Inflatable Hugh

by Terry Ravenscroft

  “What?” said Arbuckle. “Me? I haven’t....” But that was a far as he got as a baseball bat came crashing down on his head and he fell to the ground unconscious.

  The battle, such as it was, was all over in less than two minutes; the hammers and crowbars of the raiding party being no match for the baseball bats of Pugh’s heavies. Seal was unconscious on the floor along with Arbuckle. The remainder of the VAST members were still conscious but wishing they weren’t, as terrible blows rained down on their bodies. Khan was covered in blood. He had managed to pierce a jugular vein but unfortunately it was his own, when the heavy he aimed his hook at had contemptuously knocked it back with his baseball bat.

  At the main gate the heat from the warehouse was intense and the ladies, struggling to free themselves from their chains, were now fearing for their lives. The four different locks securing the four chains had four different keys, and all the keys were together in Mrs Wisbech’s handbag. When Mrs Wisbech attempted to free them Sod’s Law prevailed and none of the keys she tried in the four locks fitted. Unfortunately when life is in imminent danger logical thinking takes a back seat to blind panic and instead of trying one of the keys in all four locks, which would have eventually brought success, all three ladies tried the keys quite indiscriminately.

  Trying to force one of the keys into a lock Mrs Bean dropped it on the ground. Bending frantically to search for it she dragged Miss Preece to the ground with her, whereupon Miss Preece dropped her key too. As they scrabbled around on hands and knees looking for the keys, Mrs Wisbech started muttering a prayer. Mrs Bean joined her.

  Abandoning her search for the key Miss Preece started singing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’. Their prayers over, Mrs Wisbech and Miss Preece joined her. The irony of the situation, that if their circumstances didn’t improve pretty quickly all three of them would be a lot nearer to God than they wanted to be, escaped the ladies.

  Just before Mrs Wisbech, finally overcome by the intense heat, collapsed to the ground to join Mrs Bean and Miss Preece, three inflatable rubber women floated past overhead, free as birds, as if to mock them.

  A fireman arriving on the scene five minutes later found the ladies in a heap on the ground, quite still. He feared at first that they had perished, asphyxiated by the acrid flames. Mercifully they were still living, but all three ladies were severely singed.

  At its height the fire was of such an intensity it could be seen from a distance of ten miles. Cleaver would have been proud. However in his haste to douse the warehouse he had spilled petrol on his clothes, and in the act of setting fire to the warehouse had inadvertently set fire to himself as well. He could be seen from a distance of one mile, but not for long.

  ***

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The warehouse had burned to the ground in a matter of minutes. Its contents had seen to that. The bottles of petrol by themselves would probably have been enough to do the job, but as most of the warehouse’s three hundred and fifty thousand square feet of storage space consisted of highly combustible rubber its total destruction was guaranteed from the moment Cleaver threw the lighted match to the ground.

  The vast majority of the one million inflatable rubber women had gone up in flames. However some of them, due to the intense heat, had inflated before catching fire. This caused them to break out, grotesquely, from their charred packaging. The scene as they emerged, many of them dressed in Oxfam cast-offs, resembled something Roger Corman might have dreamed up for one of his horror movies if he’d been trying to go more over the top than usual. One of the inflatable rubber women, wearing a back to front ex-JBL Sports baseball cap, ex-Ethel Austin velour jogging bottoms and an ex-XXL Matalan crop top, was especially gruesome.

  Literally hundreds of the inflatable rubber women rose and disappeared into the night air, to be carried far and wide by the blustery north-west wind prevailing that night. Eight sightings of unidentified flying objects were reported from as far afield as Burnley to the north and Lytham St Anne’s to the west. Twenty four sightings of identified objects were reported – twenty three were identified as inflatable rubber women; one, which had blown up to immense proportions, was identified, possibly by a drunk, as Dawn French.

  During the next twenty four hours a further two hundred and thirty inflatable rubber women were found within a thirty mile radius of the An Hour In Bed factory. The following day a high ranking police officer went on national television and radio to warn the general public not to go near them as they were contaminated. Twelve men who went to their doctors complaining they were itching all over wished the senior police officer had spoken up a bit sooner.

  Three of the inflatable rubber women, welded together by the heat, came to rest in the Harpurhey district of Manchester, and are now in service as a settee. Four came to rest close to Eastlands Stadium, home of Manchester City Football Club. The four City fans who found them took them to the next home match, in an echo of the late 1980’s when many supporters of the club took along large inflatable bananas. At the following home game there were over a hundred inflatable women, purchased by the fans especially for match days, augmented by thirty two the supporters already had. A new craze was born, with a consequent boost to the inflatable rubber women industry.

  The largest proportion of the inflatable rubber women came down in open countryside, many in farmers’ fields. Some were eaten by cows and sheep. The cows and sheep became contaminated and Sir David Donnelly, the latest doom-monger to hold the post of Chief Medical Officer of the National Health Service, misdiagnosed their illness as Foot and Mouth disease.

  Vast tracts of the country were designated no-go areas. The tourist industry complained that the Government was overreacting. Twenty seven herds of cattle, including the herd of a Saddleworth smallholder, and thirty nine flocks of sheep, were slaughtered as a precautionary measure. The price of beef and lamb went up by a third, overnight. Millions of pounds in compensation were subsequently paid out. The Saddleworth smallholder unsuccessfully claimed compensation at a higher rate, maintaining he had lost his lovers. The Government said that lessons had been learned.

  The Chief Medical Officer’s misdiagnosis was never admitted to. Two months later he was knighted and received an annual bonus.

  ****

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  “I want that bastard Arbuckle sacked!”

  “Sacked? But why?”

  “Because I fucking said so, that’s why.”

  Two days after the fire Pugh’s first action on arriving at the Department of Transport was to phone Cleek University to settle Arbuckle’s hash. The previous day he had already instructed Wainwright to sack him if he had the brass neck to turn up at what was left of the factory.

  “I can’t just dismiss an undergraduate without good reason,” said the Vice-Chancellor.

  “You can and you will.”

  The Vice-Chancellor cleared his throat, as if to add weight to his words. “Now see hear, Mr Pugh, I....”

  “Otherwise I will pull the plug on the two million pounds a year I have already promised to donate to Cleek University. Of which you will be receiving the first payment in six months time.”

  The line went silent for a moment. When the Vice-Chancellor spoke again weighty words had been dispensed with in favour of words of a more lighter, accommodating nature. “What did this Arbuckle fellow do, exactly?”

  Pugh told him.

  Recalling his previous dealings with Pugh the Vice-Chancellor had grave doubts that the university would ever see any more money from the Pugh family, let alone two million pounds a year, but shutting the door on that possibility was not a risk he was prepared to take. Funds for the long overdue replenishment of the university’s wine cellar were urgently required, amongst other things. The following day Arbuckle was sent down.

  Pugh’s second action was to sit back and take stock of the situation. Which was pretty desperate, whichever way he looked at. The warehouse, along with every last one of its precious stock of inflata
ble rubber women, was no more, completely consumed by the fire. No inflatable rubber women, no artificial car passengers, full stop. About half the factory had been saved from the flames, although what was left of it was severely damaged, much of it lacking a roof. Wainwright had estimated it would be at least three weeks before only limited production would be possible, three months before anything like full capacity could be achieved, and that was pushing it. Previous production levels could be brought about only by the factory being rebuilt and re-quipped. That, as Pugh knew only too well, would take money. Money which he didn’t have.

  The only good news was that hardly anyone apart from the workforce and the local emergency services knew about the events of two nights ago. And no one but Wainwright and the heavies knew about his part in it. The latter had already been paid and would keep their mouths shut. Wainwright would do the same if he valued his job, and he seemed to have got the message when Pugh had laid it on the line to him the day before.

  The blaze had been reported in the inside pages of the Manchester Evening News and three of the daily tabloids, but there hadn’t been any pictures. The following day one of the less restrained of the tabloids, true to form, on learning that an Afghan had been hospitalized with a wound in one of his jugular veins, had claimed the involvement of al-Qaida. Another had tried to tie-in the incident with a report of Martians having landed in nearby Bury the day before. However it had since disappeared from the pages of the press altogether. Fortunately no one at the Department of Transport knew he was the owner of An Hour In Bed as he had been careful not to inform anyone there of his inheritance. Nor, for the same reason, were any of his fellow MPs cognisant. Although nothing would have given Pugh greater pleasure than to shout news of his good fortune from the rooftops, and add ‘So bollocks to the lot of you’ as an encore, he was aware that if he made it public he would have to declare it as a business interest - and his business was his own business, nobody else’s. After the general election, when it wouldn’t matter what his business interests were, would be quite soon enough to tell anyone.

  The police would probably know about it; Wainwright would have had to tell them if they’d asked, and they would have asked, would have ‘made enquiries’, if Pugh knew anything about the police. But so what? They wouldn’t know he’d been there at the time - as soon as he’d made sure the members of VAST were getting what was coming to them he’d made himself scarce and driven back to London. Besides, if it came to the crunch, if somebody claimed he’d been there he would simply deny it; Lorelei would provide an alibi if one were required.

  Lorelei knew about it. A couple of nights after receiving his good news he’d had far too much to drink – two bottles of excellent 1982 Clos Rene - and surrendered to one of his regular attacks of boasting. But Lorelei would do as she was told if she knew what was good for her.

  Phil knew about it. Pugh considered the problem of the Prime Minister. He would have to be told about the fire of course. Phil was pushing the Single Driver Tax legislation through Parliament and would be expecting his cut from the sales of the inflatable rubber women. But now there wouldn’t be any sales, there weren’t any inflatable rubber women to sell. Unless.....unless he could come up with another good idea.

  He sighed. If it took him as long to come up with a good idea as it had taken him to come up with the artificial car passengers idea he was sunk.

  ****

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Arbuckle was bereft. Which was an improvement, as the day before, when the Vice-Chancellor had told him to pack his bags and leave immediately, he had been suicidal.

  He still couldn’t quite believe it. Three days earlier he had been on top of the world; a young man who knew exactly where he was going, studying the subject of his choice, and with a successful career beckoning. And now....?

  During the last few weeks, and in particular since he’d been able to compare having sexual intercourse with a sex doll and with a real woman, he had become more aware, more sure, of what he wanted to do with his life. It was to advocate, promote and encourage sex with inflatable rubber women. It had dawned on him that it was the answer to many men’s problems, if they did but know it; the solution to the pent-up frustrations of millions of men throughout the world, if they could only open their eyes to it. He would be the man who would open their eyes; to make them understand that there was nothing wrong with having intercourse with a sex doll, that it was nothing to be ashamed of. He hadn’t yet worked out exactly how he was going to achieve this, but he was confident that his further studies whilst pursuing his degree would point him in the right direction. His ambitions had become his dream; and now his dream had been cruelly taken away from him, for without the gravitas the university degree would give him who would listen to him?

  When the Vice-Chancellor had informed him of his dismissal Arbuckle had pleaded with him. But the Vice-Chancellor had been adamant. There had been a complaint about his reckless behaviour from no less than the owner of An Hour In Bed, the brother of their benefactor; Arbuckle had brought shame down on the university and that was the end of the matter. It was not something that was up for discussion, there could be no argument.

  Arbuckle had come to the conclusion that Pugh must have somehow got the wrong end of the stick in thinking that he’d in some way been responsible for the fire. Perhaps Pugh had got the impression that he’d created a diversion by deliberately taking so long to get to the mixing room? With this in mind he made efforts to contact his boss to try to explain, and having explained to get him to plead with the Vice-Chancellor on his behalf. Pugh hadn’t been at the factory when Arbuckle tried to contact him, but Wainwright had given him a telephone number he could try, a London number. Pugh had refused to speak to him. He hadn’t even managed to get past his secretary. Arbuckle had pleaded with her, asked her to implore him. A minute later she was back on the line saying that she’d implored Mr Pugh and Mr Pugh had said “Tell the twat if I ever see him again I’ll have his bollocks on a plate.”

  Arbuckle had no alternative but to accept his fate.

  Minutes of the two hundred and forty third weekly meeting of Vigilantes Against Sex Toys (VAST). February 18th. Held at The Grim Jogger.

  Those attending: Mr Willoughby (Chair), Mrs Wisbech (Hon Sec), Mr Seal, Fr Flannery, Mrs Bean.

  Apologies for Absence: Mr Grimshaw (Severe headache), Miss Preece (Depression).

  It was felt by Mr Willoughby that Mr Khan would either have attended or apologised for his absence had he not been in the intensive care unit of North Manchester General Hospital. This was duly noted and recorded.

  Fr Flannery proposed a minute’s silence in respect of the late Mr Cleaver.

  Mr Seal seconded the motion.

  Mrs Wisbech said that the rest of them could do what they liked but that she was certainly not going to observe a minute’s silence since it was Mr Cleaver who had been responsible for leaving her with the complexion of a Red Indian.

  Mrs Bean added that she too was against any show of sympathy for Cleaver, for the same reason, and felt that Miss Preece would have been of a similar opinion had she been in attendance.

  A vote was taken which resulted in two in favour of the motion and two against. Mr Willoughby’s casting vote was in favour and the motion was carried.

  A minute’s silence for Mr Cleaver was observed. After the minute’s silence Mrs Wisbech made the point that she hadn’t been silent for Mr Cleaver, she was just being silent because she had nothing to say at the time.

  Mr Seal said that made a change.

  Mrs Wisbech asked Mr Seal what he meant by that.

  Mr Seal told her to forget it.

  Mr Willoughby opened the meeting.

  Mr Willoughby reported that the raid on the An Hour In Bed factory, although it hadn’t gone quite as planned, had been a huge success. Despite being beaten up it had been well worth it. His information was that production at the An Hour In Bed factory had ceased, and if newspaper reports were correct it woul
d be quite some time before it started again. Fortunately all the gentlemen in the raiding party had been able to get out of the blazing factory before the fire consumed them, unhurt.

  Mr Seal said that he wasn’t unhurt, he had a broken arm, two broken ribs and a broken nose, thanks to those bastards with the baseball bats.

  Mr Willoughby said he meant unhurt by the fire.

  Mr Seal said that regarding the beating up they had taken they should report the matter to the police as whoever was responsible shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

  Mr Willoughby pointed out that if they were to do that they would have to explain their presence in the factory.

  Fr Flannery said that he too was in favour of reporting the matter to the police as his doctor had told him he might never walk the same again. He suggested that perhaps they could tell the police that they had got lost whilst on a tour of the factory.

  Mr Seal said that was all very well but how did it explain the ladies chained to the railings and the VAST banner.

  Mrs Wisbech said they could say the reason for the banner and the presence of the ladies was because they were canvassing for new members.

  Mrs Bean said that was an excellent suggestion and in order to add credence to the story she could probably get her sister-in-law to say that the canvassing had borne fruit because she herself had been recruited during the canvassing.