she’s away on a cure at the moment?’
‘Yeah. She should be in peak form at the moment.’
As he says the words, an ancient Armstrong Siddeley can be seen belting down the promenade towards us. Its course is, to put it mildly, erratic, and it forces a milk float off the road before squealing to a halt outside the Cromby. Hardly have the wheels stopped turning than the driver’s door flies open and a big woman of about fifty gets out. She is carrying a bulging suitcase and has only taken two steps before the case bursts open and about half a dozen spirit bottles shatter on the paving stones.
‘What did you say her name was?’ I ask Sid.
‘Miss Ruperts,’ he says grimly.
‘ “In peak form”, that’s what you said, isn’t it, Sid? Looks as if she’s heard the news all right.’
‘Shut up,’ says Sid.
‘I expect you want to go and introduce yourself. I think I’ll take a turn round the pier.’
I watch Miss R. lurch through the front entrance of the hotel.
‘You come with me,’ hisses Sid. ‘You’re my Personal Assistant. This is what you get paid for.’
‘When, Sid?’ I ask, but he does not seem to hear me. I follow him across the road and we bump into Miss Primstone just outside the hotel.
‘Was–er–that Miss Ruperts?’ says Sidney casually.
‘Yes,’ says Miss Primstone hurriedly. ‘But she seems rather overtired. I think she wants to be alone.’
‘Very understandable,’ says Sid. ‘But could you tell her that Mr Noggett would like a word with her? It is important.’
‘Have you ever thought about changing your name?’ I say as Miss P. hurries away shaking her head.
‘Shut up.’
‘But Sidney Noggett. I mean, it’s not like Gaylord Mandeville, is it?’
‘No, thank God. Now belt up! Unless you want to start sketching the insides of Labour Exchanges for a living.’
‘That’s very funny, Sid,’ I say as we are shown into a small dark office behind the reception. ‘Have you ever thought about doing it professionally?’
‘I’ve thought about doing you, hundreds of times. Ah, Miss Ruperts? How nice to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. I am Sidney Noggett and this is my Personal Assistant Mr Lea.’
‘A bauble,’ says Miss R. as she pours a jumbo shot of Scotch into a shaking tumbler.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘To be a bauble passed from hand to hand is not the future I would have envisaged for myself in those halcyon days of yore.’ I don’t really understand what she is on about because I have edited out the slurs so it reads understandably. But ‘passed from hand to hand’? With her frame you would need a fork lift truck. She has a mug like a professional wrestler–only most of them shave these days–and hair like Wild Bill Hitchcock–feminine but masculine, if you know what I mean. Her shoulders would not be out of place on a second row forward. And, how often does Raquel Welch wear a Norfolk jacket and jodhpurs with a bootlace tie? You can count the times on the notches of your riding crop. All in all, a very distinctive lady, not much prone to flower arrangement, or anything else, I would wager.
‘Have no fear, madam,’ says Sidney who picked up most of his manners from old movies starring the likes of Ronald Colman. ‘You have no cause for alarm.’
‘Casting an eye over the register used to be like glancing through Debrett. Half the crowned heads of Europe stayed here. Their servants used to put up at the Grand. And now, now–’ Miss Ruperts chokes with emotion, or maybe it is the booze. ‘I am on my way to the gutter.’ She knocks back the contents of her glass and belches loudly. Now you would not think that DDT. ‘No flies on me’ Noggett would be taken in by that load of cobblers, would you? No? Well, you would be wrong. Very wrong. Sidney–and I am not so different myself, really–has a respect for anything uppercrust that is positively terrifying. If some bloke had rolled up flashing his greasy braces and with half a Woodbine glued to his lower lip, Sidney would have taken him apart soon as look at him, but this drunken old slagbag is getting the Queen Mother treatment because she talks very refained and does not remind Sid of anything he has seen in Scraggs Lane–ancestral home of the Leas.
‘Miss Ruperts, allow me to assure you–’
But Miss R. has not finished yet.
‘It is not me that I am thinking of,’ she says, reaching out for the Scotch bottle, ‘but those faithful retainers who have rendered yeoman service all these years. Treat me as you will, I have my memories to live on, but I beseech you, do not cast them into the wilderness. This place has been a home to them. To you it may only be a realisable asset but–please! I beseech you. Temper expediency with mercy.’
You don’t read speeches like that in Shakespeare, do you? Certainly not, if it’s a choice between that and Coronation Street.
‘Miss Ruperts,’ says Sid, while I wonder if I am hearing right. ‘I am certain that your experience will be invaluable. I hope that we will be able to work together to restore the hotel to its former position of immenseness. Do not fear that I have any plans to destroy your life work.’
Miss Ruperts is visibly moved by these stirring words and has to take more liquid comfort to calm herself.
‘Call me a stupid old woman if you will,’ she begins.
‘You’re a–’
‘Shut up, Timmy! Forgive me, Miss Ruperts. You were saying.’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I was only attempting an expression of gratitude for your noble gesture and generous sentiments. Now, if you will forgive me, I would like to be left alone. The events of the last few hours have taken toll of my strength–my heart, you know.’ She taps the region of her enormous chest which looks like a kitbag worn on the wrong side of the body.
‘Of course, of course,’ Sid is backing out of the office. ‘We can discuss details later. I hope you will soon be perfectly recovered.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ I say as we return to the cocktail bar. ‘You weren’t really swallowing all that rubbish were you?’
‘One of the old school,’ says Sid. ‘You don’t often meet them like that these days.’
‘If you’re lucky you don’t. Come off it, Sid. She’s a piss artist. If you don’t get rid of her, she’ll drink the place dry within a couple of weeks.’
‘She does have a drink problem, I’ll grant you that, but she must be worth a lot of goodwill in a place like this. Think of the contacts she’s got.’
‘I’d rather not, though I suppose she might be able to fix us up with an Alcoholics Anonymous Convention. I thought you were going to weed out all the layabouts? She’d be top of my list.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, and make sure you don’t start creeping
