Looking for Mrs Dextrose

by Nick Griffiths

  Turning to Clemmie, I said, “Bet the last verse would have mentioned the Frog Ch…” But she was leaving.

  “What did you think?” I asked when I caught her up outside.

  “I’m leaving, aren’t I?” she said.

  We walked in silence in the direction of the Desert Rose.

  “OK, well it was nice to meet you again,” said Clemmie, making for the downstairs hallway, somewhere along which her room must have been.

  I had to act fast or I would lose her.

  “Erm,” I said in a raised voice, aimed at her retreating form.

  She turned. Pursed her lips. Mmm… lovely lips.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I could murder a coffee!”

  She paused. “I’m sorry. Hot refreshment’s only available nine to five. But there’s a kettle in the communal kitchen upstairs.”

  Moment slipping away. “No, you’ve misunderstood me. I was hoping to have a coffee.”

  “Yes, I heard you the first time. Hot ref…”

  “No, I didn’t mean…”

  “Orange squash?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Cold drink? Orange squash?”

  “That’s not…”

  “Iced tea?”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Milk?”

  “Actually, I’m not feeling that thirsty any more.”

  “Oh. Oh well,” she said. “If you change your mind.”

  Had to be more direct. “In England, where I come from, ‘coffee’ is a euphemism.”

  “Is it?” She frowned. “So what do you ask for when you want a coffee?”

  It wasn’t going at all well. “Look, I’ll get to the point,” I said. “Would you…”

  Suddenly there came an almighty banging on a nearby wall. A man’s gummy-sounding voice shouted, “Whatf all vat wacket? Get to beb!”

  Clemmie looked abashed. “My Dad. Gotta go,” she loud-whispered. “Night.”

  And that was that.

  How near and yet how far?

  The way I saw it, I had three options:

  1. Head up to my TV-less room and fall asleep through boredom.

  2. Head back out into Flattened Hat, maybe find a bar and grab a bite to eat.

  3. Save Dextrose from himself.

  Option 2 stuck out like a sore thumb, and even 1 was preferable to 3.

  But then, what price loyalty?

  I wasn’t sure what to expect as I pushed on the door of Jimmy’s Topless Bar. My single – vain – hope was that Harrison Dextrose would not be inside.

  “Minking marvellous!” were the first words I heard.

  He was seated on a stool, elbows on the bar, chin in hands, staring at a 50-something barmaid engrossed in a book, wearing no top. Her breasts were voluminous and she was using them as a rest. She wore reading glasses and had a chestnut perm (possibly a wig: it didn’t look quite real).

  The room was dingy, with plain walls like chalkboards, and whiffed of stale sweat (there was another note in there, which I hoped never to identify). All of its windows had been blacked out. A dartboard hung in one corner; beside it a jukebox barely audibly played Stand By Your Man by Tammy Wynette.

  There was only one other customer, seated next to Dextrose, though they were paying each other no attention. He was a wizened little old man with a bent back and trousers that were too big, held up by braces.

  “Heehee! Oi love them dirty pillows!” announced the little old man, apropos of nothing.

  The barmaid looked up and tutted.

  Dextrose slapped him on the back, spilling his own drink as his elbow slid along the bar surface. The glass rolled off and smashed onto the floor.

  “Another one, boys?” sighed the barmaid, putting down her book.

  No one had even noticed me in the doorway.

  All out of enthusiasm and loyalty, I reverted to option 1.

  I lay on the bed and allowed my mood to sink. Drizzle pattered its downbeat rhythm on the window-pane and somewhere a dog howled a forlorn siren song to other lonely, horny mutts.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  A glass of milk and a ham sandwich had been left on the bedside table, by the lovely Clemmie I hoped, and were a brief but welcome respite from the overwhelming sense that everything was going wrong.

  I felt so badly let down.

  Why had I kidded myself that Dextrose might change? I’d read his book: that was him. The alcoholic skirt-chaser, hedonist, deviant. His world revolved around him.

  That I had seen a softer side to him, at least verging on the paternal, only made his return to the dark side worse. We were supposed to be on a mission, to find his abandoned wife. He’d understood that, I knew. Although I doubted he would ever admit it – immaturity, misdirected pride – he did want to find her.

  I had become swept along with the lame-ass plan, based on a childlike drawing made under the influence of hallucinogens, and on the claims of a charlatan, with Dextrose’s memory of places and times key to our hopes. How stupid had I been?

  Chasing shadows.

  At least I’d had a mother and father. Physical presences. They had even managed to live in the same house as me. For years! They had communicated with me, had acknowledged my existence, catered to my needs and comforted me when I was ill. They’d shown responsibility. Of parents, that was hardly too much to ask. And they had only been my guardians.

  Why on earth had I been so in awe of Dextrose?

  It made me wonder whether I had been too hard on Mother and Father? It was all too easy to remember the tougher times, the claustrophobia and the irritation of being brought up. But it hadn’t been all so bad. It really hadn’t.

  When I was a young boy in buttoned-up pyjamas, Father used to tell me bedtime stories. I would lie bound in linen and he would ask me to pick a character and setting, then he would weave a fantastical tale around those, off the top of his head. He’d been very good at that, and I had always looked forward to his tales, the sense of safety and the escapism.

  And every night, before he turned off the light, he would pat me on the head, as tenderly as his own evidently repressed upbringing would allow.

  I’d forgotten that.

  Another incident sprang to my mind. There had been a boy at boarding school who had bullied me during my early teens. He made me fear break-times, would tease and taunt me, sometimes punched and kicked. I hated him.

  It was his power trip and my pathetic impotence, and the taunts of my classmates riled and upset me. I never dared offer a physical response because the bully was stronger than me. So readily downtrodden had I been.

  Neither would I have told Father, volunteer my weakness, though he noticed one weekend when I had become especially withdrawn and had coaxed the story out of me.

  He listened quietly and, when I had finished pouring out my woe, for once he did not recommend a stiff upper lip, his solution to so many of life’s problems.

  That Monday, he drove me to school for the week as usual, before heading back to teach at Glibley Secondary. Unusually, when he parked the car he got out too. The boys were kicking balls around the playground, killing time before assembly.

  “You’re going to point this bully out to me,” he said.

  I was mortified. Eyes were upon us.

  “Come on,” he commanded. “I don’t have long.”

  So I did it. I pointed to the boy, feeling like Judas, and the boy saw me doing so.

  I could barely watch as Father strode across the playground, stopped at my tormentor and spoke to him, for no more than a few seconds. When he returned to his car he said nothing to me, did not even look my way. Then he was gone.

  The retribution never came. The bullying just stopped. The boy actively avoided me afterwards.

  Only a couple of weeks later, once my embarrassment and trepidation had subsided enough for inquisitiveness to kick in, did I steel myself to ask Father what he had said. He tried to brush the query aside, but I persisted.

  Eventually he t
old me: “I just said to him in a vaguely threatening manner, ‘Remember what happened to Pythagoras’.”

  I was bemused. “Why, what did happen to Pythagoras?”

  “No one really knows,” he replied. “But I was darned sure that young bully wouldn’t. A maths-based threat!”

  Though Father never had much of a sense of humour he laughed that day, and I could not help but join in. It was one of those moments.

  Perhaps I had been too hard on him?

  I had certainly given Dextrose too generous a ride. So I made up my mind, as a clock outside chimed midnight: I’d get him back for his solipsism, for his disloyalty, for his wanton ways. Maybe I should just abandon him, as he had me? That’d sure slap my message across his swollen face.

  Yes, why not?

  Sorted.

  It had been a night of fitful slumber, punctuated by nightmares featuring Importos, Hilda and Eustace. All too real. I had woken up several times, shaking, almost feverish, and when I drifted back to sleep the terrible visions had continued precisely where they’d left off.

  I recalled feeling, even in my subconscious, an enormous sense of relief when the cavalry had finally arrived in the form of a fleet of police cars, rolling in convoy down the Nameless Highway and into Lonely Bush, sirens blaring.

  When I woke up, the sirens were still blaring.

  Immediately I guessed what was going on.

  Red light travelled in pulses along the walls of the stairway, beamed in through glass. Which emergency service – services? – they belonged to, that was debatable, but I knew full well which establishment they would be attending.

  The sirens ceased as I descended the stairs. Rose was at the bottom in a floral nightgown, heading for the front door. I shimmied past her, reached the latch, then had to stand aside while she found the key for the lock.

  “I’ll bet it’s that damned titty bar again,” she muttered to herself. “Always trouble. The lowlife they get in there.”

  “Indeed,” I replied.

  “What are you doing up, anyway? Is this something to do with you?” she demanded.

  “What’s going on, Ma?” Clemmie’s voice, muffled by walls.

  I couldn’t let them know the truth – that my father was a lecherous drunk whose face was falling off – so I was forced to think fast. And it just slipped out: “I’m an undercover police officer. Stay inside and leave this to me.”

  “Oooh,” she went, practically swooning. “You should have said so before, officer.”

  Pushing Rose aside, I swung open the door and stood on the step. Swathed in flashing red light, which felt seedy, I turned and held my palm up towards her. “Go back inside, ma’m. Let me take care of this.”

  That was when Clemmie appeared in her jim-jams. Pale blue jim-jams, probably cotton. Her hair in sweet disarray. Rubbing bleary eyes.

  As I closed the door I caught her say the words, “…must have been pretty deep undercover…”

  A single police car, white with a green stripe along the side, was parked outside Jimmy’s. The drunk being bundled into the back seat by a copper in a hat was instantly recognisable.

  The barmaid I’d seen earlier was standing in the bar doorway, ranting and shaking a fist while her boobs wobbled in sympathy. “Get him out of here! Dirty old sod! You throw the book at him, officer! Never in all my years…”

  The drizzle had stopped, leaving that nostalgic, heady aroma of dampened grass. I sucked it in, looked around to see Clemmie and her mother’s noses pressed against the guesthouse window, ogling, and dived into the crime scene.

  “Excuse me, officer,” I said, keeping a respectful distance. “Can I help?”

  Dextrose lay sprawled across the rear seat of the cop car, attempting to right himself in the manner of an upside-down beetle. His tracksuit bottoms were soaked in what I trusted was beer, and I could smell the alcohol fumes even from a safe distance.

  The officer addressed me. “And why might you be able to help, sir?”

  I swallowed dry nothing. He had the disposition of a sergeant-major, all chest and chin. His khaki uniform – shorts, short-sleeved shirt, long socks, blunt pointy hat with four dents, such as a scoutmaster (or an eccentric German) might have worn – was immaculate. His buttons were polished and his expression scared me.

  “Iyav neverseenthad man inmylife, orifice,” slurred Dextrose.

  I had no way of telling whether he was trying to protect me or had forgotten who I was again.

  “What’s he done?” I asked.

  “And why would that be any business of yours? Sir?” the copper persisted.

  Should I confess? “He’s my father, officer.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “That’s your father?”

  “Yes. He is.”

  The copper glared. “You realise I am at liberty to arrest you also, for consorting with a known criminal?”

  I didn’t, but felt the concept was best sidestepped. “What’s he done, officer?”

  He pointed towards Jimmy’s. “According to Miss Venetia Williams, the beverage dispenser at said establishment, the accused proceeded to place his penis in her lime juice and soda water at…” he consulted his notebook, “5.57am, while requesting of her in a ‘leery’ manner, ‘Do you fancy a quick mint?’”

  “Actually, it’s ‘mink’,” I pointed out, as he slapped shut his book.

  Sadly it didn’t surprise me at all. More than once in The Lost Incompetent had Dextrose documented himself doing precisely the same: dunking his private part in a lady’s drink then asking her out. It appeared to be his chat-up technique when exquisitely drunk, and it had never occurred to him that it didn’t work.

  Instead, I said: “That’s most unlike him, officer. Are you sure it isn’t a case of mistaken identity?”

  Dextrose, I noticed, had fallen asleep sucking his thumb.

  The copper pushed out his shiny shirt buttons. “Sir. Besides Miss Williams, the accused was the only human personage in said establishment. Now, if you do not wish to become incarcerated also, I suggest you stand aside and desist from asking questions.” He opened his car door and slid in.

  “Wait, please, officer. Where are you taking him?”

  He donned a pair of sunglasses slowly, while staring at me, savouring his role. “Pretanike Jail. Now disproceed from the crime scene, sir. That is your final warning.”

  He slammed his door and turned on his flashing lights and siren, though there was no other traffic in sight. I watched the car disappear up the road, flustered and bereft. Now I would be looking for both Mr and Mrs Dextrose in Pretanike: a disconcerting burden of responsibility, suddenly thrust upon me.

  Quite sensibly, I could have stayed in Flattened Hat, married Clemmie following a whirlwind romance and lived happily ever after, expunging any memories of the Dextrose clan from my mind. Just let it go. Get on with my life.

  But I couldn’t.

  I wished I could have done, but I couldn’t.

  Rose’s gaze followed me as I returned to the guesthouse and she was waiting on the doorstep as I arrived. Her daughter had disappeared. Probably overcome with admiration.

  “What happened?” she asked eagerly. “Did he ask for your help?”

  “Out of my jurisdiction,” I replied.

  “So what happened?”

  I tapped the side of my nose conspiratorially. “Police business. You understand, I’m sure, ma’m?”

  “Ooooh!” she gasped. “You can tell me, you know…”

  “No time, I’m afraid. I need to follow that police car to Pretanike Jail.”

  But how?

  I needn’t have worried. “Clemmie! Clemmie!” Rose called back down the hallway.

  “What?” her daughter replied.

  Rose said, “I’ve told this charming young policeman you’ll give him a lift to Pretanike. He needs to get there urgently.”

  Brief silence. Then: “Why me?”

  “Because I have to stay here to run the guesthouse and your father has to�
�” The landlady glanced at me. “You know what your father has to do. Now get a move on, young lady!”

  “Do I have to?” Slightly whinier than I might have anticipated.

  “Yes! You do!”

  I will confess that my ardour for Clemmie was cooling slightly by the time the dark needles that were Pretanike’s skyscrapers appeared on the horizon. There is only so much information one person needs concerning another’s grandparents, unless one is addicted to genealogy.

  Boy, could she talk about family.

  I learnt that her paternal grandparents were called Reg and Edie, that Reg died two years ago, aged 82, of lung cancer, and that Edie (87) lived a short walk away, in Lavender Close. Clemmie visited her every Thursday afternoon, they watched the daytime soap (Hoi, That’s My Wife!) while eating fig rolls, and Edie habitually pressed a penny coin into her palm as she left.

  “It’s not a lot, I know, but it adds up when you’ve visited as often as I do,” Clemmie explained.

  Reg had wheezed a lot, though he had never once in his life smoked. No one could explain this. The consultant at the hospital (Dr Beverley) suggested he might have unwittingly worked with asbestos in his younger days. However, since Reg had owned a confectionery business until his retirement (12 October 1979; 32 family members had attended his retirement party, pointedly not including Reg and Edie’s son, Jake, with whom they had fallen out once he began dating and later married Sharon Probert, “a bitch”) that had been deemed unlikely.

  Having a father who worked in sweets had been the root of Clemmie’s father Arthur’s – and later Rose’s – dental problems. Reg and Edie had tried interesting him in vegetables, even banned him from eating sweets, but he would sneak into the backroom of the shop as a child and steal the stock. White mice and strawberry bonbons were his favourites. Even into adulthood, Arthur had been unable to kick the sugar habit, leading to all of his teeth having fallen out or been extracted by the time he was 27. Rose was the first and only woman he had courted.

  And so it went on, through Grandma Nesta and Grandpa Deke (RIP – natural causes), aunties Vi, Val (RIP – motor-vehicle accident) and Vera, uncles Rich, Stevo, Terry and Jeremy (gay – source of a family rift), cousins Willy, Bill, Eric (at catering college), Jake (aforementioned), Sylv, Dashiell, Lydia, Nancy (dangerously overweight) and Tiff, nephews… I can’t go on.