Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

Now, I have never thought of Garth as being particularly quick on the uptake, but his reactions in this situation are razor sharp, to put it mildly.

“Good afternoon,” says the stranger, pushing his specs up on his nose and making his voice sound about as welcoming as an icicle sticking out of the tap marked ‘hot’. “Might I be presumptuous enough to inquire what you think you are doing in my swimming pool?”

“I’ve been overhauling the filtration system, guv,” says Garth. “You know, your annual check-up that everything is functioning O.K. We don’t want your clunge outlets clogging up, do we?”

He pulls himself out in one easy, graceful movement and taps one of the grills in the wall. “I’d watch the temperature in here, if I were you. Too much humidity can fur up your spangers.”

He says it so naturally that he almost has me convinced.

“Very interesting,” says Mr. Carstairs in his best Nazi. “I’m glad my ‘spangers’ are in such good hands. But one thing puzzles me slightly: why it is necessary to perform the service in the nude?”

I would have refused to answer that one on the grounds that it might incriminate me, but it is underarm bowling to Garth in his present mood.

“Checking the chlorine level, guv’nor. I don’t really know how it works myself but over the years your skin works up an incredible sensitivity to the chlorine content of the water. It’s a bit like taking canaries down the mines.”

“Remarkable,” says Mr. Meany, all sarcastic-like. “And this amazing talent is denied its full expression if you are wearing a pair of bathing trunks?”

“Exactly, guv, the tactile stimuli are impeded by the presence of any form of clothing.”

Mr. Carstairs snorts and is obviously going to contribute something further to the conversation when Mrs. C. appears. I am glad to see that she is fully dressed and that there is no sign of Mrs. Dent. With a bit of luck we might still get away with our balls unsinged.

“Darling,” she squeals. “What a heavenly surprise. I had no idea you were going to be back before the weekend.” She gazes at Garth as if he had just floated out of the exit duct and flashes a quick glance round for me.

“Evidently,” says Mr. C., allowing himself to be kissed on the cheek. “I’m sorry to have spoiled your surprise.”

“Surprise, darling?”

“Having the ‘clunge outlets unclogged and the ‘spangers’—it is spangers, isn’t it?”; Garth nods—“having the spangers protected from furring up. It was very thoughtful of you. This sturdy servitor of aqua-hygiene has been telling me all about it.”

“Oh, well, yes.” Mrs. C. starts fingering a necklace she isn’t wearing and struggles for inspiration. “I thought it was about time somebody had a look at it.”

“Yes, indeed. Well, now you can tell me what you’ve been doing, while our friend here gets his clothes on.”

Thank God, I think, now they’ll piss off and I can slip out with Garth. But not a bit of it. The bastard sits right down on the edge of the springboard while Mrs. C. rabbits on about her painting and Garth slopes off to get dressed.

By now I am sweating like a pig and there is something crawling up my legs that feels as if it has come all the way from Africa with the undergrowth. Garth comes out of the changing-room and I can see my T-shirt sticking out of his hold-all.

“Goodbye,” says Mr. C. like a python talking to something that is already half-way down its throat. “I’d like to say I hope to see you again, but I’m certain that someone with your obvious talents will be moving on to bigger and better swimming-pools.”

Garth mumbles something cheerful and is half-way to the door when Mr. C.’s voice cuts in again.

“Oh, by the way, I believe my wife has been using a model who probably needs a lift back to town. Perhaps you can help her out?”

“Certainly, guv. It’ll be a pleasure.”

He bundles out and I wait hopefully for Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs to follow him. Mrs. C. doesn’t need any pushing, but Mr. C. suddenly starts loosening his tie.

“Are you coming, George?”

“No. I rather fancy a swim. I want to see if I can feel the chlorine level.”

“You what?”

“It doesn’t matter, dear. It was something the service man was talking to me about. I’ll see you later.”

He disappears into the changing-room and Mrs. C. gazes desperately round the room for me. She even looks into the pool as if she expects to find me holding my nose on the bottom. I have half a mind to make a run for the door, but before I can pull myself together Mr. C. has shot out of the changing-room sporting a pair of moth-eaten red woollen trunks. Why he bothers I can’t think.

“You go and get some supper, dear,” he says. “I feel like building up an appetite.”

And this is just what the bastard does. Up and down the pool he goes until the sweat is making a puddle at my feet and I have to lie on my stomach to get over the cramp in my legs.

He must have done about a hundred lengths before he clambers out and slowly towels himself down. It is now dark outside and I don’t relish exposing my body to the kind of weather Cromingham dishes out. I could eat a horse and the heat is giving me a headache. “Piss off out of it, Carstairs,” I murmur to myself and at last the bugger moves towards the door that leads into the house proper. A few more minutes and I will be able to escape while he is feeding his stupid face. I begin to move myself into a position from which I can get up when suddenly Carstairs pauses in the doorway and swivels his gaze to exactly where I am hiding.

“I must say you’re doing a most conscientious job checking those plants,” he says mockingly. “I’ll turn the heating up so that you don’t get too cold in case there’s a frost tonight. I know it may fur up the spangers but I’m certain your associate would understand.”

And with that he closes the door behind him and I hear the key turn in the lock. Bloody swine! He has known I was there all the time and been making me sweat it out—literally. Rage boils up inside me. I could probably sue him for the diabolical liberties he is taking. You can’t lock up people in your heated swimming-pool just because they might have been about to have an orgy with your old woman. This isn’t a police state yet, Mr. Carstairs! This and a few hundred other thoughts march through my mind as the humidity increases to a point where I can hardly breathe and snowflakes whirl down through the darkness outside.

What a carry-on! I might as well be spending the night in a Turkish bath; and if I do get out, other than in a sponge, I will probably freeze to death. Luckily I can crawl into the changing-room but, as I had suspected, the brilliant Garth has taken all my clobber. All I can find to wear is a pair of kid’s bathing trunks and a white coat such as worn by cricket umpires, doctors and ice-cream salesmen. Not much cop for the great outdoors. There is no outside door to the changing-room and the door to the house has been locked by creepy Carstairs. I try to slide open the sheet glass windows but they, too, appear to be locked. Apart from lifting the grille in the bath and chancing my luck down the outlet channel, there seems to be no alternative, other than smashing a window or waiting to be released. The destruction involved in the former is a bit monumental even by my standards and I decide to wait and see if Garth or Mrs. C. comes to the rescue.

Hours later I am still waiting and there is no sign of either of them. I have a pretty good idea where Garth is, and the very thought of it is more than I can bear in my condition. By this time I have returned to the changing-room, where it is slightly easier to breathe and am trying to sleep on one of the benches. I must have half dozed off when I hear a ‘click’ which sounds like a key turning in a lock. I listen for a moment but there is no other noise, and it is only desperation that makes me drag myself across to try the door. It opens! Either Mr. Carstairs has relented or Julia has managed to slip away and release me. Probably the latter. There is nobody on the other side of the door so I don’t hang about but tiptoe across the ankle-deep carpet and climb out by the first sash window I come to.

By the cringe, it is cold! It has stopped snowing and is now freezing hard and I almost wish I had hung on long enough to find a pair of shoes before doing a bunk. Unless I keep moving the soles of my feet stick to the ground and the wind cuts me like a knife. Luckily, I stop a bloke in a van at the end of the lane and scramble in before he has a chance to see my bare feet. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he does and drives like fury to the end of Mrs. B.’s road, where I thank him through chattering teeth and stagger the last hundred yards trying to keep my circulation going by swinging my arms.

Of course, I don’t have a front door key, so I have to steer a frozen finger to the bell-push and after a couple of rings a light goes on at the top of the stairs.

Mrs. B. pulls open the door and I practically fall into the hall before she can say anything. She has obviously been on the point of giving me the mother and father of all bollockings but my pitiful condition changes all that.

“Good heavens!” she gasps. “What on earth have you been up to? You look half dead.”

A glance in the hallstand mirror confirms her impression. There is a rim of frost across both eyebrows, my eyelashes look as if they had been dipped in sugar, and my hair is white. I might have been chipped out of a deep freeze.

“I b-b-b-b-b-b—” I croak and luckily the Florence Nightingale in Mrs. B. comes surging to the fore.

“Never mind,” she says urgently. “You can tell me later. If we don’t do something about you, you’re going to freeze to death. Can you get upstairs?”

I nod bravely and reach for the bannisters whilst she goes on ahead to run a bath. Can my body stand it, I ask myself. Boiled alive one moment, frozen the next; it reminds me of how we used to harden up conkers when I was a kid. Certainly my own personal set are in a pitiful condition, having shrunk to a size that would give a four-year-old boy an anxiety complex. But that is not one of my immediate problems. My body is so numb that you could drive nails through my feet without me feeling anything. But when I get into the bath—yeeow! The pain is excruciating and I groan away, hardly conscious that Mrs. B. is standing there watching my naked agony.

“Brandy and hot lemon. That’s what you need,” she says motheringly. “I think there’s some in the medicine cupboard.”

She pads off and slowly the pain is replaced by a kind of pleasant tiredness. I pull myself out of the bath and have just draped a large towel round my shoulders when she reappears, carrying a steaming mug. It must be one of the best drinks I have ever tasted and I gulp hungrily, trying to make grateful noises between mouthfuls.

“That’s all right, dear. Don’t talk. You’re not up to it.”

I become aware that Mrs. B.’s sensitive fingers have started towelling me down and that her warm, fragrant-smelling body is close to mine. She is wearing a long, white linen nightdress dropping low enough at the front for me to see her rich creamy boobs and this revelation coincides with the arrival of her healing fingers at the source of most of my great moments in sport.

“O-o-ooh, that’s good,” I moan.

She can take that any way she wants and I don’t think it is my imagination when the pressure round my John Thomas increases.

“You poor boy,” she murmurs. “You poor, poor boy.”

She is shivering more than me now and somehow our mouths just seem to collide. My towel drops to the floor and I am digging my fingers into her soft arse as her tongue fights to get past mine.

It’s funny, but sometimes when you are nearly out on your feet you really fancy a bit of the other, and tonight is no exception. I feel warm and cosy, but at the same time charged with a great desire to make love. I start to pull up Mrs. B.’s nightdress but she takes my hands and leads me down the corridor to where her bedroom door opens invitingly. I can see the outline of the big double bed and the eiderdown swollen like an over-pumped Lilo. The sheets are thrown back from when she got up to let me in and there is a soft white valley into which we collapse. Her hands help mine to pull the nightdress over her head and I reach out to support her freed breasts.

“Come down into the warm,” she murmurs and wriggles over on to her back, pulling me and the bedclothes with her. My fingers glide over her belly and down to the smooth luxury of her thighs, which part invitingly. Her hand reaches past mine and removes a hot water bottle which I hear thud against the floor.

“We won’t need that now,” she says, and, hugging me to her, she sets out to prove it.

CHAPTER NINE

Garth is very apologetic about not coming back, but says that Mrs. Dent had his old man out before they got to the crossroads and that one thing led to another and that he thought Mrs. C. would let me out anyway and that, yes, he knew I didn’t have any clothes but it would have been giving the game away to leave mine in the changing-room and he thought Mrs. C. would take care of that too.

I can’t really blame him because I don’t reckon I would have acted any differently in his position. Mrs. Dent, I know from experience, can be a very demanding lady.

I am pretty certain that I will never see Mrs. C. again and this worries me somewhat because Cronky thinks that the Department of the Environment shines out of her arsehole and is not likely to take kindly to the disappearance of his favourite pupil. But, to my surprise, she shows up per schedule, bright as an old penny, and starts gushing the moment we have got out of earshot of the E.C.D.S.

“Frightfully sorry … felt so awful … poor you … wasting away … what a shame … your divine friend … silly old George … can be so difficult … bee in the bonnet … had the most awful trouble … couldn’t get away … marvellous idea … new wonder pills … two in his brandy … mad lust … endless lovemaking … staggered down … hardly turn key … sorry too much.”

I get interested towards the end and make her take me through it again. It appears that she has got her hands on some tablets which are the ideal cure for wilting Willy. Not only that, but they are a winner on the old desire stakes as well. Given a couple of those in their Ovaltine, Lady Lewisham and Malcolm Muggeridge would have to be separated with a firehose. Quite where Mrs. C. got them from is a secret she keeps to herself but I have a suspicion she has been having it away with some boffin at Python’s Pesticides who specialises in that kind of thing. Certainly her old man didn’t give them to her—be a bloody fool to, wouldn’t he? They must work, because she is highly chuffed and makes no reference to another painting session. Bloody egg heads put the mockers on everything. But, I reason to myself, if science can work against me, it can work for me, and you never know when the deadly brewers’ droop is going to strike. One or two of those little fellows could come in very handy. I press Mrs. C. on the point and after a fair amount of dithering she promises to get me a few.

“But for heaven’s sake, Timmy,” she warns me, “whatever you do, don’t use more than one at a time. I gave George two and they turned him into a ravening beast.” She smiles happily at the memory.

Well, of course, I promise I will be very careful and the next time I see her she slips me a small phial of what looks like saccharin tablets. I was expecting something the size of bantams’ eggs but you have only to take a butchers at Mrs. C. to see that, however small they are, they work. There is a comfortable, satisfied look about her and she hardly talks throughout the lesson. I throw in a hopeful reference to painting but she says that she has not been doing much lately and is spending her time getting ready to accompany George on a business trip he is making to Copenhagen. Bloody nice, isn’t it? A couple of love pills and a ‘live show’ and I reckon Python’s could say goodbye to both of them.

I pop the pills in my pocket and though I continue to do so every morning, after a while I almost forget they are there. Almost, that is, until the day of the Shermer Rugby Union Football Club seven-a-side tournament.

Winter has given very grudgingly to spring along the North Norfolk coast and Mrs. Carstairs has passed her test first time, as I always knew she would. Mrs. Dent has failed hers for the third time, as I also knew she would, because she likes getting poked by Garth. In fact, she is a first-rate driver, and if it was not for the fact that she would be jumping out every two minutes and trying to screw the other competitors I would enter her at Indianapolis. Mrs. C.’s success means that Cronky looks upon me as a second son and can hardly take his eyes off the door in case the Queen Mother comes in. Needless to say, the latter event does not take place and it is left to Garth Williams, six foot four of craggy Celt, to inject some excitement into our cold spring days.

“Ever played rugby, Timmy?” he says to me one morning.

In fact, I have played rugby netball, which is a game found nowhere else outside Clapham Common and too complicated to describe in detail here, but once I have told him about my shattered ankle he shifts his attention to Petal.

“You must be joking, luv. I don’t even like the shape of the ball. And all that physical contact with people you’ve never seen before in your life. I should coco!”

I don’t usually agree with Petal but I am on his side there. What kind of bloke is it that spends Saturday afternoon trying to push his head between two other blokes’ arses? And all that frisking about in the showers afterwards? And singing dirty songs in the ‘men only’ bar? It’s a bit strange, if you ask me. Would you want to spend Easter in a coach with thirty-two men? Of course you wouldn’t. I wonder The People haven’t exposed it.

“I’m trying to get a side up for the Shermer seven-a-sides,” says Garth. “They’re a bloody load of snobs and they win their own tournament every year, so it’s time somebody fixed them. Raymouth have gone off on tour and I’ve persuaded one or two of their blokes that couldn’t go to turn out for us, but I need a couple more class players if we aren’t going to look bloody stupid. Your friend Tony Sharp is their star, Timmy, if that’s any incentive.”

It very nearly is but I still get the odd twinge from my ankle and I reckon I’m ahead in the Lea v Sharp series, so I shake my head. “Sorry, mate, but my ankle isn’t up to it and I’d probably let you down anyway, but tell us when it is and we’ll come along and support, eh, Petal?”

“If I’m not in London, lovie, I’d adore to,” says Petal, totally without sincerity, “but I’m very heavily committed in the next few weeks. One of my friends is coming back from Australia and I haven’t seen him for years.”

“Worked his passage, did he?” says Garth.

“I beg your pardon?” says Petal. “Let’s have no more of that.”

So one Saturday afternoon, when the wind has dropped to gale force and a few super optimists in the High Street are beginning to scrape the flaking paint off signs saying ‘Olde Englishe Tea Roomes’ and ‘Ye Noshery’ in anticipation of the first rush of holidaymakers, I pick up Dawn and we take the coast road to Shermer. The rugby ground is tucked away in a corner of the golf course and the clubhouse is one of the new concrete type that looks like a public lavatory on two levels. From the moment we get there I can see what Garth means about the Shermer crowd being snobs. The two blokes selling programmes at the gate are both retired Indian Army and look a bit horrified when they see the E.C.D.S. sign on my car.

“Sure you’ve got the right place, old man?” says one of them condescendingly. “This is the Shermer Rugby Club, you know.”

I tell him I do know and we pay our 50p and go in past a crowd of blokes and birds leaning out of an old banger and shouting “You beast!” and “Oh, Rodney, don’t!” at each other.

I must confess that my unease is slightly heightened by Dawn’s clobber, which differs considerably from that on any other bint I can see. Her white high-heel shoes soon start sinking into the pool of mud outside the clubhouse and I don’t think that the stockings with two sailors climbing up a ladder pattern are being generally admired. Add to that a miniskirt, short fur coat, black patent leather handbag and the usual make-up counter of Woolworth’s plastered all over her mush and you can see that she would be a teeny bit overdressed for Raymouth Palais on fancy dress night. She does not help by rabbiting on about how cold and dirty it is and I wish I had left her at home, especially when I see some of the class talent lying about. I recognize the neat little dark-haired job that Sharp was with at the Y.C.s dance and give her a warm smile across the pile of sliced bread she is coating with sandwich spread, and she smiles back, which presumably means no more than that she thinks I am one of Tony’s friends. How wrong can you get? There is no sign of Sharp but I don’t have time to think about that because Garth comes bustling up.

“Thank God you’ve come,” he says. “One of the bloody Raymouth mob hasn’t turned up and we’re a man short.”

Now, normally I would have referred him to my wonky ankle but I don’t fancy being lumbered with Dawn for the whole afternoon and this might be a good opportunity to escape for a bit. We are certain to be knocked out in the first round so I shouldn’t come to any harm. Garth can see me weakening.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s only seven minutes each way and we’ve got a bye in the first round. You might even get a chance to kick Tony Sharp in the crutch. Have a go if only to give the rest of our blokes a game.”

“Oh, look,” says Dawn, “there’s a juke box over there. I think I’ll have a little dance to keep myself warm.”

“I’ll play,” I say.

It is half an hour before anyone starts playing and another half hour before we leave the crypt-like cold of the changing-room and start trotting towards a pitch which looks about half a mile away. ‘We’ are the Cromingham Crabs and, looking around my fellow team-mates, I wouldn’t back us against a day nursery when their best players were down with nappy rash.

Garth is all right, of course, his thighs sticking out of his shorts like sides of beef, but the rest of them! One long streak of piss with hair hanging down in front of his eyes like a Yorkshire Terrier, two small fat men and one big fat man who have to stop running before we even get to the pitch, and a bloke about my age who looks all right until he hands someone his glasses and then practically has to be led on to the field. The fact that only two members of the side are wearing the same coloured shirt also tends to convey the impression that we may be a bit short of teamwork.

We are playing Python’s Pesticides and, frankly, they don’t look much more imposing than us, though they have beaten Old Crominghamians II in the first round and are all wearing the same strip.

“Where do you want me to play?” I ask Garth.

“You’d better go on the wing,” he says comfortingly. “Do you know how to throw the ball in?”

“No.”

“Well, watch the game over there and you’ll see.”

He starts doing fast press-ups, slapping his chest after each press, and I am glad to see that someone is fit. The rest of our team are passing round fags and boasting about how long it is since they played.

The game on the other pitch features Shermer and that is where most of the spectators are gathered, shouting “Olly, olly Shermer” and similar idiotic expressions of upper-class encouragement. It does not take me long to see Sharp because the minute I arrive his lean frame can be seen streaking away and the cries of the faithful rise into a crescendo as he grounds the ball behind the opposition’s posts.

“Oh, well played, Shermer.” “Beautiful, Tony.” “Give ’em a chance, lads. Don’t score too many.” Sharp walks back nonchalantly, holding the ball at arm’s length with one hand and thinking how wonderful he is. I have to admit he can move a bit and I don’t reckon I would be able to live with him for speed. Luckily it’s not likely to come to the test.