The Confessions Collection - Timothy Lea

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as she advances towards me with a cup of tea. ‘Oh!’ The last remark is occasioned by one of my mits reaching out and squeezing one of her knockers.

      ‘I was thinking that it was probably too long since you were kissed,’ I say, remembering a snatch of dialogue from an old movie I saw at the Classic, Tooting. Maybe Mrs. O’Hanrahan saw the same movie.

      ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she says helpfully.

      Twenty minutes later we are stretched out on Mrs. O’Hanrahan’s bed under a gigantic painting of a shamrock, and they have been twenty minutes very well spent. I am lying on my back watching the clouds chase each other past the window and I am reckoning that this is the only way to clinch a sale.

      Suddenly I hear a voice raised in anger outside the flat and an accent that freezes my blood so that you could snap my arm like a stick of celery.

      ‘Get that fockin’ troycycle out of the fockin’ way, woman! Do you want me to break my fockin’ neck ! !’ Whilst a female voice gives half-hearted battle Mrs. O’Hanrahan rises vertically into the air like a helicopter.

      ‘Get out! Get out!’ she screeches. ‘He’ll kill us both.’

      There are no prizes for guessing who the gentleman in the corridor is and I start running round the room snatching up my clothes like it is some kind of party game.

      ‘Where? Where?’ I croak, every second expecting giant Irish hands to tear me limb from limb.

      Mrs. O’H. flings open one of the windows. ‘Get out on the ledge.’

      ‘What!!’ To look down is to experience immediate vertigo. ‘I can’t get out there.’

      ‘You leave it out here again and I’ll ram it down the fockin’ child’s throat! !’ A key is turning in the lock.

      ‘Stand aside,’ I say hurriedly. I edge out onto the ledge and an icy wind nearly whips my balls off. This is it! God, if I ever get out of this alive I will never look at another woman again. But what chance do I have of getting out of it alive? Thirty stories up, stark bollock naked, half a gale blowing. I stretch out an arm and nudge one of my boots off the ledge. Oh my Gawd!! That might have been me.

      ‘Can’t a man have a few fockin’ jars without bein’ persoycuted in his own home? And what’s this? Are yew layin’ fockin’ booby traps for me now?’

      No doubt the good Mr. O’Hanrahan, weary after hard days and nights making life easier for the English motorist, has tripped over the Nugget. I speed up my crawl and get to a point on the ledge beyond the O’Hanrahan flat. Now, if I can stand up facing the wall I may be able to feel my way along until I come to a landing window.

      ‘– fockin’ rubbish, you wasteful slut!!’

      As I rise unsteadily to me feet and press the side of my cheek against the wall a window opens and the Nugget sails out into space followed by a stream of curses and four attachments. I close my eyes not daring to look down. Please God don’t let it kill anybody or Mr. Seamus O’Hanrahan see me. The window closes again and there is silence broken only by the sound of the wind trying to prise me off the side of the building. I edge further along the ledge and my outstretched hand touches glass. Could this be my happy landing? No it could not. As I come into a position to bring my naked body flush against the glass I can see that I am looking into a living room. A living room in which a family are sitting down to tea. Two adults are munching with their backs to the window and facing me across the table is a chubby toddler in a high chair. This little fellow obviously finds the spectacle of a naked man passing across the window highly amusing but the more he jabs his spoon at me and tries to persuade his parents to get in on the laugh riot, the more they demand that he shuts up and gets on with his nosh. Mum and dad resolutely refuse to turn round and, as I eventually fade out of sight, Junior has got so exasperated that he has flung his spoon on the floor and got smacked for his pains.

      By the time I get to a landing window I am colder than a penguin’s chuff and my old man has shrunk so much it looks like a constipated worm’s cast. Somehow I manage to push my clobber through the window and scramble after it and there I am. Half dead and listening to my teeth chattering like a xylophone solo.

      I struggle to get my clothes on but I am so cramped with cold and terror that it is very difficult. I have got my y-fronts up to knee level when the lift doors open and an elderly couple step out.

      ‘Evening,’ I say cheerfully and hobble past them trying to hang on to all my clothes. Their expression as the doors close is one I will never forget.

      By the time the lift gets to the ground floor I have got all my clothes – all the clothes I have left, that is – and this is just as well, because waiting outside the lift are five very determined looking policemen. Obviously someone has reported my little jaunt. Not surprising really when you think how many people must have been in a position for a quick shufti at my naked torso. If Sid had been here he would have taken a collection. The boys in blue eye me up and down suspiciously.

      ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it?’ I say quickly. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’

      ‘He’s still up there, is he?’ says one of the cops. I nod my head.

      ‘It’s the girl I feel sorry for. It’s a terrible business. Excuse me, but I must get to her mothers She lives down here.’

      I am hardly out of the lift before the ‘bules have piled into it and are zooming off to face new perils. Now I must move fast. They have only got to bump into Darby and Joan on the top floor and they will be right back again.

      The blood is now moving through my system a treat and I dart out of the front entrance and down a convenient underpass which brings me out by a bus stop, just as a large green job is pulling away. I hop onto it and am soon gazing up at the scene of my near disaster. Every window seems to have someone hanging out of it and the building looks like a troop ship coming into port.

      ‘Somebody threatening to do themselves in, I expect,’ says the conductor. He walks to the platform and leans out looking up at the block of flats.

      ‘Joomp ! !’ he shouts.

       CHAPTER NINE

      ‘We can’t go on like this,’ says Sidney.

      We are sitting in a cramped bed-sitting room listening to the smell of the curry from the Indian restaurant next door. It is the kind of pong that you can respond to with all your senses – a yellow cloud rolling towards you with a noise like a rubber mat being peeled off a wet window pane.

      ‘You mean Mrs. Bandanaike?’ I say, referring to our landlady.

      ‘No. Yes. Everything! How many of those bleeding things have we sold now?’

      I rack my brains. ‘Two – four – one on Thursday – then there were the four duds – the girls sold three – one that bloke threw out of the window – we had three returned – then there was the one that blew up – Friday was a good day, wasn’t it? We sold four. Now let’s see. Altogether, taking into account returns and damaged stock –’

      ‘Get on with it!’ hisses Sid.

      ‘Four.’

      ‘Four!’

      ‘It might be five. I can go and check the stock list.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have to check the bleeding stock list if we’ve only sold four! Oh, it doesn’t matter! We’re doomed. We’re up the spout.’ Sidney buries his face in his hands.

      ‘It’s not good, is it?’ I say soothingly.

      ‘“Not good”? Stuck in this bleeding dump eating curry buttees? It’s costing me two hundred quid every time we sell one of those bleeding cleaners.’

      ‘The product’s not right, is it?’

      ‘Not right! I had

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