Fantastic! What happened? You what? Unbelievable! Quite unbelievable! Lucky to be alive, eh? What about your passenger? Miss Frankcom? Oh, her! I’ve heard about her. Taken the test fifty times, hasn’t she? Thirteen. Oh, I thought it was more than that. Oh well, it doesn’t matter.” Click, click, click. “You like water, don’t you? No, I’m sorry. Of course it isn’t funny. Yes, I’m sorry you didn’t like our last story. Most people thought it was very good, but there you are. Oh, is that Miss Frankcom? I must have a word with her. Miss Frankcom, Miss Frankcom!” And he pisses off across the beach to where Miss F. has foolishly revealed herself. Apart from jumping on him and his camera and burying them both in the sand, there is very little I can do, so I return to the Morris which looks like a boiled sweet some toddler has spat out into an ash can and imagine Cronk’s face when he opens his morning paper or the Norfolk Mafia get on the blower to him.
To my amazement the engine fires first time which is either a credit to British engineering or an indication that it is getting used to working on a mixture of petrol and water. I dish out some silver to my fishermen friends: “You be lucky there, bor” and pull alongside Miss Frankcom who is clearly relishing Gruntscomb’s greasy attentions.
“No, I haven’t tried the Major School,” she is saying. “After so long with the East Coast I feel I should see the thing through with them. To change now would be an admission of failure. Almost like giving up.”
“Touting for business, are you?” I snarl.
Gruntscomb looks aggrieved. “No, I was just trying to get the whole story. I wondered if this incident would have any effect on Miss Frankcom’s future plans.”
“No, dear,” says Miss Frankcom considerately, “it was an accident and I don’t blame Mr. Lea for anything.”
That’s enough for me and I bundle her into the Morris before she can say anything else more quotable.
“You must be shaken after that,” I say comfortingly, “let me run you home.”
“Aren’t we going to finish the lesson?” she says.
Somehow I manage to resist strangling her—mainly because I don’t reckon my hands will fit round her bloody great throat—and dump her outside her bungalow. I am so choked that I could easily drive the Morris over the nearest cliff but I know Gruntscomb would be waiting there with his crummy little camera poised for action so there is no point. Why should I give the bastard any more free material?
Determined to make a clean breast of it I give the Morris a wipe down and return to the E.C.D.S. where Dawn, presumably wearing dark glasses to celebrate it being the coldest day of the year, looks up as I come in.
“Where’s Miss Frankcom?” she says.
“Good question, I filled her knickers with paving stones and pushed her off the end of the pier.”
“Did she sink?”
“Not her. She was running up the beach thirty seconds later shaking like a golden retriever. Where’s Cronky?”
“He’s out playing golf. Where is she, really?”
“You mean you haven’t heard yet? I thought the telephone would have been ringing all afternoon. I could hear the drums beating outside the coast guard station.”
“You haven’t had another accident? I don’t believe it!”
So I tell her what happened and I must say she is quite sympathetic in a “well I never” “ooh er, you didn’t” sort of way. It is the first time I have ever known her show any emotion apart from when she spilt nail varnish on her new tights and in my present mood her interest is most welcome.
“What are you going to do?” she asks eventually.
“Go out and get pissed … the minute the pubs open,” I say, “do you want to keep me company?”
To my surprise she takes the invitation seriously and I can see her little mind ticking over.
“I don’t fancy sitting in a pub all night,” she says, “but there’s a dance at the Shermer Young Conservatives—” her voice tails away temptingly.
“Will they let me in? I haven’t brought my passport with me.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s nice. They’ve got a good band up there.”
So a few hours later I am building up my confidence with a few pints in the “Three Jolly Rapists” or whatever Mrs. Bendon’s local is called and thinking of the reproachful look in her eyes as I slid out of the house in my zoot suit. A frilly blouse she had on and when you look down her cleavage it’s a poor reason to be leaving home on a cold night.
Luckily Dawn, running down the concrete path of her council house looks a very reasonable alternative even if it is by lamplight. Not the kind of girl you would take home to mother perhaps, but dad would be very grateful. She smells like homage to “California Poppy” and has bloody great curtain rings hanging down from her ears, but her tits stick out where tits ought to stick out and her mouth looks a bit more exciting than the slit in a pillar box—not much smaller, mind you, but more inviting. I feel the dark glasses could be dispensed with but I don’t want to pick a fight with her at this stage of the evening.
“You look fabulous!” I say, and from my waist down I mean it.
Shermer Y.C.s hold their dances at the tennis club and from the “Shermerlins” to the cider cup the festivities live down to my expectations so completely as to be not worth describing, but luckily I have taken steps to make good the foreseen absence of strong liquor by bringing my own half bottle of scotch. With this, I lace every drink sipped by the fair Dawn until she is snuggling up to me as if I am her favourite teddy. I do nothing to disillusion her and am awaiting the right moment to suggest we hit the trail when I notice a familiar face propped up by the doorway.
It belongs to the long blond streak of piss that drove me off the road. Tony Fart-features or whatever his name was supposed to be. As I see him so he recognises me and our eyes meet with not enough love left over for a parish funeral. He sneers and turns away and my fists contract. My first reaction is to belt the living daylights out of him, but there are other considerations. Am I going to risk leaving this gorgeous half-cut hunk of mammal sleepily kneeding my thigh for a mere affair of honour? Am I buggery! I can catch up with shag-nasty any day of the week. Tonight I intend to be up at the crack of Dawn.
“Come on, gorgeous,” I murmur into one of her stretched ears—those earrings really are heavy—“time to go home.”
She doesn’t argue and I half carry her to ‘Ladies Cloaks’ and hope she doesn’t fall asleep inside.
While I’m waiting I take another look around the dance floor and watch. Tony Sharp waltzing with a pert little brunette who he seems to be massaging into his body like embrocation. Whoever it is, she obviously fancies him, which, I guess, makes two of them. I try to catch his eye for a further staring match but he is too busy to notice and they disappear into a scrum of bodies.
Behind me the door opens and my dream girl lurches out. She has left her dark glasses behind but I don’t care because it gives me my first opportunity of the evening to admire the acres of mascara plastered round her eyes.
“You look fabulous,” I say pulling her towards me by the lapels of her synthetic fur coat. I may
