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There is Another Way

By: bad_hobbit



Author's note: Firstly thanks to Scotsman69 and Thomas Drablézien for their absolutely invaluable feedback on my first version of this story. As a result of their comments, I've corrected some of the more obvious historical and linguistic errors in my story. I hope that the result is now better and more credible.

This is a bit of a departure for me -- a proper story, mostly about love and the tragedy of war and containing sex scenes, rather than my usual tales of sex with a bit of story wrapped around them. It's set in Malaysia and Thailand (then Malaya and Siam) in the 1940s, and is told by an educated and successful businessman of the time. Given my obsession with context, this should explain why the language is a bit 'flowery'.

It arose from a thought I had; can you write a romantic story about anal sex? Only you can be the judge of whether this is successful -- please do let me know what you think.

________________________

I sat in the offices of the Australian Rubber Corporation in Sydney, looking at the rather shabby surroundings and thinking how things had changed. Six years of war, and the loss of so much, so many, had made us all weary and jaded. I was here to try to negotiate contracts, to find new outlets for what was left of my remaining plantations. The Japs had done a lot of damage in their retreat through Malaya, and barely two of my smaller holdings had escaped serious damage. Now, five years after the war had finally ended, and things were at last beginning to pick up, or so I hoped.

I'd found myself a workforce -- not easy, given how many of the native people had been killed or taken away as slaves by the invaders. The few Europeans who had still been there at the time the place was overrun were either scarred by their experiences, dead or vanished. Mervyn Jones, one of my estate managers, had returned but still woke up screaming, and had almost killed a girl who had brought him coffee one morning and inadvertently awoken him from one of these nightmares. Four more of my managers were gone. I know two of them died at the hands of the Japs in the internment camps -- the civilians fared little better than the POWs. The others, including Jim Jenkins, my right hand man before the War, had just disappeared, perhaps also dead, perhaps returned to Britain or Australia to lick their wounds. Most of the Dutch had left, and the French were finding themselves less than welcome across Indo-China. And worst of all, there was no news of the one I most wanted to hear from.

As I sat, waiting to be ushered in to talk through my proposals, volumes, prices and all that, the door opened and a young man in a rather shabby suit appeared. He smiled and said "Mr Campbell? Our General Manager for Supplies has considered your proposal, and you won't be required to present it, thank you."

"So does that mean he accepts it, or rejects it?"

"I'm unable to tell you that. My General Manager has simply asked me to convey this message to you. Just these words. 'George -- there is another way'."

I sat bolt upright in my chair. Who -- who would know to speak those specific words to me? Only one -- perhaps two people. Could it be?

"Thank you -- thank you for the message. Please -- could you tell me the name of your General Manager?"

"A French lady -- very good at her job, seems to know the trade very well. Madame Cecile de Perigny."

My heart skipped. Cecile! It couldn't be -- oh God, I prayed it was!

I first saw Cecile in spring 1940. By that time, I'd left Dunlop and sunk the small inheritance my father had left me into two small rubber plantations of my own. The World had been gearing up for war for several years, and now the British Empire was mobilising in earnest. Rubber was in strong demand, and I was selling everything I could tap, at good prices. I was trying to find new, perhaps under-utilised sources to help with the war effort -- and of course make me wealthier.

By this time, the Germans were pretty well finished with Poland and were about to turn their attentions on France. The French must have known this, but I'd had word that their few concessions in Siam and across French Indo-China were not producing or shipping as much as they could. I travelled north of the border to a small cluster of French-owned concerns I'd had dealings with, to see if I could persuade them to increase production and perhaps ship through me.

I found Monsieur Emilion, a slight gentleman in his fifties, courteous and welcoming. We had met a few times before, and whilst not exactly friends, we were well-enough acquainted that he would listen to my proposals. I showed him how he could increase his income substantially and cut his shipping costs if her would be prepared to allow me to buy the latex direct from him at source and ship it home myself. I'd heard rumours that he was in debt, and he certainly listened attentively to the plans I outlined in my reasonably-fluent French. Madame Emilion, a stout woman in her mid-forties, seemed pleasant and hospitable enough, and invited me to stay for a few nights so I could inspect their plantations and production facilities. I was also hoping to win Monsieur Emilion over sufficiently to intercede on my behalf with the other planters, especially the influential Comte de Perigny, who I knew by reputation and who owned several large estates in southern Siam.

It was at dinner that night in late April that I saw Cecile for the first time. I was immediately entranced. The girl -- just seventeen at the time -- was slim and willowy, with a thick mane of dark curly hair, eyes that were a deep chestnut brown, and a lovely pale olive complexion. She seemed a little tall to be her parents' child, but I could see that she did indeed have her mother's eyes. She was at first a little coy, but once the conversation began to flow, she showed herself to be both witty and intelligent, with an endearing, sweet giggle that made me feel tenderly towards her -- and made parts of me very firm. For my part, I was captivated.

The next morning I rose early, intending to leave with Monsieur Emilion to view his plantations, but just as we finished breakfast, a heavy tropical downpour delayed our departure. I sat in their library, reading a newspaper, waiting for the rain to abate. I was startled by her voice behind me. "So Monsieur, what is the news from Europe?"

I looked up into those deep brown eyes and it was probably at that moment I actually fell in love. I just adored the delicacy of her features, the grace of her movements. She was a sweet angel, and I wanted her to be mine. As I tried to make small talk about the war that was tearing Europe apart, trying to suppress what I had just gleaned of the stories of Japanese atrocities coming out of China and my terrible fears of what might happen next, I was melting under her gaze. 

The rain stopped abruptly, as it does in the Tropics. To change the subject, and to gain a little more time with this beautiful creature, I asked her to take me on a tour of their lovely garden, which was fresh and full of rich tropical aromas. Away from the cares of the world outside, she became more animated and vivacious, excitedly talking about the plants here that she had personally planted and nurtured. By the time her father found us in the garden and summoned me for our little excursion, we were becoming friends.

On my return that evening, I met her again on the terrace. We sat, with her father and mother close by, making small talk. I told her about my plantations, which were being very productive, although I tried to dwell more on the 'man of means' angle than any detail of the rubber trade, which I thought would bore her. I asked about her and her schooling, and what she planned to do next.

Here I got my first shock. "Oh, Monsieur, I am to be married before the end of the year to the Comte de Perigny. Did you not know? We agreed the engagement perhaps six months ago. So you see, I shall become a Comtesse and a wealthy woman in my own right. The Comte has some large estates further north. He has several close friends in the Siamese Royal Family, and a lovely home near Hua Hin. He also has a chateau back in France. We hope to arrange the wedding at his own private chapel at the chateau, and then return to Siam next spring. Maman has ordered the dress, which will be in while silk with a long train and peach trim and..."

Her enthusiasm for her planned wedding was reflected in the benign smiles of her parents. She was a typical young girl, in love with the dream of a fairytale wedding in a fairytale castle. I, meanwhile, was trying to keep the feeling of devastation from my face. In barely 24 hours I had fallen madly in love with this beautiful creature, only to discover she could not be mine.

Although I was nearly ten years her senior, the Comte was even older; at nearly 35, old enough to be her father, I thought. True, he was fabulously rich, so it was said, deemed good-looking and well-respected. I could see why the girl might fall for him, despite the age gap, but suspected this was more her parents' wish than hers.

So I decided not to be deterred. I would woo her, gently, subtly. I would make her fall in love and shun the match her parents had chosen for her. Her wedding would instead be to me, in a nice British parish church, and her home that of a wealthy plantation owner in Malaya. The planned wedding to the Comte was not for perhaps six months. I still had time to change her mind.

I stayed with the Emilions initially for around a month -- and what a momentous month May 1940 turned out to be. Monsieur Emilion took me around his own estates and introduced me to his friends with plantations nearby. We were proceeding slowly but amicably, until on May 10th news came that Hitler had invaded France. Over the next three weeks, everything changed. Perhaps it was a surge of patriotism, or a need to make money while they could, but I found the businessmen now had a pressing need to sell their rubber to help the war effort. As news of Allied reverses came thick and fast, Emilion and his friends initially seemed to feel that their rubber needed to go to their native land to help France fight back. I could not persuade them to sell to the British via me, and with a heavy heart, set off home with a promise to return in a few weeks, once the situation in Europe was clearer.

In truth, I felt I'd had more success with Cecile than I had with the plantation owners. We talked often, and she would increasingly switch to English to improve her facility with the language. She talked of her fears for her native land and her worries about the impending wedding. I tried to sound positive about her plans, whilst also seeding our conversation with little hints about the difficulties that a young woman may encounter marrying a much older man. Just before I left for Malaya, I stole a kiss from her, expecting it to be my last. To my surprise and delight, she responded.

When I returned at the end of June, everything was in turmoil. France had fallen -- something the planters seemed to find impossible to comprehend. Quite apart from the shock to their pride and patriotism, there was now no domestic market for their produce. Although the British army had been evacuated from Dunkirk, prompting some of the French to suggest that soon there would be no Britain to receive their exports, I countered by saying that with her huge empire, the British would continue to fight on from all the corners of the globe. If Britain were to fall, I would switch the export route to Australia, which would be much harder for the Germans to conquer.

So the planters agreed in principle to sell to the 'Rosbifs', as perhaps the best way to strike back at the 'Bosche' for overrunning their native land. I was tempted to press the planters harder, to make them settle for worse terms than I had previously offered, but partly persuaded by Cecile to be more generous, I kept my original deal on the table. I suspect that Emilion may have asked Cecile to intercede for them, knowing of our friendship. However, they little guessed where that might lead.

For on my return, I found Cecile changed. Even her eighteenth birthday, celebrated while I was away, had done little to lighten her mood. The fairytale chateau wedding was now not to be, as the chateau in question was in a country overrun with foreign troops. Since the loss of his estates at home, I found that the Comte, in my dealings with him, had become more morose and moody, and Cecile was also perhaps less enchanted with him than before. However, I would like to believe that my own charms had something to do with the change, for she seemed to seek out my company, and on the few occasions we were able to be alone together, she kissed me, spontaneously, often reaching an intensity I'd never experienced with another woman.

I was no virgin, or course. I'd first enjoyed the delights of sexual congress with some of the native girls in Malaya. At first these were prostitutes, but later I encountered first some of the estate girls -- slim, pretty and, shall we say, vivacious -- and then later, on a return to England, one or two delightful young women in London who were prepared to share my bed. I don't flatter myself; the aroma of money and success, some silk stockings and raw silk scarves lubricated my path to -- well, the lubricated path. By now, my conquests had reached a sufficient number that I could provide pleasure as well as taking it, and experience with some fiery little Siamese women had taught me much about interesting and arcane ways of making love.

But, unsurprisingly, Cecile still was a virgin. And there lay a problem. As my negotiations with the prevaricating planters dragged on through June and July of 1940 and into August, Cecile and I became more passionate. Perhaps persuaded by my hints about the future of the World and by the Comte's increasingly morose manner that her wedding would never come, she had fallen into my arms with increasing passion. We would meet in a small outbuilding, where we would both arrive by circuitous routes, and there I discovered the exquisite nature of her body at very close quarters.

The first time I prevailed upon her to remove her dress, I thought my heart would burst from beating so hard. After only the tiniest reluctance and hesitation, she agreed. Her body was so beautifully slender, her skin pale but with a slight olive tint that made her appear a little like some of the palest oriental girls I have enjoyed. She insisted in removing my shirt and singlet, covering my chest with kisses, before returning to devour my mouth. Whilst I had experienced such eagerness among some of my oriental women, and once or twice in England when the presents were flowing as much as the juices, I hardly expected it from this innocent young girl. Yet, when her kisses had seared my lips, she returned to unbutton my fly and extract my manhood, and I watched dumbstruck as she withdrew the hard and throbbing organ from my trousers and caressed it, as if it were some precious treasure.

We lay naked for a while, revelling in the feel of each other's skin. I loved the way she delighted in the way I licked and nibbled at her neck and throat, and how she sighed as I teased the sensitive skin of her arms and thighs with my fingernails. My caresses, kisses and gentle sucking on her exquisite breasts and sweet, dark nipples made her moan out loud. When my fingers finally probed into her sweet slit, and felt the ample wetness under the soft downy fur, she gasped and, in very little time, mewed-out her climax, as her body twisting and bucking under my touch.

She clung tightly to me, smothering me in yet more kisses, and used her delicate fingers to tease my rampant rod. It seemed that mine was not the first she had touched, and I finally prised out of her the truth, both of some adolescent fumblings at home in France -- no more than a simple 'show and touch' session with a cousin of the same age -- and also of a clandestine encounter with the Comte. It seemed that the latter was as much to satisfy himself that she was still a virgin as anything, and had concluded with her using her hands to bring him to ejaculation. However, it appears that my gentle coaxing today was the first time any man had taken her to her own climax.

I tried to persuade the girl to offer me her treasure, to open those long, coltish thighs for me, to welcome me home into the place I most craved. I told her the truth -- that I loved her more than anything in the world, that I wanted and desired her, that she was irresistibly beautiful and that I would take her away from here and marry her.

Her response surprised me. She giggled a little at my compliments, but became grave when I spoke of marriage. "Alas, Monsieur Georges" -- she always pronounced it the French way -- "I fear this cannot be. I'm engaged to the Comte. If I break off this engagement, my parents will disown me. If I surrender myself to you, as my body desires too, the Comte will know and we will have no wedding. You are not yet so rich that you can provide me with a fine life and relieve my parents of the crippling debt they are under, but the Comte is. So it is my duty, as a fond daughter, to follow my destiny and save my family. I will do this, even though my heart says otherwise. But Georges -- I do love you, believe me."

I was disconsolate. Although Cecile teased me and brought me to juddering climax with her clever little hands, I wanted more than an illicit fumble in our private hideaway. I wanted this beautiful young woman on my arm at social gatherings, in my house to return to every evening, in my bed to make love with each night.

We met twice more in the outhouse. On one occasion, I kissed, licked and devoured her sweet quim, and her climax was so powerful that I was afraid her cries would arouse suspicions. As if determined to show herself to be the equal of me as her lover, she fell upon my hard and throbbing prick with her delicious soft lips and wicked tongue, exploring me up, down and around before opening her mouth and sucking me in. I have had girls in the East and the West perform this delightful service before. The Orientals seem to have smaller mouths and can swallow only a little of my shaft, though what they do is delicious. Western girls seem to be reluctant at first, then to lose interest too quickly and prefer to transfer you to their twats after a few minutes.

Cecile was wonderful. Initially she grazed me a little with her teeth, but took guidance without protest, and continued until I warned her I could hold back no longer. Then the little minx simply slipped as far down my shaft as her sweet mouth would permit, swirled with her tongue and looked up at me with those soulful, sparkling eyes as I helplessly unloaded my seed into her mouth. When I apologised, she said she had enjoyed the taste - a little spicy and salty, like the Siamese food she had grown to love.

And I had grown to love her so much that I stepped into folly. Two days after my rapturous oral encounter with Cecile, I concluded my deal with the planters. I then went back to the Emilions' house, and after dinner asked Monsieur Emilion for his daughter's hand in marriage. At first he was kind and consoling -- he had thought I had understood that Cecile was engaged to marry the Comte, and therefore any alternative was out of the question. I tried, as patiently and diplomatically as I could, to explain that Cecile and I loved each other, and that while I hadn't the same fortune as the Comte, I could care for her just as well. Met for the second time with a blank refusal, this time a little more forceful, I played my trump card. I said I knew of his debts and I would be prepared to help him to the best of my ability -- something perhaps the Comte would struggle with, now that his home was occupied by the Bosche.


There is Another Way



I can't say Monsieur Emilion actually threw me out. He was far too polite for that. However, he made it clear I was to leave in the morning, and that he refused to enter into any further discussion of Cecile or her future, which were fully decided. I was forbidden to see Cecile again. He also said that while he and his colleagues would honour their contract with me, I was to send an intermediary for any further visits, as I would most definitely not be welcome in his house again.

The following morning, I said some tense farewells to Monsieur and Madame Emilion. I asked about Cecile, and was told I was never to mention her name again. However, I did glean that she had gone out riding. The servants put my bags into my car, and I drove off, pointing the vehicle south. After a mile, I stopped, turned around and headed for a small track, where I knew I could leave the car and hike on foot for around 15 minutes to our hideaway.

To my immense relief, Cecile was there. She had been crying, and she told me what her parents had told her -- that we should never see each other again. We embraced tightly, kissed with renewed fire as this might be our last-ever encounter, and undressed each other with a speed driven by a desperate desire. I almost begged her for the right to enter her as I craved, to feel those legs around me, to feel her sheathing my cock in that most delicious of ways. Through her tears she begged me not to ask that of her. "If I am not a virgin when I marry the Comte, he will throw me out, as you well know, my love. Would you have me ruined thus for the sake of a few minutes of pleasure? I cannot -- I desire it as much as you, my love, but I truly cannot."

I cradled her in my arms and felt like weeping too. Then she looked up at me and smiled through her tears. "But Georges, my love, there is another way."

I looked at her, a little puzzled. "What way is that, Cecile, my angel?"

"I spoke to my maid, Dok-mayee. She is in love with one of our houseboys. They plan to marry, but when they do, she will be forced to leave my employment. They want to make love, but cannot risk her becoming pregnant. She told me what they do. It sounds a little frightening, but I so want to feel you close and in my body that I would like to try."

"I'm not sure I understand you correctly, my sweet. Do you wish to take me once more into your mouth?"

"Not my mouth, my love, though I will gladly do that if you wish. Rather -- rather I would like you to enter -- to enter..." she lapsed back into French, "Mon petit cul."

Her face was red with embarrassment as she said the words. I wasn't sure what to say, so she continued quickly. "You see, my love, the entrance is very close to my vagina, and I could embrace you between my legs, and feel you inside me as I so long to do. Dok-mayee says that it does not hurt her, if her man is gentle, and they can make love and she can never get with child. Please my love -- will you try this thing with me before we must part? It may be our only chance to be so close -- perhaps for ever!"

I was in turmoil. This sweet girl, whom I loved beyond bearing, wanted me so much that she was willing to -- to take me -- to have me sodomise her -- so that we could join our bodies in passion. Strange, almost perverted as this practice seemed to me, it was not possible to deny the thrill that it gave me. "Very well, my love. If this is what you desire, and if you promise to stop me if I hurt you, I will do as you suggest. I love and desire you so much!"

I was surprised at how wet her sweet quim was, and the touch of my fingers seemed to make her even more excited. She told me that she had carefully bathed and cleansed the area, under the instruction of her maid, earlier that morning when she realised our dilemma. She produced some sweet-scented lubricant oil and asked me spread it inside her with my finger. She bent over like a supplicant before the altar, presenting her pert little behind to my view. This made my erection throb with lust as I surveyed the tiny pink puckered hole I was being invited to sample, as well as the delicious slit, surrounded by its 'fur collar' that I was still to be denied. For one mad moment I thought of simply plunging my length into that wet tunnel, so that the Comte would be denied his pleasure and Cecile would be forced to run away with me. Then I realised that I could never visit the hurt and shame on her that this simple, carnal act would bring.

Instead, I started to probe with a well-oiled finger, concluding after finally gaining entrance that this would not work. The grip on my single digit was enough to persuade me that nothing larger could penetrate that tightest of holes without tearing her flesh. I told her that this was hopeless, that she was too tiny and I was too large, but she begged me to continue. I asked her what the point was, and she said that she was enjoying my finger, and would like me to try to insert two, that I should be patient and let her decide what would be possible.

Some minutes later, she had persuaded me to insert first two and then three fingers into that oh-so-tight orifice. She gasped but did not cry out or make any protest. To distract her from what I felt sure must be a painful experience, I kept leaning in to nuzzle her neck, and then I slipped a finger into her wet little slit, and she gave a little cry of pleasure. Heartened by her response, I continued with my actions front and rear, and was delighted with the moans that emanated from her sweet mouth.

Then she gasped "Maintenant, mon chér! Maintenant!" She raised herself slightly and reached out, pouring the oil from its little bottle onto my shaft, spreading it around with her other hand. The sensations felt divine, the oil seemingly a little mentholated, tingling against my sensitive flesh.

I knew what I had to do, though still hardly believing I was to do it, and moved around as she crouched lower, spreading her legs. I gently extracted my fingers, leaving the hole that had been so tight now wide open and distended. Placing the head of my cock into the opening, I pushed as gently as I could. The tightness of her ring, even stretched as it was, seemed almost excruciating and I could make little progress. "Push, my love, please" she gasped.

"I don't want to hurt you," I said softly.

"You will hurt me more if you delay. Please, do it now!"

And so I pushed, all the while doing my best to distract her from the torment I felt I must be inflicting upon her by sliding my finger in her slit, which seemed now even more flooded with her juices than before. Almost painfully slowly the head of my cock eased into her tightness, until finally the head found its way through the ring and she held me prisoner at last.

I had concentrated so much that my eyes were closed. When I heard her sob, my eyes flicked open to see that she had bitten her knuckle so hard that she had drawn blood. I was mortified. I had caused my love pain, in my selfish desire to plunder her innocent young body. What was I thinking?

"Oh Cecile, my love. I can't..."

"Please, Georges, please don't stop. Deeper, my sweet, I beg you. And a little -- a little less in my slit. I fear I may climax too soon."

I was totally confused. I'd hurt her so much she'd bitten her hand to distract herself, yet she was virtually begging me to do more, to go deeper, and speaking of imminent orgasm.

"Cecile. Please. I don't want to hurt you."

"Please, Georges. I want you. I must have you. All of you. Please be slow and gentle, as you have been so far my sweet, but please keep going. Please!"

Her cries were piteous, and I could not decide whether she was doing this for me or for her. But I had no option but to continue, her plaintive tone so sensual and the squeeze of her tight back passage so exquisite that I was desperate to do as she asked.

And so I slowly, slowly slid inside; deeper, deeper, in a gentle rocking motion, spreading the oil, slowly opening her, until she gasped "Assez! Pas plus, s'il te plâit!" She had most of my length inside her, but clearly could take no more. Slowly I withdrew, the pressure of her back passage forcing the intruder out, until my cock-head began once more to open her ring-piece.

"Encore!" she gasped, urging me to repeat the thrust, this time a little faster, a fraction deeper, then gently withdrawing again. And I resumed my strokes in her slit until she was panting and moaning in apparent pleasure. 

Soon, we were locked in a rhythm that required no more guidance than her occasional "Ah oui!" to steer me on my course. My thrusts were perhaps gentler, slower than I would have been tempted to make inside her sweet snatch, but firm enough to elicit little cries as I reached each extremity, each time edging a tiny fraction deeper, pulling back a little harder to stretch that exit hole. Then, just as I sensed we were both ascending toward climax, she suddenly gasped "Non, mon chér! Please stop."

I assumed that she was now sore and could take no more, and disappointed as I was, I felt for her, having borne this torment so well for my pleasure. Gingerly she moved her hips forward, so that my cock popped out of her ring, making us both gasp. Then to my surprise, she rolled onto her back on the couch we used for our congress, took the small oil bottle and dribbled some into her now-gaping anus. She then poured more onto my hot and throbbing rod, smearing it over with her hand, before raising her knees and directing me back to the hole.

"Encore, cherie! Enter me again, my love!"

I could not believe what was happening. Slowly I slid down between her thighs, as if we were making love in the conventional manner, except that I once again filled a tighter, more taboo hole. Her legs lifted to embrace my hips, her arms came up to draw me close, and before either of us realised it, my cock was in her to the hilt. Her face looked so incredibly, heartbreakingly beautiful that I almost cried. Tear-streaks covered her cheeks, her sweet, full lips were open and pouting, her beautiful eyes looking into mine, pleading to me to take her, fill her - beyond the pain, beyond the stretch, just to fill her with my love. I snaked my arm between us, found her little love-button and pressed it gently with my thumb. Her eyes widened. "Cherie!" she gasped.

I could hold back no longer. I clamped my mouth shut to suppress the roar that tried to escape between my teeth. As I started my final thrust, I felt her hips swing up, willing me deeper, then drawing back and impaling herself again. My organ felt as if it were bursting apart -- the sensations so strong they bordered on pain. And as I thought I could take no more of her tight back passage riding my over-stimulated cock, I suddenly felt the answering tremor, the first ripples of a mighty wave that swept over my love.

Our mouths met, and I heard and felt her scream go into my throat. She hung from my body, her legs splayed, heels locked behind my thighs, hands clawing at my back. Her own slender frame arched to drive herself as fully as possible onto me, and I felt her teeth bite into my lip as she tried to suppress her own cries of exquisite torment. And I felt her throbbing and rippling around me, and my cock physically ached from so much friction, such repeated clenching of her tight young muscles, such violent spurts of my seed into my true-love's bowels.

As I held her in my arms, she was shaking. I felt that I must be trembling myself. It had been -- and remains -- probably the most intense sexual moment of my life, not just because of the strangeness and deliciously taboo nature of the act, but because each of us was experiencing it for the first time with someone we dearly loved.

We lay like that for some time, embracing, swearing our undying devotion, no matter what. We separated our bodies, and for the next hour we cleaned each other and tried to dress, stopping every few seconds for hungrier and more desperate embraces. Finally, we knew that Cecile must leave, before her parents became suspicious. I gave her a ring that I had bought in Kuala Lumpur, a simple thing but delightful -- gold with opals, intended originally as a gift, rather than a token. I said that one day, perhaps, there would come a time when we could stand together in a church and I could put a different ring on her finger. We swore we would never forget each other. And then I kissed away some of the tears that were flooding down her face -- as they were mine -- and swore we would meet again.

As I drove back across the border, I was heartbroken, devastated. I had a contract in my pocket that would make me a rich man, and a hole in my heart that I was sure would make me a miserable one.

Back home, I concluded the arrangements with the Ministry of Supply in London, and briefed my assistant Jenkins on his tasks. He duly made regular trips across to Siam, ensuring that substantial cargoes of rubber found their way back down to Malay ports and thence to Britain or Australia, and sometimes to the USA to be manufactured into items that found their way -- U-boats permitting -- to Britain in her darkest hours. Jenkins was also my postman, delivering and collecting a clandestine correspondence between Cecile and myself.

Throughout 1941, I kept hearing bad news. While Britain had averted the imminent risk of invasion through a combination of dogged determination and courage, better aircraft and -- as we now know -- RADAR, she was taking a pasting from the German bombers every night. News from North Africa was not good, with a constant demand for materiel that, whilst it kept my business booming, sapped the national ability to wage war. And then I heard that Cecile had married the Comte de Perigny and had moved to his estate at Hua Hin. At this stage, my correspondence all but dried up, Cecile's final letter to me full of sadness and resignation.

I drank rather a lot for about a week, and don't remember much. Then I threw myself into my work again for several months. In the late autumn of 1941, I began to hear rumours from business associates about what was happening in China and on the Siamese border. They talked of large Japanese troop movements. It seemed that the Japs were planning an invasion. I immediately assumed Siam or Indo China was their target, as the Siamese army was not strong and there was now no real French government to oppose them further East and no troops to send. But if Siam and the rest fell, what was to stop them pressing on down and across the peninsula, into Burma and even Malaya? The rewards were there -- rubber, tin, even some oil -- and with Britain so far on the back foot, how could our interests be protected, how could we strike back?

By November the rumours were so strong I was seriously alarmed. I scribbled a note and gave it to Jenkins, telling him to get it somehow -- anyhow -- to Cecile in Hua Hin, and also to warn her family if he could. In it, I said that if the Japs came over the border, she should flee immediately to India or Australia -- somewhere that was far away from the War or any imminent threat. Having heard what the Japs had done in places like Nanking, I had few illusions that anyone would be safe.

Before he left, I told Jenkins to prepare, on his return, to evacuate as many non-essential personnel as he could, especially the Europeans. I doubted whether we could get the Malays to leave anyway, and it was unlikely they would be welcomed in Australia, but I did present him with plans to get as many as possible of our people, of whatever race, on a ship out of Georgetown and head straight for Sydney. He smiled and said that if the Japs did invade, there would be a force up from Singapore in no time to 'sort them out'. I said I hoped so, though in truth I doubted it. In some trepidation I headed for KL and the next flight I could get for Delhi.

By now, quite a few people on the Governor General's staff knew me over there, and I needed to plead a case for reinforcements to protect British interests in the peninsula. I should have realised I was wasting my breath. "Oh no, old boy. Don't'cha know that the little yellow fella isn't cut out for the jungle. He'll turn tail at the sight of a battalion of good old British infantry. Mark my words, Campbell. They won't dare take on the might of the Empire, and they know it. It'll be like a bunch of gnats trying to knock over an elephant."

That night in my hotel I bumped into an old friend from Blighty, Michael Craig, working for United Press and out to cover some of what was going on in China. He gave me some pretty sobering news. He shared my concerns, but said whenever he tried to get his editor back home to print something, he was called 'alarmist'. We went out to some dive he knew and had a delicious but unusual curry meal -- one of the best I'd had in years.

The next morning, I woke up with my guts in knots. In agony, sweating profusely, vomiting and with blood seeping out of my empty bowels, I was carried off to hospital. I lost consciousness for days at a time, and they kept pumping fluids into me. When I finally started to stabilise, it was the middle of December. It was a week later, approaching Christmas, when they finally broke the news to me. Michael Craig had died, three weeks earlier, of severe amoebic dysentery. But what was even worse was that, a few days after I was admitted to hospital, the Japs had walked into Siam, Indo-China, Burma, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. And they had bombed the Yanks at Pearl Harbor. They had taken on the British Empire and the Americans, swept aside the remnants of the French and the Dutch -- and they were winning, spectacularly. They had sunk two of the main British warships in the area, and were in the process of invading the Philippines and pushing the beleaguered Yanks out.

I could do nothing. I sat in my hospital bed, desperately praying that Jenkins had done as I asked -- that my people were now heading south to Australia. Even more than that, I hoped fervently that Cecile was on a plane bound for Delhi right now. If I could meet her here, I'd be the happiest man alive, despite the calamitous news.

But no word came, and then in February, horror of horrors, Singapore fell. Considered an impregnable fortress, no one seemed to think it would ever be attacked from the landward side. Over 40,000 soldiers and civilians were captured. There were stories of women and children being machine-gunned or worse.

As soon as I was well enough, I went to join up. But there seemed to be nothing doing -- the authorities were stunned, like rabbits in the headlights. Then I bumped into another guy I knew from Delhi, who introduced me to a chap called Wingate. Very charismatic, though I thought he was more talk than actual experience. He'd heard that I knew the jungle, that I'd been up and down the peninsula, and asked if I wanted to join a unit he was putting together to fight the Japs in a guerrilla campaign. His unit was called the 'Chindits', and he had the backing of Wavell and even Churchill.

After some peremptory training, I fought with him for over three years. As I suspected, he could motivate people, but his leadership and methods in some situations was highly questionable. I sometimes think he killed almost as many of his own people as he did the Japs. But for me, all I wanted to do was get back at the little bastards. It was not a 'nice' war, a 'gentleman's war' like the Western Desert, Rommel and Monty and all that. This was brutal. No quarter was given on either side. We were as ruthless as the Japs, if not quite as fanatical. Whether our results merited the slaughter, I'm afraid I'll never know.

Suffice it to say that in late 1945, recovered from two wounds, having killed more men (mostly Japanese) than I would ever wish to remember, I returned to my estates in Malaya. The Japs had done a good job of trying to destroy everything of value as they retreated. I was appalled at how badly they had treated the native people. Several of the women had been repeatedly raped and kept as sex-slaves; some of these murdered as the Japs retreated. The men on my plantation had fared little better, starved, flogged, brutalised and now left to die with nothing to eat left in the compound. More of them died before I could get any decent food supplies in. No-one had heard of Jenkins since he went up-country in early 1942. Although he had managed to get most of the Europeans out, he had chosen to stay himself. Brave fool.




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.