The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics by Gideon Defoe Page B

barkeep,’ said Byron, waving. ‘A flagon of whatever disgusting indigenous drink you probably brew out of wolf skeletons and bits of mud, please.’
    ‘Just look at the man’s hands!’ Shelley marvelled. The barkeep obligingly held up his hands for closer inspection. ‘The stubby fingers of a real culture, untainted by Western values!’ He turned to address the entire tavern. ‘You know, in many ways all of you strange, hunched-over peasant folk are far richer than us, because you’re so much more spiritual.’
    The locals murmured a slightly half-hearted ‘thank you’. As the Romantics attempted to strike up a conversation about tribal tattoos, Jennifer picked her way across the tavern to where the Pirate Captain had parked himself on a stool. He was pulling wistful faces into his pint glass.
    ‘Hello, Pirate Captain. Mind if I join you?’ she said, sitting down next to him. The Captain glanced across the room at Mary and pulled another even more wistful face. Jennifer patted his shoulder. ‘You know, Captain, before I joined the crew, all my adventures happened in drawing rooms and on lawns. We didn’t have sea monsters or tidal waves so we tried to get our excitement from listening to what people said.’
    ‘Sounds awful,’ said the Pirate Captain with a shiver.
    ‘It was,’ agreed Jennifer, ‘but it taught me something really useful. It’s called reading between the lines . When people say one thing they often mean something else entirely. The trick is to think about what that could be. So, for example, when Lady Something-or-other talks about an urn in her ornamental garden she’s actually intimating that the Earl of Wherever is interested in marrying Madame Thingy’s niece who was recently in Bath. That’s called subtext .’
    ‘Subtext?’ said the Pirate Captain, blankly. ‘Is that like one of Babbage’s codes?’
    Jennifer nodded. ‘That’s right. It’s like a really annoying code. Here’s another example. Imagine a young Englishwoman writing about a nautical mutant. Now imagine she tells a nautical person about a plot where a young Englishwoman has feelings for the mutant.’
    ‘That sounds a lot like Mary’s book,’ the Captain said with a nod. He paused. ‘Hang on a tick. I thought you were asleep?’
    ‘I was trying to sleep, but you’ve got quite a loud voice. It penetrates.’
    The Pirate Captain took this as a compliment and gave a little bow.
    ‘So I pretended to be asleep rather than get in the way.’
    ‘Do you do that often? Pretend to be asleep, I mean?’
    ‘Don’t worry, Captain, I’ve never noticed you creep into my cabin and try on my clothes at night, and if I had noticed I would be sure to assume it was just the kind of healthy experimentation anybody might do. But you’re missing my point about Mary’s subtext.’
    It took quite a long time for the Captain to really grasp it, even after she’d drawn a few diagrams to help him along.
    ‘So,’ said Jennifer, ‘to sum up: I think Mary likes you too. But she’s conflicted. The same way you sometimes get conflicted about whether a chop is better than a steak.’
    The Captain contemplated. The face the Captain did for contemplating was a lot like the face he did for nodding off, so Jennifer gave him a prod.
    ‘All depends on the context. Is it to go with potatoes?’
    ‘Try to stay on topic, Captain.’
    ‘Sorry. Well then. Mary and me. I think I’ve got an idea!’
    ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that your idea involves “talking about your feelings like two sensible adults”?’
    ‘It is, sorry. See, if Mary likes this subtext palaver as much as it seems, then it only makes sense for me to use even more of my own subtext. It will show we’re on the same wavelength. I don’t really know what being on the same wavelength means, but I do know that it’s one of the most important things to you women.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Jennifer, who knew when to cut her losses in a conversation with