Part Two

*****

Yes, Anthony Bracegirdle was in love, going on more than two years now, but to him it seemed that he had always been in love with Lizzie, or at least that he had always been meant to be so, as if from the day he was born he had not been complete, that deep inside him there had always been a little notched out place in his heart, a carved out portion of a very particular shape and size that waited for its missing piece, shaped just so, to come and make it whole. And when he had seen her for the very first time, on a warm and glorious May Day Sunday, standing in the company of her parents beside the doors of his papa's church, apparently making the acquaintance, in fact, of the Reverend Mr. Bracegirdle, indeed his hand had flown to his heart as he felt a most peculiar sensation there; a little thump, and a firm "click" as of something locking into place, and from that moment on he knew that he had found the missing piece of him; from that moment on, he was whole.

As for her part, Miss Elizabeth Jane Goodbody seemed too, from that very first meeting, to recognize something in the person of Tony Bracegirdle, something beyond the pleasing effect of his merrily twinkling blue eyes and sweetly handsome face. She liked the look of him, yes, for he was a solidly built young man (who would tend to portliness, her mother warned, not that a woman should let such concerns overshadow the truly important ones in the selection of a husband) and strong and capable, she fancied. Truly, she liked everything about him, from his charming smile to his adorable nose; she liked his elegant hands and his long, honey-gold hair. But above all of that, she, like he, simply knew from that warm day in May, that something momentous had occurred, and that one day she would belong to Tony, come what may, and he to her.

But, unfortunately, as has very often been the case (from what must certainly have been near the very beginning of time), the determination of young people in love as to the inevitability of their bonding may be subject to a very different interpretation indeed in the view of their parents. This was most certainly the difficulty when it came to the opinion of Mr. Barnabas Goodbody, Lizzie's father.

This Goodbody was a man of wealth and property, and proud of that fact, for indeed it had come to him all by his own doing, his origins being respectable, but somewhat less than modest, even, one might say, poor. And if it was rumored that his original capital might have been acquired by less than scrupulous means---privateering, it was whispered, among other things---such rumors could not be counted with any certainty as truth, and in any case, there was nothing that was not to be respected about the Honourable Goodbody Orientalist Importers Company, a very sizable concern that filled a niche of demand for the highest quality of certain goods with which not even the near monopoly of the East India Company could quite successfully compete. Having established his business in the port of Chatham, and looking about him to establish his estate, he looked not to the heights of Rochester, where all the best families lived, not because they would not have him, oh, no, but because he desired land, and Rochester, as everyone knew, was already hopelessly overbuilt. He looked in the end, to the vicinity of Haythe, proximal to Dover and Deal, easily accessible to London and Chatham by coach or by boat, and there he settled his little family, his darling wife and his one and only daughter, in a large and mostly elegant farmhouse, with ambitious plans for improvement.

And ambitious plans, too, for Lizzie's future. She was undeniably a beautiful girl, coming nineteen, with a perfect, womanly figure, glorious cornsilk hair, a honeyed, blushing complexion, and marvelous blue-green eyes that changed with her temper, or even with the color of the sky. She was intelligent, accomplished, and with a fortune that was not to be sneezed at, who was to say that she might not have a baronet, or indeed why not even an earl? Stranger things had happened!

And so when this young pup Bracegirdle, son of a vicar, a Navy midshipman---not an admiral, not even a captain!--- had had the effrontery to come and ask him for permission to call on his daughter, he had of course had no choice but to send the whelp packing, and in no misapprehension of any further prospect of his amending his resolve. It meant very little to Goodbody, if he had even understood it, that the Bracegirdles were members of a large, well-established and prosperous clan of the land-owning gentry. They did live modestly, it was true, and it had always been an especial decree that the sons of the family must all employ themselves in meaningful and self-improving careers, hence Tony had chosen the Navy, by virtue of his love of the sea and boats, and Jonty had gone up to Cambridge to study, and would one day inherit the living of Haythe parish from his father. In truth, the Bracegirdles were well and beyond the equal of the Goodbody's in both fortune and respectability, but to Barnabas Goodbody, Tony was a nobody, and furthermore, he harbored a certain prejudice towards the boy in respect of what he, Barnabas, regarded as the young man's rather happy-go-lucky approach to life. The fellow lacked ambition, Barnabas decided. In short, he was nothing like Barnabas, and no, he would simply not do!

But what are a pair of young lovers to do in such circumstances? It is well known that it is in the very nature of humans that the more a thing has been denied, the more acute and painful becomes the urgency of its need, and old Barnabas should perhaps have known better, for all he did by denying Tony's suit was to increase his daughter's desire to have young Bracegirdle, whatever the cost, and to place her precious virtue in a far more dangerous situation than had he but given his grudging consent!

For Tony and Lizzie life became a breathless, exciting whirl of clandestined meetings and secret, impassioned letters, of stolen kisses and fervent embraces that came, over time, ever closer and closer to a desperate point of no return. But such was their need for each other, and their inability to imagine any outcome but that of their eventual marriage, they were finding themselves with less and less of a compunction to restrain themselves, and indeed, even in some of their cooler-headed moments, had considered the possibility of elopement, or even of forcing Lizzie's father's hand by getting themselves into a deliberate predicament which could only be resolved by his giving his consent for them to marry. Thus far, however, cool heads had barely managed to prevail over hot passions, for better or for worse.

Too soon (or not a moment to soon, depending upon one's outlook on the affair) the time came when his lengthy shore leave was ended and Tony must return to his ship. He and Lizzie had arranged a final meeting on the stretch of abandoned shingle they liked to call, "The Smuggler's Beach". There, in the shelter of one of the crumbling old stone towers, they would make their promises to one another one last time, and try to make this farewell one that would keep them until they should meet again.

It was a beautiful night, clear and cool and crisp as cider, and the moon rose, golden yellow, spilling her glow upon the empty strand. The sea was calm, and lapped at the shore with naught but a rhythmic whisper: “Shhh, shhh, shhh”. Tony waited in the doorway of the old tower, watching for his ladylove, noting every shadow that moved, every sound. He entertained himself (perversely perhaps, but he could hardly help the thought's occurrence) with musings on the legend of the Headless Helmsman, and indeed, what would he, Tony Bracegirdle, do were he to encounter that venerable phantom on such a night as this? Would he be afraid? As a boy he most certainly had been, and whenever he and his brother and sisters had been playing on the beach, or out in their boats near dusk, they had always made certain to make haste to find their way home before the fall of night, lest they should risk the terror of an encounter with that infamous ghost. But now he was a grown man, and not at all sure of even his belief in ghosts, and besides, was it not very often said that such restless spirits really meant no harm to the living?  Nor, it was theorized, had they even in fact intended malice, could they actually do a living body any real harm, made up as they were of nothing more than so much mist and dust. But aside from any of that, Tony mused, as he looked, anxiously, one more time at the empty stretch of beach from which at any moment he expected not the phantom helmsman, but his one and only true love to materialize, if he was afraid of anything in this world, he was afraid of losing Lizzie, and that fear, and his desperate love, eclipsed all else beside it.

At last she came, flying into his arms at a run, her dark cloak billowing around her and her hair all falling down, a pale gold to rival the moon's glow. "Oh, Lizzie!" was all that he could say, and "Oh Tony!" all she could reply, and "Oh, Lizzie", and "Oh, Tony", and "Oh, Lizzie," and "Oh, Tony" and so on until they collapsed together in a heap upon the old stone floor of the tower, heedless of the cold, hard stone and of the drifting sand that would insinuate itself into every wrinkle of clothing (or exposed crevice of skin, given half the chance!) as they held and kissed each other, working themselves quickly into the mad fever of desire that they had become lately so adept at achieving. Very soon the confines and inhibiting nature of clothing to hungering hands and mouths became quite too much to bear, and one by one, items began to find themselves unbuttoned, untucked, unrolled, and untied, and warm hands found their way to even warmer parts just yearning to be caressed and stroked and squeezed, and breaths came in hot, panting bursts, filling the air above their heads with clouds of passionate vapour, soft, swirling billows of lively, concupiscent steam.

"Oh, Lizzie!" Tony moaned, his voice somewhat muffled, his face quite completely buried in the deep, fragrant cleft of her downy soft bosoms. "Tony!" she sighed, wriggling and rubbing and writhing against him. "Oh, darling, do not leave me but you first make me yours!"

"I cannot!" cried he in utmost despair, kissing the tender pink rosebuds, like marchpane sweets, so dainty, so darling, so dear on his tongue. "My sweetheart, what if I were to leave you with child, and some dread misfortune befell me at sea?" Oh, agony! He thought, his great misfortune might well be that he never be restored to normalcy again, that he would carry his eminence before him the rest of his days, painful and wooden, thick and stiff as the bosun's starter, extended like a bowsprit for any and all to see. They might use him for a hat hook! Oh gawd!

"Never say it!" cried Lizzie, holding his very heart in her hand, the blood beating wildly as she circled and squeezed. "Oh, love, is there nothing to be done?"

"Ah! Perhaps!" he gurgled, gasping for his breath as the grip of her fingers did girdle and grind. "Perhaps just a bit…faster my love!" And seized by her inspiration, among other of her parts, he did endeavor to employ his own inquisitive digits to answer her, joy for joy.

Oh, he would not ship to sea as a hat hook at all nor leave her a mother-to-be, for passion, necessity, and fingers found a way, for the time, to assuage love's urgency. And when at last they lay in each other's arms, well-spent, but still quite safely chaste, he told her, "There, you see, I will marry you yet, but in good time, and with your papa's good will, not in dishonor nor in haste."

What a pair of devoted and enraptured lovers they were, all wrapped up in their private hour. A hundred headless ghosts might have appeared and surrounded that old and lonely tower, rattling their chains and moaning their immortal despair, and these two would neither know nor care.


Go to Part Three