Cleopatra�s Perfume (35 page)

I couldn’t forgo sneaking an afternoon at the Globe Cinema on Primrose Hill Street, where we would snuggle in the back row like university students, his lordship’s hands squeezing my knee or pinching my nipple in the darkened theater. I was at peace here in Coventry, the war seemed so far away in this little town where Lady Godiva rode naked through the city in exchange for her husband lowering taxes on the townspeople. (There’s talk of erecting a statue to the beautiful heroine.) Nothing could happen here…

My thoughts ramble, remembering that sober visit to the countryside (I refrained from using cocaine, so you see, dear reader, the strength to stop was there, but not the will when I was in London). I enjoyed my stay at our hideaway, checking out the cottage, though I use the word with license since it was a spacious and grand house with a staircase with a balustrade composed of carved panels instead of balusters, the forceful reliefs consisting of gents and ladies in various sexual poses. (I shall leave it to your imagination as to what licentious poses.) Our upstairs playroom containing our “toys” was equipped with spy holes or “squints” concealed behind two great carnival masks from Venice through which his lordship could observe me.

Blindfolded, tied to a chair.

The silken crimson cord around my wrist became loose, leaving my hand free to…

I struggled to move my hand toward my pussy, but I couldn’t do it because my arms were tied to the chair.

I kept struggling, the bonds became looser…

Struggling…

…my hand coming closer to my pussy.

One, then two fingers inside me, rubbing my clit until it burned with delicious agony while his lordship watched…

Lord Marlowe presented his approach to submission to me in a restrained, intelligent manner, unhurried and unobtrusive, immersing me completely in his world. It mattered not to us the society pressure to make us feel awkward despite our age and class difference, our love took root and flowered in this hideaway. A unique sensuality came from the explicitness, candor and vulnerability we showed toward each other, an emotional nakedness as well as the full-frontal exposure of our bodies to each other at the oddest hours. In the oddest moments. A favorite game of his lordship required me to be available for sex at all times, regardless of whether or not I was aroused. Consequently, he desired me to do whatever necessary to be ready to receive his cock. Periodically during the day (or night) he would penetrate me without warning, regardless of what I was doing. How I missed those days.

I again felt the magic of our hideaway awakening in me when it began to rain. A fire melted my resolve not to seek out the element of our favorite game as the liquid fingers of a gentle rain streaked the windowpanes, tempting me with a most delicious idea. But I refrained from mentioning it to Mrs. Wills. She wouldn’t understand. I tiptoed upstairs to our playroom, leaving Mrs. Wills to her knitting in the sitting room, listening to the rattle of rain and humming to herself. Knowing where I would find what I was looking for, I entered the wood-paneled room and removed the wall
plate above the fireplace mantel. I sighed when I saw it. The black hatbox wrapped with a white silk ribbon. With palms sweating, my breath erratic, I unwrapped it quickly and pulled out the crimson cord. I was struck by the lingering scent of my honeyed juices wrapped up in pleasure in that box, bidding me to relive those moments with my late husband. I dared wonder if I would ever again enjoy the pleasures the crimson cord offered, the expert fingers of Lord Marlowe slipping my knickers down then removing my brassiere as he had done to allow me to recline nude on the plush velvet couch, then tying my hands with the crimson cord we both loved, my white-blond hair matted to my neck with the sweat of my excitement before he turned me over, my bare arse in the air, and whipped my quivering buttocks with the fine leather crop. Stinging, delicious pain until I begged him to take me but he didn’t. Instead, he ordered me to lie down on the midnight-blue velvet caressing my skin while he parted my legs then licked around my swollen inner lips, then flickered his tongue over my clit…

No, dear Mrs. Wills would never understand. But I know you do, dear reader.

London

February 18, 1940 through early September 1940

When I returned to the city, I was more lonely than ever, but determined to feed my frustration for companionship the only way I knew how: through sex. But I would never again involve my soul nor my heart. I had learned that was a luxury I could ill afford. I kept my sexual escapades private, knowing Mrs. Wills would rep
rimand me for my dalliances with the nefarious characters I chose to spend my evenings with, especially those with whom I shared the partaking of the white powder. Then again, in those days everyone in London was in love or at least wanted to believe they were. You can’t imagine how eager these young fliers were to exhibit their sexual prowess in the bedroom before they embarked on their missions deep into the heart of Germany, bombing troop concentrations and oil plants in the Ruhr, munitions works, airplane factories and canals. Or the older gents who wanted to prove they were still in the fight, which is how I found myself the weekend guest at the home of a retired army officer, an adviser to the Foreign Office, who was also a nudist. I’ll never forget the morning after we’d spent a rambunctious evening of chess and cards and sex watching the major standing in the kitchen giving orders in the nude to his manservant. Delightful.

My trysts weren’t as much about the sex as they were about the feeling, the need for closeness, the confusion of the times, the companionship and the desire for sexual experimentation to escape it all. I saw myself as a woman seeking adventure and forbidden desires rather than what I was: vulnerable and at times, raw. I took what I wanted, whom I wanted, and when I wanted them with all the spikiness of a royal queen demanding her captain of the guards do her bidding and pleasure her. I possessed a hunger
there,
the need for penetration that would make me explode, my juices spurt and my body shiver with pleasure. I was base, sarcastic, greedy, and filled with taking love wherever I could find it.

And yes, dear reader, I made mistakes, hurtful mistakes I’ll never forget. Like the young Aussie officer with the hearty voice and
thoughtful deep blue eyes with an uncanny talent for sucking on my clit for an indescribably long time. He would ring me up or pop in unexpectedly during those early-spring days of the war with an armful of daffodils. One day he brought me more yellow daffodils than I’d ever seen, boasting he’d been on the RAF list as “missing” but here he was, ready to get bloody drunk and kiss my nude body all over then suck my juices dry. I admitted I never knew he was listed as missing, so when he didn’t show up the next week I joked to a group of fliers the Aussie was playing games with me again. No, they said, he was attacked by six ME–109s, but shot down one enemy aircraft before crashing in a wood. He wasn’t coming back.

You’d think I would cry, but I couldn’t. My emotions had atrophied. I managed to stay sober that day, waiting for the shaking to set in, the tremors. Nothing. Only an intense numbness, a sadness I couldn’t shake. Thereafter, every time I saw a daffodil trying to burst into flame in the park, I turned and walked the other way, refusing to accept this war and its dire consequences.

I know now all that arrogance was a manifestation of my need to protect myself to the point I hid my body in plain, white moiré dresses to make my outrageous flirting more acceptable. I remember a date with a British officer who was so involved in checking the RAF’s losses, he went out to see how the newspaper sellers chalked up the day’s results in terms of a cricket match while I tried to wiggle out of the damn dress but couldn’t because of all the underpinnings. (“RAF versus Germans, 58 for 21—Close of Play Today.”) He got tired of waiting for me to take off my clothes and went back to his regiment blustering about how the damn Jerries better watch out since he didn’t drop his load. Did I mention I was high on cocaine?

I dare to assert I wasn’t alone in my need to numb my feelings. Many Londoners also found solace in the drug, once the choice of smart society, now an underground stimulant to get us through those days, months of waiting for something to happen. You may wonder where I secured cocaine in a time of war. Ah, but I was so clever, dear reader, in keeping my habit secret from Mrs. Wills. Like most British women of the upper class, I joined the women’s auxiliary services and initially received a job doing tedious administrative duties for the war office, not to mention having to endure the babble of Lady Palmer, a frequent visitor in her quest to collect clothing and household items for those in need. Day after day, she droned on about how the war was ruining the Season. I soon discovered a more interesting endeavor, one that would also help me secure the fix I needed.

Driving an ambulance.

I worked eight hours on duty, eight hours standby (which meant I reported for duty if the siren went off) and eight hours off with every third weekend free. You would think I’d balk at such duty, but I relished it with a vigor I hadn’t felt in years. I found it exciting and an opportunity to socialize with acquaintances working at the hospital (I was both surprised and pleased to see Lady Palmer’s daughter, Flavia, working there as a Red Cross volunteer), as well as showing off my trim figure in the smart WAF uniform. Rather silly of me, but I still lived in a fantasy world, never believing I’d be touched by the war except for the inconvenience of not having new silk stockings and possessing only one tube of red lipstick left to my name.

And
my supply of cocaine was dwindling.

Even then fate seemed to be guiding me. One afternoon when I
was called down to the West India docks, I gave a ride to an old soldier with a wooden leg, a crusty gent with deep sunken eyes and a surly laugh. I had picked up an injured man who had been hurt loading crates onto a barge, and while the doctor attended to him in the back of my ambulance, the old soldier regaled me with his risqué stories about life on the front and the pretty nurses who took care of him and how they gave him morphia for his pain. His talk made me uneasy, especially when he hinted he had something that would help me stay awake during long nights on duty. For a price. With a sly gaze in my direction, he opened up a secret compartment in his wooden leg and showed me the white powder. My heart raced, my mouth salivated. Seeing my reaction, he smiled. I couldn’t resist the drug, though I was destroying myself. I was without the protection of his lordship, vulnerable and alone. There was no turning back for me.

Over time I pieced together that he got his drugs from the senior medical attendant in charge of the receiving room of the hospital. He had cocaine smuggled in with each shipment of medical supplies. It was quite ingenious, actually. All the requisitions from the hospital were handled by his friend in another department who, when he received a request for drugs from his coworker, would fill the order with cocaine and forward it as medicine, then enter it on his books as medical supplies and in his ledger as being used for treatment.

Where he got the drugs, I can only speculate. Rumor had it the supply came from Spain, maybe France, though since the Germans took Paris, I doubt any drugs were smuggled in. I didn’t care where they came from. Each week, I’d meet the old soldier in a different location and refill my cache. He had no idea who I was, simply a British
woman driving an ambulance. I was in illicit heaven, staying high when I needed it, and crashing and sleeping for days when I wasn’t called for duty. No one speculated about my strange behavior except—

Mrs. Wills.

She questioned why my eyes were so tired, my mood so jumpy, my stare so oblique. Especially after I returned home at dawn after drinking and dancing at Hachett’s or Lansdowne, having spent a night in glorious harmony with the perfect balance of cocaine and alcohol, my mind poised delicately on the edge of sleep but still receptive to the bold advances of the junior officer with his hand down my knickers, probing me and rubbing my swollen clit with his cold fingers before guiding me down on the hard bed in the cheap hotel and clumsily pushing my legs apart. He entered me, his thrusts tentative, as if he expected me to tell him to stop, but it was too late. I was hot and wanting, my lips glossy with pleasure, begging him to take me…

They were all the same, dear reader. Eager hands, sweaty hard bodies, thrusting cocks. But I digress. Know only that it didn’t take Mrs. Wills long to figure out I was using drugs again when the officer in charge of my unit rang up my flat, inquiring about my whereabouts and telling Mrs. Wills this war was no society outing. I should report to him as soon as possible for an assignment. I had no choice but to tell her about my clandestine trips all over London, from Regent’s Park to the Old Church in Chelsea to Liverpool Station, even as far as the Woolwich Arsenal in the East End to pick up my drugs. I needed her support to cover me if I was held up at any time.

Dear Mrs. Wills. She did as I asked, while pleading with me to go to a sanitarium to cure my addiction. I refused. I could handle
it, I told her. I had no reason to quit. Lord Marlowe had been taken from me in a motorcar crash, then Ramzi’s infidelity, and finally, I lost Chuck Dawn, the American. A great nostalgia came over me, a sorrow I can’t describe, as if I had traversed between two exotic midnights, Cairo and London, both dark and filled with secrets of sexual escapades.

Three men. Three loves. Three obsessions.

I conjured up my favorite fantasies to make me believe I could cope, while ignoring the throbbing headaches, the frequent nausea, the pervasive dullness invading my nerves, my muscles. My body would recover. It always had. I assure you, dear reader, nothing Mrs. Wills could have said or done would have made any difference. The addict must find her own way to sobriety, a winding, often suicidal, course fought with much pain and a harshness that follows only after confusion and coldness have numbed the soul to a point where no other choice exists but to quit.