. Jack was so utterly casual and unashamed. She didn’t know where to look (was finding it hard not to stare at a candle which hadn’t seemed so small to her) or what to say. How was this boy so much more at home with this situation than her? His action with the pillow looked more a gesture of politeness to her than one of embarrassment for himself, while she felt hot to the tips of her ears. And more. She realized, to her mortification, there was more than a touch of dampness… down there. She was wet between her legs. Oh God. She needed to leave before anything showed.“Um, well, er, perhaps I should, umm.” “Yes, would be for the best. We don't want someone else coming in and starting this whole misunderstanding again, do we?”Miss Brampton realized she was in a young man’s bedroom, in the middle of the night, in her nightgown, with her hair down and her nipples hardening. She decided to leave at once. Not being able to explain this to herself made her feel she’d have a poor chance of doing so to anyone else. In an effort to take back control of the situation she stuck out a hand. Jack hesitated a beat, then took and shook it. She didn’t let go, nerves blocking control of her actions. “Well, er, goodnight then. I, erm, I hope you sleep well, Jack.”Jack nodded and was about to take his hand back when she stuttered out.“Perhaps we can start again from tomorrow and, and. Well, I’d like us to be, er, friends.” The word sat there looking improbable and unsure if it was dressed for the occasion. Can’t see that in a million years, thought Jack, but replied, “Yes, Miss Brampton, that would be nice.”“Oh, please. Call me Fanny.”“Of course. But I really think it’s time, now Miss.. Fanny.” She left. It was far from being a triumphal march, but not quite Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow either. She was flustered, sure she could have handled the situation better and rather unsettled by her body’s reactions. She wanted a cold bath, but she settled for a wet flannel against her forehead, cheeks and neck. Her dreams that night were vague and suspended somewhere between embarrassing and very, very pleasant. Jack peed into the chamber pot while his erection waned. Automatic reaction, he thought, though he had to admit, Fanny, with her hair out of those rope-like braids, was a good looking woman. She’d a good figure, too. One he hadn’t minded getting so much closer to. Bugger, where were the strange white shapes in the trees when you needed them for distraction? It took a while before he slept.
Jack munched his apple, looked at the water and thought, sod it. The chances of anyone seeing him were slim and he didn’t much care anyway. He was hot, the water was cool and he wanted to swim. He stripped, folded his clothes and put them under a bush, then slid into the water. There was the sharp chill and gasping shock as his overwarm body cooled too quickly, but then the water simply refreshed and re-awakened him. He turned upriver, thinking it better to go further from the castle and enjoy the current on his return rather than fight it when tired. A gentle breast-stroke carried him slowly up the stream. There’d be places here where you might tickle trout, he thought, and decided to try later – Bridie might appreciate some fresh fish and it hardly counted as poaching. A few strokes of front crawl persuaded him that he wasn’t in the mood for anything strenuous, so he floated on his back for a while, holding position by sculling. The sky was that perfect blue, the water sang in his ears and the world held him in a cradle. He’d enjoy his own company today and commune with his own thoughts. Sometime he’d love to get a rowboat from the boat-house and explore the length of the river. There’d be places for picnics… Nah. Who would he go on a picnic with? A trace of melancholy waiting at the end of the thought. One he didn’t want to meet, and so turned over and swam away from. The river here wound in tight arcs, its bends hiding secluded nooks. He marked them as good spots to come read and enjoy shade and the sound of the water.Tight around the next bend and… “Oh, hello.” There on the shore, five or six paces from him. Fanny Brampton, combing her hair, her feet dangling over the water. She’d taken off her stiff woolen dress and ankle boots and was clothed in…What would you call that, Jack wondered, female undergarments being a linguistic mystery. A one-pieced garment of… white cotton, he guessed, that covered her from opened neck to ankles. Looked like a summer dress, or the nightgown she'd been wearing in his room, though it was thinner, almost see-through. Wide skirt, just showing her calves, and loosened top, a hint of cleavage, demurely hinting. She started a little on seeing him, clearly having been enjoying the same peace and quiet. Anyone else coming on her like this and she'd surely have screamed, or rushed to cover herself, or… or something. Jack, though… She didn’t get up or rush to her dress,  so he put his feet to the bed of the river and stood to talk. It seemed the thing to do. After all. He was covered to the navel and the water hid the fact he wasn’t covered beneath it. “ Good morning, Jack.” She blushed just slightly, then stood up. Once up, however, she couldn’t think what else she wanted to do and went back to brushing her hair, her eyes on the river bank. The brushing, to Jack,  suggesting someone trying hard to be occupied with something else.“Sorry to disturb you. I hadn’t expected to meet anyone else here.”“No, nor I. It’s been so quiet here of late. One hardly ever sees another soul. It’s so hot today, I felt I could risk my underclothes without danger of interruption.” “I can move on if you’d prefer, but I’m hardly dangerous.” Fanny, memories of the night before still fresh, almost disagreed, but stifled the remark and almost stopped herself looking at him. Jack had strikingly wide shoulders and his stomach was flat with muscles lying across it like fish on a slab. She wanted to count them and wanted not to look anywhere near. She pulled her eyes away and they, disobedient children, snuck back. She brushed her hair more vigorously.“The water looks rather cold, aren’t you worried about catching a chill?”“No, it’s very refreshing. Perhaps you should come in?” She laughed and tried to put the thought of herself in the water, and nearer him, out of her mind. “Oh, I rather think not. A little too forward, I think.” “Well, at least dip a toe in to test it.”Fanny almost did. Then, worried she’d be exposing too much ankle, shook her head and brushed harder. “Scaredy cat! Here.”He flicked a handful of water at her. A few drops fell on her and she shrieked. The look she gave him shone with happy indignation, though, so he flicked more. She jumped back, slipped and fell against the slope of the bank. Jack caught a flash of legs as she went down and a laugh behind the shrieks and splashed more, soaking her. Fanny regained her feet, dropped her hairbrush to the ground and ran into the water, fully intent on dunking him under. She slipped just as her hand caught his head, though, and barreled into him. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Jack, reflexively grabbing and pulling her towards him. Neither knew later who started the kiss, but they were locked together in it as he got his feet back on the river bed and  pulled her, with her legs wrapped around his, up and even tighter in. When drowning, they say, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Perhaps. And perhaps not. Certainly, you have time for thoughts, for thoughts happen with a speed like light's. Fanny, engrossed, overwhelmed and enraptured with being kissed, with kissing, with being held tight against a male body, with holding that body with her legs, between her legs, and feeling all of last night’s full orchestra of sensations starting again with a thunder like the 1812 overture; found, although she did not want it,  time for one. This shouldn’t be happening. She pulled her mouth away from his, gasping, “No. No, Jack. We must stop. We must stop!”
I would say that there is more, but that's not true yet. There will be. This scene isn't finished yet, but it's late, I'm tired an there is a lot of work to do on this yet. Till next time. 

I would say that step one in this is to write your best-selling novel, but I haven't done that yet and I'm already pushing on to step two. Step two in my case is to get some feedback about it. Sending to friends is not the worst idea, since they might well read it whereas others might not, well, why should they? They don't know you from the unshampooed stalker that might be hanging around their front door, waiting to fall deeply in lust with them and wind up boiling their rabbit.
Friends might read for one of two reasons (there are more and I'll think of them soon and put them in later). One is some variation on them liking you. A variation being that they don't want you to stop liking them, which can be emotional blackmail on your part. I don't advise this. Not just because it is a BAD THING, but because people who read because of emotional blackmail are probably not going to have much common sense about what they are reading, might well start by viewing it as a chore and might, therefore, never get bowled over by the brilliance of your prose, the cunning of your plotting or the joke about the dragon, the Enfield Bullet and spandex psychedelic leggings.
Better are the friends who get chosen 'cos you know their tastes and are sure your writing is just what they'd love to curl up with. They will have some common sense about what you are writing, but they might not be ready to tell you, 'Yeah, I do love reading this kind of stuff, but not when written by you. This sucks.'
A way of getting round all that is to enlist strangers.
This post is about how, or at least, one how.
Youwrite on. com is a site for writers to get feedback on their work, samples of it at least, by other writers. Writers will do this in some cases because they have big, generous souls. YWO, sensibly, ignores that possibility and bribes them instead.
If you review another writer's work, you get a reading credit. You can then use this credit to get a review yourself. Each review has to give you marks on a number of features of your writing - the characters, the narrative voice, the settings etc. They have to write at least one hundred words of what they are urged to make constructive criticism and then they have to pass a test on the sample that you posted. That's the part that is most cynical and therefore my favourite bit. Some of those writers might get tempted to score you 3's for everything, say it wasn't bad and then pass on to spend their reading credit without ever going to the effort of reading your damn work. Can't do that if they don't pass the test, which you get to set.
After eight reviews the computer crunches the numbers of the scores you have been given, awards you an overall mark out of five and puts you up on the top ten chart.
Should you actually get into the top ten and stay there long enough, you can be read by expert punters from Random House. They'll probably tell you nice try, here's the first of your rejections, don't you feel like a real writer now? Should this happen, feel good about yourself, most don't get that far. (Oh, I've been here ten years and I'm still waiting for someone to spit in my face. They must think the sun shines out of your arse.)
Anyway, I've put up the first 6,000 words, or thereabouts, I've never been good with numbers, on YWO and am now waiting for people to comment.
I've done this before with Brendan, which once got up to equal twelfth. The run of good reviewers stopped there, however, and I was then subjected to a range of reviewers who either just didn't get it, didn't like reading other people's work, or had dropped the last of their medication down the back of the fridge and hadn't waited to get more before committing their hallucinations to print.It dropped down the charts and reached a level from which statistics meant it would never significantly rise. I gave up.
So why start again?
Well, Brendan was a very ambitious piece of work. A Science Fiction novel set in a children's fantasy world, courtesy of a Matrix-like computer simulation. It was narrated by two main, first person narrators and a squad of others, giving a lot of story-jumps, names to remember etc. One of the protagonists is a girl from 2020 who speaks a teenage argot that wasn't as hard to get the head around as Clockwork Orange's Nadsat, but which bent some people out of shape a good bit.
I was worried when I wrote it that it might fall a bit between a number of stools and not be quite enough for one group while being too much for another. Of those who've read and reviewed it half have been friends, who are blokes, Brits and people who do read the same kind of stuff as me - we've traded books for years. They've said they've liked it and I think they've meant that. The other group are book blog reviewers who've been strangers, female, American and (not 100% sure about this) probably don't read as much of the stuff I do - two said they've not seen anything like it before, which is an, 'Umm, yes there is.' Most said they really got gripped by the premise and the story, but had problems with the complexity and, in two cases, the dialect forms used. Both thought I'd made a lot of grammar mistakes. Bit mean I thought, Faulkner never had to put up with people saying, 'this guy's grammar sucks'. At least, not as far as I know.
Shadowlands isn't like that. One omniscient narrator, a story set in the First World War era (tick Downton Abbey fans), with the story being about a young boy who goes to a castle full of women - the men have all gone off to the war - and his sexual adventures there (tick dirty old men and maybe Shades of Grey fans, though my hero is a nice guy). From the beginning, you know that there are ghosts in this story (tick ghost story fans) and there is a question about what a boy called Jack is doing with a knife for killing in his bag and a surgeon's knowledge of how to use it in his head (tick Ripper/Slasher story fans, though they are going to be mostly disappointed - I have much better ideas about what my hero can do with sexy young women than stick knives in them). Later on there will be zombies (tick), but no vampires (tick, tick , tick) and maybe Nazis and Mexican bandits (no, I'm not kidding, it follows the logic of the story). All of this announces that it is a Science Fiction story from the beginning, so TICK SF fans.
I'm really wondering if I've missed anything (oh, there are some scenes of martial arts, even before we get to the Nazis, tick).
The only thing that is ambitious about this is the massive cheek of trying to cram all of that in, though I honestly think I can make it work and have a reader say, yeah, that does make sense. At least by the end. I'm going to bung the sample off to friends who might be able to tell me if they'd read on past the bit I give them. But the probable answer to that (see above) is yes.
That being the case, YWO is a good place to start. If I get positive reviews from there, it might be something to put into an approach to an agent, or a media kit for self-publishing and sending to book review blogs.