Timothy Lea - Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

This is something I realise when I hear Mum’s voice from the hall.

“I can smell burning,” she says.

Now we have been going at it a bit – but burning? I don’t think so. Not that I would be prepared to argue with her because at that moment I am riding a tidal wave of passion and would not be diverted from my purpose if the Dagenham Girl Pipers started marching around the room. My friend obviously feels the same because she is carving finger holds in my shoulder blades and making a noise like a donkey with hiccups. A few mighty thrusts and the deed is done with a mutual shriek of ecstasy that must rupture eardrums as far away as Balham High Road.

Mum certainly hears it because I look up to see her peering down on us with a face turning the colour of a baboon’s bum. As is always the case with me, I now begin to wonder what I was getting so worked up about and my passion evaporates like spit on a stove-top. Not so with Mum.

“Timmy!” she screams. “Oh no! How could you? It’s horrible! Oh no! Oh no! no! no!” I have never known her behave like this before and it is really quite disturbing. We uncouple and I scramble to my feet just in time to give Mrs. Wagstaff a glimpse of the full frontals which obviously takes her back a bit – about forty years I should think. Mrs. Wagstaff is one of Mum’s friends and the biggest gossip and ratbag in the neighbourhood. The last person Mum would have chosen to witness our little domestic upheaval. She is carrying my friend’s skirt which is soaking wet – what is left of it, that is. A quick glance at the charred remains convince me that it was a bad idea to drape it over the oven to dry.

‘Ooh!!” says Mrs. Wagstaff. “OOoooh!”

“My skirt!!” squeals Miss Aerosol. “It’s ruined; ruined!!”

“How could you do this to me?” howls Mum. “How could you?!! On the sitting room carpet as well.”

I don’t really see what that has to do with it but I don’t argue the point. After all, one doesn’t want to upset one’s own mother too much, does one?

It was as a direct result of this little incident that I found myself pacing up and down in the reception of Funfrall Enterprises a few days later. Mum has been decidedly stroppy about my little flirtation on the hearth rug and has passed the ill tidings on to Dad who has reacted in characteristic fashion and done his nut. Like all dyed in the wool dirty old men, Dad has a deep-rooted objection to anyone else but himself getting their end away, and is very quick to come an attack of the total outrage.

It is perhaps a trifle unfortunate that he discovered me breaking down racial barriers with one, Matilda NGobla, on that self-same rug a few months before. She was one of our next door neighbours and never a favourite with my parents who are so bigoted they drape a blanket over the tele during the Black and White Minstrel Show. Anyway it has now got to the stage where Mum and Dad start going over the seat covers with a vacuum cleaner before they sit down and I have clearly got to head for the wide open spaces again.

I don’t fancy volunteering to become callus fodder down at the Labour Exchange so, bearing in mind what Mum has said about Sidney wringing gravy out of his turn-ups, I pad round to get the gen from sister Rosie. I am fortunate enough to find her between the slimming salon and the hairdresser’s and a glance round the eye-level grills and the louvred cupboard tells me that Mum has not exaggerated. Sidney must be on to a good thing. Rosie fills in the plot by telling me how Sidney sold the window cleaning business for a ridiculous sum of money and moved into Funfrall on the strength of a contact – Sidney has contacts like dogs have fleas. It is painful to listen to and I am quick to down my cup of Blend 37 and leave Rosie to wrestle with her Boeuf Strogonoff.

The reception area of Funfrall Enterprises is like an ice rink which may have something to do with the personality of the receptionist who would turn a cupboard into a refrigerator by sitting in it. She is like one of those frigid bints you see photographed in opticians’ windows, and watches me as if she reckons I am going to start nicking the magazines. With a choice of “The Director” or “The Investors’ Chronicle” she must be joking. Her makeup looks as if it has been put on with a spray gun and it can hardly withstand the strain of her telling me that Mr. Noggett’s secretary will be waiting for me by the lift on the fifth floor.

This girl is easy to recognise because she is breathing heavily and there is a large red flush on one side of her neck. I look at this pointedly and watch her tucking in her blouse as I follow her tight little arse down the corridor. It looks as if Sidney hasn’t changed much.

The man himself is staring out of the window with his back to me when I come into his office and I notice that on his desk there is a photograph of Rosie clasping the infant Jason to her bosom. There is also a strong whiff of perfume, aftershave lotion and togetherness, but perhaps I am imagining it.

“It suits you,” I say when Sidney turns round.

“What? Oh, you mean this?” He fingers his moustache as if he hadn’t realised what I was talking about. “Rosie nagged me into growing it.”

He is looking well, there is no doubt about it. A bit plumper round the chops but still a fine figure of a conman in his Burton Executive suit. I wonder if I am actually turning green.

“So you’re back again,” he says. “Decided that being a driving instructor wasn’t quite your line?” I nod. “I don’t know how many jobs you expect me to find you before you settle down.” When he says that I wish I hadn’t come, but I keep my mouth shut.

“Still, you’ve got to make allowances for your brother-in-law, haven’t you?”

“That’s what I always say about you.” I mean, there is a limit, isn’t there?

“Saucy, saucy.” Sid wags his finger at me.

“Don’t bite the hand that lays the golden egg.”

The news that Sidney had problems with his Eleven Plus will surprise nobody.

“Look, Sid,” I say. “I don’t want to grovel. Have you got anything that might be up my street?”

‘Well, I don’t know. It all depends.” Sidney fiddles with his cigarette case. “You know I’m Promotions Manager for our holiday camp circuit?”

“Mum said something about it.”

“Yes, well amongst other things, that means I have to recruit our Holiday Hosts.”

“You mean Redcoats?”

Sidney’s face turns white and he darts a glance around the room as if he expects Fu Manchu to leap out of the air conditioning.

“Don’t mention those words,” he hisses. “There is no other Holiday Host than a Funfrall holiday Host. We do not recognise the existence of any competition.”

He sounds as if he is reading the words off a fiery tablet and I don’t mean the kind you take for tummy upsets.

“O.K. O.K.” I say. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I was only asking. What the the chances of me becoming a—a Holiday Host?”

Sidney leans back in his swivel chair and puts his finger tips together in a gesture he must have borrowed from “The Power Game”.

“It depends,” he says. “Do you play any musical instruments?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Can you do conjuring tricks?’

“No.”

“Are you of instructor standard at any popular recreational activities?”

“Well—I—er—”

“I didn’t mean that! What about children. Do you like children?”

“I like little Jason,” I lisp untruthfully.

“That’s why he bursts into tears every time he sees you, I suppose?”

“I think he’s a bit highly strung,” I murmur, thinking that about six feet off the ground would be favourite.