The funeral was a gloomy affair as funerals go.

I am somewhat irreverent and remember clearly my twin brother and I giggling all through my Uncle’s funeral because his widow had the price ticket still dangling from the back of her hat. John and I shared a sense of mischief and humour. At our Grandfather’s funeral, we’d been unable to look at each other during the hymn ‘Praise my soul the king of heaven,’ because John had written an alternative verse that was utterly filthy and we both knew what the other was thinking. Identical we clearly were not, but we were mentally totally attuned and sometimes even knew what the other was doing or thinking when we were miles apart.

This was John’s funeral. I felt as if a part of me had died and, in a way, it had.

“Brave face now, Livy. Got to show some fortitude, it’ll help the tenants.”

My Father always took his responsibilities as landowner and the thirteenth Duke of Westershire seriously. He’d fought in the last war and when John was killed on the last day of the siege of Tobruk he’d shown, at least in front of others, no emotions at all.

I had no brave face. I had cried for a week after we’d heard the news and only stopped because I had no tears left to shed. I’d re-stocked by the time his body came home and my eyes, beneath the black veil of my hat, were red and swollen.

“Captain John Arthur George Wellham-Stokes was a very brave soldier. He was awarded an immediate Military Cross at Tobruk on the third day of the siege, rescuing an isolated group of men who were suffering heavy machine gun fire from the enemy. He returned to help the wounded three times at enormous risk to his own life. That life was taken on the two hundred and forty-first day, the last day of the siege, the twenty-seventh of November 1941.”

This was his commanding officer who had asked to be permitted to speak. A large number of men of all ranks from John’s regiment attended and gave full military honours to their fallen comrade. When the bugler played the last post and the regimental colours dipped it was just too much and I sobbed silently. My Aunt slipped her arm across my shoulder and held me; a rare show of affection and most unusual in our family. But then, Aunt Georgina was herself unusual. She was a bohemian, a writer of feminist work almost before feminism had been invented, thrice married, twice divorced and once widowed and lived what my Father called a louche lifestyle in Belgravia.

My Mother had died when I was three years old. A succession of Nannies looked after us until John went off to Eton at the age of thirteen and I did my best to educate myself. I’d managed to secure a place at University which, surprisingly, my Father encouraged and, aged eighteen, I went to Oxford, to a ladies college at the same time as John had entered the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

I studied modern languages and in 1936 I was sent to France, a town on the border with Germany where both French and German were spoken and I served as an Assistante for a year. The Headmistress was a formidable character but kindly and authoritarian in equal measure. I made many friends during my year there and, in fact, had my first lesbian experiences with the music teacher, Eloise Duchamp, a pianist and violinist of significant talent.

She lived in a cottage in the grounds of the school and I’d visit her ostensibly for dinner or to learn the piano but in fact to retire to her bed for energetic sex. Her fingers were the first ever to invade me, her mouth the first to touch my sex. She would hold me to her breasts as our conjoined bodies rubbed each other to a climax. Her teeth would bite my nipples at the moment of climax and, somehow, she showed me that that little pain heightened the ecstasy of the orgasm. We would lie together after, smoking sometimes, always caressing and kissing until the passion rose again and we’d make love once more.

The dark cloud of Nazism threatened to overwhelm Europe and although I’d resolved to stay and continue teaching (and being bedded by my lover) I was forced to leave and return to England.

After graduating I stayed with Aunt Georgina in Belgravia rather than return to the family seat in Somerset. My Father had married again and I loathed the woman which was entirely mutual and Father and I agreed it would be wise for me to stay away. I was well provided for with a substantial allowance, enjoyed the circle in which George (as she insisted I call her) moved and found happiness if not love in the arms of a woman called Naomi Pringle.

She was a tall, wiry woman with striking blue eyes, short, dark hair and a penchant for manly clothes down even to the tie and brogue shoes. Where Eloise had been soft and feminine, Naomi was hard and athletic, the daughter of a Cabinet Minister and did something for a Whitehall department but we never talked ‘shop’ there being far more pleasant things for us to do. George had no qualms about her staying under our roof and sharing a bed with me.

“The lower classes may be shocked by homosexuality, Darling, but the upper class have been buggering each other for centuries. I have no idea what you and Naomi get up to but I don’t give a damn so long as you’re happy. Which, judging from the racket you two make, you must be.”

I was. Naomi was a fabulous lover. The first time she’d taken me to my bed she’d spent about twenty minutes between my thighs, one hand up to stroke, squeeze and delight my breasts while her tongue and fingers danced on my cunt.

“Let’s not be coy, Olivia, it’s a cunt. Cunt is a fine old Anglo-Saxon word and all the euphemisms in the world don’t make is anything that it isn’t.”

One screaming climax and it was my turn to bury my face between her thighs while she gripped my hair and writhed under me giving instructions as she might have to a horse. Her climax was violent, copiously wet and noisy.

“Bloody well done. That French girl must have been a fine tutor!”

She had been.

Nothing was taboo for Naomi. She introduced me to delights I’d never thought of, never mind experienced. She loved my arse, often with a dildo strapped to herself but mostly with her tongue and fingers.

The first time I’d been shocked but she’d told me to, “bloody well let me get on with it. You’ll love it.”

Right again.

When the war started I joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry as a driver. I had learned to drive on the estate and knew about tractors, lorries and cars and was even capable of some mechanical repairs because John had taught me.

I received an order in 1942 to attend a mews house in Islington. I put on my best uniform and arrived promptly at the allotted hour of eleven. A dowdy woman, about fifty, answered my knock and invited me in after checking my identity card.

“Olivia Stokes,” she announced at the door of a small sitting room. I never used the double-barreled version of my surname, nor my title, Lady Westershire. I was surprised to see Naomi sitting at a small table in the room accompanied by a tall, rather bent man in a shabby tweed suit. They could have been brothers!

“Livy, darling, this is Alastair Heaton.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Thank you for coming. Naomi tells me you speak fluent German and French?”

So, I thought, straight to business.

“Yes.”

“You studied at Oxford and worked at a school in Metz for a year.”

Poor Metz. So close to the German border it had been one of the first places to fall in the Battle of France having been returned to France after the first war.

“Yes.”

He wasn’t reading any sort of dossier, in fact, there was only one piece of blank paper on the table.

“You drive, had some flying lessons.” My father had a small aircraft and had created a landing strip in a field near the House. I nodded. “And your brother was lost at Tobruk?” I nodded again.

“Naomi tells me you are intelligent and brave.”

I said nothing.

“How do you feel about the Germans?”
 

“I know quite a few, well knew anyway from my time in Metz. I don’t hate the Germans but I do hate what they are doing and how they are doing it.”

“And the French?”

“People call them cowardly but I disagree. They were Ill-prepared and paid the price, just as we were and nearly did. If people had listened to Mr Churchill things would have been different.”

“Well, Mr Churchill has a job for you, a rather special job.”

I said nothing, deciding he would get around to it in his own time.

He did.

“There is a group charged with work in France. It is dangerous of course and highly secret. How would you feel about that?”

“I don’t know what ‘that’ is.”

He smiled and turned over the paper on the table. “Sign this and I can tell you.” It was a note about the terms of the Official Secrets Act. I signed it.

Two weeks later, promoted to Captain, I found myself at a stately home on the south coast of England. The training headquarters of the Special Operations Executive. I shared a barrack hut with twelve other women. We used false names and were enjoined not to inquire about each other. My name was Jeanne. ‘Relationships’ between us were also forbidden by our senior tormentor, a woman we knew as Betty. She was fierce and we all called her, behind her back, Bitchy.

The training was hard: codes, combat, weapons, explosives, poisons (including one for ourselves!) map reading and much else. Women would disappear without explanation.

I was having a drink in the mess one evening when a new face appeared. She was stunningly good looking and called herself Celeste. She sat with me and the steward brought her a whisky and soda. We chatted about mundane things and I grew to like her. A few days after our first chat we were in the mess again, drinking wine. She took my hand and in a low voice told me she thought I was very pretty. I hastily withdrew my hand, thanking her for the compliment and saying she was attractive too.

“Where did you grow up?”

“We’re not allowed to discuss our backgrounds.”

“Oh, I know about the silly rules but seriously, where’s the harm in knowing where you come from?”

“I don’t know, but they don’t make rules unless they’re necessary.”

“Nonsense. The military makes rules for the sake of it. My real name’s Gloria and I live in Greenwich. I was a lady of leisure before this lot started and wouldn’t mind getting back to it as soon as I can.”

I finished my wine in silence, excused myself and left the mess and sought out Bitchy. I recounted my conversation with Celeste. She merely nodded and told me to go to bed. I never saw Gloria/Celeste again until long after the war. She’d been a plant, set among us to root out the loose-tongued.

I parachuted into France in June 1943. My papers identified me as Jeanne Lasainte and as a nurse and midwife. I was lodged with a doctor and his wife in Normandy, far enough, it had been decided, from Metz as to render it most unlikely that I’d meet anyone I’d known there. I’d been given a crash course in nursing and midwifery but I dreaded the thought of actually having to deliver any babies. The choice of occupation gave me more freedom of movement than I might otherwise have had, particularly after curfew.

There was a telephone exchange in the centre of the town. It was guarded by a group of German soldiers and the women who worked there were managed by three German women one of whom was a very attractive woman, about forty years old, blonde, very Aryan. She came to the Doctor’s surgery one afternoon when I was acting as his nurse. She was complaining of nausea and heartburn. The Doctor examined her in my presence (he liked to have a chaperone). Her French was pretty good but I decided not to reveal my knowledge of German. It was useful to be able to listen to the Germans when they spoke assuming nobody understood.

As she was leaving, the Doctor said, “I shall ask Nurse Lasainte to visit you in your billet later to make sure you are comfortable. Drink plenty of water but nothing solid for a few days.”

She seemed pleased and I saw her smile at me in a way that suggested she found me, as Naomi used to say, ‘of interest.’ My sexuality had been discussed at length at the training camp and they had told me to be discreet but, if the opportunity arose, to respond to an advance from any German woman who might be useful. So, I had thought at the time, I am to be a whore for the King.

The following day I went to the house she stayed in. It had been commandeered for her and the family whose residence it had been ‘sent away.’ Few understood then what that really meant. The house was not large but it indicated her seniority that she occupied it alone.

She opened the door to me wearing her full uniform that always sent shivers of fear down my spine. She was beautiful, her hair plaited and rolled, her blue eyes contrasting with the grey of her tunic.

She invited me in and I took her temperature and checked her pulse. As I held her wrist she asked me if the Doctor had given me any medicine for her. I said that he had and took from my bag a little bottle of suppositories. She looked at them somewhat askance, and asked how to take them. I did a mime of pushing them up my bum, unsure whether her French was up to the challenge.

She got angry. “This is your Doctor’s little joke?”

I assured her it was not. It is true the French medical profession use such medication more than others.

“I shall not use this.”

“Then I will take them back to the Doctor.”

“Stay, make me coffee. Have one too, it is real coffee.”

I did and we talked as best we could. The coffee was a wonderful treat but I felt uncomfortable accepting her hospitality but I knew my concern was more that local people might think me a collaborator. I was fortunate that the Doctor was held in such high regard by the townsfolk.

“Help me with these… things.” She pointed at the bottle of suppositories.

“It’s perfectly simple. You simply push them.”

“Help me.”

And so it was that the first time I ever saw a German’s arse it was Ilse Mundt’s. She pulled down rather voluminous satin knickers which I doubted were strictly uniform then turned and bent over. It was a nice arse, firm and shapely. I hastily inserted the lozenge as gently as possible and retreated to wash my hands.

Ilse turned and faced me as she pulled her knickers up.

“Thank you,” she said smiling. “I think that is the nicest medication I have ever had.”

I nodded, embarrassed and made to leave but she held my wrist. “Come back this evening.”

“The curfew.”

“You are a nurse and I am a patient. Come back this evening.”

I discussed this with the Doctor when I got back to the surgery. He knew all about me, well, all that he had been told anyway. He knew my role was gathering intelligence as well as providing assistance to the resistance. To have access to someone who worked at a telephone exchange could be very productive since it was, along with radio, a much-used communications mechanism for the Germans. If nothing else, I might be able to provide information that could be useful if ever the military needed to disable the exchange.

I cycled back to her house just before the curfew. She invited me, now wearing a loose linen dress and, I was sure her breasts were unfettered beneath it. We went through to her sitting room where she had a bottle of a very good wine open on a tray on a sideboard. Two glasses stood beside it, one half full, the other empty.

“Pour some wine and come and sit with me.”

I poured and delivered her glass to her but I didn’t pour one for myself, nor did I sit. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. I really came to the Doctor because I knew you were there. I wanted to see you. I like seeing you. So I, how would you say, exaggerated to get a little time off. My work is very dull. Sit, please.”

“Ma’am, you know how dangerous it is for French women to mix with the Germans. I don’t mean to be rude but people will say I am a collaborator.”

“I am not the army. I have to wear that awful uniform but I am communications. I am not asking you to collaborate.”

“But people will think I am.”

“Then in public, I shall ignore you so people think you come here because you have to treat me, not because you want to.”

I nodded. “Why do you think I want to.”
 

“I can smell it. You are a lover of women, just as I am. I do not enjoy the women I have to work with but I am going to enjoy you. Give me more medicine.” She pointed at the bottle on the sideboard beside the wine.

I went to the sideboard and took a suppository from the bottle and was astonished when I turned around and was naked. She held her large breasts in her hands and smiled at me.

“You like what you see?” I nodded. “Let me see you.”

“Ma’am, I cannot.”

She came close to me and said, “Oh but you can and you will because you want to.” Her hand went to the hem of my dress and she lifted it. “I can get you better food stockings, lingerie if you are my whore. If you do as you are told I shall take care of you. If you do not then things might be less comfortable for you.”

She kissed me then, hard. Her hands roamed freely over my uniform which was dull and grey and poorly-made like most wartime attire, for the occupied French at least.

“I shall keep some clothes here for you to wear when we are alone but I want to see your body now.”

She fumbled with the buttons and opened the top of my dress to reveal my once-white slip, now slightly grey too and thin with repeated washing. My braless, small breasts were suddenly exposed and she handled them roughly. “I will be a good lover. You will enjoy and so will I.”

I had been told to show reluctance, if not outright resistance, for that could have been dangerous. To show eagerness would have been risky too so I walked that line as best I could. Soon, I was naked and she led me to her bedroom where she lay on the bed and told me to help her to orgasm.

“Use your mouth first, then your fingers. You know what I want.”

I knelt between her spread legs, her knees lifted and I gave her my tongue. She was hairy, her hair blonde and unkempt. I could not help feeling slightly aroused despite the situation and I licked and kissed her for a while before easing a finger into her which caused her to buck a little and emit a mild gasp of pleasure. Her pleasure clearly increased as my finger moved more quickly, she gripped my hair and moaned, uttering little instructions.

“Another finger. Faster. Don’t stop. Lick me harder, yes, there.”

I suspected it had been a long time since she’d felt the attentions of another woman and she was quick to orgasm; a noisy, violent climax, lifting her arse high off the bed and flooding and trembling as it overwhelmed her. She subsided back onto the sheets and lay, panting, still gripping my air.

“Ma’am,” I said. “The curfew.”

“Yes, you must go. Come again tomorrow, earlier.”

I was pleased to get out. I retrieved my cycle and hastily made my way back to the Doctor’s house. All the while I wondered if this woman, this Ilse, would, could be useful. Time would tell.