In Over My Head

When I said I wanted a doodle, I really, really hope I didn't sound like I was saying "Drop everything and imperil your academic stability to draw me something!" Because that's what I seem to have done, and now I feel really, really awful about it.



Last week I got a chance to go visit my good friend and writing buddy (We could almost say 'partner-in-crime' in place of 'writing buddy') Helen. We had a grand time, doing the things normal university students do when they have free time -- watching movies, discussing boys, baking -- and it was lovely. Quite a change from life in the cottages, and life the previous week with my mom, sightseeing in London. Helen and her roommates were incredibly gracious hosts, but it wasn't until after I left that I realized how much time they had devoted to me when they could have (should have, probably) been working on their own schoolwork.



I was a terribly distracting individual even after I left -- I mentioned that I would love one of Helen's famous sketches and I would tempt her with a North and South fanfic I had been inspired to write, I sent Helen recipes for lemon bars and then she not only baked the bars but also produced not one, but two doodles! And I have no North and South fanfic to praise her efforts with. Well, only the vague shadow of one, a few sketchy scenes and no plot whatsoever, or the very frailest of outlines slightly resembling what I remember of Wives and Daughters, something about one girl always getting the guys and a misunderstanding with her friend about her intentions on one of them. It's very confusing to me.



I'm finding, as I've mentioned before, that this trip is leaving me little time to, well, be me. Sit in a room with no one but myself and write something that has nothing to do with class, or read a book that I don't have to take notes on for discussion. I'm always around other people, and while that's fun (We spent the better part of four hours last night sitting around drinking and talking with some of the guys last night in a series of events that involved us making dinner and them making dinner and everyone eating and then just staying) I find I long for silence. I miss being alone.



So I get up at six in the morning to write my blog and upload pictures and try and shoehorn in some writing that isn't about the Northern Troubles or my understanding of Ireland or anything graded at all. I suppose it doesn't help that my brand of writing is sometimes so terribly academic -- I love to research, to read about what it is I'm writing, and I can't do that here. I have no resources to read and more importantly, I have no time. And I cannot, repeat cannot, produce well-informed, historically based fanfiction without research. It wounds me to the core to even contemplate it -- Books were broken and authors' work disrespected with such carelessly constructed houses. (Recall, reader, the Twilight/Austen crossover abomination. Seriously uninformed, a serious breach of the unspoken trust a writer should form with her Canon.)



After this weekend our excursions end, and I'll have some room to breath again. Or at least, I hope that happens, as we have also been threatened with increased academic rigor given our change in cirumstances. I know I shouldn't say this, but I'm kind of looking forward to being home, and being able to crawl back into my hermitage again. That's who I am. I can't very well change that over three months.



So, Helen, mea culpa. I offer what little I have close to finished on that dreadful story in payment of my debt.



Opening Scene, John and Margret over breakfast, two years married, discussing the contents of the morning's post.

Scene.
----

“You shall have to tell me what is in that letter, John,” Margaret Thornton declared across a very full breakfast table, watching her husband’s normally stern face contort into a pleased smile. “The outer wrapping declares it cannot be full of business and that grin of yours betrays it is far too amusing to keep to yourself.”

“Am I allowed nothing to myself?” John Thornton asked mockingly, smiling at his wife over the top of the decidedly feminine stationary, edged in a silvery blue gilt that could only have appealed to a lady. “It is from a cousin of mine, in America. She wishes to visit and begs our hospitality. I laugh because I have not seen her in nearly eight years and yet I can still hear her voice when I read her words,” her husband replied.


“A cousin? I did not know you had any cousins in America. I thought I had been introduced to your family entire,” Margaret remarked, laying aside her napkin to hear what could only be an enlightening piece of what her husband’s life had consisted of before he had met her. Nearly four years ago now, that would have been, and she found she was still uncovering little secrets. It was not that John Thornton was a secretive man, or that he felt he had something to hide, for if Margaret asked a question, he always answered with the strictest honesty. It was rather more that he never thought things worth mentioning.



“Forgive me, she is not a cousin in the strictest sense,” Thornton amended. “Her father, Mr. Grant, was a friend of my father’s, and his father a financier. My father borrowed heavily against the elder Grant’s bank; it was… that family who helped to repay our debts,” the industrialist finished carefully, looking up from his plate to see that his wife’s face was filled with fond sympathy.


Her husband’s words caused Margaret to pause, thinking back to that day, so many days – nay, even years -- ago now, when she had first heard this tale from her father. Bits and pieces returned now, from the depths of her memory and the time when she had not, to her great shame, esteemed the man who would later be her husband as much as she ought to have. Returned to Milton…. went quietly round to each creditor…and all was paid at last… helped on materially by the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed old fellow… taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind of partner. “It must be a trial, then, to think about them. I know you do not often discuss that,” the wife told her husband very gently.



“The Grants were – are -- wonderful people, and I should be very remiss if I did not sometimes remember them and their kindness to me,” John said strongly. “Besides, I cannot refuse cousin Phoebe’s request – she begs to meet you, and I would not deny that to anyone in the world,” he added with a fond smile for his wife, a gesture that made her color even after two years of marriage.


“Is that her name, Phoebe?” Margaret asked, curious to learn more about this cousin who was not a cousin on the other side of the world, a relation that might at any minute descend on her house.


“It is. A Boston name, I think it. At any rate it would not go in Milton, as Mother would say.”