Each part of this story has quite distinctive erotic characteristics. While the chapters can be read and, hopefully, enjoyed in isolation, they were written to form an evolving and complex whole. I hope you will take the time to read them as intended.
I await, as always with thanks, your comments and evaluation.
With Regards, Benultimo.
***
In the following parts of this story, I will often not tell the plain truth. This is not because I wish to hide or prettify what really occurred. It is because in remembering and writing down, I suddenly knew and understood more. My insight into what happened and what I was doing then was limited; foremost by what I then was, knew and wished for. The 20/20 vision of hindsight alters the lived reality of the past. Any retelling becomes, thereby, a story that is, if not a lie, partly fiction.
As such, it often reveals truths that otherwise would have remained hidden or ignored.
My relationship with Helga had ended. It had been, for me, rich in experience and meaning. Inge still wrote regularly, but her letters were vague on why her coming to join me was so delayed. Nevertheless, I hoped that she would come within a few months.
I had settled into my Public-Service-job, was saving some money and intended to study for my Leaving Certificate. After my so temptingly dangerous relationship with Helga, I did not want to get involved with any more women. To avoid meeting any, I stopped going to the Continental clubs in St. Kilda. I was earnestly committed to keeping faith in waiting for Inge.
When Josef and his younger brother Walter - who had followed us to Australia a year earlier - went to the German club one Saturday, I came only reluctantly along. As usual, it was crowded.
On a table, across the dance floor from us, was a party of eight: Six young men who were obviously friends, and two attractive young women. The latter somehow did not appear to belong to their circle. The boys seemed to have no interest in dancing with them. Their conversation with the girls, polite and in German, appeared to be forced.
The smaller and, I thought, more animated one of the women caught me looking across. She lowered her eyes for a second before she gave me an encouraging smile. Josef noticed. As usual, he saw an opening for himself. He egged me on to ask the girl for the next dance. As his wingman, I went across and made my bow. She rose, we danced.
She was charming, well dressed, feather-light on her feet, and immediately friendly when she heard my Austrian accent. In her voice, I detected the Viennese. Her name was Ingeborg. We happily chatted on after the music stopped, not going back to our respective tables while we waited for the next dance. I learned that she and her friend had been in Australia for six months, that they shared a flat in St.Kilda. Regarding tonight, two of the boys at their table were very, very distant relatives of her friend. With a laugh, she admitted that the boys had been pressured to take them out: -
"The boys are very religious, they belong to a sort of sect. I don't think they want to dance with us."
I returned to my table. Josef now felt secure enough to ask Ingeborg for a dance. It was the first of many. After the second he came back and told me that she had asked him to let me know that her friend, Gertrud, was getting very bored just sitting with the boys. I had to take the hint.
Gertrud was, compared to her friend, somewhat reserved. However, she was attractive, felt relaxed in my arms and happy enough to have me as a stand-in partner. At the end of the night, the boys that had brought the girls to the dance left without them. It was us, therefore, that accompanied our new acquaintances home. Josef secured a date with Ingeborg, and I politely said Good Night to Gertrud in honour of my pledge.
Not knowing Ingeborg at this stage, I had no suspicion of her talent as a Go-Between nor, in general, of the wiles of women conspiring in cahoots. Ingeborg had, as I would learn later, firm ideas about what Gertrud needed. Although Ingeborg was five years younger than her, Gertrud listened.
Through Josef, both women knew that I was expecting my long-term girlfriend from home and that she would come soon. I learned - again because Ingeborg had told Josef - that Gertrud was engaged.
On her journey to Australia, Gertrud started a shipboard romance with a young, Danish civil engineer. Unlike her, he was not an assisted migrant but came under contract to work for a mining company. They had a few weeks together in Melbourne and got engaged. Then he had to leave for his assigned job in an outback Queensland mine.
In those days no Fly-In-Fly-Out arrangements existed for Australia's workers in outback mines. Gertrud and her fiancé could, therefore, only be with each other three or four times a year, unless...? Ingeborg dismissed the idea that Gertrud would want to become an outback-bride out-of-hand.
In this scenario, Ingeborg decided to play the devil's advocate. As I found out later, Gertrud and I were pawns in a game she enjoyed playing.
Josef and Ingeborg had dated a few times, and their relationship was close to becoming closer. He had just bought his first new car and planned to take Ingeborg for a 'dirty' weekend to a lodge in the snow. Ingeborg managed to sweet-talk him out of it. Instead of the seduction weekend, it became a day on the mountain for the four of us. Over the long drive and the fourteen or so hours we were together, I got to know both girls quite well.
They had met and become friends on the boat journey to Australia. Ingeborg was nineteen and Austrian, Gertrud was twenty-four and was German. Both were, besides being very attractive, remarkable young women. Although recent arrivals, they had managed to secure for themselves excellent jobs. Gertrud was the personal secretary of one of the managers of one of Australia's largest company. Ingeborg worked as a tailoress in one of Melbourne's top fashion houses. I was impressed, perhaps even a bit awed, especially by Gertrud.
Her English was, not only to my foreign ears perfect. Gertrud spoke the Queen's English and not the colonial version I was beginning to acquire. She had completed a commercial apprenticeship in Germany and then, at only seventeen, had gone to England. At first, Gertrud worked as an au pair and studied at night. Then she worked for another three years in clerical jobs, while she completed her Pitman's Shorthand qualifications as well as the Cambridge Entrance certification in English. Returning to Germany at twenty-one, she worked for an export-company handling their English correspondence.
About her own background and why she had come to Australia, I learned at that time little. She just gleefully told me how she got her job. Going through the job advertisements in the Age, she decided to test the waters by applying for a job she really did not think she could get. All she expected to get was, perhaps, a job in a typing-pool. In ringing the company, it was probably her English accent that secured an appointment. But she impressed. The Manager of Shipping she now worked for, offered her immediately the job as his personal secretary.
The day we spent together went well. Gertrud's initial reserve changed into a relaxed friendliness, but no more. We did not flirt. On the long journey back to Melbourne, some of it in darkness, I kept my distance. In the intimate closeness of the backseat of Josef's' car, I was avoiding anything that could have suggested a sexual advance. While I was attracted by Gertrud, I was also overawed by her class and achievements. This probably stopped me from becoming too interested in her.
