Kitabı oku: «Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions»

CONTENTS

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ONE

The window cleaning lark first begins to appeal to me one evening when I am up at the pub with my brother-in-law. It is on Clapham Common and we are sitting on a bench outside, watching the sun go down and this big bird with the white silk blouse on. It is a bit small – the blouse I mean – and rides up from her waist so you can see her two tone flesh and the top of her knickers.

She has been in the sun, that is for sure. She has dyed hair, too much lipstick and a diabolical eyebrow pencil beauty spot that dates her a bit, but if she is going down hill I can think of a few blokes who wouldn’t mind waiting for her at the bottom – me included.

“Sup up,” says Sid. “You’re supposed to drink it, not pour it all over your balls. You’re right out of practice, aren’t you?”

I nod and correct the angle of my glass. Sid is right. I am straight out of reform school, ‘for the holidays’, my poxy father says, and there haven’t been a lot of opportunities for elbow bending – or lapping up birds like Silk Blouse. She has a black bra underneath it which I think is a bit of a liberty. Sid looks at her as if it is an effort to keep from yawning. “I’ve had her,” he says, switching his gaze to his finger nails. Very neat they are, too. Say what you like about Sid – and most people say plenty – but he keeps himself in good nick.

“Oh yes,” I say. “You and who else?”

“I don’t know about that, do I?” he says. “But I know I have. Why, don’t you believe me?”

“If you want to put it like that – no?” I say. I mean, she is with two blokes who look sharp as tin tacks and have a white Jag to prove it. I can’t see our Sidney with her legs up against the dashboard of his mini van.

“Hang on,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

Before I can say anything he picks up my glass and slides off towards the bar. The bird hasn’t noticed him up till then, but when she does I begin to believe Sid might be right. She half smiles and shoots a quick glance at one of the blokes she’s with. You can see she doesn’t quite know what to do. Sid is a gent because he nods to her ever so politely like she was his Sunday school teacher and carries right on into the pub. I can’t help it, I’m impressed. Seeing Sid must have done something to her, for her fag goes out and she starts tugging her blouse down and smiling slightly out of time with the conversation she’s supposed to be part of; as if there’s something on her mind. I look at Sid through new eyes when he comes out of the pub. He’s quite a good-looking fellow, I suppose. Not tall, but with very broad shoulders and narrow hips. Looks a bit like one of those poufdah ballet dancers you see on the telly before you turn over to the wrestling. I know my sister thinks his arsehole plays ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ every time he farts.

“Try and keep this one inside you,” he says, handing me a pint. “You look as if you’ve pissed yourself. I’m ashamed to be seen with you.”

He runs his fingers through his hair, kneading in every wave – Sid has lovely hair, even my mum remarks on it – and gives Silk Blouse a big smile as she glances at him. She blushes and turns away double quick. Sid shakes his head and stares out over the common towards the pond where the kids and the middle-aged wankers sail their model boats. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be the cause of any embarrassment to her. Very thoughtful.

“Well?” he says. “You saw that?”

“Yes,” I say. “She looked pretty twitched up. Who are those blokes she’s with?”

“I don’t know. Her husband travels, I believe. I expect she gets a bit lonely in the evenings.”

“How did you meet her?”

“On the job, how else?”

“What, window cleaning?”

“I haven’t got any other jobs, have I?”

I’m registering surprise because Sid and Rosie, my sister, have been married for three months and Rosie is already great, too great if you ask my mother, with child, which everybody in the family, and even a few of the neighbours, are prepared to accept as Sid’s. What’s more, Sid has only been cleaning windows since they came back from their honeymoon, which is what they called the weekend they spent at Brighton where one of Sid’s friends was supposed to have a boarding house. In fact, they never found a trace of the friend and spent two nights trying to sleep rough at Butlins before they were thrown out. I missed the wedding because I was being reformed at the time and heard all about it, and the honeymoon, from Rosie, who could not be accused of exaggeration because she was bonkers about Sid and would burst into tears every time Dad said he was a ponce.

“What about my sister?” I say, feeling I’d better show a bit of family loyalty.

“She’s getting all she can handle,” says Sid. “You haven’t heard her complaining, have you?”

This is true. I’ve heard my old man complaining about the row they make but not a squeak out of Rosie. In fact, Rosie doesn’t make much noise of any kind. This evening we’ve left her at home in front of the telly, knitting some woolly horror for ‘her Sid’ and I know she’ll be in exactly the same position when we get back, with her head jutting towards the screen and just a few more rows of puce to show for it. She and Sid have been living with us since the wedding and show every sign of continuing to do so until they find ‘the right place’ as Sid puts it. Dad says that Sid’s idea of the right place is the one he seems to be finding every night and he can hardly expect his daughter to be a contortionist as well as a wife. Mum tells him not to be dirty, though she doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. She just knows Dad.

“Anyhow, I’m doing it for her, aren’t I?”

I give him my ‘pull the other one’ look.

“Oh, you can act all disapproving, but you’ve no idea what it’s like. I’m trying to build up a business, aren’t I? Half of these birds don’t just want their windows cleaned. You say no dice and they swear blind you did it anyway. I’ve been told that. Straight up, I have. One terrible old bag, she blackmailed me, said if I didn’t give her what she wanted, she’d start screaming the place down. What could I do? You soon get the message. Put yourself in my position.”

I steal a quick glance at Silk Blouse and wish I could.

“You want to keep them happy, don’t you, because you want the work; and you’re only human, aren’t you? When a bit of stuff like that starts offering to squeeze out your chamois, you don’t start retracting your ladder, do you?”

“I suppose not,” I say. “But is it really like that? I mean, you hear all those stories about milkmen, but I never believe half of it.”

“I don’t know about milkmen,” says Sid. “But you wouldn’t coco some of the things that have happened to me, and I haven’t been in the business four months. I won’t start to tell you, because you wouldn’t credit it. I think maybe it’s because you look more athletic cleaning windows. You might laugh but sometimes I feel I’m almost hypnotising them when I sweep the old squeegee backwards and forwards. I always wear a T shirt or white nylon – that’s favourite because when it gets wet they can see your nipples. Press up against the window and give ’em a smile occasionally. You can see their hands shaking as they put the kettle on.”

“So that bird isn’t the only one?” I say slowly.

“God, no. It’s a bad week in which I don’t get half a dozen solid offers – and that’s new business, not my old customers.”

“How do you manage?”

“Well, you have to box a bit clever, don’t you? You can’t leave them without it for too long, otherwise they get all resentful. You have to spread it out a bit. Keep everybody happy. In fact,” he looks round at Silk Blouse, who is climbing into the Jag and showing thigh clean up to her arse, “the business is expanding, so fast I’ve got almost more than I can handle. Work and all.”

I lean forward hopefully, and the bastard pauses, leaving me dangling on his words. Silk Blouse gives him a discreet little wave as the Jag pulls away and Sid inclines his head. “I was thinking of asking you if you’d like to come in with me—”

“It’d be great, Sid,” I interrupt, thinking of Silk Blouse’s thighs and nearly creaming my jeans. “Great, I’d—”

“—cool it.” Sid’s voice sounds just like Paul Newman’s which is exactly what it is meant to sound like. Rosie, or some other bird, once told him that he looked like Paul Newman and the world has suffered for it ever since, “don’t get your knickers in a twist. I just said I was thinking about it, I’m not certain you’re up to the work.”

“There’s nothing to cleaning windows, is there,” I say. “and I’m not afraid of heights. Shouldn’t be any problem getting a ladder and a bucket – one of those polythene—”

“I wasn’t thinking about that side of it. Rosie said she reckoned you’d never had your end away.”

He runs his fingers round the edge of his glass. It’s one of those tall thin ones and made an apologetic whining noise. They don’t give Sid and me the thick chunky ones with the handles.

“That’s what Rosie said, is it?” I say, trying to give myself time to think.

“That’s what Rosie said.”

Of course, Rosie is right but I don’t thank her for opening her trap to Sid. Must be envy on her part. Before she met Sid she was known as the easiest lay in the neighbourhood. On Saturday night, after the pubs closed, there used to be a queue outside the front door. Talk about watching the quiet ones.

“How does she know?” I say.

“Said you told her.”

This is true too. I once had a confidential word with her because I was desperate to score and I reckoned she must have a mate who could oblige me. Fact was that all the other birds in the district hated her guts because the way she gave it away was ruining the market. Their blokes only had to get a sniff of our Rosie and that was that. In my present mood I have half a mind to tell Sid all about her but I think better of it.

“That was before I went inside.” I say.

“You had birds in there!?”

“Of course. I had this mate. We used to get out at nights and go round the local girls’ school. They’d hang their knickers out of the window so we knew which one to get in at. Very posh birds they were but they were crazy for it.”

Of course, it’s all a load of lies but I think it sounds quite good.

“Really,” says Sid. “Bentworth Grange wasn’t it? Must have changed a bit since I was there. In those days the screws would go spare if you as much as looked out of the window.”

“I didn’t know you were there, Sid,” I say – trying to appear interested.

“Yeah, we went to the same school. I’ll let you borrow my old boys tie some time. Now look, I’m still a bit sceptical about whether you’ve had your end away or not.”

Sid is very strong on long words and ‘Quotable Quips’ he gets from the Reader’s Digest. He used to spend so much time in Doctors’ waiting rooms trying to get a medical certificate that he is quite well read.

“I don’t want to go on about it, but I can’t afford to have someone with me who goes around disappointing people. You’ve got to know how to handle yourself.”

Make no mistake, I’m not a fairy or anything, and my equipment is alright. It’s just that something always seems to go wrong just when I am about to score. The bird passes out or a copper starts flashing his torch or I’m too pissed to do it. A lot of trouble is the birds themselves. Because I am inexperienced I end up with inexperienced girls and of the two of us I have the most to lose. Rosie doesn’t help because I feel embarrassed about her, and that puts me off my stride a bit, and of course, there wasn’t anything happening at Bentworth, apart from the danger of spraining your wrist or getting a bent screw up your backside. I say all this because a lot of people seem to believe that every working class lad has it regular from the age of eight and it just isn’t true. I wish to God it was.

“Don’t worry about me Sid,” I say, “I won’t let you down.”

“Um.” Sid looks at me and then past me to the plump old bird we can see just inside the boozer, sitting up at the bar and sipping what must be a port and lemon.

“Could you handle that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Chat her up, buy her a drink, take her home. She’s a pushover, that one. Always up here begging for it.”

“I don’t fancy her.” I say quickly. It’s the truth too. Talk about mutton dressed up as lamb. She’s bulging out all over the place like a badly tied parcel and they must be able to hear her laughing down at the Plough. It sounds like somebody cutting through giblets with a hacksaw.

“Don’t fancy her? You’re going to be no bloody good to me if you go on like that. Who do you think you are, Godfrey Winn?”

“If I was, I’d be calling her mother. She won’t see forty again if you give her a telescope.”

“You mean you won’t even say hallo to her? Look, go and chat her up a bit, that’s all. You don’t have to do anything. I just want to see how you handle yourself. I tell you she’s a bit of class compared to some of the scrubbers you’ll come across if I take you on.”

“Well I won’t be coming across them then.”

“Get over there and overpower her with some of your sophisticated banter,” sneers Sid, “and remember, I’ll be watching.”

“I won’t forget,” I say and I start towards the bar. I feel less enthusiastic than a bloke setting out to poke a bacon slicer, but it isn’t a boozer I go to a lot, so I can afford to make a bit of a Charlie of myself. Above all, I want to show Sid that I am a man of the world.

The old bag gives me a quick up and down as I go in and returns to her drink. She has terrible legs and wears patterned stockings so you’ll notice it. It is difficult to know where the pattern ends and her varicose veins begin. I stroll up to the bar and lean on it as casually as I can, discovering as I do so that I have chosen a large puddle of beer to put my elbow in.

“Learning to swim, dear?” says the old bag. I blush and hope that Sid has noticed how smoothly I have started a conversation.

“Lovely evening,” I say. The words are alright but unfortunately I am so tense that my voice cracks and the alsatian in the corner growls and pricks up its ears.

“What did you say, dear?”

“I said ‘it’s a nice evening’.”

“Very nice, dear.” She sounds a bit nervous. I can feel. I am sweating and I start licking my lips. The barman is in the saloon and I try to catch his eye.

“I don’t get up this way often.”

“Really dear? I thought I hadn’t seen you before.”

“Not on Thursdays, anyway.” Why did I say that? The old bag looks even more worried. “Thursday is early closing day,” I go on desperately, “I work in a bakery, you see, and we get the afternoon off.”

“Very nice, dear. I expect you look forward to it?”

The barman is coming towards me. Now for my big push.

“Can I buy you a fuck?” I say. She goes scarlet, the barman breaks into a run and the alsatian sits up.

“I mean a drink,” I shout, wishing I was dead.

“Make up your mind,” says Sid, who has miraculously appeared behind me. “You know, sometimes, I think he doesn’t know the difference,” he adds, flashing his pearlies at the old bag who is staring at me like I had eye teeth down to my navel.

“Is he with you?” she screeches. “You want to watch him, he’s round the twist. You heard what he said. He should be locked up.”

“In an asylum, Madam,” agrees Sid, “Anybody making a suggestion like that to you must be insane.”

“Hey, what do you mean,” says the old bag. “You trying to be funny or something? You’re no bleeding oil painting yourself.”

“That’s enough,” says the barman, “You two hop it.” He means Sid and me.

“Why should we?” says Sid. “We aren’t doing any harm. My friend merely asked the lady if she’d like a drink.”

“I heard what he asked the lady,” says the barman, “Now hop it before I call the police.”

“If you’re going to call anybody make it Hammer Films, mate,” says Sid. “They can’t start shooting till she turns up. ‘Daughter of the Vampires’, that’s what she’s in, and guess who’s playing mother!”

“Ooh, you little bastard!” The old bag swings her handbag, Sid ducks, and the barman catches it, smack in the kisser. You have to laugh. At least Sid and I do. The other two don’t seem to be finding it so funny. The barman shouts to the alsatian and before I can get really scared it has torn the old bag’s skirt off. By the time we get outside I am laughing so much I can hardly stand up.

“You did a bloody marvellous job in there,” says Sid all sarcastic. “My God, you came on strong. Nothing like getting to the point quick.”

“It’s no good with me if I don’t fancy a bird,” I say. “If my heart isn’t in it, nothing else is.”

“I don’t believe you could stick your old man in a fire bucket without someone shouting instructions through a megaphone,” says Sid. “What a bloody hopeless performance. That’s done it for me. You’d have both of us locked up on your first morning.”

“Come off it, Sid. You know it was an accident. I just got a bit flustered, that’s all.”

“Flustered?” says Sid. “Christ, I wonder you didn’t stick it in her hand and burst into tears.” I can see there isn’t much point in going on about it, so we walk across the common in silence. Dusk, as they say, is falling and I notice that Sid keeps taking a few strides and jumping as far as he can. I’ve never known him show any interest in athletics, apart from running away from hard work, so I ask him what he is doing.

“Trying to put the alsatian off the scent,” he says.

“You didn’t think of telling me, did you?”

“I was just going to mention it,” he says, managing to sound all hurt.

So I’m off across the common with a hop, skip and a jump and a right fairy I feel. Then Sid tells me to stop.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I was taking the piss out of you, you stupid berk, and it isn’t funny any more.”

Sometimes I really dislike Sid.

We are near the boating pond by now and I can make out a few shadowy figures moving about in the darkness. Most of them are bent or on the game because the pond, after dark, is very much the place you wouldn’t arrange to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. There are also a few anglers but their presence is a bit suspect, for the last fish must have coughed itself to death about ten years ago, and the surface is too thick with fagpackets and french letters that you’d need a half pound ledger to get through it. I reckon the anglers just want an excuse to get away from the old woman and have a bit on the side. I must confess, I’ve thought about it myself, but somehow I feel I need something more private for the first time.

“Look, Sid,” I say, my mind returning to the window cleaning, “couldn’t you just give me a trial? A couple of weeks maybe. I’m certain I could do the job. If I can’t, well, O.K. then.”

Sid is exploring the darkness and doesn’t seem to be listening to me. Eventually he sees what he’s looking for and, beckoning to me to follow him, makes towards the pond. By the water’s edge a fat old git is buttoning his oilskin trench coat and spitting words at a thin bird who is picking pieces of grass off her skirt. No prizes for guessing what they’ve been up to. The man bends down and reels in his line which, I notice, only has a weight on the end of it – no hooks. Presumably his technique is to whirl the weight round and round above his head and bash the fish over the bonce with it.

“Hallo, Lil” says Sid all cheerful like, “You busy?”

“With old kinky-coat” says the bird, “You must be joking. He exhausted himself screwing his rod together.”

The fat man says something ‘not nice’, as my mother would say, and collapsing his collapsible stool, hurries away.

“Lil,” says Sid, “I’d like you to meet my brother-in-law, Timmy. Timmy this is my aunty Lil.”

“Not so much of the aunty, ta.” says Lil. “Pleased to meet you Timmy. I don’t remember you at the wedding.”

“Timmy was detained elsewhere. He was giving her majesty pleasure.”

Sid’s aunty! What a turn up. She doesn’t seem old enough.

She’s not bad looking really. A bit tired and a bit skinny but not bad. Fancy her being on the game.

“She’s my mum’s youngest sister. Much younger.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say. I have a nasty feeling that Sid has engineered our meeting with what the B.B.C. calls an ulterior motive in view. Sid immediately proves me right. Waiting no longer than the space of time it takes fatso to merge into the background he begins to speak.

“Lil,” he says, “with my friend Timmy, actions speak a bloody sight louder than words, or so he would have me believe. He’s not much of a chatterbox but he’s shit hot when it comes to the proof of the pudding. I’d like you to take him in hand or anything else you have to offer and give me your views.”

I start to say something but Sid shuts me up and sweeps Lil away into outer darkness. I hear them rabbiting away and then Lil nips back again all peaches and cream. Before I can say anything she’s kneading the front of my trousers like dough and steering me towards the wide open spaces.

“Hey, Sid—” I begin but there’s no stopping her.

“Don’t be frightened,” she murmurs, “Lil’s going to take care of you.”

The minute she opens her mouth with that quiet reassuring tone I can feel my old man disappearing like a pat of butter at the bottom of a hot frying pan. It’s about as sincere as Ted Heath singing the Red Flag. At the same time I realise that Sid is setting this up so he can see what I’m made of, and that after the last cock-up I can’t afford to blow it.

It’s in this uneasy frame of mind that I find myself wedged up against a tree with the lights of Clapham sparkling all around me and Aunty Lil’s hand pulling the zip of my fly out of its mooring.

“Ooh, ooh, ooh,” she grunts fumbling away, but my cock has got about as much sensation in it as a headline in ‘Chicks Own’.

“Come on, darling,” she pants, “don’t you want a nice time?”

“I feel we’re being watched” I say and it’s no exaggeration. Talk about Edward G. Robinson in ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes’. There’s a crackle of plastic macs around us like a crisp eating contest. That’s another thing I’ve got against Clapham Common. The public don’t only come to watch the football matches.

“Don’t worry about them,” says Aunty Lil soothingly, “they’re only jealous.”

Nothing is happening down below and I can see she’s getting a bit fed up. What with the beer and the tension I’m under, and all those dirty old buggers creeping round us like red indians, I don’t think it’s going to be one of my nights. Lil stops mauling me and puts her hands on my shoulders.

“Don’t worry about the money,” she says, “it’s on the family.”

I try and blurt out my thanks and in a desperate effort to get in the mood I attempt to kiss her. This is definitely not a good move, for she twists away as if I’ve sunk fangs into her neck.

“Don’t do that!” she snarls, “Don’t ever do that.”

It’s obvious that I’ve seriously offended her and I’ve since learned that a lot of whores don’t mind what you do to them below the waist but they reserve their mouths for their boyfriends – or girl friends since quite a few of them are bent. There is also the problem of smudged make-up and Clapham Common isn’t exactly crawling with powder rooms.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter.

“Get on with it,” she spits. I can see she’s had enough. I’m all for chucking it in but I think of Sid and some kind of pride drives me on.

“Come on, come on.”

I put my hands underneath her skirt and she sucks in her breath because they must be quite cold. She’s not wearing any knicks which is no surprise and I fumble till I find something like a warm pan scourer, Lil’s arms are round me and I’m gritting my teeth and staring over her shoulder towards the string of lights that run across the common. There’s a bit of something going for me down below now, so I grab hold of it and lunge forward until I feel myself secured between her legs. It’s really very disappointing after all I’ve read and heard about it, but at least I’m there. I put my hands behind her arse and start pulling her towards me. Sid should be quite impressed.

“Well,” says Lil, “aren’t you going to put it in?”

“I have put it in!” I gulp.

“You stupid berk. You’ve got it caught under my suspender strap.”

CHAPTER TWO

We return home in silence. At least I’m silent. Sid keeps pissing himself with laughter and has to be left behind to recover. I can hear him wheezing: “her suspender strap, oh my God,” and terrifying people out of their wits. I feel like belting him but I know it won’t do any good and frankly I’m a bit frightened of him anyway.

We live in a semi off Nightingale Lane which is the class street round these parts. In fact Scraggs Road is quite a long way off but my old mum always mentions the two in the same beery breath and the habit has rubbed off on me. Mum is very sensitive about her surroundings and I’ve heard her tell people we live at Wandsworth Common because she thinks it sounds better. I reckon its Balham myself but mum doesn’t want to know about that. She has a photograph of Winston Churchill in the outside toilet so you can see where her sympathies lie. It’s pretty damp out there and poor old Winnie is getting mildew, but when mum gets in there its like Woburn Abbey as far as she’s concerned.

When we lumber into the front room the family are grouped in their usual position of homage to the telly. Dad is dribbling down his collar stud and his hands are thrust protectively down the front of his trousers as if he reckons someone was going to knock off his balls the minute his eyes are closed. As he gets older he gets more and more embarrassing does dad. He must be the world champ at pocket billiards. Mum is sitting there guzzling down ‘After Eights’ and smoking at the same time so the ashtrays are full of fag ends and sticky brown paper spilling onto the floor. Rosie’s position has hardly changed since we went out except that her mouth has dropped open a bit as if her jaw has started melting. Her fingers are still clicking away seemingly independent of the rest of her body. Looking at her I have to confess that our Rosie is going to seed fast.

They are all watching ‘Come Dancing’ and every few seconds the birds make little exclamations of wonder and surprise as another six hundred feet of tuile and sequins hover into sight or Peter West cocks the score up. Dad’s head has lolled back and from the noise he is making it sounds as if his dentures are lodged in his throat.

“Did you have a nice time?” says Mum without taking her eyes off the set. She’d say that to you if you had just come back from World War Three.

“Alright” I say quickly before Sid can get his oar in. “We had a couple of jars at the Highwayman.”

Its amazing but on the mention of the pub Dad’s eyes leap open as if a little alarm bell has rung in his mind.

“Did you bring us back a drop of something?” he says.

“Sorry Dad” says Sid, “we moved out a bit sharpish and it quite slipped my mind.”

“Leave him alone Dad” says Rosie. “That’s a nice little dress isn’t it mum. Eh, Sid, how would you fancy me in that?”

“You’d look bloody nice on top of a Christmas tree” says Sid.

“It’s no good asking him,” goes on Dad, “he can’t even afford a bottle of brown ale for his father-in-law. You won’t get any dresses out of him.”

“I told you, to leave him alone Dad. Sid is saving up for the down payment on one of those new flats up by the common. He hasn’t got the money to keep you in booze.”

“I don’t want champagne and caviar. I just ask to be remembered, that’s all. A bit of common civility – that’s all I ask for. Bugger me, he isn’t bankrupting himself, the rent he’s paying to stay here.”

“Give over, Dad” says Mum. “You’ve already said all that. You know Sid is doing his best.”

“That’s what he tells me” says Dad, who is probably the most boring old git in the world when he puts his mind to it. “I haven’t seen any evidence of it – not even a single solitary bottle of brown ale.”

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” explodes Sid, “I can’t stand any more of this. I’m going to bed. Look, here’s some money. Go and buy your own bloody brown ale.” And he chucks two bob down at dad’s feet and slams out. Immediately everybody starts shouting and it’s all turning into another typical evening at the Lea’s. Rosie throws a tizzie and has to be comforted by Mum and they both turn on Dad while Peter West tells us it all depends on the result of the formation dancing. Dad is in a spot because you can see he wants to pocket the two bob but knows that if he does the women will really start riding him. He solves that one by picking the money up and resting it casually on the arm of his chair as if he was frightened that someone might trip over it. Rosie is ranting about how they both might as well get out because Dad has never liked Sid and Mum is trying to quieten her down, saying things like “ssh, think about the neighbours”.

She’s very neighbour-conscious is Mum. It nearly broke her heart when Mr Ngobla moved in next door with the five little Ngoblas. She’s dead keen that nothing untoward should take place which might make the Ngoblas suspect that they aren’t a great deal less refined than we are. “Is that really his wife?” Mum keeps saying. “I’d never have recognised her. They all look the same to me. No, of course I didn’t mean to give offence. I thought it was one of his – you know – one of his other ones.”

Dad is much more tolerant than Mum. He’s always leaning over the wall and explaining to them that many of our ways must strike them as being a bit strange and that a few years ago we had some pretty primitive customs ourselves. You can see them looking at each other when he’s talking.

Anyway, that’s nothing to do with this evening’s caper which ends with Central London winning by one point and Mum going off to make a cup of Ovaltine. Dad, choosing his moment well, pockets the two bob and shuffles off to bed. Rosie is still snivelling and showing no interest in professional wrestling from the Winter Gardens, Morecambe, which shows how serious things are. I turn the set off and for a few minutes we have to get used to the strange sound of our voices unaccompanied by the background noise of the telly.

“I should have married Rory,” sniffs Rosie, “that would have made Dad happy.”

Rory was a big silent slob who worked in a garage and used to leave greasemarks all over the settee. He and Rosie were very close for a while and it was a union Dad would have smiled upon since Rory’s old man owned the garage. They even went on holiday once. Rory and Rosie I mean, not his old man. A few months after that Rosie faints down at the palais and tongues start wagging backwards and forwards like wedding bells. They’ve got it a bit wrong though, for it’s about that time that Sid rolls up and Rosie falls like a pair of lead knickers. She nips off to see a friend of a friend one evening and comes back looking pale but relieved. A couple of weeks later they’re calling the banns. Rory is very cut up about it and saying how he’s going to smash Sid’s face in, but he never does anything. How much Sid knows about it all I’ve never found out.

“I saw Rory the other day,” I say. “He was asking after you.”

Now this is a complete lie and I don’t know why I say it but I just have the feeling that I might be doing myself a bit of good. Rosie looks really agitated.

“What did he say?”

“Said how about having a drink.”

“What me?”

“No, no. Me.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said fine.”

“Did he say anything else?”

I’m thinking very fast now. Rosie is obviously dead worried that Rory is going to start blabbing his mouth off. She also has a lot of influence over Sid. More than he’d care to let on. This might be what I’m looking for.

“Oh, he started saying there were a few things he’d like to tell Sid. He was a bit pissed, you couldn’t take him seriously.”

“I don’t want him near Sid.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about. He didn’t say he was going to glass him or anything.”

“No, well I still think its better that they don’t meet. Let bygones be bygones.”

“Yes, you’re probably right. Trouble is, Rory was talking about a job up at the garage and you know what Dad’s been like lately. I was thinking of taking it.”

It’s a fact that Dad has had the dead needle with me ever since I got back from Bentworth, and I usually get more of it than Sid. This evening’s little interchange has not been typical.

The reference to the job with Rory is obviously a master-stroke and I can see Rosie wriggling.

“It’s a bit difficult isn’t it,” I go on, “I mean, I’ve got to get a job and the garage seems favourite but I can understand your feelings about Rory. It would be difficult to stop him coming round here.”

“I haven’t got any feelings about Rory” she snaps, “I just don’t want him telling Sid a lot of lies about me.”

‘No, of course not.” I shake my head understandingly and then my face lights up as an idea suddenly comes to me. “I’ve just thought,” I say, “Sid was telling me that the old window cleaning lark was picking up a treat. Perhaps I could go in with him? Keep it in the family and all that. I’ve heard him saying he’s got more work than he can handle.”

I’m holding my breath and crossing my fingers and, by Christ, it works.

“That’s a good idea,” she says. “Why don’t you have a word with him about it?”

“I would but – you know – it’s his business, and what with him living here and me being family, I don’t want him to feel that I’m pushing it too much. You know what I mean? I think it would be much better if you could mention it to him first. Might make things easier with Dad too.” I soon learn that I’m overplaying my hand there.

“Dad can get stuffed,” she says, “he’s always had it in for Sid and now he’s beginning to do alright for himself he’s getting jealous.” He’s not the only one I think.

“Yes, you’re probably right. Well, if you could have a word with Sid and see if there’s anything going, I’d be very grateful, Rosie. I’m supposed to be seeing Rory tomorrow and he was pushing me for an answer so maybe I can say ‘no go’ and warn him off, so to speak.”

“I’ll talk to him tonight,” says Rosie firmly, “it seems a good idea to me, really it does. And if you can, see Rory doesn’t make any fuss – of course he can’t do anything but you know what it’s like.”

“Of course, Rosie, don’t worry yourself. I’ll see you alright. It’ll be a sort of tit for tat won’t it?”

She looks at me a bit hard but I give her my brotherly smile and I don’t think she suspects anything.

A few minutes later she goes to bed and I have my Ovaltine with Mum. It makes me think how I could have used all that malt, milk and eggs and added vitamins earlier in the evening. I can never understand how the stuff is supposed to give you more energy than you know what to do with and yet help you to sleep at the same time. Mum pushes off and I take a quick shufty in the hall stand where Dad keeps all the dirty books he’s ashamed to bring into the house. Things must be bad down at the lost property office where he works because there’s not so much as a censored copy of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ let alone the hard core porn he thrives on. Dad and his mates down at the L.P.O. are on to a good thing because, knowing that no one is ever going to come round and confess to having lost a fully illustrated copy of ‘Spanking through the ages’ they nick everything juicy they can lay their hands on.

My room is at the top of the house; in fact if it was any higher my head would be sticking out of the chimney, and I have to go past Sid and Rosie’s room to get there. Normally, at this time, I would be treated to the sound of creaking springs, but tonight I can hear Rosie rabbiting away and Sid making occasional muffled grunts that sound as if he’s got a pillow over his head. I hope she is getting stuck in on my behalf.

I lie in my bed, naked, and listen to somebody’s wireless playing a few houses away. Or maybe they’re having a party. Now that I don’t need it I’ve got a bloody great hard on and when I think of Silk Blouse, or even Aunty Lil, or any of the millions of birds who must be lying alone in bed and feeling like a bit of the other, I’m bloody near bursting into tears.

When I come down the next morning Sid is sitting there with his hands wrapped round a cup of tea and he’s giving me an old fashioned expression that tells me Rosie has been getting at him.

“Morning” I say agreeably. Sid doesn’t answer.

“You going down the Labour today?” says Mum.

“I went yesterday” I say. “I don’t want to look as if I’m begging.”

“Well, don’t leave it too long, dear, you know what your father is like.”

I help myself to a cup of tea and ask Sid for the sugar. He slides it across very slowly without taking his hand off the bowl. I think Paul Newman did it in ‘Hud’ but I can’t be certain.

“I had a talk with your sister last night,” he says.

“Oh, really.”

“Yes, I thought you’d be surprised.”

“Well, I didn’t know you talked to each other as well.”

“Don’t be cheeky” says Mum.

“Don’t suppose you’ve any idea what we were talking about?” says Sid.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well it was about what we were talking about yesterday.”

“Really? Oh, interesting.”

“Yeah. And to stop us poodling on like this any longer I might as well tell you that I’ve agreed to give it a go.”

“Great!” I say. “Ta very much. You won’t regret it.”

“Um, we’ll see.”

“What you on about?” says Mum.

“Sid and I are going into business” I say. “I’m going to be a window cleaner, Mum.”

“That’s nice, dear. Do you think he’ll be alright, Sid?”

“No” says Sid bitterly, “but you don’t expect much from a brother-in-law do you?”

“Now Sid,” says Mum, all reproachful, “that’s not very nice. That’s not the right spirit to work together in.”

“It’s alright, Mum,” I say, “he’s only joking, aren’t you, Sid?” Sid can’t bring himself to say ‘yes’ but he nods slowly.

“Today, you can do your Mum’s windows” he says, “It’ll be good practice for you. Tomorrow we’ll be out on the road.” He makes it sound like we’re driving ten thousand head of prime beef down to Texas.

“That’s a good idea” says Mum, “I was wondering when someone was going to get round to my windows.”

Sid gives me a quick demo and it looks dead simple. There’s a squeegee, or a bit of rubber on a handle, that you sweep backwards and forwards over a wet window and that seems to do the trick in no time. With that you use the classical chamois and finish off with a piece of rough cotton cloth that won’t fluff up called a scrim. It seems like money for old rope and I can’t wait to get down to it. Sid pushes off to keep his customers satisfied and I attack Mum’s windows. Attack is the right word. In no time at all I’ve put my arm through one of them and I’m soaked from head to foot. The squeegee is a sight more difficult to use than it looks. Whatever I do I end up with dirty lines going either up or down the window and it gets very de-chuffing rearranging them like some bloody kid’s toy. When I get inside it’s even worse because the whole of the outside of the windows look as if I’ve been trying to grow hair on them. That’s what comes of wearing the woolly cardigan Rosie knitted for me last Christmas. I get out and give the windows a shave and then I find that there are bits that are still dirty which you can only see from the inside. I’m popping in and out like a bleeding cuckoo in a clock that’s stuck at midnight. Inside at last and I drop my dirty chamois in the goldfish tank and stand on Mum’s favourite ashtray which she brought back the year they went to the Costa Brava. By the time I’ve cleaned up and replaced the broken window-pane – twice – it’s dinner time and I’m dead knackered.

Sid drops in to see how I’m getting on and you can tell that he’s not very impressed.

“At this rate,” he says, “you might do three a day – with overtime.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s a knack. It’ll come.”

Sid shakes his head. “What with that and your lousy sense of direction” he says. “I’ll be surprised if you last the first day.”

But he’s wrong. It doesn’t go badly at all. Sid starts me off at the end of a street and gives me a few addresses and though I’m dead nervous, I soon begin to get the hang of it. I drop my scrim down the basement a couple of times but there are no major cock-ups and nobody says anything. A few of them ask where Sid is but on the whole it’s all very quiet. In fact, if I wasn’t so busy trying to concentrate on the job I’d be a bit choked. After what Sid has led me to believe, these dead-eyed old bags look about as sexed up as Mum’s Tom after he had his operation. Curlers, hairnets, turbans, carpet slippers, housecoats like puke-stained eiderdowns – I was expecting Gina Lollamathingymebobs to pull me on to her dumplings the minute I pressed the front door bell. Perhaps Sid was having me on or perhaps, and this is much more likely, its some crafty scheme to con me into the business for next to nothing. Sid hasn’t been over-talkative about the money side of the deal. I do get one spot of tea but the cup has a tide-mark on it like a coal miner’s bath and I reckon the slag that gives it to me has the same. Perhaps Sid has purposely given me a list of no-hopers after my performance, or lack of it, with Aunt Lil.

This is a subject I tax him with when we’re having a pint and a wad in the boozer at lunch time but he is quick to deny it.

“Oh no,” he says, “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. No, it’s the school holidays, you see. That always calms them down a bit. You wait till the little bleeders go back – then you’ll be amongst it.”

I had to admit that a lot of kids have been hanging around asking stupid questions and generally getting in the way, so perhaps he’s on the level.

“Don’t worry,” he goes on, “I’ve got a little treat lined up for this afternoon. Very good friend of mine, she’ll see you alright.”

“Not Aunt Lil?” I say nervously.

“No. You won’t be seeing her again. Not if she sees you first.”

“Who is it then?”

“Nobody you know. Sup up and we’ll have a game of darts.”

And that’s all he will say. Of course it preys on my mind and I’m playing like a wanker. Two pints it costs me before Sid rubs the back of his hand against his mouth and looks at his watch.

“Right, off we go.”

It’s overcast and a bit sultry as we cycle along and I envy the way Sid handles his bike. With the ladder on my shoulders I’m wobbling all over the shop.

“Where are we going now, Sid?”

“You’ll see.”

We’re round the back of Balham Hill and I’m all of a tingle. What is Sid up to? We cycle past a row of lock-up garages and Sid hops off his bike and swings up his ladder all in one easy movement. I put both feet down and drop mine in the gutter.

“Clumsy berk,” says Sid.

Still with the ladder on his shoulder, he pushes open the gate of one of the semis and does a quick “dum, de, dum dum,” on the doorknocker before running his fingers through his hair and sucking his teeth. The door opens fast and there’s a bird of about thirty, standing there, wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a miniskirt. She has a large charm bracelet round her wrist and high-heeled furry slippers that make her look as if she’s balanced on a couple of rabbits. She has a bright-eyed cheerful face and it looks more cheerful when she sees Sid.

“Hallo Sid,” she says, and I can tell by her expression that he doesn’t have to threaten her with a gun to get through the front door. Her eyes wander over him as if trying to remember bits that she particularly likes and she steps to one side to let him in. Then she sees me.

“That’s my new mate, Timmy,” says Sid without turning his head.

The bird’s face clouds over for a moment and then snaps back to normal.

She gives me the all-over eyeball treatment and I feel as if I’ve been fed into an IBM machine.

“I never reckoned you needed any help, Sid,” she says drily.

“Very kind of you, Viv,” says Sid with dignity, “but you know how it is. You can’t stand still nowadays, otherwise you’re going backwards. If you’re going to get anywhere you’ve got to expand.”

“Fascinating” says Viv. “Well, did you just come round to tell me how it was going to be you and Charlie Clore from now on, or was there something else?”

“We’ve come round to do your windows, of course,” says Sid. “I just thought I’d introduce you to Timmy.”

“Very nice. Hello Timmy.” She half drops her eyelids as she smiles at me and it’s very effective.

“Timmy hasn’t had much experience—”

“—oh dear.”

“—and I’m keeping an eye on him for the first few days.”

“You always were thoughtful, Sid.”

“Yes, well, I’ll leave him to get on with it then.”

“So I won’t be seeing you again, Sid?”

“Oh yes. I’ll be around I expect, you know. I just thought that—”

Sid’s voice tails away.

“Yes?”

“Well, you know.”

“Yes.”

Viv smiles an understanding smile which is obviously aimed at adding to Sid’s discomforture – and succeeds. Seeing that things are getting sticky I decide to take the initiative and step forward smartish only to be brought to a sudden halt in the doorway.

“You don’t use that inside the house do you?” says Viv, “the rooms are quite small, you know.”

I mumble something and take the ladder off my shoulder. Stupid berk!

“Well, ta ta,” says Viv cheerfully.

“Ta ta, Viv! Be seeing you. I’ll see you later.”

“O.K. Sid,” I say and the door closes behind me.

“In there,” says Viv smoothing down her skirt, and her hands don’t have a lot of work to do, I can tell you.

“In there?”

“That’s right.”

Something about the way she says it makes me feel there’s going to be a bloody great four-poster behind the door but maybe it’s my imagination. I push the door open and I’m in the kitchen. She notices my surprise.

“You want to fill your bucket, don’t you.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

She watches me do it and starts fanning herself with the Daily Mirror.

“Bloody humid, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t stand this kind of weather. Makes me feel sort of itchy all over.”

“How long have you been with Sid?”

“On the window cleaning? Only today, but I’ve known him for a long time. He’s married to my sister.”

I wonder if I should have said that but Viv doesn’t seem over-worried.

“So you’re all living with your Mum and Dad?”

“That’s right.”

All this time she’s talking her eyes are wandering over me and there’s a sort of amused expression on her face. You don’t feel that she’s interested in any of the answers she gets but that she’s just trying to unwind you with conversation.

“I don’t think you’ll get any more in there.”

I turn off the tap and empty some of the water out of the bucket so it manages to spill across the floor.

“Don’t worry,” she squeezes me just above the bicep. “You get on with the windows. I’ll clear this up. You’re a strong boy, aren’t you?” She fans herself with the paper so her tits wobble.

“It’s so muggy, I’m going to take a bath. See if that doesn’t do any good. The bathroom curtains are in the wash, so don’t take any liberties, will you?” She reaches down underneath the sink and I practically need another pair of hands to keep the ones I’ve got from grabbing her. Talk about a nice arse. It shouldn’t be allowed, it’s so nice. Once you see that, all other arses are just bums.

I grab my bucket and get outside breathing deep. I do the downstairs windows and am just getting the ladder up and my blood pressure down, when I hear a tapping above my head. It really is very sultry now and the sky looks as if it’s going to piss down with rain at any moment. I’ve seen enough flicks to know that when nature starts rearing it’s ugly head someone usually gets their end away and I hope the signs do not lie. I am round the side of the house and the window from which the tapping is coming is clearly the bathroom as there is a stream of drain-bound soapy water splashing over my boots. Perhaps she has locked herself in and needs help. The very thought has me whipping up the ladder like a clockwork monkey. Viv is pressed against the window which should be alright because the lower half is frosted glass. However, she is pressed so tight that the first thing I see is a nice bit of milky white tit with a flattened nipple in the middle of it. She moves back when she follows my eyes.

“You alright?” I say.

“I haven’t had any complaints.”

“No. I mean I thought you’d, oh, it doesn’t matter.”

“I wondered if you’d like a cup of tea?”

“Yes, that would be nice. I’ve just got the front to do and I’ll pop in.”

“Right, I’ll put the kettle on.”

The inside of the window is steamed up, and there’s a cracking niff of perfume bashing my hooter. She needn’t have bothered because I’d go for her if she had a spoonful of dripping behind the ears – or would I? I can hardly finish the windows for thinking about it and three times I drop my scrim in the same flower bed and have to rinse the bastard out. I’ll never have a better chance to score and yet that very fact is making my old man feel like it would have difficulty making a dent in a plate of cold soup. It’s like having an empty goal to shoot at and knowing you’re going to bang the ball eight yards over the bar. For a second, I even considered pissing off and leaving the whole thing for another time but I know I’ve got to go through with it – or try to.

Taking another of my deep breaths and feeling absolutely certain that my old man has dropped off and got lodged half way down one of my trouser legs, I rap on the back door and wait for Viv’s husband to open it.

“It’s open” she calls and when I go in she’s just taking the kettle off. She’s still wearing the slippers but on the rest of her is one of those big padded housecoats with frills around the hem. It is tied tightly around the waist but somehow manages to spring apart up top so I get another eyeful of her bristols.

“Do you like it?” she says, and for a moment I’m on the point of telling her I like both of them. Then I realise she means the housecoat.

“Very nice,” I gulp. “Er, it makes you look very sexy.”

“You don’t sound very convinced,” she says. “How do you like it, hot and strong like Sid?”

She has this habit of suddenly switching from one subject to another which throws me a bit.

“You mean the tea?”

“What else?”

“Anyway it comes, I’m not fussy.”

“Why don’t you sit down. You make me nervous standing there.”

I sit down and find myself playing with the sugar bowl and trying to think of something to say.

“I think we’re going to have a storm,” I manage eventually.

“Shouldn’t wonder,” she puts a cup of tea in front of me and sits down on the other side of the table.

“Do you smoke?”

“No thanks.”

She lights a fag and blows a puff of smoke at me as if from a peashooter. She’s got that amused, distant look on her face again.

“Cheer up.”

That’s always a disastrous thing to say to me because it’s like telling a bloke you can see his trousers are falling down.

“I’m very happy” I say and listen to the silence. If only I could be like Sid. He’d be chatting her up and dancing about so the whole thing would be like ‘Spring in Park Lane’. The same though obviously occurs to Viv because she rests her head in her hand and gazes at me sadly.

“You’re a quiet one compared to Sid,” she says.

“Still waters.”

“Pardon?”

“Still waters run deep.”

“Oh, I see. You’re a deep one, are you?”

“Well, I don’t know about that—”

She gets up and comes behind me resting her fingers lightly on my shoulders for a second.

“How deep do you go?”

“What do you—”

“—It doesn’t matter. Have another cup of tea.”

She reaches down past me and her warm arm brushes against the side of my face. Now’s your chance, I shout to myself but by the time I get around to moving, she’s over the other side of the kitchen filling the teapot.

“There you are,” she says, “a nice cup of cha. Do you fancy a biscuit?”

“Yes, very nice. Ta.”

She couldn’t be more obliging but she’s obviously waiting for me to do something. So am I.

“Chocolate finger or a ginger nut?”

“Ginger nut, please.”

“I won’t join you because I have to watch my figure.”

“I should think you have a lot of company.” That’s not bad and I can see it goes down well.

“Cheeky. No, its alright for an old married woman, I suppose, but I have to work at it.”

“What does your old man do—” I say very casual.

“Oh, he’s in the navy. In Singapore at the moment, lucky basket. I can just imagine what he’s up to.”

I’m glad there are a few thousand miles between us.

“How long is he away for?”

“Oh, months at a time. Why, are you thinking of moving in?”

“It’s an idea.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. I know some blokes who would jump at the chance.”

I would jump at it too if I wasn’t such a stupid tongue-tied twat. I can listen to myself like some gormless berk you overhear on the bus and feel sorry for, but I can’t get off my arse and tell her I want to fuck her. I feel it so badly I’m nearly crying but it’s stuck inside me and I don’t think anything is going to bring it out. Now, I can’t think of a thing to say. Not a single bloody little word. I’m sitting there concentrating and I know my face is setting as if its in a jelly mould. I’ve got to get out. The whole thing was a stupid mistake. Its much better if you stick to thinking about it. I stand up fast and my knee jars the tea cup across the table.

“Well—” And then it rains. It doesn’t just rain, it explodes. One moment there’s nothing and then the water is hitting the ground like bullets. One moment Viv is looking at me startled the next our eyes are pulled towards the window. Its frightening – and exciting. Watching it I forget my tensions and when she struggles to close the top window I help her and our bodies are touching and the rain’s splashing all over our faces. I don’t know whether she starts kissing me first or it’s the other way round but it seems like the most natural thing in the world and when I feel her beautiful soft mouth against mine I want to come, it’s so fantastic. Her housecoat falls open and I pull her down on the floor knocking over the garbage bucket as we go. All the rubbish spills out and for some reason I find myself looking at a tin which says ‘Honest Katkins – a satisfied cat or your money back’. But not for long. Viv is coming at me like eight drunken Irishmen locked in the ladies’ and she tears at my fly like it’s the way out of a burning building.

“Get it in, get it in!” she hollers and I’m struggling with my skin tight jeans in a graveyard of potato peelings. I tear my boots off with my feet practically still in them and she’s plucking the buttons off my shirt as if she’s shelling peas. Talk about ‘Beat the Clock’. At last I get my jeans off and she grabs my cock like it’s a lifebelt and she’s going down for the third time.

“Come here,” she howls, and I’m so twitched up I nearly do – on the spot. Once she’s got her hands on you you’d be a fool to try and resist and I’m inside her faster than a pouf on a choirboys outing. Then she really starts. If I didn’t know I’d think she’d just plugged herself into the electrical circuit. I’m not complaining mind you, but it’s all a bit overpowering for me considering it’s my first time and I soon realise that things are getting out of control.

“Yowee,” I howl and suddenly its like going over a bump on a toboggan incredibly fast. Everything speeds up and I hear myself shouting as if from the other end of a long corridor.

“Thank you, thank you,” I sob, “you’re marvellous, fantastic—”

Viv moves her head to one side and squints down my body.

“You’ve cut your heel,” she says, ‘We’d better put something on it before you bleed all over the mat.”

CHAPTER THREE

When I leave Mrs. Stanmore’s – that was Viv’s name because I saw an envelope with her address and a foreign stamp on it in the kitchen – I feel about a hundred feet tall. I’ve scored at last and I want to rush off and tell everybody about it. I am a bit disappointed that Viv seems so unaffected and is thumbing through the T.V. Times when I leave but you can’t have everything. The main thing was that I’ve got my end away, and on my first day too. I rolled my eyes at all the girls I passed and wonder if they knew what they are missing. And a married woman too. She must have been on the pill – or something. How should I tell Sid? For no reason that I can think of I terrify everybody waiting for a bus outside Balham Station by shouting ‘Up the Blues!’ and race myself home.

But I don’t have to tell Sid. A couple of hours later he comes in and chucks himself down in front of the telly. Mum was getting tea and Rosie is washing her hair. Dad is presumably down at the Linnet explaining to those who haven’t heard it before how he won the Second World War.

“How’s it go?” I say waiting for him to ask the same question.

“Much as usual. I brought your ladder back.”

That takes the wind out of my sails. Sid grins.

“Yeah, you start leaving those all over the place and its going to get expensive.”

“Sorry Sid, my mind just went blank.”

“Only just?”

I try and smile but I don’t really feel like it. What did Sid go back for? I don’t have to wait long to find out.

“Viv told me you had a little tussle. Very little I believe, You’ll have to do better than that with Viv, she’s a very greedy girl.”

It occurs to me that Sid has secretly been a bit jealous once he’s handed over his bird and hopped back smartish to see that everything is alright. His swagger suggests that he has been reassured that he is still Number One in the farm yard. Lucky old Viv. She’ll really be looking up when we take on a few partners. I can’t help feeling a bit choked about it but at the same time the fact that Sid might have been worried gives me confidence. I’ve never known him show any signs of flapping before.

“She didn’t seem overimpressed with you if you must know.” I lie.

Sid goes scarlet. “What did she say?”

“Oh, nothing really. It’s not worth talking about.”

“Go on. What did she say?”

“Well, she said – oh, no. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Sid.”

“She didn’t say anything. You’re lying.”

“That’s right Sid. I was just having a little joke.”

“She’s never complained to me.”

“No, of course not.”

Poor Sid. You can see him racking his mind to think of every single time he’s had it away with her.

“She said I was the best poke she’d ever had.”

“Well, there you are.”

“What did she say?”

“I told you Sid. It was nothing really.”

Sid is starting to speak again when Mum comes in with our tea.

“What you got lined up for me tomorrow?” I says to him all innocent like.

“You can get stuffed,” he snarls, and storms out, nearly knocking over Mum’s tray.

“What’s the matter with him,” she says. “You two haven’t been quarrelling have you? Not when you’ve only just started together. Oh, dear, that’s not very nice is it?”

“It’s alright Mum,” I say loud enough for Sid to hear before the front door closes, “he’s strained his groin and I was telling him to look after himself.”

That’s the last bit of spare I get from Sid and for the next few weeks our relationship is dead official. Every morning he gives me a list of addresses and tells me the area he wants me to cover and off we cycle in opposite directions.

My little adventure with Viv has totally changed my approach to women and I’m now a different person. It’s like learning to ride a bike. Once you find you can stay up there’s no holding you. In fact, looking back I think I overdid it a bit. I was all straining biceps and too-tight T-shirts; whistling through clenched teeth and bouncing about like the bloke who takes your money on the Giant Whip. I must have looked like the cover of ‘Butch Male’. Not that I didn’t realise there was room for improvement. I had sensed that Viv went off the boil pretty quickly, before Sid started riding me, and it was easy to tie this in with the fact that I’d been in and out of her faster than the Pope mistaking the local Synagogue for the Gents.

I went down the Junction and bought a book about it from one of those shops that you can never look in the window of without someone appearing beside you. I had exactly the right money and I threw it down and snatched up the book before the wet-lipped old pouf behind the counter had finished leering, “Do you need any other personal requisites?” at me.

It’s very interesting reading and I’m full of things I didn’t know, like birds taking longer to get warmed up than fellows. It occurs to me that if Viv was just getting into her stride she’d bloody kill you once she got going. Anyhow, I get the message that I’m supposed to stick around a bit longer and in this connection there is an interesting passage on something called ‘carezza’. With this you think about a subject totally unrelated to what you’re doing so you don’t boil over. In other words if you think you’re going to come, you immediately start concentrating on your grandmother’s budgerigar. It seems alright to me as long as you have a wide range of things to think about. I mean, I wouldn’t fancy getting a hard on every time I saw grandma’s budgie.

There’s also a lot of other stuff in the book which they say, to my relief, is quite normal. I had always thought I was kinky just thinking about it. At the back are some illustrations which are sealed so you can’t open them till you buy the book. I tear the pages open hungrily but there are only a couple of pictures of cocks and fannies with all their working parts and the posh names for them. Vas Deferens. It sounds like a pop singer.

Now, as you can imagine, all this fruity reading plus the taste I’ve had from Viv is making me keener than a new razor blade and I’m really keeping my eyes open. I don’t have long to wait.

“Don’t hang about out there,” she says, “You’ll catch your death.”

It’s turned a bit colder now and it’s a day that reminds you of what winter is going to be like. I’m standing under the only tree in her little back garden and I’m still getting wet.

“Rain is a nuisance isn’t it?” she says. “If it had started earlier I could have saved myself a few bob – I’m only joking of course.”

She touches my arm quickly to prove she means it. It’s a good sign that arm touching. Viv did it too. It’s like squeezing fruit in a greengrocers. It shows interest and concern. A desire to make contact.

“You’d better have a cup of tea now you’re here, hadn’t you? You know I’m quite glad you showed up. I’d been meaning to do something about the windows for ages. They’re a disgrace, aren’t they?”

She wasn’t one of the regulars on Sid’s list but a bird who had come darting out as I cycled past. A bit on the tall side but with big eyes and good legs. I like her.

“But it’s one of those things, like having the chimney swept. Somehow you can never bring yourself to do anything about it until the grate is full of soot.”

She’s rabbiting on as if she’s really glad to have someone to talk to. I suppose it must get a bit lonely when your old man is away all day and the children are at school and it’s pissing down with rain. The boozer’s shut and you’d get a few raised eyebrows if you went in there on your tod. You might go to the flicks but that’s like a morgue in the afternoon and some nutcase will probably start trying to touch you up. A cup of tea with one of your mates and a natter about the kids is the most you can look forward to. It’s not much is it?

“Sorry the place is in such a mess but I usually do the washing today. Could go down the launderette, I suppose, but I don’t fancy using the same machine as some coon. You know what I mean?”

It’s funny how after the first time I’m so relaxed. I’m letting her do all the talking and I’m thinking about her – not me.

“Still takes all sorts doesn’t it,” I say. “My old man can’t stand the Irish. Always on about the night they chucked one through the window of the Linnet. He’s dead funny like that.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’ve nothing against them. There’s good and bad on all sides. It’s just that we got a few hard nuts round here.”

“Oh yeah, I’m not blaming you. I know what it’s like.”

We sip our tea and I look at her tits and don’t try to hide it. She notices because she sits back in her chair and sticks her chest out. There’s nothing there to give Sabrina a complex but at least she’s putting the goods on show.

“Still,” she says, “you don’t have to worry do you? Big, strong fellow like you knows how to look after himself.”

“Well, I try and keep fit. I play a bit of football and rugby netball.” I say modestly.

“I wish you could get my old man up there,” she says. “He’s gone off something rotten in the last few years. He used to be mad keen on sport but now he can hardly find the strength to turn the wrestling on.”

“Really,” I says, quite liking the way things are going, “that’s a pity. Why do you reckon that is?”

“Dunno. I think its the job. He works down the power station. I think the heat takes it out of him. He’s put on a lot of weight too.”

“You notice a difference?”

“Oh yeah, I notice a difference alright” she raises her eyes to the ceiling which is all flaky and curly like white wood shavings.

“I notice a difference. Look” – she glances round as if expecting someone else to be listening, “I shouldn’t be saying this to you, a perfect stranger—”

“I’m not perfect” I say.

“No, well – oh yes – very funny – well, where was I? – yes – our, what you might call, private life is non-existent these days.”

“You mean—”

“—Exactly. He just doesn’t want to know. Now, I read an article in the paper somewhere that most people do it at least twice a week – are you married?”

“No.”

“Well, twice a week that’s what they said.”

“Did you show the article to your husband?”

“That’s exactly what I did, I said ‘Arthur, you used to be quite a boy once. Now have a read of this’.”

“And did he?”

“Oh yeah! He glanced at it and then he threw it on the fire and said ‘I don’t want to know about all that rubbish, What’s on the telly?’”

“That’s diabolical, I mean its not as if you’re unattractive.”

“I’m not asking for compliments.”

“I wouldn’t say it unless I meant it. I think you’re a very handsome woman. Your old man doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

I can see she laps this up and it’s the first real lesson I learn about chatting up birds. If you’re stuck for something to say tell them they’re beautiful. They’ll always believe that. Even if you’re stuck with some right old slag, find something about her that doesn’t turn your stomach and say “Has anybody ever told you what smashing eyebrows you have?” or “Doreen, I never noticed your ears before, they’re beautiful”. Chances are they’ll be peering at themselves in the mirror for the rest of the evening and saying “He’s right, he’s right”, and they’ll be eternally grateful – or, at least if not eternally, you stand a good chance of getting your end away in the bus shelter on the way home.

Another thing to remember about married birds is that none of them reckon their old men appreciate them. Tell them this and you’re backing up their own judgement as well as flattering them, which can’t be bad. Anyhow, in this particular situation the bird’s hand is shaking with excitement as she pours me another cup of tea and I’m sitting back feeling I’ll soon have to start taking ugly pills.

“You know who you remind me of?” she says all intense like.

“Boris Karloff?” I say, modestly.

“No, stupid. Jackie Pallo.”

Jackie Pallo. I don’t reckon that very much. “Nobody’s ever told me that before.”

“It’s your body.”

“You haven’t seen my body.”

“I’ve seen enough of it to tell.”

“I don’t look a bit like Jackie Pallo.”

“Oh yes you do, look, I’ll show you.”

She pops out and comes back with a bloody great scrap book of male pin-ups going right back to people like Dana Andrews and John Payne. They must have been stuck in when she was a kid. Most of the up-to-date ones are telly stars and she certainly goes for beefcake. There’s hardly a bloke with a stitch on above the waist.

“There you are.” She points to a photo of Pallo standing on some poor berk’s chest with his hands clasped above his head.

“I don’t see it.”

“You must do.”

“I’m not very flattered.”

“You should be, I think he’s smashing. I go all – oh, I don’t know – when I see him.”

“Well, I am flattered then.” I puts my hand on her thigh and gives it a squeeze. She doesn’t touch my hand but looks right past me and her bottom lip starts trembling. I take my hand away.

“I’ve got another one somewhere. I think it’s upstairs.”

“I’ll help you look for it.”

“It’s a bit of a mess up there.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I think it may be in the kids room.”

“Let’s look there.”

She’s going up the dark stairs ahead of me and I can hear her stockings swishing against each other. Round the bend on the landing and I can see the line of her bra and the bulge of its clip against the small of her back. I’m getting so worked up I can hardly wait to get through the door.

“Now, where did I see it?”

It’s a small room with two kids’ beds close together and the walls covered with pictures of Chelsea Footballers flashing their muscles and looking sickeningly confident. I know how they feel.

She drops on one knee, between the beds, and I’m down there with her like her own shadow. She starts rummaging around a pile of comics and when she turns round I’m right on top of her. I try and kiss her but she pulls back and puts her hand on my arm.

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to kiss you.”

“Oh, you mustn’t do that.”

This is another little performance you have to learn to get used to. A bird will sandbag you and drag you back to her place but once she gets you there she’ll suddenly start acting all coy and saying things like “do you really think this is a good idea?” or “you just want me for my body”. Bloody stupid, unnatural things that make you want to say “alright then” and piss off. But of course you never do because by that time you’d put a ring on her finger to get your end away.

“Oh, let me kiss you,” I bleat, “don’t be cruel. I think you’re smashing, I really do.”

She makes a bit of token resistance and then comes down on both knees to make herself more comfortable.

“Suppose my old man were to come home?” The minute she says that I know I’m in like Flynn.

“He couldn’t say anything could he. He neglects you.”

I put my hand up her skirt and start kissing her again. She’s good at that and allows herself a couple of satisfied moans.

“You can’t stay long, the kids will be back from school soon.”

We struggle onto the bed and I start fiddling for the hook on her skirt.

“Close the door first.”

I get up and close the door and she’s lying on the bed with her skirt up round her waist, and her face flushed. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start taking my shoes off. There’s a hair pin hanging down by her ear so I take it out and kiss her very gently.

One thing to remember when you’re undressing in front of a bird is to do it in the right order. Get your shoes and socks off first, then your shirt, trousers and pants, if you wear any. I can never understand all those jokers in dirty photographs running around with just a pair of socks on. Always seems very crude to me.

Anyway, I go through this palava until the bird, whose name I haven’t yet discovered, gets a spot of the full frontals without having to turn her telly on.

“He’s very naughty,” she says stretching out her hand, and it’s a fact that I’m standing to attention better than the brigade of guards. I settle down beside her and after a bit more cuddling, because I’ve been reading my book, remember? I unhook her skirt and start to pull it off.

“There’s a zip,” she says. I find that and we’re off again.

So are her pants and tights. I’m starting to unbutton her blouse when she grabs my hand.

“That’s enough,” she says.

It’s a funny thing that, and its one of the differences I find between upper and working class birds. Your upper class bints likes nothing better than to tear all her clothes off and run around starkers showing you everything she’s got, and proud of it, but most of the stuff I tumble with only take their knickers off. Flashers like Viv are the exception. I don’t know whether it’s because working class families live on top of each other and have to be more careful in case the kids suddenly come bouncing in, or because they reckon the whole thing is a bit dirty and least seen soonest mended. Anyway, this bird is dead typical.

“Go on,” I say, “you’ve got lovely breasts.” Notice I don’t say tits. It’s because I’m trying to be romantic and ‘breasts’ seem the right word to use, but I have since learnt that with an upper class bird you’d be much better telling her she had a nice pair of bristols. They go for it if you talk dirty to them, whilst a bird like this one will go spare if you say ‘cock’ when you’re on the job.

“No,” she says, “you mustn’t do that. You just be nice to me, that’s all.” I know what she means so I drop my hands down below and rummage around in her tea-cosy. It’s as slippery as a snail’s front doorstep and twice as inviting. The very feel of it sends electric currents racing round my old man.

“What’s that?” she says suddenly.

“It’s my hand.” I says.

“No, I meant that noise.”

She half sits up and I stop quivering with excitement and start trembling with fear. Our ears strain into the distance and I hold my breath waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stair.

“I can’t hear anything.”

“No, it must have been my imagination. The house creaks a bit sometimes.”

She drops back again and pulls me down to her.

“Sorry, put him in now. I can feel he’s ready for it.”

The habit of talking about my prick as if its something I take round with me on the end of a lead does not appeal very much but I don’t think this is the moment to point it out to her. She’s stroking me up a treat and she must use the right washing-up liquid because her fingers are soft as putty. I don’t need any more urging and I’m inside her easy as wanking. It’s all very pleasurable except for the creaking bed springs and the feeling that I’m going to come any moment. In fact the bedsprings are a help, because I’m so busy imagining someone creeping upstairs under cover of the noise that it quite takes my mind off sex which in turn stops me from boiling over. It’s a kind of enforced carezza but it can’t last for ever because the bird is becoming increasingly noisy and violent which excites me out of my tiny mind.

“Oh no – yes – go on, go on! oh no – stop! no – I can’t – oh yes, no!”

She rabbits on like this so if you was really trying to do what she wanted you’d go round the twist or jack it in in disgust. Experience has taught me that when a bint is sexed up you might as well forget anything she says. You’re better off just wacking away till you hear the old death rattle – if you stop that’s always wrong.

But I’m skating on a bit. On this particular afternoon in late September it’s me who’s hanging on for dear life. Like the book says I’m trying to think of everything under the sun to stop myself from coming – hobnail boots, Jimmy Young, bulldogs, old gramophone records – but it’s no good. I’m just on the point of surrendering to my baser emotions when the bird starts tugging at my arse as if she’s trying to get the whole bloody lot of me inside her and starts hollering ‘Now, now, now!’ Well that’s it. I accept her advice gratefully and a few moments later I’m lying on top of her damp blouse and struggling to get my breath back. It’s dead ungrateful, I know, but the moment I’ve come I wish I could press a button and make her disappear. I just don’t want to know anymore. It seems bloody ridiculous that I could have been so worked up just a few minutes before. Beneath me the bird gives a little wriggle to tell me that she wants me to move and when I don’t carefully eases herself into a more comfortable position.

“What’s your name?” she says softly.

“Timmy.”

“That was nice, Timmy. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.”

“Yeah, good.” I give her a little squeeze while I’m wondering how to get out. With Viv it was easy. I might have been in the Casualty Department of a hospital. She just gave me a plaster for my foot, we dressed and I went home. Dead simple. As it happens my latest turns out to be less of a problem than I imagined – at least in one way.

“My name’s Dorothy – what’s that?”

This time there is something. The front door slamming and the sound of feet pounding up the stairs – two of them. Kids voices shouting the odds.

“Oh yes I did!”

“You bleedin’ didn’t!”

“Get out,” hisses the bird. She’s off the bed like its white hot, and whipping on her skirt. She rolls up her drawers and tights and throws them on top of the cupboard. Quick thinking. I’d be impressed if I had time.

“Stop them,” I whisper while I fumble for my socks. She’s so red she might burst. She takes one look at me which hasn’t got an ounce of expression in it and goes out fast. I can sympathise with her. It can’t be much fun to have your kids find you on the job with the window cleaner.

“Look at that carpet. How many times have I told you to wipe your feet before you go upstairs.”

“But Mum—”

“Don’t ‘but Mum’ me. You can go right back and do it properly.” I hear her voice and the squeaks of protest descending to the hall. Now, how am I going to get out? I’ll have to pretend that I was cleaning the windows. I haven’t brought any of my stuff up with me so what am I going to use? In a flash of inspiration I remember Dorothy’s knicks and tights. I nip up on one of the beds and fish them down from the top of the wardrobe. There’s a toilet next door so I dip them in that and give the windows a quick rub over. Luckily it’s stopped raining about an hour before so it doesn’t look too stupid. There’s a nosy old bag opposite peering at me round a curtain but I don’t worry about her over much. She can’t possibly see what I’m cleaning the window with.

Downstairs and I shove the undies in the bottom of my bucket and smile at the kids. They look at me a bit old-fashioned though it’s probably my imagination.

“That’s it, lady, fifteen bob if you don’t mind. Thank you very much. Ta ta, be seeing you.”

I hop on my bike and start cycling down the street with the funny feeling that none of it really happened. Round the corner in front of me a bloke of about thirty-five is crossing the road. His hair is beginning to go and there’s a dead fag gummed between his lips. He’s fat and scruffy and looks like about ten million other blokes who have got one of their mates to clock out for them and shuffled home early for Bird’s Eye fish fingers and an evening in front of the telly. I know that if I turn round and watch he’ll go into the house I’ve just left. But I don’t turn round.

CHAPTER FOUR

“What’s this then?” says Mum.

She’s got a packet of ants’ eggs in one hand and Dorothy’s undies in the other. Like a good mum she’s started to hang my rags out over the cooker – nosy old bag. Sid nearly chokes on his eggs and bacon.

“Didn’t you know, Mum,” he says, “Timmy’s the demon knicker nicker of Clapham. Your smalls aren’t safe on the line when he’s about. Don’t you ever read the Sundays?”

From the look on Mum’s face I can see she half believes him.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” she says, shaking the stuff under my nose.

“It’s just a joke, Mum.” I start to say desperately, “I put them there myself for a laugh.”

“You want to see under his bed, Mum,” goes on Sid, “there’s two suitcases full of the stuff. I’ve seen him at night, sitting up and counting it. He keeps a list of it all in a little notebook.”

“Timmy!” I can see he’s got Rosie going now. It makes you realise what your own family really thinks of you. They’d probably believe Sid if he said I had a couple of bodies under my bed. Luckily, Dad is upstairs with one of his turns – that’s when he turns over and says ‘fuck it, I’m going to stay in bed all day’. He’d probably run out and start yelling for a copper if he was here.

Sid holds an imaginary microphone under my hooter and puts on his lah-di-dah voice.

“Tell me, Mr Lea, when did you first experience the uncontrollable urge to steal ladies’ underwear that has made you the terror of S.W.12?”

“About the same time as I felt the uncontrollable urge to shove this bread knife up your bracket,” I say. “For God’s sake, Mum, you don’t believe him, do you?”

“Where did you get those panties from then?” says Rosie.

“I bought them—”

“—he’s dead kinky, too,” interrupts Sid, “Go on, take your trousers off and show them what you’re wearing. You never seen such—”

“Shut up!” I yell. “I bought them for a girl friend but they were the wrong size, so I thought I’d have a little joke.”

“You haven’t got a girl friend,” says Rosie.

“That’s all you know. I don’t tell you everything.”

“She must be a funny shape if they don’t fit her,” says Sid, holding up the knickers. “You could get into them, couldn’t you Rosie?”

“Don’t talk dirty and put those things down.” says Mum. “What I can’t see is why you didn’t take them back and change them if they was the wrong size?”

With everybody in the family a bleeding Perry Mason, I might as well give up. I should have told them that Sid put them there to start off with.

“They wouldn’t take them back because they were worn,” I say.

“You mean she had to put them on before she found they wouldn’t fit?” says Rosie.

“No, he did,” said Sid.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“I should hope not,” says Mum, “the very idea.”

It’s amazing how they go on treating you like a kid, isn’t it?

“It all sounds very fishy to me,” says Sid. “I reckon you’d better come clean and open those suitcases. If you took everything back and said you were sorry—”

“He doesn’t want to do that,” says Rosie, “Better to burn them.”

“Everybody’s going to see.”

“Not if he does it at night.”

“Look a bit funny, won’t it, having a bonfire in the middle of the night?”

“Why don’t you all wait till Guy Fawkes day and then get Sid to stand on the fire instead of a guy?” I say. “By God, I’ve never heard such a load of cobblers in my life. Can’t you see that Sid is having you on? There’s nothing under my bed except fluff. I wouldn’t have believed you could have thought so little of me.”

I knock back my tea and push the chair away from the table. They’re all a bit quiet now and Mum and Rosie are definitely looking guilty. I decide to blow my nose to show them how affected I have been by their unkindness and remove my handkerchief with a flourish. Trouble is that in my hurry that morning I have grabbed a hanky down from the clothes line in the kitchen and – yes, that’s right – it’s not a hanky, it’s a pair of Rosie’s drawers. I notice the expressions on their faces first, and honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Even Sid looks at me as if I’ve got blood running down my chin. A glance shows me what I am raising to my nose. Light blue, with a touch of grey lace round the bottom. I start to say something but it’s no good. Everybody is still staring at the knickers like they’ve started ticking. I throw them on the table and Rosie shrinks back in her chair. None of them will say a word. I start to speak again and their eyes slowly swing up to my face marvelling that they could have lived with me so long without suspecting. There’s no point in going on so I stumble out.

I don’t know what they say when I’ve gone but I do know that to this day the subject of underwear makes my mother wince and you don’t see any bras or panties hanging up in our back garden.

As the next few weeks go by I realise that there are quite a few Dorothys about, and I begin to be able to recognise the kind of bird who will be asking you to help her move the dressing table from one side of the bedroom to the other, five minutes after she’s opened the front door. She’s usually been married about seven years – take it from me, the seven year itch is no fairy story – and the last of the children has just begun school, so she’s suddenly got a bit of free time on her hands. Her old man is a dead end nine to fiver, and she’s as bored with him as she is with having nothing to do. She’s read all the stuff in the Sundays about wife-swapping and troilism and she reckons that not only must it be alright to do it but that she is the only bird in the world who isn’t. She’s also unlikely to have thrown it around much before she got married so she reckons she missed out there too, and is dead keen to make up for it. Her trouble is that until she’s done it a few times she’s liable to confuse her natural desire for a bit on the side with love, which can stir up all kinds of problems. Once a customer starts baking cakes for you, or slipping bottles of after-shave lotion in your pocket, you’re better off giving it a miss, believe me.

I remember poor Sid going through a very embarrassing period with this bird who started coming round the house and asking if he could do her windows. She was round there about once a fortnight which was bleeding ridiculous. Added to that, she’s always be walking past dressed up as if she was going to her old man’s funeral. Sid was scared to go out of the house and Mum was giving him the old dead eye. She had a bloody good idea what was going on. Luckily, Rosie had this job in the supermarket so she never twigged. God knows what she would have done if she had. How Sid got rid of that piece I don’t know, because he never talked to me about it, but one day I suddenly think I haven’t seen her for a while and that’s the end of it. Since the business with Viv, Sid has kept his activities very quiet and I think he regrets having opened his mouth that first time up at the Highwayman.

One of the most interesting things about the job is the opportunity it gives you to have a shufty at how other people live. Everybody likes having a poke round somebody else’s place to see what they’ve got. My old Mum for instance. Every time there’s a house in the street for sale she goes round there. She’s no intention of moving, it’s just that she wants to see what kind of wallpaper they’ve got and whether there’s an indoor kasi. She’s also potty on going round the nobs’ houses in the country and coming back and rabbiting on about their stuff as if it’s a dead ringer of hers.

“Little fireplace in the kiddies’ room,” she’ll say, “it had exactly the same tiles as our front room. Very similar, anyway.”

I’m a bit like Mum in a smaller way and there was one job about that time that really sticks in my mind. It was up by the common and one day I’m cycling along when this old bird comes running out holding a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head and waving a walking stick.

“Young man, young man,” she calls out. “Are you a window cleaner?”

I feel like saying no, I always cycle around with a ladder in case I forget my front door key, but I don’t, and she says she has a job for me. As I look at her, I notice that what I first thought was a flower pattern on her hat is in fact bird droppings but I imagine she has just been unlucky and follow her into the semi-circular drive of this bloody great house. There’s newspapers and rubbish strewn everywhere and though I’ve been past the place before, I never thought anybody lived there. By the look of the windows, they can’t do, unless they’ve got bleeding good eyesight because they don’t look as if they’ve been cleaned since they were put in.

“It’s gonna cost you a few bob to clean that lot,” I say, because frankly I don’t fancy the job.

“Only the downstairs windows,” she says. “We’re all downstairs.”

That strikes me as being a bit funny because I can’t imagine a lot of people living there. Maybe they are the survivors of a Victorian hippie commune who can’t stand heights. Anyway, we haggle a bit and I agree to do the downstairs windows for a couple of quid. I’m following her up the front steps when I take a butchers through one of the bay windows. I can hardly see anything they’re so dirty, but there seems to be a lot of movement at floor level which puzzles me. I start to take a closer look but the old bird – “My name is Mrs. Chorlwood” – sends me round the back sharpish. “I’ll open the back door for you,” she says. “I don’t want you frightening them.”

Them? What has she got in there? I move round the house very careful-like, and something knocks against one of the windows from the inside which gives me a start, but I can’t see anything. The garden must have been very nice once, but now it’s all overgrown and there are weeds pushing through the concrete in the bottom of the dried up ornamental pond. I’m surprised they haven’t torn the whole place down and built a block of flats there.

When I get round the back, Mrs. Chorlwood is waiting for me and that’s not all. There’s a pile of empty catfood tins large enough to have fed half Brixton. They pong a bit, too, but that’s nothing to what I find in the kitchen. A large saucepan is bubbling away on a filthy greasy stove and the stink attacks you. There are tins of cat food and packets of birdseed everywhere and a slice of horsemeat from something that must have been running before the war – the Boer war. The sink is blocked up and you can’t see the pattern on the lino for all the muck that has been trodden into it.

Mrs. Chorlwood picks up a carving knife and for a moment I’m getting ready to bash her over the head if she tries anything.

“Din dins time,” she says with a sigh. “It’s hard work cooking when you have a family my size. Now, don’t open any of the windows whatever you do, we don’t want anyone getting out.”

By this time I’ve got a good idea what I’ve let myself in for, but I don’t know half of it. Mrs. Chorlwood opens the kitchen door and the pong hits me like a kick in the stomach. Cats. Gawd strewth it’s diabolical! The hall and stairs are crawling with bloody cats which make a great rush for us the moment they see Mrs. C. You can’t put your foot down without standing on one of their turds and the carpets are soggy with piss.

“Naughty, naughty,” says Mrs. C. “Oh, you naughty Jezebel. Not time for din dins yet. Now come on, Pansy, don’t scratch, dear.” She presses forward and I see that the place isn’t only full of cats. Up above, there’s a flutter of wings and we’re being dive-bombed by a flock of bloody pigeons. The picture rails are thick with droppings, the walls are spattered and there’s even a nest behind one of the light brackets.

“They get very excited about lunch time,” says Mrs. C. Too bloody right they do. One of the cats has practically got my boot off and I have to restrain myself from giving it a boot up the backside.

“I think she’s taken to you,” says Mrs. C. “Sabrina is usually rather reserved at first.”

“Don’t you ever let them out?” I say, giving Sabrina a sly jab when Mrs. C. isn’t looking.

“Out!?” says the old bag looking at me as if I’m bonkers. “Into a world like this? Nobody loves animals any more. Look what they do to each other. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let these innocent creatures fall into the hands of the vivisectionists.” I wouldn’t fancy the vivisectionists’ chances if they got their hands on the likes of Sabrina but it’s an opinion I keep to myself.

“Don’t they fight?” I say. “I mean, surely the cats must be after the birds the whole time.”

“This is no microcosm of the world,” says Mrs. C. seriously. “It is an oasis, a sanctuary where wild creatures can live in peace with each other. They all have enough to eat so there is no need for the law of the jungle.”

“What’s that one eating, then?” I say.

I am pointing to a monstrous moggy with a pile of feathers sticking out of its mouth.

“Oh, you wicked Rufus,” says Mrs. C. flying at him. “You wicked, wicked cat. How many times has mummy told you not to do that?” Rufus draws away arching his back and showing his teeth without dropping a feather. Honest, I wouldn’t fancy my chances against him on a dark night.

“They must be hungry,” says Mrs. C. “Really it’s a shame you have to see them when Rufus is playing up. Normally they’re as good as gold.”

She opens a door and we’re in one of the rooms at the front of the house. It’s large but dark because the windows are so caked with bird shit they appear opaque. The carpet must have been worth a few bob in its time but now you’d be better off selling the bird shit on it for manure. In the middle of the room is a telly and two pigeons are perched on the indoor aerial above it. Mrs. C. switches on the set and as the announcer comes up one of the birds disgraces itself all over him. I rather like that, but Mrs. C. doesn’t seem to notice.

“They like the television on,” she says. “Keeps them company when I’m not here. Well, there you are, this is one of the rooms I want you to do. Remember, keep those windows closed.”

“Excuse me asking,” I say, “but why do you want the windows cleaned?”

“So the little chaps can see what’s happening outside. It is getting a trifle dim in here.” She says it as if it is stupid of me not to have noticed it for myself.

“I’m going to get the animals their lunch now. Would you like something?”

“No. No thanks. I’ve just eaten.” I nearly shout it at her. The thought of eating anything out of that kitchen practically makes me spew my ring up on the spot.

“Very well. I’ll just bring you a cup of tea.”

I tell her not to bother but she’s already gone. That leaves me nothing to do but get on with the job. I tell you, I’ve never known anything like it in my life. The pong must be scarring the inside of my nostrils and every time I get a window clean, some bloody bird comes and shits all over it. After a while I let them get on with it. I just want to get out. It takes me all of ‘Watch with Mother’ to clean six panes of glass.

Suddenly there’s the sound of Mrs. C. rattling some tins and the room clears faster than Glasgow on a flag day. Then she comes in with my mug of tea. At least, I suppose it’s a mug. There’s what looks like bird seed floating on top of it and I don’t know quite what it’s been standing in – I can guess though. Poor old Mrs. C. She really is a case. Her hands are raw and scratched and there’s muck all over her clothes which she either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care about. I pretend to drink the tea and when she goes out I pour it into one of the geranium pots. As I suspected there’s some more bird seed stuck together at the bottom.

When I get in the fresh air I feel like I’ve just come out of the nick again. I sweep my rubber across the windows and it’s like looking into one of those cages at the zoo. All the cats milling around her legs and Mrs. Chorlwood chattering away to them like kids. She sits down in front of the telly – just knocks a few turds off a wing-back chair and sits down – and they’re all trying to get up on her lap the minute her arse has touched the chair. Trouble is they don’t look like cats to me. They seem more like rats. A living blanket of rats.

“Come back in a couple of months,” she says when she pays me. “I expect we’ll need you again then.”

But I don’t go back. I think about it sometimes and I can imagine her in that chair one afternoon, dropping off and not waking up again. And the cats and the birds waiting for their food; and no way of getting out and, after a while, nothing to eat. The telly going on the blink and being the only living thing in the house, flickering and chattering away. That’s the time the rats would hear the telly and nothing else and start sticking their noses out of their holes, and maybe that picture I saw through the window would be right. Mrs. Chorlwood with that living, twitching blanket on her lap … You can see why I didn’t go back, can’t you?

Earlier on I said that Dorothy was a pretty average sample of the kind of bird you have it away with on this caper. She wants a bit of company, a bit of a change and a bit of the other. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t other kinds – any number of them – but at least once you’ve got to the point with them your problems are usually over. I mean, if it was any other way, there wouldn’t be any point would there? – or would there? You’d have to ask Mrs. Armstrong that because I was never able to. I could never ask her anything.

Mrs. Armstrong lived in one of those large detached houses in Nightingale Lane with a flight of steps going up to two Samson-size pillars which supported a balcony so they didn’t feel starved of a purpose in life. She is what my mother would call a handsome woman and definitely upper class in a way that puts the mockers on you. I mean, though she’s attractive you’d never think of trying it on with. her. It would be like wolf-whistling at the Queen Mother. She has an aristocratic hooter with a bend in it, piercing grey eyes and a very good figure for a woman of forty-plus, which is what I imagine she is. She’s a bit of a twinset and pearls type but her stuff always fits beautifully and she smells nice. I say all this but at the time I hardly noticed it, if you know what I mean. She was just the woman who opened the door and stepped to one side as I went through. As I remember, nothing at all happened the first time but when I next go round it’s in the afternoon and she asks me if I’d like some tea when I’ve finished. I say yes, thinking she means a cuppa, but when I come down she takes me into the front room where there is a trolley loaded with cakes and toast cut up into thin bits and a silver teapot and its friends. I look round for someone else but she waves me to sit down and starts filling a couple of cups. It’s not easy to park myself because the settee is one of those ones you either perch on the edge of or plunge down into and it takes me a bit of wriggling before I can get into a position to receive my cup.

“Two lumps?”

Mrs. A. drops them in with a pair of tongs as if they’re the final ingredient in a Doctor Frankenstein experiment. Since my experiences with Viv and Dorothy I’ve been quite at ease in this kind of situation but with Mrs. A. gazing past me out of the window my hands feel about eight sizes too large for the cup and I drop the spoon down the side of the settee. It’s the old upper class hypnotism I suppose. If she was Dorothy I’d be chattering away nineteen to the dozen. She has got nice legs though. I do notice that. She’s sitting on a pouf – a leather one, I hasten to add – and I can see quite a bit of them.

“I don’t think you’ve met my daughters.” She nods towards the mantelpiece and for a moment I expect to see them sitting up there. In fact, there’s one of those great leather wallets full of photos of everybody including the nursemaid’s dog, and beside it a very posed photograph of two birds holding bunches of flowers. They must have been bridesmaids or something. Anyway they are both lookers and I say so. Mrs. A. nods graciously but continues to avoid my eyes as if she might catch something from them.

“When they’re home,” she sighs, “it’s absolute bedlam. They are attractive, as you say and I have young men round here in droves.”

I’m not certain what a drove is but I imagine it’s one of those flash wop sports cars. Alright for some, I think to myself.

“Where are they now?” I say.

“Oh, Fiona’s nursing at Guys and Viccy is at Sussex – University, you know.”

I didn’t. I mean if she’d have said Manchester, should I have reckoned she played on the wing for United?

“Of course, these boys do lead to some unexpected problems. Very flattering, though.”

I nod understandingly and wonder what she is on about.

“Do you find older women attractive?”

I think of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West. I can never understand what all the fuss is about. I mean they are a bit past it, aren’t they?

“Up to a point,” I say. “I mean, within reason.”

“They’re not mine,” she says, indicating the photograph. “They’re by my late husband’s first marriage. I think she must have been rather an insecure woman. People who know her suggested she had a jealous nature and I think it’s carried over into the children.”

I accept another piece of toast and bite into it so the butter runs down my chin. Mrs. A. is still looking out of the window and doesn’t notice.

“I mean you’d think they’d be flattered if someone found their mother attractive, wouldn’t you?”

I don’t think so at all, in fact it seems a bit disgusting even Dad finding my Mum attractive; though that must have been a long time ago. I start to say something but Mrs. A. rabbits on.

“This Johnathan, I can’t even be certain that was his name. Anyway, he drinks too much at one of their terrible parties and we put him to bed. Poor boy, I know he’s always had a thing about me – I mean it’s perfectly natural, perfectly harmless. I’m trying to calm him down and Fiona comes in. Heavens, you should have heard the things that girl called me.

“She totally lost control of herself. It was so embarrassing. What everybody else thought, I’ve no idea. Poor Johnathan, he was the one I was worried about. He was so upset he never came near the house again – and you can’t blame him.” She takes the empty tea cup out of my hand and sits down next to me on the sofa tugging her skirt down towards her knees.

“Then there was Rollo. Now, he was a charming boy – absolutely charming. Much too good for Viccy. She treats him so badly it’s incredible. I think he turned to me because of it. At least one can be civil, can’t one, but young people today – I know everybody says it but it’s true – young people are so thoughtless, so ill-mannered, it really does upset me. Anyway, on this occasion they were playing tennis and Rollo falls and grazes his leg quite badly. Do you know, all Viccy can do is laugh at him? It really was so cruel. I was mortified. I took him up to the house to put something on his knee and made him lie down on this very sofa.” She pats it like an animal. “Now perhaps it was the brandy, or me in my tennis things – I don’t know what it was – anyway, poor Rollo suddenly becomes terribly affectionate – I mean you can’t blame him the way that girl treats him. I suppose I should have told him to behave himself, in fact I’m certain I did, but he was such a sweet boy. Nothing happened, of course, I wouldn’t have let it, but Viccy comes leaping through the door – she’s quite a big girl really – and the language. I don’t know where she heard words like that – certainly not from me, though I can’t speak for her real mother. It’s much quieter here when they’re both away.”

All the time she has been saying this, her hand has been creeping along the back of the settee and now it is ruffling the hair on the back of my neck. I turn towards her and she suddenly kisses me, so fast she nearly misses my mouth. It’s more like franking a letter than a kiss really.

“Now, I expect you’d like to see my bedroom,” she says.

It’s all moving a bit fast for me and I try and kiss her just to make sure that we’re both thinking about the same thing. But she pulls away like the Q.E.2 leaving Southampton and stands up smoothing her dress down.

“Leave the tea things,” she says, and glides out. I follow her up the stairs and when we get to the top she points to one of the doors along the landing. “I expect you’d like to use the bathroom,” she says.

I wouldn’t dream of arguing with her so I pop into the onyx palace. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing and when I’ve had a quick sluice down I put my clothes on again. I mean I don’t want to wander into her bedroom bollock naked and find she only wants me to mend the plug on her electric blanket.

But when I get to the bedroom I’m dead certain that isn’t what she has in mind. The curtains are half drawn and there’s an electric fire on by the bed. In it, the bed I mean, is Mrs. A. with her back to me. I can see that she is wearing a slip, the straps nudging in to her fleshy shoulders.

“I can’t abide cold hands,” she says firmly, so I take the hint and warm mine in front of the electric fire. What a carry on. I only wish I felt a bit sexed up about the whole thing, but I don’t. I’ve hardly touched the woman and yet I’m practically in bed with her. I mean, even the best of us need a bit of warming up and at the moment I’m drooping like a wet pigtail. If I had an ounce of self respect I’d tell her to get stuffed and march straight out, but of course, I haven’t, so I take my clothes off and slide in beside her, hoping that once I make contact it’s going to be alright. Her back is still turned towards me and I slip my hands under her petticoat sharpish because that usually brings me on a treat – just the feel of it, you know. She isn’t wearing any knicks, wicked old bag, and allows herself a little groan which might be meant to indicate pleasure. If it is she certainly knows how to keep herself under control. I’m nibbling her shoulders and playing her like a Naafi piano but she doesn’t move.

At last I can’t stand it any more and I wrench her round and start raining kisses on her pruin mouth. This has some effect because she grabs hold of my old man and starts yanking it like it’s something to call the butler on. It’s not having the desired effect though and I’m wondering how to escape when she flings back the bedclothes and suddenly sits up. I think she’s had enough too, but her back arches and her head goes down my body.

“Poor boy,” she says, just before she starts, “it’s always the same, what a good thing the girls aren’t here.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Now so far I’ve been talking solidly about birds and you may recall – if you went skipping to get to the sexy bits – how I described the signs that can lead the average red blooded English boy to a spot of nooky: frustration, boredom, seven year itch, everybody doing-it, old man over the top – that kind of thing.

Now all this pre-supposes that you’ve only got to stand there with your scrim in your hand and they’re all going to start tearing your clothes off. Up to a point this is true. If you hang on long enough you can’t fail to get some bag making a pass at you even if you look like Goofie with a hang over. But there are times when it’s in the balance, and then you’ve got to ram home the message wrapped in a bit of sales appeal. In other words it’s no good recognising the ones that will if they don’t know you can.

What I’m going to tell you now is the fruit of years of experience, observation, and advice I’ve received. I certainly didn’t know it all when I was tumbling about with the likes of Viv, Dot and Mrs. A., but they each helped in their own special way.

First of all, you’ve got to like birds. It seems dead simple doesn’t it? I mean every man likes birds. But he doesn’t! There’s a hell of a lot of them would be much happier danging their floats in the local reservoir or checking over their stamp collections. They only make a token effort so their mates don’t think they’re bent or because Mum is always nagging at them. Look at some of your married friends if you don’t believe me. It’s not just that they don’t fancy the old woman, they don’t fancy any one! The telly, the boozer, maybe a spot of football, that’s their lot. They came in with a dud battery hanging between their legs and it’s too late to take it back to the shop. So: Rule One. You’ve got a much better chance of getting it if you really want it.

Rule Two: Make them laugh. This is where you can’t go wrong. Once you’ve got a bird laughing – and especially a married bird – you can practically hear the bedsprings creaking. Birds want to be relaxed, they want a bit of fun and once you’re sharing a sense of humour – well, there’s no limit to what you’ll be sharing. Considering how much time we spend talking to each other, it’s amazing how bad we are at it. The difference between what we want to say – and what actually comes out of our mouths is fantastic. I mean, take me and that first time with Viv for instance. Diabolical. Whereas, if I’d have been able to keep chatting and thrown in a few funnies, I’d have been there nice and easy, without needing a bloody thunderstorm. Most women, though there are exceptions – in fact when you’re talking about women there are millions of exceptions – like to feel that they are being seduced by you, so if you can chat them up, make them laugh, take the micky out of yourself a bit so you seem a human being just like they are, then you’re guiding them gently towards the front room carpet or whereever else they like to do it. Which reminds me of a bird once who – no, sorry.

Rule Three: Be persistent. If you really want it, go hard for it. Don’t take no for an answer. I had a mate at school who had a face like three warts on a carbuncle but his record was fantastic. I know because I saw photographs of some of the birds. In fact I had to swallow one in the middle of the geography class when the master got curious. How he got them to pose like that I’ll never quite know, because he was only about fifteen – they must have been out of their tiny minds. I believe it was because he went on shaking them, like a kaleidoscope, until he got the right pattern or they got so fed up they decided it was the only way to make him buzz off. He was fantastic that bloke.

So remember, when they start coming all that “Oh, Fred, do you really think we should be doing this?” stuff they are asking to be mastered. Tell them to get them off and get on with it. If you start saying, “well, maybe you’ve got a point there, Edith,” they’ll just think you’re wetter than a used nappy liner.

Rule Four: Keep yourself in good shape. You don’t have to look like Rock Hudson but if your gut is spilling over your Y-fronts you’re only going to remind them of their old man and that’s worse than useless. So keep your clobber on the tight side and nip about a bit to show them you’re alive. Sid does a lovely line in sliding down the ladder with his feet on the outside, which goes down a treat and his footwork on the high window sill has to be seen to be believed. I’ve got good shoulders so my forte is the deep breath and the rhythmic to and fro with the rubber. I’ve known times when birds have been doing the ironing in time with me.

Rule Five: Be prepared to forget the other four rules. As I’ve already said, birds are funny, so if you’ve got a good line you might as well stick to it. One of Sid’s mates, known as the Magic Dragon, never used to say a word and he had so much crumpet he didn’t know what to do with it. He was a good looking bloke, I know because I saw him up at the boozer once. He used to keep himself brown with a sun ray lamp and do weightlifting so his shoulders gushed out from his waist as if they’d been forced through a three inch pipe. His line was to get out there all strong and silent, letting his biceps speak a language any woman could understand, whilst he gazed down on them like they were drying foot prints. Faced with this rejection most birds felt like knotting themselves but just when they couldn’t stand any more the Magic Dragon would suddenly suck in a mouthful of air, gorge his enormous pectorals (sit down madam!) and breathe all over the window pane, a big one at first, followed by little, delicate puffs like whirls of cake icing. Hence, his nickname, see? ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’. Well, I never saw him in action, but apparently you had to sweep up the pieces afterwards. One bird savaged him so badly he had to have fourteen stitches in his shoulder. Alright, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true, so help me. You don’t know what seven years of happy marriage can do to a woman.

Then there was Roy. He didn’t say much either. His angle was to have his lower lip trembling the whole time and to be seen frequently blowing his nose.

Well, no woman could resist this for very long and before you could say “Watch it lady” they’d be asking him what the trouble was. “Nothing, nothing,” he’d sob, “sorry to be going on like this” and poor brave fellow that he was, he’d hurl himself back at the job until he suddenly lost his footing and ended up in a crumpled, shuddering heap at the bottom of the ladder. “Jenny, Jenny,” he’d be moaning as they reached him and then it would all come blurting out. How his wife had run away with the milkman, leaving him with six kids, and how it was his fault because he hadn’t been paying her enough attention because he’d been working evenings trying to make enough money to take the whole family to the seaside for the first time. By Christ, it fair broke your heart to think about it, and it was a hard bitch who didn’t put a protective arm around his shoulders and shove the kettle on for a nice soothing cup of tea. Well, of course, the minute they did that they were done for. Roy’s snuffles would dry against their blouses and hands that had once been clutching desperately as if at a straw, were now invested with a new sense of purpose. “Oh no” Roy would gasp, taking the words straight out of their mouths. “I didn’t think I could ever feel like this again. It’s wonderful.” Up till then they’d been getting a bit worried, but with those words they suddenly realised that they were in the exalted position of being able to confer the gift of life on a fellow human being. This creature desperately trying to pull down their knickers and tights at the same time had been wounded near to death and by a member of their own sex to boot. What better way to offer some reparation than by letting him take the simple pleasure he so obviously sought and which they were in the fortunate position of being able to bestow. I tell you, it was diabolical how he got away with it.

Now, you may well be asking yourselves where I fit in all this; you may equally well be scratching your left bollock, but that’s your affair.

I was learning fast but although I soon got the hang of all the dodges, I knew that I was never going to be in Sid’s class. I was too moody. My ability to chat a bird up didn’t just depend on her but on whether Chairman Mao was being nice to the Russians, or the weather, or how Chelsea had been doing lately. Sometimes I was dead on and sometimes I was dead on my feet, there was no knowing how it was going to be.

Luckily, when I met Sandy it was one of my chirpy days. If it hadn’t been I might have done myself a permanent injury.

One of my better jobs was a small block of posh flats down by Wandsworth Common. One of those big Victorian Houses had been steam-rollered and Green Pastures – yes that’s what the berks called it – had been shot up in its place. It was dead simple because it was all glass and you could have wheeled a pram along its window sills, they were so wide. Window cleaning was included in the service fee the tenants payed so I collected my cash from the caretaker and whipped round with my large squeegee in no time.

At least, usually I did. On this occasion, I was moving along the front of the building admiring the brass rubbings and the bookcases full of paper-backs when I saw something that made my blood turn colder than an Eskimo’s chuff.

In this room there was a naked woman tied up on the floor. Not just tied up, but with so much cord round her it looked as if someone had used her to roll up a piece of string. If she had problems they didn’t end there. There was another bird wearing a thigh length black slip and a very determined expression, lashing her with a riding crop. Now you’ve got to admit that that’s a sight you don’t see every day of the week. Talk about “Kinky Kats on the Rampage”. It made Wardour Street seem like Cheltenham Spa on a wet Monday.

At first I didn’t see it. Call me naive if you like or Flossy if it gives you real pleasure – but I thought that the bird on the floor was being attacked by the other one. My basic, decent British reaction was one of outrage, so I banged hard on the window.

Neither of the bints had seen me and the one with the whip looks up and claps her hands to her tits in a gesture of upper class shock a bit at odds with the cold blooded thrashing she’d just been dishing out. Before I got any further let me say at once that she is a very good looking bird. Black gypsy ringlets coiling down around alabaster shoulders – you know all that crap – big long-lashed brown eyes, tits like pomegranates – in fact she’s like the birds on those Schweppervesence show cards I used to knock off from the local boozer. She’s panting a bit and her complexion would make Mr. Yardley cream his jeans in envy. Even before I notice the small watercolours in the thin gilt frames and the chaise longue I realise I am in the presence of a lady.

“Good gracious” she says, opening the window, “you gave me a start.”

“You don’t look as if you need one,” I say, immediately proving to her what a laugh I am. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

“I was trying to give Amanda an orgasm,” she says, matter-of-factly. “It rather looks as if it’s gone by the board now, doesn’t it?”

I have to agree with her because Amanda who I recall as being rigid with effort is now all relaxed and bulging against her bonds like a rolled sirloin. She is a large girl and you wouldn’t find many people outside that African tribe that goes in for fattening up its women till they look like hippos, that would disagree with me.

“Amanda loves being beaten,” goes on the dark-haired bird. “It’s about the only thing she does like. It was awfully lucky we found out. You see Sebastian, that’s her husband, got rather squiffy one night and suddenly started flailing away at her. We were all absolutely horrified and poor ’Basters was really distraught when he sobered up. But what makes it so terribly amusing is that Amanda absolutely adored it and nearly came on the spot. Never been near it before, had you darling? – Oh I am sorry, you haven’t been introduced. Amanda this is – what is your name?”

“Timothy Lea.”

“Timothy Lea – Amanda Browne, with an e.” Amanda Browne grunts a greeting. She really is a very plain girl and the weal marks don’t help.

“And my name is Rachel Devroon, though everybody calls me Sandy because I don’t have red hair. Yes, well, wasn’t it lucky about Amanda finding out what she really liked.”

This bird is obviously nutty as a fruit cake, but she is very cool. I have to admit that.

“So Amanda’s old man keeps her happy by bashing her up. Nothing unusual about that, it happens all the time round here.”

“If you’re going to do anything, for God’s sake do it,” says Amanda, peevishly, “I’m beginning to get cramp. And do shut that bloody window.”

“Sorry Pet,” says Sandy hopping across the room so her boobs bounce up and down like twins in a rubber baby carriage, “we must get everything right for you.”

Sandy’s thighs are the smoothest way to introduce a leg to an arse I’ve ever seen and when she bends down I can practically hear my mince pies grinding between them, like skinned golf balls. She’s bloody lucky she isn’t tied up on the floor.

“You don’t understand darling,” she says to me, “Amanda doesn’t really get on with ’Basters. Oh, he’s very sweet but he’s a bit draggy at the same time – very ‘where’s my Financial Times?’ – you know? So I find her the most dishy spade who bashes her all over the place.”

“So everybody is happy.” I say.

“No. Racialism rears it’s ugly head. Amanda tries very hard but deep down inside she’s got a thing about coloured men – her grandfather had a tobacco farm in Rhodesia or something, so that doesn’t work either. Spitsville isn’t it?”

“Very,” I say, “So what were you doing just now?”

“Well, Amanda feels that because it just doesn’t seem to work with fellahs, she may be a lesbian and we were just seeing if I could do anything. You were quite enjoying it, weren’t you, sweet?”

“Quite,” says Amanda seriously, “but I don’t think I’ll be able to come. Especially now.”

I suppose I should be feeling guilty but I’m so amazed by what is going on that I can hardly feel anything except a desire to get Sandy’s drawers down. What with the whips and the tying up, it is getting a bit sexy.

“Well, I’m adoring it,” says Sandy, “I can quite see why those awful old harridans were always hanging around the dorms after lights out. Thrashing someone is absolute bliss.” She shudders with excitement and suddenly runs her hand up the front of my trousers where, surprise, surprise, there is someone wanting to greet it. “Oh, super,” she says, “Do you want to join in?”

“Well—”

“Tell you what. You start beating her.” She hands me the crop and has pulled the slip over her head before you can say National Health Service. Her tits are really something and her half cup bra deserves an award for service beyond the call of duty. Never was so much supported by so little. She whips it off and I feel like bursting into applause – or through the front of my Y-fronts.

“Go on, she loves it.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Try.”

“I can’t—”

“Poor darling.”

But she’s not talking to me. She drops on her knees and starts necking with the bird and fondling her breasts. There must be something wrong with me because I find it the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I tear my clothes off and I hate them for every second they stay on my body. Then I’m lying down there chewing Sandy’s neck and peeling her tights off and she’s groaning and all three of us are squirming like electric eels. Amanda wants Sandy and is crying out for her to beat her, and I want Sandy and I’m not tied-up, and I win. I hurl the crop to the other side of the room and unravel Sandy like a piece of rolled up paper till I can pin her down and get above her lovely flat stomach and feel her legs hook round mine and her finger nails sink into my back.

“I’m going to put my mark on you,” she hisses and she clings to me like she wants to suck every ounce of blood, flesh and guts out of me. It must be quite a way to go but I want to do this again so I rev my motor and we’re generating enough power to light up Piccadilly Circus for a month. But not for long though. No force on earth can withstand Miss Rachel (Sandy) Devroon when she shudders into her final gyration and I feel like a piece of fluff hovering at the mouth of a suction cleaner.

“Shit!” she screams, “oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!!”

(I may have missed out a few ‘shits’ but that’s the gist of it) and away we go. Eight hundred doors banging, Chaik’s 1812 being performed in your left earhole, upside down on a roller coaster – it does you more good than a cup of Bovril any day of the week I can tell you.

After that lot I’m spent and sucking in mouthfulls of carpet pile but Sandy is made of sterner stuff.

“Super fuck,” she says cheerfully, “Now it’s Amanda’s turn.”

Not with me it isn’t, I vow to myself. Even Raquel Welch would have to wait a few minutes, and with Amanda it might stretch into years. But I don’t have to worry. Sandy wriggles out from underneath me and in a few seconds I hear the contented sounds of her wielding the riding crop. It seems to be a wild success because Amanda is hollering fit to bust and Sandy is cheering her on like a Derby winner. What a performance. You wouldn’t credit it unless you were in the front row of the dress circle.

Well, all good things must come to an end and Sandy unties Amanda and starts rubbing cold cream into her back. The poor old bag really needs it too, but she isn’t complaining.

“That was super,” she says, “Absolutely super. I found it so sexy watching you, I nearly came by myself.”

“But darling, you remember that orgy we had at Tarquins, it didn’t do a thing for you.”

“I know, but it was all so contrived. I mean, when you go through the door and start talking to people about the weather and know that in a few minutes you are all going to take your clothes off. I find that terribly inhibiting. I’m worrying about coming out in a red flush or something. But this was so unexpected, so natural, it was beautiful.” Her eyes suddenly widened, “I say, it was chance wasn’t it, you didn’t lay it on for me?”

“Heavens no, luvie, I know Timmy looks very professional,” Sandy runs her fingers down my chest, and then on a bit, “but he’s just doing it for the love of it like the rest of us. Aren’t you pet”

“Would you like a drink?”

I say yes to both questions and get a tumbler half full of scotch which can’t be bad. Sandy comes down and sits on the floor next to me and already I’m beginning to feel I could be there again. She is a good example of what I said about upper class birds taking their clothes off at the drop of a hint. I can’t imagine Rosie fixing you a drink in the all together. I don’t mind it when I’m having it away but it seems a bit strange sitting around starkers with a scotch in your hand and I reach out for my shirt.

“Don’t do that,” says Sandy, “you’ve got a super body and I like looking at it.” She takes the shirt between finger and thumb and drops it over her shoulder.

“I think you’re bloody fantastic,” I say, and I mean it.

“I think I’d better go,” Amanda drags herself to her feet. “Can I have a bath?”

“Yes, of course, but why didn’t you have one before I put the cream on you?”

“I didn’t want one then,” Amanda goes out showing you that from behind she looks like two shetland ponies on the job.

“I’m thrilled about this,” says Sandy.

“What, about her being satisfied?”

“Yes, you don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“Well what a way to come. Being beaten till your back is like a corrugated iron roof. I’d rather do without, myself.”

“I bet you wouldn’t. That girl couldn’t even give herself an orgasm by masturbating until today. Every woman is entitled to an orgasm and if a man can’t give it to her, she has a perfect right to get one by any means she can.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts,” Sandy obviously feels strongly about this, “women are fed a lot of twaddle about how marvellous sex is and when it isn’t they feel let down. Some of them don’t even know whether they’ve had an orgasm or not. They get worried. They think it’s their fault. Men don’t have any trouble having orgasms, why should women?”

“They’re built differently,” I say helpfully.

“You’re damn right they are. Sexual discrimination starts right here in our bodies. Whoever designed us would put the handle on a door so you couldn’t reach it standing on tip toe. And men don’t help with the old ‘thank you dear, that was very nice, now let me go to sleep, I’ve got a busy day at the office tomorrow,’ mentality.”

“You don’t seem to have any problems.”

“That’s not the point. I’ve liberated myself. I’m one of the lucky ones. I want to help people like Amanda who have resigned themselves to having rotten sex lives.”

“By beating them?”

“By doing anything to them that doesn’t offend either one of us and stands a chance of giving them what they have a right to. Surely you must believe that anything people do when they’re having sex is O.K. as long as they both want to do it?”

“Yes – but?”

“—There you go ‘butting’ again. I think you’re a hypocrite. You got jolly sexed up when you were watching me and Amanda didn’t you? You found that dirty, or kinky, or whatever you like to call it – and because of that it gave you a sexual appetite. Now you didn’t feel guilty about that, did you? You just responded to a certain stimulus and got satisfaction from it. Can’t you see that that’s what I’m trying to make happen with Amanda? I want to find something that turns her on. They give mental patients electric shocks, don’t they?”

I can’t follow everything she’s trying to say but I agree with a lot of it. She certainly comes across as being sincere and the way she talks to me I might be Malcolm Muggeridge instead of a window cleaner. In short, I’m impressed. She’s so direct she’s like a man, but I find I can accept that.

“I take it from your silence that you’re in total agreement with what I say?”

“I was just thinking that I’d never seen a woman with turned up nipples before,” I says.

“They’re retroussé and recherché,” she says, and because she knows I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about and wishes she hadn’t said it she leans forward and puts her hand between my legs and kisses me on the neck.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she says.

“I hope so.” Down in the forest something is stirring and I take one of those delicious nipples between finger and thumb and give it a friendly squeeze until it feels like a hot bullet.

“This time very gentle please,” she says, so we nibble each others lips for a few minutes before I flip her over onto her back and she flicks her legs up against my shoulders.

“Goodbye cock,” I say as I watch it disappear.

“Remember, darling,” she says, “you’re not losing a cock, you’re gaining a vagina.”

She’s funny, see, and you don’t meet many birds with a sense of humour.

They’re very much worth having.

Take my word for it.

CHAPTER SIX

Of all the birds I had about that time Sandy was the most memorable. I admired her and I felt quite honoured to be having it away with her. She was always dead straight and never talked down to you. Not like some of those upper class birds who could never resist telling you they were slumming, just so they didn’t feel too bad about it the next day. They really wanted a spade but they couldn’t quite stoop to that and you were the next best thing.

I even used to ring Sandy up outside business hours and I went round to her flat in the evening a couple of times. She was always very breathless on the phone as if she was terribly busy and trying to remember all the things she had to do. “Hallo-yes-who? – oh yes – sorry. No of course, I do. Yes that’s fine I think – wait a minute – no sorry. What is today? Thursday? Good God. No I can’t I’ve got some other fellah coming round. Better make it another time. Do give me a ring though because I’d adore seeing you again. ’Bye luv.”

I know its bloody stupid but I was a little jealous of all those other blokes I imagined trooping round there. I knew they existed, of course, but all the same I’d look at my watch a few hours later and think now they’re on the job; now some other lucky bastard is stroking that smooth creamy brown skin; now her pepper mill arse is grinding him into small fragments of ecstasy; now – God! It really choked me I can tell you.

Of the other birds. I steered clear of Viv because I didn’t want to rub Sid up the wrong way but I kept in touch with Dorothy and Mrs. Armstrong. It was always the same with them. Every time I left the house I vowed it would be the last time but a couple of months later I’d be back again and quite looking forward to seeing them.

Before I went back to Dorothy I bought her an outrageous pair of panties from Marks and Sparks which must have made her old man sit up if he even noticed them. Also, a pair of fishnet tights. Once she saw those it didn’t take me long to wonder what they would look like on, we organised a little fashion show upstairs. This proved that the panties were perfect but that the tights weren’t quite long enough in the leg – she had very long legs did Dorothy. This didn’t matter too much because the tights got torn anyway. We were in a bit of a hurry getting them off.

Mrs. Armstrong was more of a puzzle. Everytime I went through the back door I’d start thinking I must have dreamed it the last time. Mrs. A. smelling like the ground floor of Debenham and Freebodys and looking over my shoulder as if she had double vision. But it was always the same. I’d be squeezin’ out my chamois and the old trolley would go rambling past. “I thought you might like some tea”: “Thank you very much.” Into the sitting room and a load of chat about her bloody stepdaughters or how the country was going to the dogs. Then, just when I was looking at my watch and mumbling that I had to be getting along she’d suddenly press her hands together and say something like “Would you like to go upstairs, or would you rather stay here?” Once I said “I’d rather stay here,” and she had me in front of the fire with me watching her head reflected in the side of the tea pot as it bobbed up and down.

If this part of my life represented a bit of variety, things at home hardly changed at all. Dad was off work which was as normal as Thursday – he had trouble with his back which Sid said boiled down to an inability to get it off the bed: Mum was still counting how many Ngoblas went in and out next door and Rosie grew more like an export reject zeppelin every day. As for Sid, the dark shadows under his eyes might have been caused by reading the London Telephone Directory by candlelight, but I doubted it.

All in all, it was a strange time for me to get involved with a bird, but I did. I think maybe it was a reaction to Sandy. I really fancied her but I knew it would never come to anything so I looked around for a substitute to whom I could say all the things I felt but could never seriously express. I think also that I was influenced by all the bints I was making on the job. They could well have put me off the whole idea of marriage but instead, I felt a great desire to prove that there was some bird, somewhere, who could just love me and stay like that. Basically, you see, I was a hypocrite and a puritan and all the things Sandy used to call me. What I did was quite different from what I was prepared to permit my bird to do. Fascinating isn’t it? No? – oh well, you’re probably right.

I met Elizabeth down at the Palais, which, I read somewhere, is where 99.9 percent of British Men meet their future wives. You’d think that armed with a statistic like that no poor bastard would ever go near the place, but I’m one of those berks who get born every minute and takes a 6¾” hat size to prove it.

I used to go with a mate of mine called George who was the perfect side kick because he was good looking and a good dancer but so stupid he couldn’t arrange the words “do fuck you?” into a common phrase or saying, if you put them on a blackboard for him. I used to let him whip them round the floor a few times and then, when they were bored out of their minds with telling him what they did, I’d move in with a bit of chat and – hey presto! their drawers were practically in my jacket pocket.

But Elizabeth – there’s a solid, reliable name for you, nothing flighty about Elizabeth – she was different. When I came bouncing up she looked at me as if I was a run in a new pair of tights. I was really impressed by that, you can’t beat the old cold shoulder for making an impression.

“Fancy you working there,” George is saying.

“My sister works in the haberdashery department. I don’t suppose you know her?”

“I don’t think so,” says the bird. “I haven’t been there long enough to meet many people yet.”

“Her name is Wanda,” goes on George, “tall girl, fair hair. She plays the piano very well.”

“You can’t miss her,” I say, “Just look out for a tall, fair haired girl pushing a piano.” I give her my understanding George-is-a-prat-but-now-I-am-here-everything-is-going-to-be-alright smile. The girl glances at me as if I’d dropped out of the woodwork and turns back to George.

“I don’t think I’ve met her,” she says, “now I really must go and find my friend, she’ll be wondering what’s happened to me. Thanks for the drink.”

She starts to stand up but I’m leaning over the back of her chair so it’s difficult.

“Come on George,” I say, “surely you’re going to introduce me to your friend.”

“Elizabeth – Timmy Lea” says George wearily. “Elizabeth works in the beauty department at Haddons.”

“She must be their best advertisement.” I say.

“Yuk,” says Elizabeth and I fall in love with her on the spot. She scrapes back her chair nods to George and is gone.

“Bitch,” he says, “she had a large gin and tonic off me.”

“You’re a bloody fool then, aren’t you.”

“We can’t all be freeloaders like you.”

“That’s not very nice, I was going to buy you a light ale but now I’ve thought better of it.”

I wander off into the balcony and look down through the coloured light onto the dance floor. Ricci Volare – Alfred Boggis to his Mum and Dad – is conducting his Music Men as if he had a fire cracker stuffed up his arse, and about forty birds are dancing with each other whilst a crowd of blokes hang about like they’re waiting for the Labour Exchange to open. For a moment I can’t see Elizabeth and then I spot her sitting at one of the tables with her friend. This bird has specs and has obviously been selected to make Elizabeth look like a million dollars which she does. She, Elizabeth, I mean, is tallish with a good slim figure, small but shapely breasts and a nose with a slight tilt in it. From the balcony I can’t see what colour her eyes are but I remember them as being on the large side like her mouth. When I describe her she doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary but at the time I really fancied her. She looks a bit like Sandy, maybe that’s it.

I consider asking her to dance but only poufdahs go around asking birds to dance at the Palais and anyway it’s too soon after she’s given me the evil eye. Also, I can’t dance. Not this rubbish anyway. A slow grapple to waltz time is about my mark. So I go back to George and we sink a few beers till I’m feeling quite merry. Then there’s a sudden rush towards the floor and I realise it’s the last dance. I have to move fast and I get to Elizabeth just before a large bloke with enough grease on his hair to lay up the Queen Mary.

“Would you care to dance?” I say oozing civility.

“What about my friend?” she says.

I’m on the point of telling her I can’t dance with both of them when grease-bonce grabs goggles and we’re away.

“Have you got to go far?” I say.

“Stockwell.”

“Can I give you a lift?”

“Have you got a car?”

“No, but I’m bloody strong. You could hop on my back.”

She allows herself to smile at that.

“But I don’t know you from Adam.”

“It’s easy to tell the difference, I’ve got more clothes on.”

“Very funny. You’re quite a comedian aren’t you?”

“I have my moments.”

“Well, don’t think you’re going to have one of them with me. If I let you take me home ’Reen comes too.”

That’s bad news. Both for me and ’Reen because I’ve borrowed Sid’s van and there aren’t any seats in the back. Just a couple of buckets which may come in handy if ’Reen gets taken short on the way home but aren’t very comfortable for sitting in.

It is with this thought in mind that I decide to keep the specification of my vehicle a temporary secret but luckily grease-bonce and goggles conceive an instant fascination for each other and after the two birds have rabbitted for about ten minutes I learn that Elizabeth will condescend to come home with me on her tod. There then remains the problem of George who wants a lift but I tell him discreetly to piss off and I’m all lined up.

Elizabeth takes another ten minutes in the Damerie and after a while I think she’s climbed out of one of the windows, but when she appears its been worth waiting for. She’s all powdery and thick eye-lashed and she has a maxi coat with fur all round the bottom that would really keep your neck warm.

“You look smashing,” I tell her, “and you smell fantastic.” I try to bury my hooter in her hair but she pushes me aside.

“Where’s this car of yours?”

“Just round the back.” Actually its about four streets away and by the time we get there Elizabeth is getting worried. She cheers up when we get there though which rather surprises me till I see her standing beside the MGB I’m parked behind.

“It’s this one.”

“I thought you said you had a car. I’d never have come if I’d known it was this.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” I’m getting a bit fed up with her by this time. “You know where the buses go from. That’s the High Street down the bottom there.” But she mumbles something about being too late and gets inside, catching her coat on the door handle which makes her even madder. The engine won’t fire at first and she’s fuming when I shove the thing in gear and accidently hit her leg. You’d think I put my hand up her skirt the way she pulls her coat over her knees. Really it’s so bloody ridiculous. There’s me getting up to all these tricks with a wagon load of birds and this little tart acting like a lady muck because I brush against her leg. Who the hell does she think she is.

“What do you do?” she says.

“The cleaning business.”

“Dry cleaning?”

“All kinds. What do you do – oh I know, you work at Haddon’s, don’t you.”

“Yes.”

“Is that where you got the perfume?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it called.”

“Ma Griffe.”

“Mother Unhappiness? That’s a bloody silly name for a perfume.”

“No, it’s French, you fool. ‘Ma Griffe’. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

“No, I’ve only heard of Californian Poppy?”

“You get that at Woolworths.”

“I know, that’s where I saw it.”

If I was with Sandy now, we’d be discussing our orgasms or having one. I wonder what Elizabeth would say if I asked her if she had good orgasms.

“There’s a good film on at the Odeon next week.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“I don’t know. I know it’s good though. One of my mates told me about it.”

“Well, that’s no good if you don’t know what it’s called.”

“I was wondering if you’d like to go.”

“Well, I don’t know do I?”

“Are you on the telephone?”

“Yes. Why?”

Because I want to write ‘For giant-sized orgasms ring blank and ask for Elizabeth’ in every phone box from here to Vauxhall.

“So I can find out the name of the film and give you a ring about it.”

“Oh, alright. It’s in the book under Roberts E. E.”

“O.K. I’ll remember that.”

We keep up some kind of conversation until we get to her home, which is like every other semi-detached house in every other road in South London. If you took me a couple of streets away and turned me round three times I wouldn’t be able to find it again in a hundred years.

The minute I start slowing down her hand is on the door handle. I turn off the engine quick and reach across to help her.

“Thanks very much. I can’t ask you in because my Mum and Dad will be asleep.”

“Aren’t you even going to kiss me goodnight?”

She resigns herself to offering me her mouth and my hands steal down towards her legs where they are promptly seized by the other pair of hands in the car.

“Naughty,” she says, which must be pretty fast talk for her.

We kiss gently but the second my tongue goes in she pulls away and opens the door quickly.

“Don’t forget the number,” she says, “it’s under Roberts E. E. Goodnight.”

“Ta ta.”

I watch her go in and reply to her little wave from the front door before driving away down the dark, silent street. It’s funny but in a way I’m quite glad she wouldn’t let me put my hand up her skirt. Sandy once said I had a working class background and middle class values and I think maybe she’s right.

It was ridiculous really because about the time I met Elizabeth – I always called her Elizabeth, never Liz or Lizzie or anything like that – I got mixed up with the kinkiest bint yet. She lived up on the west side of the common and she had a maid. If that sounds coming it a bit for Clapham I can tell you that there were a lot of well to do people moving in around then and that the house itself looked as if it had upped sticks and moved in with them. Georgian, set back from the road, gold topped railings, separate gate with a little sign on it saying ‘Tradesmen’. Rather more Chelsea than is the rule around here.

The maid wasn’t French but Lithuanian or something like that which was virtually the same as far as I was concerned. She was small, dark and curvy and though she had a slight moustache I didn’t hold it against her. In fact, because the rest of her was so very female it rather appealed to me. Maybe I was getting kinky too. Anyway, this bird was obviously dead lonely and would follow you around the house offering cups of tea in a fractured English accent and smiling like she was trying to do her mouth an injury. I was reckoning on taking her out so I could do something about it but one afternoon when I roll up there is no sign of Ma Villiers – she’s the one who owns the house, I’ve never seen her old man – so I reckon I can save myself ten bob on cinema seats – I never make a bird open the exit doors the first time I take her out.

Petra, that’s the maid’s name, is waggling her arse like a come and get me sign as I follow her upstairs and isn’t slow to tell me that Mrs. V. has nipped off to the West End with a friend. Some blokes do the windows first, but not me. Take it while it’s there is my motto, you never know what’s going to happen in half an hour’s time. So when we’re passing the main bedroom I stop and take a butchers through the half open door. Inside, it’s all white paint and gilt with full length mirrors and knobbly kneed furniture as far as the eye can see, which is quite a long way. The bed has a canopy over the top and you could get a football team inside it if you liked that kind of thing.

“How do you fancy that?” I say, and she starts giggling, and I give her a little pinch and one thing leads to another and before you say ‘your policemen are wonderful’ we’re banging away on top of the silk bedspread. She has hairy armpits and smells a bit like the municipal changing rooms on Sunday morning but there are many worse ways of spending an afternoon and its obviously giving her pleasure, so what the hell. What I’m enjoying most are the surroundings. The mirrors give you an interesting new slant on things and with Petra stripped down to her black stockings I’m feeling more like James Bond than Sean Connery. I push myself up on my hands and watch my reflection moving rhythmically backwards and forwards with Petra swaying beneath me like weed on the sea bed. This is the life; screwing in style. This big bed, the silk drapes, the antique furniture, Mrs. Villiers standing in the doorway. Mrs Villiers standing in the doorway! I leap off the bed feeling as if I’ve been shot in the stomach. Petra’s face registers surprise, then horror as she looks towards the door.

“Get off my bed, you slut!”

I’ve never heard the word used with such venom before. It comes wrapped in spittle. Petra and I scuttle around, bumping into each other as we try and find our clothes. It could be funny if it wasn’t happening to you. Mrs. Villiers stalks over to the scene of the action and makes another exclamation of disgust as she examines the bedspread. I’ve got my trousers on now and am struggling into my shoes without untying the laces.

“You can get out,” she snarls at me.

“I’ve left my stuff in the—”

“Get out! I don’t want you in my house a minute longer. Get out!” She comes towards me with her face screwed up like a piece of red paper and, so help me, I think she’s going to belt me one.

I’m always dead scared when a bird turns nasty because you never know what they’re going to do. A kick in the cobblers might be the least of it. So I don’t wait to say goodbye to Petra but back away quick with Mrs. V. in pursuit. I half fall down the stairs and I’m out of the front door just as fast as any bloke in my situation ought to be. So fast in fact that it’s not till I’m on the other side of the railing that I remember I’ve left all my kit round the back porch. Now I could go back for it but somehow the thought of another brush with Mrs. V. doesn’t appeal so I decide to push off home and give her time to cool off.

The next morning I hang around at home until Sid has gone out and then nip round to the Big House. I’m feeling a lot better now and a little ashamed that I didn’t go back yesterday. Mrs. V. can’t eat me and the only thing I did wrong was to use her bed. Nothing to get stroppy about.

Round the back and I’m hoping to find my stuff where I left it but no such luck. The old bag has probably moved it inside so she can tear me off a strip when I come to collect it. I give the back door a gentle tap and wait for Petra to open it but that’s not the way it goes. When I look up it’s Mrs. V. who’s fixing me with a steely eye.

“So you’ve come to finish the job?” she says.

I wonder what she means for a moment but decide she isn’t trying to be sarcastic.

“You want me to do the windows?”

“That’s the idea. You are a window cleaner aren’t you – I mean as your first line of business.”

“Yes I suppose so.”

“Well, you’d better suppose right, or you won’t get the work again. You’ll find your things in the garage.”

She turns away and just for a moment I wonder whether to kick her up the backside and tell her to stuff it. But as usual my shrewd business brain weighs up the possibilities and I troop off to the garage wondering where Petra is.

I keep my eyes open as I move round the outside of the house but there’s no sign of her and it occurs to me that Mrs. V. might have given her the chop. Up to the scene of my near triumph the day before and I’m gazing fondly through the window imagining how magnificent I must have looked on the job when Petra comes into the room. She’s got her little black dress on with her frilly white apron and the thing in her hair and – wait a minute! She seems to have got plumper overnight. Her upper arms are definitely more rounded and her thighs – Jesus Christ! It isn’t Petra, it’s Mrs. V. My mouth is hanging lower than a coal miner’s balls and it’s a good job I’ve got one foot hooked over the window sill otherwise I’d be down in the garden. What a carve up. Mrs. V. must have gone round the twist. What in God’s name does she think she’s playing at?

I soon get the chance to ask her because she beckons me towards her with her index finger like my old schoolmaster used to do when he was going to clip you round the earhole.

“Come ’ere you naughty boy,” she squeaks. The accent doesn’t sound like her at all and I suddenly realise that it’s like a Frog speaking English.

“You ’ave been a naughty boy but I ’ave been naughty too, so I zink zat perhaps you should punish me.”

“Oh, no, that’s alright” I mumble, thinking that she’s barmy and wondering whether I ought to get the police.

“Ve should never ’ave come in ’ere.”

Mrs. V. picks up a silver backed hairbrush and hands it to me.

“Ven zomebody ’as been wicked girl they should ’av a little smack.”

She looks quite good standing there with her tits pushed up as if they’re being served up to you on a tray. The fact that the costume is a bit on the small side doesn’t do any harm either. It strikes me that she’s not a bad looking bird. Full mouth, good features, she can’t be much over forty.

“Smack you?” I says.

“Zat’s right.” she lowers her eyes and bows her head like a kid owning up for smashing a window. Some kid! I wonder how long she was standing there in the doorway watching Petra and me on the job. She certainly didn’t start coughing or anything.

“I vill lie on ze bed and you give me a little smack. Yes?”

She pulls up her skirt and shows me one of the sauciest pairs of frilly black knickers I’ve seen outside of those shops in Shaftesbury Avenue. I’m admiring them, when she pulls them down to her knees and bends over the bed. Now I’m only human aren’t I, and I can stand so much. This is so much.

I go over to the bed and put my hand between her legs and tickle the thing that is pressed against the bedspread like a warm, black spider. I’ve got a hard on now like a stick of Blackpool rock with the Lords Prayer printed through it – sideways.

“Smack me.”

I’ve still got the hairbrush in my hand and – well, you can’t refuse a lady can you? – I give her a few taps till her bottom is a delicate patterned pink and she’s squealing like feeding time at the piggery. It amazes me how some birds love being walloped.

Well, you don’t have to read a lot of detective stories to know what happens next. Her drawers complete their journey to the floor where they soon chum up with my jeans and I’m into her faster than a stoat into a rabbit hole.

What a performer. In my experience you can’t beat an older woman. Everytime they do it they do it as if they reckon it might be the last. And they’re not inhibited either. Mrs. V’s attraction to things French goes a lot deeper than just dressing up in her maid’s clobber and saying ‘oo la la’ occasionally. About the only thing she doesn’t do is the Can Can.

Then suddenly, it’s all over. She sits up, pats her hair, picks up her knickers and says “I am going to ze bathroom” and walks out. Well, I can take a hint, and sure enough just as I’m dressed and have swung one foot over the window sill she comes in again – but this time wearing the full Mrs. Villiers kit. She gives me a searching glance as if to say “Keep your nose to the grindstone and your hands off the teaspoons” and stalks out. There’s not even a twinkle when she gives me my money and if it wasn’t for the condition of my old man I might think I’d dreamed the whole thing. But when I examine what looks like a peeled grape with anaemia I realise it’s either been belting the arse off somebody or I must have caught it in a mincing machine without noticing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Now about this time I can hear some of you saying ‘oh yes, very likely, isn’t it. Women dressing up as French maids and having it off with the window cleaner. What a load of cobblers. Who does he think we are, etc. etc.’. Now, I don’t mind. I’m used to this reaction. But I want to warn you against it. Having your doubts is one thing, but complacency is a whore of a different colour. Just because it’s never happened to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to other people. Have a quick butchers at the ‘News of the People’ occasionally if you don’t believe me. I knew a bloke once who came home in the middle of the afternoon and caught his wife curled up in bed with someone else. He went spare. Picked up a lamp to smash the fellow’s face in – and found it was the next door neighbour’s daughter. Now just imagine that; not very nice to find your wife on the job with a bloke, but with a bird? It nearly killed the poor bastard and he’d had no idea his old woman was bent; used to have it away with her whenever he wanted to and she never complained or anything.

It’s like I was saying earlier. You never really know what a woman is up to, and they don’t know themselves half the time. But I can tell you that if you take ’em for granted you’re asking for a nasty surprise – and I’m speaking from personal experience.

A lot of people’s scornful attitude is also caused by a chronic obsession with their own sexual adequacy (phew! not bad, eh? It took me about three days to get the spelling right). Few blokes or birds are satisfied with their plumbing and they’re always looking around a bit nervous-like to size up the competition. To be secure they have to believe that no one is getting it more often or better than they are. The very thought makes their stomachs hiss and bubble like a bucket of Epsom Salts. This kind of person is much happier saying that you’re bull-shitting – and trying to believe it – than grabbing a slice of the action for himself.

I can’t blame them really because the way I go on you’d think I was having a thigh hamburger every hour of the day. In fact it’s like I said at the beginning. Most of them just roll their eyeballs over you and have a little think about it. For every bird that takes you upstairs there’s fifty that don’t fancy it, and five that prefer Ken Dodd anyway. And, by God, if you saw some of them, you’d be bloody grateful for it too. It’s not every day of the week that beauty and lust go hand in hand. I don’t tell you about some of the terrible old scrubbers that tip me the wink because I don’t want to turn you off. I had a mate who used to be a court usher and he told me that if you saw some of the rubbish that came up before the beak you wouldn’t be able to associate them with the tricks they’re supposed to have got up to. You’d think it was six other people.

Talking of tricks reminds me of Brenda; plump little blonde bird with bloody great tits. She was a rotten little tart if ever there was one. She’d strip to the waist to wash her hands in a prisoner of war camp, and the insides of her legs hadn’t touched each other since she left primary school.

She was another one who was always moaning on about her old man. I don’t like that because I’m happier forgetting he exists. Hearing some bird telling me what a prat her husband is makes me feel sorry for the poor bastard and once I feel sorry I feel guilty and once I feel guilty I don’t enjoy poking the bird so much. So Brenda is doing nobody a favour by beginning to rabbit on about ‘The Weasel’ as she affectionately calls him.

“You know what I like about you?” she says to me one afternoon, when we’re tucked up side by side enjoying a marshmallow after the first round of our labours. I’m not kidding. Brenda is always stuffing herself with sweets.

“Don’t be bloody stupid,” I tell her.

“No, besides that – well it is part of it I suppose. It’s your body. You’ve got a lovely body, Timmy.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You conceited bastard!”

“Well, it’s a fact, isn’t it? I’m stuck with it. There’s no point in pretending I haven’t noticed it myself.”

“The Weasel looks like a slug compared to you.”

“Weasels can’t look like slugs.”

“Mine can. Oh, you don’t know what it’s like when he starts pawing you.”

“You’re dead right I don’t.”

“He’s got cold, clammy hands, and hairs growing out of his ears. Trouble is, he’s so sexy. He can’t get enough of it. Every night he’s trying to have it away. ‘Come on Brenda. Just a quickie. It’ll help me go to sleep.’ That’s what he says. I usually give in to him. Just so that I can get some peace.”

“Well, it’s nice to know somebody cares, isn’t it?”

“He doesn’t care. I could be half a grapefruit for all it matters to him.”

You damn near are, I think to myself.

“And he’s so mean,” she goes on. “Never takes me out anywhere.”

“He’s frightened of losing you to another man.”

“Go on. Don’t give me that. If I could leave my twat behind, he’d chuck me out tomorrow.”

Most birds never mention their fannies by name but Brenda doesn’t bother about such niceties.

“He’d have a job, wouldn’t he?”

“You ought to be jealous listening to me going on about my husband.”

“Doesn’t sound as if I’ve got much to be jealous about.”

“No. It’s the idea of it. If you cared for me, you wouldn’t want me to mention anybody else.”

“No. I expect you’re right.”

“Ooh. You are terrible. You only want one thing with me.”

“So do you.”

“I don’t. I’m very fond of you. Much more than you are of me. I don’t tell you, but I am.”

“You’re telling me now, aren’t you?”

“If you’re going to be like that, you might as well piss off.”

“That’s what I like about you, Brenda, you’re such a lady.”

“That’s not what you like about me. This is what you like—” She picks up my hand and puts it between her legs. It’s like putting it in front of an electric fire. You could hatch ducks’ eggs down there.

“—and this is what I like.” Brenda’s hands are like a cheese grater and she uses them as if she’s rummaging for a tanner in a sack of potatoes. That’s because she’s a scrubber. A class bird will always treat your property with the tenderness and respect it deserves. However, my prick is so pig stupid it frequently can’t tell the difference and responds to her horrible advances with a speed worthy of a better occasion.

“There’s a good boy.”

Brenda shoves another marshmallow in her mouth and scrambles astride me.

“Where is it? Ah, there we are.”

She settles down like a chicken on to its eggs and starts a slow circular movement which matches the passage of the marshmallow round her mouth. It’s not bad and I lie back and watch her enormous tits. They’re a bit like marshmallows, too.

“Come on, aren’t you going to do anything?”

“I was admiring you.”

“Go on.”

“No seriously. You’ve got fabulous tits.”

I know I said I never call ’em tits, but with Brenda it doesn’t matter. She bends forward so her hair dangles all over my face and her bristols are hanging down like two stockings full of sago pudding. It’s supposed to be sexy but in fact her hair tickles and her tits give me an inferiority complex. That’s why I like small, slim birds. Because I’ve got a penis complex – oh doctor, I thought I’d never tell you.

I tilt back my head and lick the dust of icing sugar on her lips. Somewhere outside men are digging holes in the road, or adding up columns of sales figures, or selling vacuum cleaners, but Timmy Lea is lying here being screwed by Brenda Somebody and it’s not a bad way to make a living, really it isn’t.

“Yoo hoo! Anyone at home?”

I leap about four feet in the air, which is not bad when you’ve got somebody Brenda’s weight sitting on your old man, but bloody painful when you come down again.

“Fuck,” says Brenda. She sounds more annoyed than scared. Not me though.

I’m scared. This is the kind of thing I always knew would happen one day.

“What am going to do?”

“You could get in the wardrobe.”

I rush across the room and tear the coat hangers aside, so I can burrow into the mothballs like a thirteen stone moth trying to commit suicide.

“My clothes?”

“Alright, alright,” she picks up my stuff and pushes it into the wardrobe.

“Here I come, lover.” The voice is about six paces away.

“Close the door. Ouch!”

The last exclamation is occasioned by my cock nearly getting slammed in the door. It must have been done a permanent injury, because it’s still standing stiffly to attention like the boy on the burning deck. Try explaining that one away I think to myself as I crouch there peering through the clothes and the half-open doors towards the bed.

In this situation, I have to hand it to Brenda. You wouldn’t think that her husband was on the point of bursting into the bedroom and finding her boy friend bent double in the wardrobe with an enormous hard on. She drops her nightdress over her shoulders like a tea cosy, hops into bed and is sitting there selecting a marshmallow as ‘The Weasel’ comes into my field of vision. I can see what she means about being sexy. He must be fruitier than a two-ton packet of wine gums. He’s only been shedding his clothes all the way up the stairs and is now wearing a string vest, pants and socks, held up by an arresting pair of yellow suspenders. It is possible that he always goes about like this, but I reject the thought.

“So there you are,” he says, sitting on the bed and helping himself to a marshmallow.

“Cor, you’re looking alright.”

“Help yourself.” Brenda waves at the box on her lap. “Why don’t you take the whole bleeding lot?”

“You don’t seem very glad to see me. I got away special to come over here. Look, I bought you a little present.”

Typical, I think to myself. ‘He never buys me anything,’ that’s what she said to me. You can’t believe a word they say.

The Weasel produces what looks like one coil from a large spring which he must have been hiding in his hand.

“Where did you knock that off from?” Grateful, isn’t she?

“I bought it.”

“Go on. I know you. What is it?”

“It’s a bracelet. It goes on your wrist.”

“I know where bracelets go. I didn’t think it went through my nose.”

Not a bad idea, though, I think to myself. God. but it’s uncomfortable in that cupboard and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stand it without moving. Why doesn’t Brenda tell him to piss off and buy her a packet of aspirins?

“Don’t be like that, Bren,” continues the Weasel. “You know how I feel about you.”

“Yeah. With your dirty little hands most of the time. I’ve had about enough of it.”

“Oh Bren.”

“Get orf me.”

The Weasel is getting passionate and attempts to embrace Brenda, getting a stiff hand off for his pains.

“Come on, Bren, give me a little kiss.” One of his podgy hands closes on her breast. “I did buy you a bracelet, didn’t I?”

You can tell that ‘The Weasel’ is the persistent type and does not take ‘no’ for an answer easily. You may recall my earlier words on how effective this can be. Certainly Brenda is slow to brush the hand away and I can almost see her disgusting little mind thinking that it might be quicker and easier to let him get on with it.

“You’re lovely, Bren. Ooh, if you knew how much I fancied you.”

“I get an idea sometimes.”

Brenda allows herself to be kissed and the rolls of fat on the Weasel’s neck huddle together like shorn sheep. It looks as if I’m going to be right. His hands disappear under her nightie and he’s moaning and trying unsuccessfully to hook off his socks. He looks bloody ridiculous and I hope nobody has ever seen me in the same position. Brenda’s head is on his shoulder and the cheeky bitch raises her eyebrows to the ceiling in a ‘useless’ gesture clearly intended for my benefit.

“Come on then,” she says. “But you’d better make it quick – still, you usually do, don’t you?”

She’s a hard case, that Brenda. The Weasel is trying to slip under the sheets but she kicks them all back so I can see right up to her tonsils. She whips off his pants like they’re a corn plaster and lays back with her hands behind her head. It’s obvious that this is all for my benefit. The dirtly little scrubber obviously gets a kick out of being watched when she’s on the job. The Weasel scrambles on top of her with all the grace of a pelican landing on a flag pole and fumbles his way into her. God knows why she calls him the Weasel. He’s more like an over-fed spaniel. Once he’s inside, she wraps her legs round the small of his back and I’m almost jealous until he gets into his stride. What a disgusting sight. It’s like a couple of hairy, white blancmanges caught in a high gale. They wobble and tremble so I think they might end up on the floor at any moment. I promise you, if you saw what it looked like it would put you off for the rest of your life. Luckily, I don’t have to bear it for long, because Brenda is dead right – the Weasel has hardly started before he is finished. He lets out a groan like the end of three weeks constipation and collapses on top of her as if he’s a beach mattress and somebody has taken the bung out. Over his shoulder Brenda is unkindly giving me a thumbs-down sign.

“Get off, you’re suffocating me.”

Brenda is not one of those women who need to be gently cossetted after the sexual act. She obviously has not read the book I got at the Junction.

“Oh Bren –”

“—Give over, for God’s sake. I’m not in the mood.”

“Bren—”

“—Look, you’ve had what you want. Now, why don’t you piss off?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here with you.”

Poor sod, I think, you can’t blame him. After all it is his home. If you get off work early and nip back for a bit of the other you expect to be treated better than this. The Weasel must really fancy her because he starts trying to kiss her neck and generally behaving in a very affectionate fashion quite unlike most blokes when they’ve just shot their load.

“Bren, Bren, oh Bren.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Oh, don’t you see, Bren?”

“Right!!!”

Brenda struggles out from underneath him and pulls herself up on her elbows. Her eyes are blazing and she is looking directly towards the wardrobe. What is the stupid bitch going to do?

“Do you want to meet my husband?”

Her eyebrows raise in a question mark but they don’t get as far as my stomach which practically jumps out of my mouth. The Weasel whips round as if his head is attached by a twisted elastic band, and his eyes widen in what I assume is the first indication of insane rage. The bitch obviously wants to see me torn limb from limb. I shrink back into the wardrobe and that must upset its balance because the whole thing starts to tremble and I lose my footing and have to stumble out with my hampton still at the present arms. I put my fists up because I reckon I’m going to have to fight for my life against a justifiably enraged husband but ‘The Weasel’s’ behaviour is a revelation. He leaps off the bed just like you’d expect him to do, and the expression on his face certainly suggests a kind of madness, but instead of hurling himself at me he bursts past and bundles down the stairs as if Old Nick is after him.

At first I’m dead relieved but then I get a bit worried. Perhaps the shock has driven him out of his mind. I hear the front door slam and crossing to the door, see that his clothes are still strewn all down the stairs. The poor berk must be running through the streets of Clapham in the altogether. I am genuinely disturbed but behind me Brenda is pissing herself.

“Oh my God,” she screeches. “What a bloody laugh.”

“Shutup, you crude bitch.” I say. “Are you some kind of nutter, or something?”

But she goes on laughing fit to burst and I find my clobber and start pulling on my jeans. I mean, sympathy is all very well, but with everybody going round the twist you’ve got to look after number one. Maybe he has a friend round the corner with a shot gun.

“You must be sick,” I say, managing to catch my foreskin in my zip which makes her laugh all the more. Really, I could belt her, the way I feel.

“His face, when I asked him if he’d like to meet my husband. Oh my God. I thought I was going to die.” And yours, when you came out of the wardrobe. If you—”

“What do you mean?” I say, but, of course, the moment she says that I twig.

“You mean—”

“Oh no!” Now she can hardly form the words. “Haven’t you got it yet? That wasn’t my husband.”

“Then why the hell did you make me get in the cupboard?” I scream.

“I didn’t make you do anything. I mentioned it and you were in there before I could stop you. You must have had a guilty conscience. Come on—”

She stretches out her hand and tries to ruffle my hair. “Where’s your sense of humour? Can’t you take a little joke? I’m sorry, but I’d forgotten he said he was coming round. Ouch!!”

I don’t approve of belting women but there has to be an exception to every rule, and with Brenda I really think I was justified. What her old man thought when he did come home I don’t know, but with that shiner he must have thought she did more than walk into a cupboard.

With birds like that around it was a relief to be able to turn to Elizabeth. I had taken her to the flicks a couple of times and on the second occasion I actually got her into the back row and kissed her. How about that?

The first time I had to be content with holding her hand during the big feature and her burying her head in my shoulder during the nasty bits. It was a different world I can tell you, and when I went out with Elizabeth I felt as if I was entering an order of monks who had taken the vow of ‘keep your hands off it.’ I was so used to grabbing any part of a bird I took a fancy to that it took me a bit of time to adapt to her standards. And, by God, they were strict. On the way home after our little kissing session in the cinema – kissing, I hasten to make it clear, not necking – she is obviously dead worried that she has gone too far and shies away every time I try and put my arm round her. “I give you an inch and you want to take a mile,” she bleats.

This is typical and with some birds I wouldn’t bother, but, as I have explained, in a funny way, I rather like it. It amuses me to think that I’m having this wild scene with all those dollies and yet this little virgin won’t let me lay a finger on her, She is also a very good-looking bird and I think every bloke needs a steady to tide him over the ups and downs. This thought is particularly sharp in my mind at the moment because Sandy has a big thing going with some Spade – you can take that any way you like – and doesn’t really want to know me. As you can imagine, this is causing me all kinds of little hang-ups.

So for all those reasons I’m quite happy sitting there in the darkness, watching Elizabeth gaze hypnotised at the screen whilst the Dairy Vanilla Walnut Whip Sundae Special drips off the end of her spoon on to the floor.

“That was really nice,” she says to me at the end of one epic load of old rubbish when I have broken all records by actually massaging one of her tits for thirteen seconds before being pulled off. She is not referring to my pathetic advances but to the film.

“Not bad,” I say. “I wish he’d say a bit more, though. I get fed up with this strong, silent stuff.”

“Well, he was meant to be an Inca prince. Perhaps they didn’t speak much. Anyway, I think he’s smashing. My Mum likes him too.”

“When am I going to meet your Mum?”

It’s a fact that I’ve been out with her about six times now and I’ve never been inside the house. Maybe she’s ashamed of it – or maybe it’s me.

“Well, you won’t meet her tonight.”

This is no surprise so I start resigning myself to a wimpy and a quick tussle in the porch, with her rabbiting on about the neighbours.

“They’ve gone to stay with my aunt in Broadstairs for the weekend.”

“What, your Mum and Dad?”

“Yes.”

Now normally you’d expect her to follow that by saying “Don’t get any ideas about coming in and making a beast of yourself.” but she doesn’t. And when she doesn’t the blood starts circulating even faster through my ever-hopeful veins. Perhaps this is my big opportunity. Play it cool and I could be in like Flynn.

So I drop the subject and take her off for a cup of coffee and some more chat about Charlton Heston and how good he was in “The Big Country” and all that kind of thing. She is less talkative than usual and I feel that there may be something on her mind. I wonder what it is.

It starts pissing with rain on the way home and I don’t have Sid’s van so we are getting pretty wet. This is fine by me because I can’t see how she can refuse to let me in, just to dry off, at least.

She pauses with her hand on the gate and I know that this is the moment of truth as they say.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she says.

“Anything to get out of this rain. Yeah, thanks a lot.”

We go up the path and she fumbles with the front door key and looks nervously over her shoulder as if she expects to see the neighbours drawing up a petition to the local watch committee.

“Here, let me do that,” I insert the key the right way up and we go in. Inside it is just like your own house only it smells like somebody else’s, and we take our macs off with a great deal of nervous hairshaking and teeth-chattering on her part.

“Do you find it cold?” she says. “You go into the front room and I’ll fetch the electric fire. It’s up in my bedroom.”

Don’t bother, I feel like saying, let’s go up to your bedroom, it’ll save you a trip. But you can see by her blushes that she didn’t mean to say it, and thinks that I’ll imagine it was some kind of hint on her part so I keep my mouth shut.

The front room is cold and I wander around swinging my arms and looking at the photograph of what must be her Dad on the mantelpiece. It was probably taken during the war – God knows which one – because his haircut practically starts under his scalp and his shorts could pass for Greek trousers in a bad light. Whatever the older generation say about my lot, at least we don’t turn ourselves out as diabolically badly as they did.

Seeing Daddy makes me feel uneasy. I’m never very happy in a house I don’t know well and I keep feeling that the old man is suddenly going to leap up from behind the settee with a horsewhip in his hand. I sit down in one of the faded armchairs with the coloured, leather elephant motif on the back of it and try and prepare my plan of action. Best, I feel, to continue as I am, playing it dead cool, and see what happens. If nothing happens I can always come to the physical bit when it’s time to leave.

Elizabeth comes in with the electric fire and it’s obvious that she’s tarted herself up a bit. A splash of perfume under the armpits, by the whiff of it.

“You did say tea, didn’t you? You can have coffee if you like.”

She is kneeling down to plug the fire in and I have to admit she’s got a cracking body on her. I wouldn’t climb over her to get to Ted Heath.

“No, no tea’s fine.”

“You’re very quiet all of a sudden.”

“It’s such a surprise being invited in that I’m speechless.”

“Oh, I was meaning to invite you in when Mum and Dad were here but you know what they’re like. It’s so formal it’s embarrassing. They never turn the telly off and you have to talk and watch at the same time.”

“You’ve brought other blokes home, have you?”

“Not when I was on my own.” She’s blushing again.

“I should think not. You never know what they might try and get up to.”

She won’t look me in the eyes but she’s still kneeling in front of me and her tits are making a lovely pattern through her pink woolly jumper.

“Some of them had a try.”

I stretch out my hand and rest it gently on her shoulder.

“What about that cup of tea?”

My hand gently ruffles the hair at the back of her neck.

“They’re not coming back till tomorrow evening.”

I pull her towards me and kiss her very gently on the mouth and to my surprise she clings to me as hard as she can, and her kissing becomes clumsy and desperate, as if she’s trying to work my lips away from the rest of my face.

“You won’t give me a baby, will you?” she says.

Well, I didn’t give her a baby. In fact, to tell you the truth, I didn’t give her anything till about six o’clock the next morning, after I’d fallen asleep worrying about it a couple of hours before. Yes, I know it sounds incredible, but faced with this innocent virgin, who made me get undressed outside the bedroom and come in when she had turned the light off, I couldn’t do a bloody thing.

She was very pleased about it though. She said that it was nice that we were both virgins.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I still felt pretty ashamed when I did eventually manage to do it. I can remember lying there listening to the rattle of milk bottles on the doorstep and Elizabeth rabbiting on about how it hadn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, and thinking: how could I have managed to make such a cock of it; and when I quite fancied the bird, too. If it had been some old scrubber like Brenda, that I didn’t give tuppence about, I’d have been through her like a dose of salts. Maybe I’d been spoilt. I mean, when you have women who go over you like they’re sorting out the dirty linen basket you begin to take it for granted. You’ve gone past the stage of the simple, straightforward little bird who wants you to take the initiative, and you’ve forgotten what to do when you meet her. I think affection had something to do with it as well. I mean, Elizabeth was the kind of girl I would marry one day and you don’t do things like that to the bird you marry, do you? Well, maybe you do but I still think the first time was made more difficult because I really liked her.

I mentioned marriage then but, of course, I was thinking of it in the distant future. Not Elizabeth. The second she lost her cherry she was planning her trousseau. It was as if by having it away with her I had put the down payment on a wife and three kids. She started fussing around and that very first morning I had to have breakfast in bed. A dead waste of time as far as I’m concerned, because you always get crumbs stuck in the most uncomfortable places and knock the teapot over when you try and fish them out. Then there was washing up together and going shopping together – she even starts looking in the window of furniture shops which turns me off a bit – and in the end I have to pretend I arranged to go to Chelsea with a mate before I can get away.

It’s really good to be back home again, even with Mum going on at me for being out all night and not telling her anything. She’s worried about me but you can see that Dad just thinks I’ve been out nicking something. Not that he’d mind provided I cut him in for a slice. The fact is that since I fell into bad company and did a spot of lead stripping I haven’t laid a hand on anything. And that’s saying something with the chances you get as a window cleaner I can tell you.

Anyway, back to Elizabeth. The next few weeks she’s more difficult to shake off than a pixie’s french letter. I feel she’s taking over my life. And it’s not as if I’m getting a lot of the other from her, either. She doesn’t fancy it on the common, her Mum and Dad are always at home and if they do leave the house in the afternoon she doesn’t like doing it when it’s light. It’s not on, is it? If I had any sense I’d give her the bullet but of course the more she plays up the more I pretend to myself that she is a girl with what Mum would call ‘old fashioned values’. I’m dead simple you see.

Luckily it doesn’t matter too much that Elizabeth’s legs are shut tighter than a pair of rusty scissors because I’m getting more than I need elsewhere. Sandy is still shacked up with her spade and I’ve gone off Brenda in a big way but the rest of them are all ready, willing and very able. Of course Elizabeth knows nothing about this and she still reckons I’m practically a virgin. Not surprising really, because by the time I get round to her sometimes I’m so knackered I can hardly poke my old man through the zip of my fly. Maybe it’s because deep down inside I reckon I’m going to get married and have to settle down, but I’m screwing everything that moves at the moment. It’s as if I’m trying to build up a rich storehouse of memory before I go under.

Thinking about it, that’s probably why I was so glad to meet Sonia.

Sonia was a dancer, an acrobatic dancer. I don’t know what she was like because I never saw her do it – acrobatic dancing I mean – but she showed me an album of press cuttings and there were some pictures of her doing the splits and jamming her leg up against the wall so it looked like a giant hard. She was billed as ‘Kismetta the Fantastica’ which might have gone down well at the Aldershot Hippodrome in 1942 but was hardly going to pack them in now. Somebody else had obviously had the same idea because when I met her she was ‘resting’ as she put it. Anyway, let me tell you the whole story.

One of the places I did was called the ‘Fitzroy Hotel’ but it was more like a doss house really. The glass sign outside was broken so you could see the bulbs inside and the lino cracked up like baked custard. There were never many people there and I can’t see how the place stayed open. I wouldn’t have passed water there let alone the night. The owner was a miserable old git who always tried to knock down my price and said that he’d do it himself if it wasn’t for his back and that I was taking advantage of him. I took this a couple of times and then I told him to stuff the job up his Jacksie, which put our relationship on a more professional footing. After that he never gave any trouble but just wandered round making sure no one had left a light on and that I knew he was watching me to see that I didn’t nick anything.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when I first met Sonia. I didn’t expect anybody to be around then and I got a bit of a shock when this pile of bedclothes suddenly springs up and flashes a couple of tits at me. It’s worse for her because I’ve woken her up and she glares at me and pulls the sheet up to her chin.

She’s about thirty. I suppose; boney, sallow, hollow-cheeked, lank-haired; her tits are small but they droop like foxgloves which gives them shape. There’s a beat-up, world-used scruffiness about her which I feel at home with. Any bird that sleeps starkers always interest me and she looks better than a lot I’ve seen considering she’s just woken up. Elizabeth has never let me see her naked yet. She always wears a nightdress and though I’m allowed to mess about underneath it, it stays on, come hell or high water. I think it’s because she secretly thinks what we are doing is sinful and feels a bit better about it if she is wearing something.

The bird in the bed is saying something but I can’t hear what it is so I pull the top window down a bit and manage to drop my squeegee into the room. Then I find the bottom window is jammed so I have to indicate that I need assistance. The bint raises her eyes to the ceiling in a ‘you prick’ gesture and swings out of bed wrapping the sheet around herself but not quickly enough to stop me seeing that they’re the same colour as the hairs on her head. She stalks across to the window, picks up the squeegee and hands it to me over the top.

“Haven’t you got a hanky?” she says.

At first I don’t know what she means and I’m wondering if there’s a large bogeyman hanging out of one of my nostrils. Then I cotton on that she’s talking about dropping handkerchiefs.

“Hurrah,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I could see your mind working. You got there in the end, didn’t you?”

“I usually do.”

“What do you mean by coming and waking me up?”

“Somebody had to do it. Do you know what the time is?”

“About eleven?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I know what the time is, then, don’t I?”

I’m still standing on the window ledge and I am beginning to feel that this may be a position in which I have difficulty doing myself justice.

The bird obviously agrees with me because she shakes her head and wanders over to the door where there is a dressing gown hanging up. In one quick movement she drops the sheet and has the dressing gown round her shoulders. It’s a man’s dressing gown and it’s far too big for her. She feels in the pocket, pulls out a fag packet and sticks a dog end in her mouth. No matches. She points to her fag and looks at me and I nod. I don’t smoke but I always carry a box of matches for just such moments. It’s like boy scouts carry around those penknives with bits on them to get stones out of horses’ hooves. She shrugs her shoulders and with a feat of strength that impresses me almost as much as the view down the front of her dressing gown she pulls up the window.

“If we’re going to go on handing things backwards and forwards to each other you’d better come in. You’re not going to rape me, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Pity. I feel like being raped this morning. Do you ever get feelings like that?”

“Sometimes. Only it’s different for me.”

“Of course. You’ve got to do the raping, haven’t you? I wonder what happens when somebody who wants to be raped meets somebody who wants to rape someone. It can’t be rape, can it?”

“No. I suppose it’s normal.”

“Or passion – yes. I think it’s probably passion.”

She sits down on the bed and crosses one leg over the other, which is something she does very well. I light her cigarette and start wiping over the inside of the windows.

“What’s that thing called?”

“It’s a squeegee.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of those. I always thought it was some kind of mop.”

“I think it’s that, too.”

“Well, I’m glad we thrashed that out, you learn something new every day, don’t you? Do you want a cup of fabulous, taste-bud tickling Nescafé while you’re here?”

“Yes, ta.”

She has an accent which is a mixture of posh and working class so you can’t quite tell what it is but the vaguely piss-taking way she talks has a definite style to it.

She puts the kettle on and washes out a couple of mugs in the washbasin.

“The milk’s off. Do you mind it black?”

“No, that’s fine. What are you doing here?”

“You mean what’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’m resting, dahling.”

She makes her voice go all husky.

“I’m a theatrical you see and at the moment no one wants to know about me.”

“But why here?”

“Well, I usually stay at the Ritz but when I heard the Aga Khan was staying there I thought it would be more diplomatic if I dossed down somewhere else. We were lovers for years, you know.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“No, well you wouldn’t would you? It was a terribly well kept secret. I used to have a couple of fantail pigeons which carried messages backwards and forwards between us – “Be by the bandstand on Clapham Common at eight o’clock on Thursday. My private plane will collect you” – that kind of thing. Then we’d be off to Biarritz or Budleigh Salterton or wherever his exotic fancy took him, making mad passionate love until it was time for him to go off and be weighed in jewels or something. He was a slave to Islam you know.”

I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about but I’m impressed.

“You’re an actress then?”

“Brilliant. I could see you were a bright boy the moment I clapped eyes on you. Yes, sort of. Ooops – coffee time.”

She switches off the gas and hands me my coffee,

“What have you been in? Anything I’d have seen on the telly?”

She claps a hand to her heart and looks disgusted.

“Television? Oh! Goodness gracious me, no! I work in the live theatre – and besides, nobody has ever asked me.”

“So what have you been in?”

“You are persistent, aren’t you? Well, let me see. I was Becket in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ – no, actually, the last thing I did was to stand next to a girl with a very personal problem in the chorus of “Babes in the Wood” at the Granada, Tooting. You may not have seen the show, but you probably smelt it. You know: two balloons up your jumper and a string of jokes about baked bean commercials.”

“When did that finish?”

“You’re not from the Inland Revenue, are you? My goodness, but you ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry but I’ve never met an actress before.”

“Well, I misled you a little bit. I’m not really an actress, I’m a dancer. An acrobatic dancer – or I was. Now, I’ll do anything within reason, and provided I can keep my knickers on. Would you like to see my credentials? I was waiting for a fan to show up.”

She doesn’t stop for an answer but goes and gets this book of press cuttings I mentioned earlier.

“Come with me down memory lane,” she says and pats the bed beside her. I sit down and she takes me through the book. It’s a bit sad because all the big cuttings are from a newspaper in Baldock which is where she must have come from and which would probably make it a front page story if one of the locals farted outside Covent Garden Opera House.

“Who’s the bloke?”

In some of the pictures there’s a good looking dago dancing with her, wearing some kind of gypsy costume. His hair is slicked down and parted in the middle so the parting looks as if someone made it with a meat cleaver. He reminds me of Valentino who Mum is always going on about, and he’s probably meant to. A few photos later he’s wearing a turban and a lot of boot polish and then he disappears altogether.

“That’s the Great Fakir, if you’ll excuse my pronunciation.”

“The what?”

“That was what he called himself in the act – in that one anyway. He was also known as ‘The Sheik’ and my husband – he wasn’t very good at that though.”

“Is that his dressing gown?”

She smiles and pulls it closer around her. “Yes, I – yes. How observant of you. But then I suppose it’s unlikely that I’d go out and buy a man’s dressing gown, isn’t it?”

“You’re divorced now?”

“No, we were never married. I said he was ‘known’ as my husband. Roy was doing you a favour just to live with you. He was too bloody clever to get married. I was married, though, before I met him. God! But I made a wonderful botch of things. Still, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; a complete stranger who suddenly appears on my window sill.”

“Probably because I ask so many questions.”

“Maybe. Perhaps it’s also – oh, it doesn’t matter. You’d better get back on the job, hadn’t you? – if you’ll excuse the expression. You’re losing money sitting here.”

“That’s alright. I like talking to you.”

I look into her eyes and she looks back at me very cool. I can feel her mind examining the same set of possibilities as mine.

Then there’s a knock on the door.

“To be continued,” she says, and tightening the sash round her waist she opens the door.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss er, Miss Hatchard?”

The voice belongs to the miserable berk who runs the place.

“That’s right. Who did you expect it to be?”

“Oh, no one, it’s just that I saw the ladder outside your window and I wanted to check that everything was alright. You know, I mean you’ve got to be careful these days, haven’t you? I thought you might have gone out and – you know?”

“That was very thoughtful of you Mr. Drake.”

“Well, I like my guests to feel that their welfare is at the forefront of my mind.”

Mealy-mouthed old shit bag. He obviously thought I was knocking off stuff from her room – or wanted to make her think I would do, if I got half the chance.

“Thank you Mr. Drake. I do appreciate that – oh, Mr. Drake,” her voice is soft as a kitten’s stomach.

“Yes, Miss Hatchard?”

“I feel I should tell you that I’ve got a long needle, and if I find you peeping through the bathroom keyhole again I’ll ram it straight through your eyeball.”

She slams the door and stalks back to the bed.

“Dirty little rat. He’s always pawing me with his eyes. Asked me if I’d like to come down and watch his telly the other night. Christ, can you imagine it. Two brown ales and his podgy wet hands creeping towards you. I’d rather be on the game.”

I can see that Drakey has smashed the nice little atmosphere of mutual sympathy and understanding that was building up between us, and that it would be a smart move to get back outside and arrange to see her later if I can. “I’d better get out of here,” I say. “Tell you what, let me buy you a drink later. You get dressed while I finish this place and I’ll take you round to the boozer. It’ll soon be dinner time anyway.”

She thinks about it for a minute and then nods.

“Yes, why not? Thank you very much. I can’t stay too long, though, because I’ve got to go to an audition this afternoon. I’m supposed to be there at two o’clock, though they’ll probably keep me hanging around for bloody hours as usual.”

So I hop outside again and she winks at me through the window, which is a promise of good things to come I carry with me round the rest of the job. Drakey pays up without a murmur, though he gets a bit tense when I ask him why one of his eyes is watering. I also enjoy his expression when Kismetta, or whatever her real name is sails out looking mean, moody and magnificent in a maxi skirt slashed to her navel and her hair practically straight down the front of her face.

I guide her round to the pub and I can see that the lads are impressed. With this in mind, I steer her into a corner and get her a lager and a cheese roll – fast. You can’t leave a bird like that alone for long without reckoning that some other bleeder will be chatting her up.

“Your real name isn’t Kismetta, is it?” I say as I shove the drink into her hand.

“You must be joking, dahling.” She blows smoke over her left shoulder and I can see her lapping up the way everybody is slopping the beer down their bibs because they can’t take their eyes off her.

“No, it’s Pat. Pat Hatchard. That other rubbish is just a stage name.”

“What are you trying for this afternoon?”

“I don’t really know. Theatre in the Round in Streatham or something. Doesn’t really matter; it’s always the same: Right Miss – um Miss Hatchard. Thank you. Very nice. Now there’s a chance that we’ll be playing ‘The Birthday Party’ in our birthday suits this season so I wonder if you’d mind taking off your knickers. You would? Too public, eh? Well, supposing you came round to my flat this evening, more informal you know. No? Thank you, Miss Hatchard. Next please.”

Now, everybody in the boozer hears her going on like this and I’m getting a bit embarrassed. I mean, women don’t say those kind of things round here. Not in the local, anyway. I’ve never heard anything like it since Sid’s mother told Dad to stop squeezing her tits; and that was on Christmas Eve, so there was some excuse. I mean Mum would have done more than just break a soda syphon over his head if there hadn’t been.

“It’s no good if it’s like that,” I say hurriedly. “Maybe you ought to think about doing some other job? Can you type?”

She knocks back her drink and pushes the empty glass toward me expectantly.

“Type? God no! I’d rather go on the streets. Much rather.”

She glances round to see if anybody agrees with her but now they’re shying away as if it costs you five bob to catch her eye. I buy her another lager and the barman looks at me as if I’m a ponce. This is not quite the image-building job I was after. I can’t stand women who are crude in public. Still, having made an investment of two lagers I’m not prepared to quit now.

“Tell you what,” I say to her all casual-like. “If you get the job why don’t we have a little celebration tonight – or even if you don’t get it? It’ll cheer you up either way.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Oh, I dunno. A few beers and then we might take one of those Chinese meals back to your place.”

“To my place?”

“Well, I live with my Mum and Dad.”

“Very nice. But, I mean why don’t we have the Chinese meal in a Chinese restaurant. You can do that, you know.”

“I thought it might be more cosy, more intimate,—”

“—more chance of getting your end away.”

She says that so loud that even the bloke playing darts down the other end of the public bar can hear her. I know because he nearly pins his mate’s ear to the board.

“Oh, come off it.”

“What do you mean, ‘come off it’? You come off it. I don’t mind. I just wish you’d be honest about it. Now, let’s get out of this place. It gives me the creeps. I’ve never seen such a load of fish-eyed old syphilitics in my life. Haven’t they ever seen a woman before?”

And she stalks out leaving half her lager behind. I’m tempted to finish it but my reputation has already suffered enough as it is so I follow her outside sharpish.

I should give it a miss then, but, as I’ve said before, the old bulldog spirit is half the battle in this game, so I eventually get her to agree that I should give her a ring around six so we can decide where to meet. She doesn’t seem all that wild about it but at least she doesn’t say she’s got to visit her grandmother or something.

So at six o’clock I ring the Fitz and – surprise, surprise – Pat has got the job and is as chuffed as a dog with two cocks. “Come on round,” she shouts – “and bring a little bottle with you.” She sounds so cheerful that I don’t mention the pub crawl and go ape with the after shave lotion before blowing 47p on a very nice Spanish Sauternes, which I am confident is a shrewd investment with a bird who’s obviously been around a bit. Six forty-five and I’m striding past Drakey who always pops out like a spider the moment he hears a footstep. The poor sod has opened the register before he recognises me. I put him in his place with a curt nod and sail upstairs.

Rat, tat, tat and – blimey! When Pat swings the door open I wonder why I’ve bothered with the Spanish Sauternes. She smells like a perfumed brewery and has obviously had a few to celebrate before I got there. “Dahling – hic!” she husks. “Come in and let me devour you. Oh! You’ve brought a bottle. How kind. Lovely Spanish Sauternes, as drunk by the Greek gods.” She giggles weakly and falls back on the bed.

Frankly, my feelings are mixed. Obviously it’s on with her, but she’s pissed out of her mind and could start slinging her goloshes out of the window at any moment. I don’t mind, but at the first sign of activity Drakey will be beating his tiny knuckles white against the door panelling.

I don’t have much time to think about it because Pat tears the wine from my hand, sucks out the cork – she must have, she did it so fast – and sloshes half the bottle into a couple of mugs so it’s slopping over the sides.

Her dress had buttons all down the front which I thought were just for show but I can see now they aren’t because the top fifteen or so are undone.

“Come here, you beautiful bastard,” she yodels and gives me a smacking kiss on the lips and half her Sauternes down the front of my trousers. She finds that very funny and starts chanting “Get ’em off! Get ’em off!” loud enough to get herself free membership of the Chelsea F.C. Supporters Club.

Now, I can see that the longer I leave things, the worse it’s going to get, so I grab hold of her and seal her mouth with my lips. This calms things down a lot and she wriggles into my body like she’s trying to find a way through it. She can certainly kiss can Pat and what with that and her fingers running up and down my spine and ruffling my hair it’s easy for the lower half of my body to suddenly decide it’s deeply in love with her.

“So you got the job?” I say when we come up for air.

“Fuck the job,” she says, “Wheeeeee!”

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever leaned against the wall and been kissed by a girl who has one foot on the floor and one on your shoulder, but it’s quite an experience, I can tell you. And what you can do with your hands is nobody’s business.

After we’ve tried that one for a few minutes, she goes through her whole repertoire. High kicks, the splits, everything. There’s buttons popping like Guy Fawkes night and her dress is open right down the front so I can see she’s only wearing a pair of black lace panties underneath – it’s fantastic. She whizzes round the room about five times and then collapses on the bed.

Well, there’s probably about three blokes in the world who would have tip-toed out to get her an ice pack at that moment but I’m not one of them. I’ve got my clothes off faster than a kid unwraps a Christmas present and in no time I’m guiding her knicks down over her knees while she starts grinding her arse into the bed and baring her teeth.

I would like to be able to say that we made love, but I’d be boasting.

She made love and I tried to keep up with her. What an experience!

Whatever you’ve heard about dancers and muscle control – it’s true. Every bloody word of it. All those ladies you see swinging about on ropes at the circus; I bet their old men are walking round with smiles on their faces. This girl can grip you like she’s got a second pair of hands – and as for what she does when she’s got you. Five minutes with Pat and you know how a table cloth feels when it’s being shaken out of the window. She can do the splits with you inside her so that she’s playing footsie and tickling your ear with her big toe at the same time.

Like I said, I’m just lying back and hoping she doesn’t break it off. The whole room is bouncing up and down in time with me and it occurs to me it might be a good idea to lock the door if only to spoil Drakey’s view, through the keyhole.

I am glancing towards it when I suddenly notice the cupboard door start to swing open and close again. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it fell right off it’s hinges but to open and close. That’s strange. Bloody strange. I watch closely and it actually clicks shut. That’s it!

I leap out of bed nearly leaving my cock behind, and tear open the cupboard door. A bloke I’ve never seen before in my life is cowering behind it with his fly buttons open. I won’t tell you what he’s been doing but, according to my Mum, it stands a good chance of stunting his growth if not actually leading to total blindness.

“You bastard!” I shout and I belt him so he goes down in a heap of shoes and coat hangers.

“I don’t think you two have met,” says Pat over my shoulder. “Timmy, this is Mr. Wiseman who is auditioning me today. Tell me, Mr. Wiseman, have I got the part?”

He doesn’t answer because I kick him in the goolies so hard it sprains my ankle.

“You dirty bitch,” I yell, turning on Pat. “I thought you were the girl who never let any bleeding theatrical monkey touch her?”

“I need the work,” she screams. “Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life in this crummy room? Do you think I wanted to do that? Why do you think I’m drunk? Oh, my God.” And she bursts into tears and throws herself on the bed.

She’s just done that when there’s a furious banging on the door and Drakey starts demanding to know what’s going on. I’m not really in the mood to tell him so I pull on my trousers while Pat’s screaming gets louder, the bloke in the cupboard is sick and somebody else starts thumping on the wall.

It’s getting a bit noisy for me so I pick up my jacket and open the door just as Drakey takes a run at it. He sails past me and ends up on the bed with Pat who fetches him a back hander in the mouth.

“Don’t move,” I say. “I always want to remember you like that.”

CHAPTER NINE

You may be thinking that I meet a lot of funny people – well I do. People are funny. When you get inside their homes you find out. How many times have you heard somebody say “ooh, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.” Well, I am sometimes, just that. I spend my day looking into hundreds of little boxes, some of which have people in. Most of the time nothing is happening but, now and then, very occasionally, something is. Most people still make love indoors, and kill each other indoors, sometimes one after the other. I haven’t seen a murder yet, but I’ve been close to it. People get very worked up, and when they get worked up they look around for something to hit each other with. Once it was me.

Elvie was slim as a boy and flatter than a witches tit. Her hair was cropped close to her head and she had large soulful eyes with dark rings under them. She looked intelligent and intense and as if sex was the last thing she was interested in. She had a self contained flat in one of the big Victorian houses in Nightingale Lane and as it was right at the top I had to ring the bell to get in.

“Window cleaner.” I say cheerfully when she opens the door.

“Oh, yes,” she seems to be thinking about something else, and hardly glances at me. “You’d better come in.”

Inside, the flat is very light and well furnished. There’s a big round chinese lamp that lets down from the ceiling on a kind of pulley; built in bookshelves – some with books, some with ornaments, cream wall-to-wall carpeting and a huge double bed with a white bedspread on it and purple velvet cushions. The curtains match the cushions and are gathered with gold sashes. All in all it’s like something in one of those glossy magazines you find at the dentists. I would like to have a room like it one day. Especially that double bed. It would just about fill the whole of my pad at home.

There is another room leading off which I take to be the kitchen because I can hear the sound of something cooking.

“Excuse me,” she says unnecessarily, and goes into the kitchen. At least she trusts me which is something. You’d be amazed how many people are scared you will start nicking everything in sight the moment their back is turned. I’ve had birds hovering about me I was certain were hungry for a bit of the other, only to find out they were worried about their Post Office Savings book.

There’s a small balcony outside and I hop out and have a little wipe around with my mind idling happily in neutral. The sun is shining and there’s that faint hint of warmth in the air that reminds me of spring – for two pins I’d start whistling the score of Snow White.

In this mood, it is therefore a disappointment and a surprise to find the girl who opened the door kneeling by the bed and crying bitterly. In my simple way I imagine that she must have been trying some new recipe and made a cock of it, as opposed to the French version of the same thing.

I spring into the room and place a friendly hand on her shoulder and enquire what the matter is. From her reaction to my touch you would think I was the Beast from Fifty Thousand Fathoms or John Wayne in drag. She twists away from me and starts chewing on her knuckles.

“What’s the matter?” I say, feeling a bit of a tit. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what the trouble is.”

You can see what a bloody good child welfare officer I would have made can’t you? The girl still won’t answer so I am forced to continue with my kindly uncle Timmy routine.

“Is it something you’ve messed up in the kitchen? I know, you’ve just got married and you’ve burned the apple crumble. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.”

At the mention of the word marriage the bird redoubles her sobs and I decide to bury the kindly uncle Timmy routine. Also, and it’s a bit naughty to say this, I find women very sexy when they start crying. I love the way their bodies heave when they’re sobbing; and their wet little faces and moist lips; and the thought that beastly, rugged, brutish old me did it and is so masculine that he might have to kill himself. Terrible isn’t it? But there you are. So, I really have to watch myself when a bird starts crying. Luckily, I know the signs and I’m turning to leave when she suddenly rounds on me.

“Do you know what love is?” she says, and her voice is splintering like a piece of bamboo.

Now this is a very good question and one that I have thought of for myself. I am pretty certain that the answer is no, so my reply is a formality.

“Yes,” I say, “Of course I do. Why, is that what the trouble is?”

“Supposing you loved someone and they suddenly said they didn’t love you anymore and wanted to go off with someone else?”

“Well, I don’t know.” It’s the truth, I don’t know. You could do anything, couldn’t you? Kill him, kill her, kill yourself, shrug your shoulders and go off for a pint. I don’t know.

“Supposing they’d told you once that they would die without you and would never leave you. How would you feel then?”

“I’d feel terrible. I know I would. Look, this has happened to you, hasn’t it?” Notice how my radar mind homes immediately on the truth. “I probably sound callous but it happens to everybody sooner or later. You’ve just got to look at it as experience. In a few weeks you’ll wonder what you were getting so worked up about.”

Good advice isn’t it? If you didn’t know, you’d think I had some idea what I was talking about.

“You’ve never loved anbody,” she says.

“What makes you say that?”

“If you’d ever been in love, really in love, you couldn’t make that kind of glib, smug generalisation. Love invades you, it goes into you like a bullet, turns you over like a spade—”

Her voice dies away and she rests her head on the counterpane so I can see one wide-open shiny eye glinting like a diamond. Now I can smell her; that aroused, liberated smell like a patch of grass after rain. It works on me much better than any perfume ever invented. But, what am I thinking about. It’s like taking advantage of somebody lying on a hospital bed. I shouldn’t be thinking the things I’m thinking.

“I think you’re getting too worked up,” I say, “there’s plenty of other fish in the sea.”

“I know. And too many cooks spoil the broth don’t they? But on the other hand many hands make light work, so where do you go from there?”

“Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself for a start. Either get the bloke back in tow or chuck it in and find someone else!”

“Someone else? Oh God. I’ve tried that. This is what led to the hellish trouble I’m in now. I had this person and it seemed – it seemed too constricting. Faced with something you think is totally yours you grow to accept it and then dislike it. Like a room you decorate, and live in, and then suddenly you can’t believe that you could ever have liked it—.”

“So you change it?”

“I didn’t want to change it. Not really. I just wanted to inject some excitement into it. And then before I knew what I’d done I started a chain reaction and now I’m in this mess.”

“But you’ve got to take some of the blame. If you start messing about you can’t be surprised if your bloke does the same.”

“I wasn’t messing about. A little flirting isn’t messing about.”

It’s funny but I can’t imagine this bird flirting, she just doesn’t seem the type. You wouldn’t think she was capable of getting so worked up either.

“It’s that all the things that we’ve said and done together can be so easily swept aside. That you can put three years of your life into something and see it snuffed out like a candle.”

She sits up on the bed and leans forward with her hands clasped between her knees. There’s a small flush beneath one of her ears which is spreading like a blood stain.

“Maybe you should fight fire with fire.”

“What does that particularly ill-favoured homily mean in my situation?”

“What I said means that if your fellah is making you jealous maybe you should give him a dose of his own medicine.”

“Him.” To my amazement she smiles.

“Yes, you’ve tried it once, now try it again. But this time look as if you mean it.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“Look if you love this fellah you’ve got nothing to lose have you? Lay it on really strong. It’s make or break.”

“What’s the time?”

“The time?” The question throws me. Why is she suddenly interested in the time.”

“Yes, what’s the time?”

“It’s about half past eleven. Why, have you left something in the oven?”

“No, come on. I’m prepared to take your advice.” No sooner has she said this than she starts to peel back the bedspread.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking off the counterpane so that we can go to bed together. Now, put your bucket and stuff in the kitchen. It will spoil everything if you’re seen to be the window cleaner.”

“Thanks very much. Who do you want me to look like. Cary Grant?”

“It doesn’t matter. Come on, hurry up.”

She is down to a pair of pants already and they soon hit the deck. She pulls back the bedclothes and hops in, leaving a memory of a neat little arse, smooth, white and round as two onions.

“What’s the hurry. Is this bloke coming round here?”

She nods.

“Great,” I say, “He’s not going to be overthrilled to find us on the job, is he?”

“I thought that was the idea. Anyway, we don’t have to be ‘on the job’ as you put it. We can pretend.”

The minute she says that I suddenly decide I want to have it away with her very much. Pretend indeed – who does she think I am. The door is locked so we can worry about her fellow when he shows up. I know it’s crazy and I’m taking advantage, and she’s bonkers, but all that crying and her little eel body squirming under the sheets is too much for me. I’ve got as much chance of staying out of that bed as I have of pulling my foreskin over my head to keep my ears warm.

My clothes join hers and I’m inside the cool sheets reaching out for her body. But again, as soon as I touch her she rides away as if I’ve got electricity in my fingers.

“What’s the matter. Are my hands cold?”

She doesn’t answer but turns her back on me and curls herself up into a ball. I imagine she is worried about her bloke coming along and finding her on the job but she should have thought about that before she invited me into her bed. I put my hand on her stomach and try to pull her towards me but she starts struggling like a mad thing and splits my lip with her elbow. This really makes me go spare and I pin her arms down and kneel on her thighs which is a pretty effective way of keeping most women quiet. Not this one though because she starts spitting in my face. Anybody would think I was trying to rape her. The minute I think of that I start to get really worried. Perhaps she’s one of those birds you read about in the Sundays who gives you the big come on and then suddenly starts hollering cop. For a terrible moment I wonder if my innocence is being exploited.

To give myself time to think about it I grab a pillow and hold it over her face. I don’t want to smother her, just save myself from the rain of spittle. Well, you won’t believe what I find under the pillow, I don’t know what it is at first. It’s some kind of harness with a cricket bat handle fastened to it. Then I coco. It’s a false prick. Poor kid, no wonder she’s so neurotic. Her bloke obviously can’t do it properly and has to use this thing. She’s probably so mixed up that the thought of real sex terrifies her. I got here just in time.

I pick up the other pillow and there’s something else. A long pink thing like a plastic torch but with a smooth rounded end. Maybe I’m getting dirty minded in my old age but I don’t think it’s used for stirring Christmas pudding and when I give the end a twist and it starts vibrating like crazy I’m damn sure it isn’t. I am on the point of asking a few questions when I hear the key turning in the lock. Bleeding heck! – I hadn’t reckoned her fellow would be able to walk straight in. Now that he’s here I’m feeling a lot less enthusiastic about the whole idea. I was really more interested in a quick bit of nooky than all that rubbish about making people jealous.

I try to get up but the bird has heard the noise too, because she suddenly starts clinging to me as hard as she was trying to push me away a few seconds before. Talk about changing your mind.

“Get off,” I shout, but it’s not half as loud as the scream behind me. It’s not a bloke standing in the doorway but a bird. A slim little blonde job like a choir boy with make-up. She’s looking at us like it’s a bad motor crash. Horrified is putting it mildly.

“Elvie! Oh My God,” she howls, and she pulls the words out slowly as if from the bottom of a deep bag. All the time she is shrinking away but then she suddenly shakes her head like someone waking themselves up from a nightmare and rushes into the kitchen. This is not what I am expecting but beneath me the bird’s face is triumphant.

I’m thick. I’m very, very thick but something is beginning to dawn on me. Something that explains why I’m about as appealing to her as a skunk’s after shave lotion.

“There isn’t a bloke, is there? You’re lesbians.”

She ignores me and lies back clenching her fists.

“Did you see the expression on her cheap little face when she saw us. It was gorgeous. Now she knows what it’s like, dirty little bitch.”

There’s no sound coming from the kitchen and I’m getting worried. The blonde job may be looking for a carving knife. I know enough about women to be scared of them at moments like this. A woman’s scorn and all that malarky. It seems to me that my bent playmates may have been a good deal less than totally honest with me but I don’t know what goes on in the twilight world of Butches and Dykes and with every second in that flat I’m beginning to care less.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach down and grab my trousers.

“What’s she doing in there?”

“I don’t know. Collecting her things I suppose. That’s what she said she was going to do. She’s got somebody else, somebody older who can afford to take her around the world as a companion. She’s just a little whore. She’ll give herself to the highest bidder. She’d even sleep with you.”

“Thanks very much.”

There’s the sound of glass shattering in the kitchen and I go and stick my head round the door. Blondie is leaning forward with both hands in the sink and her face is grey. There is an empty asprin bottle beside her and the pieces of broken glass on the floor surround a pap of half dissolved tablets. Not enough though to correct the impression that the major part of them must be in her stomach.

“Christ!”

“What is it?”

“She’s swallowed a bottle of asprins!”

“Whaaat! No! Helen. Darling!”

Elvie shoots past me and grabs Helen like she’s a toddler that’s gone too near the edge of the pond. Helen tries to put her arms round her but can’t do it. As a sight it would really be quite affecting if it wasn’t all so bloody stupid.

“Make her sick!” I say, “Make her eat salt. I’ll ring for an ambulance.”

“Oh my darling,” sobs Elvie, “I don’t wan’t you to go away. I was being cruel. I’m sorry. I’m stupid and jealous. This man isn’t anything. I manufactured the whole thing just to make you miserable. Oh darling, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, forgive me. Don’t leave me.”

“Make her sick,” I shout and slam the door on them.

I ring for an ambulance, give the address and put the ’phone down when they ask for my name. Back in the kitchen Helen has her head in the sink and is making hawking noises. They’re both too occupied to take any notice of me and they always will be so I piss off.

So that was one bird I didn’t make. Another was Carla or Carlotta or something very similar and foreign. She wore one of the most superb bodies I’ve ever seen and her bone structure made Elizabeth Taylor look like she’d gone thirteen rounds with Rocky Marciano. She was a right little darling and the first time I saw her I got my dirty-old-mongrel-confronted-with-small-pedigree-poodle-wearing-blue-ribbon sensation which makes me just as horny and evil as the little-orphan-Nell-sobbing-because-she’s-three-weeks-behind-with-the-rent urge which I described a few lines ago.

Carla, I’ll settle for that, I met when I was whipping my scrim round some grotty little number off Norcote Road. It’s the kind of house you have to be careful about leaning a ladder against in case the whole bloody lot comes down and I would forsee less chance of finding a good looking bird there than in the Gents at Piccadilly Underground – on second thoughts maybe I’d better reconsider that statement. Anyway, I am peering through this window just to prove that my eyes are still working, when I see this delectable bint craning forward to adjust her false eyelashes. She’s wearing a pair of skin tight, flare bottomed, black velvet trousers and a white silk blouse with a mass of frills and ruffles round the sleeves. Her hair is black and shoulder length and she has silver heeled boots, and silver bracelets and rings littering her wrists and fingers. She makes the room look like it must be background for one of those fashion shots in which they photograph beautiful birds lying down in the middle of a rubbish-dump.

I’m so impressed I bang on the window pane and she gives me a big wave and a smile before getting on with her plumbing job. When she’s finished she sidles over to the window and give me a big wink and a flick of the hips that would knock an Irish navvy arse over tit.

“Fantastic!”

“You like it, sailor? I’m very glad to hear it. You not so bad yourself. Now, when you come to do the inside of my windows?” Her voice is husky and her accent, I imagine, Italian. It’s definitely wog anyway.

“When you’ve got a couple of hours to spare.”

“Why? It taka long time to do the inside of the window?”

“It can take a very long time.”

“How long?”

“How long would you like?”

“I think you make a joke with me.”

“I think I do.”

She tosses back her hair and smiles at me – “You are window cleaner, yes? You not tom cat who does pee pee?”

At first I don’t get it and then I realise she means a peeping tom.

“No, I’m being employed by your landlady, the good Mrs. Purvis.”

“If she good then she another Mrs. Purvis. Listen, if you say yes to teabag I make you pot of tea.”

“I say yes to teabag.”

“Good, now you come in and start inside the window.”

So I hop inside and start inside of window. This Italian bint is obviously going to be money for old rope because the minute I touch the floor she gives my arm a big pinch and makes a ‘grrh’ noise, and she’s rolling her eyes at me all the time she’s filling the kettle. I’ve never seen such an odds on certainty.

Down below Percy is uncoiling himself from his afternoon siesta and I’m camping it up like a maniac, sweeping my squeegee over the glass like it’s a paintbrush and giving her a wonderful opportunity to observe how my enormously broad shoulders narrow down to a tiny waist. She clearly laps it up because she has another couple of little goes at me before I finish and stretch out my hand for the tea. This I get, plus a quick massage of the goolies that nearly makes me tip the whole bloody lot down the front of her frills. Talk about forward, this bird is practically behind you! She’s a lovely mover too and is always striking exaggerated poses that show off her body to its best advantage. It’s a job to take my eyes off her and look round the room.

Like I’ve said this is pretty scruffy and distinguished only by the pictures of ballet dancers pinned above the bed. A right load of poufdahs they look too and when I see one pansy with ‘Romeo and Juliet’ written under his kisser I can quite believe it. I can’t see what this bird, who obviously fancies a spot of beef cake, can see in them.

“Are you a dancer?” I ask her.

“You mean, do I lika dancing? – oh, no – I see what you mean. No, I am not a ballet dancer but I like. You go to ballet?”

“No I don’t go much on opera or ballet, I find it boring.”

“That is terrible. It is never boring. How can you say such a thing?”

She’s not serious, just having a bit of fun.

“I can’t understand what it’s all about. They’re singing in Italian, so that’s a dead loss to me and the dancing doesn’t tell a story.”

“But it does!”

“Well, I can’t follow it. All that spinning about and holding birds above your head. It’s always the same.”

We go on with our little artistic chat for a few minutes while I sip my tea, which tastes like virgin’s piss – I reckon she must only have put in one tea bag – and fend off her pinching fingers. She’s always growling and hissing through her teeth and she can’t keep her hands off me – it’s understandable, I can’t myself sometimes.

Well, thank God. one thing leads to another and when she asks me if I’d like another cup of tea I say no and I put my cup and saucer on the floor and she bends down to pick it up and she’s in my lap before I’ve had a time to ask her what part of Italy she comes from. My imagination sweeps me away to the vinefields and in my mind’s eye I can see us lying there in the hot Italian sunshine. The grape juice running down our chins and some wop singing ‘Volare’ in the background. It’s romantic, isn’t it?

Anyway, Carla or whatever she said her name was, is now running her tongue gently over my eyelids and her fingers are unbuttoning my flies, which, if she but knew it, is an act akin to slipping back the bolt on a tiger’s cage. Always eager to join in the fun I fumble for the zip on her slacks, and thwarted, try to put my hand inside them at the waist. She has me between her fingers now and as our mouths meet and drowsily chew each other I put my hand down and—

Have you ever bitten into a ripe peach and then tasted something rotten and found yourself looking at half a maggot? That’s the feeling I get when I find out that Carla should have been called Carlos!

I’m a little hazy about what happened next. I’m only interested in getting out fast and I succeed in doing that without any trouble. I mean I don’t hit the nancy boy. If I did I’d be hitting myself somehow. I grab my stuff and push the protesting little git out of the way and go home and have a wash and clean my teeth.

No harm done, but I still think about it sometimes and when I do I can’t stop that prickling sensation from creeping up my spine.

CHAPTER TEN

Those two little episodes were about the nastiest things that happened to me – mainly, of course, because I didn’t get my end away – but they were what you might call hazards of the profession. The kinkiest lady I ever met was something I got into all by myself – if you know what I mean.

I first saw her when I was in Dad’s boozer. I had to show Elizabeth to Mum and Dad sometime and a quick pint at the local seemed the most painless way to do it. We could get away sharpish without too much trouble and meeting in a pub robbed the occasion of it’s more sinister overtones – potential bride meets future in-laws, all that kind of thing. I knew what was in Elizabeth’s mind and I didn’t want to build up her hopes too much.

The night I choose, Sid and Rosie have found a baby sitter and are there as well, and of course, Sid can’t resist showing us what a wag he is.

“Elizabeth. Pleased to meet you. We’ve heard so much about you. Now we’d like to hear your side of it.”

Elizabeth blushes and turns to me. “What have you been saying about me, Timmy?”

“Nothing. He’s just trying to be funny that’s all.”

“Just a little joke, Liz. I don’t expect you’re very used to them with young Timmy here.”

“Timmy can be very funny,” she says loyally.

“He is funny, I agree with you,” says Sid, “some might say peculiar but I think funny covers it.”

“Now that’s enough Sid,” chips in Mum, “You stop your teasing. He’s a terrible tease is our Sid.”

Elizabeth tries to smile agreeably.

“That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. We saw one just like that at Marks, didn’t we dear?”

“Eh?” Dad is too busy worrying about how he is going to avoid buying a round to think of anything else.

“Did you make it from one of those patterns in Woman’s Own?” says Rosie.

“What are you all drinking?” I can see the only hope is to get pissed and at least while I’m at the bar I don’t have to listen to their balls-aching conversation.

It’s very crowded that night and while I’m waiting to be served, I’m pushed up against the patterned glass partition which divides the public and saloon bars. I take a peep round it and I’m face to face with a handsome blonde (dyed) bird of around forty who looks at me as if I’m something she’s found on the bottom of her shoe after a walk through the farmyard. There is something so ‘piss off’ in her glance that all my sexual aggression is immediately aroused. I want to see her down at my knees begging for cock, while I tell her contemptuously that she’ll have to wait her turn like the rest of them.

She whips her eyes away as if they might catch something by resting on me and addresses someone I can’t see.

“This glass is filthy, George,” she snaps.

“But—”

“No buts! Look at it. There’s lipstick all round the edge. Get me a new one please.”

“Oh, really Alice. I think it’s just the colour of the glass.”

“Colour! That’s a lipstick mark I tell you. What’s the matter, are you frightened to open your mouth? Hey, barman!”

Her screech would make the Queen Elizabeth heave to.

“Yes, Mrs. Evans?”

“You’ve given me a dirty glass.”

“Oh, sorry about that.”

The barman doesn’t even look at it but twirls a new glass in the light and transfers her drink to it.

“I’m not drinking it after it’s been in that glass.”

The barman controls himself and pours her another whisky without a word. Even then the bitch glares at the glass as if she suspects there’s poison in it, and can’t bring herself to say thank you.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” says George.

“If I am it’s no thanks to you.” she snarls, and our eyes lock again for a second. “I can’t rely on you to stand up for yourself, let alone anyone else.”

I get my order in and I don’t think about Mrs. Alice Evans for the next hour or two. By that time everyone is well pissed and telling anyone they can force into a corner, exactly what they think about immigration, feeding tropical fish, Charlie Cooke or you name it. Dad is rabbiting on to Elizabeth about how young people today have it dead cushy, and good luck to them, but when he was a boy etc., etc. Mum is getting sentimental as she always does on a few stouts and telling Rosie, who’s heard it a hundred times, what a wonderful person Aunty Glad was. “Why they took her away I’ll never know,” she says, looking towards the ceiling so you’ll get the message that it’s not the rozzers she’s talking about, “she never had a bad word for anybody.”

In fact Aunty Glad was a foul mouthed old slag whose breath smelt and whose husband has taken on a new lease of life since she snuffed it, but that’s another story. Sid is talking to one of his mates and making eyes at Gloria, the barmaid, over his shoulder. I reckon he’s been there, otherwise he wouldn’t be so secretive about it.

With all this gaiety and excitement going on I’m beginning to feel a bit frisky myself, and looking round to see that Elizabeth is still well occupied, I cast about for a bit of mischief. It’s a good feeling, with a few beers under your belt: relaxed, smooth tongued, the cares of the world a million miles away. Unfortunately, there is nobody nearby to benefit from my good nature, but then I remember the Mary Whitehouse of the saloon bar, next door. I slide out without being noticed and am relieved to find that Mrs. Evans, as I now recall her, is perched elegantly on a bar stool without any sign of George in attendance.

I sway towards her hoping that my stagger will be interpreted as a rolling gait, but from the look of those about me I think it is unlikely.

“Forgive me for coming up and talking to you like this,” I say, “but I wanted to tell you how grateful I was that you took issue about those dirty glasses. It’s something I can’t abide myself.”

Her widening eyes betray initial distrust not to mention alarm, but when I have finished speaking, her face softens into the expression adapted by royalty when receiving bouquets from small children.

“You’ve no idea what a relief it is to find someone who feels as I do,” she says, “you’d be amazed how many people think I’m some kind of eccentric. Even my own husband,” she adds as the unfortunate bastard joins us. “George! You haven’t finished dressing yourself.”

There’s a piece of shirt sticking out of his fly, which has me guessing for a moment.

“Sorry, my dear.”

George fiddles with himself and gives me a searching look that suggests he can see through me like the front door of Woolworths.

“George, this young man was telling me that he approves of my action in sending back that dirty glass.”

“Really, my dear. Very praiseworthy. Tell me Mr.—”

“Lea, Timothy Lea.”

“—Tell me, Mr. Lea, what do you do for a living?”

“I clean windows.”

“That must obviously account for your keen interest in matters hygienic.”

“I don’t know about that. It may have something to do with it.”

Why doesn’t the stupid old git bugger off. Mrs. Evan’s face has now shed a lot of its sterness and she is gazing at me like I’m some kind of long lost son. She also has very nice tits and I want to tell her about them.

“You must get an unenviable opportunity to see how appallingly lax some peoples standards are,” she says.

“Oh, very much so. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I see.”

Mrs. Evans shakes her head. “Awful, don’t you think so George?”

“I was just thinking it might be a good opportunity to see whether this place’s standards have been maintained in the last few minutes. Same again, my dear? And what about you Mr. Lea?”

So I have a scotch, and the pub is beginning to swim in front of my eyes as I try and keep up with Mrs. Evans searching questions. I’m prepared to say anything as long as I can form the words, and when Mr. Evans disappears again I go blundering while I’ve still got the chance.

“Why don’t I come and clean your windows?” I say as if I’ve just thought of it. “I could give them a Dettol rinse. It’s a speciality of mine, though you’d be amazed how few people ask for it.”

“I wouldn’t. Not at all. Yes, why don’t you, 42 Malplaquet Drive.”

I know it, it’s all walnut trees and concrete paths.

“What day would suit you?”

“Let me see. I play bridge on Wednesdays. Thursday? No, Friday? Yes, Friday. I’ll be there in the afternoon. Come round about half past two. Is that alright?”

“That’s fine.” I say. I know I should leave it there but I’m drunk and I’m a fool. “You have beautiful breasts,” I say.

George is coming over to us so she can’t say anything, but she blushes scarlet and digs her finger nails into the back of my hand so deep that I have blood blisters in the morning.

They start shouting last orders then, so I excuse myself and go back to the Public Bar. As is always the case on such occasions no one has missed me and they are still gabbling away to each other like it’s a public speaking contest. Only Elizabeth notices me and she has Sid looming over her so she’s probably looking around hopefully for anyone.

“Don’t forget,” Sid is saying when I come up to them, “I’m going to be angry if you do.” I half wonder what they’ve been on about but I don’t really give it much thought – not then anyway.

“What do you think of him?” I say to her on the way home.

“Think of who?”

“Sid of course.”

“Oh, he’s alright. Quite nice really. He’s a bit crude but he makes you laugh.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing special. You, quite a bit.” She laughs, “Not that you aren’t special of course.”

There’s a very handy doorway just there and I push her into it and have my hands up her skirt faster than the verger trying to replace a fallen bell clapper, but they’re not there for long.

“Not here!” she says, pushing me away from her, “You’ll have to wait till the weekend.”

But I don’t have to wait till the weekend. I look at the blisters on the back of my hand and I grit my teeth and wait for Friday afternoon. If it wasn’t for the scratch marks I’d have a nasty feeling that I’d dreamed it all, and as if it’s a bit difficult to revive my Saturday night certainty that something was on. I keep thinking that she was probably pissed too, and quite likely to run a mile, or call the police, if I show up at the house. More chance of the former, because a lot of birds talk themselves into all kinds of situations when they’re stoned and get the screaming abdabs the next morning when they realise what they might have let themselves in for.

Anyway, I’m an optimist and I’ve got nothing to lose, so on Friday I put on a clean pair of Jungle Briefs, douse Percy with after shave lotion and I’m off to find my fortune.

Number 42 is very like number 40 and not entirely dissimilar to number 38.

There’s a lot of white paint about, venetian blinds, a boat trailer and highly polished carriage lamps. The whole place looks like they’re expecting a visit from Ideal Home not the window cleaner.

I press the front door bell and listen to the chimes echo through the house. Eventually there’s the sound of someone coming and I see a ripple of movement through the frosted glass. A pause by the door, which is presumably so I can be examined through the spy hole, and then it opens.

“Oh,” says Mrs. Evans, and the surprise seems genuine. “Yes?”

“Window Cleaner. You asked me to call.”

“Oh, yes. Did I? Well, if I did, I did.”

“You asked me in the pub, last Saturday.’

“I’m not disputing it,” her voice is sharp, “I just didn’t recognise your face, that’s all.”

Her tone implies that all window cleaners look the same, like coons or chinks.

“You’d better get on with it. There’s a tap round the back of the house by the kitchen door. Careful with the flower beds, they’re full of bulbs that haven’t come up yet and mind the climbing roses. Don’t lean your ladder against them.”

Big deal. I don’t know why I bothered. Mrs. E. is obviously intent on cutting me right down to size, if she remembers me at all.

It’s a pity, because she’s wearing dark glasses and smelling like a pouf’s birthday party, and her tits are practically sitting up and begging.

Something about the old twin set and pearls always gets me going. I feel as if I’m part of England’s heritage: “Remember, Ambrose, the Duke must never know, but since his accident I have realised that he cannot give me the heir the line so desperately needs. So I have decided that, for the sake of the de Pommefrites, I must take you, who exemplify all that is finest in the English male, to my bed. Come, put on this blindfold and take my hand—”

I can just see it, can’t you? No? Oh well then. Neither can Mrs. E. so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

I flug round the back of the house and start bashing the windows as if I intended to set a new world record. They’re all cleaner than a mermaid’s tit anyway, so I’m wasting my time in all directions. However, I can’t very well burst into tears and buzz off. I’m effectively hoisted with my own pederast as Sid would say.

In this situation I become careless, and from there it is a short step to becoming injured. I lean too far, the ladder slips and my hand goes clean through the bathroom window. It’s not a deep cut but there’s a lot of blood and it obviously needs binding up. There’s nothing for it but to report to Mrs. Evans. I shin down and rap on the back door which is opened almost before my hand has touched it. Mrs. E. is standing there with her purse in her hand and an expression not unlike that worn by the Duchess of Bloodshot when the first charabanc of the season arrives.

“How much—” she is starting to say when she notices my hand. “Don’t drip all over the mat,” she squeaks, “hold it over the flowerbed. Oh, dear, you haven’t been leaving a trail of blood round the side of the house, have you?”

“I didn’t bother to look,” I say. “If you can give me a rag I’ll go and wipe it up.”

“I’m sorry. But you know how I like to have everything just right.” So she does remember. “Blood is so terribly messy, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, and I’m afraid there may be a bit more upstairs. I put my hand through the bathroom window.”

You can see that the news really distresses her and she can hardly wait to wrap a bandage round my wrist, before scooting off to see what the damage is. When she returns it is with one of the bathroom curtains over her arm.

“I’ll put this into soak,” she says, “It should be alright. Oh, dear,” she is looking down at my feet, “you should have taken your shoes off. You’ve left mud everywhere.”

There is a bit of exaggeration but on her highly bulled surfaces a gnat’s heavy breathing would show up. The whole place looks like a new set of doll’s house furniture. It’s so clean it’s unreal. When I think of Mrs. Chorlwood and her cats, my mind boggles.

“How is that bandage holding up, it’s not going to start leaking again is it?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She’s only worried about the floor, of course. “You’d better have a cup of tea, and then I can think about finding someone to mend that window. My husband is hopeless at that kind of thing.”

I tell her not to worry because I will do it and we have a cup of coffee because that is what she really wants and she is obviously a lady who is used to getting what she really wants.

I then take my shoes off and put on a pair of George’s slippers and go upstairs to measure the window. I’m not allowed to clean anything up because Mrs. E. knows I wouldn’t do it properly. The rest of the house is just like the kitchen. Everything spotlessly clean and nothing left lying about to break up the straight lines and smooth surfaces. In the bathroom even the shower hose is neatly coiled and there are no bars of soap or toothbrushes beside the wash basin. You feel it would upset everything if you had a piss.

Mrs. E. is down on her hands and knees winkling out bits of glass and just for a second our eyes brush against each other. Her breasts swell forward and I can feel Percy making an ugly rush in the same direction. Luckily I can control myself and scribble down the window dimensions on a sheet of newspaper before scooting off to get another piece of glass and some putty.

It is raining when I come back and I take great care to leave my shoes at the back door before padding upstairs. A few minutes with Mrs. Evans and you’ve got the message. There is no sign of her so I chip out the splinters of glass from the window frame and set to laying a bed of putty. I am so engrossed that the sound of water pouring into the bath sparks me off like an alarm clock ringing. I turn round and find Mrs. Evans standing there wearing a wide-sleeved, silk dressing gown and a pair of slippers. For a moment I think she’s going to hop into the bath but before I can get my pulse back to normal she’s dropped the blood stained curtain into soak and gone out. What a funny woman! She must be highly strung, or bonkers or something. Why the hell has she taken her clothes off?

I replace the window pane and go downstairs. Mrs. E. is finishing the washing up and I notice she even empties the sugar bowl back into the tin marked – wait for it – sugar, and then washes the bowl. How finniky can you get? I should think that if she ever has it away with her old man she must make him wear a surgical mask and put his cock in with a pair of forceps. I can see that she will be able to supply her own rubber gloves.

“Well, that’s that,” I say, “Sorry to cause you so much trouble, but it’s alright now. I don’t think I left any blood anywhere.” She ignores that and pulls her gloves off so that they make a loud smacking noise. Her index fingers flex like long, thin insects.

“Before you go, there is something I would like you to do for me. Can you fix light bulbs?”

“I can screw them into sockets.”

“Good. There’s one gone in the coal cellar and I can’t replace it. If you can put a new one in I’ll hold the torch.”

“O.K.”

So we trip down some stairs beside the kitchen door and Mrs. E. bustles along in front of me her dressing gown brushing against the bannister. She’s got a good body on her, I have to admit that. Too much sand in the bottom half of the hour glass but you can’t be too choosey, except now perhaps, when it’s not on anyway.

She opens a door at the end of the passage and I can see coal glinting in the darkness.

“Dirty.” she says, but it seems to me that there’s more relish in her voice than distaste. Must be my imagination. She switches on the torch and I can see the light socket hanging down like a piece of black fur. The ceiling is low and its no problem reaching it but some joker has left the remains of the last bulb in the socket so I’m struggling again. Suddenly the torch starts to waver and I hear the rustle of clothing. I turn round to see what the trouble is and – there is Mrs. E. silhouetted in the doorway, stark bollock naked. It’s no accident either, because she advances towards me and I can see areas of soft flesh picked out in the back glow of the torch.

Funnily enough, my first reaction is one of fear because I’ve never felt the same about cellars since I saw ‘Pyscho’. My state of mind is not improved by Mrs. E. dropping to her knees and gripping one of my thighs with something like the intensity she showed when scratching me in the boozer. Maybe she’s got a carving knife concealed behind her back. Just to be on the safe side I sink down beside her and run my hands lightly over her body but all I come up with is a light bulb.

“Put it in,” she moans. This request opens so many possibilities that I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Surely she doesn’t want to have it away here? Not the very clean Mrs. E. But maybe that’s it. Maybe, hygienically sealed away from the world, a very dirty lady has been trying to get out.

Her breath smells of toothpaste and there’s no better indication of a woman’s plans for you. I take the heavy fruit of her breasts in my hands and even in the darkness I can see she looks as if she’s been lying in black sand. Her nipples come up like champagne corks and she sinks back into the coal dust and starts unpopping my jeans.

I’m about to chuck the bulb away but she makes it clear she wants some light on the subject and when I’ve fixed things I find that red must be her favourite colour. The bulb gives off a soft pink glow so the cellar looks more like Father Christmas’s grotto than the remains of last years’ coal supply.

By now I reckon I must be dreaming the whole thing, and when she starts writhing in the coal dust I know I am.

“Come down here, come down here,” she begs. Some might refuse but Percy has become a bit of a handful and I know that in this mood it is pointless to try to control him. So, off with my jeans and down I go, and – oh! what fun takes place. Mrs. E. is a very selfish lover but you don’t mind when she is obviously enjoying herself so much. I mean, for a man, the pleasure has got to be in making someone else happy, hasn’t it? Otherwise we’d all get the problem off our tiny minds immediately and have a nice kip.

By the time we’re finished, we’re blacker than a bus conductor’s finger nails. If Al Jolson saw us he’d be on to his lawyers within seconds.

“Now what?” I say and it’s a fair question. Unless she’s got a shower in the coal cellar her lovely clean house is going to look like her old man is a chimney sweep who brings his work home with him.

“Over there,” she snaps, and it’s obvious she’s reverting to type faster than most. “In the corner you’ll find some plastic clothes bags. Put one on and hop up to the bathroom.”

So help me, she says it just like that. As if she’s telling you where to empty the waste bin. I think she’s joking but when I get over there it’s just as she says. A pile of bags with a sash round them saying ‘One dozen suit or costume containers. Keep away from children’ etc., etc. Feeling like a right Charlie I put one on and start shuffling upstairs. Something inside me makes me almost wish George would come in as I’m hopping past the front door. I think maybe it’s that there are only four bags left in the pile and I’m wondering who the other four blokes were.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I left Mrs. Evans’ place I was still feeling dirty. Not physically, you understand, because Mrs. E. had taken great care to see that there wasn’t a smidgeon of coal dust on me. There was a shower in the bathroom, a proper one with a frosted glass door and Mrs. E. had taken me inside it with a bottle of shampoo and – Well, you can imagine, can’t you? The lather; the warm, wet bodies rubbing against each other; the slippery fingers gliding everywhere. I was putty in her hands – no, not putty. I do myself a disservice when I say that. What I mean is, she had me again, just as she presumably had all the other blokes. I had played my part in her kinky games and when it was over I was patted on the head and sent on my way.

It began to dawn on me that I wasn’t screwing anybody. All these birds were screwing me. When I thought about it, most of the birds I’d been with had made me fit in with their plans. Their fantasies, or whatever, never changed; only the man who took part in them, and he could have been anyone.

Nothing wrong with that except that it was getting more and more complicated and I was never doing things my way. Having it away in the coal cellar was the last straw. A few more like Mrs. E. and I’d probably only be able to do it standing in a bowl of custard with a rose behind my ear. I could see it affecting my relationship with Elizabeth. Nice, simple girl like that, it would break her heart if she knew what I was getting up to. Imagine, on your wedding night having to say, ‘I’m sorry, love, but you’ll have to hang upside down from the lamp bracket before I can do anything – oh, and don’t forget to put on your riding boots.’ I mean, it would put the mockers on everything, wouldn’t it?

I think that was the moment I made my resolve to give up all the frigging about and settle down.

“It’s got to stop.” I can remember saying the words out loud so that an old lady at the bus stop almost jumped out of her skin and I got embarrassed and tried to cycle on and cracked the back window of the van in front with my ladder. The bloke was very nasty about it and I was still thinking about some of the things he had called me when I got home.

When I arrive, Mum is rolling out pastry in the kitchen, and she looks at me with that ‘I’ve-got-something-to-tell-you’ expression on her face.

“Lady left a note for you,” she says.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t stop. I just saw her walking away.” Nobody in the world is faster off the mark than Mum when she hears somebody near the front door, and she has eyes that can see through curtains two inches thick.

“She looked like one of those hippies to me. Got some kind of leather cowgirl costume on and a ton of beads.”

“Well, I’d better read the note, hadn’t I?”

“She went off with a black man on a motor bike.” Mum speaks the words as if she expects to be struck down for blasphemy. She doesn’t go and see a lot of Sidney Poitier movies, does Mum.

“I reckon it must be Sandy. My friend Miss Rachel Devroon to you. She has a lot of time for Spades. She says they are much more exciting lovers than white men.”

“Oh! Timmy!”

I have said that strictly for Mum’s benefit and the reaction is exactly as anticipated.

“How can you say such a thing? I hope you aren’t being silly, are you? You don’t want to get into bad company again. Remember what happened last time.”

“No. O.K. Mum, you’ve made your point. Now where is this letter?” Eventually I get it off her and, as I expected, it is from Sandy. ‘Superthrash. Tonite. Ten till then. Now is the time for all good pokes to come to the aid of the party. So please do. Luv, Sandy.’ Of course it’s typical, isn’t it? I’ve no sooner decided to give it all up and live happily ever after than a bloody great load of temptation lands in my lap. I haven’t seen Sandy for weeks and now she comes bouncing back into my life. I hold the letter up to my nostrils and breathe in memories. Mum looks worried.

“She looked a bit old for you, dear,” she says.

“Don’t worry about that, Mum, we’re just good friends.” I’ve never been to one of her parties though she’s talked about some of the things that have gone on at them. Just this once couldn’t do any harm could it? I mean, I’m giving up my wicked ways and turning over a new leaf, so starting tomorrow won’t make any difference. Just to going to this party will serve as an innoculation against any more depravity.

Well, in no time at all I’ve talked myself into it and decided to do something about Elizabeth the next day. I could take her of course, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be her scene.

I’m dead right there because I can hear the noise before I even get to the street and the sound waves are coming at you like a coloured hangover.

There are cars parked down both sides of the road and there’s everything from puce landrovers to minis painted like unwound marbles. A group of spades are noshing fish and chips outside the front entrance and there is one guy already stoned out of his mind and doing an old-fashioned waltz on the front lawn – by himself, of course.

You can see where the party is, because through the window it looks like an aquarium chock full of people with a few more slid in sideways along the top to fill in the spaces. Sometimes you feel confident that an evening is going to be different and I have a lot of faith in this one.

I bound up the stairs and go in with the kind of upper class twit I normally meet when he leans out of his sports car and asks me how to get to Dulwich. He is all cuff and silk choker, with shiny black shoes with a gold chain across the instep, and it’s obvious that the dolly who is lumbered with him can’t love him half as much as he does.

“You’re looking drool-making, darling,” he lisps, and for a moment I think he’s talking to himself because he’s certainly not looking at the bird.

“Let’s just take a little looksee and if it’s not us we can slope off to my place for drinkypoos.”

“Super!” says the bird who looks the kind of blonde old English Sheep Dog who can’t say anything else, except perhaps “dishy” when describing people like the upper class berk to her friends.

Luckily Sandy appears before they can really get up my nostrils and leads me to a table which is an alcoholic’s dream. She is wearing a silver suit which fits her like a skin below the waist but on top turns into an open waistcoat so you can shake hands with her boobs if you want to. I do want to, but I content myself with giving her nipples a friendly squeeze.

“Where’s the boyfriend?”

“Oh, he had to go back to Nigeria. He’s king or something. Now, who can I introduce you to?”

“You don’t have to bother. I’ll get amongst it when I’ve finished my drink. Who are those people over by the window?” There are three middle-aged couples sipping what looks like sherry and smiling nervously at each other.

“They’re some of my neighbours. I always invite them as a kind of tip off. The smart ones take the hint and stay with friends for the night, but they obviously haven’t got the message. It doesn’t matter because once they’ve been here they can hardly kick up a fuss about the noise. It wouldn’t be British. Oh, look, there’s Amanda. You remember Amanda, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

So I re-meet Amanda who looks a hell of a sight better with her clothes on, and am introduced to her husband, Sebastian. He is a pleasant enough cove but only capable of talking about rugger which limits our conversation a bit as I don’t know a scrum from a line out and couldn’t care less about either. Not that this worries Sebastian who goes rambling on about building a new clubhouse for the Old Shithousians or someone until I’m getting glassy-eyed. Luckily, a wave of dancing breaks out at this moment and I seize Amanda and plunge into the middle of it. She is a good girl to be with because she’s built like a padded bumper car and soaks up most of the punishment that is being dished out. Some of those spades really cut loose when they’re dancing and the amount of black tit shaking about would fill a couple of hammocks.

It’s about this time that I notice a lot more flesh than I was seeing earlier in the evening and realise that there are a lot of birds following Sandy’s lead. One fantastic dolly with an Afro hairstyle, blue lips and luminous eye make-up has tassels on her tits and could save you buying an electric fan the way she whirls them around.

Not everybody is dancing though. In one of the bedrooms there is a small group of pot smokers passing round a joint and a couple who have just found they are very much in love and are proving it to anyone who cares to watch.

I snake off for a slash because I can sense that Amanda is getting a bit fruity and I don’t fancy it. Also, husband Sebastian is making going-home noises and I can see that a big row is looming up. I want Sandy, but she is being the good hostess and helping people to vomit or find their coats, according to need, so there is nothing for me there. “Later, darling, later,” she breathes.

Frankly, the way things are going, I’m not certain there is going to be a later. I can definitely feel the walls moving when I lean against them and some of the dancing can only be described as screwing to music. The whole scene has gone up as if it had been soaked in petrol and set fire to and when that happens the flames can be pretty high but they don’t last long.

Things aren’t helped by a gang of skinheads who resent the spade influence at the party – and anybody except themselves having a good time – and are pelting the front entrance with milk bottles. This kind of activity is not slow to stir a response and soon the party divides itself into groups. Sebastian at last begins to enjoy himself and leads a party of idiots on to the balcony to hurl bottles at the skinheads; the pot smokers go on smoking pot; a few mainliners are linking arms in the lav and sharing a love fix; and the rest of us are trying to screw each other. This latter pursuit is helped by the fact that nearly all the lights are off and even the most faint-hearted start stripping down to their birthday suits. It is at this moment that Sandy makes a spectacular entrance stark naked except for her minge cosy into which she has woven some luminous coloured wool. This merry little device catches the fancy of everyone and in no time we are all sitting on the floor weaving patterns in each other’s pubic hairs. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But it’s amazing how something as bloody stupid as that can seem like the most amusing thing in the world when you are pissed. Of course none of the patterns ever got finished because with all the touching up that is going on people’s enthusiasm soon gets syphoned away into other pursuits. I am a bit disappointed because I am doing a lovely white Star of David in this black bird’s fuzz when she suddenly makes it impossible for me to continue. Not that I am complaining, mind you, and none of the other writhing couples around us seem unduly upset either.

I never finish with the black bird because Amanda grabs me and by the time I’ve given it a little wiggle for old times’ sake, Sandy is tapping me on the shoulder and I’m in to number three. I am vaguely aware that the battle outside is hotting up and I think I can hear Sebastian yelping because he has got a dustbin lid stuck in his cake hole but I am now only capable of concentrating on the job in hand. The flesh trading is getting a bit complicated because any spare mouth, or whatever, is speedily seized upon so you are never quite certain who is doing what and with which and to whom.

I can’t remember how long we go on like this but I do recall the pressure of feet along the small of my back and someone shouting, “The Fuzz! The Fuzz!” Immediately, all hell breaks loose and there are blokes leaping about like rats in a burning cage. My mind clears faster than Stamford Bridge after an away win and I am out of Sandy and into my trousers before you can say “I was framed”. Not a second too soon either, because the first Bule comes steaming through the door as I am doing up the zip. He has his truncheon in his hand and must feel quite at home when he looks round some of the blokes in the room.

“I don’t remember inviting you,” starts Sandy, but she gets shoved up against the wall and told to shut up. The Bule is joined by a few of his mates and they are all shaking with outrage and excitement. You can see they haven’t had so much fun in years. It is then that I notice the upper class twit who came in with me. He is bollock naked except for a tiny pair of yellow silk pants and though this might cramp the style of lesser men, it has no effect on this Herbert.

“Can you tell me who is in charge here?” he says. “I would like to register a very strong protest. This is a private party in a private house and so far I have seen no evidence of a search warrant or any other reason for your impertinent intrusion. I will most certainly be bringing this matter to my father’s attention and I can assure you that – Ow!!” The exclamation is caused by one of the Bules stepping on his naked foot and causing him to leap back onto the burning joint of the hopped up idiot behind him. A small spot of pandemonium breaks out and the spades around me start muttering about police brutality.

By this time I am dead scared because I can see that my Ovaltiney’s badge will be right up the spout when this little lot comes to court and after my last brush with the law it’s a bit soon to be coming back for another dose. There is only one thing for it. And that is to get the hell out of the place – fast. Choosing the moment when the upper class twit has accused the Bule of stamping on his foot and sparked off a near riot I sidle towards the window and slip onto its broad ledge just as a shout of alarm indicates that my departure has been noticed.

Luckily, as I have said before, you could wheel a pram along the ledge and even at night I can scoot along it easy as winking. My problem now is the crowd gathered outside who start howling the moment they see me. I nip round the corner of the building and to my relief the ground slopes up sharply so I don’t have so far to jump. Right behind me, some old bag is screaming her guts out at the prospect of being murdered in her bed and that is just the nudge I need. I hit the bank as the first Bule comes round the corner and am across the grass at a speed that would have brought tears to the eyes of my old games master. There’s a fence in front of me but I’m over that like it’s an upturned fag packet and crashing through someone’s back garden. Another fence and then a wall. Down from that just missing a bamboo stake and I branch off at right angles and tip toe up beside a house. Tip toe is the right word because I don’t have any shoes on, remember. Behind me I hear somebody curse and two torch beams bob across the garden and disappear over the next wall. I wait a few more minutes massaging my tortured feet and creep on round the side of the house. There is a door and behind that, I hope, freedom. I press the catch and push. At first nothing, then it suddenly cracks open as if it has just been freshly painted and I nip through like a spurt of flame. Beside me a flight of steps is going up to the first floor but as I step forward, all relieved and relaxed, a face suddenly looms over the side so I can smell the stale booze on the owner’s breath. He shows no sign of fear or surprise to match my own, because he is obviously stoned out of his mind; but I see his eyes weighing up my half-naked body. I could run for it but if he starts shouting, the rozzers will come quicker than a Wop in a warm bedroom. Suddenly, to my amazement, a broad smile spreads across his face and he pats me on the shoulders.

“So, he came home unexpected, did he?” he beams. “I wish I had a pound note for every time it had happened to me. Good luck to you, lad.” And off he goes swaying slightly and chuckling to himself whilst he prods hopefully for the key hole.

Dame Fortune is obviously splitting her face in my direction and as danger recedes so my happily pissed feeling returns as if it has just been hiding away in an odd corner of my body till the trouble blew over. Fresh from the jaws of danger I decide that it is a marvellous moment to go and propose to Elizabeth. Half naked and glistening with dew and sweat I will be revealed in the back garden hurling handfulls of earth against her bedroom window. Crummy Charlton Heston couldn’t do it better – certainly not in my condition. I am so possessed of the strange feeling that I have to go to Elizabeth. It’s like a murderer giving himself up. I feel that someone there is saying, “Right, lad, we got you out of that one, but there’s a condition, see?”

Now the problem is how to get there. Elizabeth’s place is a couple of miles and it is beginning to rain. Wearing just a pair of trousers I do look a bit unusual and not everybody I meet is going to be as pissed as my friend on the steps. It occurs to me, in a blinding flash of inspiration, that if I take my trousers off and run in my pants people will think I am some barmy athlete out training. Trouble is, as I discover when my jeans hit the ground, my pants are still in the flat.

This could be a problem but luckily my guardian angel is still earning her keep because I come round the corner to find she has left a brand new bike there for me. There is no one about and it isn’t padlocked so in no time I’m whizzing away on my errand of love listening to the hum of the wheels and feeling the rain sting my face. Exhilarating is the word for it, I think, and I’m almost singing out loud when I skim to a halt a few houses away from Elizabeth’s place. I prop the bike up against the fence and pad down to Number 47. My feet feel like raw frankfurters but I don’t care and swing my leg noiselessly over the gate. There is not a soul about and the only light comes from a street lamp about fifty yards away. Round the side of the house just brushing against a dustbin lid which refuses to fall – it’s my lucky night, see? – and I’m in the back garden. The rain is falling steadily now and I stand there feeling the wet grass beneath my feet and sucking in mouthfuls of air. I’ve had some good times I think to myself, but I’m not sorry it’s all going to change. I look up to the grey waste of the sky and wonder how I will feel in the morning; what I will say to Mum and what Sid will think about it. Rosie will probably start snivelling and Dad will just shake his head and ask if we intend to move in alongside of Sid, Rosie and the baby. I can see it all. Of course, this presupposes that Elizabeth will say yes, but that is an odds on certainty. The bird has been angling for it since the first time I took her out.

I pick out Elizabeth’s window and go over to one of the flowerbeds for a handful of earth. As I bend down, a cat glides silently along the wall above me and my eye follows it up to the small shed at the end of the garden. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I can see a light glowing in the darkness. Perhaps Elizabeth’s old man has forgotten to turn off the lamp he uses in there. As a future son-in-law it is my duty to protect his property so I slope off to see what I can do.

When I get nearer I can see a line of light around the door and am amazed to hear someone talking in a low voice. Even more amazed when I recognise who it is.

“Oh, that was wonderful,” sighs the girl. “I’d no idea it could be like that. You are clever. You’re so clever.”

An ice cold current of electricity surges through my stomach and I try to make myself believe that this is not happening to me. I must be drunk, or dreaming – or anything!

“It’s easy when it’s with you,” the other voice is also known to me and the pain becomes unbearable. “I could go on doing it all night. I don’t know what it is, but you really turn me on—”

“Oh Sid.”

“Liz.”

Now, if I had any sense I’d bite my lip and tiptoe quietly away writing it all down to experience. Sid has done me a favour really. Better now than when we’ve got hitched. God, how bloody stupid can you get? There I was, deciding to give it all up and settle down with this quiet, demure little girl who would make me a good wife and mother, and all the time the dirty little slut is having it away with Sid. There’s no justice in the world, is there? No wonder blokes go off the rails. ‘I’d no idea it could be like that.’ Bloody hell!

“Sid!”

“Oh Liz.”

Bloody hell!!! My howl of rage must be heard the other side of Tooting Bec Common. I go through the door like it’s wet tissue paper and there is Elizabeth lying on her back on the workbench with Sid standing between her legs.

“You bastard!”

“Hey, what the—”

“Oh, no!”

There’s no point in describing it in detail, and I can’t remember exactly what happened anyway. All I know is that when I leave that shed, it is through a gap in the plywood walls which has been made by Sid’s body. Every light in the neighbourhood is on and Elizabeth’s screams suggest a big future in grand opera – provided she can get the fish glue out of her hair – both sets.

I step over Sid and stride away down the garden. Some blokes would probably be able to think of something comforting and profound at a moment like this, but I’m buggered if I can.

THE END

Confessions of a Driving Instructor
BY TIMOTHY LEA

CONTENTS

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER ONE

I don’t know how you would react to finding your brother-in-law knocking off your fiancée in the potting shed, but I can tell you that I was annoyed. Not annoyed so much as bloody choked. I mean, what a liberty. My own brother-in-law! The horny bastard who was living in the room below mine at the ancestral home of the Leas in Scraggs Road. It would have broken my sister’s heart. Poor Rosie thought the sun went in every time he pulled up his trousers. But what about me? Why was I being so generous with my sympathy? The cunning of the bitch. All that ‘butter wouldn’t melt between my legs’ innocence. The reproving looks every time I used a four-letter word, her little hand sneaking over the top of her glass after the second Babycham. Well, she certainly had me fooled.

That’s what annoyed me most of all, really. I’d been fooled. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d reckoned her as being a bit on the flighty side, but I’d never had an inkling. She’d really made a mug out of me.

I must confess that when I’d stalked off into the night, leaving them clambering out of the wreckage of the shed, I though seriously about going straight home and sobbing the whole story to Rosie. But as I strode through the drizzle and my blood cooled a bit, two things stopped me. One was the praiseworthy desire to spare my sister’s feelings already alluded to, and the other, and much stronger emotion, the fear that everybody in the neighbourhood would soon know that I had been shat on by sexy Sidney, Balham’s answer to the piston engine. If I dropped Sidney in it, he wouldn’t be slow to make sure that everybody in S.W.12 knew that my fiancée preferred him in bed, in a shed, or anywhere, and I couldn’t have stood that. Some of the things I’d heard her whispering to him in the shed fair made my blood curdle; mainly because I had a horrible suspicion that she had never felt like that with me. I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t help it.

Mum and Dad had gone to bed when I got home and I tiptoed up to my attic room and lay there staring at the roof (I didn’t have much alternative because it was about three inches above my head) and wondering what I should do. As is my normal habit in situations like that, I eventually decided: nothing. Apart from Rosie and my reputation, there was the job (Sid and I were partners in a window-cleaning business) and though we went pretty much our own ways, I didn’t want to rock the boat too much there.

The more I rationalised it all the more I put the blame squarely on Liz’s shoulders. I hated her, but at the same time I wanted her more than I’d ever done in the past. Not with any shred of affection, but with a desire to batter her to death with my body so that she died gasping “You are the greatest” with a look of unspeakable contentment etched across her glazed eyeballs. It had been this ability to look on the brighter side that has been my salvation in many chastening situations.

Not that I was prepared to give Sid a book token or anything. The bastard would be dead scared that I’d spill the beans to Rosie and I decided to let him sweat on it. I didn’t hear him come in before I fell asleep and the next morning when I got down to breakfast early, there was no sign of him or Rosie. Dad was sitting there studying his form book and Mum was frying bread. Dad is very working-class because, though he never does anything, he’s always very punctual about not doing it. He gets down to the Lost Property Office where he works a quarter of an hour before they open and then spends forty minutes in the cafe opposite before he strolls in and bleats like buggery about some kid who comes in five minutes late and gets down to work immediately.

“Morning,” I say cheerfully.

“Morning,” says Mum.

Dad grunts without looking up.

“Have you seen your Dad’s Dentucreme?” says Mum. I shudder because I can’t stand false teeth at the best of times.

“I think Sid tried to clean his wet-look shoes with it,” I say.

“Oh, no! You must be having me on.”

“Straight up, Ma. Sid got mad because it took all the shine off and threw it out of the window.”

“Bloody marvellous,” says Dad. “Who does he think he is?”

“You’ll be able to ask him yourself,” I say, as Sid comes in trying to look all relaxed. I am glad to see that there is a lump under one of his eyes and his upper lip is grotesquely swollen. Mum notices immediately.

“Ooh, Sid, you haven’t been in any trouble, have you?”

“No, Mum. Somebody let a swing door go at me. It was an accident.”

He stresses the last word and there is almost a hint of pleading in his eyes as he looks at me.

“Looks as if Rosie has been having a go at him, if you ask me, Mum,” I say. “What have you been up to, Sid?”

“You and Rosie haven’t had words, have you?” says Mum, all worried-like. Mum can’t stand what she calls ‘an atmosphere’ and can remember when Sid came home rotten-drunk and tried to have Rosie on the stairs. This manoeuvre, difficult enough at the best of times and downright impossible when drunk and with Rosie trying to knee you in the groin, resulted in Sid slipping down fifteen steps and nearly doing himself irreparable damage on a loose stair rod.

“No, no,” says Sid. “Rosie and me are fine. It was an accident, I tell you.”

“Of course, I don’t suppose Rosie has seen your face yet, has she?” I say pleasantly. “You came in pretty late last night, didn’t you?”

“I don’t have to clock in, do I?” says Sid, and I can tell he is beginning to lose his temper.

“Come, come, dear,” says Mum, “I don’t think Timmy meant it like that. It’ll be a bit of a shock for Rosie, won’t it?”

“Too true, Ma,” I chip in. “It’s the kind of thing Rosie could get very distressed about.”

“You hadn’t been drinking, had you, dear?” says Mum. “I know it’s none of my business, but I think you ought to look after yourself a bit more. You’ve been looking quite peaky lately. You must get enough sleep if you’re going to be up and down those ladders all day. You only need one slip and that’s your livelihood gone. And with Rosie and, now, little Jason, you’ve got more than just yourself to think about.”

“Humf,” says Dad from behind his paper.

Dad is a first-rate judge of a layabout and has few contenders himself in the over-fifty category. He has always reckoned Sid to be a creep of the first water and not been slow to say so.

“He’s never thought about anyone else in his whole life and he’s not going to start now. You’re wasting your time there, Mother. Any man with a grain of self-respect wouldn’t still be living off his in-laws on the money he’s making. I know what his little game is. He reckons if he hangs on long enough, you and I will snuff it and he’ll have the house. Well, he’ll have to wait a damn long time, I can tell you. I’ll still be sitting here when he’s queueing up for his old age pension.”

“Oh, God! Not again! I can’t stand it at this time of the morning. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t want your rubbishy old house.”

“‘Rubbishy’. Did you hear that, Mother? The sponging layabout has the gall to call our home ‘rubbishy’. If it’s not good enough for you, why do you stay here then?”

“I’m not staying here a minute longer than it takes me to save up the deposit on a flat. You know that as well as I do. And don’t talk about sponging. You get your rent every week. A bloody sight more than you deserve for this dump. I’m amazed the kid wasn’t born with web feet.”

“Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it? Did you hear that, Mother? Now he’s sneering at us. You’d like oil-fired central heating, I suppose, and a heated lavatory seat.”

“It’s quite warm enough, the length of time you spend sitting on it,” says Sid, and Dad goes on spluttering while Mum clucks away and the fried bread gets burnt. It’s all going very nicely, though it’s getting a bit far away from Rosie.

Luckily the little lady herself makes a timely appearance and immediately drops her lips to give the loathsome Sid his first kiss of the day. In such a position his battered phizog is clearly revealed to her.

“Oh, Sid,” she squeals. “How did you do that?”

“Yes, Sid,” I say, my voice heavy with menace, “how did you do that?”

“I’ve told you once, you berk. Somebody swung a door in my face.” He sounds worried.

“On purpose?” howls Rosie. “How could anybody do a thing like that?”

“Maybe Sid rubbed them up the wrong way,” I say, helpfully. “You’d be surprised some of the things he gets up to.”

I divide my gaze between Sid and Rosie and they stare at me blankly, but for different reasons.

“You aren’t in any trouble, are you, Sid?”

Very good question. Sid swallows hard and is about to open his mouth when Mum decides it’s time to change the subject.

“I thought your Elizabeth was looking very nice the other night,” she says to me. Stupid old bag. Trust her to let Sid off the hook. But maybe I can turn it to advantage.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I say, grudgingly.

“What do you mean, ‘you wouldn’t know’?” says Rosie, turning her attention away from Sid. “She’s a lovely girl. You should be very glad to have her.”

“Yes,” says Sid, chirping up a bit, “very glad.”

“Depends what you mean by ‘have’,” I say, giving Sid the evil eye.

“I don’t understand you.” Rosie shakes her head.

“Well, Rosie, I suppose I’d better tell you—and you, Mum. You’ve got to know sooner or later—” My voice is trembling and even Dad puts down his pencil and stares at me. Sid’s face screws up like a man threatened with a red hot poker and his mean features plead for mercy.

“I don’t really know how to say this …” Sid pulls back from the throng and his hand dives into his back pocket.

“… but last night I saw Liz and …” Sid pulls open his wallet and points feverishly at a thick wad of notes. My power is total and I can’t resist another turn of the knife.

“It was in her Dad’s potting shed …”

“Her Dad’s potting shed?” says Mum. “I hope you weren’t up to no good.”

“Oh, no, Mum. Not me …”

Sid staggers back against the sink to await the mardi gras, as the frogs call it.

“We had a talk and, well, we decided it wasn’t on.”

“Oh, no, dear. I am sorry to hear that. Are you sure it isn’t just a tiff?” says Mum.

“No, Mum. There’s a number of fundamental issues we disagree on.” (I got that from all those trade union interviews on the telly.)

“Like sex before marriage, I suppose,” sneers Dad, rubbing his fried bread into his egg yolk like he’s trying to clean the pattern off the plate.

“No, we both felt the same about that,” I say, meaningfully, giving Sid’s wallet a hard glance. Sid’s smile is what you might call conciliatory.

“Oh, I am sorry,” says Rosie. “I liked Liz; didn’t you, Sid?”

Sid gulps and nods his head.

“From what little I saw of her.”

Cheeky bastard! That’s going to cost him a few extra quid.

“What do you mean, ‘little’? You two were getting on like a house on fire that night up at the boozer.”

Blimey, I think to myself, even my dozey sister could see what was going on. What a prize berk I must be.

“The course of true love never runs smooth,” chips in Mum. “Don’t be too disappointed. I’m certain it’s not over yet.”

“Oh, I am, Mum. From my point of view, there’s no going back on what happened last night.”

“But how can you suddenly be so certain!” bleats Rosie. “I mean, you’ve been going steady with Liz for months now. You’re not going to tell me that one little row can be the end of everything.”

“It wasn’t so little,” I say with a quiet intensity that would have made Godfrey Winn sound like a fairground barker. “There are some things so fundamental in a relationship that when you stumble across them they spell make or break.”

“I don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about,” says Dad. “You mean you found she was in the family way?”

The stupid old sod doesn’t know how close he is but I dismiss him with a humoring nod of the head and address myself to Sid and his disappearing wallet.

“No, Dad, it’s nothing your generation would understand. I think Sid knows what I mean, don’t you, Sid?”

Sid blushes before my penetrating gaze and nods vigorously.

“Yes, Timmy,” he says, “I had the same problem myself once.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Rosie. “It certainly wasn’t with me. We never had a wrong word the whole time we were engaged.”

“I don’t ever remember that you were engaged,” says Dad.

“Now, Dad …” says Mum.

“If he’s going to start getting at me …” says Rosie.

“I’d better be getting going,” says Sid. “I’ve got an early job. I’ll have some breakfast at the caff.”

I catch up with him in the hall. “Oh, Sid,” I say, “I got the impression in there you might be able to stand me a few bob.”

“How much? A fiver?”

“You must be joking. That’s what you’d pay up the West End. For family it comes a bit more expensive. Twenty-five nicker.”

“Nice bleeder, aren’t you? You’d make a good ponce.”

“Thanks. It takes one to know one. Just take it as being damages for breach of promise.”

“I never promised anything.”

“O.K. Well, consider yourself an unofficial co-respondent.”

“It’s more like bloody blackmail.”

“It is bloody blackmail and you’re bloody lucky to get off with twenty-five nicker and a bunch of fives up the bracket.”

“O.K. Well, I suppose it was worth it.”

“Don’t push it.”

And so on those pleasant terms we part with Sid lighter by the weight of five crisp fivers which he counts three times in case an extra one might have got stuck to them.

It is shortly after this event that, much to my father’s surprise and mother’s sorrow, Sid makes good his promise and moves Rosie and Jason into the wonderful new world of a Span flat, overlooking the common. Dad congratulates himself that it is his non-stop rabbiting that has done the trick but I have a shrewd suspicion that it is the threat of me blurting out a few home truths to Rosie—plus the not inconsequential demands I am making upon his surplus funds. Some might feel the odd pang of guilt, but I console myself with the thought that I am feathering my beloved sister’s nest as well as my own.

With the departure of the Boggetts (that was Sid’s name, poor sod) I move my photographs of the Chelsea football team (F.A. and European Cup winners: ‘We are the champions’) down to their bedroom and prepare to lord it a bit. But things don’t work out the way I’ve hoped. Mum is distraught about losing ‘her little Jason’ and keeps going on about all his lovable little habits like pissing in the coal bucket, and Dad misses having Sid to whine at and starts taking it out on me. Between the two of them, they are beginning to make me feel quite nostalgic for the old days. What I would have done next I’ll never know because at that moment fate intervenes and the whole course of my life is changed at one stroke. Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it? Oh, well, please yourself.

I have already mentioned that I shared a window cleaning business with Sid and readers of the previous volume of my memoirs (Confessions of a Window Cleaner—Sphere 1971. Ed.) will recall that this led to the odd entanglement with what my old schoolmaster used to call members of the opposite sex. It was such an occasion that led to my eventual, and literal, downfall.

I remember the day well because it was late summer and very hot in a way that only happens in the week after everyone has come back from their August bank holiday. Dogs panted in shadowy doorways and the heat seemed to muffle the noises of the street so that I might have been working in a dream as I lazily swept my squeegee over the top floor windows. I was operating in the front garden of a row of comfortable middle-class semi-detacheds behind Nightingale Lane and was stripped to the waist, not because I wanted to give any bird the come-on, but because I wanted to improve my suntan—though the two things are not entirely unconnected. Most of the windows round here are thicker with net curtains than Dracula’s wedding veil, but Mrs. Dunbar must have had hers in the wash because I can see straight through into her kiddies’ nursery.

Mrs. D. is on her hands and knees behind a rocking horse, and I note with satisfaction the pattern of her knickers showing through her skirt as her delicious little arse bulges over her haunches. Mrs. D. is a regular client of mine but I’ve never had an inkling that there might be anything there for me. To be honest, I find her a bit upper-class and self-confident. I prefer a bird who is more dithery and unsure of herself. Nevertheless, in my sun-sated mood and with a couple of pints from the wood inside me, there are a lot worse things to look at. She has the horse’s tail in her hand and turns towards me and shrugs her shoulder. This is a gesture she could repeat to advantage because she isn’t wearing a bra and her breasts give a little jump like startled kittens. I can see the kittens’ noses, too, pressing temptingly out towards me. Cruel Mrs. D. No animal lover should be so frustrated. The no-bra look has been slow to penetrate into the Clapham and Wandsworth Common area and is another indication of upper-class sophistication and decadence which leaves me trembling with a mixture of desire and impotence—two bedfellows that seldom give each other much pleasure.

Mrs. D.’s gesture is meant to indicate that she doesn’t know what to do with the rocking horse’s tail and a number of tempting alternatives flash across my mind. I reject them and take the opportunity to close the distance between us.

“Let me give you a hand,” I say gallantly, and I’m over the sill before she can say ‘Piss off.’

“Oh, that’s kind of you,” she says breezily. “I’m afraid he’s seen better days.” She isn’t joking because most of the leather-work is hanging off and the screws that hold the horse to its frame all need tightening up. I make a few tut-tutting noises and send her off for the tools to do the job. The way her eyes flit lightly across my pectorals does not escape me. When she comes back I’m tapping in tacks and she asks me if I’ve got any children.

“Don’t think so. What makes you ask?”

“You seem to know how to mend toys.”

“My sister and her husband used to live with us. The kid smashed everything it could get its hands on. I got plenty of practice. You know what kids are like. They enjoy taking things to pieces but they don’t want to put them together again.”

She nods.

“So you’re not married?”

“No. I was thinking about it, but things didn’t work out. You must be, though. How many kids have you got.”

“Two. They’re with their father at the moment. We’re separated.”

“Oh, I am sorry.” In fact, I’m chuffed to NAAFI breaks because there is nothing more likely to put the mockers on a beautiful romance than the threat of a couple of kids bundling in on you at any moment.

“Don’t be. I’m not.” She rubs her hands together lightly and pats her hair. “You’re a fabulous colour.”

“It’s easy on this job.”

“I envy you when it’s like this.”

“Well, you haven’t got far to go yourself.”

“I have to think of the neighbours. Would you like a beer? I think there’s some in the ’fridge.”

Another sign of class. Mostly it’s a cup of tea with my customers. But whatever it is, any form of refreshment is a favourable omen. Many is the pot of cha I’ve known to go cold with only the two cups out of it.

“That’s very kind of you.”

A few moments later she’s back just as I’ve finished the rocking horse.

“Oh, that’s much better. I’d hardly recognise him. The children will be pleased. I hope this is all right. It’s lager.”

“Smashing! Cheers!”

“Cheers!”

I’m down on the floor so I lean back against my handiwork and rub the cool glass against my cheek. She is standing above me pulling at the horse’s bridle as if it is real. I can see up her skirt but not as far as I’d like to. I feel keyed up the way I do just before going out to play football. The sunlight is coming through the window in chunks so you can see thousands of particles of dust dancing in it.

“You said you were nearly married once, didn’t you?”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You implied it, anyway. What went wrong? Forgive me asking, but it’s a subject I’m particularly interested in at the moment.”

“I found the bird I fancied having it away with my brother-in-law.”

“The one that lives at home with your sister?”

“He used to. They’ve got a flat up by the common now.”

“You didn’t like that? I mean, him sleeping with your girlfriend?”

“Not very much. I mean, it doesn’t seem the best recommendation for your future wife, does it?”

“I don’t know. At least you know where you stand with her.”

“It’s who else is standing with her I’d be worried about.”

“You’re the jealous type?”

“You could put it like that.”

“Jealousy is a very self-destructive emotion.”

“Not with me, it isn’t. I’m the last person that gets destroyed.”

“Surely the concept of sexual faithfulness is a bit out of date, isn’t it? Are you seriously going to tell me you will remain faithful to your wife when you do get married? The opportunities you must have in a job like this.”

I try to look as if the thought had never occurred to me.

“I reckon it’s difficult for me.”

I know this remark is going to get her all worked up, but there is no point in putting off saying it. I’m all for complete sexual freedom for women in theory, but the moment some horny bastard gets near my bird a phial of sulphuric acid explodes in my stomach and little green bells start ringing as I look around for an axe. That’s the way I am and I can’t see myself changing.

“Oh God! Even my far from successful marriage had progressed beyond that hoary old male chestnut.” Mrs. D.’s tone is as contemptuous as I had expected it to be. “Why should you have complete freedom to take sex just whenever you want it, whilst your little woman is supposed to sit at home and keep your supper warm?”

I have now decided that the kittens look more like small, fretful tigers jostling each other to escape and get at me. I am prepared for this eventuality.

“You mean to tell me,” I say seriously, borrowing one of J.C.’s successful argumentative devices, “that if your old man came in now and saw us—um, er—” (the indecision is intentional; I don’t want to sound too sure of myself) “making love, he wouldn’t mind?”

“No, of course not. No more than if he found me enjoying a bit of quiche lorraine.” (I don’t understand what she’s on about, but I imagine it must be French for a muff job. Outspoken lady, isn’t she?) “It’s no more than an appetite and as such, it can be controlled.”

“And if it was the other way round, you wouldn’t get annoyed?”

“Good heavens, no.”

“Then what went wrong with your marriage?”

“I found out I didn’t love him any more. It had nothing to do with sex. I was seven years younger than him and I changed—he didn’t. Suddenly I found we had nothing in common.”

I can sense that I have to get things moving pretty quickly, otherwise we’re going to end up having a natter that only needs Adam Faith and the Archbishop of Woolwich to get it on Sunday evening telly. I am still lying down and I want to bring her down to my level. It’s no good with her leaning against the bedroom door. I can’t just get up and grab her, because that is not my style. There is still some lager in my glass so I put it down beside me and then promptly knock it over.

“Oh, sorry. I am a clumsy berk.”

“It doesn’t matter; there’s a cloth in the bathroom.”

She goes out and I dab ineffectually at the stain with my handkerchief until she comes back. Then she’s on her hands and knees beside me and her delicious tits bounce up and down whilst I ache to close my hands around them. Her vest hangs open, and it is like looking into a sackful of apples. “Do something!” shouts the voice inside me. The soft down of hairs on her forearm glistens gold and matches the curls gently caressing the smooth, white valleys behind her ears. “Do something!” She gives one last stain-dispersing rub and sits back on her haunches. The outline of her pants now runs across her stretched skirt like an extra seam. She takes a deep breath and there’s no doubt about it, she’s a real knock-out. “Do something!” The message gets home to me and I lean forward for what is intended to be a gentle, respectful kiss, capable of interpretation as mute admiration rather than slow rape. Trouble is that she suddenly leans forward at the vital moment and nudges me in the mouth with her temple. I taste blood immediately and she doesn’t make things any better by laughing. Nothing bright and breezy leaps to my lips and, sensing my discomfiture, she gives me a light kiss on the cheek.

“I’m sorry—” she begins, but when a Lea’s passions are roused and his pride stung, tidal waves are like a kid’s widdle. I grab her above the elbows and pull her on to my mouth. She struggles a bit and then goes limp so that I can release the pressure on her arms and send my finger up to stroke her cheeks. I suck her lips and her tongue darts against mine. She is rubbing those fantastic tits against my chest and her fingers claw underneath the belt of my jeans. I may have misread the signs but I don’t think she is going to start hollering for a cop.

I kiss her eyelids and with the delicacy of a master surgeon run my fingers along her backbone, dwelling momentarily on each firm protuberance. Her vest is cramping our style and I tug it upwards until the delicious breasts bound into my eager hands and I can soothe the fretting nipples with my kindly caress. Such a shape they have, and so firm. The vest must go and she writhes rhythmically like an athlete winding up to throw the discus, before slipping it over her shoulders. Unimpeded, I now drop my mouth and browse between her breasts, near suffocating in their rich, firm fullness. My hands scout for the hook on her skirt and tug it open, down with the zip, and I can feel the soft sheen of her pants. Her fingers are not idle and she fumbles with my belt, grumbling under her breath. I flip over on my back and slip down my trousers, pants, shoes and socks like a snake shedding its skin. She lies across my chest and her hand tip-toes down to explore between my legs. Deliciously naked and warm in the sun-filled room, I kiss her hard and send my tongue deep into her mouth so that her hand tightens around my fullness and her body squirms against mine. I have had enough of games and even vein and muscle in my body throbs to be at her.

“I want you inside me.”

She tears the words from my mouth and slowly turns on to her back like a frivolous cat, her half-parted lips hinting at the pleasure to come. For a second I savour her and then I am between her legs, pulling down her skirt and slowly removing her pants—women love having their knickers taken off—before softly gauging her readiness with my fingers. She gives a little gasp and stretches out her hand imploringly.

“Please,” she says. “Please put it in.”

Maybe it is an hour later, maybe longer. I don’t know. All I do know is that the sun is still shining, the room is still warm and I have been asleep. Mrs. D. is dozing beside me and I am looking straight into the eyes—or rather eye—of a scruffy teddy bear.

“Penny!”

The voice is loud and male and does not belong to the teddy bear—not that it is coming from much further away.

“Penny! Where the hell are you?”

Mrs. D.’s eyes open and then open a whole lot more. Her head bounces off the floor and she swallows half the air in the room.

Now, at this moment, I should have remembered that Mrs. D. and her husband were separated and that he wasn’t the jealous type anyway. I should have lain back and called out, “We’re in here, old chap. Won’t be a sec. Why don’t you fix yourself a gin and T. and we’ll be right down?” and he would have coughed apologetically and said, “Gosh, I’m most awfully sorry. Hope I didn’t disturb you, what? See you in a few mins.” Then I could have had Mrs. D. again and gone downstairs to talk about how the soil around here was lousy for lupins.

But, of course, I don’t do any of those things. Maybe it’s the look in Mrs. D.’s eyes or maybe it’s the size of the voice outside, or maybe it’s just instinct; but anyway, I’m half way across the room as the door knob starts turning. I pause pathetically, considering snatching up a few clothes, and then launch myself on to the ladder. As I swivel round, my eye captures the scene like a camera. Door flung open, bloody great rugby type filling the space it occupies, Mrs. D. cowering with her pants in one hand and the other draped across her tits. Mr. D. (I have no reason to suppose it is anyone else) sinks the scene in one gulp and bounces Mrs. D. across the room with a belt round the side of the bonce which would have stopped Joe Frazier.

I feel like telling him that I agree with him entirely and that he has all my sympathy, but I don’t think he wants to talk to me. His eyes flash towards the window and as my head drops out of sight I see him reaching for something. This turns out to be a hobby horse, as I find when he swings it at my head like a mace. The expression on his face would scar your dreams for years.

“I’ll kill you, you bastard,” he screams, and he doesn’t have to go on about it—I’m convinced. I’ve hardly had time to rejoice that I’m out of range than he changes his tactics. I’ve got the extension on and there’s a long drop to the ground. Mr. D. decides to speed up my journey and, jamming the hobby horse against the ladder, starts to push it away from the house. Like a prick, I hang on for grim death and scream at him instead of sliding. What a way to go! Stark bollock naked in the middle of Thurston Road! I see Dunbar’s face contorted in a self-satisfied effort and for a moment the ladder trembles. Then I’m going backwards, paralysed with fear, and the house is growing in front of me.

I try to jump and the next thing I know is this god-awful pain in my ankle and the feeling that all the breath has been dug out of my body with a spade.

I’m sprawled across the centre of the road, screaming with pain and fear, Mrs. D. is howling, the neighbours’ windows are slamming open, cars are squealing to a halt, and suddenly a quiet residential street seems like Trafalgar Square on Guy Fawkes night. I’m glad to see everyone, because any second I’m expecting Mr. D. to come bursting through his front door to finish the job. It’s amazing how the great British public react at a moment like this. They are interested all right, but not one of the bastards makes a move to help me. I might be a tailor’s dummy for all they care.

To my surprise, Mrs. D. is first to my side, and she’s alone, thank God. She drapes a blanket over me and that encourages a few helpmates to get me on to the pavement.

“What a load of crap about your husband,” I snarl. “If that was your husband.”

“Yes, yes,” she says, beaming round at the neighbours, who, observing her black eye, are no doubt putting two and two together and scoring well. “I’m sorry about that. He’s phoning for an ambulance now.”

“Sure it isn’t the morgue?”

“No, no.” She pats my arm and smiles again. “I’m sorry. I really am.” I close my eyes because I’m feeling sick, dizzy and knackered. Bugger the lot of them. When I open them again, it’s as I’m being lifted into the ambulance. Mrs. D. follows me in and gives my hand an affectionate squeeze.

“It was wonderful,” she says.

I won’t tell you what my reply was, but the ambulance man nearly dropped me on the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

It turns out that my ankle is broken in more places than a Foreign Secretary’s promises and they keep me in hospital for three days. I have a private room, which surprises me at first until I find out that it is courtesy of a certain Dr. Dunbar—small world, isn’t it? I make a few inquiries and it seems that this party has taken his wife and kids on a camping holiday to the South of France, so he isn’t around to be thanked. You could knock me down with a feather—or half a brick, if you had one handy. So Cupid Lea strikes again! What a carve-up! Why wasn’t I in the marriage guidance business? I might not be able to do myself any good, but I was obviously the kiss of death to the permissive society.

One of the advantages of a private room, apart from the fact that the other buggers couldn’t nosh your fruit, was that it gave you an uninterrupted crack at the nurses, and some were little darlings. I’ve always been kinky about black stockings and Florence Nightingale, and with one pert red-head the very presence of her thermometer under my tongue was enough to raise the bedclothes a couple of inches. There is nothing more randy-making than lying in bed with sod-all else to do but fiddle about under the bedclothes and by the end of my time, the nurses had to come into the room in pairs and my arm had grown half a foot grabbing at them. It didn’t do me any good, although I did corner the red head in the linen cupboard on my last morning and pin her against a pile of pillow cases with my crutch (the one you prop under your arm). I had just got one hand into that delicious no-man’s-land between stocking top and knickers (I hate tights) when Sister came in looking like a scraped beetroot and I had to say goodbye quickly. All very sad but life is full of little might-have-beens.

Eight weeks later it was time to take the plaster off and I was bloody grateful because every berk in the neighbourhood had used it as a scribbling pad to demonstrate his pathetic sense of humour. Word of my escapade had got around and there were a lot of cracks about ‘Batman’ and ‘Peter Pan’ which I found pretty childish.

I hate going to the Doctor because the waiting room smells of sick people and most of the magazines are older than I am. It is cold and badly lit and the stuffed owl in a glass case looks as if you’d only have to give it a nudge for all its feathers to fall out. Everybody seems healthy enough but I have a nasty feeling that underneath the clothes their bodies are erupting in a series of disgusting sores covering limbs held together by sellotape. Behind the serving hatch a parched slag of about 182 dispenses pills and indifference. In such an atmosphere I wonder why the N.H.S. doesn’t dispense a do-it-yourself knotting kit and have done with it.

When I get in to his surgery, Doctor Murdoch attacks my plaster as if gutting a fish that has done him a personal injury. From the look of him one would guess that he had just returned from a meths drinkers’ stag party. The sight of my ankle causes his prim lips to contract into walnuts and I can sympathise with him. The object we are both staring at looks like a swollen inner tube painted the colour of a gangrenous sunset.

“What do you do?” he barks.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you’re a ballroom dancer, you’d better get down to the labour exchange.”

“It’s going to be alright, isn’t it?” I whine. I mean, what with heart transplants and artificial kidneys you expect them to be able to mend a bloody broken ankle, don’t you?

“You’ll be able to walk on it, but I won’t make any promises about the next Olympic Games,” says Murdoch who must be a laugh riot at his medical school reunions.

“I’m a window cleaner,” I pipe.

“You were,” says Murdoch. “That ankle has been very badly broken. You can’t risk any antics on it. I’m amazed we’ve got it together as well as we have.” I’m speechless for a moment. All those windows, all those birds. I could weep just thinking about it. What are they going to do without me? What am I going to do without them?

Added to that, there is the money.

“Are you positive?” I gulp.

“Absolutely. Of course, you don’t have to take my advice but you’d be a damn fool to get on a ladder again.”

So there I am, redundant at 22. Lots of blokes would envy me but there is a crazy streak of ambition in the Leas and I’m too patriotic to go on National Assistance—at least for a few years yet. What am I going to do?

Broken-hearted, I manage to get pissed and return to the family home. As I have already indicated relations with Dad have been strained since Sid’s departure and my accident has not drawn forth the sympathy one could expect from a father figure. I suspect that this may be due to some of the rumours that have been circulating. “Look Mother,” he sings out as I come through the door. “It’s the Birdman of Alcatraz!”

This is really witty for Dad and besides confirming my suspicions is an unkind allusion to a few months I once spent at reform school.

“Shutup, you miserable old git!” I say.

“Don’t raise your voice to me, sonny,” says Dad, “otherwise I’ll start asking you when you first began to clean windows in the all-together. Got a nudist camp on the rounds, I suppose?”

Dad and Doctor Murdoch would make a wonderful comedy team, and I’m wondering what Hughie Green’s telephone number is when Mum chips in.

“Do leave him alone, Dad, he’s told you enough times what happened.”

“Oh, yes, Mother. I know all that. He was stretched out on the roof, wasn’t he, having a little sunbathe. Then this bloke opens a window, dislodges the ladder. Timmy grabs at it, slips, loses his balance and does a swallow dive into the street. Sounds very likely, doesn’t it?”

“I really can’t be bothered—” I begin.

“I suppose that bird got a black eye when you landed on top of her?”

“I wonder what your excuse is going to be, Dad?”

“Don’t adopt that tone with me, Sonny Jim. I could still teach you a few lessons if it came to the pinch.”

“Well, prove it, or shut up.”

I mean it, too. Every few weeks or it is probably days now, Dad and I are squaring up to each other and sooner or later I am going to dot the stupid old bugger one. Nothing happens this time because mum throws a tantrum and sister Rosie arrives with little Jason.

“I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,” Mum is wailing when little dribble jaws shoves his jam-stained mug round the door and her mood changes faster than a bloke finding that the large lump in the middle of his new cement path is his mother-in-law.

“Hello darling,” she coos. “Who’s come to see his Grand-mummy, then? Ooh, and what a nasty runny nose we’ve got. Doesn’t naughty mummy give you your lovely cod liver oil, then?”

Honestly, Rosie must feel like belting her sometimes. She still exists in a world of cod liver oil, cascara and milk of magnesia. Open your bowels and live might be her motto.

Mum and Rosie go rabbiting on and little Jason rubs his filthy fingers all over the moquette. Just like old times. I haven’t had a chance to tell anyone about my problem, and nobody would be interested, anyway.

“How are the lessons going, dear?” says Mum.

“Oh, smashing Mum. I’ve got this lovely fellah. Very refined, lovely even white teeth. I think they’re his own. You know what I mean?”

Mum shakes her head vigorously. “Yes dear, some of them are very nice. I’ve thought about learning myself, but your father will never get one.”

What are they on about? I’ve never known Rosie to acknowledge the existence of any other bloke than Sid.

“He’s ever so gentlemanly and he never shouts at me. Everything is very smooth and relaxed.”

“That’s the secret, dear,” agrees Mum. “If you were doing it with Sid he would probably start getting at you. I’m told you never want to take lessons with your husband. Can you imagine what your father would be like?”

They nod enthusiastically.

“Bloody marvellous, isn’t it?” says Dad, letting me in on the secret. “For thirty years I struggle and sweat to support a family and never even sniff a motor car. Now every bleeder has one and your mother starts saying she wants to take driving lessons.”

“Yes Dad.”

I’m not really listening because suddenly I’ve got this feeling that fate—or whatever you like to call it—is trying to tell me something. Become a driving instructor! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? It would be ideal. I can’t hop about on my leg too much and as an instructor I’d be sitting on my arse most of the time, telling some bird to turn left at the next traffic lights. It would be a doddle. And what opportunities to exploit my natural talents! If Mum and Rosie could be aroused, just imagine the effect on a normal red-blooded woman! I’d seen all those ads and tele commercials—that’s where they had got the idea from. Tight-lipped, hawk-eyed young men ruthlessly thrusting home gear leavers with wristy nonchalance whilst, open-mouthed x-certificate “yes please” girls lapped up every orgasmic gesture. It was a wonder a bird could look at a gear stick without blushing. And the whole operation had so much more class than window cleaning. I’d seen them with their leather-patched hacking jackets, nonchalantly drumming their fingers against the side of the window. “Very good, Mrs. Smithers. You really are beginning to make progress. Now let’s pull off on the left here, and I’ll ask you a few questions about the Highway Code—”

“Oh Mr. Lea—”

“Careful, Mrs. Smithers, you’re drooling all over my chukka boots.”

I can see it as clearly as Ted Heath’s teeth. An endless procession of upside-down footprints on the dashboard.

Are you the guy that’s been a pushin’

Leaving greasemarks on the cushion

And footprints on the dashboard upside down

Since you’ve been at our Nelly,

She’s got pains down in her belly,

I guess you’d best be moving out of town.

That’s the way Potter the Poet tells it and that’s the way I can see it.

The rest of the day is background music and the next morning I am round at Battersea Public Library which is the source of all knowledge to the lower orders. I had been simple enough to imagine that you just slapped a sign saying “LEArn with LEA” on your car and you were away. But, oh dear me, no. Not by a long chalk. The lady with a frizzy bun and indelible pencil all round her unpretty lips soon throws a bucket of cold water over that one.

“You’ll have to write to the Department of the Environment,” she says coldly. Me writing to the Department of the Environment! I mean, it sounds so grand I hardly feel I have a right to. Maybe I should chuck it all in and get a job on the buses. But I do as she says and soon receive an AD154 (an official paid buff envelope which Dad snitches to send off his pools), an AD12, an AD13, and AD1 3L, two AD14’s and an AD1 14 (revised). My cup overfloweth. After poring over this lot till my eyes ache I work out that I have to get on the Register of Approved Driving Instructors and that to do this I have to pass a written and a practical examination. I will then be a—wait for it—“Department of the Environment Approved Driving Instructor” and you can’t get much higher than that, can you? D.E.A.D.I.—oh well, I suppose they know what they are doing.

Filling in the application form is a bit of a drag because there is a section about convictions for non-motoring offences and a request for the names of two people prepared to give references. I decide to come clean on the lead-stripping because, on the application form, they give you four lines for details of your offences and tell you to continue on a separate sheet if necessary, so they must be used to getting some right rogues. My criminal record will fit into half a line.

The references are more of a problem because you can’t use family (not that anyone, apart from Mum, would have a good word for me) and I am not on close terms with anyone else in S.W.12. In the end I make up a couple of names and give my sister’s address for one, and a block of flats where I know the caretaker for the other. Both of them get instructions to hang on to any mail addressed to the Rev. Trubshawe or Lieut.-Colonel Phillips R.A. and sure enough, both of them get a letter asking for a character reference.

I am dead cunning with my replies, even getting the Rev. Trubshawe to allude to my schoolboy indiscretion: “no doubt accounted for by his having strayed into the company of the wrong sort of boy”, whilst the colonel says I am a “damn fine type”. My little ruse seems to work because two weeks later I get a receipt for my £5 examination admission fee and am told where to report.

The first examination is the written one and I mug up all the guff they give me so I see road signs every time I close my eyes. I have never worked so hard in my life and I feel really confident that I’m going to do well. But—and that is one of the key words in my life—once again fate puts the mockers on me. This time it is in the crutch-swelling shape of the eldest Ngobla girl Matilda. The Ngoblas are our next door neighbours and, as their name suggests, are blacker than the inside of a lump of coal. Mum and Dad are very cool about it and would never admit to anything as unsavoury as racial prejudice but the Ngoblas are not on our Christmas card list and when Mum smiles at Mrs. Ngobla it’s like Sonny Liston trying to tell his opponent something as they touch gloves. For myself, I am not very fussed either way but I don’t have much to do with the Ngoblas, basically, I suppose, because I never have done.

My encounter with Matilda takes place when I am revising on the eve of my examination. Mum has gone to the bingo and Dad is at the boozer so I have the kitchen to myself and am reading “Driving” for the four hundred and thirty second time when I look out of the window and see Matilda prancing about on the lawn (which is what Dad calls the patch of dandelions by the dustbins). She has just achieved that instant transformation from schoolgirl to woman and with her pink woolly sweater and velvet hot-pants she looks decidedly fanciable. I can hardly believe that when I last saw her she was wearing a grubby gymslip and dragging a satchel behind her. It turns out that one of her kid brothers—there are about 400 of them—has lost his ball over the wall and I help her look for it whilst flashing some of the small talk that has made me the toast of Wimbledon Palais. I am glad to find, when she bends over an old chicken coop, that there isn’t a drop of prejudice in me. In fact, quite the reverse. I could board her, no trouble at all. She looks as if she has been poured into a black rubber mould and the sight is enough to give Mr. Dunlop a few ideas for new products, I can tell you.

I persuade her to pop inside for a quick drink (tea or coffee) and—well, you know what it is like—one thing leads to another and I’ve got her hot pants off before you can say Enoch Powell. A few moments later, we are wearing out the pile on the fireside rug when Dad comes in. He must have crept across the hall on tiptoe, the nosey old sod. He goes spare and starts rambling on about “your mother’s home” and “blackamoors”, “thin end of the wedge” etc., until I nearly go out of my mind. No sooner has he belted up than Mum comes in to hear the whole story and start blaming herself for leaving me alone for a couple of hours just as if I was still a schoolkid. Matilda stalks out with her head in the air right at the beginning and, I must say, I have to hand it to her.

“Ooh, the hussy,” squeals Mum, “can’t you see, it’s a conspiracy. They’ve been trying to lure you for years. Give themselves a bit of respectability. You mark my words, that black trollop will be saying you made her pregnant.”

“She’ll be dead lucky,” I say. “Dad put the kibosh on that.”

“Shut your mouth, you dirty little bleeder,” howls Dad.

It’s all pretty turgid, and when I tell Dad he is jealous and I have watched him giving Mrs. Ngobla the eye for years, he goes stark raving bonkers.

“Get out of this house!” he rages. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

So I do. Straight out of the front door, slamming it behind so the whole terrace sways. And that is the start of one of the worst nights of my life. I am not going back, oh no, not me! But where am I going? Rosie seems a good bet, even if I do have to throw myself on Sid’s mercy, but I find that they have gone to Hastings for the week.

When I think about it, I’ve got the same problem I had when I was looking for a reference. No friends. I end up sleeping, if that is the right word, in one of the tennis court huts on Clapham Common, and I have to hang around there for an hour until the last pair of lovers vacate it. It is bloody cold and I think I still have the pattern of the benches stamped on my shoulder blades. When I eventually drop off it is only onto the floor and then it starts raining so I give up the whole idea of sleep and huddle in the darkness until it begins to get light.

The result of this is that by the time I get to the examination, I am totally knackered and can hardly keep my eyes open. I am not looking my best, either because pride has prevented me from returning to the family home and velvet jeans and a Mr. Freedom T-shirt are a trifle conscipuous amongst the selection of sports jackets set off by the occasional Burton masterpiece.

We have one hour and twenty minutes for the first two papers and by a superhuman effort I manage to keep my eyes open most of the time, though it is fatal if I prop my head on a hand. My habit of jumping out of my seat and taking violent swings at the empty air causes a little surprise though, as does the occasional slap round the chops I administer to myself.

We have a break before the second examination and I nip across the road for some tea and a couple of ham rolls. Trouble is I’ve no sooner sat down than I fall asleep and all the other buggers have been working for fifteen minutes when I come stumbling through the door. I try and settle down but it’s hopeless. Every question I read about five times and I can’t take in the words. I start writing and my mind drifts off into cotton wool and I forget what I was about. Then I make the mistake of thinking that if I could just take a little cat nap I would awake refreshed and be able to dash off the papers in half an hour. The next thing I remember is the examiner tugging my papers from under my head and the trail of saliva running down the desk and on to the floor. My paper has my number on it, the question number and “The interpretation of the reason for failure”. That is all. I could weep.

But of course, I don’t. I drag myself home and go straight to bed, ignoring Mum who is glad to see me, but damned if she is going to show it too much. It’s a funny thing but though I am still flaked out I can’t sleep. I just lie there thinking how I have blown the exam and how bloody unfair it is. After a while, I get up and go through all my AD12 and AD13s to see if and when I can take it again. Three months it says.

Three months! That is a bloody long time; especially now that I have vowed to get out of Scraggs Road just as fast as my tiny legs will carry me.

I pore over my papers and discover a faint ray of hope. I can get a “Licence to give Instruction” which would allow me to do just that whilst I am waiting to take the written exam again. Trouble is, that for at least one-fifth of the time I’m on the road I have to be supervised by an A.D.I. so that means finding a driving school that will accept me as a trainee. LEArn with LEA will have to wait for a bit.

Slightly cheered I pad round the local schools but not a sausage. They are all one man bands, fully staffed or “we only take fully qualified people” said with withering contempt.

So there I am again, on the scrap heap at 22. Stuck between the Devil and the Deep Black Ngoblas for another three months. Dad is, of course, not at all surprised by my failure to pass the exam and the verbal war between us festers unpleasantly with Mum flapping miserably on the side lines. The situation is intolerable, as my old schoolmaster used to say, and I keep out of the house as much as I can. “You use this place like a hotel,” moans Dad, who would start belly-aching about me always being under his feet if I watched five minutes of Coronation Street! It is at this time of frustration and bitterness that help arrives from an unexpected quarter.

I am having a solitary drink in the public bar of the Highwayman when I see Sid in the saloon. At first we pretend not to see each other but then, when I am sitting down thinking how stupid it is and on the point of going over and buying him a beer, he comes in and buys me one. I tell him my problems and he nods sympathetically.

“You want a driving school, eh?” he says. “Funny that, but I just might be able to help you. Bloke I knew in the army runs a driving school. Did I ever tell you about B.S.M. Cronk?”

“Cronk?! That’s a funny name!”

“Yeah. Battery Sergeant Major Cronk. He was the herbert who got me chucked out, bless him.”

Sid had done his national service, which shows you how old he is, and been dishonourably discharged after getting involved in some petrol fiddle. I could never understand the details and Sid swore that he was innocent—not that that meant anything. When he was caught red-handed in a fur warehouse he said he had heard a cat mewing, climbed in to let it out, and picked up the wrong fur in the darkness.

“I had a letter from him afterwards saying that it had all come out and that they now knew I was innocent. I said ‘forget it’ in case they took me back in again. I remember at the time thinking that it was good of the old bugger to write to me.”

“What’s all this got to do with me?” I say, because Sid can go on a bit once he starts his army reminiscences.

“Well,” says Sid, “he owes me a favour; said as much in his letter. I reckon if I dropped him a line and reminded him, he might see you alright.”

“Where is this school?” I ask.

“I dunno. Place called Cromingham, I think. Somewhere in Norfolk.”

“Norfolk! Bloody heck. It’s not exactly round the corner, is it?”

“No, but I believe it’s very nice up there. Very good air, your Mum always used to say. She went up there for her honeymoon, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know where she went. Look, I don’t know if I want to go all that way. It’s flat as a pancake, isn’t it, and there’s nothing there but a load of swede-bashers. What am I going to do in the evenings?”

“What do you mean? It’s a seaside resort, isn’t it? The place will be crawling with birds. It’ll be like a permanent holiday.”

“But it’s November, Sid.”

“Well, all the local birds will be dying for a bit of spare, won’t they? I went to Rhyl in October once and all the local tarts who wouldn’t have looked at you in the holiday season were roaming the streets in packs.”

“I’d have thought they’d have been better off out of season because their blokes weren’t knocking off all the new birds.”

“It works both ways. By Christ, but you’re hard to please. You don’t just look a gift horse in the mouth, you kick its bleeding teeth down its throat.”

“You’ve got a vested interest in seeing me out of the way, Sid. You can’t blame me for being cautious.”

And so we go on until I agree that he should write to Cronk and lend me two quid, the latter negotiation being a bit more difficult to effect than the former. A week later a very official looking letter arrives with “The East Coast Driving School” tattooed all over it. It is from Walter Cronk, Managing Director and Chief Instructor, and informs me curtly that the writer has reason to believe that I wish to become a licensed instructor at the above-named establishment and would be grateful for my verification of this fact and a statement of my availability. I write back saying that my availability is immediate and receive what Mr. Cronk calls a movement order, stating that upon acceptance of my application for a licence to give instruction in the driving of a motor car, provision will be made for me to board with a Mrs. Bendon at 17 Ocean Approach, and will I inform her and the E.C.D.S. of my intended date and time of arrival. Mr. Cronk, or someone, has also thoughtfully enclosed a postcard of the Esplanade at Cromingham which looks not unlike the Esplanade of 132 other resorts, though achieving a certain distinction by the quality of the colour register which is such as to give the effect of a 3D film seen without glasses.

I make my arrangements quietly and secretly and can then achieve total surprise and discomfiture when I announce that I am pushing off. Mum can’t believe it and even Dad looks a trifle cast down. The night before I go he takes me out for a drink, which is totally unheard of, and hardly says anything the whole evening, which is likewise.

“Good luck, boy,” he says, squeezing my arm as we say goodnight. “I’ll miss you.” I think the miserable old sod really meant it.

The next morning I take my sandwiches which Mum has wrapped in grease-proof paper, refuse her tomatoes because I know they will get squashed, and stride off to Clapham South tube station.

It’s funny, but now that I’ve fixed everything, I don’t want to go.

CHAPTER THREE

I change trains at Norwich and up till then the landscape has been flatter than a witch’s tit. After that it is flatter. Ploughed fields stretch away to the horizon and there are occasional lines of straggling trees pinning down the hedgerows. Farm buildings glint from behind the trees but they seem outnumbered by church towers. There must be one for every man, woman and child in Norfolk. Above all looms the sky, totally dominating the earth, the clouds sweeping in like waves on a vast and deserted beach.

The effect on me is depressing. Without a few houses around I feel as exposed as a spare prick at a whore’s wedding and there is something about the increasingly bare landscape and slow unhurried progress of the train that makes me feel I am coming to the edge of the world. Now the fields give way to marshes, pock-marked by brackish pools, and the trees disappear. Soon, I think to myself, the marsh will disappear and we will continue over, into and under the sea without anyone making a move to save himself. We are on the train of the doomed! (It just shows what watching all those late-night horror movies can do to your imagination.) I had hoped that the trip would be enlivened by the presence of a nymphomaniac lady of quality going up to visit her titled husband who had been paralysed from the waist down in a car accident. Unfortunately, once again we seem to have got on different trains and I am forced to blunt my imagination on hordes of yacking schoolgirls who invade the train as it approaches Cromingham. If not desirable, they are at least reassuringly not of the spirit world.

“So I says to ’im, git you your ‘ands off my knicks,” says one of them enthusiastically to a friend in an accent I can hardly understand. With them chattering like starlings and increasing evidence that man has contributed to the landscape, I begin to cheer up and look out hopefully towards the sea. I have been a few times with Mum—day trips to Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings when I was a kid—and I remember the kick I used to get when I suddenly realised that the great blue line running along the horizon was the sea. Unfortunately, today it is a great grey line and what I see through a sudden dip in the landscape is barely distinguishable from the sky. I know Cromingham is next because British Railways have thoughtfully provided a map to which someone has added a piece of chewing gum and the word ‘dump’ next to my destination; no doubt one of my fellow-travellers who is now confiding to a local friend that one Clint Seago, fortunate owner of a Honda motor bike, “be a bit of all right”.

The marsh gives way to dry land again, thus ending my last fears, and buildings begin to appear beside the track as the brakes slam on. I notice that the trees cower away from the sea and their topmost branches are twisted in on themselves like the arms of a beaten boxer trying to protect himself from a hail of blows. When I flick the sandwich crumbs off my lap and struggle out onto the platform I can see why. The wind has an edge on it like a razor and must have been gathering speed ever since it left Norway. I can understand why all the locals scuttle off at an angle of 45º to the vertical. Also why their skins are tanned a kind of golden brown not far short of mahogany. You don’t have to breathe here. Just open your mouth and let the wind rush through every hole in your body.

When I get to the station entrance it is in time to see what I imagine is the only taxi in East Anglia disappearing inland and the last schoolgirl paddling away down the hill towards the town. An inquiry about buses is met with the same puzzled amazement that might have greeted a request for a camel.

I eventually manage to ring for another taxi and settle down to wait, looking over the rows of flint-studded cottages to where clumps of caravans sprout along the cliffs like toadstools. Very few of them seem to be occupied and I’m not surprised. You could freeze to death up there if this weather is anything to go by.

All in all, speaking my mind, and not mincing my words, the place has about as much appeal as an old age pensioners’ nudist camp and I’m seriously considering catching the next train home when my taxi arrives. The driver takes one look at my Hardy Amies original and has me summed up immediately.

“You want the camp?” he says.

“Holiday or army?”

“You can have either.”

“I don’t want either, thanks.”

“Python’s, then?”

“Pythons?” I query, my mind boggling.

“Python’s Pesticides. Look, what do you want?”

He seems irritated, as if there are only three reasons for coming to Cromingham in November and he has mentioned all of them.

“15 Ocean Approach, please.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Bendon, isn’t it? You a relation of hers?”

“No. I’m going to lodge with her.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you looked like family. From London, are you?”

“Yes.”

“We don’t get many folk down from London at this time of year.”

“Maybe they don’t like getting the third degree from complete strangers.”

If this ruffles him he doesn’t show it.

“What are you here for?” he says, letting out the hand-brake slowly.

“I’m joining the driving school.”

“You’ve come all this way to learn to drive?”

“Yes. Princess Margaret told me it was the best in the world.”

His expression doesn’t change and he nods his head.

“Which one?”

“The Queen’s sister, of course; which one do you think?”

“I mean which driving school?”

This is a surprise because I hadn’t thought of there being more than one.

“The East Coast Driving School.”

“Oh yes.” He nods his head again and suddenly lapses into silence.

“How many driving schools are there here?” I ask eventually, unable to restrain my curiosity.

“Just the two. The East Coast and the Major.”

“Which one do you reckon is the best?”

“I dunno,” he says, his expression not changing by the flicker of a muscle. “You’d better ask Princess Margaret.”

We are driving along the front now and below me the sea stretches away like cold porridge, only less enticing. The beach has a generous helping of shingle and is divided into sections by an orderly procession of breakwaters disappearing into infinity as if the effect has been achieved with mirrors. I can see one lunatic sitting against a concrete ramp with a thermos flask in his hands, otherwise the beach is as empty as the collection plate at a Jewish wedding. Quite where all the birds that Sid was talking about are I don’t know, but maybe word hasn’t got around that I’m in town yet. We pass a few shelters built in the style of Japanese prefabs and turn off beyond a row of seedy hotels with names that promise rather more than they look likely to deliver. 15 Ocean Approach is one of a row of what must once have been fishermen’s cottages and has a fading ‘Bed and Breakfast’ sign in the parlour window.

‘You’ll be all right there,” says the driver with meaning as he watches me struggle out with my case. “She’ll look after you.”

I pay him and advance towards the front door, which opens as I reach out for the knocker. When I see what I presume to be Mrs. Bendon, I can understand what the driver was getting at. She must be knocking forty and she has a nice pair of knockers to do it with. Her hair has been freshly permed, possibly for my benefit, and she pats it genteelly as she extends a hand.

“Mr. Lea? I thought so. Do come in. Can you manage? Good. Don’t bother about that. I’ll pick it up later. It is cramped in here, isn’t it? Put your case down there. I’ve got the kettle on. Would you like a cup of tea—or coffee, perhaps? Are you sure? It doesn’t make any difference to me. Really it doesn’t. Give me time and I’ll find out all your little likes and dislikes. Did you have a good journey? It’s a drag from London, isn’t it? That change at Norwich and all those stops afterwards. Of course, Norwich is quite a pleasant city. I go and shop there sometimes. Not like London, though. I was born and bred in London, you know. Within the sound of Bow Bells, though I bet you can’t tell it from my accent. Still, I mustn’t ramble on like this. You must be dying for that cup of tea—or was it coffee? It really doesn’t matter, you know. It’s no trouble. You just say what you’d like. I’ll soon get to know all your little likes and dislikes.”

I can’t get a word in, so I take a cup of tea and sit in the front room, listening to her rabbiting on while I look at the horse brasses and the frilly lampshades and the lace headrests and the painting of three horses running into the rising sun, and her legs. Mostly it’s her legs, which are not at all bad for a woman of her age and have a delicious little swelling rising from her thigh which suggest that she is wearing suspenders. Suspenders! The very thought of it sends new life surging through my jockey briefs. Her complexion is good and though she is a trifle on the plump side it suits her. Her teeth are a bit crooked but this must mean that they are her own and I rate that. I’ve never fancied birds who start dismantling themselves at bedtime. The one big disadvantage I can see at the moment is her non-stop rabbiting, which could well get on my nerves over the next few months, or weeks, or days, or hours.

“… so I married him,” she goes on. “There I was with the world at my feet. A pretty girl—though I say it myself—with a good many beaux to my string, and I marry a penniless fisherman after I’ve known him a week. Foolish, romantic chit of a girl that I was.”

I nod understandingly.

“Not that I had anything to complain about—Ted was a wonderfully kind man. He didn’t say much but you always knew he meant well. Never denied me anything that we could afford. But he wasn’t a thinker. We never talked about things. Do you know what I mean?”

I know all right. The poor bastard couldn’t have got a word in edgeways even if he knew any.

“I’d fallen in love with a dream, you see. When he came in on the boat all bronzed and handsome he used to look like some Viking god. He’d leap over the side and thrust the boat up the beach,” Mrs. Bendon bristles at the thought of it, “and his waders would be slapping together, and the fish dancing and the crabs scuttling.” She licks her lips quickly. “I was so proud of him, I wanted to turn to people and say ‘He’s mine.’” Mrs. Bendon’s voice sinks down below the ecstatic level. “But when we were at home he’d just sit staring at the television or go to bed. I never saw him even look at a newspaper. He was a different man. Of course he wasn’t really. He was the same man but it was just the way I looked at him. Do you know what I mean?”

I nod gamely. Of course I do. She wanted a mixture of Oliver Reed and David Dimbleby. Don’t they all?

“Still, that’s enough of me, going on like this. You’ve only been here half an hour and I’m telling you my life story. Must be very boring for you. You’re probably dying to see your room and get unpacked. Would you like a bath after your journey? The trains these days are so dirty, aren’t they? I don’t think anybody ever cleans them. You’d think those diesel things would be cleaner than the old steam ones, but they aren’t.”

My bedroom is at the back of the house and looking obliquely left over a series of tiny back gardens. I can see a chunk of sea between the gap thoughtfully bequeathed by two boarding houses. In the middle of it nestles a small boat and I think of Mr. Bendon. Mrs. B. has not yet told me what happened to him and it’s a bit early to ask. Maybe he was drowned or maybe he couldn’t stand the sound of her voice any more and kept his boat pointed out to sea.

It is cold so I close the window and switch on the electric fire thoughtfully provided. Five minutes later I realise that nothing has happened and notice a small meter which exchanges warmth for 5p pieces. Mrs. B. is not Nelson Rockefeller in drag. I unpack, wash from the rose-patterned china jug and bowl set—idly wondering whether I’m supposed to throw the dirty water out of the window—and lay down on the bed. I’ve almost dozed off when there is a light tap on the door and Mrs. B. tells me that supper will be ready in half an hour and that I can watch the television if I want to.

Her cooking is not bad and certainly better than Mum’s. Mum has trouble reheating a packet of fish and chips.

“That was very nice,” I say, scooping up my last mouthful of fruit salad—the real stuff out of a tin, not Mum’s bits of cut up orange and apple.

“Thank you, dear. I’m glad you liked it. It’s nice to have someone to cook for again. Once the season is over there’s not much doing here and the locals aren’t over-friendly. I’ve lived here twenty years and they still think of me as being an outsider. Of course, there are a lot of new people moving in. Retired couples, most of them, and there is an awful lot of new building—weekend bungalows, that kind of thing. But it’s not easy to make new friends when you’re a single woman of my age. I’m not a newcomer and I’m not really a resident either. People seem to be at bit suspicious. If you’re not married it’s difficult to fit in, you know.”

I get my nod working again.

“Tell you what,” I say. “Why don’t I help you with the washing up and then take you out for a drink? There must be a nice little pub near here.”

“That’s very kind of you, dear, but what will the neighbours say? Going out with the lodger on his first night. Tongues will be wagging.”

“They don’t have to know, do they?”

“There’s not much that goes on around here they don’t know about. All right, just a quick one. I haven’t been out in the evening for weeks and I think I deserve a little tipple. We’ll take my car.”

“I didn’t know you had a car.”

“Oh, it’s very old. One of the first A40s ever made. I keep it in a garage round the corner. I hope it will start. There isn’t anywhere very nice to drink around here and I’d like to get away from the neighbours.”

By the time we get out it is dark as the inside of a nigger’s nostril and the wind is playing havoc with Mrs. B.’s carefully-tarted-up hair. There is a bit of movement behind the neighbouring curtains and I can believe what she says about them not missing much. You can almost hear the tongues tuning up.

Getting the car out is a bit of a pantomime because there is no light in the lock-up garage and I have to fumble about with controls that might belong to an electric organ for all I can see. Mrs. B. flaps and fusses and when the bloody engine eventually fires into life you would think I’d built it from toothpicks the way she goes on.

“Ooh, what talent,” she squeals. “You won’t mind if I ask you to fix a few things at home, will you?”

“Pleasure,” I say. “Now, which way do we go?”

We tootle inland for about six miles and this gives me time to get acquainted with the perfume she is wearing. It’s the kind that comes at you like the North Korea Army and I think she laces it with chloroform because I am quite drowsy by the time we get to a small country pub with some water glittering in the background. I nip out smartish so I have the satisfaction of opening her door and watching her skirt ride up as she climbs out. Long as I live, I’ll never tire of watching birds get in and out of cars. It’s the little casual things that turn me on more than five hours of strip-tease.

“It’s lovely here in the summer time,” she says. “All kinds of boats. Have you ever been on the Broads?”

I’m a bit slow to answer because most of the time she doesn’t expect you to. Besides, I don’t know what she is on about. I always thought that a ‘broad’ was the American word for a woman and I don’t think she means that.

“The Broads, dear,” she explains. “They’re lakes connected by rivers. You can sail for hundreds of miles, or take a cabin cruiser, or fish. Surely you’ve heard of them?

Now that she mentions it, I do remember Dad going on about how he came up here once with a party of his mates when he was a lad. I didn’t take any notice because I reckoned anything he did must be pretty square and wasn’t worth touching with a barge pole.

“Oh, yes,” I say, “my family came up here once. My father was very impressed. Now, which bar do you recommend?”

Inside there is a big log fire burning and a few old codgers playing dominoes in the corner. They look at us like they’ve never seen another human being before, but after examining every thread of clothing eventually go back to their game as we settle by the fire.

“You’d better not offer to do this too often, otherwise you’ll have no money left,” says Mrs. B., raising her glass of whisky gratefully. I agree with her but I don’t say so.

“It’s my pleasure. The very least I could do after that wonderful meal.”

Smarmy creep, aren’t I? But it’s only common sense to keep on the best side of your landlady. But how far should I go? If it was anyone else I’d be trying to get my hand up her skirt already; but I have to live with her. If she takes it the wrong way or we get too involved, it could be disastrous. I’d better bide my time till I see how the land lies—or the landlady lies.

“You’re looking very preoccupied,” she says. “A penny for your thoughts.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything really—apart from how lucky I am to be staying with you, of course. No, I think I must be a bit tired. I’m feeling quite drowsy.”

“Not surprising after your journey. It’s probably the air, too. Very bracing, Norfolk air, but it takes it out of you. I’ll buy you one and then we’d best be getting back. There’s not a lot of time before they close, anyway.”

I protest but she is very persistent and in the end she slips me 50p and we have another one.

“Have you got any children?” I ask in one of our quiet moments—these occur when she stops talking to get her breath back.

“Yes. One. She’s at Teacher Training College at the moment. She’ll be home at Christmas. She’s a lovely girl, though I say so myself. You’ve got her bedroom.”

“I hope that’s not going to inconvenience you when she comes home?”

“No, she can move in with me. It won’t hurt her for a couple of weeks.”

“Is that all the holiday she gets?”

“No, but she has lots of friends and she is always going to stay with them. They come here in the summer, though it’s a crush putting them all up.”

I look forward to seeing Miss Bendon and the thought preoccupies me on the way back.

To my surprise Mrs. B. does not get out before we approach the garage but sits there while I open up and edge forward into the tight little nest of darkness. I switch off the engine and the silence is deafening.

“Well,” she says wistfully, “that was very nice.” I can feel her turning her face towards me and I don’t need a handbook to tell me what I am supposed to do next.

“Yes. Very snug little place, that,” I gulp. I’m tempted My God, I’m tempted, but I try to remember my resolution of earlier in the evening. Mrs. B. sighs and puts her hand on the door handle.

“Ah well, I suppose we’d better go home before someone wonders what we’re doing in here.”

“Yes.” I try a light laugh and hop out gratefully. Sitting beside Mrs. B.’s warm, perfume-doused body and listening to the noise her stockings make as they rub together is more than a young boy should be expected to stand.

We walk home in silence and Mrs. B. lets me in. and pauses at the foot of the stairs.

“Would you like Ovaltine or something?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll turn in. I’m feeling really sleepy now.”

Mrs. B. puts her hand on my arm.

“Breakfast will be about eight. I’ll give you a call. Thanks again for taking me out. I did enjoy it.”

“It was nothing. Really nothing.” I drop my head and give her a quick kiss on the cheek as if the idea had just flown into my mind and been too overpowering to resist. “I’m sorry. I just felt I had to do that. I don’t know what came over me. Sorry.”

I make this speech stumbling up the stairs and at their foot Mrs. B. is gazing at me with what seems like tears in her eyes—or maybe it is the light.

“You’re a funny boy,” she says, blowing me a kiss. “Sleep tight.”

“Good night.”

I scarper across the landing and gratefully close my bedroom door behind me. Not bad, really. Enough done to save my honour and keep Mrs. B. simmering gently, without risking upsetting the apple cart on my first trip to market.

I undress and get into bed and then have to get out again and wedge some paper into the window jambs to stop their persistent rattle performing a Norfolk version of the Chinese water torture. The wind threatens to lift the house off the ground and the sea sounds mean and angry and coming from the next room. Considering I am living in the middle of a town it is amazing how quiet it is otherwise. No cars, no drunks, no Ngoblas extending hospitality Ghanian-style to about 500 guests.

Thinking about home makes me sad again. I imagine Dad dropping off in front of the little white light in the middle of the T.V. screen, and Mum carefully marking up tomorrow’s viewing in the T.V. Times before feeding the goldfish and putting the cat out.

Cromingham seems a long way from all that.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning finds me outside the East Coast Driving School, which is situated in a small glass-fronted shop next to the Majestic Cinema and sllightly larger than it. The cinema is showing ‘The Big Sleep’ and the familiar faces of Bogart and Bacall, sneering at me from the faded stills, are comforting. “Yeah, he’s the kind of guy who would bat all your teeth out, then kick you in the stomach for mumbling.” “O.K., blue eyes, where’s Schultzy? Talk or I’ll give you a row of lead waistcoat buttons.” I turn up my coat collar, stuff my hands deep into the pockets and walk past the E.C.D.S. offices again. I have done this about six times now and the shapely blonde manicuring her nails behind a desk marked RECEPTION is beginning to notice me. She is wearing a silk blouse unbuttoned provocatively so the top of her bra cups show and she is either chewing gum or trying to ease out a stubborn piece of breakfast that doesn’t want to say goodbye to her teeth. She looks a greedy girl and I am prepared to bet that her appetite covers more than a taste for Black Magic chocolates. Besides her, the room contains half-a-dozen chairs and a test-your-eyesight wall chart. It looks like a doctor’s waiting-room.

It is five past nine so I square my enormous shoulders and stroll nonchalantly into the reception area, pausing only to remove the doormat which has hooked itself over one of my shoes.

“Yes?” says the girl, looking at me as if I am something the cat has brought up. “Can I help you?” She manages to make it sound like it is the last thing in the world she wants to do.

“I hope so,” I say. “My name is Lea and I have an appointment with Mr. Cronk at nine o’clock.”

“And you’re five minutes late for it, aren’t you, lad?” The voice belongs to an enormous man with a moustache like one of those things used for cleaning toilets.

He has appeared through a door marked PRIVATE and his bloodshot eyes are going up and down my body like they’ve been caught up in the zip of my fly.

“One thing I can’t abide is unpunctuality,” he goes on. “I saw you slouching up and down outside. Having second thoughts, were you? Or was it the lure of the moving picture house? No joy there, because it’s bingo two-knee-ite.” His voice rises to a shrill screech at the end of the sentence and the word ‘night’ is pronounced as in ‘knee height to a grasshopper.’ His inflection is about as army as a set of mess tins and my steel trap mind springs to a conclusion.

“Mr. Cronk?”

“Key-rect, Lea. Step into my office.”

I go through the door marked PRIVATE and into a neat little rooms which contains a desk, empty except for a set of ‘in’, ‘out’ and ‘pending’ trays, all of which are also empty. On the wall is a picture of Montgomery and a few other geezers who have cleaned up, selling their memoirs to the Sunday Times. Slightly to the left of them is a photograph of Cronk amongst a group of regimental hard nuts posed under a palm tree as if they have just won something—probably World War II.

“Right, lad,” says Cronk, sitting down behind his desk, but making no gesture towards waving me into a seat. “Welcome to the East Coast Driving School. You will find us a happy band united behind the resolve to make this the most successful driving school in the whole of East Anglia. I think I can safely say that already our reputation has spread far and wide and we intend to build on success. That is why you are fortunate to be joining us at a moment when the future looms wide with opportunities. With your assistance, we will take them.”

“Thank you,” I say earnestly. “You can rely on me to do my best.”

“I hope so, lad. I know nothing about you apart from what your brother-in-law wrote to me.” I look questioningly into his face but it doesn’t tell me anything. “I expect you heard that we were involved in a little altercation?”

I nod. “You got him thrown out of the army.”

“Yes, indeed. Terrible business. Mistake. Awful.”

“You don’t want to worry about it,” I reassure him. “Sid was dead chuffed to be out.”

“Nevertheless,” Cronk winces at such blasphemy, “it was a bad business and I hold myself responsible. The least I can do is to extend a helping hand to you as some kind of reparation. But, and let me make this most clear, this is not a charitable organisation. You will be expected to pull your weight and if you do not come up to our standards—high standards, I might add—we will be forced to dispense with your services. Understood?” I nod again. “Now, as I expect you know, one-fifth of all your instructing time must be spent with an A.D.I. until you pass your examination and I’ve asked our Mr. Cripps to accompany you on your first few lessons. He’ll take you out for a tour of the most used test circuits after our little chat.”

‘Chat’ is the wrong word, for Cronk doesn’t give me the chance to say anything. He rabbits on about the importance of not compromising myself and the penalty for ignoring his advice—instant dismissal. Though disturbed by his attitude, I’m cheered to find that there obviously is the chance of a bit of nooky if you keep your eyes open.

I keep nodding and wish I could get a bit of activity into my facial muscles to relieve the monotony, but I can feel my features setting like cement.

“… and so, now that you know a little about us …” I can tell that he is winding up for the big finale, “… and in the weeks to come you’re obviously going to know a great deal more. If there is anything you’re not happy about, anything you want to know, come and see me; that’s what I’m here for. Understood? Good. Any questions?”

“Yes,” I think to myself. “One. Why do you wear that bloody great moustache when you have a small, turned-up nose with a red blob on the end of it like Coco the clown? That moustache needs a great big hooter with a beard in the middle of it.”

“Not at the moment, thank you.” I shake my head and unravel my fingers.

“Right. I’ll introduce you to Mr. Cripps.”

He presses a button in the middle of his desk and nothing happens. He does this twice more and then stalks to the door and siezes the knob as if intent on tearing it from its mooring. Seconds later I realise that this was not his intention because he is looking at the knob in his hand with something akin to surprise. Cursing crudely he seeks the spindle, but this has dropped through to the other side. I find the whole situation a mild giggle but Cronk has turned scarlet and dropping to his knees begins to bellow instructions through the keyhole. These are speedily complied with—possibly too speedily because the returning spindle makes violent contact with Cronk’s eyeball causing him to cry out with pain and anger.

“Are you trying to blind me?” he howls, as the door is opened. “Do you realise there could have been a very serious accident? When is somebody going to do something about that bleeper? I’d be better off with a megaphone. Oh my God, this place is going to the dogs.”

“The man said he’d come yesterday,” says the receptionist who is totally unmoved by the outburst. “Do you want me to see if he can fix the door handle as well?”

“Yes, please,” says Cronk making an obvious effort to control himself. “I’d be very grateful if you would. Now, can you ask Mr. Cripps if he would be kind enough to step inside my office as I’d like to introduce him to Mr. Lea.”

Cronk sits down behind his desk and applies a spotless white handkerchief to his weeping eye. Everything about him is immaculate in a square sort of way. His shirt looks as if it is part of a new set of tennis kit and you feel that the creases in his trousers must score grooves in the underside of his desk. The contrast between him and the figure that stumbles through the door is remarkable.

Mr. Cripps, whom I assume it to be, looks as if he keeps a moulting polar bear as a suit press and the layer of dandruff on his shoulders would come up to a moth’s knees. He wears a grey nylon shirt, darkening to black at neck level and a frayed tie with so much dirt engrained round the knot that one supposes it is never untied but merely loosened to afford a passage over its owner’s head. The face is that of a life-battered fifty-year-old and everything sags, mouth, eyes and even a sparse moustache that looks as if a strong gust of wind would snatch it away across the North Sea. The total effect of flabby incompetence is cemented by the footwear—yellow plastic sandals worn over holed grey socks.

I was expecting a Nazi stormtrooper to bound through the door after Cronk’s pep talk and the reality is a bit of an anti-climax. Not that I am complaining, mind you. Seeing Mr. Cripps makes me feel much happier.

Cronk can obviously read my mind because his eyes travel over Cripps without looking as if they are enjoying the trip very much.

“Good morning, Arthur,” he says. “This is Timothy Lea who I told you about. He’s joining us under licence and I’d like you to take him round the town this morning. Show him the ropes.” He turns to me almost apologetically. “Mr. Cripps looks after our more mature learners. He’s a veritable font of patience to those who aren’t as quick as they might be.”

Mr. Cripps extends a damp hand and looks patient. “Pleased to meet you,” he says.

“Likewise,” I murmur. “When will I start instructing?”

“If everything goes alright today, it could be tomorrow,” says Cronk. “We’ll see.” We go out and I smile at the receptionist but she looks through me as if I am the most boring thing since rubber spaghetti and goes on inspecting her nails. I could shaft her on the spot.

“What’s she like?” I ask Cripps as we climb into a scruffy Morris Minor with a large red and white sign across the top.

“Dawn? Oh, she’s not a bad girl. A little flighty and impertinent but it’s mostly high spirits I believe.”

“She does a turn, does she?” I ask eagerly.

Cripps blushes. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he says primly, “perhaps you would care to drive.” His voice sounds as if its coming from half way down his throat and when he speaks his lips don’t move. He would make a marvellous ventriloquist, only it would be impossible to hear him if you weren’t sitting in the front two rows and no self-respecting dummy would want to work with him. I reject the thought as being unkind and peer back through the window of the driving school where I catch one of Dawn’s heavily made-up eyes. I stick my tongue out at her but she merely directs her gaze towards the ceiling and my rapist fantasies become homicidal.

This is probably why I nearly clip a milk float as I pull out. There is a screech of brakes and a crate of milk shatters all over the road.

“Dammit, boy,” shouts the enraged driver, “how many lessons you had to come swinging out like that before giving any signals?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” I say.

A small crowd has gathered and Cronk and Dawn are watching through the window. Not one of my best starts.

“Didn’t see me!” snorts the yokel. “You better have your eyes tested, boy. You want to watch it, Arthur. You should have taken him up to the golf course before you let him have a go. He won’t pass his test if he can’t see proper.”

I could belt the bleeder, but after a few more insults we help him kick the broken glass into the gutter and can get on our way. Cronk’s face is a picture but he stays inside. For the first time since I have been there, Dawn is smiling. What really gets my goat is that Cripps does take the wheel and drive up to the golf course before he lets me have a go. I feel like accelerating to the cliff edge and slamming on the anchors inches from the brink but the poor sod can’t help being like he is so I don’t do anything and meekly drive towards the club house as instructed.

It is about ten o’clock when we get there and he flashes inside mumbling something about “call of nature”. I don’t know what kind of piss house they have in there but when he comes back there is a new spring in his gait and a faint whiff of Scotch around his chops. I don’t pay much attention but not more than half an hour later it is the side entrance of the Metropole and he has disappeared again. I am therefore not surprised when eleven o’clock finds us outside the Admiral Nelson and Cripps asks casually if I would fancy a quiet half of shandy or something. His “something” turns out to be a large Scotch and you don’t have to have an I.Q. of 150 to guess what he spends all his pocket money on.

Marvellous, isn’t it? After all that bullshit from Cronk, I’m driving round with a chronic boozer who can’t last half an hour without having a snifter. Not that it seems to affect him. He looks just as docile and disinterested as he did when I first saw him.

“You have to be a bit careful with the stuff, don’t you?” I ask him.

“Oh yes. But it’s no problem with me. I just have a quick snort occasionally to keep my spirits up.”

“How long have you been with Cronk?”

“Oh, let me see, I suppose about five years. I knew him in the army, you know. He used to work for me then. Very conscientious chap, and behind the gruff exterior, exceptionally kind-hearted.”

“What made you leave the army?”

I can sense that this is a question he would have preferred me not to ask and for a second I wish I wasn’t such a nosey sod.

“Oh, a number of reasons. I was getting a bit old for it. I felt I needed a change, one or two other things. You know how it is.”

I don’t, but I hold back from telling him and we go on to talk about our respective digs and how his landlady’s coughing keeps him awake at nights and her cat gives him hay fever. All in all he is a bit of a sad case is Arthur Cripps.

Lunch is taken in the Red Mullett and is mostly liquid as far as Arthur is concerned and by four o’clock I feel I know the pubs of Cromingham better than the test circuits we have been driving round.

For all the booze he has put away he still seems his normal unexciting self but I am glad when he suggests that we call it a day and I drop him behind the Grand Hotel where no doubt another bar stool is waiting for his arse to polish it.

A small seaside resort out of season is like an empty house. It goes to seed pretty quickly. The paint starts peeling, the signs start drooping, the waste paper baskets look as if they haven’t been emptied since the last visitor pulled out and the dirty postcards begin to turn yellow and peel at the edges. In another five months, the residents will probably start soaking their paint brushes in turps, but it seems a long time to wait.

I park the car and wander around for a bit learning how to lean into the wind like the locals and comforting myself that the air is probably doing me a lot of good. Once you get away from the sea front and the centre of the town, the streets fall into orderly rows of detached bungalows with names like “Shangrila” and “Trade Winds” and they are shooting up like bean stalks. The turves have no sooner been laid in the gardens of Seaview Close than the developers are levelling the foundations for Cromingham Heights. Most of the residents that I can see look like newcomers to the district. Retired, a lot of them, but a few middle executive type families with dad probably working for “Python’s Pesticides” whose “factory in a country garden” is just outside the town. Good fodder for the E.C.D.S. all of them.

I walk back past the closed cafes with their whitewashed windows, and dead bluebottles who never made it to the door in time, and take a turn round the pier. The old geezer who grabs my money looks surprised and irritated to see me and says they close in ten minutes. Through the rusty salt-eroded turnstiles and I listen to my footsteps thudding against the planks and watch the greeny brown water swirling thirty feet below me. It is difficult to imagine anyone coming here for a holiday. At the end of the pier is the lifeboat station and two or three anglers wrapped up like Egyptian Mummys and gazing unemotionally at the spots where their lines disappear beneath a choppy sea. I look round hopefully for some sign of a catch but there is only a tin of rather frayed-looking worms. It is funny, but though I don’t fish because I find it boring, I watch fishermen for hours. It’s the same with cricket.

The wind is now blowing so hard that I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole pier broke away from its moorings and started to drift out to sea. I watch with child-like excitement as one of the fishermen reels in his line, but there is nothing on any of the five hooks—not even a worm. He glares at me if he suspects I might have had a hand in nicking them and I push off back towards the turnstiles. In the centre of the pier is—would you believe it?—the Pier Pavilion, which has apparently been entertaining the masses with Eddy Seago’s Summer Follies, produced by Arnold Begstein, in collaboration with Lew and Sidney Godspeed for Wonderworld Enterprises in conjunction with Mash International. This starred, not unnaturally, laugh-a-line Eddy Seago—star of T.V., stage and screen—which probably means he once appeared in a dog food commercial—Conny Mara, Ireland’s little leprechaun of song, and the “Three Rudolphos” Jugglers Extraordinary. They were supported by Lady Lititia and her talking dogs, a group called “Armpit”, which I recall once having a record that got into the top thirty when you could still fix the charts and “that maestro of melody, the ever popular Harvy Pitts at the electric organ.”

Looking through the glass I can see the chairs lying just where they must have been left since the last audience stampeded for the exits. I wonder where they all are now, Eddy, Conny and the rest of them. Rehearsing for “Babes in the Wood” at Darlington probably, or working their fingers to the bone ringing their agents.

Looking along the coast I can see the lights of another resort beginning to multiply in the fast-falling darkness. This must be Shermer and it occurs to me to have a quick look at it before finding out what special delicacy Ma Bendon is whipping up for supper. I don’t hold any hopes that Shermer is going to be any more exciting than Cromingham but you never know.

Unfortunately, I never find out. Not then, anyway. I’m in the Morris and just pulling up at the junction with the coast road when a Viva screams up from nowhere and draws alongside. You must be in a hurry, I think to myself and I take a cool look at the bloke who is driving. From what I can see in the lamp light he is a good looking bloke with blond curly hair and neat, regular features. He looks like a college boy in an Amercian movie and has the same spoilt, arrogant expression playing round his chops. I take an immediate dislike to him and it must be mutual because he sneers back at me and edges his car into the main road before pulling away towards Shermer with tyres screeching.

Once he is ahead I notice the sign on the roof: “The Major School of Motoring”. So! Someone in the same line of business and not over-friendly with it. Having cut me up at the road junction I expect him to zoom off but the berk now proceeds to dawdle along in front doing about 25 mph. There is a bend about sixty yards ahead but with nothing coming towards me it is perfectly safe to overtake so I put my foot down and pull out alongside the Viva. Immediately blondy accelerates to keep pace with me. At first I think it’s just my imagination but when I put my foot hard down he is still purring along inside me.

Just at that moment a car’s headlights come stabbing round the bend towards me. I immediately step on the brakes but, like it’s my shadow, the Viva slows down too. The bastard is obviously trying to wipe me out. I am screaming curses which are nine tenths sheer bloody funk and the headlights are bearing down on me like the Empire State Building on wheels. The road is not wide enough for the three of us so I throw the wheel over and swing across the road, just missing the oncoming vehicle’s near side wing. I am so close I can smell what the driver had for dinner. I don’t have time to think it though, because the Morris smashes against the verge, bashing my head against the roof. There is a crack of splintering wood and a spray of water lashes the windscreen as my forehead jerks forward to meet it. To my horror I feel myself sinking.

I am panicking, trying to remember whether you let the car sink to the bottom and then open a door, or open a window first, or do neither, when the sinking stops. I raise my head, still mumbling with terror, and find that I am tyre-top deep in what seems to be a duck pond. The six white ducks hurriedly climbing out the other side would agree with me, anyway.

Both the other cars have disappeared and I am alone with the darkness and what passes for silence in these parts, i.e. the sound of a fifty mile an hour gale tearing through the treeless wastes. I manage to get one of the doors open and scramble to the bank to find that I have crashed straight through a wooden fence. This feat does little to cheer me when I consider what damage has probably been done to the car. Now that I have proved to myself that I am definitely alive, fear is being replaced by a homicidal desire to get my hands on the blond bomber in the Viva and bash his face in. My job with the E.C.D.S. is probably up the spout and only revenge is left.

Filled with this warming thought I hook my thumb viciously at a few passing cars but either they can’t see me, or they don’t want to know and I’m forced to squelch back to the nearest garage where I manage to chivvy up a breakdown van. I also take the opportunity to phone the police and report my version of the attempt on my life but when we get back to the scene of what they laughingly call the accident, I am surprised to find a Mini parked there and a man with a flashlight camera hovering expectantly.

“Excuse me, but were you driving this vehicle?” he asks clicking away before I can say anything.

“Yes I was. Who are you?”

He is a nervy little sod hopping around like a jack rabbit and his eyes never stop moving.

“Gruntscomb. East Coast Echo. You’re an instructor, are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before?”

“I’ve only just arrived. Look, I was driven off the road you know. Some bastard from the Major School of Motoring. At least, he was in one of their cars.”

“Really? Very lucky to be alive, aren’t you? Have you been instructing long?”

“I’ve just started. I’m under licence.”

“Oh.” Gruntscomb scribbles something in a little black note book. “Got your L-plates up have you?”

“You could put it like that.”

“Look, would you mind getting back in the car again. It would make a great photograph.”

“No.”

“Oh, good. Hop in then and—”

“I mean yes, I would mind. It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

I wish I had not said that because Gruntscomb writes something else in his little black book.

“O.K. Just as you like. Well, thanks. See you around.”

He snaps his notebook shut and is gone.

It takes about ten minutes to winch out the Morris and in all of that time I’m waiting for the police to show up and even wondering if I shouldn’t have left the car where it was until they got there. But the boys in blue don’t put in an appearance, and I am back inside the Morris trying to make the engine turn over. It must be wetter than a mother of the bride’s handkerchief because it splutters a bit and then refuses to make a sound.

“It’ll be dried out by the morning,” says the breakdown man, cheerfully. “You don’t want to drive it now, anyway, because you don’t know what else might be wrong with it. It needs a thorough overhaul.”

So I’m forced to sit beside him and listen to his harrowing tales of limbs strewn across the road and cars full of courting couples plunging over cliffs whilst the Morris bobs along behind like a fat minnow on the end of a fishing line. My mind is working overtime on what Cronk is going to say and I can see his face swelling up and exploding like a big red balloon.

I hope to God there isn’t too much damage.

I tell the breakdown man that there will be a few bob in it for him if he can get the garage working on the car first thing in the morning and push off back to my lodging with my tail between my legs like a barrel bung.

It is half past nine when I get there and Mrs. Bendon is showing signs of both alarm and irritation.

“There you are!” she exclaims. “I was getting quite worried about you. Been having a few drinks, have you? I suppose you realise your supper is quite ruined. Lovely piece of fresh mackerel, too. I’d be grateful if you could let me know if you’re going to be in late for meals. I did say half past seven and it’s not easy keeping food hot without it drying up. I hope you understand. I don’t want to start laying down rules, but—”

“I had an accident,” I say. “Someone forced me off the road.”

“You were driving?”

“Yes. I wasn’t instructing. I was going to have a look at Shermer.”

“Well, that was something. Is the car all right?”

“I don’t know. It went straight through a fence and into a pond. It doesn’t look too bad.”

“Gracious me. You’re lucky to have escaped alive. You are all right, are you?”

After that, she can’t do enough and I gobble down her mackerel while her eyes roam over me as if expecting parts of me to start dropping off. It’s like being watched by a cat when you are opening a tin of salmon.

“That was very nice,” I say, wiping my mouth on the patterned paper serviette she has thoughtfully provided.

“Thank you, dear. I’m afraid there’s not much to follow, but I’ve got some nice crisp Coxes.”

“An apple would be very nice.”

“Would you like some coffee afterwards?”

“No, thanks, don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother.”

‘No, thanks. It might keep me awake.”

“That’s right. You don’t want to lose your beauty sleep. Though you’ve got nothing to worry about. Not like me. I need every second.”

I am obviously expected to say something and I don’t disappoint her.

“Come off it! You’re a very handsome woman. I bet you’ve got every bloke in town chasing you.”

“A few as shouldn’t, but not everyone by a long chalk. You sure about that coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“There’s one of those ‘Plays for Today’ on the telly if you’d like to look at that.”

The truth is that I am thinking about that heap of twisted metal sitting in the garage and I am finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else. Even the sight of Mrs. B.’s rich, ripe, round arse rearing up at me as she rummages at the bottom of the linen basket is hardly enough to divert my thoughts from the wrath to come tomorrow.

“I think I’ll turn in,” I say. “I am feeling a bit shaky. Is it all right if I take a bath?”

“Of course, dear. The blue towel is yours.” She stands up and smooths down the front of her sweater so that her breasts lunge out towards me like they are on springs. Such is my pitiful condition that I hardly notice them.

“Thanks.”

I pad upstairs and savour the unaccustomed luxury of a bath. This was one feature of gracious living that Scraggs Road did not offer, and I supplement the ecstasy by covering myself in Mrs. B.’s talcum powder.

No sooner am I tucked up in bed than there is a knock on the door and Mrs. B. comes in before I can say “Get your knickers off”—not that I feel like saying it, anyway. She is carrying a tray and wearing a pink fluffy dressing-gown which presumably has a nightdress underneath it. I say ‘presumably’ because all I can see are the Bendon boobs lurching towards me again like a flesh Etna erupting.

“I thought you might like a mug of Ovaltine,” she says. “It helps you sleep, you know.” She is wearing that perfume again and it doesn’t take any prisoners, I can tell you! By the cringe! When she sits down on the edge of the bed, I feel I am being anaesthetised.

“You shouldn’t have bothered, really you shouldn’t,” I say—and then I notice she has started sniffing. It must be her talc she can smell. God knows how, with the pong she is giving out.

“You naughty boy,” she says, all skittish like. “You’ve been at my Rose Blossom, haven’t you?”

Before I can say anything she leans forward and flicks open the front of my pyjamas. “Where have you put it all?” she says, running her finger down my chest. Most of it is between my toes and at her present rate of progress it won’t take her long to get there. Normally I would have her into bed quicker than you can say ‘Eric Robinson’ but tonight I just don’t feel like it. I can’t forget the bloody Morris and what I am going to say to Cronk in the morning.

“Sorry,” I say. “I won’t do it again.” I spring back against the pillow and pull my pyjama jacket together. “I’ll buy you some more talc.”

Mrs. B. takes her rebuff coolly and shakes her head.

“You’re a funny boy,” she says. “Don’t bother about the talc. There’s plenty more where that came from.” She stands up and puts the tray down on the bedroom table. “Make sure you put the mug back on the tray. It leaves a ring otherwise. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. And thanks.”

She goes out and I am left listening to the sea and the wind. They don’t sound so loud tonight. Maybe I am getting used to them.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Oh, it doesn’t do you justice, luv,” says Petal. “I’d hardly have recognised you. They’re beasts, those reporters, you know. They just don’t care about people’s feelings. All they want is a story.”

Petal—real name, Peter Flowers—is about five foot six low, with dyed blond, razor cut hair, and is wearing a white safari jacket with purple silk scarf, blue towelling trousers that cling as if soaked in water, and dinky little brown wet-look shoes with enormous butterfly buckles across the insteps. He looks as out of place in the front office of the E.C.D.S. as Sammy Davis Junior at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Despite that, he is one of my fellow instructors.

We are looking at the front page of the East Coast Echo which carries a picture of me silhouetted against the half-submerged Morris under the caption “New driving instructor loses his way on the first day.” The E.C.D.S. sign is clearly recognisable in the photograph and the school is mentioned again in the jokey story below.

I am double choked because I have skipped one of Mrs. B.’s excellent breakfasts in order to be at the garage since eight o’clock—holding my breath while they give the Morris the once over and picking pieces of duckweed off the chassis. To my relief, there is nothing seriously wrong with it apart from a broken headlight and a few more bends on the front bumper, and once I have had the headlight fixed and wiped over the bodywork with a damp cloth it would take a keen eye to notice that anything has happened. With a bit of luck, Cronk need never know, and I can settle up with the bleeder in the Viva later. I have a faint fear that the police will suddenly start getting interested but—

All ‘buts’ are swept aside by the poxy little shit from the Echo. Now I have no more chance of keeping my little mishap dark than Raquel Welch has of being mistaken for Twiggy.

As if to confirm my view, Cronk comes in looking as if he is about to announce the outbreak of World War III.

“Into my office, lad,” he snarls without looking at me and marches on ahead so that the papers on Dawn’s desk skip and dance in his slipstream.

“Ooh, you’re for it,” squeals Petal, obviously relishing the thought. “He’s in one of his real paddys. He can be a tartar when he likes, can’t he, Dawn?”

Dawn nods and it may be my imagination, but I think I can see a trace of sympathy wrinkling her make-up.

“Just tell him what happened,” she says. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Too true, dear,” says Petal. “Those bastards have tried it on with me before now. This place is getting like Chicago. I remember one day down by the pier—”

I leave him rambling on and go into Cronk’s office wondering what time the next train leaves town. Cronk wheels round on me.

“Right,” he says. “I’ve heard it from Mr. Padgett and I’ve read it in the papers. Now, what’s your version?”

“P-Padgett?” I stutter.

“He runs the Clifftop Garage. Rang me up at home this morning.”

Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? The Russians have nothing on this lot, I can tell you.

“I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any serious damage,” I whine.

“Very considerate of you. Now, tell me about the accident.”

So I tell him that it wasn’t an accident and that this crinkly-haired bugger in a Major Driving School Viva has tried to force me under an oncoming car and the expression on his face does not change by one twitch of a muscle.

“Did either of the other cars stop?” he says.

“No.”

“Did you get their numbers?”

“No.”

“Were there any witnesses?”

“I didn’t see any.”

“So the fellow in the Viva could say that you were trying to overtake him and misjudged the distance?”

“Yes, I suppose he could, but it would be—”

“Shut up! Did you have anything to drink when you were out with Cripps?”

“A few halves. Surely you don’t think I was—”

“Shut up! I won’t tell you again. You were bloody lucky the police didn’t breathalyse you. They’re getting very hot on it round here.”

“I wasn’t drunk!”

“I know, I know. But don’t you see what I’m getting at? It’s your word against the fellow in the Viva and, if I suspect rightly, that’s Tony Sharp and he’s a darn sight better known that you are—and that counts for something around here, I can tell you. Even if you could find the chap in the other car, he probably didn’t see anything conclusive. Face up to it, lad. You haven’t got a leg to stand on.”

“You know the bloke that did me?”

“I think I do. Look, lad; let me explain. I served in the army under a man called Major Minto. We didn’t get on well then and we get on a bloody sight worse now. The problem is that he runs the Major School of Motoring, so the situation has to be watched very carefully. He’s on the council and has quite a few friends around here—that little creep from the Echo was probably one of them. If we put a foot wrong we’re in trouble, but they can ride us and get away with it. I’ve said the man you describe as running you off the road was probably Tony Sharp, their chief instructor. He’s a cocky sod and it isn’t the first time he’s tried something like this.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” I shout, showing him that the red blood runs thick in my veins.

“You aren’t going to do anything, lad. You concentrate on your instruction and leave Minto and his lot to me.”

His tone suggests I don’t argue with him, so I stand there humbly like I used to do in front of my old schoolmaster.

“Right, off you go,” he says. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt this time, but watch it! Miss Boswell will tell you who you’re with today.” I turn for the door. “Oh, by the way,” he adds, “what did you do about paying for the damage to the Morris?”

“I told them to send me the bill.”

“Well, we’ll get the insurance to cover it this time. I’ll tell the garage.”

“Oh, thanks a lot.”

“One more thing.” He ignores my grovelling and drops his voice confidentially. “You probably noticed that when you were out with Cripps that he fancies his tipple. It’s not a good habit to get into and I don’t recommend you to try to keep pace with him. He’s had a lot of practice, if you know what I mean.”

I nod wisely.

“Keep an eye open for him, because he’s a good bloke really, and he may need your help one day.”

“You were in the army with him, weren’t you?” I say casually to draw him out.

“That’s right,” says Cronk firmly and finally. “Now, you’d better be getting on with the job.”

I soon find that army service with Cronk is a common bond between all the instructors. Even Petal, who hardly comes over as an advertisement for the Royal Marines, was a cook and occasionally makes wistful references to it. “Totally untrue what they say about the army food, duckie. Considering the conditions I was working under, I was performing bloody great miracles every day. Nobody ever grumbled about my food.”

“Few of them lived to.”

Interjections like this usually come from John ‘Garth’ Williams, who stands about six foot four on other people’s stockinged feet and needs a shoe horn to get into his Triumph Herald. He is the clumsiest man I have ever met and is always apologising for knocking things or people over, and running his fingers through his tousled hair in gestures of helpless self-exasperation. Despite that, he is a handsome bloke in a craggy, beefy way that went out of fashion the day they opened the first male boutique, and I can imagine women fancying him.

I am glad to see him, because I don’t reckon that either Petal or Cripps go much on birds and it’s nice to have someone to compare notes with occasionally. Now that I’ve got through my first day and am beginning to feel the lay of the land, my normal appetites are returning and a bit of nooky seems just what the doctor ordered. I look at Dawn and she crosses her legs and looks straight back at me.

“What have you got lined up for me today?” I say, “or can I choose?”

“You can do what you like,” she says wittily, “but you’ll be going out with Lester and a few of the old faithfuls this morning. In the afternoon you’re solo with Miss Frankcom.”

Miss Frankcom. The very name reeks of sex. I can see already, five foot eight and a half inches of insatiable nymphomaniac. Hardly outside the 30 m.p.h. limit and she’s abandoned all pretence of handling the gear stick and is rampaging across the front of my cords. “Miss Frankcom, please! Miss Frankcom, you mustn’t! Not here. Oh, no, oh!!!!” I can hardly wait.

Poor Dawn, if only she’d moved a bit faster, she might have been in with a chance.

“What’s Miss Frankcom like?” I ask Garth. Garth reflects for a moment. “Mature,” he says. He winks at me and I reckon I must be on a good thing.

The thought of what is to come keeps me going through a very dreary morning. Lester Hewett is the fourth member of the instructors’ pool and is a silent, spotty youth I imagine to be about the same age as myself, though without any of my physical magnetism. There are white sweat patches under the armpits of his sports jacket and nobody would even think of asking him to do a Colgate commercial.

Not surprisingly, his pupils seem to have been selected on the basis that if Lester pongs a bit they will never notice and it is not just for the hand signals that I keep the windows well down. Lester sniffs in the back and occasionally whispers unhelpful comments into my left ear, thus undermining my authority and alarming some of the pupils, who I can see suspect him of being a potential hi-jacker: “O.K. Start driving towards Cuba.”

In the course of the morning I get lumbered with three real draggies. Firstly, a middle-aged schoolmaster type who grips the wheel with such feverish concentration that I expect to see additional mouldings on the plalstic when he releases it and yelps “Oh, my God!” at moments of tension—which occur pretty regularly. He has considerable difficulty judging the space into which the Morris will fit and steers down the middle of Cromingham High Street as if transporting a load of nitro-glycerine across a bumper car track. Faced by an approaching vehicle, his first impulse is to stop and wave the madcap oncomer to the side of the road.

No sooner has he staggered away shaking his head than I am stuck with the colonel’s lady, who calls me ‘young man’ only because she suspects I would not understand the Hindu for ‘hey you’: “Young man, I have arthritis and it is impossible for me to hang my arm out of the window”; “Young man, the gear lever does not appear to be working properly”; “Young man, my seat belt is cutting into my shoulder.” She is dead ruthless and I would not fancy my first pupil’s chance if he met her coming the wrong way up a one-way street. She is also incapable of accepting anything as being her fault. “Wretched car!” she hisses every time she mangles the gears. “Witless ingrate,” she levels at some old age pensioner taking his life in his hands by stepping on to a zebra crossing thirty yards ahead. All in all, she is pretty exhausting company, but I can see how we got our Empire.

My third pupil is the enormously pregnant Mrs. Owen, who can hardly get behind the steering wheel and rabbits on continuously about how she is having lessons to take her mind off the baby. It may take her mind off it, but every time she leans forward I expect the little bleeder to come popping out under pressure. She keeps making jokes about how it might be safer if we practised three point turns outside the Maternity Hospital and that doesn’t do much for my state of mind, either. I am well pleased when it is time for dinner.

Lester offers me one of his crust-free salad spread sandwiches but I refuse with ease and leave him slopping his hot Bovril into the plastic top of his thermos flask. By my standards it has been a successful if fairly tedious morning and I want to compose myself for going ‘solo’. I have tried hard not to think about Miss Frankcom in the belief that things thought about never come up to expectations but this has proved impossible, so I now think about her continuously in the hope that this double bluff will fool fate into making her everything I want her to be. I sit in one of the shelters on the front and marvel at the amazing softness of her skin, the exquisite whiteness of her teeth seen through lips half-parted by the outward symtoms of acute ecstasy, the fawn-like gentleness of her exploring fingers …

It is therefore something of a surprise at two o’clock to find that Miss Frankcom is about seventy-five and nutty as a fruit cake. To think of her in relation to sexual intercourse seems as crazy as entering Charlie Drake for the Olympic high jump.

“Thirteen times she’s taken her test,” says Garth, “and on one occasion the examiner was crying at the end of it.”

“You bugger!” I hiss at him as we watch her innocently studying the Highway Code as if she had never seen one before. “You never told me she was like that.”

“I said ‘mature’,” says Garth innocently. “You can’t argue with that.”

“‘Mature!’ By the cringe, she’s obsolete. There must have been a bloke with a red flag in front of the car when she first took the test.”

“Look on it as a challenge,” says Garth, trying to sound reassuring. “If you can handle her, you can handle anything. You’ve got to watch her all the time, because she can do some very funny things. I remember when she drove straight into the fire station—luckily there weren’t any fire engines there at the time.”

“Why the hell do we take people like that?”

“Use your common. Miss Frankcom must have poured thousands into this place through the years. There’d be no future in the business if everybody passed their test after three lessons. You need the right balance between people who whip through fast and act as a good advertisement, and all those poor sods that Crippsy and Lester take who pay the bills.”

“Crippsy and Lester and me,” I say bitterly as I see Dawn giving me her ‘You’re on’ nod.

“Just at the beginning,” says Garth cheerfully. “It’s all good practice.”

I say something unprintable to him and am introduced to Miss Frankcom, who feels certain she has seen me before but can’t place me. She has a deep booming voice and a body like a dust sheet over a grand piano, and she is eager to go.

“Now we’ve number thirteen out of the way, I’m certain I’m going to pass. I never felt happy coming up to thirteen. Fourteen seems a much happier number, don’t you think?”

She nearly proves herself wrong by driving into the back of a bus with that number plastered across it, but I just get my foot down in time.

One thing I have to give Miss Frankcom—she does not let little things like that put her out of her stride.

“Whoops! That’s how I failed number ten,” she says cheerfully. “Can we practise emergency stops today?”

I can see little chance of us doing anything else, but I concentrate on getting her out of town and along the coast road. It is amazing that a woman who has had so many lessons can still mistake her clutch for her brake pedal and our progress is one of fits and starts—most of the fits being thrown by me.

“I think having a new instructor is making me nervous,” she confides as I nearly go through the windscreen for the tenth time. “I’m trying so hard to impress you I’m becoming tense.”

I know the feeling and eventually come across an entrance to a disused airfield where we can practise reversing with comparative safety, though even then she nearly has the car over me when I step out to arrange a few bricks.

“Dangerous to bend down,” she sings out cheerfully. “I nearly didn’t see you.”

In no time at all she has reduced the bricks to rubble and I wouldn’t lay odds on her being able to reverse through the doors of an aircraft hangar.

“I think I’m getting the hang of it now,” she chortles. “I’m feeling much more relaxed. My trouble has always been that I concentrate too hard.”

So saying, she knocks down the only sign on thirty thousand square yards of tarmac. There is no doubt about it—preparing her to be unleashed on the public highway is like raising ferrets in a chicken run.

“Clumsy me,” she squeals. “But you don’t expect anything to be here, do you?”

I agree with her and suggest that we make our way back to town. This we achieve without mishap but it is where I make my fatal mistake. Coming towards us along the pavement is a blonde bird wearing black woollen hot pants with a red butterfly motif patched on one thigh. By local standards she is a knock-out and I watch her, wishing I had my drool cup within reach.

“What’s the time?” I hear Miss Frankcom saying, but I am watching the girl’s swelling crutch quivering above white lace-up boots.

This is how I had imagined Miss Frankcom and the sight of this tasty dolly grips my attention like a 32A cup on a 40-inch bust. But not for long! Suddenly the scenery changes through 180 degrees as Miss F. wrenches the wheel over and we skid across the road, narrowly missing a Guinness tanker. My foot plunges down—but nothing happens. The dual control has chosen this moment to pack it in or die of heart failure.

“Brake, brake!” I scream desperately and Miss F. stamps hard on the accelerator. Not that she need have bothered because we are poised at the head of a steep slipway and the car starts to plunge down towards the beach like a pair of lead knickers. Over the cobble stones we go with old men in waders and blue jerseys scrambling out of the way and shouts of fear and warning fading away behind us. Miss F. is hunched over the wheel like a plaster cast and I lunge for the wheel as we head straight for an upturned fishing boat. Lobster pots scatter like a flock of sparrows as we take a layer of paint off the boat and career on downwards. I haul on the handbrake which comes away in my hand and stamp desperately between Miss F’s feet in the hope of locating some means of stopping us. Miss F. obviously shares my belief that we are going to die because she emits a high pitched “wheeeeeh!” noise from between her clenched gums and her eyes are tight shut. The next thing I know is that the ground begins to level out, my head makes a dent in the roof and we are bowling across the beach, narrowly missing an ancient salt with a paint brush in his hand, whose eyes open wider than serving hatches as we speed by. Fortunately, the tide is just on the turn and the wet sand slows our progress until the car slides to a halt in a flurry of small wavelets. Gazing out across the grey ocean I compose a few prayers whilst Miss Frankcom remains hunched over the wheel muttering, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” under her breath until I could belt her.

“Tell me, Miss Frankcom,” I say eventually, marvelling at how calm I can make my voice sound, “why did you do that?”

“I was trying to tell the time, dear.”

‘Trying to tell the time,” I repeat wearily. “You mean you suddenly remembered where there was a clock and turned right to find it?”

“No, dear. I was trying to look at the one on the dashboard and one of the spokes of the driving wheel was in the way.”

“So you moved it?”

“That’s right, dear. I suppose it was rather silly of me, wasn’t it?”

I watch the water slurping against the hub caps and nod my head slowly.

“Yeah. I think it probably was.”

I get out slamming the door rather harder than is necessary to shut it and look back along the tyre tracks to where a posse of lucky-to-be-alive bystanders and side-leapers is beginning to close in on us. The tracks directly behind the vehicle have now disappeared and the Morris is settling comfortably into the sand like an old lady into a bath-chair.

Thinking of old ladies reminds me of Miss Frankcom and I wade round to the driver’s seat and suggest that she gets out.

“But it’s wet,” she exclaims in horror. “I’m not stepping into that. You’ll have to carry me.”

Either that or wait for a boat to take her off. The sea doesn’t mess about round here when it decides to do something and already the occasional wave is smacking against the side of the door. So, adding insult to injury, I have to stagger up the beach with this monstrous old rat bag threatening to ruin my marriage prospects with every stride. I dump her beside the first aid post—closed of course—and look around desperately for a telephone. If I don’t find a garage soon, I will need an underwater salvage team.

Luckily this isn’t necessary because the fishermen have a contraption which winches their boats up the slipway and moving at a speed not normally associated with East Anglians they have secured a wire to the back axle and are dragging the Morris up the beach.

But not quite fast enough. Across the beach wings Gruntscomb of the Echo, waving his arms and pausing every few strides to unleash another volley of camera shots at this newshound’s dream. I attempt to hide behind a boat but Gruntscomb’s eyes don’t miss much.

“Mr. Lea, isn’t it? Good heavens. Don’t tell me you were in this one as well. Fantastic! What happened? You what? Unbelievable! Quite unbelievable! Lucky to be alive, eh? What about your passenger? Miss Frankcom? Oh, her! I’ve heard about her. Taken the test fifty times, hasn’t she? Thirteen. Oh, I thought it was more than that. Oh well, it doesn’t matter.” Click, click, click. “You like water, don’t you? No, I’m sorry. Of course it isn’t funny. Yes, I’m sorry you didn’t like our last story. Most people thought it was very good, but there you are. Oh, is that Miss Frankcom? I must have a word with her. Miss Frankcom, Miss Frankcom!” And he pisses off across the beach to where Miss F. has foolishly revealed herself. Apart from jumping on him and his camera and burying them both in the sand, there is very little I can do, so I return to the Morris which looks like a boiled sweet some toddler has spat out into an ash can and imagine Cronk’s face when he opens his morning paper or the Norfolk Mafia get on the blower to him.

To my amazement the engine fires first time which is either a credit to British engineering or an indication that it is getting used to working on a mixture of petrol and water. I dish out some silver to my fishermen friends: “You be lucky there, bor” and pull alongside Miss Frankcom who is clearly relishing Gruntscomb’s greasy attentions.

“No, I haven’t tried the Major School,” she is saying. “After so long with the East Coast I feel I should see the thing through with them. To change now would be an admission of failure. Almost like giving up.”

“Touting for business, are you?” I snarl.

Gruntscomb looks aggrieved. “No, I was just trying to get the whole story. I wondered if this incident would have any effect on Miss Frankcom’s future plans.”

“No, dear,” says Miss Frankcom considerately, “it was an accident and I don’t blame Mr. Lea for anything.”

That’s enough for me and I bundle her into the Morris before she can say anything else more quotable.

“You must be shaken after that,” I say comfortingly, “let me run you home.”

“Aren’t we going to finish the lesson?” she says.

Somehow I manage to resist strangling her—mainly because I don’t reckon my hands will fit round her bloody great throat—and dump her outside her bungalow. I am so choked that I could easily drive the Morris over the nearest cliff but I know Gruntscomb would be waiting there with his crummy little camera poised for action so there is no point. Why should I give the bastard any more free material?

Determined to make a clean breast of it I give the Morris a wipe down and return to the E.C.D.S. where Dawn, presumably wearing dark glasses to celebrate it being the coldest day of the year, looks up as I come in.

“Where’s Miss Frankcom?” she says.

“Good question, I filled her knickers with paving stones and pushed her off the end of the pier.”

“Did she sink?”

“Not her. She was running up the beach thirty seconds later shaking like a golden retriever. Where’s Cronky?”

“He’s out playing golf. Where is she, really?”

“You mean you haven’t heard yet? I thought the telephone would have been ringing all afternoon. I could hear the drums beating outside the coast guard station.”

“You haven’t had another accident? I don’t believe it!”

So I tell her what happened and I must say she is quite sympathetic in a “well I never” “ooh er, you didn’t” sort of way. It is the first time I have ever known her show any emotion apart from when she spilt nail varnish on her new tights and in my present mood her interest is most welcome.

“What are you going to do?” she asks eventually.

“Go out and get pissed … the minute the pubs open,” I say, “do you want to keep me company?”

To my surprise she takes the invitation seriously and I can see her little mind ticking over.

“I don’t fancy sitting in a pub all night,” she says, “but there’s a dance at the Shermer Young Conservatives—” her voice tails away temptingly.

“Will they let me in? I haven’t brought my passport with me.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s nice. They’ve got a good band up there.”

So a few hours later I am building up my confidence with a few pints in the “Three Jolly Rapists” or whatever Mrs. Bendon’s local is called and thinking of the reproachful look in her eyes as I slid out of the house in my zoot suit. A frilly blouse she had on and when you look down her cleavage it’s a poor reason to be leaving home on a cold night.

Luckily Dawn, running down the concrete path of her council house looks a very reasonable alternative even if it is by lamplight. Not the kind of girl you would take home to mother perhaps, but dad would be very grateful. She smells like homage to “California Poppy” and has bloody great curtain rings hanging down from her ears, but her tits stick out where tits ought to stick out and her mouth looks a bit more exciting than the slit in a pillar box—not much smaller, mind you, but more inviting. I feel the dark glasses could be dispensed with but I don’t want to pick a fight with her at this stage of the evening.

“You look fabulous!” I say, and from my waist down I mean it.

Shermer Y.C.s hold their dances at the tennis club and from the “Shermerlins” to the cider cup the festivities live down to my expectations so completely as to be not worth describing, but luckily I have taken steps to make good the foreseen absence of strong liquor by bringing my own half bottle of scotch. With this, I lace every drink sipped by the fair Dawn until she is snuggling up to me as if I am her favourite teddy. I do nothing to disillusion her and am awaiting the right moment to suggest we hit the trail when I notice a familiar face propped up by the doorway.

It belongs to the long blond streak of piss that drove me off the road. Tony Fart-features or whatever his name was supposed to be. As I see him so he recognises me and our eyes meet with not enough love left over for a parish funeral. He sneers and turns away and my fists contract. My first reaction is to belt the living daylights out of him, but there are other considerations. Am I going to risk leaving this gorgeous half-cut hunk of mammal sleepily kneeding my thigh for a mere affair of honour? Am I buggery! I can catch up with shag-nasty any day of the week. Tonight I intend to be up at the crack of Dawn.

“Come on, gorgeous,” I murmur into one of her stretched ears—those earrings really are heavy—“time to go home.”

She doesn’t argue and I half carry her to ‘Ladies Cloaks’ and hope she doesn’t fall asleep inside.

While I’m waiting I take another look around the dance floor and watch. Tony Sharp waltzing with a pert little brunette who he seems to be massaging into his body like embrocation. Whoever it is, she obviously fancies him, which, I guess, makes two of them. I try to catch his eye for a further staring match but he is too busy to notice and they disappear into a scrum of bodies.

Behind me the door opens and my dream girl lurches out. She has left her dark glasses behind but I don’t care because it gives me my first opportunity of the evening to admire the acres of mascara plastered round her eyes.

“You look fabulous,” I say pulling her towards me by the lapels of her synthetic fur coat. I may have said this before, but I can’t say it often enough: always tell them they look great. You will never find a woman who will think any less of you for it.

I kiss her gently on the side of the cheek—it’s like kissing a flourbag—and steer her outside. In the car park, it is as cold as an eskimo’s chuff and that is a real passion-killer. I can see Dawn coming round faster than if I had poured a bucket of cold water over her. This is obviously death to my plans so I push her into the car and turn the heater up to full before remarking casually that I think I may have a drop of whisky somewhere and would she care for a reviving sip. “Never touch the stuff,” she says primly, which shows how much she knows. I take a quick shot and making a low grunting noise, which is meant to indicate that I can’t resist the pull of her overpowering, female magnetism any longer, attempt to take her in my arms.

“Not here, you fool,” she says as if we had been sitting on the high altar in Westminster Abbey and, in fairness, I suppose that to someone like Dawn, a mixture of the Y.C.s and the Tennis Club is a bit overpowering.

“Sorry,” I say gazing moodily into her virtually invisible face, “but you’re looking marvellous.”

I am cheered by her “not here” because it obviously means that it will be alright somewhere else, and this is where I intend to take her as quickly as possible. Back along the coast road we spin with me humming “I’m in the mood for love” and her head dropping down against my shoulder in a gesture I first interpret as affection and then—when I hear the snores—realise means she is falling asleep. I adjust the heater to spark her up a bit and pull off the road on to a parking area affording a view of two large concrete litter bins and the North Sea—in that order.

I switch off the ignition and Dawn shakes herself awake.

“Ooh, I was just dropping off. Where are we?”

“Somewhere where I can kiss you,” I say. “You really are fantastic.”

With all the trouble and expense I have put into this evening I have really got to believe it and I sweep down on the mouth she thoughtfully offers like a hot avalanche. “Fantastic breasts,” I murmur, inserting my hand into her coat and running my fingers over them gently. Normally I might pursue this line a bit longer, but as I get older I get more impatient and my evil little fingers soon drop down to floor level and start climbing up again.

This is the moment when any great artist holds his breath. Will the thighs slam shut? Will steel-grip fingers close round my wrist? Will her body stiffen and her head jerk back?”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” she says, opening her legs a little wider to make it easier for me, “you might have warmed your hands up first!” Once my fingers are strolling round that delicious, honeyed moisture, I feel like a flat battery that has been plugged into a generator. A charge of lust floods through my system and I have her knicks and tights in the glove compartment before you can say Mary Whitehouse. Dawn hangs on to my arms and makes a few moaning noises but she is not a great contributor—more the lie-back-and-enjoy-it-while-you-get-on-with-it type.

In my present mood of animal rapture I can put up with this and I drop between her legs and start trying to get to grips with it. My efforts are crowned with something less than success because the gear stick gets stuck up the back of my belt and the room I have to work in makes a changing cubicle in a London boutique seem like the stateroom of Queen Mary. Of course, we could go outside but this might lead to frostbite of the hampton and even the detour to the back seat could be dangerous.

I am now reckless with desire and drag the protesting Dawn over into the back seat and manoeuvre her into a position across my thighs. By this time the whole adventure has no chance of becoming a follow-up to “The Sound of Music” and sweat is pouring down the inside of the windows. Nevertheless, I am not a man who is put off by his surroundings and I bring the episode to a noisy and successful—for me at least—conclusion with a few dynamic thrusts which I could swear—when I step outside to rearrange my clothing—have moved the Morris a few feet nearer another trip to the beach. Just in case you should think me careless, I should add that she has breathed those words every man yearns to hear—“It’s alright, I’m on the pill.”

The journey home is inevitably an anticlimax with Dawn struggling into her tights and grumbling about feeling sick and me wishing I had punched Sharp on the nose when I had the chance. It’s sad how all the romance evaporates so quickly, isn’t it?

I drop Dawn off, telling her I will see her in the morning which doesn’t surprise her much, and nip back to Mrs. B’s. Maybe it is because I am tired or pissed, or both, but I am a bit careless and stagger in through the door with half Dawn’s make-up smeared across my face. Mrs. B has obviously been waiting up for me and when she sees me, an expression close to pain flashes across her face. I start to say something but her nostrils flare like a fish’s gills and I am left with the swish of her nightgown as she turns and sweeps upstairs. Bang! goes the bedroom door and I have a nasty suspicion that relations are going to be a bit strained from now on.

CHAPTER SIX

Breakfast the next morning has as much snap, crackle and pop as a damp cornflake and I am relieved when I can escape from the brooding Mrs. B. and head for the E.C.D.S. At least my reception there won’t be silent. If Mrs. B. goes on like this, I will have to change my lodgings, though probably after my latest episode, that will be taken care of for me.

I am working out my best approach to Cronk when I notice a primrose Rolls Royce pull up alongside me at the traffic lights. It is cleaner than a choirboy’s foreskin and has a venetian blind at the back and a few magenta cushions scattered along the width of the rear window. The driver is about fifty, with close-cropped hair, a small waxed moustache and a pillar box red complexion. He is wearing a camel hair overcoat and backless driving gloves and tapping the wheel impatiently whilst peering fixedly at the red light. Even before I see Sharp sitting by his side I feel positive it must be Major Minto. Neither of them takes any notice of me and as the amber comes up, the car leaps forward and roars out of sight. Nobody at M.S.M. seems to like driving slowly.

I get to the E.C.D.S. before nine o’clock but it is not early enough to beat Garth, Crippsy, Lester and Petal who are all hovering like expectant vultures and waving their morning papers.

“Ooh, but you’ve had it this time, ducky,” squeals Petal, “front page news on half the nationals. Cronky is going to go out of his tiny mind.”

Sure enough “The Sun” carries one of Gruntscomb’s poxy photographs with “How Miss Frankcom was driven to the drink” plastered above it and the “Express” combines that with a picture of the duckpond incident under the headlines “How to make a splash as a driving instructor”. Very funny. Gruntscomb has obviously done a world-class job.

I have no more time to sample the wit of the British press because Cronk sweeps through with an expression on his face like a man who has had his “Special K” laced with cement. He says nothing but merely jerks his thumb at me to follow him into his office.

“Is it going to be like this every day?” says Petal. “I can’t wait to see tomorrow’s papers.”

I tell him to get his roots tinted and pad after Cronk.

“Now—” he starts, but then the telephone rings. He lets it ring for a few moments and then snatches it up. “Where the hell is that girl? She’s never on—. Hello, East Coast Driving School. Oh, I was just beginning to wonder where you were. Yes, I’m sorry to hear that. O.K. Well get in when you can. Goodbye.” He slams down the ’phone. “She’s got ’flu and won’t be in today. Now—” His ’phone rings again. “Good morning, East Coast Driving School, Cronk speaking. Oh yes. Did you—wait a minute. I’m afraid my girl’s away, I’ll have to get the book.” He turns to me. “Get the appointment book from Dawn’s desk.” I hand it to him and he flips through the pages. “Yes, we can manage tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock. You know where we are? And the fees? Good. Oh did you? But then things do get exaggerated a bit you know. Yes, well, goodbye. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.” He puts down the ’phone and turns back to me.

“The dual control packed in,” I say desperately. “You can check it yourself if you like.”

“I will do that. Now perhaps you can explain how the Echo seems to be following you about everywhere you go. This publicity could ruin us.”

The telephone goes again. “Good morning. East Coast Driving School. Yes, yes. Yes I think we can.” He flips through the book again. “Mrs. Dobson? Fine. Right, we’ll see you then. Oh, did you? Yes, I know what you mean. I’m talking to the young man now. Do you? Well, we’ll have to see about that, Mrs. Dobson. It all depends on our rotation schedules. Goodbye.” He puts the ’phone down and shakes his head. “Woman must be mad, quite me-add! Now, where was I—oh yes, I was talking about all this rubbish in the papers. It’s making us a laughing stock. At your current rate of progress, we’ll be out of business in a few weeks if I go on employing you.” The ’phone rings again.

“East Coast Driving School. You saw our what in the paper? But we don’t advertise. Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Of course we’d be delighted to enrol you.” He reaches for his pen.

And that is how it goes on all day. Any publicity seems to be good publicity and there are twenty people who ring up to say that they had been meaning to take lessons for years and decided to do something about it after reading about us in the papers. Faced with this sudden upsurge in business Cronky finds it increasingly difficult to keep the rough edge on his tongue and by the time someone from Anglia T.V. rings up to see if I will appear with Miss Frankcom on “Anglia in the News”, he is almost purring.

In fact, I do trip along to the studios and, though I say so myself, I am a wild success, mentioning the East Coast Driving School twice and giving the impression that I love helping old ladies across the road and being kind to animals. Petal notices that my fly is undone but you can’t have everything and overall it must have gone well because for the rest of the week we are besieged with people wanting to learn to drive and one woman from Felixstowe who craves a lock of my hair—I send it to her, of course.

I continue to take Miss Frankcom and people nudge each other in the street as we go past. We are like a travelling advertisement for the E.C.D.S. With all this goodwill and public image flying about I am keen not to spoil it by kicking Sharp in the crutch but this does not change my resolve to get the bastard when the right moment comes along. In the meantime, there is Mrs. Dent to keep me occupied.

She is one of Garth’s pupils, and I can see why when I get a crack at her while he is taking a week’s holiday with his aunt under the shadow of the Brecon Beacons. She is a wispy blonde of about thirty who is constantly biting her lip and fingering her necklace when her hands aren’t creeping round the edge of the driving wheel. She chats to herself at moments of stress and is as mixed up as a kid’s fishing line. I remember birds like her from when I was cleaning windows and I am quick to check out her background as we spiral up towards the golf course.

“What kind of car does your husband drive?” I say conversationally.

“Some kind of Jag, I think. The latest saloon.”

“Has he ever taken you out in it?”

She laughs derisively. “You must be joking. I hardly ever see either of them. No—that’s a lie. I see them together on Saturday mornings when he’s cleaning the blasted thing. I’ve often wished I could get that much attention, but it’s difficult when you’re a woman.”

“He’s fond of the car, is he?” I say innocently.

“Fond of it!? If he had the choice between it and me and the kids I wouldn’t fancy our chances. That and his golf are the only things he cares about.”

For a girl with a soft face she comes over very hard and her voice is flat as shovel.

“What does he do?”

“He’s a Brand Manager for Python’s. That’s like being one of the ones who was crucified next to Jesus.”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“It’s the only thing you ever hear about in our house. That, and ‘why don’t you try and do a bit more with yourself. I give you enough money, don’t I?’ I’m supposed to prance around in front of his business associates just in case the marketing director has a heart attack.”

“What, because of you prancing around in front of him? Don’t hog the middle of the road so much!”

“No! Because of the—oh, it doesn’t matter. The whole bloody thing doesn’t matter. Look, can we stop for a cigarette in a minute?”

“Yes. There’s a lay-by up here on the right. Pull in there.”

She dives in her handbag and lights up as if she was doing it against the clock; then puffs a thin stream of smoke over her left shoulder.

“Do you want one?”

“No. I gave it up.”

“That’s very strong-minded of you.”

“Not strong-minded. Just scared. I was frightened of killing myself.”

“You could die crossing the road.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t do it by throwing myself under a car.”

She shrugs her shoulders and gazes out across the golf course.

“That’s the seventeenth over there,” she says.

“Oh.” I try to sound interested. “Do you play too?”

She smiles. “No, I don’t. Where’s Mr. Williams?”

“Garth, you mean? He’s visiting his mum in Wales, I think. You have him usually, don’t you?”

She looks at me a bit sharpish as if she suspects I might be trying to suggest something.

“Yes, that’s right.” She decides that I didn’t mean anything and her expression softens. “I didn’t know you called him Garth.”

“Well, he’s a big fellow, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I suppose he is. What do they call you?”

She settles down in her seat and tilts her head back so she is blowing smoke against the car roof. Her tits stand out firm against her blouse and I would like to put my hands on them. Sitting like this she is asking for it. But you never know with some birds. Often the pushy ones are the first to start yelling for a copper. It’s the quiet ones who won’t look you in the eyes who usually turn up trumps. At least, that is how it was when I was cleaning windows and my clientele is not all that different.

“Well?” she says.

“Well what?”

“What do they call you?”

“Oh!” I’ve been so busy looking at her tits I have forgotten what she was rabbiting about. “I don’t know. I haven’t been with the firm long enough to get a nickname.”

“You make it sound as if you qualify for one when you retire. My husband would approve of that. Another non-contributory fringe benefit.”

Back to the old man again. I don’t have to be able to do the Times crossword to get the message that he is not looming very large in her legend at the moment. It would be nice to think that this probably spelled out a big welcome for my hand testing her knicker elastic but that might not be true either. I have often found that women who rabbit on like maniacs about how wonderful their husbands are become the first to ask you if you would like to see their new counterpanes. This is because they feel guilty about their adulterous desires and don’t want to commit the additional sin of blaming their innocent husbands for them. Similarly, the women who bitch about their husbands are really making them scapegoats for their own lack of guts in not having an affair. “If my husband wasn’t so pathetically jealous and old-fashioned,” they grumble to themselves, “I could have a whale of a time.” The fact is that they are usually dyed-in-the-wool Puritans who would pass out if you tweaked their suspenders coming out of a ‘War on Want’ lunch.

Fascinating lot of old cobblers, isn’t it? No? Oh, well, I don’t blame you if you disagree with me. Any theory you have about women is unlikely to be provable in more than one case. Anyway, there we are, with Mrs. Dent flashing her tits at me and throwing in a bit of thigh for good measure and me wondering what is the best method of getting my hands on both of them. I am also wondering just how much driving Mrs. D. expects to fit into an hour’s session. I don’t mind watching the East wind turn every blade of grass on the Cromingham golf course into a hunchback, but I feel I should be doing a bit more for my money.

“Is this what you usually do when you’re having a lesson?” I say.

“It depends on the instructor,” she says, looking at me like Lauren Bacall used to look at Humphrey Bogart. I wait for her to eject a meaningful puff of smoke in my direction, and sure enough she does.

“You mean that some are more easy going than others?”

“You could put it like that. I prefer to say that some are more imaginative than others.”

“What do you mean?” It’s always worth while asking women that when you don’t know what to say next.

“John Williams knows that there is more to playing golf than hitting a golf ball four hundred yards. Do you know that if there’s a hint of sun, you can lie in the bottom of that bunker by the seventeenth green in a bikini?”

“Fascinating, but what’s that got to do with learning to drive?”

“What’s learning to drive got to do with learning to drive?” She laughs hollowly. “I came out here with my husband once when he was flogging his way round with one of his clients. You could smell him three holes away. Scared stiff that he wouldn’t put up a good show. Wanting not to appear wanting.” She laughs again. “I watched him digging a hole in the bottom of that bunker with the sweat dripping off him and his expression getting more and more racked. And do you know? Just where he was flapping away I had been lying a few days earlier with my lover. Ironic, isn’t it? I started laughing out loud and that made him furious. We had quite a row about it.”

“What did the client do?”

“He didn’t mind. I’m having lunch with him tomorrow.”

“Sandwiches at the seventeenth?”

“No. He’s staying at a hotel. You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“I’m jealous.”

“There’s no need to be.”

She turns towards me and reaches up an arm to pat my cheek. That’s it! I don’t have to have a crystal ball to know what she is thinking. I bend down and kiss her and her tongue comes out like one of those curled up squeaker things that kids blow at Christmas time. At the same time her hand goes down to my fly so fast it might be tied to the top of my zipper with a piece of elastic. She is the quickest worker since God made the world without breaking into double time. I hardly have time to breathe in through the nose before her practised fingers have poured over the side of my jockey briefs like Attila the Hun and she is rummaging away like a champion shop lifter who has got her hand caught down the side of the deep freeze cabinet. Not that there is much frozen goods being displayed. That kind of thing brings me on faster than a Derby winner and I’m giving her a bit of the same before the first appreciative murmur has escaped from her throat.

“It’s a bit cramped in here, isn’t it?” she says.

“Yeah! I used to have a pantechnicon but I fell behind with the payments. Let’s go back to your place.”

“I daren’t do that. I’ve got too many nosey neighbours. What about you?”

“No dice. I’ve got the same kind of problem.” I can just see Mrs. Bendon’s face if I rolled up with this one. She would do her nut. “Come on my lap,” I murmur, helpfully.

“I don’t like that. I can only come when I’m lying flat out.” She’s honest, isn’t she? Germaine Greer herself could not be more direct. “There’s a bunker at the fifteenth,” she goes on. “Let’s go there.”

“Not the sixteenth?”

“It has sentimental memories for me.”

I would not have suspected that she was the romantic type, but there you are. As an alternative to my usual chores as an instructor a length on the links seems very attractive—but in mid-November?

“It’s going to be a bit parky out there, isn’t it?” I say nervously.

“I’ve already told you. Once you get out of the wind it’s alright. Look, there’s even a bit of sunshine.”

She is right, too. A few perished shafts are breaking through the blanket of grey that has hung over my head ever since I left Liverpool Street Station.

“O.K. Let’s give it a whirl.”

“You needn’t sound so enthusiastic. I know some fellows who’d stay all night in an open lifeboat for a chance to hold my hand.”

“I can believe it,” I lie enthusiastically. I mean, really! Twice round the boating pool whilst you finished your cheese sandwich would be more like it. Some women get delusions of grandeur about what they are trying to give away. At least a whore has the guts to put a price on her goodies. As my old schoolmaster used to say: you don’t have to like capitalism but at least it separates the professionals from the amateurs.

Anyway, off we go across the golf course with me trying to look at my watch without her noticing and hoping that we will be able to squeeze a happy memory out of the fifteenth. I reckon she must have played every hole on the course in her day because she does not deviate by an inch but pushes through the bracken and brings us out a long-distance spit from a neat little circle of grass with a flag in the middle of it.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask, but she is already scrambling up the side of a low mound and beckoning for me to follow. When I get there, I can see that we are perched on the edge of a deep sand trap and she squeezes my arm ferociously, presumably intending to suggest the pleasure to come. Down we go and she leans back against the wall of the bunker and gazes at me expectantly. I have to confess that out of the wind it is almost bearable, though I don’t go a bundle on the old Woodbine packets and the used french letter I can see out of the corner of my eye.

“You see,” she says. “It’s quite cosy, isn’t it?”

It is hardly the word I would have used but then I am not a country boy at heart.

“Come here,” I say, which is another great non-phrase I use a lot with birds. Roughly translated, it means: “I can’t think of anything to say so I am going to try to kiss you/put my hand up your skirt/both.”

Mrs. D. offers me her mouth and we chew away hungrily whilst her hands start a reprise of ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ on the zip of my fly. The sand is a bit damp and I would normally reckon this as being a knee-tremble job but for what Mrs. D. said about liking to get stretched out for maximum satisfaction. She has pulled open my trousers like the mouth of a flour sack and has got both hands round my hampton while I am easing her knickers down to knee level with a skill any window dresser would envy. It may not be the most elegant sight in the world but it is giving us both a lot of pleasure and I am fast forgetting about the weather. I prod forward a couple of times and Mrs. D. gives a shiver of passion which just might be for real and starts licking my ear.

“I want to lie down now,” she says, “and then you put it in.”

Try to stop me, I think, and, perfect gent that I am, I bend down to remove the panties that are flapping pathetically round her ankles.

In doing this I am hindered by her whole weight suddenly flopping over my shoulders as if she wanted to be given a piggy-back.

“Hey! Steady on—” I begin, thinking this is some kinky game she likes to play, or a request for a muff job, but when I straighten up she slides down between my legs and I notice there is a swelling on the side of her head which is growing as I look at it. There is also a small white ball nestling beside my foot and it has more pock-marks on it than my Aunt Ethel. Some clumsy berk has bounced a golf ball off her bonce! Just my flaming luck. The bloody game should be banned.

“Wake up,” I squeal, slapping her cheeks and gazing into her lifeless mug. “Are you all right?” She does not say anything but groans weakly and pulls her hands up to her head. She is not going anywhere in a hurry in the next few minutes and I am prepared to lay bets on it. One possible taker is the prick who clobbered her and I raise my head carefully over the side of the bunker to see if anyone is coming. By the cringe! Two blokes are striding purposefully towards us and I recognise both of them. Minto and Sharp!

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about my slice,” sings out Minto and I can’t hear what Sharp says. Minto may think he has problems but they are fleabites compared with what is facing me. Caught in a bunker with a senseless, knickerless pupil can’t be good for business. Knickerless! I snatch up Mrs. D.’s panties and shove them into my pocket, dislodging one of her shoes in my frenzy. I force it on again and there she is, looking just like any other thirty-year-old woman you would expect to find lying senseless in a bunker every time you play a round of golf.

It is then that I act foolishly—well, act foolishly again, if you feel that trying to shaft a bird in a golf bunker in the middle of November is a bit stupid in the first place. I pick up the ball and roll it carefully onto the fairway, hoping that Minto and Sharp will stumble upon it and not the lovely Mrs. D. and myself. No sooner have I done this than my pupil starting groaning like she is auditioning for the ‘Red Barn’ and I spring to her side and try to muffle the noise with my shoulder. In this position I am glad to hear a cry of surprise from the fairway.

“Good God, is this your ball?”

“No, I’m on the green,” says the blond streak of piss impatiently, “and you’re in the bunker, so don’t try anything.”

“I’m not trying anything, you fool.” Minto’s voice is quick to sound irritated. “This is a number four and that’s what I’m playing. It must have hit something and come out.”

“Or pigs can fly, or it’s somebody else’s ball. We’ll soon find out.”

Before I can congratulate myself on another great idea, Sharp’s self-satisfied mug appears over the side of the bunker and he pulls back in surprise. Since Mrs. D. and I are kneeling against each other like a couple of out-of-work bookends it is an emotion you can forgive him.

“Good Gawd!”

Sharp’s voice usually sounds dead middle-class with pretensions to something better, but now, caught off guard, it slips a couple of notches.

“What is it?”

Minto looms up at his elbow and his mouth jumps open when he sees us.

“What the hell are you doing down there?”

He is blustering because he is frightened. I don’t blame him. So am I.

“This lady fell into the bunker and hit her head,” I say. Well, it must happen all the time, mustn’t it? Sharp obviously does not agree with me.

“How long have you been there?” he says, suspiciously. “Wait a minute! I know you. You work for Cronk’s crowd. You were at the Shermer YCs the other night with their receptionist. I’ve seen this bloke before—” he starts explaining it all over again to Minto.

“Yeah. And I know you,” I chip in. “You forced me off the road and nearly killed me.”

“You forced yourself off. It was a bloody stupid place to try to overtake.”

“I don’t like this,” says Minto, who has been staring fixedly at Mrs. Dent ever since he saw us. “She’s got a bump on the side of her head.”

“I told you: she fell in,” I say desperately, but Mrs. D. doesn’t help matters by redoubling her groan rate.

“I see what you mean,” says Sharp menacingly. “It’s not the first time something like this has happened up here.”

“Yes. There was that chap—what was his name? Medley? Smedley?”

“Bachelor. Strangled them and then—”

“—when he’d sexually assaulted them—”

“—he buried them in the bunkers.”

“That’s the one.”

They beam at each other like a couple of excited kids who have just landed a large minnow.

“You’re round the twist,” I say indignantly and start to pat Mrs. D.’s cheeks gently.

“Come on, love. You’re all right. Pull yourself together.”

To my relief, her groans start turning into words and she stretches out her arms for support.

“What happened? Where am I? Was there an accident?”

“No, no, it’s all right,” I say soothingly. “Everything is going to be fine.”

But it isn’t. Mrs. D.’s faltering fingers catch hold of her knickers and pull them out of my pocket.

The following few seconds seem like hours and then Mrs. D. drives the final nail into my coffin by uttering her first recognisable words in minutes.

“Those are my knickers,” she says, and her voice has just the right note of surprise and indignation to ensure that any judge worth his assault would have me inside for eleven years.

“Now wait—” I begin, but Sharp does not. Leaping into the bunker, he brandishes his putter like a club of the non-golf variety and throws a few words over his shoulder to Minto.

“You get the police. I’ll hang on to this bastard.”

“Don’t be wet,” I tell him. “You’ve behaving like an overgrown boy scout. I’m no more a sex maniac than you are. A bloody sight less if what I saw last night is anything to go by.”

Although constructed purely out of spite and imagination, this is a master stroke because Dawn has told me that the bird Sharp was with at the YCs dance was none other than Minto’s daughter and that they are practically engaged. Certainly Sharp’s interchange with Minto before my discovery has revealed a considerable familiarity. From the looks on both their faces I can see that this may well be a thing of the past, and I am not slow to follow up my advantage.

“I saw you in the car park with that dark-haired bird. Bloody good job the police didn’t. You want to get some blinds on the car if you’re going to carry on like that.”

“Shut your lying mouth,” howls Sharp, clenching his teeth and bringing back the head of the putter.

“Why? A bit close to home, is it? You don’t mind pointing the finger at other people, do you? But when it comes to—”

“Get the police!” snarls Sharp. “Can’t you see he’s trying to play for time? If we hadn’t got here when we did, he’d probably have killed that poor girl.”

“Just what I thought last night when I saw your friend’s feet wedged against the windscreen,” I go on. But I don’t get any further. Sharp takes a swing at me and the putter slices the air above my head. Before he can try another one I step forward and hook him hard to the pit of the stomach. His head jerks forward and my left swings in and catches him flush on the side of the jaw. They are as pretty a couple of punches as I have ever thrown and when my left whips into his mug I know it is going to need a crane to set him on his feet within five minutes.

At the sight of his mate biting the dust, Minto looks about as happy as a goldfish dropped into a tank of piranha, but he still tries to come cocky with it.

“Stay where you are,” he snaps, his voice quavering a bit. “Don’t try anything.”

“Piss off,” I say, because I am no stranger to the big bluster myself. “Get in my way and I’ll push your face in.”

I get my arms under Mrs. D. and haul her up until I can give her a fireman’s lift on to my shoulder. Sharp is beginning to stir but he is in no mood to cause anybody any problems and I step over him and out of the bunker like Edmund Hillary. Minto runs along beside me, jumping up like a Yorkshire terrier.

“I’ve warned you. You won’t get away with it. Put that woman down. I’ll fetch the police.”