“That figures,” I muttered.
I thought Sarah was going to slap me again.
I knew she wanted to.
Oh well, at least we were not going to have to go through a protracted trial separation or divorce.
Every cloud is supposed to have a silver lining but this is going a bit too far…
I suppose that it is at times like this: that is, later, much later in a day that began with one being dragged out of bed in the small hours of the morning with a gun at one’s head, a day playing mind games with police which had carried on going down-hill, and reached an apparent nadir when I was drugged, had passed out and messed myself, and finally, regained consciousness hand-cuffed to a chair with my ex-wife conducting affairs with the flat of her right hand, that a chap is, quite naturally, liable to feel a tad hard done by.
I confess, I was a bit down in the dumps.
Sarah was dressed up in the green uniform of the CSS. She had captain’s crimson tabs on her lapels and I could tell that her calf-length skirt was tailored to flatter her figure.
I decided that the only thing to do was to imagine her naked.
Sarah was a lot less scary when she was butt naked.
Not to mention a sight for sore old eyes.
I gave her what I hoped looked like a lopsided grin: ‘Was it something I said, sweetheart?’
She obviously did not see the joke which given the circumstances – I was the one handcuffed to a chair in what looked like a disused changing room – lacked a certain style.
A changing room…
I could see where the benches had been along the white-tiled walls, underfoot there were a couple of drain holes covered by rusty grills and I thought I glimpsed the edge of what might have been the communal after match bath beyond Sarah’s shoulder.
I recollected that there was a derelict football stadium down by the estuary of the Connetquot River. Most of the locals would have translated the old Algonquian name as ‘great river’…
My mind was wandering.
“What in God’s name did you comedians put in my tea?” I inquired.
It seemed like a reasonable question.
I was still trying to figure out why Sarah had just taken a step to the left when the next bucket of icy water drenched me.
“Oh, very funny,” I spluttered. Quite feebly, thinking about it.
“You’re going to tell me everything,” she replied.
Okay, it was good to talk.
That was where most marriages went wrong; the parties stopped talking to each other.
“Er, about what?”
“The plot.”
“What plot?”
SLAP!
Well, that only goes to show you: I thought I was married to a south paw and then out of the blue she finds a stinging right cross! Perhaps, we ought to have talked more?
I shook my head until the ringing in my ears went away.
“Ouch,” I complained.
All things considered I did not want to do anything likely to piss her off so badly she called in a man to do her woman’s work. Shapely as Sarah might be she was a lightweight chastising me with the flat of her hand – well, hands – not a middleweight balling his fists.
“I know it’s a wife’s prerogative to have her husband at a disadvantage from time to time but this is beyond weird…”
She stepped behind me.
Whispered in my ear: “You talk in your sleep, husband.”
I wondered if I ought to tell her she snored in her sleep some nights?
No, no, perhaps on balance this was not the right time.
“I’m hardly likely to remember what I say,” I remarked.
“I know everything.”
“Wives do,” I agreed.
I could smell her hair, feel her lips by my ear.
It was almost erotic…
If the literature was to be believed – scientific literature, I mean, not the sleazy top shelf magazines fellows of a certain ilk used to be able to buy in the twin-colony before the bloody Puritans took over – there were a lot of men willing to pay good money to be tied up, abused and slapped about like this. I had never seen the point of it myself but viewed from a certain angle, and assuming a certain mindset, I could see how a dirty old man like me might get a rise out of it…
SLAP!
For me the slapping rather spoiled it.
I think my head must have hit the floor when Sarah pushed me and the chair over because the world went black momentarily, or for a long time, I had no idea which.
Chapter 14
Brooklyn Admiralty Dockyard, Wallabout Bay, King’s County
Queen Eleanor patiently awaited her turn. First the Superintendent of the Brooklyn Admiralty Dockyards gave his speech of welcome, extemporising somewhat until he received the signal that the final preparations for the launch had been completed.
‘It is always a fine judgement about how many of the restraints and blocks to remove or knock away, and how many of the tackles to loosen off to ensure that when the bottle actually cracks on the bow of the vessel that the ship can actually be safely launched down the slipway by the simultaneous removal of the last critical restraints,’ her husband had once explained to her. ‘It is damnably easy to inadvertently launch the blasted thing early and then one looks like a right dunce waving at the ship floating half-a-mile away in the water!’
The Brooklyn Yard had mounted the bottle of Virginia Champagne – not a very good vintage, thank goodness – on a mechanical arm which upon her pulling the appropriate lever would prescribe an eighty-five-degree downward arc before exploding on contact with a six-inch sharpened ‘rib’ welded to the hull for this purpose. This was a huge relief to Eleanor because the first time she had attempted to launch a ship the bottle had not broken even though the glass had been half sawed through prior to the event.
The bow of the cruiser soared some ten feet over her head.
The ship’s sharp stem was literally beside her, close enough to touch without fully extending her arm.
The public-address speakers boomed and echoed.
Some seventy yards to her right the mighty steel sarcophagus of HMS Perseus was rising out of the depths of the giant dry dock, between the Polyphemus and the aircraft carrier the keel of the second ship of her class was already laid, a skeleton of steel rising from the slip. To the left of the looming bow lay the ungainly, slab-sided hulls of two assault ships – odd vessels with huge internal docks which could be flooded down to allow each to discharge their cargo of landing craft – both due to be launched in the coming months.
‘The thing is that once they give you the nod, not to hang about, my dear,’ her husband had advised the Queen the first couple of times she had done this. ‘Once they’ve got the ship primed to slide a strong breeze can set the thing off. So, stepping lively is the order of the day!’
“Pray stand for Her Majesty the Queen!”
Oh, the colonials were so sweet!
Everybody knew that she was only Her Royal Highness, Princess Eleanor and not really Her Majesty but the farther one was from London the more sensible people became she had discovered on her travels. Although she always missed England when they were away on one of their ‘Grand Tours’ she invariably came home refreshed and somehow, with her faith in the peoples of the Empire restored.
“Here! Here!” She heard her husband guffaw enthusiastically. She had been and forever would be his Queen.
Eleanor stepped to the battery of microphones.
Her hand rested lightly on the lever which would set things in motion.
“It is with enormous pleasure that my first act upon setting foot at my husband’s side on the proud soil of New England is that I should be asked to launch one of the Royal Navy’s most modern ships.”