Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

“So there was nothing to worry about?”

“No – well, I was never worried. You know me.”

“Yes, Sid.”

“It wasn’t anything to do with the principle we were talking about. I still feel the same about that. I just didn’t fancy the bloke. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, Sid.”

A week later I am standing with my suitcase on the deck of a small dirty steamer watching the crew leap around like excited monkeys while Nat and Nan casually decide which one they are going to screw first. The poor nautical sods don’t know what they are letting themselves in for. Ricci Volare is already hawking over the rail and the Isla de Amor is slipping beneath the ocean behind us – though I realise sadly, that this is only an optical illusion.

Mum has sent me a post card of a large tabby cat saying that they all got home safely and that Dad is in bed with a cold and has not been back to work yet. There is no word from Sid or Ted which does not surprise me.

Taking a last unloving look at the disappearing land mass I go below to check the lock on my cabin door. It won’t be long before the girls have exhausted the crew and you can’t be too careful.

A pity about Carmen. I would have liked to say goodbye to the girl. She probably could not face up to the sight of me leaving, or maybe she still has the needle because Sir Giles sloped off without her.

I open the door of my cabin, and check the bolt. Seems secure enough. Wedge a chair under the handle and I should be alright – for the first few days, anyway.

“Hello, buddy.”

I whip round and there, emerging stark naked from beneath my bunk is—

“Carmen!”

“Yes. We come together to Ingland. I will serveese you, no?”

“No!” I scream.

“You make promeese to your Carmen buddy. Now, you stop trying to unlock door and we make love mucho, mucho.”

“No, no,” I plead but it is hopeless. Her strong arms are already pulling me remorselessly towards the bunk. How long is this trip supposed to last? Ten days? Oh my God! Nat and Nan outside. Carmen inside. I might as well dive straight through a porthole and have done with it.

“Oh, buddy,” sighs Carmen enthusiastically, as she rips open my fly. “This eez going to be voyage to remember.”

THE END

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

I don’t know how you would handle four weeks on a tramp steamer with a couple of nymphomaniacs, but I was right knackered at the end of it, I can tell you. The second mate was carried off the boat on a stretcher, and he managed to barricade himself in his cabin after the first week. By the cringe, it was a voyage and a half. Now I know what they mean when they say ‘see Naples and die’. Nat and Nan found me skulking in an empty lifeboat the night before we docked and I nearly kicked the bucket with my first glimpse of Mount Vesuvius. Talk about insatiable–I can now, because I looked it up in the dictionary–if those two birds were rabbits it would not have needed myxomatosis to kill off half the male bunny population. I am not unpartial to a bit of the other but–blimey! There is a limit. After the first couple of hours it is becoming more a penance than a penis, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, for the sake of those of you who missed my capers as a Holiday Host with Funfrall Enterprises, I had better explain what I am on about. My period of service on an island off the Costa Brava had come to an end for a number of reasons–not the least of them being that my Dad had burned down the camp. Accidentally, of course. Everything Dad does is an accident, which accounts for how I happen to be about to write this. Anyway, that is another story and I would be the last person to put anybody off their cornflakes by telling it.

My presence on the boat with Nat and Nan–my pen starts shaking uncontrollably every time I write their names–is occasioned by me being left to clear up after the blaze. Once I have sifted all the dentures out of the ashes and paid off the local labour, I am expected to make my way home on a battered tramp steamer calling at every port in the Mediterranean. I would not normally be the first person to start whining about such treatment, were it not for the presence of the deadly duo already alluded to. Also, another lively bird called Carmen who fortunately gets homesick after a couple of days and dives overboard to join a passing fishing boat. Nat and Nan have the same attitude towards sex as those small birds that eat ten times their own weight every day, only in their case, forget small birds and substitute bleeding great vultures. Not that they are unattractive, oh, dear me, no. They are beautiful girls and living tributes to the efficacy of National Health Milk and free dental care. The only trouble is that they do have this disconcerting habit of tearing the trousers off every bloke they meet. And on a few thousand square feet of tramp steamer it gets so it is not worth putting your trousers on again. Your turn is going to come up in another few minutes, buster, so lie back and enjoy it.

Luckily, I have had experience of these girls (I laugh hollowly as I write that) and for the first few days I manage to keep out of the way while the crew run amok. By the end of the first week they are running a mile. Every time the Terrible Twins come round a corner, the sleek smiles slide off their greasy faces faster than blobs of fat off a hot plate. By the end of the second week they are threatening mutiny and by the end of the third week they have twice tried to abandon ship in a lifeboat. One bloke dives overboard the minute we get into the Bay of Naples. How he finds the strength to reach shore, I will never know.

My attempts to avoid being pressed into service–a not altogether happy, but very accurate description of what takes place–founder on my natural desire for food. I am intercepted on a sneaky trip to the galley and from that moment on I am making progress towards a frayed tonk like every other male on board.

By the time we get to Liverpool I never want to see another woman as long as I live–or at least two weeks–and the crew have burned all their pin-ups. The captain has not been seen for four days. Every time anybody taps on the door of his cabin a feeble voice keeps repeating–‘Don’t let them get me. Remember the RNVR.’ The poor basket has obviously gone round the twist.

When we get to Scouseland and can actually see the Liver Building the crew fall on their knees like pilgrims getting their first eyeful of Mecca. There is hardly an Englishman amongst them but they all know that this is where the girls get off. The expression of unspeakable joy on their faces as we go down the gangplank is something I will always remember.

My own feelings are typical of those of any son of Albion returning to the land of his birth–bitter disappointment. When I was on the Isla de Amor I could not wait to feel the native sod under my feet but now as I see some of the native sods in person I wish I was back in the land of the antique plumbing. At least there was sunshine there and I could not understand the newspaper headlines. My tan has been fading since the Bay of Biscay and Mum and Dad and Scraggs Lane seem about as tempting as two weeks in a leper colony.