Confessions of a Driving Instructor. Timothy Lea
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bear.
“Penny!”
The voice is loud and male and does not belong to the teddy bear—not that it is coming from much further away.
“Penny! Where the hell are you?”
Mrs. D.’s eyes open and then open a whole lot more. Her head bounces off the floor and she swallows half the air in the room.
Now, at this moment, I should have remembered that Mrs. D. and her husband were separated and that he wasn’t the jealous type anyway. I should have lain back and called out, “We’re in here, old chap. Won’t be a sec. Why don’t you fix yourself a gin and T. and we’ll be right down?” and he would have coughed apologetically and said, “Gosh, I’m most awfully sorry. Hope I didn’t disturb you, what? See you in a few mins.” Then I could have had Mrs. D. again and gone downstairs to talk about how the soil around here was lousy for lupins.
But, of course, I don’t do any of those things. Maybe it’s the look in Mrs. D.’s eyes or maybe it’s the size of the voice outside, or maybe it’s just instinct; but anyway, I’m half way across the room as the door knob starts turning. I pause pathetically, considering snatching up a few clothes, and then launch myself on to the ladder. As I swivel round, my eye captures the scene like a camera. Door flung open, bloody great rugby type filling the space it occupies, Mrs. D. cowering with her pants in one hand and the other draped across her tits. Mr. D. (I have no reason to suppose it is anyone else) sinks the scene in one gulp and bounces Mrs. D. across the room with a belt round the side of the bonce which would have stopped Joe Frazier.
I feel like telling him that I agree with him entirely and that he has all my sympathy, but I don’t think he wants to talk to me. His eyes flash towards the window and as my head drops out of sight I see him reaching for something. This turns out to be a hobby horse, as I find when he swings it at my head like a mace. The expression on his face would scar your dreams for years.
“I’ll kill you, you bastard,” he screams, and he doesn’t have to go on about it—I’m convinced. I’ve hardly had time to rejoice that I’m out of range than he changes his tactics. I’ve got the extension on and there’s a long drop to the ground. Mr. D. decides to speed up my journey and, jamming the hobby horse against the ladder, starts to push it away from the house. Like a prick, I hang on for grim death and scream at him instead of sliding. What a way to go! Stark bollock naked in the middle of Thurston Road! I see Dunbar’s face contorted in a self-satisfied effort and for a moment the ladder trembles. Then I’m going backwards, paralysed with fear, and the house is growing in front of me.
I try to jump and the next thing I know is this god-awful pain in my ankle and the feeling that all the breath has been dug out of my body with a spade.
I’m sprawled across the centre of the road, screaming with pain and fear, Mrs. D. is howling, the neighbours’ windows are slamming open, cars are squealing to a halt, and suddenly a quiet residential street seems like Trafalgar Square on Guy Fawkes night. I’m glad to see everyone, because any second I’m expecting Mr. D. to come bursting through his front door to finish the job. It’s amazing how the great British public react at a moment like this. They are interested all right, but not one of the bastards makes a move to help me. I might be a tailor’s dummy for all they care.
To my surprise, Mrs. D. is first to my side, and she’s alone, thank God. She drapes a blanket over me and that encourages a few helpmates to get me on to the pavement.
“What a load of crap about your husband,” I snarl. “If that was your husband.”
“Yes, yes,” she says, beaming round at the neighbours, who, observing her black eye, are no doubt putting two and two together and scoring well. “I’m sorry about that. He’s phoning for an ambulance now.”
“Sure it isn’t the morgue?”
“No, no.” She pats my arm and smiles again. “I’m sorry. I really am.” I close my eyes because I’m feeling sick, dizzy and knackered. Bugger the lot of them. When I open them again, it’s as I’m being lifted into the ambulance. Mrs. D. follows me in and gives my hand an affectionate squeeze.
“It was wonderful,” she says.
I won’t tell you what my reply was, but the ambulance man nearly dropped me on the floor.
It turns out that my ankle is broken in more places than a Foreign Secretary’s promises and they keep me in hospital for three days. I have a private room, which surprises me at first until I find out that it is courtesy of a certain Dr. Dunbar—small world, isn’t it? I make a few inquiries and it seems that this party has taken his wife and kids on a camping holiday to the South of France, so he isn’t around to be thanked. You could knock me down with a feather—or half a brick, if you had one handy. So Cupid Lea strikes again! What a carve-up! Why wasn’t I in the marriage guidance business? I might not be able to do myself any good, but I was obviously the kiss of death to the permissive society.
One of the advantages of a private room, apart from the fact that the other buggers couldn’t nosh your fruit, was that it gave you an uninterrupted crack at the nurses, and some were little darlings. I’ve always been kinky about black stockings and Florence Nightingale, and with one pert red-head the very presence of her thermometer under my tongue was enough to raise the bedclothes a couple of inches. There is nothing more randy-making than lying in bed with sod-all else to do but fiddle about under the bedclothes and by the end of my time, the nurses had to come into the room in pairs and my arm had grown half a foot grabbing at them. It didn’t do me any good, although I did corner the red head in the linen cupboard on my last morning and pin her against a pile of pillow cases with my crutch (the one you prop under your arm). I had just got one hand into that delicious no-man’s-land between stocking top and knickers (I hate tights) when Sister came in looking like a scraped beetroot and I had to say goodbye quickly. All very sad but life is full of little might-have-beens.
Eight weeks later it was time to take the plaster off and I was bloody grateful because every berk in the neighbourhood had used it as a scribbling pad to demonstrate his pathetic sense of humour. Word of my escapade had got around and there were a lot of cracks about ‘Batman’ and ‘Peter Pan’ which I found pretty childish.
I hate going to the Doctor because the waiting room smells of sick people and most of the magazines are older than I am. It is cold and badly lit and the stuffed owl in a glass case looks as if you’d only have to give it a nudge for all its feathers to fall out. Everybody seems healthy enough but I have a nasty feeling that underneath the clothes their bodies are erupting in a series of disgusting sores covering limbs held together by sellotape. Behind the serving hatch a parched slag of about 182 dispenses pills and indifference. In such an atmosphere I wonder why the N.H.S. doesn’t dispense a do-it-yourself knotting kit and have done with it.
When I get in to his surgery, Doctor Murdoch attacks my plaster as if gutting a fish that has done him a personal injury. From the look of him one would guess that he had just returned from a meths drinkers’ stag party. The sight of my ankle causes his prim lips to contract into walnuts and I can sympathise with him. The object we are both staring at looks like a swollen inner tube painted the colour of a gangrenous sunset.
“What do you do?” he barks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you’re a ballroom dancer, you’d better get down to the labour exchange.”
“It’s going to be alright, isn’t it?” I whine. I mean, what with heart transplants and artificial kidneys you expect them to be able to mend a bloody broken ankle, don’t you?
“You’ll be able to walk on it, but I won’t make any promises about the next Olympic Games,” says Murdoch who must be a laugh riot at his medical school reunions.
“I’m a window cleaner,” I pipe.
“You