Confessions of a Private Soldier. Timothy Lea
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the kitchen.
‘Yes please.’ It occurs to me that it would be a good idea to subject Percy to a little first aid treatment. I can’t just sit here with him sulking under my brushed denims. I make genteel ‘I’m going for a piss’ noises and scarper to the toilet. It is strange but the whole of the lower part of my body seems anaesthetised. It is not until I try shock treatment and plunge my spam ram under the cold tap that I feel anything. This is because I have plunged it under the hot tap by mistake.
If there was a flicker of life in the poor sod, this puts the kibosh on it. In its present condition you could lay my dick on a plate of roes on toast and not be able to spot the stranger.
I tuck my equipment away and prepare to face Mrs Jones. I don’t like admitting it but in my heart of hearts I know that she is the reason why my get up and go has got up and gone. Suddenly, she seems so experienced and demanding. I need someone wilting and dependent. Some bird who reckons that I am fantastic and who can lay it on so thick that I want to make it true for her. Sitting on the sofa and picking up a lump of sugar with a pair of tongs, Mrs Jones doesn’t look as if she thinks I am fantastic. In fact she is looking disappointed. Disappointed? And I haven’t even touched her yet.
‘I think it better to be frank, don’t you?’ says Mrs J., indicating my chair.
‘Yes,’ I say, shaking my head. She gives me an old-fashioned look and I try nodding instead.
‘I need to be physically satisfied just like a man.’
‘Very understandable.’ I slop tea into the saucer and drop my spoon on the floor.
‘Most women wouldn’t admit that,’ muses Mrs J.
‘It’s not easy, is it?’ I mean to admit that you fancy a bit of the other if you are a bird. Mrs J. is swift to misunderstand me.
‘No. I suppose I ask a lot from a man. I’m what you might call “demanding”.’
‘Really?’ A mouthful of cake goes down the wrong way and I blurt crumbs all over the settee. ‘You make a smashing cake.’
‘Brian made it. He’s a much better cook than I am.’
‘Oh, well, it’s very nice.’ Now I look closely at Elspeth Jones I can see that she has a heavy down of hairs on her upper lip.
‘I don’t just mean size.’ Percy is now making a field mouse look like King Kong. In fact I am not even certain he is still there.
‘Stamina.’ She practically spits the word into my lap. ‘I once knew this fantastic Jamaican.’ ‘Don’t tell me about him,’ I screech silently. ‘What a man. The most superb body I’ve ever seen. Great banks of gleaming black muscle. And he went on and on and–’
‘I’ve heard they’re very–’
‘–on and on and on. I was a different person afterwards. That experience really showed me what sex could be like. It was never the same with Brian after that. I told him, of course.’
‘You mean that it wasn’t the same as–’
‘Yes. It was a shock to him but I think he respected my integrity. He was seeing a psychoanalyst at the time, anyway.’
‘Oh, well. That must have been a big help to him.’
Mrs Jones leans forward and takes the cup and saucer from my twitching fingers.
‘Don’t worry about the crumbs. Do you want to do it in here or in the bedroom?’
Now that I look into her face again she seems to be growing a beard. Oh, dear. I am really on the horn of a Dalai Lama. Half of me is saying ‘you don’t fancy it, so piss off’ while the other half is saying ‘don’t be a berk, she’s a lovely bit of stuff. Once you get her knicks off everything will be all right’. I know I will be pretty choked if I think about this afterwards and I have not had a crack at it. It is like refusing a bloke who is trying to give you bank notes.
‘I don’t mind stretching my legs,’ I say weakly and haul myself to my feet. If I am going through with this I will have to break the hypnotic spell that my mind has cast over my hampton park. I will have to stop thinking about sex. If I can take the mental pressure off Percy then I may have a sporting chance of competing with black power.
‘Are you interested in football, at all?’ I ask as we go into the bedroom.
‘I loathe it.’ Mrs J. coolly unzips her dress and steps out of it. I notice that she is wearing a pair of those scarlet, transparent, embroidered panties with a frilly hem that have names like ‘Casbah Madness’. I always wondered who wore them. Although their intention is clearly to turn the observer on, they have the opposite effect on me. There is something professional and rehearsed about them which makes me feel I am about to take part in a circus act. I would like there to be a spot of physical contact between us whilst we shred the threads but Mrs J. is stark bollock naked and lying on the counterpane before you can say Roger Carpenter. She has a fantastic body but it might be a waxwork for all the effect it is having on me.
‘I support Chelsea, myself,’ I tell her. ‘We are the champions.’
‘Come here and prove it,’ says Mrs J. meaningfully.
Relax, I tell myself. Just imagine you are in one of those changing huts in the middle of Clapham Common. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start undoing my shoelaces. If I can persuade myself that I am in the process of changing for some commonplace sporting event I may be able to divert worried Percy from his current hang-ups and then suddenly spring Mrs J. on him when he is least expecting it. It’s a proper carry on, isn’t it? Seems ridiculous really.
‘What are you whistling?’ says a puzzled Mrs J.
‘ “Blue is the colour.” ’
‘That’s one of those ridiculous soccer songs, isn’t it? Now what are you doing?’
‘Just dribbling my sock over to the dressing table. Goal!’
‘Are you all right?’ Mrs J. sounds worried. I wish she would belt up. How does she expect me to get it together if she keeps rabbiting?
‘The ball’s bobbing about on the edge of the penalty area. Osgood to Lea. Lea swings his right foot. Goal! Wilson didn’t move.’ I raise my hands above my head in front of the wardrobe and catch a glimpse of Mrs J. watching me nervously from the bed. If I can recreate the atmosphere of an actual match, I may be able to break the spell. In my mind I emerge from the changing room and start running towards the pitch. It is drizzling and cold. Very cold. So cold in fact that my old man is beginning to shrivel up – no, you fool! That’s not the effect I’m after. I start running around the room swinging my arms across my chest.
‘Now what are you doing?’
‘Warming up.’
‘I can think of less selfish ways of doing it.’
‘I’m going in goal.’ I hurl myself across the bed and push one of the pillow cases on to the floor.
‘Stop it!’
‘Did you see that save? Fantastic. Here we go again. Wheeeeeh!’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I’m football crazy.’ I leap on to the bed and head the lightshade so that it swings into the middle of the room and a cloud of dust comes down.
‘Stop it!’ Mrs J.’s cool is clearly shattered and this cheers me up a bit. That worried look in her eyes makes me feel more like the male chauvinist pig I found I was when I read that article in one of the posh Sundays. Incidentally, if you fancy a spot of saucy reading I can thoroughly recommend the posh Sundays. They wrap it up a bit and you need a dictionary handy, but there is no doubt that you can get a lot of interesting sexual detail from the quality press – and it concerns a much higher class of person, too. Quite historical, some of it. I reckon I would have been far more interested in history at school if I’d known that