Belle Rock: Chapter Six

Stanley left quietly that night. We talked a little while longer, and I could not believe how little I knew of the world. And I was even further from finding out why my father had actually brought me here; he had told me in the letter that he wanted to look after me now mother was dead, but he hadn't done anything to look after me in the last decade, so if that was the extent of his intentions I would be mortally surprised, but now that hypothesis seemed even less likely because he had no money. With the amount of debt Stanley told me my father had, it was a wonder he hadn't yet had Belle Rock repossessed.

I tried to sleep, but that thought made it hard to.

I wondered if my father would be sent to debtors' prison back in London; he was, after all, still British by birth and – though I didn't know to whom he owed his debts – there may be a possibility that he would be deported back to London to serve a jail term. But that seemed unlikely, so I tried desperately to sleep.

I awoke early the following day to find that I had left the window open, allowing the cool air from the sea to press into my room which had blown out the fire. I dressed in pale lilac as quickly as I could, noticing the time as six of the clock. I knew that the best way to become the master of my fate was to do things decidedly as I wanted them, and now – that was what Stanley had told me last night – I needed to control my own destiny. I unlocked the door to the room with my familiar gold key and locked it again once I had departed. I carried my shoes as I walked down the stairs, not wanting to be heard leaving by my father. I slipped them back on at the bottom of the stairs and began towards the door, which had a huge rusted out anchor dangling ominously from the ceiling just above it. Its shackling presence made me feel distinctly uneasy.

"Lucinda?" a voice rang through the limited dawning light. I stopped dead. I heard the heavy plodding of footsteps approaching the blind corner to the left of me beyond which I knew (in my limited knowledge of this house) to be my father's study.

"Father?" I asked the blind corner.

"What are you doing up so early?" my father appeared from around the corner, stopping in his tracks at the edge of the yellow morning light. In his navy blue nightgown, he seemed to quiver as the yellow rays shone upon him, faltering a little in his steps.

"I could ask you the same question," I said, hurriedly putting my shoes on.

"Well, I asked first." He smiled lightly.

"I was planning to take a walk by the sea to try to get a bit of a feel for this place."

"Oh, okay." he swallowed. "Do be back soon, Lucinda; you need to get ready for lunch with Mr Lloyd." I nodded obediently as he finished speaking and turned to the door to exit this house.

"Father," I turned back to him ", what's going on with Mr Lloyd?"

"Nothing." He swallowed, feigning a smile.

"Okay," I said, turning and leaving the house. And it was with that lie that I knew all that Stanley Venture had said had been true. I suppose it hurt me a little; my father seemed totally incapable of telling me the truth, and a man I had known but a day could offer me so much more honesty than he could. That, though, is how things are; truth comes from those uninvested in the outcome of that knowledge. I shut the door behind me with a loud bang and headed off at speed towards the sea. The sea – what a complex thing! Reminiscent of adventure and possibility in its vast, glassy majesty and yet so hopelessly limiting in its capacity to force one to remain on the land. I suppose I was enchanted by its inevitable liminality. But then again, if enchantment of the heart is something occurring to one who loves what lies before them and sees only the good, then I was simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible possibility the sea offered me.

And so I changed my path away from the dirt track of rocks and rubble leading down to the water and towards a worn, tired path leading back away from my father's house and over the little hills towards the village of Lower Belle Rock in which the people that worked for my father resided. Their tiny cottages and shacks were formed of wood (which my limited knowledge of construction tells me in wet air rots) and stone, tiny cracking chimneys formed of rocks too with dark smoke of coal fires and burning driftwood tossed up by the ocean gushing out of them like blood from a fresh wound all clumped together so disordered I was sure that there had been no plan under which these were all built. People dressed in greying clothes came and went, hurrying between the huts, all inevitably tired – exhausted, even – hoping that a whaling voyage would set off in due course. I knew better.

"Miss Bradbury," a woman in grey timidly chattered up to me ", do you know when The Raven will be ready to sail again?"

"I'm sorry, I don't." I shook my head, wishing I could give her a better answer.

"Oh," she looked down at the wet ground ", I'm sorry to bother you, Miss, it's just that there's been no whaling voyages for a few months now, and everyone is worrying and out of money and thinking we must be nearing on ready to pick up the anchor soon."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to ask my father; I have no idea about the business." Which, after all, was the grim truth of my existence.

Recommend Write a ReviewReport