History

PROLOGUE

Ulysses Laughton was born to Terrence and Aarshiya Laughton once snow coated the ground and the trees lost their foliage. He was healthy, quiet and slept when directed. He sucked his thumb, wrote with his right hand and had absolutely abominable penmanship. As a young man, he loved well-cooked beef, fruit juice and could always be found inside, cooped up with a book or hidden in the folds of his mother’s skirt as she worked. His story, while intriguing and very dear to many hearts, ends after only eleven years and is not the one that historians will remember in centuries’ time.

Mildred Laughton, who was born two hours after her brother, began her life screaming, learned to crawl and speak early enough to drive her parents insane, spent her earliest nights calling out to be fed and spoiled and never sucked her thumb.

Obviously it is quite easy to discern who the more fascinating child is.


ACT 1

Before us, our mother and father had a tumultuous love story of their own. Our Da. who came from the sea had met our Ma, an artist from the south where the sun was hot and ever present. Our Da told us stories of his travels, years spent on deck surrounded by captains, krakens and pirates alike. He had been content to live a nomadic, naval lifestyle, until he fell for our Ma, a beautiful lady with deep brown skin, rich, long, midnight curls and feet that danced throughout the night like a fairy. Her family was the opposite of fond of him, so he took our Ma and they ran away together, settling in the country and travelling for work.

Our Da made use of his skills learned at sea, turning to carpentry and working for whoever would have a use for his intricate skills. Our Ma retired from the arts, taking up stitching and tailoring, often working into the earliest hours of the morn for whichever silver-spooned bastard would request her services.

Their relationship, from my understanding, was atypical. A love match between a rogue from the water and a fairy from the shore, my brother often compared them to the fables Ma would read us before bed, ultimately desirable and realistically unattainable.

Soon after their union, Ulysses and I were brought into the world. My brother and I grew up exceptionally close. Born mere hours apart, we were bound to be inseparable. Wherever I went, he was sure to follow behind, albeit most reluctantly. We ate together, bathed together, played together and, when Ulysses was too tired to follow me up into the trees, we shared a hammock together, lazing about until the next adventure ambled into the front garden.

Ulysses had always been the more meak one of us two. His best friends were made of ink and paper while I had an affinity for the rabbits and weasels in the garden. I was definitely trouble, climbing anywhere I could reach and running as far as I could manage as Ulysses trailed after me, begging to turn back. In spite of our differences, we were as thick as thieves. Ulysses was the voice of reason, while I nurtured his feeble sense of adventure. I challenge anyone to pinpoint a duo as equipoised as the Laughton siblings.

Life was, for the most part, quite wonderful. It was easy to settle into the easy companionship and support my family offered. If my dreams were not as lofty as they were alluring, perhaps I would have lived my life as a simple folk, stitching the clothes of the rich upper class until my vision went and my ambitions died.

Unfortunately, I was destined for much greater things and, even if I had settled for monotony, it would not have served me for long.


ACT 2

Mirrors were quite fickle things, in my opinion. Always warped, never clean. No matter how beautiful a subject was, it could never be viewed as it should be, in all its glory, through a looking glass. If I were to determine where my vigorous thirst for the arts blossomed, it would be now, when my ultimate objective became to capture life’s beauty eternally, for all to see and admire.

Funnily enough, I had never felt beautiful, especially not with my reflection staring me down, uncanny and entirely not who I knew I was.

So art became my mother tongue, creativity became my lexicon and I took it upon myself to write my story the way I felt it should be. Ulysses took this as well as he could have, nodding along to whatever I told him, agreeing even though he did not entirely comprehend what I longed for. My parents, bless their hearts, were slower to catch on. They adored me, but they did not truly love this part of me.

The part of me that wanted to be a boy.

I implore the reader to put my eternal strife to the side for a moment, as now it is time to raise the curtain on who must be my absolute favourite character and her companions, the absolutely sublime Felicité Findley. My first model and my most cherished bosom friend.

The Findleys were absolutely lovely people, quite modern and forward-thinking, in spite of the tight-lipped expression that seemed to cling to her mother’s face every time I called on Felicité to play. Kind and stubborn, Felicité was everything I could ever want in a confidante.

Our Ma had a deep love for the theatre and often would read us some of her favourite English works. While My brother was partial to the drama and the conflict of Macbeth or Hamlet I had been thoroughly accosted by Romeo and Juliet, leading to an idolisation of love and destiny that grew as I did, flourishing into an obsession. Our cottage had an attic, lattices and coiling vines produced by our Ma’s love for gardening and our Da’s love for her. Because Felicité was everything ever under the sun, she had entertained my fanaticism, the Juliet to my silly little Romeo as the sun ceased to beam through the attic’s window.

She was the first person to ever truly see me, before Romeo was anything more than a character and I was anything more than the Laughtons’ daughter.

Of course, I could not say for certain whether she had completely realised what I had truly intended when I requested she call me Romeo when we were not in fair Verona, or when I cut my hair off in a fit of despair with my father’s carving tools, or when I drowned in Ulysses’ clothes, but she obliged me and for that, I will be eternally grateful.


ACT 3

My little world, locked away from everything scary and real, was bound to die out. Admittedly, even I could have never predicted its grand finale, going up in flames.

I am not certain how it happened. A candle, maybe. A mishap in the kitchen or perhaps the result of a conflict between Da and his old sea faring companions, some of whom did not appreciate his choice of a wife. Whatever the reason, I do not think it truly holds any significance, as no amount of explanation could bring my family’s spirits back, no possible elucidation could turn their ashes back into bodies. The day my family’s house burned down to the ground was perhaps the first time I had realised that no matter how lovely Felicité was, or how gentle Ulysses treated me, or how much my parents tried to support me, life was no fairytale. Happy endings were nothing more than the stories Ulysses had kept in his bookshelf, now reduced to cinders along with his heart and his mind.

That afternoon, I had been spared by whatever tortured deity wished to see me punished, as I had passed the time with Felicité, drinking tea and showing her my latest pieces. My vanity and her friendship had saved me and, in spite of what I had wanted in those moments, from the ashes of my family’s demise I had been reborn. A phoenix, Ulysses would have called me.

Though, he would never be known as Ulysses, the gentle boy who read and helped his mother in the garden. For the people would mourn Terrence, Aarshiya and Mildred Laughton who died in the fire, leaving their only son behind in the care of their close family friends.

Mildred Laughton mourned her family that day, but she had also mourned the foolish youth —Romeo — who had died along with them.

Additionally, a select few would rejoice, for Ulysses Laughton, the poet, the artist and the bosom friend to one Felicité Findley had finally taken shape and he, I had intended to make a name for myself, or at least create a legacy for the brother that no longer existed.


ACT 4

In spite of my quite exuberant personality, I mostly kept to my own people. During our youngest years, my brother and I were educated side-by-side. Our mother taught herself how to read and write in English (guided by our father); so it was no major obstacle to educate her children. When we expressed interest, our mother taught us what forms of art she knew. My brother was my dearest friend, Felicité was my muse. Why would I entertain the paltry company of the rest of the world when I had no use for them, outside of their future as my audience?

Inevitably, after the fall of the Laughton household, I had to enter society and face the music. I was determined to be my own person, to carve out a space in the solid and unyielding rock of society. They would know of my presence and rejoice, and if they would not, well then they were of no pertinence to me. I found myself growing into quite the social butterfly, with Felicité accompanying me it was only fated for my desolate anguish to morph into fervid ambition. My heart caterwauled for more, for fame and fortune and anything else one could dream of.

I had found my compulsion with the wielding of a chisel. In an effort to socialise me, I attended a rather plain general arts class. Having refused to pick up a sculpting utensil after the rather incandescent demise of my late mother, the idea of a chisel in my hands had felt like an action of betrayal until that very moment.

In that moment, I had resigned myself to eternal damnation if only to create for a single moment. I had been reborn again, no longer a depressed phantasmal version of myself, but an artist with renewed vigour. I am unable to express what exactly my mentor had admired about me, but I am not one to pick apart the minds of my betters. I had been taken on as a pupil, as he had decided I was a worthy student to tutor. It was easy to fall into the life of a creator and even after I had surpassed my tutor. I had continued to pursue the arts, with plans to adventure and explore the country until my curiosity was satiated.

My art is my soul and for many, my soul is quite the attraction. I pave my own path and race down it on the stallion of my ambition. I carry myself like a persona, a role open to interpretation. One may elucidate my character however they may like, I certainly will be too occupied to correct them.