by Timothy Lea
‘There’s a place!’ screams a bloke. ‘Look! The Crudney Arms.’
From the cheer that goes up you would think that Mafeking had been relieved for the second time.
‘It’s a bit posh,’ says someone else. ‘They’ve got a sign saying “No Coaches”.’
‘I don’t care if it’s got a sign saying “No Knickers”,’ says the driver. ‘We’re stopping!’ So saying, he steers the coach into the car park and shoves on the anchors.
‘Look, Glad. They’ve got a wedding reception here.’
‘Ooh! Lovely!! I do like a nice wedding. I wonder if she’s gone off yet?’
When I go down the steps of the coach it occurs to me that I must be plastered. Everything is a couple of shades darker than usual and slightly fuzzy. The building in front of me is all Tudor and black and white stripes but the uprights are wavering a bit more than they ought to be, even allowing for four hundred years. There are a lot of big cars about and some of them are black and white: Black cars, white ribbons. The old girls were right.
‘What are you going to do, mate?’ says someone to the driver.
‘I’ll have to ring up a garage. You may have to go home with the others.’
‘We’ll never see them.’
‘Of course we will. We’re nearer London. When it’s closing time we’ll be able to flag them down as they go through.’
‘I’m afraid you must have misread the sign. It says, quite distinctly — “No Coaches”. Furthermore we are closed until eight o’clock because we have a private wedding reception. I must therefore ask you to be on your way.’ The last voice, firm, clipped — and nervous — belongs to a geezer in a gunge-spattered morning suit who has emerged from the hotel at a fast trot, rubbing his hands together.
‘Sorry, mate,’ says the driver. ‘I didn’t have no alternative. The clutch has gone on the bugger. I’ll have to use your phone.’
‘Oh dear. What a disaster,’ says the posh geezer glancing over his shoulder nervously. ‘It looks so unsightly and the bride will be leaving in a minute. Can’t you push it somewhere?’
‘Push it somewhere? You must be bleeding joking, mate. It’s difficult enough to move the bugger when it’s working.’
Morning suit closes his eyes momentarily as the agony of it all drenches his features. ‘Major Blackthorn isn’t going to like this,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to keep all those people on the coach. I’m afraid they can’t possibly —’ His voice tails away as the fading notes of “Knees up Mother Brown” indicate that the last of our party are helping each other through the front door of the hotel. ‘Oh no!’ He starts running towards the hotel.
‘Push it somewhere!’ repeats the driver. ‘I know where I bloody nearly pushed it.’
When we get to the hotel a distinguished looking bloke in wedding clobber is giving our friend a bad time.
‘What the devil’s going on, Frimble?’ he barks. ‘Where have all these ghastly people come from?’
One of the chars taps him on the shoulder. ‘Do you know where the toilet is, dear? I’m bursting.’
‘Haven’t you got a drink, mate?’ says another of our party. ‘You want to get in there. They’re giving it away. It’s only champagne but it’s all right if you’re thirsty.’
‘Frimble!! I told you to stop serving champagne half an hour ago!’
‘I’m most awfully sorry, Major Blackthorn. They’re helping themselves.’
This, indeed, appears to be the case. There is a large room leading off the entrance hall and at the far end of it a bar laid out on a long table covered with a white tablecloth. Some of our lads have located crates of champagne beneath the table and, having overcome token resistance from a couple of terrified Cypriot waiters, are beginning to tear the foil off the bottles.
‘Bleeding difficult to open these things, isn’t it?’ says my old mate Lenny. ‘Oops! Sorry, love.’ His apology accompanies a stream of champagne colliding with the earhole of a very toffee-nosed old tart wearing an enormous feathered titfer.
It soon becomes obvious that very few of our party are well versed in the art of opening champagne bottles and the air is filled with whizzing corks and streams of liquid. The upper crust guests huddle together nervously and gingerly accept such offers of refreshment as come their way. It is clear that they have some difficulty in placing the late arrivals.
‘But they can’t all be servants,’ I hear one old bag saying.
‘They’re so familiar,’ says another.
‘Thank God for some more champagne,’ says a bloke knocking back the contents of his glass greedily. ‘I don’t care who they are.’
Major Blackthorn is doing his nut. ‘Don’t just stand there, Frimble!’ he screeches. ‘Send for the police.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Edgar!’ The voice belongs to a huge woman who looks like Willy John McBride in drag. ‘We can’t have Charlotte’s great day ruined by the intrusion of the police. We’d never hear the end of it. We’ll have to get her away and deal with these people afterwards.’
‘All right, all right!’ snaps Blackthorn. ‘Have it your way, you always do. But get upstairs and tell her to get a move on. It can’t take her that long to change.’
Fancy joining in the Hokey Cokey, darling? I like big girls.’ Before Mrs Blackthorn can indicate whether she would like to accept the invitation of the Slumbernog employee swaying in front of her, there are shouts and screams from above.
‘Oh my God! What’s happening now?’
There is a rush for the stairs and we get to the landing to find Arthur Dunge, the boilerman, struggling in the grip of two clean-cut young men.
‘The filthy swine tried to assault Charlotte!’ gasps one of them.
‘It’s all a misunderstanding,’ whines Arthur. ‘I’m looking for the karsi, aren’t I? I open this door and I see this tart, half naked, with another tart and I think hello, hello, hello! I’m in a knocking shop, aren’t I? So I whips out a fiver and I says, Right! I’ll take both of you.’
‘Disgusting!’ breathes Mrs Blackthorn. ‘He should be birched.’
‘I want my five quid back,’ says Arthur.
‘Get your hands off my mate!’ says one of the Slumbernog mob.
‘Step aside if you know what’s good for you!’
Crunch! Biff! Wallop! Like I have said before, I am a bit pissed at the time and I can’t really remember who swings the first bunch of fives. All I know is that there is the mother and father of a punch-up and when I come to I am in the back of this Black Maria full of blokes and birds. I have my arms round this fantastic chick wearing a coffee-coloured slip with lacy bits over her knockers and she is dabbing the lump on the side of my nut with a wet hanky.
‘You were fantastic,’ she says. ‘Absolutely fantastic.’
‘Thank you,’ I murmur. Now she comes to mention it I do recall — I glance across the van and my eyes meet those of Mrs Blackthorn. Her hat has been pulled down over her eyes and she looks even more like Willy John McBride — with a scrum cap on. She looks away from me and leans forward urgently to the bird by my side.
‘Charlotte,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together. Rodney is very, very upset!’
CHAPTER NINE
Everybody agrees that it was a very nice Tolpuddle Martyrs Day — everybody, that is, except Major and Mrs Blackthorn, Rodney, and those of their guests who suffered actual physical damage or worse. Of course, Charlotte goes back to Rodney when we have all been bound over and I expect that they will live happily ever after. It will give them something to talk about in the long winter evenings, anyway.
Back at Slumbernog, life seems a bit humdrum and I am not sorry when excitement arrives in the shapely form of Mrs Jeremy Rightberk. It all starts when I am about to clock off after a spot of overtime. This involved screwing on twenty-four casters and playing five-a-side soccer for an hour and a half — I am not considered good enough for the solo school where sums of up to 15p have been known to change hands in the course of on
e afternoon.
I am walking past the Cuddle Chamber when I come across Mrs Rightberk bending over the engine of a small Italian motor car — or I do mentally, anyway. In practice I smile pleasantly.
‘Do you know anything about these things?’ she says.
‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ I say, staring at her arse with obvious relish. ‘Can’t you start it?’
‘The engine won’t turn over,’ she says. ‘I thought something might have become disconnected.’
‘Shall I have a go?’ I say.
‘Would you? I’ll stay out here and see if anything happens.’
All the time this harmless conversation is going on we are leering and smirking at each other and it occurs to me that this bird is about as ready for a spot of in and out as I am. If that clip of film I saw with OO and Nurse Waddley was anything to go by she is a right raver. Some of the things she was doing to Umbrage you could be prosecuted for thinking about. I scramble into the driver’s seat and fumble for the controls.
‘Snug little job,’ I say, watching the way her jeans cling to her love box. ‘Plenty of poke, too, no doubt?’
‘Plenty,’ she says, curling out her tongue to touch her upper lip.
Right on! I think to myself. I wonder if the Cuddle Chamber is open? I turn the key in the ignition but the starter just gives a little shudder as if saying ‘piss off and leave me alone!’
‘You’ve got a flat battery,’ I say, scrambling out without doing any more of my mechanical marvel act. ‘Do you want to ring for a taxi or can your husband give you a lift?’
‘My husband’s playing golf. It had better be the taxi. Is there a telephone round here?’ She moves towards the Cuddle Chamber before I have taken a step.
‘Probably,’ I say, having a quick look round and following her sharpish.
A new batch of beds are waiting to be tested and they look a lot more solid than the ones Jean helped me destroy. Mrs Rightberk runs her finger along one fondly. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she says.
‘Mrs Rightberk,’ I say.
‘That’s right. How clever of you to know. My visits here are even less frequent than those of my husband. You must have seen me with him?’
I shake my head. ‘It was someone else actually.’
Mrs Rightberk sighs. ‘Poor Jeremy. He takes so much out of himself on the course.’
‘On the coarse what?’ I ask — I hate being left in suspense.
‘On the golf course. He’s a slave to those little round balls.’ I nod sympathetically. ‘He doesn’t have a lot of energy left when he gets home.’
‘That’s tough,’ I say.
‘It is. A woman needs to communicate.’
‘I know,’ I say.
‘It can get very lonely sometimes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You need somebody to fill the gap.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I think he understands about my needs.’ She reaches out and flicks the end of my hooter with her finger. ‘This isn’t going to find us that telephone, is it?’
‘Do you want it to?’ I say. This is the kind of handy phrase that means nothing but sounds impressive.
‘What do you mean?’ She wasn’t supposed to ask that.
‘I was thinking about your need to communicate,’ I say awkwardly.
Mrs Rightberk stretches out a hand again. ‘You’re a funny boy, what’s your name?’
‘Timothy Lea, Mrs Rightberk.’
‘Call me Rachel.’ She slides her arms round me and kisses me on the mouth. ‘You can make love to me if you want to. We’ll worry about the taxi later.’
‘Great,’ I say. It is funny, but now that Mrs Rightberk has taken over the initiative I don’t feel so Captain Dynamite as I did a few minutes ago. Percy, who was bounding into the ascendant, is now turning the front of my Y-fronts into a hammock.
‘Doesn’t the idea appeal?’ she says, beginning to sound a little cold.
‘I’m knocked out,’ I say. ‘But I, -er, believe you have to be a bit careful in here. They have hidden cameras or something. It’s just like a supermarket.’
‘I know all about that. I’ve seen the end product. Very arousing.’ Her hand drops down the front of my jeans and starts a slow movement that would have done credit to Beethoven.
‘But don’t the management see them?’ I say, feeling Percy begin to come alive again.
‘Only after I’ve seen them. I was on very good terms with the professor.’
You, too, I think to myself. They do all right for themselves, these Secret Service blokes. I wonder if you can get an entry form at the Post Office?
‘Well, that’s all right then,’ I say.
I am not just referring to the cameras, either. Down at crotch level my dongler is no longer a dangler and a lot of red corpuscles are beginning to beat their chests and demand action. I slip my arms around Mrs R. and begin to tug up her sweater. I can sense that she is not the type who wants to be read a couple of chapters of The Wind in The Willows first. She is wearing one of those stretch bras and I pull it up and fall greedily on the ripe fruit that reveals itself. Mrs R. clearly enjoys the experience because she has led Percy into the light before you can say Roger Carpenter. She tickles my tonk while I nibble her nipples. It is a highly pleasurable division of labours but without any demarcation problems we are free to let our fingers range over wider areas of flesh. I unzip her jeans and we tumble backwards on to one of the beds, tugging and pulling until our threads are in one pile beside the action station.
‘Forget about the bed. Test me!’ With these challenging words Mrs Rightberk grabs hold of my minge muffler and shoves it into her snatch like a cucumber into a gravy boat. By the cringe! What an experience. I have lain between some powerful thighs in my time but this talented crotch artist could bash the stuffing out of a medicine ball in a couple of minutes. Her mitts fold round my bum and she whips up and down so that my goolies feel like a couple of peas spending their holiday in a spin dryer. I don’t want to let the side down so I hang on grimly, but it is not easy. I would not have played all that football if I had known the demands that were going to be made on me.
‘How do you feel?’ inquires my fun-loving companion.
‘You should know.’ I wince. ‘Oooooooh! If you’re coming, you’d better hurry up because I’m going.’
With those less than chivalrous words I abandon myself to the mercy of Rachel Rightberk’s thighs — and, believe me, they don’t know the meaning of the word. Conscious that she has little time to lose, Rachel slams into top gear and roars down the straight, eating up the distance between us until she overtakes me just before the finishing line and disappears through the grandstand in a shower of gaskets.
‘That was heaven,’ she pants. ‘Let’s have a little rest and do it again.’
But we don’t do it again. We only get as far as the little rest bit — only that turns out to be a long rest. When I next wake up it is to find that Mrs Rightberk and I have dozed off on top of each other and that a very unhappy looking geezer is staring down at us. The expression on his face suggests that he wishes he had a large rock handy and the name on the front of his passport is Jeremy Rightberk.
CHAPTER TEN
‘It’s disgraceful!’ shouts Jeremy Rightberk. ‘Absolutely disgraceful!!’
‘You’re right!’ says Umbrage. ‘I totally agree with you. It is a disgrace.’ It is the next morning and I am in Rightberk’s office. ‘This lad does an extra two hours overtime in the Cuddle Chamber and you refuse to pay him double rate? I’ll say that’s a disgrace. It’s bloody disgusting! Either he gets his money or the whole factory comes out.’
‘Listen!!’ screams Rightberk turning scarlet. ‘Do you seriously think I’m going to stand by while this little swine fucks my wife and gets paid double his normal hourly wage for the privilege!!’
Umbrage looks shocked. ‘There’s no need for that kind of language. I don’t have to stand here and listen to that.’ He pauses
to allow Rightberk to regain his composure. ‘You know very well the agreement that was made with the Union concerning Double Time working arrangements. We are loath to see our members exploited but we acknowledge that there are times when the Sabbath must be broken in order to keep in line with the productivity targets laid down by —’
‘No!!’ screams Rightberk, smashing his fist down on the desk. ‘No! No! No! That’s got nothing to do with it. I’m not going to pay this creeping parasite a penny for his desecration of the family bed.’
‘Family bed?’ says Umbrage, leaning forward attentively. ‘Is this a fact? Am I to understand that you were testing items not produced in this factory? This puts a wholly different and highly unpleasant complexion on what was up to now a fairly routine matter. But now I’m going to get Miss Pullover.
‘And what is she doing here?’ yells Rightberk.
‘Comrade Pullova is secretary of the Omsk Branch of the Heavy Metal Workers Union in the workers’ paradise of the USSR,’ says Umbrage like he is talking about Tom Finney. ‘She is here at the invitation of S.C.A.B. as the first part of an exchange visit aimed at creating a greater understanding between the workers of our two countries.’
‘God’s teeth!’ snarls Rightberk. ‘As if it wasn’t enough having crypto Commies creeping about under the guise of trade unionists. Now we have to have the real thing.’
Umbrage puts on his ‘Martyred for the masses’ expression. ‘I would like to take the liberty of pointing out that the arrangement regarding Comrade Pullova was ratified with the full cognisance of management at a meeting convened on —’
‘Oh, shut up!’snaps Rightberk.
‘Heavy Metal Workers,’ sneers Sid. ‘I can just imagine how heavy she’s going to be. Putting her weight all over the place and clomping around with her great mounds of flesh wobbling and —’
‘Greetings, comrades!’
For a moment, nobody says anything. We stand or sit amazed. Can this beautifully sculpted six foot goddess with burnished tresses and a body like a concrete workers’ collective really be secretary of a trade union or are our eyes playing bourgeois revisionist tricks on us?
