Chapter 5: Charles Dickens

'I wouldn't say invited, exactly,' Wilkie Collins began. England fixed him with a stare so murderous that it rendered even the dead man a little uneasy. 'Well, protégée in life, companion in death as they say,' he reasoned with a would-be-airy wave of the hand. 'I happened to bump into Dickens along one of the walks he and I used to favour in our prime days, and mentioned to him that I intended to drop in on you this evening and had got the idea that you were holding a –'

'A carouse, an orgy, a riot of debauchery at the expense of the groaning masses!' Blake burst forth. His waistcoat swelled with indignation; his eyes flashed lightning before the thunder of his voice resounded again. 'Despicable excess made all the more vile by its veneer of civilisation! What are you but dapper, legitimised, blue-collar baronets, giving to the people with your left hands and taking away with your right, waxing fat on the groaning of your labouring classes? Deadening their reason and dulling their misery with the opium of consumerism while with the engines of authority you attempt to deny them benefits, healthcare, the very education that raises them from mere beasts to men who might question your greed – You, France, where is your revolution? And you too, Germany and Italy? Drinking cosily around the table, and in the middle of a recession! Will you solve the deficit between the claret and the champagne? Fiddling while Rome burns, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic –'

'A yes, the Titanic.' Dickens eased himself into a chair between Tolkien and France – the better to attack England's best line of defence on the one hand, join forces with his natural enemy on the other, and face his crony Collins across the table – rolling the word around his mouth, not quite like fine wine, but like a particularly acidic vinegar he was about to spit sharply into his opponent's face. 'A singular episode, that. After my time of course, but you would remember it, Tolkien, I believe.'

'Yes,' Tolkien said unwillingly. 'A great shame.'

'And yet,' Dickens continued, holding two fingers up as though to frame a picture that only he could see, 'possessed of a kind of peculiar irony which is…not pleasing, of course, but certainly engaging to those of our profession. We deal in such ironies, after all, and when Nature of herself produces them…well, it is a disconcerting thing, to be almost ousted from one's profession by the workings of mere chance!' He gave a horrible, throaty laugh.

'It being mere chance, of course,' France put in. Maybe he was only trying to point out that suffering was brought about by accidents as often as by the malice of the upper classes, but England couldn't help thinking, shut up, France, don't feed him lines.

'An extraordinary series of chances!' Dickens rejoined, as though in emphatic agreement. 'Why, did you know that the hull of the ship had in fact been designed in the form of a number of great steel bubbles, as it were, so that even if one were ruptured in a collision the vessel would still float? Had the captain only steered head-on into the iceburg that did the mischief instead of attempting to steer when it was already too late, the ship might have been saved. But no, he turned, and in turning tore every section along the hull of the vessel. Tragic. But from it we may draw a lesson for life: if men, or nations, having steered themselves foolishly into trouble, would only meet that trouble head-on, they might yet come through. It is the mixture of cowardice and stupidity that kills.'

And he fixed England with a hard and sardonic eye, though England couldn't for the life of him think what incident he might be alluding to.

'And then,' Dickens ploughed on remorselessly, still addressing France, 'bethink you that there was in fact another ship within striking distance of the Titanic, who received their radio signal for help. But they forbore to give assistance, recalling a description they had heard of the new British vessel: "A ship so mighty God himself could not sink it." They thought that the Titanic could not possibly be in any serious trouble, and ignored its message! A fictitious twist of fate could hardly have been more incredible, could it?'

'If this had been a tale I had been writing,' Wilkie Collins chimed in, 'I would have hesitated to include that event, for fear of being accused of labouring my point!'

'Exactly! And when you consider the agony with which the ship went down – ah, what a blend of tragedy and farce! There is a poor young woman whom older, wiser and more learned men had promised nothing more than a journey to the New World in record time. They have given her more than she asked for; the sea bathing which she has always heard to be so beneficial! But the water here is ice cold; it is not a holiday she will return from. But see! Here is a rich officer, son of a noble landlord who turned to the tobacco trade when his estate ceased to be lucrative. In the stiff sea breeze of Southhampton he took a turn around the deck, basking in the pride of the unsinkable British liner – surely proof that their Nation and their Empire was the greatest on Earth and could never fall – and then peered over the top of his waxed moustache at the lifeboats aft and declared: 'the deck looks too cluttered! How are the gentry to promenade around the deck of an evening if they must clamber over unsightly mooring ropes? Remove some of these boats! – there must be a few, to ease the minds of the more nervously disposed, but why carry more? For we modern engineers are immortal; let us cast off the symbols of our mortality! But now he struggles and thrashes through the waves towards the nearest boat, and thrusts that worker's daughter aside in his desperation to scramble into a seat, and he does not recall that he did not see the need for a lifeboat, and that maybe he should leave that seat to the humble passenger, or that person of a nervous disposition whom it was there to reassure, and should swim to America! Oh, a pretty irony indeed!'

'Well I think it's horrid!' Tolkien said in a short, snappish tone – a sure sign that he was near either to fury or to tears. Good old Tolkien! England thought. As though any decent author would ever welcome a tragedy just so that they could write mocking, doom-laden prose about it!

'My friend, so do I!' Dickens exclaimed, throwing up his hands, 'and I would pity the engineers sincerely in their disappointment if only they would learn! One technological project fails; one would think they would grasp the futility of it, but no! A few decades later they begin another one! Take the Concorde, for example – of course, nations have always enjoyed being at loggerheads with one another, but it is a peculiarly modern phenomenon to see them spending such large amounts of public money just to create a point of contention.'

'Arthur and I were only trying to learn to co-operate…' France murmured, no longer looking quite so amused.

'Yes!' England agreed eagerly. 'Our relationship councillor suggested that a shared project –'

'Cowardice!' Blake overrode him. Wilkie Collins flinched a little at his strident tone. 'This perfectly illustrates your point about cowardice, Dickens! They begin the Concorde project, it immediately becomes apparent that it is failing, but will they stop? Admit defeat? No; instead, we see a desperate piling in of money – the public money, as you said…'

'A farcical clutching at straws,' Dickens re-joined. He tutted into his beard. 'Cowardice.'

'Monsieur Dickens,' France said, 'I think you are misjudging. It was not cowardice, but rather a determination to see through what we had started together, rather than to give up at the first sign of difficulty –'

'Ho,' Wilkie Collins chuckled. 'If it had been me I would have given up the moment I had heard you French were involved. And if I had been you I would have called it quits in 1066. Not meaning to belittle you, old chap, but there it is…'

'Oh, come now, Collins,' Tolkien interposed hastily, as France spluttered. 'France has proved itself influential since the Battle of Hastings –'

'Of course!' Wilkie Collins exclaimed. There was a pregnant silence. 'In the Napoleonic Wars.'

France banged his fist down on the table. 'What are you implying?' he demanded. 'My beautiful country has always been influential in – '

'Routed at Waterloo!' Wilkie said smugly. 'Trounced by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war! Reduced to shivering behind the Rhine, loudly demanding yet more sanctions against your foes in every defensive treaty going! Flattened in a month in 1940 –'

'I would prefer,' said Germany, speaking for the first time since Dickens' entrance, 'that you did not make light of that –'

'Thank you,' England said, taking advantage of Germany's interruption and getting to his feet. 'Now look here, Collins; Dickens; Blake; I didn't ask you to waltz in here and start insulting my guests –'

He flung out one arm in an emphatic gesture towards Italy, who yelped and fell off his chair. France made a disgusted noise and darted to help him up.

'Look, Angleterre, now you have frightened him!'

'I have frightened him?' England protested. 'I was only trying to restore some sort of order! Maybe if he wasn't so damned easily frightened – '

'Do not start on Italia! Just because you cannot control your own authors and only dare speak out against them when you have the excuse of defending your guests –'

'Well I don't see what I've done!' England snapped.

'How could you tell those vile ghouls about Concorde?'

'It was common knowledge! It was in the papers!'

'Tcha!' France swung back to Wilkie Collins. 'You may think what you like! I may have made the occasional faux-passe, but you are dead.'

'And you would do well,' Germany added, 'not go make sport of…of past events.'

'Say, Germany, what's the difference between Adolph Hitler and Joseph Chamberlain?' Wilkie Collins asked, unabashed. There was a horrible silence.

'Chamberlain takes a weekend in the country, and Hitler takes a country in the weekend!' he said gleefully.

'Right,' Germany said thickly. He turned to England. 'I'm sorry, Arthur, but if this continues I'm going to have to leave early.'

'That's it,' Blake rumbled darkly. 'Stop your ears and bury your heads, flee from those who would make you aware of your follies…'

'Germany speaks for both of us,' France said stiffly. 'I will not continue this argument.'

'Cheese-eating surrender-monkey,' Wilkie Collins muttered.

France's face went white, then scarlet. 'How dare you?' he shouted. 'You, with your miserable, rainy weather and your foul cuisine –'

'THAT'S IT!' England bellowed. 'I've had it!' He knew that whoever snaps first had lost, but he couldn't stop the torrent. 'I try to prepare a nice dinner for you all and what do I get? Ghosts insulting my guests and guests insulting my cooking! When's the last time you tried to eat something of mine, Francis? When have you ever given my food a chance –'

France was glaring, Blake was wearing his I-told-you-so face, as though the dinner were going exactly as he had expected, Dickens' eyes seemed to flash with vindictive lightning; it seemed he could almost hear the crash and see the blazing – and then thunder was crashing, a great tearing peel of it; a gale of cold wind swept the room, pressing the light of the electric bulb down dim as though it were a gas flame or a candle; his frustrated anger vanished, replaced by a sense of bewildered exhilaration as a rush of power erupted in the room, filling it to the brim and setting the rafters creaking. It was a shocking sensation; he was not sure whether he himself was the source of the power or whether he was being racked by it, one with a nation's worth of rapt, helpless readers.

He could tell – though he did not quite dare turn – that a darkness had amassed behind him, that a presence was growing in the middle of that darkness, and that it was from this new apparition that the power and the thunder came – and then, at his shoulder, a ringing voice spoke.

'Shame upon ye, authors! Shame! Have you forgotten the land that begot ye? From whence does inspiration flow, where is the succour of hearth and home, where the pastures of thy youth, O Blake, O Collins, O Dickens, thou dissembler?'

The smirk was gone from Wilkie Collins' face. Dickens was perfectly still, and despite the fact that he was thin as air England could somehow tell that he had gone pale. Even Blake was silenced.

'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,' the voice behind him thundered. 'This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall, or as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…'

As the voice of Shakespeare spoke, the ghosts seemed to shrink before it. England, head bowed and shoulders hunched against the onslaught of sound, and uncomfortably hot under the collar, saw Blake and Collins fading, retreating from the greatest writer of all, until they blurred softly away into nothingness. The other three Nations were not erased so easily, but they all backed away from the ghost, for once awed into speechlessness. At his elbow Tolkien was burning low; silent, listening.

Shakespeare drew to a close, and the whole room seemed to heave a breath. England stayed bent over the table, both arms braced to hold himself in place. He was sure he was no less shaken than anybody else.

He felt Shakespeare come forward to stand by his elbow – he still hadn't turned around, but he could never fail to mistake the presence of this playwright, who had written so prolifically, made their names all but synonymous and chose to champion him so fiercely. He raised his head and saw that Dickens was still sitting across the table. He seemed unabashed, though not unmoved, but somehow he looked too tired for England to view him with the same dread as he had a few seconds ago. Or maybe it was just that England himself was too tired to be properly awed. Either way, the author had lost his inescapable, malignant presence. Not the inescapable voice of revenge from the past. Just a ghost.

'Get ye gone, Dickens,' Shakespeare said. 'A man may criticise out of love, but he who hates his country is a fool. Remember thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return – English dust.'

'I do love my country,' Dickens muttered. 'Too much to see it rot.'

Shakespeare chuckled. 'Art never satisfied, lad. Wilt thou not be satisfied with the progress thou seest? Nay, nor even congratulate thy fatherland on what he has achieved?' He clapped England on the shoulder, and for a moment it almost felt like solid contact.

'He cannot avoid the truth forever!' Dickens insisted – suddenly he sounded like the boy Shakespeare must see in him. 'Even amidst all these fine trappings of diplomacy, see how readily a meeting descends into chaos –'

'You were the one who started going on about Titanic and Concorde in the first place,' Shakespeare pointed out dryly.

'France should learn a little humility! And forbearance. And were their differences truly resolved, Kirkland would have been quicker in his defence!'

'T'is impossible to teach all this to a nation in one night,' Shakespeare told him gently.

Dickens' voice was bitter as he answered. 'Then must I cease to try?'

'Charles,' Tolkien said from behind him. England couldn't see the look he gave Dickens, but it was enough to make the other ghost rise and reach for his hat.

'Remember what I say, Arthur,' he said. 'You nations must learn true diplomacy, true democracy, and until you do –' he nodded at Tolkien – 'we authors will be here. Both living and dead. Good evening to you.'

He donned his hat and drifted through the wall in preference to the door. Half-turning, England caught a glimpse of a silvery figure in a ruff, turning towards Tolkien. Tolkien nodded once and removed his hat. He held it in his hand as the ghost slowly faded to nothing. The last of England's strength seemed to fade with it. He collapsed into his chair and slumped forward with his head on his arms.

'England…' Germany hesitated. 'I…er…I'm sorry…'

'Just go away.'

'Angleterre –' France tried.

England snapped upright and banged the table. 'All of you, out!'

Italy didn't need telling again. He scrambled for the door with France behind him. Germany hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and hurried out after them.

'Kirkland?' Tolkien said tentatively. There was no response. 'Ahem…Arthur?'

'Just leave me alone,' England muttered. He heard Tolkien sign once, and then it was quiet, except for the sounds of him pacing around and puffing on his pipe – not quite noises, since he had next to no substance, but definite sensations of presence and movement. England burrowed deeper into his arms. He wished even Tolkien would go away.

There was a faint rustling. He shifted his head a little, freeing his ears. Could it be a wind creeping in? By God, Francis had been right about the draughts…but then the rustling began to slowly resolve itself into whispers.

'What's wrong with old Arthur?'

'A rather unsuccessful dinner party,' he heard Tolkien reply. 'Some of the others turned up. Blake. Dickens. Collins making light of the war. Poor old Kirkland was already attempting to field France…'

'Oh dear, what a combination! Have you tried to speak to him?'

'Once. He's a bit fed up, I'm afraid.'

'Tut tut. Poor fellow. They can be a bit overbearing, can't they, those Radical chaps? Well, I'll see what I can do. I say, Arthur! Won't you sit up and join us?'

'I don't feel like it,' England growled, his voice muffled by his arms.

'Come now, the devil loves self-pity,' the voice said briskly. England sighed and sat up slowly. Clive Lewis was bending over him.

'Good man!' he said. 'Put it behind you, I would. These foreign nations can be tiresome, but they mean well. Mostly. What exactly happened, Tolkien?'

'Oh, Dickens very cleverly led the conversation around to Concorde and then set Collins loose on the subject,' Tolkien explained, coming up behind England. 'France took offence, and for some reason took it most strongly against Kirkland…possibly since we are all products of him to begin with.'

'Yes.' Lewis looked keenly at Tolkien. 'Something that those authors would do well to remember, I think.'

England watched the look they gave each other. He recognised it well; understanding, mutual respect, and just a hint of mutual envy. It was a look he had often shared with France.

Lewis, Protestant theologian, and Tolkien, Catholic creator of worlds. Whatever their causes of jealousy or disagreement, they had been friends, too. And maybe it's time Francis and I learned to be the same, he thought to himself. Oh, these authors. These children of mine. Huh.

'Harrumph,' he grunted, hauling himself to his feet. 'You're perfectly right, Lewis: there's no sense in moping.'

'Hurrah!' Lewis said, clapping him on the shoulder. 'That's the spirit! Now, since I've so luckily caught you both together, I hope you won't mind if I stick around for a while?'

'Excellent idea,' Tolkien agreed heartily, while England ground his teeth in despair. These authors; will they never stop haunting me? 'Why don't we stroll down to the tavern and have a drink?'

'I'm not in the mood,' England said coldly.

'Humour us!' Lewis cried, seizing his arm in a grip that was very firm for that of a ghost. 'Get his other side, Tolkien. Come on, you'll feel much better. Off we go!'

'I have to say,' Lewis declared two and a half hours later, 'they can brew a dashed fine beer in your home county, Tolkien.'

'Here here!' England said enthusiastically, waving his tankard. 'Take that, Germany! Not that he's such a bad fellow,' he added as an afterthought.

'I would deny it,' Tolkien sighed, 'but to do so would be false modesty. Nobody does it like the Hobbits of Oxfordshire! Say, are you getting to the bottom of your glass, Kirkland? Let's have another round, eh?'

'Well, I don't know,' England hesitated, peering at his watch without much success – it seemed to have grown a few extra hands over the last hour's drinking. 'I do have a meeting tomorrow…'

'Oh, come now, Kirkland, don't be a spoilsport!' Lewis protested, waving for the barman. 'You can manage another before we call it a night.

'After all, don't forget you're drinking for three!'

A/N: Many thanks to Essence 'what would I do without her' of Gold for the last line. Here ends this serendipitous little fic; many thanks again to anon for an awesome prompt, and to everyone who commented so kindly on the meme and over here.

On a side-note: have you noticed how all the little icons for promoting fics on different 'social networking' sites shove the titles of chapters all off-centre?

Review reply to TangerineTea, because you don't have PMs enabled: it's a fair cop, since I did no research. On the other hand, it depends what he meant by 'hates writing.' I'm sure we've all detested the grind of putting pen to paper at some point, but I don't think he could have written LOTR if he didn't love creating worlds and characters. Anyway, glad you liked it overall, and please do tell me these things; I always want to know more about writers.

alloette: No, it's not sad at all, since one author talking in not-particularly-period-accurate olde-worlde speech sounds very much like another. Maybe it should have been Chaucer, since he came earlier, but I felt that Shakespeare was more iconic.