has Sidney spoken a truer word.
When we eventually get them in to supper I notice that a good many of the husbands and wives have split up and are not sitting together. I suppose they must have known each other before they got here. I notice, too, that they all have a gong-like medal strung round their necks. It must have something to do with the pendulum bit. At the end of the meal Sam the Ram scrapes back his chair and addresses the throng.
‘Get in tune with your surroundings, people,’ he intones. ‘The Mellow Mingle will begin at two hours before tomorrow. Keys please, to the ballroom where nightcaps will be served and friendships cemented.’ He flicks the gong round his neck so that it swings from side to side, and sits down as an interested murmur spreads around the room. Swings. Pendulum. Swings. Swingers! By the cringe! I take another good look around the nuzzling diners and there can be no doubt about it. They are wife-swappers to a man. Husband-swappers to a woman. Does Sidney know what he has let himself in for? Surely Miss Ruperts cannot have been party to this unsavoury flesh-trading. The diners began to drift away and I flee to Sidney’s side.
‘They’re all bleeding wife-swappers,’ I gasp. ‘Did you know that?’
‘Funny you should say that. The same thought was going through my mind.’ Sid does not sound very concerned.
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘What do you expect me to do about it? Tell them all to leave? I don’t care what they get up to as long as it doesn’t frighten the staff.’
‘Or the residents.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about them, well, they’re all so gaga they wouldn’t notice if Mrs Caitley started doing a striptease.’
‘Don’t be so disgusting! I bet the whale bone in her corsets was turning yellow when Moby Dick was a tadpole.’
‘Be your age, Timmo. You’re so old fashioned sometimes. Having a bit on the side isn’t the sin it used to be. A very nice class of person indulges these days, you know.’
‘That makes it all right then doesn’t it? Blimey, Sidney Noggett, you’re the biggest snob I know. Anything is all right if you read about it in Nova.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about. All I know is that the hotel is full and that none of them signed the register with X’s. That’s good enough for me.’
‘Well, I hope Rosie sees it like that.’ Then, at last, Sidney’s face registers a trace of disquiet.
I have a few hours off that evening so I slip into my dudes and nip out for a drink; I can’t afford the prices at the Cromby. As I sit in the snug at the Fisherman’s Arms and consider the design on the beer mats, it occurs to me that Sidney’s attitude may well be the right one. It also occurs to me that there is a lot of spare back at the hotel and that I do not have an old lady to worry about. I mean, I am all in favour of free love, but I can’t imagine my wife ever being ready for it. They take things so much more seriously than us, don’t they? Look at Rosie with Ricci Volare on the Isla de Amor. She still stiffens every time Jimmy Young plays Come Prima.
I knock back my drink and whip round to the hotel. It is five to ten and I just have time to squirt some after-shave down the front of my Y-fronts before joining the crowd pushing into the ballroom. None of the older generation of Cromby employees are on view but Dennis is firmly entrenched behind the bar, no doubt fiddling a small fortune for himself. He registers surprise when he sees me.
‘Mr Noggett asked me to mingle and see that everything was under control,’ I say reassuringly.
‘Funny. That’s what he told me he was doing.’ Dennis points across the room and there is Sidney with a large scotch in his hand chatting up a tall bird with butterfly glasses. Dirty old sod! You can’t trust anybody these days, can you? He looks up and sees me before I can duck into the crowd and the expression on his mug is not akin to delight. However, he is obviously making headway with the chick because he turns his back and leaves me to it.
‘Oh, I am sorry!’ The willowy redhead must have made a detour of about five yards to bump into me and is smelling like a fire in a perfume factory that has been put out with liquid supplied by the local brewery.
‘That’s all right.’ My smile would make Warren Beatty rush round to his dentist for a check-up. ‘It was my fault. Let me get you another drink.’
‘That’s very kind of you, but are you sure?’
‘What’s your pleasure?’
‘Now you’re asking.’ She rolls her eyes and gives her pendulum a swing. ‘Just a teeny gin and tonic. A small one. Really.’
Dennis looks up at the ceiling as I approach him and flaps his wrist. ‘All right for some, isn’t it?’
‘Keep watering the drinks.’
I return to my fair companion who is now chewing her gong temptingly.
‘Where’s your thing?’
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘Your pendulum, silly!’
‘Oh, that!’ I pat my chest absent-mindedly. ‘Must have left it in my room.’
‘Did you leave your wife in your room too?’
‘She wasn’t feeling so well. It must have been someone she ate.’ She does not seem to find that very funny. Maybe she’s right.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Er, Clapham.’ I hesitate because Mum has always taught us to say Wandsworth Common because she thinks it sounds better and I am only just breaking myself of the habit.
‘Oh, it’s lovely, isn’t it? We’ve got lots of friends who have just moved there. The Common is bliss.’
I don’t know if I would call Scraggs Lane lovely, and when I was a kid the tarts’ minders on the common used to keep warm by turning you over for your pocket money Still, I suppose it has changed a bit in the last few years.
‘It’s not bad.’
‘Have you lived there long?’
‘Quite a long time, yes.’ Like all my bleeding life, actually. It is obviously time I changed the subject.
‘What’s your name?’ She holds up her gong and I see that it has Penelope Brown engraved on it.
‘Call me Penny. What’s yours?’
‘Timothy Lea.’
‘Do you mind being called Tim?’
‘I don’t mind at all. How’s your glass?’
‘Fine. I don’t think I should have any more. I’m feeling a bit squiffy as it is. Tell me’–she tugs my sleeve, ‘are you fixed up yet?’ She looks around the assembled swingers and I follow her eyes.
‘You mean–?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
