Confessions of a Window Cleaner (13 page)

“Get off, you’re suffocating me.”

Brenda is not one of those women who need to be gently cossetted after the sexual act. She obviously has not read the book I got at the Junction.

“Oh Bren –”

“—Give over, for God’s sake. I’m not in the mood.”

“Bren—”

“—Look, you’ve had what you want. Now, why don’t you piss off?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here with you.”

Poor sod, I think, you can’t blame him. After all it is his home. If you get off work early and nip back for a bit of the other you expect to be treated better than this. The Weasel must really fancy her because he starts trying to kiss her neck and generally behaving in a very affectionate fashion quite unlike most blokes when they’ve just shot their load.

“Bren, Bren, oh Bren.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Oh, don’t you see, Bren?”

“Right!!!”

Brenda struggles out from underneath him and pulls herself up on her elbows. Her eyes are blazing and she is looking directly towards the wardrobe. What is the stupid bitch going to do?

“Do you want to meet my husband?”

Her eyebrows raise in a question mark but they don’t get as far as my stomach which practically jumps out of my mouth. The Weasel whips round as if his head is attached by a twisted elastic band, and his eyes widen in what I assume is the first indication of insane rage. The bitch obviously wants to see me torn limb from limb. I shrink back into the wardrobe and that must upset its balance because the whole thing starts to tremble and I lose my footing and have to stumble out with my hampton still at the present arms. I put my fists up because I reckon I’m going to have to fight for my life against a justifiably enraged husband but ‘The Weasel’s’ behaviour is a revelation. He leaps off the bed just like you’d expect him to do, and the expression on his face certainly suggests a kind of madness, but instead of hurling himself at me he bursts past and bundles down the stairs as if Old Nick is after him.

At first I’m dead relieved but then I get a bit worried. Perhaps the shock has driven him out of his mind. I hear the front door slam and crossing to the door, see that his clothes are still strewn all down the stairs. The poor berk must be running through the streets of Clapham in the altogether. I am genuinely disturbed but behind me Brenda is pissing herself.

“Oh my God,” she screeches. “What a bloody laugh.”

“Shutup, you crude bitch.” I say. “Are you some kind of nutter, or something?”

But she goes on laughing fit to burst and I find my clobber and start pulling on my jeans. I mean, sympathy is all very well, but with everybody going round the twist you’ve got to look after number one. Maybe he has a friend round the corner with a shot gun.

“You must be sick,” I say, managing to catch my foreskin in my zip which makes her laugh all the more. Really, I could belt her, the way I feel.

“His face, when I asked him if he’d like to meet my husband. Oh my God. I thought I was going to die.” And yours, when you came out of the wardrobe. If you—”

“What do you mean?” I say, but, of course, the moment she says that I twig.

“You mean—”

“Oh no!” Now she can hardly form the words. “Haven’t you got it yet? That wasn’t my husband.”

“Then why the hell did you make me get in the cupboard?” I scream.

“I didn’t make you do anything. I mentioned it and you were in there before I could stop you. You must have had a guilty conscience. Come on—”

She stretches out her hand and tries to ruffle my hair. “Where’s your sense of humour? Can’t you take a little joke? I’m sorry, but I’d forgotten he said he was coming round. Ouch!!”

I don’t approve of belting women but there has to be an exception to every rule, and with Brenda I really think I was justified. What her old man thought when he did come home I don’t know, but with that shiner he must have thought she did more than walk into a cupboard.

With birds like that around it was a relief to be able to turn to Elizabeth. I had taken her to the flicks a couple of times and on the second occasion I actually got her into the back row and kissed her. How about that?

The first time I had to be content with holding her hand during the big feature and her burying her head in my shoulder during the nasty bits. It was a different world I can tell you, and when I went out with Elizabeth I felt as if I was entering an order of monks who had taken the vow of ‘keep your hands off it.’ I was so used to grabbing any part of a bird I took a fancy to that it took me a bit of time to adapt to her standards. And, by God, they were strict. On the way home after our little kissing session in the cinema – kissing, I hasten to make it clear, not necking – she is obviously dead worried that she has gone too far and shies away every time I try and put my arm round her. “I give you an inch and you want to take a mile,” she bleats.

This is typical and with some birds I wouldn’t bother, but, as I have explained, in a funny way, I rather like it. It amuses me to think that I’m having this wild scene with all those dollies and yet this little virgin won’t let me lay a finger on her, She is also a very good-looking bird and I think every bloke needs a steady to tide him over the ups and downs. This thought is particularly sharp in my mind at the moment because Sandy has a big thing going with some Spade – you can take that any way you like – and doesn’t really want to know me. As you can imagine, this is causing me all kinds of little hang-ups.

So for all those reasons I’m quite happy sitting there in the darkness, watching Elizabeth gaze hypnotised at the screen whilst the Dairy Vanilla Walnut Whip Sundae Special drips off the end of her spoon on to the floor.

“That was really nice,” she says to me at the end of one epic load of old rubbish when I have broken all records by actually massaging one of her tits for thirteen seconds before being pulled off. She is not referring to my pathetic advances but to the film.

“Not bad,” I say. “I wish he’d say a bit more, though. I get fed up with this strong, silent stuff.”

“Well, he was meant to be an Inca prince. Perhaps they didn’t speak much. Anyway, I think he’s smashing. My Mum likes him too.”

“When am I going to meet your Mum?”

It’s a fact that I’ve been out with her about six times now and I’ve never been inside the house. Maybe she’s ashamed of it – or maybe it’s me.

“Well, you won’t meet her tonight.”

This is no surprise so I start resigning myself to a wimpy and a quick tussle in the porch, with her rabbiting on about the neighbours.

“They’ve gone to stay with my aunt in Broadstairs for the weekend.”

“What, your Mum and Dad?”

“Yes.”

Now normally you’d expect her to follow that by saying “Don’t get any ideas about coming in and making a beast of yourself.” but she doesn’t. And when she doesn’t the blood starts circulating even faster through my ever-hopeful veins. Perhaps this is my big opportunity. Play it cool and I could be in like Flynn.

So I drop the subject and take her off for a cup of coffee and some more chat about Charlton Heston and how good he was in “The Big Country” and all that kind of thing. She is less talkative than usual and I feel that there may be something on her mind. I wonder what it is.

It starts pissing with rain on the way home and I don’t have Sid’s van so we are getting pretty wet. This is fine by me because I can’t see how she can refuse to let me in, just to dry off, at least.

She pauses with her hand on the gate and I know that this is the moment of truth as they say.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she says.

“Anything to get out of this rain. Yeah, thanks a lot.”

We go up the path and she fumbles with the front door key and looks nervously over her shoulder as if she expects to see the neighbours drawing up a petition to the local watch committee.

“Here, let me do that,” I insert the key the right way up and we go in. Inside it is just like your own house only it smells like somebody else’s, and we take our macs off with a great deal of nervous hairshaking and teeth-chattering on her part.

“Do you find it cold?” she says. “You go into the front room and I’ll fetch the electric fire. It’s up in my bedroom.”

Don’t bother, I feel like saying, let’s go up to your bedroom, it’ll save you a trip. But you can see by her blushes that she didn’t mean to say it, and thinks that I’ll imagine it was some kind of hint on her part so I keep my mouth shut.

The front room is cold and I wander around swinging my arms and looking at the photograph of what must be her Dad on the mantelpiece. It was probably taken during the war – God knows which one – because his haircut practically starts under his scalp and his shorts could pass for Greek trousers in a bad light. Whatever the older generation say about my lot, at least we don’t turn ourselves out as diabolically badly as they did.

Seeing Daddy makes me feel uneasy. I’m never very happy in a house I don’t know well and I keep feeling that the old man is suddenly going to leap up from behind the settee with a horsewhip in his hand. I sit down in one of the faded armchairs with the coloured, leather elephant motif on the back of it and try and prepare my plan of action. Best, I feel, to continue as I am, playing it dead cool, and see what happens. If nothing happens I can always come to the physical bit when it’s time to leave.

Elizabeth comes in with the electric fire and it’s obvious that she’s tarted herself up a bit. A splash of perfume under the armpits, by the whiff of it.

“You did say tea, didn’t you? You can have coffee if you like.”

She is kneeling down to plug the fire in and I have to admit she’s got a cracking body on her. I wouldn’t climb over her to get to Ted Heath.

“No, no tea’s fine.”

“You’re very quiet all of a sudden.”

“It’s such a surprise being invited in that I’m speechless.”

“Oh, I was meaning to invite you in when Mum and Dad were here but you know what they’re like. It’s so formal it’s embarrassing. They never turn the telly off and you have to talk and watch at the same time.”

“You’ve brought other blokes home, have you?”

“Not when I was on my own.” She’s blushing again.

“I should think not. You never know what they might try and get up to.”

She won’t look me in the eyes but she’s still kneeling in front of me and her tits are making a lovely pattern through her pink woolly jumper.

“Some of them had a try.”

I stretch out my hand and rest it gently on her shoulder.

“What about that cup of tea?”

My hand gently ruffles the hair at the back of her neck.

“They’re not coming back till tomorrow evening.”

I pull her towards me and kiss her very gently on the mouth and to my surprise she clings to me as hard as she can, and her kissing becomes clumsy and desperate, as if she’s trying to work my lips away from the rest of my face.

“You won’t give me a baby, will you?” she says.

Well, I didn’t give her a baby. In fact, to tell you the truth, I didn’t give her anything till about six o’clock the next morning, after I’d fallen asleep worrying about it a couple of hours before. Yes, I know it sounds incredible, but faced with this innocent virgin, who made me get undressed outside the bedroom and come in when she had turned the light off, I couldn’t do a bloody thing.

She was very pleased about it though. She said that it was nice that we were both virgins.

I still felt pretty ashamed when I did eventually manage to do it. I can remember lying there listening to the rattle of milk bottles on the doorstep and Elizabeth rabbiting on about how it hadn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, and thinking: how could I have managed to make such a cock of it; and when I quite fancied the bird, too. If it had been some old scrubber like Brenda, that I didn’t give tuppence about, I’d have been through her like a dose of salts. Maybe I’d been spoilt. I mean, when you have women who go over you like they’re sorting out the dirty linen basket you begin to take it for granted. You’ve gone past the stage of the simple, straightforward little bird who wants you to take the initiative, and you’ve forgotten what to do when you meet her. I think affection had something to do with it as well. I mean, Elizabeth was the kind of girl I would marry one day and you don’t do things like that to the bird you marry, do you? Well, maybe you do but I still think the first time was made more difficult because I really liked her.

I mentioned marriage then but, of course, I was thinking of it in the distant future. Not Elizabeth. The second she lost her cherry she was planning her trousseau. It was as if by having it away with her I had put the down payment on a wife and three kids. She started fussing around and that very first morning I had to have breakfast in bed. A dead waste of time as far as I’m concerned, because you always get crumbs stuck in the most uncomfortable places and knock the teapot over when you try and fish them out. Then there was washing up together and going shopping together – she even starts looking in the window of furniture shops which turns me off a bit – and in the end I have to pretend I arranged to go to Chelsea with a mate before I can get away.

It’s really good to be back home again, even with Mum going on at me for being out all night and not telling her anything. She’s worried about me but you can see that Dad just thinks I’ve been out nicking something. Not that he’d mind provided I cut him in for a slice. The fact is that since I fell into bad company and did a spot of lead stripping I haven’t laid a hand on anything. And that’s saying something with the chances you get as a window cleaner I can tell you.

Anyway, back to Elizabeth. The next few weeks she’s more difficult to shake off than a pixie’s french letter. I feel she’s taking over my life. And it’s not as if I’m getting a lot of the other from her, either. She doesn’t fancy it on the common, her Mum and Dad are always at home and if they do leave the house in the afternoon she doesn’t like doing it when it’s light. It’s not on, is it? If I had any sense I’d give her the bullet but of course the more she plays up the more I pretend to myself that she is a girl with what Mum would call ‘old fashioned values’. I’m dead simple you see.