Читать книгу William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story - Matt Rudd - Страница 47

‘I will stay here. I don’t want to go for a walk,’ says her mum.

‘A short walk never killed anyone. It is a short walk, isn’t it?’ says mine.

‘Come on, let’s get on with it,’ say the dads in unison.

We all leave the flat, and set a course for Hampstead Heath.

‘Are these plantains?’ Three hundred yards in, my dad, like a moth to an ultraviolet insect zapper, has been drawn to a Caribbean vegetable store on the Holloway Road.

‘I think so, Dad. Leave them.’

‘Excuse me, young man, how long does one cook plantains?’

We wait outside a wig shop for ten minutes while Dad gets the lowdown on plantains from the Rastafarian vegetable stallholder. During the delay, her mum keeps breaking for the flat, mine looks at the wigs. Her dad tuts at people with shirts hanging out. Sheepdogs have an easier job.

‘What is that man doing? He’s almost naked.’ We have inadvertently wandered into the heath’s nudge-nudge, wink-wink meeting place for lonely hearts. Her dad has stopped and is pointing at a man in a red G-string reading the Guardian.

‘He’s reading the Guardian, Dad. Don’t worry about it.’

‘There’s another one. Reading the Guardian,’ says my dad.

‘Lot of Guardian-readers round here,’ says her dad. He’s a Times man.

‘Why are they all sitting in this field, separately?’ says mine. ‘It’s suspicious to say the least.’

‘In knickers.’

‘G-strings, I believe they’re called.’

‘Please, let’s go,’ Isabel and I say together.

‘Are these men after a bit of nookie, with strangers?’ asks her dad, loudly. Just because he’s hard of hearing, he thinks everyone else is.

‘Like that MP, you mean?’ asks mine.

‘Yes, it’s what they call dogging, isn’t it?’ says hers.

‘No, I think dogging is when you watch other people having sex in cars,’ says mine.

‘Kinky stuff they’re into these days, don’t you think? Mind you, we weren’t much better back in the Sixties, were we, darling?’

‘Now is not the time to talk about our era of free love, darlink. I have a blister,’ says her mum.

Isabel is looking like you’d expect her to look after finding out her parents really swung in the Swinging Sixties.

‘This is turning into a long walk,’ says my mum.