Название: Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions
Автор: Timothy Lea
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Книги о войне
isbn: 9780007569816
isbn:
“Well, that’s that,” I say, “Sorry to cause you so much trouble, but it’s alright now. I don’t think I left any blood anywhere.” She ignores that and pulls her gloves off so that they make a loud smacking noise. Her index fingers flex like long, thin insects.
“Before you go, there is something I would like you to do for me. Can you fix light bulbs?”
“I can screw them into sockets.”
“Good. There’s one gone in the coal cellar and I can’t replace it. If you can put a new one in I’ll hold the torch.”
“O.K.”
So we trip down some stairs beside the kitchen door and Mrs. E. bustles along in front of me her dressing gown brushing against the bannister. She’s got a good body on her, I have to admit that. Too much sand in the bottom half of the hour glass but you can’t be too choosey, except now perhaps, when it’s not on anyway.
She opens a door at the end of the passage and I can see coal glinting in the darkness.
“Dirty.” she says, but it seems to me that there’s more relish in her voice than distaste. Must be my imagination. She switches on the torch and I can see the light socket hanging down like a piece of black fur. The ceiling is low and its no problem reaching it but some joker has left the remains of the last bulb in the socket so I’m struggling again. Suddenly the torch starts to waver and I hear the rustle of clothing. I turn round to see what the trouble is and – there is Mrs. E. silhouetted in the doorway, stark bollock naked. It’s no accident either, because she advances towards me and I can see areas of soft flesh picked out in the back glow of the torch.
Funnily enough, my first reaction is one of fear because I’ve never felt the same about cellars since I saw ‘Pyscho’. My state of mind is not improved by Mrs. E. dropping to her knees and gripping one of my thighs with something like the intensity she showed when scratching me in the boozer. Maybe she’s got a carving knife concealed behind her back. Just to be on the safe side I sink down beside her and run my hands lightly over her body but all I come up with is a light bulb.
“Put it in,” she moans. This request opens so many possibilities that I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Surely she doesn’t want to have it away here? Not the very clean Mrs. E. But maybe that’s it. Maybe, hygienically sealed away from the world, a very dirty lady has been trying to get out.
Her breath smells of toothpaste and there’s no better indication of a woman’s plans for you. I take the heavy fruit of her breasts in my hands and even in the darkness I can see she looks as if she’s been lying in black sand. Her nipples come up like champagne corks and she sinks back into the coal dust and starts unpopping my jeans.
I’m about to chuck the bulb away but she makes it clear she wants some light on the subject and when I’ve fixed things I find that red must be her favourite colour. The bulb gives off a soft pink glow so the cellar looks more like Father Christmas’s grotto than the remains of last years’ coal supply.
By now I reckon I must be dreaming the whole thing, and when she starts writhing in the coal dust I know I am.
“Come down here, come down here,” she begs. Some might refuse but Percy has become a bit of a handful and I know that in this mood it is pointless to try to control him. So, off with my jeans and down I go, and – oh! what fun takes place. Mrs. E. is a very selfish lover but you don’t mind when she is obviously enjoying herself so much. I mean, for a man, the pleasure has got to be in making someone else happy, hasn’t it? Otherwise we’d all get the problem off our tiny minds immediately and have a nice kip.
By the time we’re finished, we’re blacker than a bus conductor’s finger nails. If Al Jolson saw us he’d be on to his lawyers within seconds.
“Now what?” I say and it’s a fair question. Unless she’s got a shower in the coal cellar her lovely clean house is going to look like her old man is a chimney sweep who brings his work home with him.
“Over there,” she snaps, and it’s obvious she’s reverting to type faster than most. “In the corner you’ll find some plastic clothes bags. Put one on and hop up to the bathroom.”
So help me, she says it just like that. As if she’s telling you where to empty the waste bin. I think she’s joking but when I get over there it’s just as she says. A pile of bags with a sash round them saying ‘One dozen suit or costume containers. Keep away from children’ etc., etc. Feeling like a right Charlie I put one on and start shuffling upstairs. Something inside me makes me almost wish George would come in as I’m hopping past the front door. I think maybe it’s that there are only four bags left in the pile and I’m wondering who the other four blokes were.
When I left Mrs. Evans’ place I was still feeling dirty. Not physically, you understand, because Mrs. E. had taken great care to see that there wasn’t a smidgeon of coal dust on me. There was a shower in the bathroom, a proper one with a frosted glass door and Mrs. E. had taken me inside it with a bottle of shampoo and – Well, you can imagine, can’t you? The lather; the warm, wet bodies rubbing against each other; the slippery fingers gliding everywhere. I was putty in her hands – no, not putty. I do myself a disservice when I say that. What I mean is, she had me again, just as she presumably had all the other blokes. I had played my part in her kinky games and when it was over I was patted on the head and sent on my way.
It began to dawn on me that I wasn’t screwing anybody. All these birds were screwing me. When I thought about it, most of the birds I’d been with had made me fit in with their plans. Their fantasies, or whatever, never changed; only the man who took part in them, and he could have been anyone.
Nothing wrong with that except that it was getting more and more complicated and I was never doing things my way. Having it away in the coal cellar was the last straw. A few more like Mrs. E. and I’d probably only be able to do it standing in a bowl of custard with a rose behind my ear. I could see it affecting my relationship with Elizabeth. Nice, simple girl like that, it would break her heart if she knew what I was getting up to. Imagine, on your wedding night having to say, ‘I’m sorry, love, but you’ll have to hang upside down from the lamp bracket before I can do anything – oh, and don’t forget to put on your riding boots.’ I mean, it would put the mockers on everything, wouldn’t it?
I think that was the moment I made my resolve to give up all the frigging about and settle down.
“It’s got to stop.” I can remember saying the words out loud so that an old lady at the bus stop almost jumped out of her skin and I got embarrassed and tried to cycle on and cracked the back window of the van in front with my ladder. The bloke was very nasty about it and I was still thinking about some of the things he had called me when I got home.
When I arrive, Mum is rolling out pastry in the kitchen, and she looks at me with that ‘I’ve-got-something-to-tell-you’ expression on her face.
“Lady left a note for you,” she says.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t stop. I just saw her walking away.” Nobody in the world is faster off the mark than Mum when she hears somebody near the front door, and she has eyes that can see through curtains two inches thick.
“She looked like one of those hippies to me. Got some kind СКАЧАТЬ