At the beginning of May, when the weather turned warm and the blossom came out, I had to leave my handsome riverside letting and find somewhere else to live. I couldn't afford to stay there in summer-not at those prices.
When I handed over the key to the estate agent who managed it for the absentee owner, she asked me whether I had yet found anywhere else to live. I said I hadn't. She said: well, we've got a couple of empty properties for rent on our books at the moment, both within a two minute walk, why didn't I go and have a look at them? Dawn could take me right now if I liked.
The hitherto unseen Dawn appeared from behind a partition, smiling assent to the idea. She was lovely. All right, I said. Dawn took down some keys from hooks on the wall, smiled again, and led me out of the door and along the pavement. The pavement was too narrow to walk two abreast so we had to go in single file.
The first place was a very old two-up, two-down mid-terraced house off the High Street. The key was stiff in the lock and we both had to put our shoulders to the door to get it open. It was tiny inside. As Dawn and I sidled around the furniture from room to room we were rarely more than an arm's length apart. At the top of the narrow spiral staircase we stooped under a low ceiling and contemplated a small double bed. Beside it lay a paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There was an odd little hiatus. Then we grimaced disappointedly at one another and Dawn led me back down the stairs, out of the house and along the pavement again.
Eighty yards further down the High Street I followed her shapely figure through an unlocked door, up four flights of thinly carpeted stairs, through another, less substantial door and into an enormous, empty flat. After the smallness of the last place, it was like walking into a cathedral. But it was dark and gloomy and smelled of neglect. In several places the wallpaper was hanging from the walls in long strips.
Dawn led me around. The kitchen was narrow and grimy. We didn't go in-it was too horrible-we just stuck our heads over the threshold. The bathroom was nice though, it had been retiled and a new puce vanity suite installed. But any aesthetic pleasure afforded by the shiny tiles evaporated on the dusty chocolate brown carpet in the bare sitting room.
"What do you think?" said Dawn.
Without her to brighten up the place, I would rather have lived in a hedge than in that flat.
"Very nice," I said. "Lovely."
We were standing face to face in the middle of the empty living room. Dawn launched self-consciously into her spiel about refundable deposits, references, council tax and the like. I tried to listen attentively and maintain eye contact, but I began to feel hot and giddy. Above all I felt an alarming deliquescence occurring in my bowels and my sphincter muscle began twitching madly. Clenching my buttocks together in the vain hope that the urge to defecate might go away again, I tried to appear interested in what she was saying; but I began perspiring like a maniac and she stopped speaking and gave me a quizzical look.
I was in trouble. It felt as if my insides were about to fall out. Unless I excused myself within the next ten seconds, I was going to mess my pants in front of the lovely Dawn.
So I said to her: "I'm sorry, Dawn-I must go to the toilet." Then I carefully walked across the carpet to the bathroom, slammed the door behind me, ripped down my Levis and got my backside on the toilet seat in the nick of time.
Conscious of the acoustic qualities of large empty flats, and of Dawn having nothing else to do in the interim but stand eight feet away in the next room, waiting, probably listening, I tried to let it go as quietly as possible. Unfortunately my bowel movement had more to do with ballistics than peristalsis. First there was a terrific inaugural explosion which I thought took half my arse away with it. This was immediately followed by wild trumpeting, heralding a dramatic series of reports, detonations and cannonades. From Dawn's point of view, it must have been like listening to a mediaeval siege.
Added to this it came out piping hot and I groaned aloud in great travail. I couldn't help it. Even when the crisis had passed I continued to moan and whimper quietly to myself in shock and relief, slumped forward on the seat, while my poor quivering anus regained something of its former equilibrium.
Fortunately the flush was working, but there was no toilet paper. I tottered from the bathroom like the only survivor of a pit disaster. Dawn was studying a long rip in the wallpaper with minute interest.
"Sorry about that," I said. "It must have been something I ate."
