Lollipop

by David Fletcher

  Lollipop

  David Fletcher

  First published in Great Britain in 2006

  The Trouser Press Press

  PO Box 12085

  Redditch B96 6WP

  Copyright 2006 by David Fletcher

  The right of David Fletcher to be identified

  as the author of this work has been asserted

  by him in accordance with Section 77 of the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 2000

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0-9548398-5-4

  All rights reserved to The Trouser Press Press

  For

  Woody Allen, Rowan Atkinson, David Attenborough, Joan Baez,

  Ronnie Barker, Simon Barnes, Ludwig van Beethoven,

  Harry Belafonte, Leonard Bernstein, Eric Bibb, Georges Bizet,

  Colin Blunstone, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Borgnine, Jeff Bridges,

  Charles Bronson, Tim Burton, Kate Bush, Peter Butterworth,

  David Byrne, Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, J J Cale, Jasper Carrot,

  Graham Chapman, Eric Clapton, John Cleese, Nat King Cole,

  Robbie Coltrane, Sean Connery, Ry Cooder, Steve Coogan,

  Peter Cook, Tommy Cooper, Ronnie Corbett, Jamie Lee Curtis,

  Achille-Claude Debussy, Devo, Ian Dury, Bob Dylan,

  Clint Eastwood, Paul Eddington, Adrian Edmondson, M C Escher,

  Kenny Everett, Family, W C Fields, Ian Fleming, Harrison Ford,

  Stephen Fry, Marvin Gaye, Genesis, George Gershwin,

  Ricky Gervais, Terry Gilliam, Richard E Grant, Graham Greene,

  Richard Griffiths, Alec Guinness, Gene Hackman, Tony Hancock,

  George Harrison, Alex Harvey, Ted Hawkins, Nigel Hawthorne,

  Harry Hill, Ian Hislop, Ian Holm, Barry Humphries, John Hurt,

  Eric Idle, Neil Innes, Peter Jackson, Sid James, David Jason,

  Jethro Tull, Terry Jones, Buster Keaton, George Kennedy,

  Andy Kershaw, Stephen King, The Kinks, Leo Kottke,

  Stanley Kubrik, Akira Kurosawa, Burt Lancaster, John Le Mesurier,

  John Lennon, Joanna Lumley, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Madness,

  Steve Martin, Groucho Marx, Rik Mayall, Meat Loaf,

  Felix Mendelssohn, Paul Merton, Toshiro Mifune, Jonathan Miller,

  Spike Milligan, Moody Blues, Dudley Moore, Eric Morecambe,

  Paul Newman, Nice, Jack Nicholson, David Niven, Phil Ochs,

  Roy Orbison, Peter O'Toole, Jack Palance, Michael Palin, John Peel,

  Dan Penn, Penn & Teller, Penguin Café Orchestra, Matthew Pinsent,

  Nigel Planer, Vincent Price, Queen, Maurice Ravel, Otis Redding,

  Steve Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Jean Réno, Leonard Rossiter,

  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Sellers, William Shakespeare,

  Labby Siffre, Alastair Sim, Nina Simone, Squeeze, Ringo Starr,

  John Steinbeck, Stranglers, The Streets, Jacques Tati, Irma Thomas,

  Daly Thompson, Richard Thompson, J R R Tolkien, Tom Tom Club,

  Spencer Tracy, UB40, Peter Ustinov, Lee Van Cleef, Jon Voight,

  Loudon Wainwright III, Christopher Walken, Sigourney Weaver,

  Orson Welles, The Who, Oscar Wilde, Victoria Wood, Warren Zevon

  For the pleasure they've brought me

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  1.

  The man standing next to Renton was wearing just a smile on his face and a tie round his neck. And the end of the tie was tethered to his tojjer with a thread. 'Stops it floppin' about,' announced the man. 'I mean me tie, not me willy'. He grinned a wicked grin.

  'Mind, that ain't all. Oh no. Not by a long chalk.' He grinned again. 'Yer see, it gets 'em goin'. I mean, it really gets 'em goin'.'

  His eyes sparkled as he swigged from his glass. Then his eyes inspected Renton.

  'Yer wanna try it yerself, mate. No offence an' all, but yer won't do much good round 'ere dressed like that. I mean yer'll end up wi' all the rubbish. Well, yer know, 'oo the 'ell's gonna get the 'ots for that sorta stuff? Crikey mose, it ain't even got any 'oles in it. It's jus'… well, it's jus' not like… yer know… like allurin' or anythin'. It's jus' borin' like. It's… well, it's 'opeless.'

  Renton stared at the man. He could think of nothing to say, nothing that would constitute a half-reasonable response to the man's thoughtful observations. OK, his brushed denim hipster jeans might be a bit “borin'”, and they might not have any “'oles” in them, but they did meet the damn stupid requirements of this damn stupid bar, and they didn't make him look like some retarded pervert, and certainly not like some retarded pervert who wanted to draw attention to his rather undersized appendage.

  The man appeared to take Renton's silence as a demand for the development of his point. He went on.

  'Look, it's like this, yer see. It ain't what yer got, it's the way yer present it. Least, 'tis in 'ere anyway. No good bein' shy an' retirin'. It jus' ain't the way it works. It ain't like what's expected. Understand?'

  Renton did understand. And only too well. But that wasn't going to make him change his mind - or his trousers. As long as they met the rules he would keep them on, thanks very much - and their integrity would be maintained as well. The only holes they'd have in them would be the regular ones - the ones that came as standard. But he didn't share these thoughts with the man. He just continued to stare.

  'Oh well, please yerself,' shrugged his advisor, 'no nose off my foreskin. If yer don't wanna listen, that's your 'ard luck. And anyhow, I got other things to do.'

  He took another swig from his glass, blotted his lips with the back of his hand and then left Renton's life. The last Renton ever saw of him was his lumpy square bottom disappearing into that forest of flesh, that thick stand of uncovered-kind that completely filled the bar. Then Renton was on his own. And he felt worse than ever - just as he knew he would.

  Why the hell hadn't he talked to that chap? How often in his earlier “professional” life had he turned up to some dreadful “function”, all on his tod, to be confronted with a roomful of people he neither knew nor cared to know - but who all seemed to know someone else? Unknown person A would know unknown person B, and possibly even unknown person C as well - and they would all be standing there, chatting and laughing - and they always had something to chat and laugh about. And meanwhile he, the visitor from another dimension, would have exchanged a nod with the lady handing out the buc
ks fizz, and would now be either trying to make lighting a cigarette a middle distance event or, more likely, be striding purposefully around the assembled company, pretending to be on his way somewhere - to meet one of his friends or to talk to his old mucker, the guest of honour for the function - and all the time knowing that he looked like nothing more than someone with no one to speak to, not even a man with his tie tethered to his tojjer with a piece of thread…

  Well, here he was again - with a beer not a bucks fizz, and in jeans not a suit - and he'd just thrown away his only salvation: the company of another in a room full of strangers - and strangers with the accent on strange. Perhaps if he could find that chap again, ask him where he got his tie from, what the tether thread was made of, how big one made the loop… There again, perhaps he should just get on with his job.

  'Come on, Tenting!' he told himself. 'This isn't supposed to be easy. This is work. It's your job now. And you've got to get on with it. And that means some purposeful striding. So stop dithering. Go to it! Now!'

  And he did. Although it was more a case of careful shuffling than purposeful striding. It was just unavoidable. An enormous bar, heaving with scantily clad patrons, simply demanded it. And anyway, if he'd tried any striding, he'd have looked more out of place than ever. He already stood out. How could he not when he had these bloody jeans on, and everybody else had considerably less on?

  He'd thought he'd be OK. The jeans were fairly tight fitting, and with nothing on beneath them, you could even see which side he dressed - really quite easily. He'd thought they'd be fine and quite in keeping with the rules - and the ethos - of Brady's bar: “the singles bar with a difference”! And what a difference. For as well as being unattached, one also had to be single in one's approach to dressing. That is, one was allowed in only if one was attired in the singular - with just one piece of clothing. But in any event, he wasn't OK. Because his pair of jeans were the only pair in town. And elsewhere there was just very much less - like a tie or a belt or a pouch or a thong - and there was even one guy with a rather small gong!

  He was now stepping round a young lady who was in deep conversation with a young man. She had invested her allowance in a stick-on plastic fig leaf, and he in a tie-on one. Or did fig leaves come that small? Renton wasn't sure. But so what? The two of them made a lovely pair. As did the chaps. The two chaps wearing chaps, the sort of chaps worn by cowboys to protect their jeans. Only these two chaps didn't have any jeans to protect. They just had these chaps, silly woolly things tied at their waists and then again at their knees - and each pair of chaps framing what made these chaps chaps rather than chapesses… Renton looked away.

  But wherever he looked there were similar sights, some less bizarre but all on the same theme. It was as though the restriction to one piece of clothing was not enough. That this had to be taken as just the starting point, the launch pad for some real exhibitionism, some explicit exhibitionism, where the only limits were the number of rude bits one possessed. And he had to admit, the men were worse than the women. In some parts of the bar where men had clustered for safety or maybe for preference, it was like a sea of pink maggots, flabby pink maggots - often drooping from flabby pink bodies. And not what you'd call giant maggots either. Far from it. Renton wondered why they bothered.

  Some of the women were far more discreet - if not entirely modest. There were even a few who had gone as far as hiding all their bits, the busty ones as well as the lusty ones - albeit a little too tightly. And of those who hadn't managed both, the majority seemed to have favoured some lowland cover at the expense of exposure on the highlands. But not all of them. That woman there, for example, the one with the boob-tube…

  …and then it struck him. Yes. She had blonde hair. And she had blue eyes as well. And she was tall, very tall indeed. This could be her. This could be the woman he was after. And so soon! His first night aboard and he'd found her. Boz would be amazed. His first assignment, and he'd succeeded - and so quickly!

  He moved closer. She was alone. She was standing in an alcove, her hands clasping a glass, her head swaying in time to the muzak. It was as though she was dreaming. Her eyes were not closed but they seemed not to see…

  He studied her boob-tube. It completely concealed her more than ample bosom. And that was just so unfair. Because, of course, it meant he couldn't confirm his success - not immediately, anyway. OK, she must be six-foot threeish. There was no question of that. And she had long blonde hair - and it looked real. And she certainly had blue eyes. But did she have a tattoo of a toothbrush on her right tit? The one piece of conclusive evidence. And it was damn well out of sight. And in here! In this heaving boob-station, this bristol convention centre, this bloody great mammary mecca. Hell, the breastiest place in town - and both of hers were hidden!

  Damn! This wasn't just unfair, this was a real pisser. It meant he'd have to shadow her and find out where her cabin was and all that sort of stuff. But just now he wouldn't be sure. Just now he wouldn't he absolutely sure he had the right broad and he wouldn't be sure 'til she showed her top floor, something she might be disinclined to do if she hadn't done it in here - where expansive exposure was merely standard behaviour. Renton frowned. Why was life always pinching his cherry? Then he stopped frowning. She'd seen him. The woman had clearly observed her observer and she was now on her way to confront him. She was making a bee-line for him. And those dreamy eyes were now piercing eyes. And yes, they were now piercing him.

  Damn again!

  Then she was before him. And now she was smiling.

  Immediately he could think of nothing to say. It was a very special skill, this lack of a conversational agenda, and one that had never deserted him, not after all these long years. So he just stared. And what he saw was not the smile, but just those two piercing eyes.

  'I think your jeans are super. I haven't seen any like that for years.'

  Renton did a quick mind scan. No, he hadn't said that. That was coming from outside - but not far outside, from somewhere really quite close. Yes, it must be this woman here, this woman with the piercing eyes.

  He was right, of course. Then she said something else.

  'I see you dress to the left. Most men dress to the right, you know.'

  'Good god! I've just been propositioned,' thought Renton. 'By this woman. And so… well, so formally, and so… well, so for-the-first-time-ly. And she's the one I'm after, the one I'm supposed to be surveilling - covertly an' all. And she's just made an observation about my tackle - and in a propositional sort of way…'

  Renton, despite all his training, still had a penchant for mental inspections of the obvious. And they tended to get in the way of making decisions, and decisions that were sometimes required immediately. For example, how to respond to a sexual proposition.

  In the absence of such a response, the woman retreated, but only as far as introducing herself. She was still very close.

  'I'm Gerry,' she said, 'Gerry with a G. What's your name?’

  Shit, a direct question! Should he respond? But how could he not? How could he just stand there? But his own name or a made-up one? He couldn't think but it started without him. His mouth was forming a word - just as he was becoming distracted by her more than ample breasts…

  'Charlies,' he announced

  'Sorry?' responded Gerry.

  'Errh, Char… Charles, errh Charles Lees. My name is Charles Lees.'

  'Oh, you poor thing. Charles is such an awful name, isn't it? It's so… well, so unimaginative, isn't it? And so uninspiring…'

  Renton's mouth opened slightly. Even though Charles wasn't his real name, he still felt rather affronted. And it obviously showed.

  'Oh dear,' offered Gerry. 'I am sorry. I really am. I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that I say what I think. But often without thinking what I'm saying - if you know what I mean…'

  Renton didn't respond. He was too busy fretting…

  'Oh shit, what have I done?' he thought. 'And what will Boz think? Here's my target
in front of me. And talking to me. And she shouldn't even know I exist. And how do I get out of this? How do I disengage? How do I…'

  'Ladies and gentlemen,' blared the public address system, 'welcome to Brady's. Welcome to a singular experience. Welcome to a singular pleasure. And welcome to that very special time of the evening…'

  There was an enormous cheer from the crowd in the bar.

  '…yes, folks, it's that time again. Time for what makes Brady's the superest single-est singles bar in the cosmos. Yes, it's happy hour! In just five seconds it's Brady's happy hour - Brady's happy and horny hour! And counting. Five, four, three…'

  The mob in the bar had now joined in. There was a riot of noise.

  '…two, one!'

  And then happy hour arrived. And, as Renton very soon discovered, this wasn't a happy hour where prices were lowered. No, this was a happy hour where inhibitions were lowered - if not entirely removed. And all thanks to a gas. Yes, at the appointed hour, a special gas was released into the bar, a fast-acting aphrodisiac gas, which caused pure bacchanalia to break out within seconds. And, needless to say, this required the removal of all those singular items of clothing. All of them. And all in an instant. So off they all came, all those skirts, and all those pouches, and all those fig leaves - and all those boob-tubes - including Gerry's!

  And then he knew. Straightaway. For on her boobs, there were no tattoos at all. So, despite all his worries, he was OK. Because this wasn't his target. It was some other bird. And he hadn't screwed up after all. In fact, what he'd done was successfully eliminate a suspect. Yes, he'd cleverly uncovered, as it were, one person on this pleasure craft who, despite her superficial likeness to his real quarry, could now be disregarded for the purpose of his future enquiries. And that was a good start, a very good start indeed.

  In fact, if one included what took place in the bar over the next hour and a half, it probably ranked as one of the best starts he'd ever made…

  2.

  Renton examined his pizza. It was vast. But, there again, it had to be. How else could they get all those friggin' calories in? Thousands of them, row upon row, all just sitting there waiting to do their worst, waiting to take their liberties with his waist.