The Confessions Collection - Timothy Lea

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the matter?’ she says eventually.

      ‘I was just thinking,’ I murmur.

      ‘Thinking what?’

      ‘That you are more beautiful than Cheryl. She’s lovely of course. But she hasn’t quite got your refinement of feature.’ That’s a smashing phrase, isn’t it? I got it out of a racehorse’s obituary. Mrs. V. obviously fancies it because she blushes.

      ‘She has her father’s colouring,’ she says. I nod understandingly.

      ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that,’ I continue, ‘but you did ask me.’

      ‘Oh, no. I’m very flattered. People are always telling me how pretty Cheryl is.’

      ‘Never you?’ I give her my brooding look and her eyes falter.

      ‘Well, there are—I have been—’

      I stand up and walk round the table.

      ‘I think you’re beautiful,’ I say, ‘very, very beautiful.’

      ‘Mr. Leak!’ Her voice combines surprise, pleasure and a hint of wariness.

      ‘Look at me,’ I order her. A good tip, this. If you are looking each other straight in the eyes it raises everything to a more superior plain. Also the bird cannot see what your hands are doing. Mrs. V. looks up at me nervously and I smile down at her. A smile laden with warmth, good fellowship and sheer naked lust. ‘I want to make love to you.’

      ‘But –’

      ‘No buts. From the first moment I clapped hands on you, I mean, eyes on you, I felt I was in the grip of some superior destiny. I was being told what to do by something bigger than I was.’ Certainly, something down the front of my trousers is a lot bigger than it was. ‘Don’t you feel it?’ I say passionately. I snatch up one of Mrs. V.’s hands and draw her to her feet. She offers no resistance and I put my arms round her.

      ‘But I hardly know you,’ she breathes.

      ‘This was the way nature intended us to become acquainted,’ I pant. ‘It has to be, can’t you feel it?’ She should be able to, standing where she is.

      ‘But we can’t, not here, can we?’ she asks. ‘What about Cheryl?’

      ‘Cheryl’s gone out,’ I lie, ‘and Arthur will take hours to fix that drier. It’s a big job and he’s very conscientious.’ I slide my hand gently up the front of her skirt and she starts shivering.

      ‘I don’t know what’s come over me,’ she says. ‘I haven’t felt like this for years.’

      ‘You must have,’ I murmur. ‘It’s just that you never let yourself go.’

      ‘Come in the sitting room,’ she says, ‘it’s too crowded in here.’

      She leads me out into the hall and listens for a moment at the bottom of the stairs. I hold my breath but luckily no sound can be heard. God knows what they are doing up there.

      ‘I expect he’s hard at it,’ I say, not meaning to be funny. She nods and opens the door into the sitting room. Two armchairs, sofa, telly, gas fire with artificial log effect, horse brasses, flying ducks and a hairy white rug. It is the last feature that catches my eye.

      ‘I’m afraid it’s in an awful –’ she begins, but she never finishes. My mouth dives onto hers and as I push the door shut with my foot I steer her backwards towards the rug. She is wearing a long dress that buttons up from top to bottom and I have all the buttons undone in the space of one extended kiss. Not the only thing that is being extended either. The front of my trousers should be reinforced with high breaking-strain nylon thread to withstand the bashing it is getting. Some subtle process must have transferred this thought to Mrs. V.’s mind because her friendly fingers work speedily to release the pressure on my flies.

      ‘Oh,’ she gasps, ‘it’s been so long, so long.’ I know just how she feels and I too lose no time in freeing her shapely nether regions for a spot of in-and-out. Soon her fingers are entwined in the man-made fibres of the rug and she is uttering man-made squeaks of ecstasy as my eager body becomes the bow that plays love’s old sweet melody across her curvaceous hips. In fact, if she had a theme song, it would be ‘Cello, Dolly’. (Think about it, unless it proves too painful.)

      ‘Oh!’ she yelps. ‘I’m comings Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!’ I am very glad she says that because my own restraint is evaporating so fast that I don’t reckon on taking a taxi down to the Y.M.C.A. to boast about it. Gratefully, I let my evil impulses have their way, and Mrs. V and I shudder into squeaking ecstasy like a couple of over-inflated balloons escaping from restraining fingers.

      Of course, it is only my first day, but I think I am going to enjoy being a salesman for HomeClean Products.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘You wouldn’t believe the half of it,’ says Arthur.

      ‘Try me,’ I say.

      We are sitting in the Delilah Coffee Bar, the next morning, discussing the previous afternoon – or rather, Arthur is describing and I am listening.

      ‘I couldn’t tell you some of the things that girl did,’ says Arthur with prudish satisfaction.

      ‘What sort of things?’ I ask eagerly.

      ‘I’d be too embarrassed to tell you,’ he says after considering a moment.

      ‘But you let her do them?’

      Arthur pauses. ‘I still don’t feel right about it.’

      ‘What did she do, for God’s sake?’

      Arthur looks me in the eye and then looks away again.

      ‘Things that animals do to each other.’

      ‘Sounds great,’ I say. Arthur shakes his head.

      ‘It’s terrible really. I feel ashamed of myself.’

      ‘But she fancied you. She told me so herself.’

      ‘I should never have taken advantage of her.’

      ‘But she wanted you to.’

      ‘She needs psychological help, that girl.’

      ‘Arthur, please! I reckon anybody who fancies you needs psychological help! Don’t get your knickers in a twist about it.’ Arthur draws himself up to his full five foot eight and a half inches.

      ‘What do you mean?’ he says. ‘This kind of thing is happening to me all the time. It’s just that usually I say “no”. I don’t have any shortage of opportunities, believe me. Incidentally, where were you?’

      ‘Did you look in the garden?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well, that’s where we were. She’s got some very nice begonias, you know.’

      ‘That’s funny. I thought she only had a window box.’

      ‘You must be mixing her up with one of your other lady friends.’ My remark is intended to divert the sensitive Seaton from discovering the extent of my activities with his erstwhile love and it does not fail.

      ‘You mind what you’re saying,’ he snaps. ‘I’m not one of your hanky panky merchants.’

      ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I assure him. ‘Now, where are we going to start today?’

      The rest of the week is downright disappointing by Monday’s standards and it is not until the following Tuesday that I bump into someone capable of making my pulse quicken. Strangely enough it is not a customer but a competitive lady, a demonstrator, who works for HomeClean’s deadly rivals, U.H.A., Universal Home Appliances. I bump into

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