Confessions of a Plumber’s Mate

Publisher’s Note

The Confessions series of novels were written in the 1970s and some of the content may not be as politically correct as we might expect of material written today. We have, however, published these ebook editions without any changes to preserve the integrity of the original books. These are word for word how they first appeared.

Confessions of a Plumber’s Mate

by Timothy Lea

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Also Available in the Confessions Series

About the Author

Also by Timothy Lea

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Forty-eight hours I am stuck inside Enid, give or take a few – and by the end of the experience I would rather give than take, I don’t mind telling you. Of course, I am referring to Enid, my lorry, and the length of time I spend in a snow drift on the Pennines, not to anything more unwholesome. Not that there is a lot more unwholesome than spending forty-eight hours on a load of uncured sheepskins. Of course, I do have Shirl – I have to laugh when I write that – have her? We practically write a new sex manual together. What a woman! Once she gets to like you she is no slouch in finding ways of demonstrating the fact. One thing about those sheepskins, they are warm – I mean, the sheep wouldn’t wear them if they weren’t, would they? – and snuggled up together in the middle of them it is easy for the natural curtain of modesty that separates two young people to be drawn aside to reveal the elementary life force that surges like a mighty torrent beyond the cottage window. Sorry about that but when you’re stuck in a snowdrift with a randy bird, a Worcester Pearmain and a bar of fruit and nut, your mind does tend to go off into the poetical. I mean, as an experience it can have its longueurs. Don’t get me wrong. As regular readers will know, I am not averse to a spot of in and out. The trouble is that after forty-eight hours I am all-in and ready for the out.

It would have been even worse if the bloke from the sports car had not joined us. At first I think it is one of the Long Horns that has been sheltering against the back of the lorry – as it turns out, I am not so far wrong. I don’t want to go into details because I find it too humiliating but he and Shirl strike up an instant understanding. I don’t mind too much because I am able to get stuck into his barley sugar. Without that, I think I might be in a worse way than I am. By the time they get us out I am noshing the caster sugar at the bottom of the tin.

No doubt you recall the build-up to these incidents? I describe it in an account of my experiences as a lorry driver entitled, perhaps not altogether surprisingly, Confessions of a Long Distance Lorry Driver. Readers of that tome will recall that Lady Luck has not risked a hernia through bearing me large slices of good fortune of late. The load of glasses I was carrying north went west and there is a strong likelihood of extreme unpleasantness with brother-in-law and partner, Sidney Noggett, when I eventually limp back to the Smoke.

When the snow plough gets to us, Shirl decides to travel with the bloke in the sports car. Simon Masterton is what I think his name is. He plays no further part in the story but I thought you might like to say goodbye to him. Shirl clearly reckons that they have something very big going for them and I think I have already alluded to what that might be. As far as I am concerned, Shirl turns off faster than the time switch on a Scotsman’s central heating system and once again I am shocked by the changeability of women. They are like the weather. You never know what they are going to do next. I thought I was the best thing that had ever happened to her until Simon Jumbo-Parts shoved his long conk over the tailboard.

I have more bother when I get to Hull where I am supposed to be delivering the skins. At first they refuse to take them. I am not a little narked because I have spent a lot of time fluffing them out. It is a bit insulting, isn’t it? I mean, they are not supposed to be cured and they niffed more than a bit when I took charge of them. Maybe I ought to change the Cologne I use. It makes a mockery of one’s programme of personal freshness. Frankly, I can’t see what the bloke is getting so worked up about. The sheep have it away in them, don’t they? I would like to point this out but I can’t give too much away about those two torrid – and rather horrid – nights without weakening my position.

In the end I threaten to shove them through the office letterbox one by one and the bloke throws in the sponge. Once I have used it to his satisfaction, he agrees to accept the skins.

As I drive back to London, a fresh worry invades my already over-occupied mind: the effect that my unexpected absence will have had on Mum and Dad. We say a few harsh words to each other but basically we are very close. I expect that Mum will be nearly distraught with worry and that Dad will be having to struggle to keep a grip on his emotions. I had better postpone my showdown with Sid and get straight round to 17 Scraggs Lane, the ancestral home of the Leas in the burrow of Clapham – that’s what we call our street now because of all the high-rise flats around it. You feel as it you are underground. I park the lorry beyond the line of abandoned cars that starts outside our front door – actually, a lot of them aren’t abandoned. Sid has borrowed them to come and see us and nobody has found them yet. Sid does have the Rover but it is always in the garage having the dents taken out of it – I keep telling him that he shouldn’t drive at the traffic wardens like that.

I hope that Mum does not burst into tears or anything. Of course, it would be quite understandable if she did. Her only son snatched back from the living hell of the north; the new ice age denied another victim, and all that – but I still hope she does not do it. It might start Dad off. He is not as reserved as people think. I remember him crying when Nobby Stiles took out his false teeth after the 1966 World Cup – I mean, of course, when Nobby Stiles took out his own false teeth. He never had a go at Dad’s – though I wouldn’t have put it past him if Dad had looked like scoring. Then again, when Bambi’s mother copped it in the film of the same name. You couldn’t blame him for that. I don’t reckon anyone could sit through that and not start feeling for something to blow his nose on – that is what I told Carol Farmer at the time, anyway, though she still had me thrown out of the cinema. She was a funny girl. Her right hand never knew what her left hand was doing and always seemed surprised to find out.

I press the front door bell and listen to the silence. Dad brought home a Multi-Vibe Temple Chime from the lost property office where he goes to sleep during the day but he has clearly not got around to fixing it up yet. Wait a minute! I tell a lie. There, nailed to one of the peeling door jambs is the aforementioned M-V TC looking like a rusty xylophone. Beside it hangs a mallet. I can imagine the whole thing appealing to Dad’s sense of refinement and grandeur. Although a convicted socialist – I have never been able to find out what all the convictions were for – he nicks Country Life from the doctor’s and on one occasion even made a toilet paper holder out of a cover. He would get an upper class thrill out of wiping his bum on the contents pages if they were not so shiny.

Feeling like the geezer who bashes the gong at the start of those old J Arthur movies I have a go at the Temple Chime and step smartly to one side as it crashes to the ground. Hardly has the first note rung out and the third piece of piping bounced halfway across the street than the front door bursts open and I find myself face to face with Dad. His bloodshot eyes gaze deep into mine and I see a look of haunted anguish that makes my worst fears come true. Here is a man living on the very edge of reason. A man practically unhinged by the return of a well-loved child given up for lost. ‘Dad!’ I say, throwing my arms around him.

‘Get off me, you git-faced twit!’ shouts my father. ‘Have you gone round the twist? Look what you’ve done. Do you know how much those things cost in the shops? Oh my Gawd!’

So saying, he casts himself on the ground and begins trying to retrieve pieces of the Temple Chime. Much as the thought distresses me, it is clear that its multi-vibes will never again be harnessed into one glorious ringing note.

‘I’m all right, Dad,’ I say, comfortingly.

‘You’re all right?’ screams Dad. ‘Who told you that? Let me know and I’ll have him certified. You’re not all right! You’re the most destructive little sod that ever drew breath and unemployment benefit.’

‘Dad! Please!’ I say. ‘Think of your heart.’

Dad shakes his head. ‘Every time I look at you, I wish I’d listened to your mother.’

‘Why Dad? What did she say?’

‘She told me to stop it!’ says Dad bitterly.

Before I can decide whether to question Dad more closely on this delicate subject, Mum appears carrying a dustpan and brush. She, at least, looks as if she has got her feelings under control. It is strange, but I have often noticed how women, who are supposed to be the weaker sex, can often show tremendous resolution in times of stress.

‘It’s fallen down again, has it?’ says Mum. ‘I told you it should have been fixed up properly. You ought to have got an electrician in.’

‘I’m back, Mum,’ I say.

‘I’m not made of bleeding money,’ says Dad. ‘Those blokes cost a fortune. It would have been quite all right if clumsy clot here hadn’t laid his lazy, no good hands on it.’

‘I’m back, Mum,’ I repeat. ‘From the snowdrift.’

‘You can’t blame him, Walter,’ says Mum. ‘The milkman had it down as well. It shouldn’t be hanging there, that’s the long and short of it.’

‘From the snowdrift on the desolate Pennine Hills,’ I say. ‘Mickle Fell.’

‘My bleeding door chimes fell, and all!’ says Dad. ‘What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you think of other people for a change?’

I am beginning to understand that concern for his door chimes has temporarily blinded my father to my absence. It is sad but not totally unexpected. I swallow my disappointment and turn to my mother. ‘Mum,’ I say. ‘I don’t wish to appear melodramatic but I have been lost for two nights in one of the worst blizzards the north of England has known. Have you at any time during that period experienced any feelings of what I might describe as unease?’ I watch my mother’s face consider the question for a moment and then shape itself into an expression of extreme distress. Perhaps I was too blunt.

‘Oh!’ she says. ‘Oh, no!’

Immediately, I feel guilt-stricken. I should have bided my time; let her come to terms with my return in her own way. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean –’

‘What’s the matter now?’ says Dad peevishly.

‘His supper’s been in the oven for three days,’ says Mum.

I would not mind so much if she did not still expect me to eat it! I mean, I never reckoned her corn beef fritters much at the best of times. After three days in the oven they taste like coke butties. One thing I will say for them, they don’t crumble in your pocket – they rip the lining to pieces but they don’t crumble. I smuggle two out and I can’t force them between the bars of the drain they are so tough.

One thing I am surprised to learn, when Dad has stopped fretting about his chimes, is that we have been invited to supper by sister Rosie and brother-in-law, Sid. Not only supper but during a weekday, too. What is more, Rosie refers to the meal as dinner and thoroughly confuses everybody. Dad does put in a token appearance at the lost property office, most days, to see if there is anything worth nicking and Mum is quite likely to be queuing up for her favourite seat at the bingo during what we call dinnertime.

Of course, it turns out that Rosie is being toffee-nosed and referring to supper. She is not the girl she was when we were all living together in Scraggs Lane. The success of the boutiques and wine bars has gone to her head. Now she lives in Vauxhall, or East Westminster as she chooses to call it, she has become all classless and stripped pine. I even saw her with a ‘Vote Liberal’ sticker on her Fiat. Mum and Dad don’t know what to make of her and Sid has his problems. While she has gone from excess to success, he has floundered. None of his recent business ventures has prospered and I reckon that he must have sunk every penny he had in Noggett Transport. My load of glasses being written off could be the last straw. Poor Sid. How am I going to tell him? Well, not while I am by myself for a start. Just in case he turns nasty. It has been known to happen. If I wait till we go to supper then I will have Mum and Dad to back me up, or at least, get in the way if he starts throwing things. Then there is Rosie. She can always be relied upon to side with anyone against Sid. Yes, I will put off the evil moment until the evening.

Mum and Dad are very agitated about the forthcoming event. Dad even takes the day off from work to prepare for it. It is strange because he is always saying what a sponging git-face Sid is, yet, when he gets an invitation to his home, he doesn’t want to go.

‘We’d better take something, I suppose,’ says Mum.

‘Yeah, bicarbonate of soda,’ says Dad.

‘What do you mean?’ says Mum, all worked up. ‘I taught Rosie everything I know about cooking.’

‘That’s what worries me,’ says Dad.

Mum looks at him coldly. ‘I was referring to a gift. You have to take something when you go out to supper with people. It’s manners.’

‘Well, you buy them something,’ says Dad. ‘I can’t afford to. It seems stupid to me. What’s the point of receiving hospitality if you have to pay for it?’

‘Some of those mints,’ says Mum. ‘They’d be nice. I’ve seen them on the telly.’

‘They’re not on the telly now,’ says Dad.

‘I mean, advertised on the telly!’ says Mum. ‘Really, Walter, I don’t know how you hold down that job of yours sometimes.’

Mum keeps on at him and in the end he grumbles off to the newsagent’s. He is gone a long time so I know that he has been having a browse through the girlie magazines. The way his mince pies have gone all pink gives the game away as well.

‘Well, did you get them?’ says Mum, looking at his empty hands expectantly.

Dad dives one of his mitts into his raincoat pocket and produces a roll of mints. ‘Extra strong,’ he says proudly.

‘I didn’t mean them!’ screams Mum. ‘I meant the wafer thin ones. You can’t give those to people!’

‘Well I’ll have them, then,’ says Dad.

By the time six o’clock comes and Mum reckons it is time for us to leave, she is in a right flap. ‘Make sure you go to the toilet before we leave, Walter,’ she says.

‘What are you on about?’ says Dad. ‘They’ve got a toilet there, haven’t they?’

‘Yes, but I’d rather you used this one. I know what you’re like!’

‘Mum, please!’ I say. ‘Do you have to? It’s so embarrassing.’

‘It’s embarrassing for me, too,’ says Mum. ‘I have to clean up after him.’

‘I don’t know why we have to leave now,’ says Dad. ‘It’s not going to take us two hours to get there.’

‘You never know, with the buses the way they are,’ says Mum, pressing shut the studs on her flower-motifed Packy-Macky – it looks like a shower curtain. ‘They travel in convoys. If you miss one you can wait for hours.’

‘It’s them sambos,’ says Dad. ‘They’re all used to living in tribes so they stick together. You never see a white bus conductor, these days.’

‘We want to get there a bit early, anyway,’ says Mum. ‘Eight o’clock is too late for supper. I’m surprised at Rosie.’

‘You’re right,’ says Dad. ‘I’ll think I’ll pop into the kitchen and make a bacon sandwich to tide me over. Do you fancy one, son?’

‘Oh no you don’t!’ says Mum. ‘I’m not having you ruining your appetite and getting your fingers all greasy. I want you to do Rosie’s meal justice.’

Of course, we end up getting a bus almost immediately and arriving on Rosie’s doorstep just after seven. I know that my sister is not going to be very glad to see us but at least it will give me time to sort out my business with Sid.

It is the man himself who wrenches open the front door. ‘Blimey,’ he says. ‘It’s you. I thought it was the food.’

‘The food?’ says Mum.

‘Rosie’s having one of her Chinese evenings,’ says Sid. ‘It’s brought up from Limehouse.’

‘A lot of it’s brought up in Limehouse, so I hear,’ says Dad. ‘Oh dear, I’ve never been very partial to chink nosh. It comes out the way it goes in if you know what I mean.’

‘Walter, please! Don’t let’s have any of your distasteful remarks at this stage of the evening,’ says Mum. ‘Well, Sidney. Are we going to be allowed to cross the threshold?’

Sid steps to one side hurriedly. ‘Of course, Mum. Come inside. I’ll get you a drink.’

‘I must have a word with you,’ I hiss to Sid.

‘Yes I know,’ says Sid. ‘In a minute.’ He follows Mum and Dad into the house, leaving me to wonder how he could have found out my guilty secret so soon.

‘Tell them to put it on the table,’ shouts my sister’s voice from upstairs. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Mum to roll up in a minute. Anything free has them round faster than –’

‘Ah hem!’ hollers Sid. ‘The family are here, dear. I’m just giving them a drink.’

‘I’ll be right down!’ Rosie’s voice changes so that it flows down the stairs like a torrent of treacle.

‘What would you like, Mum?’ says Sid.

‘A sherry would be nice,’ says Mum. ‘I see you still haven’t got the settee covered.’

I knew Mum would pick on that. I have always thought it was strange, myself. I don’t know how they can stand that bare leather. It looks so unfinished.

‘It’s meant to be like that,’ says Sid, handing Mum a glass.

‘That’s not very generous, Sidney,’ says Dad. ‘You might give your mother-in-law a decent tumblerful. It’s not often we’re invited here.’

‘That’s a special sherry glass,’ I say. ‘You have to have it in that.’

‘That’s right,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t you know nothing, Walter? I can always have another one.’ She hands Sid back her now empty glass. ‘Try to develop a little couth, dear.’

‘I’m thinking of you, that’s what I’m doing,’ grumbles Dad. ‘You’re my wife and I’m standing up for you.’

‘You’ve left it a bit late for that,’ sniffs Mum. I am not quite certain what she means by that remark and less than eager to find out.

‘What are you having, Dad? Scotch?’ says Sid.

‘Just a large one,’ says Dad, looking round the room, eager to see everyone laughing at his joke.

‘Why do you always have to say that, Walter?’ says Mum. ‘Why can’t you think of something original?’

‘Being offered a scotch by this geezer is original enough for one evening,’ says Dad.

‘I’ll have a scotch, too,’ I say.

‘I’ve got some light ale in for you.’ Sid nods towards a crate in the corner.

‘No thanks, I’ll still have the scotch.’ I would rather have the light ale but I don’t like the thought of having such unsociable tastes that they have to be specially catered for. I remember how Dad used to grumble about getting a bottle of peppermint cordial in for Gran when she used to spend Christmas with us. I expect she misses it where she has gone.

Sid catches my eye. ‘It’s a disaster, isn’t it?’ I think he is talking about this evening and nod. ‘At least she got out alive, that’s the main thing.’

‘You could look at it like that,’ I say – reckoning that he is talking about my ordeal in the snow. Frankly, his words puzzle me. Having first-hand experience of Shirl’s insatiable appetites I would say that it was I and the other bloke who were lucky to get out alive. Shirl’s survival potential was never in doubt.

‘I mean, what’s a lorry compared to a human life?’

What is Sid on about? There is nothing wrong with Enid. It occurs to me that he may be talking about something else. That would account for him not having thumped me round the earhole the minute I came through the door. Perhaps he doesn’t know anything about the broken glasses. ‘Sid –’ I begin.

‘I must have nudged it out of gear with my backside,’ he says. ‘I’d put the hand brake on I’ll swear to it. I got my head up for a second and there it was, slipping backwards.’

‘Your head?’ I say.

‘No, you berk. The lorry. Thank goodness she could swim.’ Sid shakes his bonce. ‘Oh, I shudder every time I think about it.’

‘Sid,’ I say. ‘I think you imagine I know more than I do. Are you telling me that you were farting about with some bird in the cab of your lorry and managed to shunt the whole bleeding issue into the drink?’

‘Drink?’ says Dad. ‘Your mother and I wouldn’t say no. What are you two talking about?’

‘Where’s Rosie?’ says Mum. ‘She is expecting us, isn’t she? I want to see the children.’

‘Go up if you like,’ says Sid. ‘She won’t mind. She’s just putting on her cheongsam.’

‘Caught her at the awkward time of the month, have we?’ says Mum. ‘Never mind. ‘I’ll pop up and say goodnight to the children. How is Jerome’s bite?’

‘Very painful,’ says Sid. ‘Make sure he doesn’t get the chance to give you one.’ He pours Dad another scotch and turns back to me. ‘I thought you knew,’ he says. ‘It was in the papers.’

‘I didn’t see any papers where I was,’ I tell him. ‘Sid, this is terrible. Is the lorry all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Sid. ‘Since it sunk to the bottom of the Thames I haven’t seen it.’

‘Gordon Bennett!’ I say. ‘How did the bird take it?’

‘In the normal way,’ says Sid. ‘As I recall it her feet were wedged against the dashboard and I was –’

‘I didn’t mean that!’ I say. Honestly, Sid is about as sensitive as a cast-iron sheath. ‘How did she react to such an awful experience?’

Sid closes his eyes and winces. ‘The whole thing was horrible. Screaming, fighting, struggling! I can hardly bear to think about it.’

‘But she came round in the end, did she?’

‘That wasn’t her, that was me!’ says Sid. ‘If it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t be here now. She dragged me ashore with her teeth – my teeth as well, we didn’t lose anything.’

‘Except the lorry,’ I say, grimly. ‘At least it makes it easier to tell you my bad news.’

I tell Sid about the glasses and he buries his face in his hands. ‘That’s it!’ he says. ‘We’re ruined. Not to put too fine a point on it, we’re up shit creek without a paddle – in fact, we don’t even have a bleeding canoe!’

It is perhaps fortunate that at that moment Mum and Rosie start to come downstairs.

Dad takes one look at Rosie and puts down his glass. ‘Blimey, girl!’ he says. ‘Have you seen that dress you’re wearing?’

‘Of course I have,’ says Rosie. ‘I didn’t put it on in the dark.’

‘It’s new, is it?’ says Dad.

‘It is actually,’ says Rosie. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘You want to take it back!’ says Dad. ‘It’s got a bleeding great slit up the side. Anyone can see straight up to your fundaments!’

‘Oh Dad!’ Rosie bites her lip in exasperation. ‘You never change, do you? It’s supposed to have a slit up the side. That’s the way the Chinese wear them. It goes with the evening, don’t you see?’

‘That’s right, dear,’ says Mum. ‘You’ve seen it on the telly. You remember that film with William Holden, The World of Suzie Wong?’