by Timothy Lea
‘Your encounter with Miss Nippleshow —’
‘Nippleshow?’ I say.
‘Jean Nippleshow. That —’ OO chooses his word carefully — relationship demonstrated how successful my regime has been.’ He searches my face for a response. It wasn’t just inferior workmanship and sub-standard raw materials, you know. The reason why it was so damnably difficult to achieve the rudiments of a successful mating position on those beds was because I designed them that way!’
‘Blimey!’ I say, understanding why Jean never mentioned her surname. ‘So the government employed you to infiltrate the works and put the mockers on nooky. You’d never think they thought about things like that, would you?’
‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ says OO.
‘More things than what?’ I ask him.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ OO is beginning to sound weary. I suppose being blown through a skylight by an over-flated expanding bed must take it out of you.
‘Thank you very much for telling me all this,’ I say. ‘Will you be coming back when you’re better?’
OO shakes his head. ‘No. I think my own involvement was misdirected by the powers that be. From what I’ve seen of the Slumbernog operation, from management downwards — or perhaps, upwards in this case — the firm is more than equipped to fulfil all the hopes expressed for it by the British Government without any outside intervention. My only reservation is whether The National Health Service will be able to stand the strain.’
‘You mean, from all those dicky beds,’ I say. ‘Yeah, that is a point.’
I am very heartened by my conversation with this brilliant and important man because it has shown me that whenever there is a big cock-up at national level it was intended. I had always been naive and untrusting enough to think that it was because the nation was run by a bunch of idiots who would be pushed to direct piss into a bucket without someone shouting instructions through a megaphone. I must change my attitude.
‘There is only one thing I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘How did you know I was having a spot of in and out with Miss Seethrough —’
‘Nippleshow.’
‘Nippleshow, if you were being pressed against the ceiling at the time?’
OO shakes his head admiringly. ‘Excellent. I can see that you are not a complete fool — just a gifted trier. I knew you were having a spot of — sexual relations with Miss Titgander —’
‘Nippleshow.’
‘— Nippleshow because all that took place in the hideously named “Cuddle Chamber” was recorded on film to assist the design department in diagnosing faults and to amuse the directors after board meetings.’
‘Blimey!’ I say. ‘Mr Jeremy isn’t going to cocoa the sight of his old lady having it off with Fred Umbrage.’
OO smiles. ‘I have protected him from such a cathartic experience.’ “Cathartic”, eh? That sounds a bit kinky. I would have thought that Fred Umbrage was a straightforward in and out man, myself. ‘I have removed some of the more distressingly overt encounters in order to protect the protagonists and the susceptibilities of the more sensitive viewers. Your own episode is included.’
‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘Could you give us a blow-job — I mean, blow-up!!!’ OO has pulled his bedclothes up to his chin and shrunk back against his pillows. It is so embarrassing. ‘Nothing fancy. Just head and shoulders will do. I want one for my mum, see?’
OO nods his head weakly and reaches out for a glass of water beside his bed. ‘Just leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling rather tired.’
As I go out, the nurse comes in and lets down a cinema screen that was hanging behind me. It is all a bit strange, especially the way she and OO wait for me to go out of the door. By the time I get to the lift I have decided to take another butchers at the situation. You don’t often get the chance to see the British Secret Service on the job, do you? I tiptoe back down the corridor and adapt a what-the-butler-saw position at the keyhole, moving the “Do not Disturb” notice to one side. My field of view is limited but I get a good shufti at the bed. OO is lying on it starkers and the nurse is down to black stockings and starched cap — Cor!! What a turn on! Don’t go any further, darling! OO is watching something — besides the nurse — and I hear the whirr of a projector.
I am afraid that it is all a bit too much for me and, on an impulse, I open the door and go inside. Nursey is just climbing on OO’s chest and he is having to look round her to see the screen which shows Fred Umbrage’s bum bouncing up and down between the thighs of an enthusiastic Mrs Rightberk. It is what you might call a situation charged with eroticism.
‘Did you leave something?’ says OO, irritably.
‘Not yet,’ I say, moving towards the bed. ‘Move over. I’m staying for the big feature.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Right,’ says Jack. ‘Have we got all the light ale aboard?’
‘Forty-eight crates.’
‘That’s the Guinness, isn’t it?’ says Jack. ‘For God’s sake, let’s make sure we’ve got enough this year. We don’t want to run short again.’
It is the day of The Sedan Chair and Bedmakers Union’s pilgrimage to Southend, and Jack is supervising the loading of one of the coaches.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘It’s absolutely chocker with booze. Where are the people going to sit?’
‘In the other coaches,’ says Jack. ‘This one is for the spare booze in case we run short.’
‘Who pays for it all?’ I say. ‘The union?’
‘Don’t be stupid! The management, of course. It’s the least they can do to make amends for the cruel wrongs perpendiculared on the brave sons of the soil who were the Tolpuddle Martyrs — Fred will tell you the rest. He got management to cough up. Now, where are you going to sit, lad? It doesn’t matter too much on the way out because that’s serious drinking and most of the birds are a bit uptight anyway. It’s on the way back you want to pick carefully. Stick with me and we’ll get amongst those posh tarts from sales. A couple of Babychams and they’re anybody’s. You can see them looking at you when you go into the office. Wanting you, but frightened to show it unless their mate says, “Eew, sinking a bit low, aren’t we, Doris?” ’
‘Talking about getting amongst it,’ I say. ‘How did you get on when you took Mrs Collier’s bed back?’
Jack waves his hand up and down in front of his cake hole. ‘I hoped you weren’t going to ask me that. There’s some things you don’t like to talk about, know what I mean? That woman’s lust, well, it was almost disgusting some of the things she did to me.’
‘Go on,’ I say. Percy is all ears.
‘No. I couldn’t. It might put you off for life. You have to be very sophisticated to even think about some of the things that happened on that billiard table.’
‘Billiard table?!’
‘Yeah. I must have potted her red more times than you’ve had hot dinners.’
‘Blimey!’ While I am marvelling at the wonder of it all, another driver wanders up and tries to help himself to a bottle of pig’s ear.
‘Piss off!’ says Jack. ‘That’s for the journey.’
‘Have a heart, Jack,’ says the bloke. ‘We’ll be off in a moment. Anyway, you owe me a favour for doing that Collier job. Funny woman, wasn’t she? In the end I had to give her one to shut her up. Cheers!’ He takes a bottle and wanders off. He must be about five-foot-six and has thick pebble glass specs.
‘I had a bad cold that day,’ says Jack. ‘It’s never any good when I’ve got a cold.’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Better chase everybody up.’ Jack disappears sharpish and I am left to find a seat.
I am looking forward to the trip because you can’t beat a nice day at the briny, can you? A stick of candy floss and a plate of whelks. A stroll along the promenade and a go on the dodgems. Maybe even a dip if the tide is in. When I climb aboard a coach the chars are already singing “Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside
”, and one of them makes a grab at my leg as I go past.
‘You’ll have to watch her, mate!’ cackle the others. ‘She’s a devil when she’s had a few.’
I have carefully avoided getting on a coach carrying any of the mattress stuffers and I hope I have not let myself in for anything even more distressing. Being gang-raped by a party of drunken geriatrics does not appeal overmuch.
Everybody around me seems to have a bottle and an acute awareness of how to convey its contents into the cakehole and it is not long before I am being offered swigs or a share of the booze that is being dished out from the back of the bus. I glance at my watch. Half past eight. Not bad going.
‘What time will we get there?’ I ask my neighbour.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘We never get to Tolpuddle.’
‘Never get there!?’ I echo.
‘Fourteen years that I remember setting out through the factory gates and giving three boos for the management and not once can I remember reaching Tolpuddle.’
‘What happened?’ I say.
My neighbour shrugs and takes another swig from his flask. ‘I can’t rightly remember,’ he says.
How incredible. Still, Dorset is some distance away. We won’t have any problems getting to Southend. By the time it is half past nine and we have only reached the City I am beginning to think again. True, the traffic is bad but I did not expect us to stop for someone to be sick and two old ladies to go to the toilet. It isn’t easy to find anywhere in that part of London, either. In the end, they have to do it beside the bus. It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t in the middle of London Bridge at the time. The expressions on the faces of those upper crust geezers is really something to see. They turn as pink as the pages of the papers they have tucked neatly under their arms.
‘That’ll teach you not to get to work on time, you lazy bleeder,’ shouts the coach joker to one gent in a bowler hat and somebody leans out of the window and tries to grab his titfer.
You don’t know what work is, you scoundrel!’ shouts the City gent, turning from pink to scarlet. He tries a spot of fencing with his umbrella and somebody snatches it and chucks it in the Thames. For a moment I think that there is going to be a large scale punch-up. Then, the traffic starts moving and everybody’s attention is diverted to getting Mrs Dorrit back on to the bus with her knickers up.
It’s a lovely trip, this one,’ says my neighbour contentedly. ‘A really lovely trip.’ He has finished his hip flask already so I am not surprised that he doesn’t remember much about Tolpuddle.
By the time we are heading through Ilford we have collected three bowler hats and a warning from the fuzz for throwing beer cans out of the window. Everybody is in high spirits and the oldsters are singing “Pack up your troubles”. My right arm is not exactly going to sleep, either. I have swallowed more booze than usually slides down before closing time on Saturday night.
‘Here we are. There’s a nice one, Alkie boy.’
‘Right-o, Arthur.’
A couple of words with the driver later, we are pulling in to a layby.
‘Why are we stopping here?’ I ask my neighbour.
‘So everybody can stretch their legs,’ he says. ‘They don’t open till half past ten, you know.’ I think he is referring to pubs, not legs.
In fact, legs seem to be the last things that get stretched. Throats certainly get stretched as do one or two more private parts of the body, but there is not a lot happening at leg level — unless they stretch under the pressure of the liquid seeping into them. The back of the coach is opened and an impressive array of crates is laid out. After that it is solid boozing with a little light conversation on the side and a lot of light ale going down the tube in the middle. Other Slumbernog coaches pull in beside us and there is a happy exchange of information between the occupants.
‘How many thrown up, Jim?’
‘Only old Mother Partridge. Once she gets north of the Thames the atmosphere gets too rarified for her. How many with you?’
‘Just a couple of the lads. Mixing cocktails, they were, stupid little bastards. I told them: “Never mix brandy with beer”.’
‘Too right, squire. Diabolical waste. Fair ruins the taste, don’t it?’
“Yeah. And it doesn’t do much for the brandy, neither.’
Everybody is getting boozed quite happily until somebody looks at his watch and finds that it is twenty-five to eleven.
‘Blimey!’ says the bloke next to him, knocking hack the contents of his glass. ‘We’d getter bet a move on. We’re schlipping behind sledule.’
I agree with him. I mean, I expected to have finished my first paddle by now. There is not much point in going to the seaside if you arrive just in time to go home, is there?
At eleven fifteen, the coach pulls up outside a pub in Havering and from the rush for the door you would think the bloody thing was alight.
‘Lovely,’ says the bloke next to me smacking his lips. ‘I could just do with a pint.’ Anyone would think he had not consumed a hip flask of scotch and God knows how many light ales.
As the day wears on, it becomes clear to me that there are various kinds of drinking. There is light-hearted personal stuff that takes place within the coach, slightly more serious bouts of dousing the tonsils that are enjoyed at the roadside, and honest-to-God boozing which takes place inside pubs. Anything that slips down outside a pub is just killing time. It is not worth considering as far as the real drinker is concerned.
Every time we leave a pub, all the toilets have to be searched to make sure that we have left no one behind and there is a nasty moment in a place called Cranham when we find the karsi door locked and a pair of boots visible underneath it.
‘Passed out on the job,’ says Jack. ‘Right, lads. Who’s going over the top?’ I manage to avoid copping that detail which is no bad thing, because when one of our lot drops on the other side he finds himself in the company of a local who has fallen asleep over his Daily Mirror. That geezer is not too pleased when he wakes up to discover himself sharing the amenities with a complete stranger and a certain amount of unpleasantness ensues. The situation is not improved by our lad saying: ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were one of us.’
When he comes out, he has his hand over his eye and he is being chased by a bloke with his trousers round his ankles. As Confucius might have said: ‘Bloke with hand over eye run faster than geezer with trousers round ankles.’ Our man is out of the door by the time the other bloke has tripped and put his hand in one of the standing urinals whilst trying to keep his balance. I know you shouldn’t laugh but it is very difficult sometimes.
By the time we get to Laindon it is half past two and the big question is, should we push on? After a few more pints and some heated discussion, it is closing time and the answer is yes. We will try and reach Basildon.
I know, that’s what I thought. What about Southend? Blooming heck! It’s only twenty-five flipping miles from London and I brought my bathing costume. But it is no good. The union executive have reached a decision and are going to petition management for a two-day break so that the trip can be made without undue hardship and sacrifice to its members. There is disappointment, of course, but most members take it very well — let’s face it, they have been taking it very well all day.
After we leave Laindon the convoy pulls into a layby and it is noticeable that, for the first time, the coach carrying emergency supplies is receiving serious attention. The next few hours are critical ones and Jack is hopping about anxiously. A repeat of last year’s fiasco, when apparently the outing ran out of booze, could be disastrous. Fortunately, it looks as if stocks are going to hold out — but only just.
Another thing I notice is that it is now couples who are sneaking off towards whatever cover presents itself rather than individuals with their mugs twisted into expressions of strain. There is nothing like a few gallons of booze to turn a young man’s fancy to what birds are thinking about all the time.
I don’t kno
w what it is, but somehow the old relentless magnetism doesn’t seem to be working so good today. Jean Nippleshow has been as cold as a polar bear’s pussy and is now widening her goo goo eyes at a pimply jerk from the sales department — I don’t know what he is doing at a union outing wearing a suit. Nobody else seems to want to know. It is doubly choking when everyone else is getting lined up. I don’t mind suffering in company but I hate doing it on my tod. I think there has been a sort of unpleasantness — like rape, for instance — when I hear a bird screaming from the bushes. In the end it turns out that she has seen a cow for the first time.
‘It was horrible,’ she says. ‘Horrible. It had things sticking out of its head and a rubber glove underneath.’
‘You want to leave the countryside alone, girl,’ says an old stager. ‘You don’t know what there is out there. Stick in the layby where you’re safe. The others nod in agreement and continue to swill down their beer.
When even the birds in the stuffing department give me a wide berth I start to get really worried. There must be something about me that is less enticing than a fish restaurant in the middle of the Sahara Desert. It is not until we are scrambling aboard the buses for the final assault on Basildon that I get an inkling of what it might be. My flies are undone and someone has pinned a notice saying ‘Self Service’ on my back.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ says my neighbour, patting me on the shoulder. ‘It’ll be all right when we get to Basildon.’
But we don’t get to Basildon. We are just coasting down the final straight with the old birds in the front singing “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts”, and near pissing themselves at the memories it brings back, when there is an ugly clonking noise and the driver starts cursing.
‘Bloody clutch has gone,’ he snarls.
‘It can’t have gone,’ says a voice tinged with terror. ‘It’s five minutes to opening time.’
‘You tell that to the bleeding gear box,’ says the driver. ‘I’ve got to stop.’
What makes the whole incident even more tragic is that we have run out of beer. Strong men’s lips begin to quiver and women cringe.