by Timothy Lea
“So, he came home unexpected, did he?” he beams. “I wish I had a pound note for every time it had happened to me. Good luck to you, lad.” And off he goes swaying slightly and chuckling to himself whilst he prods hopefully for the key hole.
Dame Fortune is obviously splitting her face in my direction and as danger recedes so my happily pissed feeling returns as if it has just been hiding away in an odd corner of my body till the trouble blew over. Fresh from the jaws of danger I decide that it is a marvellous moment to go and propose to Elizabeth. Half naked and glistening with dew and sweat I will be revealed in the back garden hurling handfulls of earth against her bedroom window. Crummy Charlton Heston couldn’t do it better – certainly not in my condition. I am so possessed of the strange feeling that I have to go to Elizabeth. It’s like a murderer giving himself up. I feel that someone there is saying, “Right, lad, we got you out of that one, but there’s a condition, see?”
Now the problem is how to get there. Elizabeth’s place is a couple of miles and it is beginning to rain. Wearing just a pair of trousers I do look a bit unusual and not everybody I meet is going to be as pissed as my friend on the steps. It occurs to me, in a blinding flash of inspiration, that if I take my trousers off and run in my pants people will think I am some barmy athlete out training. Trouble is, as I discover when my jeans hit the ground, my pants are still in the flat.
This could be a problem but luckily my guardian angel is still earning her keep because I come round the corner to find she has left a brand new bike there for me. There is no one about and it isn’t padlocked so in no time I’m whizzing away on my errand of love listening to the hum of the wheels and feeling the rain sting my face. Exhilarating is the word for it, I think, and I’m almost singing out loud when I skim to a halt a few houses away from Elizabeth’s place. I prop the bike up against the fence and pad down to Number 47. My feet feel like raw frankfurters but I don’t care and swing my leg noiselessly over the gate. There is not a soul about and the only light comes from a street lamp about fifty yards away. Round the side of the house just brushing against a dustbin lid which refuses to fall – it’s my lucky night, see? – and I’m in the back garden. The rain is falling steadily now and I stand there feeling the wet grass beneath my feet and sucking in mouthfuls of air. I’ve had some good times I think to myself, but I’m not sorry it’s all going to change. I look up to the grey waste of the sky and wonder how I will feel in the morning; what I will say to Mum and what Sid will think about it. Rosie will probably start snivelling and Dad will just shake his head and ask if we intend to move in alongside of Sid, Rosie and the baby. I can see it all. Of course, this presupposes that Elizabeth will say yes, but that is an odds on certainty. The bird has been angling for it since the first time I took her out.
I pick out Elizabeth’s window and go over to one of the flowerbeds for a handful of earth. As I bend down, a cat glides silently along the wall above me and my eye follows it up to the small shed at the end of the garden. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I can see a light glowing in the darkness. Perhaps Elizabeth’s old man has forgotten to turn off the lamp he uses in there. As a future son-in-law it is my duty to protect his property so I slope off to see what I can do.
When I get nearer I can see a line of light around the door and am amazed to hear someone talking in a low voice. Even more amazed when I recognise who it is.
“Oh, that was wonderful,” sighs the girl. “I’d no idea it could be like that. You are clever. You’re so clever.”
An ice cold current of electricity surges through my stomach and I try to make myself believe that this is not happening to me. I must be drunk, or dreaming – or anything!
“It’s easy when it’s with you,” the other voice is also known to me and the pain becomes unbearable. “I could go on doing it all night. I don’t know what it is, but you really turn me on—”
“Oh Sid.”
“Liz.”
Now, if I had any sense I’d bite my lip and tiptoe quietly away writing it all down to experience. Sid has done me a favour really. Better now than when we’ve got hitched. God, how bloody stupid can you get? There I was, deciding to give it all up and settle down with this quiet, demure little girl who would make me a good wife and mother, and all the time the dirty little slut is having it away with Sid. There’s no justice in the world, is there? No wonder blokes go off the rails. ‘I’d no idea it could be like that.’ Bloody hell!
“Sid!”
“Oh Liz.”
Bloody hell!!! My howl of rage must be heard the other side of Tooting Bec Common. I go through the door like it’s wet tissue paper and there is Elizabeth lying on her back on the workbench with Sid standing between her legs.
“You bastard!”
“Hey, what the—”
“Oh, no!”
There’s no point in describing it in detail, and I can’t remember exactly what happened anyway. All I know is that when I leave that shed, it is through a gap in the plywood walls which has been made by Sid’s body. Every light in the neighbourhood is on and Elizabeth’s screams suggest a big future in grand opera – provided she can get the fish glue out of her hair – both sets.
I step over Sid and stride away down the garden. Some blokes would probably be able to think of something comforting and profound at a moment like this, but I’m buggered if I can.
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Confessions of a Night Nurse
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Copyright
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain in 1971 by Sphere Books Ltd
This ebook edition first published by The Friday Project in 2013
Copyright © Timothy Lea 1971
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007516018
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