by Timothy Lea
‘Do you have another one?’ says Sid.
I turn in time with Mrs Ripley and my sleeve brushes against something. There is a loud shattering noise.
‘Not any more,’ says Mrs R cheerfully. ‘Look what’s inside this one. He’s a naughty little boy, isn’t he. We take a butchers at about forty furry crusts. ‘I’ll get a dustpan and brush,’ says Sid.
‘Don’t worry,’ says the bird. ‘You go upstairs. I’ll attend to this. And mind that curtain. It’s very easy to catch your foot and –’
If it had been left to me, I would never have put the stuffed owl there in the first place. The curtain pole smashes the glass case and the owl slowly topples forward on to the table and lies on its back with one claw pointing accusingly at Sid.
‘That was bloody clumsy of you,’ says Sid.
‘What do you mean!?’ I say. ‘It was your foot in the curtain.’
‘But you nudged me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ breezes Mrs Ripley. ‘If anybody’s to blame it’s me. I kept meaning to take that damn hem up.’ She examines the two-foot rip as Sid removes one of his plates. ‘I won’t have to bother now.’
‘This is terrible!’ bleats Sid as we reach the landing. ‘We can’t afford any more breakages.’
‘Mind those little ornaments,’ I say.
‘What little ornaments?’
‘Like the one you’re standing on.’
‘Oh my gawd!’ Sid sweeps up the shattered remains. ‘Those little Neasden Shepherdesses are worth a few bob, aren’t they?’
‘Dresden Shepherdesses,’ I say. ‘It seems to me they put everything in bloody stupid places in this house.’
Sid shoves the broken bits of the shepherdess in his pocket. ‘Yeah. They got to expect a few breakages, haven’t they? Still, we must be careful. We don’t want to give people the impression that we’re slapdash.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I say, arranging the rest of the ornaments along the shelf so that there is no obvious gap. ‘Do you think it’s favourite to start at the top?’
‘Definitely,’ says Sid. ‘That way, when we’re knackered, we’ll be at the bottom and we won’t have so far to carry the stuff.’
‘On the other hand, if we cleared the stuff at the bottom first, we wouldn’t have so much to bump into on the way down.’
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ says Sid. ‘That smacks of sound reasoning. Now you have me in two minds.’
‘You should be grateful for either of them,’ I say.
Sid does not care for the tone of that remark and draws back his arm to deliver a clip round the earhole. There is an ugly crunching noise and he turns to see that he has put his elbow through the glass over a picture. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ he says.
‘I think it’s rather nice,’ I say. ‘I mean, the way it splinters out like the rays of the rising sun. It is a bit Japanesey, anyway.’
‘You’re going to get one of my japankneesies in your ballsies if you’re not careful!’ hisses Sid. ‘Pull yourself together for gawd’s sake!’
We go into the first room at the top of the stairs and there is an enormous double bed. ‘Thank goodness we don’t have to move that,’ I say.
Sid looks at it with a wistful expression on his mug. ‘Yeah,’ he says.
‘Moved it before, have you?’ I say. ‘Up and down, perhaps?’
‘Don’t be disgusting,’ says Sid. ‘You sully something rare and special when you talk like that. What Maureen and I shared was, well, beautiful. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. Our idol was touched by magic.’
‘Your idle what?’ I ask.
‘Idle nothing, you ignorant twit!’ bawls Sid. ‘I was referring to our rustic interlude, our I-D-Y-L-L.’
‘That’s pronounced idyll,’ I say. ‘Blimey, Sid. It’s no wonder people can’t understand you.’
‘It doesn’t matter how it’s pronounced,’ says Sid impatiently. ‘It’s the depth of feeling that counts. Oh, Timmo, don’t you get it?’
‘Now and then,’ I say.
‘You’re so coarse,’ sniffs Sid. ‘Untouched by higher feelings. Don’t you detect that Maureen is different to other women?’
‘Not with the naked eye,’ I say. ‘You’ve obviously seen more of her than I have.’
Sid shakes his head and closes his eyes despairingly. ‘I’m referring to spiritual qualities,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t that woman’s fragile innocence break over you in waves?’
‘Fragile innocence?’ I say. ‘You are referring to Big Knockers? I thought she was about as spiritual as a brick chicken house.’
The trouble with Sid is that his stupidity is laced with a strong streak of romanticism. Before he got hitched to my sister Rosie he thought that he was the only thing standing between her and the nunnery. In fact, what Rosie didn’t know about the facts of life could be written on a piece of confetti, leaving plenty of room for the manufacturer’s name.
‘Watch it!’ snarls Sid. ‘I had something very big going with that woman.’
‘It can’t be what I’m thinking of, then,’ I say. ‘Tell me, what was it?’
‘You can sneer,’ says Sid. ‘But there was a time when our relationship seriously threatened the fabric of my marriage to your sister. That’s why I had to break it off.’
‘I think you broke a bit too much off,’ I say. ‘You can overdo these things, you know.’
Sid shows no signs of having heard me. ‘Must be going on for three years since I last saw her. When we started this lot up I decided to circularise her.’
‘You haven’t got the training,’ I tell him. ‘You nearly fainted when they had that commercial for blood donors on the telly. Anyway, you can’t do it to women, can you?’
‘What are you on about?’ says Sid. ‘I’m baring my heart to you and all you can do is take the piss. You’re not dealing with a scrubber, you know. This woman is class and refinement down to the tips of her toenails. You’ve never met anything like it so you don’t know. Take my word for it, sonny. Maureen makes Barbara Cartland seem like Albert Steptoe in drag.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I say, thoughtfully. ‘She does look a bit funny, doesn’t she?’
For a moment I think that Sid is going to belt me. ‘Are you talking about Maureen?’ he says.
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Barbara Cartland.’
At that moment, the woman herself walks in carrying a bottle of champagne – I mean Maureen Ripley, not Barbara Cartland. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I thought we might have a drink to cheer ourselves up. It’s a sad moment moving house, isn’t it? What you might call a touching experience.’
So saying, she squeezes Sid’s upper thigh – quite a long way up in fact and veering over towards regions adjacent. It may be unkind of me but I can’t help thinking that Sid’s impression of Mrs Ripley as being fragile and refined could be a bit exaggerated.
‘Oh yes,’ says Sid. ‘Well, we haven’t got very far yet.’
Mrs Ripley swells out her bristols and lightly runs her fingers up Sid’s chest. ‘That’s not like you, Sid. You used to be a fast worker.’
‘We’re just sizing the job up,’ I say, making no secret of the fact that my minces are browsing over the rich pasture of the lady’s breasts. ‘Shall I open that?’
After a couple of seconds, she realises that I am talking about the champagne and not her lace-up blouse. ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Would you?’
‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ I say, pouting my tiptoes at her.
As you can see, I have decided that it is time to mesmerise her with the breathless suavity of my savoire faire, to say nothing of my je ne sais quoi. I have never opened a bottle of champagne before but it must be just like the pomagne stuff we had at Aunty Nora’s silver wedding party – where Dad was sick in the window box. All you had to do was unwind the wire and shake it about until the cork began to work loose.
‘I’ll pop out and get some glasses,’ says Mrs R.
Sid can hardly wait till she is through
the door before he is on at me. ‘Are you trying to prove something?’ he says. ‘Stop messing about. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Here it comes!’
I do not exaggerate. A froth of champagne sploshes all over the pink eiderdown. If Sid did not act with unusual quick-wittedness and whip a chamber pot out of a bedside cabinet we would be in real trouble.
Maureen Ripley re-enters the room with a tray of glasses as I stand holding the neck of the bottle over the rim of Sid’s pot. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have it out of a glass?’ she says.
Sid blushes. ‘I’m afraid we had a little accident,’ he says. ‘My partner is a bit of a berk on the quiet.’
Mrs Ripley looks at the bed. ‘Oh dear. Never mind, I expect it will be all right if we leave it to dry. Worse things have happened.’ She gives Sid a meaningful glance and, seizing the neck of the champagne bottle between finger and thumb, directs it over her glass. When she has helped herself, she flicks a finger against the froth at the rim of the bottle and licks it. The way she does it sends shivers down the length of my one-eyed trouser snake. If Sid thinks that butter would not melt in this bird’s mouth then he should have his hampton examined. I would not reckon on a pound of lard retaining solid shape five seconds after it had passed through her cake hole.
‘You want us to leave the bed, don’t you?’ I say, giving her the famous Lea slow burn.
‘You can’t leave something you haven’t got into, can you?’ she says, knowingly. ‘Come on, drink up.’
I am strictly a bitter man myself and I find the taste of Mrs Ripley’s champagne a lot less to my liking than the pomagne we had at Aunty Nora’s knees up – it is not so sweet for one thing. What I will say for it is that it certainly gets you pissed quick. Hardly has the contents of the second glass slipped down my hairy goat than I am feeling decidedly light-headed. I slip out to the karsi for a Swiss Miss and when I return, Mrs Ripley is standing by the window with her arm round Sid’s waist.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Sid,’ she is saying. ‘You used to be so lively.’ She turns to me. ‘Your friend here seems to have much more get up and go.’ She rubs her hand up and down my Derby Kell and makes ‘Grrgh!!’ noises.
‘Sid lives in the past, sometimes,’ I say, throwing in a bit of the old character analysis. It always goes down a treat with the birds. They love raking through their mental make-up boxes.
‘I used to be like that, once,’ says the lovely Mrs R. ‘Then I started living for the future. Now, it’s the present every time. “Do it now”, that’s my motto.’ She tosses back the rest of her glass of champagne and bites me on the chest. Yes, just like that. It quite takes my breath away.
‘Has your husband got the day off for the move?’ says Sid in a strained voice.
Maureen nods. ‘He’s waiting at Peterborough. There’s no one going to interrupt us here. Oooooooh! Just think what we could get up to.’
A number of possibilities are occurring to me and it seems not beyond the wilder realms of speculation that a spot of group activity should feature amongst them. Whilst never loath to dish it out amongst a bevy of bints I am less enthusiastic about playing slot the gopher when the teams are unequally weighted in the male’s favour. However, in this instance, maybe I should reconsider my position – or positions, you never know your luck. The continuing presence of Maureen Ripley in Sid’s excuse for a mind is clearly a threat to the stability of my sister’s marriage. If I can help lay the ghost of the past and prove to Sid that Mrs R is not what he has cracked her up to be then I will be striking an important blow for the cause of family unity. At the very least I will be getting my end away which can’t be bad.
‘Do you think we ought to take the eiderdown off the bed?’ I say.
‘Just fold it back,’ says Mrs Ripley giving me a highly naughty look.
‘I don’t think it’s gone through,’ I say.
Mrs Ripley scrambles on to the bed and hauls her knockers over the spot where any stain would be likely to show itself. From where I am standing you could post early for Christmas in her cleavage. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing there.’
This is not a remark that could be made about the front of my overall. It is standing room only at crutch level.
Mrs R runs her tongue over her lips and slides her legs down the bed so that her skirt rides up to her thighs. If this was not enough to put your hampton on purple alert she lies back against the pillow and pats the bed beside her. ‘It’s very soft,’ she says.
One of the few things that is, I think to myself as I glance across at Sid. He looks like a man under strain and is fiddling nervously with the stem of his empty champagne glass. So nervously that it breaks in two. Maureen Ripley gives him what might be described as a melting look. ‘You don’t know your own strength, do you, Sidney?’ she says.
Sid gulps. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.’
‘Well, it certainly won’t be me at this rate’, sniffs Mrs R, turning to me. ‘Do you want to test the posture springing, Chu-Chi Face?’
It seems like an offer nobody could refuse and when Mrs Ripley stretches out her hand I sink down on the bed like heavy dust. Hardly have I dented the upholstery than Mrs R has puckered up her cakehole trimming and is directing it unerringly towards my own fair lips. She rolls over against me and her body seems to be touching mine at about half a dozen different places.
‘Kiss me!!’ she says like Barbra Streisand finding that the last train leaves town in five minutes.
I don’t have time to consider the suggestion because she has launched herself on to my lips like they are a couple of fat, pink mice about to take refuge behind my teeth, and she is a starving moggy.
‘Ah hem,’ says Sid. ‘It’s time we got down to it, I think, Timmo.’
I don’t answer him for obvious reasons and marvel at the practised ease with which Mrs R whips out my dick. It reminds me of my Uncle Norbert filleting a kipper – not, I hasten to add, that there is anything unwholesome about Uncle Norbert, apart from the fact that he only changes his socks when England win the World Cup.
‘There’s work to be done,’ says Sid uncomfortably. ‘I can’t do it all by myself, you know.’
Mrs Ripley rises swiftly to her knees and proceeds to unzip her skirt. I pull it down and get on with removing my own clothing. The bed is bouncing up and down like a trampoline. Anybody coming through the door would think that it was some kind of party game with Sid as the referee. Mrs R’s Manchesters are really jumbo numbers and it is not surprising that she lies on the bed once she has slung her tit sling. If she caught herself under the chin with one of them, it could do a lot of damage. Once her shoulders are against the sheets, she arches her back and invites me to remove her panties. Not with any words but with a quick wriggle of her hips. I am down to the Y-fronts by this time and percy is trying to prise them off by himself. He has climbed over the rim and is exerting strong downward leverage. Mrs R is not slow to play the US Cavalry and her helpful fingers allow my action man kit to lunge forward like one of those cannon at the Tower of London. I peel off her panties and we are both starkers and waiting for the off – or, more appropriately, on.
It is at about this time that I am conscious of the sound of heavy breathing coming from neither Maureen nor myself. As percy commences his journey into the interior and Mrs R closes her fingers tightly round my sit feature, I turn my head and catch a glimpse of Sid hopping round the room trying to pull his trousers over his shoes. It is only a glimpse because he topples backwards and disappears from view accompanied by the sound of breaking furniture.
‘Join us when you can, Sidney,’ says Mrs R, baring her teeth. ‘There’s no hurry.’
‘I’ll be right with you,’ pants Sid. ‘Just as soon as I’ve got my foot out of this bleeding potty!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Now it is not often that I can be accused of reticence – mainly because I can say, with complete justificati
on, that I have no idea what it means – but our session with Mrs Maureen – ‘More in than out’ – Ripley is another matter. You would not cocoa some of the things that go on. I hardly know where to put myself when I think about it – mind you, I hardly knew where to put myself at the time. Once Sid joined the party, space became at a premium so to speak. Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber – well, not in her chamber because Sid broke it getting it off his foot. That wasn’t the only thing either. The bed was in a terrible state by the time we rolled off it. I could understand why she didn’t want to take it with her.
I can remember standing there trying to pull on Sid’s trousers and thinking ‘Oh my gawd! We’ve been through all that and we haven’t even started work yet!’ I am so knackered that I nearly fall asleep putting my socks on. That is another thing the experience teaches me. I had always wondered why those blokes in the dirty photographs never took their Brightons off. Now I know. It is so they don’t have to bend down to pull them on afterwards.
Sid is in a worse condition than me, if anything, and it is Mrs Ripley’s furniture that suffers. You could fill a sack with the chips off some of the heavier articles and the noise when we go through the hall is like an army marching on egg shells – there are that many breakages lying about. As for the walls – on tight corners they look as if they have been attacked with an axe and on the stairs you would think someone had run a rake down the wall paper. Every time we go through the front door for another load I mutter ‘Never again!’ and I know Sid agrees with me though he doesn’t say anything – he can’t say anything, poor sod. The remarkable thing is the way Mrs Ripley tolerates it all. I know that she has had a few glasses of champagne and that birds perk up after a spot of in and out – spot? It was more like a bleeding epidemic – but she is like a little ray of sunshine dancing about.
‘Don’t bother to sweep anything up,’ she says when we have got the last tea chest of china aboard. ‘I’ll look after that. You wouldn’t fancy another glass of champagne, would you?’
Sid and I lock shoulders in the door. What a woman! It is just as well that she is making her own way to Peterborough. I can imagine what a journey with her would be like. At least, I think to myself, Sid will have been cured of his romantic delusions. Lea the exorcist has done his tiny bit to preserve family unity.
