Timothy Lea - The Confessions Collection

“Look at that carpet. How many times have I told you to wipe your feet before you go upstairs.”

“But Mum—”

“Don’t ‘but Mum’ me. You can go right back and do it properly.” I hear her voice and the squeaks of protest descending to the hall. Now, how am I going to get out? I’ll have to pretend that I was cleaning the windows. I haven’t brought any of my stuff up with me so what am I going to use? In a flash of inspiration I remember Dorothy’s knicks and tights. I nip up on one of the beds and fish them down from the top of the wardrobe. There’s a toilet next door so I dip them in that and give the windows a quick rub over. Luckily it’s stopped raining about an hour before so it doesn’t look too stupid. There’s a nosy old bag opposite peering at me round a curtain but I don’t worry about her over much. She can’t possibly see what I’m cleaning the window with.

Downstairs and I shove the undies in the bottom of my bucket and smile at the kids. They look at me a bit old-fashioned though it’s probably my imagination.

“That’s it, lady, fifteen bob if you don’t mind. Thank you very much. Ta ta, be seeing you.”

I hop on my bike and start cycling down the street with the funny feeling that none of it really happened. Round the corner in front of me a bloke of about thirty-five is crossing the road. His hair is beginning to go and there’s a dead fag gummed between his lips. He’s fat and scruffy and looks like about ten million other blokes who have got one of their mates to clock out for them and shuffled home early for Bird’s Eye fish fingers and an evening in front of the telly. I know that if I turn round and watch he’ll go into the house I’ve just left. But I don’t turn round.

“What’s this then?” says Mum.

She’s got a packet of ants’ eggs in one hand and Dorothy’s undies in the other. Like a good mum she’s started to hang my rags out over the cooker – nosy old bag. Sid nearly chokes on his eggs and bacon.

“Didn’t you know, Mum,” he says, “Timmy’s the demon knicker nicker of Clapham. Your smalls aren’t safe on the line when he’s about. Don’t you ever read the Sundays?”

From the look on Mum’s face I can see she half believes him.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” she says, shaking the stuff under my nose.

“It’s just a joke, Mum.” I start to say desperately, “I put them there myself for a laugh.”

“You want to see under his bed, Mum,” goes on Sid, “there’s two suitcases full of the stuff. I’ve seen him at night, sitting up and counting it. He keeps a list of it all in a little notebook.”

“Timmy!” I can see he’s got Rosie going now. It makes you realise what your own family really thinks of you. They’d probably believe Sid if he said I had a couple of bodies under my bed. Luckily, Dad is upstairs with one of his turns – that’s when he turns over and says ‘fuck it, I’m going to stay in bed all day’. He’d probably run out and start yelling for a copper if he was here.

Sid holds an imaginary microphone under my hooter and puts on his lah-di-dah voice.

“Tell me, Mr Lea, when did you first experience the uncontrollable urge to steal ladies’ underwear that has made you the terror of S.W.12?”

“About the same time as I felt the uncontrollable urge to shove this bread knife up your bracket,” I say. “For God’s sake, Mum, you don’t believe him, do you?”

“Where did you get those panties from then?” says Rosie.

“I bought them—”

“—he’s dead kinky, too,” interrupts Sid, “Go on, take your trousers off and show them what you’re wearing. You never seen such—”

“Shut up!” I yell. “I bought them for a girl friend but they were the wrong size, so I thought I’d have a little joke.”

“You haven’t got a girl friend,” says Rosie.

“That’s all you know. I don’t tell you everything.”

“She must be a funny shape if they don’t fit her,” says Sid, holding up the knickers. “You could get into them, couldn’t you Rosie?”

“Don’t talk dirty and put those things down.” says Mum. “What I can’t see is why you didn’t take them back and change them if they was the wrong size?”

With everybody in the family a bleeding Perry Mason, I might as well give up. I should have told them that Sid put them there to start off with.

“They wouldn’t take them back because they were worn,” I say.

“You mean she had to put them on before she found they wouldn’t fit?” says Rosie.

“No, he did,” said Sid.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“I should hope not,” says Mum, “the very idea.”

It’s amazing how they go on treating you like a kid, isn’t it?

“It all sounds very fishy to me,” says Sid. “I reckon you’d better come clean and open those suitcases. If you took everything back and said you were sorry—”

“He doesn’t want to do that,” says Rosie, “Better to burn them.”

“Everybody’s going to see.”

“Not if he does it at night.”

“Look a bit funny, won’t it, having a bonfire in the middle of the night?”

“Why don’t you all wait till Guy Fawkes day and then get Sid to stand on the fire instead of a guy?” I say. “By God, I’ve never heard such a load of cobblers in my life. Can’t you see that Sid is having you on? There’s nothing under my bed except fluff. I wouldn’t have believed you could have thought so little of me.”

I knock back my tea and push the chair away from the table. They’re all a bit quiet now and Mum and Rosie are definitely looking guilty. I decide to blow my nose to show them how affected I have been by their unkindness and remove my handkerchief with a flourish. Trouble is that in my hurry that morning I have grabbed a hanky down from the clothes line in the kitchen and – yes, that’s right – it’s not a hanky, it’s a pair of Rosie’s drawers. I notice the expressions on their faces first, and honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Even Sid looks at me as if I’ve got blood running down my chin. A glance shows me what I am raising to my nose. Light blue, with a touch of grey lace round the bottom. I start to say something but it’s no good. Everybody is still staring at the knickers like they’ve started ticking. I throw them on the table and Rosie shrinks back in her chair. None of them will say a word. I start to speak again and their eyes slowly swing up to my face marvelling that they could have lived with me so long without suspecting. There’s no point in going on so I stumble out.

I don’t know what they say when I’ve gone but I do know that to this day the subject of underwear makes my mother wince and you don’t see any bras or panties hanging up in our back garden.

As the next few weeks go by I realise that there are quite a few Dorothys about, and I begin to be able to recognise the kind of bird who will be asking you to help her move the dressing table from one side of the bedroom to the other, five minutes after she’s opened the front door. She’s usually been married about seven years – take it from me, the seven year itch is no fairy story – and the last of the children has just begun school, so she’s suddenly got a bit of free time on her hands. Her old man is a dead end nine to fiver, and she’s as bored with him as she is with having nothing to do. She’s read all the stuff in the Sundays about wife-swapping and troilism and she reckons that not only must it be alright to do it but that she is the only bird in the world who isn’t. She’s also unlikely to have thrown it around much before she got married so she reckons she missed out there too, and is dead keen to make up for it. Her trouble is that until she’s done it a few times she’s liable to confuse her natural desire for a bit on the side with love, which can stir up all kinds of problems. Once a customer starts baking cakes for you, or slipping bottles of after-shave lotion in your pocket, you’re better off giving it a miss, believe me.