We'll stay, forever this way. You are safe in my heart and, my heart will...
Of all the things the 6th Officer wished he could remember, that vexing shopgirl's song was the last thing he wanted playing over and over in his head.
But it was the only thing his mind wouldn't let go of, as he waited outside the museum for the maid to come out and claim her cat.
Both officer and fur-ball hunkered down on a bus stop bench, as James made a tent for Captain Wentworth with the buttoned flaps of his jacket. A perfect hiding place from the rain for the two gray owl-like ears and penny eyes peeking out from the warm safety of the officer's coat.
James only knew of one cure to bothersome songs that wouldn't take leave of one's head.
Being a man of foresight, who was too nervous to leave much to chance, James went to sea prepared for anything. Never leaving land without a boatswain's knife for making ropes fast, a needle and thread, if his coat should drop a button, and a harmonica for his sanity of mind.
And while he breathed into each note of Miss Amberflaw's catchy tune on his harmonica, playing the melodic ballad by ear, James's numbly cold fingers came to a gradual stop.
The notes of his wistful harmonica softening into silence at his puckered lips.
Only the rain played on without him.
Falling stars that shimmered down around the roof of the lonely bus stop, as the trickle of water hitting the puddles carried his mind back to England.
Or at least, what he remembered of home.
"Tell me, old boy," he said distantly to Captain Wentworth, snuggled warmly against his side. "Does it always rain like this here too?"
.
Because now that James thought about it, it was that gloomy summer in 1904, when he remembered the rain in Scarborough never wanting to stop either.
James hadn't expected to find any such tribute there, and when he did, his heart quickened for the one person he suspected might've left it.
Atop the white headstone named for Evelyn Louise Lammin-Moody rested a bustle of forget-me-nots tied together with cream lace.
The baby blue mouse-ears for petals were the first pop of color that caught James Moody's eye out of the gloomy sea fog hanging over Scarborough that morning.
But it wasn't he this timewho'd left the miniature bouquet there for his mother.
And neither could it have been his father, James made his guesses.
John Henry Moody wasn't long a widower before he married Miss Annie, and by the time James's half-brother Antony was born the very next year, papa seemed to have forgotten he loved another woman first.
And so, it became James's ritual alone to look after his mother as she slept, faithfully taking a leave from sea every year on the anniversary of Evelyn Moody's death.
John Moody tried hardest to convince his son that 8 years was enough time to make peace with his mourning, but James wasn't counting.
Though he never showed it in his easy smile, James's heart was still badly broken, and heartsickness couldn't tell a day from a decade gone by.
So, just as he'd done every year before, James spent that morning at his mother's graveside reading her favorite poetry.
Unlike his father, who preferred the practical studies of law, James shared his mother's love for imaginative books. William Blake, Christina Rossetti, E.M. Forster, Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett, The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Louis Carole...the list went on and on. And no sweeter voice than his mother's reading each one had ever carried James into pleasanter dreams.
Until he got it in his head somehow that it'd be fun to write her his own poetry someday.
Ditching his lessons at Rosebury Prep and hiding out on the roof of Scarborough lighthouse with a breathtaking view of the sea, scribbling poetry in the dying light of a marine sunset, before his father came demanding he climb down at once.
Of course, papa only kept a branch hanging in his study as a symbol of authority and warning that punishment would certainly follow where it was due. But John Moody hardly had a heart to use it on any of his eight children, especially James, whose easy nature rarely gave him a reason to anyway. Save for indulging in imaginative book reading and poem writing!
But his usual punishments of being locked in a dark closet or losing his allowance for playing hookie were gambles James took on occasion.
And on one of these such occasions, James had been at the lighthouse when the doctor suddenly dropped into the Moodys' foyer.
And when the doctor dropped out, just as James was running back in to show mama he had at last worked out the first stanza to his poem, his mother was already gone.
The words he'd written down on paper now empty hollows left behind in her absence.
And for days after, he'd lie there wordlessly on his stomach, using his elbow like a pillow to rest his head on the cold wooden floor of his room. Saying very little to any concerned caller at his bed chamber door, as he used his pen to trace the dancing shadows from the great Irish Oak outside his window, which fell across his untouched note paper as daylight abandoned him.
Nevermore having enough words to fill the perpetually white space on his blank parchment.
And since then, James never wrote anything lengthier than the letters to his sister between ship ports, and rarely bothered with imaginative books these days, save for the stories he told to other sailors on stormy nights at sea.
Because when one is encouraged to always "quit ye as a man and be strong", always act chivalrous and button everything else down, always be sunny and grateful, always be sociably warm and charming, always smile politely when spoken to...and never spoil tea with laments for the unchangeable past...what room was there for anything else James felt?
Would there ever be a "suitable" word for pain beyond all imagining, or missing someone dear you never wanted to be without?
After his mother's passing, words could never fill James's empty heart quite the same way as dirt seemed to fill her empty grave.
And while mama had stayed just the same in James's memory, he was no longer 11. He was much older than that now, and understood far more of the world for what it was.
No longer for what he dreamed it could be.
And as fate would have it, duty brought him home again to Scarborough. His father's expectations for him as a Moody to carry on the family's reputation safely doing away with any lingering romanticisms of James's boyhood.
Even so, childish as poetry seemed now, James had made a vow, and his vows were never broken.
He still had a poem he owed to his mother.
But the storms had been in such a rage aboard the Boadicea that season, that for the first time since his mother's passing, James had missed his chance to come home and tend to her grave.
Only to find that someone else had beat him to it.
Evelyn Moody's headstone was dusted clean of all the dead leaves, dirt, and stray hairs of webbing that hid away his mother's name while he was at sea.
The weeds were neatly trimmed back where James knew the vines grew the stubbornest, leaving the base of the headstone satisfyingly cleared and manicured.
Everything was exactly the way he might've done it, in the same spirit of care he would've done it in.
Everything but that strikingly blue bouquet of forget-me-nots crowning Evelyn's stone.
But who had been keeping the grave while he was away?
Surely, not Miss Annie, who was always so eager to earn herself a small token of James's affection, and left lilies yearly at mama's grave for him to find.
Bit for all her heart, his stepmother wasn't keen on getting dirt under her fingernails.
And surely, not his father, who was much too busy catering to his new legal clients at Downton Abbey to be bothered with so much important detail.
And if not his sister, Margaret, who had recently gone away to become a nurse, then who was left for James to thank for the unexpected kindness?
James gently turned the bouquet over in his dark day gloves, charcoal being the only color he preferred these days, as it conveniently matched all his sailing uniforms.
Discovering for the first time that forget-me-nots didn't actually carry any scent of their own.
And it puzzled James to find that he...liked it that way.
Not at all like the overpowering perfume of lilies and chrysanthemums draping his mother's headstone.
As James had no heart to tell the well-meaning Miss Annie how much like murder the smell of daylilies were to his sinuses.
But these were different.
Raw. Pure. Honest.
Whoever had left them, could any two people think so much alike, if this mystery someone were able to guess his own mind in choosing scentless forget-me-nots instead of the tired tradition of lilies?
Could the secret well-wisher have known somehow how he maddeningly looked on in silence, as the servants at the Moody house draped all the mirrors with black upon his mother's death?
Or that white and virgin pink had been chosen for Evelyn Moody's memorial, ignoring James's insistence that mama hated pink, and that sky-blue had been the color she adored most?
Could this kind spirit have really watched him so carefully, that this someone had remembered he liked to line pine shavings around Evelyn's headstone to keep the knotweeds from taking over the grave, knowing that it was never certain when he'd return from sea?
Was it any small wonder that this nameless stranger could know his heart so intimately already, even though they had never been properly introduced?
James gazed around at the morning sea-mist smelling of woodsmoke as it hung over the other gravestones nearby.
But like every other year before, James found no sign of the mystery woman he knew had been looking after mama's grave while he was away.
Only the morning's chilling rain swept across his pastel complexion, as he searched in vain for her in the fog.
Leaving the sailor to wonder if she'd ever end this tantalizing anonymity between them, or would he be resolved to go back to the Boa for yet another year without any token of her?
What was he to make of it, if she kept herself away?
No matter how early or late his arrival, the bashful Miss was careful to take her leave long before he could happen upon her at the gravesite.
Was it really just unlucky timing on James's part?
Or had he unwittingly fallen in love with a graveyard ghost?
What reason did she have to keep herself hidden, for so many tormenting years of wondering between them?
"Nah then, Mr. Moody! Bit parky out, in't? Grand day for rain, I'd say."
James waved to the grave-keeper walking by with his shovel and mattock leaning across his shoulders.
And being a sailor now, who had braved more than his fair share of horrors at sea, James took heart.
Knowing that no matter what a Nervous Nelly he felt for asking after a mystery woman he wasn't promised to, now was as good a chance as any to make bold and ask the grave-keeper that burning question that had anguished him for years.
Closing his mother's grave fence behind him, James hurried after the gravedigger, who went on singing Sweet Adeline.
'Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
'Brings back the time, love, when you were near.
It is then I wonder where you are, my darling,
And if your heart to me is still the same.
For the sighing wind and nightingale a-singing
Are breathing only your own sweet name.'
'My Adeline, my Adeline,
For you I pine, for you I pine.
In all my dreams, in all my dreams.
Your fair face beams, your fair face beams.
You're the flower of my heart,
Sweet Adeline, my Adeline.'
James at last caught up beside the tuneful grave-keeper.
"Are you in good health, sir, Mr. Harlow?"
"Aye, ah'um! Chuffin' away, lad, I am! You won't find me crouterin' and liggin' about," the grave-keeper answered merrily. "Out from under the sail, ye are again, I see! What do I owe the honor, Mr. Moody?"
"It's my honor to see you well again, sir," James assured him. "Though, I was wondering if I might ask you-"
"Ah, blinkin' hell, it's right beltin' down on us now! Mind how ye go, Mr. Moody! Take care not to catch thissen in a sinkhole!" a distracted Mr. Harlow marveled at the rain pouring around them. "Am off to my hut to give us a brolly! Reckon I got one liggin' about here someplace."
"It's nobbut water, sir. No need to go to the trouble," James declined politely. "I won't bother you longer than is necessary to inquire after-"
"Oh, aye? Fancy it nobbut indeed to a seafaring man," Mr. Harlow chuckled. "How's the Boa treatin' you? They feedin' you well enough?"
"I am getting on well with all my complements, including the stewards, which I find pays. And the salt pork and beef are not half as bad as I expected," James answered. "All the same, I'm grateful to be granted leave. Which brings me back to my question-"
"Your father had much to do with that, I imagine?" Mr. Harlow's cheery tone darkened a bit suspiciously, as he side-eyed James. "What's our old guvnor so horn-mad on these days?"
"His Lordship's solicitor took ill suddenly," James informed him. "Lord Grantham has of late been searching for loopholes in the entail at Downton. My father's legal firm was recommended to him as a stand-in. He asked me back to assist for the time being, as he was already working a case with a man about a pig farm in Leeds, and would've been sorry to turn the Earl down."
"Of course. What man of sound mind would dare say no to his lordship?" Mr. Harlow remarked sarcastically. "Even so, dead set your father is upon making you a man of law, isn't he?"
"I'd like to imagine he's at loggerheads with enough scrappin' as it is," James smiled goodheartedly. "Anyhow, Mrs. Potts will be off to fetch me soon enough, and I've still been meaning to ask you-"
"Now, don't ye settle for owt, James Moody. No matter how he berates ye," the grave-keeper warned him. "I know he's not let up on you, and sons live for nobbut to make a father proud. Nonetheless, if the sea is where your heart is, you will always find yer way back to her."
"That's bein' yonderly." It was James's turn to side-eye his old friend suspiciously. "Fancy you think there's more to this I should know about?"
The gravedigger's eyes scanned his cemetery.
"Funny thing about graves is that once we die, it don't matter who we were or what we'd done. Come lord or beggar, I come to know many secrets of both the dead and living folk here. Secrets like your father's real business at Downton...And if there be some truth to rumors, it can do no good for neither the both of you."
"What do you mean by that, I wonder?" James asked. "Which two of us are you referring to?"
But the grave-keeper's brows perked up suddenly, as if to remember something of great importance.
"Right, forgive me, lad! Here I was chelpin' on about nowt when you had something else you wanted to ask me first...What was it then, eh?"
.
Beep, beep!
The sound of 5 o'clock road-rage brought James back to the starlight of rain that fell in the headlamps of the motorcars whizzing pass him.
Captain Wentworth batted curiously at the harmonica in James's hand, as if to ask the sailor for an encore.
James gave in to a weary smile, stroking the cat's head with the back of his whitened knuckles, as his eyes found Ms. Amberflaw coming up the sidewalk at last.
"Thanks, mate," he told the shopgirl's cat. "But I can't play anymore for you, I'm afraid. Here comes your person now, and the way she's lookin' over here, I can tell she's got the monk on for me stealin' away with you. And anno better now than to go on mitherin' with the likes of her."
And as James watched the maid jog toward him through the rain, gathering up her skirt for better ease of walking as her white Converse swished through the rain puddles, his last words with the grave-keeper came back to him.
"Are you sure you're not imagining her, Mr. Moody?" Mr. Harlow had asked. "Nice young ladies don't wander about cemeteries alone tendin' to the dead, ye know."
"Suppose that's the reason she's afraid of letting me know her," James had answered him. "Yet if she knew how eagerly I'd like to, maybe she wouldn't feel afraid. I think of her often while I'm at sea. Don't suppose you 'appen to know who she is, or where she works over in town?"
"Sorry, lad, I don't reckon I've met many a lass like that here...What's she look like?"
"Dunno, really," James admitted regretfully. "We happened upon each other here when we were just bairns. When my mother died, actually. I stow away here to grieve her in peace, because my father would whip me otherwise. I don't know how she'd come about there, but the lass must have taken pity on what a miserable sight I was. I started when she put her hand on my back, but she said to me, 'Don't be afraid to cry for her. I'll stay here with you and keep watch, if you like. So no one knows you're here. Our secret, it is, just you and I.' ...She was the only soul on this earth who understood exactly the pain I felt, and how grateful I was to her that I no longer needed to hide it. I wept relentlessly. And was much too ashamed to look into her face with my ugly mug, much as I roared my eyes out in front of her. I still hadn't got a proper look at her before she was called away by her guardian. Millicent, she'd been called after...That name is all I know of her now."
"Ah, young love, is it?" Mr. Harlow teased him. "And what are you goin' to do, if you ever find this Miss Millicent from nowhere? Ask her to marry ye, will ye?"
"I'd sooner be cut off," James sighed. "I know nowt will ever come of it...Father would look down upon me marrying a girl he doesn't approve as my equal...Though I don't suppose that means I can't at least thank her for showing me so much kindness? If nothing else, I'd take even that, for the chance of meeting her again...So, if you 'appen to hear more of her, do let me know straight away."
"You have my ears, Mr. Moody. Anything at all," the gravedigger tipped his hat in farewell. "Best of luck to you, eh?"
"Thank you," James nodded to him. "Perhaps, I'll wait here a while longer, if you don't mind..in case there's a chance she comes back."
It was at long last that Emily closed the final few paces of sidewalk between her and James, leaning against the wall of the bus stop shelter, as the officer met her gaze.
"So," she said. "I've finally found you."