“I wouldn’t know about that,” I say, grudgingly.
“What do you mean, ‘you wouldn’t know’?” says Rosie, turning her attention away from Sid. “She’s a lovely girl. You should be very glad to have her.”
“Yes,” says Sid, chirping up a bit, “very glad.”
“Depends what you mean by ‘have’,” I say, giving Sid the evil eye.
“I don’t understand you.” Rosie shakes her head.
“Well, Rosie, I suppose I’d better tell you—and you, Mum. You’ve got to know sooner or later—” My voice is trembling and even Dad puts down his pencil and stares at me. Sid’s face screws up like a man threatened with a red hot poker and his mean features plead for mercy.
“I don’t really know how to say this …” Sid pulls back from the throng and his hand dives into his back pocket.
“… but last night I saw Liz and …” Sid pulls open his wallet and points feverishly at a thick wad of notes. My power is total and I can’t resist another turn of the knife.
“It was in her Dad’s potting shed …”
“Her Dad’s potting shed?” says Mum. “I hope you weren’t up to no good.”
“Oh, no, Mum. Not me …”
Sid staggers back against the sink to await the mardi gras, as the frogs call it.
“We had a talk and, well, we decided it wasn’t on.”
“Oh, no, dear. I am sorry to hear that. Are you sure it isn’t just a tiff?” says Mum.
“No, Mum. There’s a number of fundamental issues we disagree on.” (I got that from all those trade union interviews on the telly.)
“Like sex before marriage, I suppose,” sneers Dad, rubbing his fried bread into his egg yolk like he’s trying to clean the pattern off the plate.
“No, we both felt the same about that,” I say, meaningfully, giving Sid’s wallet a hard glance. Sid’s smile is what you might call conciliatory.
“Oh, I am sorry,” says Rosie. “I liked Liz; didn’t you, Sid?”
Sid gulps and nods his head.
“From what little I saw of her.”
Cheeky bastard! That’s going to cost him a few extra quid.
“What do you mean, ‘little’? You two were getting on like a house on fire that night up at the boozer.”
Blimey, I think to myself, even my dozey sister could see what was going on. What a prize berk I must be.
“The course of true love never runs smooth,” chips in Mum. “Don’t be too disappointed. I’m certain it’s not over yet.”
“Oh, I am, Mum. From my point of view, there’s no going back on what happened last night.”
“But how can you suddenly be so certain!” bleats Rosie. “I mean, you’ve been going steady with Liz for months now. You’re not going to tell me that one little row can be the end of everything.”
“It wasn’t so little,” I say with a quiet intensity that would have made Godfrey Winn sound like a fairground barker. “There are some things so fundamental in a relationship that when you stumble across them they spell make or break.”
“I don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about,” says Dad. “You mean you found she was in the family way?”
The stupid old sod doesn’t know how close he is but I dismiss him with a humoring nod of the head and address myself to Sid and his disappearing wallet.
“No, Dad, it’s nothing your generation would understand. I think Sid knows what I mean, don’t you, Sid?”
Sid blushes before my penetrating gaze and nods vigorously.
“Yes, Timmy,” he says, “I had the same problem myself once.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Rosie. “It certainly wasn’t with me. We never had a wrong word the whole time we were engaged.”
“I don’t ever remember that you were engaged,” says Dad.
“Now, Dad …” says Mum.
“If he’s going to start getting at me …” says Rosie.
“I’d better be getting going,” says Sid. “I’ve got an early job. I’ll have some breakfast at the caff.”
I catch up with him in the hall. “Oh, Sid,” I say, “I got the impression in there you might be able to stand me a few bob.”
“How much? A fiver?”
“You must be joking. That’s what you’d pay up the West End. For family it comes a bit more expensive. Twenty-five nicker.”
“Nice bleeder, aren’t you? You’d make a good ponce.”
“Thanks. It takes one to know one. Just take it as being damages for breach of promise.”
“I never promised anything.”
“O.K. Well, consider yourself an unofficial co-respondent.”
“It’s more like bloody blackmail.”
“It is bloody blackmail and you’re bloody lucky to get off with twenty-five nicker and a bunch of fives up the bracket.”
“O.K. Well, I suppose it was worth it.”
“Don’t push it.”
And so on those pleasant terms we part with Sid lighter by the weight of five crisp fivers which he counts three times in case an extra one might have got stuck to them.
It is shortly after this event that, much to my father’s surprise and mother’s sorrow, Sid makes good his promise and moves Rosie and Jason into the wonderful new world of a Span flat, overlooking the common. Dad congratulates himself that it is his non-stop rabbiting that has done the trick but I have a shrewd suspicion that it is the threat of me blurting out a few home truths to Rosie—plus the not inconsequential demands I am making upon his surplus funds. Some might feel the odd pang of guilt, but I console myself with the thought that I am feathering my beloved sister’s nest as well as my own.
With the departure of the Boggetts (that was Sid’s name, poor sod) I move my photographs of the Chelsea football team (F.A. and European Cup winners: ‘We are the champions’) down to their bedroom and prepare to lord it a bit. But things don’t work out the way I’ve hoped. Mum is distraught about losing ‘her little Jason’ and keeps going on about all his lovable little habits like pissing in the coal bucket, and Dad misses having Sid to whine at and starts taking it out on me. Between the two of them, they are beginning to make me feel quite nostalgic for the old days. What I would have done next I’ll never know because at that moment fate intervenes and the whole course of my life is changed at one stroke. Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it? Oh, well, please yourself.
I have already mentioned that I shared a window cleaning business with Sid and readers of the previous volume of my memoirs (Confessions of a Window Cleaner—Sphere 1971. Ed.) will recall that this led to the odd entanglement with what my old schoolmaster used to call members of the opposite sex. It was such an occasion that led to my eventual, and literal, downfall.
I remember the day well because it was late summer and very hot in a way that only happens in the week after everyone has come back from their August bank holiday. Dogs panted in shadowy doorways and the heat seemed to muffle the noises of the street so that I might have been working in a dream as I lazily swept my squeegee over the top floor windows. I was operating in the front garden of a row of comfortable middle-class semi-detacheds behind Nightingale Lane and was stripped to the waist, not because I wanted to give any