Only Sofia-Elisabete

by Robin Kobayashi

  Flinging my arms round his neck, I exclaimed, “Where have you been?” He hadn’t known that the packet-office had dispatched a message to us. The English lady in question, a Mrs. Wharton, having overheard Kitt speaking about being newly married and his need to return home after a long absence, had felt sorry for him. Kitt, a bright and good-natured young man, had impressed her. She had told the packet-office, “We would be honored to have Mr. and Mrs. Munro join us.”

  I was happy for us, yet unhappy about quitting Bordeaux without solving the mystery of the impostor. Who was he? He could never in fact be my father, because the real Colonel Fitzwilliam had been an honorable man who didn’t cheat at races or act ill-mannered to strangers. A disagreeable misanthrope he had never been.

  The day of our departure couldn’t arrive fast enough for Kitt. The kindness of strangers had changed everything for him. Eager to get upon the sea and to reach England, he had written to Brodie to expect him. He was resolved to pay off his debt to his brother by reporting crim. con. trials, however distasteful they were to him.

  Our portmanteaux were packed. Our farewells were made. We would sail once the captain sent word. It came, finally, after a three-day wait. “La Sarah, monsieur,” said a boy, who had knocked excitedly at our door. He had been sent to alert us as soon as they hoisted the Blue Peter—the signal for passengers and crew to repair to the vessel. The tide, half-water, half-yellowish mud, had come in sufficiently this morning. The autumnal breeze was brisk, the weather propitious.

  We weaved our way through the crowd on the quay where the market hummed with activity. Pungent and sickly-sweet odors saturated the air. Fishing smacks hauled in their catches of fresh silvery fish. Luggers floated downriver, laden with grapes and plums, quinces and melons. Hundreds of vessels from faraway nations scudded upriver or down, some flying American colors, others Danish or even Brazilian colors. What a sight to behold!

  “Which one is she?” I asked breathlessly.

  Kitt pointed with his chin. “The black one yonder, with the broad red streak at her gunwales, and the Blue Peter flying at the masthead. Isn’t she a magnificent cutter? They say she’s fifty-six tons register.”

  There she was, the Sarah, lying along the quay, very handsome, with a single mast and a bowsprit, and the insides of her bulwarks painted white. We descended a ladder to reach the cutter. The steward presented himself, and he conducted us to the main cabin below deck. The men’s cabin was on the starboard side. A small ladies’ cabin placed aft contained two berths with clean white sheets. “Ladies must be accommodated as far aft as possible, where there is less pitch and roll,” explained the steward, who remarked that for every four crossings he had made on the Bay of Biscay, one was always rough.

  Settled now in our floating abode, we joined Captain Denby on deck, in the bow of the cutter. His was a thick-set figure of middling height. “A slashing sea-going cutter, she is,” he said of the Sarah, with pride. It was then, while Kitt asked the captain about our sea route from the Gironde estuary to the Bay of Biscay, that I experienced the queerest sensation, one of those mysterious connections in the making, though I was without a clue at the time that this was so.

  Looking over my shoulder, I observed a gentleman descend into the cutter. He lingered there on the larboard side, watching the seamen stow away fresh water-casks. Somehow, our eyes met. He didn’t recognize me, owing to the veil covering my face, but I knew him at once—him and his béret.

  Had I imagined him? For a moment, I thought I might have, because deep in my sorrowful heart, despite what I had seen of this impostor’s behavior, I still wished my father was alive. Yet, my reason soon returned and told me otherwise, that the whole thing was utterly impossible. The real Colonel Fitzwilliam had always been terribly qualmish at sea. Several days aboard this cutter would have ended him.

  Inclining his head, the impostor touched his béret to me. Something about my eccentric chapeau, perhaps the whimsical balls of silk, fascinated him. Without further thought, I boldly approached him—a breach of etiquette, when we had not been properly introduced. But I was very keen to know who he was.

  “Good morning, sir. Are you a passenger?”

  He nodded. “Mrs. Wharton hired the cutter for us.”

  “I say, do you remember me?”

  “To be sure not,” was his guarded reply.

  “We met at the animal menagerie.”

  Slowly I lifted my white veil to tuck it away in the brim of my hat, so that he could see my face unobstructed.

  “I am Mrs. Munro—Sofia-Elisabete Munro.”

  His eyes went wild with fright, as though he had seen a ghost, and he gripped the side of his head. He shambled off, frantic to get away.

  “Nurse Wharton! Where are you?”

  The muffled voice of the steward came from somewhere below. “Mrs. Wharton is stowing away her painting.”

  “Tell her to come quickly! I’m having another episode.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Nurse Wharton will know what I mean.”

  He staggered towards the fore-part of the cutter. His Nurse Wharton, an older woman, emerged from below deck, adjusting the black veil on her hat. She was dressed elegantly in a dark-blue riding-habit trimmed with braiding. She took no notice of me in that her patient commanded her attention. At her request, the steward brought up a chair and placed it clear of the running rigging for the sails.

  “There, now, do sit down,” Mrs. Wharton soothed her patient in hushed tones.

  Her lady’s-maid brought a glass of water. Eventually the patient sat quiet, hunched up in his chair, his eyes fixed on the glass in his hands. Trusting her servant to watch over him, Mrs. Wharton hastened to the bow, where, from what I could see, an introduction followed. Once the captain had excused himself, I stirred myself to join her and my husband. That was when I heard her clear strong voice, heard what I could only hitherto dream about with an aching homesickness. Drawing up short, I gasped into my hand.

  The new acquaintances spoke about the weather. Kitt, being gentlemanlike, said nothing about the béret-man, whom he must’ve recognized, nor did he inquire about that man’s condition. Glancing in my direction, he wondered at my shyness. He reached out with an encouraging hand, and I, in a stunned state of mind, shuffled towards him.

  “Sofia, are you not well?” he asked.

  Her hands a-trembling, Mrs. Wharton abruptly raised the black veil that had obscured her face. We ladies started at the sight of each other.

  “God bless my soul!” cried she, and we fell into an embrace.

  Six years hadn’t much altered my step-mamma beyond a few streaks of white in her faded reddish hair, but six years had changed me significantly. I greeted her between sobs of joy, “Aggie Fitzwilliam, my dear, dear step-mamma.” She placed a finger to my lips.

  “You mustn’t call me anything but Aggie Wharton,” said she in a low voice.

  “Why do you call yourself that?”

  And then she revealed her heartache, and mine as well.

  “Your father’s head injury was quite severe. When you speak to him, mind that you call him ‘the colonel,’ since he still doesn’t remember us.”

  My father was indeed alive?—not dead, not buried, not gone to heaven?

  Suddenly I became angry and cross. She tried to hush me, but I was sick of everything being hushed up. I was sick of being betrayed.

  Wounded, I demanded to know, “Why had you never written me a line about this?”

  She turned pale. “Did you not get my letters? I wrote to you several times after it happened, even though Lord Scapeton tried to stop me. ‘She belongs in Spain with her mother, and not with a man who doesn’t remember her,’ were his words. He called me an agitator for making you homesick, unhappy and anxious.”

  “Oh! Don Rafael must’ve burned your letters.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “In some ways, it’s better that you didn’t know the truth. The colonel suffers cruelly from fits of mania. He sa
ys that episodes from his past come back to haunt him.”

  “Such as the Peninsular War?”

  “That and other things. He calls these painful nightmares his ‘episodes.’”

  “My poor, poor father,” and I sobbed into my hand.

  She cast down her eyes. “Lord Scapeton threatened to take away the colonel, to lock him up in a private asylum, unless … I stopped writing to you. I reluctantly did as his lordship asked … so that I could care for the colonel myself. I’m terribly sorry for it, my dear.”

  “Lord Scapeton, that liar, told me my father was dead.”

  “Dead? Oh, no.”

  “Dead!” and I stamped my foot.

  “You must lower your voice,” she insisted.

  Something about being near my step-mamma again brought out the vulnerable child in me, the one who wished to be cuddled by her, a loving presence. Unable to help myself, I let loose a loud frustrated wail, a most unladylike exhibition.

  How had my world so turned topsy-turvy? My father was the colonel, but the colonel wasn’t my father. My step-mamma was Aggie, but Aggie wasn’t my step-mamma. Instead, I became her particular friend. She was the colonel’s wife, but the colonel’s wife wasn’t her. Instead, she cared for him as Nurse Wharton. Now that I thought on it, Wharton had been the surname of her first husband, a man long since deceased, and good riddance at that, which is what she had always said, for he had been a womanizer.

  The colonel moaned in pain upon hearing my cries, and when that happened, his faithful Nurse Wharton rushed off to minister to him. Kitt led me away, so that I could compose myself. Inquiring after my health, he pressed me close and grieved for me.

  “I shouldn’t have doubted you, when you said he was your father.”

  “Oh, Kitt,” was all I could sob out.

  “I am so very, very sorry. Do forgive me, do.”

  His love and sympathy, however, made the truth of my situation more unbearable. I had lost my father—hadn’t I, really?—because the impostor had stolen his memories. Despite Kitt’s efforts to alleviate my distress, I began to feel strange, as if I were tottering on a tight-rope about to lose my balance.

  They sat me down on a chair next to the colonel. I couldn’t help but gaze at him, hoping for the unattainable, that he would hold me in his arms and instantly become my father again. It had to be the worst heartache I had ever known to sit there, waiting, wanting, receiving no acknowledgment from him, this after I had waited six long years to see him. Together, yet still separated—that summed up our wretched state.

  The introductions were made. Had the colonel recognized my husband from the stilts race? He gave no indication of it. Seconds passed, then minutes. We two strangers exchanged stares in an uncomfortable silence. How could I pretend he wasn’t my father? Eventually, he spoke up first, and then he rattled on about things in a disjointed manner.

  “They assure me I have sea legs. Do you suffer much at sea, Mrs. Munro?”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  Shaking his head, he remarked, “Mrs. Munro, you are much too young to be married.”

  “I am fifteen, sir.”

  “Impossible, Mrs. Munro.”

  “Do call me Sofia-Elisabete,” and as soon as I had uttered it, I knew it was inappropriate.

  He glanced at Kitt, who stood within hearing distance, watching over me.

  “I dare say your Mr. Munro wouldn’t like it, and nor would I,” he told me sternly, “when you are wholly unconnected with me.”

  Holding back my tears, I begged his pardon in the steadiest voice I could manage.

  “You see, I’ve been living in a country where men address the women by their Christian names.”

  He scoffed at such a custom.

  “Aggie also calls me by my Christian name,” I told him.

  “Aggie?” He looked over at his nurse, who was speaking with her lady’s-maid.

  “She and I are intimate friends from long ago,” I attempted to explain.

  This puzzled him greatly. He closed his eyes, as if by doing so he could simply shut off the engine of his mind. Had he gone to sleep? But I refused to let him rest. I needed to hear the impossible truth, that he remembered me and still loved me.

  “Colonel, why came you to France?” So began my interrogation of him.

  He murmured, “France … no, no. I wished to go to Spain because I forgot something there.”

  Something! You forgot me.

  “Did you find it?”

  “I couldn’t remember what it was. We came to Bordeaux then, upon the advice of my dear brother, who leased a house for us.”

  I coughed out, “Lord Scapeton?” You despised your brother most days, yet now you love him?

  “Scapey believed that my mind was playing tricks on me. He said my memory and health would improve in Bordeaux, and they did. Ain’t I fortunate to have such a caring brother?”

  “I suppose.” That hateful man!

  He went on, “We were to await him here while he settled some business matters in Madrid. But Nurse Wharton, being upset, determined that we must quit this place without him.”

  “What upset her?”

  “She blamed herself for my being injured. Against her advice, I raced on stilts—over ten feet high I was!—and I took a bad tumble. She was afraid my brother would hear about it—how the people were saying that I cheated. He doesn’t like scenes.”

  These, then, were the connecting pieces that had thrown us together on the cutter. At the time of his revelations, I had just begun to make sense of these mysterious ties.

  “But did you not cheat during that race?” I frowned at him.

  “Fie! Upon my honor, I didn’t. An impudent Scotsman tripped me up. The puppy had the audacity to call me an old man.”

  Of course, the colonel had lied, because Kitt would never cheat or act ungentlemanlike. I could only imagine what my husband must’ve been feeling when he overheard the colonel’s bizarre tale.

  The fabulist patted his round belly. “O ho! I’m hungry for another macaroni pie.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He had always joked about my childhood penchant for macaroni pie, the “silliest-looking pie on earth” to him.

  “When we return to England, I shall introduce you to my macaroni.”

  I stammered out, “Your … macaroni?”

  “My brother, the macaroni. He’s not beefy like me.”

  “Oh, him,” said I. “Do you expect to see his lordship soon?”

  “Well, of course. He adores macaroni pie.” The colonel nodded off.

  Thus ended the interrogation. Kitt, who must’ve detected my hurt and despair, came forth quickly. He knelt beside me, and when he tenderly cupped my cheek, I knew how terribly sorry he was about it, that my father, with his muddled brain, didn’t know me.

  More than ten or fifteen years of my father’s memory had been rubbed out, from what I could tell, though faded remembrances of me and others ghosted him now and then. If not for his devoted and long-suffering nurse, he would surely have gone completely mad, to live the rest of his days in Bedlam.

  The sharp shrill call of the sailor’s whistle made the colonel jump, and he nearly fell off his chair. I grasped his arm to steady him. He pressed my hand in gratitude, and I fooled myself into believing for a moment that my father had been restored to me.

  The sails had been unfurled. We gathered round the captain, who led us in a solemn prayer, after which a seaman hoisted English colors. We sang out, with national pride, the words to our beloved song. It certainly made me feel better. The colonel, who had been silent, suddenly lit up, and he sang off-key, “Rule, Britannia-a-a!”

  He still couldn’t sing. In truth, he sang worse than ever before. I caught Aggie’s eye, and a perceptible nod passed between us. Quickly, we raised our smiling voices to drown him out. Kitt thought us robustly patriotic at first, until he heard the colonel mangle the melody. The seamen, with their eyes as round as saucers, heard it, too, and one wonde
rs if they considered it bad luck for the voyage. “What an infernal racket,” grumbled the chief mate, pulling at his sunburned ear.

  Soon afterwards, we weighed anchor. Down the river we went, sailing with a lively breeze, to reach the bay fifty miles distant. Kitt and I hailed the passengers on a steam-boat, and then the sailors of a Dutch merchantman, and whenever someone chanced to return our friendly wave, or raised his hat, we rewarded ourselves with a sly kiss. Our clandestine kisses soon turned into bold kisses, which inevitably turned into a never-ending kiss. We were caught at it by the colonel.

  “I say, Mr. Munro! Is it the Scottish custom to engage in violent lovemaking in public?”

  Kitt and I jumped apart.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. We are newly married,” and he looked at me with those big star-like eyes of his, which made me want to kiss him again.

  The colonel abruptly replied, “Well, newly-married man, I have come to ask you to switch berths. Yours is the better berth, and I dare say I’ll sleep soundly in it. My man Neville will help you move your things.”

  Oh, botheration, thought I, not wanting to give Kitt up, but leave us he did to speak with the colonel’s valet.

  The colonel lent me his arm, and we took a turn on the deck. For several minutes, his brain had righted itself somehow, enabling him to communicate his thoughts without any problem. I almost thought him normal, very much himself, with his teasing bluntness. These glimpses of my real father overjoyed me. But like many things wonderful, they are never long lasting.

  “Will you miss Bordeaux?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “It was a half-way station between Spain and England.”

  “Spain …” He stroked the scar on his forehead. “Is that where you met your husband?”

  “Oh, aye. We fell in love in Cádiz, and we secretly got married since we’re both under age.”