Confessions of a Plumber's Mate Read online

  ‘Forgive my clumsiness,’ begs the trembling curve carnival. ‘It was because I had to kiss you. I cannot control myself. When you touch me, I get pimples.’

  ‘I think you mean goose pimples,’ I say firmly. ‘I have every sympathy with your feelings but please try and keep them under wraps until I get this thing blown up. Your restraint will enhance the satisfaction of both of us.’ With these cautionary words, I start blasting air into the Lilo like I intend to sail over the North Pole under it. Conchita watches me like I am demonstrating a rare skill and plucks impatiently at my shirt. If I can’t make this chick then I might as well jack the whole thing in and take up flower arranging.

  ‘Would it disturb the delicate balance of your feelings if I removed your trousers?’ She does put things nicely, doesn’t she?

  ‘Just ease them down to ankle level,’ I say.

  Still clinging to the Lilo I blow until I am dizzy and feel for the nozzle plug. Knickers! There isn’t one. Conchita’s pants are turning into groans. If I don’t get a move on she could start without me. The nearest thing to me that will fill the hole is the radiator plug. There is still no sign of any water coming out so it won’t make any difference if I borrow it for a few minutes. I can soon replace it when something starts happening. A few deft screws from the dextrous digits and the Lilo is sealed. Wacko the froggies! Let the full frontal assault on the furburger commence. I chuck the Lilo on the floor and slide my arms round the one hundred and fifty per cent willing Conchita. She has carried out my instructions to the french letter and my trousers are nestling coyly round my ankles. With practised skill I ease myself out of my shoes and kick myself free of the lingering embrace of the wool/terylene mixture. Now there are only two pairs of pants worn like fabric hoops to separate us. As our lips clamber over each other, our fingers ease the unwanted underclothes floorwards.

  ‘What should I do now?’ says Conchita.

  ‘I think if you lie down that will be a move in the right direction,’ I say, trying to stop the drool exploding down my chin.

  Nine chicks out of ten you suggested this to, would lie on their backs and not risk ruckling their knockers, but my new friend hits the Lilo on her tummy and shows me one of the most beautifully shaped pairs of back bumpers that it has ever been my mince pies’ pleasure to rollercoaster over. She turns her head and flashes those dark brown eyes at me and percy lunges forward like a dragster quivering on the starting line. There must be a bit of the old jungle magic inside me because the sight of that chick makes me grit my Teds and revert to your friendly neighbour moggy deciding that there is a lot more to life than pissing over the catsmint.

  I drop to my knees so fast that I bounce off the Lilo before nuzzling my way between Conchita’s thighs. As her legs flop open, I slide my hands under her thighs and tilt her body forward so that her rave cave is poised temptingly before my hampton. Her hand reaches behind her imploringly but before it has reached the small of her back, I have potted my red and brought two other balls up within a centimetre of the pocket.

  ‘OOOOOOOOOOH!’ sobs Conchita. ‘Is good!’

  I have no reason to disagree with the lady and proceed to slide percy to and fro until it feels as if he is running on buttered silk. If I had half as easy an action with a cue I would be world snooker champion, no trouble. While the mighty wurlitzer is pounding out love’s sweet melody, my greedy hands snake forward and give Conchita’s top bollocks a friendly fondle. If you want to develop your wrists, vicar, this is the sport for you. Her breastworks settle into the palm of the mitt like a couple of cannon balls.

  ‘Turn over,’ I say. ‘I want to look at you.’ This is not the whole truth. I want to save my wrists for the next pint I have to lift, and also, I prefer to get to the front door by coming straight up the drive. I don’t like to go round the side of the house.

  Conchita turns over fast – almost too fast – and her perfect white Teds smile up at me. ‘Is this how you do it in England?’ she asks.

  ‘I do it the same anywhere,’ I say. ‘Mostly like this but with a few other things thrown in for variety.’

  ‘Things like what?’ she says.

  ‘Things like this,’ I say, lowering my voice a couple of octaves and my head a few inches. It is just a common or garden love dive – very common, and better in the garden because there are usually fewer people about – but Conchita goes spare. Her back arches like a sheet being shaken in a gale and she thrusts forward so that my epiglottis is practically having it away with her clitoris. She says a lot of funny things in Spanish that I don’t reply to and starts to wrench out handfuls of my barnet. This is all very well but if she tugs me any closer she is going to suffocate me.

  ‘Gerrofflefluvme!’ I say – it is not easy to speak with a mouth full of furburger. I jerk my head free and launch myself forward until I am in the perfect position to despatch my thigh-snitch into her snatch.

  ‘Come!’ Like a shoplifter whipping a can of baked beans into her bag while the store detective’s back is turned she takes my tonk up to the belly button – I can practically feel my bum touching the small of my back. ‘Fug me! Fug me!’ she hollers.

  Her English may be faulty but the sentiment she is expressing is universal. It is amazing how many upper class birds – and Conchita must be upper class if she works in an embassy – like to talk dirty in the sack. It turns them on to shout a few naughty words. It also goes down a treat if you whisper a few horrible sentences into their lugholes. You see you have to face up to the fact that your really upper class bird is slumming when she offers you the freedom of her crutch-hutch. It isn’t your mind she is interested in. The least you can do is give her her money’s worth. Tell her you are going to shove your unmentionable up her unspeakable and a happy flush of pleasure will richochet through her fundaments faster than a dose of clap through a monastery.

  ‘OOOOOOOOOOOOOH!’ When Conchita grabs hold of your arse, you realise why it has a cleft in the middle. You have to put up a fight to withdraw far enough to get a good swipe at the target. Wham! Wham! Wham! Percy drives the message home and I hear the healthy ‘thwack’ of my circulars banging against the tradesmen’s entrance.

  ‘WAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!’ Conchita’s love yodel drowns the puny sound of my bouncing balls like the Atlantic Ocean slopping into a teacup and she grabs me like I am the last life jacket on a shipwrecked liner. I have know some tenacious birds in my time but this chick makes a limpet seem like a phantom weight bantam weight. Suddenly I find that I have no control over what is happening. I am in the remorseless grip of a flesh machine, seemingly engaged on a ruthless programme of self destruction. My rudder shudders as I judder up and down on top of the Slobovian flesh fortress and the air is pumped from my body as surely as it was from the crushed Lilo.

  ‘No!’ I gasp. ‘No! !’

  Conchita does not seem to be interested in my problem – eg survival. ‘I like,’ she says. ‘You tickle my fancy.’

  ‘Tickle it?!’ I say. ‘I’m practically double-glazing it.’

  ‘I no understand,’ gasps Conchita. ‘You tell me again when we finish foreplay.’

  Foreplay?! Who does this girl think she is? Or, more important, perhaps: who does she think I am? Half an hour later, I am no wiser regarding the answer to either question. All I am, is knackered. What that girl has done to me should not happen to the french letter used by the Highland Light Infantry. I lie back gasping for breath and the ceiling revolves above me.

  ‘That was lovely,’ I hear a voice saying that sounds like mine.

  ‘What you mean, was?’ says Conchita.

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Er–it was–you know–um–I’ve got a job to do, haven’t I? – somehow.’

  To my amazement, Conchita burst into tears. ‘I knew this would happen,’ she sobs. ‘I have offended you, haven’t I? My passionate nature has unbalanced your delicate susceptibilities. You no longer wish to continue with our love-making.’

  ‘It’s not so much a question of wishing –�
�� I begin.

  ‘All my life I dream of this moment – and when it comes, I destroy it. I think I kill myself!’

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘You mustn’t do that. The business couldn’t stand it – I mean, your sweet young life is too important to be thrown away over anything so trivial.’

  ‘But if you no longer desire me –’

  ‘I do desire you,’ I say, signing percy’s death warrant with four words and my sympathetic nature. ‘Of course, I do.’

  Fifteen minutes later – give or take a couple of heart attacks and a dizzy spell – I pass out. At least, I have no other explanation of how the time is filled until I open my eyes and hear a strange gurgling noise. At first I think it must be Conchita and me drifting apart – I appear to be lying on top of the lady – but a turn of the head reveals an astonishing sight. As my mince pies glance off the slumbering bonce of Conchita they are swift to locate the source of the noise. It is caused by the water that is beginning to rise above that escaping from the deplugged radiator. Your reaction to those words may well be as was mine to the actual situation – amazement coupled with a slowly dawning comprehension. The room is two and a half foot deep in water and the Lilo is floating on top of it. Conchita and I must have fallen asleep about the time Sid started refilling the hot water system. Oh my Gawd! What am I going to do? I suppose I could start bailing the water out of the window but that would take about three days even if I had a bucket. The one thing that must not happen is for someone to open the door. That would be –’

  ‘Inna here, Mrs Chompley. Nobody willa looka for us in here.’

  ‘Oh, General Garstlia. You are a one!’

  ‘No!’ The last voice is mine and coincides with the doorknob turning. Like a puff ball sucked away by a mountain torrent, Conchita, the Lilo and myself are swept down the marble staircase as General Garstlia and a beturbanned Mrs Chompley are knocked sideways by the backwash. I catch a glimpse of a Hoover vacuum cleaner turning a lazy circle in the air and then the ornate ceiling gives way to a vista of grey sky. Somebody must have opened the front door. Oh no! As we sail through and swoosh down the steps I can just imagine how annoyed Sid is going to be.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Belgravia!’ says Mum. ‘Oooh, that’s not very nice, is it?’

  ‘It is very nice,’ says Sid. ‘That’s the trouble.’

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ says Mum. ‘Oh, Timmy. You do know how to make me unhappy, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose if it had happened outside Battersea Town Hall it would have been all right,’ says Dad. ‘That’s what you make it sound like. I find the whole episode repulsive and disgusting. I don’t care where it happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I say. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I should bleeding hope not!’ says Sid. ‘The law of averages must see to that. You can’t end up stranded in the middle of Belgrave Square on a Lilo with a naked tart more than once in your life, can you?’

  ‘Sidney!’ says Mum. ‘Language!’

  ‘What do you mean, language?!’ shouts Dad. ‘It’s not often that I have to agree with sponging git-face here but his anger seems to me well-founded. It’s Little Lord Fauntleroy who’s the source of the family’s iggy–innoinog –’

  ‘Ignomy,’ says Sid.

  ‘When I want your help, I’ll ask for it, you berk!’ says Dad pleasantly. ‘Until then, belt up! What I’m trying to say is that I’ve had enough of your accessories, my lad. I’m fed up with turning the other cheek. Parents today have too many laxatives, that’s the whole trouble with this once great country of ours. When I came back from the war –’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ says Sid. ‘What war are you talking about? I know you stand up and salute every time the bus goes past the Cenotaph –’

  ‘He doesn’t do that any more since he flattened his Homburg,’ says Mum.

  ‘I wish he’d flatten his humbug as well,’ says Sid. ‘We all know Dad’s war record: Vera Lynn singing “The White Cliffs of Dover”.’

  While Dad goes to some pains to explain that the Fire Watchers did as much to win World War II as the blokes who waded ashore on the Normandy beaches, I take the chance to go and lock myself in the karsi. One advantage of having a family who are as punchy as ours is that they can never dwell on one spot of aggro for more than five minutes without another totally different outbreak flaring up. In this permanent smokescreen of unpleasantness it is easy for the original offender to creep away

  I think that the incident at the Slobovian Embassy marks the beginning of a deepening rift between Sid and Crispin. When I ask Sid what Crispin has lined up for us, he gives a bitter laugh and says ‘a firing squad’. Certainly, we don’t get any new jobs from that quarter and Sid is reduced to advertising our talents in The South London Sentinel and a couple of tobacconists’ windows. Not an easy task, I might add. Frankly, I couldn’t see anything wrong with ‘We do big and small jobs all over your house’. Still, there is no accounting for the way some editors’ minds work, I suppose. In the end we have to settle for ‘Worried about your plumbing? Can’t get it up? Home Enhancers will have a go at anything. Satisfaction guaranteed’.

  ‘That should do it,’ says Sid. ‘We don’t want to be too pacific. Cast the net as wide as possible. We might find ourselves getting work we never thought of when we started out.’

  In this last respect Sid is proved right beyond his wildest dreams. My first call is to South Chelsea – or Battersea as it used to be known when I was a little lad. It is a nice flat with a view overlooking the park – completely overlooking it, in fact – and a handsome brass door knocker. No sooner have I delivered a sharp rat-tat-tat than the brass knocker disappears and is replaced by a couple of handsome fresh numbers doing battle with the front of a too-tight fluffy wool sweater.

  ‘Good morning,’ I say, addressing the bristols and wrenching my eyes in a northerly direction. ‘Home Enhancers at your service.’

  ‘Come right in, darling.’ The bird’s tone is about as breezy as February in Great Yarmouth and she moves to one side like I am a bull rhino at the end of a one hundred and fifty yard run-up. ‘What have you got in your dear little bag?’

  ‘Tools,’ I say.

  ‘How lovely! Can I have a look?’ The bird is small with short, black hair, sharp features and bright, shining eyes that open wide to emphasise her words.

  ‘Er – yes, I suppose so,’ I say. Nobody has ever asked to look at my tools before.

  The bird, who is apparently a Miss Finch, drops to one knee and pulls open the neck of my bag. I can’t help noticing that her brown velvet trousers are stretched so tight that you could not get a starving bus ticket between them and the tempting curve of her back bumpers. VPL (Visible Pant Line) is in evidence and percy twitches like a cat dreaming of fat mice.

  ‘I say! This one looks rather groovy. What is it? Some kind of manual vibrator?’

  ‘That’s a brace and bit,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve never used one,’ says the bird. ‘You’d need long arms, wouldn’t you?’ I don’t quite know how to answer this question but it doesn’t matter because Miss Finch has tenderly replaced the brace and bit and withdrawn a screw driver. ‘This reminds me,’ she says. ‘Could you have a look at my Multi-Thrust Maxi-Probe while you’re here? I think there’s a faulty connection.’ She straightens up, gives a little shiver and pouts her lips at me.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever handled one of those,’ I say. ‘Do you still have the instructions?’

  Miss Finch shakes her head and her boobs wobble temptingly. ‘I threw them away. They were in German, anyway.’

  ‘They make a very good article, the Germans,’ I say, trying to sound as if I know what I’m talking about. ‘Very good on the electrical side, they are.’

  ‘You can say that again, darling,’ says Miss Finch enthusiastically. ‘Would you like a drink before we get down to it?’

  ‘Well, a cup of tea would be very nice,’ I say.

  ‘A cup of tea?!
How freaky. I’m sorry but I can’t gratify you. We don’t stock it. Scotch? Gin?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I say. ‘When I’ve finished. Apart from the Maxi-whatsit, what did you want me to do?’

  To my surprise, Miss Finch takes me by the hand and leads me into a bedroom. ‘Amaze me by your versatility,’ she says.

  I am not quite certain what she means so I take a butcher’s round the room. I imagine I am supposed to suss out what needs doing. The bed is certainly in need of attention. It is flopping all over the place and looks more like a thick polythene mattress. ‘I’ll start with the bed,’ I say.

  ‘Traditionalist, huh? I like that. Tea and bed. I should have laid on a crumpet for you.’ What a funny lady! You do meet some strange people in this kind of job. I haven’t really been on this bird’s wavelength since I came through the door.

  ‘Let’s get your electrical problem out of the way,’ I say. ‘I have to warn you that if it’s complicated I won’t touch it. I don’t want to give you a shock, do I?’

  ‘Just a little one might be rather heavenly,’ murmurs Miss Finch. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave it to you. After all –’ she squeezes my arm into a new shape ‘– you’re the expert.’

  Whilst I am pondering on the reason for this gesture, the bird rises on tiptoe and gets something down from the top of the wardrobe. At first I think it a miniature cannon or siege gun. Its long nozzle rears upwards at an angle of forty-five degrees from a horizontal platform and there is a length of electric flex running away from the firing mechanism. I am about to express the kind of reaction I usually reserve for my nephew Jason Noggett’s headless model soldiers – Jason executes each one of his toys, seconds after it comes into his possession – when I notice something familiar about the shape of the cannon’s barrel. Something very familiar, not to say downright rude. It has a bulbous, swelling head with a cleft on the lower side and a – hang on a minute! I know that artillery pieces recoil after they have been fired, but they don’t slide backwards and forwards in the manner that Miss Finch is demonstrating.