Quinn: An Excerpt (I)

Well, here's all I got for you fine folks thus far. I know it's pathetic, but I hope to catch up this week, now that midterms are finally over. And I actually have more than this written--my total word count is 5,209 at present, while what I am posting here is only 2,442 words. But it is the best place to insert a break for posting purposes, I think. I'll post more tomorrow (hopefully), and the plan is to actually have the chapter finished by then, too. We'll see!

Comments and critiques are eagerly welcome, but keep in mind that this is of course a first draft Nanowrimo novel, and that any ideas on improvement will be kept in storage until after November is over. Also, although I have a general idea of what will happen in the story, most of it is in fact a mystery to me, so I'm kinda making it up as I go along. Like I wasn't expecting this narrator to come along and demand the writing of the first chapter, but demand it he did, and I'm letting him do what he likes. Quinn will just have to wait for his turn to take over the narrative, it seems :)

Also, I will NOT be posting the story in its entirety on this blog. Bits and snippets, yes, but not the whole thing, due to my being unwilling to publish any serious writing in full on a website where anyone can read it and, theoretically, steal it. Yes, I know I am paranoid, but I have reason from past experience to be! If you still want to read the story word for word, shoot me an email at cpsk@hawaii.edu, let me know who you are, and I'll send you an invite to the private writers' blog that I've set up, "The Radish Room". I will be posting the entirety of Quinn on that blog, since it's secure.

Quinn: Prologue

It had been many years since I had last seen Mr. Julian Quinn, and as is the nature of such flighty things, my memories of him, once so cherished, had long since been forgotten--still there in my mind, surely, firm and unassuming as stones in a riverbed, but softened, worn faded and shapeless, as all things eventually are, by time. Looking down through the flowing waters of fifty years that ran between us, I found them grown smooth also, slipping from my fingers like minnows. Such reminders of age do not rest easily upon me: the sensation of the dull cotton of my brain gathering dust and moonbeams and my bones gathering the cold. So it is that even now that I approach the age at last when a man's best source of entertainment is plumbing for those river stones to examine them anew in the sunset of his days, I have always avoided those sunken memories of the man with an instinct something akin to that of a wary beast still tendering old hurts. And, considering the half-century of silence that I had not been alone in building between us, I suppose he felt something of the same regarding memories of me.

How foolish men are, and old men most of all! When we were boys together, I might have laughed at it--nay, I surely would have made merry over the notion. Now, however, I can see the tragedy of the thing.

It was morning when the letter came, tucked quietly into the packet of the daily post and papers that my youngest granddaughter brought to me in my study. I did not immediately take notice of her arrival, for I was absorbed in my latest writing--a good story, I thought it then, certainly my best since Phoebus. Unlike my old myth fancies and poetic prattlings, however, this was a story set here in my own England, in that place and time when I had been young. Even muses, it would seem, grow tired and begin to yearn for their beginnings again. 

Mary greeted me merrily that morning, I remember, lingering a brief spell to keep me company and to clear away the breakfast things that still cluttered my desk; the cold tea dregs and the plate, the knife and the napkin. She had dressed already for work, fresh-faced and bright-eyed, her hair clipped short and curled in the fashion that most pleases women these days, the hem of her grey smock of a dress frisking about her calves. Such a poor thing for women to wear, to my mind, though little Mary is quite proud of it, and indeed that morning her dress’s many black buttons shone like eyes. She had plainly polished them the night before. Those buttons are all the fripperies she and the other women of her age are allowed in these dark days, though they wear them almost as proudly as they flaunt the slimness of their ankles from beneath their dress hems. But still there are times when in my dozing hours I catch like butterflies the memories of silk and lace and taffeta and ribbons, skirts wide and rustling, hair braided and bound and bedecked with flowers, and I think I see my Mary as she should be, as girls her age were in the days of my youth, and then I cannot but pity her. Some thought of this kind was in my mind as I set aside my pen to greet her, and we spoke some little time together. I recall that she spoke something of the cold, as winter drew close, and I teased her gently as was my wont as regarding her ankles, which would have been so scandalous in my own time. She only replied as she did to most things: with a smile that dimpled so deeply, it could have held rainwater. It was a smile like the one I had once smiled as a boy, which may, I suppose, also account for the fondness I have for the child.

And all those careless, precious moments, the letter waited for me, so close I could have touched it without fully extending my arm, and yet I knew nothing of it. It waited silently and patiently, and I felt no such chill or premonition such as I have read of in the old novels; no half-remembered voice whispered to me from within the yellow paper; no unconscious compulsion preyed upon my mind, urging me to open it, to read the words. My life, at least, has never been like a novel, no matter how many I have written.

It was only once Mary had gone that I turned my attention at last to the few letters she had left. She had flung open the shutters at the window to make way for the sunlight, so that the mahogany of my desk that had been so black moments before now bore whorls of red and gold in its glossy heart, and a brilliant white fire was kindled in the reflective sides of my tobacco tin, though the letters remained as they had been, pale and unremarkable. I slit them open methodically but swiftly, impatient to return to my writing, not caring even to glance at the names scribed upon the envelopes themselves, but instead scanning each envelope’s contents swiftly and coming to my own conclusions before I reached each signature.

The third envelope was of excellent quality, doubly impressive in light of the paper shortages, as it seemed to my author’s fingers nearly as thick and sturdy as parchment, and creamy and pleasantly textured. I suppose I fancied it some sort of note from the government, or perhaps from the publishing firm; I do not remember now. I do recall clearly that I slit it open easily enough, withdrew from its chrysalis a single sheet of paper, and tossed the envelope aside to join the other papers in the clutter on my desk. The paper it had borne, in sharp contrast to its elegant wrapping, was a casualty of the war effort, of cheap make and no longer than the span of my hand, and no wider that I could reach from forefinger to thumb. In the corner of the sheet was written the date: 17 October, 1915. Underneath it was an address, a London address, of all places. And there at the top of the page, in the cramped handwriting that had once been as familiar to me as my own breathing, the cramped, precise hand that had so aggravated our schoolmaster when we were boys: My dear John . . .

I have said some memories wear smooth as river stones. Yet there are some, when snatched from the water, which are found to be exactly as they were a thousand years ago--it was only the moss, the distortion of the stream current, the trick of the light glancing from the surface, that made you see them as they never truly were, that made you forget. 

My God! How his face was instantly there before me, and not merely his face, but him, the man in his entirety, just as he had been in our glory days as students and young men first stepping out into the world, sharper than I had thought any memory could be, complete from the dark gloss of his carefully curled hair to the scar from a pox in childhood still evident upon his chin to the defensive way he hid his hands deep within his grey trouser pockets. I know not what expression was upon my face then, nor can I recollect leaping to my feet and calling for coat and cab--though my daughter and her family later assured me that I did--so suddenly and completely was my conscious mind overwhelmed and astounded.

Still, it was not many minutes later, I am sure, that I emerged from a state which was probably the closest I have ever come to fainting in all my life to discover myself seated in an electric carriage, rattling over the twisting, sordid byways of old London town, with the cyclists and horse-drawn cabs and heavily bundled pedestrians flashing past. I had no collar at my throat nor hat upon my head; my coat was in a bad state of disarray; and I still clutched the wondrous paper tightly within my fist. I discovered, when I shifted my position and attempted to straighten out my rumpled coat, that my walking stick had been set carefully against my leg. Later I was to discover that I had insisted upon going out alone, saying only that I needed to meet a friend, and that I would not listen to the confused protests of my daughter and her family. They had at last given way to my will, but my daughter had made sure to set the stick in the cab after me, along with a goodly amount of money in my left pocket. I did not much regard it at the time, being so caught up in a sudden boyish spirit of adventure and intent only upon urging the driver to drive faster to the address which I could show him upon the note I held, and to take the shortest way. And always before my eyes like a ghost the face and form of the young Julian Quinn of my boyhood days. It seems absurd to me now that I never once gave a thought to the rather obvious fact that Quinn would have now become an old man even as I have. In my fancy I saw him as he had looked in his student days, when he was as dear to me as though he had been one of my own brothers; I saw him working by candlelight, carefully writing out his letter summoning me back to a happier past, those bitter differences that had broken our friendship in anger showing all forgiven upon his expressive brow, and his ugly hand firmly signing the letter, Julian Quinn.

Once the long-suffering little man at the wheel had managed to convince me that he could urge the vehicle no swifter than he had already urged it, and that he was certain of the address and we should get there in the speediest possible time, I turned my attention at last to Quinn’s note, and read once and then again the actual body of the words he had written to me, as I had not managed to get past the opening salutation previously. It is strange that I should have recognized his hand so easily and immediately in the characters of my name, written firmly on the penny paper with a pen that was obviously old, by the way the ink sputtered and bled and then ran dry upon the page. The poor ink-flow rendered his handwriting, which had always been notorious among acquaintances for its illegibleness, nigh impossible to puzzle out, and not all of that was due entirely to the pen. Age was evident in his lettering just as I had noticed it becoming evident in mine. Still, it had been enough, and as I puzzled eagerly through his words now in their entirety I became aware suddenly for the first time of their import and meaning. I set out here for the reader’s benefit the letter in full, copied directly from the original by my own hand.

My dear John, it began; My dear John, pray do not be alarmed that I should choose to write to you now after so many countless years of silence. I had no other recourse left to me, now that Diana has died. These past four months have been a misery and a torment to me, and I have no one at all left to me in all this wide world save you alone, an unhappy truth that I hope you will forgive me for burdening you with. It is this loneliness, this strange emptiness of the mind, that weighs most heavily upon me all these dreary days, and the screaming of the sirens and the smoke rising from grand old Europa do nothing to give me peace. I wish I could speak to you again in person, John. It would be such a comfort to me. Yet in my heart I believe--nay, I know--that this is after all the best method of conveying my farewells to you, for ever were you too stubborn for your own good. You would not understand if I were to appear upon your doorstep only to bid you farewell, and I am afraid that perhaps my own courage could not withstand the ordeal. It is easier to explain myself thus, with pen and ink and paper, not having to see your expression as I confess myself.

John, when you read these words, I shall be dead. 

Do not mourn for me, my dear fellow; I have been far too poor a friend to you for any tears. If, however, you cherish at all any part of our friendship that once was, I entreat you to take the key I shall enclose with this note and go swift as you can to the address indicated upon the back of this sheet. The door you shall find awaiting you there will open to the key. Upon the table you will see to your left, you will find a manuscript. This too is waiting for you, John. It is all I have to bequeath, and there is no other man left living in this world to whom I can bequeath it, nor indeed to whom I would wish to bequeath it. Do with it as you will--burn it, print it, bury it, but only first swear to me that you shall read it. It is a hard thing to die alone, and it will be a comfort to me to know that there will be a man left living after me who will know the truth of my life, and perhaps find some gladness in it. This is perhaps only the flattering of an old man’s vanity, but I shall sleep the easier for it.

I remain, sir, your servant,

Julian Quinn

PS-. If I might make so bold as to make one last request of you, John--Diana lies buried in the _______ cemetery, beneath the ash sapling on the west side, and beside her lies my father in his grave. If you would visit every so often to think of them, and pray for me, I should be ever grateful. J.Q.