A visit from an old soldier brings Lotte a revelation and she deals with it in her own way.
January 1921
It was just after lunch and Lotte was seated at her desk writing a letter to Daphne Feltenup. There were two things which Daffers did not know: firstly that Lotte had never really liked her and secondly that Lotte had played a covert role in the arrest of Daffers for assisting the Soviet Union. But, despite these two facts, Lotte knew that being banged up in Holloway Jail was perfectly beastly and so she wrote encouraging letters and sometimes would visit the grim prison.
Her concentration was shattered when there came a ringing on the electric doorbell of her flat. Lotte opened the door on its security chain and beheld a man about the same age as her Uncle Charlie. He wore cream trousers, very shiny shoes and a black blazer with a military crest sewn onto the pocket.
The visitor was standing in a very upright military stance and he spoke in the crisp tones of an officer – or, at least, former officer.
“Good afternoon Miss Hardy-Worthitt. My name is Arthur Webley and I wonder if I might have a word with you.”
The man was tall with a shiny pink bald pate and outlying areas of bushy white hair. He sported a neatly trimmed pure white moustache. Lotte did not judge him to be a threat so she admitted him, sat him down on her sofa and offered tea which he accepted. Now that Lotte had a clear view of the man she recognized that the badge on his blazer was that of the Coldstream Guards. Many of her clients were officers so Lotte paid attention to military badges.
She could tell that, whatever Arthur had come to say was not easy for him and he had prepared carefully.
“I thought long and hard before coming to see you today, Charlotte. May I call you that?”
Lotte nodded.
“In the end it will be up to you whether you tell Charlie that we have met although I think it would be best that you keep silent. Charlie is my oldest friend and I really would hate to lose his friendship but I believe that you need to know these things.”
The suspense was killing Lotte and she really wished that the man would get on with it.
“The fact is that your uncle and myself served together in the Second Boer War which ended in 1901.”
Lotte was almost dumbfounded but she could not suppress her sense of shock.
“Charlie was a soldier? He was a Guardsman?”
Webley continued in the same measured, calm voice.
“Charlie was a good officer and he was a hero. Somewhere along the way he became involved with a young Boer girl (white South African of Dutch descent). Her name was Audrey and Charlie completely lost his heart but, sadly, she died in 1902 in childbirth. Charlie was totally bereft but he poured all his love into that baby girl. The child was a weak little scrap of humanity and Charlie resigned his commission and paid his own passage back to Southampton with the child.”
Webley did not need to say anymore; the picture was clear. She tried (and failed) to picture Charlie in a scarlet Guards uniform and then she imagined the young man on the steamer all the way back from The Cape with a newborn babe. Would he have hired a nurse? Would he have had the funds to do that?
Lotte had first gone to Boarding School at the age of seven and her memories before that time were very blurred. An impression of playing on a lawn somewhere, a lady in a blue uniform. When one has gone through all the struggles of childhood and puberty in a dorm with twenty other girls, one does not cry but Lotte could feel tears running down her cheek and her vision was blurring.
She thought of Charlie, the old rogue. All those cons; all the false names and different addresses. And he had always managed to keep Lotte in the smartest clothes and the best schools far away from the dust and heat of a Boer township. Spontaneously, she rose from her chair, sat beside Webley on the sofa and hugged him fiercely smelling his soap and the slight but not unpleasant suggestion of male sweat. He held her chastely around her waist and they remained like that in silence for a long time.
When the intense long moment had passed they spoke again – all very restrained and British. Webley had always kept in touch with Charlie, his old comrade although he did not always know the location of Charlie’s latest hiding place from his creditors. Charlie always knew how to contact Webley, who was now a widower with grandchildren and living in his house in Surrey.
As Webley rose to leave, Lotte asked if she could have his address and he handed over his card . Then she was alone with her thoughts.
Why had Charlie maintained the fiction that he was her uncle? Was it that he was desperately afraid of losing her and it would be less painful to lose a niece than a daughter? She thought of the intimate things which she and Charlie had done together; not entirely legal between uncle and adult niece but perhaps slightly less scandalous than….
Lotte had never been aware of Charlie having any sort of female company. Even his cons never involved women. It seemed that Audrey had been his one and only and had Lotte (definitely not his daughter) taken the place of Audrey? She did not really feel any shock at now seeing her intimacies with Charlie in the light for she had long suspected the truth and she had willingly accepted Charlie’s favors.
Lotte did not want for anything to change; she enjoyed Charlie just being Charlie even if she now worshipped him even more than she had previously. She would take Arthur’s advice and remain silent. She would have dearly liked to throw herself onto her bed, beat the pillow and howl as she no doubt had back in South Africa but she knew that such things were not possible for her. Lotte needed some catharsis and Lotte always knew where to find whatever she needed.
From her wardrobe she took a long, brown woolen coat, a dull colored hat which hid her blond hair (inherited from her Dutch mother) and a pair of dark shoes which were functional rather than fashionable or dainty. Where she was going it did not pay to look at all wealthy. Just in case, she slipped her little black automatic pistol into her bag; if any street thug did happen to molest her, she was in no mood to be gentle.
She took a cab to Hackney and made her way down a narrow alley informally called Gladstone’s Passage. A very shabby door, which she unlocked with her own key, opened onto a dark stairway leading up to another door which she unlocked.
Lotte had begun to rent this room some time ago for a number of reasons. Occasionally, certain gems belonging to other people happened to drop into her hands and this room was a useful base from which to approach her fences who operated in East London. Apart from this, she sometimes became part of Charlie’s cons and she needed an address which appeared to be her home. After stripping completely, she clothed herself in the worn and faded clothes which she took from the wardrobe and then, Hey Presto, she was Sally Biles complete with well-practiced Cockney accent, “Guv’nor”. The gun went into the pocket of her coat and then she set out to walk a few streets to a public house called the King’s Neck.
Before 1914, every dairyman, butcher and coal merchant had his own horse drawn delivery cart and there was a huge demand for stabling in the city. The war had accelerated the drive to mechanization so stables had been repurposed and Sally went to the large stable block behind the pub.
The noise of raised uncouth voices struck her immediately as did the stench of stale ale and the sweat of bodies which were not washed very often. Sally knew that in the center of the room hidden from her view by the press of bodies was a wooden enclosure such as one might use for cattle and she pressed her way through the crowd to a huge barrel of a man called Maloney. Their conversation was brief and he handed her some banknotes. Lotte could have earned more at the club as the clientele here were not wealthy but today she needed something too visceral for the regulated regime at the club.
The enclosure stood empty and Sally stood climbed up the wooden planks and swung her leg over the top exposing her black, woolen stockings which raised a leering cheer; the audience here was not sophisticated.
She stood in the middle of the paddock, strutting around and waving her arms over her head and a man climbed into the space with her. He wore baggy, workman’s trousers held up by braces, a more or less white shirt and shoes which could have crushed a cat.
He advanced on her and grabbed her blouse to which she responded by slapping his face. The man roared and threw her easily to the ground, then he was upon her and fumbling for the buttons of her long skirt. Sally writhed but he held her with just one huge hand as he completely unfastened her waistband and began to drag her skirt downwards as they both remained horizontal.
For a moment Sally struggled free but he was on her again. He lay on top of her, controlling her with his bodymass as he began to unfasten her simple cotton blouse. Sally was no match for the brute who could pretty much put her wherever he wanted her. Her skirt was now around her thighs displaying the white underskirt and he threw her down onto her belly so that he could drag her arms behind her and drag the blouse from her body to the ecstatic roars of the crowd.
Sally was waving her legs and uselessly flailing her arms as he undid the cord on her underskirt and dragged it and the skirt down to her ankles from where he cast them to a far corner of the paddock. She was now in white bodice and white drawers with her stockings emerging from the legs of the drawers.
As the man waved to the audience and gave them a huge grin, Sally struggled to her feet and ran as far from him as the fencing would allow. There was a brief game of “chase” before he grabbed a hank of her hair, held her close to his sweaty body and began to unfasten the cords at the back of her bodice exposing her corset from the top of which the swell of her breasts was clearly visible. He threw the thin bodice behind him and held her fast while he worked on her corset before dragging it from her.
Sally was now naked above her waist and she modestly tried to cover herself with her arms. She wiggled her body in a futile effort to shake him off but he put one arm around her waist while the other unlaced her drawers and they descended revealing her suspender belt and stockings. He held her wrist as she attempted to cover her pubis and he twisted her so that he was holding her from behind and he was able to spin himself and his captive in a full circle exposing her nakedness to the entire company.
Even in this place, there was one rule or there would be no female volunteers so he had to release her while he unbuttoned his flies and fitted a condom over his surging member. Sally went down in a crouching position to cover as much of herself as she could but then he was at her again, pulling her upright and pressing her back against the fencing.
It was certain that the man could not have spelt “foreplay” and he had probably not even heard the word. There was no ceremony at all as he inserted himself with brute strength defeating the muscles around her cervix. The crowd cheered at full volume, the man let out a roar like a Viking warrior and Sally screamed with tears in her eyes. He enjoyed himself for some time with the crowd cheering him on and Sally’s back being rammed ever harder against the unyielding timber fencing. As he yelled in victory, his spittle covered her face and ran down her chin mingled with her own saliva and runnings from her nose.
And then, inevitably, he was spent and he withdrew. His legs buckled and he leaned back against the fencing gasping for breath. Sally sank to the floor, also struggling to breathe. Of course, he had hurt her and she took deep breathes to press down the pain. She knew that, in some way which she could not express, she had needed this primeval release.
The man climbed out of the ring and into the arms of his fellows who were patting him on the back and laughing. No one paid any attention to Sally although a few small coins landed on the floor around her.
Unnoticed, Sally began to collect her clothing and dress herself before scooping up all the coins and dropping them into her pocket with the notes which Maloney had given her. Climbing over the fence was painful and she slipped through the crowd making eye contact with no-one.
Back at Gladstone’s Passage, she changed and then went in search of a cab which took her back to her own London and, rather than going home for a shower, she found a bar where she proceeded to get drunk. She knew that tomorrow, once she had shaken off her hangover, she would again be Lotte and queen of all she surveyed. She would also pop in to see Charlie.