Confessions of a Private Soldier

‘Are you interested in football, at all?’ I ask as we go into the bedroom.

‘I loathe it.’ Mrs J. coolly unzips her dress and steps out of it. I notice that she is wearing a pair of those scarlet, transparent, embroidered panties with a frilly hem that have names like ‘Casbah Madness’. I always wondered who wore them. Although their intention is clearly to turn the observer on, they have the opposite effect on me. There is something professional and rehearsed about them which makes me feel I am about to take part in a circus act. I would like there to be a spot of physical contact between us whilst we shred the threads but Mrs J. is stark bollock naked and lying on the counterpane before you can say Roger Carpenter. She has a fantastic body but it might be a waxwork for all the effect it is having on me.

‘I support Chelsea, myself,’ I tell her. ‘We are the champions.’

‘Come here and prove it,’ says Mrs J. meaningfully.

Relax, I tell myself. Just imagine you are in one of those changing huts in the middle of Clapham Common. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start undoing my shoelaces. If I can persuade myself that I am in the process of changing for some commonplace sporting event I may be able to divert worried Percy from his current hang-ups and then suddenly spring Mrs J. on him when he is least expecting it. It’s a proper carry on, isn’t it? Seems ridiculous really.

‘What are you whistling?’ says a puzzled Mrs J.

‘ “Blue is the colour.” ’

‘That’s one of those ridiculous soccer songs, isn’t it? Now what are you doing?’

‘Just dribbling my sock over to the dressing table. Goal!’

‘Are you all right?’ Mrs J. sounds worried. I wish she would belt up. How does she expect me to get it together if she keeps rabbiting?

‘The ball’s bobbing about on the edge of the penalty area. Osgood to Lea. Lea swings his right foot. Goal! Wilson didn’t move.’ I raise my hands above my head in front of the wardrobe and catch a glimpse of Mrs J. watching me nervously from the bed. If I can recreate the atmosphere of an actual match, I may be able to break the spell. In my mind I emerge from the changing room and start running towards the pitch. It is drizzling and cold. Very cold. So cold in fact that my old man is beginning to shrivel up – no, you fool! That’s not the effect I’m after. I start running around the room swinging my arms across my chest.

‘Now what are you doing?’

‘Warming up.’

‘I can think of less selfish ways of doing it.’

‘I’m going in goal.’ I hurl myself across the bed and push one of the pillow cases on to the floor.

‘Stop it!’

‘Did you see that save? Fantastic. Here we go again. Wheeeeeh!’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I’m football crazy.’ I leap on to the bed and head the lightshade so that it swings into the middle of the room and a cloud of dust comes down.

‘Stop it!’ Mrs J.’s cool is clearly shattered and this cheers me up a bit. That worried look in her eyes makes me feel more like the male chauvinist pig I found I was when I read that article in one of the posh Sundays. Incidentally, if you fancy a spot of saucy reading I can thoroughly recommend the posh Sundays. They wrap it up a bit and you need a dictionary handy, but there is no doubt that you can get a lot of interesting sexual detail from the quality press – and it concerns a much higher class of person, too. Quite historical, some of it. I reckon I would have been far more interested in history at school if I’d known that they were having it away all the time.

I stand on Mrs J.’s leg, she screams and I lose my balance and sit down on her arm. She screams again.

‘I’m sorry. Are you all right?’

‘Are you all right? you mean. What’s the matter with you?’

At last she touches me but it is only a restraining arm, no doubt intended to prevent me from getting my football boots on. I am a fool. I should never have got myself into this situation. I ought to have got out while I had the chance.

‘Take the rest of your clothes off,’ barks Mrs J. She might be saying ‘Come in, number nine, your time’s up,’ for all the romantic feeling she can get into her voice.

I peel off my shirt and, without looking, ease down my Y-fronts. Maybe they are the trouble. All those tight jeans and athletes’ briefs have suffocated the poor basket. Still, you can’t wander about in bloomers, can you? Nobody would ever want to be exposed to the lustre of your cluster.

Mrs J. takes a deep breath and lies back expectantly. ‘We’ve got three and a half hours,’ she says.

‘Three and a half hours!’ Flipping heck! What does she think I am? At this rate I’ll be reading her nursery rhymes for the last three and a quarter. I look down at the faint moustache above her upper lip and wonder why I can suddenly smell Sloan’s Linament.

‘Why are you sniffing?’

‘I thought I smelt something.’

‘It must be my perfume. It’s very unusual. I once had this Persian boyfriend. It used to drive him out of his mind. He used to say that he could catch a whiff of it at the bottom of the stairs. I always knew it was him when I heard the footsteps pounding along the corridor. I’d hardly have time to open the door before he’d burst through like some great animal and snatch me up into his arms.’

‘Very strong bio–’

‘And then he’d carry me through the flat and throw me down on the bed and–’

‘It must have been very–’

‘–on and on and on.’

Blimey! By the time she has stopped rabbiting Percy has got about as much backbone as a homeless whelk. I do wish she wouldn’t go on like that – on and on and on.

‘What’s the matter?’ she says.

‘Nothing. I was just thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh, nothing, really.’

‘It must get rather boring?’

‘I’m used to it.’

It’s not vintage Noel Coward, is it? And Mrs Jones is not slow to realise that something is wrong. Nudging me with a shapely knocker, she raises herself on one elbow and sends her fingers down to reconnoitre the disaster area.

‘Don’t you find me attractive?’ she says accusingly, having discovered less action than at an old age pensioners’ jitterbugging contest.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ I say weakly.

‘I’m not certain that I do,’ says Mrs J. unkindly, releasing her hold on my wilting willy. ‘You’re not queer, are you?’

Those must be, without doubt, the cruellest words my lugholes have ever cringed before. That I, Timothy Lea, Clapham’s most exciting male animal, should be so accused and unable to stand up for himself. It does not bear thinking about, especially if – no, it can’t be. Not me. Surely not. I mean–

‘Are you? I don’t mind. I’ve never been to bed with a queer.’

‘Neither have I!’ I say, indignantly. ‘Do you mind? Every bloke who doesn’t fancy you isn’t a raving poofter, you know.’

‘If you’re not queer, you’re something very like it,’ sniffs Mrs J. ‘Coming in here playing football. Most men who come in here have got something better to do.’

‘I’m not queer,’ I repeat.

‘Prove it.’ Mrs J. leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. It is nice of her to bother but I need gentler treatment.

‘That was like a man’s kiss!’ I chide her.

‘Ah! So you’ve been kissed by men?’

‘No! Of course I haven’t. I just imagined it would feel like that.’

‘Do you think about it a lot?’ Mrs J. sounds quite interested.

‘I never bleeding think about it! I tell you: I’m not queer.’ I swing my feet off the bed and grab my Y-fronts.

‘Running away, are you?’ mocks Mrs J. ‘It just shows how wrong you can be about people. I thought you looked quite sexy when I saw you in The Highwayman.’

‘I felt the same about you,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry but I think I’d better go.’

‘Maybe you’re not eating enough,’ she says as I pull on my jeans. I look at her wriggling into her panties and for a moment I experience a twinge of lust. It is not worth pursuing, though. This bird and I are never going to be able to make it in a million years. I will probably never be able to make it again with any bird.

‘I’ve got a book somewhere that might help you,’ she says as we walk towards the door. ‘Sexual impotence, the beginning of the end. My husband found it very useful.’

‘Thanks a lot, but I’m not much of a reader. I’ll have to work it out for myself.’

Right up to the moment when the door closes behind me I have a feeling that some miracle is going to occur. That something will spark us off into a knicker-ripping assault on the carpet pile. But nothing does happen. I find myself standing outside the building and I still have all my clothes and the forty thousand million sperm cells I went in with. At least, that is what I used to carry. I probably have about half a dozen now and them barely able to travel the length of my tonk without a wheelchair. It is all very, very disturbing.

CHAPTER TWO

When I walk away from the flats my spirits are lower than the balls on a kneeling dachshund. I still cannot believe that it happened – or rather that it didn’t happen. How could I, the answer to the secret love dreams of twenty-five million British birds, make such a hopeless cock up of it? ‘Cock up’! I permit myself a wry smile. What a bleeding marvellous choice of words. And after three months Sellotape – or celibate, or whatever it is. I might as well knot myself. Twenty-two and on the way to the knacker’s yard. It wasn’t as if I was pissed or anything. I have absolutely no excuse. I look down at the smooth, unruckled front of my brushed denim jeans and feel like bursting into tears.

There is only one thing for it: get pissed. Fortunately, Mum has slipped me a few quid and the pubs are still open. I go into the nearest boozer and order a double scotch. I get in a couple more and then buy a half bottle to take on the common when the pub closes. The more I think about things the more depressed I get. Not just about sex but about my life as a whole – or as a hole, more like. The nick was pretty bad but I relish living at home less than being a chalet maid at an eskimo nudist camp. I have had half a dozen different careers and I would have made more cash if I had become a yak sexer and signed on for unemployment benefit. Nothing seems to go right for me. And one of the main reasons for that is bleeding Sidney. He is always messing me about. What I need is a complete change of scene. I must get away from the suffocating pressures of home life.

I turn my back on the couple who are practically having it away in the shelter in the under-sixes playground and consider what to do next. Two old birds wander past and one of them shakes her head as she looks at me. ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ she murmurs to her companion as they both stare at my half-empty bottle.

She is dead right, of course. Fifty years later I could still be sitting here, only with a bottle of meths. I must do something to change my aimless, self-indulgent life. Pausing only to swig down the rest of the scotch, I hurl the bottle into the nearest litter bin and immediately feel a better man. A new sense of purpose, that is what I need. Starting from next weekend I will begin watching Stars on Sunday.

Right now, I see that there is a revival of Titty, Titty, Gang Bang at The Roxy, Balham, and I might just be able to catch the main feature. I don’t want to waste the whole afternoon.

But I never get to the The Roxy. The way to the cinema takes me past the Army Careers Information Office. Normally, it takes me past it bleeding fast, but today I am in a state fast approaching the pissed and I stop and have a butcher’s through the window. I should be warned when the bloke with sergeant’s stripes and peaked cap nearly covering his tash leaps to his feet like a monkey seeing a banana walking past its cage.

My attention has been caught by a placard in the window showing a bloke dressed up in a white ski suit, with a fur hood, sub-machine gun and goggles. He is carrying – would you believe it? – a pair of skis. The bloke looks very like me, as do lots of people when you can only see the ends of their hooters, and releases in me a tidal wave of wish fulfilment. Looking at him I can see myself, completely on my tod, skimming up and down mountain peaks while some kid whistles the theme music from Shane in the background – if he couldn’t whistle that I would settle for 633 Squadron.

‘Good afternoon! Thinking about becoming a professional, are you?’ The voice is brimming over with friendly enthusiasm and issues from the cakehole of the sergeant who is now standing in the doorway.

‘I was just looking,’ I say, defensively.

‘Look away, laddy. That’s what it’s all there for. You like skiing, do you?’

‘I’ve never done any.’

The sergeant shakes his head sympathetically.

‘It’s a wonderful sport. You haven’t lived ’til you’ve been on skis. And taught at the Army’s expense, too. It doesn’t seem credulous, does it?’

‘You do that in Germany, do you?’ I hear myself saying.

‘Germany, Norway, Cyprus. In Cyprus you can snow ski in the morning and be water skiing in the afternoon. All that and twenty-nine pounds thirty-three p before you even get a stripe up. What a life for a young man, I only wish I had my time again.’

‘Yeah.’ I take another look at the bloke on skis. It would certainly be a lot different to Scraggs Lane, wouldn’t it?

‘It’s changed out of all recognition since I first went in. No bull, choice of first class food. Lots of free time to follow up your own private interests. Like skiing, for instance.’

Of course, I can see it all. Check in your rifle about four o’clock and then up and down the ski runs until it’s time for a mug of edelweiss and a spot of clog dancing. Must be the life, mustn’t it? I don’t know why I never thought of the Army before. Ooh, I do feel dizzy.

‘Come in and sit down and I’ll answer any questions you may have,’ says the kindly sergeant. I follow him inside and he picks up the evening paper lying on his desk and throws it to one side. Funny that it should be open at the ‘Sits. Vac.’ section.

‘Now, lad. What branch of the service were you thinking about? Infantry?’

‘I hadn’t really thought—’

‘That would be the best for the skiing, wouldn’t it? Build up the leg muscles nicely. There’s a lot of famous regiments, you know. You a local boy, are you?’

I nod.

‘How about the Light Division?’

‘I can’t even mend a fuse.’

‘No, laddy.’ The friendly sergeant grits his teeth for a fleeting second. ‘I meant the Light Infantry or the Green Jackets. If we can make a decision today I can practically guarantee you the choice of any regiment you care to mention.’

‘Are there any skiing regiments?’

The kindly sergeant shakes his head regretfully.

‘No, laddy, I’m afraid not. But you could well find yourself being seconded to a Norwegian unit on a NATO exercise. You know all about our obligations to NATO, don’t you?’

‘You mean the president of Yugoslavia?’

‘No, lad. I meant – oh, it doesn’t matter.’ He reaches for a form. ‘Now, let’s see. You want to join the infantry and you want to ski. It’s a question of how many years it’s going to take to make you a Jean Claude Killer.’

Suddenly, things seem to be going a bit fast and I wish I hadn’t knocked back that half-bottle of scotch. I don’t feel a hundred per cent in control of the situation.

‘It could be three or six or–’

‘I was thinking more of–’

‘If you spoke a bit of German it could make it easier with the skiing.’

‘Yeah, well I think maybe I’d better–’

‘Do you know what the German for “no” is, lad?’

‘Nein,’ I say, proudly.

‘Nine? Very good, lad. Right, sign here.’

‘You signed on for nine bleeding years?’ says Sid. ‘You must be round the twist.’

‘I was conned,’ I bleat. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

‘You seldom do, Timmo. But at least you don’t let yourself in for a caper like this. Blimey! Nine years. You’ll be out in time for the Clapham Olympics, won’t you?’

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