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.
Luckily it doesn’t matter too much that Elizabeth’s legs are shut tighter than a pair of rusty scissors because I’m getting more than I need elsewhere. Sandy is still shacked up with her spade and I’ve gone off Brenda in a big way but the rest of them are all ready, willing and very able. Of course Elizabeth knows nothing about this and she still reckons I’m practically a virgin. Not surprising really, because by the time I get round to her sometimes I’m so knackered I can hardly poke my old man through the zip of my fly. Maybe it’s because deep down inside I reckon I’m going to get married and have to settle down, but I’m screwing everything that moves at the moment. It’s as if I’m trying to build up a rich storehouse of memory before I go under.
Thinking about it, that’s probably why I was so glad to meet Sonia.
Sonia was a dancer, an acrobatic dancer. I don’t know what she was like because I never saw her do it – acrobatic dancing I mean – but she showed me an album of press cuttings and there were some pictures of her doing the splits and jamming her leg up against the wall so it looked like a giant hard. She was billed as ‘Kismetta the Fantastica’ which might have gone down well at the Aldershot Hippodrome in 1942 but was hardly going to pack them in now. Somebody else had obviously had the same idea because when I met her she was ‘resting’ as she put it. Anyway, let me tell you the whole story.
One of the places I did was called the ‘Fitzroy Hotel’ but it was more like a doss house really. The glass sign outside was broken so you could see the bulbs inside and the lino cracked up like baked custard. There were never many people there and I can’t see how the place stayed open. I wouldn’t have passed water there let alone the night. The owner was a miserable old git who always tried to knock down my price and said that he’d do it himself if it wasn’t for his back and that I was taking advantage of him. I took this a couple of times and then I told him to stuff the job up his Jacksie, which put our relationship on a more professional footing. After that he never gave any trouble but just wandered round making sure no one had left a light on and that I knew he was watching me to see that I didn’t nick anything.
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when I first met Sonia. I didn’t expect anybody to be around then and I got a bit of a shock when this pile of bedclothes suddenly springs up and flashes a couple of tits at me. It’s worse for her because I’ve woken her up and she glares at me and pulls the sheet up to her chin.
She’s about thirty. I suppose; boney, sallow, hollow-cheeked, lank-haired; her tits are small but they droop like foxgloves which gives them shape. There’s a beat-up, world-used scruffiness about her which I feel at home with. Any bird that sleeps starkers always interest me and she looks better than a lot I’ve seen considering she’s just woken up. Elizabeth has never let me see her naked yet. She always wears a nightdress and though I’m allowed to mess about underneath it, it stays on, come hell or high water. I think it’s because she secretly thinks what we are doing is sinful and feels a bit better about it if she is wearing something.
The bird in the bed is saying something but I can’t hear what it is so I pull the top window down a bit and manage to drop my squeegee into the room. Then I find the bottom window is jammed so I have to indicate that I need assistance. The bint raises her eyes to the ceiling in a ‘you prick’ gesture and swings out of bed wrapping the sheet around herself but not quickly enough to stop me seeing that they’re the same colour as the hairs on her head. She stalks across to the window, picks up the squeegee and hands it to me over the top.
“Haven’t you got a hanky?” she says.
At first I don’t know what she means and I’m wondering if there’s a large bogeyman hanging out of one of my nostrils. Then I cotton on that she’s talking about dropping handkerchiefs.
“Hurrah,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“I could see your mind working. You got there in the end, didn’t you?”
“I usually do.”
“What do you mean by coming and waking me up?”
“Somebody had to do it. Do you know what the time is?”
“About eleven?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I know what the time is, then, don’t I?”
I’m still standing on the window ledge and I am beginning to feel that this may be a position in which I have difficulty doing myself justice.
The bird obviously agrees with me because she shakes her head and wanders over to the door where there is a dressing gown hanging up. In one quick movement she drops the sheet and has the dressing gown round her shoulders. It’s a man’s dressing gown and it’s far too big for her. She feels in the pocket, pulls out a fag packet and sticks a dog end in her mouth. No matches. She points to her fag and looks at me and I nod. I don’t smoke but I always carry a box of matches for just such moments. It’s like boy scouts carry around those penknives with bits on them to get stones out of horses’ hooves. She shrugs her shoulders and with a feat of strength that impresses me almost