We drove through the streets without speaking. Once only, his hand, slipping from the gear lever, fell onto my knee, and his grip tightened momentarily, but whether his gesture was meant to be reassuring or indicative of what he would expect of me I had no idea. His hand returned to change gears and the car drew up alongside a smart apartment building.
We mounted in the elevator to the top floor. There we entered his luxurious penthouse apartment which overlooked the city. A smartly made-up blonde maid, whose too-fitting black dress accentuated the sensual curves of her breasts and thighs, opened the door for us. She looked me up and down before her employer, in a cold voice, ordered her to take my bag and prepare the guest bedroom. She did so, undulating her plump buttocks as she walked away.
‘Come and have a drink,’ my host said when she had disappeared. ‘Then you can have a bath and get cleaned up.’
He ushered me across the thickly carpeted hall into a lounge with a very low, pale grey ceiling, softly lambent with concealed lighting. The carpet was thick and pure white and strewn with variously coloured rugs. The walls, grey like the ceiling, supported modern paintings of nudes in erotic positions. The stone bust of the upper torso of a young woman stood on a draped pedestal in one corner. The furniture consisted mainly of divans, strewn apparently haphazardly round the room and covered with broad-striped red and white silk.
My host, who introduced himself as Tony, pressed a button beside a long mirror on the wall, and a complete bar, glittering with an array of liqueur bottles, swung into view.
He noticed my fascination, smiled, and said: ‘What will you have?’
When I hesitated, he said: ‘You haven’t been in Sydney very long, have you?’
I blushed and shook my head.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You can tell me all about it afterwards. Meanwhile, I will give you something very special.’
A moment later, he returned to me, holding a small glass containing a violet-coloured liquid in his hand.
‘Drink that,’ he said, his eyes hooded for a moment as his glance fell to where my young breasts, nervous under the thin material of my dress, rose and fell with my breathing. ‘Drink it slowly. It will do you the world of good. And sit down, my dear.’
As I drank it, he watched me with a quizzical expression on his face. It was a sallow, handsome face, and his body looked strong and slim.
‘Do you know, Helen,’ he said after a moment, ‘I believe that in the end we all get what we want . . . that is to say, if we want all that is implied in having any one thing?’
I laughed for the first time.
‘It’s easy for you to talk!’ I said.
‘But why?’ he said in a surprised tone. ‘I want all this.’ He took in the room with a gesture.
‘But what if I happened to want it?’
‘Well, you are here. The place is for the moment at your disposal. Perhaps you will find you don’t want it.’
‘But I do!’
‘We shall see,’ he said slowly. ‘Meanwhile, have one more drink before you take your bath.’
He filled my glass from the same bottle as before. As I drank, he moved across the room and switched on the radiogram.I settled comfortably on the divan and listened to the slow music.
‘See, the bath is already filled!’
It was such a bath as I had never seen before, sunk into the floor and made entirely of black marble.
‘You will look like Venus in that bath,’ he said with a smile. ‘When you have bathed, you will find your bedroom through that door on the left. There are clothes in the wardrobe. Help yourself.’ So saying, he left me, quietly closing the door behind him.
When he had gone, I threw off my clothes. My naked body, reflected in the long mirrors which covered the walls, threw itself back at me from all sides, full, lissome, and gleaming whitely in bold contours. It was the first time that I had had the opportunity to see myself from so many positions. I sat on the edge of the bath, my thighs startlingly pale against the black marble, and then, softly, on the downy skin of my swelling buttocks, I slid down into the warm scented water which closed over my curving loins with a sensation of utter intoxication. And then I was lying at full length in the big bath, my pale taut breasts breaking the surface, my nipples mauve and opaque, like fat little buoys around which the water, in ever-increasing circles, moved gently away.
I washed myself with the huge soft sponge that had been left for me. The soap was smooth and creamy on my glistening skin. When I stood up, the bubbles, like sea froth, mingled with the fair wisps of my short hairs under which my mound, like the bulge of a tunnel, thrust itself forward, bearing beneath it a furled red flag, the sullen lips of my sex. Below them, in a voluptuous rise, my broad thighs gleamed like gold pillars, subtly shadowed where the smooth lines of my heavy muscles twisted obliquely in their strong growth, while my dimpled knees, like sunken water-lilies, lurked just below the surface of the water, which the discarded heats of my body had caused to cloud, so that my feet were no longer visible on the black marble below them.
Dried on the soft turkish towels which had been provided for me, I walked naked into the bedroom.
The ceiling of this room was low like that of the lounge, only everything in the room was white – the damask curtains, the silk-lined walls, the soft carpet, the dressing table with its vast curved mirror. The only spots of colour were the various articles of female toilet on the dressing table, the black sheets on the bed, and the gold picture frame on the wall, which was filled with folds of soft crimson velvet at the centre of which there was a gold tube, the shape of a horn, which contained a splendid white and purple orchid.
The wardrobe was a fitted one, contained in the wall behind a mirror. At first, I paid no attention to it. I crossed to the dressing table, examined the various perfumes, creams, and varnishes, and slowly, watching the graceful movements of my nude torso in the crystal mirror, I began to make myself up. First I scented myself all over, the tender surfaces of my thighs and arms, my breasts and neck, and the soft yellowish furrow between the impeccable globes of my buttocks. Then I began to paint myself – my nails, toenails, and lips, a bright crimson; my eyelids and the soft shadows under my eyes, touched green with silver; the various hollows of my body accentuated by touching them with gradual spots of yellow-green and blue-green; and my long eyelashes a jet black. Then I brushed my long platinum-blonde hair until it shone and stood back to examine the entire effect.
At that moment, a breath of wind parted the curtains and I moved across the room to the window. I discovered that it was open and that it led to a small balcony which overlooked the city. I lit a cigarette and stood in my woman’s nakedness on the exposed balcony. I paid no attention to the men who peered at me from the windows opposite and only returned to the room when I had finished my cigarette.
The wardrobe next. I found there long dresses of various materials. I chose one of heavy silver lamé, slipped into it, and examined myself in the mirror. The dress was cleverly cut, with almost no front to it. Beginning at the navel, at which there was a finely wrought silver button, it was cut away downwards in a long spearhead so that it left the lower belly, the sex, and the whole taper of the thighs and legs entirely exposed. The train of the dress reached the floor and acted as a superb background for the starkly exposed soft front surface of the body. It was a strapless dress which left arms and shoulders entirely naked and, at the same time, because of subtle reinforcements, held the breasts high in two dully glowing silver cups. At that moment I had a brainwave. I found some silver ribbon in one of the dressing table drawers and, removing the orchid from its horn, I tied it neatly in position, just over and obscuring the strong sensuality of my mound. Then I stepped into a pair of high-heeled evening slippers and made my way back to the lounge.
Tony was reclining on one of the divans with a glass of whisky on a small table beside him. He shot me an admiring glance as I entered but did not rise to greet me.
‘You must be
hot with all those clothes on,’ he said with a smile. ‘Help yourself to a drink.’
When I had done so and was lying on another divan near him, he asked me if I was hungry.
‘Not in the way you mean,’ I said slowly.
‘In that case,’ he said immediately, ‘we might have the show before dinner.’ He got up, turned down most of the lights, leaving only those which shed softly on the divan on which I was lying, and then he returned to his own and made himself comfortable.
‘What’s all that for?’ I said in surprise. ‘Don’t you want to come over here?’
‘Don’t ask so many questions, Helen,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain everything soon enough. Meanwhile, relax and smoke a cigarette.’ He threw one over to me, and I lit it with the lighter on the small table beside me.
The minutes crept by. I was exasperated to find that he wasn’t even looking at me. He was lying back smoking against the cushions on his own divan, and he appeared to be thinking of something.
About five minutes later I realised that his glance was directed on a door to the right of me. I rolled over and looked.
In the doorway, the maid who had ushered me in was standing. That itself would have been strange enough. But that was not all. She was completely nude.
This big girl had her hands on her naked hips and was looking across at me sardonically. Her magnificent torso rippled as she moved, incredibly slowly, across the carpet towards me. My first impulse was to escape, but her slow movement and her eyes fixed on mine seemed to hypnotise me. I found myself powerless to move. There was a constriction at my belly and I breathed heavily. The luscious germinal juices mounted through my trembling thighs and my breasts quivered under the silver lamé. She was standing over me, looking down. I stubbed my cigarette and shot a quick glance at Tony, who said nothing and watched with a lazy smile on his lips.
Suddenly, without warning, she whipped away the orchid from my sex and cast it on the carpet.
Then, still without speaking, her fingers slipped quickly to the fasteners of my dress, which soon fell aside, exposing the whole front of my torso to her gaze. The tightness at my throat would not permit me to cry out. Terrified, I lay helpless and abandoned beneath her.
At her next movement, I resisted with all my strength. But the strange mask bore downwards, with the power of muscle, until I felt myself pinioned under soft and subtle gestures of fertility. A cry became a groan, fighting at impending thickness, a giving away. In response to the strange and extravagant intrusion which worked gently at the mastic substance which rose in my prickling hairs, my fists, which had pounded blindly, became relaxed, tensions cracked, and opposition died in me. The whole sheath of my lower torso was involved in the urgent systole and diastole of desire. I abandoned myself to the strength of my assailant and to the curious gaze of the man whose presence, felt rather than seen, seemed to cause my body to attain an abandoned luxuriance such as I had never before experienced. The sap rose under my skin. My legs, once tightly closed in their reluctance to take part in this unfamiliar orgy, became hot and flaccid as they widened to contain the gleaming oval movement of the woman’s buoyant hips, and the soft cleft of my deeper consciousness was peeled as though by turf, exposing my dewy shoots which were radiant in abrasion. My mouth slackened, and my hands, which had been idle since resistance died in me, sought to participate. Simultaneously, I felt myself brought to the knowledge of a new seat of pleasure as one of her slender darts pierced the loamy oasis which heretofore had been innocent of all sensation. Riven now at twin poles of delight, my glistening torso slithered under discs, flats, and surfaces, under flanges of containment and protrusion, all seeking the weld of female unison. My breasts, charged with ambiguous alluvial sensations, slipped to and fro under their counterparts, and, at my sudden daring gesture, a shuddering groan escaped her and her reanimated body leapt with a soft smack on the limited gyration allowed it by the strong clamp of my thighs.
A moment later, before the huge symphony of our limbs had attained its climax, and before I had time to realise her purpose, she had ballooned about, bringing heat and darkness to my face and joining me in sweet and cyclic suffocation. At last, in that perfect circle of moist female passion, our plumes were spent and our bodies met in a subsidence of lavish abandon. Spent, tremulous, and glad, we lay there for some minutes, inhaling deeply, in a welter of glistening limbs.
‘A delicious spectacle,’ Tony was saying. ‘Helen, I want to congratulate you on your quick wit. You were magnificent! And now that you . . . eh . . . know one another, allow me to introduce you. Helen, this is Ursula.’
We rolled apart.
Ursula laughed in a low voice. ‘You’re okay Helen,’ she said. She pressed the white wet fold of my thigh.
‘That’s enough for the moment, Ursula my pet,’ Tony said with a smile. ‘Enough, as some liar said, is as good as a feast.’ He got up and went over to the bar. ‘Now we’ll have a drink and get down to business.’ He returned with two long whiskies and soda which he presented to us, and then, installed on a chair opposite the divan on which we were still reclining in a nude state, he lit a cigarette and allowed his eyes to fall to the carpet. Presently he looked away.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was by way of initiation. I suppose that is the first time you have made love with a woman. It probably won’t be the last. Anyway, that is what I want to talk to you about. Believe it or not, Helen, there are here in Sydney many rich women who will pay a great deal of money to have a young woman.’
Once again Ursula pressed my thigh. ‘It’s easy, Helen,’ she said. ‘And the more they want, the more they pay.’
‘A business like any other, naturally,’ Tony said casually.
I said nothing.
He looked at me meaningfully and continued: ‘The only difficulty is to find those women. It is not easy. But they exist. Yes, they exist, young, old, fat, thin, with only one idea in their heads. That is where I come in. I find the women and arrange the fees, which come directly to me. Ursula and the other girls do the necessary, for which they receive whatever is given them by the woman, money, trinkets, sometimes costly gifts, and a fixed salary and a wardrobe from me.’
They were both looking at me now, waiting for me to say something.
‘You are interested?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said hesitantly.
‘But there are a number of conditions,’ Tony went on in a precise voice. ‘I had better acquaint you with them before you make up your mind.’
‘Oh, they’re reasonable enough,’ Ursula said with a laugh.
‘The first is that you cannot set up in business for yourself, the second is that you must never let the customer know you are working for me – you do it because you like it, you understand? The third is that you must accept whatever assignment I allot to you, there will be no question of your refusing. The fourth, that you must be available at all times.’ He hesitated, looked at me fixedly for a moment. ‘And there is one last condition: you can’t quit – is that understood?’
I looked at Ursula. She smiled reassuringly. I nodded. There was no question of giving up the present luxury. The future would look after itself.
Perhaps Tony doubted me, for he said next: ‘I’d better warn you that one or two of the girls in the past have tried to quit. They are sorry for it now, you understand? They are no longer good-looking. They couldn’t make a living as a whore at the docks.’
One again Ursula pressed my thigh. ‘It’s alright, darling,’ she said. ‘As long as you play straight with Tony you’ve nothing to worry about.’
Finally, I agreed. In that way I became for a time a woman’s woman, the adored and pampered mistress of rich women who expected me to dress, speak, and act as they did. I moved in the hothouse world of scented boudoirs and flirted with the husbands whom I cuckolded.
Chapter Four
Last night no one came. Once or twice I heard a movement outside the tent and I hurried to conceal my journal. But no one disturbed m
e, so I was able to write on into the early hours. At the first signs of dawn I was exasperated. I have travelled a long way, emptying myself of whatever would not serve my insistent desire. To be denied, to have one’s existence denied – are there not at least twenty men with the caravan?—is the most subtle of all punishments.
It is still early tonight. After an almost sleepless night, another hot day on the desert, nothing but sand, the harsh cries of the camel men, some mutton stew, a few dates, glances whose meaning I was unable to comprehend – and then, the oasis where we are camped now. The men seemed restless. I have a feeling that we are going to arrive somewhere soon.
I was installed in a small luxury flat of my own. I had been working for Tony for about six months. First there was the wife of a prominent businessman, then a German countess who was living for a short while in Sydney, and then there was a lull. I had been idle for the best part of two weeks. My salary was still paid. My mind, free of the cloying demands of rich women, was once again focussed on the possibility of leaving Australia. I had lost my fear of Tony. What, after all, could he do? I could be hundreds of miles away on the ocean before he even missed me. I had plenty of money to buy a ticket.
It was a fine morning. I gave way to the impulse to go immediately to a shipping office and book my passage. I walked there with a feeling of immense freedom. I had enough money for my requirements for the next few months. I had not a care in the world.
The shipping clerk accepted my money and gave me tickets for a ship which left for Singapore in ten days time. But before I left the office he counselled me to have my passport in order before the sailing date. It was the first time I had heard that such things as passports were required. He gave me the address of the passport office.
There, I made the stupid blunder of admitting that I was only nineteen.
‘In that case,’ the official said, ‘your application will have to be signed by your parent or guardian.’
‘But . . . my parents are dead.’
Helen And Desire Page 4
