Perfidious Albion, Chapter Nine
Sunday, August 26th, 2018 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
challis_2070 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mindcrackloveLink to Chapter Eight- https://mindcracklove.dreamwidth.org/1182601.html#cutid1 (Yes, I know it's right below this one)
Baj pondered the last week thoughtfully. If what Nathan was telling him was true, his nephew had, apparently, never had a birthday party. Well, they thought he might have had one or two, but he thought at this point it might be better to simply ask directly on the matter. It seemed to get a better end result from Paul.
Well, his nephew had said he was coming over today to spend some time with Nathan, so, he could kill two birds with one stone, pretty much.
-----
“Hey, mamaí?” Pyro leaned his head into the living room before wandering over and flopping on the couch that was opposite of the chair that his mother was sitting in.
“What is it, Pól?” She looked up from her knitting to listen to what he had to say. She liked it, even if it did net her the nickname of Madame DeFarage. 1
“There’s a demonstration happening in Manchester for freedom for Northern Ireland. Maybe we could go to it?” He grinned at her, waving the info sheet he had printed out. His mother always did like reading them, so he thought he’d preempt the question and bring it in with him.
“Oh! When is it?” A quizzical look and she held her hand out for the paper he was holding.
“It’s the Sunday after next, at noon. Meet up is at Heaton Park, and we’d be marching to city hall. There looks to be lots of people planning on going, and we could make signs and such.” He got up and ambled over to her, handing her the print out, before going back over to the couch as he was before. It would be two days before his birthday, or that is to say, on the 11th of July.
“Oh, that would work, it would be after church if we go at nine, indeed. I think that would be quite nice, Pól.” A short nod as she looked over the paper. It looked pretty straight forward to her. Whenever she had felt well enough, she went to demonstrations, right enough, and it would be nice to be able to continue to do that, even when in England.
“Excellent! Er…will you need your walker, then?” he frowned slightly, having only just thought of that issue at all. His mother was…he never really thought of her as being incapable of something, so it was awkward to remember that maybe she couldn’t do something.
“I’ll take it, the cane, and the braces. Between those three, we should be really sturdy.” The doctor had suggested that if she wanted to be damn sure of not falling, to use all three. He had also said it was overkill, but overkill never hurt anyone. Well okay, this kind of overkill had never hurt anyone.
“Okay then! I’ll put it on our calendar on the table.” They had brought with them a small triangle shaped calendar to put on a table or counter with them, so they’d have some place to collect dates and times of anything they’d want to do so that the other two would know where they were.
“It’s a bit unfortunate that your father will be working that day, but maybe he shouldn’t be going to such demonstrations anyway…” She rarely any more tried to get him to go to such things. He tended to refuse, not from principal, but from the fact that it might give his lieutenant a heart attack and he actually liked the man. He wasn’t the worst lieutenant she had ever met, but she still didn’t much care for him. Giving him a heart attack might be a bit too cruel though, so she never pushed the issue much.
“It’s still a bit sad that he can’t join us, indeed.” He wished his father could come some time, but understood why he could not. Still, it would be a unique sight…
“True. Didn’t you say you were going to go talk to your cousin Nathan soon?” She made a shooing motion at her son, reminding him of what he had almost forgotten, before she picked her knitting back up.
“OH RIGHT. Yes, um, be back later, ma.” He flung himself up off the couch (much to his mother’s chagrin) and hurried out the door.
-----
“Heya Dinnerbone!” Chipper he entered his cousin’s house.
“Hey Pyro! How are you and your mom?” Dinnerbone looked up from where he was staring at his phone as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the living room. It was still a bit startling to have Pyro suddenly appear, but at least he had knocked this time before barreling into the house.
“Pretty good, actually. We were talking about things we could go out and do this coming week.” He made wild waving motions with his hands as he bounced around to see what Dinnerbone was looking at.
“Nice! Look, uh, Pyro, um, my dad wanted to ask you about your plans for your birthday.” Da had asked him to send Pyro into the kitchen, actually, when he came over, so he could ask. He could, or they could talk for a few first. It wasn’t a terribly important decision, after all.
“Oh? Oh right, he does normally send me a nice card on my birthday.” A brief moment as he thought of the cards that had been sent. They were nice cards, if a bit too….cutesy…for his taste, generally. Well, the cards from his father’s sister were cutesy. The ones from uncle Baj were actually pretty decent.
“He...does?” Well, of course he did…they got birthday cards from uncle Tom, at least they usually did, though they sometimes came a month or more late.
“Yea. Well, I mean, he sends it to his mother and she sends me collected birthday cards each year, but it works out the same.” He made a faint waving off gesture with his hand, appearing to dismiss the issue entirely.
“Grandmother sends you cards?” Grandmother sent them cards. Grandmother loved sending and receiving mail. This should not be as surprising as it was. Then again, grandmother never seemed to like the concept of Northern Ireland, so he had kind of…assumed…that it had extended to say, her daughter-in-law and grandson…
“Yea, only on my birthday. She sends da a lot of cards though, like at least one a week.”
“She doesn’t send you them?” Which was odd, but if she didn’t like Northern Ireland, and her son was ‘normal’ but her grandson wasn’t ‘normal’ (ie, English) then perhaps that made sense? As much sense as such things make, really.
“Naw, she sends them to da, but da reads some of them to me, so. It seems like she expects him to do that, so that’s fine.”
“Ooo…kay then. Um, Dad said he was in the kitchen, so, uh. Right.”
“Okay. I mean, my birthday ain’t that important, but…sure.” He rolled his eyes and headed into the kitchen.
-----
“Hello Paul.” He waved his nephew on over to the table where he was sitting, playing with a cup of tea.
“Heya Uncle Baj, I heard you wanted to ask me about my birthday?” He still didn’t know why they seemed to care so much about it. Sure, he was turning fifteen, and that was a nice birthday, but it wasn’t like…earth-shattering, or anything.
“Yes, I heard that you haven’t had any birthday parties??” Probably no birthday parties. He totally could have had some, but they might not have been very good. Getting news second hand was never a good thing.
“Oh. I’ve had two, actually. When I was five, da was on base in Canada and ma was at Armagh, so I stayed with my auntie Saoirse…and they had a little party for me. Their basement is waaaaaay better stocked than ours was, um is? And they had a stove. So we had a cake and a bit of a party.” He giggled remembering that party. It was fun, they had glazed the cake in orange, white, and green whipped cream frosting. He had even gotten to help color the frosting for that!
“…Right. And the other time?” He was developing a mild headache at the thought of what he was going to hear after that first one.
“Oh! It was when I was ten, and before they made it entirely illegal for us, um, the half-caste kids, I mean, to be on base. Ma was in the hospital then, so da took me to the base for that weekend, for safety, and his colleagues made a nice cake and put up streamers and stuff! He was really angry at them though, I’m not sure why. I think he had wanted them to leave me alone.”
Baj stared at his nephew for a very very long moment. No kidding, Paul, he thought, of course your father wasn’t happy. He’s gone to pains to avoid letting any of the….’squadies’ near you!
“Yeah. Okay. No. Those aren’t really sufficient as birthday parties. Since it would be really weird to have a birthday party in the house you are kind of…’housesitting’, we’ll have one here. Let your mom and dad know that I’m planning that so they can, you know, do what they want as well.” So that Lasairfhíona could complain at him, most likely, but you know, if her birthday was in the summer he’d have thrown her a birthday party as well. Huh. Maybe he could explain that to her and it might help.
“Huh. Okay, I’ll tell mamaí and she’ll tell da for me. I still don’t see the point, we spend the night before in the basement, so, you know, do you mean for us to spend the night before over here?” Well, to spend that day before and his birthday in the basement, which was normal. Save for the year he had been on base. But he was pretty sure he was still in a basement that time, actually. It was surprisingly hard to tell up from down and they had brought him to the decorated room blindfolded for the surprise and….yea…that would have upset da, yes it would have indeed.
“….Paul, there aren’t riots here on the 12th. You don’t have to spend the night in the bloody basement!” Sometimes he wondered if Paul was being intentionally obtuse or if he really had simply never considered the possibility of a lack of riots. He wasn’t sure which of those options was worse.
“Really? I’ll have to ask mamaí about it. I don’t think it would be safe…” He wasn’t trying to be whiny, he was just really really nervous about the entire idea. How could a place truly not have riots? At all?
“…Okay. Let me know tomorrow what she has to say about it, and what your dad has to say about it…unless he calls me first or something.”
“Okay!” With that, Pyro fled back to where Dinnerbone was hiding in the living room.
-----
BTC contemplated the flyer very very carefully.
He was entirely sure he shouldn’t volunteer for it. He was about 95 percent certain the…’kid’ was here at the kid’s uncle’s place and as such, he had better by god stay away from volunteering to over watch any protests about Northern Ireland. It was just…it seemed a good way to get some really bad karma going if he went.
He could, however, ask a friend who was already planning on volunteering to let him know what happened though, of course. And let his lieutenant know he had done that. He reaaaaaally didn’t want to surprise his lieutenant with something like that.
And he could go ask his lieutenant if that was why he was watching him so closely. Not to do anything with the info, but so he could stay well clear of it. The therapist had even said that it was probably a good idea for him to know in advanced those kinds of things so he could stay the hell out of any situation he could actually avoid.
Notes, Translations, etc
1 Madame Defarge is from the Charles Dicken’s book A Tale of Two Cities, and she knits. What she knits is the names of the enemies of the Revolution. There is no way you can make her ‘unknit’ your name once she has knit it.
Link to Chapter Ten- https://mindcracklove.dreamwidth.org/1183154.html#cutid1
Baj pondered the last week thoughtfully. If what Nathan was telling him was true, his nephew had, apparently, never had a birthday party. Well, they thought he might have had one or two, but he thought at this point it might be better to simply ask directly on the matter. It seemed to get a better end result from Paul.
Well, his nephew had said he was coming over today to spend some time with Nathan, so, he could kill two birds with one stone, pretty much.
-----
“Hey, mamaí?” Pyro leaned his head into the living room before wandering over and flopping on the couch that was opposite of the chair that his mother was sitting in.
“What is it, Pól?” She looked up from her knitting to listen to what he had to say. She liked it, even if it did net her the nickname of Madame DeFarage. 1
“There’s a demonstration happening in Manchester for freedom for Northern Ireland. Maybe we could go to it?” He grinned at her, waving the info sheet he had printed out. His mother always did like reading them, so he thought he’d preempt the question and bring it in with him.
“Oh! When is it?” A quizzical look and she held her hand out for the paper he was holding.
“It’s the Sunday after next, at noon. Meet up is at Heaton Park, and we’d be marching to city hall. There looks to be lots of people planning on going, and we could make signs and such.” He got up and ambled over to her, handing her the print out, before going back over to the couch as he was before. It would be two days before his birthday, or that is to say, on the 11th of July.
“Oh, that would work, it would be after church if we go at nine, indeed. I think that would be quite nice, Pól.” A short nod as she looked over the paper. It looked pretty straight forward to her. Whenever she had felt well enough, she went to demonstrations, right enough, and it would be nice to be able to continue to do that, even when in England.
“Excellent! Er…will you need your walker, then?” he frowned slightly, having only just thought of that issue at all. His mother was…he never really thought of her as being incapable of something, so it was awkward to remember that maybe she couldn’t do something.
“I’ll take it, the cane, and the braces. Between those three, we should be really sturdy.” The doctor had suggested that if she wanted to be damn sure of not falling, to use all three. He had also said it was overkill, but overkill never hurt anyone. Well okay, this kind of overkill had never hurt anyone.
“Okay then! I’ll put it on our calendar on the table.” They had brought with them a small triangle shaped calendar to put on a table or counter with them, so they’d have some place to collect dates and times of anything they’d want to do so that the other two would know where they were.
“It’s a bit unfortunate that your father will be working that day, but maybe he shouldn’t be going to such demonstrations anyway…” She rarely any more tried to get him to go to such things. He tended to refuse, not from principal, but from the fact that it might give his lieutenant a heart attack and he actually liked the man. He wasn’t the worst lieutenant she had ever met, but she still didn’t much care for him. Giving him a heart attack might be a bit too cruel though, so she never pushed the issue much.
“It’s still a bit sad that he can’t join us, indeed.” He wished his father could come some time, but understood why he could not. Still, it would be a unique sight…
“True. Didn’t you say you were going to go talk to your cousin Nathan soon?” She made a shooing motion at her son, reminding him of what he had almost forgotten, before she picked her knitting back up.
“OH RIGHT. Yes, um, be back later, ma.” He flung himself up off the couch (much to his mother’s chagrin) and hurried out the door.
-----
“Heya Dinnerbone!” Chipper he entered his cousin’s house.
“Hey Pyro! How are you and your mom?” Dinnerbone looked up from where he was staring at his phone as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the living room. It was still a bit startling to have Pyro suddenly appear, but at least he had knocked this time before barreling into the house.
“Pretty good, actually. We were talking about things we could go out and do this coming week.” He made wild waving motions with his hands as he bounced around to see what Dinnerbone was looking at.
“Nice! Look, uh, Pyro, um, my dad wanted to ask you about your plans for your birthday.” Da had asked him to send Pyro into the kitchen, actually, when he came over, so he could ask. He could, or they could talk for a few first. It wasn’t a terribly important decision, after all.
“Oh? Oh right, he does normally send me a nice card on my birthday.” A brief moment as he thought of the cards that had been sent. They were nice cards, if a bit too….cutesy…for his taste, generally. Well, the cards from his father’s sister were cutesy. The ones from uncle Baj were actually pretty decent.
“He...does?” Well, of course he did…they got birthday cards from uncle Tom, at least they usually did, though they sometimes came a month or more late.
“Yea. Well, I mean, he sends it to his mother and she sends me collected birthday cards each year, but it works out the same.” He made a faint waving off gesture with his hand, appearing to dismiss the issue entirely.
“Grandmother sends you cards?” Grandmother sent them cards. Grandmother loved sending and receiving mail. This should not be as surprising as it was. Then again, grandmother never seemed to like the concept of Northern Ireland, so he had kind of…assumed…that it had extended to say, her daughter-in-law and grandson…
“Yea, only on my birthday. She sends da a lot of cards though, like at least one a week.”
“She doesn’t send you them?” Which was odd, but if she didn’t like Northern Ireland, and her son was ‘normal’ but her grandson wasn’t ‘normal’ (ie, English) then perhaps that made sense? As much sense as such things make, really.
“Naw, she sends them to da, but da reads some of them to me, so. It seems like she expects him to do that, so that’s fine.”
“Ooo…kay then. Um, Dad said he was in the kitchen, so, uh. Right.”
“Okay. I mean, my birthday ain’t that important, but…sure.” He rolled his eyes and headed into the kitchen.
-----
“Hello Paul.” He waved his nephew on over to the table where he was sitting, playing with a cup of tea.
“Heya Uncle Baj, I heard you wanted to ask me about my birthday?” He still didn’t know why they seemed to care so much about it. Sure, he was turning fifteen, and that was a nice birthday, but it wasn’t like…earth-shattering, or anything.
“Yes, I heard that you haven’t had any birthday parties??” Probably no birthday parties. He totally could have had some, but they might not have been very good. Getting news second hand was never a good thing.
“Oh. I’ve had two, actually. When I was five, da was on base in Canada and ma was at Armagh, so I stayed with my auntie Saoirse…and they had a little party for me. Their basement is waaaaaay better stocked than ours was, um is? And they had a stove. So we had a cake and a bit of a party.” He giggled remembering that party. It was fun, they had glazed the cake in orange, white, and green whipped cream frosting. He had even gotten to help color the frosting for that!
“…Right. And the other time?” He was developing a mild headache at the thought of what he was going to hear after that first one.
“Oh! It was when I was ten, and before they made it entirely illegal for us, um, the half-caste kids, I mean, to be on base. Ma was in the hospital then, so da took me to the base for that weekend, for safety, and his colleagues made a nice cake and put up streamers and stuff! He was really angry at them though, I’m not sure why. I think he had wanted them to leave me alone.”
Baj stared at his nephew for a very very long moment. No kidding, Paul, he thought, of course your father wasn’t happy. He’s gone to pains to avoid letting any of the….’squadies’ near you!
“Yeah. Okay. No. Those aren’t really sufficient as birthday parties. Since it would be really weird to have a birthday party in the house you are kind of…’housesitting’, we’ll have one here. Let your mom and dad know that I’m planning that so they can, you know, do what they want as well.” So that Lasairfhíona could complain at him, most likely, but you know, if her birthday was in the summer he’d have thrown her a birthday party as well. Huh. Maybe he could explain that to her and it might help.
“Huh. Okay, I’ll tell mamaí and she’ll tell da for me. I still don’t see the point, we spend the night before in the basement, so, you know, do you mean for us to spend the night before over here?” Well, to spend that day before and his birthday in the basement, which was normal. Save for the year he had been on base. But he was pretty sure he was still in a basement that time, actually. It was surprisingly hard to tell up from down and they had brought him to the decorated room blindfolded for the surprise and….yea…that would have upset da, yes it would have indeed.
“….Paul, there aren’t riots here on the 12th. You don’t have to spend the night in the bloody basement!” Sometimes he wondered if Paul was being intentionally obtuse or if he really had simply never considered the possibility of a lack of riots. He wasn’t sure which of those options was worse.
“Really? I’ll have to ask mamaí about it. I don’t think it would be safe…” He wasn’t trying to be whiny, he was just really really nervous about the entire idea. How could a place truly not have riots? At all?
“…Okay. Let me know tomorrow what she has to say about it, and what your dad has to say about it…unless he calls me first or something.”
“Okay!” With that, Pyro fled back to where Dinnerbone was hiding in the living room.
-----
BTC contemplated the flyer very very carefully.
He was entirely sure he shouldn’t volunteer for it. He was about 95 percent certain the…’kid’ was here at the kid’s uncle’s place and as such, he had better by god stay away from volunteering to over watch any protests about Northern Ireland. It was just…it seemed a good way to get some really bad karma going if he went.
He could, however, ask a friend who was already planning on volunteering to let him know what happened though, of course. And let his lieutenant know he had done that. He reaaaaaally didn’t want to surprise his lieutenant with something like that.
And he could go ask his lieutenant if that was why he was watching him so closely. Not to do anything with the info, but so he could stay well clear of it. The therapist had even said that it was probably a good idea for him to know in advanced those kinds of things so he could stay the hell out of any situation he could actually avoid.
Notes, Translations, etc
1 Madame Defarge is from the Charles Dicken’s book A Tale of Two Cities, and she knits. What she knits is the names of the enemies of the Revolution. There is no way you can make her ‘unknit’ your name once she has knit it.
Link to Chapter Ten- https://mindcracklove.dreamwidth.org/1183154.html#cutid1
