by Robin
The DEVELOPMENT of a Kleppermaniac
After the episode in the coffee shop, it was Suzi who made all of the running. Ted was infatuated with her, completely captivated by her smile, her warmth and the incongruous blue eyes surrounded by virtually black hair. But his mind was in turmoil, unable to unravel the various strands that had come into play during his visit to the coffee shop with her. There was no problem with the coffee. There was no problem with Suzi herself. But all he could remember from the visit to the coffee shop was the unexpected intrusion of a new factor, unexpected but powerful. How could a simple thing like a coat, a raincoat, a sleek, grey, shiny, rubber raincoat overwhelm him? It was almost as if it had been alive and it was inextricably entwined with Suzi. He could not unfold it. It was also entwined with coffee, but less emotively so. He stumbled over his emotions, unable to make the right moves.
‘Would you like a picnic Mr Ted? The voice tinkled. ‘It’s almost the right time of the year.’
The word “almost” was lost on Ted. Suzi still retained the formal Mr and when she spoke to him in German, as she did most of the time, and she used the formal “Sie” rather than the familiar “du”. She trembled at the thought of called him “Du”.
‘I think it will only rain a little today and this is really is the first chance this Spring. In a way, it can be nicer than summer.’
‘Oh, that would be really be nice. I haven’t had a picnic for years.’
‘Good, I will go to the grocery store and get some nice things. You are coming as well because we cannot go on a picnic in the mountains unless you have the right clothes. And I don’t think you have the right clothes. Your jacket is no good in the hills at this time of the year and I don’t think you have a coat, a proper coat. Have you?’
‘Not really. I did bring one but it seems to have disappeared.’
It had indeed disappeared. Ted had left it lying around in the hotel garden one day and Suzi had seized the opportunity to dispose of the curious English garment in the weekly refuse collection. To be honest, she had held on to it for two weeks, lest he had asked and she would be forced to lie. But after two weeks, it went. The plot was laid. What Suzi did not know was that Ted had deliberately mislaid it.
‘Let’s get you a coat first and then the picnic stuff.’
Suzi led the way like a hunter with the scent of prey in her nostrils. She knew that today was the day when she would get her man properly Kleppered. Ted might not yet know he was her man, but Suzi did.
It took no more than ten minutes in the little shop, “Regenmänteln und Schirme”, roughly translated as “Macs and brollies”, to fit Ted out. The bustling small town nestled on the Eastern slopes of the Eiffel Mountains in Germany. Meteorologically, a shop selling raincoats was a necessity in this rain-swept community. The owner of the shop had done his homework and worked out the fundamentals of his business. Twenty thousand inhabitants meant about four hundred new souls born every year. Forget the ones who died. You could work everything out. Each new sensible person would buy on average, five raincoats in their lifetime. Each year, four hundred new customers were created, buying five each - two thousand raincoats over the next sixty years, or thirty three per year per two hundred of the population. The population was twenty thousand so that meant a turnover of one thousand six hundred and fifty raincoats per year. A good core business. It had taken Emil a week and much pencil licking and frowning to work that out. He was a meticulous German. He scaled it up to the population of Germany and came to the conclusion that it meant an awful lot of rubber. He decided he would go for quality. If you lived in Regensdauer (literally “Always raining”), you would need a decent Mac and the inhabitants would not take long to realise that the new fashionable, unlined, unproofed, poplin, “showerproof” coats were all right for going to a garden party, but were useless for shopping in the weekly open-air market. They were downright uncomfortable in a heavy downpour as they soaked up the rain like a sponge and fed it through to the wearer.
Emil loved to stroke the raincoats to show how well they fit. He didn’t mind how many the customers tried on. He had to restrain himself at Ted fastened each of the buttons and then turned left and right to look at himself in the mirror. It was a good fit. He gained consolation by looking at Suzi, tightly belted in her own shiny grey rubber surfaced Klepper, one of his earlier sales. He raised his eyebrows over his rimless glasses, took in the outline of her clasped hands, deep in each pocket, looking as if they were cast in gleaming grey rubber.
“I can see from the look on your respected spouse’s face that she likes this one.’
The sales compliment came across as over-oiled.
Ted was about to open his mouth to contradict the assumed marital status but noticed the microscopic shake of the head from Suzi. She had relaxed the clasp of her right hand inside the pocket so that the absence of a wedding ring was no longer etched by the encasing of the rubber fabric. In any case, Ted was already starting to feel slightly dizzy. There was an atmosphere in the shop that was starting to get to him, an overpowering aromatic sensuality. It reminded him strongly of his childhood and he struggled to place it. Clearly, what he could smell, and was being affected by, was the concentrated aroma of five hundred German rubber mackintoshes. It was what kept Emil going every dry October when he wondered if the autumn rains would come this year. They always did.
Suddenly the memories and the signals came back to Ted. He was back in “The Rubber Shop” in Skipton. There, the smell had been much more pungent; this was more restrained, almost chemical. German rubber and Skipton rubber brought many aspects of the smells of organic chemistry that he had studied and abandoned in the sixth form at grammar school. That shop in Skipton had sold everything in the world that was made of rubber, from mackintoshes to moulded galoshes, hospital sheeting, countless varieties of rubber gloves and bathing caps. His mother had shopped nowhere else for her raincoats and his four sisters had been frog-marched there as well. He had been taken there every time and had almost fainted as the pungency of the rubber overwhelmed him. Skipton was a bit like Regensdauer, on the leeward slopes of rain-lashed hills, in this case the Pennines. The local saying, echoed around the world using different hills and mountains, was that if you could see Pendle Hill, it was going to rain. If you could not see it, it was already raining. There was never a better reason in Skipton to buy a decent Mackintosh.
‘Ein Regenschirm fuer die Frau Gemahlin?’ Emil was pushing his luck. ‘An umbrella for the lady of the household?’
‘No thank you, I already have several of yours. And with the little Klepper hat I bought from you last year and this coat, I don’t really need even one.’
Suzi hugged herself. Being addressed in the company of Ted as the lady of the household was intoxicating. She felt herself through her own rubber skin and the sexuality aroused her further.
‘Oh my man.’ She thought. It will be today.
Suzi thought briefly of topping Ted off with a nice matching rubber hat but decided that it could wait. A couple of head drenchings would put him in the right mood for a Klepper hat later, when he realised how dry he was inside the coat.
A myriad of thoughts wound through Ted’s mind as the two of them stepped out onto the street, straight into a sharp shower. Emil had cleverly had the exit door changed to face the prevailing winds and rains. Several times, potential customers had not been able to make up their minds. He knew they wanted a raincoat, they knew they needed a raincoat, but people in this village did not part readily with their money. A timely blast of a cold wet sou’wester often sent them scuttling back inside to complete the purchase.
Outside on the street, Ted raised both hands, placing his palms on each side of his chest before sliding them down his sides and over his own thighs, smoothing the rubber to the contours of his body. He then tucked both hands in his pockets. Suzi looked on approvingly. They both took a deep breath. Only one thought sped through Suzi’s mind. Her man was now Kleppered and ready for a picnic.
‘Now we are ready. It is time for the picnic, no?’
‘It is time for the picnic, yes!’
Once again, as she had done outside the coffee shop, Suzi spiralled her Kleppered arm around Ted’s. This time there was no umbrella to use as an excuse; she didn’t need one anymore. It was not Ted’s bare arm but an identically grey, rain spotted sleeve. If this rain kept up, Suzi knew that both arms would turn into a glistening grey rubber double helix.
Ted had no idea what was in store. Suzi herself had plans how it would start, but no idea where it would end.
Robin
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