quigonejinn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quigonejinn) wrote2007-04-15 11:52 am
quigonejinn) wrote2007-04-15 11:52 am
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(no subject)
There is a Nor'easter outside my window, and after watching all of the 2005 run of Doctor Who and reasonable parts of the 2006, I've decided that I like the Ninth Doctor better than the Tenth. This surprises no-one, I suspect.
You have never loved easily. By the time that you were twenty seven, in fact, you believed that your heart was sufficiently well-protected. You would never fall in love.
...
As proof, there was India. Fort William, the Government House. Seven men for every white woman.
By the time that you were born, Richard had already become a man; Arthur was your mother's despair because it seemed that he would never be a successful one, but he gave signs every once in a while. There were flashes of will. By the time Richard went, in fact, Arthur had made a bit of a name for himself in the Army. You had two well-connected brothers, and money, additionally, had not been a pressing problem since the brother between Richard and Arthur came into a little money from the cousin for whom he'd been named.
In short, there was no reason why you should have gone to India in the first place. Even accounting for your father long having been dead, you should have been able to follow Anne's example before you.
...
Instead, you went to India, and after you went to the India, you went to the West Indies. From the West Indies, you went to Bello Porto. You were nearing a decade away from England, and then, at Bello Porto, you met Hornblower.
You had been expecting someone older, someone coarser. After all, you had heard of El Supremo. What kind of man would the Admiralty send to deal with him? You expected dark skin and rough manners, and he had both, but there was something else, too: there was something about him that went beyond the poor clothes and awkwardness. You made him uncomfortable, as you made many uncomfortable, and you could then proceed to charm him as you charmed most people, even when they did not want to be. You would coax out of him what what was owed to you.
"Yes," you said. "Please have my baggage brought up while I speak to him."
Hebe continued to drip. The captain looked you over, carefully, with emotion in his eyes that he obviously thought he was hiding well. Thanks to his hat, it almost was: his face was shadow, and you had to look at him, directly, in order to read him.
Also, because you wanted to see his face. There was already a strange feeling in your chest, and it persisted through defending your reasons for being in Porto Bello, through being high-handed enough with him to prove that you were, indeed, sister to two famous brothers and a third who would soon, if influence combined with ability had anything to do with it, gain that position. His eyes were dark. They moved with speed. He thought he disliked you, but he was not sure. There was something else at work there; his mouth was expressive in advance of his eyes. His hands were strangely beautiful.
The deck was blazingly hot, even to you, and you could hear Hebe complaining under her breath as they got your luggage in. You remember, vaguely, that you laughed at him at one point and mocked him at another. You needed to show him that you were not afraid of him, that he had no hold over you.
Nevertheless, it was true: you have never been seasick in your life, but by the end of the week, you were hopelessly in love with him.
His eyes had been dark, even under the shadow of his hat. It was strange to fall in love with a man whose face it was so difficult to see.
...
India was heat. Light and heat, palanquins, months of intolerable heat followed by torrential rain that obliterated English gardens and made the earth steam, even if it was covered by brick. Richard was Governor-General, and he was making a palace out of the Government House, but you were too young to take many of the formal duties of being his hostess. You arranged a few parties and pretended to oversee a staff headed by an Irish butler, but mostly, you made the marriage market turns at the homes of others. Richard was Governor-General; in addition, you had Arthur, who was not yet married and starting to distinguish himself in the Army.
None of your dresses were light enough for the full July heat. At times, it feels that half of your life has been spent in the tropics.
Five years in India. Nine months in the West Indies. Four in Bello Porto. When you return to England, you spend the first half-year shivering.
...
It was not that Hornblower was intelligent: you knew many intelligent men, and you had read widely. It was not that Hornblower talked to you: many men talked to you. If anything, Hornblower made too free in his conversation with you. You could see his flaws. He was fearful. He drove himself too fiercely, and while he was sure of his knowledge, of his skills, he was terribly unsure of the man that laid underneath. You could see all of that in the first hour that you talked with him; you were brought up to take the measure of a man quickly, to learn how to exploit him and use him for the greatest advantage when it was appropriate to take notice of him at all.
In India, you learned how to manage men and give nothing of yourself.
What you loved was, instead, this: he was one kind of man, but he thought he was another, worse kind. Consequently, he had to pretend to be what he actually was. You remember watching him on the deck of the Lydia when you were allowed on deck after the Natividad; you remember the fierce, almost possessive joy you felt, when you realized that he was not hurt, and then, you remember how he had pretended not to be concerned with the men who you had seen in the Infirmary. There were layers to him, complexities that you had never bothered to appreciate in another man. It was like a book or a voyage that you were forced to take: you had not wanted the beginning, but once you began, there was no choice but to go on, until you were done.
At times, you loved him so much that you did not think you could bear it.
"A cottage, someplace in the country," he admitted to you one afternoon, during what you had learned was called the first dogwatch. "With books. Far away from the sea, with rooms and rooms of books. And -- "
The two of you were discussing what was necessary for happiness. You led him into telling what he thought was necessary for him to be content, and you hung on every word. YOu knew that even in the unlikely event he would think to ask you what you wanted, you could deflect his attention away to something else. He was so hungry for company.
On the horizon, the sun was gold dipping into pink and violet. The colors made the horizon look like the sky, and you wanted, so badly, to make him happy. You told yourself that you would live in the country with books, away from London or excitement. The ship rocked and creaked, and you find yourself taking pleasure in the simple fact that he would match his steps to yours. Soft breezes started along the deck, and his men jammed together on the other side of the deck, so that the two of you might walk together. His face was no longer quite so dark, but instead, lit up by the sunset. By hope.
You felt that you would give anything for him to be happy.
...
By the time that you were born, Richard was almost a grown man, and Arthur was on his way, even if your mother and most did not recognize it. You remember one afternoon during the London Season when Richard was visiting home, and you went out to look for him -- he was your favorite brother, and you were still at the age when you could go looking for him in the stables.
Instead, you found Arthur, holding his favorite pony by the head and singing while he looked into his eyes. Its forehead was white, and it was so old, you knew, that half of its feed consisted of mash.
In fact, it was so old that its eyes were clouded over. It looked at you and Arthur with impartiality, and you suspected that it could not, from sight, tell one of you from the other.
...
Richard loves power; William loves security, and Arthur, you have figured out, loves any number of things. Music. Animals. Himself. You did not love Leighton, but it was also not the case that any man would have done since you could not have the one you really wanted: you came back to England, and you realized that you did not want to be left to the side. You wanted a husband with connections that would help your brothers, but one who would be frequently be absent, so that you might live your own life.
Leighton fit all of these requirements. In addition, he was kind and reasonably intelligent, so that when he did come back to England, it was easy for you to be kind to him. You had a certain amount of affection for him. He was enough like Hornblower that you could be fond of him, but he was not so like Horatio that you felt irritated. There was something, additionally, in the idea that you were, at your advanced age, nevertheless attractive enough for him to marry.
Sometimes, the combination felt enough like love: you promised, on the passage from India, that you would never marry except for love.
...
You did not love that other man, but he is the reason why you went to India: you were young. He was not your first lover, but he was properly English, properly careless with money, and a Right Honorable to boot. Consequently, he was the only one who had put it into you with regularity. He fascinated you, as a matter of investigation, and he was close to the heart of the action in London. When pregnancy occurred, your mother put out that you had become indisposed, and she sent you back home to Ireland, where you spent a season reading and walking and, against doctor's instructions, riding. Perhaps that had something to do with it; perhaps not.
In the end, you woke one night, and by dawn, you were holding onto the back of a chair and screaming. Perhaps you should have stayed on the bed. The midwife had encouraged you to lay down. Maybe you would still be fertile if you had because a great deal of red fell out of you that day, including, possibly, the part of the womb that makes it possible to bear children.
On that day, though, once the day came, it became clear that there was a fog on the lawn. It pressed itself to the windows, and they heated vast quantities of water because there was nothing else the doctor could do. You refused all drink except a little water, all food and laudanaum, and all you could think was that you must be dying: nothing else could hurt like this. It hurt so much that you could not feel the blood running down your legs, and you kicked, like a mare, at anyone who came near you to wipe it off the floor. You spat and cursed. You would be damned if you died on your back like a woman -- you would die on your feet even if it meant that you died in agony.
When you lost consciousness, they carried you to the bed, and the doctor brought out the baby in pieces.
You have never asked whether the child was male or female. You suspect it would not have been possible, in the mess, to tell.
...
So that is the story of why you went out to India, and it is also the story for why you have never been able to bear children. It isn't even the fear of pain, the way it is with some women, and it certainly isn't lack of desire for your husband. To this day, you love excitement. You love power. Horatio loves you already, and if you could give him a child, either male or female, you would have more power over him than any other person in his life. You thought that you would never conceive again, but it has happened, and Horatio is so happy that he might go wild. He certainly seems as though he might break something from sheer exuberance. He did not dare believe it at first, but then he threw up his arms and cheered like a sailor.
Eventually, after the celebrations, you are back in your rooms, and it is quiet. It has started to snow; the lawn outside is dusted white, and a fire has been lit in the grate. Your writing materials are laid on the table, and you are preparing a letter with your mother and another to Richard. If the baby is still alive in eight months time, it will be a summer baby. You think about this, and when you sit back in the chair, your back touches its back.
The thought occurs to you: it is possible that you will miscarry. The doctor does not like the idea of you being pregnant again. It worries him, and you still have, in your mind, very vividly, the memory of blood and pain that you thought would never end.
If you give birth, it will be a certainty. Miscarriage, which you did not talk about with Horatio, is probable, and it could be far worse. Would you bear that again to give Horatio a child?
It doesn't even require words for an answer. You raise your chin, and you look the fire in its face.
...
You remember that after you miscarried, you were cold. The servants could heat bricks to put at your feet, pile the blankets, and build enormous fires, but you would still be frighteningly cold. There was fog and damp, and a bone-deep cold settled into your body. You have been cold, going around two Capes, and you have been cold, riding hard across the park in Smallbridge from morning to dusk, but this was a different kind of cold.
Arthur sailed for India somewhat before you turned seventeen; when you were eighteen, Richard sailed for there, too, and you went with him and William.
...
Sometimes, when you are thinking about it, your mind suggests: it was like when you came back from the tropics for your first English winter and realized that you would never have what you wanted.
You push your mind away from that, though, and your mind usually obeys.
...
You have not told Horatio about the miscarriage: it is hard to know how he would take it, so you have omitted it. He is, nevertheless, enormously solicitous of your condition, and you, yourself, take greater care. This time, when you realize that you are pregnant, you stop riding. You stay warm, wrapped up in bed, in accordance with the advice of the physician, and you eat carefully. You protect yourself from drafts. You do not so much as look out the window at fog.
...
The West Indies did not leave an impression on you as clearly as the East did. Kingston was more British. There was heat, but you were accustomed to it from India. There were dark-skinned servants, but you were used to that, too. Even the experience of purchasing Hebe did not leave much of a mark: it was curious, but also gratifying, as you had gotten used to her during your stay with the Manleys.
Even the heat in India was more impressive. Horses were too precious and formal for use during the day; bearers were suggested. Ingram's sister also told you about suttees.
"They burn themselves after their husbands die. All of them. It is why you see few old women."
...
Maria, you know, gave your husband two children in quick succession. He lost both to smallpox, but he had loved them, spoke of them with longing even aboard the Lydia, and you remember Maria from that dinner. She was small and round, and she had, in many ways, been exactly as you expected. You knew how to read between the words of what Horatio had said to you, and she was, indeed, coarse and common. There was no shape to her, no height or grace. Her eyes were dull, and her features ordinary; you told yourself that she lacked both wit and experience, for you had an irrational jealousy, almost a hatred of her. This was the woman that Horatio would not leave. This is the woman that he preferred to you -- that low, common creature.
You know, before you married Leighton, that you would probably never conceive again. When Maria confided that she was in that way, you went cold in the hands and the feet. She would never betray Horatio; she worshiped him, and now, she was going to have his child.
Some of it, you thought, must have shown on your face. It surprised you when, after news of Rosas Bay circulated, she allowed you to call on her.
You thought it was terrible when you saw her with him, walking on his arm, looking up at him with complete devotion.
It was worse to see her in black, swollen with a child, and pale with strength that you did not think she ought to have. It made you ashamed of yourself.
...
The miscarriage happens in the fourth month. There had been warnings beforehand. You had pains in your back, and your legs were weak. Still, it was nothing. You assumed that it was entirely the result of being somewhat older when than most women, and it is strange how easily this miscarriage goes: one morning, you wake, and you leave Horatio in bed for the chamberpot. You do not realize, in fact, until you are done, that there is blood running down your legs again. In fact, there is blood on the bed, on your nightgown, on the curtains of the bed from your hand. Horatio wakes when he hears you scream, and then he starts shouting. In fact, he, too, is almost screaming.
The blood is dark and clotted. It is not the blood from a fresh wound, but from something long dead inside you.
In all your life, you have wept two, possibly three times. You did not cry, even, at your father's funeral: you were too young to know who he was, and you do not cry even when Horatio comes back into the bedroom and sits down next to you. He takes your hand, and you are looking at this hands, those beautiful hands and those dark eyes that you love.
There is no pain, at all, in fact, until that moment. Until he looks at you and touches your cheek, and you remember, all over again, what you cannot give him.
...
The next sections are something about the contrast between H's stiffness with the brothers and his overwhelming joy at seeing his son, and Barbara realizing that it hurts so much because he loves something that you did not give him. There's stuff about them seeing Richard Arthur off to school, Barbara going riding in the fog that she'd been avoiding while she was pregnant, stuff about Maria dyig, and then some kind of wrapup about Barbara thinking that unlike her brothers, HH's weaknesses are weaknesses of strength.
Yeah, I don't have any idea what's up with that either.
I think where this goes wrong by he very second section. I don't know that much about colonial India despite some quick and dirty reading (which produced the slightly hysterical discussion of suttees later, though that might be strictly Victorian and not Barbara-time); I don't know what about Barbara I could put in. And in the rest of the fic is just kind of brainstorming of things that I could use, rather than writing, per se. And I can't get rid of the India stuff because it kind of is important in any broad formulation of Barbara.
Barbara v. Maria, Barbara v. Her Brothers, Barbara v. Society. Hornblower v. Brothers, England v. Tropics/Her Colonies. I wanted there to be stuff about Hebe, originally, but.
Onwards and forwards!
You have never loved easily. By the time that you were twenty seven, in fact, you believed that your heart was sufficiently well-protected. You would never fall in love.
...
As proof, there was India. Fort William, the Government House. Seven men for every white woman.
By the time that you were born, Richard had already become a man; Arthur was your mother's despair because it seemed that he would never be a successful one, but he gave signs every once in a while. There were flashes of will. By the time Richard went, in fact, Arthur had made a bit of a name for himself in the Army. You had two well-connected brothers, and money, additionally, had not been a pressing problem since the brother between Richard and Arthur came into a little money from the cousin for whom he'd been named.
In short, there was no reason why you should have gone to India in the first place. Even accounting for your father long having been dead, you should have been able to follow Anne's example before you.
...
Instead, you went to India, and after you went to the India, you went to the West Indies. From the West Indies, you went to Bello Porto. You were nearing a decade away from England, and then, at Bello Porto, you met Hornblower.
You had been expecting someone older, someone coarser. After all, you had heard of El Supremo. What kind of man would the Admiralty send to deal with him? You expected dark skin and rough manners, and he had both, but there was something else, too: there was something about him that went beyond the poor clothes and awkwardness. You made him uncomfortable, as you made many uncomfortable, and you could then proceed to charm him as you charmed most people, even when they did not want to be. You would coax out of him what what was owed to you.
"Yes," you said. "Please have my baggage brought up while I speak to him."
Hebe continued to drip. The captain looked you over, carefully, with emotion in his eyes that he obviously thought he was hiding well. Thanks to his hat, it almost was: his face was shadow, and you had to look at him, directly, in order to read him.
Also, because you wanted to see his face. There was already a strange feeling in your chest, and it persisted through defending your reasons for being in Porto Bello, through being high-handed enough with him to prove that you were, indeed, sister to two famous brothers and a third who would soon, if influence combined with ability had anything to do with it, gain that position. His eyes were dark. They moved with speed. He thought he disliked you, but he was not sure. There was something else at work there; his mouth was expressive in advance of his eyes. His hands were strangely beautiful.
The deck was blazingly hot, even to you, and you could hear Hebe complaining under her breath as they got your luggage in. You remember, vaguely, that you laughed at him at one point and mocked him at another. You needed to show him that you were not afraid of him, that he had no hold over you.
Nevertheless, it was true: you have never been seasick in your life, but by the end of the week, you were hopelessly in love with him.
His eyes had been dark, even under the shadow of his hat. It was strange to fall in love with a man whose face it was so difficult to see.
...
India was heat. Light and heat, palanquins, months of intolerable heat followed by torrential rain that obliterated English gardens and made the earth steam, even if it was covered by brick. Richard was Governor-General, and he was making a palace out of the Government House, but you were too young to take many of the formal duties of being his hostess. You arranged a few parties and pretended to oversee a staff headed by an Irish butler, but mostly, you made the marriage market turns at the homes of others. Richard was Governor-General; in addition, you had Arthur, who was not yet married and starting to distinguish himself in the Army.
None of your dresses were light enough for the full July heat. At times, it feels that half of your life has been spent in the tropics.
Five years in India. Nine months in the West Indies. Four in Bello Porto. When you return to England, you spend the first half-year shivering.
...
It was not that Hornblower was intelligent: you knew many intelligent men, and you had read widely. It was not that Hornblower talked to you: many men talked to you. If anything, Hornblower made too free in his conversation with you. You could see his flaws. He was fearful. He drove himself too fiercely, and while he was sure of his knowledge, of his skills, he was terribly unsure of the man that laid underneath. You could see all of that in the first hour that you talked with him; you were brought up to take the measure of a man quickly, to learn how to exploit him and use him for the greatest advantage when it was appropriate to take notice of him at all.
In India, you learned how to manage men and give nothing of yourself.
What you loved was, instead, this: he was one kind of man, but he thought he was another, worse kind. Consequently, he had to pretend to be what he actually was. You remember watching him on the deck of the Lydia when you were allowed on deck after the Natividad; you remember the fierce, almost possessive joy you felt, when you realized that he was not hurt, and then, you remember how he had pretended not to be concerned with the men who you had seen in the Infirmary. There were layers to him, complexities that you had never bothered to appreciate in another man. It was like a book or a voyage that you were forced to take: you had not wanted the beginning, but once you began, there was no choice but to go on, until you were done.
At times, you loved him so much that you did not think you could bear it.
"A cottage, someplace in the country," he admitted to you one afternoon, during what you had learned was called the first dogwatch. "With books. Far away from the sea, with rooms and rooms of books. And -- "
The two of you were discussing what was necessary for happiness. You led him into telling what he thought was necessary for him to be content, and you hung on every word. YOu knew that even in the unlikely event he would think to ask you what you wanted, you could deflect his attention away to something else. He was so hungry for company.
On the horizon, the sun was gold dipping into pink and violet. The colors made the horizon look like the sky, and you wanted, so badly, to make him happy. You told yourself that you would live in the country with books, away from London or excitement. The ship rocked and creaked, and you find yourself taking pleasure in the simple fact that he would match his steps to yours. Soft breezes started along the deck, and his men jammed together on the other side of the deck, so that the two of you might walk together. His face was no longer quite so dark, but instead, lit up by the sunset. By hope.
You felt that you would give anything for him to be happy.
...
By the time that you were born, Richard was almost a grown man, and Arthur was on his way, even if your mother and most did not recognize it. You remember one afternoon during the London Season when Richard was visiting home, and you went out to look for him -- he was your favorite brother, and you were still at the age when you could go looking for him in the stables.
Instead, you found Arthur, holding his favorite pony by the head and singing while he looked into his eyes. Its forehead was white, and it was so old, you knew, that half of its feed consisted of mash.
In fact, it was so old that its eyes were clouded over. It looked at you and Arthur with impartiality, and you suspected that it could not, from sight, tell one of you from the other.
...
Richard loves power; William loves security, and Arthur, you have figured out, loves any number of things. Music. Animals. Himself. You did not love Leighton, but it was also not the case that any man would have done since you could not have the one you really wanted: you came back to England, and you realized that you did not want to be left to the side. You wanted a husband with connections that would help your brothers, but one who would be frequently be absent, so that you might live your own life.
Leighton fit all of these requirements. In addition, he was kind and reasonably intelligent, so that when he did come back to England, it was easy for you to be kind to him. You had a certain amount of affection for him. He was enough like Hornblower that you could be fond of him, but he was not so like Horatio that you felt irritated. There was something, additionally, in the idea that you were, at your advanced age, nevertheless attractive enough for him to marry.
Sometimes, the combination felt enough like love: you promised, on the passage from India, that you would never marry except for love.
...
You did not love that other man, but he is the reason why you went to India: you were young. He was not your first lover, but he was properly English, properly careless with money, and a Right Honorable to boot. Consequently, he was the only one who had put it into you with regularity. He fascinated you, as a matter of investigation, and he was close to the heart of the action in London. When pregnancy occurred, your mother put out that you had become indisposed, and she sent you back home to Ireland, where you spent a season reading and walking and, against doctor's instructions, riding. Perhaps that had something to do with it; perhaps not.
In the end, you woke one night, and by dawn, you were holding onto the back of a chair and screaming. Perhaps you should have stayed on the bed. The midwife had encouraged you to lay down. Maybe you would still be fertile if you had because a great deal of red fell out of you that day, including, possibly, the part of the womb that makes it possible to bear children.
On that day, though, once the day came, it became clear that there was a fog on the lawn. It pressed itself to the windows, and they heated vast quantities of water because there was nothing else the doctor could do. You refused all drink except a little water, all food and laudanaum, and all you could think was that you must be dying: nothing else could hurt like this. It hurt so much that you could not feel the blood running down your legs, and you kicked, like a mare, at anyone who came near you to wipe it off the floor. You spat and cursed. You would be damned if you died on your back like a woman -- you would die on your feet even if it meant that you died in agony.
When you lost consciousness, they carried you to the bed, and the doctor brought out the baby in pieces.
You have never asked whether the child was male or female. You suspect it would not have been possible, in the mess, to tell.
...
So that is the story of why you went out to India, and it is also the story for why you have never been able to bear children. It isn't even the fear of pain, the way it is with some women, and it certainly isn't lack of desire for your husband. To this day, you love excitement. You love power. Horatio loves you already, and if you could give him a child, either male or female, you would have more power over him than any other person in his life. You thought that you would never conceive again, but it has happened, and Horatio is so happy that he might go wild. He certainly seems as though he might break something from sheer exuberance. He did not dare believe it at first, but then he threw up his arms and cheered like a sailor.
Eventually, after the celebrations, you are back in your rooms, and it is quiet. It has started to snow; the lawn outside is dusted white, and a fire has been lit in the grate. Your writing materials are laid on the table, and you are preparing a letter with your mother and another to Richard. If the baby is still alive in eight months time, it will be a summer baby. You think about this, and when you sit back in the chair, your back touches its back.
The thought occurs to you: it is possible that you will miscarry. The doctor does not like the idea of you being pregnant again. It worries him, and you still have, in your mind, very vividly, the memory of blood and pain that you thought would never end.
If you give birth, it will be a certainty. Miscarriage, which you did not talk about with Horatio, is probable, and it could be far worse. Would you bear that again to give Horatio a child?
It doesn't even require words for an answer. You raise your chin, and you look the fire in its face.
...
You remember that after you miscarried, you were cold. The servants could heat bricks to put at your feet, pile the blankets, and build enormous fires, but you would still be frighteningly cold. There was fog and damp, and a bone-deep cold settled into your body. You have been cold, going around two Capes, and you have been cold, riding hard across the park in Smallbridge from morning to dusk, but this was a different kind of cold.
Arthur sailed for India somewhat before you turned seventeen; when you were eighteen, Richard sailed for there, too, and you went with him and William.
...
Sometimes, when you are thinking about it, your mind suggests: it was like when you came back from the tropics for your first English winter and realized that you would never have what you wanted.
You push your mind away from that, though, and your mind usually obeys.
...
You have not told Horatio about the miscarriage: it is hard to know how he would take it, so you have omitted it. He is, nevertheless, enormously solicitous of your condition, and you, yourself, take greater care. This time, when you realize that you are pregnant, you stop riding. You stay warm, wrapped up in bed, in accordance with the advice of the physician, and you eat carefully. You protect yourself from drafts. You do not so much as look out the window at fog.
...
The West Indies did not leave an impression on you as clearly as the East did. Kingston was more British. There was heat, but you were accustomed to it from India. There were dark-skinned servants, but you were used to that, too. Even the experience of purchasing Hebe did not leave much of a mark: it was curious, but also gratifying, as you had gotten used to her during your stay with the Manleys.
Even the heat in India was more impressive. Horses were too precious and formal for use during the day; bearers were suggested. Ingram's sister also told you about suttees.
"They burn themselves after their husbands die. All of them. It is why you see few old women."
...
Maria, you know, gave your husband two children in quick succession. He lost both to smallpox, but he had loved them, spoke of them with longing even aboard the Lydia, and you remember Maria from that dinner. She was small and round, and she had, in many ways, been exactly as you expected. You knew how to read between the words of what Horatio had said to you, and she was, indeed, coarse and common. There was no shape to her, no height or grace. Her eyes were dull, and her features ordinary; you told yourself that she lacked both wit and experience, for you had an irrational jealousy, almost a hatred of her. This was the woman that Horatio would not leave. This is the woman that he preferred to you -- that low, common creature.
You know, before you married Leighton, that you would probably never conceive again. When Maria confided that she was in that way, you went cold in the hands and the feet. She would never betray Horatio; she worshiped him, and now, she was going to have his child.
Some of it, you thought, must have shown on your face. It surprised you when, after news of Rosas Bay circulated, she allowed you to call on her.
You thought it was terrible when you saw her with him, walking on his arm, looking up at him with complete devotion.
It was worse to see her in black, swollen with a child, and pale with strength that you did not think she ought to have. It made you ashamed of yourself.
...
The miscarriage happens in the fourth month. There had been warnings beforehand. You had pains in your back, and your legs were weak. Still, it was nothing. You assumed that it was entirely the result of being somewhat older when than most women, and it is strange how easily this miscarriage goes: one morning, you wake, and you leave Horatio in bed for the chamberpot. You do not realize, in fact, until you are done, that there is blood running down your legs again. In fact, there is blood on the bed, on your nightgown, on the curtains of the bed from your hand. Horatio wakes when he hears you scream, and then he starts shouting. In fact, he, too, is almost screaming.
The blood is dark and clotted. It is not the blood from a fresh wound, but from something long dead inside you.
In all your life, you have wept two, possibly three times. You did not cry, even, at your father's funeral: you were too young to know who he was, and you do not cry even when Horatio comes back into the bedroom and sits down next to you. He takes your hand, and you are looking at this hands, those beautiful hands and those dark eyes that you love.
There is no pain, at all, in fact, until that moment. Until he looks at you and touches your cheek, and you remember, all over again, what you cannot give him.
...
The next sections are something about the contrast between H's stiffness with the brothers and his overwhelming joy at seeing his son, and Barbara realizing that it hurts so much because he loves something that you did not give him. There's stuff about them seeing Richard Arthur off to school, Barbara going riding in the fog that she'd been avoiding while she was pregnant, stuff about Maria dyig, and then some kind of wrapup about Barbara thinking that unlike her brothers, HH's weaknesses are weaknesses of strength.
Yeah, I don't have any idea what's up with that either.
I think where this goes wrong by he very second section. I don't know that much about colonial India despite some quick and dirty reading (which produced the slightly hysterical discussion of suttees later, though that might be strictly Victorian and not Barbara-time); I don't know what about Barbara I could put in. And in the rest of the fic is just kind of brainstorming of things that I could use, rather than writing, per se. And I can't get rid of the India stuff because it kind of is important in any broad formulation of Barbara.
Barbara v. Maria, Barbara v. Her Brothers, Barbara v. Society. Hornblower v. Brothers, England v. Tropics/Her Colonies. I wanted there to be stuff about Hebe, originally, but.
Onwards and forwards!
me/nine otp.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2007-04-18 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)This strikes me as a very plausible back story for the woman we meet in BtQ. I like the idea that Barbara spent most of her adult life away from England. And the miscarriages... explains her baby-snatching tendencies and her annoyance when people assume that RA is her baby.