Читать книгу Confessions from a Package Tour - Rosie Dixon - Страница 7

‘How many Belgian francs are there to the pound?’ asks Penny.

‘I think it’s about eighty,’ I say.

Penny puts down the roll of banknotes and starts counting her fingers. ‘So … eighty into six thousand four hundred goes eighty … so that makes eighty quid. That works out at about two pounds a head, doesn’t it? – if you bothered to count their heads.’

‘Don’t!’ I shudder. ‘I can’t bear to think about it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ agrees Penny, thoughtfully. ‘I think we were done – in more ways than one. Look at the charge for the room – and what’s that TVR? It’s some kind of VAT, isn’t it? This is scandalous! I’ve a good mind to go to the British Consul about it.’

It is the morning after the most degrading night of my life. I don’t think that I have ever felt more exhausted. How the professionals keep it up I do not know. What started off with Penny’s idea of a light-hearted romp got completely out of hand. Torrents of the most unspeakable men of every shape, colour and creed poured through the door and did the most unspeakable things to us. There was even the Chief Stoker of the SS Foreskeen and a couple of Manchester United supporters left over from a pre-season friendly.

‘Is the money all you can think about?’ I say, reproachfully.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ says Penny, brightening. ‘It was a bonus, really, wasn’t it? We never thought we were going to get paid when we started out.’

‘What are you talking about: started out!’ I scream. ‘All I wanted was a hot bath, a square meal and a good night’s sleep. Instead of that I get gang-raped!’

‘You also get two thousand francs, darling,’ says Penny, peeling off some notes.

‘Two thousand?’ I say. ‘After what I’ve been through, and vice versa? You said the – the manager had handed over six thousand four hundred, didn’t you?’

‘Two thousand is very generous for what you did, darling. I was handling the brunt of the action. Frankly, I thought you were spinning it out a bit, sometimes.’

‘How – !’ I take a deep breath and then think better of what I was going to say. The whole business is so depressingly sordid that there is no point in arguing about it. My conscience is clear, that is the main thing. I snatch the two thousand francs and thrust it into the breast pocket of my tunic. Thank goodness that the rest of the hotels on the tour have been pre-booked by Reggy. If this is what happens when you get slightly off the beaten track then I would rather sleep in the coach. And, thinking of coaches, what has happened to Hammerchick? I feel slightly guilty that I made no provision for his sleeping arrangements.

‘Where is Jaroslov?’ I say.

‘Under the bed,’ says Penny. ‘I think that the fourth time was a little too much for him. Especially after his efforts with the rest of the girls.’

Now that she mentions it, the sound of uneven snoring does take on a familiar ring. Oh dear, how very unseemly the whole business is. I had made a resolve not to get too close to Hammerchick on this trip and now there seems a strong likelihood that my good intentions have already been thwarted.

‘Let’s get back to the hotel,’ I say. ‘We may be able to find some breakfast.’

‘Good idea,’ says Penny cheerfully, raising her skirt and tucking the roll of notes into the top of her tights. ‘Making love certainly gives you an appetite, doesn’t it?’

I suppress another shudder and carry my suitcase to the door. How Penny can describe what we have just been through as making love, I will never know. Carrying on the way she does, I find it difficult to understand how she retains her integrity. Sometimes, I wonder why I bother to have principles.

When we get down to the foyer, the manager, or whatever he is, swiftly pushes aside what look like half a dozen tins of film and steps round his desk to greet us. ‘You go?’ he says, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘Is too sad. Please stay. Business never so good. Russian fleet extend courtesy visit.’

‘Out of the question, you old shit,’ says Penny boldly. ‘I’d need to be pretty hard up before I came to this dump again.’

‘Maybe we discuss new terms,’ says the man eagerly.

‘Hurry up!’ I say. ‘I think that’s a taxi on the other side of the street.’

As it turns out, it is very fortunate that I am correct. No sooner has the ghastly little man – I am certain that he never changes his clothes – started to haggle with Penny than a door behind the counter opens and one of the bleary-eyed creatures I saw the night before appears in the middle of a yawn. The second she sees us she starts screaming fit to bust and has to be forcibly restrained from throwing herself at Penny. Half a dozen other hideous hags appear hurling abuse and we are pursued into the street. It is a good job that the taxi is on the other side because a window slides up above our heads and I catch a glimpse of Baldylocks before she empties what looks like a chamber pot into the street. What has prompted this disgusting and spiteful behaviour I am at a loss to know. One would think that our humiliation would elicit a sympathetic response from our Continental sisters. Maybe their action is prompted by some deep-seated resentment of Great Britain’s attitude towards the Common Market. It is so difficult to tell with foreigners.

We drive away with fists battering against the windows and I experience a great sense of relief when I think that I am soon going to be in the company of my own countrymen. Whatever their shortcomings at least we speak the same language. Despite my desperate tiredness I will be happy to see them.

It is only when we have got back to the Hotel Antwerp that we remember about Hammerchick. He is presumably still fast asleep under the bed in our room. How stupid of us! We could have got a lift back in the coach had we thought about it. I feel quite furious with myself and even more annoyed when we cannot get through on the telephone.

‘He could stay there for days, knowing him,’ says Penny who has been swift to make an assessment of Hammerchick’s unreliable temperament. ‘I suppose we’d better go back for him.’

Hardly have I finished my groan than a combined mass of hotel staff and holidaymakers descend on us. Apparently, the first night on foreign soil has not been an unqualified success for anyone:

‘The toilet didn’t work.’

‘I couldn’t find the toilet.’

‘Somebody did potty outside the door of my room.’

‘I ordered early morning tea and a hot roll at six o’clock and the chambermaid tried to climb into bed with me.’

‘I left my shoes outside my room to be cleaned and I haven’t seen them since.’

‘You can’t get any English channels on the television.’

The worst complaints relate to the disgusting nature of the rooms and the hotel staff say that they will not go into them unless the holidaymakers do something about tidying them up.

All in all I am desperately relieved when Hammerchick makes an unexpected appearance, complete with coach, and we manage to get under way. Apparently, a madman has run amok in one of the dockside brothels and I am not sorry to leave Antwerp behind. Despite its splendid war record the city will never hold happy memories for me. I watch Hammerchick rub his sleeve across his greasy, smoke-blackened face and wonder why he is laughing as half a dozen fire engines race past us in the opposite direction. He is a funny fellow and no mistake. Something of a rough diamond but not totally bad. He must have some sense of responsibility or he would not have hurried back to the hotel and got the coach loaded so quickly.

We are on the motorway by half past nine and heading towards Liège, Aachen, Cologne and our appointment with the romantic castle on the banks of the Rhine where we are going to spend the night. I have seen photographs of the Schloss Badschweinfart and it is really something. Perched like an eagle’s nest on one of the high cliffs overlooking the river far below. I do love a romantic setting and this seems right up my street. Perhaps it will make up for my disappointments of the previous night.

In order to keep the passengers amused, I use the coach’s loudspeaker system – or megaphone, as Penny persists in calling it – to read the passengers place names and other items of interest. As I have already intimated in Lady Courier, the coach is not of the most modern variety and has been prone to breakdown on the way to the English coast. I do hope that the heady excitement of touching sixty miles an hour on the motorway and trying to keep in touch with the surging stream of Mercedes and BMWs that pour past will not be too much for it.

We reach Germany by lunchtime and take our meal just outside Aachen. I must say that the occasion is slightly spoiled for me by Penny telling me that she is ‘Aachen’ all over and especially in a couple of places that I never thought to hear mentioned by a lady’s lips. I am afraid that Penny does not live up to her breeding sometimes. I may only come from Chingford but I flatter myself that I have a far keener sense of the ‘niceties’ than she does.

Another problem connected with lunch concerns the meal itself. Most of the passengers have been expecting to pull up at a wayside hostelry and enjoy a repast of the ‘meat and two veg’ variety. This thought was possibly introduced into their minds by the Climax brochure which, I remember, sounded the virtues of ‘lip-smacking local delicacies washed down by the wine of the country’. For this reason, the appearance of a cross-section of very spicy liverwurst accompanied by two packets of Germütletoasties and half a dozen bottles of Seven-Up is greeted with something less than enthusiasm. The fact that the Seven-Up was bottled at Dusseldorf does little to reassure our customers. I sympathise with them but Penny and I are doing no more than carry out Reggy Parkinson’s instructions. ‘Ever mindful of the need to exert stringent economies in order to ensure that Climax Tours remains in an in profit situation’ – his own words – he has decreed that the midday meal be kept to snack proportions and served ‘on the move’, preferably against a backdrop of such great natural beauty that it will take the customers’ minds off the less-than-substantial fare they are receiving – as opposed to paying. Personally, I do not consider that the railway marshalling yards outside Aachen are at all beautiful but the decision to stop is forced upon us by those desperate to answer a call of nature of the most basic and – from what I can see through the windows of the coach – unaesthetic kind.

‘Comfort stops’, as they are known, are a problem and I do feel that the situation would be made much easier if a certain male element amongst the passengers did not load half a dozen crates of beer on to the coach every morning. It would probably also cut down on the singing which seems to offend some members of the party.

‘Eee! That’s a weight off my “mind your father”’ says Mr Arkright playfully, as he resumes his seat and feels in the crate for another bottle.

‘Er – yes,’ I say. ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got time to see Cologne Cathedral, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, most decidedly.’ Mr Arkright belches noisily.

‘Manners, Don!’ says his wife, Janine.

I turn away and look out of the window to where Sid Betts is organising a roadside fry-up. Mr Betts is not in my good books at the moment. It was very naughty of him to light a fire in his hotel room – there was no fireplace for one thing. If he wanted to heat up a tin of baked beans he should not have used the foot bath as a brazier. Incidentally, Penny tells me that the floor level font is not a foot bath. It is a bidet – pronounced B-Day as in D-Day – and used for washing very intimate parts of your body in a squatting position. I find the whole idea rather disgusting and highly embarrassing. I mean, the very idea of cold-bloodedly and single-mindedly setting out to wash yourselves there! It’s unhealthy, isn’t it? Much better to give your parts a casual slosh about when you are washing something else – sort of, almost as if you did not know they were there. To do anything else suggests that you actually expect, or even intend, to do naughty things with them. You see these bidets all over the Continent and it just shows that the inhabitants think of nothing apart from you know what.

It would not have been so bad if the bidet in Mr Betts’s room had not cracked under the heat. He tried to put the fire out by turning on the taps and then the whole thing fell apart. Inferior foreign workmanship, you see. There was a terrible flood but fortunately Mrs Lapes was sleeping in the room underneath, so we were able to keep it in the family, so to speak. I believe that the Second Mate of the SS Foreskeen was very grateful for the commotion because it allowed him to escape from Mrs Lapes’s over-zealous attentions. She is certainly revealing a different side to her nature since tasting foreign climes.

One couple who have reverted to their old selves are our newlyweds, Tyrone and Deirdre Thoroughgood. They had a little tiff on the cattle boat coming over but have now made the back seat of the coach their own again – frankly I don’t think that anyone else would want the back seat now. I do wish they would not behave like that. Especially when people are trying to eat their Germütletoasties.

‘Hi there, gorgeous. What happened to you last night?’ The husky voice trying over-hard to be sexy belongs to the odious Jimmy Wilson. I wonder whether it would put him off if I told him that I had sexual relations with fifteen men, give or take half a dozen, and decide that it probably wouldn’t. Quite the reverse in fact. ‘I looked for you everywhere. Out on the tiles, were you?’

‘Not exactly,’ I say, wishing that I smoked so that I could apply the end of a cigarette to the hand that is surreptitiously stroking my bottom. ‘I had an early night.’

‘Good idea.’ Wilson tries to tuck his fingers underneath my skirt and I dig my nails into the back of his wrist. ‘That means that we can make a little whoopee tonight. Let’s get sloshed at the Schloss.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ I say. ‘Did you think of that all by yourself?’

Wilson is obviously a slouch when it comes to perceiving sarcasm. ‘Do you think so?’ he says. ‘People used to say I was very funny at school.’

‘They were right,’ I say. ‘Do you think you could move your right hand? I think it might go to sleep if I hit you over the head with my bag.’

‘What do you mean?’ says Wilson. ‘Are you trying to get a rise out of me? We had a date last night, remember? You made me a promise.’

‘That promise isn’t worth a plugged pickle!’ I say. ‘You were blackmailing me. I only played with your balls – I mean, I only played ball with you because I wanted to spare my parents pain and distress. Anybody who would take advantage of an innocent girl in that situation doesn’t deserve to be allowed to take advantage of her again. Now, if you’ll excuse me –’ I have just seen Hammerchick and Mrs Lapes disappearing behind a pile of coal. I remember them saying that they were going to look for Edelweiss. This is ridiculous! I cannot think of a worse combination than Jaroslov Hammerchick and Mrs Lapes in her present mood. Nations may crumble if I don’t get there in time.

I detach myself from Jimmy Wilson – by hand – and clamber over the low fence. There is no immediate sign of our driver and Mrs Lapes but I soon hear the familiar sound of his guttural utterances. ‘… So I get the Focker in my sights and Boom! Boom! Boom!’ Oh dear, there he goes, boring everybody to death with his experiences as a thirteen-year-old boy in the Polish Air Force – or Polish Air Violence as I believe they were known.

‘Oh,’ says Mrs Lapes – then ‘Oh!’ A thin trickle of coal dust begins to run down one of the stacks and I know that I have found my man.

‘Ah hem,’ I say. ‘I think we’d better get back on the job, Jaroslov. May I remind you that this stop is supposed to be for food and drink?’

‘This is foodski and drinkski for me,’ says the licentious Latvian, sulkily.

Mrs Lapes pulls down her skirt and glares at me with hate in her eyes. ‘Fancy him yourself, do you?’ she says accusingly.

I pretend I do not hear her ridiculous remark and make my way back to the coach. Readers of Lady Courier will not need to be reminded of the exceptionally distressing incident at a garage in Neasden which makes a mockery of her jibe. As I climb into the coach I feel glad that I left her to pick the pieces of coke out of her own knickers.

Morning gives way to afternoon as is its wont and our coach points its steaming nose southwards. It is noticeable that the terrain is getting hillier and the passengers begin to respond with excitement to the sight of the occasional castle guarding some seemingly remote hilltop. The only depressing feature is the weather. As we leave the autobahn, the sky darkens and it seems likely that we are in for a storm.

‘Gosh! It is spooky, isn’t it?’ says Penny as we stare out of the window. ‘Rather impressive though. I think the gloom suits this place. How much further to Bad-schweinfart?’

‘Over there on hillski.’ We follow Hammerchick’s stubby black finger and see an intimidating structure dominating the summit of a steep escarpment. The walls are high and drawn in like the waist of a dress and there is a confusing jumble of towers and spires.

‘Blimey!’ says Sid Betts. ‘Colditz!’

‘It is a bit grim, isn’t it?’ echoes Penny. ‘What are those birds circling over the battlements?’

‘They must be eagles,’ I say. It is funny but, though I don’t like to say anything, they look rather like giant bats to me. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I say, turning to the passengers. I sense that some of the weaker spirits may share my forebodings and need reassurance.

‘Are we staying there?’ says Janine Arkwright, sounding less than one hundred per cent enthusiastic. ‘It looks very old-fashioned.’

‘That’s part of its charm, isn’t it?’ says Penny. ‘Like that old gibbet by the roadside.’

‘Yes, but did you see?’ says a worried Mrs Arkwright. ‘There was a skeleton hanging from it.’

‘I don’t expect that it’s a real one,’ soothes Penny. ‘It’s probably there to attract tourists.’

Something in Janine Arkright’s eyes suggests to me that the German Tourist Board may be failing in its objective and I draw Penny to one side. ‘Are you sure this is the place?’ I ask. ‘It doesn’t seem like a hotel to me.’

‘We’re a bit far away to be certain,’ says Penny. ‘But I know what you mean. Let’s go and have a look anyway. We’ll soon know when we ask.’

‘It doesn’t seem likely that there are two castles, does it?’ I say. I know I am sounding worried but I have just seen a signpost to ‘Schloss Badschweinfart’ made from what looks like the headboard of a coffin. I know that the German sense of humour is supposed to be a trifle heavy-handed but this seems to be going too far.

The road zig-zags up the side of the cliff and a sinister wind rattles the windows of the coach. I look down and see a silver ribbon of water winding hundreds of feet below. That must be the Rhine. And to think that I thought this place was romantic when I first saw a photograph of it. Whoever said that the camera cannot lie must be a terrible fibber. I have seen photographs of holiday camps that looked more attractive.

‘The view’s nice, isn’t it?’ I say, remembering Reggy’s instructions to keep cheerful at all times.

‘Not if you’re facing the castle,’ says tactless Penny – honestly, I could give her wrist a stinging slap sometimes.

We have pulled up outside two huge wooden doors studded with nails and Penny and I look at each other. ‘Are you going to ask?’ I say.

‘We’ll do it together,’ says Penny.

I am loath to set foot outside the coach and the cold feeling that creeps into my bones is not caused only by the tetchy wind that rattles the rusty chain hanging beside the heavy doors. Penny gives the chain a tug and after what seems like several seconds’ silence we hear a bell ringing in a distant part of the castle.

‘This must be the wrong place,’ says Penny.

‘Just what I was thinking,’ I say. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

We are locking shoulders in the doorway of the coach when there is the sound of bolts being slid back and a key turning in a lock. Ruefully, we turn round and find ourselves face to face with the man who has just opened one of the doors. He has a long, lean face of an unhealthy parchment hue and is wearing a scruffy black jacket with a wing collar. A large yellow frog hops over one of his feet and disappears round the side of the castle.

‘Hello,’ I say brightly. ‘We’re from Climax. Are you expecting us?’

The man gazes wistfully after the frog and then turns his puzzled eyes on us. ‘Climax?’ he says in a thick German accent. ‘Iz zat Koblenz near?’

A great feeling of relief surges over me. ‘No,’ I say. ‘There’s obviously been some mistake. Sorry to have –’

‘Wait!’ The man sticks his head round the door like a tortoise peering out of its shell. ‘Ah! You from England come, nein? I have letter in my laboratory. Herr Spanzwick has made arrangements.’

‘Spanswick?’ I say. ‘I don’t know anybody called –’

Penny plucks at my sleeve. ‘It’s one of Malcolm’s aliases,’ she whispers. ‘He uses it for the Transylvanian Medical Research Company.’

‘Malcolm?’ I say. ‘You mean Reggy?’ I do wish that our boss would cut down on the number of names he uses. It gets terribly confusing sometimes. And all these businesses he seems to be involved in. I thought there was only Climax Tours when I first met him.

‘You had better in come,’ says the man, rubbing his hands together. ‘You are much needed – I mean, velcomen. My name iz Professor Stein – Frederick N Stein – at ze service of medical science.’ He gives an eerie cackling laugh.

‘Fred N Stein,’ says Penny thoughtfully. ‘It rings a bell, doesn’t it?’

Professor Stein leans forward confidentially. ‘Are any members of ze party zick?’ His eyes light up and I experience a feeling of fear as I wonder why he has asked such a strange question.