by Timothy Lea
I manage to turn the ignition off and Roper and I are wrestling over the front seats.
“Bloody Kraut-lover! Don’t you see, you fool? If you don’t get them, they’ll get you.”
It must be shell-shock or battle-fatigue or something, but why does it always have to happen to me?
Suddenly Roper changes tack.
“We’re sinking,” he howls. “Let me out of here. Let me out! Let me out!” He begins beating against the windscreen and pressing the horn as if he intends to push it out through the front of the car.
“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”
Bugger you, I think, and start to open the door.
“Women and children first, you swine,” he hisses. “I’ve met your kind before.”
I can’t bring myself to say anything so I shake him off and climb out.
But my troubles are not over yet.
Sharp is coming for me, bristling like a fur jelly.
“What in God’s name are you playing at now, you fool—” he begins.
Sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that the gods intend to destroy you and that you are only delaying the inevitable by trying to deny them. This revelation comes to me with startling clarity when I see Sharp’s undershot jaw quivering invitingly eighteen inches away. I swing my fist into it so hard that his feet nearly leave the ground, and I stride across the road to resign.
Ten minutes later I am leaving Cronk’s office and my career with the East Coast Driving School is over. I have done most of the talking, but Cronk has been quick to agree that my particular streak of impetuosity and ability to attract questionable publicity makes me somewhat of a liability to any firm not registered purely as a tax loss.
As I come out, Gruntscomb of the Echo is lining up a photograph which captures both Cronk’s mangled Morris and the front of the office. He is working with swift relish and I shudder when I think of the headlines in the evening.
“Well, that’s it, lads,” I say to the assembled throng. “I’m off! Great to have worked with you all. I’m sorry it has to end like this and I hope this little lot doesn’t cause you too much embarrassment. I’ll probably see you if Sharp brings an assault charge—remember, it was self-defence—or maybe I’ll be back with my bucket, spade and icepick one day.”
“You can’t go just like that,” says Garth. “You’re staying for the Ball, aren’t you?”
I may not have mentioned that the day’s activities culminated in a Grand Fancy Dress Ball at the golf club with cabaret by an entertainer whose last recorded public appearance had been at Bow Street Magistrates Court on a charge of accosting males in a public lavatory—big deal!
“How can I?” I tell him. “I’m going to be a dead embarrassment, aren’t I, with Minto and all his mob there in force. It would probably end in another punch-up. Besides, I told Cronk I’d get out right away.”
“Well, have a drink before you go. I know a little place where we can knock back a couple undisturbed.”
So we all slope off and it develops into quite a session, I can tell you. One by one they drop out, starting with Dawn and working through Lester, Petal (“… look me up—and down—if you’re ever this way again, duckie … lovely working with you …”) to Crippsy, who we meet in the club, and finally Garth, who breathes a few emotionally charged words: “How are we going to win the Sevens next year without you, boyo?”—before we both stagger away, pissed out of our tiny minds.
Even in my paralytic state I am aware that Mrs. Bendon is going to be a problem. I have been having it away with her on a pretty regular basis recently and I don’t think she is going to take kindly to me suddenly announcing that I am never going to darken her bath towels again.
Maybe it is female intuition or something, but she looks uneasy when I come into the parlour—and not just because I catch my foot on the flex and bring down the standard lamp.
“I don’t know how to say this,” I mumble, deciding to come straight out with it, “but there was a bit of trouble during the procession today—you may have heard about it—and I handed in my resignation. That means I—that I—well, I will have to—I can’t stay here and it’s probably better if I go as soon as possible.”
“How soon?” Her voice seems remarkably composed.
“Well, if I paid you this week’s rent in lieu of notice, I was wondering if I might go immediately. Tonight, in fact.”
I hold my breath but she does not turn a hair.
“Yes, that seems quite fair, dear. In fact, it works out very well. I don’t mean your spot of bother, of course. No, I mean your vacating your room. My friend Mr. Greig, who you’ve heard me talk about, was saying he would like to sample a little sea air and it would be very useful having your room back again.”
My face must mirror my feelings pretty accurately because she stretches out a hand and squeezes my arm.
“Of course, I’ll be very sorry to see you go, dear. But really, to be honest, it would be better for me if you left. I want to get married again and having you in the house doesn’t help at all. It was very nice, what happened, but it couldn’t go on, could it?”
She is right, but the cool way she puts it leaves me a bit lost for words.
“You pack your things,” she says firmly, “and I’ll make us a nice tea to have before you go.”
I go upstairs feeling choked. I don’t want Mr. Greig sleeping in my bed or kicking his slippers off under Mrs. B.’s. I wish, too, I had got across Mrs. B. when I first had the chance. I hardly feel I have had my money’s worth.
Carefully draped across a chair, my Harlequin costume reminds me of the evening I will be missing. I have tried it on half a dozen times and would be the last person to deny that I look pretty magnetic in it. It is skintight so you get the total broad shoulders narrowing down to kitten hips bit, and with the mask to add an air of enticing mystery I would have been half-way to scoring before I opened my mouth.
The mask! A thought coincides with my discovery of the two quid admission ticket I had meant to give to Garth to flog. If I do look in for a couple of hours nobody need recognise me and it seems a shame to chuck a couple of oncers down the drain—not to mention the cost of hiring the costume.
That settles it. I throw my things in a case and spend fifteen minutes easing myself into my suit of lights. Snazzy is too small a word for it and my spirits perk up a bit. One thing I will say for myself: I may be a bit moody, but I am never down in the dumps for long.
Looking as good as I do, it is not surprising that I should draw a few admiring words from Mrs. B. and on the strength of this and with an attack of the ‘Auld Lang Synes’ surging through me I suggest that a bit of the other would be a nice way of saying goodbye—I also have two hours to kill before the carnival ball starts at nine o’clock and I don’t fancy wandering around the streets of Cromingham until then dressed in a style that might easily be misinterpreted by the bloody-minded locals. Unfortunately, Mrs. B. is not of a mood to take advantage of my suggestions and after a while I wish I had never raised the subject—about the time she hits me over the head with a frying-pan, in fact. This incident does at least rob our goodbyes of any lingering embarrassment and I find myself on the doorstep with my suitcase quivering beside me and her last words coming at me through the letterbox: “Don’t come back. If you’ve left anything, I’ll drop it in at the driving school.” I turn round and all the lace curtains in the street drop back into place.
What am I going to do now? Luckily it is a fine evening by local standards, so I can walk more or less upright to the bus stop and wait for half an hour for something to take me to the station. By the time it comes, there are four small urchins and a dog watching silently as if they expect a spacecraft to arrive for me instead of a bus.
“Gonk gannet gub gub,” I say to them humouringly as I climb aboard.
“Git you back to Lunnon, you girt nancy boy,” they shout. The passengers do not receive me any more warmly, but at least they keep their mouths shut, and, having overcome the embarrassment
of opening my suitcase to delve for the bus fare, I gratefully slip through the station entrance. There is a train in half an hour, which I am tempted to catch, but my native meanness and the considerable amount of liquor swilling about in my veins persuades me to stick it out until eleven forty-five, when the next and last train of the night goes. I commandeer the waiting-room and by putting a jacket and trousers over my costume manage to look less like a refugee from a Martini advertisement. In this condition I nip across the road to the Railway Hotel and sink a few swift pints until darkness coincides with the arrival of the nine-fifteen. Back to the station and I strip for action, leave my case with a suspicious porter and ring for a taxi.
The driver turns out to be the one who picked me up when I first arrived and is quick to remind me what a good memory he has.
“Hello, hello,” he says, “if it isn’t Anthony Armstrong-Jones come up for the festivities. No prizes for where you want to go to, squire.”
I smile grimly and we don’t speak again until I amaze him with the smallness of my tip at the golf club.
“Are you sure you can afford this?” he says sarcastically.
“Now you come to mention it,” I say, removing my tanner from his outspread palm, “no.”
He makes a few unpleasant remarks about my costume not being right for Shylock, but I ignore him and, pulling my mask over my eyes, I stride up the flight of steps in front of the club. A Dresden Shepherdess tears my ticket in half and I go through to mingle with the cream of Cromingham Society. A champagne buffet is included in the price of a ticket and if you look up ‘buffet’ in a dictionary you will see how accurately it is described: ‘knock, hurt, contend with’ it says, and if you want any champagne that is just what you have to do. Half Cromingham seems to be waging war over a pile of sausage rolls and cress sandwiches with a glass of lukewarm pomagne for the tenacious winners. I can resist this, and retire to the bar to case the joint. Minto and Cronk seem to have tables at opposite ends of the dance floor, which shows good planning on somebody’s part, and I can see Mrs. Dent dressed up as a pantomime cat, sitting by herself on a table with a Python’s Pesticides pennant on it. Normally I would not start moving in too early, but it is now ten o’clock and I have no time to waste. Pausing only to take a last, longing look at myself in the bar mirror, I skim over to Mrs. D.’s side.
“Would you care to dance?” I say in my best upper-crust accent. Mrs. D. cranes forward as if she has difficulty hearing me and it occurs to me that she might have had a few herself. Couldn’t be better.
“Do I know you?” she begins; then she waves her hand in a self-dismissing gesture and starts to get up. “Doesn’t matter whether I do or don’t. I’m not sitting here by myself any longer. Lead me to the floor.”
We weave our way unsteadily through the tables and I am just beginning to wonder whether the band are supposed to be playing a waltz or sounding the retreat when Mrs. D. grips my arm.
“Let’s go to the discotheque,” she says. “The sight of my husband chatting up the boss’s wife is more than my stomach can stand.”
I follow her glance and there is a balding thirty-five-year-old dancing elaborately with Mrs. Carstairs who has on her best ‘be nice to the natives’ expression. As we watch, Mr. D. starts patting his bonce with his breast pocket handkerchief and it is obvious that a combination of heat and nerves is bringing him out in a muck sweat. He looks less competition than Quasimodo with lockjaw, and this, coupled with the fact that Garth is tied up with Mrs. Cronk, makes me daring.
“Come on,” I say passionately. “I want to find somewhere where I can hold you very tight in my arms.”
I take her by the hand and lead her into the welcome darkness of the discotheque, which is full of twitchers and gropers, either doing the total dance bit or touching up each other’s wives. I fall very speedily into the second category and start moulding Mrs. D. to my torso like I am using her to take a plaster cast of my body.
“Hey,” she pants, “who are you? There’s something about you that’s familiar—apart from what you’re doing with your hands.”
“I took your knickers off once,” I say, “and I’d like to do it again. Right now!”
“Can’t you give me any more help than that?” she says.
I lean forward and whisper into her ear what I did when her knickers were off.
“Oh, I know who you are,” she says. “Colin Kelly.”
“No!”
“David McMillan? Peter Por—”
“Look! Let’s forget it,” I yelp. I mean, you can take just so much, can’t you?
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m a little bit pickled tonight, but—” she struggles close to me, “I’m certain whoever you were it was very nice. You’ve got a lovely body.”
“Just what I was going to say about you, darling,” I murmur, deciding to forgive her, “and very soft lips.” I am prepared to gamble that they don’t feel like emery paper and I am right.
“You might have worn a dress,” I grumble. “I want to put my hand up your skirt.”
“This takes off very easily.”
“But where?”
“That’s up to you.”
I seem to remember that we have been through all this before. But that time I was sober. Tonight I am drunk. And when I am drunk and there is a chance of getting my end away, I’d dive through a plate glass window for it.
“I’ve got a car outside,” I lie.
“I don’t like it in cars.”
“This is a big car.”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“Come on!” I kiss her passionately on the mouth, almost loosening one of my front teeth in the process. “I’ll see you round the corner from the front entrance.” I lead her back to the table before she can argue with me, and nod politely at Mr. D., who is leaning forward earnestly in case Mrs. Carstairs wants to stub a fag out in his ear. Mr. C.’s eyes flicker over me for a second, but I don’t think he remembers where we last met. Mrs. C. is dancing with somebody else. I thank Mrs. D. and make tracks for the side entrance which leads to the car park.
I need a pee but there is no time.
Outside the night air makes me giddy but I take a few deep breaths and start checking out the cars. There is a bloody great Vauxhall station wagon, an Alvis and—Minto’s Rolls. I wonder! It would give me a lot of satisfaction to have it away in the back of a Rolls—especially Minto’s. I might even forget to tidy up afterwards. I have no sooner tried the back door and found it open than I see Mrs. D. hovering in the entrance. I kiss her quickly and draw her after me into the shadows.
“This isn’t yours,” she hisses when she see the Rolls. “This is Major Minto’s. Supposing he comes back suddenly?”
“He won’t,” I comfort her. “He’s drawing the raffle at midnight.” This, of course, is a complete lie but it shows you how fast on my feet I can be. ‘Lea the flea’ they call me. I kiss her again and pull her into the car. The door shuts on us with a click as gentle as the snapping of a sparrow’s wishbone.
“Roomy, isn’t it?” I murmur, but Mrs. D. was never one to waste precious moments on conversation. She starts kissing me like she is trying to make my mouth fray at the edges and her fingers tie knots in the hair at the nape of my neck. It is no problem finding the zip of her cat-suit and as it plunges down to the small of her back she wriggles forward so that I can feel that she is not wearing a bra. I run my finger over her body and she sinks down until she is lying across the length of the back seat. I peel off her suit, which for some bloody stupid reason reminds me of the Babygro my sister Rosie’s kid used to wear, and see she is naked except for a pair of panties. I take a firm grip on these and as our mouths meet again I pull them down inch by inch over her straining body. She must be near coming now because her legs are rigid and trembling, and I’m not exactly thinking about Chelsea Reserves’ chances in the London Combination Cup either.
“Lick me,” she moans. “Please lick me.”
Well, you don�
�t like to disappoint people, do you? And, as I’ve said before, get a few beers inside me and I make your average eyetie seem like Sir Alec Douglas Home with a heavy cold. I am kneeling on the thick pile carpet and just about to make her a very happy lady when I am reminded again of my body’s urgent need for a piss. Better to go now, I think, for in a few minutes it’s going to be impossible. So, detaching myself with difficulty from Mrs. D.’s imploring fingers, I tell her where I am going and nip over to the nearest wall.
I don’t know how many of you have experience of pissing with a hard on but it is bloody difficult. With my hampton sticking up in the air like a level-crossing pole, I nearly pee up my own nostril and end up scoring a direct hit on the Vent-Axia unit. I have just tucked everything away and am about to return to the quivering Mrs. D. when somebody comes round the corner and I shrink back into the shadows. It is, in fact, two people, and to my amazement I recognise Dawn and Tony Sharp, the star-crossed lovers of the Shermer Sevens.
“Oh, God, I want you,” breathes Sharp, sounding like a poor imitation of me a few minutes earlier. “I’ve got to have you.”
They clinch enthusiastically and for a few moments I think they are going to have it away there and then. Before they can prove me right, there is the sound of somebody else approaching and Gruntscomb of the Echo looms into the light.
“Oh, excuse me,” he mumbles, “not trying to be a Peeping Tom. Oh, it’s you, Mr. Sharp. Good evening. Sorry about your accident today, but it didn’t half make a lovely picture, didn’t it? Did you see it in tonight’s Echo? I should think your friend Cronk must have felt like shutting up shop immediately. And, you know—” he drops his voice conspiratorially, “—there’s better to follow. We’ve got an interview with the man, Roper, who was driving the Morris, and he has practically admitted that it was the pressure that he was subjected to when he was with the E.C.D.S. that made him crack up. That’s not going to do them any good, is it? We’re printing his story tomorrow and we can get a very good slant on it, if you know what I mean.”
“You’re doing a grand job,” says Sharp hurriedly, obviously worried because Dawn had been listening. “Enjoy yourself—we’ll be in touch.”
