The Last Romantics

The Scene At The Shipyard

I excused myself just as soon as I could, rushing up to my room to be graced with silence and perhaps the ability to forget about this interruption for a while. I almost considered writing to Tobias, perhaps explaining to him my grievous mistake of leaving University, for I had fallen in with a crow di still did not understand. I wanted him to forget his glorification of Victor Trevor, outright and immediately, as I was exposed to so many sides of the poet that I did not know which one to believe. He seemed to me to be a man playing, seductive, trickster, only concerned with himself and his own needs. He kept me alive, but for what? He invited me into his house with what purpose? All those letters back and forth, those conversations in the darkened club, the way he cradled me in his arms when I was on the doors of death. For what? I lay in bed thinking about that particular question, awake until the time when the house came alive with sounds I could not understand. Starting around ten thirty there was an intense, almost rhythmic banging against the wall near the dresser. Loud slamming, almost as if someone was taking a bat and clubbing it against the paint. I couldn't comprehend what was happening in those days, and oh how that sound scared me! I remember covering the blankets over my head, worried the entire building was going to collapse. I learned later that the wall behind my dresser was shared by the headboard of my dear host's bed, and I learned even later on that such mysterious sounds happen at such hours of the night, more frequently than we would like to admit. 

 Mr. Trevor went straight to business with me, but whether this was an attempt to get me out of the house or an actual poetic exercise I could not tell. He claimed to want to grow my skills, allow me to begin to understand the world around me, and to do that I was tasked with going out and finding something mundanely haunting. Those were his exact words, up for my own interpretation, and I decided that I was on the lookout for something people saw every day, though if you focused on it for a while you may very well get the chills. After finding this strange occurrence, I was supposed to document my feeling son the matter, and then turn it into a poem. Alright then, it sounded like a legitimate claim and a reliable exercise. Perhaps this was how Mr. Trevor got his start, through exploring the London streets around him. I tried my best to memorize the address of my new home, for while my books had survived the rain storm Mr. Trevor's address card had either been lost or destroyed and I could not rely on it to take me back safely. After staring at the street name for some time, as well as identifying features of the house itself for reference, I set off down the sunny London streets alone. I was dressed in the same outfit that I had fled my house in, not very surprising considering it was the only outfit that actually fit me, though this time I was not afraid of the rain, nor of the chill. The streets offered me a new sense of freedom, and I felt as I strolled amongst the crowds that I was at last part of a unit, part of a strange and intermixed whole. It didn't take me long to find something mundanely haunting, in fact it only took me to the first public bench to find a homeless woman sitting filthy and starving, huddling her possessions to her chest with a rather maddened look about her. This frightened me, though however mundane it was I figured it frightened everyone. The homeless were a group worthy of some documentation, though they were not exactly the thing I was looking to write about. And so I moved on, walking slowly down the streets and looking very much like a tourist as I strained my eyes, looking around at all angles so as to find some inspiration for my new task. The next thing I saw that perked my interest was a man walking slowly down the walk, hobbling in a very particular fashion and falling down upon one of his legs with a hard thunk. He had an artificial leg, perhaps a war injury, though was dressed in such a way as to reassure me that he still had money. A wounded general, perhaps back from India? Yes this was haunting, the fact that he had given his leg for the betterment of our nation (an ironic prophesy, which I never understood until now), however it was not all together mundane. This man was drawing attention, people noticed him, and so I decided he didn't quite fit my category. And just as with the homeless woman, I moved on. There were so many thought provoking aspects of the London streets that I simply couldn't pick one, and I found myself walking all the way through the town until at last I found the river Thames, creeping slowly with its own filth and offering a rather dead end. I could walk the boarder of it, I could climb the bridges, but for a moment I sat and stared at the many ships docked along the harbor, large steam vessels loaded with figures rushing about and cargo in great multitudes. I paused, considering what I saw in front of me, and realized at last that the seafaring ships of the London shipyards were precisely the category in which I was searching. They were something that no one noticed unless they were a part of the trade, just another disturbance in a Londoners everyday life. Though look at them! Gigantic vessels, destined to venture from these familiar shores and into the vast open ocean, making their way through storm and treachery so as to reach the other side of the country, the continent, even perhaps the world! This disgusting shipyard, filled with pollutants like oil and ballast water, the rust coating the inside of the ships and barnacles plastered about the outside...a place where no distinguished gentleman could ever linger for long, proven to be a safe haven for these poor men, happy just to be able to set their feet on dry land. This miserable place was to them like another life, a happier life, and while they rejoiced to be back in England, back where they could visit with their families and friends, well everyone who never left looked upon them as if they were nothing more than scurvy inflicted, unshaven beasts. They were perfectly mundane, and perfectly haunting. And so, deciding that I had my topic before me, I sat on one of the benches in front of a very old looking steamboat, looking as if it had just made port and was being unloaded onto the docks. It was covered with men of all different varieties, Londoners and foreigners, speaking a variety of broken English. They were loading large crates onto the docks, heaving them with great effort so as to be carted away to be sold. They had done their duty, brought this cargo in from who knows where! And here I was, the only one who seemed to notice them like the brave souls they were. Interesting how no one else stopped to ponder the seaman's troubles. I brought out a little notebook, supplied to me by Mr. Trevor as my own had been partially destroyed in my runaway adventure. For a while I scrawled down my observations, looking at each man individually and trying to determine the differences between them all, what made each individual man special. For a while I stared at them, watching as they unloaded box after box after box, and after a while I had documented about five pages of observations and reactions. Nothing of much variety happened in the duration of my visit, at least not until another figure appeared from the streets, a woman looking so out of place in the midst of the sweaty men that I felt obligated to focus on her completely. She had every distinction of being wealthy, wearing a long white dress that I really hated to see get dirtied at the bottom by the filth of the docks. She covered her head with a small hat, complimenting her blonde hair in a very stylish sense, though the look on her face was perhaps the most beautiful thing about her appearance. She looked as if she had never seen a more beautiful sight than that rusted piece of junk, and she stood quite next to the edge of the docks so as to lean forward and yell something towards one of the men, perhaps her husband just returned from sea. I sat quietly, observing as her voice was lost in the river wind, though it seemed to have been heard by the person of interest. All of the sudden one of the smaller men perked up from his task, lifting his head away from the boxes and barrels so as to see the woman who was calling his name. He was a stout, strong looking man with his head hidden underneath a small cap, and other than his peculiar stance he really didn't have any remarkable features that I could tell from where I sat, so far removed from the scene. A look of utmost joy flashed upon the sailor's face, something I noted immediately, and he rushed off of the ship, jumping from the edge of the ship onto the docks without even a ladder of assistance, embracing her eagerly. This must have been their first meeting, for their hug lasted for quite some time, and it was quite strange to watch such radiant a woman being held by a man who looked as if he had been through the chimneys of London. I was sure that when they parted her white dress would be stained with the debris and dirt from his clothes, an unavoidable truth when dealing with the laborers of our nation. I could tell by the couple's greeting that they were not married, and however passionate their embrace was I could not even tell if they were related or perhaps just good friends. He held her hand when they talked, though now I could see there was awkwardness between them, as if they were courting but never got around to declaring anything serious. It was an interesting character study, not quite haunting or mundane, however I wrote it down in my notebook all the same. For a while they talked, until a gruff voice from the ship called out a harsh "Watson!" and the man was forced to return to his active duties. He checked his pocket watch, told something to the woman, and then rushed off back the way he had come, this time much less eagerly as he rejoined his crew and went about his work. Out of curiosity I checked my watch as well, seeing as though it was just around eleven thirty, and wondered what the significance of that might be. Perhaps this Watson fellow had promised to go to lunch with the woman, and begged her to wait until he was released for that very purpose. Just as I predicted the woman looked around a bit apprehensively, feeling lost now that her only companion had vanished back to his duties. Oh the fool I was! I did not think to look away as she began searching the docks, and before I knew it our eyes met and she smiled, taking my attention as a sign that she was welcome to share my bench. Well I wasn't all together opposed to sharing; it was just the fact that I had some more important duties to do rather than socializing. I was curious how these men interacted, and was trying my best to listen to whatever scraps of conversation I could gather from the blowing wind. Before I knew it the woman had come up to sit beside me, at first staying rather quiet before she noticed that I too was staring at the ship.