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toomuchofmyself
Jun. 16th, 2014 06:47 pmAt Penge, Alec had wanted for nothing but company.
There had been work - mountains of it, as always seemed to pile up around big, old homes. There had been woods, an almost-wilderness that was the dearest thing to him he could recall since boyhood, and plenty of quiet to enjoy it in. There had been pay enough. But the emptiness he'd so loved in the outdoors was only bleak in a house, and even the half of the year the Durhams actually occupied their estate was a lonely one. No shortage of guests, of course, but for Alec it was just a stream of people who made no impression; they hardly looked at him, nor he at them. The staff had been small. For five years he'd been served up more solitude than even he could really stomach.
He hadn't truly wanted to move to London. There was plenty about the city that put him off - the smell, for one - but his brother was there, with his flock of children, and he'd promised to keep Alec in work until he could find something suitable. And there were people. People his own age, even. It was worth more to him than he expected it to be.
And here, he'd come up on his feet pretty well. True, he was only a day into the job, but it was no factory, no stifling office, nothing shut away and sooty like so much of London surely was. If he stood in the right place, looked in the right direction, he could almost imagine (had he been given to imagining) he was back out at Penge. A more beautiful Penge, to be sure, with more color and rather more care poured into it. He liked it, he'd decided. It wasn't one of those prim, reined-into-death gardens he'd heard people call French, not one of those flat, pointless things some people laid down around fountains and forgot about. It was a little wild; full; something like what might happen in nature, if nature were a bit more conscientious.
The sun was lowering, now, and he was stationed up on a ladder, disentangling a brittle vein of dead roses from an otherwise prolific trellis. Wild was all well and good, of course; but once a thing was done, it was done. He twisted on the ladder to throw down an armful of thorny mess, but stopped short when he caught sight of Mr. Hallward - not close enough to be hit or perhaps even to notice him, but close enough that Alec felt it might be a touch rude to be dumping vegetation. He knew next to nothing about the man, and he always tread carefully around the monied sort until he knew better.
He just touched his forehead and called out, quite clearly, mostly to let the man know he was there: "Nearly done for the day, sir."
There had been work - mountains of it, as always seemed to pile up around big, old homes. There had been woods, an almost-wilderness that was the dearest thing to him he could recall since boyhood, and plenty of quiet to enjoy it in. There had been pay enough. But the emptiness he'd so loved in the outdoors was only bleak in a house, and even the half of the year the Durhams actually occupied their estate was a lonely one. No shortage of guests, of course, but for Alec it was just a stream of people who made no impression; they hardly looked at him, nor he at them. The staff had been small. For five years he'd been served up more solitude than even he could really stomach.
He hadn't truly wanted to move to London. There was plenty about the city that put him off - the smell, for one - but his brother was there, with his flock of children, and he'd promised to keep Alec in work until he could find something suitable. And there were people. People his own age, even. It was worth more to him than he expected it to be.
And here, he'd come up on his feet pretty well. True, he was only a day into the job, but it was no factory, no stifling office, nothing shut away and sooty like so much of London surely was. If he stood in the right place, looked in the right direction, he could almost imagine (had he been given to imagining) he was back out at Penge. A more beautiful Penge, to be sure, with more color and rather more care poured into it. He liked it, he'd decided. It wasn't one of those prim, reined-into-death gardens he'd heard people call French, not one of those flat, pointless things some people laid down around fountains and forgot about. It was a little wild; full; something like what might happen in nature, if nature were a bit more conscientious.
The sun was lowering, now, and he was stationed up on a ladder, disentangling a brittle vein of dead roses from an otherwise prolific trellis. Wild was all well and good, of course; but once a thing was done, it was done. He twisted on the ladder to throw down an armful of thorny mess, but stopped short when he caught sight of Mr. Hallward - not close enough to be hit or perhaps even to notice him, but close enough that Alec felt it might be a touch rude to be dumping vegetation. He knew next to nothing about the man, and he always tread carefully around the monied sort until he knew better.
He just touched his forehead and called out, quite clearly, mostly to let the man know he was there: "Nearly done for the day, sir."
