There is Another Way

Many of the rubber trees had been felled or burned. The damage would take years to repair. My lovely house hadn't been completely wrecked, but anything of value was gone and in places it was falling down. But I set to work in the way I have always felt best; organised, methodical and disciplined. It did take years, but slowly we rebuilt.

But I needed new customers. Five years after the end of the War, I was getting back to some useful production levels, but was really limited for markets. Standing alone against the Nazis for so long, and fighting for six years had bankrupted Britain. They had given India independence, started a National Health Service and had somehow managed to run an Olympic Games on a shoestring. But rationing was still in full force. When I went back, it seemed strange and so depressing to me -- bomb-sites everywhere, the grime, the grey-ness, the 'make do and mend'. They still couldn't really afford to take increased supplies of rubber from me -- what would they make, and who could afford to buy it?

So I looked to Australia, beginning to recover a little in its own right, to spread its wings after such a long period of Imperial rule. I headed for Sydney and did the rounds of all the rubber processing companies I could find. I hoped for some interest, soon.

But when I heard those words in that office, I was amazed, excited -- perhaps a little afraid. I turned, and standing behind the young man, there she was. She had clearly suffered. At some stage, someone had broken her pretty retroussé nose. There were some lines on her face, well before their time, and some of the delicacy of her features had been hardened by her experiences. But she was still my Cecile, and as beautiful as ever to me.

She ushered me into her office, and as soon as the door was closed we fell into each other's arms. For what seemed forever we kissed and held each other, reluctant, now that we had found each other, to ever be separated again.

I drove us in my hired car her to a smart Sydney restaurant for lunch, but I was almost unable to eat, so great was my excitement in meeting her again after so long. On the journey she heard an abbreviated version of my tale, and over lunch her own story unfolded.

"I married Victoire, as you know, and moved to his lovely estate at Hua Hin. He was a good man, and even though there was not the passion I felt with you, my love, we were happy. He was gentle and kind and generous, and he gave me pleasure in bed. My first time with him was a little disappointing -- there was none of the intensity of our coupling -- but he proved a considerate lover.

Around October, I found I was pregnant. I was happy, as we both wanted a child. Then your message arrived from your friend Jenkins. I'm not sure that Victoire knew what to make of it. Having heard from my parents about your proposal of marriage the previous year, he was suspicious. However, Mr Jenkins assured us both that he had also warned the other planters, including my parents, so Victoire's suspicions were allayed a little. He thanked Jenkins and sent him on his way. I said that I thought we should leave as you had suggested, but Victoire thought the message alarmist. To mollify me, he suggested I go, but I would not leave him and he would not leave the estate."

"I guessed as much. I always found the Comte rather stubborn".

"Georges -- Victoire was a good, brave and very principled man. He had already lost his estates in France, and he could not bear to think he would also lose everything he had worked for in Siam. He did agree that we should bury as much as we could that was valuable in a secret place that only we knew, just in case the worst happened. Victoire got the gardeners to dig a hole to plant a tree. He told them to leave it overnight, so I could see the tree planted in the morning, and that night he dug the hole deeper himself, and we stashed all our jewellery, gold, small antiques and most of our money in Sterling and Dollars in a large metal box at the bottom. The following day, the tree was planted and our treasures were hidden away -- we hoped for later retrieval."

"A wise plan," I said. She nodded and continued.

"The Japanese arrived in early January. At first they were officious but not overly aggressive. Then they said they wanted the house for their regional commander. We protested, but they just marched us out of the house, and we stayed in the summer house. Then a group of them came round, took my maid outside and started ripping her clothes off. I tried to stop them, but one of them hit me in the face with a rifle butt and broke my nose. They raped poor Dok-mayee, again and again, and all Victoire and I could do was watch -- two of them kept us at bay with fixed bayonets. I had blood all over my face, and I was weeping for my poor girl, who they left sobbing and bleeding in the dust when they had finished with her. The next day they came back and raped her again. This time her fiancée -- the one I told you about -- tried to protect her, and they killed him with their bayonets. The third time they came for her, she grabbed a knife and killed herself before they could start." Cecile's voice did not betray the emotion she clearly felt. I guessed there was worse to come.

"Then a few weeks later, they came round in a truck, rounding up all the Europeans and taking us off to an internment camp. I was frightened for us, but also for our people. Most of them were treated very badly by the Japanese, but sometimes we were able to intercede and prevent some of the more extreme cruelties. Without us there, they would be at the mercy of those brutes.

But soon I needed to worry about our own fate. In the internment camp I was reunited with my parents and other friends, but there was never enough food. They set the men, and then the women, to do manual work. Victoire begged them to spare me, because of the child, but he had little influence. We worked in the fields with the peasants, planting rice, digging ditches -- anything they wanted done. My father was never very strong. One day he collapsed while working in the heat. They kicked him to get him up again, and when he didn't rise, they kept kicking him. The brutes fractured his skull and he died.

The shock of his death, plus the malnutrition and the constant work and hardship laid me open to disease. I got dysentery, and then I miscarried. I was wretched, but worse was to come. With help from Victoire and maman, I recovered my strength and was sent back to work. Then one day a group of soldiers saw me in the field and grabbed hold of me. I knew what they were going to do, but there was no point in struggling or screaming. When they'd got my clothes off they leered at me, pawing and mauling at me in the most hideous way. Then Victoire saw what they were doing, and came running over. One of them hit him with a rifle butt, and he went down, but he got up again and started to attack them. I screamed for him to stop, told him it was no use and they would only hurt him, but he wouldn't listen. Two of them held me while the others turned on Victoire. One of them bayoneted him, then the rest clubbed him with their rifles until he was dead.

I really didn't feel their disgusting little pricks as they raped me, again and again. I was so wretched, seeing my husband murdered before my eyes, seeing their total disregard for human dignity, for human life. That evening I tried to cry, but I couldn't - the tears just would not come. The next morning, maman and I, helped by a few friends, buried Victoire in a corner of the field, next to Papa. And then we went back to work. And later that day, they came back and raped me again. It was as well I was so malnourished, or I may have fallen pregnant with one of their bastards.

And then at last I had some good luck. Just as they were finishing with me for what must have been the fourth time, an officer appeared. He shouted at the men, and they came to attention, and he ordered that I was taken to his house. His doctor cleaned me up -- I was bleeding from the violence of their assault on me -- and he said something in broken French to me. He told me that I was excused field work, and that I would now be required to be his house-servant.

I soon discovered what this meant -- mostly sex, whenever he wanted it. He was a brute, but it was better than being repeatedly raped until I could stand no more and finally killed myself like poor Dok-mayee. So I stayed, and I know some of the women envied me, but it was hardly my choice. Then around late 1942, my officer was recalled to Japan to be given new duties, and wanted me to go with him. I was frightened. How would I be treated in Japan? Would I ever escape? And I would be leaving maman and my friends in the camp. But what was the point in worrying? As always, I had no choice in the matter.

So I said goodbye to maman and my friends and was taken away with some other prisoners -- mostly women, I noticed - to board a large troopship. But on about the third or fourth night out, there was a loud explosion, and I was thrown out of bed and across the room, just before a piece of the bulkhead ruptured and skewered my officer as he lay in bed. I pulled on a coat, took his short seppuku sword for my protection and left him to die in the cabin while I scrambled up on deck. The ship was sinking -- we'd been torpedoed by an Allied submarine. I tried to get into a lifeboat full of Japanese soldiers, but they drove me off and even tried to shoot me, so I found a lifejacket and a wooden packing case to hold on to. Just before I jumped overboard, I saw a Japanese civilian carrying a water canister and a lifejacket and heading for the rail. I've never used a sword before, but it doesn't take much to stick one in a man's guts when you have all the pent-up anger that I had that night. I took his water container, wrapped it in his lifejacket, dropped it and my packing case over the side and jumped.

Miraculously I managed to swim to my makeshift raft and climb on it, pulling my water canister after me. I feared it would sink any moment, but it didn't and I managed to stay mostly out of the water, away from sharks and the possibility of dying from hypothermia. Two days later, I spotted a lifeboat and managed to paddle up to it. There were two European women -- one Dutch, the other British - and two badly-wounded Japs in it. The women helped me aboard -- I think it was because they saw my water and knew how precious it was, rather than any compassion on their part. Then before they could say anything, I despatched the two Japanese with my sword. They were appalled; they said that these men would have been their protectors, and I was putting us all at risk. I asked them what they thought the Japanese would protect us from, and pointed out how little water we had. They saw my point, and together we threw the bodies overboard and waited.

Nearly a week later, when we were desperately hungry and sunburned terribly, we saw a ship. As it got closer, we realised it was an Allied destroyer. It picked us up, and a few other survivors including quite a few Japanese, and we ended up in Australia. I was sent to hospital to recover, but as soon as I was out, I immediately went to find work. They were looking for people with business skills in some of the rubber companies, and had lost a lot of their men into the army, so with my experience from helping Papa and Victiore, I got a good job. In three years I'd got myself promoted to general manager, a post I managed to keep, even after the men came back.

In 1946 I went back to Siam. Amazingly, maman had survived the camps, but many of my friends were dead. There were hardly any people on the plantation that I recognised. The estate nominally belonged to me, but it was quite difficult. The locals were not happy about a woman running the show, so I appointed a manager I believed I could trust, and with the help of two Australian colleagues who had accompanied me back home, I dug up the treasures Victoire and I had buried and took them back with me to Australia.

So you see, I'm set up fairly well here. I still own estates in France and Siam, but I've never visited Perigny and Siam no longer feels like home. Maman stayed on in the old plantation, but she was a broken woman and only lived for another six months or so. I came back here and took up my job again, arranging some sources of rubber from what's left of the plantations after the Japs burned most of them. I tried to find out what had happened to you. They said you'd joined the army in Burma, that you had survived the War and gone back to Britain. After that, I couldn't find any trace of you. When I saw your proposal, I was amazed and delighted."

She reached inside the neckline of her smart business blouse. "Do you remember this, mon amour?" It was the opal ring I had given her just before we parted.

"Of course. Was that one of your buried treasures?" I asked.

"Non, mon chér. I carried this with me always. I had to keep it hidden, for fear they would take it from me. Sometimes the only safe place was where you yourself had entered me." She smiled for the first time since starting her story, at the fond memory of our passionate lovemaking. "Strangely, that was one place they never tried to defile me. I kept it with me at all times. In the midst of all the horror, it told me that there was still someone who loved me, someone for whom sex was an expression of sublime love, not of violence and control. It was my anchor, cherie."

For the first time since she had begun her desperately sad story, a tear trickled down her face. I got up from the table and she also stood, and we embraced, there in the middle of a smart Sydney restaurant. As the gawpers looked on, I threw a handful of banknotes onto the table to more than cover the bill, and gently steered her out to the car, holding her as she sobbed into my shoulder. There was nothing I could say except "Cecile, I'm here with you now, my love. I don't want us ever to part again."

Gradually, she recovered her composure. "Where shall we go, my love?" I asked. "Shall I take you to my hotel, or would you like to go back to the office?"

She smiled. "I've told my staff I'll be out for the rest of the day. I have a house overlooking the harbour. Take me there."

She directed me out of the city and up along a high cliff with spectacular views of Sydney harbour. We stopped at a large and very nice art-deco-style building, and she led me inside.

"Lovely place you have here," I told her. I was impressed.

"I sold a lot of treasures to pay for it. I keep one housekeeper -- rather less than the staff I was used to in Siam - but it's her day off. We have the place to ourselves."

We both knew what should happen next. She took a bottle of chilled champagne from the refrigerator and two glasses from a cupboard, then led me to the bedroom. It had a balcony with amazing harbour views. We toasted 'old love, renewed', then I took her inside and slowly undressed her. Her body bore some scars from her mistreatment, but she was still my beautiful Cecile. Then I undressed, and she asked about my own war wounds, which I made light of. Beside her own ordeal, I felt that my war was a picnic.

I took perhaps an hour caressing her, reacquainting myself with every inch of her delicious, so fragile body. It tore at my heart to think of how she had been mistreated, and I rejoiced each time she gave a gasp of pleasure. We kissed -- oh how we kissed -- and I savoured her skin, still mostly smooth and lightly-coloured. Her breasts were still firm and delicate, her thighs smooth and oh-so-enticing. When my tongue entered her cleft, she flinched, but then relaxed. Soon, she was moaning loudly in pleasure. Her climax, when it came, was fierce and passionate.

I held her for a long while, as her moans of ecstasy subsided and the tears returned. "Oh Georges! For so long I have had no pleasure from my body. After my mistreatment, I could not bear to be touched by another man. On the few occasions when I tried to pleasure myself, all I remembered was the brutish faces leering at me as they invaded me, clawing at my skin. I was revolted. But you -- with you, I have a different memory, one of a secret act, so wicked and so wonderful, that gave me my first and best climax ever. And a man who told me he loved me, and tried to save me, and came back for me. Georges my love -- you showed me my first and greatest pleasure, and when it was torn away from me you have come back to return it!" She kissed me again, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and my heart melted at what she had been through.

After her tears had dried up, and we had sipped more champagne -- now a little warm -- she smiled the saucy smile I recall that an 18-year old had given me over ten years earlier, and slid down my body. She surrounded my manhood with her mouth, and had me erect and ready to burst in no time. Just before she took me too far, I lifted her head and rolled her onto her back. I lowered myself between her legs, and she closed her eyes. As I probed gently at that entrance I had so long desired, she suddenly went tense, gave a sob and turned her head away.

"Georges, my love. I cannot! My heart remembers you, but my body -- my vagina -- cannot forget my abusers. I think we may have to wait a little before I am ready to wipe those memories away." Her face clouded, and I was touched by the misery in her expression as she knew we would both be denied the thing we most wanted.

Then suddenly she smiled. Through her tears she said "But Georges -- as you know, there is another way. No other man has entered me there, no brute has defiled me in that tight little hole. Georges, it is yours if you wish it."

Did I wish it? I was almost trembling as she retrieved the jar of Vaseline and applied it to herself and to me. Once again, after all these years, I carefully inserted one, two, then three fingers. This time, she reached down to caress herself even before I could touch her slit. Then she reached for a pillow, and slipped it under her slim bottom, spreading her legs wide for me.

"Now, Georges, please. I am ready. Please, now? Maintenant?" Her voice almost pleaded with me, using the word she had used so long ago to induce me to this act -- do it now! There was no need. This was perhaps the thing I most wanted to do in the entire world -- except, perhaps, sheath myself in the sweet tunnel that God had intended. But that was not possible for now -- I prayed, only for now - so I slowly extracted my fingers and did as my love desired.

As before, so many years before, the act of insertion caused her to wince. This time, I could look straight into her lovely face, deep into those big dark eyes, and I knew at once that the slight pain I was causing was to her exquisite pleasure. Gentleness, not brutality. Love, not sadism. It was ironic that an act that many would have called perverse, that may even have had us in a court of law had there been witnesses, was actually the most serene expression of our love that either of us knew.

I entered her slowly in a single stroke, facing her in the position we had latterly adopted in our previous congress, and at the point of my deepest penetration, her eyes fluttered closed and she let out a long sigh of contentment. Her arms surrounded my neck and she kissed me so tenderly that tears prickled in my own eyes. "I love you, Georges. I love you so much" she sighed.

"I love you Cecile. Be with me always. Marry me, please?"

Looking back, mine must have been one of the more -- shall we say -- unconventional proposals. Most men drop to one knee and proffer a ring. I had my penis -- my cock - buried to the hilt inside my lover's anus as I asked her to be mine forever.

"Georges. Oh yes! Oh yes, please, my love." The smile on her face at that moment was worth all of the riches of the Indies to me.