Confessions of a Travelling Salesman. Timothy Lea
meant to sound. It’s like packets of detergent. The smallest one is always called “Jumbo size”. But that’s enough from me. You’ll be learning all about that when you do your training.’
‘Do I have to be trained, Sid. Can’t I pick it up as I go along? Surely you could train me?’
‘I could, Timmo, and very good it would be though I say so myself, but I want to be able to concentrate on finding the right product. Something that fills a housewife’s needs.’
‘We’ll be selling to women, will we, Sid?’
‘I think that’s what we’re best at, Timmo.’
‘And where am I going to get this training?’
‘Very important question, Timmo. Luckily, I anticipated your enthusiasm for this new career opportunity and I wrote off to a number of our larger companies who run training schemes for salesmen.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Sid. But, I thought I was going to work for you.’
‘You are, Timmo. Once you have completed your training, and I have found the right product, you will resign and join MagiNog.’
‘MagiNog? Blimey! It sounds a bit underhand, Sid. I mean, taking all their training and then pissing off to join you.’
‘It’s a fact of business life, Timmo. It could happen to anyone. One day, when we’re a household word, it will be happening to us.’
‘I don’t see MagiNog as a household word somehow, Sid.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Timmo. You concentrate on spelling your name right on the application forms.’
I must say you have to give Sid full marks for effort. In the next few days a sackful of envelopes arrive with my humble name picked out by electric typewriter, and I plough through sheets of application forms. Previous jobs, exam results, army service, hobbies, interests.
‘Put down everything you’ve done,’ says Sid cheerfully. ‘It’s all evidence of your experience at meeting people. That’s very important in selling.’
Another couple of weeks go by and I get three letters from different firms asking me to report for an interview. Sidney is well chuffed because one of these comes from HomeClean Products who he reckons can sell vaginal deodorants to skunks.
I view my forthcoming change of career with mixed feelings. The Cromby is beginning to fill up with cantankerous old fogies but at the same time, there are a few additions to the staff who definitely justify more than a quick spot of eyeball bashing. One in particular is Miss Alma Stokely, our new physiotherapist, or, as Sid scornfully puts it, a masseuse with ‘O’ levels. Sid is a bit narky because he reckons that Alma owes her position to a special relationship with Doctor Carboy. I don’t know about special – any kind of relationship with Alma would suit me down to the ground – or any other handy flat surface. She is one of the cool, lady-like ones you catch shooting crafty glances at the front of your jeans. She wears tight cashmere sweaters and fiddles with her felt pen when she is talking to you. I reckon she is trying to fight an irresistible desire to rip my y-fronts off, but then I feel that about a lot of women – and have the scratches on my wrists to prove it.
The day before my interview in London I look through the door of her office and there is this bleeding great couch taking up half the room. It is in three separate pieces, and I am puzzling put how it works when the lovely Alma glides up behind me.
‘I see you’re gazing at my new toy,’ she purrs.
‘Er, yes, Miss Stokely,’ I mumble, because the twinset and pearls types always bring out the peasant in me. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a vibrator,’ she says. ‘They use them a lot in the German clinics.’ That’s news to me but I don’t say anything. ‘Excellent for winkling out the wrinkles on your dorsals.’ Well, it takes all sorts, doesn’t it?
‘How does it work?’
She presses a button in the side of the thing and all three surfaces start shuddering and shaking in different directions.
‘To gain maximum benefit you should take a hot bath and lie on it in the nude.’
The way some of the moving parts are nearly smacking against each other makes me think that if you did not watch your angle of dangle you could have a nasty accident.
‘Would you like to try it?’ Miss Stokely’s eyes are leaning on my crutch again. ‘It’s safer if you lie on something.’ She looks me straight in the mince pies and lowers her eyelids fractionally and for the life of me I don’t think she is referring to a thick bath towel.
Unfortunately I never have the chance to find out because I hear the sound of a couple of large red hands being rubbed together and Carboy stalks into the room.
‘Well, if it isn’t Timothy Lea,’ he says. ‘And if it isn’t, so much the better. No good looking longingly at that, Lea. You’ll have to wait a few years before you’re eligible for a spot of Egyptian P.T. on that little number.’ This just shows how wrong he can be but I don’t know that ’til later.
I have been looking forward to getting back to the smoke for my HomeClean interview and it is a bit of a disappointment to find that I have to report to one of those places which is so far out on the tube that you can never remember having heard of the station before. Down Railway Cuttings and through the industrial estate and I am face to face with a man in a peaked cap who looks as if he showed people round concentration camps while they were still in operation. When I tell him why I am there his lip curls contemptuously and he is on the point of directing me to the Sales Office when a large lorry pulls up outside the gate house.
‘Got another load of SM 42’s, mate,’ sings out the driver, ‘where do you want ’em?’ The bloke on the gate shoots me a worried glance and I imagine that this must be the code number of some new product. Very exciting, isn’t it? Oh well, maybe you should have bought an Alistair McLean?
I pad round to the reception at Home Sales, and the bird there is peeling faster than the walls. She must have been on a walking tour of the Sahara Desert and left her suntan cream at home. It is surprising at a place called HomeClean that the reception area should look like a rest home for spiders; not a bit like the flash interior of Funfrall Enterprises. Still, when you think what a load of conmen they were, maybe this is a good thing.
‘We’re running rather behind schedule,’ says the receptionist coldly. ‘If you take a seat over there I’ll call you when Mr. Snooks is free.’ I am not very happy about Mr. Snooks and when I eventually see him my fears are justified. He has very thick rimless glasses, a green bow tie and a haircut that would make a gooseberry feel like screaming Lord Sutch.
‘Sit down quickly,’ he says. At least, that is what I think he says. I leap into a chair before it occurs to me that he might have said ‘Quigley’. Snooks is obviously surprised by the speed at which I have moved, especially as it has succeeded in knocking his vase of artificial flowers all over his blotter. This would not be so bad except that the vase has real water in it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I thought you said “Quickly”.’
‘Said what quickly?’
‘Said that I was to sit down quickly.’
Snooks looks at me blankly. ‘I said “sit down, Quigley”.’
‘Yes, I realise that now. Sorry about your blotter. Can I do anything? I’ve got a hankie here.’ Snooks looks at me warily.
‘No, no. It doesn’t matter. Sit down Quig – just sit down. Now tell me, what first –’
I feel I have to put the poor bastard right.
‘The name is Lea,’ I say, ‘not Quigley, Lea.’ Snooks looks as if he could kill me.
‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’
‘Because