WISH YOU WERE THERE!
Jantallian
POST SCRIPT
SS - JH
When 'eventually' arrived they were both cold and exhausted. Neither of them would have admitted to being frightened at the time, but, when they discussed it afterwards, they were in agreement that it was one of the most terrifying experiences of their lives. As Jess put it, " 'Cos y' know y' ain't gonna be able to do anythin' that'll make any difference!"
At long last, however, the current swept them back towards a broad, sandy beach. It was almost deserted, except for a small group of people. They appeared to floating directly towards this group. In fact, they were going to be washed up immediately opposite them. As they drew inexorably closer and closer, it became apparent that the group was a family picnic of the most decorous kind – ladies sitting shaded by parasols, young men reclining modestly at their feet on rugs, children playing sedately and a venerable elder enthroned in a big rush chair.
A majestic and tall venerable elder, with wild, white hair, a long snowy beard and moustache, a nose like an eagle's beak, a mountainous build and the look of an Old Testament prophet. "I do not believe this!" Slim breathed hoarsely as he found his feet in the surf at last.
"Y' don't? Well, you're the one lookin' for him." Jess had stopped further out, up to his shoulders in the breaking waves. He was keeping his footing with difficulty, but showed no inclination to come any further ashore.
"Come on!" Slim started to wade towards the beach and then stopped. He was suddenly aware that silk drawers did not conform to the dress required by polite society, especially when thoroughly soaked with seawater. He looked back. Jess raised an eyebrow and shrugged at the same time, but made no move to join him.
"I say! Are you chaps all right?" A voice hailed them from the beach. A young man was standing in the shallows, the trousers of his suit rolled up in order to facilitate the need to paddle.
"Good afternoon!" Slim was nothing if not polite. "We have a bit of a problem," he began, hearing in his memory Jess's judgement that he was a problem.
"I say! Bad luck!" the young man sympathised. "Anything we can do to help?"
"Only if you're thinkin' of miraculously transportin' us miles back up the coast!" Slim heard Jess growl. He hastily qualified this. "We were swimming –"
"Yes, I can see that!" By this time the young man had been joined by a crowd of small children. Behind them, the women were beginning to stir, curious about the sudden appearance of these two mermen from the ocean.
"We got swept away from where we left our clothes," Slim explained. The young man continued to smile cheerfully at him with complete lack of comprehension. "We'd be grateful for the loan of a towel," Slim begged desperately.
"Two towels!" Jess growled behind him. Slim glanced over his shoulder. Jess was beginning to go an interesting shade of mauve under his tan. He never did handle the cold very well.
"Oh, I say – how inconsiderate of me!" The young man turned to a couple of the elder boys and said, "Cut along back to the house and bring some towels and a couple of bath robes. And be quick about it!"
Some ten minutes later they were decently, if somewhat unconventionally, dressed and rather more ready to face the company than they had been. The young man, who introduced himself as Algernon Fitzwilliam, chattered on cheerfully, explaining that the picnic was to celebrate his aunt's birthday and the visit of members of the English branch of the family, of whom he himself was one, to California. They had apparently come by sea from India.
"Come and meet my uncle," Algie invited, waving a hand at the venerable figure in the rush chair.
"Yeah!" said two voices as one. Still neither of them could believe their eyes.
As they approached, the old man stood up and shaded his own eyes against the bright sun glinting off the water. He too seemed very much taken aback by what he saw. He folded his arms and said grimly, "Slim. Jess. I always took you for respectable young men. What in the world are you doing?"
Since 'looking for you' was going to sound a flippant and unlikely answer, Slim surreptitiously hacked Jess's ankle and smiled at the old man. "Visiting relatives, sir. Jess's sister lives in California." The fact that she lived over four hundred miles away tweaked his conscience, but at least it was the truth. They had visited her. Slim had an uneasy feeling that he had failed in his duty of care for the little brother by nearly getting him drowned, but shoved this temporarily to the back of his mind as he thought how to deal with what he now remembered was a most irascible old gentleman. How on earth had he thought they could just persuade him to come back to Laramie with them?
"Oh, my goodness, are you acquainted with each other already?" enquired the polite voice of Algernon in its impeccable English.
"Two of my parishioners," the Reverend William Fitzwilliam explained grimly. "Or perhaps I should say, ex- parishioners."
"What a co-incidence!" Algie remarked blithely. Slim hoped fervently that Jess, whom he could feel getting tenser by the moment, was not going to throttle the young man out of sheer aggravation.
"Yes!" The Reverend did not sound in the least as if he thought it was a co-incidence. Slim exchanged a harassed glance with Jess. The old man turned to his nephew and ordered: "Take them up to the house, Algernon, and find them something suitable to wear." He had become increasingly aware of the discreet interest of the female members of his household in these two good-looking and barely clad young castaways. "You will, of course, stay to dinner, gentlemen."
Dinner was substantial, decorous and almost entirely boring. The only bright spot was the presence of the lady hosting it, who did not seem to be part of the Fitzwilliam clan, but who nonetheless sat at the foot of the table, paying charming attention to her two unexpected guests. She was rather older than either of them, but age has a lot to recommend it when it comes harnessed to sophistication and experience. Among other things, it was she who arranged for their horses and belongings to be retrieved. It was not until after dinner that the Reverend Fitzwilliam chose to interrogate his visitors. He said he wanted to catch up on news of his previous parish, but it was an interrogation.
"And what," he demanded, "are you two young men really doing here?"
"Apart from nearly gettin' drowned?" Jess countered before Slim could stop him. "Well, we've been runnin' all round town." He paused and gave Slim a conspiratorial wink. "We've been cursed, soaked, boiled, suffocated, targeted, manhandled, thrown out, propositioned, beaten up – oh, and Slim won a boxing match."
"You did?" A fanatical gleam had come momentarily into the Reverend Fitzwilliam's eye. Then he recovered his sense of parsonical dignity with an effort. "I cannot see how you can have become involved with such activities in the civilised environs of Santa Barbara?" *7
"We were on the Barbary Coast," Slim admitted. He glared at Jess and added: "You forgot the shopping!"
"An' the sightseein'!" Jess retorted slyly.
The Reverend, however, was ruminating on that other location. "An ungodly place, from all I hear tell!" He frowned formidably and went on, "I trust that you withstood the temptations of the flesh?"
"Are you kiddin'?" Jess laughed, "Slim wouldn't recognise a temptation of the flesh if it was tryin to' –"
"Shut up!" Slim hissed. He drew a breath and decided to make a clean breast of it. He was, in any case, inherently truthful. "We were trying to find you, sir. You see -"
He got no further before the Reverend erupted in righteous indignation: "Me? On the Barbary Coast? What impudence!"
"But they do have the best boxin' matches there," Jess countered. "And we figured, that, bein' retired, you might be takin' an interest in your old hobby."
Things hung in the balance for a moment, but the lure of fighting glory was too much for the Reverend. "Tell me about it!"
It was much later in the night and after numerous whiskies that he was fully satisfied with their account of the fights they had witnessed and heard about. Finally he sat back in his deep armchair, his eyes glittering with enthusiasm and his lips curled in what might have been a smile, but rather resembled the feral grin of a major predator. He regarded the two young men in front of him more benignly than he had at their first appearance, but nonetheless, something was troubling him. Eventually he seemed to come to a decision. He sighed deeply and the smile, if it was a smile, disappeared entirely. "You'd better tell me why Rachel sent you, Slim!"
"Us," Jess put in firmly.
"The only reason Rachel would have sent you," he was told coldly, "is because you can be relied upon to hit pretty much anything with that gun of yours!" The Reverend looked at the marks still showing faintly on that young man's face and added: "I suppose you can hit things with your fists too – if you can reach?"
"Jess!" Slim was half out of his chair in preventative mode, but Jess just laughed: "Your reach is a lot longer'n mine, Reverend, an' I ain't gonna try dodgin' it – not tonight, at any rate!"
Slim fell back with a sigh of relief. He didn't really think Jess would hit an old gentleman, still less a gentleman of the cloth, but he was not at all sure that the opposite would apply! The old gentleman, however, just repeated his question: "Why did she send you?"
"She was worried, sir. She thought you were in trouble and she sent me – us – to help you make it back to Laramie."
"Back to Laramie?" The old man surprised them with a roar of laughter. "My dear young man, I have not the least intention of ever going back to that miserable excuse for civilisation in the middle of nowhere!" He regarded their stunned expressions with considerable amusement and explained: "This is where life is. Everyone who is anyone is coming to California!"
Slim and Jess regarded each other thoughtfully. It certainly did seem to be a place for which many of their acquaintances were heading, not least those who had something they wanted to leave behind.
"But you can't want to leave your daughters?" Slim objected.
"Why not?" was all the answer he got. "They'll get married off soon enough and an elderly father is nothing but an encumbrance to marital harmony. As a matter of fact," – a gleam came into the Reverend's eye that had nothing to do with boxing – "getting married is exactly what I'm intending to do myself."
"You do? You are!" Slim was utterly dumbfounded and Jess was nearly splitting his sides in an attempt not to laugh.
"Miss Susannah Gregory, whom you met at dinner tonight, has done me the honour of accepting my hand." This stopped the laughter and explained the stunning news. Slim and Jess regarded each other thoughtfully again. Miss Gregory was certainly woman enough to warrant any man's interest, even though she was not quite in the first flush of youth. The Reverend, meanwhile, was continuing, "And if either of you would like to oblige by taking Rachel off my hands –"
"She's just trustin' Slim to find you, Reverend," Jess said quickly. "An' I'm only along to keep you both safe!"
Slim and Jess stared at each other in mutually shared apprehension, holding their breath as The Reverend William Fitzwilliam nodded slowly and observed: "Well, now you've succeeded in that –"
Instant communication flashed between the hapless pair. Time for a well-timed exit! "We'll be heading right on home!" Slim said firmly.
It was not until a number of days and many miles later that they came round to reflecting on their trip to the Barbary Coast and other sunny climes of California.
"Can't see Miss Rachel paying our expenses if we're coming back empty-handed," Slim pointed out gloomily.
"She should be glad we ain't bringin' back a new step-ma too!" Jess pointed out cheerfully.
"We're going to be seriously out of pocket," Slim the book-keeper was worried as usual.
"Nope! We've got $500 in my back pocket!" Jess the gambler was sanguine as usual.
"That's your winnings."
"Nope. You won the fight, so it's our profit. What d'y' wanna spend it on?"
"Not on a hat!" was the firm reply.
They rode on in silence for a while.
Then Slim remarked: "Who'd have thought he'd remarry, at his age?"
"No wonder he didn't want Miss Rachel sortin' him out!" Jess grinned.
There was another silence. Then Jess continued, still sounding highly amused: "At least playin' guard paid off, 'cos it ain't either of us gettin' married! I knew I'd come in useful for somethin' on this crazy expedition."
Slim brooded for a moment on the charms of Miss Rachel Fitzwilliam and his own resentment that Jess had got himself included riding shot-gun to the expedition. And he made a fleeting comparison with a certain theatrical costumier. Then he considered the accidents, attacks and anxieties he had suffered in his encounter with the Barbary Coast. Finally he also remembered the amazing environment, extraordinary experiences and entrancing sightseeing he had enjoyed.
"Yeah, it was a pretty wild trip," he summed up, "but all things considered –"
"What?"
"I'm glad you were there!"
SS – JH – SS – JH – SS – JH
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NOTES:
6. A small homage to a sighting on my own marvellous trip up the Pacific Coast highway. I admit to having compacted the geography somewhat.
7. Although it appears that Santa Barbara did have its own period of lawlessness, Wiki informs us that "During the 1870s, writer Charles Nordhoff promoted the town as a health resort and destination for well-to-do travellers from other parts of the U.S.; many of them came, and many stayed."