Confessions of a Travelling Salesman

by Timothy Lea

  ‘Anything we can do to help?’

  ‘Well, there is one thing. Cheryl’s hair dryer seems to be acting up. I’d be very grateful if you could look at it.’

  Arthur shoots me a ‘you heard what the lady said, now beat it’ look, and I am quick to express my enthusiasm for the task.

  ‘It’s in her bedroom. Top of the stairs, turn right.’

  The polished rail runs smoothly under my fingers as I glide up the staircase and I push open the door that is ajar before me.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  Cheryl Vickers has taken her jumper off and is standing in front of the mirror revealing that she must have burnt her bra weeks before. I notice that her breasts are all-over suntanned. Maybe she pops over to Mrs. Bennett’s to sunbathe. There is no hint of embarrassment in her voice as she calmly continues to brush her hair. It is a pursuit that makes her breasts stand out very nicely indeed.

  ‘If you were sorry,’ she says, ‘you wouldn’t be standing there gawping at me.’

  ‘I’m not gawping,’ I say. ‘I’m just a connoisseur of beautiful things.’ Pretty smooth, eh? I got that out of an old Rossano Brazzi movie. Maybe I should have left it there.

  ‘Yuk!’ says Cheryl. ‘Have you ever thought about compering “Come Dancing”?’

  ‘Your mum said you had a hair dryer that needed mending?’ I say hurriedly, deciding that the lark-tongued side of my personality is wasted on this chick. My first impulse was clearly the right one.

  ‘It’s not one of yours,’ she says with obvious satisfaction. ‘I’m going to take my jeans off now. Promise you won’t make some stomach-turning reference to the colour of my panties?’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear you wear any,’ I say. ‘Now, give me the dryer before I bash you over the nut with it.’

  ‘There’s no need to be bloody rude,’ she says, shoving the dryer into my hand.

  ‘Look who’s talking. You’ve hardly said a civil word since I came through the door.’

  Her pants are a deep purple colour with a kind of crochet pattern running through them. I remember seeing them on the expensive counter at Marks and Sparks. They are special favourites of mine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m a bit on edge at the moment.’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Oh, lots of things. I’m fed up with hanging about here and yet I don’t seem to be able to pull myself together and do something about it; and I’m fed up with mum pussyfooting around with the likes of your friend Mr. Seaton.’

  ‘She’s a very attractive woman, your mother. You can’t blame her –’

  ‘I don’t blame her. I wish she would do something about it. She’s so, so genteel. I suppose that’s the right word.’

  ‘But Seaton gives me the message that you’re always getting in the way.’ Cheryl blushes.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I fancy him myself.’

  ‘You what!’ So that is what that funny look in the hall meant – Blimey, I seem to be losing out to the Sanatogen brigade all over town.

  ‘Oh, yes. I think he’s terribly sexy. That wispy, greying hair and those incredible bags under his eyes. I love men whose faces look as if they’ve been lived in.’ I can understand that, but Seaton’s face looks as if it has been lived in by a colony of woodworm.

  ‘He’s old enough to be your father,’ I blurt out and then a thought occurs to me. Ja, Herr Doctor, it eez all ver zimple. Ze child haz lozt her fader, nein? Zo she identifies mit ze Zeaton who becomes ze fader figure unt de lover. Eez, zimple, nein?

  ‘I don’t care what he is,’ she says. ‘I think he’s smashing. All the fellows I meet of my own age are only interested in getting these off.’ She points to her knickers. ‘Now your friend. He’s so gentle. When I see him fussing over mum and her just sitting there simpering, it makes me want to hug him. I wish he had come up here to mend the dryer.’

  ‘Yes’ I say thoughtfully. ‘Put your dressing gown on, I’ve got an idea.’ I hate to leave such a delectable flesh banquet but it is obvious that owing to the strange workings of the female mind, there is one better equipped to take advantage of it than I.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says as I get up. ‘What about the dryer?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I say, heading for the door. ‘Everything is going to be alright.’

  Just as I had expected, Mrs. V. and Arthur are sat down at opposite sides of the kitchen table having a cup of tea. The atmosphere is about as laden with suppressed sexuality as an old age pensioner’s drag contest. It occurs to me that Arthur Seaton’s trousers probably only come down just before he climbs into bed with Mrs. Seaton, and then when she is facing the wall. Maybe Cheryl will be able to do something about that.

  ‘I’m sorry, Arthur,’ I say, ‘but I can’t make head or tail of it. I think you’d better have a look.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ he says, sounding a bit narky at being disturbed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘That’s the trouble. It needs a real pro.’ I smile at Mrs. V. and she smiles back. Arthur finishes his tea and stands up.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he says. Personally, I have my doubts, but I don’t say anything.

  He goes out and Mrs. V. nods towards the tea pot.

  ‘Do you fancy a cup?’

  ‘Lovely, ta.’ I sit down and immediately gaze moodily into Mrs. V.’s eyes. I keep this up while she prattles on asking me how long I have worked with Arthur and all that kind of thing. I can see that she is aware of my attentive eyes but it takes her a few minutes to get around to commenting on them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she says eventually.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I murmur.

  ‘Thinking what?’

  ‘That you are more beautiful than Cheryl. She’s lovely of course. But she hasn’t quite got your refinement of feature.’ That’s a smashing phrase, isn’t it? I got it out of a racehorse’s obituary. Mrs. V. obviously fancies it because she blushes.

  ‘She has her father’s colouring,’ she says. I nod understandingly.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that,’ I continue, ‘but you did ask me.’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m very flattered. People are always telling me how pretty Cheryl is.’

  ‘Never you?’ I give her my brooding look and her eyes falter.

  ‘Well, there are—I have been—’

  I stand up and walk round the table.

  ‘I think you’re beautiful,’ I say, ‘very, very beautiful.’

  ‘Mr. Leak!’ Her voice combines surprise, pleasure and a hint of wariness.

  ‘Look at me,’ I order her. A good tip, this. If you are looking each other straight in the eyes it raises everything to a more superior plain. Also the bird cannot see what your hands are doing. Mrs. V. looks up at me nervously and I smile down at her. A smile laden with warmth, good fellowship and sheer naked lust. ‘I want to make love to you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No buts. From the first moment I clapped hands on you, I mean, eyes on you, I felt I was in the grip of some superior destiny. I was being told what to do by something bigger than I was.’ Certainly, something down the front of my trousers is a lot bigger than it was. ‘Don’t you feel it?’ I say passionately. I snatch up one of Mrs. V.’s hands and draw her to her feet. She offers no resistance and I put my arms round her.

  ‘But I hardly know you,’ she breathes.

  ‘This was the way nature intended us to become acquainted,’ I pant. ‘It has to be, can’t you feel it?’ She should be able to, standing where she is.

  ‘But we can’t, not here, can we?’ she asks. ‘What about Cheryl?’

  ‘Cheryl’s gone out,’ I lie, ‘and Arthur will take hours to fix that drier. It’s a big job and he’s very conscientious.’ I slide my hand gently up the front of her skirt and she starts shivering.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over me,’ she says. ‘I haven’t felt like this for years.’

  ‘You must have,’ I
murmur. ‘It’s just that you never let yourself go.’

  ‘Come in the sitting room,’ she says, ‘it’s too crowded in here.’

  She leads me out into the hall and listens for a moment at the bottom of the stairs. I hold my breath but luckily no sound can be heard. God knows what they are doing up there.

  ‘I expect he’s hard at it,’ I say, not meaning to be funny. She nods and opens the door into the sitting room. Two armchairs, sofa, telly, gas fire with artificial log effect, horse brasses, flying ducks and a hairy white rug. It is the last feature that catches my eye.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s in an awful –’ she begins, but she never finishes. My mouth dives onto hers and as I push the door shut with my foot I steer her backwards towards the rug. She is wearing a long dress that buttons up from top to bottom and I have all the buttons undone in the space of one extended kiss. Not the only thing that is being extended either. The front of my trousers should be reinforced with high breaking-strain nylon thread to withstand the bashing it is getting. Some subtle process must have transferred this thought to Mrs. V.’s mind because her friendly fingers work speedily to release the pressure on my flies.

  ‘Oh,’ she gasps, ‘it’s been so long, so long.’ I know just how she feels and I too lose no time in freeing her shapely nether regions for a spot of in-and-out. Soon her fingers are entwined in the man-made fibres of the rug and she is uttering man-made squeaks of ecstasy as my eager body becomes the bow that plays love’s old sweet melody across her curvaceous hips. In fact, if she had a theme song, it would be ‘Cello, Dolly’. (Think about it, unless it proves too painful.)

  ‘Oh!’ she yelps. ‘I’m comings Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!’ I am very glad she says that because my own restraint is evaporating so fast that I don’t reckon on taking a taxi down to the Y.M.C.A. to boast about it. Gratefully, I let my evil impulses have their way, and Mrs. V and I shudder into squeaking ecstasy like a couple of over-inflated balloons escaping from restraining fingers.

  Of course, it is only my first day, but I think I am going to enjoy being a salesman for HomeClean Products.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the half of it,’ says Arthur.

  ‘Try me,’ I say.

  We are sitting in the Delilah Coffee Bar, the next morning, discussing the previous afternoon – or rather, Arthur is describing and I am listening.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you some of the things that girl did,’ says Arthur with prudish satisfaction.

  ‘What sort of things?’ I ask eagerly.

  ‘I’d be too embarrassed to tell you,’ he says after considering a moment.

  ‘But you let her do them?’

  Arthur pauses. ‘I still don’t feel right about it.’

  ‘What did she do, for God’s sake?’

  Arthur looks me in the eye and then looks away again.

  ‘Things that animals do to each other.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ I say. Arthur shakes his head.

  ‘It’s terrible really. I feel ashamed of myself.’

  ‘But she fancied you. She told me so herself.’

  ‘I should never have taken advantage of her.’

  ‘But she wanted you to.’

  ‘She needs psychological help, that girl.’

  ‘Arthur, please! I reckon anybody who fancies you needs psychological help! Don’t get your knickers in a twist about it.’ Arthur draws himself up to his full five foot eight and a half inches.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he says. ‘This kind of thing is happening to me all the time. It’s just that usually I say “no”. I don’t have any shortage of opportunities, believe me. Incidentally, where were you?’

  ‘Did you look in the garden?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s where we were. She’s got some very nice begonias, you know.’

  ‘That’s funny. I thought she only had a window box.’

  ‘You must be mixing her up with one of your other lady friends.’ My remark is intended to divert the sensitive Seaton from discovering the extent of my activities with his erstwhile love and it does not fail.

  ‘You mind what you’re saying,’ he snaps. ‘I’m not one of your hanky panky merchants.’

  ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I assure him. ‘Now, where are we going to start today?’

  The rest of the week is downright disappointing by Monday’s standards and it is not until the following Tuesday that I bump into someone capable of making my pulse quicken. Strangely enough it is not a customer but a competitive lady, a demonstrator, who works for HomeClean’s deadly rivals, U.H.A., Universal Home Appliances. I bump into her in an Electricity Board showroom where she is discussing the price of butter with the resident HomeClean demonstrator and a bird from another firm. It is easy to tell the demonstrators when you go into a store because, unlike the salespeople who merely look disinterested, they give the impression of being capable of killing you if you interrupt their conversation. Also, despite the fact that they work for rival firms they are all terribly matey with each other. The last fact has to do with their belief that they were born to do better things than discuss washing machines with peasants and that if there was any justice in the world they would all be Paul Getty’s widows.

  I do not know this when I first see Rose Dunchurch – she sounds like a village in the west country, doesn’t she? – and therefore my natural Lea high spirits get me off on the wrong foot.

  Seeing me gazing at the U.H.A. Washwhiz while I try to work out in what way, if any, it differs from the HomeClean WonderWasher, she misinterprets my interest and glides towards me like a crocodile approaching breakfast.

  ‘Thinking about a washing machine, sah?’ she says, all posh-like.

  ‘I seldom think about anything else,’ I say as her eyebrows go up. ‘Tell me, they all look the same to me. What’s so remarkable about this one?’

  ‘In a word, sah,’ she says, ‘“Tickle tension”.’

  ‘“Tickle tension”,’ I gulp. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘That is the unique U.H.A. wash action that extends the fabric being washed and gently tickles the dirt from it. Strong but gentle. There’s no tangling, no clumsy propellers to damage your clothes. Independent tests have proved –’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I say, because I have heard all that before, ‘but is this washing action strong enough to get the dirt out of really dirty garments? I mean, my flatmate does a lot of moto-cross. I reckon it’s going to take more than tickling to get the mud out of that lot.’

  In fact the Washwhiz is a first rate product and I am only repeating the line we have been told to spin the trade. Sales Education have decided that ‘Tickle tension’ sounds a bit feeble and are casually dropping it about that the machine would not pull a boyscout off his sister.

  ‘Oh, no, sah,’ she says, shaking her head in amazement that such old wives tales should still persist. ‘There is no diminution in washing efficacy.’ She uses words like that because she is pretty certain I am not going to understand them. This is another pretty standard selling ploy and usually revolves around product description: ‘You see, madam, the centrifugal drag factor is starboggled by countersunk flange gussets to maintain the perfect balance between fabric safety and drying efficiency’. This, at a pinch, could be used to explain why your machine spin dries worse than anything else on the market. Few customers wish to reveal themselves as the kind of idiot who does not understand about countersunk flange gussets and most of them are impressed by any word they have never heard before. Rose Dunchurch continues, the U.H.A. badge on her generous knockers trembling with selling zeal.

  ‘Don’t be misled into thinking that because the keynote of the Tickle tension washing action is gentleness you are losing out on cleaning power. I know there are other machines on the market that give the impression of a lot going on when you look through the port-hole, but in fact, some of the more powerful actions are too powerful. They are actually driving the dirt deeper into the clothes!’


  ‘No!’ I gasp.

  ‘Yes!’ Miss Dunchurch begins to close in for the kill. ‘Now, with Tickle tension, the whole surface of the article to be washed is opened out,’ she gently opens a folded tea-cloth, ‘not screwed into a ball as happens with some washing machines.’ Her face contorts with disgust and she viciously mangles the tea towel. By the cringe, but she is a strong girl. ‘Now,’ her voice softens again, ‘with the Washwhiz we open up the fabric rather like a flower responding to sunshine,’ I suppress a wince. What diabolical adman could have thought of that one! ‘Gentle jets of water play on the fabric as it circulates, easing out the dirt.’ She agitates the cloth between her fingers and I watch her breasts quivering. I like it when she does that.

  ‘Sounds very good,’ I say earnestly, ‘but I was thinking about a Wonderwasher. They speak very highly of it in the advertisements.’

  Miss Dunchurch looks round carefully to see if the HomeClean Demonstrator is within earshot. She is not.

  ‘Personally,’ says Miss D., ‘I have the highest respect for HomeClean. They make some wonderful products. Their electric pruners, for instance – absolutely first class. But –’ a teeny note of doubt creeps into her voice, ‘I have never been absolutely one hundred per cent confident about their washing machines. I suppose it all boils down to the question of personal experience, whether tangling is something you worry about, how handy you are with a sewing machine –’

  ‘Oh, there you are Timmy, sorry I’m late. Hello, Rose.’ Arthur has crept up behind me unnoticed. Miss Dunchurch’s face registers instant distaste.

  ‘Is he one of yours?’ she says to Arthur as if referring to a puppy that has just relieved itself against her ankle.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘you were doing such a good job I didn’t have the heart to stop you.’

  ‘There is a code,’ she says witheringly. ‘Even in this business one has ethics.’

  ‘I prefer Suffolk myself,’ I say, ‘not so flat.’

  My little joke goes unnoticed as Miss D. continues her outburst of righteous indignation.

  ‘You don’t care do you,’ says Arthur later. ‘She’ll put in a complaint for certain. Head office are very sticky about things like that.’