#character: graham reid malett
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Whumptober 2022 day 30
This is the writing mood lads, but we’re nearly there...
Manhandled | Hair Grabbing | “Please don’t touch me.”
Another stellar shout from @stripedroseandsketchpads Mmmmaybe the thing in PiF where Lymond is caught/being held back and GRM tries to literally force him to take drugs etc? Iirc there was also face grabbing involved…
Took me a while to find the in on this, and please don’t question surrounding details - PiF timelines and events diverge a bit from canon. A card game isn’t equivalent to five-aside opium-fuelled murder chess, it’s just one element of things. Francis has been playing at other tables too - though you might be suspicious as to whether he really has been trying to cheat the house.
CW: kidnapping (well...implied gambling for custody over people), prescription drug misuse and addiction, manhandling and signs of a beating (blood). Casino setting. GRM being there, being a creep, trying to force drugs on our dear hero. Also cw 1980s fashions. And a toddler gets dropped, but that’s how it goes in canon, too.
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"You can't just keep me here!" Philippa injected all of her strident Somerville common-sense into the words.
She supposed Kate had been right about another thing - a shower and a change of clothes could do wonders for your confidence. She'd probably have been unstoppable if she'd been allowed to choose the outfit herself. Instead she had to make do with Kiaya Çalışkan's idea of suitable attire for a business meeting in a casino: a clingy mint green dress cut straight across the top so that her shoulders and collarbones were bare, cinched in at the middle by a wide gold belt that felt almost like a corset. In the air-conditioned room, Philippa's neck and shoulders might have felt exposed if not for her hair, which fell long over her clavicles, and for the child, Hamal's warm weight in her arms.
She stood at the table where the final game of the night had been played and stared down the array of disinterest and disdain that greeted her.
The owner of the casino, Roxelana, gazed impassively at Philippa. "Sweetheart, he lost," she said, raising one empty palm and shrugging.
Kiaya Çalışkan's arms were folded - an unusual indicator of her annoyance - but she said nothing to support Philippa. She looked at Roxelana and Philippa thought she saw something pass between them, these two otherworldly women. They towered on their huge heels like tall, elegant birds, Kiaya's gracefully curved nose raised in the air, Roxelana's long, narrow eyes quick to observe from beneath her heavily made-up lids.
Roxelana's thin lips softened at the corners into a hostess' smile and she turned back to Philippa. "You'll be quite comfortable here, our rooms are luxurious. It's only until Mr Crawford and Mr Reid Malett can reach a more...binding agreement."
"It's still kidnapping," Philippa said baldly.
Roxelana chuckled mirthlessly, her mouth remaining closed as she did. She met Kiaya's eyes and Kiaya smiled back obligingly.
Philippa wondered what sort of life these women led, where a teenager complaining of kidnapping and abduction could just be treated as a source of amusement, or something endearingly naïve to be patronised.
The third person on the other side of the table had been staring at her with an expression of boredom and disgust. Graham Reid Malett's lip curled even as he ran his icy blue eyes up and down her body. His hands were in the pockets of his pink satin suit trousers and he stood in an aspect of readied relaxation that belied the damage Philippa knew had been done to one of his legs.
Philippa clutched Hamal tightly and pretended she couldn't feel Reid Malett assessing every swell and curve of her seventeen years through the form-fitting fabric of her dress. She tossed her hair back and raised her chin assertively. "Mr Crawford won't stand for this. I know he has a plan. He'll never consent to leaving Ms O'Dwyer and their son behind with a man like him," she deliberately ignored Reid Malett and addressed Roxelana, the lady in charge.
Another woman, who remained sitting down next to her, gazed up with her own look of wry amusement, though it was nearly buried beneath exhaustion. Oonagh O'Dwyer appeared every inch the supermodel again after Kiaya's work - an ivory-coloured satin bodice enfolded her body, as straight-edged and unyielding as she was, and an artfully pressed pair of matching trousers seemed to engulf her long, skinny legs. She held a toddler on her lap as well, a sullen and restless boy with blond curls and a long, angry mouth. She didn't contradict Philippa - but Philippa gathered that she had little hope of any help from Francis now.
"He ought to have played better then, oughtn't he?" Reid Malett sneered.
"Yes, well - " Philippa drew an indignant breath, but didn't get the chance to offer up an excuse for Mr Crawford. At that moment the door to the private room opened and the man himself was launched back through it, followed by two black-suited security guards.
Francis tumbled to his knees on the thick, patterned carpet and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. Philippa saw it come away with blood on it and she detected Oonagh's soft murmur - some Irish curse, no doubt.
Reid Malett perked up at his appearance, swaying to face the man who was now being forcibly restrained by the guards. His hands still in his pockets, he nodded his head at Roxelana's chief of security, who had been standing in the shadows by the wall, observing all with silent professionalism.
"Well, Dragut. Looks like your boys have discovered some...irregularities already."
The Turkish guard did not move or unfold his arms. His moustache twitched a little, like he wanted dearly to say something to Reid Malett, but instead he asked his men what the situation was.
One tossed a leather satchel on the table and pointed a finger at it. "He's been pocketing his winnings. Tried to leave without paying off his credit."
"A serious accusation," Reid Malett looked at Roxelana and stepped forwards, reaching for the bag. "May I?"
Dragut watched him closely but did not object. Roxelana frowned, folded her arms and nodded.
Philippa was staring at Francis, who laughed ruefully and shook his head. There was blood welling from his split lip and dripping on the front of his white shirt. His arms were held unnecessarily tightly behind his back by the two guards. He glanced up finally and met her eyes. "Hullo. Fancy meeting you here," he gasped, his attempt at a reassuring smile somewhat undercut by the blood on his teeth.
Hamal saw it too and whimpered unhappily. He wrapped his small fists in Philippa's hair and nuzzled her chin.
Reid Malett was removing things from the satchel. What interested him most seemed to be a little orange pill bottle, which he shook experimentally and held up to the light above the playing table. "Oh, Francis, my dove. What on earth is this?" he cooed.
Philippa went to take another step closer to see what it was, but felt a cool grip on her arm.
Oonagh looked up at her with steady, serious green eyes. "Mo chailín cróga. Don't."
She hesitated. She just wanted to ask the guards to loosen their grip a bit, to check Reid Malett hadn't somehow planted the evidence he seemed so unsurprised to find. But Oonagh's expression was the expression of a woman who knew all too well what was at stake and what the people in the room were capable of. She squeezed Philippa's arm until the girl sighed and agreed to hang back.
In Oonagh's arms, Cai watched Swami Geetesh with a rapt expression. "Sweeties!" he yelled, and pointed a chubby finger at the bottle in Reid Malett's hand.
Most of the people in the room where staring at the child and the pill bottle - only Philippa and Oonagh saw Francis turn glacial white at the boy's demand.
Reid Malett smiled perfunctorily at Cai. "Not sweeties, no. The sign of a dreadful addiction, in fact. When did you grow so desperate that you had to self-medicate, Francis?" he stepped towards him until he was standing right in front of the kneeling Mr Crawford, and he shook the bottle of pills again, holding it down by his crotch, which he held jutted towards Francis' face.
Francis swallowed and a tremor went through his body. The guards responded as though it had been an escape attempt and wrenched his arms back further.
Graham Reid Malett stared at him, open-eyed, open-lipped, an expression of thirsty fascination on his features. "It's been a while since you've had any, hm?"
He flicked the cap off with his thumb and wafted the bottle below Francis' downturned face. It probably didn't smell of much at all, but the proximity of it made Francis snap his head up and wriggle against his restraints.
"You must be feeling dreadful," Reid Malett mused. He turned to Roxelana and Kiaya, but he did not move away from Mr Crawford. "It must have impaired his judgement during the game. It would be remiss of me to accept a result like that - won on an advantage, against a man who is already lost to his basest instincts."
"Indeed?" Kiaya's brows raised. "What do you propose?"
Reid Malett barked a laugh. "Well first, he needs to be in his right state of mind." He raised the bottle and studied it again. "They're strong, Francis. How long have you been taking them?" Abruptly, he dropped to a crouch, so that he was at eye level with his plaything. "You must be feeling..." Reid Malett studied his face, then whipped a large hand out to grab Francis and hold him, his thumb on Francis' cheek, his fingers tight on the back of his head. "Simply dreadful. No sleep...cold sweats...anxiety...do you see that it is all hopeless yet, darling?"
Mr Crawford pressed his lips together and Philippa distinctly saw him shudder again.
Reid Malett beamed. "Siezures? Oh dear. Dear, dear, dear. I think the only way you can work with us is if you have a little more, hm? We don't have time to wait out the withdrawal symptoms."
"Hold his head," he stood and ordered the guards.
"Stop!" Philippa yelped. "Why are you listening to him? He's not your boss!"
Oonagh's hand was on her arm again, pinching tight, but Oonagh was also looking at Roxelana and Dragut. Kiaya was looking at Dragut. Dragut was looking at Roxelana.
The lady of the house turned to the table and ran her fingers through the takings that had been discovered in Francis' bag. She hummed to herself and tapped a roll of bills with one manicured nail. "Why did you steal from me, Mr Crawford?" she asked.
Francis, his head forced back and his hair pulled tight by one of the guards, grimaced. "My financial problems are well known."
Roxelana's eyes narrowed. "Indeed, which is why I brought you here to negotiate a residency on stage."
Francis' brows rose and he glanced at Reid Malett, a smile almost reaching his lips. "Yes. It doesn't make much sense, does it?"
"The uncontrolled impulses of a junkie," Graham Reid Malett announced.
Roxelana looked down her long, straight nose at Mr Crawford and at Reid Malett. Then she shrugged and turned away.
"Dragut, I think Mr Crawford will be staying with us as well. Please have someone prepare a room for him."
"No..." Philippa whined, pain seeping into her voice as Oonagh's nails bit into the skin of her bicep.
Mr Crawford didn't have a chance to cast a brave look in her direction. Reid Malett grabbed his jaw between his thumb and fingers and pinched tight enough that Philippa could see the blood rise to his skin even from where she stood.
Reid Malett lifted the bottle of pills towards Mr Crawford's mouth and squeezed as hard as he could against his teeth, trying to force an opening to appear between his lips.
The only thing that Philippa could think of to do was not very fair, really, but then nobody in this room could judge her on it. Nobody except for Hamal himself, whom she murmured an apology to as she let her hold on him fail and watched him drop to the floor.
Hamal shrieked as he fell and shrieked again at the impact. It wasn't very far and the carpet was plush, but the shock of it left him howling.
It was enough of a distraction - in the instant the guards' attention wandered, Francis tore his hair free and threw himself sideways, managing to knock the pill bottle from Reid Malett's hand with his shoulder as he turned.
The contents of the bottle rolled away and found places to nestle in among the thick pile carpet. Francis didn't try to flee, but let the guards grasp him once more and laughed even as the back of Reid Malett's hand landed a blow across his cheek.
Philippa had bent to where Hamal sat screaming, his face red and the tears flowing down his cheeks. She tutted at the carpet burn on his knee and spoke gently but firmly. "Fie, fie, hinny! It’s a soft, expensive rug!"
She glanced up to check on Mr Crawford and saw he was staring at her with horror, Reid Malett's face next to his, also turned towards Philippa. She could almost read the words on his lips as he murmured against Francis' cheek: "Don't worry. I'll see that she pays for it."
#whumptober2022#whumptober#every day i write the book#character: philippa somerville#character: francis crawford#character: graham reid malett#character: kiaya khatun#character: oonagh o'dwyer#character: cai o'dwyer#character: hamal#character: dragut#character: roxelana#setting: topkapi casino#band au: pawn in frankincense
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ten examples of characters calling Lymond “Francis” for the first time, or the first time on page! So many flavors of Francis feelings. Take your pick. (and let me know if I missed earlier instances)
Speakers and context:
Sybilla to the son she hasn’t seen in five years, as he breaks into her castle and sets it on fire. (first on page, The Game of Kings)
Margaret Douglas to the man who kidnapped her. They, too, haven’t seen each other in about five years. (first on page, The Game of Kings)
Christian to her anonymous friend at Threave. I normally wouldn’t count this, because she says his last name, but it’s THE REVEAL, and she calls him by his first name to Sybilla later in the chapter. (first on page, The Game of Kings) - “Francis Crawford: you’re another fool, playing Macarius with the lockjaw. I told you sound was my stock-in-trade. I’ve known your voice since I was twelve.”
Richard. The dell near Hexham. God, Francis had screamed. (first on page, The Game of Kings)
Oonagh when they wake up together and she declines to give him Artus Cholet’s name. And she’s quoting Sybilla? I desperately want to know more about that interaction. We get some information in Checkmate, but still… (genuine first Francis, presumably. Queens’ Play)
Will Scott after the Hough Isa scheme and after spilling soup on himself! (first on page, presumably not a genuine first, The Disorderly Knights)
Graham Reid Malett. What the fuck, dude. (first time directly to Francis, The Disorderly Knights) - “‘I desire,’ he said abruptly to Lymond, ‘to call you Francis. Is that permitted? It is out of affection and a … purely spiritual love.’”
Jerott after he finds Oonagh’s body. (first time on page directly to Francis. Given the context and the way the Francises begin to multiply soon after, I would believe it’s the first time he’s addressed Lymond that way in ten years. Pawn in Frankincense) - “She is more than dead, Francis. If I thought you would do it, I would beg you to go without seeing her.”
Marthe to her brother, at Volos, after he calls her his sister by reciting a poem. The turning point. (genuine first Francis, Pawn in Frankincense)
Philippa, after falling in love with her husband as they wreak sweet, lyrical havoc across the rooftops and through the traboules of Lyon. Before the rest of that night happens. (genuine first Francis, Checkmate)
#lymond#francis crawford#lymond chronicles spoilers#eight of these are devastating to me in their own ways#and then there’s Will!#and then. there’s Gabriel.#but it was necessary to include both of them#you see#poll#something i#you will note there are none from the ringed castle#that’s because it’s the ringed castle#lymond polls
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top 5 villains in fiction? Or alternatively, top 5 antagonists, totally up to you.
thank youuuuu :)
lol so i'm very obnoxious about what kind of character does or does not constitute a villain/an antagonist so these are like top 5 that passed that rigorous selection process
graham reid malett aka gabriel (the lymond chronicles). so my problem with villanous characters is that i'm a contrary bitch and when authors want me to really hate someone i usually end up either not caring either way or actively rooting for them lmao. but with gabriel dunnett managed to create someone truly terrifying and compelling at the same time. he's sort of a variation on lymond himself in the sense that he's what other characters think lymond should be - he's a version of lymond that conforms. or seems to conform, to put it more accurately, but that's the horror of it all - being a good man vs. seeming like one, and who's to say what's more important in the grand scheme of things? so the depiction of how any reasonably talented sociopath can charm his way to power and none will be the wiser is very realistic and scary but also - his villain monologues? outstanding. his gaslighting game? virtuoso. the homoerotic tension with the hero? off the charts. yet to be dethroned as my favorite villain of all time.
azula (avatar: the last airbender). i just like how cool and competent and dramatic she is and tbh the gaang were able to beat her only bc she conveniently got a bad case of mommy issues at the end. the last agni kai lives in my mind rent free - truly one of the greatest moments of cinema history.
milady de winter (the three musketeers, especially the 1978 adaptation). i knoooow she's the problematic femme fatale trope or whatever but i don't care. she's the blueprint. she has that sad backstory of being used and abused by men but i don't even particularly care about that either. she's an evil spy ladyboss i connected with on a neurological level when i was 11 and i have loved seeing her winning battles and losing wars again and again ever since.
lord voldemort (harry potter). tbh just a classic nostalgic "i want dominion over everything" kind of villain who at the same time represents evil and insidious real world ideologies that we like to think we defeated once and for all until they rise again - and in a very ironic fashion too, given by whomst this particular villain has been authored. i like voldemort's iconography and origin story but i also like how at the end of the day he remains a "flat" sort of villain with none of that boohoo nonsense. like, seriously, sometimes one needs less snivelling and more "there is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it". i like the trope of having to collect a number of macguffins and do things in a very specific way in order to defeat him - and it does feel satisfying to see the characters finally accomplish it.
shen jiu (the scum villain's self-saving system). lol unlike in the case of milady i do care about shen jiu's backstory insofar as it means he has done nothing wrong ever in his life but he's on this list bc he's the titular scum villain and the book itself is about interrogating the roles people play in each other's lives and how those can be reframed if we change the perspective of the narrative. shen jiu is the villain bc luo binghe is the protag - the book tells us so on the meta level. but then as shen yuan learns more about shen jiu - and especially when we read the extra stories from shen jiu's pov - "villain" does not apply anymore as per my very specific criteria lol. in this regard shen jiu is also notable for asking one of the realest questions: while trying to get him to reconcile with liu qingge yue qingyuan says something like "do him a kindness and he'll return it tenfold" - to which shen jiu replies "ah but that's the thing - why should i be the one to be kind first?". bc if you think about it "why should i be the one to break the cycle of violence?" is one of the fundamental villain questions.
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@niniblack replied to your post:
these books, painful? nah...
I mean, true. This is just extra painful because it's been giving me meta thoughts about how we (almost?) always see Lymond from another characters perspective, so when we get to see any emotion from him it's generally when he's absolutely broken. The fact that even though he's not pleading or desperate we can see just how badly he's hurting underneath the character he's playing just makes my heart ache.
It's one of the many things I find really interesting about the way Lymond and Gabriel are played against each other in The Disorderly Knights. Lymond is closed off and distant where Gabriel is open and sincere so you can see exactly why all the characters would pick him over Lymond. When you realise how much he's been hiding, it's incredible that he could come across as so honest and trustworthy.
It's funny, because from the scene where he was introduced I had Gabriel pegged as either the villain or Lymond's long lost brother (or both), but the reveal was still a shock because of how kind and emotionally available he was shown to be up to that point.
#kind of a tangent there but it's something i've been thinking of for a while#gabriel's a fucked up guy but he's one hell of a character#niniblack#lymond chronicles#lymond#francis crawford of lymond#tagging it properly because of vaguely meta-ish stuff#graham reid malett
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Six sentence Sunday
I felt like I hadn’t done that much writing this week, but it turns out I have three WIPs to post from! A bit more than six sentences where there’s dialogue and the sentences are short.
So whether you’re a horrible (wonderful) gremlin who likes the idea of Band AU Graham Reid Malett tormenting Jerott (subtitled: The Worst Breakup Ever), whether you needed to know that Slata Baba in the Band AU is a big, nervous dog who doesn’t die, or whether you were at all curious as to whether I ever wrote non-Lymond characters, there’s something for...the usual extremely specific tastes.
1) Horrible no good whump (Band AU, Gabriel/Jerott)
"No, you are right. The scar will be an interesting talking point for you. What will you tell your groupies, Mr Blyth?"
Jerott closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, wondering what would happen to him once Geetesh had has his fun. The twin points of pain made sparks of light dance behind his eyelids, interference crackling on the edges of his awareness.
Geetesh discarded the cloth and touched Jerott's face once more with his hand, smoothing over skin that felt bruised and tender. "Will you tell them it was given to you by your tormentor? Or by one who you loved? Will you say I have ruined you, that not even your adoring fans can save you, though they will try, with all that they have to give..." Geetesh's hand slid to Jerott's neck, cupping his throat just below the line of his jaw, fingers working against the hot line of Jerott's pulse, thumb a threat of strength over his Adam's apple. "Well?"
2) Fluff! Francis is a bit worried, but it’s ok, Slata Baba is getting nice belly scritches from a party guest (Band AU, the post-Checkmate celebration of Thatcher’s ousting)
With her dark coat and reclusive tendencies, Slata Baba had quickly demonstrated that she could vanish in the most inconspicuous corners of shadow. The most likely thing to send her sulking was the intrusion of strange people into her new home, and at present there were rather a lot of rather strange people within the walls of St Mary's.
The sound of the party rang through the building, and not even the sanctuary of the study was completely free of it. And now a very large, very nervous Moscow street dog was roaming about - a Russian Vodolaz, no less, a breed known for its high-strung personality and unreliable temper - a dog who had unwillingly become a stray for a second time in her life a little over two years ago, and had only recently been reunited with her adopted family. A dog with abandonment issues loose in a house where party guests stood on lintels laughing and smoking and left doors open, where a handful of under-tens stampeded from occupation to occupation without restraint or limits on the noise they produced.
Francis felt his pulse quicken and wondered who had left this particular door open - no matter. First he had to find the dog.
3) And Then We Danced fic...that will become a Band AU crossover because @erinaceina-blog knows what’s up: Merab in London, encountering a bunch of proud middle-aged queer artists out celebrating Adam Blacklock’s birthday in a Georgian restaurant.
Mary's aunt opened one thin door and revealed a long, narrow bedroom with half a square window at the end. The bed took up most of the space, and with a chest of drawers by its head, beneath the window, it left barely room for three paces from the door across the pale laminate floor. Merab swallowed and made himself smile gratefully - it would be a novelty to have his own room, but he worried about where he would be able to practice.
He put his bags down on the bed and shrugged off his coat, breathing in the smell of lavender on the sheets. Mary's aunt was explaining that she did not usually cook elaborate Georgian meals and he should not get used to it - but for their first night in England she thought her boys would be homesick.
He might have supposed it to be one of her grammatical slips, only then she added: "It's funny, the two of you turning up at once. No lodger for months and then my house is full! He is sleeping at present; he was on a very early flight. So, you take your time, unpack, I will call you boys when the table needs setting."
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Fic meme—#12
favorite character to write about this year
Based solely on the amount of fic I wrote about a single character I’m gonna go with Loki, still. But if we’re talking new character that I haven’t written about before (which might be a more interesting answer) - might have to be Felix. I missed writing Felix, it turns out. And I think I’ve gotten better at him.
But the surprise character that I didn’t expect to enjoy writing about as much as I have is Aziraphale. For whatever reason, while Crowley owns my heart, Aziraphale is really fun to write.
Other characters who remain really enjoyable to write include: the Grandmaster, Valkyrie, and Sir Graham “Gabriel” Reid Malett.
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In my happy ramblings through the Lymond tag, I came across a fancast post to which @hellotailor had added a comment on how Gabriel might be ideally played by Chris Evans, or at least by someone who looks Like That. This was such a startling idea that my brain immediately latched on to it and refuses to let go (previously my fantasy choice would have been Ladyhawke-era Rutger Hauer, maybe).
Could Chris Evans do it?
- Good reviews for playing corrupt cop on stage
- Half the planet trained by Marvel to see him as Steve Rogers, embodiment of Good
- Can you imagine the shock value of Chris Evans playing a Steve Rogers-type character who turns out to be pure sociopathic evil?
- Just to put the finishing touches on the concept, last night I came across a short fic in which Steve Rogers has basically been Graham Reid Malett all his life:
"The Value of Strength", by Margo_Kim (AO3)
It felt like seeing inside Gabriel's head.
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Whumptober 2022 day 2
Nowhere to Run: Cornered | Caged | Confrontation
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Oonagh and Cai (Khaireddin) on the ashram. References to Oonagh's ED, plus her imprisonment and Geetesh's manipulation of Cai.
Went hard one day 1, had barely any time/inspiration on day 2, rip and apologies! I'm not happy with this but it's done and I had fun comparing Oonagh to the Morrígan at least.
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Now and again she was allowed to see her son, and it was the only thing that kept Oonagh O'Dwyer eating. For nine months after his birth he had at least been kept close by, and every few days Oonagh had been granted an audience in a sound-proofed room at Swami Geetesh's private residence. But then, as her son learned to crawl and toddle, as he began to blossom with an interest in the world, he had been taken and left among the other young children whose presence on Geetesh's ashram was a mere distraction from the spiritual path of the adults. Volunteers minded the infants in the nursery, but Oonagh was never allocated such work - she was honoured to labour in the service of Swami Geetesh himself, in the house he imprisoned her in, where he could keep a close eye on her spirit to ensure it remained small and acquiescent. On the occasions when Geetesh entertained rich donors and couldn't have her around the place - silent and furious, a walking denial of the healing he claimed to offer - she was banished to the kitchens, where her appetite dwindled further in the face of stacks and stacks of dirty plates and greasy pots to wash.
No one on the ashram knew who Oonagh was anymore, no one was left who remembered her pregnancy and her plans to go to Vegas for the birth. No one who knew that, before she was called Ma Daso - the servant - her name had been Oonagh O'Dwyer. She had been supermodel, singer, lover of the superstar Lymond. She had survived the tyranny of Cormac O'Connor before she had survived this.
But earlier, when she had meant to leave this place, she had been sun-tawny and strong, her edges smoothed by happiness, satisfaction, and the health she had learned to maintain for the sake of the child she carried. Now she looked in the mirror of the little bathroom in her attic prison and saw a ghoul: dry black hair starting to show grey wisps - like ruffled feathers - cheeks too hollow, skin too pale and patchy, eyes frenzied and accusatory. Her lips were dry, always troubled by blisters or spots, uneven and bloodied where she picked at them with soft, flaking nails. She looked like a deity whose temple had been slighted; a war grave that had been desecrated; an omen of death.
But when she was with Cai, she laid all that aside - for a few brief minutes once every so many days, or weeks, her captor let her watch over her child, and she made herself glow during that time. Just seeing him was like feeling a tug on the life-belt tethering her to existence. She wouldn't let herself drown while he lived, while a future existed in which she might escape, with Cai, and forge the life she had promised herself.
She never saw another sannyasin at the nursery when she was there - only Geetesh, who watched silently, with contemptuous expectation.
Oonagh wondered, with her own measure of contempt, whether he thought she might one day not recognise her own child in amongst the other toddlers - as if she would ever mistake him for another when she had already spent so many months wondering whether the baby she bore would be the stout, heavy-browed child of bruising colonial traumas, or a poet's changeling, delicate and defiant as the astrantia that had flowered beneath the trees in the month she was due to leave the ashram for the birth.
When she'd met Cai and seen his father's long mouth and delicate brow, his fair complexion and long limbs, she knew she had met someone unforgettable.
Cai was hers and he was a gift from a much-loved friend, not, in fact, a memento from a hellish period of her life that Cormac O'Connor might choose to be litigious about. Cai was hers and no matter how firmly Swami Geetesh referred to the boy as Kailam, his plaything, Oonagh knew, as carrion birds already know the outcome of battle, that Cai was hers.
He had been shy within the group at first. He had known her voice and cleaved to it - crawling across bare floorboards or dry sand to reach for her red linen skirts.
Geetesh had forbidden her from picking him up, but when she spoke to Cai it seemed to amuse him. She'd murmur words of confidence in Irish, and Geetesh would look at her like she was simple.
"Misneach, mo chroí," she told her son. She promised that they would leave together one day, and never wear red again.
And then Cai had stopped coming to her. Geetesh made Oonagh wait longer between visits. And when she arrived, Cai was only as interested in her as the other children were. Less so, in fact. She knew him, always, but Geetesh's contempt turned into amusement as he watched her try to speak with the boy.
Cai had no time for her voice any longer. What return did it bring him? What gratification? Cai saw another child playing with a toy he wanted and he took the toy - Geetesh laughed and praised him. Cai stamped brazenly up to Geetesh and held a hand out. His demands were made - monosyllabic, steeped with certainty - and Geetesh laughed, praised him, and rewarded him with some treat or other from the pockets of his pink linen robes.
If Oonagh objected, the meeting would be cut short. She would be escorted away, Geetesh's large hand pinching tight around her skinny arm.
"Ma Daso, do not interfere," Geetesh warned her, bundling her back inside his car.
"What in hell's name are you doing to him?!" Once, in pure frustration, the question had escaped her.
Geetesh stared down at her from the other side of the car door. Oonagh fought the urge to slam the lock down, as though it would do anything to stop him when he had the keys in his fist.
"He is learning how to transcend the petty limitations we impose upon ourselves," Geetesh said quietly.
"You're turning him into a little psychopath!"
He chuckled. "No, Daso. I am giving him freedom - of course, if you no longer wish to see him, all you need do is tell me."
She swallowed. Her fists clenched in her lap and she searched the icy depths of Geetesh's eyes - whatever she saw there, it still wasn't the same as what she saw in Cai. Cai was hers. Geetesh could give him all the freedom he wanted, but that child - unlooked for, unplanned - was hers, and she would never let it be forgotten.
#whumptober#whumptober2022#character: oonagh o'dwyer#character: cai o'dwyer#band au: disorderly knights#band au: pawn in frankincense#every day i write the book#character: graham reid malett
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Whumptober 2022 day 4
Dead on your feet: Hidden injury | Waking up disoriented | Can't pass out
Content: mainly just Francis having a horrible migraine, while suffering the effects of diazepam addiction. No one getting stabbed or anything! Just. Bad migraine. Bad substances. And important stuff to do. Oh ig CW Graham Reid Malett, unfortunately he is There Again.
---
For the audience, what was at stake was a grand cash prize; for Francis Crawford it was art, freedom, life itself. If he didn't win this contest, his son would never be returned to him, lives would be split apart and hopes shattered, and he would be locked out of any act of creation that didn't directly profit Graham Reid Malett.
It was, all being said, not the ideal time for a migraine to strike.
He waited backstage in the darkness behind the thick, velvet curtains of the stage at the Topkapi Casino. He had no qualms about using meditative techniques the Rajneeshees had taught him back at the studio in London as he tried to imagine that he was separate from his body, from his surroundings - nothing but a pair of hands waiting to pick up an instrument, and a heart to set the audience alight.
Beyond him, on stage, Jerott was holding his own just as Marthe and Philippa had done before him. Although Marthe had fought to be the one to play opposite her old teacher, Francis had insisted, much to her fury, that Jerott would be the one to outplay Georges Gaultier. Gaultier was a fussy, classical player, and Marthe had mastered all he could teach her - she could match him note for note, arpeggio for arpeggio - but even with the extra years of practice she had on Jerott, Marthe had never had the opportunity to cultivate her own style much beyond her teacher's.
She would have done fine, in all likelihood, but out there, past the ringing in Francis' ears, he knew Jerott was doing more than fine - he'd soon grown bored of Gaultier's staid choices of Flamenco staples and had let his own influences leak in. The innovations George Harrison had borrowed from Indian culture were reclaimed, foregrounded and blended with Django Reinhardt's louche, jazzy beats; the precision of Davy Graham's Andalusian-inspired picking collided with cocky, raï-infused syncopation.
Francis managed to smile wanly despite the weakness in his legs, the cold sweat springing to his skin. He could hear the frustration building in Gaultier's dry, heavy finger-work - he fumbled more notes as the audience talked over him and began to heckle, and when Jerott's guitar cut in again the listeners screamed and cheered. The sound was like a bolt gun to the base of Francis' skull, but it meant that soon he would be the one to take the stage - Gaultier was finished.
Archie - ever observant, ever vigilant, always managing to be where he was needed most - handed Francis a pair of sunglasses as he stood at the edge of the stage, his eyes closed, his pulse speeding, his stomach empty and volatile.
He felt the plastic frames between his trembling fingers and tried to get enough air in his lungs to counteract the growing feeling of nausea.
"Maestro, did ye take a dose...?" Archie asked softly. Even so, gentle as he made his voice, his gravelly accent was like needles in Francis' gums, like a vice tightening on top of his spine.
"Yes," he said hoarsely. "I've had enough." The diazepam didn't do anything for the migraines - in fact he'd been on it for long enough that it just added to the fuzzy, unbalanced feeling he had anyway - but without it he would be a wreck, unable even to hold his guitar.
"And ye can play?" Archie asked, as the audience in the vast arena erupted to confirm Jerott's victory.
Francis grimaced and forced the sunglasses on, though he kept his eyes closed as he did, and struggled to settle the frames over his ears with the interference of his violently shaking hands. He swallowed, but his throat remained dry. "I must play, Archie," he murmured.
Behind the shades, he cracked his eyes open and even his teeth seemed to ache at what he could see of the stage lights. He grunted and winced and turned his face towards Archie, his eyelids shut tight again behind the tinted lenses.
"Archie."
"Maestro?"
"A red light on Reid Malett. Blue on me. Nothing more, you hear?"
"Aye, Maestro. I'll speak wi' the technicians."
Even with his eyes closed, even with the relentless howling agony in his head, Francis knew that Jerott had stepped off stage and come to stand by him. His breathing was heavy - self-satisfied, scented with bourbon and tar-rich cigarette smoke - but the hand on Francis' arm, though sweaty, was kind. "You're up."
"I know," Francis pushed his body away from the scaffold he'd been propped up against. Belatedly, he added, "You did well, Jerott. At least the audience is on our side."
Jerott didn't acknowledge the praise directly, but his next words were squeezed by some new emotion: "Francis - are you sure about this?"
Francis sighed. He didn't have the energy to shrug Jerott's hand off him or to explain why this was the only option. Out on stage, the compere seemed to shriek into his microphone, and the record agent Kiaya Çalışkan giggled into her own mic - the sound felt to Francis much like he imagined it would feel to have sand rubbed into his eyeballs.
"He's better than you think on the electric..." Jerott persisted. "But you'd have no problem with this."
With the hand that wasn't on Francis' arm, Jerott was offering the acoustic guitar he'd played. Francis squinted at it, shook his head - once, slowly, feeling the pain behind his eyes turn to a swirl of colours as he did. He forced his clenched jaw apart and thanked Jerott in barely more than a whisper.
"But no - it must be the electric. We can't follow you with more of the same. It's a good instrument, and it's been set up well."
"He'll have - "
"He might have tampered, yes. I can tune my own guitar, Jerott," Francis tried to smile and moved unsteadily past Jerott and his instrument. The stage was dark except for a white spot on the compere and on Kiaya, the competition's sponsor. Francis put Jerott and his worries from his mind, he put Archie and the request he'd made from his mind, and waited for Kiaya Çalışkan to mince off stage in her figure-hugging gold dress and towering stilettos. He focussed on his breathing and opened and closed his fists in time with it, imagining stillness in his fingers until he had willed something close to it into existence.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." the compare yelled.
Francis lowered his head and closed his eyes again, picturing the distance between him and the guitar, counting the necessary steps in his head.
"Without further ado - please welcome to the stage your headline combatants! A real Highland fling here for you tonight..."
Francis had stopped listening to the words. It was too much effort to push past the static of chimes and electric shrieks his mind was telling him his ears could hear. He waited only for the mechanical thunk of the spotlight going off and then he shuffled out onto the dark stage - one step, one breath, two, two, three, three...
"Watch out, buddy, are you drunk?" the compere brushed past him on his own way to the side of the stage, but Francis was nearly there now. He grasped the neck of his guitar as a man dying of thirst would reach for fresh water.
In the darkness across the stage, from behind the lenses of his sunglasses, Francis could just about make out the glittering points of his opponent's instrument - metal tuning pegs, bridge and pickup shining like his golden cufflinks and broad, white-toothed smile.
Francis shouldered his own guitar, unplugged it, and checked the tuning. It wasn't quite what he'd asked for, but he was glad he had that to concentrate on as the crowd roared and the lights went up.
Archie had done his job at least, and twilight blue light bathed Francis as he stood with head bowed, listening with all his might for the hushed, metallic twang of the strings. It was probably muscle memory as much as anything that did it then - knowing how tight the pegs should feel relative to the tension on the strings. It seemed close enough - and if he was off, he would hide it with some elaborate distortion and retune it as he played. An advantage of playing electric, he reflected.
Into the hot, heavy, not-quite-silence beyond the chaos in Francis' head, his enemy launched into a wild, virtuosic riff. At the end, he shook the reverb on it out, letting the sound fade away as the audience's cheers built.
"Are you ready, sweeting?" Graham Reid Malett called across the stage. He chopped out a couple of chords as punctuation, and Francis released a steadying breath through his nostrils. He nodded, settled his hands on his instrument, and played a modest response to Reid Malett's opening that was, at least, in tune.
Francis' opponent threw back his head and laughed. He let rip, and Francis' eyes followed his fingers, picking up what his ears wouldn't let him observe. It wasn't necessary to copy, just to show he was capable of doing the same - and more.
Reid Malett's left hand moved effortlessly up and down the neck of his instrument, his fingers dancing over frets as the digits of his right hand plucked and flicked at the strings. He was quick, but not quite quick enough to hide his workings from Francis.
And at least, come his turn, Francis could close his eyes, forget about the noise in his mind, and think only of the movements of his own hands, of the mechanical processes of wringing emotion from metal and plastic and wood. He could be alone with the guitar and his breathing, where a calmness, sweetened by just a touch of the adrenaline he felt when performing on stage, led him to the point of balance he needed. While he stood there, his body wracked by the year's struggles, practically dead on his feet, he could put himself inside the instrument, inside the music and the patterns of it, and let the colours of the migraine drop into the background as he imposed his own art over the top.
One solo down, he let himself peer across the stage at his opponent from narrowed eyes. He didn't hope for the satisfaction of seeing fear in Reid Malett's expression, but hoped, perhaps, to have rattled his confidence.
Instead, Graham Reid Malett smiled, his eyes mad beneath the filters of red light and dark shades. "I am glad, my pet, that we will have a real contest tonight...don't pass out, now..."
#whumptober2022#whumptober#every day i write the book#character: francis crawford#character: jerott blyth#character: archie abernethy#character: georges gaultier#character: graham reid malett#character: kiaya khatun#band au: pawn in frankincense#setting: topkapi casino
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Whumptober 2022 day 19
Knees Buckling | Repeatedly Passing Out | Head Lolling
Have I got my mojo back? Am I gonna actually catch up today? Maybe! Maybe...this certainly is nearly 2,000 words long!
Philippa wonders where Joleta’s got to during a party at St Mary’s. It’s lucky someone’s looking for her...
CW: overdose, respiratory problems, references to teen sex and underage drinking/drug abuse, passing reference to death of close family member.
---
Philippa had seen Joleta leave the party, but not come back. She'd said she was just getting a beer, and Philippa had thought, this time, that it had been a genuine announcement - she hadn't detected any mocking shiftiness or secrecy in her friend's voice, no ulterior motive she had kept from Philippa.
But she had been gone for a long time.
Philippa didn't want to appear needy by going after her. She was still feeling tender and uncharitable after the row they'd had about Mr Crawford. Joleta was really just a friend of convenience, after all. She wasn't like Philippa. She was brash and impulsive, flighty and easily bored. She claimed she knew how to take care of herself, and she would only tut and roll her eyes if she knew Philippa was worrying about her.
Philippa fidgeted with her plastic cup of lemonade as she considered this, throwing the occasional polite smile at Mariotta Crawford and the baby in her arms. Mariotta was chatting to Kate in a nervous, high-pitched tone that was playing havoc with Philippa's already stretched nerves, and though Kate was speaking soothingly to her in response, Philippa longed to leave them and find some other conversation she could join.
Without Joleta, it was hard to know where to go. Philippa was perfectly happy to make conversation once in a group, but joining any of the clusters of people dotted about the great hall was the most daunting part of an evening. Joleta would stride confidently up to anyone, her arm looped in Philippa's, her chin high and her manner imperious, and that would be that. She couldn't be put off by any amount of boyish sniggering or eyerolls - which on her own, Philippa would simply decline to deal with.
Philippa on her own had to wait for someone else to invite her in, which rarely happened - to many of the other musicians, she was aware, it felt like having to babysit their way through a party. So she was stuck with the mothers, and occasionally encouraged to walk round with a bowl of crisps to see if anyone wanted to line their stomachs while drinking.
No, Joleta wasn't like her - except for the fact that she was the only other teenage musician in St Marys Collective. The only other teenage girl in a largely male studio environment, where Mr Crawford's friends liked to brag about their skills and their tastes, and spoke savagely to anyone whose musical preferences differed from what they considered the canon.
Philippa sighed and sipped at her lemonade, but she'd already filled up on the sweet, fizzy drink, and couldn't stomach anymore. She put the cup down and went to leave the hall, her arms folded across her smart party sweater, one releasing only so she could reach up and tuck her brown hair back behind an ear.
"Philippa?" Kate called reflexively.
She didn't mean to be clingy, Philippa reminded herself. But since Dad had died Kate liked to be sure she knew where the rest of her family was.
"I'm just going to the loo, Mum. Too much lemonade."
"Ok! Will you spend a penny for me too, while you're there?"
Philippa's lips twisted in a smile and she rolled her eyes. "No Mum, you have to spend it yourself..."
"Oh, offspring, you are cruel!" Kate teased.
Philippa sighed again and shuffled out of the room, her shoulders hunched to make herself small. She was annoyed at herself for giving in and going in search of Letty. If the men at the party felt like they were babysitting her from time to time, Philippa also knew what it was like to have to babysit Joleta, no matter how well she claimed she could look after herself.
She wandered up and down the corridor and decided Joleta wasn't downstairs. She wasn't outside the front door or the kitchen patio door either - she'd smoke inside, but she was always on the look out for boys she could get to invite her out for a snog behind the clematis.
Philippa trudged upstairs. She wished Joleta could just enjoy herself without the drink and the cigarettes and the boys and the drugs. She was much more fun when they just jammed together, drinking cups of tea in their shared room - even the make-up tutorials and girly magazines were tolerable if Philippa could laugh at the agony aunt column and the silly horoscopes at the back while Joleta did her hair.
She wasn't in their room, and Philippa peeked into all the other open doors there were along the mezzanine level. She tiptoed past one in which Mr Crawford was having a whispered, urgent conversation with someone else - a man with a very thick accent, whose words Philippa couldn't make out. She hesitated, but they weren't talking about Joleta, and Philippa was starting to worry at not finding her friend yet.
It made her suspicious then, to note that the door to Mr Crawford's room was ajar and that a light was on inside. He always left it shut, if not locked, when he was out - and Philippa knew he wasn't in there right now.
She remembered Joleta bragging about the time she'd spent in Dumbarton with him. She had turned up in the middle of the night, got into Philippa's bed wearing her jogging bottoms and t-shirt, and had insisted on talking Philippa through everything. She'd smelled of sickly strawberry shower gel and lip gloss and her voice had been odd in the dark, brittle and quick, almost like she was having to hurry to convince herself of all she said. Philippa, therefore, had assumed she was making a good deal of it up.
But not all of it. Letty wasn't completely delusional.
Philippa cleared her throat and pushed at the open door.
What if one of Mr Crawford's...grown-up friends were in there? Someone like Ms O'Dwyer, or, what had Swami Vadan called them, his 'tour bus twinks'...
She let her knuckles fall against the wood as she pushed, so there was a very soft knocking sound. "H...hello?"
No reply. Philippa peeked inside and stifled a squeak.
Letty was lying on top of the bed covers in nothing but her underwear. Her legs were a relaxed tangle, one of her arms was thrown out at an odd angle, and her cascading apricot hair tumbled over her lolling head, permed curls obscuring her face.
"Joleta?!" Philippa darted forwards and got onto the bed, all self-consciousness about being in the room gone in an instant. "Letty! Letty can you hear me?"
There was a scattering of small white pills on the duvet that rolled out from under Joleta's arm when Philippa's knee depressed the mattress nearby. The pot they'd fallen out of was half under the pillow.
Philippa grabbed it, but between the German label and the long pharmaceutical name, she didn't understand any of the words she read, and tutted impatiently. She checked Joleta's pulse - oh god, oh god it was faint - and stroked the hair away from her face.
Her features looked blue and puffy and Philippa let out a terrified squeak. She checked for the pulse at her neck this time and tried to shift her so she could breathe more freely.
Joleta's head just lolled against the pillow uncooperatively and Philippa felt desperate tears start to prick at her eyes.
"No, no, no, come on Letty, work with me, hinny..." her accent thickened as her voice did, and Philippa, her hands shaking, gave up and ran to the doorway. She screamed and hollered as loud as she could - all the cathartic, necessary noise she usually only let herself make through the fiddle and the pipes came out of her lungs directly now.
Mr Crawford was nearby - he'd know what to do. Philippa could see he hadn't touched Letty that night, whatever she'd been hoping for. He would help.
He was coming, too, bolting from the room she'd seen him in earlier - but he was going to arrive at the same time as Joleta's brother.
Swami Geetesh bounded up the stairs, his swishing pink robes belying the smooth athleticism of his movements. How had he been the one to hear her and no one else from downstairs? Philippa thought despairingly.
"Philippa?" Mr Crawford looked at her, then at the doorway - the bed would be hidden from view, but he seemed to understand, anyway. "Shit, what's happened?" he brushed past her.
"It's Joleta..." she began miserably.
She couldn't have hoped to stop Swami Geetesh from sweeping past too.
"Good god!" he was already exclaiming before he'd rounded the door. "What have you done to her?"
Then they were yelling - it wasn't like Mr Crawford to lose his cool, but he was gesturing with the empty pill bottle and Swami Geetesh, who also never spoke above a gentle murmur, let his deep voice rumble over Mr Crawford's furious accusations, drowning them with his own.
Philippa blinked at the spectacle - Joleta was still lying between them, unattended, undressed. Adam and Archie and Swami Vadan and others were coming upstairs, rushing to the sound of the argument, and Philippa saw that no one else was going to call an ambulance.
Mr Crawford kept a phone plugged in on the far side of the bed, and Philippa slammed the door in Swami Vadan's shocked face and pulled the lock across. She dashed to the phone, but could barely hear the tone over the men shouting.
"Stop it! Will you both shut up!!" she yelped.
Gasping, she saw that she'd created a pocket of silence. Mr Crawford was half-turned to her, and he ran a hand through his yellow hair contritely and gestured at the phone with a nod. Swami Geetesh shook his head. He bent to his sister and tried to move her, to sweep her up off the covers.
"What are you doing?!" Francis snapped.
"I'm getting her out of here."
"She needs an ambulance!"
"Out here? We'll be waiting hours. I'm taking her myself. Away from you."
"You shouldn't move her!"
Philippa, exasperated, tears in her eyes, shouted again: "Put her down! She can't breathe!"
Joleta's body was limp in Geetesh's arms. Her head flopped backwards over his elbow - Philippa thought of the dead chicken she'd found one morning in the yard at Flaw Valleys, killed by the fox in a frenzy, but let uneaten. Joleta was gasping a little, it was audible but evidently strained, like everything inside her was as swollen and puffy as her face. Her arms hung straight down, and her hair was a mass of tangled curls.
Swami Geetesh allowed a small frown to pass over his face like the warning of a coming storm. "I think I know what's best for my sister, young lady."
Philippa gaped at him, but the operator on the other end of the line spoke calmly and confidently into her ear: "999, which emergency service do you require?"
Philippa let her eyes fall shut in relief. "Ambulance."
They put her through, and she glared at Geetesh as she explained what she could - Mr Crawford murmured the name of the pills and Philippa repeated it carefully - until the operator audibly, crisply instructed her to make sure Joleta lay on her side with her airways clear. Mr Crawford gestured to the bed, inviting Geetesh to choose whether or not he was going to contradict the medical professional.
Philippa hung up and said hoarsely, "It won't be more than twenty minutes, they say."
"You can't get to Glasgow in twenty minutes, Swami," Francis told Geetesh softly, firmly. "Not by driving legally. And I won't let you risk her by driving any other way."
"You won't let me risk her?" Geetesh echoed furiously. He was so focussed on Francis that he ignored Philippa creeping back towards the door. She'd remembered that Swami Vadan had first aid training, and given how much he looked up to Geetesh, he'd surely find a way to stop Geetesh from letting him down.
Philippa slid the bolt back on the lock and turned the handle, even as Joleta let out another squeaky, strangled breath - this one seemed to stop unfinished though, and Philippa could no longer hear her breath as the others piled into the room.
#whumptober2022#whumptober#every day i write the book#character: philippa somerville#character: joleta reid malett#character: francis crawford#character: graham reid malett#actually super pleased with this!
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Whumptober 2022 day 23
Forced to Kneel | Tied to a Table | “Hold them down.”
*sound of catching-up intensifies*
No whipping posts in the band AU, just have to rely on good old-fashioned kicking :’)
CW: a beating (inside a tent, so claustrophobia warning!), broken ribs, general GRM nastiness and references to what went down between Francis and Joleta and Joleta’s overdose. Joleta lying about things, Francis using whisky as a painkiller, also guitars as weapons.
Also something really weird happened switching between desktop and mobile editors and it screwed up the order of a bunch of paragraphs so let me know if any still seem out of order 😮💨
---
Francis' usual pre-gig routine was always disturbed when he was at a music festival. Peace and quiet were relative only, and he had to entrust set up and soundcheck to the roadies provided. There was little to do other than wait.
He might try to sneak off into the crowds in order to watch a band lower down the listings play - but sneaking was rarely an option these days. He'd graced the covers of too many magazines and people were on the lookout for him. His presence at a set might make or break a young band if he was noticed there - his expression could guarantee them a record contract or result in their immediate split.
He hated it. There was no such thing as simply being curious about new music, not for him, not any more.
So he went to lie down in his tent and to listen for anything other than the beat from the main stage.
It wasn't a particularly hot afternoon, but inside the blue canvas the sun was trapped and the air was stuffy. Francis closed his eyes and focussed on the sound of a fly battering against the inside of the tent, and another on the outside, its legs scrabbling on woven, water-proofed cotton.
The blue light was warm on his eyelids. In the distance the bass thudded and the crowds screamed. The ground beneath his tent roll and his flattened sleeping bag was hard and uneven - divots of grass and old pock-marks left by the hooves of the cattle that normally grazed this land were undulations he felt with the muscles of his back and legs. Habitually, his mind picked away at these thoughts in search of inspiration. He considered the land as a palimpsest, thought about its years of use...
The flies continued to scuff and scratch and buffet against the canvas, and Francis' lip quirked up in a smirk that was honest because it couldn't be seen by anyone else. His lips moved as he recited William Blake's poem, though he did not speak it aloud:
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
By not speaking it aloud he felt as though he was testing his belief in it, rolling its assertions around in his mind to see whether or not he agreed. He found that it didn't fully sit with him like it might once have done. Ambition dug its heels in and rejected the ambivalence towards death - there were things he might do first. St Marys had already proved itself useful in achieving what he couldn't have managed alone with a band, and the men he was working with were learning their lessons well - though Francis felt he still had much he wanted them to learn and understand. There was much that he wanted to learn and understand alongside them.
He was thinking of the extraordinary tapes and songs Salah had managed to smuggle out of the war in the Aouzou Strip. His heart kindled with a secret thrill as he imagined that he might learn some of Salah's techniques, and his thoughts were lost under the Libyan sun when the shadows of several figures fell over his tent.
The tent flap opened silently, but it let in a bracing gust of evening air.
Francis sighed, preparing to congratulate Swami Vadan on finding him, to offer the leadership that Vadan needed in response to whatever minor inconvenience had been encountered during the stage set-up.
Instead, he opened his eyes and saw another linen-robed sannyasin gazing at him.
Swami Geetesh's face looked purple under the light of the canvas. His eyes glittered with malice and there was no friendly mask softening his square jaw and broad, high cheek bones. There was no guileless calm or self-satisfied peace there today: only anticipation, thirsty and fevered.
Francis pushed himself up on his elbows. He noticed the shadows of other figures on the sides of the tent and he realised just what sort of trouble he was about to be in.
"Swami Geetesh. You were granted compassionate leave for this fixture."
Geetesh's lips moved in a sneer. He stared with unblinking hunger at Francis. "Yes, how compassionate of you. Since you have sullied and used my sister, since you nearly killed her with your carelessness."
Francis' jaw tightened. He had said all there was to say on that matter already. Whatever confession Geetesh hoped to elicit now would tell him nothing new.
"Since you care for her so devoutly, I thought you might want to spend time with her while she recovers."
Geetesh lowered his head a little, so the shadows in his eyes deepened. "Actually, I have come to the conclusion that what I need is revenge, dear Francis. I am not yet an enlightened man - the path is a long one and rarely follows a direct line."
Francis did not show the fear that began to eat away at his bones. The inside of the tent seemed a lot darker and colder than before - outside, twilight was descending on the festival. Their headline slot wasn't far away now, and Geetesh evidently intended that Francis would never make it to the stage.
"If it's revenge you want, I can give you the name of the hospital that prescribed the painkillers she took," Francis said steadily, anger lending an archness to his voice.
Geetesh shook his head and smirked. His plan was not about to be derailed by minor inconveniences of history and fact. "How can you be trusted to lead a social enterprise, to preach of change and charity through culture, when you yourself behave so despicably? When you use your status to justify breaking a girl - little more than a child - on the rack of your...sinful body. It displays a truly staggering arrogance, my dove."
Outside the tent someone asked something.
"Wait," Geetesh barked. He turned back to Francis. "I'm afraid it's better if I take St Marys from you. You're not cut out for that sort of business - but I can make use of you in the studio."
Francis laughed hollowly. "You think I'll work for you?"
"I know it," Geetesh purred. "It's in your stars, my dear. I will have you on your knees, begging for me to include you." He tweaked one of Francis' toes playfully and backed out of the tent with a grin on his face.
Nearby, someone switched on a boombox and the opening bars of Satisfaction (I Can't Get No) blasted out.
"Hold the corners down," Geetesh instructed, and then Francis had seconds to prepare, curling himself tightly into a ball beneath the thin padding of his sleeping bag, wrapping his arms around his head - and the blows began to rain down on him and the tent.
Tent poles snapped, canvas bowed and ripped, and feet and other weapons thudded against Francis' body. Someone was using a baton of some kind, really whaling blows down on him with reckless glee - though the impacts were padded, spread by something that was wrapped around the weapon, as well as by the layers of tent and bedding burying Francis.
He thought of the building collapse in Berlin, phantom pain - oh god, it was phantom, wasn't it? - lancing through his leg and hip. This was similar, but more like being caught in the collapse of a pillow fort as the fort itself tried to devour him whole. Some of the blows hit the remnants of the tent poles that lay over his body and he felt the impacts bruise, metal and bamboo driven against him with weight and pressure above them.
He had no idea how long they worked him over - they took the boombox with them when they were done, and his ears rang with the blows so he couldn't have said what the last song playing had been.
It was a struggle to breathe under the cover of the sleeping bag and the collapsed tent. The air was hot and tasted of blood. A downy feather, burst from the battered sleeping bag, clung to his lip, and when Francis fought to free himself he was introduced to the full extent of the damage they'd achieved.
There were broken ribs, that was certain. Francis groaned and gritted his teeth and tried to curl around the pain, but that movement hurt just as much. He tried to steady himself, his palm pressed to the groundsheet beneath him, touching the hard, uneven earth below. He felt like he was running out of oxygen, his own breath coming back to him, moist and hot beneath the covers.
He moved more carefully this time, one hand, trembling, fumbling the sleeping bag off him so that only the tent lay above his face. His fingers found a tear in the fabric and worked their way through, pushing, trying to stretch the hole.
To his astonishment, another set of fingers gripped his - he flinched and let out a cry of pain as the movement jarred his bruised and fractured body.
"Mr Crawford?!" The voice was a young girl's, breathless and afraid.
He let out an agonising sigh and an even more painful laugh of relief. "Philippa? Is that you?"
"Oh, Mr Crawford, I saw what they did! Are you ok?" She pulled at the tear in the fabric and Francis' hand was free, then his forearm, then he could squint up at her and spit the feather from his bloodied lip.
"I can honestly say that I've been better, Miss Somerville," he grinned for her. "But I can also honestly say that I've been worse."
Philippa's frown didn't ease, but she was ruthless about the tent and soon had him freed. Francis managed to make himself sit up amid the wreckage, though bands of fiery agony clasped his torso and breathing alone made the edges of his vision blur and blacken.
"What are you doing here, then?" he asked her, determined to make pleasant conversation rather than acknowledge the worry in her brown eyes.
Philippa bit her lip. "I snuck away. Mum's with Letty. But Letty told me... She told me something I thought you should know. I thought it might help you."
Francis blinked - the gesture doubled as genuine response and momentary pause to survey the pain that came in ceaseless waves over him. "Help me? Should I be the one asking if you are ok?"
Philippa's eyes went very large and round. She knelt demurely, sitting on her feet, her hands pressed between her knees and her lower lip getting ragged as she chewed it. "I've been...a bit unfair maybe. But this is serious. Letty lied to you - she said she was pregnant and she's not. But I heard Mr Gee...Swami Geetesh telling the men from St Marys that you killed the baby on purpose with the drugs."
Francis sighed and bowed his head. He reached out for one of Philippa's hands and she gave it to him hesitatingly. "Thank you, Philippa," he smiled at the pooled mess of fabric around him. "Thank you. I know she was lying. But perhaps you could tell me which men Swami Geetesh brought with him?"
She nodded, confused, but hopeful that she could still be of use.
"And then, I may need your assistance in reaching the stage - we will be due on very soon, I imagine."
"Oh, Mr Crawford, you can't - "
She stopped at a glance from him, his eyebrows raised and his cracked lip smiling patiently, sadly. "Will you help me? It might be the only time you are justified in doing so. I will not always have such a righteous cause, Philippa."
She stood and arranged the strap of her little cross-body bag like an adventurer preparing for an epic journey. "That's ok, I'm not prone to hero worship. I just believe in justice," Philippa said grandly, with unmistakeable shades of Gideon Somerville in her voice.
Francis' smile was no less melancholy, but he let her do what she could to aid him to stand, and he managed to limp through the darkening campsite with her help.
She told him what he had suspected to be true of the other men - they were techs and roadies who would claim themselves seduced by Joleta to varying degrees. White knights with no interest in helping the girl herself - unless it was to obtain drugs and booze for her - but who had been quite prepared to join Geetesh in avenging her honour against a tyrant. They would be cleared out of St Marys - just as the Rajneeshees and their parasitic power trip would be.
Francis washed the blood from his mouth in the uneven plastic mirror in the back of a portaloo door, using a bottle of sparkling mineral water Philippa had obtained from the concessions tent. There seemed to be precious little evidence of the beating otherwise visible on his body. There were a couple of bruises - long, tent-pole shaped shadows on his arms and back - but by and large the damage was internal, submerged beneath skin and tissue.
Philippa objected to the end - St Marys were already on stage, they'd already apologised for Francis, he had no need to go up there... But Francis had to show Geetesh that he wouldn't get his way that easily.
He took a look at the rider before going on stage and forced back about a third of a bottle of blended whisky. It was the quickest way to trick himself into not feeling the pain of his ribs with every movement. It was what he needed in order to be able to get the guitar strap over his head. In order to endure the feeling of its weight against his torso. He blinked and coughed - winced, took another mouthful of the spirit - and then thanked Philippa again before hauling himself up the stairs to the wing of the stage.
His Fender was out there, already prepared for him on its stand. Geetesh was leading a smooth version of one of the songs from the latest album, playing the Gibson Francis usually kept to a different tuning. Adam was bent over the keyboards, his hair flopping wildly as he hammered the notes out, Archie was sweating away on the drums, and Vadan was playing a bored, perfunctory bass part - filling in while the two first choice bassists languished in separate wards of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Fergie twirled her own drumsticks with idle confidence between contributing on the drum pads, and Alec Guthrie moved his fingers meticulously, cleverly across the deck of his own synthesiser.
It was all fine, but the balance was off - Geetesh was trying to be two guitar parts in one, and Francis was sorely needed.
At first, Geetesh thought the swelling roar of the crowd was for him, and he beamed and let out a show-offy riff between verses. By the time he turned to see what had got the other band members' attention, Francis had managed to secure his guitar and was ready to join in.
He nodded calmly at Vadan and at Geetesh, and slipped into the stream of the music with ease, glad, at least, to have that to distract him from the excruciating pain in his body.
Geetesh merely cast him a condescending smirk and turned back to his mic, but Vadan continued to stare at Francis. He moved restlessly with his bass, sauntering across the stage, trailing its cable around his sandalled feet.
Francis thought, from a distance, that it was anger that was foremost in Vadan's dark eyes, but as he strolled closer, worry could be detected also.
"Where were you? Is something wrong?" Vadan leaned in to call the questions into Francis' ear.
Francis shook his head and concentrated on his guitar. "Later..." he told Vadan. "I'm fine."
The effort needed to force the words out with enough volume that Vadan could hear him almost undid the statement - Francis closed his eyes and swallowed down a rising tide of nausea at the lancing pain in his ribs.
Vadan was clearly not convinced, and mooched about the stage close by, pacing restlessly and apparently missing the wild effort Francis usually put into sharing solos with him.
Geetesh announced the next song and invited Francis to sing it, a cruel amusement lighting his eyes as he glanced back over the stage.
It could be done - more as a spoken word piece than was usually the case, but maybe the audience would feel gratified to be granted an exclusive live version of a track they already knew well. Francis managed it, his eyes screwed up, his teeth millimetres from the metal of the mic, his lips pressed to it like it was a life-giving source of sustenance. He was sweating with the effort and with the heat of the stage lights, and he was in no state to shuffle around the stage wielding his guitar like an axe as they segued into the instrumental part of the song.
Vadan and Geetesh were, of course, free to dance and play. They played back to back at first, Vadan grinning at the contact with his master, his bare brown chest shining under the multi-coloured spot lights. Then Geetesh moved away and stamped one foot and swung his guitar as he did. He repeated the gesture on the beat, moving gradually across the stage, followed by Vadan, who tried to keep up with his moves, his head down and his black hair wild around his face.
Too late, Francis appreciated Geetesh's intentions. Vadan never did.
Turning once he'd reached Francis' side of the stage, Geetesh once more swung the neck of his guitar up over his left shoulder as he played. Vadan had come too close, straightening up, ready to back towards Geetesh as he often did when playing with Francis. Francis was trapped behind the mic, mid-way through singing the bridge, when Geetesh swung the guitar in an arc around his torso so that the head if the instrument collided with Vadan's cheek and the body of the guitar slammed back against Francis' ribs.
Francis must have made a sound, but he couldn't have said what it was or how it might be interpreted within the tone of the song.
When he managed to peel his scrunched up eyes open he saw he was on his knees before the mic, his guitar still held in his lap.
Geetesh was still playing, gazing down at him with cool, appreciative pleasure. Play your solo then, he mouthed. On your knees.
Francis had to unlock the pain from his stiffened fingers and remind them what to do, but he managed to join in with the song again before the end, and watched Geetesh saunter back over to the other side of the stage and speak his thank yous to the audience.
While the crowds cheered - they'd always be more willing to believe in stagecraft and rock-'n'-roll than in disaster and real consequences - Vadan crouched by him.
Francis gasped to see the blood under his friend's nose, where Geetesh's guitar had caught him full in the face. Vadan didn't seem perturbed by it, and he swiped it away with the back of his wrist, leaving a red streak across his cheek.
"Francis, what happened? Can you play?" he asked urgently, thickly through the still-welling blood.
Francis looked out at the audience and looked over at Geetesh. Geetesh grinned viciously over his shoulder. "I think poor, dear Lymond may have to admit defeat on this one..." he told the audience.
They booed, and Francis tensed, trying to think about how he'd get to his feet.
Vadan's hand weighed his shoulder down though, and the man who used to be called Jerott Blyth shook his head. "Don't be stupid, you look like you're about to faint!"
"You see how reluctant he was to let you down," Geetesh told the audience in a mock-sympathetic voice, gesturing at Francis with an outflung arm. "But he's just too ill. Now, I'll give you all a word of advice, all you festival-goers..." the crowd hollared and heckled, but Geetesh didn't mind. He smiled and leaned into the mic, turning to eye up Francis as he did. "Beware of the falafel van..." he chuckled.
The Scottish crowd let out a delighted thunderclap of laughter, whistling and jeering their agreement.
Vadan assisted Francis in getting the guitar up over his head, and replaced it tenderly on its stand before returning to help him up too.
There was nothing for it - he had to accept the hand he was being offered, and Francis gripped Vadan's knuckles with all the strength of his fury as he rose to his shaking legs.
"Oh, Lymond, I dreamed of seeing you on your knees for me..." Geetesh couldn't resist adding as Francis stumbled to the side of the stage, one hand waving perfunctorily at the crowd.
Vadan stared at Geetesh in shock; Archie hastily passed a message over to Fergie; Geetesh announced the next song; and Francis let himself return to the ministrations of a worried teenager.
#whumptober2022#whumptober#every day i write the book#character: francis crawford#character: philippa somerville#character: graham reid malett#character: jerott blyth#characters: st marys#band au: disorderly knights
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Crossroads (1986)
#setting: 1980s#ficspiration: music#ficspiration#ficspiration: films#guitar battle#setting: topkapi casino#character: francis crawford#character: graham reid malett#Youtube
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Whumptober 2022 days 12 + 13
“Mayday, mayday!” | Cave In | Rusty Nail
Fracture | Dislocation | “Are you here to break me out?”
Technically, we’re getting down to the duel at Zuara. But that manifests differently in the AU. With more...torture, basically.
CW for ummm where to start. Imprisonment, solitary confinement, darkness, torture, beatings, SA, psychological fuckery, drugging, restraint, psychiatric malpractice, personal data and privacy breaches, oh yes, limb dislocation, childbirth mention, allusions to rape and SA...😬 oh and cave ins! Flooding. Violent use of stationery. Blood. Homophobic slurs. Threats of the care system and the use of lobotomy. Can I just say CW Graham Reid Malett? It would save time.
It’s also about 7,500 words, I know tumblr isn’t the ideal platform for reading, it will go on ao3 at the end of the month with everything else.
So anyway, repeat after me: Whump Room! Whump Room! Whump Room!
I’m going to go and do penance for this now k bye. So much love to all my gremlins who want to read this! <3
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Notes: Vadan is Jerott’s old sannyasin name, as Geetesh is GRM’s name. Baron Morgan is the Aga Morat. Khaireddin is Kailam/Cai. Kiaya Çalışkan is Kiaya Khatún. If anything else needs explaining do ask!
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Francis wasn't certain how long he'd been in the tunnels below the ashram. His days began whenever he woke - or, more often, was woken - in darkness, and ended the same way. He had become Graham Reid Malett's latest living experiment, and as far as he knew, his life only mattered because it protected the lives of others.
Oonagh was alive, he had been told, though he hadn't seen her; her son - Francis' son - was alive. There was the boy Joleta had given birth to at an age it appalled Francis to even imagine; there was Philippa, supposing that her cover was safe as she worked with both children in the nursery; Archie and Salah, who would be looking for Francis, risking themselves the closer they came to discovering to the truth; Marthe, brought into all this against her will, seething at finding she couldn't just leave; and Onophrion, Gaultier, the boy Mikál who Philippa had formed a bond with...a whole community for Swami Geetesh to fuck with in the cause of keeping Francis compliant.
It had been made exquisitely clear to him that help was not coming. It would not be permitted to reach him, even if it were to be offered.
Since the first time he'd been brought rudely to consciousness, Swami Geetesh had let him believe that Jerott was already lost - an accident on the road as he had tried to escape and get help.
Francis couldn't say how many days ago it had been, but he recalled the sight of Geetesh's fascinated expression, lit in patterns of jagged contrast by the lone, caged bulb affixed to the wall. "He won't be bringing anyone back for you, my dear, do you understand that?"
It was impossible to process in the unreality of the world Francis had found himself in. It simply wasn't comprehensible that Jerott might not exist any longer - it seemed far more likely that Francis himself had ceased to be, and had found himself in some auto-purgatory, smothered by his own worst nightmares.
Before this, he had been helping Onophrion and another of the sannyasins clear brush in the woods; someone had offered him a sip of water from a flask and he'd grimaced at the bitter, metallic taste, supposing that the bottle was new and hadn't been cleaned well. He didn't remember losing consciousness, had merely woken to find himself pinned to a narrow bed with Geetesh sitting next to him. His hands had been cuffed to the steel frame and nausea had scoured his body from the tips of his toes to his scalp.
Geetesh had scowled at the sound of Francis retching. "Pull yourself together. The facilities in here are limited - if you ruin these clothes and this mattress I shan't be able to bring you replacements."
He'd had to force down another spasm of acidic rebellion as he contemplated spewing directly into that smug face, but logic clamped down on the temptation swiftly. He needed to know where he was, what was happening, what on earth Graham Reid Malett intended for him now.
That, of course, had all been information that Geetesh had delighted in spooling out over various indefinable moments of consciousness. When he visited, Francis always woke to find himself chained to the bed; when he left it was usually when Francis was on the brink of passing out for one reason or another, and in no fit state to fight Geetesh for the door key.
The room had a door at each end - they were sold, metal constructions. The floor was poured concrete and the walls and ceiling were bare rock. As well as the bed there was a stool and a heavy desk affixed to the floor, and a bare metal toilet bowl, like one would find in a prison, plumbed securely into the concrete. The light only came on when Geetesh arrived.
It emerged that Francis was being kept in this empty, soulless space in order to contribute to Geetesh's musical ambitions. Once Geetesh had explained his vision, he brought sound equipment down with him and set it up on the desk. The power source was outside the room, and a red extension cable trailed across the the desk from one of the doors, taking mixing decks, recording devices and other gadgets in its sockets. Sometimes it took Geetesh some time to set up the paraphernalia; sometimes all he did was press play on a battery powered cassette player and watch Francis' response. Once or twice he did not press play, but rather record, and those were the visits Francis resented most.
It turned out that Geetesh had been keeping archives of every one-to-one therapy or meditation session run out of the ashram, as well as recordings of the ambient trauma of collective samarpan sessions. He had some theories about human empathy, about the need some people felt to respond to the suffering shown by another.
"Listen to that," he might breathe, pausing the cassette after a pupil made a sound that weighed more than words - a sigh, a whimper, a groan of revelation. "What is it that makes us respond to music, Francis?
"The way the professional singer can channel feelings it isn't possible or desirable for us to express in our day to day lives. The kinds of feelings we may express instead in a closed therapy session. But it's always an act for the singer, isn't it, my lyrebird?
"You withold yourself, even when you are on stage. You perform. But what if your music was real? What if you let the audience have your real, authentic self? How much more cathartic might it be for all?"
When Geetesh depressed the button marked record, Francis knew it was time to be as silent as possible. Geetesh's approach varied - but never his goal of stripping Francis back to his 'authentic self'.
Sometimes he spoke to Francis like a psychiatrist might, leading him to the worst occasions in his life that Geetesh could summon: the year of slavery spent working for the New York mob, the disappearance of his young sister, the disaster in East Berlin, the night of misguided, narcotic-fuelled sex he'd shared with Geetesh's own sister. But, by and large, all these occasions that Geetesh knew about were a matter of public record already - and Francis had heard everything the world could throw at him regarding these moments. He didn't need Geetesh to tell him to regret his actions.
"And wouldn't you say that you enjoyed feeling important? Knowing that your music was worth killing over? You liked the idea of being a figurehead for freedom fighters...But a figurehead was all you were. Absolved of responsibility, merely a trinket for the serious men to display - free to deny it all...
"Of course, you let Eloise down. She trusted you, didn't she? She thought you could save her, offer her the life of luxury that would take her away from Gavin Crawford. But you're selfish, Francis. You didn't want to share. What if the world had loved her even more than you? You couldn't bear to let her in, so you drove her away. It's your fault she's never coming back.
"Those poor young things in Berlin - what a merry dance you led them on. Hope is the most dangerous weapon in a musician's arsenal, wouldn't you agree? To bring them the hope of acceptance - offering them the chance to be themselves even as you appeared in disguise - knowing that it would likely just get them killed...Was it worth it, for your career? How many times will you try the same trick - dying in order to boost your record sales?
"What you did to that girl is unconscionable. Unimaginable. She was nothing to you, was she? Just another little groupie you could teach a lesson to. Just a way of hurting me. But I bet you enjoyed it, didn't you, Francis? Having power over one so young. Testing the feeling of a nubile body beneath yours, showing her all the ways of the world she couldn't yet have experienced. You wanted to ruin her, and you got a thrill out of doing it."
These sessions left Francis calmly impassive. Geetesh was opening no new wounds, and when such accusations were thrown out only with the intention of getting a response from him, Francis was well-practised in acting indifferent. He already knew that the insinuations behind all Geetesh said could hurt him - but the pain was worst when Francis was the one carving blame into himself. And he had already hurt himself more deeply with those thoughts than Geetesh could possibly hope to do, lacking, as he was, the precise reasons why Francis already held himself fully accountable for the lives ruined and lost in the wake of their association with him.
So just as Francis declined to show any great emotion regarding his sordid past, Geetesh resolved to hide his own frustration at Francis' self-control.
This he managed some days better than others. Sometimes, the record button was pressed to catch the sounds of a clinical, thoughtfully-plotted beating - nothing serious enough to impede Francis' creative abilities, merely, as Geetesh called it, "A purgative. To help me to centre myself again. To remind me of the greater things that will be possible when you submit."
He would leave Francis with hidden bruises, scrupulous about wrapping his preferred implement in soft padding before the act. Afterwards, he might mix the new recording into a session taken from a group meditation and invite Francis to pick out his own grunts and cries among the screams of devotees letting loose.
Francis didn't know how many sessions of this he had endured when Geetesh decided to forcibly remind him of his obligations to those he loved.
He had already played dozens of tapes to Francis, narrating over other people's private confessions as though, by his intervention, he had collected the essence of each individual and contained it in a tidy arc: beginning, middle, end - and Geetesh's concluding moral. But on one occasion he woke Francis without preamble, leaving him in the darkness with only one track playing.
On it: a woman's voice - she had a Donegal accent - and the murmurs of a solicitous helper, someone with the disingenuous, soothing tones of a medical professional. Geetesh's own instructions, spoken too quietly to be heard precisely, and a bustle of activity and beeping monitors.
"You couldn't be there for the birth," Geetesh murmured from the darkness at the foot of Francis' bed. "So I thought I would preserve it for posterity."
Of course, this most precious of moments was accompanied by the pointed reminder that Geetesh expected some return for his generosity in sharing Kailam's first breaths - and that if Francis did not oblige him, he would make sure the relevant parties suffered.
It got him writing, at last. It forced him to compose, and it was, undeniably, inspirational.
Geetesh let Francis sit at the desk, uncuffed, and he lay on the bed, smiling, waiting for Francis to share what he had created.
Bitter, hopeless, and exasperated by the task, Francis finally exclaimed: "Don't you think the work might be more natural if I wrote about fatherhood from the perspective of one who is allowed to be a parent to their child?"
Geetesh stared at him dumbly for a moment, his brows raised and eyes wide. Then he rolled his head on the pillow and laughed uproariously at the ceiling. "You? Parent? I don't think so, little lyrebird. Besides, it's your pain that I want. That's what will sell best. The market for those sappy peans to parenthood is...limited."
Stupidly, after all the disdain and abuse that had fallen from his lips already, Francis found this got under his skin more than anything else had done His grip tightened on his pen, and he imagined driving it into Geetesh's eyeball.
No. Early on, Geetesh had told him that there was a pager hidden on site, rigged to sent an automatic message out if Geetesh did not override it within a number of hours. The message would ensure that Francis' family was scattered to the four winds: that Cai would vanish into the adoption system and Oonagh would be sectioned, and who knew what else would happen to the others. Any harm to Geetesh risked triggering this if Francis could not search thousands of acres of land and find the pager in time - or if he couldn't guarantee an escape for them all before then.
Francis had only one very dim hope regarding this. It hinged on circumstances that were, regrettably, beyond his control, but he had to believe that nature hated Graham Reid Malett as much as he did.
He had managed to escape the confines of his dingy cell just the once, when, having administered a beating, Geetesh had removed Francis' cuffs and wandered over to the desk to jot some things down in a soft-bound notepad. Francis' limbs had taken the brunt of it that day - his upper arms felt puffy and weak, his legs shook, and the soles of his feet were in agony. He lay curled on the concrete floor, his breath ragged and pained, and he noticed that one of the heavy metal doors hadn't been fully closed. There was a light seeping in that wasn't the same colour as the dim yellow of the bulb in the room - this light was cooler, perhaps more natural. Francis' hopes rose - maybe freedom was closer than he had thought.
He rolled over with a groan so that he was close to the door, and Geetesh turned to look at him.
"Good, lyrebird. That's material we can work with," he said smoothly.
Francis waited, prone against the cold, hard floor, until Geetesh had turned away again. Then, summoning the strength to stand - simply because he had to - Francis got up with the aid of the wall and the door jamb, grasped the edge of the heavy metal door with his fingertips and wrenched it open, and stumbled into fresher air.
He had found himself at the foot of a vertical shaft lined with metal rungs. It seemed to rise endlessly, to the source of the cool, white light he had detected. He grimaced at the distance, though he moved towards the rungs with the intention of climbing.
But the nerves in his fingers tingled from the blows that had been struck to his upper arms, and the pressure of one rung under the sole of his bare, whipped, foot was unbearable.
He had leaned his head against one of the cold metal bars and gasped back a sob of anguish, and then, even as Geetesh's steps casually approached from behind, he had noticed the water and minerals beading on the surface of the rock and he had recalled the maps he'd seen of the area.
Miles of unmapped tunnels and aquifers; cave systems that people disappeared into never to be seen again; unpredictable, changeable arroyos; old wells and sinkholes; a land that was as restless and vindictive under modern human occupation as an unbroken animal. When Francis had been removed to this cell, they had been approaching autumn and the rains. Was it too much to hope for, that this recently dug tunnel might not be able to withstand the forces of the seasons when they were unleashed?
Geetesh had wrapped his arms around Francis' biceps and torso and plucked him from the ladder like he was plucking a bug from a tree trunk. He had deposited Francis heavily on the bed, face first among sheets that already now smelled of Geetesh, and he had left immediately, taking his recording equipment and mixing deck with him, switching the light off and slamming the door.
But since then, Francis had thought often of the damp wall and what might be behind it. He didn't consider himself a man of faith, but he prayed to that wall and to the aquifer that lay behind it, and he willed it to break through and sweep both him and Geetesh away.
He tried not to let it work its way into the songs he wrote - this flood imagery and the potential of primordial power that lurked, always, in his subconscious. In this way, he found that he could write the miserable memoir Geetesh craved, while even so retaining his true feelings - his authentic self - from his tormentor.
It still wasn't easy to pluck what Geetesh desired from the knotted tangle of horrors that passed for emotions in that cell, and writing was a constantly draining task. Francis offered up his own self-loathing regarding the events Geetesh had questioned him about - he wrote confessions daily - or hourly - or at the very least every time consciousness arrived, wearing pink linens and a cruel smile on its face. But he did not preface them with forgive me, Father. He wrote for the impatient, seething morass that was the public court of opinion, knowing that no amount of sugar-coating with circumstance could absolve him.
The titles came and came, the confessions poured forth until there was almost an album's worth:
Galley Boy
The Sympathiser
Blood and Treason
The Tragic Moves
Strange Refuge
An Accident Happens
Distress is Not Released
The Lusty May
Flaming June
Pawn in Frankincense
Francis was at his lowest ebb. The tunnel he was in was deep enough below ground that he still had no inkling of the season. Wherever Geetesh arrived from, he never came direct from the outdoors, wet or bundled up against the cold. For all Francis knew they might have passed through winter and emerged again into spring.
But no - when Geetesh got close to him under the dim yellow bulb, Francis could see that his summer colour was absent. His skin was pale and his hair was a more muted gold. He smelled of wood smoke as much as patchouli, and the food he brought Francis was heartier, warming stuff.
He also seemed to sense that Francis' inspiration was beginning to wither, that his resources were running low, and that he could no longer push himself along only on the empty fumes of fear and stubbornness. He brought the tape player back in.
"I decided to share something special with you today, lyrebird," Geetesh told him. Settling at the foot of Francis' bed, cross-legged, his feet bare, he laid the tape player down between them like he was a teenager about to present a mixtape to their crush. "I'm sure you miss our foolhardy young friend almost as much as I do - and I thought you might like to hear his voice again."
Francis sat with his back to the headboard, frowning as he sought after Geetesh's meaning.
But then Geetesh pressed play, looked at Francis with mischief in his eyes and - to Francis' horror - pulled his linen top off. "It's one of my favourite sessions," he said by way of explanation. "I like to be comfortable when I listen to it. We made such a breakthrough! Ah, what might have been..."
He placed his large hands on his knees and drew an extravagantly deep breath that was designed to show off every muscle in his abdomen and chest - and the mastery which he had over them all. His wooden mala hung over his skin, and on it, the bearded face of Shree Rajneesh smirked at Francis on Geetesh's behalf.
Soon, two voices began to speak, and Francis closed his eyes when he recognised who Geetesh's patient - or pupil, or disciple, or whatever he called them - was in this session.
The accent was unmistakeable: Kelvingrove via Paris. Abrupt phrasing, heated and passionate one minute, stunned and defensive the next. A little younger, a little higher than it had been the last time Francis had spoken to him - cigarettes and booze had brought it down to something with rougher edges. But it was Jerott Blyth, and he was talking to Geetesh about a cassette he'd bought at a gas station.
The album he mentioned was Lymond's third, recorded with Will Scott, Christian Stewart and Turkey Mat. He seemed to have spent some time listening to it, to the point where Geetesh termed it an obsession and began to probe into how Jerott came to know the singer whose skill he praised so highly.
Francis, his eyes closed, remembered sleepless nights of innocent mischief in Carlisle. He remembered jamming at the youth hostel, swapping cassettes, raiding charity shop record bins, singing together, drinking together, singing together again and going back to the hostel to play guitar together again, and never wanting the month to end.
He still couldn't really fathom the thought that Jerott was truly gone - he had seemed indestructible, not least after surviving the fire and the cyanide and the delerium tremens. Not least in the wake of the betrayal he had felt when he'd discovered what Francis had done to keep them safe at Baron Morgan's Oasis, and the way he had pushed past that hurt in order to give the glorious, rousing, ecstatic performance he'd shared with Francis on their last night at the Oasis.
Francis had always supposed that Jerott, despite a propensity for finding trouble, would outlast him by a lifetime, would be the one to keep playing Francis' songs long after others forgot him. And now Francis found that the lack of him was an open wound that Geetesh had finally learned he could access.
On cue, Geetesh leaned forward and prodded Francis' leg. "Do you hear, my sweet? Did you know he thought that of you?"
The tape played, and Francis could not open his eyes as he heard the old conversation flow over him.
...
"Yet you say he's beautiful."
"Well, yes, but...so are...sunsets! I wouldn't have sex with a sunset."
"No. But a beautiful woman?"
"Yes. Obviously."
"Then why not a beautiful man?"
"Well it's. It's not right. It's perverted. Bhagwan says we need to be balanced. He says... that's unnatural, unbalanced. The people doing it have just got into bad habits."
Geetesh chuckles; indulgent.
"Is that what it was, when you came to me in Pune?"
"I... that was different." His throat sounds dry.
"Oh? You don't find me beautiful, Vadan?" Geetesh is smiling; it can be heard in his rich voice.
Jerott's laughter is nervous.
"No, I...that is...not...beautiful. Um. I just. I suppose I found myself thinking about it."
"It?"
"...Sex. I guess. With..."
"A man?"
"You."
Silence crackles on the tape before Jerott speaks again: "And I couldn't move beyond it, like Bhagwan instructs us to. So. I thought...um. Trying it would help me move beyond."
"Even though it's a perversion?"
"Well...I didn't think you would...judge me."
"I'm not judging you, Vadan. I would never, ever judge you - not least for such an...innocent curiosity."
"Yes - curiosity! That was all." He sounds so relieved.
"Yes. Now tell me, if this boy you knew came here, to the ashram. If you lived with him as you live with the others, and you felt that - curiosity - would you not act on it?"
"Um. I don't. I don't know..."
"Think about it, Vadan. How did he make you feel? What was it like being around him?"
"I don't...I only knew him for a few weeks, it's silly, really."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"You're minimising it. You're belittling your own feelings instead of acknowledging them, instead of seeing them clearly. They may make you uncomfortable, Vadan, but they are true, and real, and you. Did you love him?"
"Um. Maybe? I don't know. I never knew anyone like that before. Never...never felt like that before."
"You didn't have girlfriends?"
"Yeah, yeah of course. But I didn't love them. It was just...that was just fun, you know?"
"I understand, yes."
"But I wouldn't want to spoil it. We were friends. Maybe it couldn't have lasted if...if anything else had happened."
"At least, I think, you understand why I rejected you in Pune, then?"
Jerott sighs.
"It's the same?"
"Only you can say, naujavaa."
"I mean...maybe, when I left, maybe he could have persuaded me to stay."
"He didn't try?"
"No. Yes. But...not hard enough."
"You wanted to stay, then? Deep down, you wanted to be with him, to be in his band, to give up your fiancée and your father and follow this musician?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. It was different, when my dad was alive. When I thought I had a plan."
"I think, Vadan..." Geetesh's voice turns ever so soft, like a hand extended to a frightened animal. "I think you have been waiting for instructions ever since that time. You have been following the orders of those around you. The first decision you truly made for yourself was to come with me. Before then, you were shackled to this moment, to the hope that this boy would persuade you, would tell you what to do. You put that decision in his hands, and he didn't help you make the choice you wanted. So you absolved yourself of all choosing. Is that not so?"
Jerott draws a breath: sharp and sudden."Yes?"
"You were letting him rule you, letting the time he didn't try hard enough to persuade you to stay be the root from which all your problems stemmed."
"Yeah..."
"Good, Vadan, good! We have really made some progress today. Now your journey will involve moving past this boy, this love. He has hampered you for too long. We will go beyond him, you and I, and you will find that new loves appear."
...
Francis felt water on his cheeks. He'd cried at the sounds of Oonagh giving birth to Cai, but at nothing else that Geetesh had played. He hadn't expected to be confronted with anything that might make him feel in a way to rival that moment.
This, though, was a fist inside his chest all over again, a hand squeezing on his heart every time it tried to pump. It wasn't that he longed to be with the person he heard - not like he had needed, physically felt the compulsion to be at Oonagh's side when he had heard her animal roar and heard Cai cry out - but he found that a regret had been articulated by this recording that he hadn't been allowing himself to feel. He hadn't formed a callus over this injury, because he hadn't had the chance to build one up with preparatory, introspective self-flagellation.
He hadn't even thought that Jerott had wanted to be persuaded by him that night in Carlisle after the Solway Battle of the Bands. He had thought that arguing with Jerott about that would have been to show disrespect to his family and their priorities and customs. And he had never been at all certain of Jerott's feelings in those days - maybe Jerott hadn't been sure himself until he had gone to the ashram in Pune and discovered new depths to his being.
But really, Francis thought he was crying for what he knew Geetesh had done to the boy in the recording. For the knowledge that the replacement love offered by Geetesh had been poison from the start, and all his psychiatric language and half-truths only concealed the fact that he had been Jerott's new master and manipulator, the real chooser of his destiny. Francis was only swallowing down bile and tasting salt on his lips because of the knowledge of what Jerott had offered to Geetesh in Pune before Geetesh took it forcibly in the basement studio at St Mary's. Right under the bones of Francis' home, and he hadn't done a thing to stop it.
Jerott's words at the Oasis rang in Francis' memory: You fucking faggot!
Francis let out a sigh.
"Exquisite," Geetesh gloated. "I knew you would appreciate it."
"Fuck you..." Francis said wearily.
Geetesh's lips curled in a sneer. "How coarse. I expect more eloquence from you, pet. But I suppose, as you evidently care so much about our mutual second, you would like to hear about how I helped him to go beyond the base desires that were limiting him?"
Francis let his expression suffice as an answer. His body ached in ways that he could no longer enumerate or define; he couldn't say whether the sleep he was getting was too much or too little, but it wasn't at all restorative. Meal times were sporadic, and he couldn't remember the intervals between them because he was sure it changed each time. Sometimes he would wake to find Geetesh above him, his body pinning Francis to the mattress, his grip tight on Francis' jaw, and a razor in his free hand. Time couldn't even be measured by beard growth, although Francis found that he was getting confused about that process anyway - didn't it need light to grow? In short, he was in no position to stop Geetesh from monologuing about his achievements, but he doubted that this approach could wring much more material from him. He could only write with his 'authentic self' if he remembered what that was, after all.
Geetesh wasn't to be put off, though. He fingered the beads of his mala and gave a self-satisfied chuckle. "He thought I just needed to see your genius, little lyrebird."
Francis said nothing.
Geetesh took the cassette from the deck and put a blank in. He depressed the record button.
"That's why he invited me back. He thought he needed to save me, that if I could just see what he saw - how wonderful you are - we could all be one happy family."
Francis leaned his head against the stone above his headboard and closed his eyes again, envisaging a cleansing wave sweeping them both away, slamming their bodies against the uneven, jagged walls.
"As if I couldn't already see your genius. As if I wasn't already better equipped to understand you than he could ever be. As if we were his to share. He grew arrogant around you. You let him think he had more to offer than he did, and it was up to me to remind him of his place."
His breathing grew louder - Francis heard the excitement build in his voice as he recounted, blow by blow, what he had done.
He was recording himself - Francis didn't make a sound, just sat there with his eyes closed and his fists clenched in his lap, trying not to flinch at the picturesque account Geetesh delivered.
All too well, Francis remembered the state Jerott had been in afterwards. He had never needed to hear any of this to know enough about what had happened.
"So you see," Geetesh said lovingly. "It was what he had asked me for. How could he overcome his obsession if he never experienced what he desired? Unfortunately, our dear Vadan was never as receptive as he ought to have been. I don't think he understood the gift I gave him."
Despite the outward appearance of calm, Francis' pulse had spiked. He was trying not to think of anything at all, trying to empty his mind like he'd done whenever Baron Morgan had taken him back to his cabin and demanded payment for their stay. He'd endured that, he reminded himself. He could endure this. And Jerott wasn't alive anymore - Geetesh couldn't hurt him anymore. These were just words, aimed at lighting the fuse on Francis' imagination, and so Francis could fight them by keeping his mind blank.
"He showed me that he had never understood Bhagwan's teachings. He was supposed to take that experience, learn something about himself, and move on - but he only grew more obsessed with you, didn't he?"
Francis' thoughts of collapsing cave walls were coming into conflict with the maintenance of his own defenses. Too much was clamouring at the edges of his mind, too many recent traumas that he hadn't been able to deal with - displaced onto the hurt that had been done to another instead of the hurt done to him, these memories grew more powerful. He saw again and again that he should have tried harder, done more, stopped things from reaching this point.
He thought of Baron Morgan leering: "I seen how he looks at you."
Marthe, with a cynical curl of her lip, implying that Morgan's attentions might, in fact, have been just what Jerott needed. And later, thinking she was alone with Jerott in the pool: "It's because you can't have Francis Crawford that you want me."
Again, Jerott swinging a blow at Francis' face - one that had real, savage intent behind it: "You fucking faggot!"
Jerott later that night, after the triumph of the gig, after the escape, after the wild motorbike ride through the desert, his arms clasped round Francis' body as they rode into Salina, his cheek resting against Francis' back, his thighs behind Francis' thighs. Murmuring Arabic from a poem he'd recited to Francis back in Carlisle - lines he didn't realise Francis had looked up and memorised, as he memorised all poems he encountered.
«My drink and my ride are sweet
and my beloved takes care of me.»
Geetesh shifted his weight and Francis' eyes snapped open - a response born purely of self-preservation.
He had moved the tape recorder aside and leaned forwards to peer at Francis' expression. One of his hands was down the front of his trousers, moving slowly, thoughtfully over the erection that showed beneath the fine fabric.
Francis drew a sharp breath and wedged his body back against the headboard, his fingers knotting with disgust in the sheets to either side of his hips.
"Were you never tempted by him yourself, Francis? Or was he supposed to follow you forever, receiving nothing in return?"
Francis just shook his head and tried to keep his eyes on Geetesh's face. There was a furious trembling inside his chest, fighting to radiate out through his body - but he wouldn't give Geetesh the satisfaction of seeing him shudder. He wouldn't.
Geetesh smiled. "I did at least spoil him for you, then, didn't I? I am pleased. At least the experiment wasn't a total failure."
He moved forwards again, one hand on himself, the other dropping to Francis' knee. His expression was terrible, unblinking, full of a wondering fascination with Francis' own repulsion. "But I think you're subtle enough to understand me better, Francis. And I understand you."
Francis went to remove Geetesh's touch from his knee, but Geetesh was quick as a snake striking. He pinned Francis' wrist down, and the hand that had been busy inside his own trousers emerged and gripped Francis' jaw with bruising, searing strength. Francis smelled the hidden parts of Geetesh's body on his fingers, savoury and musky. He gagged even as Geetesh tilted his head back against the top of the headboard and shifted to straddle him.
"Don't fight it, sweeting. I will have you. Not like that farmer in the desert had you - oh yes, I know all about Mr Morgan and how you debased yourself for him - not like that Cypriot courtesan who thinks her influence extends further than it does. Not like Margaret Douglas and her...plain, old-fashioned wants. I will have the real Francis Crawford, however I find him."
Francis' mind scrabbled for purchase on the information concealed in Geetesh's words. Some of this...some of this he shouldn't have known about. Who could have told him about Baron Morgan and about Kiaya Çalışkan? It was hard to think, though, when he felt the hardness of Geetesh's groin jammed up against his stomach, when the skin on his wrist felt raw and burnt from Geetesh's twisting, tight hold.
"It's ok if you're afraid, gentle bird," Geetesh murmured above his lips. "Let yourself be afraid. I want to see it all."
Francis' body juddered involuntarily. His eyes were screwed up and his jaw was clenched as he felt his cheeks squeezed against his teeth by Geetesh's thumb and forefinger. It took him a moment to realise that the tremor hadn't just occurred within his own limbs. The wall had rumbled, hadn't it?
Geetesh looked around the room with a scowl and then leaned over Francis' face again. "You and I will make the earth move another time, lyrebird. For now, I hope you find that you have enough material to finish your magnum opus."
He got off, picked up the tape player and stopped the recording, gathered the other cassette, his notebook and his shirt, and left.
The light went out and Francis remained in darkness, gasping, gulping, begging for air to reach his lungs as the panic he hadn't shown earlier flooded into his nervous system. If the tunnels and the room had caved in then and there he wasn't sure he'd have known the difference. Only when it ended, and the fear was gone at last, would he know he was free. He wished it would happen, and then pulled himself up short - he needed Geetesh to die with him. He needed to stop that man from doing any more to anyone else.
His hands were shaking, and Francis splayed them against the sheets, steadying himself, trying to find stillness.
Beneath one finger, he felt something unexpected: hard and plastic. A pen? A pen.
His heart thundered hard enough that it seemed to bruise itself with the effort. Geetesh had left him a weapon. And next time, pager or not, Francis was going to use it. He didn't care what he had to do to rescue Oonagh and Cai and the others. He'd run himself straight to jail if he had to, but he realised now that no amount of waiting would present him with an opportunity to defeat Geetesh without ending him.
Francis grasped the weapon in his fist, breathing hard. In the darkness of the cell he prepared himself to become a killer.
---
It was impossible, as ever, to know how long the interval between Geetesh's visits was. During this stretch of darkness Francis felt the ground shiver on a number of occasions, and the air emerging from the vent in the door seemed cooler and fresher.
He supposed this was connected to Geetesh's manner: when he next appeared his mood was sour. He switched the light on and slammed the door. His hands were already shaking with fury as he struggled to insert the key in the lock.
Francis had formed his plan, but he wasn't certain how it would go over with Geetesh in this temper. He waited, standing between the bed and the desk, the pen concealed in one hand.
Geetesh visibly imposed calm on himself before turning to the room, arranging a grim smile onto his features. He looked Francis up and down and raised a brow.
"You may sit," he said impatiently.
Francis glanced between the stool and the bed, and Geetesh snorted.
"What? Would you like me to just get it over with, my sorry, hungering slut?" He crossed the room with his long stride and grabbed Francis' wrists.
He didn't seem to have noticed what Francis held in one hand, but Francis couldn't do anything with the pen anyway, not when he was held in this furious, agonising grip.
Geetesh gazed down at him, and Francis realised he hadn't come with a schedule, as he usually did. He was deciding what to do only now, and Francis' anticipation that he would pick up where he'd left off had been what prompted his current inclination.
"You think you can make yourself into whatever anyone wants, don't you? A Protean whore, always aiming to please. You've remodelled yourself so often you don't even know who you are or what you want anymore. Would you like me to remind you, Francis?"
Francis bit the inside of his lip to distract from the pain in his wrists. He stared up into the mad periwinkle blue of Graham Reid Malett's eyes and begged his terrified animal body to have patience with him.
"You don't need to pretend for me," Geetesh hissed. He flung Francis down onto the mattress, and Francis landed messily, his head colliding with the back wall. He felt the pen lying concealed beneath his palm still, but his ears rang from the blow and he felt a cool spot on his scalp, as though blood was beginning to seep from a wound. Geetesh pulled his top off once more and reached a hand into his trousers, jerking quick and rough to get himself hard. He stepped forwards, leaned one knee on the mattress, and reached for Francis' waistband.
He was within striking distance, and Francis raised the pen and brought it down as hard as he could on that sturdy, muscled thigh. Geetesh's flesh was hard, the pen was blunt, but fear gave Francis strength beyond hope, and the nib pierced skin and burrowed into Geetesh's leg.
He roared, his breath hot on Francis' face, and he plunged a fist into Francis' solar plexus.
Francis just gripped the pen tighter, tried to force it deeper into the thigh, tried to tear the wound wider, seeking the deep artery however he could.
Geetesh didn't seem concerned with removing the weapon from his body though: just with getting his revenge, just with having Francis how he'd resolved to have him. He grappled with Francis, their bloodied hands tussling until Geetesh held both of Francis' wrists again. He hauled Francis towards him, slipping back off the bed's edge to bring them both to their feet - another bellow of rage was the only sign he gave that the item of stationary embedded in his thigh was causing him any discomfort.
He spun Francis round like a ballerina pirouetting with her hands above her head and then jerked and twisted one of Francis' arms as he pulled it down.
There was a wet, snapping pop. White hot agony exploded in Francis' shoulder and he yelled as loud as Geetesh had done. He thought he might have blacked out for a moment, because suddenly he found himself face first on the bed, his arm still held behind him at an improbable angle - dislocated, for sure - and Geetesh's hand was fumbling inexactly at the fastenings of Francis' trousers. His breathing was ragged and he seemed to be struggling with his coordination.
The room juddered and rumbled, and Francis knew that finally he had done enough, and they were both going to be buried there by the flood that had to come.
"Do you...do you think you've won, lyrebird?" Geetesh's voice rasped in his ear. "Your recordings are safe. They'll be released, one day. Your brood mare won't last long once she's separated from the child for good. Maybe they'll lobotomise her, maybe it will be the only way to pacify her. That boy won't last a month with any foster family. He'll be driven from pillar to post, cast out wherever he goes, never able to understand why no one loved him enough to want him, to keep him."
Francis screwed his eyes shut and a gasping sob escaped his clenched teeth. He'd had no choice. In the end, he'd had no choice. Graham Reid Malett had to be stopped.
It sounded like there was a thunderstorm behind the door and the room went dark - the bulb had put up no resistance. The bed rattled and its legs thrummed against the floor, and the door creaked and juddered. Pressure built, and then a vast body of water slammed into the room, throwing the door off its hinges and blasting it into the desk.
Their bodies were gathered up in the maelstrom, and Francis was lost in the black swirling current, battered against ceiling and wall.
He wasn't conscious and couldn't know that the water had had enough force to drive through the door at the other end of the room as well. After a few seconds in which a raging torrent scoured the cell, the water levels dropped, releasing two bodies as they did: Geetesh landed face-first on the soaked bed again, his bodyweight pressing the pen deeper into his thigh as he bled out; and Francis' sprawled messily on the floor, filthied by mud and soil and stones that had been dragged along by the water.
When he came to, he was in a tunnel, lit by the light of an electric torch. There was a brown-skinned, bearded man leaning over him, a wild look in his eyes. Fucking hell, thought Francis. That can't be right.
He remembered Geetesh's final words, the threat to his family, and he screwed his eyes shut against the realisation that, dead or alive, he had given them up in order to stop Graham Reid Malett.
"O mill, o mill...what hast thou ground..." he murmured lyrics from the compositions Geetesh had wrung from him, and the man leaning over him touched his face tentatively.
"Francis?"
Francis blinked his eyes open. That definitely couldn't be right. He must have been dead after all. It seemed unfair to be dead and still hurt so much, though.
"Francis...I think...I think he's...gone," Jerott Blyth was staring at something beyond Francis' head and his voice was quiet and fearful, but it was his voice behind the scruffy black beard, and it was the voice of someone who seemed, despite all previous information, to be very much alive.
#whumptober2022#whumptober#every day i write the book#band au: pawn in frankincense#character: graham reid malett#character: francis crawford#character: jerott blyth
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Whumptober 2022 day 6
Ransom Video | “I’ve got a pulse” | Screams from Across the Hall
Joleta overhears her brother talking about her pregnancies and attempts to seduce Francis Crawford. She decides to take matters into her own hands. CW: mention of abortion, birth, teen pregnancies, lying about pregnancies, drug use, opiates and general bad sibling behaviour, though not canon incest.
---
"Letty, what are you doing, skulking in here?"
Her big brother reached out to pinch her cheek as she left the pantry, and Joleta tossed her head away from his grasp - eurgh, he always smelled like weird spices these days - and tutted.
"I'm not skulking, I came to get a drink..."
"What are you drinking?" His smile and his tone were playful, but Joleta resented any attempt to snoop on what she was doing. Still he saw the can of lager and grabbed for it.
"I'm allowed!"
"Excuse me?" He smirked. He was infuriating. Everything she did seemed to be a source of amusement to him.
"It's legal to drink at home whatever your age is - and this has been my home, hasn't it?"
"It's not a very ladylike drink though, is it, Gecko?"
"Piss off, Stink," Joleta scrunched her nose up at the childish nickname he still gave her and stuck her tongue out as she retreated down the hallway.
Graham chuckled and she paused to look over her shoulder as he stopped by the telephone.
He noticed her watching and shooed her away. "I need to make a very boring phone call, go on..."
Suspecting that he hadn't asked Francis to use the phone, and that it would be an expensive, long-distance call, Joleta smiled and pretended to leave, but when his back was turned she snuck back across the corridor to hide in a doorway behind the coat-stand, where she'd be close enough to hear even if he muttered into the mouthpiece.
What she heard was both more interesting, and more infuriating, than she could have expected. He was speaking to one of his dweeby hippy friends in America, and he was talking about her.
"It's happened again. Yes, again, again, I know, I keep telling her, but you know they only teach by rote at that bloody school - she'll have to have it drummed into that empty head before she remembers."
He was talking about the pregnancy test she'd lied to Francis about. She'd faked the positive, and confronted Francis with it, but since then Graham must have pulled the kit out of her bin. It wasn't real, but he didn't know that. As far as he knew, she'd peed on it! Gross, gross, gross, why was he like that?
Joleta threw back a mouthful of warm beer and pulled a face.
"I don't know. I think we'll need to do as we did last time. Well of course it's not ideal, but she's fluffed her chance of seducing him."
Last time. Last time had been a quick visit to the hospital in Glasgow, a pill and a lot of blood, a discreet consultant, who had given her a bunch of heather afterwards, and a handful of condoms. Obviously she'd used one with Francis, but men scared easily - just say it had slipped, or it must have had a hole or been out of date - they couldn't be sure. They'd been thinking of other things at the time - even if they hadn't also been high as a kite.
"Please. He's a litigious little snake. He'd - oh, you're saying we could sue? Hah, there's a thought. Get him for paternity payouts. She'd have to come to the ashram, though. God, single-handedly filling the crèche, I know..."
Joleta's cheeks burned with rage and shame. Her hand shook and she tried not to let her fingers crumple the thin metal of the can.
Before last time there had been never again. The little boy who had been taken out of her, away from her, before she even knew what colour his eyes were. Graham had said it was for the best. He'd said she needed to finish school, and the boy would be a useless drug addict anyway. And now he joked about how pointless he thought her school had been anyway!
She wondered where that little boy had gone. Single-handedly filling the crèche...
"Well I'll book her a ticket and we can decide in Nevada. Pity - she might have hooked the kind of husband even her schoolmates would be jealous of. Oh yes - influential as a diplomat, rich as a prince. But she wasn't up to it. Probably too much of a prude for a worldly man like Crawford. What on earth could she offer that he couldn't get for himself elsewhere?" Graham chuckled. "Oh, she'll always have a credit on the sleeve note, yes..."
Joleta glugged more warm beer. She wasn't going to be shipped off to her brother's weird cult site. She was going to be the girlfriend and muse of the rock star Lymond, and that was that.
She sidled down the corridor away from the phone and looked around the main room for Francis.
He wasn't there among the crowds celebrating the album launch, so she turned and clumped upstairs in her heavy heels.
He wasn't obviously anywhere.
But Joleta knew where his room was and figured she could wait for him. She snuck in through the open door and inhaled the smell of Francis Crawford with giddy delight. First, she put on the bedside light, and then she set to invesitaging all the usual hiding places: bedside drawers, under the pillow, under the mattress...
It was all remarkably clean, so she went into the little en-suite and admired herself in the mirror for a moment, tidying her hair, smoothing the concealer on her cheeks and re-applying lipstick.
Then she pulled the cabinet doors open and set about finding the good stuff - it had to be in there somewhere!
Ah ha - opiates he'd been prescribed in...West Germany, in 1983? Joleta shook the bottle and scrunched her nose thoughtfully. It probably didn't go off. She could always just take a bit more in case it had lost some of its effectiveness since then.
She went back to the bedroom and peered out into the corridor once more, hopefully.
There was no sign of him, but by the time he came to her she would be ready, anyway. She stripped off her dress and checked the fit of her lacy black push-up bra, chucked her shoes in a corner of the room, helped herself to a spritz of Chanel from her clutch bag and threw herself down on the bed in what she supposed was a casual yet irresistibly sexy pose.
Reaching for the beer can on the bedside table, she popped the lid off the medicine and swilled a couple of tablets back with the warm, fizzy drink.
She'd show Graham what she was capable of - Francis didn't stand a chance against her. He just hadn't realised it yet.
---
The screaming from across the hall summoned Mr Crawford first, but Graham Reid Malett was hot on his heels.
Philippa Somerville stood in the doorway of Mr Crawford's room, pale as skimmed milk, her brown eyes almost comically round. "Help! Help something's happened! It's Joleta..."
#whumptober#whumptober2022#band au: disorderly knights#every day i write the book#character: joleta reid malett#character: philippa somerville#setting: st mary's#character: graham reid malett
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Oh and cursed playlist concept. What kind of music does Gabriel put on at the ashram (Pune or Nevada) to decompress from intense group therapy… (from research I’d say overarching - general vibes: happy, maybe danceable; lyrics: English or Hindi probably :P)
aka the desire to be subtle vs the desire to be funny: FIGHT
A Purely Spiritual Love
A band AU playlist for running away from the world aged nineteen and accidentally falling for your cult leader. Or just for chillin' post dynamic meditation, that's cool too.
Nazia Hassan - Aao Naa
ABBA - Me & I
Asha Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum (pt. 2)
The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star
Asha Bhosle - Koi Shahri Babu (pt. 1)
The Monkees - I'm a Believer
Kishore Kumar - Ye Jawani Hai Diwani
Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar - Jai Jai Shiv Shankar
Carly Simon - You're So Vain
Kalyanji-Anandji - Dharmatma Theme (pt. 1 - instrumental)
The Human League - Don't You Want Me
Nazia and Zoheb Hassan - Dosti
Don McLean - American Pie
Lata Mangeshkar - Bangle Ke Peechhe
The Beach Boys - Sloop John B
Kishore Kumar, Mahendra Kapoor & Shailendra Singh - Amar Akbar Anthony
The Beatles - All You Need is Love
Usual deal: explanation below the cut. Album cover featuring Joel Kinnaman's chin.
Caveat and apologies that I don't always have a very detailed explanation for why all the Hindi songs are on here because for some I just couldn't find English lyrics/descriptions of the film they're from, they're just here because they're bops.
Caveat and apologies that the English songs are really NOT subtle and I had way too much fun picking them.
Nazia Hassan - Aao Naa
Not Hindi, but also no great explanation beyond: what a CRACKING album opener!! Jerott's probably got the cassette and has playlist privileges at Nevada.
ABBA - Me & I
Frankly ALL of Super Trouper is on the ashram playlist. The Winner Takes It All? GRM approves! But for supreme trolling-through-playlist purposes, get boogie-ing to this disco track about psychoanalysis:
Sometimes I have toyed
With ideas that I got from good old Dr. Freud
Nothing new of course
It may seem to you I try to break through open doors
Oh no, oh no
I just wanna say a lot of that applies to me
'Cause it's an explanation to my split identity
3) Asha Bhosle - Dum Maro Dum (pt. 2)
This was an epic hit, from the film Haré Rama Haré Krishna (1971) which involves, ooh, international bigamy, cults, selling off artifacts to rich Westerners, suicide, hippies beating people up, and all sorts of things that people suspicious of Rajneesh's movement would recognise as threats. I think it would tickle Graham Reid Malett to have people dancing to the big song from a film warning about the dangers of his type.
4) The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star
Cheesy, a bit sad, a bit sinister even, but everyone can dance along and everyone knows it.
5) Asha Bhosle - Koi Shahri Babu (pt. 1)
I'll be honest and say that Bollywood thriller plots are somewhat impenetrable when reduced to short Wikipedia summaries, but this is from Loafer (1973) which seems to be about love across rival gangs and spying on one another. The song is about falling coyly for a guy who gives you a gift. And Asha is the queen, so we put as much Asha on the playlist as we need to.
6) The Monkees - I'm a Believer
:))) be happy! Your dynamic meditation has finished and you have taken another step towards enlightenment/entrapment by Graham Reid Malett.
7) Kishore Kumar - Ye Jawani Hai Diwani
No explanation, couldn't find the lyrics anywhere BUT what a tune!! Kishore and R.D. Burman, more icons. The film it's from (Jawani Diwani, 1972) has people leaving/becoming estranged from their families for love and intergenerational repeats of that so. A bit of a Jerott vibe.
8) Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
People from well-to-do background suddenly asking themselves 'how did I get here?' and packing it all in to give their money to the ashram…?
9) Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar - Jai Jai Shiv Shankar
Laughter therapy, praising Shiva (god of meditation, among other things, Rajneesh discoursed on him a lot). And from a film (Aap Ki Kasam, 1974) where paranoia and possessiveness ruins relationships.
10) Carly Simon - You're So Vain
Do I think I'm funny? Yes. Yes I do. It's about the death of the ego babe, let go of yourself! But genuinely, you could sway along and dance to this when you were exhausted from meditation! And when Carly Simon finally tells us who (else) it was about you mark my words, Graham Reid Malett will be on the list :P
You had me several years ago
When I was still quite naive
Well, you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
11) Kalyanji-Anandji - Dharmatma Theme (pt. 1 - instrumental)
The film (Dharmatma, 1975) is apparently based on the Godfather but set in Afghanistan. So absolutely the kind of thing that would appeal to teenage Jerott, who never knew his grandparents who spent time around the (then) India-Afghanistan border. Plus teenage boys love gangster stories. Plus Jerott doesn't realise the similarities between the ashram set up and that of a mob.
12) The Human League - Don't You Want Me
A man who feels entitled to another person because he plucked from obscurity and 'made something of them'? Remind you of anyone?
I picked you out, I shook you up and turned you around
Turned you into someone new
Now five years later on you've got the world at your feet
Success has been so easy for you
But don't forget, it's me who put you where you are now
And I can put you back down too
I feel like the background story to this song's release is also relevant: the band hated it and thought it was a filler track and didn't want to release it as a single, the record company forced them to, and it was a huge success. Reminiscent of Francis and GRM's interactions in PiF.
13) Nazia and Zoheb Hassan - Dosti
Just another of Jerott's cassettes with good Pakistani disco pop on it! :')
14) Don McLean - American Pie
It's just….it's such a GRM/Jerott kind of vibe? The disappointment, grief and sense of loss for something you never quite had, the crushing of hope, the nostalgia for something half-remembered as life-changing, but all sounding so beautiful and dreamy and it kind of cheers everyone up to be able to sing along? The idea of the American Dream as an ideal that can never be lived up to as well, kind of like what Jerott is hoping to find from the ashram vs what he gets.
Oh, and there we were, all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
'Cause fire is the devil's only friend
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in hell
Could break that Satan's spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
15) Lata Mangeshkar - Bangle Ke Peechhe
Another I couldn't find the lyrics for, but it's R.D. Burman again and was a massive hit. It's from Samadhi (1972).
16) The Beach Boys - Sloop John B
Another one that kind of sounds cheery until you listen to the lyrics when it's actually really miserable! Jerott are you ok?
The first mate, he got drunk
And broke in the captain's trunk
The constable had to come and take him away
Sheriff John Stone
Why don't you leave me alone? Yeah, yeah
Well, I feel so broke up
I wanna go home
17) Kishore Jumar, Mahendra Kapoor & Shailendra Singh - Amar Akbar Anthony
From a 'masala' film of the same title, about three brothers separated and raised as Hindu/Muslim/Christian, so I figure a good ashram vibe for bringing people together in a synthesis of teachings… Also look out Francis. Look out Jerott.
<Two are better than one
Three are better than two
The bride and the groom are not together
There's music but not a wedding procession
The bride and the groom are not together
There's music but not a wedding procession
There's nothing to fear
This is a night of union and not of sadness
Smile my friends, why do you have such a crying face
Smile my friends, why do you have such a crying face
When the three of us get together in one place>
18) The Beatles - All You Need is Love
Can't have a playlist about a rich white guy exploiting an already exploitative Indian cult to make himself powerful without putting some Beatles on it, right? Sure Graham, 'love'.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy
Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
#playlists: period appropriate#(i've made a mess of the tags sometime because i always forget how to spell his name)#character: jerott blyth#setting: ashram#setting: nevada#setting: pune ashram#pink people#setting: 1980s#character: graham reid malett
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Whumptober 2022 day 14
Desperate Measures | Failed escape | “I’ll be right behind you.”
A prompt from @stripedroseandsketchpads: Oonagh *did* canonically try to break out from the seraglio w Khaireddin one time…
She sure did! This one in the AU is set immediately after Breathe for Two (see fic list pinned post on my dash). Oonagh is not to be fucked with. Unfortunately, she’s also not able to succeed this time.
Sorry for the delay posting! I’m trying to get back on track, I really am :’)
CW: pregnancy and symptoms of low blood pressure, references to terrorism training and guns, also to DV. I’m afraid Graham Reid Malett also turns up, so be prepared for that: some blood and violence.
---
Oonagh waited until it was dark. By then she knew she was in control of the symptoms she'd experienced since trying to leave the ashram earlier that day. She still felt light-headed if she rushed a task, and her skin was clammy, her stomach in turmoil, but these were sensations a woman in her third trimester could put into context and deal with. Provided they didn't worsen; provided she was otherwise healthy.
Oonagh, after six months of work on the ashram, of good food and good friendships and no Cormac O'Connor, felt the healthiest she'd been in years.
Light-headedness aside, of course.
So since Swami Geetesh's visit she had used her seething fury to plan and to prepare. He had made it quite clear that he considered her little more than a vessel, a carrier for the child that he hoped belonged to Francis Crawford. What the fuck he wanted to do with the child if that was the case was anyone's guess - and what would happen if the child turned out to be Cormac's was an even more troubling unknown. But Oonagh had promised herself never again to be in a position of vulnerability and subordination to a man. Never again to let someone else dictate what her body was for and how it should look. She would not sit meekly in her room and wait for her world to be snatched away.
So during the afternoon, she'd torn the cotton sheets on her bed into strips and soaked them in the small bathroom sink - you didn't spend a lifetime in the fashion industry without learning a thing or two about the properties of fabric and how to improve the strength of cotton fibres. At least, you didn't if you had the kind of quick, ready mind Oonagh had always had, the kind of mind that thrived on stimuli and newness and on understanding every little thing that went on around her.
She took a bag of carob brownies a friend had baked from her bag and made herself eat half of one for strength and focus, and she wrapped the rest in a select parcel of only the most necessary clothes. And then she waited, doing breathing exercises, rubbing her hands over and over her huge belly, talking to the child she carried inside her in Irish, muttering low under her breath.
The child wriggled in response, as restless as Oonagh felt in the little room. She murmured comradely reassurance - she told them to save their kicks for Swami Geetesh, although if mummy could, she would make sure they never had to meet him.
Sunset came slowly, agonisingly slowly. It couldn't really be seen from her window, she just had to wait as the light changed and the gaps between the trees disappeared. The towering, straight trunks looked like bars layering jail cell after jail cell outside her room, but as twilight deepened, engulfing their bases and the heights of their boughs beyond what Oonagh could see, the darkness unlocked opportunity.
She checked her watch and wondered whether she ought to wait, in case someone was tasked with bringing her an evening meal. But there had been no scents rising from downstairs, no sounds of cooking - no sounds at all, in fact.
So Oonagh, nervous from waiting so long already, made her choice and pushed the window open. It would be a tight fit for her swollen, co-occupied body, but she would manage. She secured the knotted rope of wet sheets to the heavy wooden bed, ensuring the furniture was wedged tight against the wall already and wouldn't give her away with any screeching movement across the floor.
She had changed out of her flowing red dress and pulled on an old pair of dyed leggings and a top that was loose without being baggy. She tied her long black hair back, knotted the bundle of essentials she had chosen in a makeshift papoose held above her belly, and took a deep, soothing breath - part meditation, part catwalk prep, part eyeing up the target on the provo’s training range as she tightened her finger on the trigger of a Libyan rifle.
She squirmed backwards out of the window, her bare toes reaching into the night air, flailing until she got her angle right, and then flexing against the wooden walls of the building, her fists knotted in wet wraps of torn sheets. She allowed herself one more quiet promise in Irish made directly to the child, and then paused to listen again to the silence.
The water from the taut cotton was dripping steadily on the wooden floor of her room, her blood was rushing and she felt a headache building at the base of her skull - if she took too long about this, she risked a return if the light-headedness. She risked a fall from a height she most certainly couldn't afford.
Oonagh clenched her teeth and unwound one hand from the rope of sheets, moving it lower, rewrapping it securely before she unwound her second hand.
Her knuckles felt squeezed and bruised, but the tactic kept her secure. With each steady movement, accompanied by each steady breath, she recited a favourite poem in her mind, line by line, one foot then the other, one hand unwrapped, rewrapped, then the other:
I won’t go back to it –
my nation displaced
into old dactyls
oaths made
by the animal tallows
of the candle –
land of the Gulf Stream,
the small farm,
the scalded memory,
the songs,
that bandage up the history,
the words
tha rhythm of the crime
where time is time past.
A palsy of regrets.
No. I won’t go back.
My roots are brutal:
I am the woman -
a sloven’s mix
of silk at the wrists,
a sort of dove-strut
in the precincts of the garrison -
who practices
the quick frictions,
the rictus of delight
and gets cambric for it,
rice colored silk.
I am the woman
in the gansy-coat
on board the Mary Belle,
in the huddling cold,
holding a half-dead baby to her
as the wind shifts east
and north over the dirty
water of the wharf
mingling the immigrant
guttural with the vowels
of homesickness who neither
knows nor cares that
a new language
is a kind of scar
and heals after awhile
into a possible imitation
of what went before
Her feet touched crisp leaf matter and dry, gritty soil. She let out another deep breath and freed her hands, laying the palms against the wooden sides of the house and checking that her body was still with her, working with her, supporting her. The ache in her head hadn't worsened, and deep breathing settled her nausea and the floating feeling inside her chest and brow.
She slipped her sandals back on, but it didn't seem advisable to go by foot, she realised that with grim certainty. She was managing, but she didn't want to risk collapsing in the woods. She wanted to escape, not put her child at risk. At least in a car she would be sitting. She would be comparatively still. She would be able to get off the ashram, and on the I-93 she'd find someone who could help get her the rest of the way to Vegas.
With a pang of regret, she noticed it hadn't even occurred to her to approach the friends she'd had here. Who knew what they would do if Swami Geetesh asked it of them? She couldn't trust anyone in this place if she couldn't trust him.
She shuffled round the building, keeping close to the walls. Light radiated from only one room, escaping the cracks in the curtains, but she ducked low and crawled beneath the level of the sill.
In the front yard there were two cars - the truck and the saloon. Geetesh's housekeeper - Donati, Oonagh had thought her name was, Ma Dānti - was instructing a man as he carried a heavy-looking wooden rocking chair into the house. Oonagh held her breath - it must have been the one meant for her room, which meant she didn't have much time before they'd realise she was gone. There was no sign of Geetesh, though, so she figured they would spend a few extra minutes panicking without their leader.
She steeled herself and ran in as low a crouch as her belly allowed across to the truck once both figures had gone inside the house. Her hands were steady and her breathing was controlled when she silently popped the door, her fingers hooked under the metal handle. She kept one eye on the house - the door was open, but still the only light was from the room on the corner, which must have been large to have so many windows.
Her hope was that the man who had brought the chair might have left his keys in the truck, but - no dice.
"Go hlfreann leat!" she spat, and pulled the hard plastic cover under the steering wheel down, more annoyed than inconvenienced by the lack. She knew how to hotwire, just as she knew how to fuse an improvised explosive. Long supermodel's fingers worked quickly, tugging and twisting the right components until she had the two wires she needed, held ready in her hands. Did she wait until she heard a commotion from the house? Did she just go?
Shite, she realised she should have done something to disable the saloon. She'd been too keen to leave, too smug with the knowledge that she had the skills to do so.
Oonagh glanced back at the house. There didn't seem to have been any change in the situation there, yet.
Crouched low, she moved round the from of the truck to the saloon, which was at least concealed by the shadow of the bigger vehicle. It made it easier to get inside, pull the bonnet, and lift it high enough to snatch the spark plug without being visible from the house.
She went back to the truck again, the spark plug gripped tight in her hand, the other one soothing the excited child in her belly.
"Oh, you're enjoying this, are you?" she whispered. Pride overrode the moment of trepidation she felt as she imagined her child - the child of Cormac, after all? - attending the same training she'd undergone.
She picked up the wires as she'd left them and didn't hesitate to touch them together now. The little spark made her blink, dazzled momentarily as her eyes came to terms with the darkness again, now filled with the rumbling of the truck's engine. Then she stood, one foot in the truck, one hand on the door, and realised the latter was resisting her attempt to close it.
She turned with a gasp and saw Swami Geetesh standing too near, his large hand preventing her from slamming the truck door closed.
"No," she couldn't stop the word. Like when she knew it would only wind Cormac up further to hear her object, but she had to object anyway.
Geetesh said nothing. He looked white with fury and he ripped the door from her hand, throwing it wide open and grabbing at her arm with a pinching grip.
She'd come too close to freedom to go quietly back now. She didn't give a shit who was working for him - she'd make them doubt their loyalty all right. She hollared loud enough to make her throat raw. She bellowed and screamed and held onto the steering wheel with the hand that still held the spark plug from the saloon. She kicked at him with her woefully soft sandals and remembered the catharsis of group meditation, the catharsis of Francis Crawford encouraging her to really scream into the mic during one recording session they'd shared.
She knew he was stronger than her. She knew she couldn't keep this up long, it was already making her temples howl with pain and making blackness seep into her vision.
So while she still had the strength to, she let him drag her from the car and used the momentum of her body to swipe at him with the sharper end of the spark plug.
He turned his head, but the metal grazed through his thick, guinea gold hair, and Oonagh pressed hard against the resistance beneath her weapon - she dragged it along his scalp and let it slam into the upper part of his chest. An ineffective injury, but an injury nonetheless.
Blood began to seep through the strands of his hair and he slapped her, open-palmed, so the shock of it made her drop the spark plug, her body trembling, remembering the touch of Cormac O'Connor.
"Daso," he said commandingly. "Where are you going? Ma Dānti has prepared you a meal."
"I'm not hungry," she sneered and spat in his face.
He closed his eyes momentarily and shook her in his grip before wiping it from his cheek. "There is a chair and a reading light."
"I don't want to sit," she raised the arm he wasn't holding and went to claw her nails into the wound in his scalp.
He grabbed her wrist before she could, but all she had hoped for was to make him realise she'd fight him the whole way.
He ground his teeth, his jaw bulging angrily though he tried to keep up the cool, impassive act. "Then pace the room until your heart is content, but know this: you will not be leaving it again until the child comes."
"You won't have my child," Oonagh told him.
"You can't stop me, my dear," he returned, his nose coming near to hers as he finally allowed his anger to seep through into his voice.
***
The poem is Mise Eire by Eavan Boland (1983), a response to Padraig Pearse’s poem of the same name (”I am Ireland”) and against a whole genre of comparing the island to a mythological woman.
#whumptober2022#whumptober#character: oonagh o'dwyer#character: graham reid malett#band au: disorderly knights#kinda?#every day i write the book
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