Jorge Joestar (Light Novel)

Chapter 7: Airplanes

The English were unpleasant in their own very English way. It was as if they lived at the top of the world, and naturally looked down on everyone else; 'looked down' in the sense that everyone else was clearly beneath them so what else could they do? No spite or guilt, just...'Why doesn't everyone else try harder?' There was a hint of warmth to their contempt that I found especially deplorable. How could such scumbags sit pretending to be gentlemen, acting as if they made the world spin while sipping tea and discussing the state of the world? If this was the English, the Spaniards back on the Canary Islands were far better. They were cocky and violent but never tried to pretend they were in the right. They never explained to you how their tyranny was based on logical superiority, and besides, if they left the trash to themselves they'd never amount to anything, yes? I'd never realized that true arrogance presented itself as elegance. True class, to my mind, was evident without resorting to pretense. In that sense, I found no true gentlemen or ladies in the Joestar family's ancestral home, Wastewood. Every single one of them treated our apparent differences as a means by which they could once again justify their own superiority. The Joestar family's recent contributions to Wastewood history had been the slaughter of the head of the family and a great number of policeman by an adopted son, followed by a fire that burned the manor to the ground, and then the surviving heir had married only to die in a shipwreck on his honeymoon. Even once my mother returned, all we got was: Eh? The Joestar girl survived? My, you had a child and lived on your own in the Canary Islands...how sturdy of you. So you've come 'home'? Although you never really lived here, did you? Hmm.

Well, that hospital your father ran was handed over to new management quiet some time ago, so you really have no family here at all. It's been a burned heap of rubble for twenty years, I never imagined seeing the Joestar manor rebuilt. Oh, you know the president of the Speedwagon company? He's helping you rebuild, is he? He's a bachelor, and you have two children...it must be tough.

Oh? Really? The girl isn't yours? Not even of noble birth? I see.

Well, you're still Pendleton's daughter, and a fine woman...although it's been much too long since your wedding to really reenter society. And your son doesn't seem to fit in at the club. But enough about practical matters, tell us more about life on the island. You must have had so many adventures! My mother just smiled, and nodded, and said that it had all been quite a bizarre adventure, and since staying at home led to nothing but this sort of neighborly assault, she quickly began commuting to London. In the city was the hospital my mother's father had founded, now even larger. Graham Pendleton had retired, and the hospital was now run by someone else, but the controlling interest in the stock was owned by mother and my grandfather, and she had stayed in contact with him the entire time we were on the Canary Islands. My mother started her own company not far from the hospital, effectively transferring the headquarters of the Star Mark Tradings Company she'd founded from the Canary Islands to London. The office back on the islands remained, and additional ships from England increased the volume they could trade; England and Spain being presently engaged in a struggle for control of the seas this arrangement allowed her to play both sides, purchasing goods in Spain to sell in England, leading to a steady increase in profits. Both mother and Penelope, who was working with her, seemed full of life and fun, while I had transferred to my father's old school, Hugh Hudson High, and was being bullied again. Judging by the number of people who called me Jorge, the fact that I was a fallen aristocrat amused my classmates endlessly, but at the same time the economic success my mother had was impossible not to notice locally, and made them all frantically jealous. On top of that it was very easy to make fun of anyone with a single-mother household, and well, quite a number of things were said to me. I never really minded what they said about me; when they couldn't get a reaction out of me they got mad, and one idiot fumbled his way into insulting my mother, which I could not abide.