Chapter 2A: Paris and Adventure

The following day was also beautiful. I was thinking two gorgeous April days in a row must be an English record. We cleared the Marina on a course slightly east of south under full sail. I steered while daddy and Mother set the sails.

Mel sat next to me on the navigator’s bench looking bright green. I said kindly, “You’ll get used to it dear”. She responded by heaving into one of the buckets at my feet. I had to admit that the Channel is a lot choppier than most of the places I had sailed.

Daddy took over the helm as soon as the sails were set. I took my poor little friend below to prepare breakfast. I made her some dry toast and milk tea. I was fixing a quiche Lorraine for the rest of us. Mel kept it down. But she was still looking the worst for wear.

She has faithfully followed me through all of the adventures that we’ve been in. I was thinking that one of these days I should spend some time in the East End just to see what her world looked like. I had a feeling that I would not be able to function nearly as well in her world as she did in mine.

We were making 14 knots under an offshore breeze which was going to get us the 100 miles to Honfleur earlier than expected. Mel had settled down a bit once I got some toast and a little bit of porridge into her. She even came out on deck for a second, spotted the heaving horizon, turned green, and bolted back down into the cabin.

It is a trick of sailing that, when the boat is laid over on a tack, like we were at the time, the horizon isn’t horizontal. So, the visual that you get coming out of the cabin makes it look like the world has just tilted 30 degrees. If you know enough to anticipate it there is no disorientation, but poor Mel must have felt like she was having a stroke.

I told her to lie down in her berth and we would get her there. But I put a bucket next to the bed just in case. She looked like a pitiful drowned puppy, beautifully exotic and wildly sexy, but a drowned puppy, nonetheless.

I was up on deck through the whole trip. Daddy handed the helm to me while he made final docking arrangements via the internet in the cabin and mother went back to scrubbing the decks. My mother has to work hard to feel good about herself. I guess I inherited that trait.

It was breezy mid-channel and the ship traffic was intense so I couldn’t just put the boat on the auto-sailor and go below without ending up under the keel of a 1,000-foot container ship. I was wearing a fisherman’s sweater because it was getting cold and a pair of skintight jeans because I wanted to show off the goods. Daddy has stopped gibbering about my dressing in a “sexual” manner now that I am totally independent.

We got close enough to the coast that I could navigate by sight. Honfleur is off of the Seine Estuary so it was easy to just steer for that gap in the coastline. The route to Cherbourg is much shorter than to Honfleur but that is a big port and my parents wanted quaint not industrial.

Honfleur has centuries of seafaring history built into it and you can see why it was established where it is as you approach it from the sea.

The Seine empties into the Channel there and Honfleur was the best of both worlds. Goods going to-and-from Paris can be transported by water not land. They can have an easy trip down the Seine to the port of Honfleur and from that port they can go to any place in the world.

Most of the early French settlement of the new world left from that port and, along with Le Havre, it was the center for French colonialism in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

The mouth of the Seine is so wide that the estuary itself looks like two different shores. Le Havre, which was visible to the north and right on the Channel, gets a lot of big ship traffic.

Honfleur is tucked into the mouth of the Estuary itself and you could also see why the traffic out of that place dried up as ships got bigger, since the Seine is tidal and the navigation into the river is tricky.

We pulled into Honfleur at two in the afternoon, which was seven hours after we left Poole. However, with the time difference between the UK and France it was actually three o’clock in Honfleur.

My parents have a permanent berth in the Vieux Bassin, which is a little harbor right in the center of the Town. My dad navigated us through the locks, which are set up upstream to smooth out the tidal shifts of the Seine.

We were under diesel power from the time we entered the estuary and I had to visit my two children down below, just to make sure that they were behaving themselves. The two brutish Detroit D4s were down there humming like a well-tuned chamber music group. Their mother was pleased.

I have a love of mechanics that is so profound that I would have probably worked in a garage if I wasn’t rich. I know that isn’t very girly but that is who I am.

We motored into our slip in the small archetypally square continental harbor. At forty-one feet, the C&C is a big boat for that mooring and it looked like an aircraft carrier next to the 30 footers.

The harbor itself was considerably beyond charming. The general impression, with the half-timbered buildings and high-rise houses, is that, “This place couldn’t be real?” But once in a while the modern world does have places that picturesque, and Honfleur is one of them.

The houses around it are those classically narrow 16th Century buildings that are 20 feet wide and seven stories tall. You see them most prominently in Amsterdam, but they are in every harbor city on the northern coast of Europe.

They are painted in a riot of colors and the overall effect is that you just slipped back in time. Monet, Turner and Boudin all lived in Honfleur and painted pictures of the place; and there are still painters always sitting at easels around the harbor.

Mel had recovered her spirit and good humor as soon as the boat stopped pitching and she was standing on the quarter deck as Mother and I secured the docking lines.

She was wearing something that only Mel could get away with, absolutely skintight white Capri pants and a bright, lime green hooded sweatshirt. I was kind of envious of her dark complexion since it allows her to look stunning in colors that most women would shun like the plague.

The sweatshirt was an inspiration since rather than hiding her boobs the mounds under the front of it looked even bigger and more mysterious. I was in my fisherman’s sweater and equally skintight jeans with my Dad’s black 101st airborne hat worn backwards.

My mother was in an outfit I see her in frequently, a pair of tweed slacks that nicely emphasized her still perfectly muscled and round hips and a white cashmere turtleneck sweater that had the same effect as Mel’s sweatshirt.

Mother radiated class and what she was wearing was as sedate as a Sunday school picnic. But the way the cashmere molded to her incredible breasts was almost pornographic; especially with my dad’s special gold necklace with the spectacular diamond dangling in the deep valley between them. I was thinking to myself, “Those two little women are never, off-stage, are they?”

Baudelaire and a bunch of the other French romantics particularly loved Honfleur for its peaceful scenic beauty. Not being a French romantic I love Honfleur for the Calvados which is especially good here. People think of France they think of wine. But when you visit Normandy the drink du jour is made out of apples, not grapes.

And a chilled jug of Calvados on a beautiful late afternoon is heaven. English cider, in my opinion, is swill. But Calvados, which is essentially cider, has a smoothness and depth that rivals the finest wines in all of France.

We three ladies found an open table at a café right on the harbor and watched the denizens of that little place intermingle with each other. There were painters who looked like they had come out of central casting for French painters. There were a few, but not too many, tourists. There were the people of the town going about their business and then there were the cafes and bistros, which are superb.

Of course, the men were French and the sight of my mother and Mel sitting out in the open was threatening a slow burning civil insurrection among the male half of the population.

There was one open seat at our table that my mother was saving for my dad. Seven different French guys stopped by to ask if they could sit in it before my dad, who had been finalizing the docking, appeared.

He is a dangerous looking man without being tall and whenever he materializes anywhere the men clustering around his wife tend to scatter. That was the case here. It was almost comical watching the more persistent ones suddenly melt into the surrounding crowd like the jackals when the lion arrives.

We finished up the Calvados and ordered another jug. The rough Norman pottery that the best Calvados is served in is almost as interesting as the drink itself. The shape and heft of the jug is reminiscent of French working people over the centuries. And of course, the thick walls of the jug keep the Calvados delightfully ice cold.

We really didn’t need to change for dinner since the ambience of the place was informal. We sat and talked and watched the sunset appear until our reservation. Then we moved to an outdoor table and had an outstanding meal. Mel was hilarious throughout. Her talents for acting and mimicry were incredible.

Almost anybody we had been in contact with during the meal ended up being mimicked as soon as they left the table. But that wasn’t the surprise. It turns out that my mother was better than Mel at literally putting on a character and walking around wearing them.

I think that is because Mom and Mel are so open and instinctual and I am too much like my daddy; rational and controlled. I would use the word “Inhibited” but I am aware of how crazy I can get during sex and so that word would never correctly describe me.

Daddy wanted to go back to the boat, which was moored less than 200 yards away. I watched him as he made his way around the harbor on the huge chunks of flagstone paving that comprised the street.

He was also dressed in a fisherman’s sweater and jeans, just not so skintight. The French, some of whom were taller than him, were all getting out of his way as he walked. Daddy is a very sweet man inside. But on the outside, he is as scary tough looking as a Doberman, or some other kind of guard dog.

I knew he wanted to go back to the boat to have his nightly drink and cigar. I saw him board, pour his first helping of Johnny Walker Blue and light his cigar. If you don’t count my mother, who he can never be separated from, my daddy is a solitary person. His life in that Iraqi prison must have been horrible. But my Daddy just kept living his life as best he could until he could get back to my mother.

Then it came to me in a flash of inspiration. His total devotion to her was less a matter of her perfect body and beautiful face, than it was a case of her unconditional love for him. I filed that insight away under the heading of, “What I want out of a true relationship with a man”.

My mother says I am too analytic and perhaps I am. But the concept of two people who fill in all of the missing pieces of the other person’s life was a real breakthrough in my own concept of what love really is.

My daddy treats the gift of my mom’s love as something precious, not as his right, and he reinforces that understanding in every aspect of their relationship. That made up my mind. I am going to enjoy what life holds until I find a man who can cherish the love what I give him.

In the meantime, the sun was down, and we were looking for something to do. My mother is a cat and so she likes the nighttime. Mel and I were looking for men to wind up. That meant we had to find a nightclub. Fortunately, the best one in the area was in plain sight directly diagonal from where we were on the other side of the harbor.

So, we walked the 400 yards to Le Vintage. It was a little, probably former, fisherman’s cottage right on the end of the causeway between the inner and outer harbor. Our boat was prominently obvious on that side of the harbor.

The place itself was a little crowded but it featured an African American guy and a tenor saxophone sound that just reeked of lonely, rainy nights in New York City. We sat and listened for a while but nobody who looks like us is going to escape being asked to dance.

The first guy who came over asked Mel. That made sense because she was the easiest to pick out; her hoodie practically glowed in the dark. All of the tunes so far were sad and melancholy, and Mel plastered herself on the guy like they had been best friends since childhood.

Then two guys who might have been brothers asked mother and me to dance. In a club we probably looked like sisters since my mother is agelessly hot and I might look older than I actually am.

The guy who had asked my mother to dance was trying to get her to put her arms around his neck, rather than dance in the classic style. She finally relented but she was not giving him any romance. The guy who was dancing with me was holding me like he really wanted to dance.

We all swayed back and forth out there, with my mother occasionally retrieving her partner’s hand from her butt and putting it back where it belonged. When the dance ended, she actually thanked him, which given the look on her face was more a case of etiquette than true gratitude.

I marveled as usual at my mother’s ability to attract men. She still has a body that is like catnip to people who like voluptuous women. But it is her total womanly confidence and the spirit, that just radiates off of her, makes her exceptionally visible and attractive to the male population.

We both returned to our table and put out the psychic “No Trespassing” sign that women use to warn away prospective Lotharios. It is all in the body language and facial attitude. We both wanted to watch my little friend in action.

Mel was still dancing with the guy who had originally asked her. Except she was now jamming her boobs into him and playing with his hair while she humped her mound against one of his thighs. I was getting turned on just watching her and I imagine the guy was at full mast.

My mother, who is a master of the sport, was providing expert play-by-play commentary along the lines of, “See how she does that little sigh and moan there. That always convinces them that they are going to get lucky.” I could have done without all of that information because I had seen Mel in action before.

She was clearly not hungry tonight and so when the next song ended, she stepped back and said brightly “Thank you for the dance. That was fun”, as if they had been dancing at a cotillion instead of dry humping in a Honfleur nightclub.

She then walked back to us with a kittenish smile on her face, having added one more male to her growing list of conquests. Her partner was standing there looking like Mel had hit him between the eyes with a mallet.

He got his raging hard-on under control and turned and headed for our table with fire in his eyes. I am the biggest and strongest of the three of us, so I stood up to intercept him.

I said, “Pardon!!! Vous allez?” He said in American English, “Get out of my way!! I am going to get that little cock teasing bitch and we are going to go somewhere and have a little fun!!!”

I said, “No you’re not” and did a thing that I mastered in my extensive work with Israeli Krav Maga. It involves the nerve centers more than it does the muscles and it is hard to tell whether the fiery pain, or the paralysis of the arm, is worse.

He shrieked like a little bitch and almost collapsed into my arms. I turned him around and shoved him toward the men’s room saying, “Go beat off with the other hand. That one will still work”. Nobody noticed anything but his shriek and my shove. My mother was looking at Mel with both amusement and respect.

Mel could not get over the fact that she was in a club in the French city of Honfleur. It was another one of those magic rabbits that Hilley kept producing. The music was classic blues-jazz fusion and the black guy playing the saxophone was a genius.

Mel would probably have been labeled a total dweeb except she was clearly the most stunning looking girl in the East End. So, men were not a problem for her. On the other hand, she would have been another example of a hard-working Cockney girl if it had not been for the accident of her being assigned to a study group with Hilley Larson.

They hit it off right away. Both of them were intelligent and serious students. But both of them also liked to have fun. Mel knew Hilley from the tabloids. She was the girlfriend of a guy who played center-back for the Spurs, which was Mel’s favorite team being a Cockney and all.

Mel had expected Hilley to be the typical girlfriend of a star athlete, constantly bragging about him and all the people she knew. But Hilley never even mentioned that she knew the guy.

Hilley also never seemed to have any time to play during the week. Mel assumed that was because she worked the same kind of long hours that Mel did in her Dad’s fish and chips shop.

Mel and her friend Prudence were regulars at the Ministry of Sound since it was just off the Southbank campus and they would see Hilley there with Gavin. But Hilley never seemed happy.

Mel being the intuitive soul that she was could see that Hilley had some things to talk about and so one day after a particularly long and arduous study session she asked her if she wanted to grab a pint at the Elephant and Castle.

Knowing Hilley now, Mel realized how gauche her choice of pubs was. But at the time it was at the top of her list of cool places.

Mel knew practically nothing about Hilley Larson. She knew that Hilley was considered to be the most beautiful woman on the Southbank campus and that none of Mel’s many boyfriends could even get to first base with her.

So, Mel did what Mel does best. She commiserated and that empathy quickly got Hilley Larson to open up. It seemed that Hilley Larson was very lonely. She had no real friends, at least ones who were her equal. And all of the men in her life were self-centered little boys who she couldn’t relate to.

Since Mel’s interest in men did not involve anything more than how much they would spend on her and how many times they could make her come, the concept of being able to relate to a man was something that Mel had to think about.

Nevertheless, she got Hilley’s point. Hilley just needed another human being to talk to. So, Mel concentrated all of her powers of compassion, warmth and understanding on communicating that Melissa Brown was her friend. Mel asked for nothing and gave Hilley everything and Hilley began to see that somebody in her life who plain-and-simple cared her.

Of course, Melissa had no idea whatsoever that Hilley Larson was rich and soon to graduate from Imperial College with an advanced degree in computer engineering ALONG WITH the Law diploma they both got from Southbank. At least that explained why Hilley never seemed to have any time.

Now Mel was sitting in a club in France. She thought to herself, “It has been an exciting three years”. Then the good-looking guy asked her to dance. Mel liked the feel of the male body and so when she danced with anybody, she tried to enhance the sensation as much as she could.

The music was intoxicating, and she wrapped her arms around the guys neck, jammed her boobs into his chest, laid her head on his shoulder and sighed with contentment. She could feel more than contentment poking her in the stomach which also pleased her.

Mel was not a slut she was a huntress. She liked bagging men in the same way that a fisherman comes home with a basket full of fish or a duck hunter with a string of ducks. It made her feel sexy and desirable. So, it was natural for her to go through her usual routine of tricks.

She moved her body around on his. She sighed and even moaned a little. She rubbed her huge mobile tits on his chest, and she grabbed his leg between her thighs, moving her mound around on him as they danced. The whole thing was making her very wet, but she had no intention of fucking the guy, she just wanted to turn up his temperature. That was reward enough for him.

When the last song ended, she headed back toward their table with a look of satisfaction on her face. But as she sat down, she saw the guy coming angrily toward her. She knew that sometimes happened. Men could get the totally incorrect idea that they were in control.

She could have probably dealt with him herself except Hilley, who could easily pass as a warrior princess with her superb body and her incredible strength, got to him first.

The guy said something about taking Mel someplace where he could have a little fun with her. Hilley tweaked the top of his hand, just above his wrist. The guy shrieked like Hilley had stabbed him and literally sagged into her. Hilley turned him around and shoved him toward the men’s room telling him to go beat himself off with the other hand.

The incident was over with. But the three women decided to go back to the protection of the boat anyhow, just in case the guy had friends. Hilley’s mother was walking beside Mel all the way back. Mel was afraid that Hilley’s mom would be mad at her, or even worse think that she was a slut for winding the guy up like she had.

Instead she said approvingly, “That was a masterpiece.” It was one huntress talking to another. Mel suddenly understood where Hilley got all of her fire and passion. It also explained all of the noise she had heard coming from her parent’s cabin last night.

The call we had been waiting for came very early the next day. Sir Alex was his usual hail-fellow-well-met self, which was a little hard to take at 7:00 in the morning. He said, “GOOD MORNING Miss Larson. Could you and Miss Brown meet me at the Club in an hour?”

I said, “We’re in Honfleur and it will take me that long to line up an air-taxi, but we can be there by noon.”

He said, “That would be excellent, we can do lunch.”

My next call was the air-taxi service. It was expensive but I didn’t want the hassle of driving over to Calais to hop the Eurostar. I dressed in jeans and a sweater and went next door to wake up Mel. She was sleeping wrapped around a pillow like she was cuddling a man.

I shook her lightly and said, “Wake up sleepy head.” She muttered something about it being, too early.

I shook her a little harder and said, “We have to meet Sir Alex.”

Mel shot straight up with a startled look on her face and said, “Where am I?” Then she saw me and smiled sweetly.

I said, “You are in Honfleur, remember? You had your way with one of the tourists last night.”

She smiled again and said “Yesss that was nice.”

I said, “You have to get dressed and packed. I have an air-taxi picking us up in 45 minutes.”

She looked confused. I said, “We are flying back over to London in a helicopter. We need to meet it in 45 minutes. If you are not ready you are going to have to sail back to England with my parents”

THAT threat got her going. Mother and daddy were already out on the covered part of the quarterdeck having their morning coffee. I said, “The call just came in, I am meeting the air-taxi in the parking lot next to La Morelle in 35 minutes.”

They both looked a little disappointed, and proud of me at the same time. I kissed both of them on the cheek and said, “I’ll be back. I never want to get far from either of you.” They both looked fond. The Bell 407 is fast, and it made it from Honfleur to the Battersea helipad in a couple of hours. Mel had never been in a helicopter and so she had her moments getting into and out of it; especially with the rotor wash. Those whirling rotors can be scary.

The cab ride over to the Oxford-Cambridge club was uneventful. We were both in business suits that we had put on before we left the boat. Mine was bespoke and tailored for my figure. Mel’s was off the rack at Harrods but with a body like hers almost anything she wears is eye catching.

It was clear that the geezers at the club noticed Mel’s round, nubile little body and the guy at reception, who knows me by now, even had the faint hint of an emotion flash fleetingly across his face. He said, “Sir Alex is in the coffee room, you may go through.”

Mel kept running into me gawking at the décor. So far today I had added helicopters and snotty men’s clubs to her list of new experiences. Sir Alex rose to meet us. He is always an English gentleman. Mel looked like she wanted to sink into the floor.

I understood that my little friend was totally intimidated by her surroundings and I said, “Sir Alex, meet Melissa Brown.”

She extended her hand and he took it in both of his and said kindly, “Welcome Miss Brown, we have heard excellent things about you.”

Mel, who is beautifully dark complected, turned a brilliant shade of red and actually did a shy little curtsey. I suppressed a grin. The look that came into Sir Alex’s eyes was fond, like he had found a long-lost daughter.

I said, “Sit down dear” and pulled out a chair for her.

She sat looking overwhelmed. I knew I had to kick off the ball, so I said, “I hope you have something interesting for us Sir Alex.”

The waiter arrived at that point and I had to show Mel how to fill out the little slips of paper with her order on it. I had her sign her name on the slip, which is a unique feature of THAT club. Then we got down to business.

Sir Alex leaned back in his chair and looked at me appraisingly. He said, “How much do you know about the Varus massacre?”

Marcus Caelius trudged along with the men of the 18th. He was feeling uneasy. They had left their summer camp on the Weser River four days earlier. The first day was ideal but the next two had brought the sort of cold soaking wetness that only happened in Germany.

He was miserable. And it was so cloudy that it was almost like dusk rather than high noon. He was Primus Pilus of Century I Legio XVIII and thus the Centurion in charge of the affairs of the first and most elite Century of the XVIIIth.

Caelius knew that the legion’s route was supposed to take them south and west to their winter camp at Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. But the legions had immediately turned northwest and headed toward the lands of the Chauci.

When the march had started Legio XVIII was the advance guard of a line of people that extended back behind them for over 20 miles. It comprised two other legions, the 17th and the 19th and all of the associated auxiliaries, archers, slingers and cavalry. It also included nearly 10,000 servants, wives, children and other typical camp followers. Those people, their carts, horses and donkeys, were straggling along among the marching men.

Caelius hated Quinctilius Varus. And this breakdown of discipline was further proof of the man’s total incompetence. Worse, the chill from the rainy and damp climate was beginning to seep underneath his armor and cloak and get into his very bones.

Like most legionaries Caelius was used to difficult weather. But this German rain was diabolical, and the damned forest was even worse. He wanted to get to the warm fires of their winter camp on the Rhine, still 150 miles away. Not slog off in the other direction.

On the fourth day, the column was proceeding on a narrow track through endless woods. Like most of the time when they were marching into new territory, the pioneers were filling in the road as they went along. But progress was slow because the trail that they were on was so uncivilized.

It was getting eerie underneath those interminable trees. So Caelius rode forward to check on the archers and German guides who were up front serving as the eyes and ears of the entire 30,000-man Roman column.

When he got to the very head of the column, he found his archers spread out in battle formation and engaged with an unseen enemy. Arrows were zipping into the trees and javelins were zipping out.

Archers are light infantry, not well armored and so occasionally one of them would make a gargling sound and fall to the ground as a javelin found its mark.

Caelius signaled the Cornicen who always rode with him; and that man started the trumpeting that would bring the men of the forward hastati of Cohors I on the run. Those men would sweep the trees on both sides of the Roman column and encourage the natives in them to be more “hospitable” to Rome’s soldiers in the future.

He could hear the men of that cohort moving slowly and methodically 100 meters to each side of the column. There was the occasional scream and then Caelius heard the sounds of a general engagement off to the left. Caelius rode quickly to the spot and found the 120 men of the first two maniples of Cohors I in a testudo formation.

They were fighting off 300 or so shrieking Germans. He considered that fair odds for Roman legionnaires, and it was obvious that the Germans agreed with that assessment, as they shortly disappeared into the forest as if they had never been there.

Caelius noted with some regret that he had lost three of his archers. He cared nothing about the loss of three Syrians, but he needed all of the forward scouting power he could get, and those men would be hard to replace.