Confessions of an Ice Cream Man. Timothy Lea

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      CHAPTER TWO

      In which Valentina’s mum arrives and an unexpected love idyll is rudely interrupted.

      ‘Boum!’ The noise comes from a long way away, echoing through the house. I don’t take a lot of notice of it but burrow deeper into Valentina’s warm, friendly body – but Valentina’s warm, friendly body suddenly isn’t there any more. It is sitting up and looking anxiously towards the door.

      ‘Basta!’ she hisses. That is not very nice, is it? After all we have been through. It is only afterwards that I find it doesn’t mean what I think it does. ‘Mamma!’ Now I know what that means – trouble. The sound was the front door slamming. Suddenly I am very much awake. For the second time I swing my legs off the bed and start searching for my clothes.

      ‘Valentina!’

      She has her sweater over her head in half a second flat – not flat, very curvy. ‘In the cupboard!’ she hisses. I grab my shoes and scuttle through the door. She picks up a sock and throws it after me. The door closes with a scraping noise. It is not a clothes cupboard but more like a stock room. There are shelves with piles of stationery and pieces of advertising material ‘Frascati’s original blend old Italian ice cream’. I must say, the stuff does taste good. I remember it as a kid. Still, flavour of the month is not my preoccupation at the moment. I hear the sound of the door flying open followed by a babble of Italian. Blimey! Valentina’s mum goes on like Vesuvius in full spate. She is obviously having a go at her little girl and wanting to know why she is having a kip in the middle of the afternoon. I hope Valentina is a good talker. She can hardly get a word in edgeways at the moment. I lean forward to get a better idea of what is going on and my elbow brushes against a pile of pamphlets. I spin round to stop them falling and knock a wadge of notepaper on the floor with a loud ‘crump!’ Mamma’s voice cuts out like you have lifted it off the turntable and my stomach drops. The cupboard door is nearly torn off its hinges and I am looking into a pair of blazing eyes fringed by ragged jet black hair. Valentina’s mum clocks the unpleasant sight before her for a few long seconds and then turns to her daughter. Wham! Biff! Sock! – and anything else you used to read in your favourite comic book. Poor Valentina cops some terrible right handers and runs out of the room in tears. I take the opportunity to get one of my feet in my trousers but this turns out to be a bad mistake as Mamma turns on me and starts chasing me round the room. She would be a difficult person to dodge at the best of times – but hopping? It is out of the question.

      ‘Ani-mal, ani-mal!’ she shouts. ‘You bring dishonour on our family. My daughter will never be married in white!’ Well, I don’t know about that but if Valentina was a stranger to the one-eyed bed snake then you can call me Johann Cruyf.

      ‘Think of the money you’re going to save on the dress,’ I say. ‘Ouch!’ She is strong, Valentina’s mum, there is no getting away from it. Much bigger than her daughter and with knockers like the corners on a cement bag. She snatches my shirt from my hands and rips it in half. ‘Hey! Watch it!’ I say. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry – well, I was just going to.’

      She is working herself up to a terrible state and when she picks up a pair of scissors I start to get really worried. ‘And now I cut it off!’ she shouts.

      Oh dear, what a way to go. She picks up my trousers and starts hacking through the bit round the zip. Very symbolic. You don’t need to watch a lot of Wednesday plays to get the drift. I can just see the headlines in the Balham Courier: ‘Stop me and buy one. “I wanted a cassata not a castrata”, squeaks Clapham youth.’ More like ‘I scream’ than ‘Ice cream’. ‘Y-a-a-argh!’ Blimey! It is like a Jewish wedding when they find that the bridegroom’s Barclaycard is out of date. God knows what the neighbours must think. She is going to do herself an injury before she does me at this rate. She throws me back on the bed and dives on me so that the scissor blades are inches from my throat. Cancel my last statement.

      I struggle desperately and succeed in getting the scissors away from her. I throw them across the room and she drags her nails down my chest. ‘Youch!’ Now she is biting me. I wrestle myself on top of her and pin her arms out. My face is inches from hers and she spits into it. Charming! I bet Barbara Cartland wouldn’t carry on like this if she caught you dunking your doughnut with Lady Lewisham. What huge knockers she has got – I don’t mean Lady Lewisham. I mean Valentina’s mum. They are performing a seismic eruption beneath me.

      ‘Ani-mal! Ani-mal! Dirtee ani-mal!!’ She struggles to free her wrists but I am too strong for her – just. How long can this go on? I only have the strength of three men.

      ‘Mmmmmmm!!’ She hooks her legs over mine and suddenly arches her back and delivers a plonker on my rose hips. It is not so much a kiss as an attempt to rearrange the whole architecture of my face beneath nose level. What is so amazing is that it seems to have the stuff of genuine passion in it as well as all the natural juices. That is without the panting and morning. Is she on the level or trying to make me loosen my grip so that she can practise more mayhem? There is only one way to find out.

      I let go of her wrists and she clasps her powerful hands to my nut and starts manoeuvring it round her mouth like it is some kind of mechanical love aid. She is wearing a cardigan over a blouse and I ping open the buttons and feel the ribbed pattern of her bra rough against the palm of my hands. The unexpectedness of everything has had a very salutary effect on my old man and I can feel it poking uncomfortably against the restraining web of my y-fronts. I slide a hand down and quickly free it while Valentina’s mum pulls a sheet about us. Her eyes are closed and I reckon she has purposely worked herself up into a kind of trance so that she can СКАЧАТЬ