Authors: Amanda Sandton
Love a Sailor (11 page)
I pull open the door of the first utility locker I come to
and hide inside. I can scarcely breathe the gray miasma is so suffocating. I
lean against the door, panting and heaving until my breathing slows.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. At last the
gray recedes until it is a blur in my peripheral vision.
I’m in a cupboard and I’m bare. What
happened to me? My mind whirls madly seeking reason until realization blasts
through me. I lost it. Sheer panic. I was doing fine, but the old nightmare
took me over. The one I banished years ago. I have to get a hold of myself. I
take some more deep breaths.
But the Captain. What about the Captain?
He must think I’m insane. How could I have treated him like that? Gone is my
chance with him. He won’t want anything to do with me after this. My legs are
wobbly and I feel sick. I slide down the door and crumple to the floor,
clutching my dress to my chest. I am so ashamed. I’ll never be able to look him
in the face again.
And I love him. He is so kind and patient
with me. If any man could have helped me over this, he could have, but now the
chance is gone. My eyes fill with tears. How am I going to carry on without
him? How am I going to get through two months on the same ship with him and
never see him? Because I can’t ever see him again. I would die of shame.
The floor is cold and I’m shivering. I
must get up and find my way back. I pull my dress on, and open the door slowly to
check the corridor. It’s empty. I run to the stairs and slip down them, glad
that my cabin is only one floor down. I have to knock on the door because I
don’t have my key, but Kate doesn’t answer. She must be out partying. I’ll have
to wake Clara. As soon as she opens the door I rush in and throw my arms round
her, sobbing my heart out.
“What on earth’s the matter?” she asks,
holding me tightly.
She steers me to her bed and we sit down
together, with my head on her shoulder. She rubs my back until I quieten. She
asks me again what is wrong but I can’t –
mustn’t
– tell her about the
Captain. She will blame him for my distress and he is not to blame. I mumble
something about some man pinning me to the wall in the corridor and fumbling
me.
“But what about your shoes and your purse?”
she asks, her eyes wide with concern.
I make up some story about our gang
taking off their shoes to sit by the pool and dangle our legs in the water. She
believes me. I say I dropped my purse when I made my escape. I thank my lucky
stars she doesn’t know I have no bra and panties on.
“You must be more careful,” she says.
“Don’t go around on your own at night and, anyway, who was this man? Do you
know him? Could you describe him?”
I shake my head. “Oh, please, no! Don’t
let’s go there. I don’t know who it was and I don’t want to pursue it.”
Clara hugs me to her. “Of course not,
Meredith. We’ll let it lie, but you must promise me not to walk around the ship
at night on your own. We came on this voyage to keep you safe. There’s no point
escaping Kempton only to fall foul of some other predator. Make sure you always
have a friend with you, a girlfriend. Okay?”
“I promise,” I whisper.
She takes a tissue from the box on the
nightstand. She wipes away my tears and holds it for me to blow my nose, just
like she does for Sukey.
“Now, do you think you’re ready for bed?”
She asks, taking my hands in hers and pulling me to my feet.
She opens the connecting door and ushers
me in front of her. She takes my nightdress from under my pillow and turns me
round so she can undo my zip. I brush her hands away. “I can do that, Clara.
I’m all right now. You get to bed.”
I don’t want her helping me to get
undressed. She kisses me on the forehead and leaves, closing the door quietly.
I take a warm shower and get ready for
bed. Kate comes in as I am taking a miniature cognac out of the drinks unit.
She raises her eyebrows, “What drinking at this time of the night, or should I
say, morning?”
When I don’t answer she comes closer and
stares at me. “What’s happened to you, Merry? You look awful. Have you been
crying?”
I shrug and pour the brandy into the
glass. “I need this tonight, Kate. Something horrible happened to me, but I
don’t want to talk about it.”
There’s a knock at the door. Kate goes to
open it but I call out, “Leave it, Kate, Please! Don’t answer.”
She stops and looks back at me, “Are you
sure? It might be important.”
“Leave it. I know who it is, and I don’t
want to answer.”
She rolls her eyes at me and comes over
and gives me a big hug, squashing my glass against my chest and causing me to
spill half its contents down my nightdress. But I don’t mind, her comforting
makes me feel better. She’s a great friend. Loyal to the bone.
A few minutes later we’re both in bed.
Kate is creaming her face. My mind is buzzing with the events of the night,
wondering how I am going to cope. The phone rings and Kate picks it up. It can
only be one person. My stomach clenches and a chill sweeps over me. I swear my
heart has stopped beating.
“It’s for you,” Kate says. “It’s the
Captain. He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him no,” I say. “I don’t want to
talk to him ever again.”
Kate blinks at me.
What?
she
mouths. I shake my head to emphasize my determination not to take his call.
I hear her tell the Captain that I don’t
want to speak to him. She pauses to listen before adding that I am safe in our
cabin. Listens again and puts the phone down.
“He says he’s worried about you,
Meredith. He’ll be sending your things down tomorrow. He said to tell you he
wants to see you and sort things out.”
“Kate, I told you, I don’t ever want to
see him again.”
“Merry? This is me, Kate. What’s wrong?”
I take no notice of her questions and
turn over in my bed, wrapping my arms round my knees and burying my head under
the covers. I made such a fool of myself it would be too humiliating to tell
worldly-wise Kate about it. And I can’t tell Clara because, although she would
be understanding about my behavior, she would not be happy to hear about the
Captain.
As I fall asleep I wonder whether the
Captain was checking up on me because he still cared for me, or whether he was
just doing his job and making sure I had got back to my cabin in one piece.
Either way, I never ever, EVER, want to
see him again.
*****
TO BE CONTINUED
in
Perilous Seas
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By A J Mill & B Scott
From 'Ship Ahoy' (1909)
All the nice girls love a sailor
All the nice girls love a tar
For there's something about a sailor
(Well you know what sailors are!)
Bright and breezy, free and easy,
He's the ladies' pride and joy!
He falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off to sea
again,
Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!
A
wounded young woman. A charismatic ship’s captain. Does love stand a chance?
Eighteen-year old Meredith Roxley is on the run from
Kempton, the man who preyed on her when she was in her early teens. When
Meredith tells her aunt Clara that Kempton has tried to snatch her, her aunt
spirits the family away on a three-month sea trip.
On board the
MV Albion
Meredith meets Captain Raphael
Maynard, a handsome hunk of a man, well-seasoned in the art of love. Meredith
finds herself falling for him, but two things stand in the way of any love
affair:
-
An
age gap of twelve years. The Captain is thirty years old. Meredith knows that
her over-protective aunt will not allow such a relationship.
-
Meredith’s
fear of sexual intimacy which threatens any chance of happiness with the
Captain as she struggles with her past.
Will the Captain persevere in his attempt to free Meredith
from this psychological bondage while knowing nothing of her history? Or will
he decide the effort is not worth his while?
This the first of a series of novellas telling the story of
Meredith and the Captain. Each ends on a cliff-hanger, but the ultimate
resolution of the story is a ‘happy ever after’.
The adult content of the story makes the series suitable for
those of 18 and over.