Confessions of a Driving Instructor

by Timothy Lea

  “East Coast Driving School. You saw our what in the paper? But we don’t advertise. Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Of course we’d be delighted to enrol you.” He reaches for his pen.

  And that is how it goes on all day. Any publicity seems to be good publicity and there are twenty people who ring up to say that they had been meaning to take lessons for years and decided to do something about it after reading about us in the papers. Faced with this sudden upsurge in business Cronky finds it increasingly difficult to keep the rough edge on his tongue and by the time someone from Anglia T.V. rings up to see if I will appear with Miss Frankcom on “Anglia in the News”, he is almost purring.

  In fact, I do trip along to the studios and, though I say so myself, I am a wild success, mentioning the East Coast Driving School twice and giving the impression that I love helping old ladies across the road and being kind to animals. Petal notices that my fly is undone but you can’t have everything and overall it must have gone well because for the rest of the week we are besieged with people wanting to learn to drive and one woman from Felixstowe who craves a lock of my hair—I send it to her, of course.

  I continue to take Miss Frankcom and people nudge each other in the street as we go past. We are like a travelling advertisement for the E.C.D.S. With all this goodwill and public image flying about I am keen not to spoil it by kicking Sharp in the crutch but this does not change my resolve to get the bastard when the right moment comes along. In the meantime, there is Mrs. Dent to keep me occupied.

  She is one of Garth’s pupils, and I can see why when I get a crack at her while he is taking a week’s holiday with his aunt under the shadow of the Brecon Beacons. She is a wispy blonde of about thirty who is constantly biting her lip and fingering her necklace when her hands aren’t creeping round the edge of the driving wheel. She chats to herself at moments of stress and is as mixed up as a kid’s fishing line. I remember birds like her from when I was cleaning windows and I am quick to check out her background as we spiral up towards the golf course.

  “What kind of car does your husband drive?” I say conversationally.

  “Some kind of Jag, I think. The latest saloon.”

  “Has he ever taken you out in it?”

  She laughs derisively. “You must be joking. I hardly ever see either of them. No—that’s a lie. I see them together on Saturday mornings when he’s cleaning the blasted thing. I’ve often wished I could get that much attention, but it’s difficult when you’re a woman.”

  “He’s fond of the car, is he?” I say innocently.

  “Fond of it!? If he had the choice between it and me and the kids I wouldn’t fancy our chances. That and his golf are the only things he cares about.”

  For a girl with a soft face she comes over very hard and her voice is flat as shovel.

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a Brand Manager for Python’s. That’s like being one of the ones who was crucified next to Jesus.”

  “I’ve heard of them.”

  “It’s the only thing you ever hear about in our house. That, and ‘why don’t you try and do a bit more with yourself. I give you enough money, don’t I?’ I’m supposed to prance around in front of his business associates just in case the marketing director has a heart attack.”

  “What, because of you prancing around in front of him? Don’t hog the middle of the road so much!”

  “No! Because of the—oh, it doesn’t matter. The whole bloody thing doesn’t matter. Look, can we stop for a cigarette in a minute?”

  “Yes. There’s a lay-by up here on the right. Pull in there.”

  She dives in her handbag and lights up as if she was doing it against the clock; then puffs a thin stream of smoke over her left shoulder.

  “Do you want one?”

  “No. I gave it up.”

  “That’s very strong-minded of you.”

  “Not strong-minded. Just scared. I was frightened of killing myself.”

  “You could die crossing the road.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t do it by throwing myself under a car.”

  She shrugs her shoulders and gazes out across the golf course.

  “That’s the seventeenth over there,” she says.

  “Oh.” I try to sound interested. “Do you play too?”

  She smiles. “No, I don’t. Where’s Mr. Williams?”

  “Garth, you mean? He’s visiting his mum in Wales, I think. You have him usually, don’t you?”

  She looks at me a bit sharpish as if she suspects I might be trying to suggest something.

  “Yes, that’s right.” She decides that I didn’t mean anything and her expression softens. “I didn’t know you called him Garth.”

  “Well, he’s a big fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, I suppose he is. What do they call you?”

  She settles down in her seat and tilts her head back so she is blowing smoke against the car roof. Her tits stand out firm against her blouse and I would like to put my hands on them. Sitting like this she is asking for it. But you never know with some birds. Often the pushy ones are the first to start yelling for a copper. It’s the quiet ones who won’t look you in the eyes who usually turn up trumps. At least, that is how it was when I was cleaning windows and my clientele is not all that different.

  “Well?” she says.

  “Well what?”

  “What do they call you?”

  “Oh!” I’ve been so busy looking at her tits I have forgotten what she was rabbiting about. “I don’t know. I haven’t been with the firm long enough to get a nickname.”

  “You make it sound as if you qualify for one when you retire. My husband would approve of that. Another non-contributory fringe benefit.”

  Back to the old man again. I don’t have to be able to do the Times crossword to get the message that he is not looming very large in her legend at the moment. It would be nice to think that this probably spelled out a big welcome for my hand testing her knicker elastic but that might not be true either. I have often found that women who rabbit on like maniacs about how wonderful their husbands are become the first to ask you if you would like to see their new counterpanes. This is because they feel guilty about their adulterous desires and don’t want to commit the additional sin of blaming their innocent husbands for them. Similarly, the women who bitch about their husbands are really making them scapegoats for their own lack of guts in not having an affair. “If my husband wasn’t so pathetically jealous and old-fashioned,” they grumble to themselves, “I could have a whale of a time.” The fact is that they are usually dyed-in-the-wool Puritans who would pass out if you tweaked their suspenders coming out of a ‘War on Want’ lunch.

  Fascinating lot of old cobblers, isn’t it? No? Oh, well, I don’t blame you if you disagree with me. Any theory you have about women is unlikely to be provable in more than one case. Anyway, there we are, with Mrs. Dent flashing her tits at me and throwing in a bit of thigh for good measure and me wondering what is the best method of getting my hands on both of them. I am also wondering just how much driving Mrs. D. expects to fit into an hour’s session. I don’t mind watching the East wind turn every blade of grass on the Cromingham golf course into a hunchback, but I feel I should be doing a bit more for my money.

  “Is this what you usually do when you’re having a lesson?” I say.

  “It depends on the instructor,” she says, looking at me like Lauren Bacall used to look at Humphrey Bogart. I wait for her to eject a meaningful puff of smoke in my direction, and sure enough she does.

  “You mean that some are more easy going than others?”

  “You could put it like that. I prefer to say that some are more imaginative than others.”

  “What do you mean?” It’s always worth while asking women that when you don’t know what to say next.

  “John Williams knows that there is more to playing golf than hitting a golf ball four hundred yards. Do you know that if there’s a hint of sun, you can lie in the
bottom of that bunker by the seventeenth green in a bikini?”

  “Fascinating, but what’s that got to do with learning to drive?”

  “What’s learning to drive got to do with learning to drive?” She laughs hollowly. “I came out here with my husband once when he was flogging his way round with one of his clients. You could smell him three holes away. Scared stiff that he wouldn’t put up a good show. Wanting not to appear wanting.” She laughs again. “I watched him digging a hole in the bottom of that bunker with the sweat dripping off him and his expression getting more and more racked. And do you know? Just where he was flapping away I had been lying a few days earlier with my lover. Ironic, isn’t it? I started laughing out loud and that made him furious. We had quite a row about it.”

  “What did the client do?”

  “He didn’t mind. I’m having lunch with him tomorrow.”

  “Sandwiches at the seventeenth?”

  “No. He’s staying at a hotel. You sound as if you don’t approve.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “There’s no need to be.”

  She turns towards me and reaches up an arm to pat my cheek. That’s it! I don’t have to have a crystal ball to know what she is thinking. I bend down and kiss her and her tongue comes out like one of those curled up squeaker things that kids blow at Christmas time. At the same time her hand goes down to my fly so fast it might be tied to the top of my zipper with a piece of elastic. She is the quickest worker since God made the world without breaking into double time. I hardly have time to breathe in through the nose before her practised fingers have poured over the side of my jockey briefs like Attila the Hun and she is rummaging away like a champion shop lifter who has got her hand caught down the side of the deep freeze cabinet. Not that there is much frozen goods being displayed. That kind of thing brings me on faster than a Derby winner and I’m giving her a bit of the same before the first appreciative murmur has escaped from her throat.

  “It’s a bit cramped in here, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Yeah! I used to have a pantechnicon but I fell behind with the payments. Let’s go back to your place.”

  “I daren’t do that. I’ve got too many nosey neighbours. What about you?”

  “No dice. I’ve got the same kind of problem.” I can just see Mrs. Bendon’s face if I rolled up with this one. She would do her nut. “Come on my lap,” I murmur, helpfully.

  “I don’t like that. I can only come when I’m lying flat out.” She’s honest, isn’t she? Germaine Greer herself could not be more direct. “There’s a bunker at the fifteenth,” she goes on. “Let’s go there.”

  “Not the sixteenth?”

  “It has sentimental memories for me.”

  I would not have suspected that she was the romantic type, but there you are. As an alternative to my usual chores as an instructor a length on the links seems very attractive—but in mid-November?

  “It’s going to be a bit parky out there, isn’t it?” I say nervously.

  “I’ve already told you. Once you get out of the wind it’s alright. Look, there’s even a bit of sunshine.”

  She is right, too. A few perished shafts are breaking through the blanket of grey that has hung over my head ever since I left Liverpool Street Station.

  “O.K. Let’s give it a whirl.”

  “You needn’t sound so enthusiastic. I know some fellows who’d stay all night in an open lifeboat for a chance to hold my hand.”

  “I can believe it,” I lie enthusiastically. I mean, really! Twice round the boating pool whilst you finished your cheese sandwich would be more like it. Some women get delusions of grandeur about what they are trying to give away. At least a whore has the guts to put a price on her goodies. As my old schoolmaster used to say: you don’t have to like capitalism but at least it separates the professionals from the amateurs.

  Anyway, off we go across the golf course with me trying to look at my watch without her noticing and hoping that we will be able to squeeze a happy memory out of the fifteenth. I reckon she must have played every hole on the course in her day because she does not deviate by an inch but pushes through the bracken and brings us out a long-distance spit from a neat little circle of grass with a flag in the middle of it.

  “Where do we go from here?” I ask, but she is already scrambling up the side of a low mound and beckoning for me to follow. When I get there, I can see that we are perched on the edge of a deep sand trap and she squeezes my arm ferociously, presumably intending to suggest the pleasure to come. Down we go and she leans back against the wall of the bunker and gazes at me expectantly. I have to confess that out of the wind it is almost bearable, though I don’t go a bundle on the old Woodbine packets and the used french letter I can see out of the corner of my eye.

  “You see,” she says. “It’s quite cosy, isn’t it?”

  It is hardly the word I would have used but then I am not a country boy at heart.

  “Come here,” I say, which is another great non-phrase I use a lot with birds. Roughly translated, it means: “I can’t think of anything to say so I am going to try to kiss you/put my hand up your skirt/both.”

  Mrs. D. offers me her mouth and we chew away hungrily whilst her hands start a reprise of ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ on the zip of my fly. The sand is a bit damp and I would normally reckon this as being a knee-tremble job but for what Mrs. D. said about liking to get stretched out for maximum satisfaction. She has pulled open my trousers like the mouth of a flour sack and has got both hands round my hampton while I am easing her knickers down to knee level with a skill any window dresser would envy. It may not be the most elegant sight in the world but it is giving us both a lot of pleasure and I am fast forgetting about the weather. I prod forward a couple of times and Mrs. D. gives a shiver of passion which just might be for real and starts licking my ear.

  “I want to lie down now,” she says, “and then you put it in.”

  Try to stop me, I think, and, perfect gent that I am, I bend down to remove the panties that are flapping pathetically round her ankles.

  In doing this I am hindered by her whole weight suddenly flopping over my shoulders as if she wanted to be given a piggy-back.

  “Hey! Steady on—” I begin, thinking this is some kinky game she likes to play, or a request for a muff job, but when I straighten up she slides down between my legs and I notice there is a swelling on the side of her head which is growing as I look at it. There is also a small white ball nestling beside my foot and it has more pock-marks on it than my Aunt Ethel. Some clumsy berk has bounced a golf ball off her bonce! Just my flaming luck. The bloody game should be banned.

  “Wake up,” I squeal, slapping her cheeks and gazing into her lifeless mug. “Are you all right?” She does not say anything but groans weakly and pulls her hands up to her head. She is not going anywhere in a hurry in the next few minutes and I am prepared to lay bets on it. One possible taker is the prick who clobbered her and I raise my head carefully over the side of the bunker to see if anyone is coming. By the cringe! Two blokes are striding purposefully towards us and I recognise both of them. Minto and Sharp!

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about my slice,” sings out Minto and I can’t hear what Sharp says. Minto may think he has problems but they are fleabites compared with what is facing me. Caught in a bunker with a senseless, knickerless pupil can’t be good for business. Knickerless! I snatch up Mrs. D.’s panties and shove them into my pocket, dislodging one of her shoes in my frenzy. I force it on again and there she is, looking just like any other thirty-year-old woman you would expect to find lying senseless in a bunker every time you play a round of golf.

  It is then that I act foolishly—well, act foolishly again, if you feel that trying to shaft a bird in a golf bunker in the middle of November is a bit stupid in the first place. I pick up the ball and roll it carefully onto the fairway, hoping that Minto and Sharp will stumble upon it and not the lovely Mrs. D. and myself. No sooner have I done this
than my pupil starting groaning like she is auditioning for the ‘Red Barn’ and I spring to her side and try to muffle the noise with my shoulder. In this position I am glad to hear a cry of surprise from the fairway.

  “Good God, is this your ball?”

  “No, I’m on the green,” says the blond streak of piss impatiently, “and you’re in the bunker, so don’t try anything.”

  “I’m not trying anything, you fool.” Minto’s voice is quick to sound irritated. “This is a number four and that’s what I’m playing. It must have hit something and come out.”

  “Or pigs can fly, or it’s somebody else’s ball. We’ll soon find out.”

  Before I can congratulate myself on another great idea, Sharp’s self-satisfied mug appears over the side of the bunker and he pulls back in surprise. Since Mrs. D. and I are kneeling against each other like a couple of out-of-work bookends it is an emotion you can forgive him.

  “Good Gawd!”

  Sharp’s voice usually sounds dead middle-class with pretensions to something better, but now, caught off guard, it slips a couple of notches.

  “What is it?”

  Minto looms up at his elbow and his mouth jumps open when he sees us.

  “What the hell are you doing down there?”

  He is blustering because he is frightened. I don’t blame him. So am I.

  “This lady fell into the bunker and hit her head,” I say. Well, it must happen all the time, mustn’t it? Sharp obviously does not agree with me.

  “How long have you been there?” he says, suspiciously. “Wait a minute! I know you. You work for Cronk’s crowd. You were at the Shermer YCs the other night with their receptionist. I’ve seen this bloke before—” he starts explaining it all over again to Minto.

  “Yeah. And I know you,” I chip in. “You forced me off the road and nearly killed me.”

  “You forced yourself off. It was a bloody stupid place to try to overtake.”