All at Sea

Dark story with no actual sex, and not really erotic in any way. For your info, 'a brief' in the Uk is the nickname for a barrister, or the lawyer who represents you in court. It is a revenge story, but not a conventional BTB tale.

You've been warned!

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There's no good way to discover that your wife has had sex with another man, but believe me, some are worse than others. But surely, the way that I found out must be the very worst of all.

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It was a day like so many others that had preceded it, and the weather for that matter, from what I remember of it, was nothing exceptional. What was abnormal was that when I got home that evening, my wife of six years wasn't there. Robyn worked part time in an insurance office for some guy called Tom Blowers, and had been there for six months or so, and would normally be home by that time. I'd been away on business for a few days and had been looking forward to being welcomed back into my lovely young wife's arms. Her not being there didn't especially worry me, but unfortunately my lack of concern was about to be blown out of the water.

An hour later and I was beginning to get concerned, when the front door bell rang. I jumped up and made for the door, speculating whether maybe Robyn had lost her key, but opening the door I was surprised to find two police officers standing there.

"Mr. John Fielding?" He asked calmly.

"That's me," I answered, wondering what they could want.

"Your wife is Robyn Fielding?"

"That's correct," I confirmed, my insides turning to lead as I imagined what bad news that question could mean.

It did!

Much worse than I could ever have expected.

"I'm very sorry Sir, but we have some bad news for you."

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The rest was a blur, and you'll have to excuse me if I won't, or rather can't repeat it word for word. The bad news of course was that my Robyn, my beautiful young wife, was no longer with us. She wasn't home with my dinner ready on the table for the simple reason that some poor unfortunate soul had been dragging her lifeless body out of the river. She wouldn't be there with my dinner ready the next day or the day after that.

I cried a lot over that next few days. I cried and called out to the God that I'd never believed in to demand how he could be so cruel. I opened her drawers and cupboards and stared for hours at her clothes and underwear, unable to accept that I would never again see any of them on my lovely wife any more.

People were good, or tried to be, but how could they console the inconsolable? I hardly knew her parents who lived abroad, but even so, ringing them with the news was simply awful.

None of them could bring my Robyn back?

Just when I thought I had reached the bottom of the pit, things got worse. They had no idea how Robyn could have ended up in the river on a perfectly normal spring day, or even why she should have been down in that part of the town. A post-mortem was duly carried out, and to my shock it was discovered that Robyn had taken a whole load of tablets, probably sleeping tablets, shortly before entering the water.

The term suicide was being bandied about, but at that stage, not directly to me. The police came to see me and asked, maybe told me, that when I felt ready they would need to speak to me down at the station. I didn't want to, not wishing to accept that Robyn would do such a thing, or that she would have any reason for doing so. God, I hadn't honestly accepted yet that she wouldn't be walking in the door any minute, with that enticing little giggle that I'd fell in love with so quickly.

It was soon after I'd seen those policemen out, that for the first time since that awful night I opened my lap top to reluctantly check up on my e mails, and it was then that I found it.

I found the object that sent my life swirling even further down the pan of life, a single sheet of paper. The handwriting on it was Robyn's that I knew so well, the blotches smudging her words, so obviously her tears dropping onto the paper as she wrote them.

My darling, lovely husband,

By the time you read this I will be gone. I'm sorry my love for the heartbreak this must cause you, but I simply can't go on. I can't live with myself any longer for what I have done to you and our marriage.

Three days ago Tom asked me to stay on at the office for ten minutes after the others had left to help him finish some paperwork, but that wasn't his real reason.

I'm not sure if it qualified as rape, but he forced himself on me. I swear to you John that I tried to fight him off, but he was just so much stronger than me, and I was soon exhausted and simply gave up.

He stripped me and finger fucked me, and God help me John, I succumbed to him. The next thing I knew he had me over the desk and was fucking me, and I was squealing at him to fuck me harder. The only reason I know this is because afterwards he let me get dressed, but wouldn't let me leave till he'd shown me the video he'd taken of the whole thing, and made it clear that within the hour it would be edited to show the world how I'd encouraged him and been a willing partner. That is of course, unless I allowed him to enjoy my body again.

I went home that night and cried myself to sleep. I swear I would have confessed to you that night, but you were away for four days up north on that trade show, and by the time you came back Tom had threatened to expose me to you, our friends, my parents and the whole world. I couldn't think straight and you weren't there to help me and I gave in to his demands to have sex with him once more to keep him quiet.

Of course that was stupid of me but it was too late by then and he blackmailed me into continuing.

I'm sorry my love, but I can't take it any more and I've got to end it. I can't face you when you come back and I can't face the world, and I pray that you'll forgive me for taking the easy way out.

I hope that you'll find it in yourself to forgive me for what I've done, and pray that you'll get over me and find another woman who is more deserving.

Your loving wife,

Robyn.

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Words may exist to describe my feelings after reading the letter, but I can't seem to string them together.

I should have gone straight to the police, but the thought never occurred to me, but if I had, then my story would have been very different.

I sat there remembering about how we'd met. I'd left school and joined the Merchant Navy rather than going onto university, and soon found myself on a super tanker in the middle of the ocean. Royal Dutch Shell didn't believe in spending too much time in schooling their new officer cadets before they could prove that they could show that they could adapt to a life at sea. No good spending money only to find out that I was seasick all the time or missed my mummy too much. It was a case of being thrown in the deep end and swimming or sinking, and out there in the middle of the ocean, sinking didn't seem to be an attractive option.

Over the next few years our stop over in ports around the world were shorter than the Royal Navy enjoyed, but our officer's uniforms seemed to be as attractive to the local ladies and our higher wages probably even more so.

Not that I went with the professional ladies, though the distinction between them and some of my bed-mates was sometimes somewhat blurred. The first woman on my first shore leave may well have been the exception, though I would have been too drunk to know the difference. If she was, then it wasn't me who paid her, but it isn't unknown for shipmates to make sure that the new boys don't go home still a virgin. That basically summed up my love life, till one day the company decided I had a particular skill that they decided to use back on shore in the company technical office, and I started a new direction for my career, with the promise that I could transfer back to the ships if it didn't suit me.

I decided that it suited me just fine, the third week back on shore, when at a party I was introduced to Robyn. She was like no girl I'd ever met before, and I hardly knew how to behave with her. Till then I'd virtually never dated a girl without ending up in bed with her the first night. Not unless I got too drunk or involved in a brawl before we got there, and yes, when your young and stupid, even the officers got into fights. In uniform we were the picture of calm authority, but out in civvies, then we were as crazy as the next young guy, and the three years I'd spent as an amateur boxer in school, often came in handy. Not that I was really any good at it, but a little training goes a long way.

But Robyn was different to other girls I'd been with, and I swear that it was her that dropped the first hint that maybe after four weeks we should be 'moving on in our relationship' as she put it.

So move on we did, and a year later we tied the knot.

Six more years later and the knot had been suddenly and cruelly severed, and wiping my tears away, I decided that someone was going to pay, and there was only one person who could pay for taking my Robyn away from me.

I should have gone to the police, but as I've said, I didn't, but found myself pushing open the door to that bloody insurance agency, with little memory of how I'd got there. Brushing aside the questions of the receptionist, I charged through the door into Tom, bloody Blowers' office and confronted him.

"You bastard!" I shouted at him.

"Mr Fielding," he gasped back, leaping to his feet and keeping the desk between us. "We're all so sorry to hear about your wife."

"Sorry?" I queried angrily. "You fucking murdered her."

"Now look Mr Fielding, I think ...."

"Never mind what you think," I interrupted him. "You were blackmailing her you bastard."

"Rubbish," he shouted back at me.

"I've got proof."

"You can't prove a thing," he glared back at me, removing, if there was any doubt at all, that Robyn's letter was the truth.

"Wait till the police read this then," I screamed at him, holding Robyn's letter up in front of his face for him to read.

"The stupid bitch," he snapped, only having time to read the first few lines, at which point something inside me snapped.

Tom was bigger and heavier than me, but not by much, and unlike him I had learnt to scrap in some of the roughest ports in the world, and he probably hadn't swung a fist in anger since he left school. I chased him round the desk, Tom trying to keep it between us, till he thought he saw a chance to surprise me. The punch was so long coming that I could have ducked easily, but I didn't even bother. His punch landed, but before he had a chance to prepare another, I'd hit him four or five times, knocking him to the floor. In my haste to inflict further punishment, I shoved angrily at the desk to get at him, only managing to upturn it on top of him. The bugger scurried behind it, trying to protect himself from the flurry of punches and kicks I rained down on him, screaming in frustration that I couldn't get at his face to kick his teeth into the back of his scull.

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It may have been the noise, it may have been the angry way I pushed past the receptionist, and possibly there was a squad car nearby, but the next thing I knew the boys in blue were dragging me off the bloody mess below me, apparently tazering me when in my fury, I turned on them as well.

I woke up in prison aching all over, surprised at my own violence, but not regretting it. I hoped I had killed him whatever the consequences, and vowed that I would one day, when I discovered that I hadn't.

For the first time in my life, I discovered what it felt to really hate someone. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but maybe in some strange way it eased my pain of losing my wife. The brain only has a certain capacity for emotion, I suppose, and the sorrow that had so dominated me, had to make room for the hate that I then had.

Tom was in hospital pretty badly beaten up, and I knew that I'd probably have to pay for that, but with the evidence I had of his blackmail, then he would suffer even worse at the hands of the court. That thought allowed me to settle down a little, until another suddenly hit me like an express train.

My evidence!

Where was it?

In my haste to go and smash his face in, it hadn't occurred to me to make a copy of Robyn's letter, and when the police had dragged me out from Tom's office, then what had happened to it?

Oh Shit!

I convinced myself that justice would prevail and that the letter would turn up, but it simply never did. The state that Tom had been in, then it was doubtful that he'd been able to dispose of it, and the secretary/receptionist denied having seen it when questioned by the police. I pleaded and came to tears, trying to persuade the law to pursue the matter, but alas to no avail. What it came down to was my word against his that the letter even existed, and the mindset I was in, my sanity must have been under some suspicion. I'm pretty sure the investigating officer, deep down believed my story, but without evidence, even I had to accept in the end that the case was dead in the water.

Not so my case!

I'd given Tom a thorough beating and when asked if he wanted to press charges, he went for it. Not content with being responsible for my wife's death, he now wanted revenge on me. Not only that, but his solicitor opposed bail for me while I awaited trial, telling the court that his client was afraid for his safety if I was let out.

He was justified of course, though it wasn't so much his safety, as his life he should have been worrying about, and when bail was refused, my hate just about went off the scale.

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The court case could have gone worse, all things considered, and I think I smiled for the first time in months when Tom limped up to give evidence, the marks that I'd put on him still evident. He avoided looking at me throughout his questioning, while my glare in his direction never wavered, and I did wonder if that affected some of the jury.

The prosecution bought up the fact that I'd done some boxing, and made it sound as if I'd been a professional or something, and that I was a dangerous man out of control. My guy pointed out that it had been at a low level when I was at school and had no bearing on the case. My thoughts were that if my boxing was a problem, then they should have been concerned that I'd played soccer as well, because for sure I'd done him more damage by kicking him than with my fists, since he'd been hiding under that desk.

The other thing that went my way, was when my brief asked Tom if he thought I was justified in attacking him after blackmailing my wife and causing her suicide.

"Objection!" shouted out the prosecuting brief, and the good judge, quite correctly, unfortunately, allowed it, telling my man to be careful what he said, and instructing the jury to ignore the question.

"Ok," my guy continued, facing Tom. "Accepting that my client -- thought - that you were blackmailing his wife, then do you think he was ....."

Which is as far as he got before there was another cry of "Objection your honour."

Uproar!

It took a good ten minutes to regain quiet in the court, with another instruction to the jury to ignore my man's words, and a pretty firm telling off for him as well. The prosecutor demanded a recess, but the judge refused, giving him a hard time also, a mild hint that he believed the blackmail accusation, even though he couldn't allow it to be aired in his courtroom.

When it came to my turn to give evidence it all started over again. When asked why I had beaten my late wife's employer up, and yes my man phrased it that way, it gave me my chance to say my piece, but choosing my words carefully.

"After my wife committed suicide," I started, hesitating and looking straight at the jury to make sure they took it all in. "I found a letter from her telling me why she'd done so."

The prosecuting brief leapt to his feet, but was beaten to it by the judge, who waved him to sit down, warning me to be careful what I said, and asking where this letter was now.

"I left it in Blower's office when I went to beat him up for what he did to my wife," I replied, the judge waving down the other side's guy as he leapt to his feet again.

"Mr Fielding," he lectured me sternly. "I've warned you to be careful what you say in my court."

"How can I answer the question honestly, if I'm not allowed to talk about that bastard raping my wife and then blackmailing her and causing her to commit suicide?" I managed to get in before the court erupted again.

Shouts of 'objection' and 'order in the court' rang out, and this time everyone seemed to leap to their feet, even a couple of the jurors standing up and shouting, to add to the confusion.

This time it was my guy who asked for a recess, and I think it was with relief that the judge granted it, ordering the two lawyers to his chambers immediately.

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I was never privy to what was discussed between the three of them, but before the case resumed later that afternoon, I was warned by my brief that though prosecution was a certainty, I'd had my day and I should keep my mouth shut, and it would go well for me.

Sure enough, I wasn't recalled to the stand, and the whole thing was wrapped up pretty quickly. The judge clearly directed the jury that whatever justification I might or might not have had, that my admitted attack on Blowers was a criminal offence. They went out to consider and were back in no time at all, with a guilty verdict but a recommendation for leniency.

The judge duly gave me three months, which disappointed me till he pointed out that I was now a free man, having already spent that time in prison on remand.

The papers and local news channels picked up on it, and I kept my head down having been warned that any inappropriate remarks by me, could end up with me back in front of the judge. The innuendo however was rife, and though it didn't last long as a news interest, Blower's reputation was in tatters, and his business failed within six months.

I was left feeling pretty pleased with the way things had turned out, and decided that Tom wasn't worth the risk of killing. I'd only spent three months in jail, but that was enough to know that I didn't want to go back there. I'd forgiven Robyn, in fact decided that there was nothing to forgive, except perhaps that she had acted unwisely, and that she'd left me on my own in this world. I knew I'd never forgive Blowers though, but took the decision that I wasn't going to do anything about it.

The end!

No way!

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A year passed, and I was relieved that my company took me back, though I never really felt entirely comfortable in the office again. I kept an eye on what Blowers was up to, which didn't seem to be much during that first year.

I don't know where he got the money from, but at the end of that year, he set up another office in a town about forty miles away. It wasn't such a big affair and the actual office was not so well appointed, but I hadn't forgotten what he'd done and it was too good for the likes of him.

I caught him leaving his office one dark winter evening, and he may have guessed who it was, but had no real chance of confirming it. The first time it may have been considered a fair fight, but this time it wasn't. I didn't draw out the punishment, as I had a time scale to get back to where I still was officially, and the iron bar I'd taken to the party allowed me to do that. I could have killed him, but I no longer wanted to. I could have beaten him to a pulp, but I didn't want to. I wanted him hurt, but not so badly that he wouldn't recover in a few months, knowing, though he wouldn't be able to prove it, that it was me, and that I'd be back again. And again!