Romance at Sea

"How fascinating."

Thinking that was a typical male snide remark she went to strike back but caught his expression – he looked fascinated!

He scoffed his plate of Traditional English Breakfast and then sat back watching her nibble. "I'm glad you're not fat and ugly."

"Gawd, what an Australian cur you are."

He grinned and said she should leave her unpalatable breakfast and commence her first lesson.

"My first lesson?"

"Follow me."

He walked off like a husband going out to the woodshed to save the family from chill as the fire in the living room fireplace was in need of fuel. Why was she thinking like this? To try to make sense of him, that's why. She couldn't remember meeting a man so perplexing. Most men – no correction – all other men would have stood beside her as she rose from the table and taken her arm.

They stood by the door leading out to the deck where the pool was. The sky was sullenly ugly, the deckchairs had been removed; they were sailing into a storm. The door was locked.

"You stupid man. You have instructed me to wear my bathing suit under my top and shorts. Look at it outside. A spring storm is brewing. Now you've gotten my freezing."

"Stop acting like a silly teenager," Randall told her sternly. "The temperature inside here is the same as before you peered outside. Nothing has changed expect my desire to change your mindset."

"Why?"

"Because you apparently have not learned to live. And that's why we had that aborted fuck last night."

"Don't use that word within my hearing."

"Sorry. And that's why we had a fuck that didn't work out last night."

She stared at his mocking face. "Fuck you," she spat and was aghast to see him grin hugely.

"What?"

"You've just proved to me you can emote."

She turned and walked away to prepare to practice. She expected him to run after her but he didn't. She smiled and thought, "I am found me a man!"

During the day she saw him three times. Once playing cards, once with a young woman all over him, her hand practically down the front of her pants but it they'd done it they must have been quick because she saw him again twenty minutes later at lunch where he nodded to her as she went to a table where she knew some of the people.

Before Gwen had finished pecking at her food Randall was beside her. Making no attempt to lower his voice he said, finding his Australian accent, "Say babe, care to spend this afternoon in bed with me. The storm gathers."

Gwen colored and noted the men at the table looked angry while all but one of the women smirked. One of the men stood, squaring his shoulders and said, "Now look here Jones."

A companion opposite said, "Careful Andrew, Jones was a rowing and boxing blue at Cambridge I believe."

"Well I can't say I like it, dammit."

"Boys, boys. Have tolerance for Mr Jones' immodest behavior. He is Australian and their men are in the habit of fucking any woman in sight."

Everyone around the table – and some people at adjoining tables – looked at Gwen either in surprise or in shock.

"Run alone Randall – I'll order dinner for two at 8:30 in my cabin tonight. Bring your sleepwear. We have heard the announcement that all formal dining is likely to be cancelled tonight because of the storm."

"Thank you milady, very nice," Randall said with an exaggerated twang, touching his forehead with a finger. Gwen and the other women giggled, partly because they were looking at men who appeared ready to form a lynching party.

In her suite Gwen called and ordered dinner for 8:30 – steak cooked rare and a double serving of fries for Randall and poached salmon for herself and cream cakes and coffee.

If Randall arrived a little seedy the fries would send the rude swine to the toilet to vomit. Really, he had no right to talk to her in such an appalling manner in front of people she knew or even to talk to her in that manner. Period.

The storm hit to enliven the passage of the liner through the wind-whipped seas but at its peak around 6:00 Gwen was happily reading, knowing she'd been through much worst. The thought occurred to her perhaps Randall had good sea legs. That was confirmed when he arrived at 8:15 carrying a bottle of hideously expensive champagne, resplendent in his tuxedo, and whistling.

Whistling? She smiled and decided not to finish her hair because, well, it wouldn't matter to him.

"Two of your bully boys from your table had a quiet word with me."

"Oh Christ, you didn't bop them did you?"

"Of course not. I'm not a violent man. I listened, nodded sagely and then invited them to a drink. They appeared pleased and said it was encouraging to be able to reform an Australian. That made me really mad."

"Oh Christ."

"I suggested a game of poker and left the two of them almost seven hundred bucks poorer. We parted as buddies and they said I'd played like a gentleman."

"Oh, how sweet."

"An hour later one of their wives came into the bar and loudly demanded I give her the money her husband had lost."

"Oh dear."

"I said fuck off bitch, at least your husband is not a poor loser."

"Oh gawd."

"A couple of Aussie guys yelled to her to piss off and the entire bar, including the women, told her to piss off."

Gwen sighed, holding out two champagne flutes. "Randall my sweet, I think you had best stick around me. You are not safe to be by yourself. What was the woman's name?"

"Gladys someone."

"Oh Randall, you do know who to take on. Her husband Mike heads some sort of high-powered. Investigation commission that Gladys is not permitted to talk about."

"Well Mike should have married a lady."

* * *

Gwen went to the kitchen and returned carrying two glasses of wine. Stephen thought damn, that was the end of the narration for today. He'd hoped Gwen would be very graphic about the sex. He'd turned off the recorder but turned in back on, fingers shaking, after Gwen said, what I'm about to tell you Stephen is rather risqué. I trust you will oppose me when I attempt to have it removed from your manuscript – the extract I mention will written with sensitivity of course."

"Of course ma'am. To your good health," Stephen said, raising his glass.

* * *

Gwen had not consumed alcohol since lunch but guessed Randall had been drinking all afternoon but he appeared to be unaffected.

"Are you drunk?"

"No, after a few drinks I drink a jug of water and fifteen minutes later piss it all out."

"You crude Australian."

"Whatever you think. Now here we drink only this one bottle of champagne. I want you switched on and focused when we fuck."

"Have sex sounds better."

"We could have that as well."

The man was impossible so Gwen attempted to laugh like she thought a whore would.

"Christ, you sound like a whore."

She wondered what that made him?

Gwen took over and steered things alone so that they conversed and ate elegantly. Incredibly his manners were impeccable and his accent softened and sounded almost cultured New England. What an incredible man. She hoped he'd become brash Australian when they fucked, er, when he seduced her.

After their dinner leftovers had been taken away and Gwen returned from cleaning her teeth after he'd done the same he said, "Come sit on my knee darling. Are you wearing a bra or underpants?"

She blushed and said no.

"Good girl."

Gwen turned crimson. She was thirty-six, with notches on her garter belt for many brief sexual encounters and three great affairs and here she was acting like a virgin queen. She couldn't believe it. What was this man doing to her? Well, she soon found out. He unzipped her dress but before touching the exposed breasts kissed her slowly and thoroughly. Then he slowly began circling a nipple, making little grunts and caressing her back and shoulders, holding off as if it were the first nipple he'd seen as an adult. He then paused over it and bit the nipple. She yelped and almost flew to the ceiling.

"Fuck me," she yelped breathing heavily, standing to pull up the back of her dress and turned, giving him time to unzip and pull out his handsome cock while still sitting on the lounge chair before she slowing sat down, feeling herself being shafted. It slipped in because excitement had hit her, making her wet. Randall's hands went under her butt cheeks to control the rate of entry and when they were ready he lifted her s-l-o-w-l-y, so slowly she became desperate for him to speed up but then realized she was feeling, really feeling, each slow stroke. She dribbled through her wide-open mouth in her excitement, closed her eyes and pictured him inside her, though it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination an anatomically correct picture.

Just when she really felt like spurring him along, sensing a dam within her was soon to breach, Randall picked up the pace and soon she was yelling, her ass was going slap-slap against his legs and gut and he began breathing heavily and her growing arousal made her pull a breast to her mouth, perhaps for the first time when being with a man but it was difficult to remember not that it mattered. She sucked, she felt the ramming below and attempted to squeeze it and felt as if her entire body was swelling and finally she screamed c-o-m-i-n-g and went into what she believed was the biggest release in her whole life and he bucked and grunted into his release. They rested and rested and went at it again and again.

In the morning Gwen awoke, put on the lights and looked down on Randall and knew she was in love. She stretched and then had a wonderful idea. She slipped under the bedcovers licking her lips and found what she wanted.

Gwen and Randall separated at Southampton. He had a tight business schedule with his publishing interests in England and Ireland. He'd said he'd take her to Australia soon and she just smiled. Men often seemed to believe in their lies. She had a splendid concert tour of England and Scotland and then played in Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Budapest, Frankfurt, Berlin and Leipzig and then took time off before sailing back home from France.

Gwen had heard from Randall three times during her tour and then the phone calls stopped so she assumed that was the end of him. But he called her in New York from Tokyo just after she'd returned from telling her agent in future she would restrict her concert tours to North America except for one-off specials if there were a demand for her offshore.

"Hi honey."

Honey? Gwen pricked up her ears.

"Busy?"

"Not at present. I've just instructed my agent to cancel talks about proposed tours to South Africa and Japan."

"Well, that suggests you have time to get married?"

Gwen gasped and almost dropped the phone. "Okay, I'm interested. But talk to me long and convincingly buster."

* * *

Gwent sighed and took Stephen's glass to pour them another wine.

When she returned she said it became rather boring after that. She are Randall were married for almost five years before he found a challenging 29-year-old. "I'll fill in details about that marriage and our honeymoon in Australia and all the sailing we did and how I loved Melbourne so much that I agreed to stay for a month to practice and then to perform concerts over two nights. Surprisingly many Australians are really very cultured and don't at all talk like cave men and cave women. Tomorrow we can talk about my present husband who is in Ireland being beside his ailing mother when he's not chasing Irish sluts. And then I propose talking more about the thing above everything else Randall taught me – how to have passion for life – not only for music but for life.

Stephen had allowed the tape to run until he packed up to leave.

* * *

Susan lay against Stephen listening to the tape for the second time. "This is marvelous and provides such an insight into a woman who so-called informed critics had universally described as a tortured woman. You'll have to learn why she chose not to have children and learn why she thinks her mom was such a bitch to her...so many things. So what is your opinion now?"

"I have an absorbing book in the making that will win the hearts and minds of readers and will be a major seller, even better than I had envisaged. It could in time as being in the top ten biographies of the past ten years."

* * *

A 627-page biography, 'The Loves of Gwen, Concert Pianist' was released as at gala gathering on Gwendolyn Chappell's 61st birthday, in time to ride the pre-Christmas buying spree. Gwen had insisted she be called just Gwen in the title, one of the few changes she had made. She'd left descriptive sexual encounters untouched, saying she didn't wish to be remembered as a stuffy woman who never had fun.

THE END