A Night in Brighton
CHAPTER ONE
Friday 28 November 1952
Our one night together in Brighton began as arranged, meeting in the concourse of London Bridge railway station, 5pm for the 17.15 train. I collected the first class tickets from the office.
It was a freezing pea-souper in London, you could barely see a hand in front of your face. I left my Croydon rented house half an hour early and was waiting for her when she suddenly appeared out of the fog and kissed me on the cheek.
"Oh, your cheeks are cold, have you been waiting long?" she asked cheerfully, excited at the prospects of an outing.
Frieda's tall, slim, elegant, and in my opinion very beautiful.
Me? I'm no oil painting, a slim six foot, well, everyone in London was slim after thirteen years of relentless war and eternal food rationing. I kept fit, clean-shaven and dressed well, as I'd sold men's clothing lines before the war and was expected to be well turned out. Besides, I liked looking smart and comfortable in any strata of mixed company, with a full head of short, light brown hair, Brylcreemed and combed under my trilby, an odd grey hair showing I was just over 40.
Born in 1911, I thought I was probably fifteen years older than the wife of a seriously nasty gangster, so this affair was a little out of my comfort zone.
Frieda's husband Richard was at least five years older than me, much bigger in build, but running to fat and unfit, a heavy drinker and smoker. I never smoked because my parents smoked heavily and suffered ill-health from the habit, they were in their mid-sixties moved away from London's killer smogs.
"I got here early for the tickets to ensure I didn't keep you waiting," I said, my face open and genuinely expressing my pleasure at seeing her, "Shall I take your case?"
Her case weighed nothing.
"You always travel this light?" I asked as we walked down the platform to where our train waited, ready to pull out and head south.
"It's only the one night and I'm wearing most of my clothes," she laughed, "it is so cold, I've several layers on and my fur coat on top."
We settled into the carriage, both delighted to be alone together in our comfortable first class compartment. Only the best for this girl, I thought.
Soon the under-seat heaters warmed the carriage and I was able to stand up and take off my heavy trench coat, revealing my best suit, a smart double-breasted in blue pin-stripes made for me a few weeks earlier in Jermyn Street, almost as soon as clothing rationing ended.
"Lovely suit, Jack," complemented Frieda, as she sloughed her mink coat to reveal a nice dark blue figure-hugging suit over a lemon blouse, her skirt a daring inch below her knees and the edges picked out in lemon piping to complement the blouse.
Outside, as we left the city behind, the suffocating yellow-grey London smog thinned and disappeared, revealing the clear black starry night.
London was still a hellhole in 1952, with bombed-out buildings on every street, the country completely bankrupt under the weight of war debt. Families with relatives abroad gratefully received food parcels from the colonies. We'd thrown everything we had into defending ourselves from the Nazis, spent every penny we had and borrowed so much I expect we'll be paying interest to the Swiss and American banks for the next half century at least. Depression and smogs strangled London, so people needed my trading in goods to cheer them up.
"No trouble getting away?" I asked as I tugged up my trousers from snagging on my boney knees and sat opposite her, my back to the engine. This was a smooth, modern line, electrified all the way between London and Brighton, the first class carriage was clean and comfortable.
"No trouble, Jack, Richard and his two brothers actually left yesterday afternoon, for a long weekend of sport. He's been quiet all week, unusually reflective, so maybe his bookies have a lot riding on this boxing match. He'll be drinking heavily and he never bothers to ring me when he's away. He'll come home on Sunday morning or even Sunday night stinking of sweat, beer, chip grease and cheap whore's perfume." She smiled a false smile, I thought. "I feel so naughty. Are we signing into the hotel as 'Mr and Mrs Smith?'"
"No, Freida, we are 'Mr and Mrs Freddie Tavistock', I have his wallet and driving licence."
"Is Tavistock a friend?"
"No, he's deceased, I bought his identity for a fiver and use it whenever I need discretion. I've no other identification on me and I've paid for everything in cash. Richard will never have evidence that either of us have visited Brighton."
"Sometimes, I think it would please me to let him know, but you're right, it's best he not know."
"We're booked into 'The Grand', on Brighton's seafront for tonight," I said, "did you remember your passport, as I've booked a day trip to France for tomorrow?"
We had already agreed that she dared stay only one whole night. She had to get home by Saturday evening, in case the boxing match went bad and Richard drove home in the early hours of Sunday morning.
"Yes, I remembered, and brought spending money, just in case I see any Chanel No 5 in France."
"Oh, I can get plenty of that for you, got two whole lock-up garages full of the stuff."
"Ah, of course you have! You're Richard's 'Mr Fixer', huh, Mr Jack Tucker? Richard tells me that you can buy and sell pretty well anything. He said you even bought a battleship and a squadron of bombers. Did you?"
I've been an independent buyer since demob, a bit of a wheeler dealer really. I basically put people who've got something to sell, together with someone who wants to buy. Sometimes I take a chance, buy a bargain for myself and then look for buyers, but connecting sellers and buyers is usually where I make most of my money.
Some of my deals were not strictly legal. With many essential foodstuffs and goods still rationed, there is a huge black market prepared to beat rationing and make huge profits. This involved me with criminals connected to the black market, namely East London gangs.
I took personal charge of these particular transactions, to protect my workers. They were on a wage and they had to do what they were told. I was earning the profits, so I had to step up to the mark and do what I had to do, which was still basically what I was told to do by my clients.
Gradually, rationing restrictions were lifted and by late 1952 most of my importing was strictly legal and more transactions were going through the official ledgers and I had to start paying bloody taxes again.
I got around some of that using false inflated invoices "from abroad" to kid the Inland Revenue that I was making a whole lot less money than I actually was. It was easy to falsify accounts because most customers paid cash on the nose and I had a dodgy printer who forged invoices, cargo manifests and other useful mitigating documents for me.
I served my country all through the war, as Sergeant Jack Tucker, I even signed up before conscription officially began in 1939.
I was a commercial salesman in 1939, working for a men's outfitter wholesaler, hawking men's clothing up and down the Home Counties' High Streets. I knew this war, long expected since the Nazis took over Germany, would last at least as long as the Great War. My old man was caught up in that one and he still coughs his guts up every morning all winter long because of the effects of gas in the trenches. And he was mostly gassed by his own side, due to incompetence.
Anyway, I could see that war-time rationing, make-do-&-mend, utility wear and half the country wearing bloody khaki for the next four or five years, would mean that my end of the clothing business would go down the toilet.
I thought by signing up early I could learn the ropes and get the seniority of a few stripes on my arm, thereby getting a better share in whatever privileges of the lower ranks that were going spare. So I joined the local county regiment the very day war was declared, for basic training, and they discovered I had a good eye, steady hands and the potential to be a damned good shot. They encouraged (make that 'ordered") me to transfer to the Rifle Brigade, so I trained as a sniper and worked my way up to three stripes during the phoney war of 1940. Saw action in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, and came through almost without a scratch, just a bit of mortar shrapnel in the back of a shoulder while in Italy.
Managed to get demobbed a few months early too, as we were told London needed builders to rebuild the houses destroyed during the Blitz. I put my hand up saying I was experienced in procuring building materials and they actually believed me.
What can I say? I've got an honest face!
Home in South East London, I started in the building game, marrying up builders with supplies and materials for my first few months in civvies. It was the first industry that got going in those early months of peacetime.
Then I got involved buying up old Army and Royal Air Force surplus and selling on to scrap merchants, all the while building up capital. I got an office and put in a bank of telephones and staff and soon I had a well-oiled operation up and running, with money rolling in nicely. I had teams specialising in construction, scrap dealing, confectionery, petrol, clothing, cheese and meat.
All goods in short supply and rationed were impossible to find unless palms were greased and you made friends with dangerous people. People like Frieda's husband, now, Richard Williamson was seriously dangerous.
"Yes," I replied to Frieda, "the battleship was stripped of armaments before I got it, but I sold it onto the Chilean Navy about four years ago and it's just finished its complete refit, it was on the Pathé News at the flicks a couple of months ago. The squadron of Lancaster bombers that I paid the RAF hard cash for were just about flyable but too bad to sell on except to a small scrapyard next door to an airfield 100 miles away. I got an old pilot with one leg to fly them down one by one, then catch a train back to pick up the next one. Kept the pilot happy in a job he loved for a month and the scrap yard busy for the last five years cutting them up and separating the ferrous metal from aluminium and carting them off to be melted down to make ... tin cans, I expect. The flying club are gradually getting more of their airfield back."
"So where did you get the Chanel perfume?"
"When I first got out of the Army, my company reclaimed old bricks from a bombed and burned-out warehouse in the East India Docks. Basically, we chipped old mortar off the good bricks and trimmed up broken bricks into decent half bricks. The warehouse was one hundred and fifty years old and the solid floor joists and floor board timbers that weren't damaged were cleaned up and used for flooring and stairways. Dirty work but profitable. When we got to ground level, underneath the rubble we found undamaged basement storerooms, packed full of goods. Some of the smaller stuff got pinched before I got there and secured the site with guards, but there was loads of high quality personal hygiene goods still packaged up in the original crates dating from the late-1930s, including the Chanel."
"So, did you buy the warehouse or just the bricks and timber?"
"You're right, of course, I only bought the building materials that I could salvage, but I was also required by the owners to remove all the 'spoil', such as the unusable timber, broken glass, bricks and mortar, and those goods we found sure looked 'spoiled' to me. I didn't need a second opinion, so I got them immediately shifted by the truckload."
"Then you are to be commended for carrying out your duties to the letter," she laughed with a lovely tinkly bell-like laugh.
"And I thought so too," I agreed with a smile.
We had a pleasant trip down on the train, a sixty-one minute journey. A quick cab ride to "The Grand" and we were in our sea-view suite by half-six.
"We dine at seven, Frieda," I said, smiling, "then we can dance until midnight, if you like."
"Good, I do like to dance and I rarely get the chance these days. You look light on your feet, Jack, do you dance well?"
"I dance, that is about the size of it, but dancing with you I know that I'll look as though I dance well, because, of course, everyone will be looking at you."
"You are a charming man, Jack. I have been looking forward to tonight all week. What made you finally ask me here?"
"I have been obsessed with you ever since I met you, Frieda, but I didn't want to risk either of us being exposed to the temper and vengeance of your husband."
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CHAPTER TWO
Now, by the early 1950s, the member of the notorious Williamson family I mostly had to deal with was Richard, Frieda's husband. He was the youngest brother of three, all of them mean-looking killers, and was in his late forties in 1952.
Richard Williamson had a mean reputation for extreme violence, not always executed by him nowadays, as he played the role of the successful business tycoon, even if he did make his money from brothels and protectionism, but by other thugs on his behalf.
In his early years as an extortionist, his favourite way of dealing with bankrupt debtors or rival gang leaders was to tie them up, gag them, tie a coal sack half full of bricks round the waist and a long rope tied around their chest. He'd drop them in the Thames off a wharf that ran inside a riverside brick warehouse that he owned.
Once the bubbles stopped coming up "Bricky Dicky", as he was then notoriously known, would haul his victim up, untie the body and dump it downstream. In the late 20s and early 30s there was any number of bankruptees jumping off London bridges, a few more went unnoticed. Richard would cheerfully repeat the process nowadays if you crossed him.
Recently, Richard had been inviting me over to his luxury West End flat, maybe once or twice each week for the last couple of months. Richard had aspirations to be a respectable businessman and could afford a large and expensive apartment. On my visits I usually shared a meal with him and his beautiful missus in the early evening, in his posh dining room, and he expected me to dress up like a bleeding penguin for his formal dinners. They had a proper cook and a stuck up butler who served the meal with his nose pointing at the ceiling. Richard's lovely wife Frieda was ever present with us while dining, until we two menfolk retired to his private sitting room to discuss whatever dodgy business he needed me for.
I was never invited to bring along a "plus one", not that I ever had one.
Every visit for dinner there was some business to discuss, whether it be chasing progress on previous requests, or adding something new for me to find or something to get rid of for him.
Some items were straightforward, the odd Luger pistol and ammunition, and a shotgun going out, with imported German cheeses and beers coming in. Some of his requests were more difficult or took time to get hold of, like wanting authentic silk kimonos from Japan, cut crystal glass from Bohemia. Some items he explained were personal for his wife or him, some were presents for family and friends.
With Christmas coming up fast, he had a continual flow of requests and seemingly bottomless pockets. I was the one dealer known by Richard to be able to find a buyer for anything and find anything a buyer wanted.
I dare not miss either the meeting or the meal. I was invited for business, he was friendly, but we were never friends. There was one other reason why I didn't mind visiting as often as Richard requested, Frieda.
Richard had actually married one of his brothel 'working girls' about two years earlier, a classic German beauty, tall, elegant, dark haired, blue eyed with translucent white skin. I was introduced to her by Richard, her name given as Frieda and I assumed that she was half his age, in her mid-to-late-20s. Not far off half my age either.
I immediately thought she was stunning, always done up to the nines in an evening gown to die for, absolutely spellbinding. I had to keep as focused as when I was an Army sniper to concentrate on what Richard was saying over our succulent dinner, rather than stare at Frieda all night with my eyes glazed over and my tongue hanging out to dry.
Richard told me, on one of my first visits, when we were alone after the meal, that I had actually brought Frieda over to England for one of his brothels in '48, but I really couldn't remember her at all. I couldn't remember any of them.
He thanked me, while we were alone later, and told me that she was the best dick sucker he'd ever had and that's why he had kept her for himself.
Frieda'd probably worked as a prostitute in Germany, as I once had connections with a dealer in West Berlin who shifted the working girls around, "to keep the brothels 'fresh' for regulars" he said.
For a couple of years in the late 1940s I'd organised regular shipments of a couple of dozen of the younger, less well worn prostitutes each shipment, smuggled over in lorries with false compartments. The girls were often refugees from all over Europe and the Williamson's expanding brothels couldn't get enough of them. It wasn't a trade I was particularly proud of and was pleased when the demand dried up naturally around 1950 and I didn't have to do any of it by the time we are talking about.
So, I was visiting Richard up to three evenings a week, in company with the beautiful Frieda, and several times over those eight weeks or so, he'd have a phone call emergency and left Frieda and me alone to eat the meal.
I couldn't just leave then, as he tended to discuss business after the meal, over strong coffee and brandy. Each time he left he promised he would be back in an hour or two.
As I was clearly attracted to Frieda, any red bloodied man would be, and she was nervous being left alone with me, it made an awkward time for me, especially the first time we were left alone.
The second time Richard took the call and left, he kissed her on the cheek and I heard him whisper that she should look after me. So, as soon as the dishes were cleared away and the paid help left us, she took my hand with a smile and started to lead me to what I assumed were the bedrooms.
I was really attracted to her, but if there's an unwritten rule that you don't mess with gangsters, with Richard Williamson I thought that was a solid golden rule. I would rather swim in safe waters than sink like a sack of bricks in the river.
Now, if he had said something to me about "help yourself, mate, fill yer boots!", then maybe I would seriously have considered finding out how good at sucking dick his missus really was, but I felt she had misunderstood Richard's request and I stopped her in her tracks before we even left the dining room. Her English was excellent and I explained what I felt was a clear misunderstanding and we ended up drinking coffee and brandy in the sitting room for a couple of hours until Richard returned.
Alone over brandy later, he asked me about whether I enjoyed the meal, which I said was up to his cook's outstanding standard, but I didn't say anything about his wife's approach, and I'm pretty sure she didn't say anything to him either.
Over that couple of months, Richard would disappear every third or fourth time I visited. Frieda and I would simply enjoy our meal and sit around in relatively comfortable and relaxed conversation. She was an attentive hostess, a good conversationalist and I really enjoyed our brief interludes together. As we were all quite friendly now, she often greeted and said farewell to me in front of her husband, with a friendly kiss on the cheek.
So it transpired, in late November, after hearing that Richard and both his brothers were spending this weekend in Liverpool to see a big money boxing match, Frieda was quite surprised when we were left alone again, and that this time I whispered that I'd like to take her to Brighton on Friday night after Richard had left for the weekend. She lifted an elegant eyebrow in surprise, before she smiled and asked, "when and where do we meet?"
CHAPTER THREE
"Indeed," Frieda continued our conversation in our Brighton suite, "I have suffered from his temper before and now I fear he's no longer in love with me."
"How have you suffered? And why do you feel unloved? When I am dining with you and Richard, he is quite attentive to you," I said.
"He slaps me around sometimes, punches me where it won't show, unpleasant but survivable. I think he has to show others that I am his when we're in company, although when we're alone I feel he's no longer mine, inattentive and distracted, particularly these last few days, and he disappears at all hours of the night."
I nod, after all she lives with him and knows him well, I do not.
"Bathe or shower and change as you will, but we need to be at our table by seven sharp. I know a lot of the places you eat in the East and West Ends are supplied by the black market, but this hotel complies with rationing rules and it's a set three-course meal and served in one sitting at seven."
She put on a brief pout, but then revealed her brilliant smile.
"Well, we do have all the rest of the night, don't we?"
"Yes, Frieda, we do, dancing until midnight, but we have to be up early to catch the boat to France at the Pier. I brought my travel alarm clock, set for half-past five."
"Half-five! Jack, I need my beauty sleep!"
"Just think, Caron, Coty, Chanel...."
"Half-five then, can we order coffee, black, for five-thirty-five?"
"I've brought my favourite coffee with me and handed it to the Concierge as we arrived. It's still in short supply and the quality varies so much. They'll have plenty over to enjoy a few pots themselves with my compliments after we have our early morning beverage."
"All right, I'll change in the bedroom and be ready in ten minutes."
I changed in the sitting room of the suite having bathed at home before I left. I brought a new dinner jacket, again from my tailor, so that I would feel dressed differently to our shared meals with her husband. She was observant, noticed my new threads and complimented me. I would have taken bets she wouldn't have noticed, but it both made me feel good about tonight and a little bad, too.
Until now, I had never knowingly slept with a married woman. As for my own marriage, it was over thirteen years ago and I wouldn't recognise Janice now even if I partnered her in a 'Gentleman's Excuse Me' tonight.
Frieda looked stunning in her yellow silk evening dress that left little to the imagination. It made her pale skin even more translucent and her dark hair darker and more lustrous. Her eye shadow made her eyes look bigger, somehow more innocent and in need of protection, and, in her red glossy lipstick she could have been a Hollywood film star.
Funnily enough, her fragrance I recognised as N'Aimez Que Moi, one that my mother always wore and somehow this softened my ardour and made me feel a little warmer towards her as a person rather than simply an object of desire.
The meal was acceptable, edible, but couldn't hold a candle to her normal evening meal cooked and served by her own staff. However, we enjoyed each other's company, speaking in whispers over our meal with a single glass of house wine.
Frieda told me that she was first married in Berlin just before the war when she was 19, to her childhood sweetheart, so she was older than I thought at 32, nine years my junior. She was from a middle class family and had worked as an English language teacher during the war, which was why her English was so good.
Her husband died on the Russian Front in 1943. When the war ended, she was trapped in the American Sector while her parents were shut up in the Russian.
Long before the end of the war the Berlin colleges closed and there was no money or appetite to reopen them immediately after the hostilities ended.
She worked for American Intelligence for a while as a translator but when the Russian grip on East Germany intensified, the Americans discovered she had close family living in East Berlin and she was informed that she could no longer work for them, being considered a security risk.
"To stay in my tiny flat I had to sleep with my landlord," she looked at me, waiting for censure.
"I know a little of your history, Frieda," I whispered back, "but go on."
Yes, I knew her history.
Unable to avoid links with the East End thugs, I had to be particularly careful with the Williamson family, who were active in backstreet prostitution, pornography and racketeering as well as illegal off-course bookies. At the time I had little choice but deal with them. At one time in the late forties I was smuggling in young girls from countries even worse off than we were, like German, Italian and Greek girls for Williamson's brothels, some being quite classy West End "gentlemen's clubs".
Freida smiled wanly.
"When he tired of me, my landlord sent me out onto the streets to earn money for him. I was arrested a couple of times for prostitution and it was actually the Police who sold me to the first whore house, who then sold me on to another a few months later, before I ended up in a false compartment in the floor of a truck loaded with other goods and released into the slavery of another whore house in London. Richard seemed to be a regular nightly customer; I didn't realise he was the owner until he decided to take me out of the brothel and install me in his flat."
Then she giggled.
"Why is that funny?" I asked.
"Well, Richard's Mother's a bossy Northerner with a really funny accent and quite straight laced, even if she is married to an East End London gangster and murderer, as are all her male offspring. She didn't realise that I was a prostitute, and Richard couldn't tell his mother that he had bought me and therefore owned me. The old dear thought I was too nice a girl to be living in sin with her son, and she insisted to Richard that we get married immediately to make an honest woman of me. I think she was hoping for grandchildren. So we married in a registry office with forged papers for me as a Dutch woman."
"I know, I got the papers for him, I know a dodgy but very skilful printer in Hackney Borough, prints all sorts of things, including American dollars, alone on his night shift, while his day staff are in ignorance of what he does."
Once we had dined on what was fairly average food for most of Britain still under food rationing, seven years after the war ended, we danced in their ballroom.
In her high heels she was exactly the same height as me so we looked into each other's eyes as we danced. Frieda moved like a dream, whether it was old-time, waltzes or swing and, with a long slit up one leg, flashed me her shapely leg all the way up to her stocking top. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see other men trying to bribe the band to play an 'Excuse Me' without them taking the bribe, but I'd already paid the band double their night's wages not to.
By 11pm the bar closed.
At midnight the band stopped playing and we retired to our suite.
We clung together in the clanking lift, in part exhaustion and part passion, as Frieda had insisted on only one glass of wine with her meal and one glass of champagne after, and she shared the rest of the bottle with the grateful and infinitely charmed diners at the tables either side of us.
We entered the bedroom and Frieda immediately flopped on the bed. I extinguished the lights in the sitting room, turned on one of the soft bedside lights and turned off the stark overhead light.
CHAPTER FOUR
I removed my dinner jacket and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling my bow tie undone and loosening the top buttons on my shirt. I removed my cuff links and put them in the clean ash tray on the bedside table on the right hand side of the bed.
Where Frieda flopped she was clearly favouring the left side, nearest the bathroom. She could have it, I didn't mind what side I slept. As I dropped my second cuff link into the ash tray I felt a slender hand on my shoulder.
"Unzip me, please?" Frieda asked softly.
She stood at the bottom of the bed and turned her back to me.
I stood and walked around the bed and unfastened the zip on her dress, pulling it down to the top of the groove of her lovely rounded bum.
"Thank you," she said quietly, breathily, and pushed the dress off both shoulders and let it drop to the floor, leaving her with long gloves, tiny panties, white suspenders and stockings and standing in her high heels. She pulled off the heels, turned to face me with her arms folded across her bare breasts and put her right leg up on the bed.
"Would you like to help me take off my stockings?" she asked, with a seductive smile, inserting an index finger between her lips and biting it, while keeping her elbow covering her nipple.
"Of course," I replied, the perfect gentleman, although inside I felt a beast awakening.
I unclasped the front two then the one behind and started to roll the stocking carefully down her thigh, past the knee. When I got to her ankle she lifted it so I could slip the stocking past her heel, then she pressed down her heel and lifted her provocatively wriggling toes so I could remove the stocking completely.
"Be a dear, Jack, and place it over the back of that chair for me, would you?"
"Of course." I did as she bid.
By the time I turned around she had the other leg up on the bed and we repeated the same ritual. This time, instead of looking at what I was doing, I looked her in the eye. She looked straight back with a Mona Lisa smile on her ruby lips. I turned to hook the other stocking over the chair next to the first, hearing a rustle behind me and by the time I turned she was in bed with the sheets pulled up to her chin.
"Aren't you going to help me with my shirt buttons?" I asked, as I picked up her dress from the floor to hang carefully over the chair.
"As a grown man, do you really need help with your buttons, Jack?" she replied coyly.
"I helped you with yours...."
"Are you comparing poor helpless little me with a big strong boy like you, Jack?"
"You're right, Frieda, there's absolutely no comparison."
"That's good thinking, Jack, that's why I like you and why I'd like to watch you undress."
"I might go and clean my teeth first," I suggested.
"What? And risk getting tooth paste or tooth powder on that lovely shirt, or on your nice snuggly fitted trousers?" she countered, her face a picture of condescension.
"No," I agreed, "I wouldn't want to spoil anything at all tonight," and started slowly undoing the buttons on my shirt, with Frieda watching my every move, her broad smile above the sheets, her eyes sparkling with amusement and, I imagined, no, hoped, lust. I pulled the shirt out of my trousers and peeled it off, turned my back on her and hung it over the back of the same chair as her stockings and dress.
"Nice body," Frieda said quietly, "do you exercise regularly, Jack?"
"I go to a boxing gym for three or four hours a week, mostly skipping, a little shadow boxing and bag work, and some sparing."
"You don't have cauliflower ears or a busted nose," she observed.
"I try not to get hit, and Jimmy, the gym owner, makes sure we amateurs wear head gear in the ring. I like to join in because the good boxers need the ring practice and a dozen rounds with twelve different enthusiastic and fresh boxers gives them a good workout and teaches them to expect the unexpected."
"So, you exercise for fun?"
"Yes," I agreed as I slowly unbuttoned my trousers, no new-fangled zips, Jermyn Street do stick to their traditions, and removed my trousers, "if it wasn't fun, I might not go so regularly."
I held the bottom of the trousers under my chin, to help fold them along the creases, and hung them carefully over the chair on top of my shirt, too. Then I took off my socks and suspenders, my new socks made from 60% nylon for stretching comfort and a lot harder wearing than plain cotton.
"Nice white briefs," she commented, her hovering voice seemed on the edge of another giggle.
"We call them y-fronts here ... I don't mind these getting toothpaste on," I said as I slowly walked to the bathroom.
"Spoilsport!" she called after me.
After cleaning my teeth I emerged from the brightly lit bathroom and said, "Now it's your turn."
I pulled up the bedclothes on my side of the bed and slipped inside the bed, while she slipped out her side and off to the bathroom. I followed her by eye all the way, her body was very slim but with enough feminine curves to make it more than just interesting.
"Nice white panties," I called out, "if you need any help...."
"I'll know who to call," she half-turned, her right arm across her chest, "what about your briefs?"
"Just slipping them off now," I said, "they'd suddenly shrunk and were getting painfully tight."
She laughed, "I'll just hold that thought in mind. Next time, if there is a next time, wear shorts for comfort."
"But shorts ride up when dancing, very uncomfortable."
"You could always underdress, like a 'Piccadilly Commando'," she giggled.
"And how's that?"
"I'll tell you later," as, just for a moment, with the much brighter bathroom light on behind her, she spread her arms across the door and the door jamb, as she slowly closed the bathroom door. All I could see was her dark silhouette against the bright light, but she presented a very nice outline shape indeed to my fertile imagination.
Lying in the bed I could smell her perfume and her own natural musk from the exertion of dancing. She definitely didn't smell anything at all like my mother.
I thought about all the dancing we had enjoyed. She told me that Richard didn't dance nor did he let her dance with anyone, so on this night of her freedom we danced a lot, for most of the four hours available to us.
A couple of times, when we were sitting a dance out, and once when I went to the toilet, she would be approached by single men to dance, but she turned them all down as she "was there", she smiled in reply, "with my husband". She wore her full wedding and engagement ring set and an expensive diamond necklace.
We had spoken during and between dancing about regrets, about her life and lack of children. Richard didn't want children, she said, so they always used condoms, which led to speak of her lack of choices and admitted to having anxiety over what we were here for tonight and the consequences of either one of us making a mistake.
Chapter 5
"What do you think I am doing here, Jack?" She had asked earlier during a gentle waltz, "Why are you here with me when you had rejected me before?" and "Where do we go from here, Jack?"
And there was little substance in my replies too, "Opportunities, for you or for me perhaps. As for where you and I go, I travel as light as your overnight case and haven't had a settled life for years. Ever since the war I have remained baseless, living in hotels, flats or more recently houses rented by the week. I keep cash in various safe deposit boxes around the city and suburbs with the bare minimum in known bank accounts."
"Minimising your risks?"
"Minimising risks would mean never doing anything. I get offers in my line of business all the time, but I am not compulsive, and I really have to weigh up the risks of each opportunity and consider that I may be saddled with an item too hot to hold and cannot shift as quickly as I'd like."
"Am I an item that you cannot shift?" she had asked as we danced, both physically and literally around our present situation.
"I don't think so, but at your flat, with Richard saying he was coming back in hours or minutes, who knew when that would be? It could've been a problem."
"But tonight you think we can be free of problems?"
"Not necessarily, we still have to be careful," I had said and she had nodded.
"Do you have someone at home that you have to be careful about, Jack?"
"No, I don't have anyone in my life. Since the war I've remained free of ties. I was married to a girl called Janice Evans back in '35 and we'd rented a three-bed semi-detached in Beckenham by '39 when I voluntarily enlisted, but she'd disappeared with everything in our house and bank account by the time I was home on leave after my first six weeks' basic training. All her clothes and stuff gone. I never heard from her again. Fortunately, we never started that family we had talked about having."
I didn't tell Frieda that although I didn't like using working girls for my pleasure much, every couple of months or so I felt I needed to relieve the pressure.
xxxXxxx
I could see that the bathroom light was off when the bathroom door opened. As she scooted across the room I turned out the bedside light.
"Brrr! It's cold, Jack," she shivered next to me, her right side touching my left. "The heating's gone off."
"Let me put my arms around you, warm you up," I said, and we cuddled for a while as she warmed up.
"Can we kiss?" she asked. "That was a lovely kiss we had during the last waltz when the lights went low."
I remembered both that kiss and the shorter one exchanged in the clanking lift on the way up to our suite.
It was a very slow waltz, the last one of the evening.
Everybody was up out of their seats for it, the last dance of the night, perhaps our last dance, holding her close to me, feeling her heat against my torso, the lights dropped as low as they went. I just forgot myself and pressed my lips against hers and she responded with growing passion. I think we stopped dancing as we kissed until the music stopped and the lights lifted.
We separated and applauded the band and thanked each other for the dance before we joined the evacuating throng.
In bed we kissed hard, holding on to each other as if our lives depended on it, and under the circumstances of our tryst, perhaps they did.
Eventually, my lips explored her throat, neck, chest and firm breasts, her hot, hard nipples, her moans urging me on to explore deeper. Her softly rounded belly was covered in my kisses and I worked down to her springy, downy fur, a mass of dark curls just discernible in the street lights, driven on by the enticing musk of her sex.
Never, since Janice, had I licked a woman's sex, I hadn't ever wanted to since, but with Frieda, I couldn't resist her, I simply couldn't get enough of the taste of her essence.
Her moans were my reward. Just as my unpracticed tongue reached the end of its endurance, Frieda's back arched, her thighs crushed my head setting my ears ringing, her hands clenched my hair and tried to drag me into her hot centre. Then, suddenly, she collapsed, her legs sagged apart and she fainted dead away.
Frieda laid on her back, as limp as a pan of overboiled greens, mouth open, eyes closed. She was breathing, emanating a gentle snore, reminiscent of a babbling brook bubbling over smooth pebbles.
I laid back and pulled the covers over us, our hot sweat chilling in the cold room.
Wide awake, I remembered the risks I'd weighed, the discussion agreed, the decisions that were made, knowing there was no turning back for either of us.
I laid still staring into the darkness until I heard her snuffle and her breathing changed. I felt the bed move and sensed rather than saw her looking at me, propped up on an elbow.
"Did I?...." she asked.
"I must've bored you," I replied softly.
"No, no-one ever...."
Then she returned the favour, oh boy, with spades. She kissed me and I kissed her back and didn't care if I tasted myself or not. She rested her head on my shoulder and we both drifted off in bliss and exhaustion.
CHAPTER SIX
I always wake early, every morning at five o'clock almost on the dot.
Frieda had turned away during what was left of the night and I got out of bed carefully without disturbing her. I dressed quickly in the sitting room, using the shirt, underpants and socks from yesterday, plus my day suit trousers and double-breasted jacket. I took the hotel room door key and slipped out of the suite to get some bracing sea air. It was dark as pitch outside.
I slipped back into the bedroom at 05.27 by the luminous dial on my clock, but Frieda was awake and switched her bedside light on as I entered the bedroom. I blinked in the light and lifted my right hand to shield my eyes.
"Oh," she cried in concern, "what have you done to your hand?"
Naked, she leaped from the bed and came to me, just inside the door.
"You've grazed your knuckles, you ungeschict. There's a small first-aid cabinet in the bathroom, I'll see what's in there." As she glided to the bathroom she asked, "What happened to your hand?"
"Oh, it's still dark out and going down the steps I grabbed the iron hand rail but it was covered in dew, I slipped and ran the back of my hand down the wall."
"I thought you'd abandoned me, when I first woke," she said softly, unwrapping a crêpe bandage, "Why did you go out so early?"
"I needed some fresh air, and you might've got cold if I'd opened a window."
She nodded her acceptance of my story and checked my knuckles for cleanliness, "No sign of loose brick dust."
"It was a pretty solid wall," I replied, as she wrapped the bandage around my hand, anchored by wrapping around the thumb, maintaining tension, then tore the end lengthwise with her teeth and tied it off neatly. It was well done, I could flex my hand without restriction, it was comfortably tight and showed no signs of slipping off.
"Good bandage," I smiled, "were you once a nurse?"
"Every woman in Berlin during the war was a nurse," she replied offhand.
I reached across and turned off the alarm just before it rang and folded the travelling clock neatly away.
"Have we time?" the naked Frieda asked me, her eyebrows raised.
"No," I replied, perhaps a little more forcibly than I intended, then more softly I added, "coffee will be here in five minutes, it's a ten minute walk to the end of the Pier and our boat sails sharp at six. You need to get washed and dressed, my dear."
"Oh, all right," she smiled sweetly and shrugged her shoulders quite beautifully, "can't blame a girl for trying."
She dressed innocently, naturally, without provocation in front of me, taking a lacy brassiere from her suitcase and tucked herself into it. I heard a gentle knock at the outer door.
"We'll have our coffee in the sitting room, Frieda," I said. At least I could breathe and swallow normally out there.
By the time I had drunk my refreshing cup, Frieda appeared, redressed in her dark blue suit and stockings from yesterday and wearing comfortable tennis shoes, like I was wearing, and I poured her a cup from the pot.
"Drink your coffee, I'll shave quickly and pack our bags."
"I can—"
"Relax, I used to work in haberdashery, before the war," I said, "I can fold your clothes carefully."
The Night Porter let me out of the hotel for the second time, now accompanied by Frieda. I easily carried both cases and put one down to tip him a half-crown before we walked down the steps to the pavement.
If Frieda noticed that the hand-rail was down the centre of the steps, she failed to mention it, nor was her attention drawn to the solitary, apparently empty, motor car in King Street, parked pointing towards the Palace Pier, while we turned in the opposite direction towards the older West Pier.
It was quite misty, as half-expected in November, and droplets of dew settled on my trench coat and Frieda's fur coat.
Waiting for us at the end of the old pier was a smart motor boat, built both for speed and comfort.
We climbed down the steps and were welcomed aboard by a Captain, speaking with a cut glass accent, and a teenage boy who was clearly dumb-struck by the sight of this beautiful woman.
"Welcome aboard Miss, I'm your Captain, Jocky Dennison, and my eldest, Archie. He'll take your bags to your cabin. One knows it's very early and won't be light for another hour and forty minutes, so if you'd like to get your head down for a mo, we'll give you a call when it's sunny and brekkie's on the go, what?"
"Thank you, Major," I said, "the lady might indeed take a snooze. We had a late night and there's nothing of interest to see in this mist."
Archie led us through the galley. I noticed a picnic basket with a bottle of champagne poking up past the gingham cloth covering. He led us to the front cabin and dropped the bags next to the bed. He went bright red as he tightly squeezed past Frieda as she smiled sweetly at him, reminding me of the time I saw her on my first invitation to dine at Richard's luxury apartment. No wonder he was struck dumb, I had been, too.
"Major?" Frieda asked once the boy had returned to the deck.
"Ex-Rifle Brigade Major, once the wet-behind-his-ears Second Lieutenant of my first squad as Sergeant, he'd long felt he owed me a favour and, well, I called it in."
She sat on the narrow bunk and patted the space next to her. "Are you joining me?"
"Actually, I need to sort out a few things with the Major, I hadn't expected he'd bring Archie along."
"Any problem with Archie being aboard?"
"No, none at all. The weather forecast is for a cold but fine and still day, Frieda, once the sun comes up and burns off the mist we'll have good visibility and a comfortable crossing. Until then, though, we'll be keeping our eyes open for coasters and steamers getting too near us."
"Do you need my eyes, too?"
"No," I smiled, "we're experienced hands, we can handle it."
"Smuggling?"
"Everyone with a boat around here's a smuggler, Frieda, whether for a few cigarettes, brandy or a nice chilled bottle of champagne, or carrying someone who is looking for a better life."
"And are you looking for a better life, Jack?"
"I suppose we all are, Frieda, but much relies on ... timing."
"And is this … timing ... my time?" Frieda asked, sitting on the bunk, her back straight and looking at me defiantly.
"It might be ... timing is everything, Frieda, everything. I don't think you know, but Richard's mother died on Monday. She died up the coast in a Bournemouth convalescent home, and the the funeral was yesterday, in Liverpool, she was being buried next to her Mum and Dad, and the wake was last night."
"So I was the item that needed 'shifting', that Richard discussed with you over coffee and brandy?"
I nodded. There was really no more need of any deception on my part of why we were here and why it was now.
"Richard discovered that his mother was terminally ill a couple of months ago, so he started asking me to come around for dinner so you'd be … comfortable with me, and leaving me alone with you, hoping you'd be open to an affair with me when opportunity presented."
"Well, you were charming and you behaved like a perfect gentleman, Jack, knowing I'd trust you. Are you going to slip me over the side, tied by a rope to a coal sack half full of bricks, Jack," and, considering what was going through her mind, she was calm, cool and collected, "or simply push me overboard?"
I smiled at her cool defiance.
"Do you have a preference?"
"If I did, would you care?"
"Of course I care, Frieda. But we have no Richard here, there are probably no sacks, and certainly no bricks. There is another option, my dear."
"There is?"
"You have your passport, your little overnight case and on a fast motor boat … and you have a three-hour head start."
"Head start?"
"You know, Richard once asked me how many Germans I killed in the war," I said, "somehow he had discovered that I was a specialist sniper during my service. But sniping opportunities mostly come with rearguard actions, retreating armies or in resistance against occupation, and I was mostly serving with advancing armies. I did a little street fighting over the five years, naturally, and I took out my fair share of careless soldiers, NCOs, officers, but it was war, Frieda, war. I killed for my country and only when necessary. I took absolutely no pleasure in it. So I just told him that I never kept count, it was true, I never kept count, I wanted to forget not remember. But Richard gave me his number all right, and in those two months of meeting in his study after dinner, he told me how he did each and every one of them, proving to me that he remembered every single murder in spine tingling detail, over as you said before, strong coffee and brandy."
"So, Richard employed you to provide the opportunity to take me away for the night and you told him this boat was leaving the pier at, what, nine instead of six o'clock, the three-hour head start?"
"Well, we've left the West Pier at six, while Richard was due to board a boat at nine at the Palace Pier. Brighton has two piers, my dear. His vessel isn't a small fast boat like this, but a proper lumbering cruise ship with a cabin booked for us all, a cabin with a discrete sea balcony. He will get on board late, with his suitcase of rope, bricks and a sack, because I told him to board at the very last minute to avoid accidental discovery by you, and it would therefore sail off with him. He will be stranded aboard, helplessly looking for us and unable to get to us for hours, if not days, after he finds the cabin we booked completely empty."
"So what is happening to us?"
"You, my dear, are going to France. You have your Dutch passport and in your case I've packed £500 in genuine fivers, and 3000 US Dollars that are definitely not genuine, except for about five hundred real ones mixed in. They're the very best US dollars that my Hackney printer can print. Lose yourself in France, Frieda, perhaps travel far away from England. Keep your head down and enjoy life, but make the money last if you can. You're a free woman, Frieda. Free as a bird."
"I do have a little knowledge of French from school, I was always good at languages. And what are you going to be doing, Jack?"
"I'm disappearing too, my dear. I always was, one day. It all depended on timing. It's now time. Richard will be looking for the two of us, and he will assume that we're a couple travelling together somewhere. I have no doubt he had his spies at the Hotel last night and we looked like a loving couple, especially when I kissed you so sweetly and so obviously at our last dance. I knocked the lights out of the lookout in the car parked out front of the hotel first thing this morning and locked him into the boot of his own car. Being apart, you and I, we each have a better chance to get through this in one piece."
"Thank you, Jack. This was the last thing I expected. Watch yourself, though, Richard is absolutely ruthless."
"Perhaps Richard needs to watch himself."
"Perhaps," she smiled.
A smile I knew I would remember for as long as I lived, however long that might be.
I watched her walk away from me at the small French port where we dropped her.
As well as her little case, she had an envelope of genuine French Francs for the port's local dounier, smugglers need friends in every port.
I was returning to a different port in Blighty, where I could leave a more distinctive trail of me with a tall dark haired girl I'd hired for Richard to track and follow into thin air. We waved for as long as we could see each other and then she was gone and I was left alone with my thoughts and dreams.
EPILOGUE
The tall, slim and elegant woman dressed in summer shorts and blouse finished her espresso coffee at the beachside café in Nice and folded her copy of today's Le Monde. She preferred to sit at the back of the outdoor café in the shade, her pale skin burned with too much sun. She had lived here for almost a year, after moving from Cannes, where she found there were far too many Americans for comfort.
She possessed a green-covered American passport, forged naturally and quite well done, but she smiled as she recalled paying for it entirely in forged Hackney dollars. The new passport showed her birthplace as Brussels but also proved that she was the recent widow of an American citizen. She told any who asked that they married immediately after the war in '45, but was sadly widowed by heart failure in '51. Her passport stamps showed that she had travelled to and from Philadelphia for extensive stays a couple of times in the last eight years and finally that she had returned to France the previous year, 1953.
She hinted that was of independent means, her late husband being in the recycling of military surplus, she told those that asked, which brought a genuinely wistful smile to her lips, impressing potential suitors that perhaps she was still grieving over her recent loss. It brought her a lot of sympathy, particularly from war widows, of which Nice seemed to have more than its fair share.
She thought about the single brief paragraph, that she had just read in Le Monde, about a police shoot-out with gangsters and a number of arrests in London's East End yesterday, but no names were mentioned, as she walked slowly back to her apartment in an unprepossessing building, well away from the tourist areas, cheap but respectable lodgings.
She was dressed casually but well, looking quite chic, still wearing her simple wedding ring, her engagement ring and diamond necklace sold off some time ago.
Nice, the largest city on the French Riviera, was becoming more developed as a resort for holidaymakers, rents were rising fast and it would soon become too expensive for her small income from her investments to sustain living here.
She still had all the genuine white fivers she started with, but had gradually changed all the dodgy dollars into French francs. She had a savings account in London, predating her marriage and unknown to Richard, and this had been invested in bonds which brought in almost sufficient income for her modest needs.
As the heat of the day rose she was eager to return to her modest apartment and lie down for a snooze in the afternoon, ready for her regular dance club every Wednesday evening at nine, once the heat of the day made such social exercise comfortable. She smiled at the thought of the pleasures of dancing with a large number of partners during the evening to come. Although they were mostly couples that belonged to the club, many of whom she counted as her friends, there were always some single men and a few tourists that arrived looking to pick up a woman for a night's pleasure. However, she was well-known to be there only to dance, perhaps enjoy a little flirting and relaxing conversations with friends, and she would always go home alone, often escorted by friendly couples to ensure she got home safely.
The thoughts of tonight's entertainment quickened her steps, keen to get home, relax and prepare herself for tonight and banish any lingering memories of a past life, now left far behind her.
The owner of the apartments, Madame Boucher, lived on the ground floor, her front door ever open, listening out for comers and goers, heard Frieda's high-heeled sandals on the checkered floor tiles and popped her head around her door. She smiled when she saw Frieda, one of the loveliest and friendliest of her paying guests, always with a ready smile and polite in any requests for necessary remedial work that this crumbling building often needed, yet a somewhat sad and private person who didn't pry or gossip.
"Madame Addison, I have a parcel for you," she said brightly, "on my table, I'll get it."
Madame Boucher handed over the parcel, about the size and weight of a pretty solid hardback book, Frieda thought. It was posted locally yesterday, addressed to her current identity, "Mrs Elfrieda Addison," at her current rented address. She turned it over, there was no return address on the back. She hadn't remembered ordering any books from the library or a bookshop and no-one outside Nice knew her new identity. She thanked Madame Boucher and carried it up the three flights to the privacy of her apartment before opening it with some trepidation.
Lifting the lid after cutting through the sellotape seal, there was a card from a well-known, and rather too expensive for her purse, Nice restaurant, resting on top of white tissue paper. She turned the card over, and hand written on the back was today's date and a time, 7.30.
She unfolded the tissue paper to reveal a bottle of Chanel No 5 perfume, in a bottle reminiscent of the 1930s, and nothing else.
She retired to her bedroom, to draw the curtains to shut out the bright light of the Mediterranean morning, to sleep and daydream through the afternoon of a past night in Brighton and a Nice night to come.
Perhaps after dinner, by nine, she thought, she could turn up at the dancing club, to the amazement and pleasure of the regulars, her friends, for the very first time with her lover on her arm.
The end