Читать книгу Confessions from a Package Tour - Rosie Dixon - Страница 4

When the SS Foreskeen finally docks at Antwerp I can hardly wait for the cattle to be driven ashore before leaving the coach. It is very cramped in that hold and after sixteen hours you can imagine the smell – the cattle don’t smell very nice either.

But perhaps I am going too fast. For the benefit of new readers let me start at the end. The end of Confessions of a Lady Courier. I am employed by Climax Tours (‘The Europe the others forgot’ – you must have seen their advertisements?) and my boss is Nicholas Bendon or Justin Cartwright or Benedict Jollybags or Jeremy Rafelsen-Bigg – for some reason that I can never quite understand, he keeps changing his name; something to do with wanting to be more people than he really is, I think. I always call him by his last name – I mean, the last name he has given himself. At the moment it is Reginald Parkinson.

Anyway, Reggy has hired me to take a coach party round Europe – there is also the driver, a strange Latvian called Jaroslov Hammerchick, but he doesn’t really count – not higher than ten, anyway. For days I have been trying to get the coach out of the country but you have no idea how difficult that can be – unless you have read Confessions of a Lady Courier. In the end, faced with gale force winds in the Channel, I am left with no alternative but to take the only means of escape available: a cattle boat travelling to Antwerp. I think it will be calmer once we get round the corner into the North Sea, but not a bit of it. We can’t see much in the hold but my tummy feels as if it is being swished around with an electric mixer. What really frightens me is when, all of a sudden, large quantities of water pour down the stairs. You can imagine the feeling, can’t you? I mean, you feel pretty trapped sitting in a coach in the bottom of a clapped-out cattle boat with the lights flickering on and off – mostly off – without that happening. And the crew! Panamanians they call themselves though it should be Panamaniacs. I have nothing against foreigners but this lot are really grubby. You don’t have to understand what they are saying to know what they mean. I certainly made no agreement with the captain that they were entitled to have sexual relations with any woman in the party under sixty and all this pinching and gesticulating is so vulgar. I do wish our lot would not do it. It only inflames the excitable citizens of Central America more. It is amazing how the most sober women seem to go berserk the moment the boat puts to sea. Maybe it is something to do with the ozone though I can’t see how any of them can smell it. What with the cattle and the cramped conditions the interior of the hold is more like the BO zone.

It is with a feeling of the most tremendous relief that I eventually come down the steps of the coach and set foot on – oh! Filthy animal! Why did it have to do that there? The inside of the boat was bad enough without the quay at Antwerp receiving the same treatment. It always amazes me how such dirty animals can produce all those nice things like butter, milk and those little creamy cheese segments with the pretty labels.

I scrape my shoe against a convenient bollard and look around the cobbled quay carefully. The cattle are disappearing towards a line of railway trucks and I wish that my own problems could be as easily solved. The first night of our ‘magic carpet ride through the cultural cornucopia of historic Europe’ was meant to be spent on the borders of the ‘romantic Rhineland’ but that was three days ago now and there seems little hope of us ever catching up with our schedule. It is half past six in the evening and a lot of those customers not bidding tearful farewells to weak-kneed Panamanians are suggesting very forcibly that they would like to go to a hotel. What am I going to do?

‘Yoo hoo, Rosie! Here I am!’ The familiar voice rings in my ears like the sound of the relieving cavalry’s bugler at the end of a John Wayne movie. I turn, and there she is – Penny! My companion in a number of adventures listed at the end of this book and fellow employee of Climax Tours. Reggy had said that he was going to send Penny to give me a hand but I had not expected her to arrive so soon.

‘Penny!’ I trill. ‘What a marvellous surprise. But how did you get here so soon? You’re looking so fresh and relaxed.’

‘I flew to Brussels and got a taxi. It was terribly easy, darling. Did you have a good trip? I hope you don’t mind me saying so but you’re looking a trifle peaky?’

‘Next time, I’ll take the Titanic if there’s a choice,’ groans Mr Betts, dumping a string bag full of baked beans tins on the quayside – Sid and Martha Betts do not trust foreign food.

‘Try not to sound quite so enthusiastic,’ I whisper to Penny. ‘The journey so far has not been a resounding success.’

‘Mine has,’ says Penny. ‘You know how they’re always saying that airline stewards are queer? Well, I can prove differently. Tamberlaine was unbelievable. The minute our eyes met I knew it was something special. The first class was empty so he invited me in for a quick one.’

‘A drink?’ I say.

‘No, darling. Procreation practice. The first time was heaven, but it was when he made me a life member of “The Mile High Club” that sparks really started to fly.’

‘How high was it?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, darling, but it seemed to be nudging my lower rib sometimes.’

‘I don’t mean that!’ I say, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment rush over me. ‘I meant how high was the plane?’

‘Excuse me,’ interrupts a slightly irritable voice. ‘Are we going to stay here all night? I haven’t slept in a bed since I left home. I don’t think it’s good enough. I came on this holiday because I was run down.’

‘Well, you’re going to be run down again if you stand there,’ says Penny, cheerfully. ‘You’re smack in the middle of the railway track.’

The man skips out of the way as the cattle train pulls out. ‘Look at all those lovely moo cows,’ says Penny. ‘They’ve got such soft faces, haven’t they?’

The man looks as if he is going to say something unpleasant and then controls himself. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if we’d got off before the cows,’ he grumbles.

‘They don’t have the same passport formalities as us,’ says Penny. ‘Life is much easier if you’re a cow.’

Once again the man opens his mouth and I deem it best to step in hurriedly – not in his mouth, of course.

‘We’ll soon be on our way,’ I say. ‘We’ll just wait for everybody to – er finish.’

It is terrible embarrassing because half the male passengers were in the middle of answering a call of nature behind the train when it pulled out. Now they are all facing us with their little pink front botties waggling in the wind. I turn away and find myself looking through one of the portholes of the Foreskeen. Another of our passengers, Mrs Lapes, is demonstrating that she is prone to other things beside accidents. Her flabby white buttocks rise and fall like a half-collapsed tent agitated by a playful breeze. Beneath her, one of the stokers opens his mouth and delivers himself of a silent scream. Either the porthole glass is too thick or, as seems more likely, the poor devil is too exhausted to raise a sound.

I do hope that these distressing events are not a foretaste of what is to come during the rest of the holiday.