One Week – Final Climax

[Lucius]

Teaser: I have just dragged my worn knickers down my legs. Janet grabs the offending—and quite damp!—garment, rolling it in a ball, and throws it out of the open porthole. The flying fish will be utterly perplexed. To give them more food for thought, I send her old nightgown to float along with my knickers.
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The author of this story has read and accepted the rules for posting stories. They guarantee that the following story depicts none of the themes listed in the Forbidden Content section of the rules.

The following story is a work of fiction meant for entertainment purposes only. All sexual acts depicted in this story take place between consenting adults. Any similarities of the characters in the story to real people are purely coincidental.
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Title: One Week
Author: Lucius
Content Warnings: Past Non-Con alluded to.
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Written for the Final Climax contest.

One Week

17 July 1931
SS Kaisar-i-Hind
Somewhere in the Red Sea

Standing on my own at the ship’s rail, I watch the flying fish. The black-wing beauties skim and soar and glide in the air, then swish their tails in the water, quivering, leaving sinuous tracks across the surface of the Red Sea, a sheet of glittering glass stretching to the horizon. Then they take off again.

Perhaps I will, too.

I wipe the sweat off my forehead. Fairly dripping with perspiration, I am. The humid heat is relentlessly wringing conscious thought out of my brain until I wonder whether thinking that I’m not thinking counts as thinking.

They say the Red Sea is worse in June, but it is hell. If not, the inferno must be below decks, where Indian stokers are feeding the boilers so that the steam engines can keep pump-pump-pump-pumping without cease, their sound mixing with the strains of music from the deck above mine, pushing our old black liner through the waters.

A tall Lascar from the deck crew—a Khalasi, I correct myself, because that’s how they like to be called— steals a glance at me while polishing a piece of brass. Honestly, a white woman wearing a flame-coloured sari from Hyderabad is not that unusual on a P&O steamer. In the First Saloon, Englishwomen dress up for dinner in saris.

My sauntering about the ship in bare feet is unusual. I think the formidable Captain Headlam snorted on seeing me dressed like that for the first time. I don’t care whether it’s shame-making or not—other passengers tend to cut me dead ever since our steamer left monsoon-swamped Bombay six days ago.

The Honourable Timothy Bradbridge, a former subaltern of the Eighth King George’s Own Light Cavalry from Secunderabad, who has resigned his commission in disgrace, did not boycott a fellow outcast. The opposite, rather. The younger brother of an earl is not supposed to travel second class, but I think neither Mr Bradbridge nor Lord Moycullen have two pennies to rub together.

Mr Bradbridge did get me drunk on the third night out of Bombay—it’s been all too easy to do during the last four months.

Mr Bradbridge was disappointed. Drunk or not, I wasn’t about to submit to his advances.

Not after Quilon.

The memories of their hands, their breath, their pricks have haunted me throughout the last four months. I drank and I smoked bhang, all to stave off this nightmare of mine. Until I plunged into something truly and utterly reckless.

The flying fish keep playing. A faraway black dot has turned into a ship. Now I can see white foam under her bows.

My soles are hardened, but the teak wood of the deck is scorching. I feel the burn—as if the old boat wants me to wear shoes—and place my right foot on the lowest rail.

‘Miss Price,’ Mrs Marshall, my cabin mate, a rather plain woman in her late twenties, is leaning over the rail next to me, strands of sweaty auburn hair clinging to her reddened neck.

‘Mrs Marshall,’ I haven’t seen her coming. At that season hardly anyone travels between India and England—unless, like me, they have to. Mrs Marshall must have compelling reasons of her own. The same that make her cry herself to sleep every night, most likely.

I’m watching her out of the corner of my eye. Her red-rimmed eyes seem to be darting between the fish and my tanned foot. I wiggle my tootsies nonchalantly, silver toe-rings twinkling in the glare… Wait, is that blush-making? It’s hard to discern, that with Mrs Marshall’s face always blotchy from crying. Sometimes I wonder whether the P&O agent put her in a berth next to mine just to torture me, or was it the other way round. At least the third bunk is vacant.

We limit ourselves for the most part to ‘good mornings’ and ‘good nights’. Actually I haven’t talked to Mrs Marshall at all today—last night, I escaped the small stuffy hole they call a second-class cabin to sleep on the stern deck. For all I know, Mrs Marshall did the same.

The other ship is alongside ours, close enough that I can distinguish the fat black funnel with three red and three white rings. Must be one of new Japanese motor ships. The Kaisar-i-Hind is a P&O boat, a floating piece of the British Empire. But the Japanese ship seems newer and bigger. She may well be faster, too.

‘I should say, the deck must be scorching!’ Mrs Marshall says, her voice quavering slightly.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Mrs Marshall. I’m used to it,’ I answer, wiping sweat off my brow. The school of flying fish is no longer playing, and my eyes are fixed at the receding stern of the Japanese ship.

A sob Mrs Marshall fails to stifle makes me turn. Gripping the rail as if it is the only thing tethering her to existence, she looks as if she is making a hard choice between keeping talking to me in public and throwing herself overboard.

No she doesn’t. I suddenly recognize that look, the look of longing and despair and fear and wonderment and lots of other things. I’ve seen it before. But it just can’t be…

It is. Most surprised, I am.

‘Do let’s go down to the cabin,’ I whisper.

Mrs Marshall nods, her sweaty hand finds its way to my bare arm to steady herself. Neither of us pulls away.

No one is looking, not that I care. The tall Khalasi is busying himself with his brass. The dried-herring-like, bespectacled Mrs Bennings, stiff on her deck-chair in the shade, is engrossed in a Baroness Orczy novel.

Down in the hole we share Mrs Marshall dissolves in tears, falling onto her bunk under the open porthole. I turn the electric fan on and then hug and stroke her.

She is crying and blubbering and shaking until I start kissing her face, her forehead, her eyes… I can’t make it to the lips—Mrs Marshall kisses mine first.

It’s all too, too devastating. The horror of the last four months collapses like a pricked balloon, and tears roll out of my eyes, mixing up with hers.

Words won’t help us now. Bodies might, and I strip jiffy-quick. Undressing Mrs Marshall takes a little time, yet here we are—two naked, sweaty women kissing and caressing one another.

‘I’m Olwen,’ I say between kissing one large pink nipple and gently sucking another.

‘Janet,’ she pants, her fingers running through my hair.

The recollection of Thankamma flashes across my brain. I cup Janet’s breasts, revelling in their softness, while I kiss her stomach. Just like I used to…

‘Oh, Olwen, I…’

Don’t look back now. Playfully, I ruffle her wiry public hair before lowering my head between her legs. Nothing can stop me from kissing these lips, and I very well do. I taste her musky tang, well chuffed to hear her faltering sigh.

‘Shhhh…’ I move away, kissing her legs from the knees up while my hands knead her bottom, feeling the heat pool in the pit of my stomach.

‘Oooh,’ Janet moans as I wantonly run my nose along her wet slit. My conk must be quite shiny after that! I slide my left hand between my legs—oh yes, my fingertips are quite soaked. Lightly scratching the hood of my button, I go back to kissing the tender skin of Janet’s inner thighs, right next to her swelling sex.

Then I make Janet gasp, giving her a full-on kiss right on the nether lips. They part even further, revealing even more of her pink inner flesh. I am licking slowly along the full length of her slit, from her bottom to her peeking little button, again and again and again, from time to time sliding my tongue inside her pussy as deep as I can.

My own joy ever growing, I am pleasuring my lover, caressing her curves, licking her out without haste. I pick up the pace, then go slow again, driving her wild. Looking up, I see her eyes shimmer with desire and not tears.

I slip my index finger inside Janet, boldly caressing the slick front wall of her trembling pussy from within while my lips suck the delicate folds around the now exposed love button. When even that is about to send Janet over the edge, I tenderly suck and kiss the slit over my questing finger, my other hand lightly scratching my own excited flesh.

We moan as we climb the peak of delight together. A few hearty lashes from my tongue across her pleasure nubbin send Janet over the top, and with an uninhibited cry she squirts her nectar right in my face. I pinch myself and join Janet in ecstasy, thrashing between her legs.

Then we cwtch and cry and kiss until it’s dinner time.

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Janet’s mother is dying of uterine cancer. Janet has sailed for England to see her for the last time. Her father is a Wiltshire parson, and the patron of his parish, the young Duke of Evesham, was generous enough to pay the Harley Street fees. But there was nothing to be done.

Janet was sent her off to India three years ago, to find herself a husband when her close friendships with women became a matter of concern for her parents. Janet did marry—and she hates every single waking moment she spends with Mr Marshall, a hard-drinking, luckless box wallah.

In the burning stillness of the evening, we decide to have another go at it before going to sleep on the deck. I have just dragged my worn knickers down my legs. Janet grabs the offending—and quite damp!—garment, rolling it in a ball, and throws it out of the open porthole. The flying fish will be utterly perplexed. To give them more food for thought, I send her old nightgown to float along with my knickers. In revenge, Janet wrecks the good ship Olwen with her tongue. She might not be that experienced, but her enthusiasm is enough.

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‘The Poona police told me it’s either book a passage out by the next steamer or be deported as an undesirable person. The Governor of Bombay and the Viceroy know my name,’ I tell Janet with a touch of shameful pride. It’s the morning after. The sea, the heat, the Kaisar and the stuffy cabin are the same, but everything has changed.

‘Why didn’t they arrest you?’ Janet stares at me, her lovely eyes open wide.

‘Oh, too scandal-making, isn’t it? Young British woman—a sexual pervert in the bargain—who is a courier for the Indian revolutionaries? And the police can only guess what was in the trunks I carried with myself on the trains,’ I say. So do I—I’m curious by nature, but I wasn’t foolish enough to look inside.

‘But why… why help the revolutionaries at all?’

‘Look, I’ve spent two years travelling across India, from Srinagar to Cape Comorin. I lived in the mofussil.’ Almost died there too. ‘Britain can’t govern India any longer. And we really shouldn’t. Enough is enough.’

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‘What are you going to do now?’ Janet must’ve been afraid to ask, but she gathered her courage tonight. The Kaisar is gliding along the narrow slit of the Suez Canal. We sit together on the deck watching the moonlit banks. The desert seems endless.

‘Not going home to Rhayader, I am,’ I say. ‘ “Radnorshire, poor Radnorshire…” Perfectly foul, I should say! Mother is long dead, the Spanish flu. And as for Father, the last thing Dr Price told me two years ago was that I was dead in sin.’ I struggle to remain calm, fixing my stare on the tall palm to the left of us for a minute or two. ‘That was when Aunt Nellie left me four hundred quid in her will…’

‘So you’re rich!’ Janet is truly happy for me.

‘If only!’ I laugh. ‘Look, I went to France in the spring of ’29, then I studied modern dance at the Margaret Morris Summer School in St Idesbald, that’s Belgium… Then a first-class ticket to India, and, well, the rest was spent there. Now I’m going to France—to dance!’

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Marseilles! It's been a week. The Kaisar is berthed alongside Mole C in the port of La Joliette. where I said goodbye to France almost two years ago.

Janet and I are crying as we say our farewells, wishing one another all the luck and joy we can imagine. Janet sails on to Plymouth whilst I debark. We have been burning together with desire and tenderness and lust, our flame sustaining us on our way through life under our own steam.

But this is the finish of it.