Mary sat up. She looked almost hurt. ‘Why, aren’t I good enough for you?’
‘You are so good, you’re positively wicked,’ he laughed. ‘No, what I meant was, where do the soldiers go when they’re looking for a good time?’
‘Oh, alright. Down on the waterfront. By the Pleasure Gardens. There’s a tavern, the Cat with the Fiddle, it’s called, although it should be Fiddle with the Pussy, if you ask me.’ She snorted derisively. ‘There’s a few other places they go ...’ with a snort of contempt still caught in her throat, Mary detailed some of the town’s other dens of ill-repute. ‘But the Cat with the Fiddle is the most popular one, and here’s why. People might look at me and hear me talk, and they’d sniff and say I’m common. But the girls down there make me look like a Queen, if you know what I mean.’
‘And to me,’ Horne said, as he wrapped both arms around her waist and heaved her onto his chest, ‘you are a Queen. And it is my duty to serve you. Now, what would please you most, ma’am?’
She giggled and shifted position slightly. ‘You will speak when you are spoken to,’ she commanded, her soft Welsh lilt taking on a most convincingly commanding tone. ‘But, as the good Lord put a tongue inside your head, maybe you should make some use of it.’ And she pressed her hot, soaking pussy to his face, moaning deeply as his tongue slid inside, lapping its way towards her clitoris. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he murmured, and he lost himself in her delicious folds.
The following day, Horne outlined his plan to the Major. He was to be introduced to the men as a new officer, fresh from an Irish regiment. He would be outfitted with a uniform, assigned a room alongside the main barracks, and given an office in the vicinity of the cipher department. That was the most likely source of the leak and, though the Major protested that every man in that area had been thoroughly checked and rechecked, Horne would not be dissuaded.
He was convinced that that was where the leak had sprung. In fact, he relied upon it. It was bad enough that he’d been called away from London to investigate this matter, but Mary, at least, had provided him with some consolation. Now, however, he was to be separated even from her, to ‘rough it’ with a bunch of soldiers, and blend in with them as best he could. And, as he suppressed the stirrings in his groin that the merest thought of Mary had proven capable of arousing, he truly believed that the blending would prove a lot easier to handle than the separation.
He was correct in his assumption. Bluff, hearty, ‘one of the boys’, every man who met ‘Colonel James’ during his first 24 hours in the camp agreed that, as officers went, he was a jolly good chap. He spent his evening in the officer’s mess, of course. But, when he returned to his quarters late at night, it was the easiest thing in the world to smuggle out a few bottles of whiskey, and pass them to one of the night sentries. ‘Share them with the lads,’ Horne whispered. ‘It’s got to be better than the swill they normally give you.’
The following afternoon, the result that Horne had hoped to secure came knocking on his office door. Hastily covering his doodles – the usual array of cocks, tits and asses – with an official looking document. ‘Come!’
Sergeant Jenkins entered and saluted smartly. ‘sir! I was wondering ... that is, the boys and I were wondering ... we have a free evening tonight and ... well, sir, a bunch of us usually go down to the Cat with the Fiddle for drinks and ...’
‘And?’ Horne did his best to look Officer-like – an impression, naturally, which Jenkins swallowed whole. ‘Well sir, there are ladies there, and ...’
Horne gave a loud, delighted chuckle. ‘Ah, the local knocking shop! Thank goodness, I was beginning to think this entire town was positively devoid of decent crumpet. Thank you very much, Sergeant. Tell the men I’d feel privileged to accompany them.’
Jenkins saluted again. ‘We leave at seven from the main barracks.’
‘I’ll see you there. Thank you.’ Jenkins left and Horne, the first part of his plan now firmly in action, celebrated by filling an entire page of his pad with a roughly sketched phallus, spurting a triumphal torrent towards a pair of tight, sharply-nippled breasts. ‘Come to daddy,’ he breathed to himself. ‘Come to daddy.’
The Cat with the Fiddle was exactly what Horne expected, a low-life waterfront tavern, with sawdust on the floor and the obligatory bunch of old men gambling Halfpennies on the Skittles in one corner. Another corner held the expected alcoholics, the men too battered by life to raise more than an eyebrow at the shapely hostesses as they plied their trade around the room. But everyone else was ‘game for the game’, as they say, reaching out to slap a behind or grab a breast as the girls gambolled from table to table, then follow them through a door beside the bar, to blow their week’s pay on whatever took their fancy.
It was a display that Horne had witnessed many times before in the course of his work ... had, in fact, already partaken of this evening. First through the door of the tavern, he was also first into one of the tiny cubicles at the back of the establishment, handing a golden sovereign to his whore (her name, with gloriously post-Dickensian irony, was Nancy), and outlining exactly what he wanted her to do. To describe every soldier she had sold her favours to this month, and every favour she’d ever distributed. ‘It’s the only way ...’ Horne stammered shyly. ‘I was wounded ... down there ... in Ireland’; and he explained how he could no longer bear for anybody to even touch, let alone see, what had become of his manhood. ‘But, if you talk to me, tell me the things you’ve done, let me visualise them, I can do myself.’
Nancy nodded. ‘OK, dearie ...’ And, for the next 30 minutes (the entire bar gave him a round of applause when he finally emerged – the whores were so good, they usually spat men out in half that), he sat with his back to her, feigning frenzied masturbation while listening to her detailed recitation of deeds done, holes filled, juices swallowed and hearts broken. Horne never ceased to wonder at the number of men who fell for the whores they paid to pleasure them; marvelled, too, at the lonely lives that should convince such men to confuse lust ... their own lust, for the whores felt none ... for love.
By the time Nancy had finished, however, and he’d drowned her last words with a suitably convincing climactic cry, he felt that he could recognise every man she’d spoken of – some by name, some by mannerisms, and one or two by the size of their dicks. But he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be called upon to partake in that particular identity parade.
Now, seated close to the door, a roost he chose for its commanding view of every aspect of the room, he observed the comings and goings of the men and the madams. He drank, of course; the soldiers around him plied him with ale, and he reciprocated, buying many more than his fair share of rounds, but glad to do so. His largesse purchased their trust, and he’d be claiming it all back on expenses when the case was finally solved.
But he also felt a vague gnawing of doubt. Though he was gathering a great deal that fed his own fascination with human sexuality, he was learning little that would help him with the investigation to hand. He had long since learned to trust his instincts, however, and his instincts demanded that he stay where he was. Maybe he’d find himself another of the girls ... that little blonde with the massive bosom looked tasty. That way, if nothing else did occur this evening, at least he’d go to bed with some lipstick on his knob.
He was about to beckon the girl over when his eye was caught by a soldier seated on the far side of the room, staring into space and seemingly utterly unconcerned by the human zoo enfolding around him. Horne had noticed him earlier, but paid no attention. But now the man’s plight intrigued him. Waiting till he caught his eye, Horne stood and walked over.
Private Treganna made to stand up and salute, but Horne gestured for him to sit again. ‘We’re all just soldiers here tonight,’ he smiled. ‘I was just thinking to myself how downcast you looked.’
Treganna looked at the floor. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘I’m sure it’s something. Look, is it money? I can loan you a few shillings. The girl
s don’t care where the cash comes from. ‘
‘No, I have money. It’s just ... I’m sorry, sir, but I’d rather not talk about it.’
Horne’s mind was racing, running through the multitude of reasons that could keep a good-looking young man, with cash in his pocket and beer in his bladder, rooted to his seat while his friends fucked and sucked their pay away. But, as his mind fought to pull the man’s details from Nancy’s exhaustive catalogue of the Cat’s customers, another possibility came to mind.
‘This isn’t really your kind of place, is it?’ he said in a low voice.
Treganna looked shocked ... struggled to find a convincing denial, but as Horne repeated that conspiratorial ‘is it?’, he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, sir ... I tried to keep it to myself, I tried not to let it interfere with my duties ...’
‘And it hasn’t interfered with them. You have nothing to apologise for. I know there’s very few people in this world that would agree with me, but there will come a day when everybody will be free to love whomsoever they want. And make love to whomsoever they want. And, if your tastes are a little more progressive than most of your fellows’, then maybe they’re missing out on something it would do them a lot of good to try.’
As Treganna continued to stare at him disbelievingly, Horne thought back to the various bars and haunts that Mary had talked of two nights before. ‘I see why you’re uncomfortable here. But I happen to know of another place in town where you might be happier.’
Treganna’s eyes widened even further, and Horne continued. ‘It is very exclusive from what I hear, and it is maybe better that as few people as possible know who you are.’ He peeled off his jacket and picked up his peaked hat. ‘Wear these, and take my name. If word gets around about a soldier on the premises, better they think it’s a Colonel, against whom nobody would dare utter such a slight.’ He handed the man some shillings as well. ‘In case it proves as expensive as it is exclusive. Just make sure you have a good time ...’
Back at the barracks, it was almost 4 in the morning when Horne was roused from a deep and blissfully contented sleep (by the time he got to bed, there was more than one ring of lipstick orbiting his shaft) by a tapping on the window. Opening it, Treganna stood on the grass outside. ‘I just wanted to thank you again, sir, and return your uniform.’ He handed a neatly folded bundle in through the window.
‘Who’s that with you?’ Horne asked, making out a second figure standing just inside the shadows, noting the Corporal’s stripe that lay on the sleeve and, once more, setting his mind to scour the database of faces and names that Nancy had given him earlier that night. Again, he came up blank.
Treganna smiled. ‘I met a friend.’
‘Met one? Or found one?’ Horne asked. ‘I do hope it was the latter.’
‘It was, sir. Thank you, sir.’
Horne closed the window and returned to sleep. So far as his investigation was concerned, the night had been a wash-out. But Treganna would remember it for the rest of his days, as the evening when he discovered that he was not alone in the life he’d been given.
The next three days passed by, so far as Horne was concerned, in a flurry of absolute inactivity. He never doubted his ability to crack the case he had been assigned, but he was wondering at the optimism with which he’d entered into it, and the strength of the hunch that had set him on this particular course. ‘Another two days,’ he said to himself, ‘I’ll give it another two days. Then I’ll have Carpenter reassign me to another part of the camp.’ He glanced down at his doodle pad, and stared at the almost painstakingly neat rows of miniature breasts he had drawn, like a child cramming his alphabet into as tiny a space as possible.
He sighed. When he was happy, when a case was going according to plan, Horne’s drawings were huge, consuming entire sheets of paper. But when he was stuck, when his brain was battering itself against a brick wall, the penises shrunk to peanuts, the bottoms to buttons, the bosoms to bugs. He needed to get out for a while.
Exiting the camp, he followed the same road that led to the Cat with the Fiddle but, instead of taking the path to its doorway, he turned instead into the Pleasure Gardens. They were crowded, of course; though summer was still some weeks away, families from all over the country seemed to have selected the town for a getaway. The grass was literally crawling with children, the Penny Arcade with their ricocheting parents, and Horne lost count of the number of times he was jostled, bumped and almost pitched backwards, as excited faces raced from point to point.
Horne was on the point of abandoning his walk and returning to the barracks, when he spotted something that stopped him dead in his tracks, left him so shockingly numb that he barely even noticing as a whale of a man, with a shark of a wife, barrelled into him from the side. Brushing off the proffered apology, Horne pushed his way through the thronging mass, towards the long white tent that had caught his eye.
A sign over the door could not have been more explicit. WHAT THE BUTLER SAW, it read and, according to the sexual mores of the day, what the butler saw, as he peered through a tiny peephole in a small black box, towards the flickering image within, was more than many God-fearing husbands saw. Horne himself was surprised to find such an attraction in what was, after all, a family area. A lot of towns had banned them from even the roughest areas.
Stepping ahead of another man who was determinedly bearing down upon the same tent, Horne fished a Penny from his pocket and handed it to the attendant. ‘How many machines do you have?’ he demanded. ‘Different machines, that is?’
‘Just the one, sir. Ten machines, but just the one film ...’ the man pronounced the word ‘fil-lum,’ and Horne was astonished to discover that even so modern an invention as the Moving Pictures had already been subjected to the corruption of colloquialisms. ‘It’s a good ’un, though. You’ll like it a lot, sir. And, if you’d like a private viewing, for a Penny more, you can go in the back.’ The white-jacketed attendant laughed coarsely. ‘I know what you military types are like, eh?’
‘I’m sure you do,’ replied Horne with equal good humour, glancing at the man he’d so indelicately jumped ahead of. The fury in the small dark eyes, the indignant quiver of a lip beneath a bushy black beard, the impatient hopping from one oddly-booted foot to another, told Horne all he needed to know.
‘Tell me, a friend of mine was in here just before me. Did he pay the extra Penny?’ Horne described the uniformed man he’d seen walking away from the tent a few moments earlier.
‘Sure he did. I told you, sir, I know what you military types are like.’
Horne paid the other Penny, and was led through the tent, past the row of hunched men who stood furtively manipulating themselves beneath their coats, and into a smaller area, with just the one machine. ‘Has anybody been in here since my friend?’
‘No, sir. Why, sir?’
‘No reason. I just think it’s funny that we should both come here at this time, without knowing the other was here as well.’ He squinted one eye up to the peephole. ‘Now, if you could leave me alone, please?’
The attendant coughed. ‘Well, I’m not going to hang around and watch you, am I?’ He left, and Horne started to watch the film. It was, as he expected, absolutely fascinating.
Wearing his own civilian clothing for the first time in a week, but feeling as though he would never truly shake off the vulgar itch of the army-issue underclothing, Horne took a sip of Major Carpenter’s finest brandy and looked at the three distinguished military men seated alongside his generous host. Outside, the harsh metallic clang of the lock-up door echoed through the room.
‘The Military Police will be here shortly,’ one of the men was saying. ‘The Corporal will be taken up to London and ... well, I wouldn’t like to say what will happen to him there. Let’s just say, they don’t treat traitors very kindly in this Kingdom.’
‘Dashed good thing as well,’ Carpenter added. ‘But now that we’re all here, tell us, Horne, how you were able to solve a case that had left the
best men in the service stymied?’
Horne cleared his throat. ‘It was simple, sir. The prisoner, as you know, was employed in the cipher room – and why not? He seemed an honest man, a truthful man, a gentle man. But beneath that soft façade there beat the heart of an ardent traitor. How simple it was for him to take the latest codes and information, and copy them onto a scrap of treated paper using the special pen that his foreign paymasters provided. Then, alone with “What The Butler Saw”, he would slip that scrap into the aperture between the projection light and the film.
‘Then, as he left the tent, his colleague would enter, and retrieve the sheet of paper, knowing that if anybody did get in first, all they would see would be a few indistinguishable shadows on the film. It was a very simple scheme, but a very effective one.’
One of the listening generals spoke. ‘What I don’t understand is, how did you know to even look there?’
‘Ah, I thought you might ask me that. Well, as you are probably aware, ‘What The Butler Saw’ is what we might call a somewhat risqué pleasure. In years to come, I’m sure, it will be regarded as extremely tame – it is, after all, little more than a barely discernable minute or two of a young lady removing her clothing in somewhat exaggerated, but frightfully immodest style.’
He paused as his audience gasped, shocked at the very thought of such depravity. ‘Of course, with only two minutes of film, she does not get very far. I’m sure, as men speaking with men, we have all seen far more for free, than the poor souls frequenting that tent get for their two Pennies.
‘However, I also believe that the Corporal currently awaiting his fate in the cell outside was also somewhat unfamiliar with the manifold secrets of the female form, for I happen to know that he himself is a fervent disciple of Priapus.’
‘You mean he’s a homosexual?’ Carpenter snapped.
‘Yes, he’s a homosexual. And why, I asked myself, would a homosexual pay good money to watch a young lady remove her clothing?’
The Erotic Adventures of Ambrose Horne Page 2
