The Bride and the Bathyscaphe

An Unlikely Courtship of Moist Devotion

They said Eleanor Wainscot could’ve had anyone. And they weren’t wrong. The Wainscot name carried weight—mostly because it was stitched into every bolt of fabric between Manchester and Bombay. If you’d worn pants in the 1860s, chances are Horace Wainscot III’s mills had touched your thighs.

Eleanor, the only daughter, was expected to marry someone equally impressive. A viscount. A foreign prince. A man with straight teeth. Someone who at least had lungs on the outside.

Instead, she chose Gregory Bunt.

Gregory, who once spent fourteen consecutive hours under the Thames in a copper helmet that made him look like a mailbox. Gregory, who had to be lifted in and out of his suit by two men and a goat named Clive, for reasons never made clear. Gregory, whose version of small talk included tapping his chest twice and pointing at barnacles.

Society was scandalized. Eleanor was delighted.

It had started at the Natural Science Exhibition, where she was busy pretending to be fascinated by a stuffed albatross. Gregory had been brought in as part of the "Men of the Depths" display. He stood silently next to a tank of eels, fully suited, arms crossed like he’d rather be anywhere else—including the ocean floor with a leak in his air hose.

While the other women tittered and pointed, Eleanor walked right up and said, “So, what’s it like being a human teapot?”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The suit wasn’t designed for flirting.

But something about the angle of his helmet, the slight tilt as he turned toward her, the bubble of condensation that slowly rolled down his faceplate—it said more than words. It said, “You’re weird. I like that.”

From there, things escalated.

There were courtship walks (he sloshed). There were dinners (he drank soup through a tube). There was a misunderstanding at a garden party when he attempted to bow and accidentally headbutted a duke’s Pomeranian into the punch bowl. But through it all, Eleanor stood by him. Partly out of affection, and partly because she enjoyed watching society’s collective monocle pop out.

Her mother fainted twice. Once upon hearing of the engagement, and once again upon discovering that Gregory would be wearing the suit at the ceremony “for atmospheric integrity.”

The wedding was held indoors to accommodate Gregory’s need for shade, moisture, and a backup air pump. The priest hesitated but was eventually bribed with a barrel of brandy and an agreement not to ask questions. Vows were shouted. Rings were wedged. The kiss involved some very delicate helmet-tilting and a sponge.

They posed afterward for the photograph. Eleanor sat in a high-backed chair made of crushed dreams and horsehair. Gregory stood beside her, arms crossed atop the parlor table, boots slightly damp, helmet fogged with either condensation or nerves—it was hard to tell.

The photographer, a nervous man named Peabody, muttered to himself while adjusting the exposure.

"Sir," he asked gently, peering into the camera hood, "Will the... gentleman be removing his head apparatus?"

"No," said Eleanor.

"But I can’t see his expression."

"He’s smiling on the inside."

Click.

The image was printed, framed, and sent to every major household in London. It became a sensation. People couldn’t decide if it was performance art or a cry for help.

They moved into a modest estate on the coast, where Gregory built a small saltwater annex to sleep in. Eleanor read novels aloud to him every evening. He occasionally blinked in Morse code, which she interpreted as "thank you" or "more biscuits."

Domestic life was, by all accounts, odd but functional. They had disagreements like any couple—mostly about humidity levels and whether barnacles were appropriate as décor—but they never once raised their voices. Gregory couldn’t, and Eleanor found shouting exhausting.

Children were politely never discussed in public.

When the queen asked Eleanor at a gala whether she intended to “procreate with that aquatically entombed gentleman,” Eleanor simply sipped her champagne and said, “Well, he’s very fertile... with ideas.”

The queen did not ask again.

They threw parties, and invited only people who could tolerate both salt air and unorthodox love. The guest list included poets, sailors, one disgraced bishop, and several large seabirds who had taken a liking to Gregory’s helmet. He wore it always, even while gardening. He claimed it helped him think.

As the years passed, Eleanor aged gracefully, like a brandy left open on purpose. Gregory, meanwhile, didn’t seem to age so much as... marinate. His helmet gained a patina. His suit stiffened. But she never asked him to take it off. She never tried to change him. And he, for his part, always remembered her birthday and never once complained about her loud reading of Tolstoy.

When reporters came to write about their “eccentric marriage of land and sea,” Eleanor gave them exactly one quote.

“We may not share everything,” she said, staring out at the gray tide, “but we share silence very well.”

Gregory tapped his helmet twice and gave her a slow thumbs-up.

In the end, love didn’t look like it was supposed to. It didn’t come in the form of courtship dances or poetry carved into pears. It didn’t involve long letters or stolen glances.

It looked like a woman with a fondness for rebellion and a man in 87 pounds of brass, trying very hard to make her tea just right.

And when Eleanor died peacefully in her chair at 78, they buried her next to the sea, where Gregory visited every morning. He brought her shells. And he sat beside her grave, fogging up the inside of his helmet, whispering stories into the surf.

Until one day, he didn’t come back from his dive.

They say the sea took him. That he just walked in one morning, slowly, like always, and didn’t surface. No panic. No struggle. Just bubbles and a trail of damp footprints that led from the garden to the shore.

The suit was never found. Only a single note, left on a stone bench:

“Gone home.”

And below it, scribbled in her handwriting from years before:

“Tell the squid I said hello.”

Let the poets write their rhymes about roses and fire. Eleanor Wainscot found her soul mate in a man who lived underwater and smelled faintly of sardines. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Love doesn’t always come neatly wrapped. Sometimes it shows up in a 19th-century diving rig, clanking softly, arms crossed, waiting patiently for someone to see through the helmet.