Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

“They cost a few bob, don’t they?” I say suspiciously.

“How much do you think?” She sounds all eager and her pencil is poised expectantly.

“Oh, about five bob, twenty five p, forty seven rupees, or whatever it is, these days.”

“What is the most you would be prepared to pay for an aerosol shoe-spray?”

“I’m quite happy with breathing on them like I do at the moment.”

“But supposing you wanted to buy an aerosol.”

“But I don’t.”

Not vintage Noel Coward, is it? And certainly not getting me any nearer a dramatisation of “Wife-swapping, Danish Style”. It’s a shame really because she’s a lovely bird, even if she does seem married to her craft.

“You must get a few passes made at you on a job like this,” I say chattily. “Have you been doing it for long?”

“Six months,” she says. “Now try and imagine that you do want to buy an aerosol. 20p? 25p? 50p?”

She does go on, doesn’t she?

“Well, it’s difficult, isn’t it?” I say. “Do you fancy a cup of tea or something? It must get a bit knackering wandering about the streets all day.”

“Thank you, no,” she says. “Look—” and she dives into a large satchel-type handbag she is carrying, “—this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

She produces three aerosol canisters and lays them on the settee. One pink, one black, one green.

“Oh yes,” I say, trying to keep my enthusiasm within bounds. Actually I am quite glad that we have found something to play with. I always reckon that it is easier to get to grips with a bird if you have something to keep your hands occupied. Start with your stamp collection and you will soon be showing her your tool set is one of my golden mottoes.

“How does it work?” I say, wrapping my mits round one of the canisters. “Oh dear—”. This latter remark is prompted by the fact that I have depressed the plunger and ejected a large blob of frothy, white liquid over my visitor’s skirt. If standing in the dock of the Old Bailey I would probably say it was an accident.

Faced with this emergency I move swiftly and muttering profuse apologies ram my hand up Miss Shapley-Thighs’ skirt. This manoeuvre, though liable to misinterpretation, is of course intended to prevent the gunge soaking through to the tights whilst also affording me a firm and uncontroversial surface on which to perform mopping up operations.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” squeals my visitor.

“I’m trying to stop your skirt getting stained,” I bleat. “You’d better take it off.”

“Take it off?!”

“Yes. I’ll get some water from the kitchen. I’m terribly sorry. I’ll buy you a new one if it’s ruined.” This show of efficient concern is obviously reassuring because when I return with a beaker of warm water she is standing behind the sofa with her skirt over her arm. She has fantastic legs that go straight up to her armpits and her arse would trigger off a wop’s pinching fingers like a burglar alarm. My hands are shaking as I put down the beaker and it is all I can do to control myself.

“You have a marvellous figure,” I tell her breathlessly. “I hope you don’t mind me saying that?” No woman ever has and I can see that my boyish enthusiasm is not entirely repulsive to her.

“Thank you,” she says permitting herself a slight smile. “I bet you say that to all the girls you squirt aerosols over.”

She bends forward and starts rubbing away at her skirt and again I have to put a hammer lock on my impulses.

“Let’s have a drink while you’re doing that,” I say. “What do you fancy? Gin, whisky, sherry?”

In fact, I know the sideboard contains a half-bottle of Stone’s Ginger Wine and an empty Chianti bottle Rosie was going to make a lamp out of seven years ago, but I want this to come as a complete surprise.

“No thanks,” she says. “I’ve finished. Now, where can I put it to dry?”

I whip the skirt down to the kitchen and drape it over the stove and when I get back the lovely girl is curled up in an armchair with her questionnaire over her thatch patch.

“Back to the questions is it?” I observe. “My, but you take your work seriously, don’t you?”

“It’s my first job,” she says. “OH!”

I follow her eyes and see that one of the poxy aerosols has started leaking all over the settee. Mum will half kill me and for the first time since I peeped through the lace curtains, all thoughts of bayonet practice are banished from my mind. Snatching up the damp rag I dive onto my hands and knees and start rubbing away like a maniac. So wrapped up in my task am I that I do not immediately notice that Miss Research is doing her bit beside me. It is only when I accidentally bounce against her boobs that it occurs to me that Mum doing her nut is not the only thing I could be up against. The damp patch is half across the sofa, the questionnaires are strewn all over the floor and the aerosols have rolled under the sideboard.

“It’s not our lucky day, is it?” I say into her mouth which is a couple of inches from mine. I smile and she smiles and her eyes make a quick trip round the features that litter my face.

“Um,” I murmur, which is a handy excuse for conversation at moments like this. “Let’s forget it.” I slip my lips into forward gear and accelerate swiftly onto her mouth. This feature is so meltingly tender that on impact my toes glow like brake lights and I feel small ripples of excitement breaking up and darting away down the long corridors of my body like kids coming out of class. I slip my hands up underneath her blouse and gently mould her back until my fingers are flicking to and fro across the catch of her bra. Her mouth is still against mine and showing no indications of finding the position unpleasant so I carefully release the catch and feel her breasts swell forward gratefully. To my surprise, she begins to tug the hair at the back of my neck and squirm against the thick bars of muscle which decorate my chest. By a happy accident a pillow drops to the floor and it is down on to this that I gently press her, running my right hand over the smooth sheen of her tights until I can feel her minge fringe stirring beneath my fingers like the fur of an animal. Her lips are half parted and her eyes closed. Glancing away from them I see that “Wife-Swapping – Danish Style” has suddenly emerged from its hiding place behind the cushion and that Inga and Horst are revealed in a manner calculated to win a warm glint of approval from any manufacturer of chocolate bars. This glimpse of our Scandinavian chums at play is sufficient to give the market garden down the front of my jeans a decidedly tropical flavour and I start peeling her tights off like there is an Olympic Gold Medal for it. It is at moments like this that I wish I could press a release mechanism and feel my jeans zooming into space like ejected pilots.

She pulls me down towards her and we wrestle with each other’s clothing whilst trading mouths and gasping and gurgling like we are drowning in lust and going down for the last time. She helps tug my jeans over my heels and we ruckle against each other so that I can feel the buttons of her open blouse biting into my chest. By now you could paint my old man green and call it a cucumber and her greedy little fingers have hardly settled on it before I am checking on the best place to tuck it away. Luckily I am no stranger to the area and soon find the ideal spot. Warm like a pot of cha brewing under a silk cosy it is, and I have to bite my lips and think of hob-nailed boots to control myself.

“Go on! Go on!” she bleats and it is going to take a battalion of Gurkhas to stop me. Rising up in the litter of questionnaires and pausing only to tuck Inga and Horst discreetly down the side of the settee, I launch myself into her like a nuclear sub gliding down a narrow slipway. Her hands close around my backside like she is frightened it might suddenly drop off and we start beating out the theme from Ravel’s Bolero in a way that would bring tears to the composer’s eyes. Powerful stuff it is, too, and once into our stride we are not easily disturbed.