“That I did!” beamed Frank, proudly. “Henk finalised all the legalities this morning. And so the charity can use the farm for at least the next three years.”
“Three? I thought it was two?”
“So did I. But that idiot, Rodney Franks, has already told Henk that he’ll object to any and all plans for a hotel. He said he’d fund a campaign by the local residents to support him, also.”
“That’s good news for the charity, at least.”
“It’s brilliant!” gushed Frank. “We’ll just need the money to do the place up a bit now.”
Jessie leaned back as two bowls of French onion soup were placed on the table before them. “Thank you,” she said graciously to the waitress. “It smells absolutely wonderful.”
“Excuse me, may I get the bill,” said the voice from the table behind Frank, not really as a question, taking the waitress’s attention away momentarily.
Jessie gave a fleeting glance to the woman standing behind Frank. “It needs a lot of work?” Jessie asked.
Frank used a piece of bread to the break through the cheese layer covering the soup as the music from the current song playing once again came to a natural conclusion. “Needs work?” he scoffed, loudly for emphasis. “It needs a load of work,” he said, making certain to catch the attention of the woman behind, before continuing, “It’s one of those where it looks good from a distance, but, the closer you get, all the cracks come into view and you can see just what a desperate state it’s in.”
Jessie motioned with her spoon to catch Frank’s eye, in a hopeless attempt to shut him up. It didn’t work. And the woman, with coat on, stood directly beside him with a face like a bear chewing a wasp.
“And the smell. Oh, the smell,” Frank went on, fanning his nose with his hand for good measure. “Stinks, doesn’t it? Just awful. Smells like it should be doused in bleach for a week. And I’ll tell you what, once you’ve been in there, you can guarantee you’ll be itching for a month.”
The bibliophile woman crouched to the floor, near Frank’s foot, where she discreetly removed something from her handbag. She stood brandishing a foil wrapper, which glistened in the dim lighting.
“Excuse me, sir. I couldn’t help but overhear that tonight was your first formal date with this lovely lady. I didn’t want the climax of the evening, as it were, to be ruined, so I thought I’d give you the courtesy of retrieving this for you,” she said, placing a condom onto the table. “It must have fallen out of your pocket, I imagine,” she said calmly. “Also,” she continued, raising her voice and slapping her palms down on the table. “I’m not a bloody prostitute!” she exclaimed, interrupting those pretending to be engrossed in their meal, with one ear tuned into the unfolding drama. She threw notes on top of her bill and marched towards the door, throwing a scarf over her shoulder, before coming to an abrupt halt, reconsidering. She then turned back to Frank’s table, and, once there, picked up the glass of wine in front of him, dispatching the contents smartly into his face.
Frank wiped the wine from his cheek, extending his tongue to catch a couple of dribbles in the process. All eyes were on him. “I would never, you know,” he announced, pointing towards the door at the exiting figure of the woman. “I wouldn’t. Not with a prostitute. She’s wasn’t a prostitute anyway, I don’t think. She’s just on the Island working. She’s a working girl, I guess you could say. It’s what she told me.”
“Not helping,” Jessie told him, talking through the closed fingers covering her face. “Perhaps a change of tack?” she suggested gently.
“I’m not some sort of sex pest!” Frank continued, undeterred, raising his finger to bring the point home. Unfortunately, when he did so, he did so with a flourish that very much resembled his digit thrusting itself up into an invisible orifice… and twisting around inside.
“And this!” he said. “It’s not mine!” he protested. “It’s not even my brand!” he proclaimed. “I only use lambskin!” he further declared.
He picked up the foil packet, daintily, with tip of thumb and forefinger, and with little finger extended, as if he were carefully lifting a used teabag up by the string, afraid it would drip its remnants on the table. He held it as far away from him as his arm would allow.
“Can you please take this away?” he asked of Chantelle, the waitress, but received only a blank, unobliging stare in return.
“I’ll put it in my pocket, then,” Frank said, more to himself than anyone else, since Chantelle was not interested.
“Jessie, that condom’s not mine!” he said, turning to her. “I would never be so presumptuous or crude.” Then he noticed her handbag, which she’d placed in front of her on the table. “I’m really sorry to cause you any embarrassment. Don’t go, Jessie, please!” pleaded Frank, in a panic now, certain he’d made a right dog’s dinner of things.
“Oh, I’m not going, don’t worry,” she chuckled, reaching into the bag. “Here, I only wanted to show you this,” she said, teasing him with a cheeky wink, and lifting out a similar foil packet. “Now we’ve got one each!”
Frank made a noise akin to a giggle, wiping the remnants of wine from his face. “Today’s turning out to be a rather good one, it would seem.” He watched Jessie tuck her packet away again, perhaps for later. “Two more glasses of wine, please!” Frank ordered, without looking up, but Chantelle was back off to the kitchen, having already escaped when the opportunity arose.
“Three hundred pounds!” Chantelle hooted in delight, arriving back at the kitchen and materialising through the door triumphantly. “Give me that sweepstake, the pervert just had a drink thrown in his face! That three hundred quid is mine-all-mine, boys!”
Murphy appeared at hand, quick-smart, followed, as well, by the owner of the Scottish drawl.
“Bastard!” screamed the Scotsman, as only a Scotsman can scream, and with a kitchen hand towel scrunched up to his face to both block his wailing — so as not to upset the customers — and to cling to for comfort and security as a baby would its special lil’ blankie. “I knew I should have phoned for a bloody ambulance!”
Chapter
Three
I can’t see anything!” bellowed a voice with a haunting echo. “It’s bloody useless. And it stinks of faeces!”
“Turn your torch on, Monty!” shouted Dave in return.
“Whaaaat?” came the resonant reply.
Dave didn’t attempt to hide his frustration. “Thhheeee toooorch, Monty. Turn. It. On.”
“I’m not bloody stupid, Dave! Give me some credit, mate! The torch is on! I can’t see anything, and it smells of faeces, I’m tellin’ ya!”
“What do you mean, faeces?
“Faeces!”
“You mean shit?”
“Yes of course I mean shit!”
“Well why didn’t you just say shit, then?”
“I was trying my best not to be vulgar, Dave!”
“Since when?”
“Fair point.”
Dave's hands scuttled up the back of Monty’s torso, applying pressure close to Monty’s midriff now, rather than the previous position near his ankles.
The adjustment caused Monty to scream out.
“Don’t you dare let me go, Dave!”
It was a tempting proposition, Dave’s had to admit. But, instead, he knelt on Monty’s buttocks in a useless attempt to look around Monty’s shoulders, and down into the hole. “I can’t see anything, either,” he remarked, squinting his eyes against the blackness of the abyss.
“Well I wouldn’t expect that you could!” Monty answered.
“And you’re right about the smell, Monty… unless, that’s you?”
“Don’t be daft! If that was me then you’d need to be phoning an ambulance right about now!”
“Yeah, but you’re always—”
“Help me up, Dave! I’m starting to feel faint!”
“Have you unblocked it?” asked Dave.
Monty used the last of his strength to push on the broom ha
ndle held in his hands.
“No, but I think something’s about to give. The smell of faeces… er, shit… is certainly getting worse. Maybe that’s a good sign?”
“You need to unblock it!” Dave roundly encouraged him. “Then I’ll let you up, yeah? Come on, Monty, they’re relying on us, mate!”
“Please let me up,” whimpered Monty. “My eyes are burning, and I think something’s alive down there…”
“All right, all right. Wait there,” Dave told him.
“Where else would I be going, presently??”
Dave pushed himself upright, leaving his foot planted firmly on Monty’s arse, preventing him disappearing down the…
“Help…!” screamed Monty, but his desperate plea was not sufficient to prevent him sliding deeper into the pit, as the pressure applied from Dave’s foot alone was evidently lacking.
Monty’s legs were the only thing above ground, poking skyward — at an acute angle — like the RMS Titanic, moments before she was lost to a watery grave.
Dave made a desperate lunge towards Monty’s waist, clamping his chubby hands around the leather belt, only seconds before his friend was likely to have been claimed by the deep.
“I’ve got you, Monty! Hold on, old son!”
“No, you hold on! I’m scared, Dave!” screamed Monty. “I’ve dropped my torch and my face is planted in the dirt— at least I hope it’s dirt. And I swear I can hear something down here! I’m not joking!”
Dave stooped over Monty, who was presently little more than a dead weight. The strain was etched on Dave’s face. He used every ounce of strength to pull Monty skyward with a force that Excalibur itself would have found impossible to resist.
“I’m going!” screamed Monty.
Which came as a surprise to Dave, whose hands remained in exactly the same position.
Yet Monty was indeed going, slowly, like a cork being eased from a bottle. Dave fought valiantly, but he was no match for gravity or a greased-up Monty — who was now sodden with sweat, from stem to stern, to boot.
Dave planted his feet for one last-ditch effort, but it was in vain. Monty collapsed in a heap belowground, and the release in strain sent Dave flying backwards, where he came to halt face-down upon the earth.
Such was Dave’s vice-like grip, however, that Monty’s now-empty wellies remained fixed firmly under Dave’s armpits. Unfortunately, at least for Dave, his efforts had also relieved Monty of his trousers — which had been catapulted, along with Dave, when Dave fell back.
Due to the preceding pitched battle, the wet grass was now caked in mud, mud which obscured Dave’s vision.
“I can’t see anything,” pleaded Dave, using his forearm to wipe the mud from his face, but to no avail. He used the article of clothing he’d removed from Monty and gratefully wiped the excess mud from his eyes and mouth, taking advantage of the moment to blow his nose into the fabric held in his hand as well.
Dave chuckled as, once his vision was cleared, it became apparent what lay in his grasp. “You’ll need to give these trousers a proper wash,” he told Monty, giving his nose a final wipe for good measure.
And yet, after a few blinks, and his eyesight further restored, it because obvious to Dave that something was amiss. The ‘trousers’ he’d been using to wipe his face were suspiciously, and unnervingly, generally free from mud.
Dave looked down to his hand, at what in fact lay there — the gusset area of Monty’s cream Y-fronts, Y-fronts that Dave sincerely hoped were soiled with only the remnants of mud from his own face, and not… other leavings.
“For the love of…! Monty, I’ve got your bloody underpants!” he said, using a wadded bunch of his own t-shirt, taken up in his spare hand now, to furiously remove any intimate essence of Monty which might have been taking up residence on his face.
“I was just looking for them,” Monty declared. “Oi, help me out?” he pleaded.
Monty had somehow managed to work himself upright and stood on his feet, though his feet were perhaps lacking solid purchase, given, as they were, positioned in a shithole. Though his body was vertical and oriented with head northward, he remained, alas, for the most part subterranean. His head, in fact, appeared from the hole — visible only from the jawline up. He looked very much like an elephant seal peering out of an ice hole.
“Here. Dave. Are you sniffing my undies?”
“Yes Monty, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I just saw them, lying there, looking all inviting, and thought, I know, I’m going to sniff Monty’s underpants.”
“That’s what I figured,” remarked Monty, immune to Dave’s sarcasm.
“Did you clear the blockage while you were down there?” asked Dave. “If we can’t get those toilets flushing, we’re never going to be able to get this place open,” he said, looking back to the farmhouse.
Monty nodded, catching his chin on the corner of the drain, covering it further with unpleasantness in the process. “I think so,” he replied. “Well, there’s now water running about the height of my ankles, at least.”
“Yeah, that’s probably not water, I expect. But good job all the same, mate,” came Dave’s reply.
“Please. Help me out, Dave. I can feel things hitting my legs— terrible things. I’m sure they’re logs, of a sort, but I’m guessing they’re not the wooden variety. If you catch my drift.” With a whimper, Monty raised his arms like a baby hoping to be picked up by its mummy.
“I’m not touching you, Monty. You’re covered in shit.”
“Faeces, Dave.”
“Shit!”
“Alright, shit, then.”
“Shit,” Dave said again, but this time more thoughtfully, as he wondered what to do about it.
“Get a hose?” Monty suggested.
Dave stood up, removing underpants from the palm of his hand. “There isn’t a hose, Monty.”
“I can’t just stay in here, Dave.”
“Hmm,” said Dave, as if ruminating on this.
“Dave, I can’t just stay down here!” Monty reiterated desperately.
Dave crouched down, hands placed crossed over one knee. He looked towards the farmhouse, and then back down to Monty. “Frank and Stan are back!” he shouted to his comrade-in-arms.
“Can they help?” asked Monty hopefully.
“They’ve got some woman with them,” Dave began.
“Surely now’s not the time, Dave?” chided Monty.
“What?” asked Dave, distracted, not following along.
“No time for love, Dr Jones,” Monty clarified.
“No, Monty, she must be from the council or environmental health or something. Frank told us we had to get the toilets working before they came back.”
“I’d say they are?” suggested Monty.
“Yes, I can see that they’re back!” countered Dave.
“I meant the toilets, Dave. In working order, that is. Judging by the smell down here, at least. Now please help me out. This is starting not to be fun anymore.”
Dave shook his head. “Bloody hell, Monty, we’ve got new jobs… we’re trying to impress, fergodsake, and presently I’m covered in sweat from your ballsack and you’re stuck down a hole like a confused mole, half-naked, and with me waving your underpants around like the bloody Union Jack!”
“Sounds like top marks for effort to me,” countered Monty. “Wave!” he added abruptly.
“What? Yeah, that’s what I said, waving your underpants around like—”
“Wave,” Monty repeated. “They’re waving at you,” he explained.
“Ah-haa-ha,” offered Dave through gritted teeth, waving awkwardly in the direction of the house in surrender, Monty’s white underpants still in hand. ‘HI THERE’ he mouthed, with no volume audible.
Frank and Stan, along with the as-yet-unidentified woman, waved enthusiastically in return. “We’ll be over in a minute, Dave!” shouted Frank, presumably unable to see Monty’s excrement-covered head poking out of the earth. “We’re just giving Eileen a
tour of the house!” he added with a thumbs-up.
Dave folded his arms, rubbing his chin. “Eileen… Eileen,” he mused. “Ah! She’s the woman from the charity trust,” the cog in his brain coming to rest and the memory settling into place. “Frank said they’d made an application for funding and that she was coming around to…”
“That’s really interesting,” interrupted Monty. “Please, do carry on. Let me put the kettle on while you tell me all about it. Oh no, I’ll have to rain check, actually, due to currently being drowned in faeces and god-knows-what-else.”
“Hmm?” said Dave, still distracted and only half-listening. “Yes, a cuppa would be lovely right about—”
“GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
Dave dropped Monty’s undies, finally, uncertain why he’d been holding onto them this whole time. “Round this side…” said Dave, troubleshooting aloud, and shuffling around the narrow opening of the drain… “There’s more grass than mud. Do you want to put your undies back on?” he suggested. “Please say yes.”
“I can’t! The water level is getting too high, now. Besides, you’ve seen what I’m packing down below loads of times before now, so there’s no need for bashfulness on your part. Just, please, before I come out, please, you need to understand that the water is cold down here. Very cold. Yeah?”
Dave reached down, and the two of them held onto each other’s hands with the intensity of two lovers in imminent danger of being forcibly separated. Dave bent his knees — good practice when lifting heavy objects — and gripped hold of Monty with every ounce of strength he could muster. He arched his back, taking the strain as his tentative grip on the grass threatened to break… only to send Monty plummeting back to the rancid depths.
“Work with me, mate,” pleaded Dave. “How bloody heavy are you, anyway?”
“I’m carrying a little holiday weight, is all, Dave. If you must know. Plus I’m waterlogged. Now keep tugging at me.”
“Here, can you not say that?” asked Dave, caught temporarily off-guard.
“What?”
Frank 'n' Stan's Bucket List #3 Isle 'Le Mans' TT: Featuring Guy Martin Page 4