by Stan Mason
‘Attendez un moment, Raoul,’ she told him in golden tones. She took a few steps towards him and he could see the slight smile on her face even beneath the veil as she seemed to come to a decision about him. Before he could say anything, she raised her hand and beckoned to him to move off the stone parapet and come closer to her. At first, he thought she was calling someone else, momentarily staring over his shoulder in case there was another person who merited the call, but he was laying on the stone parapet of the Embankment and there was only the river behind him. He was totally alone. At that moment, he considered that she may have been a person of royal blood and he wasn’t certain how to react.
‘Me?’ he enquired in bewilderment as she stood there delicately in front of him like a blossoming flower. ‘Are you beckoning to me?’ She nodded slowly without intending to speak. ‘Are you of royal blood?’ He held his breath waiting for her to reply. He had once listened to a female tramp who had chatted to him about certain members of the royal family searching occasionally for a little bit of rough. He had dismissed the gossip as sheer nonsense at the time but now, in the present circumstances, it seemed quite possible.
‘I am a titled lady,’ she told him in the sweetest of dulcet tones, ‘but I’m not of royal blood. If it concerns you at all, you need have no fear. My blood is very much the same as yours... pure red!’
‘Oh, it’s not that,’ he returned quietly. ‘I’m not particularly fussed. But I’m just a tramp. What do you want of me?’ He stared wide-eyed at her waiting with baited breath for an answer to his question. She was a complete vision! Staring at her with his partially blood-shot eyes, she was everything he desired in a woman... a gorgeous figure, a most beautiful face, a sweet-toned voice, and a desire to love him, albeit for just a short period of time at her pleasure.
‘Have no fear,’ she told him pleasantly. ‘Everyone has their uses in life. Come with me. Please get into the car.’
‘Into the car?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘But my clothes are torn and tattered. I’m a bit dirty to say the least.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied sweetly. ‘It doesn’t matter at all. Just do as I say. Get into the car.’
He climbed off the stone parapet and moved towards the Rolls-Royce. The chauffeur opened the back door again and she climbed into the back seat. Dexter moved in beside her trying to look presentable although it was a false impression.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, suddenly realising she might be abducting him.
‘Don’t worry about that?’ she replied. ‘We shall soon arrive there. You won’t be displeased.’
‘But where is it?’ he asked more urgently.
‘You’re quite handsome,’ she told him candidly ignoring his question deliberately, ‘in a bizarre sort of way.’
He preened himself for a moment, rubbing one hand over his rough unshaven face. ‘Do you really think so?’ he muttered softly. What did a titled lady want with him? She was so lovely she could have any man she desired. Any man at all! However, he thought, shrugging his shoulders aimlessly, as the poet Tennyson said, there was not to reason why, there was but to do and die! He considered it to be his duty to oblige her although her reasoning was beyond his comprehension. Yet, at the back of his mind, he readily believed that there was a possibility his fortune was about to change. After all, one could hardly go through life itself without experiencing wide-ranging periods of fate and fortune. This time, it was his turn. It was going to be for the better. His stars were in the ascendant and he was about to reap a handsome benefit.
‘Why did you choose me?’ he asked innocuously. ‘I’ve already told you I’m a tramp. What does a beautiful woman like you want with a tramp like me?’
‘Never ask for whom the bell tolls... it tolls for thee!’ she replied enigmatically.
‘John Donne, 1572-1631, the English poet... one of the great Metaphysical poets,’ he uttered solemnly. ‘Do you know he married a sixteen year old girl without asking her father’s consent and was briefly imprisoned for it. He joined the Anglican church and took holy orders becoming the chaplain to King James before being appointed Dean of St. Pauls. Ernest Hemingway wrote a film for Paramout Pictures in Hollywood with the title ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It was all about the Spanish Civil War.’
‘I’m very impressed with your depth of knowledge,’ she responded gracefully. ‘I’m surprised that someone like you, with all that information in their head, could end up a tramp.’
Silence reigned for much of the rest of the brief journey. The engine was silent emitting only a whisper as the car sped to an unknown destination. Dexter stretched his mind trying to think of something to say but he soon ran out of ideas. It was a strange situation. If he had asked her for a date, he could have showered her with affection and expressions which expounded her beauty and loveliness. But he had been solicited without warning, and without any apparent reason, therefore nothing of any reasonable value came to mind. He simply didn’t know what to say. If he showered her with delicate phrases as he would have done with any other date, she might take offence and throw him out of the car. After all, he didn’t really know what she was going to do with him. For all he knew, she would take him down to the nearest soup kitchen and deposit him there so that he could have a decent meal. And that would be the end of her good deed for the day!
Eventually, they arrived at a pretty little mews in the West End of London outside a small block of apartments, and the chauffeur pulled up outside. Everything here was expensive. The apartment most certainly would have cost an arm and a leg, while Dexter was certain it would be elegant inside in terms of decor and furnishings.
‘Merci beaucoup, Raoul,’ she told the driver fluently as she alighted. ‘Allez-vous chez vous. Jusqu’a demain.’
‘Merci, madame. Bon soir,’ returned the chauffeur, before driving the vehicle away into the night.
‘You speak very good French,’ commented Dexter with a certain amount of admiration.
‘I should think so,’ returned the titled lady indignantly. ‘My mother is French. She comes from Paris.’
‘Really!’ He was surprised at her response. ‘Paris, eh?’ he muttered. ‘Well, they say that Paris is the city of love.’
‘They certainly do. However, let me say that the English are very poor at making love and that’s a fact.’
‘It depends on which Englishman you’re talking about,’ he boasted as though he was a gigolo. ‘You may be justifiably surprised at the final result.’
She looked at him in his ridiculous rags and his unshaven dirty face and pursed her lips in thought. ‘Come with me!’ she invited, moving her white-gloved hand towards the apartments. ‘We’ll take the lift to the top floor. I own the penthouse. You’ll be quite comfortable there.’
Quite comfortable there! It was a long time since he could claim to be comfortable. Well, he thought, at least I’m not being dragged along to some old soup kitchen in the heart of the East End to satisfy the guilt of someone who was granted better fortune in life. I’m going to a posh flat in the West End with an absolutely gorgeous woman. He was still bemused at what she expected of him although a vague idea stirred at the back of his mind. However, he preferred not to think about it. He knew from experience that life was for living by the hour. One had to enjoy every moment whatever happened when it actually happened.
They arrived at the penthouse and she pressed the button on a tiny hand control which opened the front door electronically. They went inside and he was surprised at the spaciousness of the hallway and the rooms because the apartment was extremely deceptive from the outside. In any case, it was no different to what he had expected. Decor and furniture of the highest quality adorned the rooms. It was patently obvious they had cost an absolute fortune. She had to be as rich as Croesus! So, in that case, what did she want with him? He was a midd
le-aged tramp dressed in filthy rags. She was a titled lady, wealthy, attractive, desirable, and a socialite with many connections. He was at a loss to understand her motive. Suddenly, he recalled a film, which he managed to see one day after gaining entry through the back door of a cinema in the West End. The criminals in the film plotted to kill a man and switch his body for that of someone else so that the alleged widow could recover an enormous amount of money on his insurance policy. Perhaps that was the reason for him being brought to the apartment. It was all a scam! Perhaps she was setting him up specifically for that purpose. No wonder she could afford to buy such an expensive apartment and fit it out so well. They were going to substitute his body for that of her real husband... if she was married. Could it be that his demise was imminent to allow some aristocrat to succeed in his evil design in the pursuit of more wealth? His mind began to work faster than it had done for the past fifteen years. Then he thought the matter through more rationally. How could they possibly carry out such a crime successfully? For one thing, when the autopsy was carried out, it would be proved that his teeth were different to those of her husband so the idea was grotesque. For another, unless they burned his body, his skin was too weather-beaten and his body too thin to be mistaken for a person who lived a normal life. No, it couldn’t be! She was far too beautiful... too gorgeous... to be involved in anything underhanded like that!
She smiled at him as she shrugged the mink fur off her shoulders and pointed to a room down the corridor.
‘The bathroom is the second on the left,’ she cooed in a whisper. ‘You’ll find everything you need in there. Take your time. Make it worth my while!’
‘Make it worth her while? What on earth did she mean by that? He entered the bathroom and looked around. The room was immaculate. A shower had been installed in one corner, a shining white bath six feet long with golden taps rested down one side above which a long mirror had been fitted, there was an electric razor on a bracket plugged into a socket, combs and hairbrushes were in abundance, and a multitude of sprays and body deodorants were stacked along elongated shelves. He was still suspicious of her motives and very confused for he failed to believe that such a lovely person could be capable of any kind of hideous crime. Unfortunately, as his life might be at stake, he felt that he should remain on his guard as it would be inadvisable to dispense with such inconvenient thoughts. There was nothing else he could do but play along with her and do her bidding in the hope of finding out about his plight in due course. He looked at his face in the mirror, for the first time in many years, and reflected how miserable he appeared to himself let alone to other people. Then, picking up a pair of scissors he began to hack away at his beard. Slowly he transformed himself from a tramp into a reasonably handsome man, cutting, shaving, trimming, brushing and grooming himself until the final result made him wish he had been more resourceful rather than to have descended into the lower order of life. Suddenly he was magically transported back fifteen years to the time when his wife had been alive. His face was now older and more lined now but he still looked the same man, smart and dapper. Those were the days! He and his wife had been very deeply in love with each other, moreso than any other couple could have envisaged, and they savoured every moment together. It had been that way for seven years and then she told him she was pregnant. It was the start of all his misfortunes because everything went wrong from that moment onwards. His wife was diagnosed as suffering from extreme high blood pressure and she was advised to abort the baby after carrying it for a short time but she refused to do so. Ultimately, the sad saga ended in both her death and that of her unborn child.
The titled lady was not in the bedroom when he emerged. However, she had laid out a set of expensive underwear, a pure white shirt, an elegant blue herring-bone suit, new black shoes, and a brand new tie with a suitable design on the bed. He dressed slowly, enjoying every moment of the soft material against his well-talcumed body, staring at himself repeatedly in the long mirror. In due course he was fully dressed, tugging at the tie which felt too tight around his neck. He hadn’t worn one for as long as he could remember and it irritated him slightly. As she had told him, he was indeed quite handsome in a bizarre sort of way. His eyes were partially bloodshot and there were a few marks on his face caused by malnutrition, but the features were there and they were fairly good. He left the bedroom and moved down the hallway to search for his patron. He found her standing in the kitchen lighting two candles at a table which had been laid out with salads for supper. She indicated for him to sit down and followed suit herself. Then, after pouring out two full glasses of red wine, she nodded for him to begin eating. He had to admit to himself that if she was going to kill him, or frame him for a crime, it was unlikely she would go to all this trouble or undertake this kind of ploy. No, it did not appear from the state of things that anything sinister was going to happen. Of that he felt certain. However, after picking up his knife and fork to eat the salad in front of him, doubts flickered through his mind. She might be poisoning him for all he knew and, despite his suspicions, he was going to be party to the deed.
She hardly looked at him during the meal and they talked a little while he drank far too many glasses of wine.
‘Tell me a little about yourself?’ she asked in the same golden tones, smiling sweetly at him which made him feel a little uncomfortable.
‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ he replied frankly. ‘I was a happily married man for seven years... very happily married ... but my wife died in childbirth. That was fifteen years ago. After that happened, everything went downhill. My work, the house, our savings. I became a tramp because it suited me. No worries, no women, no financial problems. Freedom of thought, freedom of movement. A strange life perhaps but a happy one in some respects.’
‘Oh, come on!’ she scoffed. ‘There’s far more to any man than that! What kind of education did you have? What did you work at... if indeed you did work?’
‘Yes, I worked. I was a taxi driver from the age of twenty. I hated it. Really hated it! Perhaps that’s why I became a tramp after Sheila died. And, do you know, what with the amount of traffic on the roads and all the regulations, I’m damned glad I’m out of it.’
‘And what about your education? There are very few people who would know anything about John Donne let alone the history of his life. You are a very well-informed man. Highly educated as far as I can see.’
‘No... I went to Davenant Foundation Grammar School in the East End of London. An excellent school but not a college or a university. The masters were extremely clever and very good at teaching. The rest was from private study after I left school. S’funny, I got married the week I took up taxi driving. But since then, except for one occasion fifteen years ago after my wife’s death, I haven’t been with another woman.
‘Are you telling me you haven’t slept with a woman for fifteen years,’ she blurted, her eyes shining with interest.
‘That’s right. Not for fifteen years. As I said, there was one occasion after my wife died but that was almost fifteen years ago.’
She inhaled deeply, smiling warmly at him. ‘You have a lot to give to the female sex, haven’t you?’
‘I suppose I’ve got a lot of ground to make up but I assure you I haven’t lost my touch. Just looking at you makes me realise that.’ He pulled a face after this comment realising he was firing his guns far too early by admitting that he fancied her. But then perhaps this titled lady really only wants a bit of rough after all, he thought to himself after shrugging his shoulders aimlessly. If that were the case, he was off the hook. He was never in any serious danger and could live again afterwards with no problems... no shackles, no fetters... having been given some very nice clothes into the bargain. Mind you, it would take him a week or two to retrieve his beard and start to look like a tramp again, but what was a week or so in a person’s lifetime?
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘You have a French back
ground, your mother comes from Paris. Your chauffeur is French. You own a Rolls-Royce and a penthouse apartment with very fine decor and furnishings. What else is interesting about you?’
‘The mystique of a woman is not to tell a man anything,’ she replied almost arrogantly. ‘You will have to find out for yourself in due course. Slowly but surely.’
Hm, he thought, all the information indicates that I’ll be around for some time. That sounds good. Really good!
‘I’ll do my best,’ he told her sensually. ‘I’m sure I’m everything you want in a man.’
‘We shall have to wait and see, won’t we?’ she responded with a wry smile on her face.
‘I’m ready to prove myself any time you want,’ he retorted boldly, not caring what he said.
It was nearly an hour later when the finished supper. Dexter felt very good. The wine had made him rather heady but then it was far superior to the dregs he extracted from empty bottles at the rear entrance of some of the smart hotels in the West End of London. He stared at the titled lady with the half smile of an idiot, day-dreaming the possibility of completing the day by the consummation of an intimate sexual relationship with the vision who faced him. It was a delightful dream. His mind began to contemplate the fact that she was merely using him for her own ends. However, he had no regrets at feeling disgraced when he woke up in bed with her on the following morning. In any case, he was far too happy in his semi-drunken state to feel strongly for or against anything on such a perfect evening. She guided him to the settee in the living room and handed him a magazine to read before leaving him for a while. He inhaled deeply and stared at the decor, his eyes following the patterns on the wall indelicately as he waited for her to return. What was going to happen now? Was it the moment he was waiting for, or would it all end in disappointment? When she appeared in the doorway some ten minutes later, she was dressed in a smart white negligee with a low cut neck which ended just above her knees. Her delicate perfume permeated the room gently warming his senses for the next stage in her plan. Dexter was more than impressed. In fact wine always made him much more sexually aroused. Gone were the fears that he had been standing at death’s door waiting for the hammer to fall on him. Gone were the ideas that he was going to be used for criminal purposes so that she could obtain the proceeds of her husband’s life assurance policy... if indeed she was married. The desire which had welled up inside him for the last fifteen years, with the exception of the sexual favours offered to him one night by Dirty Mary from Bow, surged forward in his veins like Niagara Falls. Once more she beckoned to him, with a serious expression on her face. Oh, he thought, these French women certainly know how to excite their men. She went towards the bedroom and he followed her eagerly inside, closing the door slowly behind him. This was his hour of need to be satisfied with the most beautiful woman in the whole of London... no, in the whole of the world... and she was a titled lady! This was the moment of ecstasy! She pulled back the sheets on the bed and climbed in, allowing her negligee to ride up to her thighs, smiling warmly at him all the time with a ‘come-hither’ look in her eyes. This was his hour of glory... his moment of passion! He moved towards her as she lay on her back, enjoying in anticipation every second of what he was about to experience. Their lips met and both their tongues extended to the limit as their passion started to blossom. After a short while, he began to caress her body gently, stroking the nipples on her breasts until they became firm and hard. Then he ran his hands down her body, feeling her silky skin yielding against the rough texture of his hands. Wow! What a sensation! It was terrific! After fifteen years, he was about to make passionate love with a woman who was everything he desired. It was going to be wonderful! He began to feel his body surging with excitement and she began to moan in ecstasy as the mood began to overcome her. He could feel her body so close to his that they were like one person joined together. Then suddenly she halted her action for a moment to gain greater momentum from their union.