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“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.”