Kidneigh's Voyage to Wild Wonders

The sun was setting and I could hear the sounds of the sea from where I lay.

My mother always told me that I could hear the sea calling to me, that one day it would call to me so strongly that I would have to answer it.

"You are not like other young women," she would say. "You are special."

I didn't really understand what she meant by this, but I knew she wouldn't lie to me. She never lied to me.

For a long time, I had grown up thinking that my father was a fisherman - perhaps even the town's hero - who had sailed off into the wild blue yonder and never returned.

But then one day, when my mother was out doing chores, I discovered an old chest full of letters in our home and slowly began reading them. The letters were addressed to a Mrs F. Jones, and they were clearly written by someone who cared deeply for her. Each letter seemed to be written with great haste, as if each of them had been sent on some urgent errand just before the writer set off on a long voyage. As I read through these letters, it became clear that my father wasn't a fisherman at all, but rather a captain of a merchant ship who travelled across the seven seas. The writer of these letters was his wife and my mother.

The most surprising thing about these letters was not their content, but instead their author - for though they were clearly written by a woman, they were filled with masculine flourishes: choice words such as 'ye' and 'thou', which are now considered archaic and no longer used by anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in modern society; and each letter ends with some variation of 'Yours sincerely'. It was clear from my mother's writing that she was educated and well-read, so why did she insist on using such antiquated language? It wasn't until much later that I understood why - because this wasn't her fault at all: it was mine! My father insisted that he wanted his wife to be well-educated and cultured, so he forced her to read Shakespeare and Dickens aloud each night before bedtime while he worked late at sea. "It is good for her," he said whenever my mother objected. "She is better than all those ignorant scullery maids!"

My mother never complained too much about her husband's insistence on this nightly ritual; however there was one point where she had enough: when she discovered that her husband had been keeping company with another woman while away at sea! This mistress of his apparently lived in America somewhere, though my father refused to tell us exactly where or give us any indication as to how we might locate her or even if this woman still lived there or was even still alive! When my mother confronted him about this mistress after discovering their correspondence (which had been hidden inside an old first edition copy of Great Expectations), he admitted his infidelity but suggested that we leave town quickly before he risked losing everything in order to protect us from his wicked ways. My mother protested at first, demanding either an apology or that he start treating her more like a lady and less like a mere servant or housekeeper (and certainly not like some common whore), but eventually he convinced her to leave town quietly without alerting anyone else in order to protect his reputation. He said that if we left quietly no one would ever know what happened here except us. So we left town one afternoon without telling anyone goodbye (except for Doctor Dempsey who gave my mother some extra medicine for me just in case). We packed up all our belongings into our wagon early the next morning and drove away without looking back once - something my mother never allowed herself to do since she arrived here over twenty years ago!

The last time I saw my father was when he stood waiting beside our wagon outside our home before dawn one morning as we prepared to leave: "Good riddance," he spat at us under his breath as we passed him by. Moments later though, I heard him mutter something else: "And you can keep your damned fool letters too!" Then he stormed back indoors cursing loudly about how foolish he'd been for trying to teach a woman how to act like higher class than her station in life. That's when I felt bad about leaving him behind and thought about turning around just for a moment so that I could see him again just once more...but then I remembered those letters! How could such disgusting words have come from the mouth of someone so handsome? Someone who looked more like an angel than anything else...someone who looked like me! And so we continued on our journey until eventually we left England far behind us - until every trace of it disappeared beneath the horizon...

That night after sunset, when I heard the waves crashing against the shoreline below our cottage near Margate (the cottage where we finally settled down), I knew instinctively that it was time for me to set sail now too...time for me to follow in the footsteps of my father...time for me - like him - to answer the call of the sea! And with tears flowing down my face, longing for something beautiful yet unknown beyond those distant waves...something unattainable yet eternally calling out from somewhere beyond them...I made up my mind: tomorrow night after sunset I will start walking towards Dover's shining lights...where someone will meet me there with instructions about what happens next...someone who has promised me safety and security and freedom once more...