Inflatable Hugh

by Terry Ravenscroft

  Pugh had first availed himself of Dr Featherstone’s services following the nervous breakdown he’d suffered on learning how much alimony the judge had awarded his first wife following their divorce, and had used him ever since. The psychiatrist had been particularly helpful at the time of the MPs expenses scandal.

  “Well it is rather odd, I must admit,” Featherstone said, after Pugh had filled him in with the details of Aneurin’s coffin requirements. “But I would tend to say it was the action of someone who is perhaps a trifle eccentric, even....”

  It was Pugh’s turn to almost choke on his food. “A trifle eccentric? Having yourself buried in a woman’s fanny?”

  “....even bizarre,” Featherstone continued, “rather than the behaviour of a man who is no longer in control of his senses. I’m pretty sure that expert opinion would concur.”

  Pugh glowered. “So you don’t think it’s on then?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He looked at his empty plate. “Are we having a sweet?”

  Featherstone did not get his sweet, and it was all Pugh could do to foot the bill for what the doctor had already eaten.

  The first idea Pugh had come up with, a quite obvious one to a man of Pugh’s inherent trickiness, was to have a fire. A good-old fashioned drop of arson was often the solution to a lot of problems. It had already been the answer to the problem of the thatched roof of a cottage he’d once had in the Cotswolds. Along with a serious dry rot problem the property would have cost almost as much to repair as it was worth. It had consequently gone up in smoke, thanks to a judiciously knocked over oil lamp that Pugh had blamed on the cat.

  However his hand mustn’t be seen to be on it if the inflatable rubber woman factory were to go up in flames. This wasn’t four hundred grand for a country cottage we were talking about here, this was millions. The stock of inflatable rubber women alone was worth thirty million at cost, according to Plimmer. For this sort of job a third party would have to be used. A man skilled in the art of arson.

  Fortunately he knew such a man; reliable, discreet, an ex-Fire Chief now at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. A phone call was made to arrange a change of climate in and around the An Hour In Bed factory, a fee agreed (£10,000 and for that there won’t even be cinders to sift through never mind any evidence of foul play, the ex-Fire Chief had said), a time arranged (the following night, the sooner the better), and it was a done job. A second phone call was made, this time to Plimmer, to find out how much the payout from the insurance would be. Finally a third call was made, to the ex-Fire Chief again, to cancel the fire, after he’d learned from Plimmer that An Hour In Bed didn’t have any fire insurance - they hadn’t been able to afford to pay the premium when it had come up for renewal due to the financial situation at the factory.

  On returning to his office the increasingly worried Pugh had explored the third avenue that might get him out of the position he’d been landed in; the possibility of a refund of some of the ten million pounds that Aneurin had given to Cleek University. A call was made to the Vice-Chancellor.

  “Hugh Pugh here, Vice-Chancellor,” he said, on being put through. “Secretary of State for Transport,” he added, in case the academic hadn’t heard of him, very likely in his opinion, university wallahs living with their heads in the clouds as they did. “I believe you knew my brother Aneurin?”

  “Oh indeed, Mr Pugh, indeed.”

  “Are you aware that he recently passed away?”

  “Most sad. Most sad indeed. He was a great man, a great benefactor. The university was about to offer him an honorary doctorate when he passed. Services to the entertainment industry.”

  Pugh wondered fleetingly if the proposed doctorate might be offered to him instead, in view of what he was about to do for the university. He quite fancied being called Dr Pugh. He’d mention it if things went to plan. He continued: “I’m calling about the ten million pounds he gave to your university.”

  “Yes?”

  “You will no doubt be pleased to learn that as the only beneficiary in Aneurin’s will I will be carrying on with his financial support of Cleek University.”

  The Vice-Chancellor was both surprised and delighted on hearing this news. “Really?”

  “Each and every year, starting next year, I will be writing you a cheque for the sum of two million pounds.”

  The Vice-Chancellor was overcome. “This is most generous of you, Mr Pugh. This is magnificent news, quite magnificent.”

  “It is only what my brother would have wanted.”

  “Your brother was a very generous man, Mr Pugh. And you too are a very generous man, if I may say so.”

  “You may.” The prospective Dr Pugh paused before going on. “There’s just one small thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I find that the ten million pounds he gave you had the unfortunate effect of leaving An Hour In Bed with a slight cash flow problem. Nothing to worry about, just a temporary thing. But to cover it – to help An Hour In Bed out with in the generous way in which my brother helped you out, and that I will be helping you out in the future - I would like you to loan a million pounds of it back to me.”

  The line went quiet for a moment. “Loan you a million pounds?” the Vice-Chancellor eventually replied, as if he couldn’t quite believe what Pugh had said.

  “Just for a couple of months, until the cash flow problem is resolved.”

  This time the Vice-Chancellor’s reply was immediate. “Well I would love to of course, Mr Pugh. But unfortunately all the money has been allocated. Spent indeed. Setting up the new Sex and Inflatable Rubber Woman Studies Department. And the new....”

  Pugh never found out what the other new thing the university had spent the ten million pounds on as he slammed the phone down on the Vice-Chancellor.

  A further attempt to gain from his inheritance was made with a phone call to the United States.

  “Am I speaking to Claude C Greenbaum, the president of Molls Unlimited?”

  “You are indeed. What can I do for you, Mr Pugh?”

  “I am the owner of An Hour In Bed. You may have heard of us?” Pugh said, confident that the American would be aware of the British equivalent of Molls Unlimited.

  “Can’t say I have. An Hour In Bed, you say? What’s your line, bed linen maybe?”

  Pugh sighed. It might prove to be a bit more difficult than he’d imagined. “We are Britain’s largest manufacturer of inflatable rubber women.”

  “Really? We have that same honour on our side of the pond. Last year we supplied over one million happy Americans with our love dolls. That’s a helluva lot of humping every which way you look at it.”

  Pugh preferred not to look at it at all. By now even the thought of one inflatable rubber woman was beginning to sicken him, let alone the thought of Americans having sex with a million of them. In case Greenbaum had plans to enlighten him further about the sex habits of America’s male population he cut immediately to the chase. “I won’t beat about the bush, Mr Greenbaum, I....”

  “Why not, that’s just what made the one million happy Americans happy,” said Greenbaum, with a laugh.

  “Fuck me, what have I landed myself with here,” said Pugh, under his breath. He gritted his teeth and ploughed on. “As I was saying, I’ll come right to the point. I’ve got terminal cancer.”

  The line went quiet for a moment. When Greenbaum spoke again the flippancy had been replaced with polite respect. “Aw gee whizz. That’s real tough. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Pugh crossed his fingers and took a deep breath. “Yes, there is as a matter of fact. You see I’ve no one to leave my business to so I’m putting it up for sale, giving the proceeds to charity. I can let you have the lot, lock stock and barrel, for five million pounds. And that includes one million inflatable rubber women,” he said, then added, temptingly, “Which could make your one million happy Americans even happier than they already are.”

  “Well that’s very generous of you, Mr Pugh, I�
�m sure. But unfortunately we’re not thinking in term of adding to our overseas interests ever since the Greenland fiasco. So I’m afraid it’s got to be a no no.”

  Despite his disappointment Pugh was intrigued. “What Greenland fiasco?”

  “We opened a plant there. Imagined we’d do big love doll business. And why not? All that cold, a guy’s gotta do something to keep warm, and what better way to do it than humping? Thought the Eskimos would go for them in a big way. I mean have you seen those Eskimo women? Fat, and all that fur and all. Must be like humping a bear. Maybe worse. I know which I’d prefer to hump and it don’t speak Eskimo.”

  “They didn’t sell?”

  “Oh they sold all right. At first. Damned Eskimos kept getting stuck to them.”

  “Stuck?”

  “Yes, they’d hump the ass off the love dolls then drop off to sleep while they were still aboard. Then the sweat they’d worked up by humping them froze and they’d wake up frozen to them. They had to chip themselves off before they could go out fishing, or whatever else they do to pull in a dollar over there. Well word got round and sales stopped dead, just like that.”

  Pugh dropped the price of An Hour In Bed down to four million pounds, then three, then two, and finally one, before giving up on the American.

  He then took stock of the situation. He was disappointed that none of his three ideas had worked - he expected at least one of them would have hit the jackpot - but far from downhearted. He hadn’t aired his best idea yet. His banker. The implementation of it wouldn’t be exactly cut and dried but he was sure he could put forward a very convincing case for it. He would have gone for it first, and not even bothered with the others, but when he’d phoned the Foreign Secretary earlier he’d been out of the office. He tried him again and this time got his man.

  “Yes what can I do for you, Hugh?” he said.

  “John. Nice to speak to you again.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Vera keeping well? And the children?”

  “It’s Hortense now.”

  “Shit.” Pugh had heard that the Foreign Secretary had divorced and remarried but had completely forgotten about it.

  “Pardon?”

  Pugh quickly recovered from his gaffe. “Hortense! But of course it is. Me and my memory. Not getting any younger, John.” Back on course again he got down to business. “John it’s about these one million inflatable rubber women we were going to send to Africa, before they got contaminated.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Westminster, John. You can’t stop people talking. The thing is, I think we should send them to Africa anyway.”

  “Quite out of the question. As you yourself have just said, they’re all contaminated.”

  It was the response Pugh had expected. Having thought the whole thing through, and answered every possible objection, he was ready for it. “Right. But, and correct me if I’m wrong John, the Africans won’t use the condoms we already send them. Which is the reason we were sending them the inflatable rubber women. So what’s going to happen now? I’ll tell you. They’re going to carry on having unprotected sex. And we all know how that’s going to end up. More babies. So we send them the contaminated inflatable rubber women. Result, no more babies. All right, they’ll all be scratching their bollocks off, but at least they won’t be making babies and costing us a small fortune in foreign aid. And even if they scratch themselves to death it won’t make a great deal of difference because most of the buggers are going to die from Aids or starvation anyway. I mean by sending them the contaminated inflatable rubber women we’ll be doing them a favour in a way.”

  The line went quiet for a few seconds. Then the Foreign Secretary spoke. “You are aware that Hortense is African are you, Hugh?”

  ****

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mrs Wisbech had invited Mrs Bean and Miss Preece to her house ostensibly for coffee and cakes, but the real reason was so she could show off the koi carp she and her husband Harold had recently introduced to their pond to augment the goldfish and shebunkins.

  As befitting her station in life, Mrs Wisbech’s house, situated in the Mickleover area of Derby, was a large detached mock-Tudor dwelling. Although the house was impressive it was its walled garden, which had once been selected as Garden of the Week in ‘Derbyshire Life’, that was Mrs Wisbech’s pride and joy. A traditional English garden, with Japanese influences, everything in it was organic. Until today that is.

  Both Mrs Bean and Miss Preece suspected that the invitation might have an ulterior motive as the only other occasion on which Mrs Wisbech had invited them round for coffee and cakes was the time she’d had the new barbecue built. Despite Mrs Wisbech’s likely hidden agenda Mrs Bean, although she had better things to do, thought it prudent to attend. She had a speeding charge coming up shortly and there was every chance Mrs Wisbech would be sitting on the bench. For her part Miss Preece was aware that Mrs Wisbech was on the board of governors of her school. This had been more than enough to guarantee the teacher’s attendance.

  “Oh by the way, there’s something you simply must see while you’re here,” said Mrs Wisbech, trying to sound as though the thought had just occurred to her. “It’s out in the garden.”

  She got to her feet and made for the French windows, walking in the ‘Here’s my head my arse is coming’ gait affected by overweight women of a certain age. Mrs Bean and Miss Preece exchanged resigned glances, put their cups on the coffee table and dutifully followed.

  The French windows led into to the back garden. Mrs Wisbech was about to step outside when she remembered that koi carp are shown to their best advantage when feeding. “You go through, I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said, then made for the kitchen while Mrs Bean and Miss Preece continued into the garden.

  “Oh my word!” said Mrs Bean, a moment later, obviously impressed on seeing the contents of the pond.

  “Do you like them?” called Mrs Wisbech, pleased. “Such lovely colours aren’t they.”

  “There’s more than one?” said Mrs Bean. “I can see only the one.”

  “No, there are two. However one of them spends most of the time lurking behind the fishing gnome,” explained Mrs Wisbech.

  Mrs Bean didn’t think much of the colours of the one she could see, predominately pink with a splash of red here and there and a yellow head, but was too polite to say so. She couldn’t see the one that was apparently lurking behind the fishing gnome to see if its colours were more to her taste.

  The night before, when the playful breeze that had caused Grimshaw so much trouble with the inflatable rubber woman had finally stopped being playful, it had deposited its cargo in the farmer’s field some half a mile away, where it had almost interested a bull. Becoming playful again overnight the breeze had then lifted Glorious Gloria once more, borne her a further mile and deposited her in the pond in the back garden of Mrs Wisbech’s house on Kennerley Road.

  Now, returning with a box of floating fish hoops, Mrs Wisbech saw the inflatable rubber woman, stopped dead in her tracks, screamed and threw her hands and the box of fish food high in the air. A good handful of the fish hoops cascaded from the box and landed in the pool. A brightly-coloured koi carp suddenly appeared from underneath the inflatable rubber woman and started feeding voraciously on the fish hoops, causing the water to bubble and foam, as Mrs Wisbech had intended, but not exactly by the method by which she’d intended. The first koi was quickly joined by the koi from behind the fishing gnome.

  “Who.....who put that thing there?” gasped Mrs Wisbech, absolutely outraged, pointing at Glorious Gloria.

  “Didn’t you?” said Mrs Bean.

  “Me?” Mrs Wisbech looked at her with disbelief at the very idea.

  “Isn’t it what you wanted us to see?” asked Miss Preece.

  “Well of course it isn’t,” said Mrs Wisbech, most affronted. “Why on earth would I put a disgusting thing like that in my pond?”

  “Well I couldn’t say, re
ally” admitted Miss Preece. A thought came to her. “To frighten away herons, perhaps?”

  “It may frighten herons but it doesn’t seem to be causing the fish too much concern,” observed Mrs Bean, as one of the koi, having made short work of the food in the pond, spotted a fish hoop that had landed on the inflatable rubber woman, leapt out of the water and plucked it expertly from her belly. “Oh I don’t know though,” she added, when on its journey back into the water the koi got itself temporarily stuck between Glorious Gloria’s breasts, before frantically wriggling itself free and landing in the pond with a loud ‘plop’.

  “It must be some sort of sick joke,” said Mrs Wisbech. “Probably revenge, retribution from someone I’ve had to fine heavily or send to pri.......oh my God!”

  “What is it?” said Miss Preece, concerned, as most of the colour suddenly drained from Mrs Wisbech’s face.

  “The landscape gardener is due to arrive at any moment to repair the flags on my patio! I mustn’t have him seeing that thing. Good Lord it will be all over the neighbourhood. We must get it out of there at once. At once.”

  Mrs Bean noted that the pond was very large and that the inflatable rubber woman was in the middle of it, well out of reach. She made this point.

  “Perhaps you could wade in and get it, Mrs Wisbech?” suggested Miss Preece, helpfully. “Is it very deep?”

  “Four feet. We had to have it deepened especially for the koi, they have to be in deep water.”

  Mrs Bean just resisted the temptation to tell Mrs Wisbech that she would be in deep water herself if the landscape gardener turned up while Glorious Gloria was still bathing in the pond. Instead she offered a solution to the problem.

  “Throw stones.”

  “What?”

  “We should throw stones.”

  Mrs Wisbech rolled her eyes. “I realise that throwing stones at it might dissipate my anger somewhat, Mrs Bean, but how on earth is it going to get the blessed thing out of my pond?”