Lucky Man Pt. 02

When they started kissing a little more passionately, I thought I better turn and find Billy and Skip and make a move. I thought that I would be able to leave a message with the airline and arrange to meet Bob and Carol somewhere fairly neutral, say my little vineyard in Umbria, next summer. Yes, that would be nice and give us the opportunity to rebuild our relationship without jeopardising my ability to assume anonymity again should the need arise.

I turned around and stopped dead in my tracks. There, standing in front of me was the realisation of my greatest fears. She stood stock still, standing not ten feet away, clasping her hands in front of her. I would like to say she looked old for 48, that she was fat and had thick calves and batwing arms, that she was careworn and ravished by her guilt and treachery. But I could not in all honesty say any of that.

Ruth's face appeared virtually unchanged, completely unadorned by make-up. She was a little pale admittedly, as if she had spent all winter indoors, with her blond hair was cut short and neat. She was still slim and wore a simple A-line thin light blue summer dress, showing a lot of bare shapely leg and comfortable flat-heeled white tennis shoes. Ruth presented a very trim, neat figure, every bit as beautiful as the last time I saw her. No, not quite, she looked tired, as though weighed down by problems. She had probably travelled some distance, from the Northern hemisphere somewhere, on a tip off from Carol, no doubt? Seeing her there, so unexpectedly, sent a lump to my throat so huge that I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to swallow or draw breath again.

"Hello, Mark, sorry ... Bill," Ruth said so quietly that a dropped pin would have drowned out her tiny voice.

The blood was pounding in my ears so loudly that I barely heard her. I still couldn't breath or talk or move.

With no response from me Ruth looked so little-girl-lost for a moment. Then she clearly made a decision, one of us had to, I wasn't in the game, being virtually catatonic.

Ruth took a slow step forward, then another, holding eye contact with me throughout. She strode up to me and unclasped her hands and put them round my neck and, without our bodies actually touching, slowly licked her lips and placed her warm, moist mouth against mine. She kissed me gently on the lips, but I just stared at her, I really cannot tell, but I was certain my jaw was slack and I was opened-mouthed. While she kissed me she pressed her body into me, starting with her soft breasts then a knee brushed past my leg and her hips rested on mine. I was rigid, I still couldn't breathe, my chest refused to budge, even my arms remained motionless by my side. So many thoughts ran through my head trying to analyse what I was feeling, but I was empty, all my brain could register was that my damn arse was hurting like hell. My only conscious thought was that Carol must have used her connections to hold me up while Ruth's flight got in, and the only reaction I was getting was from my tortured rear end, there was certainly no flicker from my front, and I already had recent evidence of the probity of my downstairs department.

Ruth released her lips from mine and moved her head back three or four inches, her fingers stroking the back of my head, perhaps unconsciously seeking that missing stupid pony tail. She looked at me with a furrow intersecting her otherwise smooth brow, her thick light brown eyebrows arching over her searching azure eyes just as I achingly remembered how she used to look.

"Where have you been?" There was concern in her quiet voice although there was more than a hint of scolding in there, too. "We went home soon after the end of the funeral to find you, to explain to you what happened, but you were gone. We have looked for you every day since but you disappeared off the face of the world. We, I, didn't know if you were alive or dead. Your cancelled bloody life insurance policy was the first thing that came through after you left. We feared, I feared for your life. My life has been on hold ever since. Whatever happens tonight I'm just so relieved to know that you are still alive."

Ruth alternately focused on each of my eyes in turn, searching for a reaction that was, frankly, beyond me. The volume of her voice dropped even lower as if it was just a thought that she hadn't intended vocalising, "I love you, Mark, I always have. I just didn't know how much until you left me."

She was tensed, as if ready to take flight. Her lower lip trembled in the face of my complete lack of reaction to her presence. Ruth's mouth opened slightly, revealing her even pure white teeth.

Then, slowly, she started to chew her lower lip.

Suddenly I exhaled.

Ruth flinched and closed those china blue eyes, her body tensed up but bravely maintained her body position in such intimate proximity to me, her ex-husband, her hands still around my neck, the fingers frozen where they were. I could only concentrate on getting several deep gulps of air into my lungs. My head felt feint, blood rushed to my twitching member as I remembered the way she looked all those years ago, when I had only known her for an hour or so and she had looked at me with those beautiful eyes and chewed that ripe lower lip and I had fallen in love for the first and only time.

Ruth spoke quietly, plainly, firmly, undeniably truthfully.

"Your Dad, my natural father, controlled us, all of us. He seduced and raped and sodomised us all. He abused and beat us, subjected us to the will of his desires and his alone. He robbed us of our dignity, our free will, denied us any love or jealousy or independent thought, filling us with hate, stole away our emotions, any ability we had to feel ... anything. We were weak, you were the only one who ever stood up to him, the only one who had the strength to resist his will. He tried everything he could to deny you the love we owed you, tried to take away your children, your birthright and destroy you. Too late we, I, feared he had succeeded. When he died, his control was still strong, particularly with Bob, who had been subjected the longest along with his mother and aunts. Even at the funeral and the reading of the Will we were in shock. It was Charlie and Andie who snapped us out of it, pointing out the fact that we couldn't get our numbed heads around; that he was dead and gone and we were free of him and his control at last, free to live our lives and commit to the ones we love, the ones we had loved all along.

"To Andie and Charlie you were their only father, not this pathetic beast who didn't share any love with us, he just stole every ounce of love we had for anyone else. The girls brought us all to our senses, made us realise our shame and we went looking for you, the one sure burning beacon of love in our lives and ... and you were gone. Sweetheart, we have never stopped looking for you and we have found you at last."

Before I could gather my thoughts and say anything, I heard a voice behind me scream out "Daddy!"

I tore my gaze from Ruth's lidded eyes to the direction of the voice. A tall blond woman was running towards me with a baby in her arms. Even though her face had lost the slight chubbiness she had clung to throughout her teens, it was clearly Andie running towards me.

Ruth released her grip on me and moved a short distance away, leaving centre stage to her eldest daughter. I had started to move my hands up before Andie called out but as Ruth's warm body left me I turned my frame in the direction my head was facing, in time to meet Andie's impetus head on.

Her slim firm young body hit mine, pressing hard and completely uninhibitedly into me, her free left arm, which been outstretched during her graceful run, snaked around my neck in a desperate clinch, before she showered my face and head in kisses. She was crying and telling me how much she loved me and missed me and loved me again, with more swooning "Oh, Daddy"s than I could count. She frantically kissed me on the lips and cheeks and forehead then lips again and neck and side of my head and a final long lingering lips-only deeply sucking kiss on my equally responding mouth. My face was enveloped in her cooling tears, my body warmed in the glow of her affectionate embrace.

Andie broke off our kiss and beamed at me, my daughter's beautiful face wreathed in smiles, her young mother's face aglow, her cheeks glistening with salty wetness. She relaxed her lithe body, and turned into the righthand side of my body, still pressing firmly against me, her left arm sliding back until her hand stroked the back of my head.

What was so fascinating about the back of my blasted head? I had certainly got used to my short, neat hairstyle, it helped disguise how thin my hair had gotten over the last few years. Thin, made me think, clearly Andie had got her body back in trim soon after the baby.

I remembered the baby! I focused my gaze where Andie was now looking. The baby was completely unconcerned about her family's recent re-acquaintance; he or was it she? was asleep throughout the family drama being played out.

"Daddy," she announced, seeing where my gaze had focused. Her face was a picture of pride and joy at the impending introduction. "This is your grandson, Marcus, but we call him Markie."

"Grandson?" I said, questioningly. The word must have escaped my lips, I thought the question would remain unvoiced and as soon as I said it I wished I hadn't. Pain, one can only take so much and my heart had borne its capacity today and I really didn't want to pass on my misery. I looked at Andie, my lips saying "Sorry" but my throat tightened with anguish and word did not come.

Andie's moist blue eyes flashed at me, she had her mother's tapering chin and it jutted out just I remembered it would, she had certainly acquired my stubborn streak, it hadn't been inherited. Again, my heart cursed my brain's infuriating logic.

Andie barely paused to absorb my mouthed apology, she spelled out her own feminine logic in even but emphatic terms.

"You are my Daddy, the only Daddy I've known and the only Daddy I want and will ever have. I am your daughter, this is my son, you are his grandfather!"

She clamped her plump red lips in a thin tight line, keeping her chin jutting out and defying me with her blazing eyes.

I reached over and kissed her softly, gently but audibly on her searing hot forehead and searched her face for forgiveness. Andie's eyes softened, her jaw relaxed, her mouth formed into a sweet girlish smile.

Andie shifted her arm from my neck and, with both hands, proffered her baby to me. I took the featherweight bundle and comfortably cradled him, my namesake Marcus, no, Markie, in the crock of my left arm, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I could just see his red face peeking out from his swaddling, screwed up as it was I couldn't tell if he was asleep or just shutting out the bright fluorescent light. I could see the tiniest of hands next to his chin and I poked his little silk-skinned palm gently with my rough index finger. His tiny hand closed around that digit in a determined lock and his eyelids opened just a crack, revealing a tiny fleeting glimpse of his azure irises, before he clamped his eyelids shut against the world again.

I am a romantic at heart, I always have been. I once believed in love at first sight, I still do, more so today. I was in love again, this time with my grandson.

I looked at Andie. I repeated the word "Grandson", I repeated it this time without the inquisitive inflection. I continued "My grandson is beautiful and so is my daughter!"

I hardly got the last syllable out before her mouth clamped once more onto mine and her long slim arms crushed me and her baby to her bosom. She held that kiss for what seemed minutes, I simply overflowed with emotion, draining me until I felt feint. It wasn't long until her passion, relief, call it what you will, relented. I was beyond trying to define how I felt, my emotions, repressed for so long, were in utter turmoil. She relented her embrace with a final sweet smacker on my lips.

Andie turned and waved two other figures towards us. I saw the man first, wearing faintly-tinted glasses, probably light-reacting spectacles for short-sightedness. He was very tall, dwarfing by some inches even my elegant daughter. He was also wearing loose comfortable sports clothing, clearly only recently flown in for this confrontation. Carol had a lot of explaining to do, eventually. He was dark, possibly of mixed race, I couldn't be sure or cared, my daughter's happiness in the choice of her mate was everything. My cursory evaluation over, I turned my attention to the little girl shyly holding onto his hand, but positioning herself slightly beyond her father's leg. She looked nervous, peering up at me, timid, certainly but her diminutive chin jutted out familiarly and held my regard with piecing brown eyes under an unruly shock of blond, virtually white hair. I supposed that any little girl whose mother was crying real tears would regard the perpetrator with some trepidation, as well as heightened interest.

"This is my husband, Jim," introduced Andie by my side, her hand rubbing my back as if wanting to maintain contact after so long without. I had missed her too, the absence of Andrea and Charlotte from my life were voids impossible to fill. "And this is my daughter, Charlie, your first granddaughter."

I nodded in Jim's direction, he nodded back, grinning as he did so. He was handsome, and was no doubt clever, intelligent and charming, I was confident that Andie would have made a dependable choice, who wouldn't be dependable and reliable with a wife like my lovely Andrea? Still cradling Markie in the crock of my left arm, I flexed my remarkably wobbly knees and sat on my haunches, smiling in the direction of the little girl and saying,

"Hello," I said, "You are very pretty. You must be Markie's sister. How old are you, sweetheart?" I held out my right arm hoping she would come to me. Jim bent his knees too, coming down to her level, releasing his handhold and moving her in front of him. He kissed her on the top of her head and propelled her forward gently.

With hardly a hesitation, young Charlie stepped forward and quickly closed the gap into my waiting arm. She didn't kiss me, but put her arms around my neck and buried her head in my shoulder briefly before regarding me up close with her deep clear brown eyes. She looked very cute in her deliberations, with her snub nose, generous mouth and tapered chin, clearly very tanned from the long northern hemisphere summer. Her hair was very sun-bleached.

"Hello Grandpa," she said, in an American West Coast accent, "You missed my birthday last week, I was three." She smiled and the cutest dimple appeared, only in her left cheek. She was adorable and I hugged her again. This time her head went over my left shoulder just above Markie's head.

"Eu!" she exclaimed. "Markie's done a poo-poo!"

This sparked a flurry of activity, her mother snatching Markie from my arm with an apologetic smile. I stood up, my jelly-legs regaining a little of their strength. I settled little Charlie onto my hip, she adjusted herself into a comfortable position, her arms still around my neck. I think she was smiling at all the fuss her brother was causing. She looked at me and rolled her eyes, which seemed to infer an unspoken, "Brothers, you can always rely on them to ruin the mood, can't you?"

Jim took the opportunity to move in and grasp my just-freed left hand with both his smooth warm dry hands and shake them, saying "It's a pleasure to meet you sir, ... Dad, I have looked forward to this day since Andie and I got together, it's been far too long," with a deep, pleasantly cultured American accent. His hand shake was firm without extravagance, his smile reaching his warm brown eyes. Yes, I liked this man.

"The pleasure is all mine," I replied, "I hope we can quickly make up for lost time."

He nodded and smiled even more deeply before relinquishing his grip and turning his attention to help his wife find a restroom. I'd had to become good at summoning people up in the briefest of meetings. I didn't care what he did for a living but if he was anyway undervalued where he was I would find him a place in my organisation. I moved my hand to add support to holding little Charlie.

I noticed Billy, he had just finished a call on his mobile and was putting it back in his pocket. Andie was still looking for signs to the restrooms and Billy jumped straight in.

"Andie," he said, "the nearest restrooms are this way." He pointed to a distant corner of the vast hall and proceeded ahead of the pair.

I called out before they had taken more than a step, "Andie, I would like to introduce you to your brother, Bill Junior. Billy, this is my daughter Andrea and her husband Jim." Billy can always rise to the occasion, and he turned towards Andie, bowed deeply, then stepped forward with arms outstretched and lips almost pursed on his smiling mouth. He knows how appealing he appears, particularly in female company and expects nothing less than to be swept up and mothered by any female given the minimum of encouragement. I saw with pleasure that my daughter did as any woman would and they were soon embracing and kissing like the long-lost siblings they were, with Billy's new nephew buried somewhere in the mix. I was never more proud of either of them, my children, than at that point.

They broke off and arm in arm strode away purposefully with Jim in tow carrying a changing bag, chattering away like old friends. Charlie agitated that she wanted to get down and she ran after her parents, shouting over her shoulder, "See you again soon, Grandpa." Suddenly they stopped and Andie called across to me.

"Daddy," she said, my grandson over her shoulder and my son clasped in her other hand, with my granddaughter at her side. "Charlie's in Christchurch, North Island and can't fly, she's eight and a half months' pregnant. Her number's in my phone, perhaps you could call her later?"

"I'd love to do that, Sweetheart!" I heard myself calling to her retreating back as both Jim and Billy chivvied her towards the bathrooms. As a former only child, I imagined that Billy was unaccustomed to the smell of babies, but he is a quick learner. He'd be changing Markie by the end of the week, I bet to myself, he was always eager for hands on.

"Huhum!" Skip reminded me of his presence. "I took the liberty of bringing the boat straight onto Sydney, when you were held up in London, Sir." Skip was always carefully deferential to me in mixed company, he had skippered both my boats and was a firm friend. "And we are moored some forty-five minutes' cab drive away in Sydney harbour. May I remind you Sir, that in this new boat we have four staterooms? Bob and Carol have agreed to accept Bill Junior's invitation to stay on board and Billy can bunk in with me and the crew. I assume the rest of your family can be accommodated easily, Sir. By the way Bill Junior has just ordered sufficient cabs to transfer us all to the mooring."

I could see that Bob and Carol were already heading towards the exit, a whole host of mixed bags were now loaded on Skip's trolley. I smiled and nodded my thanks to Skip. I know I love my son as well as any father, and feel I couldn't possibly love him more than I do but sometimes Billy exceeds my expectations and finds another notch.

Just as he turned, Skip added, "The Great Barrier Reef is going nowhere soon, you know Sir. I have charts for New Zealand aboard, may I suggest we get underway at first light?" My smile was acquiescence enough, so he resumed pushing the laden trolley in Bob and Carol's wake.

I called after him, "Can you ask Adrian to throw a few more shrimps on the barbie?" Adrian was my bright young chef, he had also been with me in my last two crews and what he could do with fish was incredible. It had already crossed my mind to help finance his own restaurant in Melbourne after this trip was over, so perhaps he could sail occasionally as a guest in future, if he didn't become too famous.