Dahling you absolutely must join us down at Crichel House this weekend. Everyone will be there and it will be a real hoot.
Three paragraphs of this account have been deleted as they are deemed likely to cause offence or embarrassment to persons or institutions still extant at the time of writing.
Much of Lotte’s life depended upon being seen in the right places and in knowing where the Bright Young Things were gathering. A cat must patrol its territory so that others of its species can see that it is active and a force to be reckoned with.
That is what had brought Lotte to that party at the Marquis of Leeds’s huge mansion near Hampstead Heath. The house was packed with the shrill voices of exuberant youth whose speech became more slurred as the evening passed into the small hours and whose inhibitions flew ever further away into the distance. Who would have thought that an innocent game of Hunt the Slipper could become such an erotic experience or that a bottom could become quite so sore?
It was often the way in that world that one party led to another and so it was on this occasion.
“Dahling, you absolutely must join us down at Crichel House next weekend. Everyone who is anybody will be there and it will be an absolute hoot.”
Crichel House had a reputation. It was in Dorset so plenty far enough from London to be away from prying eyes and, just to make sure, it had very high, stone walls. It was well known that this where the Highest in The Land came to cast off…well to cast off pretty much everything.
The party took the train from Waterloo and then a branch line out into the countryside followed by a line of taxicabs which took then through the very formidable stone gatehouse with its black, iron gates and up the drive to the house which overlooked extensive parkland and the lake. Uniformed staff served flutes of Champagne as the guests entered the great entrance hall and servants took bags to rooms.
After flopping in the main reception room to finish their drinks the guests dispersed to their rooms to freshen up before donning their finery for dinner. After the huge banquet at which the best wines flowed like water everyone moved around the various downstairs rooms where more alcohol was served and small tables bore little silver snuff boxes containing cocaine. Lotte did not partake of the white powder as she believed that a girl must have some limits on what is permitted to enter her body.
By this point in the proceedings, clothing was beginning to loosen and bodies were becoming entwined in various and often changing combinations. Lotte had noticed a chap whom everyone called David. It turned out that David had a pilot’s license and had landed his own aircraft in a field on nearby Cranborne Chase. He was of average height with blond hair, a braying laugh and the smug confidence of someone born to privilege. As people passed from one to another, Lotte found herself pressed up against David in a hallway; he was smoking a cigarette in a long holder and he remarked that he had not, “had the pleasure” of knowing Lotte before. Like most men of that set, David obviously had no real interest in getting to know Lotte but he let his hands do the talking as he freely explored her curves in a most outrageous manner – but then, in that set, what was outrageous?
Somehow a game of Hide and Seek began and people scattered around the building sometimes in pairs. Lotte found herself grabbed by Priscilla Forbes and dragged up the main staircase. It had been agreed that the servant’s quarters were out of bounds so they had to stop when they reached the top of the main house, the servants lived in the attics.
Priscilla opened a door which was covered in the same wallpaper as the walls so it was sort of a secret door which led them into a linen room with folded bedding on wooden shelving. They sat on the floor and bum shuffled under the shelves in the darkness with just a little light filtering through the cracks around the door. The two young women were pressed up against each other, literally joined at the hip as they heard the screams of various people being discovered.
Lotte felt Priscilla’s hand on her cheek and then her chin was gently pulled around to face her old chum who emitted a breathy sigh.
“We have to find a way of passing the time.”
They embraced in their very confined, warm space and tongues became entwined. Questing fingers explored and they both rather forgot that an important part of hiding is keeping silent. Suddenly the door was wrenched open and the full light from the landing flooded in. About a dozen people in various stages of undress stared in at them chanting as they did so.
“Found them! Last ones left! Take them for the ceremony.”
Hands grabbed both women and they were dragged downstairs. Somehow, Lotte’s flapper dress had come open at the back and a hand was exploring her naked skin. The helpless women found themselves in the dining room where the table had been cleared and was now covered in a white, lace tablecloth. Male hands clawed at their victims while the women looked on and cheered and Lotte and Priscilla were soon completely naked whereupon they were both lifted onto the table and the mob chanted for them to give a show. Priscilla and Lotte had become pretty gassed up by their time together in the linen cupboard and they rose to the occasion rolling around and spreading their legs wide for the audience as they caressed each other in every way possible. They twisted and turned and Lotte found herself on her back with her head between Priscilla’s thighs as she felt the other woman’s tongue probing her own nether wetness.
It all became a bit confused after that and Lotte was left with a series of mental still pictures of various body parts, male and female rather like a cinematic film which has jumped its sprockets and is showing frames at random.
What is certain is that she found herself awake in a bedroom (not her own) with birds singing and sunshine streaming through the windows. The naked male body beside her proved to be that of the over amorous David. Neither of them felt particularly capable of very much in the way of action so they each bumbled their way to their own rooms where they bathed and dressed for a new day.
It was a perfect summer day and the company made their way, after breakfast, into the grounds where the activity was much less energetic than the previous evening. In many ways it was a return to the Garden of Eden with couples or trios cavorting naked beside the lake or in the woodland and frequently changing partners with no thought of shame or social constraints. There was no need for a serpent as, when nothing is considered a sin, there is no concept of temptation.
Lotte had no real memory of whatever had happened with David last night but this morning, at one point, she found herself splayed beneath him on a grassy bank shaded by trees. He was not a skillful lover but Lotte set him at around average perhaps losing marks for lack of originality. When they lay semi-conscious afterwards, he spoke about his uncle, The Kaiser, and how ridiculous it had been for Britain to go to war with its natural ally over a little thing like Belgium.
Lunch was a picnic of monstrous proportions served on blankets spread around the grass between the house and the lake. Dress was optional and most people, including Lotte, chose to eat simply as nature had made them. The girls lay out like something out of a Rubens painting and the boys exhibited their manhood as if they were posing for a Roman statue. They would lean over each other and pop grapes into their mouths or pour wine down each other’s throats. Bunny Cavendish got stung by a bee right on his Family Inheritance.
After lunch and, in most cases, after an alfresco nap, partygoers began to spontaneously make their way indoors and towards the bedrooms. Lotte spent much of the afternoon sandwiched between and crawling all over Hugh Lacey-Potterton and Amelia Sussex but then, seeking something gentler, she managed to cuddle up with Archie Davenport who was an absolute darling and they remained in bliss until it was time to dress for dinner.
Of course, Dinner was a very alcoholic affair and by the time they were on the brandy, cheese and biscuits, David was very drunk and holding court on what seemed to be his favorite subject.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler had been released from Prison after the Munich Putsch the previous December and David said that Germany was a proud nation and she would rise again after the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. He insisted that the Germans had been betrayed by the filthy Communists and other “degenerate elements” and Britain needed to remember that Germans and Brits were both Aryan Saxon peoples who should be united.
Lotte listened in horror as she looked around the table at all the nods of approval. It was not cowardice which kept her silent and nor was it just the thought of the nice fat brown envelope of banknotes which she hoped to extract from Claud for the Intelligence which she would provide on the parties present and the dangerous ideas around the table.
Lotte had still been at St Kat’s in 1918 but she knew girls who had lost brothers and fathers in the Great War. A girl would be taken out of class and escorted to see the Head and then she would be found weeping in the dorm. It had been horrid and then there had been poor Bertie Fawcett-Brown who had come back from France pretty much hollowed out.
The evening entertainment after dinner was a game of Truth or Dare with a few extra twists. I might tell you about it one day but it was all pretty juvenile really although it was some time before Lotte was able to think about a peach or an apple without flinching just a little.
Lotte telephoned Claud from her Dolphin Square flat on the Monday afternoon and told him that she had something for him. They met at the club early that evening where Claud, as usual, demonstrated that he tended to take the term “debrief” somewhat literally.
It was not in Claud’s nature to discuss business first and keep his natural instincts in check. He said that he would be able to concentrate much better after they had been to bed together so, after they had enjoyed a mutually satisfying and unhurried time of lovemaking, they lay side by side with the endorphins slowly clearing from their bloodstreams.
Up to this point, Lotte had only ever supplied Claud with intelligence on the Communist menace. It bemused Lotte that so many of her set seemed besotted with Lenin but she put it down to an immature love of anything which is dark, foreign and forbidden. She had been genuinely shocked by the things which she had learned that weekend (no, not THOSE things) and she desperately needed to make Claud see, if he was not already aware, the danger of the viper which was growing in the bosom of the British establishment.
“They were all hanging on his every word and nodding furiously and he was so animated as he spoke. It was a sort of madness. And he will be king one day and Teddy Manders was one of them and he is something in the Foreign Office. I tell you, Dahling, I was scared.”
Of course Claud would never tell Lotte what he did or did not know or what he may or may not have his people working on but she did go home with a nice fat brown envelope.