Confessions of a Physical Wrac

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

About the Author

Also by Timothy Lea and Rosie Dixon

Copyright

About the Publisher

If I am going to be honest with myself – and I do try to be, most of the time – I must confess that the idea of joining the Women’s Royal Army Corps only seriously occurs to me when the police arrest Reginald Parkinson – alias Nicholas Bendon, Justin Cartwright, Benedict Jollybags and Jeremy Rafelsen-Bigg – I never do find out what his real name is.

Regular readers will recall that he is the boss of Climax Tours and that my friend Penny Green and myself have been at full stretch all over the Continent – and the incontinent, sometimes – wrestling with the many problems that arise when you are in charge of a package tour party.

Penny says that she is not surprised to find the police waiting at the bottom of the fire escape when we flee from the Climax London office which is being besieged by angry clients wanting their money back (see ConfessionsfromaPackageTour for enthralling details) and I suppose, of late, I have begun to entertain suspicions that all is not well with the running of the Climax operation. When a company has so many different headings on its notepaper and is run from a suitcase packed with wads of banknotes and deposited in new accommodation every week it is difficult to think of it as having quite that permanence and dependability which are the hallmarks of great British commercial institutions.

What does surprise me is the violence that is resorted to at the bottom of the fire escape. No sooner have Reggy and his colleague, William Nostromo ‘Nosher’ Bustard – alias Count Sergio di Ponsi – thrown the bulging suitcase into the Jag and started to scramble after it – very bad manners not to have waited for Penny and myself – than a policeman steps out of the shadows.

‘Leonard Arthur Brown,’ he says, ‘I have a warrant for your arrest. Anything you say will be taken down –’

‘Knickers!’ snarls my employer.

I don’t know if that is what gives the constable who grabs me the idea, but his hand goes up underneath my skirt in a very arresting fashion. Perhaps he is attached to the squad that breaks up pop festivals. Anyway, it is a most disquieting experience. Especially as I haven’t done anything.

‘Let me go!’ I say, struggling to remove the man’s hand from the rim of my panties. ‘This is an outrage! I’ll write to my MP!’

‘You can write to Jimmy Young about it for all I care,’ says the coarse copper man handling me – and how – towards a police car.

One thing that the awful experience does reveal to me is that policemen carry two truncheons. I can feel both of them pressing against me at various stages of my ordeal. Interesting, isn’t it? I suppose they carry a spare one for emergencies or for serious riots when they have to whip them both out and wade in swinging. I would like to ask about it but I am so angry with the beast who has interfered with my underwear that I preserve a stony silence all the way to the station. Penny is travelling with me and Reggy and Nosher are in a second car with six policemen – about half the number it took to overcome them. Honestly, I have not seen such violent goings on since Dad came back unexpectedly and found my younger sister Natalie and one of her disgusting boyfriends practising limbo dancing – well, that is what they said they were doing. I have my own view of why they were half naked and underneath the dining-room table.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ says Penny. ‘We’re just employees, you know.’

The policeman shrugs. ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the Super. He’s the one who’ll decide whether you’re going to be charged.’

‘Is that the distinguished looking man with an air of the young Gary Cooper?’ says Penny. ‘The one with the dinky little silver clasps on his shoulders?’

The policeman looks as surprised as I am. The man I recall as being in charge of the operation was overweight and had an air of the young Martin Borman. ‘Er – I don’t know,’ says the constable. ‘You’ll find out soon enough, I expect.’

No more is said before we get to the station but Penny turns and gives me a big wink. I wonder what she is up to?

When we arrive at what Penny persists in calling ‘fuzzville’ we are separated and put in cells. At least it is not one big cage full of junkies and tarts like you see in American films but it is still pretty awful. The thought of what the neighbours would think if they could see me fills me with horror. And as for Mum and Dad –! The shock might kill them. I am still trembling when I hear the sound of a key turning and the cell door opens. It is the Superintendent who made the arrest. He is carrying his hat under his arm and it looks as if he has just combed his fast receding hair. He peers behind him carefully and comes into the cell, closing the hatch over the peephole before he does so. It may be my imagination but his state of discomfiture seems to match my own.