скачать книгу бесплатно
‘OK. Yes, fine. All right. Yes, I will.’ Bye.’ I ring off hurriedly. Mrs Jones smiles at me.
‘So that’s your business attended to?’
‘Yes.’ I stand up.
‘Don’t you want your cup of tea?’
‘Oh, yes.’ I sit down again.
‘Relax.’ Mrs Jones pats my wrist as if I am about to go into the dentist’s surgery. That is exactly what it feels like, too. I try to think of something to say but nothing comes into my mind.
‘I think this is the best time,’ continues Mrs J. ‘I saw the way you looked at me in The Highwayman. You don’t have to be shy. If you want to make love to me, go right ahead.’ She stretches out her long legs and leans back against the sofa.
‘That’s the kettle, isn’t it?’ I say, listening to the whistle and the sound of my heart beating.
‘That’s right.’ Mrs J. shows no sign of moving and the noise is beginning to bore a hole through my lughole.
‘Shall I make the tea?’
‘Why not?’ Mrs J. gives me one of her irritating smiles. What is beginning to alarm me is that Percy is showing no signs of interest whatsoever. In his present situation he should be hurling himself against the side of my Y-fronts like a maddened beast. But not a sausage. Not even a chipolata.
‘Don’t worry.’ Mrs Jones stands up. ‘I don’t want to disturb the balance of the sexes. You sit there.’
She stalks towards the kitchen. I watch the see-saw motion of her big end and think dirty – really dirty. Still nothing happening in the action man department. This is serious. Maybe the clink has turned me into a latent homosexual – so late it has only just caught up with me? No, that is impossible. But there must be something wrong with me. Perhaps, after three months without it—no, that doesn’t seem likely either. There was a blooming great population boom after the war, wasn’t there? I give Percy a worried nudge but he continues to show less enthusiasm than Arthur Rubinstein at a piano smashing contest.
‘Do you want a piece of home-made cake?’ Mrs J.’s voice comes from the kitchen.
‘Yes please.’ It occurs to me that it would be a good idea to subject Percy to a little first aid treatment. I can’t just sit here with him sulking under my brushed denims. I make genteel ‘I’m going for a piss’ noises and scarper to the toilet. It is strange but the whole of the lower part of my body seems anaesthetised. It is not until I try shock treatment and plunge my spam ram under the cold tap that I feel anything. This is because I have plunged it under the hot tap by mistake.
If there was a flicker of life in the poor sod, this puts the kibosh on it. In its present condition you could lay my dick on a plate of roes on toast and not be able to spot the stranger.
I tuck my equipment away and prepare to face Mrs Jones. I don’t like admitting it but in my heart of hearts I know that she is the reason why my get up and go has got up and gone. Suddenly, she seems so experienced and demanding. I need someone wilting and dependent. Some bird who reckons that I am fantastic and who can lay it on so thick that I want to make it true for her. Sitting on the sofa and picking up a lump of sugar with a pair of tongs, Mrs Jones doesn’t look as if she thinks I am fantastic. In fact she is looking disappointed. Disappointed? And I haven’t even touched her yet.
‘I think it better to be frank, don’t you?’ says Mrs J., indicating my chair.
‘Yes,’ I say, shaking my head. She gives me an old-fashioned look and I try nodding instead.
‘I need to be physically satisfied just like a man.’
‘Very understandable.’ I slop tea into the saucer and drop my spoon on the floor.
‘Most women wouldn’t admit that,’ muses Mrs J.
‘It’s not easy, is it?’ I mean to admit that you fancy a bit of the other if you are a bird. Mrs J. is swift to misunderstand me.
‘No. I suppose I ask a lot from a man. I’m what you might call “demanding”.’
‘Really?’ A mouthful of cake goes down the wrong way and I blurt crumbs all over the settee. ‘You make a smashing cake.’
‘Brian made it. He’s a much better cook than I am.’
‘Oh, well, it’s very nice.’ Now I look closely at Elspeth Jones I can see that she has a heavy down of hairs on her upper lip.
‘I don’t just mean size.’ Percy is now making a field mouse look like King Kong. In fact I am not even certain he is still there.
‘Stamina.’ She practically spits the word into my lap. ‘I once knew this fantastic Jamaican.’ ‘Don’t tell me about him,’ I screech silently. ‘What a man. The most superb body I’ve ever seen. Great banks of gleaming black muscle. And he went on and on and–’
‘I’ve heard they’re very–’
‘–on and on and on. I was a different person afterwards. That experience really showed me what sex could be like. It was never the same with Brian after that. I told him, of course.’
‘You mean that it wasn’t the same as–’
‘Yes. It was a shock to him but I think he respected my integrity. He was seeing a psychoanalyst at the time, anyway.’
‘Oh, well. That must have been a big help to him.’
Mrs Jones leans forward and takes the cup and saucer from my twitching fingers.
‘Don’t worry about the crumbs. Do you want to do it in here or in the bedroom?’
Now that I look into her face again she seems to be growing a beard. Oh, dear. I am really on the horn of a Dalai Lama. Half of me is saying ‘you don’t fancy it, so piss off’ while the other half is saying ‘don’t be a berk, she’s a lovely bit of stuff. Once you get her knicks off everything will be all right’. I know I will be pretty choked if I think about this afterwards and I have not had a crack at it. It is like refusing a bloke who is trying to give you bank notes.
‘I don’t mind stretching my legs,’ I say weakly and haul myself to my feet. If I am going through with this I will have to break the hypnotic spell that my mind has cast over my hampton park. I will have to stop thinking about sex. If I can take the mental pressure off Percy then I may have a sporting chance of competing with black power.
‘Are you interested in football, at all?’ I ask as we go into the bedroom.
‘I loathe it.’ Mrs J. coolly unzips her dress and steps out of it. I notice that she is wearing a pair of those scarlet, transparent, embroidered panties with a frilly hem that have names like ‘Casbah Madness’. I always wondered who wore them. Although their intention is clearly to turn the observer on, they have the opposite effect on me. There is something professional and rehearsed about them which makes me feel I am about to take part in a circus act. I would like there to be a spot of physical contact between us whilst we shred the threads but Mrs J. is stark bollock naked and lying on the counterpane before you can say Roger Carpenter. She has a fantastic body but it might be a waxwork for all the effect it is having on me.
‘I support Chelsea, myself,’ I tell her. ‘We are the champions.’
‘Come here and prove it,’ says Mrs J. meaningfully.
Relax, I tell myself. Just imagine you are in one of those changing huts in the middle of Clapham Common. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start undoing my shoelaces. If I can persuade myself that I am in the process of changing for some commonplace sporting event I may be able to divert worried Percy from his current hang-ups and then suddenly spring Mrs J. on him when he is least expecting it. It’s a proper carry on, isn’t it? Seems ridiculous really.
‘What are you whistling?’ says a puzzled Mrs J.
‘ “Blue is the colour.” ’
‘That’s one of those ridiculous soccer songs, isn’t it? Now what are you doing?’
‘Just dribbling my sock over to the dressing table. Goal!’
‘Are you all right?’ Mrs J. sounds worried. I wish she would belt up. How does she expect me to get it together if she keeps rabbiting?
‘The ball’s bobbing about on the edge of the penalty area. Osgood to Lea. Lea swings his right foot. Goal! Wilson didn’t move.’ I raise my hands above my head in front of the wardrobe and catch a glimpse of Mrs J. watching me nervously from the bed. If I can recreate the atmosphere of an actual match, I may be able to break the spell. In my mind I emerge from the changing room and start running towards the pitch. It is drizzling and cold. Very cold. So cold in fact that my old man is beginning to shrivel up – no, you fool! That’s not the effect I’m after. I start running around the room swinging my arms across my chest.
‘Now what are you doing?’
‘Warming up.’
‘I can think of less selfish ways of doing it.’
‘I’m going in goal.’ I hurl myself across the bed and push one of the pillow cases on to the floor.
‘Stop it!’
‘Did you see that save? Fantastic. Here we go again. Wheeeeeh!’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I’m football crazy.’ I leap on to the bed and head the lightshade so that it swings into the middle of the room and a cloud of dust comes down.
‘Stop it!’ Mrs J.’s cool is clearly shattered and this cheers me up a bit. That worried look in her eyes makes me feel more like the male chauvinist pig I found I was when I read that article in one of the posh Sundays. Incidentally, if you fancy a spot of saucy reading I can thoroughly recommend the posh Sundays. They wrap it up a bit and you need a dictionary handy, but there is no doubt that you can get a lot of interesting sexual detail from the quality press – and it concerns a much higher class of person, too. Quite historical, some of it. I reckon I would have been far more interested in history at school if I’d known that they were having it away all the time.
I stand on Mrs J.’s leg, she screams and I lose my balance and sit down on her arm. She screams again.
‘I’m sorry. Are you all right?’
‘Are you all right? you mean. What’s the matter with you?’
At last she touches me but it is only a restraining arm, no doubt intended to prevent me from getting my football boots on. I am a fool. I should never have got myself into this situation. I ought to have got out while I had the chance.
‘Take the rest of your clothes off,’ barks Mrs J. She might be saying ‘Come in, number nine, your time’s up,’ for all the romantic feeling she can get into her voice.
I peel off my shirt and, without looking, ease down my Y-fronts. Maybe they are the trouble. All those tight jeans and athletes’ briefs have suffocated the poor basket. Still, you can’t wander about in bloomers, can you? Nobody would ever want to be exposed to the lustre of your cluster.
Mrs J. takes a deep breath and lies back expectantly. ‘We’ve got three and a half hours,’ she says.
‘Three and a half hours!’ Flipping heck! What does she think I am? At this rate I’ll be reading her nursery rhymes for the last three and a quarter. I look down at the faint moustache above her upper lip and wonder why I can suddenly smell Sloan’s Linament.
‘Why are you sniffing?’
‘I thought I smelt something.’
‘It must be my perfume. It’s very unusual. I once had this Persian boyfriend. It used to drive him out of his mind. He used to say that he could catch a whiff of it at the bottom of the stairs. I always knew it was him when I heard the footsteps pounding along the corridor. I’d hardly have time to open the door before he’d burst through like some great animal and snatch me up into his arms.’
‘Very strong bio–’
‘And then he’d carry me through the flat and throw me down on the bed and–’
‘It must have been very–’
‘–on and on and on.’
Blimey! By the time she has stopped rabbiting Percy has got about as much backbone as a homeless whelk. I do wish she wouldn’t go on like that – on and on and on.
‘What’s the matter?’ she says.
‘Nothing. I was just thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Oh, nothing, really.’
‘It must get rather boring?’
‘I’m used to it.’
It’s not vintage Noel Coward, is it? And Mrs Jones is not slow to realise that something is wrong. Nudging me with a shapely knocker, she raises herself on one elbow and sends her fingers down to reconnoitre the disaster area.
‘Don’t you find me attractive?’ she says accusingly, having discovered less action than at an old age pensioners’ jitterbugging contest.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ I say weakly.
‘I’m not certain that I do,’ says Mrs J. unkindly, releasing her hold on my wilting willy. ‘You’re not queer, are you?’
Those must be, without doubt, the cruellest words my lugholes have ever cringed before. That I, Timothy Lea, Clapham’s most exciting male animal, should be so accused and unable to stand up for himself. It does not bear thinking about, especially if – no, it can’t be. Not me. Surely not. I mean–
‘Are you? I don’t mind. I’ve never been to bed with a queer.’
‘Neither have I!’ I say, indignantly. ‘Do you mind? Every bloke who doesn’t fancy you isn’t a raving poofter, you know.’
‘If you’re not queer, you’re something very like it,’ sniffs Mrs J. ‘Coming in here playing football. Most men who come in here have got something better to do.’
‘I’m not queer,’ I repeat.
‘Prove it.’ Mrs J. leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. It is nice of her to bother but I need gentler treatment.
‘That was like a man’s kiss!’ I chide her.
‘Ah! So you’ve been kissed by men?’
‘No! Of course I haven’t. I just imagined it would feel like that.’
‘Do you think about it a lot?’ Mrs J. sounds quite interested.
‘I never bleeding think about it! I tell you: I’m not queer.’ I swing my feet off the bed and grab my Y-fronts.
‘Running away, are you?’ mocks Mrs J. ‘It just shows how wrong you can be about people. I thought you looked quite sexy when I saw you in The Highwayman.’
‘I felt the same about you,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry but I think I’d better go.’
‘Maybe you’re not eating enough,’ she says as I pull on my jeans. I look at her wriggling into her panties and for a moment I experience a twinge of lust. It is not worth pursuing, though. This bird and I are never going to be able to make it in a million years. I will probably never be able to make it again with any bird.
‘I’ve got a book somewhere that might help you,’ she says as we walk towards the door. ‘Sexual impotence, the beginning of the end. My husband found it very useful.’
‘Thanks a lot, but I’m not much of a reader. I’ll have to work it out for myself.’
