Thin Strange Delight

He doesn’t sound Irish — but there have always been those who take pains, those with a talent for imitation. This is not a talent that Crozier possesses, nor one he has acquired in service. Francis’ tongue is thick with drink, and his voice is broken. Mr. Hickey is on his knees — slipping the boots from Crozier’s feet and turning them to the wall, like a sorry batman. Jopson would blush to see it. His eyes are insolently merry, his face shining out down between Crozier’s legs lit by patent-light.

So young, so sweet, so troublesome — there’s nothing but trouble in this man, wide-ranging spite and bad discipline. He’s never scrubbed a deck in his life, but he knows his way around a tar brush, and he’s not some greenhorn who doesn’t know a reefing iron from a race knife — he’s a quick study, and who could fault him for not knowing his way around a vessel as stout as the Terror? He must do the utmost — he panders. He’s a panderer. He is a vain, silly, fractious man and in that they are very much alike.

Crozier tries to steady himself against the bedrail and pull up — Hickey’s hand is on the calf of his leg, easing him into place. The embarrassment of being bundled back to his cabin after a night of carousing with a caulker’s mate is all too acute, even in anticipation. It wouldn’t do to seem distraught, nor to show favoritism.

“Please, please, get up. I’m more than capable—”

“Oh, it’s no trouble, sir.” Hickey smiles at him with crooked sweetness. “You’ve no wife to look after you.”

And whose fault is that? The fault is in Crozier. He and Mr. Hickey are men of the same banner. Limerick or thereabouts. Sorry Irishmen with few prospects. He wouldn’t need helped back to his own sleeping cabin if he hadn’t gotten so mired in his own thoughts, so disgustingly sodden with drink — and what had Mr. Hickey been doing below decks, so far from his own haunts?

“I should undress,” Crozier finally says. “You understand.” He’s too old to sleep in his clothes, and the temperature has dropped off — it must be nearly nightfall, his absence will be noted. Drink has made him flabby and useless, too string-cut slackened for any purpose, but he’s not so far gone that he can’t unbutton his coat, even if it takes a little doing to get down past the second layer. Mr. Hickey cocks his head a little, lips parting. There is something obscene in it — a faint suggestiveness that draws out Crozier’s worst blustering instincts.

Sir John again: You are weak in your vices because your rank affords you privacy and deference. Privacy and deference. They are alone here, in this narrow place. Hickey has a young man’s eyes, full of saucy geniality.

“Let me help you, sir. You’re weary from your work. The men worry about you.”

After Sir John, they worry. Hickey rises up to overtake him — easing the coat from his shoulders, slipping his hand past his vest to undo his watch-chain with his lean leg settled between Crozier’s knees. Crozier puts out a hand to stop him, making a sound of annoyance. Hickey doesn’t withdraw himself, at least not immediately.

“You’re not needed here, Mr. Hickey,” Crozier says sharply, but he can hear the slurring in his own voice.

“You must let me help you, sir.” Again.

Crozier’s hand comes to rest on Hickey’s arm instead, well within his field of vision. Hickey’s white throat is raw from the razor. His neckcloth is woven with white crosses on a field of blue. Rows and rows of white crosses. He is quite close. Closeness is all it is — the furnace heat of another man’s body. Closeness is all it is that stirs him.

Crozier is not so incapacitated that he can’t fend him off — a word would do it, the right word. His throat is stuck fast. Hickey fumbles open his flies and draws out his yard for him — when Crozier tries to sit up he is staggered by the rolling nausea of one glass too many, and Hickey shushes his groans like a mother quieting her child.

They’ll be heard — they’ll be found. He doesn’t know what they’ll do, only that they must do it or die. He is hungry for any kind of comfort at all, and comfort is the thing he cannot ask for without frightening his men or alienating his friends, whoever they might be. Any comfort at all.

He lays hands on himself.

Hickey busies himself with his tongue and lips, his mouth wet and avid and his hand clasping at Crozier’s leg — he has marvelous fair hands for a working man and a sailor, worn from work but white and scrubbed. Like he’s prettied himself up for the occasion. He’s working himself with his other hand — so it’s not all a life of service, Crozier reflects. His prick is in his fist, hot and red from the chafing of his palm. These things happen aboard ships, unspeakable and strange things — men seek release wherever they can find it.

Crozier doesn’t stir as readily as he once did, but Hickey’s hands brought him to full attention and now Hickey’s mouth threatens to bring him off — Hickey devours him and swallows him up. The red is in his cheeks.

How long has it been since another person has touched him at all? Hickey mouths at his stones, with wet lips and wet tongue — the sensation of it is so acute that it verges on pain, like the too-rough pawing of a doxy. This is not a position he can imagine a woman taking — not the lowest, most degraded creature in existence.

He shuts his eyes and tries to think of women. Sophia in a drawing-room somewhere the way he had last known her, Sophia with her skirts drawn up and the precious places of her body exposed to the probing of a hand — imagine her there and Mr. Hickey pressed between her knees, his coarseness flush against her fineness. Her hand in his hair. She’d like that, in her way.

The room lists so sharply that Crozier casts out an arm to steady himself, crying out — the whole ship tilts by degrees in the grip of the ice, in a clatter of iron fittings. Hickey doesn’t look up from his task. They are at the mercy of the ice, now, not their fellow men. Sophia the last time he saw her, dressed for spring, bare-shouldered and lively. The line of her throat reddened —

He’s in the bitter last dregs of his endurance, as Hickey slides his member free and tongues at the very head of it, lips sealed hotly around the tenderest parts while the damp shaft feels the cool air. It’s too near to pain, too far past bearing, and the act has purpose in it —

He makes a sound he cannot stifle — his heels dig into the mattress as he spends. He spends in the man’s mouth.

Crozier is left blinking stupidly in the last light. Hickey has swallowed his seed; he runs his tongue over his top lip. It gives him pleasure to do this — to take part in filthiness, the worst filthiness. What he has done is a terrible act of love, a token of the petty officer’s esteem.

There are things that men do among themselves on long voyages, things that don’t bear talking of. “I didn’t ask for this,” Crozier hisses. “I didn’t ask for this, you understand.”

“And yet I gave it.” Mr. Hickey cocks his head to the side, like a hanged man in the noose, like a serpent. “Every man does it, sir.”

He has given up mastery over himself to this man. He has given himself up. If Fitzjames finds he’s done this beastly thing, the consequences will be unlovely. Mr. Hickey draws up beside him in the narrow span of the bed — he hasn’t slept in anything more grand than a hammock in years, the richness of it must dazzle him. You can see it in his face, a queer appreciation for all the small privileges of power that to a petty officer must seem like impossible luxury.

Crozier can smell the salt of his own seed in the air, murky as the bottom of the sea. He can smell the spirits on Hickey’s breath, and his own throat prickles with dryness. Of course, when invited to partake, Mr. Hickey had a drink or two, but his captain had been well ahead of him on that account. They’d fallen to talking, then came the questions as they do — Mr. Hickey wants to know about magnetism, he wants to know about the motion of the stars. He wants to know about Parry and the loss of the Fury. How did it come to this place? Through vanity, all through vanity.

Hickey’s hand is still in his drawers, his prick is still erect — he guides Crozier to it like a man shepherding a drunk helps him find a wall to lean on. One good turn deserves another.

He could weep his way through it like a guilty schoolboy. All thoughts swim from him and part like water — the action is inexpert, his hands are clumsy, but the flesh is hot.

By the end of it, he is damp-eyed and spitting apologies, and Mr. Hickey is laid out beside him like an anatomist’s pastime. Somewhere this fellow has a sweetheart — some red-cheeked girl as hungry for his consolations as Crozier is now. Crozier could weep, he is weeping as only a hopelessly drunken man can weep, without reservation. Sir John has doomed both of them out of pride. Crozier isn’t half the man Sir John was. The hardships will only multiply. The discontent onboard will only mount. He can’t protect these men from the elements any more than he can protect himself. He cannot protect even one man.

Hickey rests his head against the flattened pillow. He strokes the crook of Crozier’s elbow with two fingers — he can turn his head, but he cannot hide his eyes, broken-hearted resentful eyes. He is sick with himself. Crozier too is sick with himself.

The exertion has left him boneless and groggy, and terribly cold — the cold has invaded him, it has crept under every layer of cloth to find the naked skin. Mr. Hickey wipes his hands on his shirttails, and does up his buttons. Crozier shakes his head, and presses the back of his wrist to his eyes. If he could will himself out of consciousness, he would.

Hickey swings his legs over. He’s a small man, viewed from this angle.

“I’ll say I was after a rat.” It comes abruptly, precipitated by nothing. “Patching up a rat-hole, with my brush. You’re a generous man, captain. You’ve been good to me.”

“For God’s sake, go.”