The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte Read online

  Would you like to sin

  With Elinor Glyn

  On a tiger skin?

  Or would you prefer

  To err

  With her

  On some other fur?

  Anonymous

  CONTENTS

  1. Wolfftown 1912

  2. Chopping the Wood

  3. Chiffonade of Misery

  4. Home Sweet Home

  5. Burning the Toast

  6. Audacious Cherry Pie

  7. Dining with Black Widow Spiders

  8. Stoking the Devil’s Oven

  9. Those Damned Kane Women

  10. Tasty Outdoor Picnics

  11. Butterfly Chop

  12. Flambéed Ambition

  13. Devilish Desires

  14. Sins of the Cake

  15. The Guilty Ferret

  16. Seasoning the Liaison

  17. Basting the Goose

  18. London’s Pudding à la Mode

  19. Beauty Without Vanity

  20. Secret Trysts

  21. The Pharaoh’s Curse

  22. Femmes Fatale

  23. Vive la France!

  24. Dangerous Bonne Femme

  25. Tepid Tea with Cold Revenge

  26. His Lordship’s Demon Rod

  27. All the World’s a Stage

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Lesley Truffle

  Copyright

  1

  WOLFFTOWN 1912

  It is every woman’s fear she will turn into her mother. And my mother, Rose Torte, is widely believed to be an adulteress, strumpet and murderess. So the battle appears lost, as I have now been convicted of murder. However, I wish to state categorically that I, Sasha Torte, am innocent of such a crime. One does not have to be a mind reader to know you are thinking, why is she lying? After all, most guilty people protest their innocence. Well let me assure you, my dears, I haven’t lost hope of eventually being freed.

  Internment does not become me and several months of injustice have played havoc with my figure. Given I’m now twenty-two years of age, I suspect my lovely eighteen-inch waist has been consigned to the past. Confined within these grim bluestone walls I often don’t know what to do with myself and time weighs heavily upon me. So I have decided to write this memoir in order to distract and amuse myself and if it should be published after I slip from the mortal coil, I hope it will entertain you too, my dear reader. For I seek not to be morally instructive but merely to examine my role in what the lawyer, Mr Algernon Wolff terms, ‘Miss Sasha Torte’s spectacular public downfall’.

  Honestly I don’t know why that cad simply doesn’t just bill me as a freakish circus act and be done with it. Clearly it wasn’t enough for Mr Wolff to twist the truth and pervert the course of justice in order to persuade Wolfftown’s citizens that I’m guilty of murder. I’m also convinced Algernon’s ongoing persecution of me probably has something to do with the well-known fact that he loathes free-spirited women such as I. Perhaps his unremitting hatred of me has something to do with the fact that his great-great grandmother – the exotic, freewheeling Miss Marigold Wolff – left an indelible stain on the Wolff family dynasty. For wherever Marigold Wolff went, scandal was sure to follow. She’s always fascinated me and I wish I could have known her. By all accounts Marigold was a woman who knew how to play the shoddy cards she’d been dealt by fate.

  Algernon Wolff is a strange bird. At the age of thirty-one, he persists in living in his magnificent mansion with only manservants for company. Algernon eschews all contact with females and his loathing of the fairer sex extends to his exclusively male stable of horses and hunting dogs – all of whom are ungelded and therefore visibly male. God knows what Mr Wolff does when female bees cheekily pollinate his Brussels sprouts, or female Welcome Swallows have the temerity to provide him with evening song.

  The gossips maintain that Algernon’s heart was gouged from his chest on his wedding day, when he was left standing at the altar. The Best Man had to break the news to him, that in the dark of night his blushing bride had gathered up her trousseau and absconded to Sicily with the notorious bushranger Fabrizio Costanzo. Fabrizio had grown up with Algernon but what made it especially galling for the lawyer, was that for eighteen months he’d knocked himself out to extricate the devilishly handsome bushranger from prison. And also succeeded in securing Costanzo a full pardon. Obviously justice is not as blind as we like to think she is.

  The first time I stood in the dock being brutally cross-examined by Algernon, I stared into his merciless, pale-blue eyes and knew without a doubt that I was about to become the whipping girl for the fairer sex. I also intuited that this was why my nemesis, Roger Dasher, had contracted Mr Wolff to do his dirty work.

  For those of geographical disposition, who want to know where the hell they are, Wolfftown is situated on the wild west coast of Tasmania, about three hundred miles from Hobart. But there aren’t any proper highways so travelling overland is simply not an option. In order to get from Wolfftown to Hobart you have to take a boat and travel down around the South East Cape, head past Bruny Island and then sail up the coast into Hobart’s snug harbour.

  Wolfftown is a shipping town, host to sailors, whalers, chancers and other lost souls. Our town is enriched by some of the finest whorehouses in the world, serviced by beautiful women. Courtesans rather than mere harlots. To be sure, a lot of your more basic whoring takes place and not just that of profitable matrimony. For it’s a bun fight indeed as women seek to marry prestigiously and conceal the tawdriness of their British and Irish convict backgrounds.

  The township was established nearly one hundred years ago by Algernon Wolff’s ancestors and was one of the first maritime outposts back in the early days of Tasmania’s settlement. Agent provocateur, Emerl Wolff and his half-sister, the infamous Marigold Wolff, deserted merry olde England in 1809 in their leaky sailing ship the Destiny. There’d been a scandal when the British press revealed that Marigold was not only living in sin in a posh London townhouse but that her Common-law husband was none other than her half-brother, Emerl Wolff. Fanning the flames was the indisputable evidence that she’d regularly entertained foreign dignitaries and enemies of the British Crown. One suspects that the British government was more concerned with Marigold Wolff’s alleged role as a spy, than her awkward relationship with her maverick half-brother.

  Somewhere on the high seas the Wolff siblings came into possession of a small fortune in gold. I wish to state categorically that this windfall was not acquired by piratical or nefarious means. But I also want to mention in passing that Algernon is very touchy about perceived slurs on his heritage and he’s earnt a reputation for unleashing his litigation skills on those who trespass upon his dignity.

  Emerl Wolff explored Tasmania’s west coast looking for a safe natural harbour. He incorrectly concluded that the future Macquarie Port was far too shallow to accommodate large sailing ships and that the future Hell’s Gates were too narrow for safe passage to a harbour. So Emerl established Wolfftown further down the coast, in a sheltered harbour that provided protection from the aggressive weather system we call The Roaring Forties.

  It didn’t take long for Marigold Wolff to computate the financial benefits of supplying wild women, dance hall music and rotgut booze to the hundreds of men who sailed into Wolfftown. Thus to Algernon’s chagrin, local legend depicts Miss Marigold Wolff as the brains of the Wolff Family Trust. Her rapacious fleecing of sailors, miners and adventurers ensured that the Wolff siblings became richer than Croesus himself.

  It’s been said by Hobart’s toffs that Wolfftown was founded on all the vices of mankind. But
let us not forget that the Wolff clan, and by default my persecutor Algernon Wolff, have profited most handsomely from those unsavoury vices.

  Excellent. While I’ve been out my butler – or should I say my gaoler – has taken delivery of four dozen Hazel Decadents. Theo’s left them sitting on the sideboard for my delectation: neatly packaged in their pale blue box with gold satin ribbon. Lovely. Are you familiar with them? They’re one of my finest creations. Indeed, I created many of the splendid confections you now take for granted. Hazel Decadents require the whole nut being tenderly wrapped in a triple layer of nougat and smooth, creamy chocolate. Simply and definitively divine. No wonder so many women abandon psychoanalysis in favour of chocolate.

  So many chefs denigrate the sublime art of pastry making and confectionary, in the same way that famous wine makers denigrate the frivolity of champagne. But the late, great French pâtissièr, Antonin Carême – who elevated the craft of pastry making to an art – took confectionary seriously and declared, ‘I believe architecture to be the first amongst the arts and the principal branch of architecture is confectionary.’

  And so, as Algernon would declare, I rest my case.

  Chocolate is one of my vices. I was an only child but never spoilt. Mother said, ‘You will only be allowed chocolates at Christmas, Sasha. A once a year treat. I will not have you turning into one of those spoilt brats who think they can gobble them up on a regular basis.’

  I had no passion for soft centres, only hard ones, so I removed each chocolate from its special nesting place, turned it upside down and squeezed it on its bottom. If it dented I would carefully place it back into the chocolate box, and nobody would be any the wiser.

  My mother drilled it into me that, ‘A well-bred girl always offers her chocolates to her guests. It would be greedy and ungracious not to share the best you have with your friends.’

  Oh really? In my experience adults weren’t quite so forthcoming with their favourite consumables, despite the fact that Jesus preached that we should be hospitable and generous towards others. So I cunningly ensured my guests only acquired the despised soft centres. How? By shamelessly devouring all the hard centres before they arrived. Then I’d graciously proffer the chocolate box around and urge my guests to partake, ‘Please, do have another. Oh look, this one is a delicious soft strawberry cream.’

  After all, the key to successful dieting is to only eat hard foods, as firm foods make the body hard.

  I occupy several rooms here at the gaol. I’ve got the whole of the north tower to myself, an uninterrupted view clear across town to the Southern Ocean. Stacked in my tower are five round rooms linked by a winding staircase. Underground lies a cellar, where I store my fine wines, imported champagnes and spirits. Unlike those poor devils in the other wings I’m surrounded by the best domestic amenities this century can offer and all I lack for is a properly appointed bathing room.

  I choose to bathe daily and this necessitates my maid, Shirley, having to drag in a copper hip bath. She never lets me forget her loathing of my tub. ‘Gawd, I swear this fucking tub gets heavier by the day.’

  In my previous residence overlooking Wolfftown’s wharf, I had a fully tiled bathing room fitted with splendid conveniences. From Chicago Illinois, I’d imported an all over hot water shower. It was an ungainly circular contraption attached to a huge water heater. The geyser fed three circular pipes with warm water and by standing in the round tub I received sprays of water from both top and sides.

  When I showed Shirley an illustration of my original shower device in the Sears Roebuck & Co. catalogue she remarked, ‘Fuck me, it looks like something you’d find in a torture dungeon.’

  I still dream about being enthroned on my imported T. Crapper and Co. lavatory, and gazing out the window at ships making port and the verdant hills in the distance.

  Things are not quite so hygienic here in this rotten old gaol and the plumbing is ghastly but you may well still ask, how does a convicted murderess command such lavish appointments? The answer lies with my enemy’s guilt. Roger Dasher, the man who hired Algernon Wolff as his lawyer and bribed the jury, knew damned well that by committing perjury in court he’d violated both natural order and justice. Then in an attempt to assuage his guilt, Roger had the whole North Wing renovated at his expense. He had the audacity to say to me, ‘Sasha my love, it’s been empty since the last Governor hanged himself there. Recently I’ve been spreading a little fear and a lot of money around, so I can easily obtain the North Wing for your exclusive use. I’ll hire builders to construct a boudoir, parlour, dining room and a kitchen, so you can continue your patisserie business. And to put your suspicious mind at ease, darling, I’ll get Algernon Wolff to draw up a legal contract to make everything I gift you officially yours.’

  It was originally Roger Dasher who stocked my cellar and paid for the renovations. It was his agents who stuffed my tower with Neo-Gothic furniture. Propelled by bad conscience, Roger had my rooms furnished with vulgar but expensive reproductions of French Renaissance cabinets. A job lot of Persian rugs cover the rotting floorboards and Tasmanian tiger skins are draped over the armchairs. Amid this confusion are some hideous sofas covered in rich brocade, heavily tasselled and beaded; a real tour de force of the upholsterer’s art.

  When I was first incarcerated the barred windows were smothered in heavy velvet curtains. I immediately tore them down. False imprisonment is false imprisonment, no matter how Roger Dasher Esquire chooses to disguise it. As soon as I could, I put a stop to Roger interfering in my life and Grandfather now manages my financial affairs, utilising the profits from my patisserie. The harshness of imprisonment can be softened if one has the means to buy privileges and pay off the gaol’s corrupt petty officials. Heaven help those who are penniless.

  Dominating the bare boards of my parlour is a Bengal tiger skin supplied by Roger. It was once a magnificent beast, shot down in its prime and I just don’t have the heart to throw it out. The tiger has glass eyes, an open-mouthed snarl and ivory teeth that I have to keep gluing back into his mouth. If the hunter could be tracked down, I’d have him shot, then flayed and pinned to the wall in the manner of a Japanese tattooist displaying his art.

  While I write, Alphonse keeps me company. Such a handsome fish, with the light flashing from his golden scales as he circles lazily in his large fishbowl. Unfortunately, he’s got a delicate constitution and is fearful of draughts and sudden noises. As Alphonse is recovering from a nasty little chill, I’m indulging him with morsels of his favourite foods and reading choice extracts from my memoir to cheer him up. He has a very dry sense of humour, so I always know when something is tickling him.

  My boudoir is on the top floor of my tower. The bed is a sumptuous affair built for four people to repose in comfortably during a tempest. It’s an old fashioned Gothic four poster with solid posts upholding blue velvet curtains. The extravagant drapery is embellished with embroidered golden bees and this provides a Napoleonic flavour.

  Should a prison riot break out, I’ll address the insurgents from the safety of my bed. I’m convinced that my bed would inspire baronial respect even amongst rioting convicts. On the other hand, if a hurricane descends over Wolfftown, I’ll lash myself to the bedposts and be swept to safety. One must be prepared for all contingencies in these trying times.

  I adore the company of erudite, witty, masculine men bearing luxurious gifts and if the mood takes me I entertain certain gentlemen in my bed. I should admit right now that I’ve never been capable of monogamy. If I was a man this wouldn’t be a contentious issue but I’m well aware of the need to be discreet, lest I find myself branded a scarlet woman. Even here on the wild, wild west coast, where social conventions are thin on the ground, I think you’ll agree it’s best that I should be prudent and conceal my sensual proclivities.

  In my experience it’s just not possible to find everything one desires in just one man. But I know fulfilment can be obtained by spreading my charms. Just a tad. I’m not greedy about it
and can usually manage the business by liaising with two gentlemen. Oh what the hell, I should be honest from the outset – sometimes it’s three gentlemen. But not all at once of course.

  To my readers who find this concept abhorrent, I suggest you put this book down slowly and abstain from ever sampling it again. Think of it as a potent champagne punch that could well facilitate your undoing. For I’ve decided to be as honest as possible in writing my memoirs. I loathe hypocrites and have no intention of joining their ranks.

  Getting back to my tower. Thanks to the aforementioned gentlemen, my rooms are warehouses of fine oil paintings, alabaster vases and crystal chandeliers. There are also many recent Australian paintings, mostly Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder’s work alongside several exquisite Italian Renaissance paintings.

  Some visitors are appalled when they see my Conder painting of the beach, it’s far too impressionistic for our prosaic Tasmanian tastes. The water shimmers and the figure of a woman is indicated by a few pink and white slashes. She stands solitary and alone with her back facing the viewer. I often imagine myself standing there in her place. Oh, how I long for such freedom.

  I’ve strictly forbidden Shirley to touch Conder’s work. She’s been demonstrating her contempt by lashing her duster vigorously over the paintings. ‘But Miss Sasha! It’s not real art like. How come you wasted your money on it?’

  I should add that our Shirley is not prudish, she’s very fond of my opium pipe collection and sixteenth century Japanese erotica. ‘Gees Ma’am. You can really see everything that’s going on there. Saucy buggers.’

  When Shirley married my cook, Bruce, I gave her a monetary bonus and a magnificent pearl-green, silk kimono for her trousseau. According to Bruce, when they honeymooned in Melbourne, ‘She swanned around me mum’s house in that damned kimono like a courtesan.’ He grinned with delight. ‘My girl’s a real little fox.’

  He’s right. Our Shirley has the special something that’s so lacking in many of Wolfftown’s wealthiest young women.