Ahoy Miranda Ch. 06

Three days into the regime working with Alan on below decks conversion work on the former fishing boat Miranda, and then setting up pottery production in the studio now blotting the landscape somewhat on part of the frontage of Alan Meadows residential plot, Lydia sighed.

It was time to come clean, to cease living a lie.

She delivered her confession that evening when she and her host and now lover were sitting with drinks on the aft deck of the 62-foot Miranda. That large vessel on the hard provided a further blot on the residential site that was bounded on three sides by attractive undergrowth of hillside forest.

Alan said, "Another great day of progress on the refit."

"Indeed and you have been so good to me that I can't bear to continue my deception any longer."

He asked steadily, "What are you about to reveal you were or still are married?"

"Yes, the former."

"Don't look surprised, it was only a guess. I mean I'd wondered why a woman of thirty-six was still living at home with her family."

"Well I hope telling you this doesn't change our relationship but if it does so be it. I feel the need to hold nothing back from you as I'm sure we both want an open relationship and so here goes," Lydia said, settling into her narrative...

* * *

Three years ago a professional photographer and author of three books on potters and pottery, Lydia Kennedy (33), who'd spent most of teenage years in Houston, Texas, and then much of her life after that living in a variety of locations with her family, married Kevin Stephen Bishop (35) at Douglas City 400 miles north of Arundel Sound where she now lived three years later.

She'd immigrated to the country three years earlier after winning a position to teach glazing techniques to ceramic arts diploma students at a large Polytechnic Institute.

A year later her father Ronald applied for a position as a line manager at a petroleum refinery near Douglas City. He negotiated the position as his final placement by the corporation before his retirement on the condition that the corporation he'd been with for most of his working life supported his application to immigrate to that country with his wife and younger daughter.

Lydia caught up with her family most weekends after their arrival because the polytechnic and the refinery were only a little over 100 miles apart.

During one weekend at Douglas City, Lydia and sister Olivia went surfing immediately after an easterly storm. The beach was almost at the point of being closed to swimming and surfing because the surf during the outgoing tide was becoming rather treacherous.

The sisters were trained swimmers and revelled in the conditions and they heard the surf club siren go, warning everyone out of the water.

They were paddling across a rip when Oliva heard a cry for help. They looked back and saw two teenage female swimmers in trouble.

With little effort the two sisters paddled back and pulled one of the swimmers on to their board.

They then both caught a wave and expertly managed the extra weight on their board to be powered back to the beach by the same wave.

The hysterical mothers called for medical help and a patrolling newspaper photographer and reporter arrived with the responding club medics carrying oxygen kits and within minutes both girls were pronounced a little water-logged but okay.

The relieved mothers dubbed the Kennedy sisters heroes.

The newspaper team had found nothing else of interest and soon the sisters were being photographed and interviewed along with the rescued girls and their mothers.

Just as the news team were leaving Lydia called them back and said she didn't wish to be named or identified with any heroic rescue because such a claim was phony. Bringing the distressed teenagers in had been carried out effortlessly.

The reporter called his editor to talk to Lydia, and that was her first contact with Kevin Bishop. Kevin told her the surf club was on the eve of its annual call for public donations to assist financing its operations and a heroic rescue had come with perfect timing.

Lydia relented and next morning the Douglas Daily had a big front page photo of the four young women and the two mothers and a screaming headline, 'Heroic Sisters Save Teens from Drowning'.

She flared that editor and his team wouldn't know the difference between a hero and their own asshole.

Her mother yelled to stop being so disgusting and Lydia said sorry the A-hole word just slipped out.

Shortly before noon there was a knock at the front door.

Lydia who was helping her father paint the dining room walls called to Olivia that some A-hole was ringing the doorbell.

There was no reply and her father said Kate and Olivia had taken some baking next door to old Mrs Peters.

Lydia went to the door forgetting she was wearing a tea-towel around her hair to keep paint drips from invading her hair, no bra under one of her mother's t-shirts and her smallest sister's discarded cut-off shorts that gave her a tummy bulge and showed the outline of her pussy.

The guy at the door looked at her breasts when saying good morning Lydia.

"Good morning. Can you make it snappy; we are painting."

"Yeah I can see that. You have a big streak of wet paint down your right cheek. Here allow me."

He grabbed her T-shirt and jerked it up to her cheek, totally exposing her left breast.

The idiot wiped her cheek and looked hard at the breast before pulling the shirt back into place and without apologising for exposing her or saying something like nice tit, he said he was Kevin Bishop and had arrived to invite her for lunch.

Lydia said why and Kevin looked her straight in the eye and said because she appeared to have everything he wanted in a woman and such women were as rare as ice-blocks in a desert.

She laughed and he became bolder and said she had nice tits and instead of hitting the A-hole she said to Kevin to go to the kitchen and pour himself coffee while she finished the wall she was working on and then would change and go to lunch with him.

He pleaded to her not to change and asked why not and Kevin said he'd never before gone out with female apparently wearing only sneakers, tight shorts and a shirt and a stupid hat.

Lydia said god he was rude and that made him a bit of a stand out. She said that looking at his crotch and he looked embarrassed and looked down to check.

They hit it off well and she met his family and eventually she spend some weekends in bed with Kevin at his family home and he spent time at her family home after her mother finally relented about Lydia having a guy sleep over.

Lydia became pregnant, probably because of a split in a condom, and she and Kevin found themselves overjoyed about that and decided they should marry.

Six weeks into the marriage she and Kevin were driving home from the wedding of a friend of his. Lydia was driving because she hadn't been drinking alcohol.

A driver in a stolen car came out of a side road without observing the compulsory stop and crashed into their side of their car, killing Kevin,

The huge impact pushed in Kevin's door to crush his chest and burst his aorta. Lydia received minor cuts from flying glass and bruising from her seat-belt and the driver's air bag as it caught the side of her face as she slid sideways.

Later that night while in hospital under observation, Lydia lost the baby.

As a result of that double tragedy, Lydia sank into depression and for days only left her bed to go to the bathroom. She was adamant she never wished to return to the house she and Kevin had purchased with a big mortgage and it was sold.

Over the weeks she showed no signs of responding to medication and was admitted to a special facility for more intense treatment where she stayed for two months. She returned home showing improved energy and mobility but remained mentally listless.

Gradually Lydia engaged in conversation more naturally and her concentration had improved and that was encouraging for her family. She resigned from her Polytechnic employment, winning the tussle over that with her mother by continually stating she wished to leave that place as it reminded her about her association with Kevin too vividly.

A few days after resigning Lydia asked her mother why her parents no longer parked their cars in the detached garage and was told it was just a change that had occurred but wasn't really laziness.

A couple of days later when going out to sit in the garden as her doctor had advised Lydia detoured and opened the side door of the garage, turned on the lights and stared in astonishment.

She'd taken to working with clay after two school basic lessons on pottery when she was ten and two years later for her 12th birthday her father cleaned out the disused garden shed at their home in Houston and had it fitted out with equipment for a hobbyist potter.

Once again, at little over twenty years later, he'd converted an out-building, this time the garage, into a fully equipment pottery studio.

That evening Lydia hugged her father and eyed him without saying anything but her parents knew the reason for that special hug.

In the wee hours of next morning Kate came back from the bedroom window and shook Ronald awake and weeping announced in joy that the lights were on in the garage and had heard noise of Lydia moving things about.

Happily that began their daughter's real progress toward full recovery.

Lydia had advanced to making a reasonable living from her pottery sales, with earnings boosted from being hired to present lessons on pottery basics two afternoons a week at the city council's Living Arts Centre.

She already received big insurance settlements as the result of that car accident and shared in the newspaper company's life insurance on Kevin with his family.

Lydia's time was to end at Douglas, not that she was expecting it and still living with her family had resumed dating again.

Relocation was triggered by her sister Olivia arriving home from her holiday adventure visit to the sounds in the south where she'd met this guy who was fitting out a boat and obviously needed assistance and would benefit by a women's touch about the place.

Olivia said innocently that she told the guy Alan Meadows that her older sister was great with her hands and would revel being in semi-wildness of great beauty and usefully engaged in the conversion of a fishing boat into a big work boat with luxury accommodation to give it a dual role in its new life.

* * *.

Lydia looked at Alan who was dabbing a handkerchief at his eyes.

She said, "Well that's my story and I needed to tell you about it."

"God it must have been almost like going to hell and back for you," he choked. "You were brave telling me about it and I understand your motivation in finally sharing your story with me."

"As each day passes darling I know my relationship with you is deepening and nothing changes with you telling me about your marriage and the tragic aftermath, losing your unborn baby and the dark days that followed."

"I wish I had been there to help you through those difficult times and thank god your father knew instinctively how to pull you back from the edge."

"Indeed."

"I've noticed you sometimes talk about your mother but rarely mention you father."

"Hmmm. I suppose that's because he's a steady-as-it-goes chap whereas mom er mum almost overflows with personality."

"Of course she was always with Olivia and me whereas dad often was involved in working double shifts supervising workers during critical maintenance or installation of new equipment being carried out in delicate operations to avoid shutting down the refinery or whatever part of production he was managing."

"He'd also spend many hours of leisure time with the guys he worked with and sometimes he would be stationed on off-shore platforms or rushed away to other sites where his specialist skills were required."

Alan said, "Look I need to make a phone call. Let's go over to the lodge where I can use their phone land line. In all probability we'll have dinner there and your exposure to motor-mouth Claire will be just what you need after you having to relive those tragic times you've just told me about."

Claire and Lydia were well into a bottle of sparkling wine when Alan returned from making the call, looking pleased with himself.

"Lydia your mother's on the phone and would like to say hi."

"My mother, why have you called my mother?"

Alan shrugged and said she'd soon find out.

Ten minutes later Lydia looking very flushed ran back into the dining room.

"You darling, you darling," she yelled, swamping Alan in a huge hug.

"My friends." Claire giggled. "You are risking over-exciting our other guests. Go and use our bed."

"Yeah and don't forget to change the sheets."

"Shut up Jamie and stop being so crude. We are seeing romance blossom right before our eyes."

Jamie demanded that Lydia get her tongue out of Alan's mouth and tell him what had triggered her excitement.

Lydia straightened up, gently removed Alan's hand from her groin and sat back in her chair.

"This wonderful, wonderful and amazing man came over here this evening with an ulterior motive. He's brought the re-launch of Matilda forward to December 23rd and we'll finish the refit on the water."

"That launching will be accompanied by a big piss-up, and I had to translate that for mom and said it meant the liquor would flow. This man of mine has invited mum and dad and Olivia plus a friend if she wishes, to stay here at the lodge for six nights from the 22nd if that accommodation is available Claire."

"Confirmed," Claire beamed and said supplied at a discount providing the liquor for the piss-up was charged through the lodge's trading account.

"Done," Alan said, leaning over and kissing Claire full on the mouth.

Lydia noticed Claire moving to pull Alan to her but then pulling back; she continued with her announcement.

"Dad was home and said the timing would allow him to take leave because the holding tanks at the refinery would be at capacity to meet the big demands for vehicle fuel for the peak holiday season from Boxing Day to late January. So that means they can come and have Christmas with their beloved me. Oh I'm so excited."

"And so you should be darling," Claire said lovingly. "Family reunions at holiday (vacation) time are so special particularly at Christmas."

"Oh Alan, on the day of the launching we'll have our usual hire firm erects their largest marquee on our lawn for everyone to have dinner over here because Alan's lawn will not be large enough."

Claire continued expansively, making Lydia even more excited, "The event will be bigger than big and women from around here who've become attached to Lydia will be lining up to get a close look at her mother."

"Oh what have I let loose," Alan groaned theatrically and Claire responded like a good hostess.

"Champagne please Jamie, hop to it and get it yourself, the best we have."

"Oh Lydia," Claire said sounding if she was about to sob and taking the younger woman's hand, "I can't wait to meet your mother."

Lydia said on the short journey down the sound, "Wow no sex for you tonight buddy; I'm drunk and would end up peeing all over you."

"Good I'll escape that disgusting shower. Besides I'd be unlikely to get it hard with your threatening to piss all over me."

"Oh darling you say such nice things to me," Lydia cooed, resting her head on his shoulders and closing her eyes.

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