Helen And Desire

by Alexander Trocchi

  ‘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.