Helen And Desire

by Alexander Trocchi

I stood up.

  ‘If you were my daughter, I’d flay you alive!’ he said. He staggered over to a small cabinet and helped himself to some whisky. When he had gulped it down, he turned to face me again. The anger seemed to have gone out of his expression. His eyes dropped to my legs and moved up again over my haunches to my breasts.

  ‘You’re not a bad shape,’ he said with an ingratiating smile. ‘Sit down, girl. You’ll take a drink?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘That’s the spirit! You’ll find the old man’s not so bad if you’re accommodating.’ He winked at me, staggered once again over to the cabinet, and carried a full glass of whisky back to me.

  I accepted it with a pleasant smile and he sat down beside me. Putting his arm round me, he said: ‘Drink up, girl, it’s good for you.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had anything to eat today.’

  ‘Nothing to eat?’ He frowned. ‘Hold on then and I’ll get you something.’ He left the cabin.

  Five minutes later he returned with a cold chicken and some bread. He sat me down at his desk and watched me eat. I was reminded at once of Duke who, daily, had done the same thing. There was no question in my mind that this sea captain intended to have me afterwards. That itself did not worry me. But I intended to leave the ship at Singapore. To go back to Australia was, among other things, dangerous, for I had every reason to believe that, if he wasn’t dead from the kick on the head, Tony had perished when the barn caught fire. For all I knew, there might already have been a warrant out for my arrest. This would be almost certain if Tony had spoken to Ursula before he called for me.

  ‘Will you let me ashore at Singapore?’

  He did not reply.

  ‘You can keep all the money,’ I said softly.

  ‘We’ll talk about that some other time,’ he said slyly. ‘There’s many days at sea between us and Singapore.’

  I lowered my eyes demurely.

  He chuckled. ‘I’ll think it over,’ he said, drawing me onto his knee. ‘For now, I’ve got other things on my mind.’

  He put his hard calloused hand on the smooth curve of my knee, and his fingers under my thin dress worked at the rising flesh of my thigh. Suddenly, an idea struck him.

  ‘See here,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a present for you.’

  He got up from under me, crossed the cabin, and rummaged around in a chest of drawers. A moment later, he turned and threw me a pair of sheer black silk stockings and a tiny frilly garterbelt.

  ‘Put them on, girl,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you in them.’

  He sat down in an easy chair which commanded a full view of the cabin.

  I undressed slowly before his excited gaze, slipping my thin dress up over my smooth thighs, off the superb thrust of my hips, and finally along the swan’s neck posture of my arms. Soon I was completely in the nude, my full pointed breasts pouting freely in their firm silhouette. Then, slowly, I drew on the black gauze-like fabric of the stockings through which my creamy skin glinted with pale sensuality. Then, fixing the provocative garterbelt on the sullen weight of my hips, I attached the fittings to the tops of the stocking, bending my gleaming torso backwards and forwards to facilitate the operation. I stepped into my high-heeled shoes, took a deep breath to tauten the curve of my bosom, tongued my lips wet, and, with one hand on my hip, shot him a suggestive glance. He was breathing deeply in the tublike armchair, his prominent blue eyes transfixed by the delicate calix of my navel.

  ‘Move!’ he said hoarsely. ‘Move slowly . . .’

  The small smooth disc of my belly rose and fell with the graceful movements of my long satin legs and my full creamy haunches trembled with each step. Suddenly my limbs were invaded by the desire to turn myself into sex’s instrument, and, rotating my hips in a motion of heavy sensuality, I glimpsed my powerful sex, at the centre of my white body, circling like a bee uncertain where to alight. I was imaginatively held by my own motion. The blonde fur of my mound did indeed become a bee which hovered around a conch shell which I lifted from the desk. Legs apart, a hissing sound escaping from my lips, my mound forming an arrowpoint to the long sleekness of my quivering thighs, I cupped the delicate form of the conch shell in my hands a few inches below my circling sex, hesitating with the whole dull tremor of my torso to alight on the shelltip. In this way, making mute love noises to the delicate urn-like thing I sought but refused to feed upon, I circled the cabin, sometimes with the shell at arms’ length, sometimes nested between my firm-nippled breasts, occasionally grazing the secret fur between my legs, until, near the cabin door, I turned off most of the lights, so that the shadow of my convoluted torso fell softly about the cabin walls. Then, on my knees, the white wall of my belly thrust forward, my head toppling backwards, I brought the point of the cone to my face, hovered with it, and then took it between the lips of my mouth, greedily, like a child at mother’s nipple. So complete was the metamorphosis of the conch shell that, still sucking the point violently, my whole body became weak with pleasure and I toppled sideways onto the cabin floor, where the garland of my excited flesh quivered on the darkly polished boards. Through the crescent rotundities of my female parts I felt my juices rise like a tide in answer to the shell’s hypnotic influence. My fair blonde hair splashed about the dark wood, half-shrouding my strange sexual devotion. I rolled over on my back, the shell held like a goblet in slender white arms which seemed to be playing an instrument, slobbering on the brittle point in untempered passion. At the same time I opened wide my heavy female thighs so that the lips of my vagina parted, showing a pale wet ruby seam of complexity.

  I heard a grunt from where the red-haired captain was sitting, and, rising on my elbow, I saw through my blonde hair, which fell in a smooth golden cascade, half-obscuring my vision, that his sex was out on his lap, strangely white against the ruddy forest of his short hairs. Slowly, I rose to my feet, still holding the conch shell, all the muscles of my slim body lustrous in the pale light, and brought my hands to my hips as my golden hair once again splashed about my delicately formed shoulderblades.

  No sooner was I on my feet than I realised with vexation that the man was impotent. He was gazing down with a drunken look of awe at his own soft white imbecility lying on the nest of red hairs. I realised at once that the reason for this man’s habitual anger was his knowledge that in spite of his desire he was no longer a male.

  My vexation turned to anger. My whole body was crying out to be taken in a brutal sexual embrace. I threw myself between his legs in an attempt to rouse him, but he sat rigidly in his chair, staring glassily at his impotence. Then, with a sudden muffled curse, he grasped me by the hair of my head and twisted my lithe body backwards across his knees, so that my head fell backwards over one arm of the chair and my trembling thighs with their furry little diadem were exposed to his avid gaze. At the same time, he grasped the conch shell and thrust it brutally between the delicately lush cleft of my sex. I cried out in pain at the shock. The rigid conicular form was altogether too large for the smooth lovesleeve, but he held my sweating body in a firm arc and, with a relentless piston-motion of his forearm, he beat me into a low whimpering pleasure. My belly and flanks danced convulsively on his knees, and a warm protesting blood appeared in trickles between my love-lips and the hard indented conch shell, which was sunk almost to its maximum diameter in my vital centre. I groaned with pain as he eased the pressure in removing the thing which had split me, and then, his huge hands grasping me at the hips, my blonde hair forming a pool on the dark wood between his feet, he raised me to doting love, soothing the bleeding lips and causing the tearing commotion at my loins to subside in a soft corrosion.

  He stood up, his mouth buried between the fleshy pillars of my thighs, my body in its upside down position flat against his brass-buttoned jacket, and walked with me through a doorway into the small cabin where he slept. Almost gently, he laid me between the sheets, slipped out of his own clothes, and climbed naked and big as a barrel into the bunk
beside me. He wasted no time. He inverted me quickly so that my dripping cleft was once again at his lips, his head resting on one of my voluptuous thighs, and with a gentle but firm thrust of one hand at the back of my smooth head he forced my face against the fleshy orchid that lay between his thighs. I was beyond resistance. Gradually, under the insistent caress strands of sensation spread like wildfire through my limbs, while my captor’s member, perhaps because of the sadistic pleasure which he had lately experienced, perhaps because of the proximity of my now doting mouth, rose like a mast between his powerful thighs until its calibre, contained in the crocus of my hands, was such that I could resist it no longer. With a sinuous movement of my young torso, I reversed my position and my sex sought his. With a strangled cry of triumph he mounted me, thrusting his rampant member between the ermine-trimmed lips of my cleft, riding on my pneumatic breasts with his broad wire-haired chest and mouthing doting obscenities in the shadow of my abandoned neck.

  I had never before experienced such overpowering strength in a male, and soon every tremulous petal of me opened as though under the rays of a ripening sun to suck in the sweet fluid that in the height of his terrible passion gushed forth with the thin pressure of steam. I thought that night that he would never allow me to sleep. Five times he mounted me, and five times my white body spread under him like soft wax, eager to expose the softest and the most secret parts of itself to the fibrous front which nuzzled it. At last, his arm coiled between my slippery buttocks, his mouth at my breast, and his broad hand at the small of my back, he fell into a deep sleep of contentment.

  I lay for a while in the darkness, uneasy under the oppressive weight of his limbs, wondering whether or not I would be able to persuade him to allow me to land at Singapore, and then, weak from the night’s love, I too fell asleep.

  I was alone when I awoke. He had evidently gone on duty. I stretched and yawned and slid from the bunk onto the floor. I was amused to find that I was still wearing both the garter belt and the black silk stockings. The garter belt was torn, and it hung like a pretty kerchief on the gleaming flesh of my belly. The stockings were badly laddered, like those of a chorus girl in a cheap vaudeville. There were traces of blood on my thighs, but I experienced no pain in moving. I laughed at myself, dabbed my thighs with a sponge, and walked naked into the main cabin.

  At that moment there was a discreet knock on the door and a seaman, bearing breakfast on a tray, entered. He had reached the centre of the cabin before he noticed me. At the sight of me, he stopped dead, his jaw dropping in surprise.

  I sized him up quickly. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, and he had probably never been alone with a naked woman. If I could make a friend of him, he might prove useful – might, even if my lover of the previous night decided against it, smuggle me ashore.

  ‘Bring it in next door,’ I said crisply, and walked, with the slow swing of my graceful buttocks towards him, back into the cabin from which I had just come.

  I sat down on the bunk with my shapely legs crossed.

  A moment later, pale and hesitant, he followed me in.

  ‘Where is the Captain?’ I asked softly.

  ‘In the chartroom, mum.’ He held the tray in front of him, his eyes almost popping from their sockets.

  ‘How long will he be there?’

  ‘Said for me to tell you he’d be to see you in an hour or so, mum.’

  I laughed softly. ‘Put the tray down,’ I said. ‘And come here.’

  After a moment’s hesitation he did so, but he stood about a yard away.

  ‘Closer,’ I said.

  He edged forward a few inches.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tom,’ he said.

  ‘Mine’s Helen. Come closer and put your hand on my thigh.’

  Wide-eyed, his hand quivering, he did so.

  ‘Stroke it for me,’ I whispered.

  His hand, which had lain there like lead, stirred slightly, and soon his fingers became more sure of themselves and traced delicate patterns along the sloping inside surface of my thigh. But he remained afraid and caressed my creamy skin at arm’s length.

  The bunk was a high one. When I sat upright, my navel was on a level with his eyes. I opened my thighs like a book.

  ‘Come close to me,’ I said in a whisper.

  He approached, fascinated. When he was close enough, I took his young boy’s head close to my soft belly and pressed it there, running my slim fingers through his tousled hair.

  ‘Put your arms round me and press me close,’ I whispered sensually.

  I felt his hands move slowly round my buttocks and soon, stifling sobs, he was burying his face in my belly. I went on caressing his head in a silence occasionally broken by a sob. An infinite tenderness existed in my veins.

  ‘Come up onto the bunk with me,’ I said in a tone of quiet command.

  He did so without hesitation. I slipped my hand on his bare skin under his rough seaman’s jersey and brought his lips against my left breast.

  ‘Suck my breast,’ I whispered.

  His soft young lips closed round my nipple and the small exciting tug sent quivers of excitement down along the rise of my belly to the seat of my body’s government. Patiently, I caressed his back, and then, drawing his legs sideways towards me, I ran my fingers lightly over the bulge in his trousers.

  ‘Take them off,’ I whispered.

  Hastily he thrust his trousers away from him down to his calves. He was young and excited; his belly was almost innocent of hair.

  The boy flung himself forward to bury himself deep within my belly before, in his first tense and vital excitement, his young seed out of all control coursed through his shuddering stem. No movement, no oscillation was necessary to set fire to his vital reservoir. He came in his first stroke as my voracious lovelips sucked him to the whirlpool of my female desire which, excited by this slimmest of lovers, caused the vice of my velvet thighs to contain him close till every youthful shudder had subsided.

  I did not try to restrain him. He wished to be away from me. He was afraid. And I knew he would return. He would love me as long as I required his devotion.

  ‘We’ll make Singapore tomorrow morning,’ the Captain said over dinner.

  I looked at him closely, trying to read what was in his mind, but he evaded my glance. I had a definite impression that he would be unwilling to set me at liberty in Singapore. He had promised to do so by this time, but he avoided the subject as much as possible.

  Captain O’Reilly had changed. He was no longer the bad-tempered bully who had confronted me that first time. He was now almost doglike in his devotion. He would have married me – he said a hundred times – if he had not already been married with children my own age. I believe he would have. That is to say, if I had agreed to such a preposterous match. O’Reilly was fifty-five and a poor man, king it is true when his ship was at sea, but just another anonymous little sea captain the moment his ship made port. As it was, he wanted me to be his mistress. The ship was far from home waters. Its home port was Liverpool in England. He could safely keep me aboard for at least eighteen months. He hinted at this so often that I began to suspect he had no intention of setting me free, and I congratulated myself on the secret love pact I had made with the callow youth who acted as his steward. Tom had promised to aid me to slip ashore at Singapore even if the Captain forbade it. I had cultivated him for the past week, giving myself to him each morning after the Captain had gone on deck, and he was now madly in love with me. I think he would have killed O’Reilly had I demanded it of him.

  ‘You will let me leave the ship?’

  ‘It may be difficult, Helen,’ he said evasively. ‘The Customs are sticky, you know. I’ll have to look over the lie of the land once we get there.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll manage,’ I said gently.

  ‘Oh, sure, sure!’ he said hastily. ‘Just give me a few days after we get there.’

  I put my hand on h
is across the table.

  ‘You know I’m in no hurry to leave you, John. It’s just that I must feel free.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  I was not worried. I had no intention of relying on him. As soon as he had gone ashore, I intended to make an attempt to land on my own. Or rather, with the help of Tom. O’Reilly wouldn’t dare to lock me up. He would be afraid to make me suspicious. So, the night before we came to Singapore, I invited him to carry me to the bunk.

  ‘Pretend this is our first night, John,’ I said huskily.

  O’Reilly was ashore. The dock was crowded with Chinese coolies and Englishmen in uniform. From somewhere came the nervous sputter of a pneumatic drill. The dockyard noises mingled with the hoarse Oriental shouts of the labourers, cranes turned, hawsers tightened, tug whistles blew. The docks were a kaleidoscope of colour, blue, red, green, yellow, and above this cauldron of commerce the sun struck down from an unbroken azure-blue sky.

  Singapore!

  Even the smells were different. As Tom dressed me in his clothes, I could hardly contain my impatience. Then he cut off the luscious blonde coils of my wonderful hair. I looked in the mirror. It was the face of a boy, albeit a pretty one.

  ‘Wear the cap,’ he said eagerly.

  I placed it on my head. The fine goldspun appearance of my clipped hair was thus shrouded.

  ‘And my papers. They’ll get you past the policeman at the gate. Don’t forget, Helen, somehow or other you must get them back to me. O’Reilly’ll skin me alive if he finds out.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom. I’ll send them back with someone and he’ll leave word with you where you can meet me.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ I kissed him on the lips.

  ‘I’ll die if you don’t!’

  I put the papers in the jacket pocket.

  ‘I’m going now,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the money.’ He had given me five pounds, which was all he had.

  Embracing him for the last time, I slipped onto the deserted deck, walked quickly down the gangplank, and threaded my way between men and machinery towards the dockyard gate. Overhead, the giant arms of cranes swivelled with bales of merchandise. I hesitated to allow a trolley to pass. I intended to send back the papers, but I had no intention of seeing Tom again. He was far too sentimental – had he not buried his face in the cut locks of my hair and prayed me that he should be allowed to keep them?—even I could not have changed him.