‘Do you know your way round this place?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it would be nice to find somewhere a little quieter to get reacquainted.’ I give her another kiss and start moving my hand in an anti-clockwise motion over her bottom – you can use a clockwise motion if you like, nothing is going to drop off.
‘Oh, Timmy, you are naughty.’
‘I can’t help myself. With you looking like that I haven’t got a chance. Come on, Sam.’ I take her by the hand and draw her down the corridor before she can say anything.
‘I’m so weak,’ she murmurs.
Smashing! I think to myself. If I don’t get across this one in two shakes of a donkey’s dongler then Tarzan wears a truss. I push her back into the first bedroom I come across and feel hopefully for a key. There isn’t one but you can’t have everything.
‘Oh, Timmy,’ she says. ‘I do like you.’
That makes two of us, I think as I slip my hands underneath her dress. She makes a yum, yum noise and chews at my lips like she is trying to untie a reef knot with her teeth. Boy! With the effect I have on women I should start taking ugly-pills.
‘You’re wearing knicks tonight.’
‘It’s cold.’
‘Doesn’t feel cold to me.’
‘Oh, Timmy, that’s lovely.’
The next few minutes could be lovely for everybody but suddenly I hear a familiar voice outside the door.
‘Come in here,’ it whispers conspiratorially. ‘I want to show you something.’
Dad! What the hell does he want? I have a good mind to tell him to piss off but a mixture of curiosity and modesty gets the better of me.
‘Somebody’s coming,’ I say unnecessarily. ‘Get in that wardrobe.’
Samantha does not seem over-enthusiastic about the idea but I push her into a jungle of Justin’s trendy threads and bundle in after her. I pull the door to and it clicks shut.
‘U-u-u-m,’ murmurs Samantha, losing no time in getting cracking with her adventurous little pandies.
‘Steady on! I don’t fancy the smell of moth balls.’ But once you switch on Samantha’s ignition her engine starts revving up fit to blow a gasket.
‘’Ere, look what I’ve got!’ Dad sounds as if he is right outside the door of the wardrobe. ‘I bet you’ve never seen one like this before?’ Oh dear! The mind boggles at what the dirty old sod is up to. What stupid scrubber can have got lumbered with him?
‘’Course I have. Is that all you brought me in here for?’ No! That is my Mum’s voice. This is disgusting. Listening to my own mother and father rabbiting on in this vein makes me go hot and cold with embarrassment. What Samantha is doing to the front of my jeans does not help either.
‘You’ve seen one shaped like this?’
‘Of course I have. They’re all shaped like that. Now put it away.’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I breathe, ‘Put it away, please!’
‘You know how it works, do you? You pull this bit at the end.’
‘Of course I know. Now come on. Are you going to play with it all night?’ Mum sounds so matter of fact about the whole thing. I suppose this is the best way to humour him. Or maybe that is what twenty odd years of marriage does for you – very odd, some of them.
‘Look, it goes red when I pull it.’ Really! Would that I could be in any other wardrobe in the whole of North London. It would make your flesh creep with a couple of strangers, but your own Mum and Dad! I find it disgusting even to think of them on the job, let alone having to endure this. ‘I can’t get it in now.’ Dad’s helpless whine sends fresh currents of nausea through my twitching frame.
‘Oh, give it here! You’re like a child, aren’t you? I have to do everything. There, simple, isn’t it?’
‘Watch out! You’ve bent it.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s still going to work. See? Still niffs the same, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah. I’d better put it back.’
‘Hurry up before somebody comes.’
I don’t know whether it is because of a subconscious urge to stop this depravity or the fact that Samantha suddenly squeezes my moth balls, but my shoulder connects with the wardrobe door which swings open to reveal Percy pointing accusingly at my Mum and Dad. Dad has a large bottle of air freshener in his hand and one finger hooked in the wick control as if about to pull it like a hand grenade. Both he and Mum are fully clothed.
‘You filthy little devil!’ explodes Dad. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Just slipping into something cool, Dad.’ I close the door swiftly as Samantha lunges towards me through the lightweights.
‘What’s he on about?’ says Mum.
‘About every five minutes,’ says Dad. ‘Come on, I feel like a drink.’
‘What’s a clitch?’ says Sid.
‘A what? Oh, a cliché. Something very corny.’
‘Why don’t they bleeding well say so, then? How are ordinary people supposed to understand words like that? I bet that’s not an English word. How about “derivative”?’
It is a few days later and we are reading the reviews of Oliver Twist that have appeared in the Sundays. They are not good. In fact they are diabolical. ‘Sex for sex’s sake.’ ‘Violence laid on with a trowel.’ ‘No concessions to artistic integrity.’ ‘I beg you to miss this film.’ And those are some of the better headlines. Justin says that it is because the critics are jealous of Loser’s genius and irritated by his off-hand manner but I reckon it is because he is a useless director. Sidney seems to be coming round to my point of view at last.
‘He’s too far ahead of his time,’ mutters Justin.
‘Like Martin Peters,’ I say helpfully.
‘More like Mary Peters,’ snarls Sidney. ‘I’ve always had my doubts about that bloke. His bloody chauffeur and those dogs. He wants to change his sheepskin and get his hair shorn.’
‘Sidney! Now, come on. I always thought you believed the sun shone out of his light meter.’
‘I’m not one to start casting nasturtiums while the enterprise is still under way,’ says Sid loftily, ‘but I think I can speak freely now. I didn’t expect to make any moola out of a straight version of the movie but I did think somebody would find something good to say about it. As a prestige production it’s got less to recommend it than a long-distance spitting contest. How many of the circuits are distributing it?’
‘Well, old bean, at this moment in time –’ says Justin,
‘None of them. Just as I thought,’ snorts Sid. ‘So I suppose we’re going to soldier on at the Bioscope for another couple of days until we’re pushed out by Naughty Nudes of Nineteen hundred and Nine.’ Justin picks up a pencil.
‘What was that again? Edwardiana is terribly popular at the moment. You might have something there.’
‘I haven’t got anything here, have I?’ says Sid bitterly.
‘My dear fellow,’ says Justin, putting his arm round Sidney’s shoulder, ‘you mustn’t be