Westpoint Tales
by Kiwi
James Hargreaves Williamson
In England, the King/Emperor lay dying. The Head of his Church, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and ruler of more than 1/3 of the earth, was not long for this world.
In the furthest of all his wide-spread and far-flung dominions and territories, at the far end of the world, one of his many loyal subjects was also dying. James Hargreaves Williamson, old and worn out at only fifty-six years of age, was also not long for this world.
He had never achieved world-wide fame, (that was easy for kings, all they had to do was to be born at the right time), but James Hargreaves could look back on his life with satisfaction. He had made his mark and his line would continue.
His son, Michael, already the father of two year old Michael Junior, had recently become a father again - of triplets, no less! Two fine healthy boys and a girl.
He'd only seen the babies once so far, but he was very taken with them. The girl, Emily, had her mother's straight black hair, but it looked like the boys would be yet another generation to carry the bane of the Williamson family. Both of them were going to have hair just like his had been, back when he had hair that is. Their tiny skulls were crowned with fine, wispy, white-blond caps of hair. Stunning in colour, but totally unmanageable. He must have gone through gallons of hair oil in his time.
Apart from providing him with the four grandchildren, Michael was a bit of a disappointment to James really. Despite having had the best education that money could buy, and all the advantages and contacts that came from being a politician's son, Michael had, so far, achieved nothing better than the position of a law clerk in a prominent firm of barristers and solicitors.
He had, lately, begun studying towards a degree in law, but heaven knew how that was going to continue now that he had a wife and four babies to support. He was single minded, James had to give him that, but his goals were just too low. Michael could have done anything with his life, but all he wanted to be was a happy family man, (nothing wrong with that!), and a lawyer in a small town. Specifically, he wanted to be a lawyer in Westpoint, the small town where he had lived as a young boy. James was sure that he could do better than that. He had.
Westpoint was a pleasant enough place, he supposed, for a small town. But that was all it was - a small working class town, full of small town people leading their small town lives. That had never been enough for James.
He'd lived there long enough, half his life actually, but he wasn't born there. He was older than the town, it had only been founded in 1861 and he was born seven years before that, in 1854, in England, not too far away from where the dying king was now lying.
His parents had followed the lure of gold, and his father had left his no-account farm labouring job and emigrated to the colonies. They had settled first in Canterbury, (it was an assisted passage), but once they had worked off the cost of their passage out from England, they packed up again and walked the whole distance across to the rich West Coast goldfields. They eventually arrived in Westpoint in 1866, when James was eight years old. His twin brother had died during the long hard trek across the mountains.
His father had never struck it rich. He was too late for the first gold rush and too soon for the second, richer, one. With an ailing wife and a sickly son to support, William Williamson had settled for the regular employment of a bar tender and a ferryman rowing passengers across the wide Bulls River.
James had then grown up beside the river, living in the Ferryman's Arms Hotel on the south bank.
His mother worked as a cook's assistant and laundress in the hotel. As he grew older, healthier and stronger James came to love the river and he often took a turn on the oars, rowing fares across the river.
However, he was a bright lad and ambitious. His parent's humble hard-working life would never have been enough for him. He was only eleven years old when he read the story of Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London. Westpoint was hardly on the same scale as London, but it was all that he had, so James determined then that he would one day be Mayor of Westpoint and he set out to achieve his goal.
Through hard work, thrift and single-minded determination he had eventually achieved it, and at the age of just thirty-two years, James Hargreaves Williamson was sworn in as the fifth Lord Mayor of Westpoint. Then he found that that wasn't enough.
He was still a relatively young man, only recently married, and there was a much bigger world than Westpoint. So he set out to become a Member of Parliament, and he had achieved that by the time he was forty-four years old. He had served three terms in parliament, just long enough to qualify for the comfortable retirement pension, and now he'd had to stand down as his health was no longer up to it. The doctors had given him six months to live, but that was eight months ago already. Hah! What would doctors know anyway?
His nurse came out to check on him. He was in his chair out in the gardens of the nursing home. She moved the chair a little - the shadows were moving as the sun began its late afternoon descent. Then she refilled his water glass, straightened the blanket across his useless legs, and disappeared back inside. Back to the gossip circle in the nurses' lounge probably.
He hated that woman. Well, not really, she was all right in her own way, he supposed. But he hated the fact that he needed a nurse to look after him. His wife should be doing this, but she wasn't interested. Selfish Cow.
Still, he shouldn't be too harsh. Their marriage had never been a love match, it was purely a marriage of convenience, but it had lasted well until now. It can't have been easy for a refined, genteel, Edwardian Lady to accept that her handsome, talented, 'trophy' husband had been reduced to this drooling wreck of a man.
He should have done the honorable thing and blown his brains out as soon as he had received confirmation of the disease that was killing him. But he didn't, he couldn't, he wasn't that brave.
So now he sat here watching the shadows lengthen in the afternoon of his days. It had been a good life in many ways, just not long enough. He'd had many satisfactions and just a few regrets.
Satisfactions? Well he'd pulled himself up hadn't he? He had arrived in Westpoint on foot, barefoot, the uneducated son of poor English immigrants and he had improved himself. He'd got himself an education, got a job as a reporter on the Westpoint Daily News paper and he had started a successful business - Westpoint's first ever music store. He had played rugby football, brilliantly, and had become the youngest ever chairman of the Old Boys Rugby Football Club, and also of the Westpoint Cycle Racing Club. He was also Secretary/Treasurer of the Westpoint Yacht Club, which sounded prestigious but wasn't really.
James still considered that his greatest achievement was back in Westpoint - Britannia Square. People thought that the Square was his gift to the town, and it was in a way. The town's biggest and best sportsfield was his legacy, his idea, but it hadn't cost him one single penny. He had actually gained more from the scheme than anyone else had, but it wasn't seen like that. Which was good.
The Westpoint Borough Council had already asked for his agreement to put up a statue of Westpoint's favorite son, James Hargreaves Williamson, near the main entrance to the Square. Like he was ever going to refuse to agree. They had previously renamed a small river after him, and the unformed 'paper' road alongside it which skirted the edge of the town. Westpoint didn't have many celebrities.
Through a series of brilliant political deals and trade-offs the Cycling Club and the rugby football crowd had managed to get James and several toadies elected to the town council. The new council had then taken possession of the vacant land on Russley Street which had been set aside as 'recreation reserve. They then developed it as 'Britannia Square', at the ratepayers' expense of course.
The new sports grounds were let at very favorable rentals, (almost nothing), to the Old Boys Rugby Football Club and the Westpoint Cycle Racing Club. Other, smaller, areas were let to the outdoor Bowling Club and the Westpoint Croquet Club. Swimming Baths were built behind the fine new grandstand and even smaller areas were set aside for a rotunda for the Municipal Band and for a children's playground.
The latter were left open for free and easy access by the townspeople who swallowed the whole scheme, hook, line and sinker. They thought that they had gained something when it was actually costing them a fortune. Hah!
The sports establishments had gained new grounds and clubrooms etc., for nominal rentals and all developed, built up and maintained at the ratepayers' expense. James Hargreaves had gained the respect of the town and a seat on the council which eventually led to his winning the Mayoralty and a lucrative career in politics. He had also made a small fortune from the building, hardware and contracting companies that he had an interest in and which he arranged for the council to award the work contracts to.
It went further than that too. With the profits that he had made from those dealings he was able to raise a loan to purchase a large tract of surplus government land on the south bank. This included his childhood home - the old Ferryman's Arms, now closed and derelict - unwanted since the bridge was built across the wide river. Part of the land he sold on to the Westpoint Golf Club, (guess who their president was?), and the price they paid was more than enough to cover the cost of the whole block.
Most of the rest of the land was a roughly developed mixed farm leased by the infamous Carver family. Unfortunately, he had never been able to evict them, the Carvers were still in residence there even now, and they owed him for years of back rent too.
However, he didn't really need the money anyway and there were going to be some changes. The Carvers were in for a big surprise. He'd changed his will not so long ago and he was going to leave the farm to the Carvers. Well, to one of them really, but it amounted to the same thing. The Carvers' new landlord was going to be one of their own - Martha Carver aged 51 years and a grandmother already although she was still single.
It was the right thing to do. He owned the farm, but she'd lived there for years. It was her farm really, hers and her family's. She'd grown up there and she'd raised her children there, her twins, Sarah and Dennis Carver.
His wife, Mary Jane, wasn't interested in the farm. She didn't need it and she didn't want it either. She had never approved of his not-quite-shady dealings that had got him the ownership of the place. Mary Jane would be well provided for. She'd probably be remarried pretty quickly anyway.
Martha, on the other hand, would not. She had nothing and he owed her. He owed her a lot. Martha could have scuttled his political career anytime she chose to, but she had never opened her mouth, not once, and she had raised the twins on her own. His twins.
That was James Hargreaves' deep dark secret, very few people were ever aware of it, but his wife was. Mary Jane knew that he was the father of Martha Carver's bastard twins. Luckily neither of them had inherited his white hair; they both had the red hair of the Carvers.
It had happened many, many years ago. James was an ambitious young man, young and handsome, lusty and lonely, very lonely. Martha was an attractive young girl, only fifteen, five years younger than James when she came to work for him as his live-in housekeeper.
James' star was already rising and when he bought the big old house on the edge of the town, he needed someone to look after it. He could have employed his mother as his housekeeper but there wasn't much prestige in that. Besides, he had other needs that his mother couldn't help him with, (Ewww!), and pretty young Martha could.
Before long 20 year old James and 15 year old Martha were living like husband and wife, but not really. It was only in the bedroom that they were co-habiting. Otherwise, elsewhere, their relationship was strictly that of master and servant.
Martha adored him, he knew that, and why not? But he was not in love with her. James only ever loved one person in his life and it was not Martha Carver, nor any of the long succession of females who followed her in his bed.
Ah, the ladies! James smiled to himself as he remembered some of the many doxies who had fallen for his charms. Young girls, older women, married and single, ladies and tarts. He had enjoyed them all. He had used them, but he had never loved any of them.
He wondered, as he often had, which one of them it had been who gave him the 'clap', this dammed syphilis that was killing him now. He'd probably passed it on to quite a few others before he realized what it was that he had. Such is life.
They were useless anyway. None of them had helped him for more than a few orgasmic moments. Martha had probably come the closest, but she could never help him to forget his one true love, his secret, shameful, forbidden love. The one person that James ever really loved, (apart from himself), was, after all, Martha's brother Billy Carver, and he couldn't give in to that.
Red-haired Martha was young and beautiful, but ignorant - unrefined and uneducated and she came from a poor white-trash family. If she was not a suitable match for an ambitious young man, how much less so would her brother be?
"Billy, Oh Billy."
Where was he now? What had ever happened to him? James didn't know. It was too late now, far too late, but he had loved that boy. He still did.
Billy Carver was no boy any longer. Wherever he was, he was a man now, a man just as old as James was. But in his mind's eye, in his memory, Billy would always be young. A truly beautiful young boy with his incredibly long and fiery-red hair, his sparkling blue eyes and his glorious sunny smile.
James had loved everything about him, but he couldn't, he just couldn’t! Not in this town, not in this life, in this world. He just could not live and love with a boy, or a man, no matter how much he loved him. So he didn't.
Nobody knew of his love, not his nosy wife, not even Billy himself - he had never told him. Nobody knew and nobody ever would. That was the one secret that James would take to his grave. He'd made his choice, he'd made his life, but, damn! He loved him.
James sat in his wheelchair, in the warm Westpoint sunshine, and he remembered. He closed his eyes and he shed one more tear as he remembered the sunshine of a beautiful boy's smile.
A few minutes later, his nurse came out to check on him again. "Mr.Williamson. This is no good, the sun's on your face again. Mr.Williamson? Mr.Williamson??"
There was no answer. James Hargreaves Williamson had died. He had died as he had lived - alone.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
