Confessions of a Milkman Page 5

  Now, only Keen has not found a position worthy of his talents and there are just not the openings there were a few minutes ago. The situation is clearly beginning to worry him because he has put down his pint and is circling the frenzied threesome like he hopes that he is going to find something that the others have missed. For a moment he pauses behind Hollis and I fear that I may have to look the other way. For a skinny bloke he has a whopper of a chopper and not, for the first time, I ponder whether this is a reality or my imagination playing tricks – I took my organ to the orgy and nobody asked me to play.

  Betty Tromble jerks her mouth off Gunter’s cakehole and turns her head sideways to suck in air. I see her twist to look at Hollis and her eye takes in the love feature of the circling Keen – eg he pokes her in the mince pie with it. Introduced at such close quarters, Betty gives the offending article a testing lick and, apparently liking what she tastes, nods her loaf towards the top of the bed. Keen jumps aboard and with legs apart, wriggles down the bed until his spread legs are just above Gunter’s head. Betty can and does stretch out her neck and starts plating him like she believes she can suck another inch out of his joint. Now she has got three hamptons tucked away and working and it is definitely a bag of sensations that appeals to her. I don’t have to get a mike across to her room to know that she is having a good time. The bed is shivering and Keen is reaching down to get his mits under Tromble’s Bristols so that he can massage them and gets the winder of his watch entangled in the hair on Gunter’s chest – he doesn’t mean to, it just happens. Hollis’s head goes back and he bares his teeth and it’s clear that everyone is about to get their rocks off in one cataclysmic multi-come. What a moment for Betty Tromble. Under fire from three different directions and about to cop a magnum of home perm in the vital apertures. What a way to go. There is a whole lot of shuddering and grabbing as everyone hangs on to their favourite bit and then Keen’s head jerks back and bangs against the wall. Gunter’s head twists sideways with his eyes closed and his north and south open and Hollis slumps forward with his nut on the small of Betty’s back. That friendly soul gives a few hopeful wriggles to see if any life still exists in the interesting parts and then releases Keen’s cock like a retriever laying a pygmy shrew at its master’s feet. What a change in that once proud organ. From thrusting and throbbing to tiny and tingling. Keen is obviously like me when it comes to the aftermath of a blow job. Very sensitive in the percy department. Hollis pulls out, followed by Gunter and there is a slight argument over ownership of a beer mug. Lucky bastards! All that oggins whilst the Boy Wonder pants in the sidelines. Despite the fact that four up would have put a strain on even Betty Tromble’s powers of accommodation I can’t help feeling deprived. Percy is now rising between my legs like an Eiffel tower made of flesh and it is hard to tell him that a joddrell is the best he can look forward to. When I think of all the birds lying alone in their beds and thoughtfully running their fingers along the extremities of the velvet void it brings tears to my thighs. If only there was some magic that could bring us together. What a waste of our mutual desires. Suppressing a sigh, I feel in my pocket for my wankerchief and gaze across the yard. My fellow course members – or coarse members as I will now think of them – are clambering into their clothes and looking at their watches. I can imagine Betty Tromble saying that she doesn’t want to keep them up too late as they have a busy day tomorrow. She must be well satisfied. I don’t think I have ever seen a woman getting it three ways at once. I wonder if I should write to the Times – or perhaps Dalton’s Weekly?

  As I start to put percy out of his misery, Gunter, Hollis and Keen take their leave of Betty Tromble and depart with the can of beer. Last of the big spenders. Thank you and good night, gentlemen. Betty looks at herself in the mirror and checks a few bits of flesh that have suffered more than the others. Then she cleans her teeth. Very understandable. I would gargle with harpic, myself. Now, surely, she will go to bed. She returns to the mirror and picks up her hairbrush. Half a dozen strokes and then she crosses to the bed – still with the hairbrush. She lies down and continues with the strokes – but not on her hair. As I watch open-mouthed, the shaft of the hairbrush disappears into her snatch right up to the bristles – both sets – and her left hand stretches out to play with her clit. What a remarkable thing is woman. Three blokes plying her from both ends and still she wants more, or maybe she didn’t get what she wanted in the first place – let alone the second place.

  My heart leaps only slightly higher than my hampton. All is not lost. If I nip up to the lady’s room she might well be not totally reluctant to grant me an audience. I could say that I was doing some revision and had forgotten the difference between homogenised and pasteurised milk. A spot of sophisticated banter about agricultural subsidies and then down to the pubic press-ups. Stand by romance, here I come

  Pausing only to tuck puzzled percy beneath the waistband of my trousers – it is like trying to smuggle a prize cucumber away from the vegetable stand – and I mean stand – I pick my way carefully to the trap door. ‘Good evening, Miss Tromble. I wonder if I could have a word with you?’ ‘Good evening, Miss Tromble. There’s something I can’t quite get straight.’ ‘Good evening, Miss Tromble. I’ve been watching you for the last forty minutes and it occurred to me that we have a mutual problem.’ ‘Good evening, Miss Tromble. Cop this.’ Somewhere between these various approaches must lie the key to Miss Tromble’s heart and the bit I am after. I pull up the trap door and – get out of it! Bloody cow! It is waiting exactly where it was when I scrambled into the loft. I stick my foot down and it sinks its teds into my worsted-terylene mixture. I know my trousers are green but this is ridiculous. Doesn’t it know one of its own mates when it sees one? Where would it be without me to sell its blooming milk? Dragging round an udder like a barrage balloon. ‘Nice Moo-Cow.’ Mum always said that I used to like cows when I was a kiddy. It is a pity she didn’t tell that to this bleeder – get out of it! I don’t want to turn your calf into veal chops! I just want to get out of that door and into Miss Tromble. You know how it is, Daisy. You must have had your moments, otherwise you would not have got lumbered with young Ferdinand there. Step to one side – please! I make a few cajoling noises and lower my foot again – snap! I raise my foot again – fast. All right, Daisy. I hope all your milkmaids have frozen fingers.

  Now what am I going to do? No chance of getting through the door without bloodshed. I will have to escape via the window. It is about fifteen feet to the ground but in my present mood I could fly it. I take another glance across the yard and – by the cringe; – Betty Tromble looks as if she is about to go into orbit. She is hopping about like a worm in an ant’s nest. Even more committed than when the Three Musketeers were peppering her private parts. Hurry, Lea, there is no time to lose. You don’t want to get there and find that she got there already. I know that women are supposed to have about fifty orgasms a bash but at the rate she is going she must be heading for her maiden century.

  I find the catch on the dusty, cobweb-covered window and pull. There is a noise like one of my eyeballs coming unstuck after a night on the piss and the window frame scrapes across the floor boards. One of the hinges has come adrift. It is not easy to get out of a window at floor level and in the darkness I have to be careful that I don’t snag myself on a nail. It would be a shame to leave my balls behind just when I am going to need them. I feel about the opening and slide my feet out – Space Odyssey 1977. What I am prepared to go through for a stab at the velvet furburger. How I keep copping out on the Honours Lists is a miracle. I slide my feet down the wall and shift my weight to my elbows. If I can just get a grip on this board I will be able to – wheeeeeeeh! The bloody thing has to be rotten doesn’t it? I only have time to push myself away from any nails in the wall before I crash awkwardly on to the cobble stones. Ouch! At first I think I must have broken my ankle. The pain is more than you would wish on the bloke who invented the cinema organ. I feel the swelling and suck in my breath. By th
e cringe! What a wonderful end to the evening. Crippled and not even a warm glow in my wrists to show for it. I gaze up at Betty Tromble’s window and take my first hobbling steps towards the promised gland. As I do so the light goes out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘How’s the ankle?’ says Mr Claygate.

  ‘Much better, thanks,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry you missed Mr Glossop’s farewell party. It was very affecting. Thirty years is a long time.’

  ‘Very,’ I say.

  ‘I put in thirty pence on your behalf – for the collection, I mean. I’ll deduct it from your next wages.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I say. ‘What did I give him?’

  Claygate looks at me sharply and strokes his moustache. ‘We gave him a clock. He expressed a preference.’ Claygate sighs. ‘With him passes an era. Meadowfresh will never be the same again.’ I nod brightly. ‘Still, I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing. This finn is ripe for a shake-up. Time doesn’t stand still, you know.’ I look serious. ‘The business is a lot more competitive nowadays. People aren’t too choosy about how they get new customers. The weakest go to the wall. Get me?’

  My eyes narrow into slits. When Claygate talks to me like a hired gun my mind goes back to the doctor who was called to the Meadowfresh Residential Course when I did my ankle. He went into Betty Tromble’s room to get some cold water for a compress and didn’t come out for two hours. National Health Service? It would be better if they issued them with humane killers the moment they left medical school.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Lea?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Claygate. You were telling me about Mr Glossop’s clock.’

  ‘I’d moved on from that,’ says Claygate irritably. ‘I was on to my plans for expansion. It was more difficult when Glossop was here. He was – how shall I put it?’

  ‘A stupid old twit?’ I say helpfully.

  Claygate winces. ‘Reactionary was the word I was looking for. Finding it difficult to move with the times. My plans need young blood.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say. The last time I heard about plans like that it was in The News of The World – Vampire Brownies of New Maiden was, I believe, the name of the article.

  ‘I want malleable young men,’ says Claygate.

  ‘They’re from Africa, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘They’ll certainly show up well against the milk.’

  ‘Malleable meaning mouldable,’ grits Claygate. ‘Flexible. Capable of facing up to every challenge as it arises – and believe me, Lea, there are going to be changes. I’m going to dynamise this place, do you understand me?’

  ‘You mean, blow it up and claim the insurance?’ I say. ‘Yes, I like the sound of that. Where do you want me to put the—’

  ‘No!’ Claygate closes his eyes and I see the whites of his knuckles. ‘I am going to make it a repository of modern marketing techniques. I am going to instigate a whole new approach to selling dairy products – notice, I don’t just say milk. I intend to widen our range.’

  And drive out those pesky sheep farmers once and for all, I muse to myself. When he talks like that you feel you are listening to Burl Ives geeing up the lads for a spot of Western aggro. Not that Claygate is all that overwhelming a personality. I know that he followed the BBC Management Today course except when the wife’s mother came to dinner and when he had to get a grip on the garden, but as a manager he seems to live more in hope than experience.

  ‘We’ve got to get more customers,’ he continues. ‘It’s as simple as that. The cows are performing their side of the bargain. Now it’s up to us.’

  ‘More canvassing,’ I say.

  Claygate nods. ‘It’s not just a question of doing it – it’s how you do it. Frankly, Lea, this is a ticklish question.’ He looks about him and lowers his voice. ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it but ninety-five per cent of our customers are women.’

  ‘Now you mention it—’ I say, a note of wonder entering my voice.

  ‘Sex appeal, Lea.’ Claygate blushes. ‘It comes in the reckoning, you know. If you can project yourself you could win a new customer.’ I pretend to consider this earth shattering proposition. Claygate leans forward confidentially. ‘I couldn’t have had this conversation with Glossop. He wouldn’t have known what I was talking about.’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘I hope I’m not shocking you,’ says Claygate. ‘I’m not asking you – or any of the other lads – to get involved in any hanky panky. Just flaunt yourselves a little bit. Let the customer know that she’s a woman and that you appreciate the fact.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I say.

  ‘Comes as a bit of a surprise to you, I expect,’ says Claygate. ‘You look like a lad that has led a sheltered life.’

  ‘Well—’ I begin.

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of in that. I’m not advocating licence. It’s just that we’ve got to keep up with the dodges the others are using. That’s the thinking behind the new uniforms.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had uniforms,’ I say.

  ‘Only a cap,’ says Claygate. ‘Made you look a bit like a bus conductor. I’ve scrapped that. Now it’s a one piece white tunic with the Meadowfresh crest on the breast pocket and your name embroidered in italic lettering across the back: “Timmy”. It’s more friendly than Timothy, isn’t it? There’s also a white cap with a long peak.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘All I need is a baseball bat. Where did you get all these ideas from?’

  ‘Most of them are things I’ve been thinking about for some time,’ says Claygate breezily. ‘The others were sparked off by discussions with the new man I took on while you were recuperating. Very forward looking, he is.’

  A faint feeling of unease flickers through my subconscious. ‘New man?’ I say.

  ‘If we’re going to expand, we’ve got to have more salesmen – or vendors. I think “vendor” sounds better, don’t you? Got a ring of class about it. Would you rather be a vendor or a salesman?’

  ‘A salesman,’ I say. ‘A vendor would make me feel like I had a coffee dispenser where my belly button ought to be. Who is this bloke?’

  ‘Nugget,’ says Claygate. ‘No, wait a minute – Nogget. Sidney Garth Noggett. Interesting man. Very experienced. Done a lot of things. Couldn’t wait to get on the job.’

  ‘That’s Sid, all right,’ I say.

  ‘You know him?’ says Claygate.

  ‘He’s my brother-in-law,’ I say. ‘Married my sister Rosie.’

  ‘He didn’t mention that,’ says Claygate.

  ‘I expect he wanted to give me a surprise,’ I say. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s out with one of the lads,’ says Claygate cheerfully. ‘I told him that despite his superior qualifications he still had to start at the bottom – just like you did.’

  ‘Very democratic,’ I say.

  ‘It has to be,’ says Claygate seriously. ‘Of course, when he comes back from his course I’ll probably make him up.’

  ‘Make him up?’ I say. ‘You mean promote him?’

  ‘I don’t mean send him out to buy an eyebrow pencil from Boots,’ says Claygate. ‘Oh yes, I think a management structure is what this company needs. It’s going to be expensive at first but I’m prepared to mortgage the present in order to purchase the future.’

  ‘Why do you think Sid has had so many jobs?’ I say, trying to keep calm.

  ‘He told me that,’ says Claygate, clearing his throat. ‘His mother. The incurable disease—’

  ‘It’s not incurable,’ I say. ‘A couple of penicillin shots and—’

  ‘He kept having to go back and nurse her. I think when he was ahead in the single-handed trans-Atlantic yacht race, that must have been the worst time. Getting the wireless message when he was becalmed and having to swim back past the other contestants. How many days was it before the Captain of the QE2 heard him hammering on the hull? Two? Three?’

  ‘At least,’ I say, deciding that I might as well throw in the sponge while I still have
the strength. ‘Ah well, Mr Claygate. What do you want me to do? Take over Mr Glossop’s round?’

  ‘I’ve rejigged all the areas,’ says Claygate. ‘There was too much complacency creeping in. Now everything is up for grabs. The customers are going to see some new faces and you’re going to see some new customers. Try on your new uniform, take your float off charge and go out and conquer Balham!’

  ‘Off to a Meadowfresh start,’ I say.

  Claygate wags his finger at me admiringly. ‘Excellent!’ he says. ‘We could use that as a slogan.’

  He is still happily repeating the phrase as I glide out of the front gates on my float. George Claygate is a nice bloke but he shows the same judgement of character as a bird picking Hitler’s photograph on a computer dating form. Fancy getting lumbered with Sid again. I feel dead narked, especially after all the cobblers he was spouting about not touching the noble profession of milkman with my old man wrapped in pipe lagging. Typical that having said that he should give Claygate a complete grease job. What a slimy bugger he is.

  I am still fretting as I pull up outside One Phillibeach Gardens, my first port of call. That address has a red cross beside it in my little book but not because a bird in nurse’s uniform takes your temperature when you ring the front door bell. Mrs Farley is apparently four weeks behind with her milk bill. Meadowfresh’s terms are strictly pay-up every seven days, but a blind eye is turned to two weeks and nobody gets their knickers in too much of a twist if three weeks go by without an injection of geldt. It is only after twenty-one days that blokes like me are supposed to start winkling out the ackers and if necessary recommend legal action. Nobody likes doing that because it costs money and loses a customer.

  ‘Ah, good morning, madam.’ The bird in front of me is all fluffy and dithery and dressing while I look at her. She fiddles with the buttons of her blouse – just fiddles, doesn’t do any of them up – and occasionally pats her hair and the back of her arse like she wonders if she put a skirt over it. ‘Mrs Farley?’