Chapter 1: A story to be told

“You want me to do what?!? You can’t be serious,” I say.

“I’m being perfectly serious. You are to write a short story about your experiences and how you came to be here. Look around you. Rebecca, Martha and the others are all doing the same. It’s a family tradition. Wadi Halaf carefully preserves the story of every woman who has entered these walls.”

“Your uncle is the best person to tell you how I come to be here.”

“I don’t mean here in Wadi Halaf, but the events that took you away from your home.”

“You know full well that the judiciaries of several countries would like to do nasty things to me if I provide them with anything that could be seen as a confession,” I grumble.

“Then disguise the names of those involved in events which are best left unmentioned. You aren’t leaving this room until the job is done, so get on with it.”

“So you want me to tell you about every man who has fucked or buggered me? That’s going to be a long repetitive story.”

“Well in your case you can probably skip over some of those occasions. Just write enough so that we get the general idea of what makes you the person you are.”

I’m given a plentiful supply of writing material and shown to a small unoccupied desk. Then I’m left to my thoughts. I have done a lot of things in my life and hopefully I’ll do a lot more before my time is done. I’ve made many friends, more than a few enemies, and encountered numerous others. But until now I have never written down my story for posterity. I shall certainly disguise the names of those involved to avoid embarrassing their kin, or inadvertently rake up matters which are best left forgotten.

Where do I begin my tale? I could start in November 1789, when I was born to a French father and a Spanish mother, onboard a ship moored in an English harbour. That particular set of circumstances might explain my affinity for the sea. It also gives me a claim to French, Spanish and English citizenship, although rarely for reasons which benefit me.

My father was Comte de Belleville, a member of the French nobility at a time when that was an exceptionally dangerous thing to be. Along with many other wealthy and privileged Frenchmen, his head was fair game for the excitable French revolutionaries. Slowly the troubles spread as far as the rural backwater of Belleville. One morning my father decided to flee France along with his Spanish mistress, who was nine months pregnant at the time. For reasons I’ve never understood, his wife, the Comtesse Angelique, stayed behind to protect the family château and lands. The indomitable Angelique had to confront sixty lusty French peasants bent on ransacking her home. Whichever version you believe about what happened, she clearly had more balls than my father.

Unfortunately my father left all his valuables behind in his haste to flee to safety. This made some French peasants extremely happy, but it meant that he arrived in England with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing. Consequently the English didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms, and it was several days after the ship arrived in Portsmouth harbour before my parents were allowed to disembark. It was during the wait on board the Jacqueline when I entered onto the scene and I was promptly named after the ship.

My father’s brain (and later the rest of his head) deserted him five years later when he became involved in a half-baked royalist plot to overthrow the new French government and reclaim all the nobles’ confiscated property. The plot ended disastrously, and Madame Guillotine claimed my father’s head after all. My mother was left destitute. Like so many women in her situation she resorted to prostitution. I received an early and very informative education in what men and women get up to in bed. More often than not, though, I’d get sent on an errand when things got interesting, although a few of her clients didn’t mind me being around.

I was eight years old when my mother died. I never knew whether it was from the pox or the clap, but I suppose that doesn’t matter. I found myself living on the streets of London. But the struggles of my childhood years spent as a beggar and thief aren’t worth repeating here. My five years of adventures on the high seas are more pertinent, but I’m going to skip over those for now so as to avoid troubling the French, English and Spanish authorities. Those authorities will undoubtedly want to use my memoires as an excuse to do nasty things to my pretty neck. I need to be careful that a French guillotine, English hangman’s noose, and Spanish garotte aren’t going to be given the chance of competing for the privilege of ending my life.

So let’s skip ahead to April 1817, three months ago, and explain how I come to be here. If you’re good at sums then you will realise that by now I’m approaching my 28^th year. The long war against Napoleon Bonaparte has ended and a French king once again rules over France. In England, those who have profited from the war are now looking for new opportunities to increase their obscene wealth. English adventurers set off for all parts of the world to rob ... ooops! I mean civilise ... the local natives of countries who up until now have been content to manage their affairs on their own. Many of the toffee nosed prigs whose families have controlled England’s power and wealth for centuries send their sons off in droves to exotic places. Once there they are expected to earn glory and wealth for themselves and their family. Apparently dying of some unheard of tropical disease, or being disembowelled by angry natives, seems infinitely preferable to dying of boredom at home. Still, more than a few toffs survive the ordeal and achieve their goal by fair means or foul ... often the latter. Of course sending so many unmarried young men overseas leaves an annoying problem for the toffs ... the marriage prospects for their daughters have been reduced to a small and indifferent pool of minor gentry and social climbers.

‘Young ladies of good standing required as wives for military officers and titled gentlemen serving in India and the far east’ reads the headline of an advertisement in the London Times and the better quality press in Madrid, Paris and probably several other European capitals. There are notably few other details provided, other than to imply that King George III, sensitive to the demand for eligible bachelors for his nobles’ daughters, has endorsed a proposal by two American gentlemen, a Captain Dickey and a Dr. Wickliffe, to transport willing young ladies to India and to arrange for appropriate marriages. Quite why any toff would entrust their daughter to a scheme endorsed by a king whose mind is known to be several cards short of a full deck is unclear to me.

Eligible young ladies interested in joining the venture need only to present themselves on the appropriate date at one of the three ports listed. The minimal eligibility requirements and the lack of any vetting process should have rung alarm bells, but it clearly didn’t. Everybody assumes that somebody else has checked the credentials of the two Americans. A mad king has endorsed the proposal and that seems a good enough recommendation to the toffs.

But what has the Dickey-Wickey venture (as the gutter press soon call it) got to do with me? I’ve spent the last six years living in Paris, more recently using the name of Jacqueline Lachatte. My real name is connected with some unfortunate business which I won’t dwell on here. Suffice to say Inspecteur Lebranleur would like to see Jacqueline de Belleville’s pretty neck cut in half with a blunt guillotine. It’s an attitude which I find totally unreasonable, since the same Inspecteur Lebranleur was more than happy with me as his mistress when Napoleon Bonaparte was in charge of France. Anyway, the slow moving cogs inside Lebranleur’s brain have finally connected the dots between J. de Belleville and J. Lachatte. Which means I need to get out of Paris in a hurry. Fast exits travelling light are becoming a family tradition.

The Dickey-Wickey venture smells as rotten as a long dead fish, but I’m not in a position to be fussy. This is my ticket out of France, and all I need to do is present myself to Captain Dickey of the Humphrey at the docks in Le Havre on the tenth day of June.

I slip out of Paris before the body of the late Inspecteur Lebranleur is discovered in my bed. At least he died with a smile on his face. An incompetent doctor might believe he died of natural causes while in the act of fucking one of his many mistresses. While Lebranleur’s death solves one problem for me, I’m not going to wait around to find out if his death causes me more trouble. I hide in Le Havre for a few days until the Humphrey, an American flagged ship, collects me and six other young women for the Dickey-Wickey venture. The newspaper advertisement said that the young woman needs to be between 18 and 30 years of age, in good health, and educated to a level where she can at least read and write. The young woman being unmarried, a virgin, and able to speak English are implied requirements, but judging by the minimal number of questions I’m asked before boarding the Humphrey, they don’t seem to be insurmountable hurdles if not. In my case, the virgin bit could have been a problem thankfully avoided.

A further stop in southern Ireland a couple of days later brings the complement of prospective brides to 32. Without further delay the Humphrey sails south, taking its cargo of young women to their future husbands. That those prospective husbands probably know nothing of the Dickey-Wickey venture doesn’t seem to trouble anybody.