Читать книгу Confessions of a Private Soldier - Timothy Lea - Страница 4

I’ll never know how I managed to end up in the army. I mean, of all the professions I never thought of going into, the army was the one I never thought of going into most.

I never even reckoned it on the telly. All those adverts showing blokes leaping in and out of jeeps and on the point of having it away with WRACs who looked like Raquel Welch. They never convinced me. What about all the geezers who can’t be there because they’ve snuffed it? That’s what I used to ask myself. I bet all these other countries have got commercials showing the bright side: you know, killing people. Somebody has got to come out second best. There has got to be a moment when chatting up birds over the white-hot top of your steaming sub-machine gun has got to stop. And then it’s, poof, you’re dead. And not only the poofs either. Blokes like you and me. And with my luck, especially me.

Of course, I suppose, coming out of the nick had a lot to do with it. Even in these emancipated, ‘anything goes’ days there is still a faint stigma attached to being chucked into the chokey. Especially if it is for flashing your full frontals in a filthy film. The fact that I lost my remission for taking part in an orgy before the assembled inmates of Penhurst Prison did not help very much either. I could say a lot in my own defence but I find the subject too painful to dwell upon and can only commend interested readers to consult Confessions from the Clink for the full and sordid details.

Anyway, I was at a very low ebb when I eventually staggered away from Penhurst, not least because of the physical deprivations I had been forced to endure. Putting it another way: I had not had my end away for three months. The early days when Penhurst had been a haven for do-gooders and good doers were long past and successive governors seemed to be vying with each other to bring new stringency to the penal system. As for me I was very worried about my own penal system, if you know what I mean. Three months is a long time to a healthy lad who likes throwing it about, and I was not at all certain that the four-fingered widow was an adequate substitute for what I had been missing.

When it was time to go the Governor said a few words about keeping my nose clean – I don’t think he was really referring to my nose – and I was pushed out with my train fare home. At least it would have been my train fare home two weeks before when they put the fares up. In the end I have to hitch-hike home and I am not in a particularly sparkling frame of mind when I eventually bang on the front door of 17 Scraggs Lane, ancestral home of the Leas. The minute I have done this I turn sideways and wait for Mum to pull back the curtains of the bay window. Mum knows that there are a lot of funny people about – after all, she married one of them – and she does not believe in taking chances. This suits Dad who has no wish to communicate with the outside world, most of which he owes money to.

Two minutes later Mum’s mug peers suspiciously through the lace curtains and settles into a resigned smile of welcome. I am disturbed to find that she blushes when she sees me and it occurs to me that my performance on the stage in Penhurst Prison still lingers strongly in her mind. How anybody could have mistaken cannabis for spinach I – and, no doubt, the two ladies I was appearing with – will never know.

‘Hello, dear,’ she says, opening the door and looking nervously up and down the street. ‘You’re looking very thin. Are you all right?’

‘Fine, Mum,’ I say, stepping uninvited into the house. ‘The old pile hasn’t changed much.’

‘Well, they don’t. Not unless you have the operation and I don’t fancy it at my age.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I say hurriedly. Blimey, I love my old Mum but she is as thick as a set of cork table mats. If you don’t spell everything out in words of one syllable she will always get you wrong. ‘I was talking about the house. It’s just the same.’ This is not strictly true because the heap of junk that Dad has nicked from the lost property office is even larger than usual and swollen by an imposing selection of gas masks, some of them as recent as World War II. Should the Chinese decide to attack with gas, 17 Scraggs Lane should be one of the last dwellings to succumb to the Yellow Peril.

‘I don’t know how people go on having this stuff to lose,’ I say. Mum nods her head in agreement.

‘Your father hates to see anything going to waste, that’s the trouble. Every time they have a sort out down at the office he brings it all back here.’ Mum’s use of the word office is significant. She reckons it sounds posher to refer to her old man as working at ‘the office’ rather than ‘the lost property office’. Mum is a bit of a social climber on the side and for that reason, if no other, my latest lapse must have been a very choking experience for her.

‘How’s Dad taken it?’ I ask.

Unfortunately I am staring at the harpoon gun when I speak and Mum is swift to take the opportunity to misunderstand me.

‘The usual way. Slipped it under his mac. Didn’t you read about it in the papers?’

‘What happened, Ma?’

‘It went off in the tube and pinned him to the ceiling.’

‘Ooh! Ma! Was he all right?’

‘He didn’t suffer any physical injury. Some ruffians took advantage of his situation to steal his wallet and undo his braces.’

‘That’s not nice, Mum.’

‘It was terrible. He thought they were trying to release him and then they suddenly got out at Clapham North and left him with his trousers round his ankles. He couldn’t move ’til the train got to Morden.’

‘Didn’t anyone else try and help him?’

‘No. He said they all took one look at him and went in the next compartment.’

Diabolical, isn’t it? Still, I suppose, when you think about it, it’s not every day you see a bloke pinned to the roof of a tube train by a steel bolt with his trousers round his ankles. It could give you a bit of a turn, couldn’t it? Not the kind of thing to send you home whistling if you were escorting your best bird back from the Granada, Tooting.

‘How is Sidney?’ I ask, eager to switch the conversation from my mother’s unfashionable ailment and father’s misfortunes.

For the uninitiated I had better explain that Sidney Noggett is my poxy brother-in-law and a frequent contributor to most of the misfortunes that befall me. He has an unpleasant habit of coming out of every situation smelling of violets whilst the odour that surrounds me is of a rather more earthy nature.

‘You should see him soon,’ says Mum. ‘He said he’d pop in before dinner.’

‘What’s he doing now? Still in clubs, is he?’

‘I don’t know, dear. You’d better ask him. It seems to change so often I can’t keep up.’

That does not surprise me. Sidney’s business ventures are seldom of the long-term variety. Either bankruptcy or the police – or sometimes both in a muck sweat, dead heat – always seem to catch up with him.

‘And Rosie and the kids?’

‘They’re very well. Rosie is going to dancing classes.’

‘She’s left it a bit late, hasn’t she?’

‘Not ordinary kind of dancing. This is all about finding the Zen or something.’

‘What was that, Mum?’

‘It’s no good talking to me. You’ll have to ask her. She should be here later.’

Sister Rosie has been becoming more and more of a handful since she started reading the colour supplements and watching BBC2 and I am not surprised to hear that she is into some new kind of self-exploration kick.

‘Every Thursday, down at the British Legion Hall. They get a very nice class of person there. They’ve all got little French cars.’

I can imagine. It is always the ones who should know better who get tired of pottery classes first. Before you know where you are they are doing ‘O’ level French and knitting red, white and blue mittens for the laundry man. After that it’s anything goes and the privet eaten down to navel level by the milkman’s horse.

Rosie was always a bit of a raver but in the old days she had the decency to feel guilty about the way she was carrying on. Now she reckons that she has the same right to get her end away as a bloke. Disgusting, isn’t it? I feel a lot of sympathy for Sidney. In fact I think it is one of the things that keeps us together. I mean, if us blokes don’t stand shoulder to shoulder and stick up for our rights we could find ourselves in the same situation as the Yanks: millions of big-mouthed women trampling all over us.

‘Where are they living, now?’ I ask.

‘Vauxhall. Rosie wanted to be near the West End. They bought an old house and gutted it. Must have cost them a fortune.’

I feel like pointing out that it cost Sidney a fortune but I do not pursue the matter. Deep down, where no one in his right mind would dream of looking, I know that Mum is a woman, and they are basically all the same.

‘I told them they were fools,’ says Mum. ‘Do you remember when they had that lovely place at Streatham? I never knew why they gave that up.’

‘Because Sidney was skint at the time. He goes up and down like a blooming yo-yo. You don’t want to worry about Vauxhall, Mum, it’s very fashionable at the moment. It’s going up.’

‘Most of what I’ve seen is coming down,’ sniffs Mum. Poor old thing. She doesn’t understand that all the nobs are fighting to live in places that the people who live there are fighting to get out of. She would reckon she had moved into Westminster Abbey if you offered her a flat in Wimbledon. She does not realise that people want to be near the art galleries and theatres and all the other places they never go to because there is something on the telly.

‘The kids all right, are they?’

Mum’s face assumes the expression of doting joy that is always reserved for her disgusting grandchildren.

‘Jason is doing ballet now.’

‘Blimey. Is Rosie trying to turn him into a poofter? They haven’t given up hopes of having a girl, have they?’

‘He’s got a natural bent, that child,’ says Mum, reproachfully.

‘That’s what’s worrying me. I haven’t forgotten him on that diabolical telly programme.’

‘I don’t want to hear a word against little Jason.’ Mum gives a tell-tale sniff. ‘At least he hasn’t broken his mother’s heart yet.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I say hurriedly. ‘And talking of heartbreak, how’s Dad? Hard at it as usual, I suppose?’

‘No need to be sarcastical,’ chides Mum. ‘Your father hasn’t been very well lately. One of his old war wounds has been playing up.’

Quite what my father did in the war has always been something of a mystery to me. Fire watching has been mentioned but I think it was mainly the one burning in the grate of 17 Scraggs Lane. Certainly I don’t think he ever traded bullets with the enemy. Cigarette cards, maybe, but not bullets.

‘What injury, Mum? Writer’s cramp from trying to get his post war credits?’

‘Don’t mock,’ says Mum, coldly. ‘You’re in no position to point the finger. You haven’t exactly brought lustre to the family name.’

‘Lustre’ is a most unusual word for my mother to use and I can only assume that she lifted it from a furniture polish advert on the box. I got my education that way.

‘I know, Mum,’ I say, humbly. ‘I’m going to try and make amends.’

I mean it too. I know I have been a disappointment to my parents since I first got done for nicking lead, diabolical decision though it was. I saw three fellows loading lead on to a lorry and they asked me if I would give them a hand. Said they were collecting for the church roof. Trouble was that they were stripping the lead off the church hall. Not knowing the religious landscape of the parish – and being a bit of a twit into the bargain – I was the mug who landed up in the South Western Magistrates’ Court.

I am about to enquire after Dad’s whereabouts when the man himself appears as Mum makes a discreet exit. He emerges from the kitchen clutching the carved up copies of the TV Times which serve as bog paper in the Lea mansion. I think it advisable to point out that Dad has been doing his stuff in the outside throne room beyond the kitchen and not – no, you could never have thought that, could you? Still, I suppose if you knew Dad as well as – no, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, there he is: five foot ten and a half inches of temporarily relieved depression centred over South West London. He looks down at my legs as if he expects to find a ball and chain around one of them and tosses his head contemptuously. I wonder if he is going to make his joke about ‘the return of the prod-it-all son’ but he restrains himself.

‘So you’re back, are you?’ Is this all he can manage?

‘I think you said that last time, Dad.’

‘What do you expect? The bleeding poet lariat reading an address of welcome?’ Dad shakes his head bitterly. ‘I suppose you’ve come back to bring more shame about our heads.’

‘I don’t know about “our heads”, Dad,’ I hear myself saying. ‘It’s certainly a shame about your head. The rest of you isn’t so good either.’ The minute I close my mouth I know that I have spoken foolishly but, somehow, with Dad, I don’t seem to be able to restrain myself. He really does know how to get up my bracket to beyond the hair line.

‘You cheeky little basket!’ he snarls. ‘No sooner inside the door than you’re at it. I don’t know how you have the gall to come back here. This isn’t the Prisoners’ Aid Society.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I say, controlling myself with difficulty. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to be rude. The words just jumped into my mouth.’

‘Well, next time, swallow them before they jump out again. If you’re going to stay around here you’d better learn a bit of respect.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘You nearly broke your old mother’s heart, you know.’

‘Yes, Dad. She was hinting at it.’

‘She was a blooming sight more than hinting at it to me, I can tell you. I had to put up with her day and night. It nearly drove me round the bend.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Talk about paying a debt to society. I reckon I footed your bill while you were in there. My taxes subsidised you. All that and your mother going on the whole time.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ He does make a meal of it, doesn’t he? It must be like a holiday down at the Lost Property Office when he doesn’t show up. I don’t know how Mum puts up with it.

‘I hear you’ve been having a bit of your old trouble,’ I say, deciding the time has come to change the subject and demonstrate a bit of concern for the miserable old git.

Dad looks at the bog paper. ‘I think it was the sausages we had last night. I don’t know what they put in them these days.’

‘I didn’t mean that, Dad,’ I say, patiently. ‘Mum was saying your wound had been playing up.’

‘I’ve had a few twinges,’ says Dad, putting on his ‘I fought through Hell and lived’ face.

‘You want to take it easy, Dad.’

Nature’s greatest argument for compulsory patricide looks up sharply.

‘Are you trying to take the mickey?’

‘No, Dad. I—’

‘I do my bit. I always have done. Not like some people. Some people don’t know what I’ve been through. The doctor said he’d never seen anything like it. He didn’t know how I kept it up. “You’re a walking miracle” that’s what he said to me. He’d never met anyone with my willpower, you see. I don’t talk about it much but me and pain are not strangers. Oh, dear me, no. I don’t let on much but–’

‘Yes, Dad,’ I say, trying to halt the flow before he really gets going. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Not again, I must have heard it a hundred times.

Luckily Mum announces that tea is up and I am spared any more details of how Dad is going to romp away with the Martyr Of The Year Award. Not that the alternative is all that great. Mum’s Rosie Lee certainly brings out the gypsy in me and what can you say for a woman who cannot even make a decent cup of tea? I can remember when she used to open the tea bags and pour them into the pot. What with one thing and another it does not take me long to get the feeling that 17 Scraggs Lane has not got a lot to recommend it over the nick.

‘Have you got a job lined up?’ asks Dad.

‘Give us a chance, I only got – I only came home this morning. I didn’t call in at the Labour on the way.’

‘You don’t even know where it is,’ says Dad scornfully. ‘I think I’ll buy you a street map so you don’t get lost.’

‘Perhaps Sidney can find something for him,’ says Mum.

I am swift to shake my head. ‘No. I’m going to stand on my own two legs. Nothing Sidney has lined up for me has ever worked out. Not in the long term, anyway.’

‘That’s not all Sidney’s fault,’ says Mum, wagging a finger at me. ‘I have to speak as I find even if blood is thicker than water.’

‘I don’t care if it’s thicker than melted nougat,’ I say. ‘I don’t reckon that it’s an accident that Wonder Sid has cleaned up the ackers while I’ve been cleaning out the “D” Block khasi.’

It is at this propitious moment that there is a quick ‘We are the champions’ on the door bell and I prepare to greet my poxy brother-in-law as Mum goes off to do a recce through the lace curtains.

‘Hello, Timmo!’ says Sid a few moments later. ‘I didn’t know you were coming out today.’

‘Didn’t you get a telegram from Buckingham Palace?’

‘I didn’t bother to read it. I thought it must be another bleeding garden party.’

‘Sidney!’ says Mum, shocked. As far as she is concerned there is nothing to choose between God and the Duke of Edinburgh. Probably not a lot to choose as far as the Duke of Edinburgh is concerned. I am not really taking a lot of notice because I am drinking in Sid’s clobber. He is wearing a black serge safari jacket and matching trousers with a raised seam. It is all very trendy and makes him look a bit of a poofter. Not at all the Sid I remember back in his faded denim days.

‘He’s not looking too bad, is he, Mum?’ says Sid. ‘He needs a bit of your home cooking to fatten him up.’ Sid winks at me and I give him my ‘do us a favour’ look. Mum cooks like she has a pathological hatred of food and is trying to pay it back for some injury it has done her in the past.

‘I’ve got a nice bread pudding planned for this evening,’ she says, proudly, as I wince. I make a better bread pudding when I’m mixing paste to go fishing.

‘How’s the family?’ I ask.

‘Smashing. Rosie should be over with the kids in a few minutes. Tell you what. Why don’t you and I slip out for a couple of jars and then we can look in later. There’s not room for us all in here. You fancy a beer, do you?’

‘Great idea, Sid. Let’s go up The Highwayman.’

‘Don’t go drinking too much,’ warns Mum.

‘There’s no danger of that. Not with those two buying!’ says Dad who is about as tight as a gnome’s foreskin when it comes to lashing out for a round of drinks.

When we get to The Highwayman I hardly recognise the place. There is piped muzak, a snack bar and everything tarted up with the most diabolical wall paper. It quite puts you off your ale. Not that this commodity is very easy to come by anyway, and when I ask for a packet of crisps the geezer behind the bar looks at me as if I have been trying to force my hampton through the slit in the Doctor Barnado box.

‘We don’t do crisps,’ he says witheringly. ‘You can have a toasted sandwich.’ He indicates a fish tank bearing the word ‘Toastimat’, inside which are littered a few melting blobs which remind me of the scene three feet below a vulture’s perch. The sight is not calculated to have me diving into my pocket for 30p.

‘Let’s go in the garden,’ I say.

‘Kiddies only,’ says the barman sharply.

‘But there aren’t any kids here.’

‘That’s the rule. If you don’t like it–’ He keeps looking me up and down as if he is trying to tell me something.

‘The place has changed a bit, hasn’t it?’ I say to Sid. ‘I don’t recognise any of the old faces.’ It is a fact that all the birds look as if they have just had their hair done and the blokes are wearing ties. One or two of them even have suits on.

‘There’s a lot of middle class people around here, now, Timmo,’ says Sid. ‘You get the office workers coming in here for lunch. They even serve coffee.’

I can hardly believe my ears. Coffee! In the boozer?! How disgusting can you get? Still, I know what Sid is on about. A lot of the big houses around the common have been pulled down and in their place are posh blocks of flats catering for dynamic young executives. It is getting so the place is almost fashionable.

‘You’re shooting up the social scale a bit, aren’t you, Sid?’

‘No, not me, mate. I’m working class and proud of it.’ This is a sure sign that Sidney is tucking away a bit of loot. When people are on the make they are always trying to act posher than they really are. Once they get a bit of cash and security they start telling everyone that success has not changed them and go around complaining about the price of brown ale.

‘What are you doing then, Sid?’

Sid narrows his eyes into slits and tries to look like a cross between Charlie Clore and Paul Newman.

‘These days you’ve got to move fast, Timmo. Things change so quickly you’ve got to be in and out. Grab the money while it’s going and then get into something else. You can’t sit back and make long term plans. The public are fickle.’

‘But what exactly do you do, Sid?’

‘Well, Timmo, in a nutshell. I see a new craze coming and I capitalise on it. Do you remember the hula hoop revival?’

‘No, Sid.’

Sid looks disappointed. ‘No, well maybe that’s not a very good example. “Hulava good time.” I think it was a bit subtle. A bit ahead of its time. By the way, you don’t happen to know anyone who wants forty thousand hula hoops, do you? You could use them as cheap tyres for penny farthings, Or cut them open, seal one end and use them for storing marbles.’

‘I’ll keep my eyes open, Sid.’ I will too. I can see all the signs that Sid’s keen eye for a business disaster has not deserted him. How, I wonder, can he find the gelt to buy houses? He must still have some cash salted away from his Cromby Hotel days.

‘But this latest one can’t go wrong,’ exults Sid. ‘It’s a sure fire winner. Nobody’s really begun to tap the potential.’

‘What is it?’

Sid looks round carefully as if the boozer might be crawling with industrial spies. ‘Pogo sticks.’

‘Pogo sticks!’

‘Not so loud, you berk. I don’t want to tell everybody.’

Sidney watches a couple leave the pub and I can see him wondering whether they are going to rush home and start dismantling the telly to make pogo sticks.

‘You reckon they’re going to catch on, do you?’

‘With a bit of help from the right quarter. The art in this game is to get the merchandise before you start the craze. That way you get it cheaper.’

‘I understand that, Sid. But it’s a bit risky, isn’t it? What about all those hula hoops?’

‘I was unlucky there, Timmo. I didn’t know all the little wrinkles. I’ve got a professional public relations adviser now.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He gets you into the papers without you having to pay for an advertisement. He’s got lots of great ideas. We’re going to have a pogo stick race round Trafalgar Square and an attempt on the world pogo stick high jump record outside Buckingham Palace. Imagine that! It will give the whole thing a sort of royal seal of approval. We’re giving one to Ted Heath. He’s athletic, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, but he can’t use it on his yacht.’

‘I dunno. When there’s a calm and nothing much going on he might be glad to bounce up and down on the fo’c’sle. Think of the pictures we’ll get. Everybody will want one.’

‘What makes you think Ted Heath is going to accept your blooming pogo stick?’

‘He won’t have any alternative. We’re going to send a frogman down to tie it on to the anchor.’

‘I don’t reckon he’s going to like that, Sid.’

‘I don’t know about that. I just hope he accepts it in the spirit in which it is given.’

‘That of wanting to make a load of bread, you mean?’

‘Well, he’s done all right, hasn’t he? I don’t see why he should object to chucking it about a bit. The Conservatives are champions of private enterprise, you know.’

Poor old Sid can be so naïve sometimes that it makes me want to weep.

‘How does Rosie react to all this?’ I ask.

‘She’s so wrapped up in her boutiques she doesn’t know what I’m doing.’

‘Boutiques?’

Sidney looks slightly deflated. ‘Yeah. She’s got two. Thinking of opening another one. She’s got quite a flair for it.’

Good for Rosie. I wonder Mum wasn’t rabbiting on about it. I suppose, being pre-women’s lib, she reckons Sidney must have done everything.

‘Must bring in a few bob.’

Sid looks downright uncomfortable. I can see where the money for his house is coming from.

‘Yeah. It’s handy of course. Gives her an interest, that’s the main thing. Of course, it hasn’t got any of the potential of my schemes. When one of these goes then, woosh! One’s talking about tens of thousands.’

That’s the trouble with Sid. He is always talking about tens of thousands. Never doing anything, just talking.

‘I hope it all goes well for you both, Sid. That’s a nice bit of stuff you’ve got there.’

Sid looks at his trendy whistle as if seeing it for the first time.

‘Do you like it? I’m not sure, myself. It’s one of Rosie’s. To tell you the truth, I think I look a bit of a ponce in it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say. ‘I think that bloke over there thinks so too.’ In fact, the geezer in question is harmlessly reading his paper but he looks up when he sees Sid staring at him. Unbeknown to Sid, I give him a little wave from behind his shoulder and the fellow waves back. Sid blushes scarlet and buries his mug in his glass.

‘Blimey, you’re right,’ he says. ‘The buggers are everywhere. I’m never going to wear this lot again.’

‘Probably wise. I think that wrist chain is a symbol of The Gay Liberation Front, isn’t it? Funny, I always think they should be called The Gay Liberation Behind.’

But Sidney is too busy tearing his bracelet off to listen to me.

‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Hang on a minute, Sid. Your friend might be over to buy you a drink in a minute.’ But my desire to stay is not only occasioned by the embarrassment I am causing Sid. At the far end of the room are a couple of fair looking birds, one of whom definitely has eyes for me. They are both on the posh side but I reckon that they are not above the thought of romantic dalliance. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? You don’t get birds in a boozer unless they know their way around. Dinner time, too. Down at the office the old man is taking his corned beef sandwiches out of his briefcase and they’re out on the town. It’s terrible, but it’s life.

‘Hang on a minute, Sid,’ I say, grabbing him by the arm. ‘I reckon we could be away there.’

Sid follows my eyes. ‘Yeah. Brings back memories, doesn’t it? This always has been a good place for pulling birds.’

For a moment I don’t know what he is on about and then I remember my embarrassing experience when I was trying to show Sid how I could charm chicks and be a successful window cleaner. That seems a long time ago now.

‘Where are you going?’ I say to him as he strains for the door.

‘I told you, I want to get out of this place.’

‘Don’t worry about him. He’ll soon back off if he sees you prefer birds.’

‘I’ve got to go shopping with Rosie this afternoon.’

‘Go another time. She’ll be all right without you.’ It is depressing to hear Sid going on like this. I can remember when he went ape if he walked past the underwear counter at Marks and Sparks.

‘I promised her.’

‘Break it.’

‘I can’t.’

Fortunately my desire for Sid’s presence diminishes strongly when the bird who showed signs of being able to resist me gets up and starts making as if she is about to leave.

‘Right. Piss off then,’ I tell Sid.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘I think I’ll stick around for a few minutes.’

‘Don’t you want to see Rosie?’

‘Very much, Sid. But she is my sister. Use a bit of common. I haven’t exactly been fêted with crumpet over the last three months. Just to see a bird is a new sensation.’

Sid shakes his head. ‘I’d have thought that gang bang at the nick would have done you for three years. I don’t know. In front of your own Mum and Dad, too.’

‘It wasn’t my fault, Sid. I was stoned, wasn’t I? We all were. It could have happened to anyone.’

‘Yeah. But when that bird climbed on the table–’

‘I’ve told you before, Sid. I don’t remember anything about it.’

My bird has got up now and looks as if she is about to follow her mate out of the pub. She gives me a real ‘come and get it’ look and goes into the ladies.

‘That bloke is smiling at you again,’ I lie.

‘Right, I’m off,’ says Sid, hurriedly. ‘You’re not coming, then?’

‘No, I’ll find my own way back. Give Dad a heart attack by telling him I’ve gone down the Labour.’

Sid pushes off and I take a quick butcher’s at myself in the mirror above the bar. My hair is a bit on the short side and I certainly have lost a lot of weight. Lean and hungry – very hungry. What am I going to say to the bird? A lot depends on whether I can catch her eye when she comes out of the khasi. If we have got a nice little smile going, then it doesn’t matter what I say. Hang on, here she comes.

The little darling slips out of the toilet and, without taking my eyes off her, I coolly raise the water jug to my lips and take a sip from it. I realise my mistake when the spout collides with my cakehole. Typical, isn’t it? Bleeding Cary Grant never has my luck. The bird does a double take and before I can get back on track some other geezer wanders over and starts chatting her up. Together they walk to the door and in the space of a few cruel seconds my plans seem doomed to failure. I am so distressed that I take a giant swig from the water jug when meaning to knock back my beer.

‘It tastes stronger than the piss you serve,’ I say to the barman who is giving me an old-fashioned look, and move swiftly out of the boozer. All is not lost because my bird has separated from the bloke she was with and is walking towards a sports car. An MGB, no less. Can’t be bad, can it? Only the best is good enough for Lea. Now what am I going to say to her? For a moment I cannot think of anything and then a giant wave of inspiration drenches me.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, belting to her side as her hand collides with the door handle. ‘I wonder if you could help me?’

She gazes into my face and I am conscious that she must have been away on holiday or under a sunray lamp. There are little flecks of white at the corner of her eyes.

‘What do you want?’

‘My mate has just gone off without his keys. I meant to give them back to him and I forgot. Do you think you could catch him up? He’s only been gone a couple of minutes.’

‘Won’t he come back when he finds he hasn’t got them?’

‘He’s going to Brighton, you see.’

‘Oh, dear. Well, you’d better get in, hadn’t you?’ She slips inside the car and stretches across to open the door and – by the cringe! I darn near cream my jeans. The mixture of tit and exposed thigh is powerful stuff to a man in my position.

‘Which way would he have gone?’

‘Across the common, I reckon.’ The MGB rips away, leaving behind a small smear of tyre rubber and I am thrown back into my bucket seat.

‘Do you live around here?’ asks my companion.

‘All my life!’ I say, trying to sound proud rather than defensive.

‘We’ve only just moved in. We used to have a flat in Surbiton but it was a bit far out. Do I turn right here?’

‘Left,’ I say. I am feeling a bit short on words because we have pulled up at some traffic lights and Sidney is in the car beside us.

‘Tell me when you see any sign of him,’ says my unsuspecting friend.

‘I will.’ I lean across behind her and give Sid a friendly wave. He does not say anything but just watches, open-mouthed, as our car roars away. It is a very satisfying moment and one that I know I am going to cherish in the long winter nights to come.

‘Do you think we’ve come the right way?’

‘I think we may have lost him,’ I say, trying to sound really broken up about it.

‘Do you want me to take you back to The Highwayman in case he’s gone back there?’

‘Er–yes.’ I should sound more enthusiastic but I am not eager to say goodbye to the lady so soon. ‘Sure it’s not taking you out of your way too much?’

‘Oh, no. If he’s not there you can come back to the flat and phone Brighton.’

‘Brighton?’

‘You said that was where he was going. Have you got the number?’

‘Oh, yes.’ I pull myself together. If it means getting into the bird’s flat, of course I have the number.

‘I suppose I can trust you, can I?’

Whenever a bird says that you can reckon that you are in like Flynn. What she is really saying is: ‘Please make it perfectly clear that I can’t trust you so that I know I’m not wasting my time with some goody-goody creep.’

‘Worried about the ash-trays, are you?’ I say, giving her the chance to spell it out.

‘Not only that. You read some very disconcerting things in the papers. A girl isn’t safe these days.’

Not if she wears no bra and a nylon blouse through which you could read the small print on a hire purchase agreement. Talk about man-made fibres, more like man-mad, if you ask me. And her perfume doesn’t exactly act as a repellent either.

‘You’re safe with me,’ I leer, delivering the famous Lea slow burn with a couple of ounces of nostril quiver chucked in at no extra charge.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Timothy Lea. What’s yours?’

‘Elspeth Jones. But my friends call me Elly.’

‘Very unusual name, Elspeth.’

‘I hate it. My mother got it out of a romantic novel she was reading when I was born.’

‘My Mum was like that with Timothy. She reckoned it was very genteel – I used to get the mickey taken out of me something dreadful at school.’

‘Children can be very unkind, can’t they?’ says Mrs Jones, sympathetically. All the omens bode well for a nooky fest, the more so when The Highwayman hoves in sight without Sidney’s ugly mug decorating the front of it There is no reason why he should be there but with Sidney you never know. He can turn up with all the unwelcome inevitability of brewer’s droop on your wedding night.

‘His car isn’t here,’ I say, trying to sound disappointed. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘What a shame.’ Mrs Jones is a good actress too. ‘Well, you can use my phone if you want to.’

‘If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.’ We look into each other’s eyes for a couple of naughty moments and I can feel Percy stirring like a hibernating rock python that has just felt the first shaft of spring sunshine fall across its resting place after a long hard winter. Putting it another way, I reckon I am going to be up her faster than a rat up a drain pipe.

‘It’s not far.’ Mrs Jones puts her foot down and the edges of my seat nearly touch in front of me. I wonder if she always drives like this. Probably suffering from an attack of Lea-lust. Who can blame her? My confinement in the clink must have ushered in a period of strain for quite a few birds.

The Jones pad is very much what I might have expected. Fill it with water and you would have the world’s largest aquarium. I have nothing against glass but my fondness for it does not extend much beyond windows. I do not want the whole world gawping at me every time I scratch my action man kit.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I say, looking at the spot where her legs meet. Mrs Jones pulls her skirt in the direction of her knees and noses her vehicle on to its slab of concrete.

‘I think it’s going to go up,’ she says. I assume she is talking about the value of the flat, but she might just be a mind reader.

‘How many girls do you share this with?’ It is obvious that she is married but all birds are flattered if you think they are just out of blue serge knickers.

‘I’m an old married woman,’ she says. ‘Three years.’

‘Three years? Good heavens, you hardly look past the age of consent.’

I have no idea what this is – probably about ten nowadays – but Mrs J. gets my drift.

‘I don’t know whether you mean that, but you’ve no idea how nice it is to receive a compliment again. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.’

‘Surely your husband tells you you’re attractive?’

‘Yes, but it’s not the same coming from him, is it?’

Sorry about that fellows, but once you have signed up with a bird you are on a hiding to nothing. If you don’t tell her she is beautiful she will say that she might as well be dead because you never take any notice of her. Tell her that she is the most gorgeous bit of crumpet under the sun and she will say that your love is stifling her. There never is a right way with women.

‘What does your husband do?’ I ask as we trip through the foyer and discover that the lift is out of order. A toffee-nosed middle-aged woman is standing beside it and she looks at me as if she can read my mind and does not like some of the four-letter words she finds there.

‘He works in an advertising agency.’ The middle-aged hag looks even more disgusted.

‘That must be very interesting.’ We start walking up the stairs and Lady Shagnasty’s eyes follow us like a couple of bloodshot private detectives. I turn round, screw up my face and throw her a big, wet kiss which shows her most of the inside of my lips. She turns away hurriedly.

‘I don’t know about interesting. They certainly get their money’s worth out of him. I hardly see him. And when I do he’s too exhausted to do anything but flop down in front of the telly. He brings home work at weekends and he’s always cutting things out of the papers. It drives me mad. I’m right in the middle of something and then, suddenly, there’s a great big hole.’

‘I know the feeling,’ I say sympathetically. ‘My sister used to be like that. All the pop stars went, and the stuff on three pages behind.’

We have so much in common, Mrs Jones and I. We must have been doomed for each other.

‘Here we are.’ Mrs Jones stops outside the door of Flat Number 69 and blushes. I do not know whether this is because the digits suggest something to her naughty little mind or because there is a red rose resting between the two yellow-top milk bottles.

‘I have a very passionate milkman,’ she says. ‘He is always leaving me things.’ I wonder why? I think to myself. My experiences as a window cleaner showed me that there are quite a few passionate customers about as well. Mrs Jones could well fit into that category. She strikes me as being quite a self-possessed lady and is quick to prove the point,

‘One disadvantage of living in this place is the neighbours,’ she says. ‘They’re always trying to organise your life for you. Maintenance committees for the lawn, sub-committees to decide what colour the flats should be painted. Nobody is allowed to be an individual.’

‘I wouldn’t like that,’ I agree with her.

‘I live my own life. I have my own set of values and I don’t give a hang what anyone else thinks.’

‘Very understandable.’

‘I wouldn’t have got married under any other conditions. I told Brian: “I demand to retain my freedom.” If I want to take a lover, that’s my affair. Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Er–yes. Yes thanks.’ For some strange reason a faint feeling of nervousness comes over me. Mrs Jones is obviously one of those strong, passionate outspoken ladies who are filling the pubs with nervous men looking over their shoulders every time the door opens.

‘Nobody in this place would understand that. They conform utterly. Did you see that old harridan by the lift?’

‘You mean the vacuum cleaner?’

‘No! The woman who was looking at us as if she reckoned we were going to be at it like knives the minute we got through the door.’ She gazes at me and I swallow hard. It is bloody stupid but when she talks like that I feel quite embarrassed. I prefer to make the running while the bird traces ‘Lea is fabulous’ on a window steamed up by her own heavy breathing.

‘Do you like milk and sugar?’

‘Yes please. Two spoonfuls.’

‘The telephone is over there.’

I say ta very much and look up the dialling code for Brighton.

‘You can have something stronger if you like.’ She says it like she reckons I need something stronger.

‘No thanks. Tea is fine.’

‘She’s typical.’

‘Typical?’

‘The woman by the lift.’

‘Oh yes.’ Mrs Jones has sat down beside me and I should be feeling as chuffed as a bog with two pails. Damn it all! I haven’t had a bit for three months. The bird is distinctly fanciable and hardly giving indications of having her legs bound together with Sellotape. What is the matter with me?

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Have you found the dialling code?’

‘Yes thanks.’ I dial the code and the first numbers that come into my head.

‘Good morning. Hang Chow Chinese Noodle Palace,’ says a voice that sounds as if it comes from somewhere a good deal further east than Wapping Broad Steps.

‘Hello, Sid. Is that you? Oh, no. It can’t be can it?’ Not unless Sid has got down by one of those speeded up films they show on the telly.

‘Hang Chow Chin–’ continues the voice patiently.

‘Tell Sid I’ve got his keys, will you. I’ll hang on to them until I see him. I think there’s a spare set in the top right-hand drawer of the desk.’

The voice at the other end of the line is beginning to get agitated.

‘OK. Yes, fine. All right. Yes, I will.’ Bye.’ I ring off hurriedly. Mrs Jones smiles at me.

‘So that’s your business attended to?’

‘Yes.’ I stand up.

‘Don’t you want your cup of tea?’

‘Oh, yes.’ I sit down again.

‘Relax.’ Mrs Jones pats my wrist as if I am about to go into the dentist’s surgery. That is exactly what it feels like, too. I try to think of something to say but nothing comes into my mind.

‘I think this is the best time,’ continues Mrs J. ‘I saw the way you looked at me in The Highwayman. You don’t have to be shy. If you want to make love to me, go right ahead.’ She stretches out her long legs and leans back against the sofa.

‘That’s the kettle, isn’t it?’ I say, listening to the whistle and the sound of my heart beating.

‘That’s right.’ Mrs J. shows no sign of moving and the noise is beginning to bore a hole through my lughole.

‘Shall I make the tea?’

‘Why not?’ Mrs J. gives me one of her irritating smiles. What is beginning to alarm me is that Percy is showing no signs of interest whatsoever. In his present situation he should be hurling himself against the side of my Y-fronts like a maddened beast. But not a sausage. Not even a chipolata.

‘Don’t worry.’ Mrs Jones stands up. ‘I don’t want to disturb the balance of the sexes. You sit there.’

She stalks towards the kitchen. I watch the see-saw motion of her big end and think dirty – really dirty. Still nothing happening in the action man department. This is serious. Maybe the clink has turned me into a latent homosexual – so late it has only just caught up with me? No, that is impossible. But there must be something wrong with me. Perhaps, after three months without it—no, that doesn’t seem likely either. There was a blooming great population boom after the war, wasn’t there? I give Percy a worried nudge but he continues to show less enthusiasm than Arthur Rubinstein at a piano smashing contest.

‘Do you want a piece of home-made cake?’ Mrs J.’s voice comes from the kitchen.

‘Yes please.’ It occurs to me that it would be a good idea to subject Percy to a little first aid treatment. I can’t just sit here with him sulking under my brushed denims. I make genteel ‘I’m going for a piss’ noises and scarper to the toilet. It is strange but the whole of the lower part of my body seems anaesthetised. It is not until I try shock treatment and plunge my spam ram under the cold tap that I feel anything. This is because I have plunged it under the hot tap by mistake.

If there was a flicker of life in the poor sod, this puts the kibosh on it. In its present condition you could lay my dick on a plate of roes on toast and not be able to spot the stranger.

I tuck my equipment away and prepare to face Mrs Jones. I don’t like admitting it but in my heart of hearts I know that she is the reason why my get up and go has got up and gone. Suddenly, she seems so experienced and demanding. I need someone wilting and dependent. Some bird who reckons that I am fantastic and who can lay it on so thick that I want to make it true for her. Sitting on the sofa and picking up a lump of sugar with a pair of tongs, Mrs Jones doesn’t look as if she thinks I am fantastic. In fact she is looking disappointed. Disappointed? And I haven’t even touched her yet.

‘I think it better to be frank, don’t you?’ says Mrs J., indicating my chair.

‘Yes,’ I say, shaking my head. She gives me an old-fashioned look and I try nodding instead.

‘I need to be physically satisfied just like a man.’

‘Very understandable.’ I slop tea into the saucer and drop my spoon on the floor.

‘Most women wouldn’t admit that,’ muses Mrs J.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ I mean to admit that you fancy a bit of the other if you are a bird. Mrs J. is swift to misunderstand me.

‘No. I suppose I ask a lot from a man. I’m what you might call “demanding”.’

‘Really?’ A mouthful of cake goes down the wrong way and I blurt crumbs all over the settee. ‘You make a smashing cake.’

‘Brian made it. He’s a much better cook than I am.’

‘Oh, well, it’s very nice.’ Now I look closely at Elspeth Jones I can see that she has a heavy down of hairs on her upper lip.

‘I don’t just mean size.’ Percy is now making a field mouse look like King Kong. In fact I am not even certain he is still there.

‘Stamina.’ She practically spits the word into my lap. ‘I once knew this fantastic Jamaican.’ ‘Don’t tell me about him,’ I screech silently. ‘What a man. The most superb body I’ve ever seen. Great banks of gleaming black muscle. And he went on and on and–’

‘I’ve heard they’re very–’

‘–on and on and on. I was a different person afterwards. That experience really showed me what sex could be like. It was never the same with Brian after that. I told him, of course.’

‘You mean that it wasn’t the same as–’

‘Yes. It was a shock to him but I think he respected my integrity. He was seeing a psychoanalyst at the time, anyway.’

‘Oh, well. That must have been a big help to him.’

Mrs Jones leans forward and takes the cup and saucer from my twitching fingers.

‘Don’t worry about the crumbs. Do you want to do it in here or in the bedroom?’

Now that I look into her face again she seems to be growing a beard. Oh, dear. I am really on the horn of a Dalai Lama. Half of me is saying ‘you don’t fancy it, so piss off’ while the other half is saying ‘don’t be a berk, she’s a lovely bit of stuff. Once you get her knicks off everything will be all right’. I know I will be pretty choked if I think about this afterwards and I have not had a crack at it. It is like refusing a bloke who is trying to give you bank notes.

‘I don’t mind stretching my legs,’ I say weakly and haul myself to my feet. If I am going through with this I will have to break the hypnotic spell that my mind has cast over my hampton park. I will have to stop thinking about sex. If I can take the mental pressure off Percy then I may have a sporting chance of competing with black power.

‘Are you interested in football, at all?’ I ask as we go into the bedroom.

‘I loathe it.’ Mrs J. coolly unzips her dress and steps out of it. I notice that she is wearing a pair of those scarlet, transparent, embroidered panties with a frilly hem that have names like ‘Casbah Madness’. I always wondered who wore them. Although their intention is clearly to turn the observer on, they have the opposite effect on me. There is something professional and rehearsed about them which makes me feel I am about to take part in a circus act. I would like there to be a spot of physical contact between us whilst we shred the threads but Mrs J. is stark bollock naked and lying on the counterpane before you can say Roger Carpenter. She has a fantastic body but it might be a waxwork for all the effect it is having on me.

‘I support Chelsea, myself,’ I tell her. ‘We are the champions.’

‘Come here and prove it,’ says Mrs J. meaningfully.

Relax, I tell myself. Just imagine you are in one of those changing huts in the middle of Clapham Common. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start undoing my shoelaces. If I can persuade myself that I am in the process of changing for some commonplace sporting event I may be able to divert worried Percy from his current hang-ups and then suddenly spring Mrs J. on him when he is least expecting it. It’s a proper carry on, isn’t it? Seems ridiculous really.

‘What are you whistling?’ says a puzzled Mrs J.

‘ “Blue is the colour.” ’

‘That’s one of those ridiculous soccer songs, isn’t it? Now what are you doing?’

‘Just dribbling my sock over to the dressing table. Goal!’

‘Are you all right?’ Mrs J. sounds worried. I wish she would belt up. How does she expect me to get it together if she keeps rabbiting?

‘The ball’s bobbing about on the edge of the penalty area. Osgood to Lea. Lea swings his right foot. Goal! Wilson didn’t move.’ I raise my hands above my head in front of the wardrobe and catch a glimpse of Mrs J. watching me nervously from the bed. If I can recreate the atmosphere of an actual match, I may be able to break the spell. In my mind I emerge from the changing room and start running towards the pitch. It is drizzling and cold. Very cold. So cold in fact that my old man is beginning to shrivel up – no, you fool! That’s not the effect I’m after. I start running around the room swinging my arms across my chest.

‘Now what are you doing?’

‘Warming up.’

‘I can think of less selfish ways of doing it.’

‘I’m going in goal.’ I hurl myself across the bed and push one of the pillow cases on to the floor.

‘Stop it!’

‘Did you see that save? Fantastic. Here we go again. Wheeeeeh!’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I’m football crazy.’ I leap on to the bed and head the lightshade so that it swings into the middle of the room and a cloud of dust comes down.

‘Stop it!’ Mrs J.’s cool is clearly shattered and this cheers me up a bit. That worried look in her eyes makes me feel more like the male chauvinist pig I found I was when I read that article in one of the posh Sundays. Incidentally, if you fancy a spot of saucy reading I can thoroughly recommend the posh Sundays. They wrap it up a bit and you need a dictionary handy, but there is no doubt that you can get a lot of interesting sexual detail from the quality press – and it concerns a much higher class of person, too. Quite historical, some of it. I reckon I would have been far more interested in history at school if I’d known that they were having it away all the time.

I stand on Mrs J.’s leg, she screams and I lose my balance and sit down on her arm. She screams again.

‘I’m sorry. Are you all right?’

‘Are you all right? you mean. What’s the matter with you?’

At last she touches me but it is only a restraining arm, no doubt intended to prevent me from getting my football boots on. I am a fool. I should never have got myself into this situation. I ought to have got out while I had the chance.

‘Take the rest of your clothes off,’ barks Mrs J. She might be saying ‘Come in, number nine, your time’s up,’ for all the romantic feeling she can get into her voice.

I peel off my shirt and, without looking, ease down my Y-fronts. Maybe they are the trouble. All those tight jeans and athletes’ briefs have suffocated the poor basket. Still, you can’t wander about in bloomers, can you? Nobody would ever want to be exposed to the lustre of your cluster.

Mrs J. takes a deep breath and lies back expectantly. ‘We’ve got three and a half hours,’ she says.

‘Three and a half hours!’ Flipping heck! What does she think I am? At this rate I’ll be reading her nursery rhymes for the last three and a quarter. I look down at the faint moustache above her upper lip and wonder why I can suddenly smell Sloan’s Linament.

‘Why are you sniffing?’

‘I thought I smelt something.’

‘It must be my perfume. It’s very unusual. I once had this Persian boyfriend. It used to drive him out of his mind. He used to say that he could catch a whiff of it at the bottom of the stairs. I always knew it was him when I heard the footsteps pounding along the corridor. I’d hardly have time to open the door before he’d burst through like some great animal and snatch me up into his arms.’

‘Very strong bio–’

‘And then he’d carry me through the flat and throw me down on the bed and–’

‘It must have been very–’

‘–on and on and on.’

Blimey! By the time she has stopped rabbiting Percy has got about as much backbone as a homeless whelk. I do wish she wouldn’t go on like that – on and on and on.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says.

‘Nothing. I was just thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh, nothing, really.’

‘It must get rather boring?’

‘I’m used to it.’

It’s not vintage Noel Coward, is it? And Mrs Jones is not slow to realise that something is wrong. Nudging me with a shapely knocker, she raises herself on one elbow and sends her fingers down to reconnoitre the disaster area.

‘Don’t you find me attractive?’ she says accusingly, having discovered less action than at an old age pensioners’ jitterbugging contest.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ I say weakly.

‘I’m not certain that I do,’ says Mrs J. unkindly, releasing her hold on my wilting willy. ‘You’re not queer, are you?’

Those must be, without doubt, the cruellest words my lugholes have ever cringed before. That I, Timothy Lea, Clapham’s most exciting male animal, should be so accused and unable to stand up for himself. It does not bear thinking about, especially if – no, it can’t be. Not me. Surely not. I mean–

‘Are you? I don’t mind. I’ve never been to bed with a queer.’

‘Neither have I!’ I say, indignantly. ‘Do you mind? Every bloke who doesn’t fancy you isn’t a raving poofter, you know.’

‘If you’re not queer, you’re something very like it,’ sniffs Mrs J. ‘Coming in here playing football. Most men who come in here have got something better to do.’

‘I’m not queer,’ I repeat.

‘Prove it.’ Mrs J. leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. It is nice of her to bother but I need gentler treatment.

‘That was like a man’s kiss!’ I chide her.

‘Ah! So you’ve been kissed by men?’

‘No! Of course I haven’t. I just imagined it would feel like that.’

‘Do you think about it a lot?’ Mrs J. sounds quite interested.

‘I never bleeding think about it! I tell you: I’m not queer.’ I swing my feet off the bed and grab my Y-fronts.

‘Running away, are you?’ mocks Mrs J. ‘It just shows how wrong you can be about people. I thought you looked quite sexy when I saw you in The Highwayman.’

‘I felt the same about you,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry but I think I’d better go.’

‘Maybe you’re not eating enough,’ she says as I pull on my jeans. I look at her wriggling into her panties and for a moment I experience a twinge of lust. It is not worth pursuing, though. This bird and I are never going to be able to make it in a million years. I will probably never be able to make it again with any bird.

‘I’ve got a book somewhere that might help you,’ she says as we walk towards the door. ‘Sexual impotence, the beginning of the end. My husband found it very useful.’

‘Thanks a lot, but I’m not much of a reader. I’ll have to work it out for myself.’

Right up to the moment when the door closes behind me I have a feeling that some miracle is going to occur. That something will spark us off into a knicker-ripping assault on the carpet pile. But nothing does happen. I find myself standing outside the building and I still have all my clothes and the forty thousand million sperm cells I went in with. At least, that is what I used to carry. I probably have about half a dozen now and them barely able to travel the length of my tonk without a wheelchair. It is all very, very disturbing.