Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

About two o’clock the hotel surrenders itself to blissful quiet as the Rottingfestrians pull out for their rugby match. They are full of booze and big talk about how they are going to crush the ‘swede-bashers’ as they call the local side. Most of the wives and sweethearts troop along dutifully but there is no sign of green-pants, and the winsome chick who asked me about local events trips down the stairs ten minutes after the others have pulled out.

‘Hurry up or you’ll miss the match,’ I tell her.

‘I’m not going. I thought I told you. I can’t stand the game. I’m taking a look at the lifeboat station and the fish market. You don’t fancy being my guide, do you?’

‘I’d love to,’ I say, meaning it, ‘but I’m on duty this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow?’

‘Maybe.’ She gives me a cute little wave and dances away down the steps. I think she quite fancies me, that one. It is diabolical isn’t it? They are either all over you or nowhere to be seen.

Somehow the minutes tick by to three o’clock and my mind is not on the outcome of the clash between Hoverton RUFC. and ORs.

Doctor Carboy rings down and asks if his baggage has arrived. We tell him ‘no’ and he delivers half a dozen wisecracks and a request for a tailor, a shirtmaker and another bottle of Glen Grant to be sent up to his room. This is unheard of and Sid practically purrs with delight when we tell him.

‘It’s happening,’ he squeaks. ‘At last it’s happening. Just when I had almost given up hope. I said if we stuck it out long enough the class customers would start showing up.’

‘No you didn’t, Sid. Only this morning you were saying we should sell out to–’

‘Quiet, you viper,’ hisses Sid. ‘Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.’

‘But I do understand, Sid. You seem to think that one swallower makes a summer.’

‘Belt up with those awful jokes and get the booze in. He’s paying for it, isn’t he?’

‘I hope so, Sid.’

Ten minutes later simple Sid has disappeared, rubbing his hands together at the thought of the riches to come, and I am rubbing my hands nervously outside room number two-four-six, also thinking hopefully of the riches to come. I stretch out my arm but the door opens before I make contact with it.

‘Come in.’

‘Blimey!’

Mrs Fatso is wearing a black nylon negligee which is downright negligent in its coverage of her erogenous zones (I got the word from one of the sex books I borrowed from Battersea Public Library. Everything you always wanted to know about sex but got smacked in the kisser for asking . Something like that, anyway).

‘Come in,’ she says, ‘it’s draughty with the door open.’

‘It would be draughty in the Sahara Desert with that thing on.’

‘You like it, do you?’

‘Fantastic.’

‘I found my husband polishing the studs of his rugger boots with it.’

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t know how he can bear to leave the room with you looking like that.’ It is no hardship chatting her up. I mean what I am saying.

‘He finds it easy to leave any room that doesn’t have a bar in it. In the last three years he has only taken me out once, and that was to a film show of the British Lions tour of New Zealand followed by two blue movies. Most of those present were more turned on by the rugby film.’

‘Incredible.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if it’s me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think I must be ugly or something. I look at myself in the mirror and ask myself why he prefers a rugby ball to me.’

‘You’re not ugly, you’re a very striking woman.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate that. You’re not just being kind?’

‘No, no. Compared to some of the birds I–’ I stop myself just in time. ‘Compared to most of the visitors we get, you’re a knockout. I can’t understand your husband. Has he always been like that?’

‘He’s always been mad keen on rugby. He started going off me about the time I stopped ironing his bootlaces.’

‘Why did he marry you in the first place?’

‘Because the captain of the first team was going out with me. Basil is very competitive. He said he liked looking at me when I bent down to pour the teas.’

‘Oh, he noticed you, then?’

‘Yes, he said that when I leaned over my breasts looked like two rugby balls dropping over the bar of my dress.’

‘Very romantic.’

‘It was, by his standards.’

‘What did you see in him?’

‘Oh, physical things, I suppose. He wasn’t so fat then. Somehow I thought that all those healthy young men charging about were where I ought to be. About as clever as a moth hanging round a naked flame. Talking of naked, will you take your clothes off please?’

‘Gladly.’

‘Thank you. Basil doesn’t believe in sex before a game and he’s too tired afterwards, and he plays on Saturday and Sunday and trains every night of the week, so you can see that our marriage isn’t exactly a hymn to fornication.’ My friend gives a little shiver and squeezes my arm passionately. I can see that her problem is one I am well equipped to solve and continue to unbutton my shirt.

‘We rushed straight from the church to the Middlesex Sevens final at Twickenham. Basil described the selection of our wedding day as the biggest bog-up of his life. It’s not surprising I give the impression of being hard, is it?’

‘ “Hard” isn’t the word I would have used.’ I slip my hand inside her negligee and give one of her breasts an affectionate feel. Her whole body stiffens and she kisses me passionately on the mouth.

‘Relax,’ I say, when I come up for air, ‘you’re buckling my lips. Let’s do it again more gently.’ I kiss her softly and run my finger lightly over the soft swell of her tummy. Now down, and she shivers again as my fingers brush against her minge fringe. Somewhere, on some foreign field, Fatso is buckling down for a scrum. Panting, puffing, aching. Poor devil. My heart goes out to him. That is all I can spare at the moment.

‘O-o-o-h, that’s good,’ murmurs Mrs F. ‘You make me feel like a woman.’

‘You are a woman,’ I assure her. ‘We don’t have to organise a poll.’

‘Talking of poles–’ her cotton-picking fingers are trying to lead in a winner from my jockey briefs and my trousers have taken up their natural position around my ankles.

‘You don’t know how good this makes me feel.’ I am very happy for her. It is heartening to see her changing from the cool lady who deloused me with her eyes in the vestibule. She presses her body close to mine and starts nibbling my ear while her impatient fingers tug down my Marks and Spencers lingerie.

‘O-o-o-h.’

‘Hang on a moment.’ Super-optimist that I am, I have worn a pair of slip-on canvas shoes without socks so that the undressing bit can be effected tastefully and gracefully. These I ease off with the miniMum of effort and step nimbly out of my trews. I would be a wiz at the bare-foot grape-pressing lark.

The state of the parties is now, Lea naked, Mrs Fatso naked except for aforementioned sexy negligee. Like a master craftsman unwrapping a rare porcelain vase, I coax the black lace from her shoulders shedding a few delicate kisses along the length of her collar bone. I am contemplating a nibble-fest but Mrs F. has other ideas. She sinks towards the ground faster than a British space rocket and wriggles her naked legs like a frisky mare waiting for the ‘off’–or in her case, the ‘on’.

Some men might pause to hum the opening bars of Rule Britannia or comment on the rising price of butter, but not Timothy Lea. For a second, pregnant with a thousand anxieties and a million promises, I am poised at the entrance to her pleasure dome. Then, joyfully, inside it.