Twenty-two things to know about William Bush.

[quigonejinn]

1. Bush's family had not wanted him to go to sea. He was the only son of his father, after all, the only boy in a batch of girls, and he also had the makings of a fine blacksmith -- still small, true, but even if he never grew very tall, he would be solidly built. He was good with his hands, enormously diligent, took instruction well. Had an uncanny knack, in fact, for spotting simple ways in which things might be improved, but he nevertheless insisted and campaigned for it, quietly, steadily, with an intensity that his aunt and uncle hadn't particularly imagined that he had.
   
   Three months after his father finally died, his uncle was owed money by someone who knew a captain who was talked into setting aside for William a midshipman's spot on his Channel vessel.
   
   
2. Bush had been more or less been at sea ever after.
   
   
3. Bush was a hard, dedicated worker -- when he was home for three months while a newly empowered Bonaparte pretended at peace, he cleared the entire lot behind the Chichester cottage of not only all weeds, rocks, and shrub, but also the root vegetables that his second sister had laid in to get established in fall, as well as his oldest sister's rhubarb stocks.
   
   After a lifetime at sea, he was unable to tell crops from weeds.
   
   
4. And he did it in the middle of coldest winter in Chichester in years.
   
   
5. "Ain't you ever thought about marrying, Mr. Bush?"
   
   
6. Bush liked his girls pretty and saucy. Beyond that, they tended to blur into indistinguishability -- blonde hair, brown hair, light-colored eyes, dark ones. It was all the same to him.
   
   
7. The closest that he came to ever marrying had been a period when he was twenty-one, and his ship paid off, and he was deadly bored while waiting for something to come in. He went back to Chichester for a few days to economize on living costs and met the daughter of his uncle's wife's brother. William remembered her in the most general sense as being very small, curly-haired and being one of a great number of identical siblings, and here she was, making giggling and smarting off at him with the full permission of her mother, his aunt, and all of his sisters.
   
   
8. The fact that he had only been on shore twice in almost twenty years of service was partially a testament to the intensity of the war and partially a testament to how good William, by that time, was at his job. He took the lieutenant's examination at twenty-six and spent the two weeks previous desperately trying to learn Neper's Pentagon, memorizing it until he could model it upside down with biscuit crumbs on the mess table, and still found that it slipped out of his head like water between fingers as soon as he tried to apply it.
   
   
9. He was so nervous about his lieutenant's examination, in fact, that he ended up feeling seasick and almost vomiting for the first time in almost a decade while they were on their way to the examination. When he came back from his lieutenant's examination, he was pale and white and tight-mouthed with exhaustion. His hat was crushed into bits under his arm, and as the surest sign of the torments that he had undergone, the ends of his his neck cloth were untucked and stuck out over his collar.
   
   "What did they ask you, William?" It was the first question that the other midshipman shouted at him.
   
   It took him a moment to process the words, and he was so exhausted that only the occaisional word could actually be made out. " -- tops'l -- shoals at six fathoms -- Dutch with half of her halyards gone -- "
   
   A great round of cheers went up, then, and cut off the recitation of terms because they knew that he had passed -- there had never been any doubt, really, as long as the board had stuck to questions of seamanship. Bush knew it all, had seen it and done it or thought about it or dreamed about it to the extent, and it was well known that he positively delighted in being on deck during periods of dirty weather.
   
   The only fear had been that the board would have asked him something to do with mathematics.
   
   
10. The romance with his cousin-in-law ended one snowy night when they were walking together. She wanted him to tell her that she was pretty, and he blurted out that he understood certain savages of the South Seas to be cannibals.
    
    
11. Even Bush recognized that there were certain luxuries that should be appreciated about life on land. The availability of fresh water, for one thing -- the Renown had come back into port after having been half-rations for water for the better part of three weeks because they had run into a winter storm and smashed a quarter of their water kegs. After paying-off, the first thing that Bush had done, despite being a sailor down to his soul, had been to pour most of a gallon of water down his throat. It was an undoubted luxury to have as much as he wanted, wheneverhe wanted.
    
    It was a luxury, too, to have hot water every day for shaving, to sleep as many hours as he could bear to lie in bed, to get completely dry for the first time in the better part of a year, and to watch storms bang and bluster outside his window and know that there would, nevertheless, be hot food that night.
    
    That time, the terrible, aching boredom did not, in fact, set in until he had been on shore for a full week.
    
    
12. Bush had not been with Hornblower when his children died -- he was still with the Hotspur doing convoy duty, and he heard about it only after they had put to sea for some days in the Lydia. There had been no time for talking while the Lydia was made ready to sail under sealed orders and on short notice; Bush had been watching Hornblower watch the young midshipmen with even more intensity than usual, but it had only come out after Bush inquired into the health of Maria.
    
    He asked the polite question, and instead of saying that she was well or something of that nature, Horatio had answered by speaking about his children. It was a very brief speech, if two sentences strung together like that could be called a speech, and Bush was very glad that he had not asked earlier because a great stillness came over his captain then. In fact, Bush tried to express his sympathies, but for a very long time, the only sound in the cabin came from the slapping of waves against the stern and sides, of Horatio keeping a very hard grip on himself while, at the same time, denying that he was doing anything of the sort.
    
    
13. He killed his first man in a face-to-face boarding action when he was seventeen. He had been so mad for the fighting that he barely even remembered the incident, and the same went for the second man he killed that way, and the third, too. It took until he was twenty-two before he could remember the face of a man that he had killed after battle, and even then, it failed to stay with him very long.
    
    
14. No one had ever asked him the greatest difficulty or sacrifice that he ever made for his country -- when he was young, he did not frequent social circles where the conversation ran in such directions, and when he was old, the question would seem to have been answered for anyone who happened to take a downwards look in the general direction of Captain Bush's foot.
    
    
15. If anyone had asked him, though, Bush would, if he were in a lively, well-lubricated mood, have thought about it for a moment, then learning whist had been difficult.
    
    
16. If anyone had asked him, though, Bush would, if he were not in a lively or well-lubricated mood, have looked at them as if they had recently just escaped from Bedlam and, if that failed to disassuade them, he would have completely ignored the question.
    
    
17. Sheerness had been a trial, though. Bush remembers when the commission for the Nonesuch came through -- he had received it in his office, tiny, cramped, airless place that it was, and he had been sitting in his chair and had read the letter once, twice, four and five times before he really believed it was for him. He went so mad with joy, in fact, that he couldn't rememer anything that happened in the following week, though somehow, he must have gotten back to his lodgings and paid his quit-rent and packed up and on the first coach to the Downs.
    
    
18. Taking the Nonsuch out with Horatio had been the proudest, happiest moment of his life. There could be no doubt. There would, in fact, never be in any doubt.
    
    
19. Also a moment of pride: Horatio had gone back to England, sick and ill, and the Nonsuch was making her way south under new orders. A terrible storm blew down from north and east. It had not been long-lasting, but it had been astoundingly fierce for that time of the year even in those waters. The winds werestrong enough to make even a seventy-four like the Nonsuch tilt alarmingly onto its side; icy water that soaked and froze the ropes to the point that they were as stiff as spars, and Bush had stayed on deck for the whole of it.
    
    He saw his ship through to light -- afternoon sun, by that point, glorious and amazingly golden -- breaking through the bank of clouds as they moved into calm coastal water, and he had been prouder in that moment than when the Nonsuch took her first prize a few weeks later.
    
    
20. Bush's father had not, in fact, been a blacksmith or a farrier or a wheelwright or anything of that sort -- by the time that Bush had been born, his father had failed to be useful in any capacity for a number of years, but when he was younger, Bush's father had been a merchant captain of solid reputation.
    
    There had been no nautical gear in the house when he was growing up, and the old man had been discouraged from telling his only son any stories about the sea. Financial difficulties packed William off to his uncle's at an early age, and there had been even less talk about the sea there, but somehow, it had gotten into William. A glimpse of of officers in blue and gold walking, jingling with prize money and their swords, a lungful of sea air when he went with his uncle into Chichester with the cart. That was all it took, and by the time that the cart actually got down to the water's edge, when Bush saw the masts of the ships, it was over.
    
    He was a blacksmith's boy, and he lived in settled land, so he had never seen more than a dozen trees standing together. That first glimpse of the port at Chichester, the crowded masts rising into the air, the sound of water against stones -- for Bush, at the age of eleven and too young to do anything but dream, a ship was already forest and sea, air and water and land. All the world rolled into a single shape.
    
    There was never hope for any woman while that had hold of him.
    
    
21. When Horatio married for the second time, Cornwallis stood by him, and half the Admiralty filled out the ranks on Horatio's side of the church. The other half was at sea, but in the morning before the ceremony, when the captain who had given Horatio his first prize command sent a note, it was Bush read it out loud to Horatio, who had even dismissed Brown.
    
    They were alone in the room, in fact. The door was locked, and Bush sat at the foot of the bed. Next to him, there were a pile of notes and express letters, all opened and read and turned out, whereas Horatio was somewhat further up, closer to the pillows, and even though Horatio was only wearing his shirt, it, alone, was fine enough for a whole suit.
    
    Morning sun was pouring through the cutains. Linen, rather different from No. 8 canvas. Silk coverlet for the bed. Mahogany dresser set, badger-hair brush and shaving soap that barely required a drop of water before it lathered. Bush had watched Horatio be shaved earlier in the morning, and breakfast was over on the low table, still covered underneath silver.
    
    "I will get you a command," Horatio said, sounding rather choked. He was sitting on the bed and paler than his white lace shirt. Slightly greener, too. The sash and star of a Knight were draped on a chair a little bit aways. "Half of the Admiralty and most of the Naval Office is here. If it is the last thing I do, Bush, I will get you back to sea."
    
    Bush studied him for a moment -- Horatio met his gaze as steadily as could be expected -- and then reached over and, rather daring, squeezed Horatio's hand. He resisted the urge to stroke it as he had in that carriage on the way to Paris all those months ago, but he kept his hand there for a moment, palm-to-palm, with Horatio's.
    
    And then he left, so that Horatio could get sick without shaming himself in front of another person and so that he, Bush himself, could take a breath and remaster himself. A little of it was because he was going to lose his best -- his only -- friend. He hardly knew what to do with himself in a house like this; even the footmen in front seemed to have more gilt in their uniforms than he did, and he had to fight down an almost instinctual urge to salute them. He had planned to hide himself away as soon as after the ceremony as he could, and the shame of that was bad enough.
    
    The largest of it, though, the stomach-roiling, truly shaming and unmanning part that made the walls by the back stairway sway, however, nothing more than terror that he would never find his way out of Sheerness and back onto a ship again.
    
    
22. The night was murky, and it was made worse by the mist rising off the water. Sheets of it, clouds of the stuff. It made it so that the covered lantern at the foot of the boat was barely visible, and it was only by squinting and informed guesswork, that Bush could count six slits of light behind and trailing.
    
    And now, there were glimmers of lights ahead. By both reckoning and the lights, there ought to be barges just around the bend, and Bush studied the mist for another moment to see if there might be anything else to be learned. When he saw that there was not, he bent low, took the covering off the signal lantern, and ordered his longboat to Caudebec.
    

Most of the Bush characterization and "Sheerness = Bush Hell" from black_hound. And uh, you know that meme people are doing where they list the top 10 signs that a given fic is by them? I so have this obsession with writing listfic.

Comments

Re: oh Bush, baby. :/

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

what makes me squeal like a crazed bitch every time I read that passage is the description of the visual -- Bush sitting on oakum cushions nursing his knees. That TOUGH motherfucker, the crazy man of Samana Bay, sitting on a cushion nursing his knees. The mind reels. XD

See, the problem I have with this whole thing is that I don't think the pieces match well. Or more likely, I'm too stupid to figure it out.

Barbara says, "You are fond of him." It's a statement, not a question. She's got it figured out somehow.

Bush says , "If you say so I suppose I must be. I hadn't even thought of being fond of him before." Okay, does that mean that we are seeing the Bush instinctual process in play again? Does that mean that he's never given any internal articulation to the way he feels?

And yeah, his response doesn't read like a pronouncement of the gay love for his captain. It's more of a professional admiration sort of response.

Totally possible I'm reading the whole Lady B. thing wrong because Bush's answer isn't matching up. Or I'm reading Bush's response wrong.

I'm fucking confused. *g*

ps: i hope training wasn't too painful yesterday *_*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I watched Catherine the Great last night, and ahahhahaha. Ahhahah. OMG, the movie was far, far enjoyable once I started pretending that it was one of them alternate-reality fics where one of the main characters is a different gender and different social class and the thing goes from being a 32nd century clone epic to a Regency novel about the ton? (IE: Catherine the Great is so totally Horatio Hornblower with v. impressive boobs and a smaller nose! She's got the coloring, the hair! :D And awww, isn't Bush with his velvet disco messiah gown just adorable?)

Bush not articulating his feelings for Hornblower = entirely possible, I guess. He's not a reflective man, you know? Even when he's all meditative on deck, it seems like he's more caught up in the whole pritty of his ship than in actual reflection. It kind of BENDS THE IMAGINATION because he's known Horatio for about eight jillion years at this point, but yeah.

And I recognize that this could just be what happens with a twenty year gap in the books, but goddammit, I still feel compelled to try and fit it into a coherent line. I think that I'm just going to assume that Barbara went fishing, that Bush didn't realize that she was fishing, that his <3 for Horatio is so deeply internalized that he doesn't even bother characterizing it anymore, and that "fruit baskets, lemonade, deck showers, below deck math tutorials, drunken singing loving in the hammock" (omg such a great way of putting it) is important to him and happened, but that it 1) happened a long time ago and 2) is now less than his overwhelming awe of Horatio the Captain.

Which means that I get to pretend FC was, like. You know. Bush and Horatio finding the human sides to each other again. HAND-HOLDING!!!!!!!!!!!!11