Timothy Lea - Confessions from a Nudist Colony

‘Awwwwwweeeeee!’ Millie lets out a squeak and then cements herself to my cakehole. Her body has stopped juddering up and down but a long tremor ripples through it and her toes press against the carpet. I can feel myself teetering on the brink and I jerk my fife upwards until the chava lava runs wild through my quivering thighs and I feel like an electric blanket having it off with a cake mixer. It is a very affecting experience.

‘Right, let’s have you – blimey!’ The speaker is Millie’s mate who has just wrenched open the back door. He looks harassed and surprised, in that order. ‘Millie! You’re supposed to be on the job.’

‘Would you like to rephrase that statement?’ I say.

‘It was bad enough with that bloke in the charge room,’ says the male fuzz. ‘You were only supposed to be taking him a cup of tea.’

‘I was only trying to soften him up,’ protests Millie. ‘Why must you keep bringing up my past?’

‘Time to move on is it, chief?’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about leaving me. I’ll be all right.’ It has occurred to my shrewd brain that the sooner the two coppers slope off the better. What I had with Millie was very beautiful but it could not last. It was just a flash in the pants really. If I arrived home with a female fuzz Dad would have a heart attack – on second thoughts –

‘You’re a disgrace to the uniform,’ says the male copper. ‘Come, Marjoribanks. Button your tunic and shove your knickers down the back of the seat with the rest of them. There’s work to be done.’ He turns back to me. ‘You’d better wait here.’

‘Have no fear, squire,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

I am blooming nearly right, too. Have you ever tried pulling up a pair of trousers with handcuffs on? – no! not on the trousers. Why would anyone want to handcuff a pair of trousers? Wake up! This isn’t exactly highbrow reading but you are supposed to have a certain amount of nous. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Standing beside this police car with my bum hanging out of my jeans. I can’t make any progress inside the vehicle and it is only when I straighten up that I begin to get somewhere – like nearly arrested again. I feel such a berk giving little jumps in the air and trying to pull my trousers up at the same moment. A couple of old ladies give me a very nasty look and though I can’t lip read I reckon they are looking around for a keeper. Ungrateful old bags! You’d think they would be glad of a bit of excitement at their age, wouldn’t you?

In the end I manage to tuck my fife away and I am ready to scarper. My shirt is hanging out at the back but I can’t do anything about that with the handcuffs on and nobody is going to draw any conclusions. I mean, it is often like that when you come out of the karsi, isn’t it?

I take a few steps along the road and then remember Sid. Is he still nattering to Madame Necroma or will he have come out and wondered where I am? I had better slip back and have a discreet dekko. Millie and her mate seemed interested in the lady so I had better step warily.

I approach the fair from a different angle and carefully pick my way through the caravans. The fair is now in full swing and the music is grinding out above the hum of the generators. I come round a corner and focus on Madame Necroma’s caravan just as the door opens and the good lady appears at the top of the steps. She is looking decidedly dishevelled and unhappy and pulling a coat round her shoulders. Behind her appears Millie looking embarrassed and I sink back into the shadows. The driver of the police car is the last to leave and he looks round behind him before closing the door. Where is Sid?

‘You’ve got nothing on me!’ says Madame Necroma. ‘Bleeding fuzz! I’ll have you for this.’ She turns on Millie. ‘You’ll have the curse for seven years!’

Before I can work out quite what she means by this statement, the trio disappear round a caravan. How very strange. I can only imagine that Sid has emerged and sloped off to his pad in trendy Vauxhall. He was never the patient type. But hist, what ist? The caravan seems to be trembling. Maybe I had better take a butcher’s. I keep a tight grip on the front of my round the houses and shuffle across the bruised grass littered with fag packets. Up the steps and I try the door. It opens. Inside, it looks just as it did when I last saw it. There is a bowl of Japanese fighting fish but they can’t be belting each other hard enough to set up the vibration that is running through the caravan. I look down at the crumpled bed and – wait a minute! There is only half a bed compared with what there used to be. I switch my gaze to the side of the caravan and see a piece of material I recognise. It is a fragment of Sid’s lumber jacket – we call it that because it is so diabolical that nobody knows how he could have lumbered himself with it. It is protruding from the door of a cupboard. The door of a cupboard that is shuddering as if someone is pressing against it from the inside. Could it be that –? No! It seems impossible – but yet – stranger things have happened to Sidney Noggett.

I grab hold of the handle in the wall and pull. Nothing happens so I pull with both hands and my trousers fall down. Hardly have they touched the floor than the missing half of Madame Necroma’s bed swings down to carpet level. On it sprawls the bright pink body of a naked man lying amongst a pile of discarded clothing and crumpled Tarot cards. His face looks like a chimpanzee’s bum after it has slid down a helter skelter without a mat.

‘Blimey!’ I say. ‘Are you all right, Sid?’

Sid does not answer me but looks round the caravan. ‘Don’t say she’s gone!’ he says. ‘We were just getting to the interesting part.’

‘I can’t believe that she was a nail,’ says Sid.

‘Stands to reason,’ I say. ‘That’s why the fuzz had the caravan under surveillance. I bet they’re pumping her down at the station at this very minute.’

Sid winces and then shakes his hand sadly. ‘I thought she had something,’ he says.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I say, ‘You’d better have a dunk with the Dettol. Use one of the egg cups if you can get your –’

‘I didn’t mean that!’ says Sid. ‘Where’s your romantic streak? I was referring to our instantaneous report.’

‘You mean rapport,’ I say. ‘A report is a bang – still, I suppose, when you come to think of it –’

‘Sometimes you meet someone and it’s as if you’ve known them all your life,’ muses Sid. ‘Making love seemed as natural as the couple of quid I gave her.’

‘I thought you didn’t have any money?’ I say.

‘I found I had another quid on me,’ says Sid. ‘I reckon it would have worked, too.’

‘What would have worked?’ I say.

‘She said that she would be able to get nearer to the reality that was me if we made love.’

‘And did she?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ says Sid. ‘There was this bang on the door and “wump!” She presses a button and half the bed with me on it whips into the wall.’

‘So you got nothing out of her?’ I say.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ says Sid. ‘She was completely at one with me about the environment. She had this feeling that our heritage was very precious and that we would squander it at our peril.’

‘That’s nice,’ I say.

‘And she resolved my uncertainty about the future,’ says Sid. ‘With her help I think I’ve found the answer.’ He leans back and taps his nail file against the end of his finger.

‘Go on,’ I say. I am referring to Sid’s effort to cut through the handcuffs with Mum’s nail file but he is making indifferent progress and is clearly more interested in his latest crack-pot scheme.