Confessions of a Travelling Salesman

by Timothy Lea

  ‘Squid?’ say our little friends temptingly, ‘raw fish?’ All this might be bearable if we could get any of it into our mouths. But with chopsticks! I am only able to raise food to my north and south if I stick something through it, and with rice this is a bit difficult. The sight of Sid and me starving to death, as we squat in agony trying to shovel minute quantities of uneatable grub into our cakeholes, would bring tears to the eyes of the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Society.

  Eventually Ishy takes pity on us and a spoon is discreetly placed within reach. With the aid of this we can get a bit of a shift on and eventually, to my enormous relief, I see that no more bowls are appearing.

  ‘And now tea.’

  I am very partial to a cuppa, and I know that the nips are hot on their cha, so I am quite looking forward to a nice spot of rosy. But, not a sausage! When the stuff comes it is green! Not only that but there are bleeding great leaves lying about in the bottom of the tiny cup. They have not even used a strainer! I can imagine what dad would say if he got stuck with this lot. Diabolical! As for the milk and sugar – not a sign of it. All in all a big disappointment and it is a good job that I am on my best behaviour so I can’t point it out to anyone. Sid, of course, says how nice it is and sticks out his mit for a second cup. Stupid berk!

  The said may taste disgusting but it must have some kind of kick because after the seventh shot I can feel myself becoming much more relaxed. Sid must be experiencing the same sensation.

  ‘Park your arse, sweetheart,’ he says to one of the twittering dollies and yanks her down onto the cushions. I avert my eyes to the ceiling at such unseemly behaviour but the bird does not seem to mind, so I look around to see if I can get a grip on my nippon. Good! There she is. I raise a hand and she comes shuffling towards me immediately. So refreshing, isn’t it? Do that with an English bird and she would pretend she had not seen you and go on powdering her nose for another five minutes.

  ‘Your desire?’ she says obediently.

  ‘Come and sit with me,’ I say patting the cushions next to me. ‘Tell me, what is your name?’

  ‘Spring Fragrance. Tell me,’ she leans forward confidentially, ‘would you like to see exquisitely filthy photographs? Would these stimulate you to amorous action?’

  I can hardly believe my ears. ‘Your English is very good,’ I say, while I consider the appropriate reply.

  ‘Thank you. I learn from Jesuit priest. Very remarkable man.’

  ‘He must have been,’ I observe. ‘Now, what kind of filthy pictures?’

  ‘Just ordinary filthy pictures. Group sexual activity with people of all races and creeds wearing ankle length socks and doing deliciously dirty things to each others I think you find them stimulating.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ I clear my throat and look to see if Sidney is watching. He appears to be finding out how to unfasten a kimono. ‘It might be interesting to have a little look mightn’t it?’

  Spring Fragrance smiles her ‘anything you say is fine by me’ smile, and withdraws a well thumbed sheaf of photographs from her sleeve. They are held together by a silken chord and I am surprised that it has not snapped under the strain. Usually I find dirty photographs less stimulating than the drawings for a ‘How to improve your golf strip – well, after about the first twenty or thirty I do – usually – but these are quite artistic and inventive and must have been produced by a very skilful pornbroker. I take another look round for Sidney and see that he and his new friend are retiring towards a pile of cushions at the other end of the room. Ishy has taken a discreet leave of the proceedings and apart from the Lea-Noggett quartet, there are only two girls left. They are hovering about us attentively.

  ‘Er, what are they hanging about for?’ I ask Spring Fragrance.

  ‘Should you wish to engage me in sexual congress they will be at hand to attend upon your whims and proffer Kleenex tissues.’ Ask this girl a question and you get a straight answer, don’t you?

  I take another quick butchers at the dirty photos and I have to confess that the idea of ‘sexual congress’, as she calls it, is a good deal more attractive than a slap round the chops with a wet kipper. The only trouble is, that I don’t fancy her second sitting at the ringside with a sponge in her mit. I am not averse to a little group nonsense but I like everybody mucking in, if you know what I mean. Get one or two jokers sitting about watching and it makes the whole thing unclean.

  ‘Would you rather that we copulated in private?’ She understands, doesn’t she? So unlike an English girl. They never have the sensitivity to cotton on to things like that. If it was not for the fact that I do not fancy being five foot two inches tall and having buck teeth, I would be a Japanese man tomorrow.

  ‘Yes please,’ I murmur, and as Spring Fragrance waves a dismissive hand at her friends I kiss her gently on the lips.

  ‘Please,’ she says, ‘do not exert yourself.’ You might think that she is taking the micky but this is not the case. ‘Japanese woman regards it as her role in life to make every moment heaven on earth for her man,’ she informs me. ‘Now, please, I will overtake all manner of erotic kissing and tactile stimulation. Should you require particular pleasure, please speak – provided mouth piece not impeded by my unworthy flesh, of course. In later case strike me sharply lest I be lost in ecstatic trance induced by my proximity to your God-like person.’

  She is a lovely talker, isn’t she? I can only nod gratefully and sink back onto the cushions. Oh boy. It was never like this down at the youth club I can tell you. Spring Fragrance goes over me like someone testing an air-bed for leaks. Fantastic!

  I am wondering how much more I can stand before I start melting when suddenly the door flies open and the lights are switched on. Framed in the doorway are the ugly sisters and they look uglier than usual.

  ‘Ah s-o-o!!’ thunders Apple Blossom. ‘Stinking old Uncle keeps us away from nooky-carnival. I no like.’

  ‘I no like either,’ snarls Pearl Diver. ‘Timmy and Sid belong to us. You girls go now before trouble hits you typhoon-style.’

  ‘Must respectfully ask you to push off,’ hisses Spring Fragrance discreetly, dropping a cushion onto my lap as she rises to her feet. ‘It is forbidden to interrupt Geisha in the conduct of her business.’

  ‘Watch it, S.F.,’ I hiss, ‘those two are killers. Don’t tangle with them.’

  But Spring Fragrance will not be warned.

  ‘I give you two ticks of the hour of the dog to get out of here,’ she says, ‘and then I declare war.’

  Pearl Diver obviously thinks this is pretty funny.

  ‘You invite conflagration with member of Japanese Violley Blall plool?’ she hoots. ‘Ho, ho!’

  Keen students of my character will not be surprised to learn that I am getting worried. I hate to leave poor little Spring Fragrance to the untender mercies of these slant-eyed slags but the thought of what they will do to me when they have torn her limb from limb sends my most cherished possession scuttling back into my body and trying to pull my balls up after it. Maybe, while they are bouncing her off the walls, I will be able to –

  ‘Gai—Ya—Yai—Yee—Yonk! ! !’ Well, it was something like that, anyway. The sound I remember most clearly is that of the table snapping in half as Apple Blossom lands on it. Yes, Apple Blossom! No sooner had she extended a muscular mit than Spring Fragrance grabs it and gives a quick switch of the wrist as if turning a key in a car door – at least that is what the action looks like – the result is somewhat different. Apple Blossom performs a couple of cartwheels in mid-air and snaps the table in two as easily as breaking a breadstick. Fantastic! Mini-nip is obviously a judo star too. Just what you need at the Wimbledon Baths Hall on St. Patrick’s night.

  Whilst Apple Blossom tries separating her features from the wood grain, big sister belts in to try her luck. With a wild cry, the like of which I have not heard since Rosie mistook the fly spray for her vaginal deodorant, she launches herself at plucky little Spring Fragrance. It is an action she is lucky to live to
regret. Spring Fragrance makes the ‘Ying, ting, tong’ noises and P.D.’s sole contribution to the conversation is an agonised ‘YE–o-o-w-w!’ swiftly drowned by the sound of shattering glass. Yes folks, Shagnasty – oriental style – has just left by one of the windows. Too bad it was closed at the time.

  ‘Blimey!’ I gasp as Apple Blossom tries to disentangle herself from the wreckage of the table and collapses back into it. ‘You’ve probably killed her.’ I am referring to the appropriately named Pearl Diver, but when we get to the shattered window, there she is, straddling a couple of telephone wires like a piece of washing hanging out to dry.

  ‘She’ll live,’ says Sid with a trace of disappointment in his voice. ‘Still –’ I can see him trying to claw some grain of satisfaction from her predicament – ‘it must be pretty cold out there.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘There’s a nasty nip in the air.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘This is it,’ says Sid enthusiastically. ‘Open your lungs and smell that soot.’

  We have just emerged from the railway station and every building seems to have been carved out of charcoal.

  ‘Why don’t you stop rabbiting, and give Moon Flower a hand with the suitcases, Sid,’ I tell him. ‘They’re bigger than she is.’

  ‘She likes doing it.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t like the way people are looking at us.’

  ‘Well, you should do. It’s all good publicity. I can’t think where that bloke from the Sentinel got to. I’d have thought we’d have been the biggest news in this place since the last Clog Dancing Championships.’

  It’s always the same with Sidney. He is such a blooming optimist. I look around the teeming streets and wish I was back at Scraggs Lane with mum and dad. Dad will just be coming back from the Lost Property office – if he bothered to clock in in the first place – and mum will be wondering whether to open a tin of pineapple slices for supper and deciding to scrape the mould off the bread pudding instead. She has a tin of pineapple slices she has been hanging onto since the war.

  They both seem a long way away as we wait for a taxi. Sid, the Daughters of the Cherry Blossom, and me.

  ‘I find them a bit difficult to understand, don’t you?’ says Sid. ‘That porter fellow for instance.’

  ‘“Tight wad” was the only word I understood. It took him a bit of time to realise you only wanted to borrow his barrow, didn’t it?’

  We nearly have some more agro when Sid tries to get all twelve girls into one taxi.

  ‘You’re breaking no world record in my taxi, gaffer,’ says the driver. ‘I’ll take four, five at a pinch – provided I can do the pinching.’

  ‘Everybody wants to be a comedian,’ sniffs Sid when we have eventually been forced to settle for three taxis. ‘Grand Hotel please, driver.’

  Grand Hotel! That sounds alright, doesn’t it? I can practically see the palms tickling the second violinist’s lughole. Maybe this little caper is not going to be so bad after all. We whip down a series of grimy streets and, there it is. Big pillars and a flight of steps. I stretch out my arm to open the door but Sidney stops me. ‘You stay here,’ he says.

  ‘I’d like to drop my luggage off.’

  ‘Why? You’re going to need it, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean? Aren’t we putting up here?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m not made of money. The girls are, Mr. Ishowi insisted. We’re in digs.’

  ‘I should have guessed. Don’t you want me to get out here and walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘You can if you like, but you’re going to find it a bit difficult with all those cleaners, aren’t you?’

  I may not have mentioned that Sidney has lumbered me with lugging half a dozen ‘Nuggets’ all the way from Hoverton so we can get out into the field with some demonstration stock. Needless to say this has not made the trip north anymore enjoyable, despite the assistance of the shapely nippons.

  When Sidney returns to the taxi his next instructions to the driver are somewhat less pulse-quickening.

  ‘Seventeen Canal Street,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, very nice, Sid,’ I say mockingly. ‘We have separate suites, I suppose?’

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Timothy. There’s always the Y.M.C.A. if you don’t fancy it.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me. It just seems a bit ridiculous, that’s all. I mean, we won the war, didn’t we? Why aren’t we in the Grand?’

  ‘No racialism, please, Timmo. It’s a simple question of economics. Once we’ve flogged a few Nuggets it will be the best hotel in town every night.’

  ‘How many is “a few”, Sidney?’

  But Sidney does not have to answer that question because the taxi pulls up outside 17 Canal Street. Yes, there is a canal and I look into it while Sidney bangs on the door knocker. A dead rat is floating past, suspended in the water as if trying to touch its toes. I try not to think of this as an omen and rejoin Sidney.

  ‘Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ he says.

  ‘If you like yellow lace curtains, it looks a knock out,’ I say. ‘They are yellow aren’t they? Or is it just the way they have faded?’

  Before Sidney can ignore my remark the front door opens and we find ourselves face to face with a curvy dolly who must be knocking forty – but very gently so it does not hear her. She has a Margaret Lockwood beauty spot and her hair swept up and over one eye in a way I have not seen since I watched one of those Sunday afternoon telly films. Her knockers are definitely up to scratching, and her legs, though nothing to write home about, are a matching pair.

  ‘Mrs. Runcorn?’ says Sidney in his grade one creeper voice.

  Now, one of the things that always fascinates me about birds is the way that they will sometimes go potty over the most revolting herberts. Like Sidney, for instance. Take Mrs. Runcorn. You can tell that the minute she claps eyes on him, her insides start melting like a soft-centred chocolate in a hot glove compartment. Her hand goes up to the gap between her generous knockers and a far away look comes into her eyes.

  ‘Mr. Noggett?’ she says hopefully.

  ‘The same,’ says Sidney, dropping his voice a couple of decibels until it sounds like Paul Robeson with laryngitis. Eagles envy Sidney’s eyesight when it comes to spotting a possible piece of nooky. ‘This is my associate, Mr. Lea.’ I give her the famous Lea slow burn but I would be better off with trading stamps. It is obviously Sidney who has stolen her heart.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she says, hardly looking at me. ‘Do come inside. It’s very simple here, but we try to make folks welcome.’

  ‘Delightful,’ breathes Sidney.

  ‘Rita, the gentlemen have come.’

  Things are pretty cramped in the tiny hall and when Rita joins us we need shoehorns. She is taller than her mother but built to the same pattern, e.g. bigly. Her hourglass figure has enough sand in it to last for six months. Not that I am complaining, mind you. I find all that flesh a bit intimidating but I would not mind her using my firm young body as a chattel for her base lusts should that be the only thing to stop her becoming a secret sennapod muncher.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she says, sending her eyes rolling over us like a couple of balls bouncing round a pin table. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

  ‘First class,’ I say, but I am not only referring to our voyage north. With Sidney obviously spoken for by Mrs. R., this leaves the daughter to me. Whacko, the froggies! The sight of some bird lapping up Sidney has always been one to cause me near physical pain. I turn to Big N. and – oh dear! His eyes have glazed over and he is gazing at Rita like she is a bundle of fivers with his name written on them.

  ‘Did you see that bird?’ he says when we are alone.

  ‘Yeah, fantastic,’ I pant. Didn’t fancy her daughter much, though.’

  ‘I meant the daughter!’ says Sid. ‘I thought she was beautiful.’

  ‘I agree. I know some people would be put off by that squint but I rather like it. Makes her face more interesting somehow.’
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br />   ‘What are you talking about?’ storms Sid. ‘She has lovely eyes.’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re lovely alright. It’s just that—well, I suppose you’d hardly notice it after a while. Especially if you were concentrating on her limp.’

  ‘Limp!?’

  ‘Yes. Now, come on. You must have noticed that. I thought she had a wooden leg at first. It was that hollow noise when she walked up the stairs.’

  ‘Sure it wasn’t something rattling around inside your head?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Sid. I was only making a completely objective comment.’

  ‘Don’t try and confuse me with long words. I fancy that bird and nothing you say is going to change my mind.’

  And that is that. Sidney nearly spills the soup tureen fighting to sit next to Rita at suppertime, and I have never seen him do so much passing: pepper, salt, bread, butter. Nobody else gets a look in. He is behaving like Mr. Fanny Cradock. After supper he moves in front of the telly with her and spends more time gazing into her mush than looking at the screen.

  She munches her way quickly through a half pound box of chocs and occasionally says ‘ooh’ or ‘well, I never’! when sufficiently moved by something. How she feels about Sid it is difficult to tell with her cakehole full of hazelnut clusters but Mrs. Runcorn’s intentions are very obvious. She apologises about the furniture, the television set and anything else there is to eat, see or touch, and keeps asking if Sid would like a cup of tea or something. There is no doubt that her preference lies in the realm of ‘or something’.

  Eventually, at ‘News at Ten’ time, Sidney suggests that we should be turning in as we have a busy day tomorrow and we pad off leaving the girls to it. Our bedrooms are at opposite ends of the house, which means that they are at least eight feet apart and I notice that we have Mrs. R.’s room between us. We have not found out what happened to Mr. R. but he is certainly not around to clutter up the laundry basket.

  I pop into bed immediately and one thing I soon notice is that you can hear every sound in the house. It creaks like a windjammer in a BBC radio play. I hear Mrs. R. come upstairs and go into her room and soon there is the inviting wheeze of the springs as her body settles onto the bed. It is very disconcerting to know that she is only a few feet away from me on the other side of the wall, no doubt thinking the same kind of deliciously dirty thoughts as myself – only about Sid, while he in turn pines for Rita. My God, but life can be cruel, can’t it, Carruthers?