James Ashleigh was happy. He was doing what he loved. Sailing the oceans but having plenty of opportunities to take part in the ritual of the chase, as Bill his friend called the pursuit of women. Life became even more pleasant when James met Maria at a party on a ship called the "Beaver " in port in Helsinki. Now he thought he had everything. A life at sea, the anticipation of arriving in Helsinki and love making like he had never know before. Then unexpectedly came his son, at first a question mark over his happiness but finally accepted. For reasons which James did not fully understand, Maria did not want to marry but after a long separation while James sailed to places other than Helsinki, they decided to get married and his happiness was now complete.Then came that night, after making love on the ship, when the car crashed on the way home to see his son and Maria was gone. Life now became a burden. The question was what was James to do about his son? James abandons his former life and hides away from his friends .He began what he thought of later as his descent into hell. Drink became his comfort, women were to be taken brutally when the chance arose with no ideas of forming steady relationships. No matter what advise from his worried friends offered, James hid himself away and tried to forget about Maria and his son. One day in a night club he met Henri, a friend of his best mate's wife June. June, who he had virtually raped one day when she came to try to help him recover his self respect but even that had not stopped her attempts to comfort him. Henri changed his life. This is the story of James' rise to happiness when life seemed perfect, his descent into unbearable grief and his final redemption in the arms of Henri. It is the story of how one man reacts to the end of all he holds dear in his life, how even in the depths of his despair, he still finds people who care even if he did not and of the final acceptance that life is for the living. While not forgetting the dead, James realises he must look to the future.
About the Author: Edmund Gubbins I write under my short name of Eddie Gubbins After leaving school at sixteen, I became a cadet with the Shell Tanker Company. In all, I spent 12 years as a ships officer in the British Merchant Navy serving with Shell, the United Baltic Corporation and British Rail Shipping Services. That is where my Tales from the Sea posted on www.theoldun.blogspot.com come from. Actually I used to put what happened while I was at sea in some sort of literary context while walking up and down the bridge of ships in the middle of the night. Though it can sound exciting travelling the world's oceans, at times it can be very boring spending four hours staring at the sea with no land or other ships in sight. I never wrote these stories down at the time just composed them in my head. After leaving the sea, I graduated and became a university lecturer in Transport Management. I had my first taste of writing seriously when I published my first text book entitled The Shipping Industry with Gordon and Breach followed by Managing Transport Operations with Kogan Page. Over a number of years I wrote a novel entitled Running after Maria loosely based on a very tragic period in my life. In this novel, I explored the effect of great loss and heartbreak and how the kindness of others can lead to redemption. One of my short stories, Maria, has been published as the runner up in a competition in an anthology " with islands in mind" by Early Press Fiction. I have written or am in the process of writing a fantasy trilogy called The Rombuli Saga. Details are available on my blog www.eddiegubbins.blogspot.com