Chapter 2: Deluge

The ocean was calm as usual, with small, foamy waves gently crumbling on the surf as Ronald strolled leisurely along the beach, taking deep breaths of the fresh, salty air–much different and much more preferable to the stench that lingered over the damp trenches, the memory of which now seemed very far away indeed. How long ago had it been? He thought, but decided to not dwell upon it, choosing rather to focus on the pleasure of the moment.

He didn't get much time to savor it, though, for there must have been some imperceptible change in the air, and while a moment before he had been calm and relaxed, now he felt suddenly nervous and panicked for no apparent reason. He turned, nervously, back and forth on the surf, trying to decide what to do, when he heard a great roar, and the sea that had been calm a minute ago now raised itself into a wave of monstrous proportions, climbing higher and higher, a mountain of water. Ronald turned and ran–a futile action, but what else could he do? The giant wave crashed down, rushing over the land and sweeping Ronald away with it….

He woke up gasping, startling himself and the other patients in the ward. After taking a few grateful gulps of air, he relaxed again, leaning back on his pillow to look up at the gray hospital ceiling.

"Pyrexia of unknown origin," the doctors had called it, but to everyone else it was simply known as "trench fever." He groaned, feeling suddenly dizzy, and closed his eyes as the images of his time at the front refreshed themselves in his memory–shells bursting, gas spreading, frenzied night missions cutting the barbed wire, the masses of corpses strewn between the lines, slowly rotting in the dreary rains that plagued them on the Western Front…he forced his eyes open, trying to put those images out of his mind. He wasn't at the front anymore, he reminded himself. He was in Birmingham, England, recovering from the irritating lice-borne illness he had contracted on the field. In a way, he hoped that he wouldn't recover so quickly–every day spent in the hospital was a day spent away from the stale horror that was happening in West mainland Europe.

Ronald grabbed his notebook, which was lying on the stand beside his bed, and turned to a blank page. Throughout his time on sick leave, he'd taken the time to brush up on his Spanish and French, and had even begun to teach himself a little Russian. It had been annoying him lately that he could deliver a crushing rebuttal in Latin at Oxford debates and enchant his friends with the ancient Norse tales in the original Icelandic, but could barely hold a normal conversation with his French colleagues without lapsing into his bad habit of mumbling and stumbling over his own words. But all language lessons aside, he was mostly just glad to have time to work on his personal projects. His notebook was full of notes on Qenya grammar and roots–he had a sizable vocabulary by now, and he'd even begun writing some simple poems in it. As he stared at the blank page in his notebook, however, instead of writing he began to draw long, curling lines that eventually turned into the image of a tidal wave ravaging a landscape–the dream that had troubled him that night, and many nights before.

Ronald couldn't remember the first time that nightmare had come to haunt his sleep, but it had haunted him for a long time–always the same, a giant wave would appear out of nowhere and engulf the land. It had terrified him as a child, and had never gone away. Now, as an adult, he decided that he should try to understand it, to make some sense out of it. What could it possibly mean? Was there a story behind it, long forgotten?

He laughed to himself, quietly. His work as a philologist had taught him to ask such questions whenever he encountered a strange or interesting word or phrase. The simplest suffix or root could have a long and noble history behind it that could easily be overlooked if taken at face value. Because of this, Ronald was not one to view anything on a superficial level, even if what he was investigating was a strange recurring dream. He scribbled some notes next to his doodle:

Great wave, recurring dream–deluge. THE Deluge. From diluvium, Latin. Noah's flood–Flood legends around the world….

He scribbled some more, and inevitably his mind drifted to his largest and most personal project of all–his English Mythology. He wondered if, somehow, he could turn his nightmare into a story that could become a part of that mythology–after all, every culture had a flood legend–why couldn't he put his own twist on it? He jotted down this idea excitedly. He had only a handful of vaguely related stories for his mythology, but he hoped to someday bring them together into something more coherent, grand, something worthy of his motherland–for of course, despite being born in South Africa, England would always be his motherland.

Motherland. The word made him remember a rather amusing discussion he had had with Arthur Kirkland about the genders of nations.

"But countries and continents are always feminine," Ronald had argued. "We refer to our native lands as our mother nations, and the personifications are always female: there's Mariana of France, Columbia of America, Fjallkonan the Lady of Iceland, and don't forget, it's Britannia who rules the waves."

"I never understood how that ridiculous convention started." Arthur had grumbled. "Why can't it be 'fatherland' for once? Who decided that all nations must be female? For all you know it may be just the opposite."

Ronald would have waved his hands above his head in frustration if he hadn't had to be afraid of German machine guns. "I don't know! It's more poetic and proper to refer to them as 'she!' Does it really even matter! It's not as if countries are like people, you know, having a definite sex! Good heavens, I'm glad that English doesn't have feminine and masculine nouns like in the Romance languages!"

Arthur had smirked, making a strange expression under those bushy eyebrows of his that Ronald hadn't been able to figure out, but mercifully they ended the conversation and never brought the subject up a gain in the remaining twelve hours that Arthur was with them.

Ronald wondered where he had gone after leaving the front, if he really was a diplomat as he had claimed, and a thousand other things–there were several curious things about that man, Arthur–the fact that he seemed familiar with Beowulf was one, but also how the captain had suddenly deferred to him on that last day. That was odd. But despite those oddities, there was definitely something about Arthur Kirkland that Ronald, as analytical as he was, just couldn't place, something that had made Ronald feel comfortable telling him all about his absurd ambitions of creating a mythology, something that had made him sure that Arthur wouldn't laugh or shake his head at such a far-fetched prospect, unlike Graham or the others.

Come to think of it, he'd hardly spoken a word about his project to anyone outside of his circle of close friends, the Tea Club Barrovian Society, T.C.B.S. for short. They had understood him far better than anyone else he knew, even more than Edith did. With fondness he remembered the days they had spent sneaking tea into the library to have their discussions and critiques on each other's poetry–good old Rob, Geoffrey and Christopher had always been there for him, and they had all firmly believed that the four of them could–and would–create something, important, something far greater than the sum of them all…

But now Rob and Geoffrey were dead, killed in action, and Christopher was too far away to be of any comfort, leaving Ronald on his own, wondering if it had all been just a foolish fantasy all along.

No, it wasn't. Don't talk like that. Tucked into Ronald's notebook was the last letter he had gotten from Geoffrey mere days before his death, urging him to remember everything their little club had sought to do and create. Ronald imagined Geoffrey sitting calmly in the empty seat the window, smiling as he talked.

"You can't give up on us," said his friend. "It's your job now to carry our torch and create what we were all striving for. The shrapnel might have got to us first, but the T.C.B.S. lives through you. "

"I can't do it all by myself, Ronald protested. "if you're talking about my grand mythology, I–I don't even know. It's such a ridiculous idea in the first place, I could never take it to the heights that we wanted. The Tea Club is dead, Geoff–and come to think of it, so are you!"

"You always had quite the imagination, John Ronald." The Geoffrey in his laughed heartily. "I'm sure you'll put it to great use. Don't stop writing! Create your story, for poor old Rob and Chris and I–no, not just for us. Write a legendarium for England to pride itself on!"

Tappa-tap-tap-tap-tappa-tap.

Ronald woke up slowly this time, to the sound of rain pelting his window. The chair next to the window was empty, which confused him–hadn't he just been talking to Geoffrey a moment ago? No, that couldn't be right–Geoffrey Smith was dead, and he was gripping his last letter in his hand.

Just another dream.

The rain was getting heavier, pounding the window as if his Deluge would be coming in the form of water from heaven, not the sea, but John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, warm and dry in his hospital bed, was already forming in his mind a story to accompany his great wave– still in its development stage, but the basic idea already there. A story that would fit in the same world as his others, to go along with a poem he had written about a mariner on a flying ship carrying a star into the sky….

"Write a legendarium for England to pride itself on!" Geoffrey had said in Ronald's dreams, and Ronald was not one to ignore a friend.

I will, he thought to himself as he folded up the letter and tucked it back into its page in his notebook. I will.

Yay, it's here! Took some liberties with it, since there isn't much info on the T.C.B.S., let alone the individual members, but the letter from Geoffrey B. Smith is real and you can read part of it in Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien. I would have included it here, but unfortunately I'm out of town and don't have my book with me. England isn't really in this chapter but he will be the next! I felt bad for not putting him in too much, so I had to put the actual conversation that happened between them in the last chapter–that was one of the funniest things to write in a mostly serious story. Stay tuned for the next chapter, and thanks for reading!