Willie's War Ch. 01

"Never mind about that for the moment." the woman snapped, "Come with me. Other people such as yourself I utilise as domestic servants while they're here, but for you I have a different task."

He followed her through into what was clearly an innermost sanctum in a small circular library on the ground floor. Inside a table lamp cast a soft glow on decorations of bronze sitting agreeably on the warm brown of cedar panelling that squeezed between ceiling high sets of shelves crammed with books. It was a comfortable den of a man's room without any softening frills. A solid mahogany door gave it an air of seclusion and an elegant Louis XIV desk piled high with pieces of paper and envelope files stood in front of a casement window.

"My father was Professor Dietz. He was an outstanding anthropologist." the woman announced briskly. "This was his work station when he was at home, and what you see around you are the last five years of his research. Unfortunately he was unable to compile his notes into manuscript before his death, and that is something I wish you to rectify. Everything is scattered about and in a jumble, so something more than a secretary is required."

A lugubrious head on the end of a long neck peered up at her. "Goodness, It sounds like an awesome task, I -- I'm only an undergraduate and I don't know if I'm capable of doing anything as grand as putting together the notes of a learned professor of anthropology."

The woman's features became set with determination. "What nonsense, of course you're capable. Since you've attended university you will be practised in making dissertations, and the youthful, vibrant blood of enthusiasm still flows through your veins. The subject is no concern of yours. All the information you require is here and only requires to be put into sequence. I'll allow you the rest of the week to read things through, then we'll discuss the matter again."

Having settled things to her own contentment she stood back and looked Willy up and down once more. "Now then, we shall go back up the stairs and I shall choose the clothes you should wear, then I shall have Rosalyn and Loti pin back your hair and teach you about makeup. Don't expect this treatment every day. I expect you to be self sufficient in being a girl, and if you don't learn quickly you'll make me angry."

The two male-maids were summoned to his room, but she didn't spare him a great deal of time herself. Having selected some items of clothing from the cupboard she threw them across the bed and left Willie in their care. "Nice fingernails," Rosalyn said, looking at his hands, "You grow them long and look after them. That's always a bonus for someone making a transformation."

Under the watchful eyes of Rosalyn and Loti he slipped into a suspender belt and silk stockings. "Suspender straps are far better than garters," Loti assured him, "Nothing looks worse on a girl than sagging stockings with baggy knees, so I advise you to always choose suspenders when you can."

When other feminine apparel was offered in his direction, he gave out a meek gasp. "A brassier? I can't wear one of those. I don't have a bosom, hardly a very big one anyway."

"We can stuff it with cotton wool." Rosalyn told him. "It will help you look the part, and showing a bosom will help you feel the part."

His hair usually hung thick and straight, sometimes framing his face and sometimes half obscuring it, but Loti skilfully fastened it back to reveal features of haunting Madonna-like purity. "You must wear more makeup." Loti said as he pinned back some rogue tresses. "If you emphasise your eyes you'll become quite beautiful."

Rosalyn agreed. "Yes, you have wonderful lashes, and a good lathering of mascara will make sure they're noticed. And a cherry-red for your lips, I think. You'll look gorgeous."

It had transpired that both the male-maids had been involved with show business in the past and knew everything about applying powder and paint, but Willie was taken aback by their enthusiasm. "I don't want to look like a painted doll."

Loti tutted. "Of course you don't. The whole point of makeup is to enhance natural beauty with a beguiling radiance. It's what the lady of the house will expect."

"Not Garbo," said Rosalyn, "More Rogers."

Willie looked at him. "What do you mean?"

Loti beamed. "Rosalyn thinks you look like the film-star, Rogers."

"Ginger Rogers, the American. Do you? Do you really think that?" he asked Rosalyn.

Rosalyn said he did, but Willie was hardly placated. "Is he teasing me?" he asked Loti.

"I think he meant it."

"Do you think I look like a film-star?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't feel glamorous. I must look a sight. I don't think I'll be comfortable going into the town dressed like this."

His two companions glanced at each other and then at him. "Don't worry about that." said Rosalyn, "The lady doesn't allow her house staff to go into the town. She keeps us at a distance from other people in case they guess the truth about us. From now until you leave you'll be expected to stay within sight of the house at all times."

"We're practically prisoner's here." added Loti, "The only compensation is the chance to dress nice."

"Fraulein Dietz isn't a very pleasant person, is she?" grumbled Willie.

Rosalyn responded with a brief, cynical laugh. "She's got less humour than a cow in the rain, and you haven't seen the worst of her yet, my little treasure. Most people wouldn't treat a Cocker Spaniel the way she treats us when she's in a bad mood. The trouble is we're stuck, aren't we? You and us alike. We have nowhere else to go."

Eventually Willie became established as fully dressed and he was able to shoo the others from the room. It took him a while after they had gone to adjust to the strange feelings that now enveloped him. The odd shoes that deformed his feet took some getting used to, as did the tight hose that clung to his legs and a skirt that swirled around his knees. His face was masked with sweet-smelling substances, and most alarming of all, he had a bosom.

He wanted to look at the finished result but the mirror in his room was only ten inches square, and he had to go out onto the bedroom landing to find a full length reflection.

Fraulein Dietz had selected a crisp white blouse to accentuate the creamy texture of his skin, and to accompany it a black skirt, narrow-waisted, hip-hugging and tight in a Chinese cheongsam style, knee-length with daring slashes half way up his thighs.

The shoes she had chosen for him had incredibly clunky high heels, but when he examined himself in the mirror he noticed that they did promote a rather nice stance of elegance, and with the stockings they did emphasise the smooth slender curve of his legs in an attractive way.

He had always felt a strong affinity with female clothes. Enthralled with his reflection he swivelled left and right to examine his appearance from every possible angle, grinning, pouting and pulling funny faces. Although he lacked the vanity to consider himself perfection he was small and slim and he did feel like a film-star. The colour scheme, starkly black on white, also emphasised the sooty black of his eyes, and with his hair freshly brushed and feeling silky and lustrous he felt better able to cope with the demands being made of him.

By the time he was ready to descend the stairs again it was time for lunch. At lunchtime Rosalyn and Loti catered for the needs of Fraulein Dietz who ate alone in a rather grand dining room. It was salad and a poached tranche of fresh salmon for her; boiled salted codfish and potatoes for everyone else, to be consumed at the kitchen table.

Frau Klausen, the cook, was a large blousy woman and fervent National Socialist who listened to music on the wireless the whole time she was there. Willie was partial to American swing and even enjoyed a good rendition of The Blue Danube, but the woman's taste was limited to martial music of the German kind that never veered from venerating the Fatherland and its Aryan stock. To its accompaniment she would constantly march back and forth, gyrating her spoons and ladles in the manner of a drum-major.

When he had eaten he went to the library and began the mighty task that had been bestowed on him. At once his interest was captured and within minutes he was absorbed.

It soon became apparent that although Fraulein Dietz's father may have been a highly intelligent man, he wasn't an organised one. The professor was in the habit of writing down his thoughts on whatever piece of paper came to hand and in no specific order. There were a number of hard-back journals and leather bound notebooks, but most of his work had been recorded onto loose-leaf sheets of paper that were now stacked in untidy heaps on every flat surface in the room.

Initially Willie had intended to read everything chronologically in date sequence, but then he found that very few of the documents had any date on them. Instead he started to read things randomly and that seemed to work in an odd kind of way, because when he'd become accustomed to the content he found he could compile separate piles for notations that commented upon relevant issues. From the start he knew it was not going to be an easy task. It would require endurance and pain-staking observation, but given the week promised to him he was confident that eventually he would find a common factor to link them all together.

He closed his eyes, and suddenly his head was back in Heidelberg, the place where he really belonged and where he could submerge himself in real study. The time he was compelled to spend at Ravenskopf was merely an interlude, he reassured himself. It wouldn't last long. Soon things would return to how they had been previously.

***

Willie was a little bit wary of Rosalyn and Loti to begin with. Their attitude to sexual matters was to say the least, loose, and they openly admitted they sometimes slept together. He himself was more reserved. Although no angel, he preferred relationships to have some mutual rapport and not to simply serve as an excuse for gratification, but after he had declined their invitation to make up a threesome a few times they got the idea, and left him alone.

The thing that made living with them easier was their good nature, not to mention their actual skill. As housemaids their efficiency was as far above reproach as their morals were beneath it. This was a fact that Fraulein Dietz must have recognised but seldom rewarded. Although she spared them military service she ran the house like a military camp, directing things, throwing out orders and demanding obedience. Her harsh words seemed to accompany everything they did, and it was not an uncommon sight to find them on the verge of tears after she had smacked their hands with a wooden spoon as punishment for some perceived stupidity.

When he went to eat his lunch one day he heard conversation in the room where Fraulein Dietz ate her meals. "Does she have a guest today?" he asked Rosalyn.

"Her brother is here for the weekend."

"Her brother?"

"Her brother, Eduard. He's stationed at an aerodrome near Grottkau but he seems to get way quite often at weekends." Rosalyn told him.

Willie then remembered an earlier mention of Fraulein Dietz's brother. "What's he like?

Rosalyn purred like a cat. "Good looking. Big and strong. Loti caught a glimpse of him in the bathroom once - said he was hung like a cart-horse. But I've never known him show any interest in us kind of girls."

He never saw much of Eduard during his brief visit. Eduard dined with his sister at meal times but spent most of his time out of doors with a twelve-gauge shotgun, a fact verified by the amount of game brought back to hang in the kitchen larder. Willie's only close encounter came when the man was on the point of departing and made an unannounced visit to the library.

"You must excuse me for interrupting you, but I'm off back to my unit this morning and there is a book I want to take with me." His words were polite but abrupt, spoken as employer to staff, to someone he considered somewhat inferior to himself. He stared at the bookshelves on one side of the room and then the other. "I know my father had a copy of Voltaire in his collection, but where to find it is the problem."

Being only 5'6'' Willie had to tilt up his face to study the man closely, and he gazed up beyond a broad sun-tanned face and straight into the eyes of... a god. Not that he was like one of the statuettes of Greek deities that filled the niches on the stairs. Instead he took after the kind of dark warrior who appeared in late Renaissance paintings.

Quite easy to look at, Willie decided. He was smart and upright in his perfectly tailored air force uniform, and as tall as his sister with thick wavy blond hair clipped short, and with blue eyes shaded by spiky gold lashes. He was not handsome in the conventional sense, his appeal was much more subtle than that, and the faintly mocking twist to his mouth was an enigma. His prominent cheekbones, firm jaw and slightly crooked nose gave him a rugged appearance, but it was the startling blue eyes and high-voltage melt-your-bones smile that made his pulse jump.

"Voltaire is on the second shelf from the bottom." he said without even thinking hard. "It's on the right hand side, next to the book by Alfred Rosenburg."

The visitor gave him a quizzical look that was tinged with amusement, then his eyes stalked visually along the shelf indicated until he snatched a volume up in his hand. "Quite right. Exactly has you said. It hasn't taken you long to get to know the lay-out of this place."

Eduard was the first attractive man Willie had met since arriving and he suddenly felt very aware of the bra thrusting out the front of his blouse, and of the two buttons unfastened at the top that exposed the hollow of his throat. "I have an interest in books, Herr Dietz, that's all one needs really. I love books, and I love art too."

"Art!" The man's eyebrows lifted has he paused to consider the word. "Yes, of course. Appreciation of art is said to be a measure of civilisation. Good art can be a joy."

"Examples of bad art are rare, Herr Dietz. Misunderstanding art is far more common."

Such a settled opinion caused the visitor to chuckle. "Holding firm views on things is worthy of respect. You must be the new -- erm - person my sister informed me about. The one she as elected to write-up my fathers notes."

Willie nodded, suddenly becoming quite breathless. Eduard dominated the room. He had tremendous natural charisma and would have dominated a room anywhere.

The man cast around with his eyes. "Settled in, have you? You'll find this a very pleasant place to work, I'm sure. Sadly the library is in a terrible mess and my father left behind such a lot of correspondence to be dealt with. It'll take you six months to read everything."

Willie peeped up sweetly from under his lashes. "Fraulein Dietz requires me to read everything in a week."

Eduard raised his eyebrows. "A week! It you can do it in a week I'll give you credit for being a top scholar."

"Oh, a week is long enough I think if I start early each day and finish late. The professor's writing is quite legible and I'm a quick reader."

The man grinned at that, an outright humorous grin that unexpectedly struck Willie like a blow to the solar plexus and made his nipples stir inside the cosy confines of his bra. The man was attractive of course, but he had no idea how irresistible his smile might be. Willie had regarded him speculatively at first, wondering if his sister's heartlessness was a family trait that he needed to be wary of, but the cheerful smile dispelled such fear. Now, with the lighter creases beside his eyes deepening to reveal laughter lines and his lips parted to reveal even white teeth, he was devastating.

"You are somehow different to the others I meet here." the man conceded, his eyes warming appreciatively has they rested on Willie's delicate-hewn features. "Not as tall. A little shrimp really. Refined. Not has sexually brash as they, and yet somehow more striking, and more - erm -- more feminine."

Willie felt a blush on his face rising up like a fiery dawn and he smiled awkwardly, unsure how to take the compliment, but he thought about him when he'd gone, remembering his smile. Eduard Dietz was everything he disliked about people in general of course; too self-assured and far too opinionated and over-confident, convinced he knew best about everything and infinitely superior to someone dressed as a girl. Even so, he had been utterly captivated by him, and his eyes glowed against the disturbing paleness of his face at the mere idea that the gorgeous man had noticed him.

It was important to stop such unsettling thoughts, he decided. He had to sweep them from his mind. A man such as Eduard Dietz was sure to have a girlfriend. He had the kind of looks that probably left broken hearts everywhere. He probably had lots of girlfriends. Real girls.

He slumped down in his chair. Oh, Heidelberg, where are you? he thought. Gone were all those sunny, carefree weekends along the Neckar, laughing and joking with the lean bodied young men who sought to court him. Gone, all those days of being chased along the river bank until they had their arms around him. Naughty boys, kissing him like they did, undressing him like they did, doing the other things that they did.

Eventually his face began to resume its delicate porcelain colour, but then he was startled by a tapping on the casement window. Looking round he saw a man outside gesticulating to speak to him. Getting to his feet he went across and opened the window as if it were a door. "Who are you? What do you want?"

The stranger offered a broad grin. "I'm Günter. I'm Frau Klausen's nephew and I too work for the lady of the house. Three days each week in the flower garden then two in the park. I heard she'd taken on a pretty thing to do some office work, so I thought I'd take a look."

Willie gazed up into a tanned outdoor face under a mop of windblown auburn hair. How handsome he looked. How tall and muscular. His lean aggressively masculine body was wrapped in a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his very masculine arms were matted with a delicate fleece of fine hair. He watched in fascination as the muscles in his arms bunched with each movement they made. He made all the boys he'd known at university seem insignificant, and he was a good substitute for the unattainable air force officer who had so recently captured his thoughts.

Still in some awe Willie watched the visitor push his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and became aware of the strong muscles of his thighs. "You are very cheeky, Günter. Do you want to come in?"

The young man grinned. "No, can't do that. The snooty Fraulein doesn't allow outside workers into the house. But I bet you haven't seen anything outside yet, have you? Would you like me to show you the garden?"

"The garden! But I'm busy."

"You must be allowed a breather. The Fraulein can't expect you to work the whole day without taking a short break now and then."

Willie brought a hand to his mouth and bit a nail, then caught himself and stopped. He found himself acknowledging Günter's undoubted physical attraction. He suited the casual attire of a gardener. His long muscular legs looked good in close fitting trousers, and the tightness of his shirt exploited the flatness of his stomach and the strength of his hips.

Why not? he thought. Why not take a break? He'd worked pretty well none stop for the past few days and never been thanked for doing it, and was it not reasonable to take the opportunity of viewing other aspects of the place where he now lived.

He opened the window to its full extent. The sill was very low so he was able to step over it quite easily.