Confessions of a Window Cleaner (11 page)

I consider asking her to dance but only poufdahs go around asking birds to dance at the Palais and anyway it’s too soon after she’s given me the evil eye. Also, I can’t dance. Not this rubbish anyway. A slow grapple to waltz time is about my mark. So I go back to George and we sink a few beers till I’m feeling quite merry. Then there’s a sudden rush towards the floor and I realise it’s the last dance. I have to move fast and I get to Elizabeth just before a large bloke with enough grease on his hair to lay up the Queen Mary.

“Would you care to dance?” I say oozing civility.

“What about my friend?” she says.

I’m on the point of telling her I can’t dance with both of them when grease-bonce grabs goggles and we’re away.

“Have you got to go far?” I say.

“Stockwell.”

“Can I give you a lift?”

“Have you got a car?”

“No, but I’m bloody strong. You could hop on my back.”

She allows herself to smile at that.

“But I don’t know you from Adam.”

“It’s easy to tell the difference, I’ve got more clothes on.”

“Very funny. You’re quite a comedian aren’t you?”

“I have my moments.”

“Well, don’t think you’re going to have one of them with me. If I let you take me home ’Reen comes too.”

That’s bad news. Both for me and ’Reen because I’ve borrowed Sid’s van and there aren’t any seats in the back. Just a couple of buckets which may come in handy if ’Reen gets taken short on the way home but aren’t very comfortable for sitting in.

It is with this thought in mind that I decide to keep the specification of my vehicle a temporary secret but luckily grease-bonce and goggles conceive an instant fascination for each other and after the two birds have rabbitted for about ten minutes I learn that Elizabeth will condescend to come home with me on her tod. There then remains the problem of George who wants a lift but I tell him discreetly to piss off and I’m all lined up.

Elizabeth takes another ten minutes in the Damerie and after a while I think she’s climbed out of one of the windows, but when she appears its been worth waiting for. She’s all powdery and thick eye-lashed and she has a maxi coat with fur all round the bottom that would really keep your neck warm.

“You look smashing,” I tell her, “and you smell fantastic.” I try to bury my hooter in her hair but she pushes me aside.

“Where’s this car of yours?”

“Just round the back.” Actually its about four streets away and by the time we get there Elizabeth is getting worried. She cheers up when we get there though which rather surprises me till I see her standing beside the MGB I’m parked behind.

“It’s this one.”

“I thought you said you had a car. I’d never have come if I’d known it was this.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” I’m getting a bit fed up with her by this time. “You know where the buses go from. That’s the High Street down the bottom there.” But she mumbles something about being too late and gets inside, catching her coat on the door handle which makes her even madder. The engine won’t fire at first and she’s fuming when I shove the thing in gear and accidently hit her leg. You’d think I put my hand up her skirt the way she pulls her coat over her knees. Really it’s so bloody ridiculous. There’s me getting up to all these tricks with a wagon load of birds and this little tart acting like a lady muck because I brush against her leg. Who the hell does she think she is.

“What do you do?” she says.

“The cleaning business.”

“Dry cleaning?”

“All kinds. What do you do – oh I know, you work at Haddon’s, don’t you.”

“Yes.”

“Is that where you got the perfume?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it called.”

“Ma Griffe.”

“Mother Unhappiness? That’s a bloody silly name for a perfume.”

“No, it’s French, you fool. ‘Ma Griffe’. Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

“No, I’ve only heard of Californian Poppy?”

“You get that at Woolworths.”

“I know, that’s where I saw it.”

If I was with Sandy now, we’d be discussing our orgasms or having one. I wonder what Elizabeth would say if I asked her if she had good orgasms.

“There’s a good film on at the Odeon next week.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“I don’t know. I know it’s good though. One of my mates told me about it.”

“Well, that’s no good if you don’t know what it’s called.”

“I was wondering if you’d like to go.”

“Well, I don’t know do I?”

“Are you on the telephone?”

“Yes. Why?”

Because I want to write ‘For giant-sized orgasms ring blank and ask for Elizabeth’ in every phone box from here to Vauxhall.

“So I can find out the name of the film and give you a ring about it.”

“Oh, alright. It’s in the book under Roberts E. E.”

“O.K. I’ll remember that.”

We keep up some kind of conversation until we get to her home, which is like every other semi-detached house in every other road in South London. If you took me a couple of streets away and turned me round three times I wouldn’t be able to find it again in a hundred years.

The minute I start slowing down her hand is on the door handle. I turn off the engine quick and reach across to help her.

“Thanks very much. I can’t ask you in because my Mum and Dad will be asleep.”

“Aren’t you even going to kiss me goodnight?”

She resigns herself to offering me her mouth and my hands steal down towards her legs where they are promptly seized by the other pair of hands in the car.

“Naughty,” she says, which must be pretty fast talk for her.

We kiss gently but the second my tongue goes in she pulls away and opens the door quickly.

“Don’t forget the number,” she says, “it’s under Roberts E. E. Goodnight.”

“Ta ta.”

I watch her go in and reply to her little wave from the front door before driving away down the dark, silent street. It’s funny but in a way I’m quite glad she wouldn’t let me put my hand up her skirt. Sandy once said I had a working class background and middle class values and I think maybe she’s right.

It was ridiculous really because about the time I met Elizabeth – I always called her Elizabeth, never Liz or Lizzie or anything like that – I got mixed up with the kinkiest bint yet. She lived up on the west side of the common and she had a maid. If that sounds coming it a bit for Clapham I can tell you that there were a lot of well to do people moving in around then and that the house itself looked as if it had upped sticks and moved in with them. Georgian, set back from the road, gold topped railings, separate gate with a little sign on it saying ‘Tradesmen’. Rather more Chelsea than is the rule around here.

The maid wasn’t French but Lithuanian or something like that which was virtually the same as far as I was concerned. She was small, dark and curvy and though she had a slight moustache I didn’t hold it against her. In fact, because the rest of her was so very female it rather appealed to me. Maybe I was getting kinky too. Anyway, this bird was obviously dead lonely and would follow you around the house offering cups of tea in a fractured English accent and smiling like she was trying to do her mouth an injury. I was reckoning on taking her out so I could do something about it but one afternoon when I roll up there is no sign of Ma Villiers – she’s the one who owns the house, I’ve never seen her old man – so I reckon I can save myself ten bob on cinema seats – I never make a bird open the exit doors the first time I take her out.

Petra, that’s the maid’s name, is waggling her arse like a come and get me sign as I follow her upstairs and isn’t slow to tell me that Mrs. V. has nipped off to the West End with a friend. Some blokes do the windows first, but not me. Take it while it’s there is my motto, you never know what’s going to happen in half an hour’s time. So when we’re passing the main bedroom I stop and take a butchers through the half open door. Inside, it’s all white paint and gilt with full length mirrors and knobbly kneed furniture as far as the eye can see, which is quite a long way. The bed has a canopy over the top and you could get a football team inside it if you liked that kind of thing.

“How do you fancy that?” I say, and she starts giggling, and I give her a little pinch and one thing leads to another and before you say ‘your policemen are wonderful’ we’re banging away on top of the silk bedspread. She has hairy armpits and smells a bit like the municipal changing rooms on Sunday morning but there are many worse ways of spending an afternoon and its obviously giving her pleasure, so what the hell. What I’m enjoying most are the surroundings. The mirrors give you an interesting new slant on things and with Petra stripped down to her black stockings I’m feeling more like James Bond than Sean Connery. I push myself up on my hands and watch my reflection moving rhythmically backwards and forwards with Petra swaying beneath me like weed on the sea bed. This is the life; screwing in style. This big bed, the silk drapes, the antique furniture, Mrs. Villiers standing in the doorway. Mrs Villiers standing in the doorway! I leap off the bed feeling as if I’ve been shot in the stomach. Petra’s face registers surprise, then horror as she looks towards the door.

“Get off my bed, you
slut
!”

I’ve never heard the word used with such venom before. It comes wrapped in spittle. Petra and I scuttle around, bumping into each other as we try and find our clothes. It could be funny if it wasn’t happening to you. Mrs. Villiers stalks over to the scene of the action and makes another exclamation of disgust as she examines the bedspread. I’ve got my trousers on now and am struggling into my shoes without untying the laces.

“You can get out,” she snarls at me.

“I’ve left my stuff in the—”

“Get out! I don’t want you in my house a minute longer. Get out!” She comes towards me with her face screwed up like a piece of red paper and, so help me, I think she’s going to belt me one.

I’m always dead scared when a bird turns nasty because you never know what they’re going to do. A kick in the cobblers might be the least of it. So I don’t wait to say goodbye to Petra but back away quick with Mrs. V. in pursuit. I half fall down the stairs and I’m out of the front door just as fast as any bloke in my situation ought to be. So fast in fact that it’s not till I’m on the other side of the railing that I remember I’ve left all my kit round the back porch. Now I could go back for it but somehow the thought of another brush with Mrs. V. doesn’t appeal so I decide to push off home and give her time to cool off.

The next morning I hang around at home until Sid has gone out and then nip round to the Big House. I’m feeling a lot better now and a little ashamed that I didn’t go back yesterday. Mrs. V. can’t eat me and the only thing I did wrong was to use her bed. Nothing to get stroppy about.

Round the back and I’m hoping to find my stuff where I left it but no such luck. The old bag has probably moved it inside so she can tear me off a strip when I come to collect it. I give the back door a gentle tap and wait for Petra to open it but that’s not the way it goes. When I look up it’s Mrs. V. who’s fixing me with a steely eye.

“So you’ve come to finish the job?” she says.

I wonder what she means for a moment but decide she isn’t trying to be sarcastic.

“You want me to do the windows?”

“That’s the idea. You are a window cleaner aren’t you – I mean as your first line of business.”

“Yes I suppose so.”

“Well, you’d better suppose right, or you won’t get the work again. You’ll find your things in the garage.”

She turns away and just for a moment I wonder whether to kick her up the backside and tell her to stuff it. But as usual my shrewd business brain weighs up the possibilities and I troop off to the garage wondering where Petra is.

I keep my eyes open as I move round the outside of the house but there’s no sign of her and it occurs to me that Mrs. V. might have given her the chop. Up to the scene of my near triumph the day before and I’m gazing fondly through the window imagining how magnificent I must have looked on the job when Petra comes into the room. She’s got her little black dress on with her frilly white apron and the thing in her hair and – wait a minute! She seems to have got plumper overnight. Her upper arms are definitely more rounded and her thighs – Jesus Christ! It isn’t Petra, it’s Mrs. V. My mouth is hanging lower than a coal miner’s balls and it’s a good job I’ve got one foot hooked over the window sill otherwise I’d be down in the garden. What a carve up. Mrs. V. must have gone round the twist. What in God’s name does she think she’s playing at?

I soon get the chance to ask her because she beckons me towards her with her index finger like my old schoolmaster used to do when he was going to clip you round the earhole.

“Come ’ere you naughty boy,” she squeaks. The accent doesn’t sound like her at all and I suddenly realise that it’s like a Frog speaking English.

“You ’ave been a naughty boy but I ’ave been naughty too, so I zink zat perhaps you should punish me.”

“Oh, no, that’s alright” I mumble, thinking that she’s barmy and wondering whether I ought to get the police.

“Ve should never ’ave come in ’ere.”

Mrs. V. picks up a silver backed hairbrush and hands it to me.

“Ven zomebody ’as been wicked girl they should ’av a little smack.”

She looks quite good standing there with her tits pushed up as if they’re being served up to you on a tray. The fact that the costume is a bit on the small side doesn’t do any harm either. It strikes me that she’s not a bad looking bird. Full mouth, good features, she can’t be much over forty.

“Smack you?” I says.

“Zat’s right.” she lowers her eyes and bows her head like a kid owning up for smashing a window. Some kid! I wonder how long she was standing there in the doorway watching Petra and me on the job. She certainly didn’t start coughing or anything.

“I vill lie on ze bed and you give me a little smack. Yes?”

She pulls up her skirt and shows me one of the sauciest pairs of frilly black knickers I’ve seen outside of those shops in Shaftesbury Avenue. I’m admiring them, when she pulls them down to her knees and bends over the bed. Now I’m only human aren’t I, and I can stand so much. This is so much.