tumbldown stories

Bowman's Luck

(originally published October 2016)

"Seriously? Never?" Speince pushed back, an eyebrow cocked in an attitude of sneering disbelief.

Clarke rolled his whisky glass morosely between his hands. "Never, even as I said it the first time. You are aware, certainly, of how little luck with women I have even around here when they're looking out for a man of their own people, rather than abroad where they're listening to a foreigner out of bare courtesy, and I find that employing prostitutes consistently creates more problems than it solves." He set the glass down with a click, the iceberglet inside spinning slick across the bottom. "So, never have I had a woman on my travels, and I'm quite certain that this, likely, neither will nor should change."

Speince rocked his chair forward with a clunk. "Oh, the hell with it! It's not that I don't understand your meaning, old sod, but come on, live a little! It needn't be a girl in every port, but what's the fun of travel without some secret assignation – some romance fueled with more passion compressed into less time – some pretty young thing who can cherish playing the whore with a gentleman, then go back to her own circle with never breathing a word, savoring her own adventure in secret? Personally, I can't even consider I've visited a town until I've had some maid make a pillow of my chest there – anything else, you can read it as well out of a bloody guidebook."

"I will keep to my guide-books," Clarke said, looking down into his glass, "and their limited courses, not needing to supplement them with biology and chemistry and botany texts, for their chapters on penicillum mold, chlorate of mercury, and teas of pennyroyal."

Speince flushed bright red and stood bolt upright. "Damn you, Clarke! Your persistent ill luck or ill nature is no excuse to go slandering me like that; I'll let this one drop for the sake of our friendship, but if you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, I swear that –"

"Now, now," Bowman interjected, turning away from the bar to lay a hand on Speince's shoulder, gesturing to Clarke with the other. "There's really no need for that, is there, gentlemen? I can understand your offense, Speince, at Clarke's rather intemperate words, but at the bottom, he's right; there's risk as well as reward in seeking amorous adventures."

Speince waved a hand. "Diseased, ugly whores? Needy, greedy servingwomen desperate to present a child and extort an income? Bah! I've seen them all, and can spot the type at a hundred paces."

Bowman smiled a wry little smile. "That wasn't quite what I was meaning. Now, if you gentlemen will join me in another glass, I can explain what I did mean – and how at a time when my luck seemed to fail me in this regard, I might have gotten the luckiest of all." He took a sip of his whisky, and paused as though collecting his thoughts.

"It was some years ago that I was in a blue funk – Julia, blast her, had believed some rotten story that her sister carried about me and canceled our engagement on the very eve of the wedding – and needed to get away, into some earnest solitude, both to clear my head and to remove myself from society and its relentless nattering about my affairs. And so, as I usually did, I sank myself into the mountains of Snowdonia, the deepest and darkest fastnesses of Wales: sheep would be my conversation partners, the mountain slopes my boulevards, the dense forests and bright clear streams my apartments and bedchamber. I had booked a room at a private lodge deep in the mountains, a place to leave my motor and such sundries as I could return to by turns, when I grew tired of the wilderness and required a shave and a civilizing wash, but in driving to it, I must have taken a wrong turn on one of the narrow and winding roads, barely more than sheep-tracks, that are the only way to get anywhere in the province, because I missed any sign of the place, found myself entirely off the map that I had brought, and was driving along in what soon became complete and utter darkness.