Chapter 4

DAY THREE

“Drink the tea first, then we’ll face the music” was Cheryl’s solution. So, not such a worrier I think. There was a splash. I wanted to look out of the port hole, wondered what to cover myself with, shrugged – she’d seen everything already - and got out of bed naked and looked. Fred was swimming past the side of the boat. A further splash signalled that another had gone in. Cheryl came to look too, she wrapped the duvet round her, but as she went to get her clothes, I ‘accidentally’ trod on it and pulled it away. She turned to grab it, showed me a full frontal, realised that had been my intention all along and scowled. She had lovely breasts with deep red areoles, and a dark brown covering of pubic hair at her groin. She was lovely. Another splash, and I could see Sarah and Joanne in the water with Fred. All of them were in bikinis. Sarah’s had slipped up and she had pulled it down as I watched. I didn’t see anything that time. As her mother was in the bathroom, Tony came back in. I covered myself.

“It’s a bit late for that! Listen! She’s my Mum! And she’s married!”

“And she can hear everything you are saying” came a voice through the wall.

“Good! Well, I just hope you know what you’ve started” and with that she turned and left again. I put on my costume and joined the others in the water, I needed a good wash to get rid of the sticky smells at my groin. Tony jumped in too, in her swimming costume rather than her bikini. Cheryl came to the rail, looked, shrugged and took off her tee shirt. She kept her shorts on over her bikini for the same reason that Tony was wearing a one piece. Some bikinis are for dry sunbathing rather than wet swimming. Sure enough I, well, we all saw the red discs appear under her bikini. Cheryl clearly figured that was acceptable but a see-through bikini bottom probably wasn’t. I was the only one who might have been excited by it and I’d seen that already; but the others might have thought it impolite to show her bush to all and sundry.

Later we sat in the well of the boat and had breakfast of fruit, fruit juice and coffee. We discussed what to do and opted to go round the headland to the town to get fresh bread before heading for the next flotilla mooring. If Tony was a upset, she didn’t show it. Craig had suggested this as an option. Craig was the lead boat skipper. He was very experienced at sailing and thought he had found the perfect job, I think it miffed him a little that I was skipper of a boat of sirens, he was used to being the object of desire amongst the women. His crew consisted of Jackie, the social organiser – she did things like arrange for meals all together, get demonstrations of Greek dancing at a taverna (and, no doubt negotiate special rates for all the custom they brought); and Mike, he was the technical guy. If a radio or an engine needed attention, he was the man. There was never any indication that Jackie was with either of the two, which was either very professional of her, or she was banging them both perhaps. Life is full of these little mysteries. Like how I came to be in the situation I was in.

We upped the shore anchor and pulled ourselves out to the kedge. Others waved at us and we heard later that they were all aground. The atmospheric pressure in the eastern end of the Mediterranean had increased, pushing the water down. We were the only boat that slide away with no problem because we had moored slightly further out. We went round to the town harbour and Tony and I stayed aboard whilst the others went to get supplies.

Tony looked at me, what was she going to say? “You had sex with my mother”

“I, umm, yes. It wasn’t planned”

“Oh, not your fault eh?”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean neither of us intended it to happen. We should have stopped, but we didn’t. But we are both over age and ... well she is very attractive.”

“And me?”

“You what?”

“Am I attractive?

“Yes”

“Would you fuck me?”

“Tony, that’s a bit crude”

“Would you!”

“Yes, if I had the chance, I suppose I would”

“And Sarah?”

“Yes”

“And Jo?”

“Yes. Look I’m a man. Don’t look like that. It’s in my hormones. Given the right situation I will have sex with any pretty girl. I, all men, have to control themselves. We are programmed to spread our genes. Last night” I instinctively knew not to mention her mother explicitly “I was unable to stop, given the circumstances”

“And Fred?”

“She’s fourteen”

“Nearly fifteen, answer the question!”

“Well, yes, if it wasn’t illegal I probably would. She’s pretty and sweet and yes I would”

“You won’t though, will you? Not full sex?”

“This was hypothetical wasn’t it?”

“I’m deputised to tell you that you are expected to remove the virginity of all three of us. Sarah is eighteen and going to uni this September or October, I forget what she said; Jo is going next year, and I’m the year after. We want to take this opportunity to clear the decks, to use a sailing metaphor.

Fred is too young, you will have to be very controlled about what you two do. If you have sex with her, you’ll be in prison in four weeks. I promise”

“But, this is silly, your mother -”

“Leave her to me.” They came back on board at that point, and I was left wondering what was going on. Was this a very silly joke, or a very clever one?

I was confused as we got ready to leave. “Chris, did you want to look in town?” asked Cheryl’s

“No, no, that’s fine. We are due to meet up at Lingoria Harbour, but Craig mentioned the uninhabited island on the way, with several bays. We could stop off?”

Let me explain the organisation of our boat. I was the skipper. On all sailing matters, I was in charge and people would defer to me. If there was time, people could ask questions; but we had established that it would be better to do what they were told first and ask why after (eg. “Stop the engine!” “Why?” “Too late, you’ve just killed a turtle” OR “Stop the engine” [engine into neutral], “Why did we do that?” “Look at that, those turtles are quite rare”). Cheryl was the bursar, financier, whatever. As the most ‘mature’, mother of two of the crew and indirectly the person who paid (actually Kevin did, but you get the point), she carried significant authority about non-nautical matters. Though, hopefully like me, she didn’t attempt to lord it over us all, we were more of a team, a committee. It was just that she might say ‘Do you want to do this or that’. Tony was kind of second in command in sailing, Joanne, Sarah and Fred were crew. I was let off some of the domestic chores because I was planning routes sometimes, but I don’t think I misused that right. There was no rota or allocated jobs. People mucked in as needed. The only time when responsibility seemed to fall to me was when a) the propeller fouled some rope, and b) the toilet was blocked. Both these jobs were apparently automatically part of my remit. If I couldn’t fix it then we’d have to call up the lead boat and Mike.

The first problem, the fouled propeller required underwater swimming, holding breath and using a sharp knife until the rope was cleared. It wasn’t technically difficult, and I knew at least one of the girls was a much better swimmer than me, but I also knew that they were nervous. We were on the sea, drifting in 100 metres of water. Somehow the depth makes people, including me, more nervous. Despite that fact that not being able to see the sea floor doesn’t make it harder or more dangerous, we think it does. Anyway, my manly instincts wouldn’t have let a girl jump in and cut it free, even if they would have been perfectly capable. Stupid, I know.

That second problem: I would happily have called up Mike. But he was miles away, and had said that stripping a toilet was above and beyond and would be charged for. I closed the stop cock, took off the flexible tube that pumped out, grimaced at the shitty brown bits in the pipe, and glowered at the tampon stuck in the outflow. I felt like producing the evidence, but I didn’t; just explained, yet again that only shit and a minimum of toilet paper was to go down the heads. The girls were very nice to me for a couple of days after that; and Mike, when he heard, was seriously impressed that we had just got on with it and coped both times.