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“Sir,” Bridgens said quietly as he took James’s greatcoat from him.
James nodded in gratitude but when Bridgens didn’t studiously disappear James blinked at him waiting for him to continue. James had just returned from a command meeting with Crozier on Terror, a formality as there was nothing report but more ice, more cold, more restless men longing for home and warmth and something but canned veal to eat. After, he’d sat with Crozier for a few brittle minutes. The ship had been creaking around them, the low din of men’s voices audible from outside. Jopson had quietly and studiously cleared the table while James waited on the captain, hoping he might speak. But Crozier, who could be loose lipped and almost pleasant when drunk, had been stiff, brooding, laconic—staring out the windows to the bright dark arctic.
James had sighed and bid him goodnight, only receiving a grunt in reply. Now back in Erebus, he was eager to sit by the oven, perhaps have some tea and read, and try his best to stifle the infernal endless boredom they were all saddled with.
“Your sweater, sir. You have a hole,” Bridgens interrupted his thoughts.
James looked down at himself, searching for the tear.
“Your elbow. I can repair it for you, if you like,” he told James before leaving briefly to stow James’ coat.
Sure enough, there was a threadbare hole in the sweater. He picked at the raw edge, dismayed as the hole unraveled more.
He hesitated a moment in shedding his vest, a sense of dread seizing him. Bridgen’s return with the tea shook him from the dark mood. He made quick work of the vest and sweater, pulling the vest back over his shirtsleeves and quickly gathering a blanket from his berth to ward off the chill. He shivered as the sweat he’d built up under his clothes from the walk back to Erebus cooled on his skin. He turned his back to the stove. His fingers prickled and itched as they warmed.
Bridgens wordlessly set the tea out for him. James slid the gansey over the table towards Bridgens, forcing himself not to linger on it. It had been a gift from William, bought new for the expedition. He’d given it to James with a small note reading Let it keep you warm, which James still had tucked away into the front of his journal. He’d been careful to keep the crisp white wool clean as he could, studiously keeping the cuffs away from wet ink, careful to wear his coat over it when not relaxing in the Great Cabin or in his own berth. But still, the wool had dulled.
“Captain?”
“Show me how you do it,” he said finally, taking up the tea.
“Pardon?”
“I never learned,” James admitted. He could sew his buttons back on with the best of them, could sew up seams and small tears but he never repaired so much as a sock. He always handed off the more complicated work to someone else. He could go to the lessons which were sometimes held out in the lower deck to learn these things. The men, to stave off boredom, gave lessons on all sorts of topics; Bridgens himself would lecture on various plays and ancient texts to those men who had any interest. But James had never bothered with the practical lessons of sewing, knitting, or darning, especially not now that he was a captain.
Bridgens’ brows went up, “Certainly.”
He returned some minutes later with a tin of needles, a bulbous wooden implement, and a small ball of brown yarn.
“Apologies. We haven’t any wool to match your gansey.”
James just shook his head and gestured for the steward to sit with him at the table.
“Where is that wool from? Someone’s cap?” he asked.
“A pair of mittens that unraveled. They were unsalvageable but the wool is still serviceable,” he explained as he leaned low over his gansey. James slid the lamp closer. Bridgens gave him a little smile.
“This will need repairing also,” he declared, turning the sweater to show James the other elbow, where the wool had worn thin and gauzy, grey with constant wear.
“I see.” James felt a pit opening up in him at the sight of it. James thought, at first, that the hardship of arctic travel—the toil and trouble and pain and adventure—would distill him, would temper him the way his time in China had; he had not been tempered. He lost Sir John, his captain swam in alcohol, his men were restless, listless, itching for something James could not hope to give them and James felt rather like he was disappearing, disintegrating between sheaves of ice. Worn thin, barely held together.
He watched Bridgens examining the loose threads of the torn elbow, then place the stout wooden instrument just so inside the elbow. The wood surface had once been painted red, but the color had long since flaked away, leaving a ragged line of paint along the edge.
“What is that?”
“A darning mushroom. It will keep the tension even preventing the cloth from bulging or buckling too much,” he explained quietly, now pulling thread from the ball.
“And why so much thread?”
“It’s a sewing technique, a little like weaving; I’ll need to pull the whole length of the thread through in order to cover the hole,” he explained, showing James where he was threading the needle in and out.
“Here, I anchor the yarn in the undamaged wool, to prevent the hole from unraveling further.”
James hummed, watching Bridgens’ deft hands as he tugged the yarn through.
“In order to get the tension right, I must be careful not to pull the yarn taught, nor leave the thread too lax. See here,” he let James examine the weave, tugging the sweater lightly to show how the material moved, then yanked on the thread lightly. “That would be too tight,” he showed the way the sweater was now inflexible, drawn in towards itself.
“Of course, the beautiful thing about knitting is its flexibility. This can be a problem if someone doesn’t know how to keep tension. The material can also wearing out, losing its resilience. I’m sure you’ve seen the men with the cuffs of their sweaters hanging loose, letting in the cold,” James nodded. “The problem with darning, with weaving, is it doesn’t have the same stretch, the same kind of openness. It’s particular thing, to mix that kind of resilience with another rigid craft.”
James just nodded again, letting the words wash over him. He enjoyed watching Bridgens work with his needles. Bridgens spoke a little more, then fell into silence as he repeated the same motions over and over. It was soothing, like the waves lapping the hull of a ship—the steady cycle its own comfort.
James let himself enjoy it. He need not fiddle with the fox or try his best to follow Goodsir’s speculation on sea slugs and nor argue with Crozier over frankly pointless command decisions.
Bridgens’ work was skillful but not beautiful. The brown yarn against white offended some tired part of James, the part of that still wanted to be the most sparkling man on the expedition, the man who still thanked Bridgens every morning as he brought James the hot curling tongs.
The longer he looked the more he saw the dinginess of his white sweater, the subtle fraying at the cuffs, the piles in the armpits. No doubt the sweater did not smell pleasant; no one did this deep in the cold.
Bridgens turned the sleeve and started weaving in the opposite direction, leaning close over his work, back bent low.
“Blast,” he muttered, taking the last row of weaving apart. He was near to filling he hole completely. “It’s hard to tell sometimes if it’s the right weave.”
James hummed in agreement, though he was not sure what Bridgens meant.
A few moments later, Bridgens handed him the sweater, saying “Feel it.” James took the sleeve, tugging at it gently, seeing the way the patch did not stretch with the rest of the cloth.
“Thank you, John. Excellent work.” James was slow and sleepy, warmed by the oven now.
Bridgens took up the other elbow, setting up a new patch.
“Mr. Bridgens,” he interrupted, with a small kernel of alarm. There was a growing red stain under Bridgens hand. “You’re bleeding.”
Bridgens turned his hand looking for the wound. There along the knife edge of his palm, where his skin was rough and hard with cold, a crack had opened up and bleed freely down his wrist, into his shirt.
“Apologies,” he went to stand, setting the sweater aside. James waved him back into his seat, hurrying into his berth and returning a moment later with his medicine box.
“Sir, you need not—” Bridgens protested.
James knew the only thing holding this expedition together through the ice, was the tenuous respect of boundaries between crew members. It was vital to their survival that everyone knew their place, that Bridgens knew his duty, and James his own, and the cooks and caulkers and royal marines and surgeons and seamen all the way down to the youngest ship’s boy. James also knew that the long night—the lack of activity, the ever-increasing yearning for home—only encouraged the breakdown of these lines. He had already seen whispers of it. Crozier and his closeness to Jopson, Goodsir and his fascination with Lady Silence, the restless men who were slow to follow James’ orders knowing they were largely pointless. James should not encourage the breakdown further. He should send Bridgens off to tend to the small crack in his hand alone with someone else’s medicine box. He should have sent the older man off the moment he offered to repair James’s sweater. But what would he have done then? Sat in the dark staring at Sir John’s empty berth worrying over what he could not change? He could have asked the Lieutenants to sit with him; what then? There was nothing new to speak of. They could read or write or play cards but that had all been done. James suspected everyone just wanted to sleep. He certainly did.
“Take what you need. There’s a hand cream too that works well for the cold.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
No doubt Sir John would disapprove.
He let Bridgens clean and dress the small cut, wrapping a small bandage around it. Bridgens struggled for a moment to secure the gauze until James broke in, “May I?”
Bridgens gave him a calculating look. There were not many times James felt his age keenly as a captain; he felt it most speaking with Crozier, who never failed to make him feel hopelessly impotent, but Bridgens expression now—James felt like a boy again. For a dizzying moment Bridgens could have been his father, and James a child offering comfort from sorrow. The feeling didn’t improve when Bridgens nodded permission and James bent close to touch the other man’s hand. He didn’t feel childish like this, but there was something in it that make his stomach squirm; the warmth of Bridgens hand, the roughness of his skin, the hands that daily cared for James’ needs, great and frivolous, without comment or strain.
When he tied off the bandage and stepped back Bridgens was looking at him with something that might be mistaken as tender. James cleared his throat. Bridgens smiled breaking their gaze to reach for James’ hand cream. Its scent had faded somewhat in the cold but he caught a breath of it still, faintly floral and warm.
James picked up the sweater, examining the small blood stains—something Bridgens would no doubt wash away later. He set the sweater back into Bridgens’ waiting hands. Bridgens took up the needle again.
“Apologies. I will wash these away later.”
James nodded, knowing full well it was too cold to wash and dry any clothing.
After another silence, Bridgens spoke into the creaking room, “Patching the holes is my favorite craft.”
James hummed, hoping to convey a little curiosity.
“It’s all repetitive of course, embroidery, knitting, sewing, but there’s a pleasure in it, the surprise of the damage, finding a new way to fix it each time. It’s never quite the same hole, and no rip needs quite the same care.”
With some irony, James said, “A discovery every time.”
“Silly, I know. But—” he did not continue.
“But when everything’s the same for months there’s a pleasure in something different?” James prompted.
“Precisely,” Bridgens answered. “Though it is not my only source of variation.”
“You’re doing better than me with varying your days, I believe,”
Bridgens just smiled at him slightly.
They lapsed into silence as Bridgens continued his work.
When Bridgens finished, the elbows no longer laid flat, bulging out slightly from the repair. James could not muster annoyance at the minor flaw.
“Here, sir. Now you can be warm again.”
James swallowed; his throat felt stuck.
“Thank you, Mr. Bridgens,” he pulled the sweater over his head, remembering the first time he pulled it on in front of William, the way they’d both smiled, the way William had patted him on the back and made a joke about what they would do when James got back.
When James got back.
“You may go,” he nodded to Bridgens. Bridgens gathered his supplies, the empty teacup, and slid the door shut behind him.
Alone again, James wrapped his arms around himself.