Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

‘I’ll deal with these later,’ she says, popping them into the top drawers of the dressing table.

‘Yeah, now you can start dealing with this.’ I grab her by the arm and yank her onto the bed.

‘Darling, I really ought to put something on it first.’

‘I’ll tell you what to put on it!’ I am not interested in garnish. I am interested in action. I have waited a long time and my equipment has been sorely misused. ‘Come on top of me.’ Mrs B. straddles me on her knees and I plunge Percy into darkness again–this time in surroundings to which he is more accustomed. ‘Come here.’ I am not usually rough with ladies but at this moment I need a little agro to rekindle my lapsed enthusiasm. I pull Penny down so that her breasts rub against my chest and her hair tickles my cheeks. I brush it aside and feast on her mouth, stroking her cheeks as if coaxing out her tongue from a hiding place. Her body begins to rise and fall across my hips and I time the flexing of my muscles to coincide with hers. Beautiful! And such good exercise too. I am certain this must be better for you than all those bloody stupid exercises they print in women’s magazines.

‘Put your knees up,’ she says, ‘I want to lean back.’ I let her go and watch the expression on her face as she settles herself in the position to achieve maxiMum satisfaction. Her eyes are half-closed and she breathes in little pockets of air almost as if she is in pain. Slowly her tongue extends to be held gingerly between her teeth and her mouth broadens into the beginnings of a smile.

‘Go on,’ she whispers, ‘go on, go on!’ Pressing her hands down against the bed she pushes her body up and down in time with the flexing of my hips. ‘Oh, darling, that’s heaven.’ I read somewhere–I don’t think it was in the Women’s Institute Year Book–that birds have been known to faint with ecstasy in such a position. I don’t blame them. I am feeling a bit giddy myself.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Is it her or me calling out? I close my eyes and open my mouth and what happens after that is Ike and Tina Turner destroying the volume control on the greatest stereo set on earth. That and some miserable old git banging on the ceiling with an artificial limb. You can’t please everybody, I suppose.

I don’t know what the time is when we eventually get to sleep but I feel as though I have been run through a combine harvester a couple of times. Talk about knackered! I close my eyes and when I open them the sunlight is streaming through the windows. Blimey! I should be somewhere else fast. I leap out of bed and land on something soft. Something soft that groans. It is a man stretched out on the bedside rug.

‘Sorry,’ says the creature, still half asleep but sounding genuinely apologetic. ‘I couldn’t stand the woman’s snoring.’ I presume he means the bird he was shacked up with. This must be Christopher. I don’t wait to introduce myself but pull on my trousers and leave him clambering wearily into bed to take my place beside Mrs B. who is still out for the count.

So endeth the first night that the Pendulum Society spend at the Cromby. It is a taste of things to come.

As luck would have it, Sidney is standing just inside the dining room as I try and sneak to my place and the expression on his face could not be interpreted as welcoming even by an Icelandic Trade Delegation.

‘Where have you been?’ he says.

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ I say, trying to swallow a yawn.

‘You look bloody awful.’

‘I got a bit plastered last night,’ I say wittily.

‘Well, you’d better get on with it. I’ll talk to you later.’

‘Yes, Sidney.’

I am hoping that Christopher and Penny will be too knackered to come down to breakfast but, of course, they are the first couple I see, staring at their packet of Rice Krispies as if it has the meaning of life scrawled on the back.

‘Morning!’ I say brightly. Mrs Brown’s face registers surprise but this is soon replaced by an expression not far distant from outrage.

‘You’re a waiter!’ she says.

‘That’s right.’ I could explain that I stand on the right hand side of Sid the All-nighty, but what is the point?

‘You’re not one of us?’

‘An imposter.’

‘How dare you! You took advantage of me.’

‘Get stuffed.’ The last words are mine. I mean, it’s a bit much isn’t it? Ruthlessly exploited all night and then rejected because my credentials do not come up to par. How middle class. I wonder she did not ask for a blood sample.

My little outburst raises a few eyebrows around us but most of these are drooping like they have lead weights sewed at the corners. The night was obviously one of nonstop pelvic-bashing. I change tables with one of the other waiters and leave the Browns to splutter over their kipper fillets. My cock-cast is never going to see the inside of Mrs B.’s bureau. Too bad. I was thinking there might be a few bob in flogging them as alternatives to garden gnomes.

Out in the vestibule a sign directs club members to an address by one Professor Mordecai Hucklejohn entitled ‘Marriage–Whither or Wither?’ and quite a few of them troop into the ballroom after breakfast. They must regret it because no sooner has Professor Hucklejohn asked for a glass of iced water than a gang of micks roll up and start tearing down the building next door. They have obviously been concentrating on the Liffywater or given orders to make as much noise as possible because the Prof’s instructive words are soon drowned by the din of falling masonry and language that would make a Billingsgate fish porter blush. Added to that clouds of dust drift in through every window in the place. Rigby’s war has begun.

‘It’s a bugger, isn’t it?’ says Sid, ‘but there’s nothing I can do about it, short of dumping him out to sea with a weighing machine tied to his ankles. I’ve been to the Town Hall but, like he said, they don’t want to know. We’ll just have to plough on regardless. I’m not giving in.’

‘Has he been in touch with you?’

‘Yes, he rang up last night. Cocky bastard. I told him what he could do with himself. Oh dear, here comes trouble.’ He refers to Sam the Ram who is approaching, shaking his head ruefully.

‘Nobody can hear a word in there, man,’ he says. ‘How long before they start on this place and we can all go home?’

‘I’m very sorry about that, Sir, but I am afraid the whole situation is caused by circumstances beyond my control–’ Sid sounds as if he is reading a bulletin fixed to the gates of Buckingham Palace, but my thoughts are elsewhere. Supposing Riley’s mob did start trying to knock down the Cromby? That could well spark off enough scandal to force weasel-features to halt his dastardly plans for a bit.

I potter about until lunch-time and then pop round to the local boozer. As anticipated the sons of Eire are tucking into a well-earned glass of lunch and I salute them cheerfully.

‘Hello there, me boyos,’ I chant, trying to get a lilt into my voice, ‘the top of the morning to you. And a fine day it is for a drop of the hard stuff.’

‘Bugger off!’

Attempts to get alongside these lusty lads are obviously going to have to be handled with a bit more subtlety.

‘Sure, and I’m having the divil’s own trouble with this dratted crossword,’ I continue. ‘Could you be tickling my memory with the information as to the longest river in the dear old Emerald Isle?’

‘I’ll be tickling your back passage with the toe of my boot if you don’t fuck off!’ Unpleasantly dirty fingers close round my throat and I get a Cinerama Holiday view of half a dozen blackened stumps which might just once have been teeth. The owner of this gross affront to the British Dental Association sprays my mug with saliva and a whiff of rotting vegetation which could be used to gas rats. ‘We’ve had enough of youse perverts,’ he continues, moving my head around with his hand as if trying to find a crack in the wall which might fit it. ‘If you don’t get your backside out of this bar in the next two minutes, you’ll get my drill up it.’