An Irish Wind

Chapter Twenty Three - A Simple Act of Kindness

  All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.  

W.B. Yeats - The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart

~

The wind changed direction and howled past the window as I took a seat with the offered whiskey glass in my hand.  I sipped the familiar tasting liquid and felt warmth immediately begin to grow somewhere low down in my chest.  Mick had not been an advocate of the binge drinking that was considered common place in Ireland as he understood how quickly people could become tainted by such a reliance.  That was not to say that he did not believe that a drink or two was heartwarming and somewhat of a reward after a long day of hard work.  There had been whiskey aboard The Grace and some wine, but he'd steered clear of rum because he'd witnessed the behaviour such a drink could cause.  There was a light ale for during the day too, but on the whole his crew seemed to know their limits.  It seemed to be a similar case aboard The Surgence where there was a small ale from the galley for the crew and water always on deck, with the wines and whiskey reserved for the officers.  

All of that was somewhat reassuring.  I'll not lie and say I don't like a drink.  I'm Irish so it's sort of in my blood really.  I think it's fair to say I'm capable of handling my liquor though, unlike others.  I think its always worrying for women to be amongst a group of drunken bawdy men because there's the potential for anything to happen.  In most cases, there's no danger and even if the men are a little uncouth with their words there's no real danger.  It doesn't stop us worrying though.  If a man is drunk enough to think that commenting on a woman's shape or form is acceptable; what else will he think he can get away with?  Even as someone who is capable of handling herself, I don't like finding myself in that situation.  We've all heard the stories whether we like to admit it or not.  Out on the sea there's no escape for a woman, as Anamaria has told me on a few occasions.  There is no flight, so you simply have to fight.  Trying to laugh it off and join in can sometimes diffuse the situation but on occasions it can make the situation worse if the men think you're up for more of a laugh than you really are.  

I've been grateful not to find myself in those kind of situations much since I left Ireland for the sea.  I always had Mick hovering somewhere over my shoulder if we were around men we did not know all that well though, so I never considered myself in any real danger.  I had come to realise very quickly that there was little danger aboard The Surgence either.  All of the crew seemed a respectable bunch, and since Lieutenant Groves' passing they had taken to being almost friendly.  The officers were all happy to be on good terms with me and I felt particularly comfortable with them because of the added reassurance that they were James's most trusted men.  Even Mr. Hawkins who liked to let his mouth run away with him at times was not someone I thought of as posing any type of real threat.

It felt odd to me to consider that perhaps I owed James thanks for my relative safety when really a woman should feel so always.  I'd been lucky and because of that I was seeing what the world really ought to be and not what it really was.  I think perhaps I do that with people as well.  I see the potential where perhaps there is none at all.  That was not the case with James though.  I knew even then that I'd never before met a man with so much potential.  Even as he sat before me sipping on a glass of whiskey in the few moments of silence before conversation resumed I could very well imagine that he would achieve whatever he put his mind to.