Timothy Lea's Complete Confessions

What am I going to do now? Luckily it is a fine evening by local standards, so I can walk more or less upright to the bus stop and wait for half an hour for something to take me to the station. By the time it comes, there are four small urchins and a dog watching silently as if they expect a spacecraft to arrive for me instead of a bus.

“Gonk gannet gub gub,” I say to them humouringly as I climb aboard.

“Git you back to Lunnon, you girt nancy boy,” they shout. The passengers do not receive me any more warmly, but at least they keep their mouths shut, and, having overcome the embarrassment of opening my suitcase to delve for the bus fare, I gratefully slip through the station entrance. There is a train in half an hour, which I am tempted to catch, but my native meanness and the considerable amount of liquor swilling about in my veins persuades me to stick it out until eleven forty-five, when the next and last train of the night goes. I commandeer the waiting-room and by putting a jacket and trousers over my costume manage to look less like a refugee from a Martini advertisement. In this condition I nip across the road to the Railway Hotel and sink a few swift pints until darkness coincides with the arrival of the nine-fifteen. Back to the station and I strip for action, leave my case with a suspicious porter and ring for a taxi.

The driver turns out to be the one who picked me up when I first arrived and is quick to remind me what a good memory he has.

“Hello, hello,” he says, “if it isn’t Anthony Armstrong-Jones come up for the festivities. No prizes for where you want to go to, squire.”

I smile grimly and we don’t speak again until I amaze him with the smallness of my tip at the golf club.

“Are you sure you can afford this?” he says sarcastically.

“Now you come to mention it,” I say, removing my tanner from his outspread palm, “no.”

He makes a few unpleasant remarks about my costume not being right for Shylock, but I ignore him and, pulling my mask over my eyes, I stride up the flight of steps in front of the club. A Dresden Shepherdess tears my ticket in half and I go through to mingle with the cream of Cromingham Society. A champagne buffet is included in the price of a ticket and if you look up ‘buffet’ in a dictionary you will see how accurately it is described: ‘knock, hurt, contend with’ it says, and if you want any champagne that is just what you have to do. Half Cromingham seems to be waging war over a pile of sausage rolls and cress sandwiches with a glass of lukewarm pomagne for the tenacious winners. I can resist this, and retire to the bar to case the joint. Minto and Cronk seem to have tables at opposite ends of the dance floor, which shows good planning on somebody’s part, and I can see Mrs. Dent dressed up as a pantomime cat, sitting by herself on a table with a Python’s Pesticides pennant on it. Normally I would not start moving in too early, but it is now ten o’clock and I have no time to waste. Pausing only to take a last, longing look at myself in the bar mirror, I skim over to Mrs. D.’s side.

“Would you care to dance?” I say in my best upper-crust accent. Mrs. D. cranes forward as if she has difficulty hearing me and it occurs to me that she might have had a few herself. Couldn’t be better.

“Do I know you?” she begins; then she waves her hand in a self-dismissing gesture and starts to get up. “Doesn’t matter whether I do or don’t. I’m not sitting here by myself any longer. Lead me to the floor.”

We weave our way unsteadily through the tables and I am just beginning to wonder whether the band are supposed to be playing a waltz or sounding the retreat when Mrs. D. grips my arm.

“Let’s go to the discotheque,” she says. “The sight of my husband chatting up the boss’s wife is more than my stomach can stand.”

I follow her glance and there is a balding thirty-five-year-old dancing elaborately with Mrs. Carstairs who has on her best ‘be nice to the natives’ expression. As we watch, Mr. D. starts patting his bonce with his breast pocket handkerchief and it is obvious that a combination of heat and nerves is bringing him out in a muck sweat. He looks less competition than Quasimodo with lockjaw, and this, coupled with the fact that Garth is tied up with Mrs. Cronk, makes me daring.

“Come on,” I say passionately. “I want to find somewhere where I can hold you very tight in my arms.”

I take her by the hand and lead her into the welcome darkness of the discotheque, which is full of twitchers and gropers, either doing the total dance bit or touching up each other’s wives. I fall very speedily into the second category and start moulding Mrs. D. to my torso like I am using her to take a plaster cast of my body.

“Hey,” she pants, “who are you? There’s something about you that’s familiar—apart from what you’re doing with your hands.”

“I took your knickers off once,” I say, “and I’d like to do it again. Right now!”

“Can’t you give me any more help than that?” she says.

I lean forward and whisper into her ear what I did when her knickers were off.

“Oh, I know who you are,” she says. “Colin Kelly.”

“No!”

“David McMillan? Peter Por—”

“Look! Let’s forget it,” I yelp. I mean, you can take just so much, can’t you?

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m a little bit pickled tonight, but—” she struggles close to me, “I’m certain whoever you were it was very nice. You’ve got a lovely body.”

“Just what I was going to say about you, darling,” I murmur, deciding to forgive her, “and very soft lips.” I am prepared to gamble that they don’t feel like emery paper and I am right.

“You might have worn a dress,” I grumble. “I want to put my hand up your skirt.”

“This takes off very easily.”

“But where?”

“That’s up to you.”

I seem to remember that we have been through all this before. But that time I was sober. Tonight I am drunk. And when I am drunk and there is a chance of getting my end away, I’d dive through a plate glass window for it.

“I’ve got a car outside,” I lie.

“I don’t like it in cars.”

“This is a big car.”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“Come on!” I kiss her passionately on the mouth, almost loosening one of my front teeth in the process. “I’ll see you round the corner from the front entrance.” I lead her back to the table before she can argue with me, and nod politely at Mr. D., who is leaning forward earnestly in case Mrs. Carstairs wants to stub a fag out in his ear. Mr. C.’s eyes flicker over me for a second, but I don’t think he remembers where we last met. Mrs. C. is dancing with somebody else. I thank Mrs. D. and make tracks for the side entrance which leads to the car park.

I need a pee but there is no time.

Outside the night air makes me giddy but I take a few deep breaths and start checking out the cars. There is a bloody great Vauxhall station wagon, an Alvis and—Minto’s Rolls. I wonder! It would give me a lot of satisfaction to have it away in the back of a Rolls—especially Minto’s. I might even forget to tidy up afterwards. I have no sooner tried the back door and found it open than I see Mrs. D. hovering in the entrance. I kiss her quickly and draw her after me into the shadows.

“This isn’t yours,” she hisses when she see the Rolls. “This is Major Minto’s. Supposing he comes back suddenly?”

“He won’t,” I comfort her. “He’s drawing the raffle at midnight.” This, of course, is a complete lie but it shows you how fast on my feet I can be. ‘Lea the flea’ they call me. I kiss her again and pull her into the car. The door shuts on us with a click as gentle as the snapping of a sparrow’s wishbone.

“Roomy, isn’t it?” I murmur, but Mrs. D. was never one to waste precious moments on conversation. She starts kissing me like she is trying to make my mouth fray at the edges and her fingers tie knots in the hair at the nape of my neck. It is no problem finding the zip of her cat-suit and as it plunges down to the small of her back she wriggles forward so that I can feel that she is not wearing a bra. I run my finger over her body and she sinks down until she is lying across the length of the back seat. I peel off her suit, which for some bloody stupid reason reminds me of the Babygro my sister Rosie’s kid used to wear, and see she is naked except for a pair of panties. I take a firm grip on these and as our mouths meet again I pull them down inch by inch over her straining body. She must be near coming now because her legs are rigid and trembling, and I’m not exactly thinking about Chelsea Reserves’ chances in the London Combination Cup either.

“Lick me,” she moans. “Please lick me.”

Well, you don’t like to disappoint people, do you? And, as I’ve said before, get a few beers inside me and I make your average eyetie seem like Sir Alec Douglas Home with a heavy cold. I am kneeling on the thick pile carpet and just about to make her a very happy lady when I am reminded again of my body’s urgent need for a piss. Better to go now, I think, for in a few minutes it’s going to be impossible. So, detaching myself with difficulty from Mrs. D.’s imploring fingers, I tell her where I am going and nip over to the nearest wall.

I don’t know how many of you have experience of pissing with a hard on but it is bloody difficult. With my hampton sticking up in the air like a level-crossing pole, I nearly pee up my own nostril and end up scoring a direct hit on the Vent-Axia unit. I have just tucked everything away and am about to return to the quivering Mrs. D. when somebody comes round the corner and I shrink back into the shadows. It is, in fact, two people, and to my amazement I recognise Dawn and Tony Sharp, the star-crossed lovers of the Shermer Sevens.

“Oh, God, I want you,” breathes Sharp, sounding like a poor imitation of me a few minutes earlier. “I’ve got to have you.”

They clinch enthusiastically and for a few moments I think they are going to have it away there and then. Before they can prove me right, there is the sound of somebody else approaching and Gruntscomb of the Echo looms into the light.

“Oh, excuse me,” he mumbles, “not trying to be a Peeping Tom. Oh, it’s you, Mr. Sharp. Good evening. Sorry about your accident today, but it didn’t half make a lovely picture, didn’t it? Did you see it in tonight’s Echo? I should think your friend Cronk must have felt like shutting up shop immediately. And, you know—” he drops his voice conspiratorially, “—there’s better to follow. We’ve got an interview with the man, Roper, who was driving the Morris, and he has practically admitted that it was the pressure that he was subjected to when he was with the E.C.D.S. that made him crack up. That’s not going to do them any good, is it? We’re printing his story tomorrow and we can get a very good slant on it, if you know what I mean.”

“You’re doing a grand job,” says Sharp hurriedly, obviously worried because Dawn had been listening. “Enjoy yourself—we’ll be in touch.”

“What was all that about?” says Dawn when Gruntscomb has padded away. “You’ve really got it in for poor old Cronky, haven’t you?”

She doesn’t seem that worried and when Sharp starts mauling her again she soon forgets all about it.

“What are we going to do?” she pants, when they come up for air.

“Have you ever made love in a Rolls Royce?” says Sharp, “It’s unforgettable.”

Oh no!!! I think.

“What do you mean?” says Dawn beginning to sound excited.

“I drove Minto here tonight and I’ve still got the keys. Come on, I love screwing you in cars.”

“You’ve only done it once.”

“That was enough to know I liked it.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Over there.”

“It’s a bit near the golf club, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t mind last time.”

“I didn’t have any alternative last time. You practically raped me.”

“You didn’t mind that, either.”

“I don’t want to do it here, that’s final! Come on—” she squeezes his arm enticingly—”take me for a spin, and then we’ll make love.” Sharp thinks about it and I pray that he is going to say no but of course his twisted, cock-happy little mind reacts in exactly the same way that mine would have done.

“O.K.” he says. “A quick spin along that road that goes out to the fourteenth. We can’t be away too long. Valerie will start getting neurotic.”

And as I hold my breath, they walk towards the Rolls and climb into the front seat. Sad as it is from my point of view, I can’t help feeling a bit amused. The naked Mrs. D. squatting in the back, no doubt hearing voices and wondering what the hell has happened to me. Sharp and his lady love purring off into the countryside, little knowing what awaits them when they eventually fumble towards the rear seat. I wish I could have a photograph of it all. It would be almost enough to make up for my disappointment.

Wait a minute. Photograph! A scheme of monstrous brilliance suddenly occurs to me. Majors are always trying to drop the E.C.D.S. in the brown stuff. Why shouldn’t they have a taste of their own medicine?

I race inside and as luck would have it bump straight into Gruntscomb.

“Quick,” I shout, “where’s a telephone? I’ve just seen a couple of roughs driving off in Major Minto’s Rolls.”

“Really!” Gruntscomb swallows it hook, line and sinker. “which way did they go?”

“That road that goes out towards the links. They’re probably taking a shortcut to Aylsham.”

The last sentence is spoken to myself for Gruntscomb is off to get the biggest scoop of his life. I dial 999 and wait to be put through to the police.

“Hello. Good evening. I’d like to report the theft of a car. A Rolls Royce. I saw it being driven away from Cromingham Golf Club on the links road. About five minutes ago—yes, I’m quite sure. Major Minto … Look officer, I know this sounds stupid, but I was certain I saw a naked girl on the back seat. I thought it might be some of those hippies going to have an orgy. It would be like them to steal the best car they could get their hands on, wouldn’t it? Yes, I’ll be here. My name’s Roger Carpenter, didn’t I tell you? I am sorry.”

I ring off and pass the good news on to the night desks of the Sun, Express and Mirror and by the time I have finished the Rolls was loaded to the roof with naked hippies, many of them bearing a striking resemblance to members of the royal family.

It would be nice to do more but it is now eleven fifteen and I barely have time to catch my train. A shame I won’t be able to see the meeting between Sharp, Mrs. D., Dawn, Gruntscomb and the police, but luckily I have a vivid imagination and it will give me something to think about on the way to London.

I dig out my last 2p bit and start dialling for a taxi.

THE END

Confessions from a Holiday Camp

BY TIMOTHY LEA

CONTENTS

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

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.