Sally Wentworth - The Sea Master

by Sally Wentworth

  The sun the next morning felt at least ten degrees hotter than the day before and she hardly needed Guy to tell her that they had entered the tropics. She had greeted him warily at breakfast, but he seemed to have the ability to put things completely behind him and his manner was quite normal. After she'd done all the jobs down below, Guy set her to cleaning the main cabin's windows, but the sun was so hot that she soon felt sticky and uncomfortable, her tee-shirt wet with perspiration. Michelle shaded her eyes against the glare and wished heartily for a swimsuit of some kind. Even Guy succumbed to the heat and went down below, to reappear after a few minutes wearing only a pair of denim shorts. She looked at him enviously as he went by and he grinned, guessing her thoughts.

  'Never mind, you'll be able to buy yourself some clothes when you get to Bermuda.'

  'That'll be great. The things I'm wearing are almost falling apart from being washed so often.'

  Which was literally true; for a while Michelle had contemplated using her underwear as a bikini, but the delicate lace was starting to fray and tear away from the silk, and they were very thin, transparent almost. No, she had a feeling it would be better not to try it, she would just have to sweat it out in the tee-shirt. At midday she went below to fix a snack lunch and was glad to be in the shade for a while. Afterwards she washed up the dishes and then looked for a clean tea-towel. There were several brand new ones in a drawer, some plain red, some red and white stripes. Seeing them gave her an idea, so, after she'd finished" drying up, she took the pair of scissors, needle and white cotton from Guy's very basic sewing kit and began to fashion herself a bikini. It took her a couple of hours and was nowhere near as

  neat as it would have been sewn on a machine, but Michelle was pleased with the finished result. The bottom half she'd made from a plain red towel and had been comparatively simple, just shaped and tying in knots at the sides, but the top half, for which she'd used the striped material, had been more difficult, but she'd used strips of the material as strings and was confident it would cover her adequately without falling down.

  Taking off the hated tee-shirt, she put on the bikini and sauntered nonchalantly out on to the deck. Guy, as usual, was up on the fly-bridge and had his back towards her as she came up. He was standing at the wheel and his legs, long and muscular, were planted apart on the deck to counteract the movement of the boat. His legs were as tanned as his chest and he didn't seem to suffer any discomfort from the heat at all. He glanced round as she came up to him and his eyes stayed on her for a second revealing surprise and something else she didn't have time to fathom, but then it was gone as he looked at her face.

  'I thought you might like a cold beer,' Michelle offered, holding out the can she'd brought up for him.

  'Thanks. Take the Wheel for a moment while I drink it, will you?'

  Surprised that he was willing to let her take charge of his precious boat for even a minute, Michelle answered rather nervously, "But I don't know how.'

  'It's quite simple. Look, you just watch the compass here and turn the wheel so that the engines counteract the movement of the tide and current, and we stay on the same heading as we are now. Come and try,' he encouraged her.

  Obediently Michelle moved to stand beside him and gingerly took the wheel in her hands, keeping her eyes fixedly on the compass, afraid the needle might move even a degree off the joint.

  'That's it. Don't turn it too much little and often is the rule.'

  He stood watching her, sipping from the can of beer, and seemed quite unaware of her bikini. Michelle concentrated hard on her task, but gradually, as she relaxed her rigid grip on the wheel, she began to feel the" life of the boat running through her fingers; the purring vibration of the engines far down in the hold below, the slight jar whenever they smashed through a wave, the pull of the tide and the pressure of the breeze. A sudden surge of excitement and power filled her as she felt the boat answer willingly to the commands she gave it. It was so big, and yet she could handle it. The feeling reminded her vividly of the time when she'd passed her driving test and had driven a car alone for the very first time. The same immensely heady sensation of power and achievement had filled her then, as if she had been handed a bright, shining sword with which she became invincible.

  Turning a glowing, laughing face to Guy, she exclaimed enthusiastically, 'This is great! I had no idea it was so easy.'

  He grinned. 'Got the bug already, have you? Maybe I'll make a sailor out of you yet—that if you ever get to know port from starboard,' he added drily.

  'Teach me,' Michelle commanded, for once immune to his irony.

  Guy looked at her contemplatively, then shrugged. 'Okay. Why not? We'll start from the bow and work back to the stern.'

  Patiently he went over the nautical terms with her, Michelle repeating them after him. Some were simple and made sense, but other things had such strange names that she couldn't think how on earth they'd come by them in the first place, but she had a quick, retentive memory and, with the help of mnemonics, got most of the names right when he tested her.

  'Very good,' Guy complimented her, then smiled thinly as she grinned with pleasure 'Don't let it go to your head; we still haven't touched on the engine and steering components, the navigating equipment or the radio yet.'

  Michelle laughed. 'They all sound too technical, not about actually sailing at all.'

  'Nevertheless no seagoing vessel is without them now, and the more aids you have on a boat the better chance you have of selling.' He had been leaning against the rail, but now he came over to her. 'I'd better take over; your shoulders are starting to colour.' He frowned in thought. 'I'm not sure whether there's any sun-tan oil on board. Have a look in my cabin, but if you can't find any you'll have to use olive oil from the galley.'

  'But I'll smell awful,' Michelle objected.

  'Better that than getting burnt. And don't stay out in the sun too long the first time. Okay?'

  Michelle came to attention and gave him a mock salute. 'Aye, aye, captain.'

  He looked at her quickly, then laughed as he turned back to look out to sea again. 'I suppose I asked for that.' Michelle moved to walk away, but stopped as he added 'By the way, I like the bikini.'

  Stepping back so that she could see his face, she said provocatively, 'So you noticed?'

  For a moment she didn't think he would answer, but then his head slowly came round until their eyes met and held. 'Yes, I noticed.'

  'Guy…'

  She wasn't sure what she had been going to say, but already he'd turned away. His tone curt and final, he said, 'Go on, go and put on some oil.'

  Reluctantly Michelle obeyed him, but forgot the incident for a while as she searched for and found some oil and carried her sleeping bag up to the main deck to lie on while she sunbathed. There was very little breeze where she was lying down because the guardrail was fitted with glass-fiber windshields— what had Guy called them? Dodgers. Yes, that was it—and she could feel the heat burning into her newly exposed skin. Better to do as Guy said and not spend too long-out here. She couldn't see him from where she was lying; he was hidden by the superstructure of the main saloon, but she could picture him up there on the bridge, braced against the movement of the sea.

  The fact that he had noticed her bikini sent a finger of excitement running through her. And the look he had given her had proved that he was still aware of her sexually, even though he now wasn't prepared to do anything about it. She didn't know much about such things, but she supposed he was a very virile man. Her fiance Peter and previous boyfriends had seemed to think of little else but sex, and she couldn't see that older men would be that much different, just better able to control their sex drive. Which was lucky for her. She could quite see that being alone with a girl for nearly two weeks could be extremely frustrating for a man. Or vice versa, for that matter.

  She turned over and shut her eyes against the glare of the sun. Was that what this continual restlessness she felt was—frustration? Did her body want wha
t her heart and mind forbade? She was certainly old enough, but strangely, apart from a natural curiosity she had never felt any strong desire to go farther than kissing and petting, no violent sexual need to give her body completely. Not that she even wanted that now, not really. But she did wonder what it would be like to go to bed with Guy, to be taken by him. He was very experienced, even she could tell that, and somehow she had an idea that he could .make a night spent with him a devastatingly unforgettable experience. And would he then, in those circumstances, unleash his emotions, or would it be just sex? Michelle shivered suddenly, despite the heat; somehow she knew that to go to bed with Guy, knowing that he felt nothing but concupiscence, would be as mentally humiliating an experience as it would be physically satisfying.

  Her thoughts went back to their conversation, or argument rather, the previous night when they had been discussing her parents' divorce. He had been vehemently, in favour of their splitting up when he heard how badly they had argued. Did that, Michelle wondered, mean that he himself had been married and divorced? He might even be married now for all she knew, although he didn't wear a ring and had never mentioned a wife, and somehow she had never thought of him as being married. But she supposed he could have been in the past, might even have had children. And if the marriage had worked out badly that could account for his complete control of his emotions, his refusal to betray feelings that could still be raw and bleeding from past wounds, perhaps recent wounds even.

  'Mitch.'

  Guy's voice above her broke starkly into her thoughts and she jumped guiltily. 'Yes, what is it?'

  'You've been out there long enough. Either go and put a shirt on or go below.'

  Michelle did as she was told, wondering again if the fact that he treated her like a child meant that he was a father himself.

  That night she came right out and asked him. Once the idea had got into her mind she couldn't get rid of it, and she just had to know. They were sitting out on the deck, leaning against the wall of the main saloon. The moon was very bright, a perfect silver sphere against the black velvet texture of the night. Star clusters that she didn't recognise hung in the sky and the waves were capped by glowing phosphorescence as they ran and broke across the surface of the dark, empty sea. They sat for some time in a companionable silence, Guy with a rod in his hands but not really worried about catching anything, a tumbler of whisky at his side, while Michelle sipped a cocktail he'd mixed for her which was longer and less potent.

  Unable to contain her .curiosity any longer, she asked boldly, 'Guy, are you married?'

  She saw him stiffen before he said coldly, "That's a very personal question.'

  'Don't try and put me down. It's no more personal than some of those you asked me the other night,' she retorted.

  He turned to look at her, but some quirk of the moonlight left his eyes in shadow and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. Abruptly he said, 'No, I'm not married. I never have been.'

  'Oh.' She didn't know how to go on, how to ask him what she wanted to know, but luckily he gave her an opening.

  'Why wait till now to ask? That's usually the first thing a woman establishes about a man.'

  'I only just now began to wonder.'

  'To wonder what?'

  'To wonder why you're like you are,' she replied inadequately.

  'So you're starting to think of someone other than yourself for a change. Maybe you are starting to grow up after all.'

  Michelle was about to answer indignantly, but suddenly saw that he was trying to sidetrack her. Determinedly she pursued, 'I wondered why you don't like women very much.'

  He laughed mockingly. 'On the contrary, I like women a great deal. You should know that,' he added with deliberate emphasis.

  Glad of the darkness to hide the sudden flush that coloured her cheeks, Michelle went on doggedly, 'You may enjoy going to bed with women, but you don't like them, not as people. You just treat them as a—as a convenient means of satisfying your needs.'

  'Hark at the nineteen-year-old psychiatrist,' he remarked with cold, insulting sarcasm. 'Really, Mitch, you're becoming quite eloquent!'

  Michelle bit her lip, -unable to speak, feeling suddenly sick and miserable inside and wishing she'd never started this whole thing, wanting to just crawl away and shut herself in her cabin.

  But to her astonishment and relief, he went on harshly, 'As you've never seen me with another woman you must mean that I don't like you and treat you only as a means to an end. How can you possibly judge that the way I treat you is the way I treat all women?'

  Michelle shrugged. 'I just know, that's all. Call it instinct, if you like?'

  'Oh, instinct.' The two words contained total masculine derision.

  'Well, don't you?'

  He was silent for a long time, then, harshly, 'I admit I have no cause to fed very favourable towards your sex. I was very much in love with a woman once and I wanted to marry her.'

  Tentatively Michelle asked, 'What—what happened?'

  'Oh, the usual thing. She met someone who could give her far more than I could and went away with him a month before the wedding.' He laughed with bitter irony. 'She even took the wedding presents with her!'

  Michelle tried to keep her voice light. 'I believe the stock answer to that is that you were lucky to be rid of her before it was too late.'

  He stood up abruptly, tossing the rod on to the deck. 'Which just shows how little you know. But you were right about one thing; I do have very little regard for your sex, and no woman I've met since has made me change that opinion,' he added savagely. Then he turned and strode down the deck to the companionway and disappeared below.

  Michelle watched him go, then got up to put the rod away, a strange feeling of intense hatred in her heart for the woman who had hurt him so badly, but all mixed up with envy and jealousy too, because the love he'd given her must have been very great for the hurt and bitterness to have lasted for so long.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next few days were uneventful, Michelle wary of antagonising Guy again and making sure to keep to safe, uncontroversial subjects. He let her take the wheel again and showed her how some of the instruments worked, but most of the time she spent on deck sunbathing or, when that got too much, down below in the welcome air-conditioned coolness of the galley. She began to experiment with various recipes and found that she quite enjoyed cooking after all, now that she had a free hand and plenty of time to work in.

  Guy, pleased with the way the boat was performing, had told her that they should reach Bermuda in about forty-eight hours, but late that evening when he was making his routine radio call to England, the note of-the engines altered, became irregular, and then ground to a halt. Michelle had been cleaning up in the galley and had to get quickly out of the way as Guy came rushing through to throw open a hatch in the floor of the corridor and disappear down it.

  'What is it? What's happened?' Michelle came to stand at the edge of the hatch and peer down.

  'The engines have seized.' Guy's voice came up to her from the bottom of a stainless steel ladder as he began to inspect the engines. 'Go to my cabin and bring me an overall, would you?'

  She did so and climbed down the ladder to give it to him, looking round her interestedly while he put it on. The area was far different from what she had expected; in films engine rooms were always dark, greasy areas of noise and heat, but that on the Ethos was almost clinically clean with all the walls and most of the engine parts, too, painted white. The ceiling was high enough for Michelle to stand upright, but Guy was too tall, he had to stoop all the time, but the place was well lit and he had no difficulty in examining the engines.

  'What do you think it is?'

  ''Don't know yet.' He was looking at a clear-plastic covered sort of window and then moved on to another one nearer the engines. 'Ah, I thought so.' He gave an exclamation of satisfaction. The filter leading to the engine cooling intake is blocked.'

  'Can you clear it?'

  'Yes, qu
ite easily. But it caused the engines to overheat, so I'll have to check that it didn't do any damage.'

  He began to whistle rather tunelessly as he worked and Michelle perched on a rung of the ladder, watching him and marvelling at the adroitness of his hands and the skill which could make sense of all the bits of the engines which had taken him unerringly to the cause of the trouble, and which were a complete mystery to her.

  'Hmm, that's unfortunate. The heat's buckled part of the exhaust manifold. I'll have to replace it with a new one.'

  'Really?' Michelle said politely. 'Will it take long?'

  He looked up at her and grinned, knowing that she hadn't understood a word. 'About an hour or so, I should think.'

  Soon the heat built up in the small area and Guy left a dark streak of oil across his forehead as he-wiped away the drops of perspiration that were threatening to run into his eyes. After about half an hour Michelle, without being asked, climbed back up the ladder and got him a can of cold beer from the fridge in the galley.

  'Thanks.' There were pieces of engine lying round his feet as Guy took the beer from her, straightened up to drink it and banged his head on the ceiling. She laughed at him as he swore ruefully, but then both of them froze into stunned silence as the piercing note of the alarm system sounded throughout the boat.

  Guy recovered first, dropping the can of beer and springing to the other side of the engine room. 'Get up to the wheelhouse!' he shouted at her sharply. 'Turn on all the other lights and those in the main saloon as you go, and switch the emergency horn on and leave it on. Then get a life vest from the wheel-house and put it on, and put as much food and drink in the dinghy as you have time for. Stay by the dinghy with a sharp knife and if whatever's out there gets close, get in the dinghy and cut it free.'