I sitting next to a modern day Henry VIII?
"Twice divorced and once more widowed. I loved them all. They say you fall in love, really in love, only once in your life. That, my boy, is hogwash. I loved all my wives the same. It was just that a couple of them didn't love me quite as much," he said with a hint of disappointment on his handsome face. I was trying to find the name of the old-time actor James McNichol reminded me of. James Mason maybe.
"Sorry to hear that." I glanced over at Harry and Patrick who were being left out of the conversation.
They seemed content to sit mostly quietly in each other's company, with Harry every once in a while telling her grandfather a little story or giggling over something I couldn't hear. I turned back to James and asked, "So your last marriage ended...?"
"Oh Delilah. She divorced me about five years ago. Went off with someone else. It's okay I guess, if that’s what makes her happy. And I've been having some fun of my own since then. But I'm still a y...well, perhaps I can't say I'm so young anymore, but I got some time left in me, Mr. Quant, and I mean to use it.
I need a good woman to settle down with again." Another "if you know what I mean" wink and nudge.
I was beginning to know exactly what he meant. James McNichol, for all his experience with the ladies, was still a rather old-fashioned gent who lived in a world with rules that few other men adhere to any longer. When he talked about dating and courting and having fun, those activities did not include sex. So when he couldn't take it anymore and wanted to have sex, he had to find a woman who wanted to get married. Given his good looks, I could understand how he'd have little trouble finding suitable candidates.
Seemed like a waste of marriage certificates to me, but whatever. What I couldn't understand was how he could be so dim as to consider Charity wife material, especially when she, along with her life partner, had invited him on a gay cruise!
Our meal arrived and Harry left to retrieve Errall and her father. While we waited, I took another look around the room. Charity was entertaining her dinner companions, Dottie and the younger set, Flora and siblings Nigel, Nathan and Kayla (I checked their names in the dossier before I came), two tables over.
The boys seemed to be enjoying every minute of their great-aunt's verbal shenanigans, as if they were on a wild amusement park ride that could end at any time. They knew to take advantage of the thrills while the)' could. At the other extreme, Kayla looked sour and Flora dour. Sitting at the table next to ours, the fiver, was the woman Errall and I had decided last night had to be Charity's sister. Faith was a gentler version of Charity; softer in her facial features, the way she wore her hair, her clothing choices. Every so often, over the usual mealtime ruckus, I heard the mellifluous tones of her voice as she spoke to others at her table. With her relaxed updo, graceful neck and delicate hands, she was Snow White at eighty-four.
The distinguished-looking gentleman at her side was no doubt her husband, Thomas Kincaid. Next to him were their daughter Marsha and her bulky husband Ted-average Joe and Jane hopelessly trying to pull off Ken and Barbie.
Marsha and Ted were looking particularly ill at ease. As much as James McNichol seemed blissfully unaware that he was on a gay cruise, these two were painfully cognizant of the fact. Whenever the solicitous waiter with only an oil can-like apparatus over his charms or the waitress with "Dorothy is my bitch" tattooed on her belly happened by, their eyes would protrude from their heads like boiled eggs.
Then they would look at one another with self-righteous indignation-or at least Marsha looked indignant.
Ted appeared rather befuddled, as if he'd just beheld a unicorn and didn't know whether he should weep at its uniqueness or shoot it as game. And when one of these creatures had the audacity to come near enough to serve
"Twice divorced and once more widowed. I loved them all. They say you fall in love, really in love, only once in your life. That, my boy, is hogwash. I loved all my wives the same. It was just that a couple of them didn't love me quite as much," he said with a hint of disappointment on his handsome face. I was trying to find the name of the old-time actor James McNichol reminded me of. James Mason maybe.
"Sorry to hear that." I glanced over at Harry and Patrick who were being left out of the conversation.
They seemed content to sit mostly quietly in each other's company, with Harry every once in a while telling her grandfather a little story or giggling over something I couldn't hear. I turned back to James and asked, "So your last marriage ended...?"
"Oh Delilah. She divorced me about five years ago. Went off with someone else. It's okay I guess, if that’s what makes her happy. And I've been having some fun of my own since then. But I'm still a y...well, perhaps I can't say I'm so young anymore, but I got some time left in me, Mr. Quant, and I mean to use it.
I need a good woman to settle down with again." Another "if you know what I mean" wink and nudge.
I was beginning to know exactly what he meant. James McNichol, for all his experience with the ladies, was still a rather old-fashioned gent who lived in a world with rules that few other men adhere to any longer. When he talked about dating and courting and having fun, those activities did not include sex. So when he couldn't take it anymore and wanted to have sex, he had to find a woman who wanted to get married. Given his good looks, I could understand how he'd have little trouble finding suitable candidates.
Seemed like a waste of marriage certificates to me, but whatever. What I couldn't understand was how he could be so dim as to consider Charity wife material, especially when she, along with her life partner, had invited him on a gay cruise!
Our meal arrived and Harry left to retrieve Errall and her father. While we waited, I took another look around the room. Charity was entertaining her dinner companions, Dottie and the younger set, Flora and siblings Nigel, Nathan and Kayla (I checked their names in the dossier before I came), two tables over.
The boys seemed to be enjoying every minute of their great-aunt's verbal shenanigans, as if they were on a wild amusement park ride that could end at any time. They knew to take advantage of the thrills while the)' could. At the other extreme, Kayla looked sour and Flora dour. Sitting at the table next to ours, the fiver, was the woman Errall and I had decided last night had to be Charity's sister. Faith was a gentler version of Charity; softer in her facial features, the way she wore her hair, her clothing choices. Every so often, over the usual mealtime ruckus, I heard the mellifluous tones of her voice as she spoke to others at her table. With her relaxed updo, graceful neck and delicate hands, she was Snow White at eighty-four.
The distinguished-looking gentleman at her side was no doubt her husband, Thomas Kincaid. Next to him were their daughter Marsha and her bulky husband Ted-average Joe and Jane hopelessly trying to pull off Ken and Barbie.
Marsha and Ted were looking particularly ill at ease. As much as James McNichol seemed blissfully unaware that he was on a gay cruise, these two were painfully cognizant of the fact. Whenever the solicitous waiter with only an oil can-like apparatus over his charms or the waitress with "Dorothy is my bitch" tattooed on her belly happened by, their eyes would protrude from their heads like boiled eggs.
Then they would look at one another with self-righteous indignation-or at least Marsha looked indignant.
Ted appeared rather befuddled, as if he'd just beheld a unicorn and didn't know whether he should weep at its uniqueness or shoot it as game. And when one of these creatures had the audacity to come near enough to serve
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