Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

“Go on! Please, please, please!!” The muscles on her face are twitching and quivering and her mouth hangs open as if about to bite into an apple.

“Go on.”

I don’t look up at the rocks. I rise up above Marcia’s shuddering body, shrug off her unnecessary fingers and dive into her as if from ten thousand feet. At a moment like this, I wouldn’t care if Grunwald was up there selling tickets.

When I next look up, Grunwald has disappeared. I don’t mention him to Marcia because she might get all up-tight about it. You know how funny women can be. We have a little swim and I am all ready for another bout of belly-bashing but unfortunately Marcia says she has to be getting back in case Sid wants her for something. Probably the same as what I want her for, I think to myself, but I don’t say anything. Marcia takes my hand as we walk back, which is very nice and romantic – until we bump into Sid coming round the side of the Candlelight Casino.

“Where have you been?” he snarls.

“Looking for Grunwald,” I say. “I think I—”

“Get round to the office—” he is talking to Marcia. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon to give you some letters. You—” he rounds on me, “I want a word with you.”

Marcia looks at him real cool for a couple of long seconds then turns and pats my cheek.

“Don’t let him bully you,” she says, and leaves me with a wink as incriminating as your dabs on the crown jewels. Sidney waits till she has disappeared round the corner and starts bristling like a turkey’s cock.

“If you’ve laid a finger on her—” he starts.

“Hey, wait a minute, Sidney,” I interrupt. “What about all that stuff we were talking about this morning? You know ‘living in the nineteen seventies’. ‘What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ – I definitely remember you saying that, when you were talking about Rosie. ‘The sex thing is pretty unimportant’. Those were your very—”

“Shut up you slimy little rat. You’ve never forgotten Liz and me, have you? You’ve been waiting to get your own back ever since.” (Liz was a bird Sid once did the nasty on me with – way back in our old window cleaning days.)

“But Sid! You said yourself—”

“Shut your mouth! Only a snivelling little fink would behave like that. After all I’ve done for you, too. You dirty little bastard!”

Well, that’s it! The old dukes are up and we are about to start belting the sh—you know what, out of each other, when Ted saves a nasty situation by lightfooting it round the corner.

“Bit out of line with the camp image, isn’t it?” he observes. “I mean, Love Island—”

“You can shut your mouth, too,” snaps Sid, and he strides away to make life hell for Marcia.

I don’t know what he does to her, but next morning she is looking like a ruckled marshmallow. Maybe he is just getting it which he still can because the first in-take – meaning those who have been taken-in by the advertisement, as Ted puts it – is arriving that afternoon and Mum, Dad and Rosie are going to be amongst them. Sid gets stroppy and says that his presence is required on the Island, so Muggins is despatched to the airport to meet them. Also, to ferry back Ricci Volare and his Angelos del Sole, some crummy Italian group Sidney is importing to boost the atmosphere in the Candlelight Casino. Poor sods I think to myself; little do they know what they are letting themselves in for.

Luckily I manage to prise myself out from under Carmen in time to slip on my Sun Senor kit and scramble aboard the ferry. I am feeling a right berk because Sidney has decreed that we all wear those flat, black hats sported by Spanish dancers and poufdahs; and strips of scarlet blanket draped round our shoulders. The ferry has been renamed “The Love Chariot” and also painted scarlet – presumably about five minutes before I sat down on it as I find when I examine the seat of my trousers. To my relief, the bus has not been painted “passionate pink” and I settle down beside the driver just in case he drops off to sleep or goes mad. He does neither but after ten minutes and four dead chickens, I am so scared I retreat to a seat halfway down the bus and pick my nails until we get to the airport. Here I skulk in a corner and endure insults about Sandemans Port from home-going English holidaymakers until, at last, the aircraft I am waiting for bounces down the runway like a horizontal pogo stick.

I am secretly hoping that the family has missed the plane, but not a chance. I can recognise Dad a hundred yards away across the tarmac. He is wearing a tweed suit and a Homburg which he must have got especially for the trip because I have never seen either of them before. Mum, too, is wearing a bloody stupid hat and only Rosie looks relatively inconspicuous in a yellow trouser suit with scarlet stars all over it – she would be a wow in Red China. Trust my bleeding family to turn up looking like a circus act.

I wave to them through the sheet glass but they don’t take any notice because they are watching the conveyor belt for their luggage as if they reckon they are never going to see it again. Dad practically ruptures himself when his case appears and Mum starts running in all directions shouting and pointing. You don’t have to be an expert lip reader to know what Dad is saying to her. What a pantomime!

When they come through the door Dad is already bathed in sweat – about the only bath he ever gets – and Mum and Rosie have got unflattering damp patches under the armpits.

“Sir Anthony Eden, I presume,” I say approaching Dad. “Would you care to step into the Embassy Rolls?”

“Oh, Timmy. Thank Gawd you’re here,” says Dad, dropping both cases on my foot. “Cop hold of these, will you? I wasn’t going to let any of those dagos get their hands on them. Never see them again. Cost a bloody fortune, those cases did.”

“Very nice,” I say.

“They were until the wogs got hold of them. I reckon they played bloody football with them. Still smarting about the World Cup, they are.”

“But Brazil won the World Cup, Dad.”

“Not that one. The World Cup. In 1966.”

“Oh, give over, Dad,” says Mum giving me a big wet kiss. “How are you, Timmy love? You’re looking well.”

“Smashing colour,” chimes in Rosie. “I’d lose that hat, though.”

“I’ve got to wear that. It’s part of the uniform. You lot wrapped up well, didn’t you?”

“You never know what to expect in these places,” moans Dad. “Floods, tycoons, you might find anything.”

“I didn’t want to crease my things by packing them,” says Mum defensively, “this brocade wrinkles something terrible.”

“Well, I hope you don’t evaporate on the way there,” I say. “It’s going to be very warm in the coach.”

“Is Sidney coming?” says Rosie.

Very probably, I think to myself. “No,” I say. “He’s rather tied up at the moment. He’s looking forward to seeing you, though. Now let’s get hold of these cases. I’ve got to make sure everybody gets on the coaches.”

But I don’t have to worry about the cases, because a big dark geezer with hair sprouting out of his cuffs and sideburns that meet under the chin hoves into view. I suppose he is quite good looking if you fancy that kind of thing. Rosie obviously does because her knees start to wobble the moment she claps eyes on him. Ignoring Dad’s suitcases he snatches up Rosie’s vanity case and starts wrapping his lips round a slice of the Marcello Masturbani’s.

“Permitta me to carry your kice, bella signorina,” he purrs. “I do not like to see a beautiful woman strangling.”

“You mean ‘struggling’, don’t you, mate?” says Dad. “Look, if you want some exercise, slap your mits on this lot. And she ain’t no ‘signorina’ either, she’s a ‘senora’. She is married to our Sid. Elle est parleyed for. Comprenny?”