Confessions of a Window Cleaner (10 page)

“Shit!” she screams, “oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!!”

(I may have missed out a few ‘shits’ but that’s the gist of it) and away we go. Eight hundred doors banging, Chaik’s 1812 being performed in your left earhole, upside down on a roller coaster – it does you more good than a cup of Bovril any day of the week I can tell you.

After that lot I’m spent and sucking in mouthfulls of carpet pile but Sandy is made of sterner stuff.

“Super fuck,” she says cheerfully, “Now it’s Amanda’s turn.”

Not with me it isn’t, I vow to myself. Even Raquel Welch would have to wait a few minutes, and with Amanda it might stretch into years. But I don’t have to worry. Sandy wriggles out from underneath me and in a few seconds I hear the contented sounds of her wielding the riding crop. It seems to be a wild success because Amanda is hollering fit to bust and Sandy is cheering her on like a Derby winner. What a performance. You wouldn’t credit it unless you were in the front row of the dress circle.

Well, all good things must come to an end and Sandy unties Amanda and starts rubbing cold cream into her back. The poor old bag really needs it too, but she isn’t complaining.

“That was super,” she says, “Absolutely super. I found it so sexy watching you, I nearly came by myself.”

“But darling, you remember that orgy we had at Tarquins, it didn’t do a thing for you.”

“I know, but it was all so contrived. I mean, when you go through the door and start talking to people about the weather and know that in a few minutes you are all going to take your clothes off. I find that terribly inhibiting. I’m worrying about coming out in a red flush or something. But this was so unexpected, so natural, it was beautiful.” Her eyes suddenly widened, “I say, it was chance wasn’t it, you didn’t lay it on for me?”

“Heavens no, luvie, I know Timmy looks very professional,” Sandy runs her fingers down my chest, and then on a bit, “but he’s just doing it for the love of it like the rest of us. Aren’t you pet”

“Would you like a drink?”

I say yes to both questions and get a tumbler half full of scotch which can’t be bad. Sandy comes down and sits on the floor next to me and already I’m beginning to feel I could be there again. She is a good example of what I said about upper class birds taking their clothes off at the drop of a hint. I can’t imagine Rosie fixing you a drink in the all together. I don’t mind it when I’m having it away but it seems a bit strange sitting around starkers with a scotch in your hand and I reach out for my shirt.

“Don’t do that,” says Sandy, “you’ve got a super body and I like looking at it.” She takes the shirt between finger and thumb and drops it over her shoulder.

“I think you’re bloody fantastic,” I say, and I mean it.

“I think I’d better go,” Amanda drags herself to her feet. “Can I have a bath?”

“Yes, of course, but why didn’t you have one before I put the cream on you?”

“I didn’t want one then,” Amanda goes out showing you that from behind she looks like two shetland ponies on the job.

“I’m thrilled about this,” says Sandy.

“What, about her being satisfied?”

“Yes, you don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“Well what a way to come. Being beaten till your back is like a corrugated iron roof. I’d rather do without, myself.”

“I bet you wouldn’t. That girl couldn’t even give herself an orgasm by masturbating until today. Every woman is entitled to an orgasm and if a man can’t give it to her, she has a perfect right to get one by any means she can.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts,” Sandy obviously feels strongly about this, “women are fed a lot of twaddle about how marvellous sex is and when it isn’t they feel let down. Some of them don’t even know whether they’ve had an orgasm or not. They get worried. They think it’s their fault. Men don’t have any trouble having orgasms, why should women?”

“They’re built differently,” I say helpfully.

“You’re damn right they are. Sexual discrimination starts right here in our bodies. Whoever designed us would put the handle on a door so you couldn’t reach it standing on tip toe. And men don’t help with the old ‘thank you dear, that was very nice, now let me go to sleep, I’ve got a busy day at the office tomorrow,’ mentality.”

“You don’t seem to have any problems.”

“That’s not the point. I’ve liberated myself. I’m one of the lucky ones. I want to help people like Amanda who have resigned themselves to having rotten sex lives.”

“By beating them?”

“By doing anything to them that doesn’t offend either one of us and stands a chance of giving them what they have a right to. Surely you must believe that anything people do when they’re having sex is O.K. as long as they both want to do it?”

“Yes – but?”

“—There you go ‘butting’ again. I think you’re a hypocrite. You got jolly sexed up when you were watching me and Amanda didn’t you? You found that dirty, or kinky, or whatever you like to call it – and because of that it gave you a sexual appetite. Now you didn’t feel guilty about that, did you? You just responded to a certain stimulus and got satisfaction from it. Can’t you see that that’s what I’m trying to make happen with Amanda? I want to find something that turns her on. They give mental patients electric shocks, don’t they?”

I can’t follow everything she’s trying to say but I agree with a lot of it. She certainly comes across as being sincere and the way she talks to me I might be Malcolm Muggeridge instead of a window cleaner. In short, I’m impressed. She’s so direct she’s like a man, but I find I can accept that.

“I take it from your silence that you’re in total agreement with what I say?”

“I was just thinking that I’d never seen a woman with turned up nipples before,” I says.

“They’re retroussé and recherché,” she says, and because she knows I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about and wishes she hadn’t said it she leans forward and puts her hand between my legs and kisses me on the neck.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she says.

“I hope so.” Down in the forest something is stirring and I take one of those delicious nipples between finger and thumb and give it a friendly squeeze until it feels like a hot bullet.

“This time very gentle please,” she says, so we nibble each others lips for a few minutes before I flip her over onto her back and she flicks her legs up against my shoulders.

“Goodbye cock,” I say as I watch it disappear.

“Remember, darling,” she says, “you’re not losing a cock, you’re gaining a vagina.”

She’s funny, see, and you don’t meet many birds with a sense of humour.

They’re very much worth having.

Take my word for it.

Of all the birds I had about that time Sandy was the most memorable. I admired her and I felt quite honoured to be having it away with her. She was always dead straight and never talked down to you. Not like some of those upper class birds who could never resist telling you they were slumming, just so they didn’t feel too bad about it the next day. They really wanted a spade but they couldn’t quite stoop to that and you were the next best thing.

I even used to ring Sandy up outside business hours and I went round to her flat in the evening a couple of times. She was always very breathless on the phone as if she was terribly busy and trying to remember all the things she had to do. “Hallo-yes-who? – oh yes – sorry. No of course, I do. Yes that’s fine I think – wait a minute – no sorry. What is today? Thursday? Good God. No I can’t I’ve got some other fellah coming round. Better make it another time. Do give me a ring though because I’d adore seeing you again. ’Bye luv.”

I know its bloody stupid but I was a little jealous of all those other blokes I imagined trooping round there. I knew they existed, of course, but all the same I’d look at my watch a few hours later and think now they’re on the job; now some other lucky bastard is stroking that smooth creamy brown skin; now her pepper mill arse is grinding him into small fragments of ecstasy; now – God! It really choked me I can tell you.

Of the other birds. I steered clear of Viv because I didn’t want to rub Sid up the wrong way but I kept in touch with Dorothy and Mrs. Armstrong. It was always the same with them. Every time I left the house I vowed it would be the last time but a couple of months later I’d be back again and quite looking forward to seeing them.

Before I went back to Dorothy I bought her an outrageous pair of panties from Marks and Sparks which must have made her old man sit up if he even noticed them. Also, a pair of fishnet tights. Once she saw those it didn’t take me long to wonder what they would look like on, we organised a little fashion show upstairs. This proved that the panties were perfect but that the tights weren’t quite long enough in the leg – she had very long legs did Dorothy. This didn’t matter too much because the tights got torn anyway. We were in a bit of a hurry getting them off.

Mrs. Armstrong was more of a puzzle. Everytime I went through the back door I’d start thinking I must have dreamed it the last time. Mrs. A. smelling like the ground floor of Debenham and Freebodys and looking over my shoulder as if she had double vision. But it was always the same. I’d be squeezin’ out my chamois and the old trolley would go rambling past. “I thought you might like some tea”: “Thank you very much.” Into the sitting room and a load of chat about her bloody stepdaughters or how the country was going to the dogs. Then, just when I was looking at my watch and mumbling that I had to be getting along she’d suddenly press her hands together and say something like “Would you like to go upstairs, or would you rather stay here?” Once I said “I’d rather stay here,” and she had me in front of the fire with me watching her head reflected in the side of the tea pot as it bobbed up and down.

If this part of my life represented a bit of variety, things at home hardly changed at all. Dad was off work which was as normal as Thursday – he had trouble with his back which Sid said boiled down to an inability to get it off the bed: Mum was still counting how many Ngoblas went in and out next door and Rosie grew more like an export reject zeppelin every day. As for Sid, the dark shadows under his eyes might have been caused by reading the London Telephone Directory by candlelight, but I doubted it.

All in all, it was a strange time for me to get involved with a bird, but I did. I think maybe it was a reaction to Sandy. I really fancied her but I knew it would never come to anything so I looked around for a substitute to whom I could say all the things I felt but could never seriously express. I think also that I was influenced by all the bints I was making on the job. They could well have put me off the whole idea of marriage but instead, I felt a great desire to prove that there was some bird, somewhere, who could just love me and stay like that. Basically, you see, I was a hypocrite and a puritan and all the things Sandy used to call me. What I did was quite different from what I was prepared to permit my bird to do. Fascinating isn’t it? No? – oh well, you’re probably right.

I met Elizabeth down at the Palais, which, I read somewhere, is where 99.9 percent of British Men meet their future wives. You’d think that armed with a statistic like that no poor bastard would ever go near the place, but I’m one of those berks who get born every minute and takes a 6¾” hat size to prove it.

I used to go with a mate of mine called George who was the perfect side kick because he was good looking and a good dancer but so stupid he couldn’t arrange the words “do fuck you?” into a common phrase or saying, if you put them on a blackboard for him. I used to let him whip them round the floor a few times and then, when they were bored out of their minds with telling him what they did, I’d move in with a bit of chat and – hey presto! their drawers were practically in my jacket pocket.

But Elizabeth – there’s a solid, reliable name for you, nothing flighty about Elizabeth – she was different. When I came bouncing up she looked at me as if I was a run in a new pair of tights. I was really impressed by that, you can’t beat the old cold shoulder for making an impression.

“Fancy you working there,” George is saying.

“My sister works in the haberdashery department. I don’t suppose you know her?”

“I don’t think so,” says the bird. “I haven’t been there long enough to meet many people yet.”

“Her name is Wanda,” goes on George, “tall girl, fair hair. She plays the piano very well.”

“You can’t miss her,” I say, “Just look out for a tall, fair haired girl pushing a piano.” I give her my understanding George-is-a-prat-but-now-I-am-here-everything-is-going-to-be-alright smile. The girl glances at me as if I’d dropped out of the woodwork and turns back to George.

“I don’t think I’ve met her,” she says, “now I really must go and find my friend, she’ll be wondering what’s happened to me. Thanks for the drink.”

She starts to stand up but I’m leaning over the back of her chair so it’s difficult.

“Come on George,” I say, “surely you’re going to introduce me to your friend.”

“Elizabeth – Timmy Lea” says George wearily. “Elizabeth works in the beauty department at Haddons.”

“She must be their best advertisement.” I say.

“Yuk,” says Elizabeth and I fall in love with her on the spot. She scrapes back her chair nods to George and is gone.

“Bitch,” he says, “she had a large gin and tonic off me.”

“You’re a bloody fool then, aren’t you.”

“We can’t all be freeloaders like you.”

“That’s not very nice, I was going to buy you a light ale but now I’ve thought better of it.”

I wander off into the balcony and look down through the coloured light onto the dance floor. Ricci Volare – Alfred Boggis to his Mum and Dad – is conducting his Music Men as if he had a fire cracker stuffed up his arse, and about forty birds are dancing with each other whilst a crowd of blokes hang about like they’re waiting for the Labour Exchange to open. For a moment I can’t see Elizabeth and then I spot her sitting at one of the tables with her friend. This bird has specs and has obviously been selected to make Elizabeth look like a million dollars which she does. She, Elizabeth, I mean, is tallish with a good slim figure, small but shapely breasts and a nose with a slight tilt in it. From the balcony I can’t see what colour her eyes are but I remember them as being on the large side like her mouth. When I describe her she doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary but at the time I really fancied her. She looks a bit like Sandy, maybe that’s it.