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The air was different in Marlinspike Hall, charged now with the promise of change. Rooms became filled with sunlight through the cleaned windows and sawdust hung suspended in those intruding yellow beams. It was in every room, the sawdust, even the ones far from the repairs, and it was inescapable, like the smell of new paint.
Metal skeletons lined walls in the great hall, drop sheets pooled on the marble floors beneath the scaffolding, and stacks of brick and boards cluttered the garden. Doors that had been locked for decades were opened. Rugs beaten clean. Downstairs, the kitchen staff returned to make the pots shine and the silverware gleam.
Nestor paused halfway down the front staircase, duties forgotten, to take in the sight of his home in the midst of its transformation from dusty relic to modern elegance. He usually wasn’t one for sentimentality, too busy making sure the builders didn’t rob Haddock blind, but these days soppiness fell over him in odd spells, like a drop cloth floating down from the scaffolding to hang heavy and comforting around his shoulders so that at any moment he would stop and gaze around in tenderness.
Any number of things might set him off on these detours from duty. This time it was the laughter.
The library door was ajar and Master Haddock was in there with Mr. Tintin (as usual when they weren’t abroad getting shot at or digging up more gold) and the captain’s baritone howling seemed to overpower the sounds of hammers, swelling to fill the whole house, and the boy’s laughter, almost melodic and chirpy in comparison, joined the sound.
The blended tones harmonizing was by now a familiar sound in Marlinspike Hall, second most common only to the captain’s Scottish brogue shouting hoarsely for Nestor, demanding he hurry to sort something out---to call off dinner because he was leaving abruptly with Mr. Tintin, or to find missing shoes, but usually he called for Nestor to unlock the liquor cabinet which Mr. Tintin had locked before heading back to his flat.
At the sound of the laughter, the hubbub of a busy day fell away from the tired man and alone on the stair case (and probably at the precise moment that the golden candlesticks were being squirreled away) Nestor stopped and smiled; he thought he wouldn’t live to see the day.
Marlinspike Hall was coming to life, slowly filling up with laughter the way a big bath filled with warm water. It wasn’t going to happen all at once, but this laughter was bringing the character of the place back from the brink. It had almost become a haunted house. Now, soon, it will be a home. Perhaps even a child’s home, little feet running down the corridors, slamming doors and sliding down rails…
How right it felt was more sentimentality than the butler was budgeted for so he snapped himself out of it and went about his business.
He did wonder, though, as he counted silver spoons, what the friends could possibly find so entertaining in a cramped, still slightly molded library. But that was adventurers for you; their heads probably weren’t even in the library at all but still out at sea, or on the Nile, or in the Congo, or whatever other dangerous strip of the globe that their latest quest had driven them down in earnest haste.
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Dinner was served early in the library and bringing it in on a tray, Nestor met the sight of Mr. Tintin at the desk with a book and Master Haddock standing behind him, reading over his shoulder. Their quiet words cut off upon Nestor’s entrance and maybe Master Haddock removed his hand from Mr. Tintin’s shoulder. They each gave him a quick smile and an absent nod of appreciation, but didn’t stop talking about clues to a missing diamond.
After dinner, Snowy found Nestor downstairs in the kitchen, playfully nipping at his ankles until he earned a pat and treat, after which he then curled up in the square of warm evening light in front of the pantry. Now that Marlinspike was to be lived in, the guard dog Hector was no longer allowed inside, but of course an exception had to be made for Snowy.
Nestor didn’t really mind the animal in the kitchen, so long as he didn’t harass the mouse-eating hedgehog that lived behind the stove, which Snowy didn’t seem to have an interest in doing since he merely made a question mark sound and cocked his head at the strange creature whenever they crossed paths. (Not like Hector, who still had it out to eat it and anything else smaller than himself--except for Snowy. Again, that powder white dog was the exception to the rule.)
Maybe that was why Nestor liked Tintin’s little dog so much. Maybe, too, it was because he was also a smart and punctual dog; Snowy knew just what time of day he would find the sunlight providing the comfortable wash of warmth on the floor, coming like clockwork to enjoy it, fall asleep on his side with his legs stretched out, ribs rising and falling and tail twitching with dreams.
Nestor often wondered how old Snowy was, but never could think to make inquiries when he had Mr. Tintin at hand. The dog slept enough to suggest an animal passed his prime, but when not sleeping he was as vibrant and alert as ever so perhaps it was just the endless pull of adventure which exhausted him so. But regardless of why, the dog could be counted on to arrive downstairs right after dinner and go straight to sleep, not waking until well passed sundown when Mr. Tintin’s red head would protrude through the kitchen door in search of him.
Today was no exception; the dog’s even breathing and occasional ruff or grunt was the only conversation for the butler as the rest of the staff had turned in for the night. He was at the table with a deck of cards, not going to bed until the master of the house had done so. Movement caught his eye and he watched the hedgehog emerge, cross the stone floor, and actually curl up with Snowy, proving that some kind of friendship had grown when Nestor hadn’t been paying attention.
Thinking on it, Nestor realized that it could have happened anytime; the dog was always here. Honestly, sometimes it was like Snowy lived here.
As Nestor pondered on this, Mr. Tintin’s sure but light feet sounded on the steps and he appeared in the doorway, apple-cheeks, freckles and a smile--pure youth, independence and hunger for thrills. He was wrapped in a brown over coat with a muddy hem brushing his high socks. Happy blue eyes knew right where to look in the big kitchen to find Snowy and pink lips puckered as the young man gave a short, low whistle, and a bright, “c’mon boy! Home!”
The dog woke to find the light had gone, sprang up with a happy yap, perhaps commenting on his new friend the hedgehog. Disturbed from his slumber, the hedgehog woke and began ambling back to his stove. Snowy’s master grinned fondly at him, as amused by the unlikely friendship as Nestor had been, and then turned to say to the butler, “Well, I’m heading out, Nestor. Good night to you.”
“And to you the same, sir,” Nestor replied, putting his solitaire game on hold to focus on the visitor. The young man bent to give his dog a scratch and then, glancing back through the kitchen door, he said with a lamenting shake of his head, “He’ll be hung over in the morning.”
Nestor didn’t assume the boy was speaking of the dog (though for the first time Nestor did wonder if Snowy’s sleeping habits weren’t from being given alcohol with his dinner when Mr. Tintin wasn’t looking.) The boy looked back at the butler. Blue eyes took on a hard commanding glint and he ordered as if he were the master of this house, “Don’t let him in the liquor cabinet in the morning. Kindly inform him there are more reasonable ways to deal with a hangover than imbibing more of the ghastly stuff.”
Amused, Nestor nodded and promised not to buckle under pressure. With that and with his dog pouncing along at his heels, the ginger journalist left through the kitchen entrance, car headlights illuminating the windows briefly with the crunch of gravel and then he was gone.
It wasn’t even an hour later when Captain Haddock, forgetting his bell, began shouting for Nestor. The problem, Nestor was unsurprised to learn upon entering the study, was the securely closed nature of a certain cabinet.
“It’s locked, sir.”
“I know it is,” he groaned as his thick fingers probed the hinges and lock as if he could find a sweet spot that would make them spring open, “I was there when the lad locked it, but you must have a spare key?” He whirled around, whiskey-reddened eyes filled with such hope, hair askew.
“Sadly, no, sir.”
“Bullocks, there’s a skeleton key for all the locks in this house!” The captain roared, marching right over to the desk with heavy strides of thick legs and rummaging through it none too gently. “I know there’s one somewhere, I played with it as a boy!”
Knowing precisely the key spoken of, Nestor nodded, “Yes, but Mr. Tintin is very adamant that you be cut off for the night and straight through the morning as well.”
“Bah!” The captain grumbled, collapsing dizzily into the desk chair and slurring, “Who does that runt of a ginger think he is, anyway, telling me how to live?”
“Your friend, sir?”
At this, the captain laughed dryly, “Friend? Ha! He wouldn’t torture me so if he cared.”
“He means well, sir.”
“I know he does, he--“ the captain cut off, shaking his head and clamping his mouth shut. The shaking became nodding and he repeated, quieter, “I know he does…” he seemingly lost himself in the middle distance and then he looked up sharply, “Has he gone?”
“Yes, sir.”
The expression of pain was most unexpected, “…Did he say if he was coming back?”
With a start, Nestor couldn’t help but huff. The departure hadn’t been even for a moment out of the ordinary and therefore Nestor had assumed that Mr. Tintin would return in time for lunch, if not breakfast, tomorrow. “Why would he not?”
The captain sighed and in the sound was heartache, regret, “I’m a fool, Nestor.”
“Sir?”
The captain took two goes at lifting himself from his chair and the line he made for Nestor and the study door was far from a straight one. He whacked a heavy hand on Nestor’s back when he reached him, moving the man several inches over, “You’re still here, at least.” The smell of alcohol was pungent and underlined by sweat and cologne. A bouquet of captain smells.
“Of course, sir. Drinking doesn’t scare me; I’ve had worse for employers.”
The captain snorted, thumping his forehead on the study door when he pushed instead of pulled to open it, “It’s not the whiskey that he runs from each night when the light has gone and all rules with it.”
Heat filled the butler’s cheeks for he knew the captain’s meaning. It didn’t, after all, allude to anything which wasn’t already subtly evident in the boy’s nature (and the captain’s as well but only when one looked beneath the bulk and hair to the lingering gazes, the smiles, and the level of attention granted to gentlemen’s accessories.) But to have it so plainly put was most unwelcome.
Clearing his throat, Nestor gently maneuvered the sea captain out of the way and opened the door. He needed help staying upright and it was as he slumped against Nestor that the captain continued in the same uncomfortable vein, “Oh, god, he’s beautiful; even as he runs away from me, I want him more than ever!”
“Sir, sleep will do you wonders. Upstairs we go.”
“You aren’t afraid for me, are you, Nestor?”
“I don’t follow you’re meaning.”
“My im-mor-tal sooouuuul!” the captain bellowed almost singing it like a hymn, “These thoughts, these actions, you don’t condemn a man for love, do you?”
“I can’t see as how a sane man would, sir. Love is the very thing a soul is made of.”
“How eloquently put, Nestor. What a poet you make when I’m drunk!”
“Thank you, sir.”
The captain began stripping his clothes well before the staircase was even mounted so by the time they reached the master bedroom, the captain was in his socks and nothing else and falling face first into the bed.
“If only he was a poet like you, Nestor. He’d be the one helping me into bed.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“I had him in my arms. I had him pinned to the wall!” Haddock’s voice had gone dark and low with passion and he changed it instantly to light and airy, “Now I don’t have him at all. I don’t have him. Or a drink.” He scowled, “I need one or the other. Or both.” He waggled his eyebrows and then commenced to laughing.
“That’s enough of this talk, don’t you think, sir?”
“He’s repulsed by me.” Haddock laughed this though the crease in his forehead suggested the laughter was covering pain.
“Nonsense, sir.”
“Then why did he leave me? Why does he always leave me to go back to that little flat so far from me?”
Uncomfortable to be speaking directly about feelings but unwilling to just leave Haddock in this state, Nestor suggested, not making eye contact, “Well… a boy with a heart as pure as his, sir… I supposed he wants you to have your wits about you, sir. For a night such as that.”
The captain looked doubtful and not at all reassured so Nestor pulled the blankets up over him and offered, “But you mustn’t forget that after he leaves, he always returns to you.”
Breaking through the scowl was a twitch in the captain’s beard, a tilt in the line of his mouth and he rolled over in the blankets with a grunt and a groaned, “Ahhhh, Blue Barnacles, you’re smart… Tintin is… hahhhhh…. and I’m drunk.”
“Yes, that you are, sir.”
“Good night, Nestor; I like having a smart butler.”
“Good night, sir.”
Nestor backtracked through the house, picking up articles of clothing, and playing back Mr. Tintin’s departure. He had been so like his natural self, so unperturbed; it was hard to believe he’d just rejected the captain’s advances. Perhaps nothing had happened; perhaps the captain was just so drunk he couldn’t tell his own mind’s fancy from reality.
Or, perhaps, Mr. Tintin was just a very fine actor and in the habit of lying to himself as easily as he was in the habit of flitting around the world on adventures.
By breakfast the following morning, Snowy was chasing squirrels in the garden while Mr. Tintin unashamedly assumed the role of master of the estate to make a few executive decisions about the renovations without consulting the captain. But because Haddock had the money for the expenses and because they were modest and tasteful decisions which only increased Marlinspike Hall’s beauty, Nestor made no comment on it. And when the captain finally woke before lunch, he was indeed hung over but he didn’t ask for a drink.
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After nearly the whole spring with the Captain at sea, Marlinspike Hall was once again graced with the presence of its master. Nestor was on his way to double-check the count of linens and stopped dead in his tracks in the carpeted upstairs corridor because out the window he could see the back garden where the fountains were laid out, neatly restored to their former glory, and sitting on the edge of the biggest fountain was the captain.
And the boy was straddling the captain’s lap.
The immediate reaction was to look away, to give privacy where privacy was due, but in a magnetic pull of curiosity too strong to resist, Nestor looked again, even stepped up to the window.
Two little figures below, one dark and bulky and the other bright and thin, sat stacked on that stone lip, their noses touching. Mr. Tintin’s slender back made a curved line, the pale soles of his shoes showed on either side of the captain’s thick legs, his red hair achieved an almost blinding shade in the direct sunlight, and freckled forearms draped rather carelessly over the captain’s shoulders while the captain’s big hands splayed on either side of a narrow ribcage tightly wrapped in a sweater vest.
Of their faces, only the captain’s was visible and it was crinkled in amusement with his teeth white in his beard, smiling. Their hands slowly explored each other as they talked (Mr. Tintin’s mapped the captain’s broad shoulders and the Captain’s smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of Mr. Tintin’s sweater) and suddenly the captain laughed, chest swelling and head going back, the sound making it all the way up to Nestor through the glass.
Mouths met once, twice, and the talking didn’t seem to stop at first but then in a string of kisses one finally stuck and it was not until Mr. Tintin’s shirt was inadvertently drawn up to reveal a pale and slopping lower back that Nestor regained any sense of propriety and hurried about his business, scolding himself for spying but unable to stop smiling.
Snowy’s sleep in the kitchen that evening went undisturbed.
The butler was in the servant’s wing, turning in for the night, when the sharp bark of the dog drew him out into the corridor thinking that Snowy had woken to find himself on the dark, cooling stone floor of the kitchen. But the barking was coming from upstairs so the dog had already sniffed out his master and before Nestor even reached the bottom of the staircase, he heard a door open above and Mr. Tintin’s voice,
“Enough of that, Snowy, you’ll have the whole house up…” then a change in the tone of the voice suggested he was not speaking to the dog as he insisted, “Oh, let him stay with us. He’s never slept through the night on his own before.” There was a rumble of a reply and Mr. Tintin laughed, his words lost by the thud of a closing door.
Nestor returned to bed.
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Renovations complete and the Captain healing nicely from a scare which involved a lion, Mr. Tintin arrived before breakfast with a case in hand that was nearly as big as he was and which turned out to be much heavier than Nestor anticipated, having witnessed the young man carrying it with such ease. The blasted thing nearly dislocated the butler’s arm and crashed to the marble at their feet the moment it was all his as the journalist happily handed it over so that he could remove his coat.
An immediate inquiry led to a demonstration of a typewriter and the boy’s skills with the unmarked keys and setting the ribbon.
From there, the warm flood of laughter (which was by now sloshing up around the chandelier due to its regular injections throughout the house) was occasionally substituted by a furious mechanical ticker sound from the library.
Tck tck tck tack tck tck tck clack tck tck tck tck Ding! Zzzzz thud
Tck tack tck tck tck tack tck tck clack tck tck tck Ding! Zzzzz thud
Tck tck tck tack tck tck tck tack tck tck clack tck tck Ding! Zzzzz thud
The sound became part of home, just like the whine of old plumbing or the clank of the radiators. Just like a drunken dog and a brave hedgehog sharing a cozy spot in the kitchen. All of these things seemed to hang suspended in the air like that sawdust, there even if they weren’t. Each memory of home saturated with them.
After the advancement of their relationship, Nestor noticed when it became commonplace to catch the captain and the boy whispering. It was also commonplace to change the sheets in the master bedroom more often than any others. To wash a second wardrobe. To collect Mr. Tintin’s newspaper articles and glue them into a scrapbook. To expect a present from the big-hearted boy at Christmas. To sleep with Snowy at his side because the captain wouldn’t open his bedroom door.
It wasn’t until the editor of the paper came to Marlinspike Hall in search of his writer that Nestor even noticed that the typewriter had never made it back to the flat and that he was indeed sorting the mail into two piles as well as the laundry. Nestor informed the good man that Mr. Tintin was away working on a story about a kidnapping and sent him on his way.
When Master Haddock and Mr. Tintin arrived in the middle of the afternoon a few days later, the captain was sunburned and beardless and the boy was limping with an arm in a sling. The captain merely grumbled something about needing a drink, but Mr. Tintin smiled and greeted Nestor happily.
Nestor was about to return the greeting when his words failed him and another one of those moments of sentimentality and affection swamped down around him.
You see, a picture of the boy who had trespassed into this manor house in order to steal back a stolen model ship next to this injured but smiling ginger man would be enough to bring a smile and exclamation to anyone’s lips. Blistering Blue Barnacles, laddie, has it been that long? Nestor did a quick calculation and had five years. Good lord.
Mr. Tintin was hardly a boy any longer (though it seemed he would never lose the baby face). He wasn’t taller or stronger, just wiser in the eyes and in the way he moved. Nestor honestly wouldn’t have noticed and would have returned to his business if, out of the car behind Tintin, a little boy hadn’t burst out and chased after Snowy.
It was the sight of the child, ten years old if a day with wide brown eyes and shaggy curls in desperate need of a cut, which froze the butler before he could manage to return the happy greeting. Only the sight of a child at Mr. Tintin’s side could emphasize the years which have distanced the journalist from his own vibrant boyhood.
Mr. Tintin clapped his hands together once, chest expanding, “Nestor. Meet Edward. Captain Haddock’s new ward. Ned, this is the butler of Marlinspike Hall, you can call him Nestor.”
“Hi, Nestor. I’m Ned.” His accent was from the unsavory side of London and his manners could use some work, but he was smiling happily and his chest went out as he explained, “I solved this last one practically all on my own, didn’t I, Tintin?”
Mr. Tintin laughed and gave him a little shove into the house, “Go on, get in there and make sure Haddock isn’t drowning himself at the prospect of putting up with you for a few years yet.”
Laughing, the boy hurried to do as he was told; undoubtedly understanding the real order he’d been given. Don’t let him start chugging down a whole bottle. By now the captain hardly ever got drunk, but when he did it was always a short drop back into his old unseemly habits.
Staring after the child, Nestor’s mouth was dropped open. “He’s to live here, sir?”
Mr. Tintin sauntered up with his hands clasped behind his back, “He’s a sharp boy. He could truly benefit from a good education.”
“But his parents--“
“Gone,” Mr. Tintin supplied quietly. “He’s homeless.”
“I see.”
“Sorry to spring it on you, Nestor. It was a last minute decision.”
“Well,” Nestor returned the smile with sincerest affection as they stepped into the entry hall just in time to see Ned slide, laughing freely, down the banister, “It’s good to have the family home, sir.”