by Ellis Major
“Sort of thank you, again, and I’ll see you soon,” she whispered, and was off so quickly he could but call ‘safe journey’ in the direction of that wonderful cascade of loose blonde curls.
“Bye, Lance,” he heard her call, followed by some murmured response or other from the Captain.
Lance entered the room, quizzical expression on his face.
Charlie had sat down - he always found it advisable to do so when his balance was disturbed.
“Funny old world isn’t it,” he remarked.
“All ok then?”
“I suppose it was, Lance yes. I still feel guilty but she has decided for sure.”
“She’ll make a lot of money.”
“That’s all she wants, then out.”
“What did she think she was doing, living like that, all to keep her brother at public school?”
“I suppose she didn’t want them both to suffer.”
“Gutsy, Charlie, I have to say, and she doesn’t despise you any more by the look of it.”
“She’s quite a girl alright and, well, you saw her today. Yeah, I guess I’m not public enemy number one any longer, but even so....”
“I know what you mean, Charlie. But she seemed fine.” Lance half smiled. “She’s something else, isn’t she? Knocks your other little chum into a cocked hat on every front. She may not be the kind of present I’d want but I can admire the packaging and the contents. Mark my words, my lad, if you behave yourself…”
Charlie snorted and shook his head. “Piss off Lance. I’m the man who made her a whore. What a great basis for taking her out to dinner. And besides, from something she said, I’ll never be Mr Right. He’s out there somewhere and he’ll never need to know, I think, about all this when she finds him.”
PART 4 - How to go about the Changing of Lives
Chapter 1 - Works Outing (Year 2 – January)
“Charlie luv,” Babs called out. “Be a darlin’ an’ slap some more lotion on me arse. If it gets burned I’ll ‘ave to stand up all fru bleedin’ dinner.”
“Me too,” came a little chorus.
Charlie laid down the sheet music he was studying, tipped his Panama back slightly and cast his eyes over the row of rumps assembled on the deck before him, some more daringly exposed than others. Babs and Virginia were wearing thongs and precious little else, whereas Rowena and Evie had stuck with bikinis of a practical and robust construction – more appropriate to their requirements and modesty.
“Ladies, your wish is my command,” Charlie cried, stirring himself from his lounger and picking up the suntan lotion. He started with Babs and then worked his way along the row.
“Yer a darlin’, Charlie,” Babs muttered. “Ta, luv.”
Rowena simply sighed. “That’s nice.” She was half asleep in the warm afternoon sun.
Virginia Bond complimented Charlie on his strong pianist’s fingers. “Just a bit higher up,” she whispered as he anointed her thighs. “Then you can play me a solo; they’ll all be asleep in a minute sweetheart.”
“Naughty, naughty,” Charlie smiled, removing his hand. “Evie’s not asleep. She’s as avid as you for my ministrations.”
Eve Endicott-Jones merely growled lazily at him when he came to her. Perhaps Charlie shouldn’t have started to wonder out loud whether there’d be enough lotion left to cover her plentiful frame.
“But Evie dear, you are such a big lass,” he told her, working his way down from her broad shoulders.
“It’s what the punters seem to like,” she rumbled, not without a certain lazy complacency.
“They do indeed, especially Mr R senior,” Charlie agreed. “I’m wondering why you didn’t charge one of them to come along to do this sort of thing for you. You could beat him with that riding crop of yours if he missed a bit.”
“I couldn’t bring work with me,” Eve told him lazily. “This is a holiday - well for most of us, eh Virginia, eh Babs?”
“That deckhand is such a lovely boy,” Virginia sighed languidly. “And so considerate of my every whim.”
Charlie laughed. “El Capitano isn’t exactly pleased with you, Ginny. He’s had to put the poor fellow on light duties. He can barely pull on a rope after you’ve given him full throttle all night.”
“We were promised the crew are here to satisfy our every need,” Virginia reminded him with a contented laugh.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Charlie sniggered. “Just as well Babs has Roddy to satisfy herself or we’d need an extra couple of able seamen.”
“I’m just ‘avin’ a bit of fun, keeping my eye in, an’ makin’ sure the boy doan pester the rest o’ the girls.” Babs called out. “’e’s ‘ardly wot I’d bleedin’ choose, the tosser, but least ‘e does wot ‘e’s told an’ I’ve bin so busy running the club that I ‘adn’t ‘ad a shag for abaht a munf.”
“Oh you poor thing,” Virginia sympathised. “I can’t imagine it!”
Charlie finished Eve’s splendid muscular calves and wiped the surplus lotion on a small towel he’d thought to bring with him. “That’s you all done,” he cried cheerfully. “I’d better go indoors and do my bit of bookmaking with Millie. When will you lot be decent again so I can let the crew out?”
The crew had been banished to their quarters whilst some of the assembled lovelies were working on their ‘all over’ tans – or as all over as they were prepared to go with Charlie sitting nearby.
“Abaht ‘arf an hour,” Babs told him.
“Half an hour it is. I’ll give you a shout.” Charlie made his cautious way along the narrow slice of teak that led away from the gleaming deck up at the sharp end.
Millicent Minx was seated in the shade, her glorious red hair drawn back severely from her face.
She’d been studying the racing pages of the previous day’s paper, delivered at vast expense by air. She glanced up as she heard Charlie approach.
“Charlie,” she called. “I don’t believe it. You’ve got the luck of the devil!”
“Have I Milly?” he said, removing his hat and dropping it on the table. “It was ever thus with bookies. You should accept it’s a mug’s game and get treatment.”
“One day,” she sighed. “I’ve cutting back on the size of the stakes but I’m having worse luck than usual with you. I had two winners but the odds you quoted were so short I’m down again.” She smiled ruefully and handed him the paper. “Here you are then, do you worst. I’ll have my revenge one day.”
“I’m sure you will. Now, let me read through it before I quote the odds.” Charlie studied the paper as Millicent called out her selections and the bets she wanted on each. He called out the odds he was prepared to offer which Millicent noted down in her little red book. Once done she placed it in her handbag. Tomorrow’s paper would supply the results and another batch of races - further opportunity for her to fritter away her hard-earned cash – not that Charlie intended to enforce the debt. He was just passing the time and having a bit of fun with her.
His betting duty done, Charlie settled back in his chair and checked his linen suit for spots or specks. “Still not going to sunbathe then?” he enquired.
She shook her head. “If you put me in the sun I’d be pink and peeling inside five minutes,” she told him. “The sun just doesn’t agree with redheads.”
“No I suppose it doesn’t,” Charlie sympathised.
“But what about you, Charlie?” Millie teased. “Not exposing the manly Tiptree physique to the rays?”
“No, Millie, with all this beauty around it would be laughable if I bared my knock knees and hollow chest,” Charlie told her firmly. “And anyway, what with Roddy and Geoff disporting their hairy torsos in those skimpy little trunks of theirs, there are more than enough male bodies on display without me showing my geeky little limbs.”
“Millie smiled. “So where are they, the gruesome twosome?”
Charlie waved a languid hand in the general direction of the stern. “They took the rubbery dinghy off to some reef over there somewhe
re. They were talking about doing a bit of snorkelling, again!”
“Well I hope they aren’t going to try and drop another sea urchin down Rowena’s front,” Millicent told him.
“Stupid trick,” he agreed. “Especially when they know how she gets hot under the collar over men’s interest in her upper regions – even now. One too many pina-coladas I fear. All the sugar made them hyperactive probably. They should stick to real drinks, not alcopops.”
She nodded. “And real breakfast marmalade I suppose. I hear poor old Lance hit a bit of bad luck. When is he supposed to get back?”
Charlie sighed. “Bad news the chopper blowing a fuse like that. El Capitano said it should be tomorrow morning. I just hope he’s in time for breakfast. Still,” he brightened a little. “At least he said he has the marmalade. You’re right Millie. Breakfast isn’t breakfast without the marmalade.”
Millicent smiled again. “Very true Charlie. I couldn’t bear to see you suffer. The look of horror on your face this morning when you found out you’d finished the jar was a sight. I almost wept for you.”
“I am prepared to rough it a bit for the sake of a break, but there are limits,” he told her.
~~~
Notwithstanding the significant setback posed by a marmalade shortage, the Works Outing of the Mayfair Academy of Modern Morals was proving to be a general success.
The Academy had continued to prosper. Rowena had become one of the newly entitled ‘top five’. This resulted in a slight re-jigging of the arrangements on the first floor but Babs and her sister sorted this out with a will. Rowena could hardly be said to be enjoying the work although she was reconciled to it. The only gratifying thing was the kind of money she was making – the amount men were willing to pay staggered her. To Rowena’s relief her circumstances had altered beyond all recognition in a very short space of time. Her initial embarrassment had faded and she was now as at ease as she was ever going to be with the idea of the investors and the other girls knowing her identity.
Babs had sensibly decided that her best whores should have regular breaks to prevent them becoming jaded. Roddy, Geoff and Charlie had been persuaded to accompany them, not a suggestion that Babs had needed to repeat. Slick Willy had pleaded pressure of work – he actually was gainfully employed, of course – but had promised to keep an eye on things whilst they were away for a couple of weeks. Lance had been persuaded to become their mobile security officer. Girl number five, Lana, had opted out of the cruise, preferring to take her entire family to a classy villa in Torremolinos-on-sea.
A private jet had whisked the party out of the January gloom in London and here they were, bobbing around on a chartered yacht in the Red Sea, pottering down the west coast.
Charlie had been marginally less enthusiastic than the others. He was a creature who liked his familiar haunts and creature comforts, but Lance had done the trick by suggesting he should buy an electric keyboard with all kinds of clever little knobs on it.
Although Charlie enjoyed experimenting with this electronic marvel, he would still have preferred a real piano, at least initially. Having seen the boat he had, at last, appreciated that funds wouldn’t quite run to one big enough to accommodate an instrument of a quality he might approve, and was now becoming quite a convert to modernity. A chartered helicopter was also available to take him ashore to potter about with his golf clubs if the sea and the reefs got a bit dull for him - and it wasn’t collecting the daily paper. The boat they’d selected was also extremely fast, so he was able to liven things up by having the Captain blast around when the fancy took him - as long as it didn’t disrupt the ladies in their sunbathing.
Charlie chatted away to Millie for a while until he concluded that half an hour had passed.
“I’d better go and warn the girls before I go downstairs,” he told her. “I didn’t see a watch amongst the lot of them.”
“It would hardly be an all over tan then, would it,” Millie told him.
“’Suppose not. I dread to think what comes off the moment I leave them alone. I’ll see you in a minute.”
The ladies were grateful to Charlie for his shouted five minute warning and a flurry of dressing began.
As they drifted back onto the rear deck, Charlie made his way to the crew’s quarters to let them know they could have their ship back.
By the time he returned the ladies were gazing into the distance, watching as the rubber dinghy puttered back towards the mother ship, bearing Roddy and Geoff.
With the prescience of someone who has learned from experience Charlie groaned. “I suppose they’ll be showing us more pictures of rocks and fish,” he complained, to a chorus of opprobrium.
“Have some sympathy,” he told them severely. “Rocks and fish don’t ring everyone’s bells.”
“Charlie, how about I cheer you up and fetch a martini,” Rowena told him, running her hand through her blonde curls. “The sun must be over the yard arm by now and it’ll help you drown your sorrows over the marmalade.”
Charlie brightened. “Don’t worry, Rowena. I’ll go in a minute whilst you’re watching the fish. I wouldn’t want you to miss out.”
“Bleedin’ marmalade,” Babs muttered. “An’ Lance offers to go and fetch some. I’d have told yew ter make do wiv bleedin’ jam.”
“I do feel bad about it, now the chopper’s busted,” Charlie agreed. “But he did volunteer. You know these military chaps sometimes like to prove how much initiative they’ve got.”
“He was probably bored, fancied an expedition,” said Rowena, thoughtfully, with a sidelong glance at Charlie.
Charlie smiled to himself. He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Lance was restive. Though Lance was fine in general, now, he often found it hard to sit down for long unless there was something very specific to occupy his attention. Charlie had made rather a fuss over the marmalade because he half expected Lance to do exactly what happened, volunteer to fetch some more. It gave him a chance to stretch his legs a bit.
Babs, however, remained in the mood to continue her good natured bollocking. “Lance is spoiling you rotten,” she told Charlie. “Can’t live without marmalade indeed! God knows where ‘e ‘ad ter go ter find it. Cairo prob’ly!”
Charlie assumed a hurt expression and, by way of avoiding further criticism, retreated in search of the steward and that martini.
It was with his second in hand, and therefore with a certain gracious benevolence, that he admired the underwater footage Roddy and Geoff had secured. He even commented politely on the variety and colour of the fish.
He also sat contentedly with Babs as the afternoon drew on and the more energetic members of the party cavorted in the azure sea with jet skis, banana boats and the like.
“Really is a bit rough, that sort of thing,” he remarked, as the banana boat tipped over for the umpteenth time, depositing everyone riding on it into the sea, to the accompaniment of assorted screams, shouts and laughter.
“Never mind Charlie,” Babs consoled him. “When Lance gets back tomorrow, yer can take your clubs onshore and practice yer bunker shots.”
“There’s a thought,” Charlie told her. “More bunker shots. The sand wedge will be the one club I’ve finally mastered by the end of this holiday. Don’t suppose there’s a links on our itinerary at all, is there?”
“Not fer the next few days,” she confirmed. “Bit bloomin’ ‘ot fer golf anyway ain’t it.
Come the morning, golf was the last thing on Charlie’s mind, or anyone else’s for that matter.
Chapter 2 – Unexpected Guests (Year 2 – January)
Charlie started to surface when the light in his cabin came on - and woke up completely when his bed was kicked with untoward violence.
“What the …” he mumbled, his befuddled state leading him to believe for a few seconds that Lance might have returned early with his marmalade and was overly keen to communicate his triumph. The sight of a ruffian standing at the end of the bed soon drove such inane thoughts
from his mind, especially as the ruffian was pointing a large gun straight at him. Lance had never done anything like that, or dressed so oddly for that matter. Lance had never been seen in loose robes and, even in the early days hung-over or not, he’d never wrapped his head in a long rag.
“Morning,” Charlie greeted his visitor politely. “Am I late for something; crossing the Equator perhaps?”
The only response he got was a grunt and a brusque nod. This drew Charlie’s attention to a piece of paper which had been placed on the small shelf beside the bed.
Charlie picked it up and read obediently. The words were hand-written, but very neat.
“Please do not panic, you are being kidnapped,” he began. “Please do not resist. Whilst you are valuable to us alive, we will not hesitate to visit pain upon you if you attempt to thwart us.”
He glanced up at his guest. He began to make a comment about the writing style before it occurred to him that his personal thug probably didn’t speak English - hence the note.
“Please pack a small bag with some clothes and whatever else you may regard as necessary to assist you in whiling away what may be many months of captivity during the period your ransom is agreed and paid. May I suggest some books, such as War and Peace, if available? Please pack as expeditiously as possible since time is limited and my staff may become impatient, and therefore aggressive, if you do not comply with these instructions with alacrity. A lack of haste may also result in your spending months in captivity with only your night attire to wear.”
“Hmm,” Charlie murmured, pulling back the covers. “Better get my skates on.”
Charlie made a creditably rapid effort of packing the clothes he might need, together with a few essentials from the bathroom. He quickly donned his safari suit – he recalled Lance saying, with only the faintest of grins, something about how practical it was – grabbed his Panama and (not being a great one for books) his keyboard.
