'Prognosticating Ruin' (m) - (2 Parts)

[Mistress Quickly]

It had to happen; I've been obsessed with Percy Bysshe Shelley for the last three years, and although there's probably some sort of law against taking poets' names in fetishistic vain, I've been wanting to write about him for a long time. This story, while slight, has been brewing for what seems like centuries; this section ends rather abruptly, mainly because I initially wasn't planning on it having multiple parts, but I've been fighting with it for such a long time I decided it was time I just got it out there, which hopefully will give me a sufficient boot up the arse to finish it properly. So here is part one, and part two is in the works, and there may be a sequel somewhere - it depends on how much I feel like punishing myself.

Just a teeny bit of background info (I don't mean to give a history lesson here, but I guess it contextualises things a bit): Claire Clairmont (who was known as Jane as a child but changed her name in her teens to something more 'musical') was the younger stepsister of Mary Godwin Shelley and the third part of the infamous menage that became the free-loving Shelley household after Percy Shelley and Mary eloped together. Claire is probably known best to history as the eighteen-year-old who launched a one-woman (successful) campaign of seduction against Lord Byron, the only other lover of his aside from Caroline Lamb whom Byron referred to as a 'little fiend' and the mother of his daughter Allegra. It's difficult to ascertain the exact nature of the relationship between Claire and Shelley, although there has been a great deal of speculation and some suggestion that she even bore him a child (though this is very unlikely), but they were certainly close and I could easily envisage Claire having the sort of filthy mind and kinky sensibility that fits perfectly into the framework of this story. That said, there is some very mild sensuality in this fic, but certainly nothing heavy.

'Prognosticating Ruin'

No doubt the London mail came earlier.

Somewhere between the sharp-knuckled bridge of her interlacing fingers and the coarse weave of the gingham rug, a blade of grass had unfurled itself from where it had lain bent beneath her cheek, to straighten and make an impertinent assailance of the corner of her mouth. At this angle, her feet elevated slightly in approximation to the level of her body where the ground sloped gently downwards, her head was now tilted at the precise angle so that the sky swooned to the left of her and then seemed to plunge upwards and away, as if somehow at any moment she might come loose from the edge of the world where she balanced, and fall impossibly upwards, or float perhaps, upended from gravity as the earth rolled over on top of her. Ahead, past where the plum bush sulked heavy with fruit leavened beyond taste in the dregs of the summer, the air around it busy with the whir and hum of wasps drunk on the fermenting flesh, the path through the trees pitched sideways and then seemed to tie a knot of itself where it switched back through the moss-spangled gate. She couldn't see the house, but as she lay she thought of where the road ran past the yellow roses of which Hogg liked cut specimens like a collector taking samples of a curio, and nestled amongst them, the painted box; empty. In London an invitation posted by morning could be comfortably answered by noon, and the recipient would still have time to organise lunch around the whole affair. Here, news posted by the weekend would be lucky to find a reader by the next, by which time any news worth the telling would have gone postively sour in the mouth, or certainly stale on the page, as pointless as a chocolate abandoned halfway between the paper and the tongue.

If you are to persist in vanquishing my every hope of our ever being reunited, I can only beseech you to spare a thought for our child, who is lovelier than I could have had any right to imagine. Why is she to suffer for what has gone between us? There is surely no need to punish her for what I alone am forced to endure.

As if it wasn't enough, marooned like Mariana had that insufferable waif been blighted with the misfortune of being imprisoned in a house that bred the cold in its every corner and then seeped into the mechanism of her piano until it twanged like Shelley's ridiculous guitar. As if that wasn't enough, the three of them trammelled together like starlings trapped in a chimney breast, and the fire beneath them, not to smoke them out, but to choke them where they cowered. But to be all of those things, and to receive nothing from Switzerland but Albe's silence aside from one cursory note sent two months ago on cheap paper, addressed to Shelley, and which would have been, Claire determined, far less insulting had he failed to mention her at all; instead, her name appeared second to Mary's in the list of lazy pleasantries, a careless enquiry after her health which she strongly suspected was provoked less by concern for the welfare of her person, and more by Albe's own awareness of the considerable inconvenience any disaster occurring to the mother of his child would result in. His Lordship remained impervious even to Claire's more ruthlessly poignant depictions of the bucolic trials suffered by all at Albion House, and she was rapidly running dry of suitably piteous material to warrant the purchase of new ink. Something had to be done, before they all perished from the very emanations of tragedy Claire weekly transcribed in tearful reports to the villa. Her conscience was admittedly not well acquainted with its natural function, but she wore superstition like a habit. There was power in the writing, after all

And yet diversions came in curious guises. Shelley's cold had been heralded three days earlier, by one of his soft, wet, rather girlish sneezes, a polite 'h-Ishhh-oo!' against a deflecting wrist. He had been weaving the divided strands of Mary's hair into a delicately twisted plait at the time, and the sneeze had verged on him with such swiftness that he barely had time to turn away. Mary and Claire had both blessed him in tones of equal surprise. It was not so much the sneeze itself which prompted this response; Shelley had a predisposition to sensitivity, a temperamental quirk which manifested itself, among other ways, in a delicate nose. It was this nose, long, narrow, with pretensions towards the aquiline, that reacted to the mildest of stimuli, disturbed dust, a sudden slant of bitter wind, and ever such a curious phenomena as sharply glinting sunlight. Shelley sneezing was not itself unusual. But the suddenness of the sneeze's assault upon him was almost unknown; it was in fact a more common spectacle was for Shelley to be teased to the very climax of a sneeze, only for it to desert him just at the hitch of his breath. Even a sneeze that reached successful fruition invariably tormented him before granting him release, a tickle that started at the back of his throat building inexorably, his delicately fluted nostrils flaring as a flinching frown puckered the skin of his forehead and the arch of his brows dipped inwards with the tensing of expectation. The urge would either linger irresolute, leaving him complaining throughout a morning that he could feel the sneeze hiding from him (he had even been forced into inducing the sneeze himself, such was the distraction the tickle was causing, inserting the pinched corner of a handerchief into his nostril and teasing, gently coaxing, until his breath suddenly snagged and - 'heh-Chisshhhh!', a tremendous, delicious relief), or else the build-up would be agonisingly slow, increasing by the ponderous second in its intensity, forcing him to pause in whatever he was doing and concentrate on the sensation, slender, graceful hands lifted together to hover tentatively just before his face as his breathing slowed, eyes drooping shut, irresistably, upper lip beginning to twitch into a curl as the need overtook him. And then, just as it would begin to appear that the sneeze would never release itself, a sharp inward breath would be wrenched from him, shoulders and head snapping inward as his elegantly curled hands contained the sneeze, amplifying its wetness, 'heh-Chussshhhhh!', a perfect beat of two, and a second would come, fluid, effortlessly graceful, his slender body pulled forward with a rather less painful vigour this time, the sneeze louder, wetter, but more at ease in its production, rounder and richer, the pitch equally balanced between the glottal fricative of its development and its fluid explosion, a plaintive strain to his voice, an expression of desperation suffused with relief that seemed so much like that other, blurring, rushing, melting heat that Claire knew from beneath the coverlet, and on damp grass, and under morning sky, and with Albe, and without. And in that there was a curious corrollary, a peculiar dialogue between the two intrinsically human experiences. It was in that very moment of involuntary, helpless feeling that the link was made, and then the next time Shelley sneezed Claire found her own body responding quite on its own, as though it understood the connection better than she, her quickening pulse centering itself in the pinprick of heat between her legs, and she almost blushed, she would have blushed, had Claire ever blushed.

After that, she imagined holding him as he sneezed. Claire had never felt desire for Shelley; she considered their relationship something nobler than that and the spectre of the grubby physical struggling together, of sweat and fetch and animal cries, and the ignominy of the aftermath, was not an imposition she had any intention of allowing between them. But she found herself increasingly fascinated by her discovery, and almost without meaning to she began to seek out situations in which she could observe this secret connection at work. It was not difficult; Shelley kept particular habits, and was easy to locate of a morning and late afternoon when the sneezing most frequently struck. She took such pleasure in the simple act of blessing him after he sneezed; it was like lust whispered in a crowded room, and his smile would be so sweetly rueful, almost bashful, as he thanked her, that it pierced her as surely as Albe ever could. To her surprise, this realisation settled calmly on her, and she weighed it in her mind, taking a voluptuous and warmly absent-minded pleasure in the small disturbance it caused to her sleep patterns. Idle imaginings had their own particular pleasures; she put very little effort into it - she did not need to - but sometime in-between midnight and the very black time before the dawn, fantasy took on luminous proportions. A night could easily dream on to twelve-noon that way.

Shelley was guilelessly compliant; she very particularly wanted to lay her palm against the small of his back, where his spine sloped inwards towards the soft curve of his buttocks, when he was sitting just to the left of her one afternoon by the open kitchen window, leaning forward on his folded arms with the delicately angular grace that pricked the smooth planes of his shoulder-blades through the fine cotton of his shirt, and remarked with a kind of cheerful diffidence that his head was 'too full of summer' that day. It was the breed of vaguely whimsical proclaimation that Shelley tended to come out with when he had the first murmurings of poetry in the blood, which Claire found charming and Mary determined to commit to memoir at some far-reaching, nostalgic point in the future, and which Hogg was fairly certain was indicative of a blight of childhood trauma, confident as he was in his own abilities with biography. This was before the cold, though, and Shelley had not yet sneezed that day, which Claire had noted but absently looked forward to with the sensuous stirrings of secrecy in the hollow of her belly. Everyone was drowsy that afternoon, the children uncommonly aquiescent, Mary and Shelley softly tactile with one another. Claire herself had set about the thorough deconstruction of a round of ham sandwiches while idling in the sun that brazened through her thin dress and pinkened the skin of her thighs. How marvellously slovenly it was to live for pleasure. She had not even pinned her hair, but let it flood unkempt, unruly in a way she liked to think made her look picturesque. Afterwards, slow with fullness, she retreated to the shade of the dark cottage which, in the heat of summer, was blessedly cool rather than damp and shivering. She thought the way his white shirt gaped open at the throat was the most amatory thing she had ever seen.

"Enough?" he said when he saw her. Claire smiled; her legs still smarted with the pleasure-pain of the sun.

"I'm perfectly baked." She had vaguely romantic thoughts about acquiring the brown skin of a continental; if Shelley had been Albe he would most likely have said something about her being ready for the eating. Though, she was still pink rather than bister, and the skin of her nose did insist on peeling in delicate, papery flakes, and he would probably have laughed at the way her eyelashes were blonding at the tips instead of her hair.

Shelley flicked the letter he was holding. "Leigh is certain of our inevitable demise," he said. "Apparently this weather is innatural for England. He says it will send us all mad."

Claire hooked her legs over the edge of the bench and twisted herself round where she sat, so that now she too was facing the open window and the grass-scented breeze that reached them from the small river at the end of the garden was cooler on her scorched cheeks. She thought of Leigh Hunt shut in his study at the offices of The Examiner, gloomily transcribing the country's Whiggish doom as the smell of London's traffic grew palpable in the still, smoky air. At this time, she was still blissful with how far from everything they were.

"I think a little madness could be good for us," she said, and she sensed rather than saw his smile.

"Arguably true. Though," - and it was here that he pushed the crook of his wrist against his nose, adorably clumsy, " - my head is all too full of summer this day. I doubt I'd know the difference."

She luxuriated in the words a moment, lazily confident of the equivoque attached to them. Codes held a certain fondness for Shelley, and she enjoyed the tricksy symmetry of puzzling out the meaning, no longer frustrated with a seventeen-year-old's impatience, but rather, calmly methodical about it with a gravity that pleased her. She liked to observe these small changes in herself; every day she grew a little less girlish, and there was a promise shining at the end of it, linking not so distantly as it did with something Albe had once said to her.

"Promises, promises, my dear - " and her only physical memory was his breath against her earlobe - "A woman is a very different thing indeed."

In that, there was the hope of some form of redemption along the way. Presumably all she had to do was continue on the upwards ascent.

Promises, indeed...

"I suspect poor Mr Hunt requires a little more stimulation than he has been receiving of late," she remarked, calmly removing a strand of hair from her mouth.

Shelley's smile translated his expression into comic punctiliousness . Even for her, it was flagrant innuendo. "Leigh is entirely capable of providing that for himself," he replied evenly. "He is, after all, master of prognostication."

"No, that's you."

This time, he laughed. "Thank you for that." He lifted a hand and pinched his nose, just gently, at the bridge, although Claire noted that he alternated the pressure slightly between thumb and forefinger in one delicate rhythm. Her gaze went to where his lips parted, as he exhaled inaudibly. "What disreputable intentions do you have for the rest of the day?"

She rolled her head languidly to the left with a smile, their eyes meeting at the precise moment she did so. She held the stare with defiance, at first making a game of it. His eyes were larger than Albe's, with fine almond-edges and irises flecked with grey towards the pupil, dilated just a little to compensate for the dim light in the room. His lashes were dark and thick where they cast feathery shadows upon his cheek, like a child's, and there was something childlike, she thought, about the solemnity of his expression as he gazed at her. For a moment, she allowed her breathing to parallel his, and now she didn't even want to smile at how seriously they were regarding one another.

Shelley blinked, and her vision had grown so delicately attuned to his face that she was certain she saw his pupils contract. The skin between his brows tightened, and for a moment his expression was one of mild surprise, verging on distress. His lips parted and she just glimpsed the vivid pink of his tongue before he turned fluidly away from her so that, to her swiftly blooming dismay, she saw only the bracing flinch his shoulders as the sneeze - 'heh - !' - almost - 'heh-hehhh - !' - released itself - '-hhhh...oh...'

"Again?" She knew how greatly she was inconveniencing him, but the act itself wound her as tightly as the bright coils of Allegra's hair and she was both repentant and fiendish inside as she spoke, wanting to provoke him into attempting speech when the duress under which he was currently struggling would render it almost impossible. The fiend (for she was His Lordship's very own fiend) invariably won the battle for her sensibilities. It was something she had long grown out of feeling shame for.

He made a stifled noise which was half-cough, almost a stillborn sneeze, and shook his head once, hard.

"I swear that the air is spiced." His voice tilted on the octave and he blinked moistened eyes, hand still poised.

"Perhaps I am the cause." Now that was an idea to be smiled at. But Shelley's glance at her was sardonic.

"Perhaps. Your timing is, after all, impeccable."

"It doesn't - " she began, but he lifted a hand.

"Wait - " She held her breath, and was sure he did too, his expression deliciously agonised, but just as quickly the urge seemed to vanish. He rubbed his nose, hard, with the palm of his hand, an uncharacteristic flash of irritation passing across his face. "Perhaps Leigh is right, after all." He sniffed twice, congestion heedless of the lack of sneezing. "If this continues, I shall be driven half to madness by September."

"Well." Claire looked at Leigh's letter lying still on the table. "It would be a shame to allow Mr Hunt's prediction to remain unchallenged," she said. "After all, it could prove to be something of an education in the long run." She paused, smiling a little, a wicked thought on a saintly day. "I do have one idea..."

finis

AN: 'Albe' was a nickname the Shelleys had for Byron, but I can't for the life of me remember where it originated from. I have the phrase 'Albe the mad Albanian' in my head, but I could be imagining that.

'Hogg' is Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Shelley's university peer (who was expelled along with him) and, later, biographer.

Leigh Hunt was a radical essayist, poet and writer and a close friend of Shelley.

Albion House was the particularly damp and decrepit little cottage where the Shelleys, Claire and Allegra lived in Marlow, England, between 1816 and 1817, during one of the many periods Claire was separated from Byron and where they eventually were forced to leave due to fears for Shelley's health; he was plagued constantly by colds during the time they lived there and was convinced he was suffering from consumption. So hey, this could be a true story

Part 2 is in progress. Any comments are greatly appreciated.

[Triosk1]

, and also

I believe that about covers my response to this fiendishly wicked piece of writing.

Can you guess I loved it?

Especially the following bits:

a plaintive strain to his voice, an expression of desperation suffused with relief that seemed so much like that other, blurring, rushing, melting heat that Claire knew from beneath the coverlet, and on damp grass, and under morning sky, and with Albe, and without.

In addition to the obviously fun subject matter, the rhythm is just gorgeous.

before he turned fluidly away from her so that, to her swiftly blooming dismay, she saw only the bracing flinch his shoulders as the sneeze - 'heh - !' - almost - 'heh-hehhh - !' - released itself - '-hhhh...oh...'

Oooh, the tension. Will he? Won't he? It's all so exciting.

He made a stifled noise which was half-cough, almost a stillborn sneeze, and shook his head once, hard.

"I swear that the air is spiced." His voice tilted on the octave and he blinked moistened eyes, hand still poised.

Awww. Also you've written about voices going up an octave before and I became a pile of goo then, as well.

And finally,

where they eventually were forced to leave due to fears for Shelley's health; he was plagued constantly by colds during the time they lived there and was convinced he was suffering from consumption.

Really the icing on the cake .

What more can I say? Can't wait for part 2; would like to steal your amazing writing abilities; will probably go away and think about finding out some more about Shelley, my knowledge of whom being ridiculously limited.

[Mistress Quickly]

Awww, thanks kastrel! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I'm immensely flattered by your comments. Ooohh, you totally should find out about Shelley; he was that oh so delicious combination of being fiendishly passionate, gorgeous, neurotically hypochondriac, slightly bonkers and a total pain the arse. I adore him - is it wrong to crush on dead poets? If you do ever read anything about him, I'd seriously reccommend Richard Holmes' biography The Pursuit. It's massively long and pretty intimidating (I almost threw it out the window when I first saw how big it was) but it's unbelievably engagingly written, completely fascinating and Shelley's life is literally the stuff of novels. It's an amazing book.

Now I'm gushing like ten fangirls. Part 2 will be along, when I've finished fighting with a nightmare of an essay.

[queenie]

Lovely. Truly lovely. I am entranced. Can't wait for Part Two.

[Mistress Quickly]

Many moons ago, I started writing a story, and ...yeah. OK. Three things. 1: I'm very sorry indeed that for the length of time it has taken me to write this, there is so very little of the actual good stuff. 2: The story now has multi-multiple parts, insomuch as there's part 3 in progress (yep, I just won't give up) and then a possible sequel. I guess I'll see how it goes down. 3: It's short. I mean, really.

Anyway...

2.

It was the memory that would stand out in her mind in later years, the way sense is overlayed with impression as though the filaments of her inner-eye had been stung with light so many times they bore the after-images as infinitely as if they had been etched there with blade and ink. She needed only to catch a glimmer from the edge of her vision and the ghost of that afternoon darted back into sight; she was there, the sun of the mid-day itchingly hot on the exposed contours of her shoulder and scorching the line of skin where her hair was parted, seeing where the canvas of trees tilting precariously around the circle of the garden allowed the relief of light through like rents in the atmosphere, illuminating the edges of the stone path baked too hot to step on and flattening the distorted ribbon of the river so that it appeared painted on the scene like a backdrop, sparkling ingeniously. The million, the milion of a million infinitesimal motes of air-dust, pollen, insects detectable only by the glinting of their wings, glimmered and glittered and shimmered and shone as they spiralled lazily, fogging the light so that everything she looked at seemed irrisdescent, all seemed infused with a strange and palpable nimbus of stifled golden air. And superimposed over it all, coalescing the smell of grass blistering itself and the unerringly, dizzyingly rhythmical passage of the river, and the tiny movements of air-borne life flitting and winking in the haze, was the sound that came from just behind her as, feet still bare, she aimed a swift leap from the cool, sharply cracked tiles just inside the back door, over the stone path to where the grass ran parallel with the cottage.

"Hih-h’tcshh!"

She reeled where she had landed, almost hopping in surprise as a pebble nicked her heel and she put out her arms instinctively to find her balance; needlessly, as it would turn out, because he was at her side in a blink, the cool pressure of his hard, slender fingers delicately proprietous on her upper arm as he steadied her. The only sign of the sneeze in his face (for she did indeed look for it, even in her discomfit) was the pinkened edges of his nostrils which, she had to concede, had probably been there already.

Unaccountably, she found herself glaring at him, before shrugging his grip from her and hiking the hem of her dress away from her feet. Balancing herself, she hooked her foot up and examined the small tender injury; the stone had peeled a neat oval of skin away from where the toughened callus of her heel curved inwards to the softer, paler flesh of her in-step. It wasn't bleeding, but the layer of raw skin beneath the surface had been exposed and its redness glistened against the white of her foot. She poked her thumbnail at it experimentally; it stung like a paper-cut, indecently insignificant for the childish smart of upset she felt.

Shelley had sneezed, and she hadn't even been looking.

Putting his hands behind his back, he arched an eyebrow at her and gravely surveyed the damage. "Barely a scratch, my dear," he snipped gently. "No limping, now."

Infuriated, she made a face at him and plumped herself defiantly down onto the grass, knitting her legs one under the other. "My cunning plan is sadly dust now," she replied, satisfactorily tart.

His mouth quirked a little in that familiar, deceptively benign half-smile, lowering his lashes slightly. "I beg your pardon?"

"You sneezed," she accused, glaring up at him.

He took a measured step towards her, clearly trying to conceal mischief with diplomacy. "Why, yes, indeed," he said. "I must confess to that occurrence. Not an uncommon phenomena, as you well know."

"How uncivil of you, what diabolical ungentlemanliness, that you should cast aside my thoughtful and entirely selfless attempts at rescuing you from a most debilitating affliction and find a solution yourself! As though my ingenious plot was neither use nor ornament! As though it were merely a casual fancy of mine, barely worth the consideration!"

"As if any scheme dreamt up by your fiendish mind could ever be any less than inspired." His brow was puckered in amused consternation as he rounded on her where she sat with slow, deliberate steps, each one bringing him steadily closer. "Your powers of invention are without equal and I am confident that you would have proved quite the heroine to my plight. Unfortunately - " He was standing over her now, blocking the sun with the jut of his long shadow, and here he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket with a flourish, almost carelessly, the gesture an unconscious assault on her prickled temper - 'nature intervened. As it will." He gave his nose a soft, wet blow, before he gracefully dropped to the ground beside her, still carefully blotting his nose.

In-between the August sun and the flayed brown grass, Claire simmered mildly. "You could have waited."

"Miss Jane." He levelled a look at her of such patriarchal solemnity that she almost snorted. "When one must sneeze, one must, indeed, sneeze."

"You could have held your nose."

He rolled over onto his elbow, so that their faces were within an inch of one another, their breath mingling warmly. She fondly regarded the drizzle of four pale freckles across the bridge his nose.

"If I startled you before," he said softly, "I apologise sincerely. I'm sorry you hurt your foot."

"I'll live," she remarked evenly. She leant closer on her own elbow, mirroring his stance, until their noses almost touched at the tip. "I do, however, suspect that you have yet to uphold your side of the bargain."

"And what is that?" the man enquired, amusement creasing the edges of his eyes.

Closer still, and when she spoke her lips brushed against his, just a little, the ghost of a kiss. "You owe me a sneeze, Mr Shelley."

finis

Any comments are appreciated.

[Triosk1]

Delightful, as expected. I couldn't quote bits like last time, because it would involve quoting all of it. You have a really wonderful way of writing about things everyone has experienced in a way that makes me feel you really understand it...*reminisces about reading The Bell Jar*...anyway, please continue, it's great!! (sorry for the incoherency, I'm rushed, and I need to write part 4 of my own story )

[queenie]

Somehow I doubt Claire has long to wait. I nhope I don't either.... *licks lips. Mmm. Delicious.

[chui]

oh very nice! i do enjoy your writing style