“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