been struggling back from the theatre, love. My cheap-jack brother couldn’t afford a taxi. I might as well have stood under that lot, mightn’t I?’ She indicates the inside of the ballroom as the sprinklers are suddenly turned off. ‘Come on, Sid. Come and warm me up.’ She gives his arm a big squeeze and folds back her lips.
‘I ought to–Oh, well. We’ll do something about it in the morning.’ Sid shakes his head and is led away towards the stairs.
I go out of the front entrance of the hotel and look towards the pier. The moon is now high in the sky and there are a lot of stars about. Not a trace of rain. Luckily, in Rosie’s capable hands, Sid is unlikely to ever know this.
‘Old what?!’ says Sid.
‘Old Rottingfestians,’ I say.
‘Who the hell are they?’
‘They’re a rugby club. Playing a couple of pre-season games in the area. Two teams and a spattering of wives, girlfriends and supporters. It can’t be bad can it?’
‘It can’t be much worse.’
It is two weeks after the Pendulum Society have wrung out their Y-fronts and gone home and the Cromby is now totally isolated from its adjoining buildings. On one side is a flat expanse of red mud with a few bricks sticking out of it and on the other the Irish problem are filling the air with dust and cursing. Bookings have dropped off at an alarming rate and some couples have only entered the hotel in order to ask for their deposits back. Never the most elegant of heaps, the Cromby now looks like the foreman’s hut on a building site.
‘At least they won’t complain about the noise, I suppose,’ sighs Sid. This has been one of our main problems and ‘The Friends of Silence’ checked out before breakfast on the first morning. Even Miss Primstone has taken to wearing ear plugs.
Poor Sid’s enthusiasm has been fading fast and I know that only his pride is preventing him from selling out to Rigby. That little rat-substitute is frequently seen standing by his Rolls-Royce and supervising the demolition with an evil smile puckering the corners of his cakehole.
Mum–Batwoman, as we now call her–and Dad have long since returned to The Smoke and Rosie–thank God–has expressed herself as unwilling to risk Jason’s tender lugholes until the noise of demolition has ceased.
‘The little perisher hardly sleeps at the best of times,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back when everything has settled down.’
At this rate everything is going to settle like a ship sliding down in fifty fathoms of briny.
Elsewhere in the hotel things do not change much. Miss Ruperts spends most of her time in her room getting, or rather keeping, pissed, and Mrs Caitley is now conducting a bitter vendetta with Senor Luigi, the latest head waiter. June, Audrey and Carmen roam the corridors, hoping to find Sacha Distel without his running shoes, and Sidney and Sandra play their own intimate version of mixed singles once a week. They have no trouble making ends meet but Dennis has to fiddle twice as hard in order to keep himself in fag money.
It is with the hotel in this, not untypically, fair-to-muddling situation that two important visitors arrive independently. The Old Rottingfestians Rugby Union Football Club, and Doctor Walter Carboy.
The former straggle up one Friday afternoon in a variety of fly-spattered MGs and scruffy 1100s. Those emerging from sports cars wear loud check hacking jackets and are usually accompanied by small blondes with brooches on the front of their jumpers. The 1100s disgorge a slightly older and shabbier article with leather elbow patches on their crumpled houndstooth and unlit pipes sagging over double chins. Their women have an air of experienced resignation like cows approaching the milking shed. You feel that they have been on tour before.
One feature that characterises all the men is an air of undefeated cheerfulness that flows like something out of a Battle of Britain epic.
‘How’s it going, Tinker?’
‘Dickers, old chap. Fantastic. How’s Daphers?’
‘Not so bad. Turned a bit green when I did a ton in Lewes High Street.’
‘Cool bastard! How did the peelers react to that?’
‘No likey. I told them my grandmother was on the point of snuffing it but they wouldn’t believe me. Good God! Look who’s here. Tortor. What a marvellous surprise!’ The bird smiles slowly and extends a cheek in order to protect her mouth. Tinker and Dickers descend on it hungrily and make sure that their hands do not feel left out of things. They grope clumsily as if there is more pleasure in being seen to grope rather than the actual groping.
One of the wives–this one must be a wife–looks very cute in her long sleeveless leather jacket, and I catch her eye as she turns away wearily from the hearty reunions going on around her. She raises a finger and I move to her side.
‘Have you got a programme of what’s on in the town?’ she says.
‘Yes, I expect so. It’s probably a bit out of date, though. You’d be better off with the local paper. I’ll see if I can find you one.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ She has a nice smile. ‘If you find one can you stick it in my pigeon hole? Number forty-two.’ A quick glance at her tidy little body and full lips confirms the coarse thought that I would not be at all averse to sticking it in her pigeon hole.
‘Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘Going to make a real weekend of it, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you’ll be taking in some of the local entertainment as well as the rugby, will you?’
‘What do you mean “as well as”?’ she says. ‘Have you ever seen this lot on tour before? Unless you can drink your own weight in beer every evening you might as well buy a season ticket to the local chamber concerts, if you’re lucky enough to find any. I don’t expect to see Adrian again until Tuesday morning.’
I begin to see what she means when by six o’clock they have drunk Dennis out of beer. It is the only thing they are interested in. As if there is some prize being offered they stand shoulder to shoulder pouring the stuff down their throats and threatening each other with physical violence in order to pay for the next round. With Dennis rushing around trying to find some more beer, they switch to shorts and so by supper time are in a decidedly jovial mood. It must be the first time in the history of the Cromby that forty-two male guests have marched into the dining room whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’.
Some of the ladies, including my friend in forty-two, obviously find it less than amusing, but their menfolk sit down joyfully and immediately start pelting each other with bridge rolls and unscrew the top of the pepper pot so that their mates will pour the whole lot into their soup. Some joker has brought a farting cushion and this provides an endless source of amusement, especially when Sid comes out to try and restore some order. Every word he says is greeted by a loud raspberry. Senor Luigi tries to make headway with the bowing and scraping but when everybody jumps out of his chair and rests his chin on his chest every time he says anything, he eventually realises that they are taking the piss.
Only Mrs Caitley knows how to handle the bastards. She storms
