ALL AT SEA by Britease
There's no good way to discover that your wife has had sex with another man, but believe me, some are worse than others. But surely, the way that I found out must be the very worst of all.
It was a day like so many others that had preceded it, and the weather for that matter, from what I remember of it, was nothing exceptional. What was abnormal was that when I got home that evening, my wife of six years wasn't there. Robyn worked part time in an insurance office for some guy called Tom Blowers, and had been there for six months or so, and would normally be home by that time. I'd been away on business for a few days and had been looking forward to being welcomed back into my lovely young wife's arms. Her not being there didn't especially worry me, but unfortunately my lack of concern was about to be blown out of the water.
An hour later and I was beginning to get concerned, when the front door bell rang. I jumped up and made for the door, speculating whether maybe Robyn had lost her key, but opening the door I was surprised to find two police officers standing there.
"Mr. John Fielding?" He asked calmly.
"That's me," I answered, wondering what they could want.
"Your wife is Robyn Fielding?"
"That's correct," I confirmed, my insides turning to lead as I imagined what bad news that question could mean.
It did!
Much worse than I could ever have expected.
"I'm very sorry Sir, but we have some bad news for you."
The rest was a blur, and you'll have to excuse me if I won't, or rather can't repeat it word for word. The bad news of course was that my Robyn, my beautiful young wife, was no longer with us. She wasn't home with my dinner ready on the table for the simple reason that some poor unfortunate soul had been dragging her lifeless body out of the river. She wouldn't be there with my dinner ready the next day or the day after that.
I cried a lot over that next few days. I cried and called out to the God that I'd never believed in to demand how he could be so cruel. I opened her drawers and cupboards and stared for hours at her clothes and underwear, unable to accept that I would never again see any of them on my lovely wife any more.
People were good, or tried to be, but how could they console the inconsolable? I hardly knew her parents who lived abroad, but even so, ringing them with the news was simply awful.
None of them could bring my Robyn back?
Just when I thought I had reached the bottom of the pit, things got worse. They had no idea how Robyn could have ended up in the river on a perfectly normal spring day, or even why she should have been down in that part of the town. A post-mortem was duly carried out, and to my shock it was discovered that Robyn had taken a whole load of tablets, probably sleeping tablets, shortly before entering the water.
The term suicide was being bandied about, but at that stage, not directly to me. The police came to see me and asked, maybe told me, that when I felt ready they would need to speak to me down at the station. I didn't want to, not wishing to accept that Robyn would do such a thing, or that she would have any reason for doing so. God, I hadn't honestly accepted yet that she wouldn't be walking in the door any minute, with that enticing little giggle that I'd fell in love with so quickly.
It was soon after I'd seen those policemen out, that for the first time since that awful night I opened my lap top to reluctantly check up on my e mails, and it was then that I found it.
I found the object that sent my life swirling even further down the pan of life, a single sheet of paper. The handwriting on it was Robyn's that I knew so well, the blotches smudging her words, so obviously her tears dropping onto the paper as she wrote them.
My darling, lovely husband,
By the time you read this I will be gone. I'm sorry my love for the heartbreak this must cause you, but I simply can't go on. I can't live with myself any longer for what I have done to you and our marriage.
Three days ago Tom asked me to stay on at the office for ten minutes after the others had left to help him finish some paperwork, but that wasn't his real reason.
I'm not sure if it qualified as rape, but he forced himself on me. I swear to you John that I tried to fight him off, but he was just so much stronger than me, and I was soon exhausted and simply gave up.
The next thing I knew he had me over the desk and was fucking me, and I was squealing at him to fuck me harder. The only reason I know this is because afterwards he let me get dressed, but wouldn't let me leave till he'd shown me the video he'd taken of the whole thing, and made it clear that within the hour it would be edited to show the world how I'd encouraged him and been a willing partner. That is of course, unless I allowed him to enjoy my body again.
I went home that night and cried myself to sleep. I swear I would have confessed to you that night, but you were away for four days up north on that trade show, and by the time you came back Tom had threatened to expose me to you, our friends, my parents and the whole world. I couldn't think straight and you weren't there to help me and I gave in to his demands to have sex with him once more to keep him quiet.
Of course that was stupid of me but it was too late by then and he blackmailed me into continuing.
I'm sorry my love, but I can't take it any more and I've got to end it. I can't face you when you come back and I can't face the world, and I pray that you'll forgive me for taking the easy way out.
I hope that you'll find it in yourself to forgive me for what I've done, and pray that you'll get over me and find another woman who is more deserving.
Your loving wife,
Robyn.
Words may exist to describe my feelings after reading the letter, but I can't seem to string them together.
I should have gone straight to the police, but the thought never occurred to me, but if I had, then my story would have been very different.
I sat there remembering about how we'd met. I'd left school and joined the Merchant Navy rather than going onto university, and soon found myself on a super tanker in the middle of the ocean. Royal Dutch Shell didn't believe in spending too much time in schooling their new officer cadets before they could prove that they could show that they could adapt to a life at sea. No good spending money only to find out that I was seasick all the time or missed my mummy too much. It was a case of being thrown in the deep end and swimming or sinking, and out there in the middle of the ocean, sinking didn't seem to be an attractive option.
Over the next few years our stop over in ports around the world were shorter than the Royal Navy enjoyed, but our officer's uniforms seemed to be as attractive to the local ladies and our higher wages probably even more so.
Not that I went with the professional ladies, though the distinction between them and some of my bed-mates was sometimes somewhat blurred. The first woman on my first shore leave may well have been the exception, though I would have been too drunk to know the difference. If she was, then it wasn't me who paid her, but it isn't unknown for shipmates to make sure that the new boys don't go home still a virgin. That basically summed up my love life, till one day the company decided I had a particular skill that they decided to use back on shore in the company technical office, and I started a new direction for my career, with the promise that I could transfer back to the ships if it didn't suit me.
I decided that it suited me just fine, the third week back on shore, when at a party I was introduced to Robyn. She was like no girl I'd ever met before, and I hardly knew how to behave with her. Till then I'd virtually never dated a girl without ending up in bed with her the first night. Not unless I got too drunk or involved in a brawl before we got there, and yes, when your young and stupid, even the officers got into fights. In uniform we were the picture of calm authority, but out in civvies, then we were as crazy as the next young guy, and the three years I'd spent as an amateur boxer in school, often came in handy. Not that I was really any good at it, but a little training goes a long way.
But Robyn was different to other girls I'd been with, and I swear that it was her that dropped the first hint that maybe after four weeks we should be 'moving on in our relationship' as she put it.
So move on we did, and a year later we tied the knot.
Six more years later and the knot had been suddenly and cruelly severed, and wiping my tears away, I decided that someone was going to pay, and there was only one person who could pay for taking my Robyn away from me.
I should have gone to the police, but as I've said, I didn't, but found myself pushing open the door to that bloody insurance agency, with little memory of how I'd got there. Brushing aside the questions of the receptionist, I charged through the door into Tom, bloody Blowers' office and confronted him.
"You bastard!" I shouted at him.
"Mr Fielding," he gasped back, leaping to his feet and keeping the desk between us. "We're all so sorry to hear about your wife."
"Sorry?" I queried angrily. "You fucking murdered her."
"Now look Mr Fielding, I think ...."
"Never mind what you think," I interrupted him. "You were blackmailing her you bastard."
"Rubbish," he shouted back at me.
"I've got proof."
"You can't prove a thing," he glared back at me, removing, if there was any doubt at all, that Robyn's letter was the truth.
"Wait till the police read this then," I screamed at him, holding Robyn's letter up in front of his face for him to read.
"The stupid bitch," he snapped, only having time to read the first few lines, at which point something inside me snapped.
Tom was bigger and heavier than me, but not by much, and unlike him I had learnt to scrap in some of the roughest ports in the world, and he probably hadn't swung a fist in anger since he left school. I chased him round the desk, Tom trying to keep it between us, till he thought he saw a chance to surprise me. The punch was so long coming that I could have ducked easily, but I didn't even bother. His punch landed, but before he had a chance to prepare another, I'd hit him four or five times, knocking him to the floor. In my haste to inflict further punishment, I shoved angrily at the desk to get at him, only managing to upturn it on top of him. The bugger scurried behind it, trying to protect himself from the flurry of punches and kicks I rained down on him, screaming in frustration that I couldn't get at his face to kick his teeth into the back of his scull.
It may have been the noise, it may have been the angry way I pushed past the receptionist, and possibly there was a squad car nearby, but the next thing I knew the boys in blue were dragging me off the bloody mess below me, apparently tazering me when in my fury, I turned on them as well.
I woke up in prison aching all over, surprised at my own violence, but not regretting it. I hoped I had killed him whatever the consequences, and vowed that I would one day, when I discovered that I hadn't.
For the first time in my life, I discovered what it felt to really hate someone. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but maybe in some strange way it eased my pain of losing my wife. The brain only has a certain capacity for emotion, I suppose, and the sorrow that had so dominated me, had to make room for the hate that I then had.
Tom was in hospital pretty badly beaten up, and I knew that I'd probably have to pay for that, but with the evidence I had of his blackmail, then he would suffer even worse at the hands of the court. That thought allowed me to settle down a little, until another suddenly hit me like an express train.
My evidence!
Where was it?
In my haste to go and smash his face in, it hadn't occurred to me to make a copy of Robyn's letter, and when the police had dragged me out from Tom's office, then what had happened to it?
Oh Shit!
I convinced myself that justice would prevail and that the letter would turn up, but it simply never did. The state that Tom had been in, then it was doubtful that he'd been able to dispose of it, and the secretary/receptionist denied having seen it when questioned by the police. I pleaded and came to tears, trying to persuade the law to pursue the matter, but alas to no avail. What it came down to was my word against his that the letter even existed, and the mindset I was in, my sanity must have been under some suspicion. I'm pretty sure the investigating officer, deep down believed my story, but without evidence, even I had to accept in the end that the case was dead in the water.
Not so my case!
I'd given Tom a thorough beating and when asked if he wanted to press charges, he went for it. Not content with being responsible for my wife's death, he now wanted revenge on me. Not only that, but his solicitor opposed bail for me while I awaited trial, telling the court that his client was afraid for his safety if I was let out.
He was justified of course, though it wasn't so much his safety, as his life he should have been worrying about, and when bail was refused, my hate just about went off the scale.
The court case could have gone worse, all things considered, and I think I smiled for the first time in months when Tom limped up to give evidence, the marks that I'd put on him still evident. He avoided looking at me throughout his questioning, while my glare in his direction never wavered, and I did wonder if that affected some of the jury.
The prosecution bought up the fact that I'd done some boxing, and made it sound as if I'd been a professional or something, and that I was a dangerous man out of control. My guy pointed out that it had been at a low level when I was at school and had no bearing on the case. My thoughts were that if my boxing was a problem, then they should have been concerned that I'd played soccer as well, because for sure I'd done him more damage by kicking him than with my fists, since he'd been hiding under that desk.
The other thing that went my way, was when my brief asked Tom if he thought I was justified in attacking him after blackmailing my wife and causing her suicide.
"Objection!" shouted out the prosecuting brief, and the good judge, quite correctly, unfortunately, allowed it, telling my man to be careful what he said, and instructing the jury to ignore the question.
"Ok," my guy continued, facing Tom. "Accepting that my client -- thought - that you were blackmailing his wife, then do you think he was ....."
Which is as far as he got before there was another cry of "Objection your honour."
Uproar!
It took a good ten minutes to regain quiet in the court, with another instruction to the jury to ignore my man's words, and a pretty firm telling off for him as well. The prosecutor demanded a recess, but the judge refused, giving him a hard time also, a mild hint that he believed the blackmail accusation, even though he couldn't allow it to be aired in his courtroom.
When it came to my turn to give evidence it all started over again. When asked why I had beaten my late wife's employer up, and yes my man phrased it that way, it gave me my chance to say my piece, but choosing my words carefully.
"After my wife committed suicide," I started, hesitating and looking straight at the jury to make sure they took it all in. "I found a letter from her telling me why she'd done so."
The prosecuting brief leapt to his feet, but was beaten to it by the judge, who waved him to sit down, warning me to be careful what I said, and asking where this letter was now.
"I left it in Blower's office when I went to beat him up for what he did to my wife," I replied, the judge waving down the other side's guy as he leapt to his feet again.
"Mr Fielding," he lectured me sternly. "I've warned you to be careful what you say in my court."
"How can I answer the question honestly, if I'm not allowed to talk about that bastard raping my wife and then blackmailing her and causing her to commit suicide?" I managed to get in before the court erupted again.
Shouts of 'objection' and 'order in the court' rang out, and this time everyone seemed to leap to their feet, even a couple of the jurors standing up and shouting, to add to the confusion.
This time it was my guy who asked for a recess, and I think it was with relief that the judge granted it, ordering the two lawyers to his chambers immediately.
I was never privy to what was discussed between the three of them, but before the case resumed later that afternoon, I was warned by my brief that though prosecution was a certainty, I'd had my day and I should keep my mouth shut, and it would go well for me.
Sure enough, I wasn't recalled to the stand, and the whole thing was wrapped up pretty quickly. The judge clearly directed the jury that whatever justification I might or might not have had, that my admitted attack on Blowers was a criminal offence. They went out to consider and were back in no time at all, with a guilty verdict but a recommendation for leniency.
The judge duly gave me three months, which disappointed me till he pointed out that I was now a free man, having already spent that time in prison on remand.
The papers and local news channels picked up on it, and I kept my head down having been warned that any inappropriate remarks by me, could end up with me back in front of the judge. The innuendo however was rife, and though it didn't last long as a news interest, Blower's reputation was in tatters, and his business failed within six months.
I was left feeling pretty pleased with the way things had turned out, and decided that Tom wasn't worth the risk of killing. I'd only spent three months in jail, but that was enough to know that I didn't want to go back there. I'd forgiven Robyn, in fact decided that there was nothing to forgive, except perhaps that she had acted unwisely, and that she'd left me on my own in this world. I knew I'd never forgive Blowers though, but took the decision that I wasn't going to do anything about it.
The end!
No way!
A year passed, and I was relieved that my company took me back, though I never really felt entirely comfortable in the office again. I kept an eye on what Blowers was up to, which didn't seem to be much during that first year.
I don't know where he got the money from, but at the end of that year, he set up another office in a town about forty miles away. It wasn't such a big affair and the actual office was not so well appointed, but I hadn't forgotten what he'd done and it was too good for the likes of him.
I caught him leaving his office one dark winter evening, and he may have guessed who it was, but had no real chance of confirming it. The first time it may have been considered a fair fight, but this time it wasn't. I didn't draw out the punishment, as I had a time scale to get back to where I still was officially, and the iron bar I'd taken to the party allowed me to do that. I could have killed him, but I no longer wanted to. I could have beaten him to a pulp, but I didn't want to. I wanted him hurt, but not so badly that he wouldn't recover in a few months, knowing, though he wouldn't be able to prove it, that it was me, and that I'd be back again. And again!
The police visited of course, but I had a watertight alibi, having never left the ship that I'd spent the evening on visiting some old friends of mine, and you can't get much more watertight than a ship, can you.
I was no longer sure that I much liked the person I'd become, but I was on a mission and that's all that seemed to count. I couldn't face dating, but for the first time in my life, paid several women to scratch an itch that needed dealing with, but was always left feeling somehow unsatisfied, wanting the women to get out as soon as possible afterwards.
My life was on hold it seemed and I had no idea how long it would be so. I knew I needed to change my life, so I took up the option of going back to sea, one that by then, most of the other people in my office breathed a sigh of relief about.
The other thing that I didn't need a psychologist to tell me was that I had to lose my obsession about making Blowers pay. It was ruining my life and I had to get over it. I hated the bastard, but that hate was destroying my life, more than it was his.
Stupid eh!
Easy.
Back to sea and all would be well, but of course it didn't work out that way, did it.
It was a few days before I was due to embark, off on my way to Kuwait for the fourth time that year, when it happened. Purely by chance, when walking down the street I virtually bumped into ...... Him!
"You bastard," he growled, stood there, just three feet between us.
"Get lost," I threw back at him, backing off as he advanced on me.
"You're going to pay Fielding," he threatened, and suddenly all my good intentions disappeared as if by magic.
I had him.
I had him where I wanted him and he had no idea.
I had him, and I was going to take the absolute best advantage of it.
He took a swing at me, and I ducked somewhat clumsily, checking around to make sure that that there were plenty of witnesses around us to confirm what was happening. That it was him making an unprovoked attack on me.
He aimed another badly aimed punch at me, and this time I allowed his fist to graze my chin, exaggerating the effect by staggering back wards, my boxing days, limited though they were, coming back to me. Again he leapt forward at me, another swing catching me somewhat unprepared and snapping my head back.
Fuck, that one hurt!
Almost automatically, I released a straight left into his face, feeling something break under my fist, followed by a right aimed at his unprotected chin as he staggered back.
I missed!
I aimed too low and missed his chin by a good few inches.
I missed his chin and smacked right into his throat, feeling his Adam's apple crush under the force of my punch.
He crumpled.
I moved in to beat the hell out of him, but he crumpled into a heap before me, clutching at his throat and coughing awfully. I lined up to give him a kick where it would hurt most, but stopped, breathed in deeply and stepped back from him.
He wasn't worth it.
Not while there were so many witnesses around to recount what had happened. Now it was my turn.
An hour later I was in the local police station, swearing out a complaint with the names and addresses of five people who had witnessed his unprovoked attack on me.
He was going down!
This time it was bloody Blowers who was stood there in the dock, and me in the witness stand. It was a lower court with just a magistrate rather than a judge, mainly because neither of us had ended up in hospital. I'd sort of hoped for a life sentence with hard labour, chained up in a dungeon in the Tower of London, but had to settle for a three month suspended sentence. Not really much of a surprise to be honest.
Might not seem much but it was somehow a salve to my anger, and even if it didn't make my hate disappear entirely, then my pressing need for revenge, at least receded.
I started to tell myself that though he had caused my wife to take her own life, then he hadn't meant it to end that way.
I even began to blame myself for not being there that night when she came home and so wasn't there for her to confess to.
The only thing I didn't query in my mind, was that none of this was Robyn's fault. Her memory was sacrosanct.
I wasn't doing this for him, but myself. I knew that my hate was consuming me and that if I was going to get on with my life and climb out of the bottomless pit that I was tumbling into, then I had to do something.
In desperation I even went as far as going to see a counsellor. Not one of your expensive, highly qualified, psycho shrink types in a fancy office, but just some pretty ordinary everyday guy with a lot of experience of life; a good listener, with some plain, sensible and sometimes bloody obvious advice to offer.
The main advice he offered me was that I couldn't simply hide my grief and hate away, but that I had to confront it.
In order to confront it, then I had to forgive Blowers!
If I couldn't then I would carry on being a very unhappy man, and my life wouldn't be worth living. Till I got rid of the hate, then I wouldn't be able to go through the grieving period, as I has to.
He suggested, and I took on board, that in order for it to work, my forgiveness had to be known to Blowers, and the best way to do that was to confront him and forgive him to his face.
Not easy I know, but this counsellor fellow was pretty convincing and it was perhaps the only way forward, as unpalatable as it might be.
So that's what I did and it did work perfectly, one hundred percent you might say. The point is though, that it didn't work out quite in the manner that the counsellor thought it would.
It took me three days to track him down, his second agency having failed when his licence was revoked now that he had a criminal record. I discovered him working in an office for some car insurance specialist, filling in claim forms or whatever. He didn't want to meet up with me of course, but I convinced him otherwise, and I eventually got to meet him on neutral ground, in a local park. We sat either end of a secluded park bench, eyeing one another nervously, both wanting to get this meeting over and done with.
"So what's this meeting about Fielding?" He demanded.
"I forgive you," I blurted out, nearly choking on my words, but desperate to say my piece and disappear.
"What?" He spluttered in surprise.
"I forgive you," I repeated, the words even harder to say the second time. "I know what you did to my wife, but I forgive you."
"Why?"
"Because I need to in order to move on," I told him, though even as I spoke the words, suddenly I knew that this wasn't going to be the magic solution I was seeking. This just wasn't going to work.
"But I forced her," he smirked at me. "I bloody near on raped her that first time."
"I know," I forced myself to say, gripping the arms of the bench to prevent myself from assaulting him.
"Bugger me Fielding," he laughed out loud. "She wasn't even a good fuck."
Later, much later, I convinced myself that it was all his fault and that he'd really said the wrong thing at the wrong moment.
His words made me see red, and the original purpose of this meeting was forgotten.
I had a couple of cuts on my face afterwards so he must have made some effort to fight back, and I have vague memories of him begging for mercy. I can recall the satisfying feeling of my fist breaking something on his face for the second time since our conflict began, and of his screams as I kicked the bastard repeatedly.
I can't remember very much more; not even of walking away and leaving him there. I remained in a bit of a daze till that evening when I climbed up the gangway to my ship, outbound for Saudi Arabia.
If I'd thought about it, then I should have been surprised that I even made it as far as the ship without being picked up by the police; but make it I did. Not only that, but I was never once interviewed or even contacted about Tom Blowers' murder.
Yes, that's right, you heard me correctly.
Blowers wasn't an important guy, but his murder made the headlines. Not because of him, but initially due to the man that they arrested for killing him. Mike Jones was his name, and if that name is familiar, then it's because he was a pretty well known local hoodlum, involved in all manner of minor and not so minor scams and crimes in the area.
What I didn't know, but what became clear, was that a certain Mrs. Jones worked at the insurance company in the same office as Blowers, and that he was up to his old tricks again and Mr. Jones took exception to it.
When I first heard the news onboard ship that night, that a body had been found in the park with a bullet wound in his head, then I assumed that the press had simply got it wrong again. When it became clear that they hadn't, then I was, to say the least, shocked.
The court case was a sensation.
Jones never denied shooting Blowers, and made it very clear exactly why the bastard deserved it. But the case was thrown into confusion when a medical expert claimed that Blowers was possibly already dead when Jones shot him, only to be disagreed with by another equally eminent gentleman of medical persuasion, who countered that such a claim couldn't be substantiated.
Jones, for his part, understanding that he could hardly be found guilty of murdering a man who was already dead, came up with the plausible story that he'd gone looking for Blowers and followed him into the park. When he'd found him lying senseless in a pool of blood by the park bench, then in anger, he'd put a bullet into his brain anyway. He also mentioned the 'other' man he'd seen walking away from the scene in a hurry, to my surprise, describing him as a 'swarthy, foreign looking geezer, of about five foot six and walking with a limp'. Since I'm just over six foot tall with a fair, almost ginger colouring, and had no problems with my mobility, then his claims were certainly food for thought.
Whether he'd made up the story about seeing someone, or it was simply his way of thanking me for doing his job for him by giving a false description, then I'd never know, but I sure was grateful.
It certainly muddied the waters as far as the court case was concerned, and the press had a field day speculating who the mysterious 'other' man was. Reports of sightings of the mysterious 'other' man, as he became known came from all over the country, and set off a controversy about the wisdom of allowing so many immigrants to settle here.
Meanwhile, Jones' charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter, and when this started to look dodgy as well, it seemed that the defence accepted the offer for him to plead guilty to aggravated assault and possession of an unauthorised weapon. He still got a nine-month sentence, but he could have been out in five if he behaved himself. Unfortunately for him, he didn't, but that is another story that had nothing to do with me.
So that left me not knowing whether I'd killed Blowers or not, and that was fine with me. I'd sort of kept my promise to myself that I'd kill the bugger one day without feeling that I'd become a murderer. My lovely Robyn was avenged and my hate had no target left, and so, almost casually, disappeared.
As the counsellor had predicted, going to tell him of my forgiveness, had worked out perfectly, just not in the way he'd predicted.
And me?
Well I stayed on the ships for a few years, and even got my master's mate's certificate. I wouldn't claim that I had a girl in every port during those years, but I did have a small but select list of telephone numbers of young ladies who were normally very pleased to see me. Eventually my services were again sought back on shore, and by the time I retired, I ended up as assistant director of operations, which pleased my wife, no end.
That's right, I found myself another special woman that I could give my love to, and with enough time for us to produce two lovely children. They became the centre of my universe, but even so, just occasionally, my mind would wander back to Robyn, and how things might have turned out so differently if her life hadn't been wasted so early. I couldn't help it, but couldn't deny that sometimes, just occasionally, in the privacy of my own mind, though I loved my new family, I still missed Robyn terribly, and deep down somewhere, always would.
The end, but really, this time.
