and always dragged in to conversations of this type as a symbol of what hard work and a bit of nous can do for you. In fact Sid is a bit stronger on the latter than the former, though you can’t point the finger at him for that – two is nearer the mark with Sid. He and I were partners in a window cleaning business until he got a bit too close to a girl I was thinking of getting spliced to. In fact “a bit too close” is putting it mildly. He was so close he was touching her in about half a dozen places. In her dad’s garden shed, too. I still get a red flush every time I think about it. Mum and Rosie, she is my sister, don’t know about that little incident, though I keep the threat of revelation dangling over Sid’s nut like the sword of Dan O’Kleas.
“How is Charlie Clore, then?” I say trying not to sound too bitter.
“Don’t be bitter, dear,” says Mum. “Just because Sidney has taken his chances—”
I start choking at this point and it’s not just because Mum’s omelettes taste like they have been made with Great Auks’ eggs.
“Don’t gulp your food, dear,” continues Mum, “I was always telling you as a child. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Sidney. Do you know what he is doing now?”
“Six years in The Scrubs?”
“He’s working for Funfrall Enterprises.”
She makes it sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury so I am obviously supposed to be impressed.
“Oh yeah. And what’s that?” In fact, I can vaguely remember having heard of it but I don’t want to let on to Mum.
“You know! They own all those Dance Halls and Holiday Camps and Health Centres and things. You’ve seen the Miss Globe Contest on the tele?”
I have too. Like an explosion in a dumpling factory with dialogue by Andy Pandy.
“He’s taken over from Michael Aspel, has he?”
“No, no. He’s nothing to do with beauty contests—”
“You can say that again.”
“—he’s tied up with the holiday camps. Promotions Manager or something. He’s doing terribly well.”
I can imagine it, too. Jammy bastard. Well we all know what goes on at holiday camps, don’t we? Just Sidney’s cup of tea. Timmy’s too!
Maybe Mum is a mind-reader.
“Perhaps he could help you find a job, dear?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so, Mum,” I say, turning down the idea on principle. “I think it’s about time I found something for myself. How are Rosie and the kid?”
I soon learn that Rosie and little nephew Jason are full of beans and now living in their own house in tasty Streatham. Sidney’s cup must be over-running right down to his Y-fronts. After a few more painful details of his new car and their holiday in Majorca I am forced to escape by switching the conversation to the unsavoury subject of Dad. I learn that the man who contracted out of the rat race because the other rats objected is still filling in some of his waking hours down at the Lost Property Office. Plentiful evidence of this fact is provided by a quick butchers round the walls of the ancestral home of the Leas. Dad is what you might call a collector. What you might also call a grade one tea leaf. Moose heads, stuffed fish, millions of umbrellas, enough binoculars to supply the Royal Box at Ascot. All saved from the incinerators – so he says. I reckon that most of the stuff was left on public transport because it wouldn’t fit into the dustbin.
The pride of Dad’s collection can be discovered in the hallstand underneath the telephone directories – we don’t have a telephone but Dad is prepared for this eventuality. Here can be found all the porn that Dad and his mates down at the L.P.O. know will never be claimed. The tattered, drool-sodden fixes of a brigade of plastic-macked sexual fantasists: “Kinky Kats on the Rampage”, “Corporal Ecstasy”, “Leatherworkers’ Handbook”, full of dead-eyed girls with tits like policemen’s helmets, who look as if they should know better – and have certainly known worse.
Not that I want to sound as if I’m always writing to Malcolm Muggeridge about it. I have never been able to resist a quick flick through Dad’s library and it’s to this that I retire when Mum has cleared away the breakfast things and toddled off to the launderette.
I am not disappointed. There, beneath the 1968 A–D nestles “Wife-swapping, Danish Style” with a cover that leaves nothing to the imagination, not even my particularly fevered article. The inside is even worse, or better, according to your personal tastes, and I am beginning to crowd my jeans when there is a sharp rat-tat on the front door. Cursing under my breath, because Sven and Brigitta and Inga and Horst are just beginning to forget about the open sandwiches. I stuff the magazine under a cushion and do a ‘mum through the lace curtains’.
Standing on the front door step is a pneumatic brunette of about twenty-five, carrying a map board and chewing the end of a pencil as she examines our door-knocker. She is not at all bad and in my present keyed-up condition could be a lot worse. Pausing only to make sure that my eye teeth are not showing, I speed to the front door and hurl it open.
“Good morning,” says my visitor with practised cheeriness. I note that her eyes are making a lightning tour of my person and allow myself a similar liberty with her own shapely frame.
“Good morning,” I say.
“I am doing some research for a company called Baspar Services and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Shoes. It won’t take very long.”
Take as long as you like, darling, I think to myself, wincing at the discomfort her too-tight sweater must be causing her tempting tits.
“Come inside, we don’t want to stand out here on the doorstep.”
The girl looks a little doubtful.
“Is your wife at home? I’ve got some questions for her, too.”
This is obviously a ploy used to discourage potential rapists. Funny how my expression always gives me away.
“Oh, I’m not married,” I say jokily as if the whole idea was too funny for words, “but my mother is doing the washing.”
I don’t say where, so she trips over the threshold and I steer her on to the settee in the front room. This puts her at a disadvantage because generations of Leas watching tele, or grappling before it during power cuts, has forced the springs down to floor level. One either sinks without trace or perches on the edge. My guest starts off by doing the former and then struggles uncomfortably into an upright position revealing a good deal of shapely leg which I pretend not to see. In reality, I am finding it difficult to control myself because the adventures of my Danish friends are still firmly rooted in my mind.
“Well, let’s get down to business,” say Miss Shapely-Thighs, briskly. “First of all, how many pairs of shoes do you have?”
She chews the end of her pencil and I could do without that for a start.
“Sixty-nine,” and her eyebrows shoot up.
“I mean six—er—yes. I think it’s six. Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.” I don’t either. I have this terrible habit of saying what I am thinking, sometimes. Very embarrassing.
“Six,” she repeats and makes a tick on her questionnaire. “When did you last buy a pair?”
Talking of pairs, I think that’s a lovely set of knockers you’ve got there. I wouldn’t mind doing a few press-ups on top of that lot.
“About a month ago,” I say.
“Where did you buy them?”
“At the shoe shop. I can’t remember the name. Maybe it’s on them. I’m wearing them, you see.”
We smile at each other as if it’s