Archive of Our Own

Well might one imagine that the possession of advanced degrees in philology, phonetics and Old English from Balliol College, Oxford, would stand a gentleman in good stead to deal with all manner of life’s challenges! Certainly, a learned linguistics professor (and also the esteemed author of the leading Higgins’ Universal Alphabet, now in its second print edition), might be forgiven for believing himself reasonably adept at continuing the civilised way of life promulgated across the British Empire.

Regrettably, Professor Henry Higgins had to admit to a certain fallibility - - at least as regards the challenge of surviving on a deserted island located somewhere near the Bay of Bengal.

Worst of all, he could not disclaim responsibility for his current, and increasingly dire, conditions. It had been entirely his own idea to embark on this voyage to Calcutta: so that Pickering could complete his latest monograph on Indian dialects in West Bengal, and so he could visit the British communities in Malta and Port Said in preparation for his new book on English accents in the expatriate Commonwealth.

They had to wait for Eliza to finish her latest course of studies at the King's College of Household and Social Sciences, which was why they had set sail in early October, when summer in England was giving way to the mildest of autumns.

Higgins had anticipated Eliza’s assistance with his book preparations, and (as she had never travelled abroad) on showing her the sights; he had not anticipated that he would be taken violently seasick en route. Despite the comforts of the P&O Line’s most ambitious steamer, the celebrated RAJPUTANA, he barely set foot on deck after the ship had left the port of Southampton.

Working on his new book was impossible under these conditions. Instead, and humiliatingly, he had to rely on Pickering to help him relieve himself, and on Eliza, who had had had to feed him soup from a spoon as if he were a child, and hold the basin when it all inevitably came up again.

Finally, a month or so on, the ship reached Port Said and the relatively calmer waters of the Gulf of the Suez. The invalid was finally able to stretch his legs on the deck and take in the sea air.

“I say, Higgins, Eliza and I will make a sailor of you yet,” Pickering remarked with the sagacity of the seasoned traveller. Eliza, who possessed the benefit of still-rude youth, as opposed to the increasing physical susceptibility of Higgins’ four-and-a quarter decades, smirked knowingly.

It must have been this decided lack of sympathy in his travelling companions that had spurred Higgins to a temporary leave of his senses in the week that followed. To wit: he decided, most uncharacteristically, to dare the deck after (according to Pickering’s maps) the RAJPUTANA had traversed the Gulf of Aden and would be crossing the Arabian Sea.

Of course, he was not to expect that the ship would be struck by a sudden squall as they neared landfall. Certainly, he was not to anticipate that, weakened by weeks of malnutrition and a lack of exercise, he would lose his footing in the rain and go over the ship’s rail into the ocean depths.

And never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that Miss Eliza Doolittle would come to his rescue: leaping off the deck with a life preserver in her arms and dog-paddling in her wide skirts until she reached his side.

“What the devil are you doing,” he spluttered when he had regained the ability to speak (first spitting out what tasted like half the Indian Ocean, or wherever it was that they were).

“I’m saving your life!” she shouted back.

“Don’t be daft, woman! It’s ridiculous for the both of us to drown! Save yourself!”

As the words left his lips, Higgins realised how hollow they were. It was too late: Eliza had irretrievably committed to this course of action when she jumped from the steam liner, which was even now speeding away into the distance.

“We’re not going to drown,” she said, in the exact same constricted laryngeal tones as she’d said, not three years ago, I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you! Higgins had never expected to feel gratified by this reminder of Eliza Doolittle’s damnably inconvenient stubbornness, but as said stubbornness was saving his life, it would be churlish to criticise it.

Instead, they clung, bobbing, to the life preserver and watched the stern of the RAJPUTANA disappear into the rain.

“They’ll come looking for us,” Eliza said, with iron certitude. “I sounded the alarm before I jumped in. We just need to hold on ‘til word gets to the bridge and the captain turns the ship around.”

“Mm,” said Higgins, noncommittally; he had much less faith in the competence of the RAJPUTANA’s captain and crew, but he saw no reason to frighten the poor girl any further.

That said, he had to admit she didn’t look especially frightened. She’d lost her hat and frock-coat in her headlong dive; she was soaked through by the rain and sea, and her dark hair was plastered against her forehead; but even under these unflattering conditions, with night falling around them, she looked remarkably composed. She’d taken to sailing like she’d taken to linguistics and the belated education that Pickering had bestowed on her; it shouldn’t surprise him that she would pick up open-sea swimming in the same defiantly competent way.

Fortuitously (if it could be called that), where they’d gone overboard was reasonably proximate to the Equator, and the waves were temperate and buoyant. When the rain subsided, the clouds parted to show a yellow moon and stars that one could never see from London.

Higgins opened his mouth to give Eliza a lecture on astronomy, but discovered that she had dozed off. He realised that, even in slumber, she was holding fast to the life preserver, and to him, in an iron grip that he found surprisingly comforting.

*

The next thing he knew, it was morning, and they had had run aground on a sandy shore. He had sand in his mouth, and in his waterlogged clothes, and he had a very bedraggled Eliza in his arms. She, too, had sand in her hair. In the dawn’s light, he could see the salt hanging from her eyelashes like snowflakes in winter.

They both sat up hastily, and made a mostly-vain attempt to repair their clothing (and their dignity), as well as to take stock of their surroundings.

“I think we must be marooned on one of the small islands in the Palk Strait, on the way to Colombo,” said Eliza, with the authority of one that had made a close study of Pickering’s maps.

Higgins, who had not seen the necessity of doing someone else’s job for them, had not done the same reading, and wasn’t in a position to gainsay her. Instead, he embarked on an exposition of Robinson Crusoe, an 18th century novel by Daniel Defoe: the story of a sailor stranded on a desert island who must tap into his creativity and tenacity to survive.

“The novel’s in-depth description of events on Crusoe’s desert island offered insightful advice on how to survive in the wilderness,” he concluded. “I fancy that, a century on, sailors and explorers still use the book as a kind of survival manual for shipwrecks and other nautical catastrophes.”

Eliza waited for an entire beat before asking, dark eyes guileless, “Might you recollect anything from Mr Defoe’s clearly very helpful novel that might assist with our predicament?”

Thus challenged, Higgins could not remember the relevant specifics. Or, it had to be said, any specifics at all. “We must first find fresh water?” he hazarded. “Then some means of shelter. And a method to make a fire, to signal for help... And to forage for food, if we aren’t rescued within the day, which I fully expect we will be, of course!”

Unfortunately, Higgins found he had very little idea how to undertake any of these tasks. He was aware that his breakfast porridge did not miraculously appear in its saucepan in the mornings at Wimpole Street, and that bath and drinking water was conveyed into London houses via a complex system of iron pipes and steel pumps from the River Lea and other springs and wells. But, parched and hungry on this desert island, devising some Crusoe-esque methodology of securing food and water and shelter seemed a bridge too far even for a Miltonic mind as his.

It fell to Eliza to take charge. “Fresh water, is it? Right, then,” she said and got to her feet, and, skirts dragging in the sand, she strode across the beach toward the broad swathe of palm trees in the distance.

It was Eliza who discovered the tiny freshwater spring some distance from the edge of the palm forest. She hiked her skirts to her knees and broke into a dead run; Higgins had the devil’s own time keeping up with her, hampered by the dress shoes that he was soon compelled to take off.

When he caught up with her, she had waded into the spring, stooping to splash her face and drink from her cupped palm. Higgins discovered he was suddenly rooted to the spot at the sight.

She was still holding her sodden skirts above the surface of the spring, her bare legs glistening in the morning sunlight. With her hair standing on end, droplets of fresh water moistening her decolletage like jewels of great worth, she was as much a sight to behold as she had been in white silk and opera gloves on the evening of the Embassy ball.

She held her free hand out to him, all gleeful abandon… and then she met his eyes and recollected herself, blushed deeply, and dropped her skirts into the stream.

Higgins did not pause to wonder what had come over him. He placed his shoes and coat on the riverbank, rolled up his trouser legs, and waded in to drink his fill as bidden.

He felt much better once he’d put himself beyond forthirst (to use the obsolete English term); dehydration clearly put one in a state of weakness. Added to this, Higgins had spent the last several weeks in a state of involuntary malnutrition. His stomach chose the moment to let out an atonal groaning noise, and he felt uncharacteristic discomfiture heat his own cheeks.

It had to be said, Eliza didn’t look disgusted; instead, she regarded him with the solicitousness with which she had tended to his seasickness (and, come to think of it, to last year’s bad bout of influenza). “We ought to find you something to eat,” she declared, and put out her hand to help him from the spring.

Higgins had the vague recollection that fishing was one of the main industries of Ceylon. If that was indeed where they were, it would follow that the seas in the region would be full of fish. He was about to give voice to this remark when he realised that his concept of engaging in fish capture involved more of ringing up C. Farlow & Co. Ltd to inquire after some angling supplies, and less of somehow fashioning a fishing rod out of palm trees.

Eliza had other ideas. She headed off into the jungle, staring intently at the thick foliage. The vegetation all looked much the same to Higgins - - gardening had always bored him, and he prided himself on being unable to distinguish a rose from a rhododendron - - but Eliza must have spent some time with Pickering’s books on tropical botany, because after they had walked for a relative distance she halted and exclaimed, “Over there! Papaya trees, and bananas, too!”

Wild banana trees apparently grew ten to twelve feet tall. It was only possible to reach the fruit if one of them stood on the shoulders of the other. Which was how Eliza ended up commandeering Higgins’ pocket knife, and, clambering onto Higgins’ shoulders, and, after several fits and starts (together with much invective from both parties), she managed to hack down several clusters for consumption.

Eliza muttered something as she jumped lightly from her perch. Higgins staggered, ears ringing from the unaccustomed physical activity (as well as the unfamiliar sensation of Eliza’s petticoats and bare feet), and didn’t catch what she said.

“Pardon me?”

“I said, I wish the Colonel were here instead of you! He’d be familiar with the terrain, and he’d know how to hunt for food! Whereas you…”

She stopped herself, but like a millstone around my neck flashed from her eyes, a term that Higgins belatedly remembered using to describe her during that last, terrible argument at his mother’s house two years before.

Now, like then, Higgins rallied himself magnificently to take the offensive. But Eliza visibly calmed herself, plucked off a mostly-ripe banana, and held it out to him like a sign of détente.

Higgins’ outrage vanished in a cloud of rapturous hunger. He wolfed down three bananas and would have eaten a fourth before Eliza stopped him.

“We’d better ration our food, in case the Colonel doesn’t find us today or to-morrow. And we ought to build that signal fire that Mr Defoe’s book talked about. Can you remember the way back to the beach?”

Higgins did; fortuitously, Pickering had given Eliza a compass, and, using strips of fabric torn from Higgins’ handkerchief and cravat, they marked their way from the grove of fruit trees to the stream and then back to the beach, where their life preserver denoted their last connection with the RAJPUTANA.

The sun had started to wane; it was already afternoon. The blue horizon stretched emptily before them, making it difficult to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. If Pickering had been searching for them all day, he would have done so in vain - - they had already lost the morning with no means to signal their plight to the RAJPUTANA.

Eliza wasn’t deterred, particularly when they discovered a damp book of matches in Higgins’ coat pocket. They gathered driftwood and shrubs and detritus from the forest floor and heaped it into a pile on the beach. Then, using skills honed from twenty years on the corner of Tottenham Court Road (and two helping Mrs Pearce tend to the fireplace at Wimpole Street), Eliza managed to coax the pile alight.

“It’ll be dark soon,” Eliza said, when she was done. “We should take turns at the stream again.”

“Ladies first,” Higgins said gallantly; at least he had his manners, if nothing much else of use in the way of survival on this desert island.

When they’d finished tending to their thirst and toilets in turn, dusk had fallen. Higgins and Eliza rested on the warm sand in front of the fire as the signal smoke rise into the darkening sky. In silence, they finished the rest of the bananas.

“We’ll need to find more food to-morrow,” Eliza remarked.

“Ye-es,” Higgins said, “though we should hope to be rescued to-night.”

He eyed her profile, surreptitiously. In the light of the fire, her young features looked like a marble statue: some idealised depiction of Strength, or Resolve. Belatedly, he remembered what he had said to her two years ago, after he had told her she had once been a millstone around his neck; he declared that she had become a consort battleship.

Now, in the flickering firelight, under unfamiliar stars, he could see how true that was. She had rescued him from the ocean, and lit this signal fire, and single-handedly orchestrated their means of survival on this desert island, whilst he had put them in this predicament in the first place. If anyone was to qualify for the status of a millstone, it was unfortunately, and undeniably, he.

The moon rose overhead, bigger and brighter than it had been in London. They watched it for a while. Finally, Eliza said, breaking the silence: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blamed you. It’s not your fault that you don’t know how to hunt or to build a shelter.”

Higgins was taken aback, and experienced a rush of emotion so foreign he didn’t immediately recognise it for what it was.

Carefully, he said, for the first time mistrustful of his own tongue: “We-ell, I’d always thought that it would be Pickering and me who would, you know, be doing the looking after, as it were… But on this trip, it has mostly been you looking after me.” To say nothing of the irony that said trip, designed to broaden Eliza’s horizons, had instead resulted in her opening his eyes, to a world unknown.

She turned to look at him, surprised. “It’s nice to be appreciated, for a change.” There was something almost tender in her expression, the colour high on her cheekbones, that Higgins wasn’t sure he’d seen there before.

Higgins felt himself flushing too; it was suddenly difficult to hold her gaze. “I do appreciate you, Eliza. I always have, and now you have saved my life.” He told himself he’d never owed as much to anyone before (save for his mother who’d given him life); it stood to reason he would be this unused to giving voice to such gratitude.

“I believe I did, that’s true.” She smiled to herself; in rare accord, they settled in for the night.

*

Higgins was once again bobbing in the sea, soaked to the skin, fighting the waves. Only this time there was no life preserver to hold him up, there was no Eliza to rescue him. He opened his mouth and breathed in water instead of air …

He came to himself with an abrupt jolt. Grey skies above, pelting down rain that soaked him to the skin. A wet bundle pressed against his side: Eliza, who must have moved in her sleep, seeking warmth and finding it.

The sunrise was barely visible in the tropical rainstorm. And their signal fire, the one that they had laboured over for so long, had been extinguished.

Higgins snatched himself to his feet, and the words poured out of him.

“The fire! The fire, by Jove, it’s gone out! Who was foolish enough to fall asleep without tending to it in the middle of this accursed monsoon season? Hellfire and damnation, the colossal stupidity of it all!”

Eliza woke, and gave vent to a very unladylike curse. “Don’t you dare shout at me, Henry Higgins! Come and help me right away!”

She darted into the rain toward the fire. Higgins followed her, but it was to no avail. The firewood was as soaked through as they both were, the spark of flame kindled to life had long been snuffed out.

They subsided, panting, in the downpour, glaring at each other. The rain pasted Eliza’s hair to her face, drenching her dress through; Higgins knew himself equally bedraggled, shoeless and in shirtsleeves, his coat and vest and socks hanging in the palm forest somewhere.

Eliza had started to shiver. “Better get out of the rain,” she muttered, crossing her arms in front of herself to preserve her modesty.

They retreated to the relative shelter of the nearest palm tree. Eliza was still shivering; Higgins didn’t think she would welcome any touch of his, but gentlemanly manners dictated that he find his coat and put that around her in lieu of his arm.

“Thank you,” she said, eventually and very formally. Higgins would be the first to own his unaccustomedness with the finer feelings of others, but even he could not fail to notice the hurt in her stiff tones.

The accursed sensation that he’d experienced last night returned in force, and in the cold light of day he could not deny what it was.

“I shouldn’t have shouted. I’m not at my best in the mornings.”

This was a rather poor, half-hearted apology, even to Higgins’ self-interested ears; the Eliza of two years ago (or even of last summer, come to think of it) would have flung it back in his face. But her mature calm took him by surprise, and even more surprisingly, last night’s almost-tenderness returned to her gaze.

“Well, you were partly right. We should have thought about taking turns to keep watch over the fire. Let’s do that to-night.”

“Agreed, of course, if we’re not rescued today.” Higgins looked away and, with some relief, changed the subject. “What the devil could Pickering be up to?”

“Worried sick about us, surely enough,” Eliza said, her countenance taking on that soft expression it often wore when she spoke of her guardian. (It rankled Higgins, now as well as then, and he lived with the man.) Then she looked out at the rain, and her gaze sharpened: “It might be good to put out some traps to collect rainwater. Perhaps we can fashion some from palm leaves.”

When the rains stopped, they discovered that the palm leaves were plentiful, as were the forest vines, and that both yielded to the edge of Higgins’ pocketknife. While waiting for their store of matches and firewood to dry out, they occupied themselves with constructing a shelter at the edge of the forest, with two palm trees lashed together to make a frame, and then weaving together waterproof layers of branches and leaves for coverage. Higgins would confess to only skimming the relevant hut-constructing chapters in Defoe’s book, and was astonished by Eliza’s cutting and weaving and tying abilities.

“How did you learn to do this?”

Eliza shrugged, squinting over her work. “From my mother. We spent a couple of summers sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath when I was a girl. Hedgerows and shrubs aren't quite palm fronds, but the manner of it’s the same.”

This was the first time Higgins had heard this story. For one, it explained the north London gloss to Eliza’s old glottal stops and East end fricative omissions. He successfully suppressed this observation, only to supplant it with the vision of child Eliza at her late mother’s knee, learning survival skills in London’s northern wilderness.

Were there fresh water springs in the Heath? Had there been fruit or berries or whatnot to forage for when Albert Doolittle hadn’t managed to bring home food for his young family? Higgins had no idea.

“It sounds as if she was quite a formidable woman,” he ventured, humbly.

“She was, God rest her. Didn’t deserve my father, at any rate. Used to be a seamstress. But she had me very young, and there wasn’t much a woman with a small child and a drunkard of a husband could do by way of work.” Eliza paused, and there was a faraway look in her eye as she said, “I used to think she’d be proud if she could have seen me selling violets in Covent Garden. I wonder what she’d think to see me now.”

Higgins had to clear his throat; uncertain of how to express his feelings in light of Eliza’s obvious sorrow, he retreated to safer topics. “I’m sure she’d be equally proud of you. Pickering said your lessons at the King’s College went very well, that old Annesley didn’t believe you’d not had any formal learning.”

Eliza resumed her work. “Professor Annesley was kind enough to ask me to enrol in the diploma course next year! But I’ve learned enough of sciences and social economics to fancy a change.”

Higgins considered this. “How about languages? Thanks to me, you’re now too advanced for a basic philology degree, and they still don’t take women at Balliol, but I’m sure I could get one of the younger fellows in the linguistics department to take you on on the sly.”

Eliza looked up, interested, and Higgins warmed to the subject. “You’ve been indispensable with preparations on the new book, but I don’t see why you can’t take classes and help me with it at the same time. We could find a little house in Oxford, and Pickering can consult at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.”

“I like the sound of that,” Eliza said, smiling. Higgins remembered her saying, two years ago while on the cusp of leaving his household, If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence!; in the intervening years, she’d seen to that, with his (and Pickering’s) help.

She added, wistfully, “Travelling has been lovely, but I hope we get back to England soon.”

“Not to worry,” Higgins said grandly. “Pickering will find us, and not a moment too soon! I’ve had enough of bananas for breakfast and washing in the stream and building my own shelter.”

Eliza sniffed. “Well, it’s not you who’s building it, is it?” she said, pointedly.

Higgins ducked his head; it hadn’t escaped his notice that he wasn’t doing much building. Perhaps it would be best to change the subject. “That’s a good section of wall, Eliza. Let’s lash it to the tree trunk, shall we?”

*

Thus were their next two days expended: with the arduous work of building the shelter, interrupted only by the daily necessities of rebuilding and tending to the fire, and foraging for food.

Higgins could not deny his low spirits. He was unused to this amount of physical labour, the absence of linguistics, an inability to work on the new book, and indeed of anything he was remotely competent at. It would have been galling to any man to be this completely out of his depth, and Henry Higgins was no common man. That he was almost entirely responsible for their predicament wasn’t the worst aspect of their current straits: the fact that he continued to be almost entirely dependent on Eliza was.

When night fell, they took turns watching over the fire, which meant that Higgins assumed first watch while Eliza bedded down on the leaf floor of the new shelter and slept the sleep of the deserving.

Higgins had never, in all of his adult life, spent any real amount of time observing anyone in slumber. Now, despite his physical exhaustion, Higgins was fascinated. Eliza slept as he imagined an innocent would sleep, her limbs restless and her face serene. Her mouth curved upwards in the moonlight, as if from a dream of circumstances more pleasant than their present surroundings.

Higgins had told Pickering, on their first encounter, that he was a man of entirely decent character where women were concerned, and it was, in the event, true. He’d never been enamoured of a woman under forty-five. The few of his own age with whom he’d been duty-bound to spend time in the past, all blue-blooded and boasting impeccable manners and suitable provenances - - why, he had tired of them soon enough, and more: he’d tired of himself when he’d spent enough time with them (becoming jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance), to say nothing of the world itself.

What about Eliza? She’d once said, Every girl has a right to be loved; she’d then threatened to marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill. She’d subsequently turned down several suitors in the two and a half years she had taken up residence at Wimpole Street, starting with Freddy. Had she welcomed any others, during her time at the King’s College?

Higgins scowled as he turned away from the uncomfortable speculation. There was a prickling sensation all along his skin, that desultory scratching did nothing to alleviate. He used to claim that to admit a woman into one’s life was to discover that she was driving at one thing while one was driving at another: the inevitable result was a compromise made no one happy. This philosophy had kept him (much to his dear mother’s chagrin) secure thus far from matrimony.

Buoyed by those years of safety, he’d taken Eliza into his home on a dare, assuming he could draw her onto the tracks of his well-underpinned, deeply-anchored way of life. It should not have surprised him when she had, true to form, ended up completely dragging him off those tracks and making her own way, with him (and Pickering, of course) firmly in tow - - and the most surprising thing of all was that he hadn’t minded. Truth be told, he had rather enjoyed the life they had built for themselves at Wimpole Street, three bachelors together, watching Eliza test her wings against the world.

Was Eliza also enjoying that life, or did she still hanker after something more? What if, after their next journey to Oxford, she decided to leave Wimpole Street for good?

By all means, she would be entirely free to do so. Higgins told himself that this was what independence meant. He and Pickering would have to make do without her if so; it was what bachelors did.

That said, it was not so easy to see her as a bachelor, not on this island, sleeping at his side, her slender form curled towards him like a punctuation mark: a question that he had never quite known how to answer.

*

As aforementioned, it took the better part of two days to build the shelter. On the fourth day, they rested. Or at least Higgins did, at any rate, watching the fire and Eliza’s perambulations across the shoreline.

After a leisurely lunch, he joined her in a stroll across the beach. She had made them hats of palm leaves to keep off the sun, which had been plentiful since that first rainy morning; it was too hot for jacket and shoes, and Higgins kept his trouser legs rolled up, while Eliza had tied her skirts to just below her knees. It was almost pleasant, with the blue sky overhead, the stretch of pale grey coralline sand before them and the indistinct susurrus of ocean waves upon the shore, the inconsequential mores of London society a world and more away.

Eliza stooped gracefully to pick up the occasional shell and stone, and to hand Higgins a branch or two of driftwood for the fire. They happened on some old cans, as well, and a bottle of some kind, as well as the flotsam and jetsam of modern shipping routes, which reassured them that they were still connected to the civilised world.

“We can use these to boil water, or cook things,” excogitated the recent student of household and social sciences as she put the cans and bottle into her makeshift apron.

“Cook the bananas?” Higgins shrugged. “Well, why not: it’d be a change from our last few meals.”

Eliza shot him a pointed look from under her palm-leaf hat. “Is island life boring you, Professor? There’s no linguistics here, or anything to use to write your book.”

“I’m not bored,” Higgins said, surprising himself. If he’d considered the issue before they had set sail, he would have believed that being shipwrecked would have bored him to death more quickly than it took to expire from thirst.

It was true that there were no linguistics on the island, nor was there progress to be made on his book, but there was Eliza, and her quicksilver wit and temper, and the need to keep up with her to ensure that they both survived in this desert wilderness.

He said as much to Eliza before he could stop himself, and, as before, colour rose to her cheeks. She mused, “I remember you once told me you couldn’t change your nature, and didn’t intend to change your manners, but perhaps this island has changed them for you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Higgins sniffed, and cast about for a change of subject. “I say, I wonder if we’re alone on this island? If Pickering were here, we might go about exploring.”

Eliza said, thoughtfully, “Well, I did go exploring yesterday, on the way to the spring. And, actually, if you were hankering after something else to eat apart from bananas…”

They returned briefly to the shelter to drop off their spoils, then Eliza led the way past the spring to the edge of the forest where a rocky inlet brought the sea inland.

They had to kneel down to see it: fat, glistening fish in the water. It made Higgins’ own mouth water, too. Here was the famous bounty of Ceylonese fishermen, darting boldly between the rocks and corals, secure in their free run of the microalgae and whatever food saltwater fish consumed in these parts.

But these fish had not reckoned with Miss Eliza Doolittle. “Close your eyes,” she instructed Higgins, taking off her palm leaf hat.

“Why? What are you doing?” Higgins demanded, as she reached under her voluminous skirts, and belatedly clapped his hand over his eyes.

When he dared look again, Eliza was holding in her hands what appeared to be an underskirt or petticoat that women wore underneath their clothes. Additionally, she had folded her sleeves up above the elbow, and cinched those her skirts higher up around her waist so her knees and shins were bare.

“What in the world,” Higgins asked, or tried to; for some reason his articulators and vocal cords weren’t functioning. Throat entirely dry, his pulse beating concussively in his ears, he could only watch as Eliza clambered out onto the rocks with the confidence and grace with which she’d crossed the ambassador’s ballroom.

She stayed entirely still for minutes. Then, with a convulsive movement, she flung her petticoats into the water - - Higgins held his breath - -

“Blast! Missed it!” and Eliza let fly the particular expostulation that Mrs Pearce had once warned Higgins against.

Higgins craned his neck to see. “What if you tried moving to your left,” he proffered, when Eliza shushed him violently.

“Stay back! They swim away when they see your shadow on the water. I’ll try again.”

With the resilience she’d showed from her first lesson at Wimpole Street, again she held still, a graven Galatea on her marble plinth. Again, Higgins could do nothing save watch, his heart in his mouth. Once again, she cast her makeshift net upon the waters, and this time her aim was true.

“Got one!” she exclaimed, whooping, and Higgins leaped to his feet and whooped as well, giddy as a boy.

He helped her scramble back to dry land. Her face was bright with victory, her wriggling prize held aloft. Her clothes were once again soaked through; water streamed down her neck and bare arms and legs, making her skin glisten like the silver scales of the fish she’d caught.

As they made their triumphant way back to the shelter, Higgins was once again aware of the prickling sensation under his skin. In the bright light of the afternoon, it was impossible to deny what it was.

Higgins, like many bachelors, had perfectly natural physical urges, albeit those that did not avail themselves toward matrimony. He considered himself to be of normal virility. He was not impotent, nor did he believe he was incapable; it was merely that he had never been promiscuous, nor had he ever permitted himself to succumb to a woman’s wiles.

Eliza had never quite shed her Puritan modesty in her years under his roof, but far away from London, in this most unlikely of elements, somehow that shyness seemed to have vanished under the island’s tropical sun. She held her young body proudly, her womanly strength and vigour undeniable, and undeniably compelling.

Higgins tried to close his ears to her excited chatter, and the rest of his senses to her presence at his side, but his present physical urges, long held in check, were not so easily quelled. It was as if the island air had dissolved his own modesty, the veneer of decorum that civilised men possessed, until what remained was the undeniable urges of his sex.

Of course, it would not do to let the girl have any inkling of the turmoil within. A civilised man should have the fortitude to conquer his baser instincts. Henry Higgins, professor of philology, foremost phonetician and grammarian, would not be defeated by mere biology.

As such, he set his teeth against the surging of his blood, the disarray of his thoughts. They stopped by the stream to drink and put their clothes to rights, and then returned to the signal fire. Eliza gutted and cleaned the fish, and placed it on one of the hottest stones to cook.

The smell of cooked fish was glorious; the taste of the first meat they’d had in days was even better. “You’ve outdone yourself,” Higgins told her, sincerely, as they ate with their fingers in the light of the setting sun.

“You see, those classes you and the Colonel paid for didn’t go to waste after all,” Eliza remarked reflexively, but there wasn’t any sting in it; instead, her tones echoed a satisfaction over a job well done.

And indeed it was well done; thanks to Eliza’s skills, their hunger for a dinner comprising more than just fruit was finally slaked. But, alas for Higgins, there were other types of hunger.

As she had done on previous nights, Eliza wished him good night and settled in on her pillow of fronds, under the shelter. She had done up her sleeves again, and her skirts were folded demurely around her ankles. But Higgins felt as if he could still see her bare skin all the same, glowing as if from within, shining through the cotton and damask of her clothes.

The prickling sensation was driving him out of his mind. And no wonder: this was the instinct that ensured the continuation of the human race. He was a fool to believe his intellect and his spark of divine fire would insulate him from the demands of his gender.

Of course, actually succumbing and acting upon said instinct was out of the question. Eliza was his former pupil, and Pickering’s ward: no decent man could possibly take advantage, desert island or no desert island.

Besides, she didn’t think of him that way. She had told him, early in their relationship and in no uncertain terms, that she would never marry him if he asked her. While women did occasionally say one thing and mean another, she had left him in no doubt that she had indeed meant it, with every ounce of her own divine fire.

And hadn’t he given her ample reason to mean it? He had bullied her roundly through those early days, as Pickering used to say to him to no avail. He’d claimed he couldn’t change his nature and didn’t intend to change his manners, but that was no excuse for the unkindness with which he had treated her. Pickering urged him to apologise after every new argument, but contrition was neither in Higgins’ nature nor his manners. Besides, if he started apologising now, he would be obliged to do so for the past two years, and might not be able to stop.

Perhaps Eliza did wish to marry after all. If so, she deserved an ambassador, or the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and not the teacher of her youth, whom she had already outgrown.

Higgins harrumphed to himself (softly, so he wouldn’t wake her). There was nothing else for it but to do battle with biology and with his own unruly sex, and to wait for dawn.

*

The next morning, Higgins awakened with a blinding headache, as well as a different type of ache in his nether regions. So, this was man’s punishment for not making love to a woman! Biology was fiendishly cruel.

Even crueller was the accompanying mental torment. Higgins discovered his attention captured by the sight of Eliza on the beach, her lithe figure limned against the morning sun. Where his habitual early morning reflections once centred on the London School’s 130 distinct vowel sounds, and on plans for the new book (and, since being shipwrecked, on when they would finally get off this blasted island), the thoughts that now consumed him were the following: what would his life be like without Eliza? How could he convince her to stay? Could he persuade her he might be a worthy prospect for her?

And worst of all: what if he wasn’t, in fact, worthy? Henry Higgins had never in all his life considered himself to be inadequate to any task or challenge set before him; now, inadequacy was all that he could see.

Higgins only realised he’d uttered an echoing anomalous vowel sound when Eliza turned to him, shading her eyes from the sun.

“Professor? Are you quite well?”

“Perfectly well,” Higgins said, which was, of course, a blatant lie. Eliza looked unconvinced, and he felt compelled to add, “A mere stomach upset. The reversion to carnivorousness must needs getting used to.”

Now she just looked mildly repelled. Higgins shouldered what remained of his dignity and announced, “I’m off to see to my toilet.”

Once at the spring, he glared at his increasingly hirsute reflection. Out in the wilderness, far away from razors and pomades and other methods of gentlemanly grooming, his hair was untamed, and a savage’s beard bristled on his chin. Small wonder that Eliza found him repulsive.

Higgins relieved himself, then removed his shirt and washed in a desultory fashion. He rinsed out his shirt as well, and wondered when he would be compelled to wash his salt-stained trousers, though he couldn’t very well run around trouserless in front of Eliza.

Still, the notion was an alluring one - - the freedom to bare all in the tropical sunshine, a reversion to man’s animal instincts like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Lord of the Apes. For a moment, Higgins was even tempted to thump on his breast! Then he deflated, in all senses of the word.

Who was he to imagine himself as Burroughs’ proud savage? He could barely get a fire to start and pluck fruit from a tree; hunting with a spear and swinging from tree to tree would be completely beyond him. Why, he wouldn’t have survived a day in the wilderness if not for Eliza.

Gloomily, Higgins sluiced water over his head, when he was struck by an idea.

He might not be able to hunt with a spear, but perhaps he could follow in Eliza’s footsteps and catch fish, using his shirt where she had used her petticoat. How difficult a task could it be? Humans had been fishermen from the dawn of civilisation, from England’s shores to these tropical waters.

Emboldened by this imagined noble heritage, Higgins set forth, retracing yesterday’s path toward the inlet.

It was an idyllic scene. The morning sun shone down on the shining water. Once more, the fat fish darted between the rocks and corals, beckoning.

Higgins, shirtless and hatless, knelt on the rocks like his forefathers (or, at any rate, someone’s forefathers) must have done. An apex predator lying in wait, biding his time, waiting for his prey to come closer…

There! He lunged forward exultantly - - whereupon he immediately lost his balance and plunged head first into the water.

When Higgins finally returned to himself, it was to discover that the morning’s splitting headache had accelerated into a full-scale marching band with tympanic accompaniment. His mouth tasted like yesterday’s newspaper (not an idle metaphor, thanks to last year’s run-in with The London Daily Chronicle). His limbs felt weak and cold. He would have imagined himself dead, save in that death would doubtless be less of a painful proposition.

He opened his eyes - - to see the leafy roof of their shelter overhead, and beyond it, a waning afternoon sky. And Eliza, sitting by his side, keeping an intent watch.

She gave a little exclamation to see him rouse, and clutched at his hand. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she had spent the afternoon crying.

Higgins had never been gladder to see anyone. She must have found him at the rocks, and gotten him back to the shelter somehow, and bandaged his hurts with (he squinted hastily down at his shirtless chest, and then put his hand to his forehead for good measure) scraps torn from her underskirt.

“Thank goodness you’re awake! What on earth possessed you to go fishing without me? I’ve been worried sick!”

Higgins waited out the expected torrent of scolding. When it abated, he opened his mouth, and was astonished to find himself saying, “I’m sorry. I thought I’d try to earn my keep; instead, I’ve made more trouble for you.”

His apology took Eliza as much by surprise, and no wonder: Higgins could not recall apologising to anyone other than his mother.

“You should be sorry,” she said, subsiding. Her eyes grew wet again. “What would I have done if you’d gone and broken your neck? What would have become of me?”

Higgins’ spirits lifted at the sight of her tears - - one didn’t cry over someone they didn’t have feelings for, did they? - - before they collapsed again when he appreciated that she must be crying for herself, and the additional burdens she would have had to bear on this island were he to expire accidentally.

“You’d do perfectly well without me, Eliza. You’ve always made that clear… Whereas I can’t even catch a fish without bashing my head against a rock and nearly drowning in ten inches of water.”

Higgins had to stop, because his usually-steady voice had grown surprisingly dysphonic. He attributed it to the blow to the head, for there was no other reason to be so overcome with emotion.

Eliza snatched her hands away and glared at him. “You silly man!” she snapped, wiping her eyes. “Of course I told you I could do without you. I said that if I couldn’t have a little kindness from you, I’d have my independence! But I came back to you in the end, didn’t I?”

Higgins frowned, straining to understand her. He tried shaking his head, which was a mistake. Holding his aching temples, he said, hesitantly:

“You did come back, that’s true. But you came on your own terms. You could have walked out at any time if I didn't do everything you wanted me to. In fact, when we get off this island, you still can… I haven’t forgotten I vowed to find you an ambassador or a lord, Eliza, and though it will most definitely be the death of me to see you go, I fully intend to make good on that promise. I want you to have everything you want.”

Eliza let out a long, exaggerated breath. “You are the stupidest man in the world, Henry Higgins. I don’t want an ambassador. I don’t want a lord. I want someone else. I’ve wanted him ever since I set foot on Wimpole Street, though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time.”

Higgins’ mouth had fallen open; he had to close it belatedly before he could formulate speech once more. “But I haven’t been kind to you. In fact, I’ve been a millstone around your neck on this island. You can’t mean you’ve really needed me all along?”

“I don’t need you. I can do without you, on this island and off it. But I’ve always wanted you, Henry.”

The blow to the head must have addled his Miltonic mind, because his synapses were reacting with the slowness of treacle. She was glaring at him, but she was smiling, too, and she had drawn closer, putting her hand on his. Her gaze held that almost-tenderness that he now suddenly and belatedly understood.

She wanted him: not any ambassador or aristocrat, not because she needed him or couldn’t do without him. And as for him, he had believed he couldn’t change his nature and didn’t intend to change his manners, but it seemed he’d been changed, anyway, without him realising it.

Humbly, he said, “That’s exactly how I feel, Eliza. I was a fool not to discover it before.”

She made a fond, scoffing noise. Greatly daring, he opened his arms, and she nestled into them, as if she had belonged there all along.

Higgins had some experience with a woman’s embraces, but Eliza was undeniably far more skilled than he in that arena. This was one more subject in which she was the teacher and he the student, and Higgins had never found taking lessons as pleasurable as this.

Finally, they subsided, and Eliza murmured, against his chest, “What if we never get off this island?”

This, of course, was giving voice to Higgins’ deepest fear: that they would never return to civilisation and have to live out their lives in the wilderness, nevermore to contribute to linguistics and the Universal Alphabet. But with Eliza Doolittle in his arms, he didn’t feel frightened in the least; rather, he felt almost cheerful - - as if the entire world was their oyster, and anything was possible.

“Why, then, if we never get off the island, we’ll always have this.”

Eliza smiled, and lifted her arms to him again, and the new moon rose over the shelter that they had built on this deserted beach, as if they were the only two people in the world.

*

A very loud prolonged tooting phonation roused Higgins from pleasant dreams. He opened his eyes to the even pleasanter weight of Eliza in his arms. She pushed her hair out of her face, and they shared a smile that warmed Higgins to his toes.

They must have both fallen asleep together, and no one had been watching the fire, but neither of them cared a whit: they had far more important matters to attend to.

The tooting sounded again, and belatedly they realised what it denoted.

“Here! Over here!” shouted Eliza, leaping to her feet and taking off like a bullet down the beach. She waved her petticoat frantically over her head before the remnants of the fire, and in full view of the most welcome sight of the RAJPUTANA on the horizon.

Dear old Pickering had finally come to their rescue, on a most inopportune morning. But Higgins could not begrudge him the unfortunate timing: they were saved, before they ran out of food and Higgins’ concussion worsened.

The captain himself put out in a lifeboat, together with a small crew. Higgins tried not resent how happy Eliza was to see Pickering and how tightly she embraced him.

“I thought I would never see the both of you again,” Pickering confessed, holding out his hand to Higgins, and Higgins greatly surprised himself by embracing his old friend as well.

Pickering and the captain exclaimed over how well-constructed their shelter was, and how well they had managed. “You both have been veritable Robinson Crusoes!” Captain Baillie remarked, admiringly.

“It was all Eliza,” Higgins said, meekly. “A remarkable thing, an education at the King’s College School of Household Sciences.”

“Then this is from where the P&O Lines ought to be next recruiting,” Baillie exclaimed. “We would welcome Miss Doolittle to address us on the topic of desert island survival skills!”

“It has been unexpectedly enjoyable here,” said Eliza, “but I confess I am rather looking forward to returning to London.”

“I’ll settle for returning to a functioning water closet and a good cup of coffee,” Higgins vouchsafed.

This was eminently true, although, despite the gratitude for their rescue, he could not help but feel an underlying sense of disconsolation. He and Eliza had finally declared their feelings for each other: an event that could have only come about on this desert island. What if Eliza decided, now they were returning to civilisation, that she no longer wanted him?

Higgins’ downcast mood continued as they made preparations to leave, gathering the remnants of their little life on the island - - the shells from the beach, the palm hats that Eliza had fashioned.

Higgins found himself lingering under the shelter that they had woven and lashed together: the refuge that they had made for themselves against the elements, the place which he had come to regard as his home, too.

He became aware of Eliza stealing up and standing beside him. “I’ll be sorry to leave this behind," she murmured.

He turned to look at her. She had a twinkle in her eye, and looked as if she was trying to hold back a smile. “So will I,” he said cautiously.

“Don’t worry, Henry, we might be leaving the island, but I’m not planning on leaving you. I’d like to see Oxford, and I want to see where this takes us.”

“And you won’t walk out tomorrow if I don't do everything you want me to?”

“No, and you won’t throw me out tomorrow if I don't do everything you want me to.” She finally smiled, radiant as the sunrise, and took his hand in hers.

Higgins clasped her fingers with relief. All his discomfiture vanished; his spirits rose like the new day around them. “I’m glad to hear that, Eliza. I meant every word I said, and more: I find I can’t do without you. I never could.”

“Then perhaps you shan’t be without me,” Eliza agreed. She squeezed his hand, gently, like a promise that the world could be still their oyster, as long as they were together. “Let’s say our goodbyes to this place, and head home at last.”