by Steve Rayer
In which is detailed the apprenticeship of an able-bodied sea person.
"Call me silly names would you?" Smack, Smack, Smack, Smack! "Take your hand away!" Smack, Smack! "I said take your hand away!" Smack, Smack, Smack, Smack!
"Now, what was it you said about me?" Smack, Smack! "Louder!" Smack, Smack!
Wishful thinking, Bill, wishful thinking: you who has never had the privilege of chastising a female bottom in your life. If only!
All right, I admit. I was fed up, angry, hurt, brassed off, pissed off! Sorry about the language but now you know how I was feeling. I don't usually swear, being too much the gentleman or so I like to think, and I tell you my gentlemanly tolerances had just been stretched to the limit. Well I ask you. How would any man feel who had just been called a conceited male chauvinist pig on his own boat by a woman who I doubt even knew which part of the boat was the bow, which was the stern, what was port, what was starboard - in other words didn't know her arse from her elbow? All right, no more swearing, I promise. That trollop needs a bloomin' good hiding I repeated to myself. (I had told her so just before she swept into the fo'c'sle slamming the cabin door on me). For a moment I toyed again with the vision of her across my knees and me whaling into her bare backside with a slipper. It helped to calm me down. Dream on: she was a solicitor and would have had me in court if I so much as dared lay a finger on her. Let me explain. I will go back to the beginning. Bear with me.
Call me a carpenter by trade, or better still furniture restorer. My father had struggled to put me through a good education hoping I would turn into something special. What a waste! I hated boarding school life, not even my best friend would have called me a scholar and I got away from the place and from home at the first opportunity. I did have one saving grace however. I had always been good with my hands and badly wanted to work with them so I trained as a carpenter and became fascinated working with different types of wood, and from these early stages began taking on work renovating antique furniture. I settled in a little town on the south coast, a prosperous part of England where lots of homes in the vicinity just seemed to have that old piece of furniture that needed touching up, so I opened a little workshop and began to make a reasonably comfortable living. Oh and I drifted in and out of marriage and by the time I'm speaking of I'm getting uncomfortably close to forty, no family and becoming resigned to life as a single gent.
Not quite true to say I was single, for I had a beautiful lady as the love of my life. 'She' was an old Brixham trawler, name of Nichola; a gaff-rigged ketch, 50 feet in length, built at a time when fishing was still done under sail and it was necessary to get back to port (Brixham in this case) as fast as possible in order to arrive home first in the queue and so command the highest prices for the catch. She was a real beauty, fast, eminently sea-worthy and looked magnificent under full sail. She always attracted attention and I made the acquaintance of lots of yachting folk who would gaze, wistfully I thought, from their vastly expensive sailing machines at this example of a boat from the days when sailing was hardly a pleasure but a means of existence. I also picked up some highly profitable renovation work from some of them but that's another story.
How did a man of my slender means come by her? Good luck, really. I got chatting to this guy, Richard, in the pub down by the quay one evening and it turns out he had a manufacturing business in the Midlands but was very keen on sailing and the history of sailing and it just so happened he knew of an old boat going cheap but obviously in need of restoration, not any old boatyard restoration but real sympathetic work. I pricked up my ears at this for I had learnt to sail in my spare time and helped to crew on some of the big yachts when I had the time. The following weekend Richard came down in his posh car and took me along the coast to the spot where the old boat was moored and I swear it was love at first sight. Together we crawled over every inch of it, checking the timbers for rot and finding them sound but the cabin and accommodation was a different matter, a right old shambles. The old beauty was in dire need of loving care and attention and that's when Richard made me a proposition. He would buy the boat outright; I had a bit of capital saved up and this would enable me to buy from him a few shares in the boat (making me a part owner!) I undertook to carry out all renovation work and he would pay me a rate for the job and supply all materials.
Marvellous: it took all my spare time for over a year but I was in heaven working with my hands on a lovely old boat with wood and lots of it. Well the day came when we sailed her out for the first time, the hull painted in shining black with a red stripe along its length, upperworks varnished, fresh rigging and a brand new suit of sails; a far cry from the sorry state she was in when we bought her. I'm not saying she was easy to sail although the gaff rig helped, in fact for just the two of us it was hard work for she had been built not for pleasure but to withstand anything the elements might care to throw at her, but she was comfortable, strong and well found: the perfect mistress surely!
Richard began bringing some of his friends and business acquaintances down for the weekend. There was plenty of sleeping accommodation on board and as they usually brought with them choice provisions and alcoholic beverages I was quite happy to put up with the braying chatter and tipsy goings on provided some of the guests could be persuaded to lend a hand with the actual sailing and haul on a rope's end from time to time. Richard's long-time girl friend, Miriam, came often; she is worth mentioning here because they did in fact get married shortly after the events I am about to relate. I got on well with her because she tried hard to make herself useful and once she had gained confidence in steering the boat would take her turn at the wheel to give us a bit of a break. Also, she could cook and feed us well: enough said!
After a few months and towards the end of summer, we felt confident to set out on a longer voyage, taking in new destinations than the familiar few places we could cover in the space of a weekend. I was ready for a week's holiday, so was Richard. Miriam said she would come and another couple, Tom and Maggie, gave their word. They had been with us before. Tom I liked very well, he enjoyed sailing and was a good man to have on board whilst Maggie, although not in the top class of usefulness had a great personality and from a man's point of view, looked a real stunner into the bargain. She went in for tight jeans and sweaters, as did Miriam and no doubt about it both were very easy on the eye. I was glad they were coming. At the last minute, Tom phoned to ask if it was o.k. to bring along an old school friend of Maggie's. Richard had already given his blessing so, thinking we would have a Maggie mark 2 on board, I was happy enough to agree.
Came the day and I had everything ready and ship shape on the dear old boat. The others would be bringing the provisions and I had stocked up with water and not forgetting diesel fuel for the auxiliary engine we had fitted (useful in flat calm weather and negotiating cramped anchorages in harbour). They arrived punctually and we lost no time in getting under way to catch the flood tide. Maggie had introduced me to her friend Lucinda (heavens, what a name!) but we were so busy storing provisions and setting sail that I had paid her little attention.
Fast forward to two days later and in the late afternoon we fetched up in Brixham, home port of our lovely Nichola, and the appreciative harbour master let us have a jolly good berth on one of the floating pontoons off the quay for the night. We stayed there all next day too because Tom and Maggie wanted to see the surrounding area (it is after all a beautiful part of the world), so did Richard and Miriam and they all left mid-morning taking, much to my huge relief, Lucinda with them, and because she will come to occupy the position of most importance in my story, I want to break off here and tell you how it was from the first.
Right from the start I had my misgivings. Whereas my friends had put on sensible sea-going clothes, warm polo-neck sweaters and working jeans, she turned up dressed more for the sun lounge of a floating gin palace than the open deck of an old Brixham trawler. I gawped at her loose white jeans, flimsy sandals and light woollen top, quite inadequate as protection from the wind out at sea. I let her learn the hard way and soon she had swapped for an old track suit top and sweat pants which simply drooped and did nothing to improve my opinion of her. She was still young, I would say not yet thirty, with the makings of a decent figure which her sloppy jeans had done nothing to flatter. If only she had taken the trouble to dress with a little more elegance! I looked at Miriam and Maggie in their neat jeans presenting a rewarding view from behind for a man's appraisal, and then at Lucinda and asked myself why when God had given her the form for mans' delight did she have to appear in baggy pants that made her look like a frump with sagging bum. Now don't get me wrong on this; if a girl wants to dress like one who's spent the night on a park bench then so be it, who am I to pass judgement? It's just that I took it as an insult to my lovely Nichola. Well you wouldn't go to the Ritz wrapped up in a shell suit, would you?
And then there was the way she looked at me, disapproving like. Now don't get me wrong on this either. She wasn't at all bad looking in a severe sort of way, though I would have recommended she do up her hair in a more friendly fashion instead of letting it hang down each side of her face (light in colour it was, almost blonde, quite nice, the hair I mean) but all I got from her was this arch superior glance as though I were hardly worth bothering with: she the intellectual, the passenger, me the humble crewman, responsible for keeping the boat sailing. She behaved like a passenger too, didn't do anything to help, not interested in the workings of our lovely old boat. Why couldn't she be like the other girls and do a woman's work whilst on board, keep the tea and coffee coming, prepare warm food in the galley, take a turn at the wheel... under my strict supervision of course?
Richard and Tom were much amused at my discomfiture and teased me saying what a pity we hadn't paired off together. The suspicion dawned on me that their lady friends had brought Lucinda along for just that purpose as Miriam in particular was always going on about my single state and wasn't it time I thought about another partner in life... oh do shut up Miriam! not after the experience of the marriage I went through however short it was, much better on my own, not the marrying kind thank you very much. Naturally my suspicions only served to strengthen the wall of indifference I presented to Lucinda. There was something else too; she worked as a solicitor, a breed I detested especially after the upset of my divorce dealings and also from another time when a customer refused to pay money owing to me and his legal friend backed him up to my detriment.
So now you know why I was glad to see the back of her that day, leaving me to enjoy alone the pleasures of the beautiful harbour, the cry of the gulls, the sea air and that same aroma the world over of a fishing port, the heady mix of fish and diesel fuel from the trawlers. I went for a stroll along the quay, lingered over a fish and chip lunch, looked in at a pub for a pint, got chatting to a few of the locals as a man does, had another pint and then another as a man does, so it was three o'clock by the time I was out again and what better next than to weave my way back to the boat, gently close the main hatch against interference from the outside world, flop down on a bunk and sleep off the effects... as a man does?
It could have been an hour later that I was woken by the sound of the hatch being slammed back on its runners; steady on now, this was no way to treat my Nichola and from where I was lying could see up the companionway steps into the cockpit and I'm looking at a pair of sloppy white jeans that I recognise instantly. What the...? not back so soon, surely! She peers down at me with her customary disapproval.
"You snore in your sleep, Mr Smith."
Yeah right, so what, was she thinking of making something of it and why did she always have to call me Mr Smith, never Bill?
"What the hell are you doing here?" I couldn't disguise my frustration: all I had asked for was a few hours on my own and now she was back to annoy me. "Where are the others?"
"Gone over to Dartmouth. I felt like the odd one out so I stayed and had a look round here."
Dartmouth was a pretty little town at the river mouth further down the coast. Briefly I wondered if this was another of Miriam's little ploys to pair us off. Nah, she wouldn't do that, would she? Lucinda sat on the top step.
"You don't want me here, do you?"
"Very perceptive of you! No, I don't."
That was telling her! Crikey, what had become of my gentlemanly behaviour, those three pints in the pub had clouded the old onion and I shook my head to clear it and swung my feet on to the floor. I was still a bit fogged and couldn't think of anything else to say. She must have taken my silence as a sign of weakness. A faulty apprehension!
"I believe you're frightened of me. Clearly you hate me and hate implies fear. Are you frightened of all women, Mr. Smith?"
Would someone please shut this woman up! Why the blazes had the others brought along this wretched girl to annoy me? A solicitor, and to make matters worse now displaying all the makings of a militant feminist? I kept silent, willing her to go away. She didn't, there was more to come.
"Or is it that you are scared of losing control, you expect the women to do all the mucky jobs on your old tub of a boat, you expect us to cook for you and do the cleaning whilst you stand like Nelson on the quarterdeck?"
She had me there. What other real use was a woman on my beautiful boat and how dare she call Nichola an old tub? She still hadn't finished with me.
"You'd just love to see the back of me wouldn't you?"
My head was clearing fast and this time I found what I thought was the perfect response.
"Yes I would love to see the back of you, your backside in fact, being tanned good and proper: compliments of a male chauvinist pig!"
I was delighted with my rhetoric, delighted to see this shot find its mark and it succeeded briefly in shutting her up. She got up off the step and came down through the main cabin to the fo'c'sle, (the cabin in the forepart of the boat for the benefit of you land-lubbers) which I had given all to herself to keep her out of the way. I should have guessed she would have the last word and at the fo'c'sle door she found the perfect response:
"A conceited male chauvinist pig I would say!"
This is the point where my story began, and gosh how that woman had rubbed me up the wrong way! No good sitting there fuming, and my eye fell on the cabin floor, my handsome cabin floor, laid all by myself and now looking grubby with the continual usage of the last few days. I filled a bucket with water and started swabbing down the floor, trying not to think of her ladyship next door. Perhaps she really believed in her own superiority, perhaps her legal training wouldn't permit her to back down in an argument, I don't know; anyway, she suddenly reappeared having changed into those ghastly sweat pants and stood watching me mop the floor.
"Well well, so Nelson can do womens' work after all."
I don't know how it happened, maybe I stepped on it, perhaps I caught it with the side of my foot, anyway the bucket went over and water cascaded all over my smart floor, and she stood hands on hips and laughed at me; real mocking laughter it was. Stupid of her; no prizes for guessing what followed. I admit I lost it, lost my temper, shamefully invoked the name of the omnipotent founder of the Christian religion, threw a right paddy. The nearest berth was only a step away and I took a firm grip on her and sat down on it...
It was all so easy and I had her across my knees before the girl scarce knew what was happening. I gave several hard slaps but her sweat pants were getting in the way so I hooked my fingers in the elastic waistband, yanked them down and then I swear sat quite still and stared, hypnotised by the flawless nature of her bare bottom. Those pants had hidden sheer perfection. My first fleeting thought had been she was knickerless but there was that tell-tale tiny triangle of material at the top of the cleft between her buttocks. So; despite putting on all those superior airs and graces, the minx had been parading around in a thong to keep her company and give her a private little thrill under her loose clothes. I set to work with enthusiasm and laid on hard with my rough carpenter's hands. Nelson she had called me. Very well, how about this then: 'England expects every man will do his duty': Nelson's signal at Trafalgar. Certainly my Lord Nelson; certainly. This man would give a bumptious creature something to be really thrilled about.
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