But I’m skating on a bit. On this particular afternoon in late September it’s me who’s hanging on for dear life. Like the book says I’m trying to think of everything under the sun to stop myself from coming – hobnail boots, Jimmy Young, bulldogs, old gramophone records – but it’s no good. I’m just on the point of surrendering to my baser emotions when the bird starts tugging at my arse as if she’s trying to get the whole bloody lot of me inside her and starts hollering ‘Now, now, now!’ Well that’s it. I accept her advice gratefully and a few moments later I’m lying on top of her damp blouse and struggling to get my breath back. It’s dead ungrateful, I know, but the moment I’ve come I wish I could press a button and make her disappear. I just don’t want to know anymore. It seems bloody ridiculous that I could have been so worked up just a few minutes before. Beneath me the bird gives a little wriggle to tell me that she wants me to move and when I don’t carefully eases herself into a more comfortable position.
“What’s your name?” she says softly.
“Timmy.”
“That was nice, Timmy. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.”
“Yeah, good.” I give her a little squeeze while I’m wondering how to get out. With Viv it was easy. I might have been in the Casualty Department of a hospital. She just gave me a plaster for my foot, we dressed and I went home. Dead simple. As it happens my latest turns out to be less of a problem than I imagined – at least in one way.
“My name’s Dorothy – what’s that?”
This time there is something. The front door slamming and the sound of feet pounding up the stairs – two of them. Kids voices shouting the odds.
“Oh yes I did!”
“You bleedin’ didn’t!”
“Get out,” hisses the bird. She’s off the bed like its white hot, and whipping on her skirt. She rolls up her drawers and tights and throws them on top of the cupboard. Quick thinking. I’d be impressed if I had time.
“Stop them,” I whisper while I fumble for my socks. She’s so red she might burst. She takes one look at me which hasn’t got an ounce of expression in it and goes out fast. I can sympathise with her. It can’t be much fun to have your kids find you on the job with the window cleaner.
“Look at that carpet. How many times have I told you to wipe your feet before you go upstairs.”
“But Mum—”
“Don’t ‘but Mum’ me. You can go right back and do it properly.” I hear her voice and the squeaks of protest descending to the hall. Now, how am I going to get out? I’ll have to pretend that I was cleaning the windows. I haven’t brought any of my stuff up with me so what am I going to use? In a flash of inspiration I remember Dorothy’s knicks and tights. I nip up on one of the beds and fish them down from the top of the wardrobe. There’s a toilet next door so I dip them in that and give the windows a quick rub over. Luckily it’s stopped raining about an hour before so it doesn’t look too stupid. There’s a nosy old bag opposite peering at me round a curtain but I don’t worry about her over much. She can’t possibly see what I’m cleaning the window with.
Downstairs and I shove the undies in the bottom of my bucket and smile at the kids. They look at me a bit old-fashioned though it’s probably my imagination.
“That’s it, lady, fifteen bob if you don’t mind. Thank you very much. Ta ta, be seeing you.”
I hop on my bike and start cycling down the street with the funny feeling that none of it really happened. Round the corner in front of me a bloke of about thirty-five is crossing the road. His hair is beginning to go and there’s a dead fag gummed between his lips. He’s fat and scruffy and looks like about ten million other blokes who have got one of their mates to clock out for them and shuffled home early for Bird’s Eye fish fingers and an evening in front of the telly. I know that if I turn round and watch he’ll go into the house I’ve just left. But I don’t turn round.
“What’s this then?” says Mum.
She’s got a packet of ants’ eggs in one hand and Dorothy’s undies in the other. Like a good mum she’s started to hang my rags out over the cooker – nosy old bag. Sid nearly chokes on his eggs and bacon.
“Didn’t you know, Mum,” he says, “Timmy’s the demon knicker nicker of Clapham. Your smalls aren’t safe on the line when he’s about. Don’t you ever read the Sundays?”
From the look on Mum’s face I can see she half believes him.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” she says, shaking the stuff under my nose.
“It’s just a joke, Mum.” I start to say desperately, “I put them there myself for a laugh.”
“You want to see under his bed, Mum,” goes on Sid, “there’s two suitcases full of the stuff. I’ve seen him at night, sitting up and counting it. He keeps a list of it all in a little notebook.”
“Timmy!” I can see he’s got Rosie going now. It makes you realise what your own family really thinks of you. They’d probably believe Sid if he said I had a couple of bodies under my bed. Luckily, Dad is upstairs with one of his turns – that’s when he turns over and says ‘fuck it, I’m going to stay in bed all day’. He’d probably run out and start yelling for a copper if he was here.
Sid holds an imaginary microphone under my hooter and puts on his lah-di-dah voice.
“Tell me, Mr Lea, when did you first experience the uncontrollable urge to steal ladies’ underwear that has made you the terror of S.W.12?”
“About the same time as I felt the uncontrollable urge to shove this bread knife up your bracket,” I say. “For God’s sake, Mum, you don’t believe him, do you?”
“Where did you get those panties from then?” says Rosie.
“I bought them—”
“—he’s dead kinky, too,” interrupts Sid, “Go on, take your trousers off and show them what you’re wearing. You never seen such—”
“Shut up!” I yell. “I bought them for a girl friend but they were the wrong size, so I thought I’d have a little joke.”
“You haven’t got a girl friend,” says Rosie.
“That’s all you know. I don’t tell you everything.”
“She must be a funny shape if they don’t fit her,” says Sid, holding up the knickers. “You could get into them, couldn’t you Rosie?”
“Don’t talk dirty and put those things down.” says Mum. “What I can’t see is why you didn’t take them back and change them if they was the wrong size?”
With everybody in the family a bleeding Perry Mason, I might as well give up. I should have told them that Sid put them there to start off with.
“They wouldn’t take them back because they were worn,” I say.
“You mean she had to put them on before she found they wouldn’t fit?” says Rosie.
“No, he did,” said Sid.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“I should hope not,” says Mum, “the very idea.”
It’s amazing how they go on treating you like a kid, isn’t it?
“It all sounds very fishy to me,”