We have been camped here for two days. A tall Arab came during the day with another man. He made me stand naked while the other man examined me, pinching my plump buttocks, feeling the posture of my hips, examining my teeth. Evidently I am to be sold.
The idea excites me. Not indifference, not horror, but positively and corruptively almost a feeling of lust. Here is a denial of personality which I have been at such pains to extinguish by my own efforts. Here is a positive and shattering assertion that I am coincident with the pleasure that is to be had between my thighs or at the nipples of my firm breasts. My wildest dreams then become for these men who handle me a matter of fact. Dualism is extinguished, mind obliterated by the refusal of these men to notice its existence. I am annihilated. There remains only this dusky front, the mould of this flank, the tilt of these breasts, the moist softness of this cleft below the strong jut of the mound. They have a life of their own, and in their alluvial silts I lust to submerge myself. And these strange men are my confederates. For the first time in my life, without hypocrisy, without prevarication, I am valued for what I am, woman, the roots of sex and pleasure. I am purged of all poisons, of civilisation.
From my hiding place behind the curtain I saw the two Chinese enter the room and sit cross-legged on cushions on the floor. A moment later a young Chinese girl entered bearing a tray with tea on it. She curtsied and placed it between the men. She was a doll-like, fragile creature dressed in heavily embroidered silk, a tunic, and black silk trousers. She wore boat-shaped little slippers on her naked yellow feet. Having placed the tray in position, she curtsied for a second time and glided silently from the room. The two men talked Chinese. Behind the curtain I leaned back well out of sight.
About a quarter of an hour later, one of the men clapped his hands. The same young Chinese girl entered and removed the tray. Then two fat little men, in dragon-patterned silk robes, came in carrying musical instruments. After bowing politely, they sat well back in one corner and began to play some kind of weird and apparently disordered melody.
One of the two spectators rose then and closed the French windows and over them the heavy damask curtains. In the semidarkness he crossed the room and struck one resounding blow on a brass gong. Then he rejoined the other man in a cross-legged position.
At that moment a tinkle of little bells came to me at the other side of the curtain. It sounded like the little jostling bells one sometimes finds on a pony harness. I widened the slit in the curtain to get a better view of what was passing in the room. A beam of green light from one side of the room picked out the smooth and heavily bedecked body of the young Balinese dancer whose sudden knee movements – for her knees were encrusted with small bells – had caused the tinkling sound which had caused me to look. Every movement of her green-hinged body was oblique, as though her graceful limbs were composed of mechanical jade. She wore a tall, intricately worked head-dress, which appeared to represent in a formalized way some personage in a nest of snakes. The snake-like impression was intensified by the cool angular thrusts of her arms and by the oiled rigidity of her long tapering hands. The cage of her pelvis seemed to be encrusted with jewels which in the strange light appeared to be embedded in the beautiful orbs of her buttocks and, in the centre of the pale green flesh of her soft twitching abdomen a ruby sparkled, a magic navel of fire which reflected the light in all its surfaces, sending needles of colour in all directions. Below the navel, the shadow of her mound was scarcely visible under the thin gold-metallic leaves which seemed to sprout amongst her slow-moving short hairs. Her breasts were entirely naked but tipped each with some jewel which sparkled faintly in the dance. Her neck supported a high collar of silver which lent rigidity to the poise of her head, the head of a statue, kohl-eyed and expressionless as that of an eastern goddess.
Under my startled eyes the strange dance progressed, continued rather, for it did not appear to have either a beginning or an end, being a series of gestures, exotic, sensual, and mechanical at the same time, and not a dance in our western sense. As the girl danced, I realised that her apparent height was deceptive. She was in fact extremely small, like a Chinese woman, and looked tall and stately merely because of the headdress, the exotic harness, and the lighting effects. She looked almost like a child or a doll, and her skin where it was visible had the sheen of pale green porcelain. Her hemispherical breasts were no bigger than apples, and bejewelled as they were, they glowed ambiguously with a fragile duck-egg blue. The faces of the men who sat cross-legged on the cushions were likewise expressionless. I was fascinated by the incense-laden formality of the spectacle.
Suddenly, as inconsequentially as it had begun, the music ceased. The girl stood rigid, without movement, her arms strangely crooked like the handles of an ornate vessel, her kohl-black eyes flickering and occult.
The fat little musicians got up and left the room.
One of the spectators bowed to the other, who returned his bow, and with his hands in the loose silk sleeves of his kimono, he followed the musicians out.
The man who remained said something in Chinese to the dancer. She bowed and sat down on the edge of a divan. Her face was devoid of expression. He crossed the room, did something with the light switches, and the beam changed the direction of its thrust so that the divan and the glimmering trappings of the dancer were flooded in a pool of green. Then he returned and sat down beside her. From my place of concealment I had a direct view of them.
They sat close on the divan, and, as he drew her towards him, the man’s hand caressed the smooth naked slice of thigh which was now exposed to him. Then, with one hand behind her shoulders, he raised her head close to his own and kissed her on the lips. Their movements were slow and suggestive. He was breathing heavily. Suddenly he said something which I couldn’t understand, at the same time relaxing his grip. The young girl slithered out of his grasp and began to remove her exotic trappings. First she removed the headdress, her slender arms pushing it upwards from her short blue-black hair. This had the effect of making her skilfully shaded eyes as large as saucers in which the strange liquids of fear and sensuality fought for control. Then, without a word, she stripped the bejewelled harness from her slim pale yellow body and cast it in a glittering heap on the floor, until she stood stark naked, as palely and supremely beautiful as a lily, her small silky mound like a soft paintbrush, wettened with ink.
For a moment he was content to admire her nudity and made no attempt to move towards her. She, meanwhile, stood with lowered glance, a delicate slave awaiting his pleasure. Then he reached forward to put his hands on her hips and drew her small body towards him. A slight reluctance caused a tremor to pass through her silken flesh before, abruptly, it swayed forward in complete subjection towards his lips. He kissed her navel, now devoid of its ruby, almost religiously, his hands cupped over her small tense buttocks, whose substance in the strange light quivered like pale green blancmange. Then his hands, caressing her sides and flanks, seemed to coax his own body off the divan. He was still wearing his kimono, which reached the floor around him like a tent. And so it turned out to be, for, hastelessly, his hands on her temples now, he forced her head and body downwards until she sat crosslegged at his feet, and, raising his kimono at the front, he brought it down over and shrouded her head and shoulders until she had disappeared entirely beneath its folds. They remained in this position for some time, and then gradually he raised her under his cloak so that her nude flesh must have been splashed against his front, while his hands – the kimono between them and her flesh – sought the smooth outline of her buttocks and her little yellow heels dangled just in sight below the hem of his kimono. In this position she rose and fell against him passionately, her toes flexed and sometimes finding the floor to prise herself forwards and upwards again against the unseen genitals of the man.
Soon they fell sideways onto the couch and the man’s powerful lower limbs, naked and glistening in the green light, kicked amongst hers as his buttocks tightened to the orgasm.
They lay still.
A moment later he had divested himself of his kimono and was lying naked beside her. Already, I felt the familiar constriction at my throat, the subterranean tremor in the secrecy of my womb, and, had I not been afraid of his anger, I would have taken off my own clothes and offered myself to his embrace. As it was, I could scarcely restrain myself, for he had begun again to make love to her, only this time in an unfamiliar way. She was lying on her belly in front of him and his hands pulled her buttocks apart, exposing the soft downy crevice and the little amulet of illicit love, round and gathered as a rosebud. At that moment, I could not help comparing him to some horned and mythical creature, a demigod with a nymph, in a temple of initiation. He was kneeling behind her, between her legs. Cautiously, as one might thread a needle, he put his point to her, testing the elasticity of her nether love lips with small, almost doting hip pressures. Suddenly, he seemed to make up his mind, like a skilful surgeon who has decided how to make his incision, and, driving his knees into the softness of the divan, he penetrated her buttocks with the force of a battering ram. The girl cried out in pain but he held her. His forearm was a bar of iron at her straining shoulders. One hand held her by the tuft of hair at the scruff of her neck; the other was under her belly, pressing her rump upwards towards him, and his legs, like powerful creepers, grafted themselves to hers as he pinioned her helplessly to meet his thrust.
At first the girl lay unresisting like a crushed flower under the flat bow of his front, but gradually, as the exploring member moved more easily at her shy ventricle, her softened buttocks mushroomed slowly upwards towards their split to imprison what was within. In a subtle collusion of movement they knelt, the man behind and against the girl who drooped frailly forwards like a broken flower stem so that her glistening hair fell in a blue veil over her eyes. They came to a climax simultaneously, she, spiked deeply, sitting on his knee at the edge of the divan, her small oval hips tilted upwards and her lips, like soft red petals at his mouth, uttered a low moan of pleasure.
Almost immediately, he stood up, pressed a button, and the normal electric lights came into play.
He said something to the girl, who rose slowly to a standing position and raised her slender arms high above her head so that the flesh glimmered whitely under the thin wisp of blue-black hair at her armpits. Her buttocks were tight and her toes were tensed in the thick pile of the carpet. Her breasts and hips looked as though they were moulded of pale yellow porcelain, the former crowned by the buds of delicate violets. He nodded, crossed the floor to where the girl stood rigid in a quivering curve from her heels to her tilted breasts to her fingertips, and, without haste, ran the palm of his hand over the downy contour of her back and buttocks.
He seemed to wish to prolong his orgy indefinitely, to be unwilling to have the beautiful creature go out of his sight. He pinched and patted her with the fingers of a connoisseur. All the time she stood like a statue and I could hear him breathing heavily.
Suddenly, and quite viciously, he slapped her across the face with his open hand, so that she fell again across the divan. I think she must have fainted momentarily. When she came out of her faint she began to cry, low convulsive sobs which caused her little breasts to rise and fall tremulously. He raised her legs onto her stomach, opened her thighs like a bible and lowered his muscly front into the soft and shadowy cleft. The girl, stimulated by the contact, moaned and shuddered with pleasure, a pleasure which seemed all the more desperate and complete for the exaggerated sensitivity of her lacerated flesh. Shortly afterwards it was over. He threw her a pale blue kimono. She put it on, collected the pieces of her dancing costume, and crept from the room in a bowing posture.
The man, seemingly abstracted now, put on his own kimono, lit a long and tapering cigarette, and clapped his hands. The servant who appeared silently opened the curtains, flooding the room with daylight.
I was not able to leave my hiding place until evening. I was not afraid of my unknowing host’s sexual passion. On the contrary, if my position in Singapore had not been so insecure I would willingly have given myself to him. But at that moment I was in need of a protector and not a lover, although I had no doubt that one man would insist on fulfilling both functions.
As soon as the room was deserted I had my first opportunity since leaving the ship to look at myself in the mirror. Straightway, I removed the cap and ruffled my blonde hair. It had a windswept appearance which, although I was unaware of it, was quite fashionable among Eastern women of that time. For myself, unconscious as yet of all fashions – in Australia clothes are worn to hide one’s shame and not to render the female body more provocative – I was quite pleased with its appearance. But my clothes were impossible. Already I had conceived a plan. If I could find some suitable clothes I would not be afraid to be found ‘in possession’ of the room when the owner returned.
By a stroke of good fortune the matter was soon settled. I found an intricately worked kimono of brocaded yellow silk in a cabinet. Hastily, I divested myself of my seaman’s attire, glanced at the luscious maturity of my creamy flesh, and slipped into the cool yellow silk. Then, rolling the clothes I had taken off into a bundle, I went through the French windows and threw it into the centre of a clump of bushes. The moment I had done so it occurred to me that I had forgotten about the young seaman’s papers. They had been in one of the pockets. And now, since the undergrowth was so dense, they were irrevocably lost to me. But I had little time for the luxuries of conscience. Without delay I returned to the room and made myself comfortable on one of the divans.
About an hour later, a servant entered bearing a tray of refreshments. He had laid it down on a table before he became aware of my presence. His face remained impassive when he saw me. He hesitated for a moment and then, as though nothing was out of order, he left the room with small quick steps. I heard excited conversation at the other side of the door, high-pitched staccato Chinese voices. I got up from the divan and helped myself to a drink. I had decided that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, although I was tolerably certain that my host, obviously a man of culture, would be more imaginative than that in his treatment of me.
I moved over to a chair by the window to drink what I had poured myself, and I had no sooner installed myself there than the door opened and this prince of sensualists came graciously across the room towards me.
He stood a few yards off, bowed, and said in faultless English:
‘You wished to see me, madam?’
‘I need your help, sir,’ I said.
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he replied at once. ‘But first, my dear lady, hadn’t you better explain to me how you come to be in my house, unknown to me, and wearing, if I am not mistaken, a garment which belongs to me?’
‘I came in by the window,’ I said. ‘And as I had no clothes I put this on.’
‘I see,’ he said ironically, but never for a moment losing his affable tone. ‘Like a goddess you arrived naked at my window, entered, and clothed yourself. Now all is explained.’
‘I could hardly have presented myself to you without clothes,’ I said with intended finality.
‘Assuredly not,’ he agreed most politely. ‘A poor mortal such as I could not expect . . . ah, if it were only possible! But then, like my great master, Confucius, I am cursed by a restless and enquiring spirit. A fair goddess, in my house, in my robe . . .’
‘If you wish to have it back,’ I said with hauteur, and I began to take it off.
‘Please, dear lady!’ he said, raising a hand in protest. ‘It is yours. You are more than welcome to everything that is in my house. Forgive my enquiring spirit! In some circumstances it is not the least of my virtues.’
I smiled at him.
‘A moment,’ he said, gesturing for me to sit down. He clapped his hands. A servant appeared and my host gave an order in Chinese.
‘You will take tea, madam?’
I nodded. He beckoned to the servant who left the room. When he had gone my host sat down opposite me and said: ‘And now perhaps you will be good enough to explain why you chose my house rather than another’s and how you came to be in such an embarrassing position – I mean, it is highly unusual for an English lady to be out and about Singapore without clothes . . .’
‘It was my husband,’ I lied.
‘You may depend upon my discretion, madam.’
‘My husband is a Commander in the British Navy,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘I told him I was going to leave him.’
‘Ah!’
‘He took away my clothes and locked me in my hotel room.’
‘How ungallant of him!’
‘I found an old raincoat.’
‘That was fortunate.’
‘I managed to get away by the fire escape.’
‘You are a resourceful woman!’
‘But an agent of my husband saw me and followed me. I ran and he chased me, but I managed to turn a corner and get out of sight. The road was deserted. I don’t know what I was thinking about but I felt that if I could get rid of the raincoat . . . you understand?’
‘So you took it off,’ he said helpfully.
‘I had forgotten I was naked underneath,’ I went on desperately.
‘A delicious oversight!’ he smiled. ‘And so?’
‘Your gate was open. I slipped into your garden and hid among the bushes, but after a while I got cold so I came inside.’
‘Et voilà!’ he said. ‘And now there is no longer a mystery.’
Although he acted as though he had believed my story, I had the unaccountable feeling that he was only pretending to do so, but I didn’t really care. I felt sure he wouldn’t send for the police.
‘And now, madam, you do not wish to return to your husband?’
‘Never!’
‘And you wish me to help you? I count myself fortunate!’
‘If only you would!’
‘Rest assured I shall be your humble servant in this matter. You have only to command. And now’ – for the servant had reappeared with a tray – ‘let us take tea.’
My host informed me that he was a silk merchant, was Chinese, and that he had an everlasting respect for the British Navy. ‘The British cruiser,’ he said, ‘it is the vicar of your great Empire. It answers the lies and iniquitous ambitions of your subject-savages with precision and relentless justice. A broadside . . . ha! Much more effective than words. Yes,’ he concluded, ‘I have the greatest respect.’
‘I hope that doesn’t mean for my husband!’
He made a gesture. ‘There are ridiculous men everywhere,’ he said. ‘I am sure you had every provocation to leave your husband.’
I thanked him.
‘No,’ he said after a moment, ‘I bring up the subject because I am expecting a young friend of mine shortly. He too is an English Naval Officer, a Lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm, perhaps you know him. His name is Hawkes.’
‘I don’t know him but I’d rather not meet him,’ I said quickly.
He nodded understandingly.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I shall put one of the upstairs rooms at your disposal. If you require anything you have only to ask.’
I thanked him again and asked him not to mention me to Lieutenant Hawkes.
‘Of course not! My dear lady, you can trust me implicitly!’
He called a servant who conducted me to my new quarters.
My room, like the one I had left downstairs, was luxuriously furnished with carpets, silks, and brocades. There I found everything I required: toilet requisites, a private bathroom, and an endless array of Chinese clothes. I bathed carefully and made myself comfortable.
About nine in the evening a servant knocked and entered with dinner: caviare, chicken, and assorted crystalized fruits. I ate and relaxed with a cigarette and the local English paper which he brought along with the tray.
It was after eleven when my host appeared. He knocked quietly and entered.
‘Mr Hawkes is gone,’ he said immediately. ‘I wondered whether you wished to tell me what it is you want me to do for you tonight or whether you wished to sleep now and talk about it tomorrow?’
I threw the paper aside. I had been reading of how the British Navy was collaborating with the local Customs in an attempt to put down opium smuggling which, it was said, had increased to alarming proportions.
‘You were reading?’ he said politely.
‘Yes, I was reading about the opium smuggling,’ I said.
‘Ah yes,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘It is an evil thing. Young Mr Hawkes is at present engaged in trying to track down the criminals.’
‘Why is it so serious?’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t people smoke opium if they want to?’
‘Ha!’ exclaimed my host, ‘it is interesting to hear a Westerner speak like that. The western vice is alcohol. You know it and therefore you are not afraid of it. We Chinese sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about.’
‘It’s people like your Mr Hawkes who make the world such a dreary place to live in.’
‘Ah yes, poor Hawkes! I have often thought so. But he is such an honourable young man.’
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I said to him.
‘If you are sure you don’t wish to sleep . . .’
‘I’m not at all tired,’ I said.
‘That is surprising after all you have been through today!’
‘On the contrary, thanks to you, I feel so relieved!’
‘It is a pleasure to help you. I begin to see, I think, that an English Naval Commander is not the type of husband who can hold a woman like you.’
I laughed. ‘He’s a fool!’ I said.
‘When it comes to women, is it not true that all men are fools?’ my host said gallantly.
‘You’re not!’ I said emphatically.
‘Ah, my dear lady, that is very flattering, but on such a short acquaintance I don’t see how you can possibly judge!’
I laughed.
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘you don’t know I am not a fool.’
‘But I do,’ I said, and then I heard myself saying, ‘because, you see, I have a confession to make.’
‘A confession?’
I nodded. It was too late to back out now.
‘It is nothing that is not forgiven as soon as it is confessed,’ he said charmingly. ‘Of that I am quite sure.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ I said seriously.
‘Well, you must tell me now certainly,’ he said laughing.
‘I watched you this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon?’ A shadow passed across his face.
‘In the room downstairs with the girl, the dancer.’
‘You were there even then?’
‘Behind the curtains,’ I confessed.
He hesitated. It was difficult to read the play of conflicting emotions on his face. He said at last:
‘I did not realise of course that I was performing . . . I am alarmed . . . could not have known . . . I trust you were not too deeply shocked by my brutality . . . a way we have in the east, dear lady . . . another culture . . . a different view of such things. We are, perhaps, less squeamish, is that the word?’
‘That,’ I said, ‘is how I am sure you are not a fool.’
‘You approved!’
‘I was jealous.’
‘Jealous!’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Do you think my husband makes love with so much imagination?’
‘Would you want him to?’
‘He would be incapable of it!’
‘Our eastern manners please you?’
‘What I’ve seen of them.’
‘You are an amazing woman,’ he said slowly. ‘If I might be of service to you in that way . . .’
I looked at him. He was smiling inscrutably. But I felt his desire and my whole body reacted to it.
‘I can think of nothing I’d like more,’ I said as he took me into his arms.
Slowly, with an immense sense of fulfilment, I sank back on the cushions, drawing his small hard body on top of me. I felt the smooth skin of his face and his hot breath at my neck. Even through two thicknesses of silk I could feel the intense heat of his loins closely insistent next to my own. His soft lips burst suddenly open on mine and his tongue, unsheathing itself, began to explore the sensitive interior of my mouth. His skilful hands meanwhile sought my satin skin beneath the kimono and he stroked me softly, bringing the mysterious current to my loins by the slow caress of his fingertips. A dark pencil of lust seemed to move down from my brain to the quivering tips of my breasts and my whole singing body cried out to be taken. I moaned softly. ‘Like this afternoon,’ I said. Without waiting for him to reply, I pulled him from the divan, dropped to his feet as the dancer had, and naked, for I had thrown off my kimono, I insinuated myself under the hem of his garment. As I had suspected, he was quite naked beneath it, and as soon as the kimono swung over me like a tent, the air, hot from his male body, filled my nostrils, causing my head to move upwards as though magnetized between the powerful muscles of his thighs. He stood there, out of my sight, his strong legs astride and his hips tilting forwards and slightly upwards, and soon, in the utter darkness, I felt the rising violence of his passion. Above my trimming lips, his belly quivered against my forehead, and, a moment later, he moved backwards, guiding me with him, until he was sitting at the divan and I, still under the strange night of his kimono, my head locked between broad and fleshy walls, was his handmaiden, kneeling at his feet.
No sooner did I feel the rise against my doting lips than he brought me out into the light of the room again, stripped himself naked and threw himself on top of me on the divan. His hardness at once broke through the cleft of hair which shrouded the soft and singing weal. Mad with passion for him, I bucked my tremulous front against him to bring about the inundation. It followed almost immediately while he was prising my knees further apart with his hands. But he did not stop there. He got onto his knees and, grasping me by the calves, drew my thighs over his head until his face was buried in my hairy furrow and his tongue struck deep into my swimming sex. We remained in that position for some time, his mouth exploring my female intricacies and his hands, like starfish, cradling the mellow globes of my buttocks, pressing them toward him to aid the penetration. Then his mouth quitted its task and there existed a lecherous rudder between my excited buttocks searching for the little studlike amethyst between them. Meanwhile, his fingers caressed towards that new centre, and I felt the tips of them play delicately with the mastic ring through which, with a gust of anticipation, I realised his courage would soon pass. As his fingertips played there, I clenched and unclenched the muscles which caused it to dilate and contract in lust. Noticing my movement, he thrust his thumb into me, quite brutally. For a moment I lay still, feeling without moving the presence of the flesh in my flesh. A prickling prescience overtook me. Then, cautiously, by dilating and contracting again, I began to feel into the oscillation I was soon to experience. When he saw my reaction he removed his thumb and turned me over on my trembling belly. I closed my eyes into the cushions. Everything was silent. The desire for the new pain which would bring the terrible pleasure into my body made me feel weak, tensionless, dragged downwards from the roots, like a flag drooping in a windless atmosphere. Once again I felt his fingers examining the orifice, then, gently, he pulled my sweating buttocks apart and laid his smoothness on the puckered indentation. I held my breath. One of his hands passed under the warm curve of my belly, his middle finger finding my cleat. His other hand grasped me by the hair at the back of my neck and his forearm bore heavily down on my tense shoulder muscles. By moving my body slightly I realised that I was now pinioned helplessly before his lust. There was no way of escape. Indeed, I wanted to escape and give myself at the same time. Now I was able to understand the presence of the elements of fear and desire in the eyes of the Chinese concubine. I had no further time to think. Suddenly, with the force of a ramrod, the cylinder burst into me and buried itself up to the hilt in my quivering buttocks. I cried out in pain and made a desperate attempt to buck him off, but by that time his legs had closed in relentlessly like octopus’ tentacles at my calves and his hand tightened its grip at the scruff of my neck and soon, in spite of my whimpering resistance, his rod sheathed and unsheathed itself inexorably like a radiant coal at my tender flesh. Gradually, I accepted the pain. It lost its tearing quality. And soon, without consciously attempting to offer compliance, I felt my buttocks rise and fall like bobbing corks against his moving front. It was no longer painful. This illicit part of me was now as voracious as my mouth had been. I wanted him to sink deeper to accomplish his primal movement in the darker recesses of my abdomen. When he finally did so, I was beside myself with desire. Every muscle, every tissue of my body was crying out for punishment.
I thrust my arms with hands clasped above my head where I lay, inviting him to hurt me. He did not hesitate, did not caress first as he did with the Chinese girl. My body was rigid, locked, as it were, by tendons which radiated to the extremities of my limbs from the anchor of my sex. My muscles were hard and flexed. All my female softnesses were a bank of flowers awaiting fertilisation. I cried out, not knowing whether it was for pain or joy, and, before I had time to protest or to resubmit myself, I felt myself turned over roughly and a sudden searing sensation struck my belly.
At that moment, he set himself at me firmly, his body a strong wall of muscle and heat, and his male organ struck again, driving deep to my roots. We reached our final orgasm within a split second of one another, and, as I felt the rigid arc of his body thrust downwards for the last time, all the pains and the exquisite pleasure of my ravishment made me utterly delirious. I cried out like a Turk, arched my body in a supple bend, and collapsed almost unconscious under the foreign weight. But soon his lips were at mine again, and my tears of pain were stifled against his neck and shoulders as his skilful fingers, playing at my battle scars, induced a tingling pleasure which passed through my prostrate frame in waves of contented shudders. I took one of his thighs between mine and squeezed it. My senses swam and I fainted.
‘This, my dear Helen, is Mr Hawkes, whom I have already spoken to you about.’
Lieutenant Hawkes, a tall young man in his late twenties, was in civilian clothes. He shook hands in a formal way with a slight bow.
‘I have told my guest in what high esteem I hold the British Navy,’ said my host with a smile.
‘Oh yes?’ Hawkes said vaguely. I felt that in spite of his obvious coolness towards me, young Mr Hawkes was more interested in me than he would have admitted.
A week had passed since I first entered the house, and during that time I had lived in the midst of a luxury which was almost incredible. Every demand had been satisfied. The presence of Lieutenant Hawkes was the climax, and indeed heralded the end of my delightful stay. It was the opinion of the host that I would not be safe until I was out of Singapore, safe that is from the agents of my ‘husband,’ for I had never gone back on my original story. To this end, Lieutenant Hawkes, who had just been granted two weeks leave from his arduous duties with the Fleet Air Arm, had been prevailed upon by his rich friend to fly me in a private aeroplane beyond the reach of the man who was supposed to be looking for me. Or so anyway I thought at the time – but more of this later.
This evening we were to have dinner together so that the young man and myself could get to know one another and arrange the details of the flight. Beneath my outward calm I was slightly nervous. Hawkes, after all, would know most of the English officers in Singapore, and he might suspect that my story was a mere fabrication. At dinner, therefore, while playing with the long crystal stem of my wine glass, I took the risk of putting the question to him:
‘You don’t know my husband by any chance, Mr Hawkes?’
‘Your husband?’ He was smiling with an air of amused surprise.
‘Commander X!’ said my host sharply to his young friend, and I had the impression that his tone of voice intended to quell the young man’s high spirits.
It certainly had that effect, because Hawkes blushed and stammered: ‘I’m so sorry, madam, I was thinking about something else. I mean no, you see there are so many naval officers in Singapore one can hardly be acquainted with them all, and anyway I have never been let into the secret of who he is, I mean his name.’
‘Of course,’ said my host smoothly, ‘unless he happened to be a personal friend of yours you would hardly be able to identify him without a name to go on. I don’t suppose the unfortunate fellow would advertise it in the news bulletin at the base! A dog perhaps! But a beautiful young woman of whom, I fear, he is exceedingly jealous! No. He will want to keep this news to himself. An enquiry agent perhaps. Such men are used to discretion, that is what they are paid for. In the mess I am quite sure you will not be reported as missing, my dear. You have gone to visit your mother, no doubt, or a maiden aunt. A man does not advertise his shame!’
‘How well you know John!’ I laughed. ‘No. He won’t have said a word to anyone. Think of it, Mr Hawkes: he might be your own Commanding Officer!’
Hawkes’ laugh was forced.
‘Hardly that, my dear,’ my host said in a propitiating tone. ‘Mr Hawkes is a pilot. Your husband is a seaman, a deck officer.’
‘Of course I was only joking,’ I agreed. I decided I had said enough about my ‘husband.’ Although I didn’t see now that it mattered since I was sure of my host’s, my lover’s goodwill, I had no wish to commit a faux pas. I was quite ignorant, more ignorant than a real Commander’s wife would have been, of navy affairs.
At that moment, fortunately, my host changed the subject.
‘And now, Hawkes, we must discuss the lady’s journey. You have flown before, my dear?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, a long journey in a small plane will certainly be an experience for you.’
‘We set out at dawn as arranged?’ Lieutenant Hawkes asked.
‘Tomorrow morning?’ I said with some surprise.
My host laid his hand on mine across the table.
‘The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be safe, my dear.’
‘Your papers are in order?’ Lieutenant Hawkes asked me.
My host replied for me. ‘Quite in order,’ he said with finality.
‘In that case,’ Hawkes said, ‘tomorrow morning’s as good as any. I don’t want to hang about Singapore for my leave.’
‘Quite so,’ the other replied. ‘Mr Hawkes, my dear, is going to fly you as far as Calcutta, quite a distance, some 2,000 miles. You will of course break the journey, twice in fact, once at Bangkok and again at Rangoon. From Calcutta you can go where you want, by boat or train or in an ordinary passenger plane. Mr Hawkes will not have time to take you farther. It is fortunate,’ he added meaningfully, ‘that you were able to bring your passport with you when you left your husband. I shall give it to Mr Hawkes before you set out in the morning.’
The remainder of the meal passed very pleasantly. About ten o’clock, my host suggested that I should retire so as to be fresh for the morrow’s journey. I did so gladly, hoping for once that my host would not visit me in my bedroom, because after a week’s violent lovemaking my whole body ached with fatigue.
I fell asleep quickly and I was not disturbed.
The engine droned steadily. Below was the flat studded plain of a huge sea which stretched in all directions as far as and beyond the eye’s power of vision. Hawkes was even less talkative than he had been the evening before. He sat at the controls in wooden silence, his face set grimly and his lean body relaxed.
I had been studying the map. We had left the land behind us in less than two hours, and its disposition as it disappeared in a purplish haze puzzled me. It seemed to me that if we flew across the sea at all en route for Bangkok we should leave land on, and not far on, the left. As it was, we were now out of sight of land altogether, and, what was even more strange, we had seemed to fly above a very broad channel, leaving land to both sides of us as the channel widened into sea. There had been a number of ships, like toys bobbing in the ocean, but now, for the best part of an hour, there was nothing but the ominous endlessness of deep green sea.
‘Are you sure we’re going the right way, Mr Hawkes?’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t even turn to answer. He was looking straight ahead. I felt, somehow, that he was tense and nervous.
‘What I can’t understand,’ I said, pushing the map in front of him, ‘is how we left the land behind us. It doesn’t seem right according to the map.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we should have left the land behind us to the left.’
‘We did,’ he said briefly.
‘We didn’t!’ I said in alarm.
‘Do you think I don’t know how to navigate?’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Perhaps you’d better take over,’ he said sarcastically.
But I had begun to be afraid.
‘There was land to left and to right of us,’ I said.
‘Look,’ he said tonelessly, ‘if you think you can fly this plane better than I you’d better take over.’ With that he pushed the steering column forward and released his grip on the controls. The plane gave a sickening lurch forward and downwards, and in a fraction of a moment, as he kicked one foot forward, twisted into a spin. I screamed and closed my eyes. How long we went downwards I don’t know. I remember only that the spinning motion stopped and gradually with a terrible relentless motion the nose of the plane came upwards almost, it seemed, out of the sea. And then we were flying low over the water at what appeared at that level to be an incredible speed.
‘Had enough?’ I heard him say.
‘You damn fool!’ I shouted angrily above the roar of the engine. ‘What do you think you are doing?’
He didn’t reply. He nosed the plane upwards and slowly we gained height until we were flying at approximately the same height as before.
‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’ he said suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come off it,’ he said drily. ‘Do you think I like doing this?’
‘What?’
‘The game’s up,’ he said, still without looking at me. ‘There’s no use shamming anymore. Look,’ and his voice was gentle suddenly, ‘I’m sorry to have to do this, really. You’re a brave woman. I respect you. But this is no time for tomfoolery.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.
He shook his head hopelessly. ‘Look below you,’ he said. ‘Do you see any ships?’
‘No.’
‘So you haven’t a chance, have you?’
I was terrified. He was looking at me now, not unkindly.
‘What are you saying?’ I said, almost in tears.
‘Can I do anything for you? I can do it anonymously when I get back. Look, for God’s sake take a hold of yourself. You knew damn well what a dangerous game you were playing. Alright, you’ve lost. The next one might have more luck, and then it will probably be my turn. And then, later on, his. They’ll get him sooner or later.’
I broke into tears. ‘Please Mr Hawkes! I don’t understand! What are you going to do to me?’
His handsome face turned towards me again and his grey eyes were gentle. ‘If it will make it easier for you,’ he said tenderly, ‘I’ll shoot you first. But anyway, you’ll be dead by the time you hit the water.’
‘For God’s sake tell me why!’
‘You make it very difficult for me,’ he said. ‘You must have known your job was dangerous.’
‘What job?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake cut it out!’ he said. ‘Do you think we believed your Commander’s wife story for a minute? Really, I didn’t think the authorities could be so naive. Your job was suicide.’
‘You must listen to me!’ I said desperately. ‘You must believe me! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
He looked at me incredulously.
‘Are you trying to tell me you are not an agent of the British government?’
‘Of course I’m not! Don’t you see?’
His expression was perplexed. ‘I almost believe you,’ he said.
‘You must believe me!’
For a long time he was silent.
‘I believe you are telling the truth,’ he said at last.
‘Oh, of course I am!’ I began to say, but he cut me short.
‘Quickly,’ he said, ‘tell me who you are and what you were doing in Chen’s house.’
As briefly as possible I told him the history of my adventures since leaving my home village in Australia, how I had run away from home, given myself to men, travelled thousands of miles to arrive finally, almost desperate, in Chen’s garden. He did not press me for details about my sexual affairs but his lips loosened in a soft, nakedly sensual smile. And then he laughed. Turning to face me, he said:
‘You must prove it to me, Helen.’
‘How?’
‘Have you ever made love in an aeroplane?’ he said.
I shook my head.
He laughed softly. ‘Take off your clothes, Helen,’ he said.
‘Sit astride my knees,’ he said.
I was standing beside him, completely naked. My clothes lay in a small heap by the side of his seat. His right hand, reaching to the cabin floor, stirred amongst my still-warm silk scanties.
‘How warm your clothes are!’ he said, and his hand moved upwards from the discarded silks to the warmer, more living silken surface of my inner thigh. He pulled me gently towards him, raising his hand under the heavy substance of my thigh so that my leg swung over his knees and I had only to sit to bring my warm belly and the smooth-haired lip of my mound against his own parts, which he had bared with his free hand. With the other, he still controlled the flight of the plane, west-wards, across the vast waters of the Bay of Bengal. For, of course, I had not been wrong. We had travelled northwest from Singapore through the straits between Malaya and Sumatra, out above the open sea. With the hand which controlled our flight he pulled me closer to his lower belly, his hand pressing against the smooth globes of my buttocks. His other hand, meanwhile, brought his excited member against the entrance to the cave of all my feeling. When he was satisfied with our position, the hand which had pressed me towards him returned to the controls, easing gradually back on the steering column so that my wet and pulsing vagina, parted at its extremity by his thrusting manhood, contained him suddenly like a glove. Up, up, up, the weight of my own flesh causing me to be spiked more deeply against the sudden upward motion of the plane. As we climbed, my whole body lay on top of his and his free hand, calmly and with the skill of a fine pilot, brought my head and my lips against his. We lay there, making an acute angle with the horizontal, our eyes open in the bright blue daylight which swamped us through the windows of the cabin, while little scudding wisps of cloud fell away below us at either side. As yet, we had hardly moved. It was the movement of the aeroplane which caused the creeping accumulation at our loins. His feet worked skilfully at the rudder bars, tilting the plane and causing my torso to swivel voluptuously against his, our bellies grazing languorously and the shock of the meeting of our bodies absorbed by the resiliency at my breasts. Our bodies, together in illusory suspension in the wide ether, absorbed all space, the lure of stars, flesh chucked minutely against flesh in this strange carnal confluence. His strong warm lower belly in its tilted position was the fang of a vast upward propulsion, raking with its fleshy dagger at the warm and viscous bin of lust which I lowered around his desire. Out of the world he seemed to drive me, beyond laws of motion, with the white ether streaming downwards with no velocity. The shifts, the slips, the slides, the slithers, the glides, the rolls did not move so much as concentrate a stranded passion, a still aerial conjunction which increased as the belly surfaces, fused by some aerostatic law, shuddered and sang above our wet sexual confusion. I could happily have ridden there pricked by this man’s passion until the world’s end, but, alas! that was not to be, for at that moment, when the seeds shifted for the thousandth time in my craving womb, Hawkes’ soft voice came to me:
‘Have you ever been beyond choice, Helen?’
The earnest seriousness of his voice brought me back to the world. My eyes read 17,000 feet on the altimeter, saw again the trailing wisps of cloud and came finally to rest on the grey eyes which looked upwards into mine with a questioning look.
I ran my fingers through the soft brown hair which framed the handsome face, the face of a flier, a dangerous man, a criminal, perhaps a traitor, but the face of a man with whom in the short space of an hour I had fallen violently and irrevocably in love. Here at last, I felt, was a man to whom I would be willing to surrender not only my body but my freedom. For the first time in my life, I felt then, I had met a man who was worthy of me. For an hour he had careened about the sky with me, controlling every tremor of our love with his wrist. I didn’t answer him. I pulled his lips upwards against mine and kissed him with all the doting passion at my command. It was I who spoke next.
‘Who is Chen, darling?’
He laughed harshly.
‘Chen is a kind of king, darling. He controls the drug traffic in southeast Asia.’
‘And you?’
‘One of his pawns,’ he said with a quiet smile. ‘I do as I’m told, double-cross the Navy, and am tolerated because I’m useful. You see, I’m one of the naval pilots who have been lent to the Customs House to track down the head of the drug ring.’
‘And he told you to get rid of me?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
‘Are you glad you didn’t?’
He dropped his eyes. ‘You don’t understand, Helen,’ he said. ‘That’s what I was trying to say about being beyond choice.’
‘What do you mean, darling?’
‘I have got rid of you.’
‘How?’
‘I had no choice, Helen. When I made love to you I signed our death warrants. He would have killed me if I had taken you back, killed us both. I should have dropped you a while back. You see, my darling, there is not enough petrol to return to land. Another ten minutes and the tank will be empty.’
The grey eyes were looking into mine, calm and without fear. Even this sudden and shocking news of my impending death could not shatter the wonderful illusion of fulfilment. I lowered my lips onto his, brushing them merely with the wet full curves of my own, and then, my mouth whispering in his ear, doting, trembling, I uttered the words: ‘Fuck me again, darling, now . . . before it’s too late . . .’
I was still astride his naked thighs when the engine sputtered into silence. I burst into tears and tried to move away.
He said: ‘Stay where you are, Helen, this is the best way to die. There’s nothing we can do.’
Then began the long swift glide downwards through the scudding wisps of cirrus clouds, and the sea, like a vast inverted green-black saucer, moved upwards to meet us.
‘Don’t turn, darling,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to bring her down as smoothly as I can.’
The sea at the windows on either side raced past like a vast and glittering black ribbon. As the plane lurched to alight, I threw my arms around his neck and crushed his head with all the strength of my torso against my naked breasts. The aircraft shuddered, slewed, somersaulted, and then, in a fraction of a second . . . blackness.