Cleopatra�s Perfume (36 page)

Then come the demons.

I had not reached that point. Not yet.

I continued my gadabout nights and wild days driving my ambulance, dealing with fires, accidents, sick children and whatever else I might encounter, but the turning point in this scenario came about one night between the first and second acts of a boring play. I was sitting with Lord Marlowe’s friend, Sir_____ of the Foreign Office, and his wife in the third row of the Queen’s Theatre in the West End, watching a play whose title I can’t recollect, when he casually inquired if I had any intention of returning to the States since Britain was at war.

No, I answered, squirming when the cavalier officer on my right nudged my knee with his. Charming…and bold. I liked that. I dropped my hand to the side and pulled up the hem of my gown, silently inviting him to run his gloved fingers up and down my calf (I wasn’t wearing stockings, but like most girls, I drew in the seams) and sending delicious shivers up and down my bare legs. Which is why I wasn’t paying attention when Sir_____ mentioned he needed someone he could trust who had access to an American passport to do him a favor. Nothing important, he said, simply go about my normal business and report back to him what I heard in social conversations. I was more involved in listening to the daring young officer whisper how he had come into smuggled red lipsticks from Paris and would I dare to please him by tinting my nipples scarlet with lipstick? I said yes and Sir_____ assumed I had accepted
his
proposal. He nodded, then mentioned he’d be calling on me soon with more details.

That,
dear reader, was how I came to be on his unofficial team of agents dispatched to various countries to eavesdrop on suspected enemy agents throughout the British empire. If I had been paying attention instead of listening to details about the officer’s favorite game called Cavalry Mounts (where naked girls sat on the shoulders of officers, bare thighs clamped around their necks and stockinged feet tucked under their armpits), I would have said no. I had no intention of going abroad with Hitler and his goose-stepping mob gobbling up Europe and I had every intention of telling Sir_____ that.

But not tonight. A succulent heat emitting from between my legs induced me to think of nothing else but the warm retreat I found
in the rear stalls when my officer suggested we move to where it was dark and shadowy
and
empty. (I discovered later he had purchased the entire section of seats to ensure our privacy.) He slid his hand under my gown and reached between my legs. Moist and wet, unfolding the velvety flesh, reaching up under my clitoral hood to find my hard bud waiting for his touch. My climaxes came quickly, easily, my sighs and moans held in abeyance, barely a whisper, but reaching a crescendo at the end of the third act.

I reached my final climax when the play did and the curtain came down.

I would be remiss, dear reader, if I didn’t report that the Queen’s Theatre was later hit with a bomb during the first few weeks of the Blitz, destroying the entire section where I was sitting that night. Yes, it unnerved me. Yes, I wore Cleopatra’s perfume. I believed it had saved my life in Cairo and I knew somehow it could so again. What I
didn’t
know was that I was in danger here in London from something other than the threat of bombing by the Luftwaffe. Laila. I believe the woman was convinced the perfume contained mystical magic. And she would stop at nothing to get it. But I had no idea how clever she was until I met a woman I shall call Anna.

Anna isn’t her real name, but it will do. Where I met this amiable miscreant is not important, dear reader. Suffice it to say, I was immediately struck by her craftiness that had a certain edge to it I couldn’t identify. Constantly looking over her shoulder as if she expected someone would take her away. Or scurrying past people queuing up for ration books, her eyes downcast, her mannerisms tense. She spoke English with a charming accent, which I guessed
to be either Swiss or Belgian, though she possessed a wild veneer about her that intrigued me, reminding me of the smell of patchouli and heavy perfume.

Wearing a tailored dark gray suit that hung loosely on her slender frame and a round fawn-colored hat tipped at an angle, she squinted at me as if she’d spent a lot of time in darkened rooms. She seemed lost in London and in need of a friend, so I invited her to have tea with me at a café in Haymarket. Dining out was “off ration,” so I treated her and we sat and talked for hours about art and music and “having to make do.” I commented that I found some wartime restrictions to my taste, considering my penchant for wearing white, like donning light-colored clothes because of a shortage of dark dyes for army uniforms. I found nothing more enjoyable than flirting with the handsome officers in their smashing uniforms, I told her, sipping warm tea and indulging in soft crunchy lemony scones. Anna shyly admitted she thought my appearance in a WAF slim skirt and tight-fitting jacket most attractive. Would I mind if she sketched me?

Flattered, I agreed.

My appetite for female companionship of a sexual nature had not been acted upon since I left Cairo. You must consider the fact London was a city with an underground of sexual activities more concerned with what the servants would say than what the local authorities would make of it. Which explains why I chose a late-summer day when Mrs. Wills was out purchasing knitting supplies (and cook and housekeeper had the day off) to indulge in a bit of naughty play. I had intended to enjoy a cold meal of lamb and cheese (rationed to a few ounces a week), when Anna paid me a visit with her sketch pad to
show me the drawings she’d finished of me in the café. They were quite marvelous. Soft shadows, and most flattering, my hair blowing in a lazy breeze lifting up the edge of my skirt, peeking at what was underneath—
lady or wench?
the breeze seemed to be asking, which made me wonder if a more subtle ploy was at play here.

It was.

No sooner had I offered to change into my uniform to continue posing for her when she whispered in a husky voice she’d rather I wore nothing at all.

I freshened up (a bath was out of the question at this time of the day), but I washed and combed my hair and grabbed a silky white sheer dressing gown. I should have known something was amiss when Anna asked me to forgo any fragrance, insisting she preferred the natural scent of a woman, clean, musky.

And aroused?
I wondered, wiping the moisture between my legs that had a slightly sweet scent. Confident—after all I was in my own home in Mayfair—I agreed to shed my inhibitions and lounge about in a state of dishabille. I lay down on the bed and she began to sketch me, pointy breasts, long torso, a white scarf tied around my head and trailing down my back, and a string of perfect white pearls around my neck. I slipped on the ruby-and-pearl ring Ramzi gave me to complete my look. We drank French wine, rather easy to come by since many restaurants and suppliers had stocked up before the Germans took Paris, and I laughed and giggled like a schoolgirl when she asked me to pose in different positions. I twirled the end of the scarf around my fingers, then allowed it to fall over my left breast in such a way my nipple poked through the silk in a provoca
tive manner. Then, biting down on my lip with the sharp edges of my teeth, I stared at her for a long moment, watching her pencil flying through the air, thinking about how pretty she was with her sad eyes and dark skin. Her shoulders swayed as she sketched, her foot tapping a silent rhythm that accompanied her creative process as if she were laying down each stroke in a private dance.

I shivered. I also wanted to move my body. Against hers. Nude skin, mine as white as eggshell, hers, rich and dark as burnt copper, breast against breast, belly against belly, legs entwined. Why did I feel like this? I was responding with sensual intent to that same wild element I saw in myself, imagining her painting me with oils that bore the rich scent of perfume. And for some reason not clear to me, I wondered what secrets her body possessed. Perhaps I was jaded from the constant but cold attention from the virile men I had taken to my bed, ready to enjoy my body but never diving into my soul; or perhaps I yearned to again savor the taste of the exotic pleasures I had known in Cairo, the staid British demeanor no longer to my taste. Whichever it was, I intended to act on my desire, stretching my body, preparing to feed on her uniqueness while indulging in my fantasy. I delighted in how my breathing slowed as I remained in control, while hers sped up to a quicker pace when she looked up and I pulled the trailing scarf off my nude breast, then tilted my head downward, my glance seemingly pointing to my hardened nipple.

“Would you like to touch me?” I asked, already knowing her answer. I delighted in the idea of being fondled and handled by her soft hands and elegant fingers.

She nodded and the game took a different turn when she ran her hand over my breasts, stroking me, then gently twisting my nipples.
Perfect points,
she commented, rolling the tip of her tongue over my rose-brown nubs and licking them, sucking on them. Her lips set me on fire, the warmth and gentleness of a woman something so different from the demanding thrusts of a man. Often cold, quick, unfeeling. But not Anna. No, dear reader, she licked my flesh with a tenderness that took my starved emotions, shriveled up like dry floral petals deprived of moisture and heat, and my body unfolded under her touch. Her sighs matched mine when she parted my legs and kissed the soft hair on my pubic mound before parting my labia and edging her tongue inside me, sucking on my clit and sending me into a dreamlike state. My fears disappeared into the shadows as the day darkened into night, though I had cleansed my body of the perfume with the sweet-scented soap of jasmine. I basked aglow in a heightened state of arousal, though I was without the perfume protecting me from danger, my whole body suffused with the driving urge for sex. I moaned, delighting in the silky sweep of her pink tongue across my pleasure bud. A charismatic feeling between us, two strangers, that brought about a certain nervousness and hesitancy.

I wasn’t ready to give up full control to this woman, raking my hand through her glossy black hair, guiding her to where I wanted her to lick me. My clit was incredibly sensitive, responding to her flicking it back and forth with the tip of her tongue, my hips gyrating in rhythm to her sucking, my mind wondering if she enjoyed the strong taste of my juices in their natural state not mixed with the scent of the perfume—

She stopped.
No,
she couldn’t do that.
Not now. Please.
I burned with fever, aching, wanting to climax, wanting to experience a clitoral orgasm with all the selfish pleasure due to me.

Sweaty, panting, I forced myself up on my elbows and opened my eyes to see why she had stopped. Intoxicated with alcohol, I stared at her, disbelieving. She was pointing a pistol at my breasts. Then I understood. With a boldness I didn’t know I possessed, I pushed out my chest and pointed my bare breasts at her.

“What are you waiting for?” I said with a curious laugh.
“Shoot me.”
Did I really mean that? Or was I so drunk I didn’t take into consideration I wasn’t wearing Cleopatra’s perfume? Did I want to die? I don’t know, only that I’d been played a fool.

“I—I…” the girl stammered, wiping sweat off her face, then rubbing her palm on her skirt so hard she tore the cheap fabric.

“What do you want? Money, jewels?” I pulled the ruby ring off my finger and tossed it at her. It rolled on the carpet, but she made no move to pick it up.

“Yes, I mean, no, I want—” She searched my bedroom, dressing room, knocking over lotion bottles, grabbing my jewel box, dumping earrings, bracelets, everything out on the floor, then opening my vanity chest until she found—

Cleopatra’s perfume.

“
This
is what I want.” She ran her fingers over the pale golden alabaster box carved with delicate emblems outlined in black with the nude, bare-breasted figure of a queen holding a scepter and perched on a throne. “What I
must
have or—”

But it was too much for her. The sex, the wine. Touching, seeing, smelling. She broke down, started crying, offering no resistance when I took the pistol from her, then wrapped the dressing gown around me. How could I have been so foolish as to have let down my guard? I knew who had sent the girl. And to think she
sent a woman to seduce me. I shivered, an oppressive feeling of disgust coming over me. She knew my foibles better than I did.

I asked, “Laila sent you, didn’t she?”

The girl nodded and explained how she was hired as a German agent by a Muslim woman with heavily lined eyes and dangling earrings. She gave her money and arranged for her passage to England with one thing in mind: to seduce me then murder me and steal my jewelry and my valuable Egyptian perfume box. A stolen artifact, she said. Which must be returned for Goering’s personal collection.

“I was supposed to kill you,” she said, “then take the Egyptian artifact back to Switzerland where it would be sent via diplomatic courier to Germany.” She collapsed into my arms, sobbing. “But I couldn’t do it, Lady Marlowe.
I couldn’t.
I’ve already seen too much death.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked with more than a hint of skepticism. “How did you get here?”

“I came to England in a small boat during the cold of night.”

“From where?”

“Dachau.”

Mrs. Wills returned with an armful of yarn and blisters on her aching feet to find my Mayfair town home filled with men from Scotland Yard. I told the investigator I befriended the young woman and how she had tried to rob me. Nothing more. The girl muttered her thanks, insisting I keep the drawings before she was taken away to Holloway prison and booked as a displaced person, where she’ll be treated fairly. Anna, I found out, was a Romani Gypsy, an artist and the last of her tribe. She learned to speak many languages, in
cluding English, so she could sketch tourists and townspeople to earn her way as her Gypsy caravan crossed Europe.