Confessions from a Holiday Camp

by Timothy Lea

  “That’s it, clear the floor and let’s have some action. Oh! Oh! Oh!!!” I lose sight of her for a moment because Nat pulls me off the sofa and starts – well, I don’t really like to say what she starts doing.

  “Love thy neighbours!!”

  The noise is incredible and the kind of smell that escapes through a grating outside a Turkish bath wells up out of the darkness.

  “Suck for peace.”

  Nan chucks her microphone into the audience and joins Nat on top of me. I suppose if I am honest with myself, in my heart of hearts I had always wanted to make love to two birds on the stage of a theatre full of people with Ike and Tina Turner singing River Deep, Mountain High in the background.

  With my face allowed a moment’s liberty I gaze into the audience. Only one seat in the place seems to remain upright and occupied. On it sits Sir Giles Slat. There is a thoughtful expression on his face.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Beautiful,” murmurs Sir Giles.

  “Beautiful,” echoes Sid.

  “I can’t remember when I was last so moved by a spontaneous outbreak of mass emotion.”

  “When England beat Germany in the World Cup?” offers Sid.

  Sir Giles frowns. “I was thinking of something rather deeper than that. To me, what we saw that night had an almost mystical, religious significance. It was a celebration of being alive. I believe that many Scandinavian countries observe a similar festival on Midsummer Night. But what was of course remarkable about this happening was that it was not a ritual in the sense of an event given historical credence by dint of annual repetition.” He pauses so that Sid can nod vigorously.

  “It was quintessentially the manifestation of an innate, atavastic but primarily unexploited yearning.”

  Well, I wouldn’t like to argue with him, would you? Sid certainly wouldn’t.

  “Yeah,” he says, “and it backs up that idea I—I mean – we – had, doesn’t it?

  It is two days after the Camp Concert and I am back at Funfrall, London, sitting in Sir Giles’ office. After the concert a number of things happened fast, one of them being that I was off the premises before you can say “tear gas”. And Francis didn’t smile once as he handed me back my stamp collection. I remember him standing there in his underpants with his sock suspenders round his neck and his shirt hanging in shreds. Poor devil. God knows what he had been through – or how many. Dad’s expression wasn’t much of an improvement when he found me standing on the doorstep. “Look, mum,” he calls out. “It’s the return of the proditall son.” Knowing Dad, he must have been working on that one for weeks. I only get them to take me in on condition that I buy a season ticket to the labour exchange and the atmosphere is, as they say, fraught.

  The call to present myself at Funfrall House does nothing to raise my spirits. Sidney presumably wants to tear me limb from limb in the seclusion of his own office or perhaps there has been an official complaint laid against me – and I don’t mean a dose of the clap caught from the probation officer’s loo.

  But when I get to the upright tray of ice cubes which pretends to be Funfrall House, Sidney is tight-lipped but cool, and says that Sir Giles wants to talk to me. Immediately I get another taste of the terrors. Could he possibly imagine that I was responsible for the behaviour of his nieces? Stranger things have happened. I knew a fellow once who used to punch blokes rotten every time they looked at his old lady while she used to hang it out for every lad in the neighbourhood. He must have known, but he just couldn’t face up to it. But, as I soon find out, it does seem as if Sir Giles has got other things on his mind. Quite what they are it is difficult, for me at least, to understand. Nevertheless, I continue to cock my lugholes attentively.

  “Yes, Noggett,” goes on Sir Giles. “One aspect of our job is to interpret trends. To find out what people are wanting and to give it to them. It would be impossible for anybody attending that—that—”

  “Rave-up?”

  “Again, not quite the words I would have chosen, Noggett – that spontaneous outpouring of communal affection, not to have formed the impression that it was answering a deep and heartfelt need. I think with you, that the time has come for Funfrall to take another momentous step forward.”

  He looks me straight between the eyes and I swallow hard and peer up at the ceiling. Very nice it is too.

  “Let me spell it out for the sake of our young friend here,” continues Sir Giles. “The progenitor of our simplistic bacchanalia.” I am not certain I like that, but it doesn’t matter, S.G. is already grinding on. “Holiday Camps were developed to cater for a simple basic need: that of providing an affordable escape from the dark satanic mills for those who had not previously envisaged a bucket and spade as other than implements required to wrest combustibles from an open cast mine. With increasing affluence and greater freedom of movement between the classes, so the seaside holiday became the rule rather than the exception and horizons extended even beyond the three mile limit which borders these shores.”

  I try and match Sidney’s expression of dogged interest.

  “What so far we seem to have ignored, in this country at least, is the changing moral climate. The expression of love and affection between adult human beings is no longer solely the prerogative of those united by bonds of marriage. Whilst not wishing to undermine the bedrock – I use the word advisedly – upon which such strong family-orientated enterprises as Melody Bay were built, we believe that there exists the opportunity to create a new kind of pleasure resort for the emancipated seventies.”

  “They’re getting a bit old, aren’t they?” I interject.

  “I referred,” grits Sir Giles, “to the nineteen-seventies. We envisage a holiday village where responsible adults can celebrate the new found sexual freedom of the age in which we live, without blanching before the cold cynosure of antedeluvian morals.”

  “A sort of legalised knocking shop,” says Sidney helpfully.

  “Please let me finish, Noggett,” says Sir Giles wearily.

  “I think I’ve got the idea,” I pant earnestly. “You think that with everybody going on coach tours of the Balkans, Holiday Camps are on the way out. Therefore you want to introduce somewhere like those frog places where they all live in each other’s mud huts and run around in grass skirts with strings of cocoa beans round their necks.” A long silence follows my remarks.

  “I believe you are related to Mr. Noggett?” says Sir G. eventually.

  “That’s right. He’s my brother-in-law.”

  Sir G. nods resignedly. “I would have suspected that might be the case.”

  I smile my “throw a stick in the pond and I’ll bring it back and lay it at your feet” smile but it takes a few moments before Sir G. gets into his stride again.

  “We have already purchased a site and the events of the other night were sufficient to persuade me that the time is now ripe to pursue the enterprise.”

  “It’s going to be a bit parky frisking about like that in our climate, isn’t it?” I ask.

  “The property comprises a small island off the north-east coast of Spain. The Costa Brava. Perhaps you have heard of it?”

  Heard of it! Some of my best friends have got food poisoning there. All this is very interesting but why are they telling me?

  “I expect you are wondering why we are telling you all this?” observes Sir G. I shrug my shoulders; Tonto, he let the Lone Ranger do all the talking.

  “I was impressed by the part you played in the proceedings of the other night. There was about you a natural unaffected joyfulness that seemed to place you apart from the more conventional Holiday Host which is our norm.”

  I rack my brains, but for the life of me I cannot remember anybody called Norm. I must have been pissed.

  “I have talked to Mr. Noggett who, of course, knows you far better than I, and he confirms my impression that you would be an ideal representative for us on ‘Isla de Amor’.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Love Island
, Funfrall’s new Mediterranean experience for the mature holidaymaker,” chirps in Sidney. “Are you interested?”

  Blimey! I think to myself. What a carve up!

  Two weeks later I have been fitted out in my new lightweight blazer and assorted togs and am entering the embarkation lounge at Gatwick like it is a bridal suite. I still cannot believe my luck. Sun, travel, and the thumbs up to give Percy his head. What more could a red-blooded young Englishman want?

  “Well, if it isn’t Melody Bay’s answer to the death of vaudeville.” I turn round and there is Ted clapping me on the shoulder. “Come to see me off, have you?”

  “I’ll see you off any day,” I say enthusiastically. I suppose I should have reckoned that Ted might show up. Sidney had told me that a selection of Hosts were being recruited from Funfrall Camps throughout the country, and Ted would be on anyone’s shortlist if they were forming the export division of Rentapoke.

  “Any birds on this jaunt?” I ask casually. “Oh, no!” The latter exclamation is sparked off by seeing Nat and Nan bearing down on us clad in white see-through muslin which a great many people are seeing through.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” I ask bitterly.

  “Haven’t you heard?” demands Ted. “They’re on the payroll.”

  “They’re what!!!”

  “They are now employed as Fiesta Bunnies. They are going to help make things go. That’s what your friend Mr. Noggett said.”

  “He’s not a friend. He’s my perishing brother-in-law!”

  “Hi there, Captain Thrust,” sings out Nan. “How about a quick injection against air-sickness?”

  I make a move to step behind Ted but he is already taking shelter behind me.

  “No skulking, stud farm,” hollers Nat who has an even louder voice than Nan. “Look, everybody, it’s Teddy and Tim, the toast of the quim!”

  “Knock it off, girls,” I hiss.

  “I thought you’d never ask. Where? Here, or against the passport counter?” What can you do with them? A fiver for the best answer sent to me on the back of a ten quid note.

  “Fiesta Bunnies’. Whoever thought of that bloody silly name?” I say, eager to change the subject.

  “The same chap who thought of calling you two Sun Senors. It has the smack of Uncle’s eminent greasie, that Noggett man.”

  She’s right too. Sun Senors is just about Sidney’s mark.

  “There’s no sign of either of them is there?” I mumble.

  “No, they’re putting down a revolution in Littlehampton or re-organising the white slave trade,” says Nat. “We’ll have to get this place jumping all by our little selves.”

  The very thought of it makes me lock myself in the gents until our flight is called. We have two weeks to make sure that everything is tickety boo on Love Island before the first swingers arrive. With the terrible twins about, you could spend all that time picking hairpins out of your codpiece and never get around to checking a single bath plug. That is, if we ever get to the place.

  “B.E.A. wish to announce the departure of flight 1147 to Gerona …”

  I cross myself a couple of times and sneak out to join the others. I have never flown before but I know I am going to be terrified. I had intended to get pissed to the point of insensibility but Nan and Nat have put the kibosh on that.

  Fortunately there is something to take my mind off the rigours to come. She is about five foot eight and wearing a uniform about two sizes too small for her so that the seam down the middle of her arse grins at you like sharks’ teeth. Her makeup looks as if it has been put on by a Chinese miniaturist and then lacquered and the expression of contempt with which she greets my gaze makes me feel like something that has crawled out from under one of her gardening shoes. As is my wont, in such circumstances, I immediately fall in love with her. Upper class disdain has always turned me on.

  “This we-a, plis,” she says in a voice that sounds like Christmas Eve in Harrods. “Dee-ont fair-get your board-ink carts.” Oh, the sheer ecstasy of it. Listening to her I can understand why Mum keeps a photo of Winston Churchill in the kasi. Some are born great, and others should have been. I trip through the glass doors and she actually smiles at me. It is not so much a smile, more a flutter of the lip endings but it is all mine. Fear is temporarily abandoned and I skip down the long corridor following the image of my B.E.A.uty Queen until the boarding card is drawn gently from my unthinking fingers and I venture out into the cool evening air.

  Then I become frightened. The minute I see the studded patchwork quilt of metal I wonder how many of those panels have had to be replaced. What are all those men in white overalls standing about for? They look like surgeons. Is the plane dying? Up the steps and inside and I think it is the final of the all Ireland Hurling Championships. In fact it is only everybody taking their coats off in a very limited amount of space and punching each other in the face at the same time.

  “On the reeack, plis,” says my dream girl as I struggle to follow suit. “Nee-o, hee-and baggage on the flea-or.”

  I manage to wedge my knees against the seat in front which is a bad move because the occupant presses the release button and nearly forces them through my chest. By the cringe, but they don’t lash out with the space in these things. I feel like I have been hung up in Shirley Bassey’s wardrobe.

  I am sitting on the end of the row because that way I am nearer the exit doors and I have a quick flit through the reading matter provided. That doesn’t cheer me up much either. It is full of diagrams about how to protect your head when the plane crashes or what you have to do to inflate your life jacket. There is also a strong paper bag which I don’t reckon is there to hold your bullseyes. Miss Love at First Flight does not improve matters by popping up and explaining how to use the oxygen mask in “the unlikely event” of the cabin becoming depressurised. They don’t have to tell me about that. I saw the movie: Kersplat! – and the whole bloody lot of us sucked out through a hole in the fuselage. All this and we haven’t even taxied to the take-off point.

  I look out of the window to see if the engines are on fire yet and turn my attention to my fellow passengers. Nan and Nat are five rows behind and sitting on either side of a big rugged bloke with a face like canned sunshine. He is looking pleased with himself as if he reckons he is no end of a fellow for having secured the attention of two such knock-out birds. Even in my agony I can summon up a smile. Ted is beside me, and most of the other passengers are “Fiesta Bunny” or “Sun Senor” fodder. “Men and women of the age we live in” as Sir Giles put it. I suspect that he could make two weeks in a concentration camp sound like it was good for waking up your liver.

  “Fee-arson your sate belts,” says my sky angel. “Nee-o smoking until the see-ine stops flea-ashing.”

  She flops down into an empty seat at the front of the plane and crosses her legs with a crackle of nylon that gets my old man airborne comfortably before the rest of the plane. I sit there looking at my white knuckles and listening to the engines’ roar getting louder and louder until the whole plane is shuddering like my Aunt’s collie when it sees the poodle from number 47.

  “Made your will?” says Ted with that wry, gritty sense of humour that so characterises the British at moments of stress or adversity.

  “Fuck off,” I tell him.

  As if taking offence the plane suddenly leaps forward and begins to career down the runway. It soon becomes obvious to me that the pilot is gambling on picking up enough speed to get us airborne before we hit the barrier fence. On and on we go and I am pressing my nails through the palms of my hands and beginning to wonder whether we are supposed to motor the first ten miles when suddenly we are airborne. I can tell that because my stomach feels as if it is floating in formaldehyde and the ground starts disappearing at an angle of 45 degrees. This might be alright but I then hear unmistakeable sounds of the plane breaking up. A groaning, rumbling noise from directly beneath my feet. I knew this would happen. Most of them crash on takeoff.

&nbs
p; “It’s the wheels,” says Ted who is watching my face.

  “They’ve fallen off?”

  “No, you berk, that’s the undercarriage being retracted.”

  “Oh.”

  Well that is alright, but the next thing I know we are in the middle of a great bank of cloud, where there is obviously a very good chance of bashing into another plane; and then the engines start to fail. I detect the change in tone immediately and the loss of power makes me feel that we must start plummeting towards the earth any second. “Just settling down to our cruising speed,” soothes Ted who is beginning to get on my nerves with all his well-informed chat. “They always cut back a bit after take-off.” He must be right because the “no smoking” sign goes off and the air hostess gets up and goes into the pilot’s cabin. I stop listening to every note of the engine and begin to relax. But not for long. When I look up, my genteel beauty is pushing an iron lung down the plane. I might have guessed. The pilot has had a heart attack. Oh well, it couldn’t last for ever.

  “Good,” says Ted. “I feel a bit peckish.” To my surprise the air hostess then opens a door in the side of the iron lung and starts dishing out trays of grub.

  “Don’t eat the knives and forks,” says Ted. I soon find out what he means. Everything is plastic, including the food. If you were both hungry and short sighted you could crunch up the whole lot.

  “Tia coffee?” say the apple of my thigh, dangling her pots in front of me.

  “Coffee,” I say, showing her what a smooth cosmopolitan man of the world I am. If she is impressed she goes to great pains to conceal it.

  “I’d like a large brandy, please,” says Ted.

  “Sartanly, Sar. I’ll sarve you as soon as I khan.”

  I wish I had thought of that. Very impressive. Ted obviously knows the form.

  “Same for me, please,” I chip in. I mean, it will help to soothe my nerves, won’t it?

  In the course of the next hour quite a lot of nerve tonic goes down and I am beginning to feel very soothed indeed. Angela, as I discover she is called, zooms up and down like the weight on a try your strength machine and I am becoming hornier than a herd of Aberdeen Angus. You would think that after my last little encounter with the demon drink I would be on my mettle, but not a bit of it. Pausing only to down my fifth brandy and consider that the clouds outside the window look like downy pillows on a large and crumpled bed I stand up, bounce back, release my safety belt and pad down the aisle, Angela-bound. In such situations, I never know what I am going to say, or do. I just hope that something will turn up and that it won’t only be the end of my nose.