HEY GUYS I AM SO SORRY THAT ITS TAKEN ME SO LONG TO UPDATE BUT IVE BEEN ILL AND DOING ASSESSMENTS FOR COURSE AND THEATRE HAS STARTED UP AGAIN SO I AM STILL TRYING TO GET THINGS SORTED WITH THAT AND I HAVE TRINITY EXAMS (for singing) AND SINGING COMPS IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS SO EVERYTHINGS PILING UP AT THE MOMENT. BUT I HOPE YOU ENJOY AND PLEASE REVIEW!
Inside the shop Henry and I made our way up to the lounge, before he left to pour us both a glass of wine and bringing the two glasses as well as the bottle into the room with him, he handed me my glass before he took a sip of his own and said
"I will be back" and I nodded. I looked around the room and thought about everything that Henry and I had been through, what could possibly make him come back to life? And did I believe it? Could I believe it? For Henry I decided, I would try. He came back upstairs carrying about five different photo albums each one looking older than the last. I frowned as he made his way over to the arm chair that was sat opposite the couch where I was sitting. He placed the albums on the table and then looked at me, taking a deep breath.
"Henry whatever it is you need to say, I'm going to try and be as understanding as possible. So please just get on with it" I said and he nodded.
"I'm immortal" he said and I looked at him, raising an eyebrow wanting him to continue.
"Right, well, as you now know I cannot die. Every time I do, I do I come back in the nearest body of water, naked and with no way of contacting anyone" he said and I looked at him, trying to judge if he was telling the truth. I knew he was because I'd seen him disappear and I was asking myself why would he ever lie about something like this. I trusted his word, but I wanted to know more. At least finding out that he died and came back naked would explain away the indecent exposure reports that he had in his file.
"So that explains the indecent exposure charges but it doesn't quite explain the rest of you. Please Henry just tell me the truth" I said and he nodded before taking another sip from his glass.
"My parents were known as Victoria and George Morgan, my father was the sole heir of his father's business Morgan Shipping Industry and my mother had married my father not for love but for the money, having grown up in a poor family with twelve siblings, all of which were uncommon practices in that time. I was born ten months after they married in the year 1779, in London. I was the oldest of four kids, I had a younger brother Bjorn and two sisters Annabel and Elizabeth each of them as talented as the next. I attended school and graduated before leaving home to attend university, much to my mother's pride and my father's hatred, as the oldest, I was set to take over my father's business but I had no desire to do so. I studied as a physician and also studied science" he started and I thought about how uncommon it was for anyone to be as educated as he had been back then and then I thought of how there was no way that any woman would've even stepped foot inside a university at that time and I was somewhat glad that I was growing up in the time that I was.
"I met and married my first wife Nora after returning home and we ended up moving to the outskirts of London, I visited with my family regularly as my sister had always been poorly but she had been one of the main reasons I had decided to do what I did. When I saved my sisters life, the news around London travelled fast and I became sought after by almost everyone. My father even began speaking to me again and we were beginning to get along well until I was out one evening with my friends. I was introduced to a man who I had never met before as he had come over from America to speak with my father, but had been invited to the party. My father had taken ill by this point and I had reluctantly agreed to attend the evening on his behalf. As I was introduced to this man he informed me that my father's company had joined the slave trade and was shipping them from England to America on his ships, I tried to defend my father as I couldn't believe that my father was part of anything so horrible as he'd always told us that he was against the whole thing" he paused for a minute before continuing "I left the party and confronted my father about it and he didn't deny that he had joined the slave trade. He told me that his moral still remained that of what he had raised me and my siblings to believe but that the business had taken a turn for the worst after my departure to university and the only thing that had brought him out of bankruptcy was to sell slaves and take the profits that were made in America. Losing the honour of our family name was more important to him than selling those less fortunate and of a different race to the highest bidder. I barely spoke to my father after that. My mother begged me to I spend time with him as his health was failing him and I refused. Finally after about six months, I agreed to see him and he told me that no matter what he had been proud of me and my actions and for not giving up on what I believed in. He apologised and handed me his pocket watch which had been passed down to him from his father and his father before him and so on. I was there when he died and felt guilty for not apologising to him" he said and I felt myself tearing up at what he was saying. Henry looked up at this point and saw me sitting there with tears streaming down my face, he frowned before handing me a tissue box.
"I don't have to continue if this is upsetting you" he said and I shook my head
"No I want to know, it's just hard listening to everything you've been through" I said and he nodded.
After a couple of minutes I had cleaned myself up and was ready to listen to more of Henry's story
"My brother had taken over the business but didn't want to the slave trade as he feared he wouldn't get the clients that he was reaching. It was about a month or so later when my brother contacted me and told me that he needed to speak to me. He told me that I had been asked to America to discuss something with a colleague of my father's and since my brother and his wife were expecting a baby and Nora would only let me sleep with her once in a blue moon I decided to go, so I got on one of my father's boat and got ready for the months at sea to get to America. Only one night one of the peasants had fallen ill, I diagnosed him with a simple case of the flu when the Captain of the ship ordered me to throw him overboard because he was dying and he didn't want to get anyone else infected. I argued and said that the man deserved to live, and for my efforts I was shot and tossed into the ocean for my trouble" he paused to see if I was alright for him to continue and when I nodded my head he did so
"When I came to I was bobbing up and down in the ocean gasping for air and trying to stay afloat. I died several times before I was picked up a day or so later by a ship passing by, on their return to England with a stop in Africa first" he said and I frowned taking a sip from the glass in front of me and grabbing a tissue to wipe the new lot of tears away from my face.
"When I finally made it back to London, news of my death had already been sent to my wife, mother, brother and sisters, each one of them had believed I was dead. But in that time there were many cases of false deaths, people mistakenly disappearing and reappearing a couple of months later. It was common for such a thing to happen. Nora had welcomed me home with loving arms and had wanted to know how I had survived. So I told her. I told her the truth and she didn't believe me. So I did the only thing I knew of to prove to her that I wasn't insane, I grabbed a knife and tried to kill myself to prove to her that I was telling the truth and before I could she told me she believed me and that she was happy to have me home" he paused taking a breath as if he was pausing to prepare himself for what he was going to say next
"The following day however I was taken away to Charing Cross asylum where they spent months trying to get me to admit that I wasn't immortal, they tortured me to get me to see reason and every time I told them that I believed I was mortal they found a new way to torture me" he paused to fill up his mug, I frowned, thinking about what it must've been like for Henry to have gone through all of that pain and not find a way out of it. For him to know that his wife, the women who was supposed to love and support him had had him locked up because he'd told her the truth which was what she had wanted in the first place. I vowed in that moment never to treat Henry that way, to never let him experience that type of betrayal again.
"Oh Henry that is horrible" I said and he looked up
"You have no idea" he whispered, deep in thought again.
So I let him have the moment to think through what he was going to say next but when he didn't say anything for a good twenty or so minutes I tried to get him to continue, I felt bad but I wanted to know, needed to know more about the man who had quickly become the most important person in my life and was now not only my best friend but also my boyfriend.
"Henry?" I asked trying to get his attention when I didn't get it, I tried again
"Henry?" this time he looked up at me with a sad look on his face
"How did you get out of the asylum?" I asked and he nodded
"Right yes. I was transferred to Southwark Prison in 1816. I was kept in a cell with a priest who had been caught sleeping with someone he shouldn't have been. We spent three months together before he convinced me to kill myself to escape. I didn't want to, I didn't want him to be blamed for attempting to help me escape but we did it anyway. I never got the chance to thank him" he said and I frowned. It was sad to think that this had happened to him because his wife hadn't been accepting of his immortality. But a thought crossed my mind
"Henry, how was it possible for your wife, Nora?" I asked seeing if I had remembered the name correctly, when he nodded I continued "to end up putting you in an asylum. Weren't women of that time supposed to respect and obey their husbands and do their wishes, to be seen and not heard?" I asked and he nodded
"Yes that is how they were supposed to act but even back then women still had rights, albeit not very many, but still enough for them to make decisions if the men weren't in their right mind. Besides Nora had always been a strong willed women, with a very high opinion of how things should be run" he answered. I smiled sadly, it was harsh finding out that he had had to go through this, but unbelievably sad as well because he had been sent away against his will because of something that was out of his control. I felt sorry for him, he had only wanted to tell her the truth about what had happened and she had turned that against him and sent him away. Henry was watching me closely, watching me process this news and he spoke up
"Jo, I don't fault her. She had every right to send me to the asylum, she thought I was ill, she didn't understand that I wasn't ill and that I was telling the truth. How could she when things like that never happened and if others had found out I would've been killed in front of the whole town. Outcast for the rest of my life other wise and she would've been shunned for being married to me. No she wasn't shallow just because she thought better of her reputation than of me but that was what life was like back then, who you were and the reputation of who you were big factors in society" he tried to explain and I nodded, kind of understanding her reasoning but not entirely sure I wanted to. Henry went to fill my mug with tea again but realised the tea pot was cold, he excused himself to refill the pot.