“I hope not. Where do you go now?”
Traffic was honking for us to vacate the double yellow line. “I’ll report back to Major Blaskin, then I might do a spot of begging, to keep my hand in. It’s a very exhilarating occupation. Interesting, as well.”
A few minutes later I blasted the horn outside Festung Moggerhanger, knowing that overspending his coin of the realm (any realm) would have to be accounted for and wondering, as the gate opened, not when I would depart again, but whether. I decided to take a leaf out of Bill’s book, and give as good as I got, feeling foolish now at letting him walk away with the handgun. I should have had it with me till I was in the clear, not to use, of course, but to feel more secure with its weight in my pocket.
Chapter Fourteen
Early one morning — yes, it’s Blaskin again — Mabel Drudge-Perkins’ resplendent body took up most of the bath, twin orbs floating in the steam like Jacky Fisher’s dreadnoughts. She may have hoped I would come in with her for a — shall I call it? — a more exciting way of getting into congress, but I had a better idea, my usual recalcitrant member (and it wasn’t an MP) so much in its rigid pose that she would not be able afterwards to deny that it had been efficacious.
She hummed a little 1920s tune, while I stood in the living room to don a shabby mackintosh (Bill Straw had taken my best), lap a scarf around my neck, and put on my most battered hat and a large pair of black rimmed spectacles. I stepped back into the bathroom, hoping she couldn’t see clearly enough through the steam to know that the moment of truth was on its way.
I yelped with surprise on seeing her, and said in a mock foreign accent: “Excuse me, miss. So sorry, so sorry”—knocking the stool for six as I backed away.
She screamed, feebly. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”
I clattered various of her unguents around the sink. “Me looking for Portobello Road. Got lost on street. Busy traffic. Bus near run me over. Can you tell me right way?”
“No, I can’t,” she cried in her powerful headmistressy tone. “This is the wrong place. It’s not in here. How did you find your way into my bathroom?”
“Don’t know, missis. Me see doors. Come up steps. Portobello Road — where is, please?”
“Go away. You shouldn’t be here. This is private property. You’re trespassing.”
I leaned closer, and lasciviously peered. “You got lovely tits, missis.”
She shrieked. “Who are you? I’ll call a constable.”
“Me constable once, in Turkey. Then lose job. Now I illegal immigrant.”
“I don’t care where you come from. I’ll scream the house down.”
“Missis, please. I only ask for Portobello Road.”
“I don’t know how to direct you. It’s far too complicated from here. So out you go. Out, I say. If you don’t go this minute I shall call the police, and then you’ll be sent to prison.”
“Prison in England better than Turkey,” I put on an appreciative leer. “You lovely. We marry. You come Turkey.”
“Oh, go away,” she wailed. “For God’s sake go!”
I pulled her hair, but only hard enough for her to realise the peril more fully. Now was the time to simulate nastiness. “Portobello Road go blazes,” I shouted. “All rubbish for much money. Me fuck you instead, for nothing.”
“No, no, please, I’m a respectable married woman.”
“Me only like them. No catch clap.” I latched my lips onto a nipple standing out of a rosy breast like the conning tower of a submarine. “Me love soap. You smell pretty nice. Dirty foreigner eat soap to get hard on.”
“Don’t you dare touch me.” She tried to hide under the water, but the displacement was such that it couldn’t be done without washing us out of the flat and into the Serpentine. I pulled the plug to be on the safe side and, to show I meant business, gave a slap on her magnificent behind while struggling to pull her upright.
Her scream was full blooded. “You filthy beast! Leave me alone.” She stayed firmly in the bath to fight back, but her effort to keep me off weakened, till I had her up to face a fate which would make death seem like a vicarage tea party. “Get out of bath, missis. Big lovely tits, nice bum, blue eyes. Ah, blue eyes. Sky in Turkey.”
“Leave me alone.” She whined like a little girl, so it was time to get on: “Me love you. Love, love, love.”
“Please don’t rape me. Oh, please. No, not that.” Her long wavering note of despair would have mellowed the heart of any man, but not mine.
We had played this theatre a number of times, which never failed as a preliminary to the sort of coupling she couldn’t resist. I slapped her a time or two on the arse, more to stimulate than hurt and, her protestations at full steam, I forced her onto the fluffy pink bath mat she liked so much, and opened myself to get right in, her lovely china-blue eyes flickering open and closed like the most intricate Ukrainian doll in Hamley’s window at Christmas.
She came with such cries as would have frightened me had I not been too concerned with my own pleasure. It wasn’t often I indulged in the kind of acting she called for, but the reward of having her in extremis made the farce worthwhile.
When the ecstasy came to a stop, as it always had to, alas, she stood by the sink and covered her breasts, tears of recovered dignity scintillating on her eyelids. “My husband will be in any minute. He’ll give you a sound thrashing, then no doubt kill you.”
I shook with fear, and disgust at myself, and began to cry. “So sorry, missis. Me only want Portobello Road. I no like husband. Bye-bye.”
I slipped away as befitted a ravishing cur, and went to my room, where I replaced the wet clothes for pyjamas and dressing gown. She came out, all warm and pink in her towelled covering. “Have a good bath, darling?” I said.
Her smile was worth a dozen performances at the Royal Court Upstairs, though the time had come to pull a few rugs from under her. “You’re late this morning. Get my breakfast on the table. I’m tired of you lolling in the back masturbating.”
“That’s something I never do.”
An ugly mood was coming on. “No? I often wonder why the flat’s shaking. Sometimes it’s at least force six on the Richter Scale. I’m so terrified, I brace myself in the doorway, in case the whole building goes down. A picture dropped off my wall the other day. I’ve seen two dildoes under your nicely ironed bloomers in the underwear drawer.”
I was going too far, but what was the point of doing otherwise? She gave no sign of taking herself off to get dressed, so obviously hadn’t had enough. She stood up straight, so as to try looking tragic. “Gilbert, I was raped just now in the bathroom.”
“How do you expect me to know? I didn’t hear screams of protest. All I ask is that you go into your bedroom and don your pretty knickers.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“Well, you could come back and sit on my knee, couldn’t you? And I could very gently take them off.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk such stuff and nonsense.” She placed herself on the arm of the sofa. “In any case, I have an announcement to make.”
“Isn’t the toilet the place for that?”
“Oh please do stop talking such rubbish. I’ve been waiting to tell you about my plan for some time.”
“What is it, then, darling?”
“I’m seriously thinking of becoming an Anglican priest. Women can train for it nowadays.”
“What a wonderful idea. I can fuck the vicar.”
“Don’t be so foul, and listen to me for once. I was talking to one by the Albert Memorial last week. She was a very sweet person, and told me all about it.”
I was stunned by her creative originality in having devised a new fantasy to keep us going, and stop me having a heart attack. “That would be the perfect occupation. A sky pilot no less. I can imagine you pouring hellfire from the pulpit, and when you’d done I could have you over the hassock in your cassock, in the vestry, of course. But if you were a priest you could still live with me. We’d have a different hymn every day after breakfast, and a sermon on the Mount of Venus for the Sabbath.”