Читать книгу Confessions of a Long Distance Lorry Driver - Timothy Lea - Страница 5

Two hundred yards downstream, the bed sinks.

Typical, isn’t it? I should have known the moment Sid asked me how I’d like to be the first man to sail round the world on a bed. Mind you, I would have thought that it might have stayed afloat for a bit longer – like to The Isle of Dogs or even Woolwich Ferry. Still, you can’t afford that kind of naive optimism when you are dealing with my brother-in-law, Sidney Noggett. It is like buying a hot water bottle before you go for a paddle in the alligator pool.

The events leading up to Sid casting me adrift on a double bed – I was lucky it was a double, he isn’t usually that generous – are well known to readers of Confessions from the Shop Floor, more an education than a book and still available from Futura Publications, or direct from me including seven pounds eighty-five pence for postage and packing. Suffice to say that Sid planned to use my trip round the world to publicise the firm of bedmakers he has bought his way into, The Universal International Bedding Company – now known as Slumbernog.

At the moment, it looks as if another great Noggett idea is about to make contact with the bed of the Thames. Not that the bed sinks fast, I will say that for it. In fact it takes me a few minutes to realise that the water is rising up the inside of my trouser leg. I thought it was the wash from a passing tug. To say that cold panic invades my system is no exaggeration. I can feel percy trying to find a foothold on my belly button as the icy water gets closer and closer. Thank goodness Sid left me with a life jacket. He is not all bad. There is a piece of string hanging down the front of it and some writing. What does it say? ‘REJECT’. I wonder if that has anything to do with inflating it? Only one way to find out. I wrench the piece of string. There is a loud ripping noise and one side of the jacket comes away at the shoulder. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Maybe the pillows will keep me afloat – or maybe they would have done. The last one is floating off into the night.

Blimey! I am really getting worried now. You don’t know how fast the current in the Thames can move until you try floating down it on a double bed. Sid must have chosen an ebb tide specially. Conniving bastard! I wish I had my hands on him now. His own brother-in-law. How could he do it?

I am on the point of losing contact with the bed when I look up and see a row of lights looming up in front of me. For a moment I think that I must have drifted in to shore. Then I can make out a mast and rigging against the night sky. It must be a boat.

‘Help!’ I shout, ‘Man overboard! Help!’

There is no faulting what I am shouting. It is all good solid stuff that I have seen used to very good effect on any number of telly screens. If my name was Robert Redford the water around me would look like an explosion in a washer factory as the lifebelts plopped over the side. But my name is Timothy Lea and that makes a lot of difference. All I hear is the echo of my own voice, the lonely hoot of a foghorn and a sound like someone playing the banjo. At least the boat in front of me does not appear to be moving. I had always reckoned on dying in bed, but not by being cut in half by a bleeding great liner!

I have hardly had time to open my cakehole again when – zomp! The bed bashes into the side of the boat and goes down faster than Britain’s gold reserves. So much for the pride of the Noggett fleet. I fling out my arms and find myself clutching the thick links of a gunge-encrusted chain. For a few seconds the current plucks at my body and then I manage to haul myself up and find a foothold on the chain. Exciting, isn’t it? I bet you are all on the edge of your seats. No? Well, do you mind edging forward a bit as I get discouraged very easily? Ta. Anyway, there I am, shivering with cold and terror and trying not to think why the anchor chain I am clinging to smells the way it does. All those rats running up and down it can’t help a lot. I suck in a few deep breaths, square my enormous shoulders, and start struggling up to where the chain disappears through a hole in the side of the ship.

Above me, I can begin to make out the name of the boat. It looks like Len Grade. It must be named after one of the famous Grade family. Funny, I have heard of Lew and Leslie but not Len. As I get nearer I see that there is a lot of other writing, like the symbols they use in cartoons when someone is swearing, and that it is Leningrad not Len Grade. The boat must come from Russia which accounts for the balalaika music smiting my earholes. I thought it was a bit haunting for a banjo.

This news cools down my blood another couple of degrees. I know that the Ruskies do not take kindly to unannounced visitors snooping round their goodies and I hope that there are going to be no misunderstandings about the reason for my appearance on board. Better, perhaps, if nobody knows about it. With this thought in mind, I slide my hand up the side of the boat and close my fingers round the lowermost of the rails. A few more contortions that Charles Atlas would envy – well, he must be about seventy now – and I pull myself up so that I can look on to the deck. There seems to be no one about so I swing my leg over the side and—

‘Haltski! Stay exactly where you are!’

I wish the bloke with the gun had not said that because the ship’s rail is threatening to carry the cleft in my arse round to the front of my body. ‘I’m not a spy,’ I say. ‘My bed sank.’

‘Your what?!’

‘My boat sank,’ I say. I mean, there is no point in making the confusion worse, is there? I flirt with a few items of verbal jollity that involve Vulgar Bedmen and Volgar Boatmen and decide against them. The gentlemen with the submachine-gun pointed at the centre of my nut cluster could well fail to be amused. Their ways are not our ways.

‘You looking for asylum?’

What a funny thing to ask a bloke! I suppose I do look a bit odd but there is no reason to start jumping to conclusions. The geezer reads the expression of surprise on my face. ‘I mean political asylum.’

‘Oh, The House of Lords,’ I say. ‘You should have said. That’s further up the river.’

‘What is it, Boris?’ Another bloke rolls up wearing long boots and a fur hat. I wonder whether to tell him that his shirt has come out of his trousers but decide against it.

‘I think it is another refugee from the fascist hyenas, Excellency.’

‘Indeed.’ The newcomer leans towards me and I suddenly tumble to the fact that it is a bird. I thought the voice was a bit funny. On closer inspection she reminds me of Vanessa Redgrave. You know, everything there, but stretched a bit. ‘So, you want to go to Urals?’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I say. You know how it is when you’re cold and you’ve had a few beers. It goes right through you.

‘Come, follow me. I wish to examine your credentials.’ I have heard how the Commies are great ones for spying on you but this is too much. Nobody follows me into the karsi. I am about to say something but the bird turns on her heel and the bloke gives me a playful nudge with his submachine-gun that clearly means ‘get a move on’. In the circumstances I see no alternative but to do as I am nudged. I never reckoned myself with perforations.

Down some steps we go and along a narrow, dimly lit corridor that smells like a baby camel’s chewing rag. The cold is now really getting through to me and I am shivering like your mum’s automatic washing machine going into spin dry.

‘You want to join the party?’

In my present condition, I have never felt less like a knees-up but I decide that it would be a bad idea to refuse the lady’s invitation. ‘Yeah, lovely,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting out of these things though.’

‘Of course. Boris, get the comrade a people’s suit.’

I am not sorry to see Boris taking his machine-gun for a walk and for a moment I consider making a bolt for it. Then it occurs to me that it probably has a bolt anyway. Plus a trigger and all the other bits. I will have to find another way of working myself into the Commie’s favour.

‘Do you know Nitya Pullova?’ I say. ‘She comes from Omsk.’

Comrade Pullova is the big knockered bird who has come to Slumbernog on an exchange visit and revolutionised production. So much so that the firm is actually making money and the horrible Rightberk brothers who share responsibility for spending all the profits with Sid have pushed off on a cruise. I throw that in just in case you like a bit of plot.

‘Omsk?’ says my companion, opening a cabin door with a wry smile – she uses her hand as well, of course. ‘That is two thousand miles from Leningrad. London is nearer to Leningrad than Omsk.’

‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘So it’s right over the other side of the country?’

The bird smiles again. ‘No, the beautiful city of Omsk is not even one third of the way across the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’

Amazing, isn’t it? Nearly drowned and a free geography lesson into the bargain. Nobody can say that I don’t lead a rich and varied life.

‘Not surprising you don’t know her then,’ I say, exhibiting once more the easy mastery of casual banter that has cemented my reputation as the Michael Parkinson of the West Clapham light ale and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps set.

There is a bit more light – of the electrical variety – in the sparsely furnished cabin and it gives me the opportunity to have a shufti at the bird. She looks a lot better when she has taken off her fur hat and allowed her blonde barnet to tumble round her shoulders. She has large grey eyes and a wide mouth that turns up temptingly at the corners. I would imagine that she is OK in the bristols department but it is a bit difficult to tell because of the blouse she is wearing. It has less shape than one of Mum’s steak and kidney puddings. She is looking at my clobber with interest.

‘You, serf,’ she says.

‘Not here,’ I say. ‘You need waves. You might be able to water ski but it wouldn’t be much fun if you fell in. I mean, look at me.’

‘I am looking at you.’ She points to the front of my ripped life jacket. ‘“REJECT”. That is how your capitalist society designates you.’

It has been occurring to me that the word ‘reject’ might well refer to something else – like what the manufacturer thinks ought to be done with a garment that quite clearly fails to come up to scratch. I wonder where Sid got it from? Probably off the back of a lorry. So much of what Sid lays his hands on falls off the back of lorries that the items usually carry tyre marks.

‘Take offski those sad rags.’ The lady is swift to note the hesitation on my part, prompted by hundreds of years of genteel breeding and the certain knowledge that my brush with cold hearted Father Thames has resulted in my hampton taking on the proportions of a dwarf brussel sprout – Hampton Wick as you might say. ‘Do not worry about exposing yourself to me. I have seen more naked men than you have had.’

I wait expectantly for her to say ‘hot dinners’ but she doesn’t.

‘What exactly do you do on board?’ I ask, peeling off the remains of Sid’s jacket. A card falls out of one of the pockets which says ‘Everything slashed!’ I don’t think it referred only to the prices.

‘I am Comfort Officer. I ensure that revolutionary fervour is maintained at high level and that crew have spotski of in and outski on Saturday night. Here, I do it.’ So saying she briskly begins to peel off my sodden clobber like she is removing washing from a line.

‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘All on Saturday night?! Have you considered staggering?’

‘I don’t have to consider,’ she says with feeling. ‘I stagger!’

The feeling I am referring to is what might be termed a brisk massage and richochets through the lower half of my body like honey bullets. The lady is obviously well-equipped with the physical wherewithal to withstand the passionate demands of the crew and it occurs to me that the work is probably no hardship to her. ‘I do not know what has happened to Boris,’ she says, whipping down my Y-fronts. ‘Maybe you like to lie down. You like bunk up?’

‘I beg your pardon!’ I say. I mean, I am not used to girls being so forward. This isn’t a Young Conservatives’ dance or anything like that.

‘You like bunk up or bunk down?’ The Russian lady is now pointing to the two bunks in the cabin and her meaning becomes clear to me.

‘The bottom one’s fine,’ I say, grabbing a blanket and adjusting my shapely limbs in a horizontal position.

Before there is time for any more sparkling interchanges the cabin door opens and Boris reappears with a bundle of clothing. ‘Is that all, Excellency?’

There is a note of pleading in his voice that goes unheeded.

‘Yes Boris. Go and read the library book.’

‘But Olga, Excellency. I know the life of Karl Marx backwards. I have other needs.’

‘They will be attended to, Boris. Now leave us.’

The door closes on the resentful Boris and Olga looks at her watch. ‘So,’ she says. ‘It is now Saturday.’

‘Yes,’ I say, trying to keep the conversation bubbling along. ‘I like the weekends.’

‘I prefer the strong ends,’ says Olga. ‘They make my job so much easier.’

‘I don’t think you quite understood what I mean,’ I say. ‘I was referring to – oh well, it doesn’t really matter.’

Olga has suddenly pulled her shift over her head to reveal that my hopes for her knockers were well founded. Naked as nature intended they lunge forward like a couple of gently curved hunting horns. The angle of dangle is tempting and my own horn starts thinking about doing a bit of hunting.

Olga picks up a bottle and a couple of glasses and sits on the edge of my bunk. ‘Now you are one of us you are entitled to take pleasure from my body like any other crude member’ – I think she means crew member but I don’t say anything. You can’t go on picking people up all the time, can you? It is very clever of her to be able to speak English as well as she does.

‘That’s very nice of you,’ I say. ‘But—’ I am about to say that there has been some kind of mistake and that I am not running away from anything and that I don’t want to join the crew when I remember the expression on Boris’s face as he went out of the door. It was not projecting a lot of human warmth and affection in my direction and could easily suggest an unbalanced personality with a quick trigger finger.

‘Yes?’ says Olga.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I was just thinking.’

Olga pours some colourless liquid into a glass and hands it to me. ‘Maybe you think too much. From now on, we do thinking for you.’

‘What is this?’ I say.

‘Just straightforward party philosophy.’

‘I meant the drink,’ I say.

‘Wodka.’

‘You mean vodka?’

‘I mean wodka.’

I take a sip and she is obviously right. It is wodka. Potent too. I have already consumed a bellyful of booze earlier in the evening and this stuff races through me like a flaming brand in a paraffin factory.

‘You like?’ Her knockers are now brushing against my bare chest and the sensation serves to short circuit the current already pumping through me from the wodka – the stuff must be pure anti-freeze.

‘I like.’ I put my glass on the floor and allow my mouth the freedom of Olga’s cakehole. With a gentleness for which I am grateful she returns the pressure and presses her warm bristols against my chest. I don’t know if you have ever seen a carp sucking at a piece of bread on the surface of a pond but that is rather her kissing style. A lot of gentle chewing and the occasional gnaw of the lower lip.

We go on like this for a while and she wriggles on to the bunk so that she is stretched out on top of me. It is very good for the warming up and after a few minutes of our nibble fest the last icicles have thawed and percy is rising like an early crocus from the melting snow. In fact, when I say crocus I do man’s best friend a disservice. He is coming up more like a scarlet cucumber.

A woman like Olga is clearly no stranger to the effect that she has on men and it is not many seconds after percy has thrust himself between us that she lets out an exclamation that sounds like the name of a new Japanese motor bike and begins to sew kisses on my chest like they are mustard seed. I watch her tawny barnet taxiing down to the root of many of my problems and it occurs to me that something very pleasant is about to happen to Timothy. ‘Oh!’ That is me responding to Olga’s snake tongue trying to undo my belly button. ‘Oooh!’ Olga’s right hand has now coasted up the inside of my thigh and is gently squeezing my niagras like they are the bellows which inflate my already straining Mad Mick. ‘OOOH!!’ Olga has now done something very volga that you seldom see unless you watch the chocolate bar commercials on the telly. How shameless and enjoyable it all is. As the minutes pass and Olga’s bobbing nut becomes increasingly in danger of bashing itself against the upper bunk, I decide that is is about time that I did something to repay the hospitality that I am being offered. It is no good lying back and expecting to have everything done for you. Do as you would consider yourself very fortunate to be done by is one of my mottoes.

Not without some regret, I draw Olga up my body and reapply myself to her lips whilst attempting to remove the garments which lumber the lower half of her body. They obviously do things up differently in Russia because I am not getting anywhere until my friend jumps from the bed, tears open her breeches, tugs off her boots and leaps on top of me again. Such eagerness is touching, as are most parts of her body. With some difficulty, I press her back against the wall and adjust my cakehole to the nearest available knocker. This treatment is well received by the lady and it is with little difficulty that I persuade her to enjoy every knocker’s favourite meal – guzzle and tweak. I dish out a second helping to each Manchester and then head south like a migrating swallow – or dipper, more like. It is funny how birds – I mean the human kind – work themselves up when a muff job is in the air, isn’t it? Backs arch, heads twist from side to side before you have even licked your lips. Olga is no exception. By the time I have found a way of propping my legs against the far wall of the cabin and swept the hair out of my eyes, you could run a model railway under her back. Mind you, it would be a terrible waste if you did. You can play with your model railway any day of the week. A girlchik like Olga comes along only when Sid casts you adrift on a double bed. And that, thank God, is not very often. As Olga quivers I set my tongue to work like it is a bow playing a musical instrument. I can’t say I recognise the tune that comes out but it is certainly a very cheerful sound. Ideally, I reckon that a muff job is a horse’s duvet (hors d’oeuvres? – Ed.) It should whet the appetite for what is to come and get the old gastric juices flowing. I don’t think it ought to become a meal in itself.

Anyway, in this case, everything works out just about right. Olga suddenly arches her back and catches her nut a terrible crack on the upstairs bunk and I realise that she is trying to tell me something. Hardly before she has sunk back against the pillow, I have stopped staring at the small hammer and sickle she has tattooed above her minge fringe and have hauled myself up her body until percy is now poised for his journey into the interior. I often wonder how he must feel at moments like this. So many responsibilities to discharge, his two porters struggling along behind him – one slightly in front of the other – and the secret cave looming in front, thick foliage almost concealing its narrow opening. It is nearly as exciting as King Solomon’s Mines, isn’t it?

‘Comeski, my little comrade.’

I am not so happy about the little but I assume that it is merely a term of affection. Better not to dwell on it. Wishing that my knees had ridges, I murmur a silent farewell to my fanny ferret and jerk forward the part of my anatomy that carries the six inch gun. Olga’s response is whole-hearted and suggests that she has played this game before. Faster than a camera shutter, her mits clamp round my back ballast and she presses me to her like she wants to take a moulding of my body. At the same moment her legs curve round outside mine and hook over my ankles. It looks like the perfect fall and I can almost hear the referee counting and Kent Walton doing his nut. The Commie custard is now rotating my bum like she is trying to unscrew it. Maybe this has something to do with the counter revolution she was talking about earlier.

This is all very well but, once again, I feel that I should stamp my own personality on the proceedings. After all, I am representing Britain and regular readers will know that I always pull out all the stops when national prestige is at stake. If we all did our bit – or, in fact, anybody’s bit – then maybe this dear old country of ours would not be in the mess it is now. At the very least, life would be a lot more fun.

Rising up so that my bonce loosens three of the slats in the upstairs bunk, I drive viciously and feel the satisfying ‘thwack!’ of my baggage train against Olga’s back bumpers. Bracing my toes against the end of the bunk, I deal out a few telling thrusts and hear the satisfying sound of Olga searching for breath. Her hands run lightly up my back as if she is playing a harp and I accompany her on the trombone – in, out; in, out, in – you can’t beat a musical evening.

Half an hour later, we are still at it, but on the floor this time. The bunks have collapsed. In my present condition, I can’t imagine what it felt like to be cold. Rivulets of condensation are running down the steamed up porthole and the wodka bottle is warm to the touch – when you can touch it. Olga is kneeling on all fours and taking hefty swigs interspersed by shouts of ‘Giddyupski!’ I am in a position slightly to the rear of the lady and we are playing a game she describes as ‘Sleigh rides’. She is between the shafts as she terms it and I must say that it is something that I envy her. I have not been ‘between the shafts’ since we started this bout of intensive, not to mention knackering, exercise and the strain is beginning to tell.

‘Once more up and down the Caucasus!’ says my hostess gaily. Frankly, I would be pushed to get up and down the crocuses. It is all I can do to prolong my attachment to the lady as she bumps and grinds round the floor.

Fortunately, some strange whim makes her suddenly flip over on to her back and seize me to her greedily. ‘Ride me, little moujik,’ she cries. ‘Ride me!’

Sensing that the moment has come, I decide to follow suit. Summoning up my last resources of energy I whip the old groin greyhound in and out until he makes Mick the Miller look like your grandma’s tabby cat. Olga lets out a wild shriek and grabs my barnet like she has Red Indian blood in her. I chuck in a few croaks and in a classic fusion of Eastern and Western ideologies, mutual orgasm is achieved. Olga lets out what I can only describe as a contented sigh and her head zonks back against the carpet. She makes a few purring noises and then starts snoring. A glance at the quarter of inch of liquid left in the bottom of the wodka bottle suggests that is is not only the compulsive fire of my love-making that is responsible for her condition.

This may well be the moment to say goodbye. Olga was not amused when I told her that I thought the Red Square was a geezer called Brezhnev and it is clear that there is another side to her nature that I have not been fully exposed to. Life with Olga would not purely be a question of getting tossed off in Rostov.

Whilst my fair companion snuggles closer to her wodka bottle I slip into the threads provided by Boris. They may go down a bomb in the Stalingradski Prospect but I don’t reckon that they are going to pull a lot of birds down the baths hall. Still, that is not my number one problem at the moment. Blowing what I hope is a farewell kiss to the toast of the Neva, I ease open the cabin door and stick my hooter out into the corridor. Not a sausage. Less sign of a human being than there is of a knot in a Scotsman’s used french letter – at least, that is, until I start walking down the corridor. Then Boris’s boots appear down the steps, closely followed by the rest of his body. He eyes me suspiciously and the nozzle of his submachine-gun starts giving percy palpitations.

‘There you are!’ I say in a flash of creative desperation. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Olga wants you.’

The way I say ‘wants you’ must make it clear to him that she is not seeking someone to unblock a stuffed up plughole.

‘Me?’ Boris’s chest swells visibly. I don’t know about the rest of him, I don’t look.

‘She’s waiting for you in the cabin.’ I just have time to flatten myself against the wall before Boris charges past. Cupid Lea they call me.

I don’t hang about but canter up the steps and stick my bonce above deck level. Still no sign of anyone. I can hear the strain – and it is a strain, make no mistake about it – of an old Russian folk tune coming from the front of the boat. The crew must be having a musical evening. Good luck to them. Over to the rail I go and look over the side. As if to signal my good fortune the moon comes out and there, shimmering beside my reflection, is the outline of a dinghy. I take another quick glance about me and slip over the side. Fortunately, I manage to cling on to a rope before I do myself a serious injury. A few moments dangerous dangling and my feet scrabble against the side of the dinghy and manoeuvre it beneath me – it’s not getting too exciting for you is it? Good. I wouldn’t like to think that I was doing Alistair MacLean out of a living. Anyway, there I am, poised over the dinghy. The strength in my arms gives out and I tumble into the bottom of the boat. For a moment, it rocks alarmingly and then settles down to tap angrily against the side of the larger vessel. Quickly, I undo the piece of rope at the sharp end, and push off with one of the oars.

Free! What an evening for my treasure trove of memories. The dinghy drifts down the side of the boat and I prepare to row to the shore. Most of the portholes show round circles of light but one has a pair of bum knockers jammed up against it. I imagine that Boris must be enjoying his Saturday constitutional.