Confessions of a Milkman. Timothy Lea
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that smile. Revealing Teds as white as the milk that is now lapping round our navels. Her barnet is held in place by one of those little caps like they wear in Joe Lyons and, now I come to think of it, she is a dead ringer for the bird who sold me the Cornish pasty at dinner time. Still, she couldn’t be. How would she get from Joe Lyons to the Sultan’s harem in just a few hours? There was a swarthy geezer behind me in the queue but I only heard him ask for a couple of doughnuts – ooh! She’s done it again. This must be love. Either that or the bath is so full of crumpet that you can’t help bumping into it. And still the line of vase-carrying beauties stretches away into the distance. I suppose that is what they mean out here when they talk about ‘going to the pitchers’. Oh! Now there is another of them at it. It’s a good job that ass’s milk is not transparent otherwise it might be embarrassing. Aaarh. What a soft, beautiful mouth. It seems to have appeared from nowhere and is now browsing on my lips. Tingles run through my system and I feel myself growing, growing … blimey! Is that me? That huge tutti-frutti all rooty with the birds nibbling it like they are playing a giant flute? It cannot be true. Soaring out of the milk it is like a nuclear sub breaking through the icecap. And the sensations! And all those lovely girls pressed against me! Oh, it’s too much, it really is. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold on much – Wait a minute! Who’s the geezer with the scimitar and the baggy trousers? The turban with the cockade and the mean expression on his mug? Why is he wading through the milk towards me. ‘Sid!’ I shout the word but no sound comes out of my mouth. I try to move but the weight of birds on top of me makes it impossible. Only my enormous hampton trembles in the slipstream of Sid swinging back his sword. ‘No!!’ Again, not a sound. Sid’s features set in an evil smile and the muscles in his arms tighten. ‘You can’t!’ I am using every ounce of strength I possess but not moving an inch. It is as if I have been drugged, as if I am standing outside myself trying to get back in. ‘Whooosh!’ “Yaaaaaaargh! ! !” I am so relieved to hear the sound of my own voice shouting into the night that I nearly shout again. Night! A second wave of relief arrives almost simultaneously with the first. I have been dreaming. Clammy and half strangled by sheets, I shake myself free and listen to a distant train. 17, Scraggs Lane seems quiet as a grave – which it resembles in many ways. I wonder if I have woken Mum and Dad? Contrary to what one might think, Dad is a light sleeper. He gets so much kip at the lost property office where he works and in front of the telly that he is quite perky during the time the rest of the world gets its head down.
I listen to the silence and then pull the bedclothes about me. What a bleeding nasty dream. If there are going to be any more like that I don’t fancy going back to kip. Just to be on the safe side I check that the old action man kit is still joined to the rest of me. Phew! What a relief. You never quite know with dreams, do you? Maybe it – no. For a moment I had hoped that it might have retained some of the lustrous promise of the harem but it seems very ordinary at the moment. Very, very ordinary. Still, better to have it intact and in working order than miniaturized by my brother-in-law’s scimitar. Funny him turning up like that. It is probably very symbolic. I believe that Clement Freud has done a lot of work in this area when not flogging dog food for the Liberal Party. He says that everything you dream has a meaning. I wonder what meaning having your hampton cut off by your brother-in-law has? Probably not a very nice one. I suppose I could write to Mr Freud about it but it does seem a bit delicate and the Liberals have enough problems of that kind as it is, don’t they? Better to save the cost of the postage stamp and buy a controlling interest in British Leyland.
It is funny about the milk though. I mean, coming so soon after my interview at the depot. I suppose I must be keyed up at the thought of going out on the rounds with Mr Glossop. Two weeks with him, a week’s course, and I could have my own float. A steady income, regular hours and virtually your own boss. It can’t be bad, can it? And no Sid. I have been tagging along under his thumb for too long. All his crackpot schemes have got me nowhere. I have been exploited. I feel myself going hot under the pyjama collar and take a couple of long, deep breaths. Cool it, Lea. Sid is not going to like it but there is nothing he can do. If you want to be a milkman that is your decision.
Cupping my hands round my goolies just in case Sid and his scimitar are within swinging distance, I prepare myself for the big day.
CHAPTER TWO
‘You can imagine how I feel,’ says Fred Glossop. ‘Twenty years, that’s a long time.’
I rub my hands together and nod. I know how I feel: bleeding parky. And we have only just left the depot. Still, it is only six o’clock and it must get warmer – lighter, too.
‘Are you tired, lad?’
I swallow my yawn and try and look like I am just waiting to come out the traps at Harringay. ‘I didn’t sleep very well last night. I was a bit keyed up. You know what it’s, like when you want to be certain to wake up. You always wake up an hour earlier.’
Fred nods, showing neither interest nor sympathy. ‘If you can’t get yourself up in the morning you might as well forget about the job. I’ve never found it a problem myself.’
Fred Glossop must be about sixty and looks as if he has never heard anything but bad news all his life. You only have to start a sentence and he is nodding pessimistically before you have got further than ‘it’s a pity—’.
‘It’s going to be a bit of a problem when you retire,’ I say, listening to the whine of the float as we whirr past the lines of parked cars.
‘Oh no, not at all,’ says Fred – he disagrees with everything you say, as well. ‘I’ve always been able to amuse myself. My mind’s always on the go. That’s vital when you work by yourself. If you haven’t got an active mind you might as well forget it.’
‘Um, yes,’ I say. ‘This thing easy to drive, is it?’
An expression almost of horror arrives on Fred’s face. ‘You’re not going to drive it,’ he says looking towards the pavement as if hoping to find someone to share his amazement with. ‘Not yet. These are specialized vehicles, you know.’
‘It’s only a bloody great battery, isn’t it?’ I say, beginnig to feel a bit choked. ‘I don’t want to enter it for a Grand Prix.’
When you arrive at the depot in the morning all the battery-operated floats are on charge. The leads stretch away like mechanical milkers fastened to a cow’s udder. It is all very symbolic.
‘There’s no need for that tone,’ reprimands Fred. ‘After twenty years I ought to know the regulations. We’ll put you through your paces at the depot. You could be cut to pieces out here – look at that one!’ A car pulls out of the line in front of us without giving a signal and I catch a glimpse of a dry-faced man using an electric shaver with one hand while he drives with the other.
‘Off to the office?’ I say.
‘Or home,’ says Fred making a ‘tch, tch’ noise. ‘There’s a lot of it goes on round here. People’s moral values seem to have plummeted.’
‘You must have seen a lot of changes,’ I say. This remark is always guaranteed to give any boring old fart over the age of thirty-five enough to talk about for the rest of his life and Fred Glossop is no exception.
‘There’s no comparison,’ he says. ‘There’s not many of the old ones left. All these people coming in from outside have changed the whole character of the community. Look at that. Wire baskets of flowers hanging in the porch. I ask you! Of course, the kids from the Alderman Wickham Estate come and nick them.’ A certain grim satisfaction enters his voice and then fades quickly. ‘Still, they’re horrible little baskets themselves. Where are you from?’
I am not quite certain I care for the way he moves smoothly from talk of ‘horrible little baskets’ to an enquiry after my place of residence but I let the matter pass. ‘Scraggs Lane,’ I say.
‘Oh.’ Glossop sounds surprised. ‘You’re local then.’ His tone warms on learning that I am not a light-skinned Jamaican. ‘That hasn’t changed much, has it? Apart from the bits they’ve pulled down.