Thomas Hickey was not a happy man. The 19 year old student was having
a bad day. The passengers were all complaining, and his teammates were
making little headway on the 300 or so cabins that were occupied the night
before, on the Cross Channel Ferry, “Pride of Bordeaux”. The day’s passenger
numbers were not as high as the 1,800 they had on board the night before,
but all the complaints were slowing him down. He was seven-deck supervisor
for the day, in the absence of his normal supervisor, Dawn, who had gone
ashore to have a broken finger set. His teammates were slow today, no doubt
about that, and he thought that some of them thought he was a soft touch,
and wouldn’t shout at them if they sat down for a smoke every now and then.
The weather didn’t help, and two of the hotel services crew had already
gone back their crew cabins because of seasickness. The job was unpleasant.
Every other cabin had vomit on the floors of the bedroom and bathroom,
so it wasn’t a nice place to be. They had to get the cabins stripped and
re-sheeted and their bathrooms cleaned before they arrived in England,
in preparation for their fully booked overnight sailing to France. He looked
at the passenger manifest. Another 2000 odd on tonight, and the weather
was scheduled to blow all night. He swore quietly under his breath, and
walked down the long corridor checking into each room to see how his team
was getting on. They had hardly started! There was no way they were going
to have all the cabins done before they docked! Raising an eyebrow, Tom
wondered where indeed his team actually was. He listened. Nothing. He could
hear the strains of New Order coming out of Lisa’s portable stereo all
the way down the other end of the corridor. Then he heard, distantly, Marcus’s
laugh. Expressionless, was walked quickly down towards the noise. Eight
cabin crewmembers were sat in one of the end cabins, all smoking and drinking
coffee. “Nice of you to get me one…” he said to no one in particular, as
he sat down, shut his eyes, and craned his head back to rest on the bulkhead.
“Tom, are we on a late one tonight?” asked Marcus, with a grin. “Yeah,
looks like it, but we’ll be all fucking night if you lot don’t kick off
with these four berths…”Tom replied, with a long draw on his last Marlboro
Light. “Fuck it. Are we going to get any help from the eight-deck lot?”
Marcus followed up with little conviction in his voice. “What do you think?”
Tom muttered, with a sarcastic grin. Without waiting for the inevitable
stream of swearing and complaints, he went on. “You know, we have to get
this deck banged out by eight or we’ll not have it sorted for when they
start embarkation for tonight, and I for one am not fucking telling Brenda
that we fucked it all up today…She’ll fucking kill me. Its all right for
you lot, you can fuck off down to the cabins, and get wasted tonight, but
ill have to take the abuse for this. Come on guys, stop taking the piss,
ok? I could really do with another smoke, ….cheers Lisa, Like I said, we
need to get it done ok? We’ve had all morning, and got fuck-all anywhere,
so lets pull the collective finger out ok?” “Fuck it” seemed to be the
consensus of opinion of the other eight. Donna, a short haired brunette,
said presently.
Three decks below, Brenda Stafford, Chief Purser for the “Pride of Bordeaux” glided down the four-deck corridor, despite the heavy swell, heading for the forward stairwell. A classically attractive woman of 44, she was five and a half feet tall, with a nice hourglass figure, accentuated by age. Her shoulder length mousy coloured hair, showed streaks of blonde gray, and her white blouse, was brilliantly white in the weak sunshine that forced its way through the picture windows to her left. She walked past the crew cabins, glancing into the occasional open door, and greeting the occupant with a well-practiced smile. She walked past Tom’s cabin, and seeing it was open glanced inside without breaking stride. Nobody was in. She shrugged almost imperceptibly and continued walking. Five paces further down the corridor she froze. The Ship lurched into another heavy swell, and as the hiss of spray from through the hull subsided she turned on her heel and walked slowly back to the cabin she had just glanced into. Sure enough, on the floor, lay the prone form of a single can of San Miguel. Ten minutes later, Tom heard his name being called, from down the corridor. He poked his head out of the cabin he was in, glad of the distraction, as he was in the process of putting powder down on yet another pool of sick, in yet another cabin. The voice was that of Brenda Stafford. He stepped out of cabin, and turned the corner into the main corridor, and almost walked into, sure enough, Mrs Stafford. “Hiya Brenda, what can I do you for?” he smiled, and looked at Brenda’s deadpan expression. “How long is it going to take you to finish this deck, Tom?” she asked, with no emotion in her voice. “Depends how many more puddles of puke ive got to deal with, er…I dunno, say half five quarter to six something like that….” He replied nonchalantly. “Ok, well when you’ve finished it, I want to see you in the office, when you have finished this deck, before you go up to nine.” She stated evenly. Tom thought nothing of it. Two hours later, a nicotine starved Tom knocked on Brenda’s office door. As Purser, she had her own office up on ten-deck, which was only five doors down from her own cabin. She said something he couldn’t hear, and he went in. She told him to sit down, and he did so. Before he could speak, he noticed a can of San Miguel on her desk. “It was on the floor of your cabin, Tom,” she said, looking right at him. Inside, he crumbled. He knew he was in a world of trouble. Momentarily, it occurred to him that they couldn’t prove anything unless they had actually seen him drink it, so it would be a trip to the bridge to breathalyse him, as was the normal procedure. With a needlepoint of horror he realised that he would still be over the limit from the beers he drank last night, with Donna…. My God might they have searched her cabin too? Might they have found her stash of marijuana? “You left your door open, and I saw it as I walked past.” She informed him in her untraceable English accent.. He shrank into his seat, and realised that his career with the company had come to an abrupt and highly damaging end. “You realise that I’ll have to take you up to the bridge to have you breathalysed don’t you, Tom?” ‘He half muttered half nodded his reply. She didn’t move. He looked up in question, and she stared back at him for what seemed like a long time. Finally, she said, quietly, “Perhaps there is another way”. He brightened considerably, at the prospect of a telling off and a let off. She moved her head to one side, in a way that he had not seen her do before, and almost whispered, “Im not going to let this go Tom. You have been here for three months. You should know better than to be doing these things, but I’m not stupid Tom. I know these things happen, and I know that I cant stop them from happening, and that you will still drink on this ship, even if I sack one or two of you as I should do, as an example, as we both know I cant sack everybody. I don’t want to sack you. But I can’t let this go, so we’ve got a problem haven’t we?” She didn’t move one muscle in her face. Tom stared at her partly squinting, biting his lower lip softly, and completely confused by what this women was telling him. She continued, and the muscles in her face softened slightly, as she went on, “I’ll tell you a story, Tom. When I was about your age, I lived with my mother. She left me in charge of the house for two days, as she to Exeter for some reason. While she was gone, I found my father’s bottles of cider. He used to drink West Country cider quite a lot, out of those big stoneware bottles, and I wanted to try some. I liked it, and I got very drunk indeed. My mother came home unexpectedly, and found me drunk as a skunk on the living room sofa. She took my father’s strap, and whipped me sober with it. Didn’t take very long. I never touched alcohol for years after that.” Alarm bells began to ring in Tom’s head though he wasn’t sure why, as Brenda went on. “This is not the first time you’ve been drunk on here is it? Mouthwash and coffee will only get you so far. Ive smelt it on you a couple of times, but decided not to do anything about it. So now, I’m going to give you a choice. You can have the day to decide, and the decision rests entirely with you.” The alarm bells just got much louder. “You can either elect to quit, and ill write you up as a drinking on board, or I can punish you personally, just like my mother did to me”. Tom gaped. “I’m doing this as a personal favour to you, and I would not do this for anyone else, but in your case I think getting a record from this company, bearing in mind the career path you have chosen, is potentially very damaging. Then again, if you ask me to thrash you, then I will not go easy on you. Rest assured, it will be the thrashing of your life, should you choose to go that way…” Tom was having trouble breathing. The stirring in his boxer shorts, made him feel faint, and the whole room and conversation felt unreal. He would have expressed disbelief if he could speak. Brenda told him to come to her cabin at half past eleven that night, with his answer. He excused himself, and floated down the slewing corridor unable to believe what he had just been asked to do. At dinner Donna and Lisa both noticed that he seemed very detached, and was smoking at lot more than he usually did. Little did they know, he had made a decision. The day and evening crawled by, without Tom’s mind ever leaving his meeting with the Purser that night. At last, the final cabins were cleaned, and Tom went back to his cabin to get dressed for passenger embarkation. He removed all his clothes and stepped into the shower, almost embracing the hot water, and the steam as it bathed the sweat from his forehead. He washed his hair, and then lay back resting against the bathroom wall, letting the hot stream touch him all over, as he tried to forget his meeting with the Purser that night. He got out of the shower presently, dried himself with a large towel, and reached over to put on a CD. He put on his James CD, and listened to the album halfway through, during which he had a shave, put some gel in his hair, and splashed some Issey Miyake on his face and neck. Donning a new pair of black Calvin Klein boxer shorts, and then put on a freshly pressed white shirt, as the one he had been wearing all day was quite unwearable. The put his black trousers on, and a pair of thick black socks. He tied a careful knot in his Company tie, and straightened in his white collar, before finally putting on his navy blue waistcoat, and tiepin. He put on his safety shoes, and reached to turn off the CD player. As he turned to leave he caught sight of the album cover. James – Whiplash. Once he had finished the upper car deck embarkation duty he had been assigned that night, he walked stiffly to the lift, and went up nine storeys to the crew mess, where he made himself a roast beef and horseradish sandwich and a mug of tea, and sat down to watch the inanities of MTV on the crew Television. Donna sat down next to him for a few minutes then headed downstairs with a wink, and instructions to come to her cabin before he went to bed. He looked at his watch. Eleven Twenty four, dimly his G-shock told him. His stomach turned a somersault, and he felt himself begin to tremble, with a mixture of fear and excitement and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He rose, with a lot more purpose than he felt, and began the short walk to Brenda’s cabin. With a feeling inside like a ice cold bucket of water, over his innards, he knocked. “Come in!” The voice was difficult to read. Was there anger there? Before
he went in, he noticed that Ken, the Hotel Services Manager hadn’t picked
up his clean laundry delivery from outside his door, which meant that he
wasn’t in his cabin, which was the only adjoining one to Brenda’s. He went
in to the room and found it to be easily twice the size of his own cabin,
and the smell of women’s bodyspray, and of clean carpet both made themselves
known to him. He sat down in a chair by her dressing table without being
invited, and Brenda sat on her bed watching him. “So what’s it to be then
Mr Hickey?” she asked him. He had to try really hard to open his mouth
and utter the words that had been burning inside him like a hot coal. “I’d
like to take the punishment from you….” He had meant to follow up with
a detailed break down of his reasons for choosing this option, but he found
his mouth had gone very dry. She looked at him for 30 seconds or more,
before she nodded, ran a hand through her thick hair, and spoke once more.
“As you wish. Understand, that you have made your choice, and you will
take everything that I am about to give you, and you cannot default on
it whatsoever. In other words, I shall not be gentle, and you will almost
certainly regret choosing me, but you cannot go back on it now.” Tom nodded
without looking directly at Brenda. He remained seated. She walked over
to her small window, at the rain outside which beat unremitting on the
pane of glass. “Tom? Were you ever thrashed by your parents?, I mean seriously?”
Tom, felt a movement behind him, and heard a low whistle, as the belt
hurtled down, then a very loud crack as it impacted. Then the pain hit
Tom, and he exhaled all the breath in his lungs. His throat was as dry
as parchment, though he didn’t notice. The pain was intense. A thick heavy
burning came right across his bottom. He grimaced heavily, and saw the
shadow on the wall change as Brenda raised the strap again.
As he put his hand on the door handle to leave, she spoke to him. “When
I said please, I meant I wanted you to strap me, give me a thrashing like
I gave you….” Tom smiled, and replied with a grin, “Well you’ve got all
day tomorrow to think about your choice. I’ll be back at half past eleven
tomorrow night. You have a choice. I can either write you up, for taking
it on all fours, in the most personal of ways, or I can punish you myself….”
She laughed. “Can’t I have a bit of both?”
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