I try to get up but the bird has heard the noise too, because she suddenly starts clinging to me as hard as she was trying to push me away a few seconds before. Talk about changing your mind.
“Get off,” I shout, but it’s not half as loud as the scream behind me. It’s not a bloke standing in the doorway but a bird. A slim little blonde job like a choir boy with make-up. She’s looking at us like it’s a bad motor crash. Horrified is putting it mildly.
“Elvie! Oh My God,” she howls, and she pulls the words out slowly as if from the bottom of a deep bag. All the time she is shrinking away but then she suddenly shakes her head like someone waking themselves up from a nightmare and rushes into the kitchen. This is not what I am expecting but beneath me the bird’s face is triumphant.
I’m thick. I’m very, very thick but something is beginning to dawn on me. Something that explains why I’m about as appealing to her as a skunk’s after shave lotion.
“There isn’t a bloke, is there? You’re lesbians.”
She ignores me and lies back clenching her fists.
“Did you see the expression on her cheap little face when she saw us. It was gorgeous. Now she knows what it’s like, dirty little bitch.”
There’s no sound coming from the kitchen and I’m getting worried. The blonde job may be looking for a carving knife. I know enough about women to be scared of them at moments like this. A woman’s scorn and all that malarky. It seems to me that my bent playmates may have been a good deal less than totally honest with me but I don’t know what goes on in the twilight world of Butches and Dykes and with every second in that flat I’m beginning to care less.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach down and grab my trousers.
“What’s she doing in there?”
“I don’t know. Collecting her things I suppose. That’s what she said she was going to do. She’s got somebody else, somebody older who can afford to take her around the world as a companion. She’s just a little whore. She’ll give herself to the highest bidder. She’d even sleep with you.”
“Thanks very much.”
There’s the sound of glass shattering in the kitchen and I go and stick my head round the door. Blondie is leaning forward with both hands in the sink and her face is grey. There is an empty asprin bottle beside her and the pieces of broken glass on the floor surround a pap of half dissolved tablets. Not enough though to correct the impression that the major part of them must be in her stomach.
“Christ!”
“What is it?”
“She’s swallowed a bottle of asprins!”
“Whaaat! No! Helen. Darling!”
Elvie shoots past me and grabs Helen like she’s a toddler that’s gone too near the edge of the pond. Helen tries to put her arms round her but can’t do it. As a sight it would really be quite affecting if it wasn’t all so bloody stupid.
“Make her sick!” I say, “Make her eat salt. I’ll ring for an ambulance.”
“Oh my darling,” sobs Elvie, “I don’t wan’t you to go away. I was being cruel. I’m sorry. I’m stupid and jealous. This man isn’t anything. I manufactured the whole thing just to make you miserable. Oh darling, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, forgive me. Don’t leave me.”
“Make her sick,” I shout and slam the door on them.
I ring for an ambulance, give the address and put the ’phone down when they ask for my name. Back in the kitchen Helen has her head in the sink and is making hawking noises. They’re both too occupied to take any notice of me and they always will be so I piss off.
So that was one bird I didn’t make. Another was Carla or Carlotta or something very similar and foreign. She wore one of the most superb bodies I’ve ever seen and her bone structure made Elizabeth Taylor look like she’d gone thirteen rounds with Rocky Marciano. She was a right little darling and the first time I saw her I got my dirty-old-mongrel-confronted-with-small-pedigree-poodle-wearing-blue-ribbon sensation which makes me just as horny and evil as the little-orphan-Nell-sobbing-because-she’s-three-weeks-behind-with-the-rent urge which I described a few lines ago.
Carla, I’ll settle for that, I met when I was whipping my scrim round some grotty little number off Norcote Road. It’s the kind of house you have to be careful about leaning a ladder against in case the whole bloody lot comes down and I would forsee less chance of finding a good looking bird there than in the Gents at Piccadilly Underground – on second thoughts maybe I’d better reconsider that statement. Anyway, I am peering through this window just to prove that my eyes are still working, when I see this delectable bint craning forward to adjust her false eyelashes. She’s wearing a pair of skin tight, flare bottomed, black velvet trousers and a white silk blouse with a mass of frills and ruffles round the sleeves. Her hair is black and shoulder length and she has silver heeled boots, and silver bracelets and rings littering her wrists and fingers. She makes the room look like it must be background for one of those fashion shots in which they photograph beautiful birds lying down in the middle of a rubbish-dump.
I’m so impressed I bang on the window pane and she gives me a big wave and a smile before getting on with her plumbing job. When she’s finished she sidles over to the window and give me a big wink and a flick of the hips that would knock an Irish navvy arse over tit.
“Fantastic!”
“You like it, sailor? I’m very glad to hear it. You not so bad yourself. Now, when you come to do the inside of my windows?” Her voice is husky and her accent, I imagine, Italian. It’s definitely wog anyway.
“When you’ve got a couple of hours to spare.”
“Why? It taka long time to do the inside of the window?”
“It can take a very long time.”
“How long?”
“How long would you like?”
“I think you make a joke with me.”
“I think I do.”
She tosses back her hair and smiles at me – “You are window cleaner, yes? You not tom cat who does pee pee?”
At first I don’t get it and then I realise she means a peeping tom.
“No, I’m being employed by your landlady, the good Mrs. Purvis.”
“If she good then she another Mrs. Purvis. Listen, if you say yes to teabag I make you pot of tea.”
“I say yes to teabag.”
“Good, now you come in and start inside the window.”
So I hop inside and start inside of window. This Italian bint is obviously going to be money for old rope because the minute I touch the floor she gives my arm a big pinch and makes a ‘grrh’ noise, and she’s rolling her eyes at me all the time she’s filling the kettle. I’ve never seen such an odds on certainty.
Down below Percy is uncoiling himself from his afternoon siesta and I’m camping it up like a maniac, sweeping my squeegee over the glass like it’s a paintbrush and giving her a wonderful opportunity to observe how my enormously broad shoulders narrow down to a tiny waist. She clearly laps it up because she has another couple of little goes at me before I finish and stretch out my hand for the tea. This I get, plus a quick massage of the goolies that nearly makes me tip the whole bloody lot down the front of her frills. Talk about forward, this bird is practically behind you! She’s a lovely mover too and is always striking exaggerated poses that show off her body to its best advantage. It’s a job to take my eyes off her and look round the room.
Like I’ve said