The Party in Pimlico

BEATRICE 12 - THE PARTY IN PIMLICO

We were going out. Jenny wanted to make me up and dress me for the party in Pimlico. She had 'certain special' friends, 'theatrical', as she liked to call them, who wanted to meet me. I wondered about them. She cut my long hair short, like a boy, the parting on the left. I had not been expecting her to cut it so severely. I cried when I saw my lovely golden tresses, snipped, lying on the floor all forlorn. My hair had been down to my waist. I had been proud of it. Part of me had been taken from me, lost forever.

"Don't cry, Beatrice." Jenny's warm, fragrant breath feathered my ear. Her hands encircled my breasts, cupping them. "It always grows back." She kissed the back of my shorn neck. "Short hair suits you anyway. You look adorable. I'll show you in a minute." She rubbed in some scented dressing and then combed it into style, giving me a little quiff in the front. In the mirror my hair looked oiled and slick. "All you need is a cock, Beatrice, and you'd be a proper boy. I'll have to get you one. But tonight you can pretend, act is you are already have one."

She dressed me in pin-stripes, a man's suit that had once been my uncle's but had now outgrown. She made alterations until it fit. When she stood me in front of the mirror I could not believe it. Was that handsome young man looking back at me really a girl, really me?

"You look gorgeous, Beatrice" she said. "Real smart, a proper gent and no mistake, my friends will love you."

"Who are these friends? I'm quite nervous about meeting them."

"There's really no need to be. They're all lovely people – theatricals, thespians, society ladies. They are all connected with the theatre and music hall and the arts one way and another. Well to-do. You'll love them."

Jenny continued fussing about me, attending to details, straightening this and straightening that, brushing imaginary specks from my shoulders.

"Now, Dame Judith Charming, she's an incredibly famous actress, you'll love her; and Lady Katherine Boyle, she is patron of The Globe theatre, very influential. And of course there's my very good friend Emily Bartlett, the world famous producer. She has a list of credits as long as your arm. She's casting for The Taming of the Shrew at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane presently. I'm hoping for an audition."

Jenny kissed my lips. I felt the merest flick of her velvet tongue, and then it was gone, like a will o'the wisp, transient and fleeting.

"You will be nice to them, won't you Beatrice, especially Emily. It would mean a lot to me. I'm quite sure you will adore them. They're all very charming and delightful ladies."

I had not heard of these people, but then we moved in different circles, Jenny and I. She lit a cigarette, placed it in an elegant tortoiseshell holder and handed it to me. "There, now you really do look the part. But you must act it too. Do the deed and so it shall become, my dear cousin."

I didn't know quite how to hold it. She showed me. Her fingers moved my fingers. "Like this. Go on, then. Put it between your lips and just draw gently. Be careful not to take too much smoke to begin with."

I did. My mouth filled with hot nastiness and burning, bitter tastes, like poison. I coughed terribly. My eyes were full of water. I couldn't see. I thought I would choke or be sick, or both. "Ugghh!"

"There, I warned you, didn't I? Be careful, not too much... a little at a time. You've never done it before so take it slowly to begin with because it can burn and make you dizzy. You will soon learn to enjoy it. You will find the more you do it the more you will get used to it and the more you will want it. Just draw the smoke in slowly, daintily, and exhale with a lazy grace, elegance, never as if you're blowing out a candle. One day I will teach you how to swallow the smoke, inhale and hold it inside you. And no ill effects, just pleasure. It will keep you calm in times of stress. And smoking is a wonderful prop. It's considered very sexy for a woman these days. It's an opportunity to show off one's hands, and you do have beautiful hands my dear. Smoking will help draw attention to yourself... not that you need much help on that score."

I thought it tasted foul. My head spun. I tried again. Now it did not burn so much. The taste was slightly better, but still bitter. I coughed only one cough this time. I blew smoke. I was crude, not yet refined, I had to learn society behaviours and niceties, manners and decorum. But I felt very grown-up already, and important. I was to move in the same circles as the hoi-polloi, society ladies, ladies of breeding. I admired my reflection. I posed. I rather fancied myself. I cut a fine figure of a man... a young man, a boy even. Jenny put a top hat on me. "Perfect!" she said.

"Here... I want to show you something," she said and took the cigarette holder from me. I watched her. She smoked it now. She seemed to draw on it in for a long time. She made it look elegant, sensual, exciting, and erotic. She took it out of her mouth. No smoke came. I watched her close her eyes as if in some kind of ecstasy. She seemed not to breathe for what seemed like an age. I saw her Adam's apple bob up and down as if she were eating and swallowing. And then slowly, smoke emerged from her nose and mouth like a dragon, a steady, controlled stream, like the steam from a steam whistle. The smoke was grey, drifting upwards. She did it again. I was fascinated by her... by the act of smoking, almost spellbound.

"Now watch this," she said and took another puff. This time she angled her head back and made an 'O' with her lips. It was like magic. A ring of smoke emerged, a wobbling circle of cloud floating towards the ceiling with perfect roundness and symmetry. I'd never seen anything like it. And then another, and another, and another. She was showing off, playing to the gallery. I loved her for it. I loved her. I was spellbound, enthralled, entranced. My cousin was an enchantress and a woman of the world.

"That's wonderful," I said. "You must teach me."

"Yes, but not tonight. It takes time and practice. All you need to do tonight is draw the smoke into your mouth and let it out slowly, gracefully, a little at a time. You must act the part. Pretend. Tonight, my dear, will be your stage debut. Your acting skills will be put to the test."

She smiled and pulled me close. "You look wonderful, Beatrice. Everyone will love you. I'm so excited about this evening."

She kissed me, a smoky kiss. I could taste it on her tongue. A grown-up's taste. My cunny fluttered like a baby bird breaking free of its egg. This was the adult world. I was a woman now, not a girl, albeit a woman dressed as a man. The clothes made me feel important, dangerous yet desirable. My older cousin had cast a spell over me.

"Come on," she said. "We must hurry. We don't want to miss anything."

We hailed a cab and went to Pimlico. Jenny tipped the driver as we alighted on the street. The house was part of a large Georgian terrace, very grand. It was becoming dusk. A municipal man was lighting the gas lamps along the pavement. There were noises, happiness and merriment and chinking of glasses drifting out from the open windows into the street. We went up the stone steps and rang the bell. My tummy fluttered with little summersaults.

After a while Jenny and I became parted. She seemed to fade into the background, move further away, taken from me by her well-to-do friends, or so I thought. I hadn't known then that this was part of a plan to get me on my own. She merged into the receding crowd and was gone. There was tinkling laughter. The chandelier sparkled with diamonds. I drank my champagne and smoked like she had showed me, doing my best to get it right. Would people know? Would they sense my naiveté, my inexperience "Would I show my rough edges, embarrass myself?

My legs wobbled. An elegant-looking lady, who had been watching me from across the room for a while, came over and began talking. She wasn't young. She looked like somebody's favourite aunt or even grandmother. She had poise, almost regal in her bearing, like the King's mother. We talked. Her voice encircled me with its softness, spinning spells. She flattered and fawned. I enjoyed every moment. I heard my voice answer her as if it were someone else. Did I talk like that? What was I saying? What was she getting me to say, agree with?

"What's a nice young man like you doing here among all these reprobates?" Her eyes crinkled in a mischievous smile.

I almost blurted out that I wasn't actually a man. But I remembered that Jenny had told me to 'act' the part, so I just smiled politely and drew gently on my cigarette. I felt desirable in her presence.

"I'm Emily, by the way," she said.

"James." I coughed on the smoke a little as I said the name Jenny had given me. I took her hand and kissed it.

"What a pleasure to meet you, James."

"The pleasure's all mine," I said.

Emily winked knowingly and sipped her champagne. Did she suspect something?

"So, you belong to Jennifer?"

"Belong?"

"Yes. Belong. I think she thinks you do."

"I don't know about that." I tried to keep my voice as deep and even as possible.

Her hand touched my hand. I looked down. They were white and slender, but crinkly and with prominent blue veins. Her bare arms reminded me of rolled pastry. Her hand stroked the back of mine, plastic bangles rattled on her wrist. I tingled with warm pleasure and benevolence. The champagne bubbles went up my nose, making me dizzy. She smiled. Her teeth were slightly discoloured with age and large like a horse. She was friendly and charming. She wore a feather boa. She looked like an actress from a bygone era. She smelled of mothballs and lavender. I liked her in the way one might like one's grandmother.

"Does she loan you out occasionally... allow you to stray once in a while?"

"I'm not sure what you mean." I had no idea what she was alluding to.

"Does she make you wear a cock?"

I turned around, because the voice that had just spoken wasn't Emily's. It had come from behind me.

"Sorry to creep up on you," said the voice.

I span round. We had been joined by two other ladies. They were equally smart and elegant, but were possibly older than the first lady - in their sixties.

"Take no notice of Katy, dear. She's had rather a lot to drink," said Emily, squeezing my hand, as if apologising for her friend's forwardness. "She's only teasing you."

"I just wanted to know about Jennifer's attention to detail, that's all," said Katy. "If Beatrice is to be a real boy she must surely have a cock between her legs."

So, it appeared that they already knew who I really was. I felt myself blush.

"Shhh! You'll embarrass him. He's only a boy. How old do we think, Judy?"

"Eighteen, nineteen possibly..."

"I think twenty. Benefit of the doubt as he's smoking."

"Tale no notice, dear," said Emily, winking at me. "I'm afraid my friends are full of mischief this evening."

"Does your mama allow you to stay out late, James?"

"Stop it, Katy... You're making him go all red, poor boy."

"But don't you just feel you want to 'mother' him?"

"No," said Emily. "He's far too grown-up for that, now leave him alone. I saw him first."

There were titters. My face burned. I was blushing, and the champagne didn't help. I wanted to say something but no sound came. I didn't know whether to nod or shake my head. Emily squeezed my elbow in a gesture of reassurance, or perhaps she was claiming me for herself. The two older women were immaculately dressed, silver-haired, coiffured, impeccably mannered and poised. They were drinking what looked like pink champagne. There was a miniature pink umbrella in each of their glasses. They seemed to be having enormous fun trying to spear their cherries.

Over their shoulders I could see three people on the chaise-longues canoodling. I had trouble focusing. The champagne and smoke had gone to my head. I felt dizzy. The women talked to me. I did not understand. They touched me, feeling the material of my suit, passing remarks. Somebody touched my bottom, surreptitiously, as if an accident. They moved closer, pressing against me. I could smell their different perfumes. They were close. When they talked I could feel their three separate breaths fan my face like fragrant feathers. They all had posh accents and were certainly well-to-do. I assumed that Emily's two friends must be Katherine and Judith, and that these were the three ladies I was to be 'nice' to.

When my eyes cleared and focused, as they did from time to time, I could see that there were two young ladies on the chaise-longues sitting either side of a man old enough to be their grandfather. He sat between them, bemused, his waxed handlebar moustache twitching. He looked like he could be a judge, a clergyman, a banker. He was entertaining them with his witty repartee. They giggled and smacked his wrists playfully. "Naughty boy... you naughty, naughty boy, Sir Edmund." More giggling and tittering.

The girls were becoming ever more cheeky and adventurous with him, playing with the knot of his tie, whispering in his ear, stroking the inside of his leg. They were frivolous and took liberties with his person. He seemed to welcome it. After a while they led him away up the stairs. I wondered if they were prostitutes, common whores.

The three ladies surrounded me with their perfumes, and coiffured hair, tittering like schoolgirls themselves."Poor dears," said Judith. "They'll have their work cut out. Edmund can never get it up after a drink."

There was raucous laughter, hands touching, bodies brushing and pressing, heads spinning, bosoms warm and cosseting, favourite aunts and grandmothers, mothers, safety in numbers.

"Judy, darling," said Emily. "Spare a thought for our lovely young man here. I'm certain he is not used to such ribald language."

"I believe we are all a little worse for wear," said Katherine. "I apologise on all our behalves, James. Will you forgive us, dear?"

I coughed on my smoke and hiccupped. "Excuse me," I said, "but I do feel rather peculiar all of a sudden."

I felt myself sway. One of the women caught me and held me upright by my elbows. An arm went around my waist. They took me upstairs to the bedrooms. They didn't force me; I just allowed myself to be led. I suppose I thought they must know what was best for me. I obviously didn't by this time.

There were many bedrooms. Emily knocked on the doors until she found one unoccupied. As soon as we did, we went in. A lamp was lit, but set low. Our shadows jumped and swayed on the wall. We sat on the bed, Judith and Katherine either side of me, and Emily standing in front of me. Their faces seemed to merge into each other, like in a kaleidoscope. After a while I did not know who was who. It didn't matter. I was floating on a cloud, sitting on a bed of feathers. Hands began unfastening buttons. I was kissed and pampered. Endearments were spoken. They flattered me. I was not frightened. I allowed myself to be touched, my breasts felt, my sex pressed and probed through my pin-stripe trousers. I was showered with kisses, my hair stroked, my bottom pinched and squeezed.

They undressed me. It was exciting. They folded my things and hung them over a chair. The lady standing up began taking off her clothes. She undressed slowly, almost as if she was doing a striptease. The other two laid me on the bed and continued their fondling. They were intimate and insinuating with their hands. One of the ladies placed her hand between my legs and began rubbing my sex. I shivered, a hot flushing shiver. The other woman played with my breasts, rolling, churning, kissing the points until they hardened and protruded like miniature medicine corks.

I watched the lady undress in front of me, brazen and uninhibited. Her breasts were large and pendulous, lolling joyously, free in their new-found freedom. They trembled like jellies, tipping invitingly as she bent down to take her shoes off. The nipples were pink and puffy. She stepped out of her garments, rolled down her stockings and removed her drawers. She had much hair between her legs. She turned around and showed me her bottom, bending over again to retrieve her stockings. It was fat and comfortable like a plump cushion. She looked over her shoulder to see if I was paying attention and then turned to face me again. She lifted her breasts and wobbled them at me. Her tummy settled in rolls and layers. I was excited by the vision, her Rubenesque stature. I wanted her, despite her advanced age.

Hands stroked me, took liberties, lit fires. I felt loved. A fat squirmy tongue entered my mouth; obscenities were spoken with hot breath in my ear. They made me hotter. My skin prickled all prickly. A lady, now with her head between my thighs lifted my bottom, drawing my knees into my chest. Her hands held me still while she attended me, her silken tongue lapping at the brown seal, soft and floating, like an artist's sable. It was so rude, so brazen. My eyes rolled. My juices ran. I made noises. My breasts were sucked hard. Sucking sounds. I felt their biting. There was sighing... my sighing, their sighing, the bed sighing.

The other two ladies got off the bed to undress and then came back to join us. One lay inverted to me. I felt her hands rove my hips and bottom. Her tongue feathered my cunt hair and then entered my slit. Little flames leapt up inside me. Her thatch tickled my nose. Her hips rolled. Her cunny begged. I could smell her smell. I wasn't sure about it. Helping hands aligned me to her, encouraged me to kiss her as she was kissing me. "Go on," they said. "She'll love you for it." I needed no more persuading. My tongue spooned at her. Her juice was like savoury honey.

I gratefully accepted and addressed whatever was put in front of me, whether it was a pendulous breast, a fat quivering bottom, or a nest of hair smelling of loam and seaweed. I welcomed it all. I joined in wholeheartedly, encouraged by the pleasures that were foisted simultaneously upon me by their artful ministrations, their fingers, their mouths and tongues, they knew how to pleasure me. I was carefully penetrated with inert objects as well as living. Fingers scooped at my juices, entered my behind, wet-lipped mouths covered my body as well as my face and toes, multiple tongues lapped at my sex, my bottom, my underarms. Hands held my legs apart so that other hands could explore the nooks and crannies of my underbelly; help themselves to my charms without resistance from me. I could not have offered any anyway. We tangled in kaleidoscopic loveliness, ephemeral, ever-changing permutations, flesh squirming against flesh, oily slits slithering across marble-white, fleshy thighs, bellies and breasts. The ladies were attentive, loving, leaving no stone unturned, no orifice unexplored. I felt like a queen. I was cherished and sated. My head swam with naughtiness and wickedness, pleasant fusions and confusions. My body tingled from their attentions, my tender spots were further tenderised and sensitized. I was made happy.

When all was done the ladies kissed me on the lips in turn and departed. I do not remember exactly when they left me to myself. I had no concept of time. I slept long and soundly till morning, the sleep of a goddess. Had I dreamed it all?

A few days later we were having breakfast at my aunt's house. Sophie had brought in the mail on a silver tray and Jenny was opening a letter with a look of great excitement on her face.

"Guess what? The most fantastic news ever... I've been offered a part in The Taming of the Shrew!"