Love, Sex, and Decent Ale
or: Nobody Stays for Long in Tortuga
JackSparrow was spectacularly hung-over. Waking up in the back-alley of the King's Thing Tavern and Inn had become a regular habit of Jack's when he was "between ships", as it were, but that did surely not make it any more enjoyable. Like so many back-alleys of Tortuga, this one was full of garbage and smelled horribly of something possibly a few hundred years past its sell-by date.
"Heads up," came a voice from the back door of the tavern, and yet another bucketful of refuse was chucked in Jack's direction.
"Thank you," Jack answered sarcastically, holding his throbbing head. He was thinking about getting up – but then again, maybe not – when a curvy, red-haired woman stepped out of the door.
"You're still here," she observed, looking at Jack with distaste, diluted, possibly by a cup of the strong grog, or perhaps her own lack of sleep. Standing directly in front of him, she held out a hand. Jack grabbed it and hauled himself up. Disgustedly, the woman pulled her hand away and wiped it on her tatty green skirt, frowning, "Don't touch me, drunk. At least not until you've paid me."
"Paid you?" Jack was now thoroughly confused, in addition to seeing double.
"Pay me," the woman repeated, her shaped brows furrowing, "for last night." She put a hand on her hips and held out the other, persistently.
"Last night?" Jack's clouded brain tried to make sense of it all. "Last night – did we –" he gestured.
"Have sex? Yes, and if I remember correctly – which I most certainly do – you owe me fifteen pounds, not a penny less."
"I don't remember-" Jack broke off. He began to stumble away, his customary swagger exaggerated by his current state.
"Yeah, well, you wouldn't, would you, you were dead out of your mind, drunk, alright, so pay up!" she insisted, jumping in his path.
He paused, looking into her face, strongly set. "What's your name?"
"Aurelia," she replied after a moment, thrown a bit off guard.
"Right. Aurelia. Do you know who I am?" She rolled her eyes. "I'm Captain Jack Monterey. Got it?"
"Look, I don't care who you are-"
"You DON'T CARE!" Jack was absolutely livid. He yelled, "you don't care that you are practically HARASSING the infamous Captain JACK SPARROW, SCOURGE of the Royal Navy!"
"No, I'd have to say I DON'T," Aurelia shouted back.
Incensed, but unwilling to strike her lest he prove himself a senseless drunk, Jack spluttered for a moment, then stalked away angrily. Thankfully, Aurelia had enough common sense not to follow him. Besides, she knew he'd be coming back into the King's Thing soon enough, where she worked as a beer wench as well as a prostitute. She'd get her money then.
As for Jack, he stormed down the street. The nerve of that woman! A woman he didn't even know! Trying to make him pay for sex he didn't even remember!
"It probably never happened! That Aureneena – or whatever her name is – was trying to take advantage of a poor, defenceless hung-over man!" he ranted later, to his friend Thomas Gibbs, as they sat in another pub, the Boar's Head Inn. Jack took a swig of his tankard of beer and instantly spat it out. "This beer is disgusting. Not like at the old King's Thing." He frowned sulkily, like a spoiled child.
"Jack, I have a very hard time seeing you as poor and defenceless," Gibbs grinned over his pint. "Anyway, it can't be so bad you have to compel yourself to drink this swill, when there's good brew just down the road! Come on, mate, let's go to the King's Thing. Eh?"
"We can't!" Jack retorted, "the King's Thing is where that- that whore sets up station. We go there and she'll start pestering me again, 'Paaaay me, paaaay me Jack, paaaay me for sex that never haaaappened.'"
Gibbs chuckled, "that nuisance of a girl may be irritating you, Jack, but I've got nothing against her. I'm going to go get myself some real beer." Standing up, he poured the contents of his tankard onto the already-soiled floor and left.
"Great, now I'm all by myself, aren't I?" Jack muttered to himself. He took another swig of ale and made a face as he swallowed, then pushed the mug away.
Two days later found Jack, again, sitting stubbornly at the Boar's Head Inn.
"I will not give in, I will not go there, I will not pay her," he chanted to himself, staring down into yet another tankard of the foul, so-called beer. There was a long hair floating around in the beer. With a face revealing naught but disgust, Jack tipped the mug, spilling the ale onto the rushes. He lifted himself from his chair and with a sigh, exited the Inn. He walked down the dirty street, to the familiar doors of the King's Thing Tavern and Inn. Jadedly, he pushed them open and crossed the threshold into the smoky air of the pub.
"JACK! Hey, Jack! Over here!" Gibbs hollered across the noisy tavern, spotting him almost immediately. As Jack made his way towards the table where Gibbs sat, drinking and laughing heartily with another group of sailors, he caught sight of Aurelia, standing behind the counter, pouring beer, wearing the same fitted green dress, looking at him.
"Gibbs, mate! And Taylor!- Harkin!- Seymour! Good to see you all again, isn't it, you know?" The sailors – pirates, really – exchanged greetings. "Say, I'm just going to get myself a cup of good ale – I've been drinking that swill over at the Boar's Head for the past few days–"
Making a smooth exit, Jack crossed the tavern towards the bar.
"You have some nerve-" Aurelia began, but Jack cut her off.
"A tankard of your best ale, please." He gave her a gold-toothed grin. Speechless – with anger or as a result of his universal charm, no one could tell, not even she – Aurelia simply poured the beer, then shoved it at him.
"Was I good, though, drunk?" Jack asked, his smile mischievous.
"I've seen better," she replied, and he could detect a mocking smile behind her intelligent grey eyes, before she lowered them. "Ten pounds, sir." Jack handed her the money, before returning to the table. Aurelia counted the money with care. Brows furrowing, she realized the amount he had given her was not, in fact, ten pounds. It was twenty-five pounds! Looking up again, she caught Jack's gaze upon her, and held it for one long moment. Taking this as an apology, Aurelia went back to pouring beer and serving customers, with just a little more of a trace of a smile in her heart.
Later that night, the tavern had filled up considerably since the afternoon, and it was in turn a great deal noisier. At least twenty more men had joined Jack's table, and a very enthusiastic –and very drunk – Gibbs was leading them in a medley of rather slurred sailors' songs. Aurelia was still at the bar, filling tankards faster than you could say "give the poor girl a break". In a momentary lapse of frenzy, she leaned back against the wall and quaffed half a cup of ale. Feeling a bit woozy, she went to put it back down on the counter but was nearly knocked off her feet by Jack, who had grabbed her around the waist.
"Dance with me, dance with me!" Jack laughed, pulling her from her post and into a mad, spontaneous jig to the fast-paced tune of three fiddles somewhere in the crowd of faces, so many faces– A little inebriated herself, Aurelia's independent feet improvised the steps and followed Jack in a spinning, kicking, twirling dance! A minute later, it was all over, the fiddles calming to the steady beat of somebody's hand drum, and all the men and women in the tavern began singing a melodious folk song, or was it God Save the King?
Amid the singing and instrument-playing, Jack took Aurelia's hand and led her, stumbling along, to some extent because of the partial darkness, but also the clouding of their minds by the strong brew, to the back of the tavern. He stopped and turned to look at her, only just making out her round face in the shadows.
"Fifteen pounds."
Their mouths met, his moustachios briefly scratching her rouged top lip– he laid a hand on a breast– she lifted his baggy white shirt over his shoulders. There, in a dark corner, as the timely music began to swell into a capering hymn, they had sex.
(Now, I apologize, but I must jolt you from this story and explain: why did I say "they had sex" instead of "they made love"? No, it's not because I enjoyed watching you cringe, embarrassed, when I mentioned the word "sex" – although it was rather entertaining – it's because she was a prostitute, having sex only for money, and though in this case she may have been, to some extent, willing to have sex with him, and, granted, there may have been a small amount of emotion involved on both sides, they did not truly and fully love each other, and therefore the act of sex cannot be justly called "making love".)
The aftermath of this fit of passion, as it were, consisted of Jack and Aurelia waking up, again hung over, in each other's arms, safely shut up in one of the inn-rooms. Laughing and talking, they lay in bed for a while before clothing themselves and leaving the Inn.
Walking hand-in-hand through the raucous streets of Tortuga, down to the waterside, onto one of the docks, Aurelia and Jack spoke of everything: sailing, food, music, ale, current affairs, piracy – life.
"Do you ever think that our way of life is… well, wrong?" Aurelia asked, looking to Jack as they dangled their feet in the salty ocean, sitting at the edge of the dock.
"Our way of life – stealing, bootlegging, drinking, gambling? Nah, not a chance!" Jack grinned again, flashing his gold teeth in the sunshine. He sobered, then replied, "yeah, sometimes. But it's the way we've got to live. I mean, if we tried to live like those poncey nobles in their big, white houses out here in the real world, we'd get eaten alive, you know!"
"We have to be the way we are in order to survive, I know," Aurelia nodded. "Like the first time we met" – she let out a giggle – "at least, the first time we met when you were sober! – I was all brusque with you, because I needed to have that money to eat and to pay rent."
"And when I tried to stay away from the King's Thing," added Jack. He ducked his head, staring at his toes beneath the crystal-clear water. "Me, I try to hide from the world. Obviously, it doesn't work particularly well." He chuckled and looked up, into her eyes, about to say something, but immediately forgot speech as their eyes connected.
For what was really only a moment, both of them eyelocked, and to them it was a millennium, an eternity spent looking through grey and brown windows into each other's soul. They explored the beauty and the secret spite behind their eyes, revelling in the inner glory to be found, just by looking into someone else's eyes.
From this eternal moment on, Aurelia and Jack loved each other, absolutely.
Their lips came together like magnets being attracted, their hands lovingly caressing each other's faces, knowing every curve, every angle. Their bodies were made to intertwine, their souls were made to interlace. Jack and Aurelia, a pirate and a prostitute, hardly perfect people – wholly made for each other.
Two blissful weeks later, Jack was offered a position as quartermaster on a fifth-rate merchant vessel in very good condition, captured en route to Jamaica, and though he loved Aurelia as much as a person can love another, he had to get back out to sea. Ships and the salty sea spray were his first loves, and he'd promised himself that they would be his last as well. So he bade farewell to his human love and returned to the sea–
"Nobody stays for long in Tortuga, but I'll be back, sooner or later," Jack promised as he stood on the dock, ready to board the Tryal.
"I'll be here," Aurelia replied, tears falling from her dove-grey eyes as they savoured their last kiss. Jack boarded the ship and waved good-bye.
And it truly was their last good-bye, their last kiss, their last words to each other, at least in this world, for Aurelia died that winter. The romantic sailors say she died of heartbreak, the realistic ones say she caught the influenza, the women say she died in childbirth.
Jack never came back.