Several months later, Norrington and Beckett were having their daily tea. However this time they had decided to make a little party out of it. This was the first day in ten years that they would not be subjected to the presence of, as Beckett called him, 'the annoying pretty boy.' They had even invited Governor Swann to mark the occasion. Despite Elizabeth's belief that Beckett had caused her father's death, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact Beckett, in order to 'deal with Governor Swann' had suggested that they take a little boating trip together. The Governor, exited by the large fish in the water, had leaned out a little too far, and had toppled into the middle of a piranha school. He had not wished to distress his daughter with such gruesome details and so had created some far-fetched story involving his dear pal Beckett and the heart of Davy Jones. His daughter had believed every word of it, which he found strange, since he thought she had grown out of her gullible stage. Then again, she was not the brightest of girls and was generally off pouting or playing with her little pirate friends. In fact, things were so chummy between Beckett and the Governor, Swann had brought his special stash of tea which was given to him by some bizarre Singaporean pirate captain who had shaken his hand whilst jabbering something about his daughter and Goddess Calypso.
The three men were even now sipping the tea and spreading jam and cream over their scones. Norrington looked thoughtful.
"This tea, it's Chinese, is it not?" he asked the Governor, who nodded silently while chewing a mouthful of scone.
Norrington looked like he had something on his mind. He kept looking from the tea to Lord Beckett and back to his tea.
"Erm, Beckett," he began, "have you ever been to China?"
"No, no, but of course I did have to send men into Singapore to deal with anti-piratical matters. I couldn't go, hadn't had my typhoid jab."
Norrington was still sipping his tea thoughtfully. "But, you worked for the East India Trading Company," he said.
"Indeed, and?" asked Beckett, looking mildly confused.
"You just said you've never been to the East Indies. You were in the West Indies."
There was a long silence while the three men thought about this. Governor Swann looked up from his tea.
"Yes, really, that was rather odd. I remember thinking at the time, 'why isn't it called the West India Trading Company?' since you were, in fact, trading in the West Indies."
Beckett pursed his lips, "Gentlemen, that is why it is called a monopoly. Because there is only one."
"Really? I thought monopoly was a game, where you bought places in London—" began Governor Swann, before Beckett cut him off.
"Yes, but you were also the person who thought leaning out of the boat to peer at piranha was a jolly good idea."
"Still, it seems like you could have worked something into your name about the West Indies," Norrington continued.
"Something like 'The East India Trading Company That Actually Operates Heavily in the West Indies,' that sort of thing?" suggested Swann.
"Well that would hardly fit on my stylish, company buttons, now would it?" argued Beckett, annoyed that the Right Honourable King's company was being questioned.
"How about the 'West-East India Trading Company'?" said Norrington. "No, wait, the 'WEast India Trading Comanpy'?"
Beckett swallowed a bite of scone and said, rather scathingly, "well, that hardly has the same ring to it, does it?"
Meanwhile, not in Davy Jones' Locker, Will was sailing home. He had not been this excited in, well, ten years really. He couldn't wait to see his lovely bride! A thought flickered into his mind, and this was a rare occurrence so it was worthy of note. Elizabeth would be ten years older than when he last saw her, he realized. Oh well, she would surely be as lovely as she had been the first time he beheld her, as a young girl. There was no one around to tell Will that sounded a bit creepy and was likely to get him on some sort of government watch-list.
Will shrugged. He had first seen then-lieutenant (pronounced left-tenant) Norrington on the same day as he had his darling Elizabeth, and Norrington had hardly aged at all in the following years. Perhaps Elizabeth would be as young and fresh as on the day of their wedding? Actually, fresh was a word he had picked up from Lord Beckett. He assumed it meant pretty.
As Will sailed closer and closer to shore, hanging from the rigging rather dramatically, trying to achieve maximum windsweptosity, he thought he could see her figure on the cliff above him. She was a bit hard to make out, being rather skinny and wearing a neutral-tone dress. Next to her, Will thought he saw a small boy, and immediately wondered what the boy was doing on the cliff, waving at him, and holding a large sign that said, "WELCOME DADDY!"
Back in the Locker, Will Turner's or otherwise, the gentlemen were still at their tea party. "More tea?" asked the Governor, holding out the teapot and smiling, looking like a dotty old man. "Apparently this tea has traces of opium in it, very popular with the Chinamen, you know."
"I say, good show," said Beckett, holding out his teacup, thankful for the change of subject. Swann was just about to place the teacup spout into Beckett's teacup when Norrington, who had been gazing pensively at the horizon suddenly shouted:
"Jones alert! Jones alert!"
Norrington's cry caused Beckett to withdraw his teacup suddenly and look around wildly much to Governor Swann's surprise.
"I say! What on earth-"
"Save the china!" Beckett cried as Davy Jones' form grew larger on the horizon.
Beckett seized the teapot from Swann's shaking hands and, although it pained him to do so, tipped the contents of the pot onto the sand and placed it carefully in the chest that Norrington had been packing the teacups hastily into.
"Hurry!" squealed Beckett as Davy Jones' footsteps grew louder—as much as that sort of thing can happen when one is striding across sand—with every step closer.
"Should I know this Jones character?" Governor Swann asked curiously, his hand still raised as if he were still holding the teapot.
"Davy Jones! Teacup breaker of doom!" Norrington said, his head held high as if to show bravery in the face of a terrifying foe.
Since the East India Trading Company no longer had possession of the heart of Davy Jones, not that it would do them much good anyway, there was nothing to bargain with in regards to the preservation of the rare and dainty creature, the tea cup.
"We-e-el," said Davy Jones, nearing their table, "what do we have here? A British teaparty? And I wasn't invited?" one couldn't really tell whether or not he was trying to intimidate them or whether he was genuinely put out at not having been invited. Again.
"Tea? Tea? I don't see any tea!" said Norrington, looking around at the sky and the empty table.
Davy Jones merely looked down at the wet spot of tea that was sinking into the sand. He coughed.
"Listen, if you want to get all touchy about it, that's fine," said Beckett, "but the last time I invited you 'round for tea, you broke Turner's teacup!"
"He provoked me! And anyway, that was over ten years ago! Surely I deserve a second chance." Davy Jones looked imploringly at the gathered gentlemen.
"Fine, whatever, come tomorrow," said Beckett exasperatedly. "So I heard your girlfriend was shacked up with some Greek for seven years." Beckett, who could never resist a tawdry tale, had been waiting to mention that to Davy Jones for years.
The colour drained from Jones's face—now that he was not a squid on legs, he had colour—and he shot Beckett a look that would shatter teacups. "That was a long time ago. She said he meant nothing to her!"
"Isn't that because the gods forced her into letting that Odysseus chap go?" asked Norrington. "It seems to me that you were the, oh, how do we say, rebound."
"Go to hell," said Davy Jones. All four men looked around at the endless white sand. No one said anything for a full minute.
"Do you reckon it was Odysseus who gave Calypso crabs?" asked Beckett, chewing the inside of his lip, recalling how Calypso had become fifty feet tall and then fell apart into thousands of crab bodies. "Personally I say you're better off without her. Never trust a woman with crabs, that's what my dad told me."
There was yet another awkward pause as everyone avoided making eye contact with Lord Beckett. Norrington was getting the distinct impression that the man had an, shall we say, unhealthy obsession with things of a sexual nature.
Far away, Will was staring stupidly at Elizabeth.
"What do you mean I have a son?"
"Will, for the thirty-seventh time, you impregnated me ten years ago, it was a boy, here he is, William Algernon Fitzgerald Rupert Charles Turner III, Esquire." Elizabeth was getting tired. Saying her son's name really took a lot out of her. The boy, meanwhile, was clinging to Will, yelling, "DADDY!" over and over again in an excited voice, not unlike that of Beckett when presented with a brand new tea set or a large gem "given" to the British as tribute by the colonized peoples.
Will blinked a few times, looked down at the boy, then back up at Elizabeth, and began to smile. "I have a son!" He yelled, in a voice remarkably similar to that of his son's—surprising, since one was pre-puberty and one was post-puberty. Almost instantaneously, a shadow seemed to cross Will's face. Not a real shadow, obviously, but a metaphorical one.
"I am a bad father!" He fell on his knees and looked into his son's eyes. "Will, when I was a boy, I thought my father dead. Now, of course, he is a member of my crew, but that's hardly the point. As a young man, I was without male guidance. I swore that I would never do that to my own son, and now, I have abandoned you! Oh, my boy, forgive me!" With that, he clutched his young son to him in a vice-like grip that caused the boy to cough and gasp for air.
"Will," said Elizabeth, "your son is turning purple." He released the boy immediately and regarded him in a new light.
"Let me give you some advice, which my father never gave to me," began Will, "Girls like windswept hair. If you want to find a nice, fresh girl—"
"WILLIAM!" screamed Elizabeth, and both Wills looked around startled. "Will, don't you have some chores to do?" she asked in an authoritative voice. The father and son regarded each other, trying to figure out whom she meant. Finally, the boy sighed in annoyance and went to go clean his room.
Will grinned and walked over to his wife, pulling her into an embrace. He pushed her hair away from her face and leaned down to whisper in her ear seductively. Unfortunately, he was greeted by her glaring up at him.
"Don't think you're getting out of chores this easily! Listen, mister, for ten years I've carried and raised your child and you come swanning in here expecting everything to be peachy. Well Mr. Turner, you've got another thing coming, I tell you that."
Will gaped at her. "But Elizabeth, baby, I thought maybe we could—"
"WELL YOU THOUGHT WRONG!" she screamed at him. "Ten years, Will, ten bloody years, and I don't even have a wedding ring! No ring, and the neighbours don't believe me when I tell them I'm married. I know what they say about me, behind my back, and about your son as well. If you think any respectable girl is going to marry him, when his legitimacy is in question," here she trailed off, seemed to re-gather energy, and started again, "And the roof needs rethatching!"
"I will rethatch the roof, then, love, and then maybe we can, you know… because Lord Beckett was giving me helpful advice and then Admiral Norrington said—"
"Oooooh, how is James?" said Elizabeth, her temper suddenly forgotten.
"Um, he's fine, I think. Drinks a lot of tea. So do you want me to rethatch the roof?"
"Weren't you listening to a single thing I said? You're coming with me to the neighbourhood dance so that I can finally show those gossipy old crones from down the lane that I am, in fact, married! Now, what other clothes do you have?" she asked, surveying his tattered, yet ruggedly windswept, shirt.
In the Locker, meanwhile, Davy Jones was getting very, very tired of Lord Beckett. First, the man had said those horrible things about Calypso, and now he was…
"It's a shame we didn't get a chance to eat the creature. I imagine it would have gone well with some pepper. Cook it up like calamari, you know," Beckett had said, swirling his tea and almost licking his lips.
"I don't know if Kracken meat is even edible, actually," had been the Governor's reply, but the man was spending too much time thinking it over for Jones's taste. "I hear the Kracken had rather bad breath, and that's not something I look for in food."
"Well, you have bad breath and the piranha still ate you," said Beckett under his breath.
Norrington was glancing at his pocket watch. "Not too much longer and Will should be returning to us," he said dryly, clearly not amused by the thought.
Governor Swann gave a start. "What? That Turner boy? Oh, I hadn't even noticed him missing. Where is he then?"
"Off with your daughter, filling her teacup—" began Beckett, before Norrington interrupted.
"Yes, thank you Cutler, that's quite enough" he said loudly, whilst Swann looked from the Lord to the Admiral.
"Oh, that's lovely, that he's taking her out for tea!" said the Governor.
William Algernon Fitzgerald Rupert Charles Turner II was not enjoying the dance. Elizabeth had dragged him around to talk to countless toothless old women, and he was sure he'd heard one of them mutter "clearly a male prostitute" to her friend as he and Elizabeth made their way to the next group of women. All he wanted to do was go back to Elizabeth's cottage and play sports with his son, or other manly activities, and have "special alone time" with his lovely wife, who, incidentally, had not aged at all. Anyway, if he didn't get some Elizabeth-lovin' soon, he wouldn't have anything to tell the boys back in the Locker, particularly Beckett, who seemed to really like hearing about that sort of thing.
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who reviewed chapter one! Reviews are of course appreciated for this chapter as well.
Coming up in the next action packed chapter: Will returns to the Locker with news of his son, but the boys can't really take him seriously.