8. THE WINDOW-CLEANER'S TALE

It's not always sleaze that window-cleaners get an eye-full of....

“Now this might cause you to be interested,” droned Dingleboot, and his pupil gazed down from the hugest of heights at the circle of people in the lounge bar in the Westminster Arms.

There was a scraping sound. Familiar, yet unfamiliar, the sort of sound you might dismiss if you were at home and preparing lunch but that seemed somehow out of place in the lounge bar of the delightful pub that the men and women exchanging their experiences were in.

“What on Earth’s that?” demanded the Judge.

“It’s rubber on glass,” murmured the librarian.

“It’s a window cleaner,” whispered the gambler, “I bet that I’d recognise that sound anywhere!”

All eyes swivelled so that all heads were staring at the window, and a smiling woman with a high pony tail, dressed in a fetching tartan frock and holding a rubber blade gazed back at them.

The judge went and opened the window. “What are you doing here, spying on us?” he demanded.

“Spying? I’m not spying! I’m one of you!” replied the lady window cleaner, and with one easy move she climbed in through the window and rested her rubber blade on the window-sill.

“I’ll call the landlord!” threatened the Judge.

“But I’ve a story to tell you, and you just might find it interesting,” suggested the window cleaner. “It’s about the late and very much unlamented Minster of Publicity,” she added, her pretty eyes sparkling as her audience, as one, started to nod their heads.

“You knew her?” asked the Policeman after a minute’s silence.

The window cleaner nodded her head. “I used to clean her windows,” she admitted, “and you know, I had to wait ages to be paid! And she had a conservatory with so many panes of glass in it that it took me an age to clean them all! But that isn’t what I wanted to tell you, though you might find it pertinent to a good understanding of her character!”

“A good word that, pertinent,” mumbled the Librarian, “I find it useful all the time,” he added, “things should always be pertinent.”

“Exactly,” smiled the window-cleaner, somehow finding an empty seat in the circle and settling down into it, arranging her tartan frock neatly round her knees. “And what you might find particularly pertinent are the things that window-cleaners see whilst at their work. Oh, I do know that there are lascivious tales about we sparklers of glass seeing a mighty selection of personal activities as we rub away at bedroom windows, but that’s not been the case with me, though I did once see a naked man dressing himself, all on his own, he was, and I became so besotted by the image of him pulling his boxer shorts up, nice clean and brightly patterned boxer shorts they were, that I married him!”

“And the two of you lived happily ever after?” asked the prostitute, her eyes glistening.

“Hey, we’ve not reached ever after yet!” laughed the window-cleaner, “though, yes, we are happy together and I’ve bought him a really exciting range of coloured boxers so that I regularly get turned on! But that’s not what I’ve come here to tell you.

“I was cleaning the wretched woman’s windows, and let’s make sure we’re all reading from the same page before I say too much, it was Edna Tomkins’ windows that I was cleaning in the hope that she would eventually find it in her heart to actually pay me, when I saw something that made my heart seem to freeze.

“She was standing in her lounge room with the curtains almost totally shut, leaving just a small gap for me to look through, and I did look through, small gaps in curtains can be most inviting to a bored window-cleaner, we never know what we’re going to see on the other side of them, though when we do see something it’s rarely that interesting.

“This time, though, I was shocked, and because the window at the top was partly open I could hear quite clearly what it was that was so shocking.

“Edna Tomkins was standing in the middle of the room brandishing a whip, and a weedy man with spectacles was cowering in front of her. And this, as far as I can recall, was the conversation they were having.

“’You are here because I ordered it, and you will do what I demand, or I will let the world know all about a private secretary who takes his trousers off on public parks where little children might be looking on,’ said the Tomkins woman.

“’But what do you want of me?” almost wept the weedy man, ‘I only came here because you said you wanted to discuss the upcoming Prime Ministerial broadcast with me. Not that I can be of much help because, truth to tell, I’m usually only involved with spreadsheets.’

“’Never mind that, you poltroon. What you are to do is sneak into the Prime Minister’s office. I know you can do that because I happen to know that due to an oversight at the locksmith’s the keys to our offices, the Prime Minister’s and mine, are interchangeable. Very fortunate that, don’t you think? And when you get inside that noble office I want you to search out the documents relating to Pumpernickel Pie and destroy them. Destroy, them, that is, completely and utterly.’

The window-cleaner cast her pretty eyes around the gathering and smiled.

“Now you might be wondering about terms like Pumpernickel pie,” she said with a little giggle, “after all, it’s such an amusing name, and who would ever dream of making a pie with pumpernickel? I wouldn’t and if I did my husband would not that me for serving it up! But I listened on and found the answer to my unspoken query almost immediately.

“’Pumpernickel pie, as you know,’ said the Tomkins woman, ‘is the codename for a plan to provide social assistance to the disabled above and beyond what they already receive. But it isn’t fair. Is it my fault that they’re one armed or one-legged or have spinal fractures or are blind or deaf or even stupid? No it isn’t! So why should it be that I pay a proportion of my taxes, and I mean those that I don’t avoid paying but actually cough up, in order to enrich the physically or mentally unfit? Why, it’s my opinion that they should be hanged good and proper if their disabilities mean they can’t work fifteen hours minimum a day on the minimum wage, which is something else that’s got to go!’

“’But your own mother’s disabled after that accident!’ protested the weedy man, and Edna Tompins cracked the whip she was holding so that the tip of it cut into his back.

“’Ouch!’ he protested, weeping and suddenly bleeding.

“’It may be that the cow lost a leg rescuing my brother from the sea at Skeggy when I tried to drown him,’ grated the wretched woman, ‘but that’s not my fault! She should have been more careful instead of putting it under the propeller of that lifeboat! Now you’ll do what I order you, won’t you? Or the world will get to know that you removed your trousers whilst spinning on a roundabout in a children’s playground before making off into the forest dragging along an unwilling spotty boy with nits!’

The window-cleaner cast her eyes around the room and shook her head.

“The consequence of what I saw became clear only the next day when the Prime Minister failed to mention anything about additional benefits for the disabled and instead declared war on an obscure Scottish island where the Leader of the Opposition liked to go secretly fishing during his holidays, when he wasn’t in his kitchen making jam, that is. Delicious jam too, I’ve been told by his own window-cleaner, who happens to be a personal friend of mine. So you can see: the woman Edna Tomkins was up to all manner of nasty things, including lying and cheating and inventing the most horrendous rumours in order to keep her enemies on-side.”

“But jam-making,” sighed the Judge.

“I’m told that it’s therapeutic,” explained the Window-cleaner.

© Peter Rogerson 27.09.18