LITMIR.BIZ

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nudity bit. Eating when you’re starkers seems disgusting somehow. A cup of coffee before and a fag afterwards, now that is alright, but Mrs. B. leaning forward and getting salad dressing all over her titties, that is enough to put you off a bit of the other for life. Especially when there are little bits of diced carrot mixed with it as well. By the time we have had our herb tea and I have rejected a natural yoghourt I am well pleased to be in the street again.

      ‘How many more like that have you got?’ I ask.

      ‘She’s the only naturist. Pity her daughter wasn’t there. She’s a lovely girl.’

      ‘Takes after mum does she?’

      ‘Oh yes. Both of them prance about starkers all the time. It gets so you hardly notice them after a while.’ Arthur rubs his hands together evilly and sucks air through his teeth.

      ‘I can imagine,’ I say.

      The afternoon follows the pattern of the morning – if you can consider it to have been sufficiently embroidered to make a pattern. We have a long cup of tea with a back street dealer who shows us his holiday snaps and eventually hands back a vacuum cleaner because the plastic casing is cracked. I don’t blame him for that but the skinflint does not buy anything to justify the forty-five minutes we spend with him. I am narked about that but Arthur is nothing if not philosophical.

      ‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey,’ he says. ‘Treat ’em right and they’ll buy in the end. I’ve got to repair that bloke’s confidence. Do that and we’ll get a big order out of him. I’m sure of it.’

      Our next call is in fact the biggest order of the day: two twin tubs and two vacuum cleaners. Arthur is delighted but it still does not seem a lot to me.

      ‘When I was at Knuttley Hall I had the impression you turned over hundreds of machines a day,’ I tell him. ‘You aren’t doing a fraction of that.’

      ‘It’s a bit quiet at the moment,’ says Arthur reflectively. ‘The weather’s against it, isn’t it?’

      ‘But I thought washing machine sales went up in the winter?’

      ‘Not when it’s cold. You don’t want to go out and buy one when it’s cold.’

      ‘Come on, Arthur! We might as well have stayed in bed for all the good we’ve done today.’

      ‘I probably would have done if I hadn’t been lumbered with you. No offence, mind.’

      ‘None taken, Arthur. But tell me, how do head office get the idea it’s all go, go, go out here?’

      ‘Well, one does have to protect oneself a bit, obviously. I am inclined to put in a few orders for products I know are not available. By the time they do come on the market again the order has to be reconfirmed and no one is surprised when the dealer has bought something else.’

      ‘But doesn’t anyone ever come out here?’

      ‘Oh yes. But then I take them round to my mates. They listen starry-eyed while I go through my chat, bung in a few fantastic orders and then I tear them all up when the brass goes back to head office. Works like a dream. Of course I’m telling you all this in confidence. Don’t let me find out that you’re a head office nark or I’ll swing for you.’ Arthur is showing the first trace of dynamism I have noticed all day.

      ‘And that works, does it?’

      ‘Well, it has so far. Of course, you can never be certain. Sometimes they have a big change of policy and sack everybody. Then, a few months later, they get a new bloke in and he takes everyone on again. It’s blooming stupid, really it is. You have to have a sense of humour to be able to stick it.’

      ‘Still there are a few fringe benefits, aren’t there?’ I smirk.

      ‘What do you—oh, you mean the likes of Mrs. Bennett. That appealed to you, did it?’

      ‘That kind of thing,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Mrs. Bennett is a bit on the mature side for me.’

      ‘You’d have fancied her daughter more, like I said.’

      ‘Very probably.’

      ‘Of course,’ says Arthur thoughtfully, ‘you do meet one or two funny people.’

      ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I used to be a window cleaner.’

      ‘Oh, well. You’d know all about it then.’ I nod. ‘Like Mrs. Vickers and her daughter,’ he continues as if thinking out loud. ‘I often wonder about them.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’

      ‘Yes.’ Arthur looks me up and down like a boxing trainer weighing up a new prospect. ‘You know how a woman fusses about you sometimes and you can see that she’s taken a bit of care with herself – a bit more than usual. She’s all of a dither and talking just for the sake of it, when she’s really got something else on her mind?’

      ‘I know the signs well,’ I say trying to inject a slightly world-weary tone into my voice. ‘She fancies you.’

      ‘Well, I must say, I have thought that. I’ve been with the company twenty-two years and in that time I’ve seen a bit of life if you know what I mean.’ I get my nod working again. ‘A man’s only human, isn’t he? That’s what nature made us for.’

      ‘What’s the daughter like?’ I say.

      ‘Jealous,’ says Arthur. ‘When I get round there she won’t leave her mother alone. Always making remarks and that kind of thing. I think she resents her mother having any kind of life of her own.’

      ‘Can’t you get round there when the daughter is away?’

      ‘I’ve tried that but I haven’t been lucky yet. I don’t know what the girl does but she always seems to be there. She’s a good looking girl too. They both are.’ Arthur looks at me as if he is waiting for me to say something.

      ‘Maybe I could chat the daughter up while you—er, talked to the mum?’

      ‘It’s an idea, isn’t it?’ Arthur brightens immediately. ‘We couldn’t come to any harm, could we?’

      ‘What’s her husband do?’ I ask nervously.

      ‘Oh, there isn’t one. She’s a widow. Couldn’t be better in that respect.’

      ‘Right, what are we waiting for?’

      Not bad is it? Four o’clock on my first day and I am lined up for a bit of nooky already. Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that after my disturbing experience, or rather lack of it, with Mabel, I am not exactly disturbed by the prospect of getting within nibbling distance of a real live bird.

      We hop into Arthur’s motor and I am hugging myself with excitement by the time he gives a smart rat, tat, tat, on the knocker of a neat little semi in Pinner. Arthur has spent five minutes in the public lav. licking himself into shape and is huffing on his cupped hands to see if his breath pongs when the door opens.

      The bird standing beside it is about eighteen and wearing a floppy halter neck sweater so it is difficult to see what her top half really looks like. If it matches the bottom half nobody is going to ask for their money back. She has bedroom eyes which are large enough to take a couple of four posters and her mouth is warm and sensuous. She smiles when she sees us and shouts over her shoulder.

      ‘Mum! It’s your boyfriend.’

      ‘You’re a cheeky young lady, aren’t you?’ says Arthur blushing. ‘This is Mr. Leak.’

      ‘Lea,’ I say.

      ‘Lea, who has been coming round with me lately.’

      ‘Why? Have you both been unconscious?’

      ‘What? Oh! I see what you mean. Very good.’ He looks at me to support his chuckle but I do not oblige. Better to play hard to get with this self-possessed little piece, I think to myself. Nevertheless,

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