Читать книгу The Confessions Collection - Rosie Dixon, Timothy Lea - Страница 57

‘Old what?!’ says Sid.

‘Old Rottingfestians,’ I say.

‘Who the hell are they?’

‘They’re a rugby club. Playing a couple of pre-season games in the area. Two teams and a spattering of wives, girlfriends and supporters. It can’t be bad can it?’

‘It can’t be much worse.’

It is two weeks after the Pendulum Society have wrung out their Y-fronts and gone home and the Cromby is now totally isolated from its adjoining buildings. On one side is a flat expanse of red mud with a few bricks sticking out of it and on the other the Irish problem are filling the air with dust and cursing. Bookings have dropped off at an alarming rate and some couples have only entered the hotel in order to ask for their deposits back. Never the most elegant of heaps, the Cromby now looks like the foreman’s hut on a building site.

‘At least they won’t complain about the noise, I suppose,’ sighs Sid. This has been one of our main problems and ‘The Friends of Silence’ checked out before breakfast on the first morning. Even Miss Primstone has taken to wearing ear plugs.

Poor Sid’s enthusiasm has been fading fast and I know that only his pride is preventing him from selling out to Rigby. That little rat-substitute is frequently seen standing by his Rolls-Royce and supervising the demolition with an evil smile puckering the corners of his cakehole.

Mum–Batwoman, as we now call her–and Dad have long since returned to The Smoke and Rosie–thank God–has expressed herself as unwilling to risk Jason’s tender lugholes until the noise of demolition has ceased.

‘The little perisher hardly sleeps at the best of times,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back when everything has settled down.’

At this rate everything is going to settle like a ship sliding down in fifty fathoms of briny.

Elsewhere in the hotel things do not change much. Miss Ruperts spends most of her time in her room getting, or rather keeping, pissed, and Mrs Caitley is now conducting a bitter vendetta with Senor Luigi, the latest head waiter. June, Audrey and Carmen roam the corridors, hoping to find Sacha Distel without his running shoes, and Sidney and Sandra play their own intimate version of mixed singles once a week. They have no trouble making ends meet but Dennis has to fiddle twice as hard in order to keep himself in fag money.

It is with the hotel in this, not untypically, fair-to-muddling situation that two important visitors arrive independently. The Old Rottingfestians Rugby Union Football Club, and Doctor Walter Carboy.

The former straggle up one Friday afternoon in a variety of fly-spattered MGs and scruffy 1100s. Those emerging from sports cars wear loud check hacking jackets and are usually accompanied by small blondes with brooches on the front of their jumpers. The 1100s disgorge a slightly older and shabbier article with leather elbow patches on their crumpled houndstooth and unlit pipes sagging over double chins. Their women have an air of experienced resignation like cows approaching the milking shed. You feel that they have been on tour before.

One feature that characterises all the men is an air of undefeated cheerfulness that flows like something out of a Battle of Britain epic.

‘How’s it going, Tinker?’

‘Dickers, old chap. Fantastic. How’s Daphers?’

‘Not so bad. Turned a bit green when I did a ton in Lewes High Street.’

‘Cool bastard! How did the peelers react to that?’

‘No likey. I told them my grandmother was on the point of snuffing it but they wouldn’t believe me. Good God! Look who’s here. Tortor. What a marvellous surprise!’ The bird smiles slowly and extends a cheek in order to protect her mouth. Tinker and Dickers descend on it hungrily and make sure that their hands do not feel left out of things. They grope clumsily as if there is more pleasure in being seen to grope rather than the actual groping.

One of the wives–this one must be a wife–looks very cute in her long sleeveless leather jacket, and I catch her eye as she turns away wearily from the hearty reunions going on around her. She raises a finger and I move to her side.

‘Have you got a programme of what’s on in the town?’ she says.

‘Yes, I expect so. It’s probably a bit out of date, though. You’d be better off with the local paper. I’ll see if I can find you one.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ She has a nice smile. ‘If you find one can you stick it in my pigeon hole? Number forty-two.’ A quick glance at her tidy little body and full lips confirms the coarse thought that I would not be at all averse to sticking it in her pigeon hole.

‘Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘Going to make a real weekend of it, are you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you’ll be taking in some of the local entertainment as well as the rugby, will you?’

‘What do you mean “as well as”?’ she says. ‘Have you ever seen this lot on tour before? Unless you can drink your own weight in beer every evening you might as well buy a season ticket to the local chamber concerts, if you’re lucky enough to find any. I don’t expect to see Adrian again until Tuesday morning.’

I begin to see what she means when by six o’clock they have drunk Dennis out of beer. It is the only thing they are interested in. As if there is some prize being offered they stand shoulder to shoulder pouring the stuff down their throats and threatening each other with physical violence in order to pay for the next round. With Dennis rushing around trying to find some more beer, they switch to shorts and so by supper time are in a decidedly jovial mood. It must be the first time in the history of the Cromby that forty-two male guests have marched into the dining room whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’.

Some of the ladies, including my friend in forty-two, obviously find it less than amusing, but their menfolk sit down joyfully and immediately start pelting each other with bridge rolls and unscrew the top of the pepper pot so that their mates will pour the whole lot into their soup. Some joker has brought a farting cushion and this provides an endless source of amusement, especially when Sid comes out to try and restore some order. Every word he says is greeted by a loud raspberry. Senor Luigi tries to make headway with the bowing and scraping but when everybody jumps out of his chair and rests his chin on his chest every time he says anything, he eventually realises that they are taking the piss.

Only Mrs Caitley knows how to handle the bastards. She storms out of the kitchen and tells them that she will stop serving any more food if they don’t belt up. They give her a loud cheer, take a good butcher’s at the expression on her mush, and belt up.

After supper it is back to the bar and when I go to bed most of them are still at it. One or two of the younger birds stay with them but most of the wives watch telly, read a book or knit. I go into the telly lounge and ask if they would like anything.

‘Yes, a husband,’ says one of them and the others laugh.

‘Don’t hang around here too long,’ says another cute little number who deserves better things, i.e. me. ‘Frustration might get the better of us.’

I leave them, thinking that the wrong type of bloke could easily be tempted to do himself a bit of good in the circumstances and retire to my room. By chance, Carmen drops by to see if I have any brown boot polish and in the ensuing search for a tin all thoughts of other ladies in the hotel are driven rhythmically from my mind.

The next morning I wake up to find that one of the rooms has been burned out, due to a drunken Rottingfestrian falling asleep with a burning cigarette in his mitt. Numerous jokers have thrown up all over the hotel, and a running battle with fire buckets and soda syphons has kept most of the non-rugby-playing guests awake half the night. There is an angry queue forming outside Sidney’s office and their pointed chatter is loud enough to be heard above the noise of the Rottingfestrians pouring cornflakes over each other in the dining room.

It is while explaining to the narked guests that Sidney will be along in a minute that I notice one of the birds who was in the TV lounge, coming down to breakfast. She is a bit older than the others and wearing a green silk trouser suit that does not have enough spare room in it to store a postage stamp. She looks a very cool lady and sweeps her eyes over me like they are the lashes on a pair of windscreen wipers brushing aside an insect. Five minutes later Sidney comes along and the rugby hearties start pouring out of breakfast.

‘OK chaps,’ trills one of them, ‘time for training.’ Thank God, I think, now for a little peace. But not a bit of it! They march straight across to the bar and demand pints all round. Dennis does not come on duty till eleven o’clock and I try to point out this fact.

‘Come off it!’ snarls one of them, bigger and uglier than the rest. ‘This is a hotel, isn’t it? The bar should be open all the time.’

‘I’d have thought you would have had enough last night,’ I say. Fatso does not like this.

‘It’s not your place to comment on my drinking habits,’ he yelps. ‘You do as you’re told and get this bar open. Otherwise I’ll report you to the BTA.’

‘You can report me to the RSPCA if you like but the bar doesn’t open till eleven.’

‘Damned cheek.’

‘Piss off.’

‘Grab him!’

Before I can lift a finger, or, more relevant to the situation, a boot, I am seized by half a dozen pairs of strong hands and pressed back against the wall.

‘What shall we do with him?’

‘Chuck him in the briny.’

‘No, I’ve got a better idea.’

Five minutes later Sidney comes into the bar in answer to my shouts and looks around him inquiringly.

‘I’m up here, Sid.’

‘Blimey!!’ Sid has probably never seen me sitting astride a bison’s head fifteen feet from the ground, and the hint of surprise in his voice is understandable.

‘How long have you been up there?’

‘Ever since they put me up here. Sid, you’re going to have to get rid of them, you know.’

‘I can’t afford to, Timmo.’

‘And Sid.’

‘Yes, Timmo.’

‘Get us a ladder before you piss off.’

‘Oh, sorry. OK. Yeah. I’ll do that.’ Sid seems to be in a daze as he wanders out of the room. My own feeling is of a deeper and more primitive nature. I am going to get even with those bastards if it is the last thing I do. You probably remember the movie. I was staked out on an anthill at the time and Yukon Pete and that sidewinding sidekick of his, the Mexican with the easy smile and the fast knife in the back pocket, had just lifted my stake in the Eldorado Gold Mine. That, after I had dug them both out of a roof-fall with my bare hands. Little did they know that three days later when I had gnawed through the buffalo hide thongs–‘Ahem,’ the bird in the green trouser suit has succeeded in attracting my attention. ‘What were you thinking about?’

‘Nothing,’ I gulp. ‘I was just thinking.’

‘It makes a refreshing change, even if it was about nothing. What are you doing this afternoon?’

‘I’m serving afternoon teas.’

‘I’d like you to serve me as well.’ The lady has not batted an eyelid–not that I would probably be able to tell if she had. I mean, do you know how to bat an eyelid?

‘Come again?’ I Mumble.

‘I hope so,’ she says briskly. ‘Come to my room at three. Two-four-six.’

‘Aren’t you going to the game?’

‘This is the game, darling.’

‘I mean the rugger match.’

‘Darling, we all go on tour for different reasons. For some people it’s rugby. Now me; I don’t like team games. I don’t like mildewed jock straps, butterscotch socks, stud mud in the bathroom basin, vomit on the door mat or courgettes that talk like cucumbers. Do you understand me?’

‘No.’

‘Two-four-six at three. We can discuss it further.’ She starts to willow away down the corridor as Fatso staggers in through the door with his arms full of one-gallon beer cans.

‘Where the hell did you put the car keys?’ he calls out to her. ‘I’ve had to walk half a mile with this lot.’

‘I expect it did you the world of good, darling,’ she beams. ‘Why don’t you try hopping upstairs on alternate feet? I’ll time you.’

‘Bitch.’

‘Thank you.’ She draws herself up and makes with the withering glance. ‘Have a good game this afternoon, and don’t forget to put your jock strap on the right way round. I’d hate your brain to get cold.’ She stalks off while I take in the glorious news that this must be Fatso’s old lady. Wild horses are going to be required to drag me away from room two-four-six.

Around lunch time the booze intake begins to drop a little and it becomes easier to spot those who are actually playing that afternoon. They can be seen sipping brandies rather than pints and ordering salads instead of meat and fourteen veg. Quite what difference this late change of diet is supposed to make I don’t know. It must all be in the mind or whatever these blokes have instead. Half a dozen of them start rugby-passing empty beer cans round the foyer and Sandra gets a nasty belt in the bristols before they can be persuaded to stop.

It is while I am suggesting to Fatso and his friends that mouth to mouth resuscitation is not necessary that Doctor Carboy arrives. He is small, dapper, toothbrush-moustached and sports an unlit cigarette in a long gold cigarette holder.

‘Step aside, gentlemen,’ he says, putting a bulging attaché case on the reception counter. ‘I am a professional man. What seems to be the trouble, my dear?’

Sandra tells him in no uncertain fashion and Dr C. shakes his head sadly. ‘Infectious high spirits cause serious complaints. Tell me, does this hurt?’

‘Hey, wait a minute!’

‘It’s alright, my dear. I’m a doctor. Doctor Walter Carboy. No, I don’t think there is anything there to worry about. Quite a lot to disturb, but nothing to worry about. In your case I’ll waive my fee.’ He waves his hand towards the door. ‘Goodbye fee. Now, let’s talk turkey–or Turkish–I don’t mind. I would like the best room you have available and a bottle of Glen Grant sent up immediately. It doesn’t matter about glasses, just send up the bottle. I joke, of course, madam,’ he smiles into Miss Primstone’s bemused face. ‘And if you can do anything to turn off the noise next door and buy yourself a hairnet, I would be grateful. I need peace. Perfect peace.’

‘What about the rest of your luggage, sir?’

‘It’s following me from Southampton. Some of the most faithful luggage in the world. I’ve been trying to shake it off for years. And now gentlemen, enough of this idle badinage. Good luck with the spheroid and even better luck with the haemorrhoids, as my old coach used to say. Last one to my room is a cissy.’ And so saying he leaps towards the stairs like Rudolf Nureyev.

The Rottingfestrians are left speechless and it takes a few seconds before Miss Primstone shoves the keys of the Plaza Suite into Martin’s hands and tells him to catch up with Carboy fast.

‘One of the old school,’ she says. ‘We have not seen his like for a long time.’ She is right there.

About two o’clock the hotel surrenders itself to blissful quiet as the Rottingfestrians pull out for their rugby match. They are full of booze and big talk about how they are going to crush the ‘swede-bashers’ as they call the local side. Most of the wives and sweethearts troop along dutifully but there is no sign of green-pants, and the winsome chick who asked me about local events trips down the stairs ten minutes after the others have pulled out.

‘Hurry up or you’ll miss the match,’ I tell her.

‘I’m not going. I thought I told you. I can’t stand the game. I’m taking a look at the lifeboat station and the fish market. You don’t fancy being my guide, do you?’

‘I’d love to,’ I say, meaning it, ‘but I’m on duty this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow?’

‘Maybe.’ She gives me a cute little wave and dances away down the steps. I think she quite fancies me, that one. It is diabolical isn’t it? They are either all over you or nowhere to be seen.

Somehow the minutes tick by to three o’clock and my mind is not on the outcome of the clash between Hoverton RUFC. and ORs.

Doctor Carboy rings down and asks if his baggage has arrived. We tell him ‘no’ and he delivers half a dozen wisecracks and a request for a tailor, a shirtmaker and another bottle of Glen Grant to be sent up to his room. This is unheard of and Sid practically purrs with delight when we tell him.

‘It’s happening,’ he squeaks. ‘At last it’s happening. Just when I had almost given up hope. I said if we stuck it out long enough the class customers would start showing up.’

‘No you didn’t, Sid. Only this morning you were saying we should sell out to–’

‘Quiet, you viper,’ hisses Sid. ‘Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.’

‘But I do understand, Sid. You seem to think that one swallower makes a summer.’

‘Belt up with those awful jokes and get the booze in. He’s paying for it, isn’t he?’

‘I hope so, Sid.’

Ten minutes later simple Sid has disappeared, rubbing his hands together at the thought of the riches to come, and I am rubbing my hands nervously outside room number two-four-six, also thinking hopefully of the riches to come. I stretch out my arm but the door opens before I make contact with it.

‘Come in.’

‘Blimey!’

Mrs Fatso is wearing a black nylon negligee which is downright negligent in its coverage of her erogenous zones (I got the word from one of the sex books I borrowed from Battersea Public Library. Everything you always wanted to know about sex but got smacked in the kisser for asking. Something like that, anyway).

‘Come in,’ she says, ‘it’s draughty with the door open.’

‘It would be draughty in the Sahara Desert with that thing on.’

‘You like it, do you?’

‘Fantastic.’

‘I found my husband polishing the studs of his rugger boots with it.’

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t know how he can bear to leave the room with you looking like that.’ It is no hardship chatting her up. I mean what I am saying.

‘He finds it easy to leave any room that doesn’t have a bar in it. In the last three years he has only taken me out once, and that was to a film show of the British Lions tour of New Zealand followed by two blue movies. Most of those present were more turned on by the rugby film.’

‘Incredible.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if it’s me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think I must be ugly or something. I look at myself in the mirror and ask myself why he prefers a rugby ball to me.’

‘You’re not ugly, you’re a very striking woman.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate that. You’re not just being kind?’

‘No, no. Compared to some of the birds I–’ I stop myself just in time. ‘Compared to most of the visitors we get, you’re a knockout. I can’t understand your husband. Has he always been like that?’

‘He’s always been mad keen on rugby. He started going off me about the time I stopped ironing his bootlaces.’

‘Why did he marry you in the first place?’

‘Because the captain of the first team was going out with me. Basil is very competitive. He said he liked looking at me when I bent down to pour the teas.’

‘Oh, he noticed you, then?’

‘Yes, he said that when I leaned over my breasts looked like two rugby balls dropping over the bar of my dress.’

‘Very romantic.’

‘It was, by his standards.’

‘What did you see in him?’

‘Oh, physical things, I suppose. He wasn’t so fat then. Somehow I thought that all those healthy young men charging about were where I ought to be. About as clever as a moth hanging round a naked flame. Talking of naked, will you take your clothes off please?’

‘Gladly.’

‘Thank you. Basil doesn’t believe in sex before a game and he’s too tired afterwards, and he plays on Saturday and Sunday and trains every night of the week, so you can see that our marriage isn’t exactly a hymn to fornication.’ My friend gives a little shiver and squeezes my arm passionately. I can see that her problem is one I am well equipped to solve and continue to unbutton my shirt.

‘We rushed straight from the church to the Middlesex Sevens final at Twickenham. Basil described the selection of our wedding day as the biggest bog-up of his life. It’s not surprising I give the impression of being hard, is it?’

‘ “Hard” isn’t the word I would have used.’ I slip my hand inside her negligee and give one of her breasts an affectionate feel. Her whole body stiffens and she kisses me passionately on the mouth.

‘Relax,’ I say, when I come up for air, ‘you’re buckling my lips. Let’s do it again more gently.’ I kiss her softly and run my finger lightly over the soft swell of her tummy. Now down, and she shivers again as my fingers brush against her minge fringe. Somewhere, on some foreign field, Fatso is buckling down for a scrum. Panting, puffing, aching. Poor devil. My heart goes out to him. That is all I can spare at the moment.

‘O-o-o-h, that’s good,’ murmurs Mrs F. ‘You make me feel like a woman.’

‘You are a woman,’ I assure her. ‘We don’t have to organise a poll.’

‘Talking of poles–’ her cotton-picking fingers are trying to lead in a winner from my jockey briefs and my trousers have taken up their natural position around my ankles.

‘You don’t know how good this makes me feel.’ I am very happy for her. It is heartening to see her changing from the cool lady who deloused me with her eyes in the vestibule. She presses her body close to mine and starts nibbling my ear while her impatient fingers tug down my Marks and Spencers lingerie.

‘O-o-o-h.’

‘Hang on a moment.’ Super-optimist that I am, I have worn a pair of slip-on canvas shoes without socks so that the undressing bit can be effected tastefully and gracefully. These I ease off with the miniMum of effort and step nimbly out of my trews. I would be a wiz at the bare-foot grape-pressing lark.

The state of the parties is now, Lea naked, Mrs Fatso naked except for aforementioned sexy negligee. Like a master craftsman unwrapping a rare porcelain vase, I coax the black lace from her shoulders shedding a few delicate kisses along the length of her collar bone. I am contemplating a nibble-fest but Mrs F. has other ideas. She sinks towards the ground faster than a British space rocket and wriggles her naked legs like a frisky mare waiting for the ‘off’–or in her case, the ‘on’.

Some men might pause to hum the opening bars of Rule Britannia or comment on the rising price of butter, but not Timothy Lea. For a second, pregnant with a thousand anxieties and a million promises, I am poised at the entrance to her pleasure dome. Then, joyfully, inside it.

Oh, what fun we have in that drab room with the leaden sky outside. I catch a glimpse of sky sometimes. At the end of an hour I feel like a glove puppet that has been turned inside out so many times that its stitching has started to work loose.

We must have dozed off, because the next thing I recall is the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor. I glance at my watch and it is still far too early for Fatso to be back. Nevertheless, I am worried. The very fact that I am conscious of the noise makes me feel that my guardian angel (?) is trying to tell me something. Mrs F. reacts to me sitting up and it is just as well that she does. Suddenly, from right outside the door, we hear a gruff male voice.

‘Two-four-six did you say? Here we are.’ There is a knock on the door that coincides with the door knob turning.

I have to hand it to Mrs F. She is on her feet before you can say ‘drop ’em’ and gets to the door just as it starts opening.

‘Oh, I’m sorry madam. I’ve got your husband here. He had a bit of an accident playing rugby.’ The bloke has obviously caught a glimpse of Mrs F. in the altogether. He may hold back but hubby isn’t going to. Oh, my gawd!! I glance round the room desperately but there is only a chest of drawers with a cupboard built on top of it. Even the bed clears the ground by only a measly two inches. What a lousy way to build a hotel. Before I can chuck myself out of the window, Fatso blunders into the room and steps on me. He curses and continues on his way to the bed.

Strange behaviour, you might think, but you cannot see him. He is holding a large wad of cotton wool over one of his eyes and the other is closed in sympathy. He is crumpled, battered and bruised and the groaning noises he is making sound very genuine.

‘Dirty bastard put his fingers in my eye: Ur-r-rgh!’ He feels for the bed and collapses onto it face downwards.

I don’t wait to ask if I can make him a cup of Nescafe but grab my clothes and head for the door. Outside, a St John’s Ambulance man is standing dutifully with his hat in his hand. His face adopts what is best described as a surprised expression as I skip past him.

‘I’m the team mascot,’ I say comfortingly before I hare down the corridor.