Confessions of a Window Cleaner (16 page)

“Supposing they’d told you once that they would die without you and would never leave you. How would you feel then?”

“I’d feel terrible. I know I would. Look, this has happened to you, hasn’t it?” Notice how my radar mind homes immediately on the truth. “I probably sound callous but it happens to everybody sooner or later. You’ve just got to look at it as experience. In a few weeks you’ll wonder what you were getting so worked up about.”

Good advice isn’t it? If you didn’t know, you’d think I had some idea what I was talking about.

“You’ve never loved anbody,” she says.

“What makes you say that?”

“If you’d ever been in love, really in love, you couldn’t make that kind of glib, smug generalisation. Love invades you, it goes into you like a bullet, turns you over like a spade—”

Her voice dies away and she rests her head on the counterpane so I can see one wide-open shiny eye glinting like a diamond. Now I can smell her; that aroused, liberated smell like a patch of grass after rain. It works on me much better than any perfume ever invented. But, what am I thinking about. It’s like taking advantage of somebody lying on a hospital bed. I shouldn’t be thinking the things I’m thinking.

“I think you’re getting too worked up,” I say, “there’s plenty of other fish in the sea.”

“I know. And too many cooks spoil the broth don’t they? But on the other hand many hands make light work, so where do you go from there?”

“Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself for a start. Either get the bloke back in tow or chuck it in and find someone else!”

“Someone else? Oh God. I’ve tried that. This is what led to the hellish trouble I’m in now. I had this person and it seemed – it seemed too constricting. Faced with something you think is totally yours you grow to accept it and then dislike it. Like a room you decorate, and live in, and then suddenly you can’t believe that you could ever have liked it—.”

“So you change it?”

“I didn’t want to change it. Not really. I just wanted to inject some excitement into it. And then before I knew what I’d done I started a chain reaction and now I’m in this mess.”

“But you’ve got to take some of the blame. If you start messing about you can’t be surprised if your bloke does the same.”

“I wasn’t messing about. A little flirting isn’t messing about.”

It’s funny but I can’t imagine this bird flirting, she just doesn’t seem the type. You wouldn’t think she was capable of getting so worked up either.

“It’s that all the things that we’ve said and done together can be so easily swept aside. That you can put three years of your life into something and see it snuffed out like a candle.”

She sits up on the bed and leans forward with her hands clasped between her knees. There’s a small flush beneath one of her ears which is spreading like a blood stain.

“Maybe you should fight fire with fire.”

“What does that particularly ill-favoured homily mean in my situation?”

“What I said means that if your fellah is making you jealous maybe you should give him a dose of his own medicine.”

“Him.” To my amazement she smiles.

“Yes, you’ve tried it once, now try it again. But this time look as if you mean it.”

“Do you think it would work?”

“Look if you love this fellah you’ve got nothing to lose have you? Lay it on really strong. It’s make or break.”

“What’s the time?”

“The time?” The question throws me. Why is she suddenly interested in the time.”

“Yes, what’s the time?”

“It’s about half past eleven. Why, have you left something in the oven?”

“No, come on. I’m prepared to take your advice.” No sooner has she said this than she starts to peel back the bedspread.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking off the counterpane so that we can go to bed together. Now, put your bucket and stuff in the kitchen. It will spoil everything if you’re seen to be the window cleaner.”

“Thanks very much. Who do you want me to look like. Cary Grant?”

“It doesn’t matter. Come on, hurry up.”

She is down to a pair of pants already and they soon hit the deck. She pulls back the bedclothes and hops in, leaving a memory of a neat little arse, smooth, white and round as two onions.

“What’s the hurry. Is this bloke coming round here?”

She nods.

“Great,” I say, “He’s not going to be overthrilled to find us on the job, is he?”

“I thought that was the idea. Anyway, we don’t have to be ‘on the job’ as you put it. We can pretend.”

The minute she says that I suddenly decide I want to have it away with her very much. Pretend indeed – who does she think I am. The door is locked so we can worry about her fellow when he shows up. I know it’s crazy and I’m taking advantage, and she’s bonkers, but all that crying and her little eel body squirming under the sheets is too much for me. I’ve got as much chance of staying out of that bed as I have of pulling my foreskin over my head to keep my ears warm.

My clothes join hers and I’m inside the cool sheets reaching out for her body. But again, as soon as I touch her she rides away as if I’ve got electricity in my fingers.

“What’s the matter. Are my hands cold?”

She doesn’t answer but turns her back on me and curls herself up into a ball. I imagine she is worried about her bloke coming along and finding her on the job but she should have thought about that before she invited me into her bed. I put my hand on her stomach and try to pull her towards me but she starts struggling like a mad thing and splits my lip with her elbow. This really makes me go spare and I pin her arms down and kneel on her thighs which is a pretty effective way of keeping most women quiet. Not this one though because she starts spitting in my face. Anybody would think I was trying to rape her. The minute I think of that I start to get really worried. Perhaps she’s one of those birds you read about in the Sundays who gives you the big come on and then suddenly starts hollering cop. For a terrible moment I wonder if my innocence is being exploited.

To give myself time to think about it I grab a pillow and hold it over her face. I don’t want to smother her, just save myself from the rain of spittle. Well, you won’t believe what I find under the pillow, I don’t know what it is at first. It’s some kind of harness with a cricket bat handle fastened to it. Then I coco. It’s a false prick. Poor kid, no wonder she’s so neurotic. Her bloke obviously can’t do it properly and has to use this thing. She’s probably so mixed up that the thought of real sex terrifies her. I got here just in time.

I pick up the other pillow and there’s something else. A long pink thing like a plastic torch but with a smooth rounded end. Maybe I’m getting dirty minded in my old age but I don’t think it’s used for stirring Christmas pudding and when I give the end a twist and it starts vibrating like crazy I’m damn sure it isn’t. I am on the point of asking a few questions when I hear the key turning in the lock. Bleeding heck! – I hadn’t reckoned her fellow would be able to walk straight in. Now that he’s here I’m feeling a lot less enthusiastic about the whole idea. I was really more interested in a quick bit of nooky than all that rubbish about making people jealous.

I try to get up but the bird has heard the noise too, because she suddenly starts clinging to me as hard as she was trying to push me away a few seconds before. Talk about changing your mind.

“Get off,” I shout, but it’s not half as loud as the scream behind me. It’s not a bloke standing in the doorway but a bird. A slim little blonde job like a choir boy with make-up. She’s looking at us like it’s a bad motor crash. Horrified is putting it mildly.

“Elvie! Oh My God,” she howls, and she pulls the words out slowly as if from the bottom of a deep bag. All the time she is shrinking away but then she suddenly shakes her head like someone waking themselves up from a nightmare and rushes into the kitchen. This is not what I am expecting but beneath me the bird’s face is triumphant.

I’m thick. I’m very, very thick but something is beginning to dawn on me. Something that explains why I’m about as appealing to her as a skunk’s after shave lotion.

“There isn’t a bloke, is there? You’re lesbians.”

She ignores me and lies back clenching her fists.

“Did you see the expression on her cheap little face when she saw us. It was gorgeous. Now she knows what it’s like, dirty little bitch.”

There’s no sound coming from the kitchen and I’m getting worried. The blonde job may be looking for a carving knife. I know enough about women to be scared of them at moments like this. A woman’s scorn and all that malarky. It seems to me that my bent playmates may have been a good deal less than totally honest with me but I don’t know what goes on in the twilight world of Butches and Dykes and with every second in that flat I’m beginning to care less.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and reach down and grab my trousers.

“What’s she doing in there?”

“I don’t know. Collecting her things I suppose. That’s what she said she was going to do. She’s got somebody else, somebody older who can afford to take her around the world as a companion. She’s just a little whore. She’ll give herself to the highest bidder. She’d even sleep with you.”

“Thanks very much.”

There’s the sound of glass shattering in the kitchen and I go and stick my head round the door. Blondie is leaning forward with both hands in the sink and her face is grey. There is an empty asprin bottle beside her and the pieces of broken glass on the floor surround a pap of half dissolved tablets. Not enough though to correct the impression that the major part of them must be in her stomach.

“Christ!”

“What is it?”

“She’s swallowed a bottle of asprins!”

“Whaaat! No! Helen. Darling!”

Elvie shoots past me and grabs Helen like she’s a toddler that’s gone too near the edge of the pond. Helen tries to put her arms round her but can’t do it. As a sight it would really be quite affecting if it wasn’t all so bloody stupid.

“Make her sick!” I say, “Make her eat salt. I’ll ring for an ambulance.”

“Oh my darling,” sobs Elvie, “I don’t wan’t you to go away. I was being cruel. I’m sorry. I’m stupid and jealous. This man isn’t anything. I manufactured the whole thing just to make you miserable. Oh darling, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, forgive me. Don’t leave me.”

“Make her sick,” I shout and slam the door on them.

I ring for an ambulance, give the address and put the ’phone down when they ask for my name. Back in the kitchen Helen has her head in the sink and is making hawking noises. They’re both too occupied to take any notice of me and they always will be so I piss off.

So that was one bird I didn’t make. Another was Carla or Carlotta or something very similar and foreign. She wore one of the most superb bodies I’ve ever seen and her bone structure made Elizabeth Taylor look like she’d gone thirteen rounds with Rocky Marciano. She was a right little darling and the first time I saw her I got my dirty-old-mongrel-confronted-with-small-pedigree-poodle-wearing-blue-ribbon sensation which makes me just as horny and evil as the little-orphan-Nell-sobbing-because-she’s-three-weeks-behind-with-the-rent urge which I described a few lines ago.

Carla, I’ll settle for that, I met when I was whipping my scrim round some grotty little number off Norcote Road. It’s the kind of house you have to be careful about leaning a ladder against in case the whole bloody lot comes down and I would forsee less chance of finding a good looking bird there than in the Gents at Piccadilly Underground – on second thoughts maybe I’d better reconsider that statement. Anyway, I am peering through this window just to prove that my eyes are still working, when I see this delectable bint craning forward to adjust her false eyelashes. She’s wearing a pair of skin tight, flare bottomed, black velvet trousers and a white silk blouse with a mass of frills and ruffles round the sleeves. Her hair is black and shoulder length and she has silver heeled boots, and silver bracelets and rings littering her wrists and fingers. She makes the room look like it must be background for one of those fashion shots in which they photograph beautiful birds lying down in the middle of a rubbish-dump.

I’m so impressed I bang on the window pane and she gives me a big wave and a smile before getting on with her plumbing job. When she’s finished she sidles over to the window and give me a big wink and a flick of the hips that would knock an Irish navvy arse over tit.

“Fantastic!”

“You like it, sailor? I’m very glad to hear it. You not so bad yourself. Now, when you come to do the inside of my windows?” Her voice is husky and her accent, I imagine, Italian. It’s definitely wog anyway.

“When you’ve got a couple of hours to spare.”

“Why? It taka long time to do the inside of the window?”

“It can take a very long time.”

“How long?”

“How long would you like?”

“I think you make a joke with me.”

“I think I do.”

She tosses back her hair and smiles at me – “You are window cleaner, yes? You not tom cat who does pee pee?”

At first I don’t get it and then I realise she means a peeping tom.

“No, I’m being employed by your landlady, the good Mrs. Purvis.”

“If she good then she another Mrs. Purvis. Listen, if you say yes to teabag I make you pot of tea.”

“I say yes to teabag.”

“Good, now you come in and start inside the window.”

So I hop inside and start inside of window. This Italian bint is obviously going to be money for old rope because the minute I touch the floor she gives my arm a big pinch and makes a ‘grrh’ noise, and she’s rolling her eyes at me all the time she’s filling the kettle. I’ve never seen such an odds on certainty.

Down below Percy is uncoiling himself from his afternoon siesta and I’m camping it up like a maniac, sweeping my squeegee over the glass like it’s a paintbrush and giving her a wonderful opportunity to observe how my enormously broad shoulders narrow down to a tiny waist. She clearly laps it up because she has another couple of little goes at me before I finish and stretch out my hand for the tea. This I get, plus a quick massage of the goolies that nearly makes me tip the whole bloody lot down the front of her frills. Talk about forward, this bird is practically behind you! She’s a lovely mover too and is always striking exaggerated poses that show off her body to its best advantage. It’s a job to take my eyes off her and look round the room.