Feb Writing Comp:….Cabin Fever.

The heat in the air beat down like an oppresive blanket enveloped in steam and covered in treacle as the woman stumbled in the road and cursed yet again as she blinked away the sweat that was pouring down her face and turning her expensive dress into a sodden rag.  A parrot screeched and the sound mingled with the strains of a radio playing a fast Rhumba beat somewhere nearby.  She strained again to lift the suitcase from the dusty road to continue and then saw a seedy looking place that looked as if it may contain the type of man she was looking for, a man built for speed rather than comfort and who wouldn’t ask too many questions.

The sign above the door of the building said it all, ‘Rooms for Seafairers’, she staggered through the door which flapped behind her and her senses were assulted with the smell of a cheap flop house, sweaty bodies, faulty plumbing, bad drains and stewed cabbages. One of the sweaty bodies looked from his perch behind the counter and appraised her up and down in a way that in a previous time would have caused him to wake up with a crowd looking down at him and her husband waiting for him to get up, but those times were past, thanks to that bitch Conchita Gonzalles and the very thought of her caused the women to dig her long red nails into her palm as she bunched her fist.

Ignoring the owner she entered the bar through a couple of swing doors and looked around. Apart from a drunk sprawled across a table and a brassy looking woman with a face like a bag of spanners behind the bar, the place was empty. She sat down to wait and snapped her fingers to the barmaid who stirred herself to take her order, slouching over to her in a way that suggested her hips had invented perpetual motion.

‘Gimme something long and cool with lots of ice’ the woman said, the barmaid looked down as a drop of sweat dropped of her broken nose and splashed onto the table, ‘We got no ice, the machine it broke’, said spanner face, ‘OK, just get me a scotch and make it a big one’.

Twenty minutes later, the man she was waiting for sauntered into the bar, only he didn’t know that she had him in her sights.  He was handed a beer and the barmaid said, ‘sorry to hear about Fifi, I liked her a lot,’ and then nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the woman, the man turned and began to drink her in. His gaze was was arrested by a pair that could have served a midget submarine very well and his eyes travelled upwards past a pair of lips full and plump and pouting in his direction, a nose that was proud and haughty and a pair of dark eyes that he could have dived into. She returned his gaze and saw a guy about six foot tall, broad shouldered and holding himself with an assurance that did not just come with his good looks, he looked like he could handle himself as she was about to find out but she had eyes for only one thing, the gold braid on his merchant navy uniform.

As this mutual appreciation society between the two of them started to get interesting there was a clattering bang as the swing doors to the bar were pushed open by two toughs. They were obviously deck hands from some tramp steamer that worked into this port and from the way they both looked at the woman they thought her lineage was the same as their steamer.

The bigger of the two stumbled over to the woman and without a formal introduction began to paw her. She reacted by jumping up and kicking him in the leg, hard. He swore and tried to strike her but found his arm being held in a vice like grip from behind and then grunted in pain as he felt the arm twist against the joint and then wondered why the floor came up to strike him in the face as the male member of the mutual admiration society floored the tough. Almost as If he knew what was coming next, the man wheeled round to see the second seaman running towards him with a broken bottle raised above his head, why is there lways a broken bottle thought the man as he ducked down on one knee, it’s as if these kind of bars keep a supply handy. As the drunk went to strike down with the bottle the man swept a bunched fist into the assailant’s groin, causing him to lose interest in the attack and to begin concentrating on the grenade that had just exploded beyween his legs.

A few minutes later the man and the woman were talking together as the hotel keeper bounced the two bums into the street before reviving them with a few buckets of water to see them stagger of to their next big adventure before the local police got their hands on them.

Ther woman had already made her mind up and started to tell her story to the man, who listened with growing interest. She told him that her pig of a husband had brought her to this part of the country for a reunion with the man he called, ‘The Colonel,’ his old boss from his days when he was a dashing young officer in the Army and she had first met him. The Colonel had fallen on hard times and had moved to this area to live with his daughter who was married to a man who worked in the docks. But every year without fail, her Husband and a few of his comrades would visit the Colonel and talk of the times when they chased and killed bandits in the jungle. At first she had enjoyed being the centre of attention but then younger women began to attend and she was toppled from the podium by the woman who had taken her Husband from her the night before, Conchite Gonzalles. She had caught them in bed together when she returned sooner than expected from a shopping trip and in the ensuing showdown her husband had thrown her out of the hotel.

She had hit the bottle hard in the bar and one of her Husbands old cronies had taken her back to his hotel with the inevitable results.  Somehow her husband had found out and felt his honour and been tarnished so went looking for her and her lover of the night before. He remembered what her Husband was like from the old days in the Jungle and skipped town by the first available means leaving her to face the rage of her Husband alone.

‘So you need me to spirit you away from this place on my ship, is that the idea?’ the man asked. She nodded and reached for her handbag, ‘I have money, jewels, just get me away from here, I’ll pay you well’.
‘Oh yes, you’ll pay me alright but not with cash or trinkets’ said the man. He could not have spoken plainer if he had spelled it out with illustrated slides.
‘One thing.’ said the Woman, ‘before we strike a deal, who is Fifi, I heard the barmaid say something about she was sorry,’ A look of sadness flitted briefly across the man’s face, ‘Fifi was my pet Chihuahua, she died killing a Great Dane in a fight,’
The Woman did a double take, ‘How the hell did a tiny dog like that kill a Great Dane?’ ‘She choked it,’ said the man wiping away a tear.

The couple then got down to brass tacks as they negotiated what it would cost her to be hidden on board and taken somewhere else. Once again he spurned all offers of cash or jewellery until they finally agreed on a price, a price she was more than willimg to pay. She agreed that they would make love in his cabin every time the ship docked and later that night he smuggled her onboard and into his sparsly appointed cabin.

They made love that night while the ship was still and she looked foreward to the voyage as he was a skilled lover and had stamina which made her gasp. He impressed upon her that she must remain in his cabin at all times and with the shutters down on the porthole and must not talk or be seen by any other member of the crew. She obeyed to the letter but the price she had agreed to pay soon became a burden that drained her of energy and spirit but the thought of the jealousy of her husband kept her in place and he came to her every time the ship docked. After three weeks her mind was in a whirl, the minutes and hours seemed to blend into one giant lovefest and although not disagreable to her, she did find it becoming a bit of a bore, I mean, how many ways do I love thee, she thought. After a further two weeks she decided to find out when she would be released from her bargain and cracked open the porthole to see if she could gain any information on her situation and after hearing two deck hands talking, the penny dropped……..

She was on the Woolwich Ferry!

Author: oldmovieguy

Another Boomer who wishes he had the stamina of youth to go with the cash of age. Fond of pricking the hot air balloons of pomposity and cutting little dictaors down to size. View all posts by oldmovieguy