As 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens, I had decided to take a trip to London to visit the famous writer’s old home, which is now a small museum filled with Dickensian memorabilia. Sadly, I’d picked a busy day in August for my visit and there was very little elbow room in the cramped four stories of this narrow Victorian townhouse.
I sought temporary refuge in the attic nursery, mercifully free of Chinese students. From my vantage point, I looked through the sash window down onto the cars parked along Doughty Street. Directly opposite, I spotted a silver Porsche Spyder convertible, identical to the one an old lover of mine named Carlotta had once owned.
Back then, these classic sports racing cars were something of a rarity; in 2020 there would probably be less than one hundred of them still on the roads, worldwide. Legend has it that a Porsche test driver once opined that driving the car at high speed around the famous Nurburgring circuit was akin to low-level flying. This was the second time I’d spotted one of these distinctive cars in traffic during my stay in London.
The sight of the silver Spyder soon had my mind wandering away from ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Great Expectations’ back a decade to lustful nights spent in the arms of the sexually insatiable Carlotta. What wouldn’t I give now for one night of extreme naughtiness with that flame-haired temptress I’d so cruelly cast aside in order to marry a boring school teacher!
I descended the staircase. “Thank you for your visit. Please come again,” called the student manning the souvenir desk.
“I certainly will.” But I’ll make sure I don’t come in August.
I paused on the pavement outside and cast an envious eye across the street at the Spyder. At this range, I could read its registration plate: CAR 69. My heart missed a beat. That was Carlotta’s old personalised number plate! So it must have once been her car – doubtless now owned by a rich Porsche enthusiast. The vinyl soft top was in place and it was hard to discern the identity of the driver sitting at the wheel. Slowly the window was wound down to reveal an attractive middle-aged woman wearing huge tortoiseshell sunglasses..
“Hello stranger, fancy seeing you!” The mild Germanic inflection was instantly recognisable as that of my old flame.
“Carlotta? Is it really you?” I stammered.
“It most certainly is, darlink. And all the better for seeing you. Come and sit beside me.”
I needed no second invitation and moved promptly into the low passenger bucket seat. I instantly picked up the distinctive aroma of the expensive Elie Saab perfume which Carlotta always wore. The previous evening, I had visited the National Film Theatre to catch the revival of an early Ingmar Bergman film, but left before the end, depressed by its morbid Swedish introspection. On the way out of the half-empty theatre, I’d caught the faintest hint of the Saab perfume.
“So what brings you to this neck of the woods, my sweet?”
“I’ve been visiting the Dickens Museum opposite. I’m doing a thesis on his work for an Open University literature degree.”
“Isn’t it a little late in your life to be doing degrees, Nicholas? I thought that was what students did.” Cutting sarcasm was always her strongest suit.
I felt a talon-like hand run slowly up my thigh, stopping only centimetres from my crotch. I recalled how it would often make me nervously imagine that inside my trousers was a tarantula spider “Remember the night I sucked you off in this car after we’d been to that porn cinema in Soho?”
“How could I forget?”
“And you pulled out and gave me a glorious facial? Or what about when you took me to the Caribbean for my fortieth birthday and we made love naked on the beach in front of our chalet on our first night?” She was now avidly turning the pages of her sexual scrapbook.
“And didn’t we have such fun in Sicily?” Yes, we did – until, on a sight-seeing tour of the island, I discovered your veneration of that odious jack-booted fascist Benito Mussolini.
She gazed through the windscreen. “So, tell me liebling, are you still a heavy cummer?” The question was posed with the same nonchalance as if we’d been talking about the weather.
“When I get the chance. Which isn’t too often these days.”
Taking the lead (as of old) she guided my hand towards the un-studded opening of her snakeskin slacks. She pushed my hand inside so that I could be reunited with her shaven quim. She purred as I fingered her moist slit. “Zo, no-one special at the moment?”
“Not really. I tried Tender.com but they were all well past their sell-by date. Most of ‘em were just sex-starved grannies.”
“Tell me about it, sweetie! I had a couple of sapphic flings on that site but all they wanted to do was eat my pussy! I love having my cunnie licked – as you well remember – but purleaze, with some finesse and mutual affection.”
The hand moved up to fondle my growing erection. “Maybe we should do something about this.” I recalled how Carlotta had once unashamedly masturbated me in a supermarket car park.
“Not here, in the middle of Clerkenwell, surely?”
She switched on the ignition and the Porsche burst into life, its exhaust emitting a throaty rasp. “Certainly not. I’m going to take you to a restaurant in Piccadilly near the Ritz, close to where I live now. You will buy me lunch. And to celebrate, we will drink a toast to our happy reunion with a champagne cocktail.” As well as having hollow legs, Carlotta adores spending other people’s money.
The restaurant turned out to be the legendary Wolsleys, once a luxury car showroom. Carlotta’s outfit comprised her figure-hugging slacks, a cream silk blouse (over a black bra) and a multi-coloured bolero jacket with midnight blue silk facings. The head waiter greeted her like a long lost relative. “Your usual table, madam?” he enquired, sweeping up two leather-bound menus.
“Naturlich. And two champagne cocktails, Henri.”
“Of course, madam.
Then we were simply swamped by apron-clad waiters, all of whom wanted to pay court to my sultry luncheon partner.
“Here’s to us, darlink,” she whispered, raising her flute and, at the same moment, wrapping one leg around my calf.
“So where are you living now, Carlotta?”
“Just around the corner. I have a duplex apartment overlooking Green Park.”
“Very impressive.”
“Heinrich – he was my third – left it to me in his Will. And where are you now, Nicholas?”
“Buried in the Black Mountains of Wales – where time stood still in the 1950s. I try to write books.”
“Single and all alone like me?” I could see all too clearly where this lunchtime seduction was headed. Should I slam on the brakes now, or stay on board for a bumpy ride? I fluttered my hand, indicating I had no special commitments. She seemed to like this signal and waived for Henri to bring two more cocktails just as our scampi fritters arrived.
“One of the nice things about Wolsleys, I always think,” she whispered conspiratorially, “is that the tablecloths here are so long that one can get up to all sorts of naughtiness without being observed. If you see what I mean.” These last six words were whispered as she simultaneously slid my fly zip down. Popping a fritter between her crimson lips with her spare hand, she asked coquettishly: “Do you remember when you took me to see a Test Match at Lords Cricket Ground?”
“Will I ever forget it?” England v New Zealand. Rain had stopped play and we withdrew to a crowded local pub, where, at her suggestion, I finger-fucked Carlotta to orgasm beneath the ‘cover’ of her raincoat, draped over our legs.
“And you told me I wouldn’t enjoy a cricket match!”
The bill arrived after our third round of cocktails had been consumed and I paid with plastic. It was almost 5 o’clock and I sensed that for Carlotta it would soon be bedtime.
I was wrong. We returned to the Spyder (it now had two parking tickets stuck to its windscreen) and she drove us around the block to park behind the Ritz, beside an ugly angular apartment block fashioned in the 1960s Brutalist style. “I live at the top,” she announced. The talon clasped my right hand tightly and she led me we towards an iron gate leading directly into Green Park. “Let’s go down to the lake.”
Dusk. There were few people around. The tourists had returned to their hotels for supper and the office workers only wanted to catch the underground back to the suburbs.
We had arrived at the edge of a small tree-shaded ornamental lake at the bottom of the park. Geese and ducks were the only other visitors. “If I strip off, will you come and watch me do my pee-pee into the water?” She gave a girlish giggle. “I think it will be almost pure champagne! You could even drink it.” I had first introduced this woman to the delights of watersports when we holidayed together in the Caribbean.
“Naked?”
“But of course, dummkopf!” The talons almost punctured the palms of my hand. “Then afterwards – when you will spend the night with me in my apartment – you must first put cuffs on me and then spank my naked bottom. You are quite the best spanker I’ve ever known! Heinrich was far too rough.” So I was ‘booked’ to spend the night in Carlotta’s duplex, doubtless to be harnessed to her sexual treadmill. For how long?
She began to undress, casually throwing her garments onto the car rug we had brought to form a sort of mattress. The black brassiere was the last to come off. As she walked to the water’s edge she pressed up the undersides of her small breasts, letting me glimpse her glorious puffy nipples. How many times had I glazed those beauties?
The effects of the champagne were wearing off. Now the range of strange occurrences (sightings of the German sports car; sensing her distinctive fragrance in strange places; the unsigned emails – some with x-rated ‘selfie’ attachments – left on my iPhone) began to form a menacing catalogue of coincidences. The way in which I was obviously being ‘groomed’ as her new lover – possibly even her fourth husband – were deeply troubling.
“Shall I test how warm the water is?” Carlotta called out. Those were to be the last words this woman ever uttered.
Two months later, following an Inquest held by the Chief Coroner for Kensington & Chelsea, an open verdict of ‘Misadventure, resulting in drowning’ was recorded against the name of Carlotta Reinhart-Hernandez.
To be continued…
