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Saturday, May 1, 2021

Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Fourteen. Louis Shalako.

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

Winnie as a Virgin

 

 

Winston Churchill, former First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, once wrote ‘There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed.’

He was in the Boer War. He was a correspondent for the popular press.

“That must have been while he was still a virgin.” According to Mick Dinwiddie, who I missed like hell sometimes.

Winnie as a virgin.

We weren’t exactly friends, but he was like a surrogate dad to so many guys on the squadron. You could ask him any question. Go to him with any problem. You could share your little triumphs and tragedies with him. Mick was sympathetic, hard on you, and sensible with the suggestions. Churchill’s support of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign forced his resignation from the Admiralty. His service as a battalion commander had somewhat rehabilitated him in some eyes. But then, in 1917 he joined Lloyd George’s coalition government. He held cabinet  positions, being either Minister of Munitions, or Secretary for War. He was born into an aristocratic Victorian family, and in his lifetime he would witness Britain’s transformation from Empire to welfare state—I expect he would have hated nothing more virulently. Being who he was and all. I guess he did have it tough in some ways.

Mick was an absolutely fabulous guy on the ground. It was only when leading men in the air that he came up a little short. At the time, this was no uncommon failing.

I would have liked to talk to Mick right about then, about a lot of things. Mr. Churchill was wrong on several counts.

1.) Nothing beats a good piece of ass.

2.) Having been shot at, and missed, and having been shot at, and hit, I can tell you the latter is more exhilarating than the former. Mr. Churchill, when you were shot at, he wasn’t a very good marksman. You missed out on all the fun.

3.) There is nothing more exhilarating than getting them in your sights and letting them live. They deserve all the suffering they can get in life. Death is too easy for some.

More about that later.

I thought I was a virtuous person, I thought I knew what that meant. I thought I’d been tempted, more than once, but what are the lusty imaginings of a fourteen year-old boy?

He doesn’t even know what he wants.

Now I knew that I was weak.

 

She left a note.

 

‘I have to go to work this morning. Don’t worry, I will give a plausible excuse for being absent yesterday afternoon. Back at six. Hugs and kisses, and by the way, if you go out, please leave an address, or a number, with the maid…sleep all day if you want to, lover.’ — Betty

 

Well, I am on leave. It kind of scares me, but I was also desperate for any kind of a friend. I laid my head back on the pillow, uncertain as to what to do next. The clock was ticking on the bureau, in an otherwise very silent room. Then came a knock.

The maid brought some tea. I drank it down pretty quick, scalding hot as it was, and jumped out of bed. Time for a quickie bath and off to work. Whatever that means, when you’re not on any real duty. That Betty, she’s a really good woman, and I wouldn’t want her to think I’m a no-good lazy bum.

I was going to seek out an old friend from early days. If anyone knew about motors, he should. He took me to the family home for a weekend leave once at Christmas. These things slip one’s mind, in the intervening years.

The maid showed me to a room where the white telephone was kept. Nice touch.

I looked around idly as she pulled the directory out of a drawer.

This was an unbelievably nice, big, ornate apartment for a single girl who works at the library. This was intriguing, but I didn’t have time. Maybe the flat belonged to a friend.

But who?

Briefly considered asking the maid. As if sensing this, she wouldn’t make eye contact.

The maid excused herself politely in a neutral tone, and disappeared into a back hallway. The room was set up as a rather ornate office or den, and the phone sat there on a bloody huge walnut desk. That cost a thousand pounds, if I am not mistaken.

“Uh, oh…I think I’m in deep trouble. Deep trouble.”

It made getting out of there so much more attractive, though.

Leafing through the book, I found a number. In my experience it really doesn’t matter if you get the right one on the first try. People are naturally helpful. They don’t like to admit that there is something they don’t know. Challenge them, but nicely. Act a little stupid on the phone. I find this helps, sometimes. Stupid but nice, this is the key to success on the phone. I speak very slowly, and let them finish my sentences, especially when I don’t actually know the end of the sentence.

“I’m looking for a person, in the Naval Department…uh…”

And the impatient person on the end of the line says, “Bill Jones?”

And I say, “No, no, it’s someone in maps, and surveys…ah…”

“Scabby Solomon? Jerry Jackman? Dick Peckerhead? Et cetera, and so forth?”

I got a whole list of contacts by this method, and I could now call back and ask for them by name and department. Just like an old buddy.

Because I like people.

If they can’t answer your question, always ask if they can suggest someone else.

You would be surprised how often this gets results. Happy to pass the buck.

That’s not my department, never take that for an answer, (it is in fact the answer you want.)

Get them to tell you whose department it is…it’s a pretty simple question, right?

Especially when calling Whitehall. Big building, but it’s a small community. Even if they hate each other, they know who’s who and who’s busy doing what. They’re all empire builders of one sort or another, and therefore they must know each other’s business, in order to poach-and-sabotage successfully.

You could say they gossip. I would have to be careful.

It didn’t take long to get through to my buddy.

Lenny ‘Crash’ Zavitz was an old friend, a former auto mechanic—and a clerk at Whitehall. We would meet for lunch. And so I left the apartment to fill up an otherwise empty day. It was hours until she would be back.

What an interesting thought.

At least now I know what temptation really is. And some other funny feelings as well.

 

***

 

I had forgotton all about the mime incident. It happened so long ago. We were on leave in Paris, and we got drunk while touring a few of the seedier dives. Finally we’d had enough of roaring sing-songs, drunken faces and noise, noise, noise. Our legs were so wobbly that we kept falling down and knocking people over. At some point we realized, rather remorsefully, that it was a bad idea.

We stood on a cold and rainy street corner, Jimmy Slade and I, Lenny and Whitey. All of a sudden a cab arrived near us, about fifty feet away on the other side of the street.

“A mime, a bloody great poufter of a mime,” in Zavitz’s words, gets out.

We looked at him, he looked at us. And all of a sudden he goes into this little act, and he was bad. I mean, he was really bad. It wasn’t that late, maybe nine-thirty. We just stood there looking at him. No one even laughed, and he got a little pouty.

You know the kind of stuff. Climbing a ladder, walking into the wind, being inside of a glass box. No one even cracked a smile. He made a rude gesture and began to turn.

I didn’t like that little cocksucker’s attitude.

I pulled out Whitey’s pistol, a big, black .45 calibre Colt. I took it away from him earlier, when he was very drunk and I was still mature and responsible, i.e. only slightly inebriated. It was a problem throughout the evening, and I was starting to resent the damned thing, heavy and cold, rubbing me raw at the waistband. If I got caught with it against orders, I would have been in a whole heap of trouble.

That was why I took it away from Whitey in the first place. It literally fell out of his coat onto the floor of a bootlegger’s house. The man’s elderly mom and pop didn’t say a thing, not a thing, and I felt rather badly for them. It was Sunday, after all.

Not their fault if their son’s a stinker. So I scooped it up and kept it.

They had a look of appreciation when they saw that. At least that’s my interpretation.

Anyway, they were glad to see us go. There were bullets in it and everything. The fool paid ten dollars in some dive for a souvenir. You could probably get one for five back home, but people are stupid after all…

The seller probably needed drinking money.

Like an idiot, I drew the gun and popped off a couple of rounds at the street sign directly above the little bastard’s head. (The mime, not Whitey.) The sign came down, narrowly missing the mime’s noggin. Brick-chips flew out of the wall, and I popped off a couple more before Dick Whitehead and Lenny pulled my arm down and wrestled the gun from me. I was yelling like a stuck pig.

I mean, this guy was bad.

“Gonna kill him. Wanna kill him. Gimme my whiskey.”

This was a pet phrase we had at the time, peculiar to our own small group of lads.

Not that relevant, but it shows the kind of evening we had been having.

Lenny dropped it, all fumble-fingered, and I grabbed it again.

“Tee. Hee. Hee.” I giggled, lining up the sights on the mime’s buttocks as he ran.

The two of them were literally hanging off my arm, which ached considerably the next day. Finally Whitey got it away. The mime scampered off, up the stairs into this big building, where windows were opening, curtains were being pulled back, and all of a sudden the gun went off again.

The bullet went spanking off into space as it ricocheted from the pavement. I got the gun again and fired the last round at the building the mime had gone into. Even drunk as a skunk, ever the professional. Always counting my shots.

“Whitey. What the fuck you doing?” I asked reproachfully.

Finally the guys were dragging me away. We could hear whistles in the distance, a lot of them. I don’t know what curiously-silent kind of conversation they might have had, and of course the French are known for their facility in gesturing, but right about then, all the mimes in the world came boiling out the door in one mad pack and came racing after us. I guess mimes can count gunshots too. So they’re not deaf or anything. All hell was about to break loose when somebody we knew pulled up in a fire truck, ‘borrowed,’ from some Royal Army types somewhere.

“…‘op in, you crazy blighters.” A voice called from the door.

We were lucky not to get lynched. We were lucky to get away with that little episode.

The gendarmes never close the book on a case like that. I’m still wanted somewhere for that little incident.

“I’ll never forget the look on his face when you opened up on him.” Laughed Zavitz. “I just wanted to see if he could talk, or if he really was a deaf mute. That’s what you said.”

I smiled in fond memory. This is why I prefer not to look up old acquaintances. Thank God for them, but sometimes the conversation runs a little thin.

I’m not too good at making small talk.

Ordering yet another round of stiff drinks, he apologized for ‘only having a couple.’

“You see, I’m on the wagon now. I’m only drinking to cele-, celebrate an old friend’s g-good luck.” He told me.

Fuck. The bugger’s turned into a real lush, and he’s just used me as an excuse to go off the wagon. Melanie, that’s his wife, is going to hate me. He probably won’t stop now, not until he’s run out of cash and credit.

Fuck. Is it any wonder I felt like such a jerk sometimes? But he seemed so glad to see me. Maybe he doesn’t have any friends left. I gently tried to steer him back to the main topic, but he insisted on telling me about his dreams.

He dreams all the time, and he can never get a good night’s sleep. He sees dead friends, face down in the mud. He can’t see their faces, but he knows they’re friends. They’re drowning, but he has no arms and can’t help them. There is always a cloud of gas in his dream, rolling forever towards him and the wounded. Now there are hundreds of them.

Wounded men everywhere.

Lenny and I were together, that day.

He remembers it that way. It is curiously blank, for me, although I believe he was. He was in my platoon. It was blank back then and pretty much now as well.

Only the major facts stand out with any clarity.

All the little details are gone.

He wants to die, but can’t.

He wants to die, but he can't.

That is the cowardly way out.

“Have ‘nuther drink?” He mumbled in sadness.

“I have to get on my way. I want to buy a motor, some sporty little rig just to get me around. Something that doesn’t cost too much to run,” I explained fairly clearly.

“Got you some names and numbers.” He replied in a fuzzy tone.

“Not too many for sale.” He added more lucidly.

There’s a war on. I know. With no new machines coming out, the used ones were at a distinct premium these days.

I helped him to a cab, told him to go home.

“Have Melanie call the office and say you’re sick.” I told him firmly, and when he asked for a number where he could reach me, I had to lie.

“It’s all up in the air for me right now.” I explained.

“Keep in touch, once in a while, Will.” He said in sadness as I wrung his hand for the final time.

Then the cabbie took him away. Poor Zavitz. One of the walking wounded, and there seemed to be many of them.

Zavitz. His sacrifice was made. He would pay a price. No one would ever understand.

Not even me. But I could sympathize. I guess I had my own private little hell brewing inside.


END

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Images. That Louis guy, with a bit of help from the internet.

 

Louis has books and stories on Barnes & Noble. See his works on ArtPal.

The documentary Fighting the Red Baron.

Check out the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, April 30, 2021

Heaven Is Too Far Away, Chapter Thirteen. Louis Shalako.


 

Chapter Thirteen

 

High Performance Aircraft

 

 

Betty loaded me up with a dozen books on engines. She was sensible enough to ask a few relevant questions, no doubt in order to serve me better.

“What are you doing?” She asked. “What are you working on?”

“Um, er, high-performance aircraft.” I admitted sheepishly.

This was supposed to be a top-secret operation, and here I was in the library.

“Maybe you should talk to someone who races aeroplanes, or automobiles, or even motorcycles.” She suggested. “What’s in the books may be only what someone is willing to tell you.”

She thought for a moment.

“Speedboats?” She wondered.

Good girl. Smart girl. High-performance engines would be strategic information.

The auto builders were all in competition with each other. So were aircraft builders. This was one aspect of the problem I hadn’t seriously thought through. This was probably one good reason for the existence of the Royal Aircraft Factory. It was a government establishment. Sharing information for the benefit of all. Should have put that in my little presentation. I’ve noticed that. One always thinks of one more thing, something truly brilliant, to add on just a little too late.

“Where would be a good place to go to talk to someone?” I asked her. “Brooklands?” 

“Why don’t we look in the telephone directory?” She suggested. “We could look up motor sales, engineers, mechanics, motor-cycle shops. It’s just a matter of some creative thinking.”

“Huh.”

“We’ll soon knock up a list of names for you.”

She was right. There they were. All over the greater London metropolitan area.

“Here we go. Mr. Throckmorton. He has a little three-wheeler which did a very good test a few years ago. He holds an eighty-something mile per hour record at Brooklands.” She reported. “I think it was a seven-hundred-fifty-cc engine.”

“It’s too bad they don’t let women into the Corps.” I said to the girl. “I have rarely met a man as sensible as you are.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I know.”

And then we were both laughing into each other’s eyes.

 

***

 

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

When I said Betty was a ‘big’ girl, I don’t mean to give the impression that she was a big, fat, sloppy thing. She was three sizes bigger than the classic, yet modernistic idea of what a woman should be, and she had strong-looking shoulders to boot.

Her face was maybe a little rounder, her hair a little shorter, her lips a little too full, her eyes a little too small. She had thick, wavy brown hair with a lot of curl to it. Nice pointy breasts, and nice legs. She wore a black dress, ending just above the ankle, and a white blouse, done up to the neck with a black ribbon tie.

She looked like a librarian, oddly enough.

When she asked me to go with her to the park for lunch, I did raise one objection. I hadn’t brought anything to eat. She told me not to worry. She would show me where to get a sandwich, ‘quite quickly,’ as she kind of read my mind. I sometimes skipped a meal in London, rather than get in a lineup early and stand there for hours waiting for a seat. As a single man, alone, I was always sitting tucked onto the end of someone else’s booth.

I threw the books into the case and went with her.

She led me to a sunny little spot. We sat and ate sandwiches and drank our coffees.

Then she had her way with me.

I can’t honestly say how I let that happen. I was telling her about France, and mentioned someone’s name. She knew the name. She’d met him. He was a friend of someone she knew, and when she told me their name, I knew of them. In fact, Jerry spoke of them often. It was a very small world, we concluded. She was laughing at the conclusion of my story. And upon throwing her head back, I couldn’t help but notice she had very fine skin, very smooth looking, at her throat and under her chin, and it was just the way she looked at me.

It made me realize that while not the love of my life, whom I probably couldn’t have anyway, Betty was a very attractive woman.

Just then she said. “Whatever happened to old Jerry?”

She waited, very still, intent on my face.

Jerry was the guy who figured so humorously in the tale.

“Oh, he got killed,” I had to tell her. “He got shot down at Bapaume. The plane caught fire…”

The memory of that plane, Jerry and Albert, his observer, falling in flames into the cloud-tops just made me kind of lock up real tight inside.

It was the look on her face that did it. I wished I hadn’t said that. She had a weird look on her face, with the shock of it. She must have missed the notice in The Times, but they never went into details either. She looked down and away. I had hurt her.

Something funny happened. A dam burst. Water began flowing from my eyes and it wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see. All the sounds of the city around us just dropped away. I realized that I was making a scene, yet nothing mattered except the pain, and the grief. There was a pounding in my ears, and snot poured from my nose.

All my fallen comrades, all those young innocents. All those victims.

I fell forward, and if she hadn’t been more alert and right on top of things, I probably would have smacked face-first into the dirt.

I beat myself about the head, gnashed my teeth, and growled like a bear. I howled in  pain and anguish.

She held me tight.

“There, there.” She said. “Shush, shush.”

She stroked my hair, and my head, rocking me back and forth on the grass beside the bench. Incoherent words. My story, Jerry’s story, gushed out of me like a torrent of guilt and shame and agony. She held me in her arms and I told her all about it.

“It’s going to be all right.” She said in a small voice. “It’s all right.”

She held me for twenty minutes or so, until I simmered down, and then she took me home. It took a while to get a grip on myself, after that one. She led me into her flat. She closed and locked the door. She told me to take off my shoes and I did. She made me sit on the couch. I sat there, numb. She was in the kitchen. A drawer opened, a door slammed. She brought me water. I blew my nose on my red bandana, something I habitually carried. She kicked off her shoes and took off her coat.

“I am so sorry.” I said sheepishly. “I really don’t know what came over me. I’m just tired out from all the stress and strain.”

Body’s all aching, wracked, and wracked with pain.

She began to undo her dress. She stood there, staring into my eyes with the strangest look. Her skirt fell to the ground. Then she stepped out of it, and I gaped. It suddenly started to sink in.

She shrugged out of her blouse.

She smelled like a woman, and she stepped forward.

“Let’s get you undressed and into the bath.” She instructed, and I didn’t resist.

I was putty in her hands, at that point. She obviously realized it, for she turned away and went down a corridor, and soon there was water running in the distance.

Now was my chance, if I wanted to leave.

There, it has been said.

I did not leave.

She returned, and dropping to her knees in front of me, she removed my socks just as a mother would remove the socks of a child. No sexy lasciviousness, no eye-ball flirting, just a gentle, almost businesslike touch. A no-nonsense touch. She tossed them aside, stood up and told me to remove my jacket. I stood up to do so. Clumsily, I tried to grab onto her and hug her and kiss her on the lips.

She was so demure, yet totally in control of what happened next. Cleverly anticipating what was a pretty likely tactic, she pushed me back down on the couch. She was avoiding my eyes…ignoring eye contact in the most frustrating way.

I was agape at all this. She was in no mood for explanation.

“Belt.” She ordered.

I undid it, pulled it out and handed it to her.

“Up.” She said brightly, like a nurse to a patient.

I lifted my bum up and she pulled my pants off. Turning away, she expertly folded them and placed them neatly over the back of a convenient chair. She bent to pick up my socks. The view from where I was sitting was enough to take my breath away. It was more frightening than the first day I ever went up in the air. I had at least read a few books on aircraft and flying, but there are no really good books on women…at least I don’t think so.

She wore black, lacy stockings and a garter belt, and panties with little flowers and an elasticized band. The fit wasn’t too tight, but just right. She shrugged out of her bra, and reaching out, put it on my head like a double dunce hat. She wore little pearl earrings, and a bracelet, and perfume, and she was unbuttoning my shirt, so I quickly shrugged out of it. Her bra fell aside on the floor.

“You need to forget.” She told me gently, in a low and slightly husky voice.

I stared at her tummy, her hips, her legs, her breasts, the whole package. I was no virgin, but up till now, my sexual maneuverings weren’t…so explicit…so visible.

I was afraid to even touch her, if the reader can believe it.

Sneaking a peek at Mary-Ann Smedlowzitz through the gap in their bathroom curtains while she stood nude in front of the mirror, was nothing as compared to this. Any other sexual knowledge I might have had was about the same level of sophistication. Groping around with Sally, that one time in the back of the barn, on a hot summer’s day, when I got her top off, things like that. And the first time, at a house in Exeter, where there was, ‘a very nice lady, very clean, and it only costs a pound….’

“Make sure you wear your prophylactic, and be back on base by ten…Anyone gets the dose, that man will be put on report. K.P duty for a week…Good luck, soldier.”

“Hey Stan, I’ll go if you will…”

That kind of thing. Speaking purely objectively, I was about sixteen, and it was a fleeting sort of experience. More like a quick twenty push-ups and then off you go to the shower, lads.

“You need to rest, and have a bath, and let me take care of things.” She crooned, then tenderly bending down, she kissed the socket-like, puckered-up scars on my legs.

She pulled my undershirt off over my head, and taking my hand, led me in to the bathroom.

“In for a penny, in for a pound.” I thought.

Quickly and shyly pulling off my shorts, I stepped right smartly into the frothy water, which was quite hot, by the way. I sat down slowly and gently, feeling the heat seep into my lower back. My knee ached as usual. She picked up a sponge and began soaking me down. She washed me thoroughly all over, soaping in between my toes, behind my ears, doing my neck, and all.

Finally I dunked down into the water and held my breath, listening to the tinkling and gurgly watery sounds. I tried to think it all out while underwater, but wasn’t having much luck. Sitting up again, she toweled my eyes and then washed my hair. The wall-paper had cheerful yellow roses on a sky-blue background. The memory is quite clear after all these years.

“There we go.” She said. “All done.”

She motioned to get up and I stepped out onto the little rug so she could dry me off. I was ‘fully erect,’ but we just ignored it as I stood there in anticipation. Then she gently pushed me out of the room.

“Haven’t we got, um, a dressing gown or something?” I asked in trepidation.

Luckily the sun was beating in through the windows, but I still felt a little shiver of something.

She grabbed my hands, mischievously.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. No. No, no.”

“I want to see everything.” She added, and led me into the bedroom.

She put me on the bed, and I lay on top of the bedspread. Stark naked, with my thing standing up for all the world to see. She slowly took out the pins from her hair. Creeping onto the monstrous bed, on her hands and knees, I could not believe what she did next.

Something I had heard about, but never experienced.

She was performing what they call ‘fellatio,’ in Latin.

“Whoa. Stop.” I gasped.

I never believed this would happen to me, never.

Not in my wildest dreams.

“Slow down. What are you doing?” I said, holding onto her hair, her head, trying to push her back, but she just kept plunging up and down.

And I was about to get out of control.

Finally she came up for air, sensing that I was squirming around quite a bit.

“What’s wrong with that?” She gasped with a glint of something wild and desperate in her eyes.

“Nothing.” I replied. “At least let me return the favour. There’s something I’ve been meaning to try.”

She readily agreed, and was soon happily ensconced on my face. Finally, after some time, she turned about. Gazing deeply into my eyes, she slowly impaled herself on me, as I stared, pretty wild-eyed by now I should think.

Stroking her breasts, milky white and oh, so soft, sucking her nipples, holding onto her bum as she slid up and down.

“See, that’s all we need, a little tender loving care.”

You need to forget.

“Love me, love me,” She suddenly squealed, and then she was out of control, the sight of which drove me into the same near-frenzied state.

Finally she subsided, moaning, and I thrashed around a little more, then collapsed back on the bed. We lay in a pool of warm sweat, and clung to each other.

“Holy smokes,” I said, and shuddered several more times.

Is that what sex is really like? All of the time?

If only I had known. No wonder people talk about it so much.

 

END

 

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

 

Images. That Louis guy, with a bit of help from the internet. 

Hispano Suiza: Griff’s World.

See the Hispano Suiza run without exhaust pipes…

Louis has books and stories on Kobo. See his stuff on Fine Art America.

Bonus link: Von Richtofen and Brown. Typical of the genre, this film takes itself very seriously indeed.

Check out the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.