Buch lesen: «Confessions from a Holiday Camp»

CHAPTER ONE

Mum was glad to see me when I got back from Cromingham. Just as she had been when I got back from the nick. A bit worried too – just as she had been when I got back from the nick.

“Everything alright at the Driving School?” she says casually, as I fold my mits round a cup of cha, made as only my Mum can make one – diabolically.

“Fine, ma,” I say, equally casually, trying not to let my expression reveal the death struggle of my shrivelling taste buds. “I’ve decided it’s time I moved on to something else, though.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ma. It was good experience but I feel like a change and Cromingham was a bit dull.”

“I thought you’d settled in.”

“Yes ma, but—”

“I do wish you would find something a bit permanent. Your father and I get quite worried about you sometimes. You’ll never get married at this rate.”

Marvellous, isn’t it? Another step on the way to National Health gnashers and my old age pension. Get married, settle down, have children, drop dead.

“I don’t particularly want to get married, Mum.”

“Well, you want a decent job, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Well then.”

“Yes, Mum.”

There is no point in telling her about how my career as a driving instructor ended: agro, needle, nudity. You want to protect your old Mum from things like that, don’t you? I pick up the paper and glance at the headlines, evincing less interest than Germaine Greer being shown round a brassiere factory. Apparently the police have found two half-naked birds and a bloke in a stolen Rolls Royce on Cromingham Golf Course. Funny that.

I toss the paper aside and thankfully gulp down the last of the tea. By the cringe, there are enough dregs at the bottom of the cup to tell the fortunes of Lana Turner’s bridesmaids.

“Well, whatever you do,” grinds on Mum, “I wish you’d get a steady job. Look how well Sidney has done.”

Odious Sid is my poxy brother-in-law and always dragged in to conversations of this type as a symbol of what hard work and a bit of nous can do for you. In fact Sid is a bit stronger on the latter than the former, though you can’t point the finger at him for that – two is nearer the mark with Sid. He and I were partners in a window cleaning business until he got a bit too close to a girl I was thinking of getting spliced to. In fact “a bit too close” is putting it mildly. He was so close he was touching her in about half a dozen places. In her dad’s garden shed, too. I still get a red flush every time I think about it. Mum and Rosie, she is my sister, don’t know about that little incident, though I keep the threat of revelation dangling over Sid’s nut like the sword of Dan O’Kleas.

“How is Charlie Clore, then?” I say trying not to sound too bitter.

“Don’t be bitter, dear,” says Mum. “Just because Sidney has taken his chances—”

I start choking at this point and it’s not just because Mum’s omelettes taste like they have been made with Great Auks’ eggs.

“Don’t gulp your food, dear,” continues Mum, “I was always telling you as a child. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Sidney. Do you know what he is doing now?”

“Six years in The Scrubs?”

“He’s working for Funfrall Enterprises.”

She makes it sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury so I am obviously supposed to be impressed.

“Oh yeah. And what’s that?” In fact, I can vaguely remember having heard of it but I don’t want to let on to Mum.

“You know! They own all those Dance Halls and Holiday Camps and Health Centres and things. You’ve seen the Miss Globe Contest on the tele?”

I have too. Like an explosion in a dumpling factory with dialogue by Andy Pandy.

“He’s taken over from Michael Aspel, has he?”

“No, no. He’s nothing to do with beauty contests—”

“You can say that again.”

“—he’s tied up with the holiday camps. Promotions Manager or something. He’s doing terribly well.”

I can imagine it, too. Jammy bastard. Well we all know what goes on at holiday camps, don’t we? Just Sidney’s cup of tea. Timmy’s too!

Maybe Mum is a mind-reader.

“Perhaps he could help you find a job, dear?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so, Mum,” I say, turning down the idea on principle. “I think it’s about time I found something for myself. How are Rosie and the kid?”

I soon learn that Rosie and little nephew Jason are full of beans and now living in their own house in tasty Streatham. Sidney’s cup must be over-running right down to his Y-fronts. After a few more painful details of his new car and their holiday in Majorca I am forced to escape by switching the conversation to the unsavoury subject of Dad. I learn that the man who contracted out of the rat race because the other rats objected is still filling in some of his waking hours down at the Lost Property Office. Plentiful evidence of this fact is provided by a quick butchers round the walls of the ancestral home of the Leas. Dad is what you might call a collector. What you might also call a grade one tea leaf. Moose heads, stuffed fish, millions of umbrellas, enough binoculars to supply the Royal Box at Ascot. All saved from the incinerators – so he says. I reckon that most of the stuff was left on public transport because it wouldn’t fit into the dustbin.

The pride of Dad’s collection can be discovered in the hallstand underneath the telephone directories – we don’t have a telephone but Dad is prepared for this eventuality. Here can be found all the porn that Dad and his mates down at the L.P.O. know will never be claimed. The tattered, drool-sodden fixes of a brigade of plastic-macked sexual fantasists: “Kinky Kats on the Rampage”, “Corporal Ecstasy”, “Leatherworkers’ Handbook”, full of dead-eyed girls with tits like policemen’s helmets, who look as if they should know better – and have certainly known worse.

Not that I want to sound as if I’m always writing to Malcolm Muggeridge about it. I have never been able to resist a quick flick through Dad’s library and it’s to this that I retire when Mum has cleared away the breakfast things and toddled off to the launderette.

I am not disappointed. There, beneath the 1968 A–D nestles “Wife-swapping, Danish Style” with a cover that leaves nothing to the imagination, not even my particularly fevered article. The inside is even worse, or better, according to your personal tastes, and I am beginning to crowd my jeans when there is a sharp rat-tat on the front door. Cursing under my breath, because Sven and Brigitta and Inga and Horst are just beginning to forget about the open sandwiches. I stuff the magazine under a cushion and do a ‘mum through the lace curtains’.

Standing on the front door step is a pneumatic brunette of about twenty-five, carrying a map board and chewing the end of a pencil as she examines our door-knocker. She is not at all bad and in my present keyed-up condition could be a lot worse. Pausing only to make sure that my eye teeth are not showing, I speed to the front door and hurl it open.

“Good morning,” says my visitor with practised cheeriness. I note that her eyes are making a lightning tour of my person and allow myself a similar liberty with her own shapely frame.

“Good morning,” I say.

“I am doing some research for a company called Baspar Services and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“Shoes. It won’t take very long.”

Take as long as you like, darling, I think to myself, wincing at the discomfort her too-tight sweater must be causing her tempting tits.

“Come inside, we don’t want to stand out here on the doorstep.”

The girl looks a little doubtful.

“Is your wife at home? I’ve got some questions for her, too.”

This is obviously a ploy used to discourage potential rapists. Funny how my expression always gives me away.

“Oh, I’m not married,” I say jokily as if the whole idea was too funny for words, “but my mother is doing the washing.”

I don’t say where, so she trips over the threshold and I steer her on to the settee in the front room. This puts her at a disadvantage because generations of Leas watching tele, or grappling before it during power cuts, has forced the springs down to floor level. One either sinks without trace or perches on the edge. My guest starts off by doing the former and then struggles uncomfortably into an upright position revealing a good deal of shapely leg which I pretend not to see. In reality, I am finding it difficult to control myself because the adventures of my Danish friends are still firmly rooted in my mind.

“Well, let’s get down to business,” say Miss Shapely-Thighs, briskly. “First of all, how many pairs of shoes do you have?”

She chews the end of her pencil and I could do without that for a start.

“Sixty-nine,” and her eyebrows shoot up.

“I mean six—er—yes. I think it’s six. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.” I don’t either. I have this terrible habit of saying what I am thinking, sometimes. Very embarrassing.

“Six,” she repeats and makes a tick on her questionnaire. “When did you last buy a pair?”

Talking of pairs, I think that’s a lovely set of knockers you’ve got there. I wouldn’t mind doing a few press-ups on top of that lot.

“About a month ago,” I say.

“Where did you buy them?”

“At the shoe shop. I can’t remember the name. Maybe it’s on them. I’m wearing them, you see.”

We smile at each other as if it’s all terribly funny really and I wrench one of my casuals off and gaze hopefully into its interior. Nothing, except a shiny brown surface and a lived-in smell I would not try to sell to Helena Rubinstein. I put it on hurriedly.

“I think it was that one down by Woolworths. It was in the High Street, anyway.”

“Can you remember how much they cost?”

“About a fiver I think. Shoes are diabolically expensive these days, aren’t they?”

I throw that in because it is about time I started showing a bit of initiative. Horst and Inga would have had each other’s knickers off by now on half the wordpower.

“Terrible,” says the bird, “and it’s not as if they’re made to last.” She flexes her calf muscles and indicates some disintegrating stitchwork before realising that I am casing her joints and snapping back to being Miss Efficiency.

“Do you have any wet-look shoes?”

“Three pairs.”

“What colours?”

“Two black, one brown.”

“How do you clean them?”

“I breathe on them,” I say, fluttering my lips at her. “And then I rub them over with a duster.”

“Have you ever used an aerosol?”

“Only my sister’s hairspray.”

“On your shoes?”

“No. I was trying to stick Mum’s Green Shield stamps in with them. They got left out in the rain and all the glue came off.”

There doesn’t seem to be a column on her questionnaire for that so she gives a little sigh and gets on with it.

“I meant an aerosol shoe spray,” she says. “They’re specially made for wet-look shoes.”

“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.

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?