‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Don’t be cheeky. Remember who’s the gaffer round here. Right, now let’s go and sort out those birds. You take what you can get, all right? And don’t let on who we are. Say we’re sales reps, OK?’
‘What are we flogging?’
‘Cars. That sounds as if it’s got some money in it. Now, come on.’
Three hours later we are standing outside the back door of the hotel in a fine drizzle and trying to decide on our next move. Both the girls are hopelessly pissed and my judgement is not exactly faultless. Amongst other things, we have been ten-pin bowling, in which Sid got his finger stuck in the ball and nearly said goodbye to it. I will always remember him doing this great wind-up and then following the ball for the first ten yards down the alley. For a wonderful moment I thought he was going to overtake it and be the first man to make a strike with his own body.
We have also lost a fortune in small change–all mine, of course–on the pin-table machines on the pier. Very few of them seem to be working although they have no problem in gobbling up 5p pieces.
We have also done a great deal of boozing and I now think I know the inside of every pub in Hoverton. Sid has taken me out to the kasi and we have agreed that he can have first crack in our room while I nip upstairs. The bird situation is no problem because neither of us has any preference. June does seem to fancy Sid and Audrey has only drawn the line when I tried to stroke her tits in the public bar of The Three Jolly Matelots. That was when I decided I must take the water cure. Swill down as much as you can and it dilutes the alcohol. I don’t want to fall down on the job with an acute attack of brewer’s droop.
‘Where’s your key, June? Can’t you get it out?’
This salty sally reduces both girls to parrot schisms of mirth and I am soaked to the skin before the door is eventually unlocked.
‘Bloody marvellous hotels where they lock the front door at eleven,’ moans Sid.
‘You should be grateful. Saves you a lot of embarrassment. It isn’t going to do your reputation much good if the new owner is seen testing his tonk on every skivvy in the place.’
‘You’re a silver-tongued bastard, aren’t you?’ Sid slips his arm round June’s waist and we all stand there making ‘sshhssh’ noises at each other. There is hardly a light on in the place and only the horrible smell tells me that we must be near the kitchens.
I take Audrey in my arms for a warm-up snog near the foot of the stairs and press her back against the door of what turns out to be a broom cupboard. I learn this fact when we slowly topple into a welter of vacuum cleaners and tins of floor polish. Maybe I should have had some more water. When we struggle out, Sidney and June have disappeared and all I can hear is the hall clock ticking. God knows where the night porter is; not that I particularly want to meet him in my present situation.
‘Oh, you’re fantastic,’ I murmur into Audrey’s lughole. ‘Absolutely fantastic.’ This is Lea’s standard Mark I gambit and seldom needs to be followed up with anything more imaginative before the bedsprings start playing ‘Love’s Old Sweet Melody’. All birds lap up a diet of non-stop flattery if delivered with sufficient enthusiasm because it backs up their own judgement. They feel both reassured and impressed by your good taste. I know I have said this before but you can’t repeat the golden rule too often.
‘Go on with you,’ whispers Audrey. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘I wish I could,’ I murmur passionately. ‘But the words would stick in my throat.’
Diabolical, isn’t it? But Audrey grabs my hand and practically drags me up the stairs. We get up to the third landing just as Sid is gently shutting the door of our room with June inside it. He gives a little wave and a thumbs-up sign and I hear the bedsprings creaking before I get to the turn in the stairs.
‘Are you going to make me a cup of Ovaltine?’ I murmur to my sultry companion.
‘Something better than that,’ she says, squeezing my thigh. At least, I think she means to squeeze my thigh but the light on the stairs is practically non-existent.
‘Don’t scream like that!’ she hisses. ‘You’ll wake everyone up.’
‘Watch what you’re doing with your hands then,’ I howl in my anguish. ‘Otherwise we’ll be making this journey for nothing.’
By the cringe, but it is big, this hotel. Another couple of flights and I am looking for Sherpa Tensing to hand me an oxygen mask. The only thing that keeps me going is the outline of Audrey’s delicious little body before me. Funny how a few days before, I was thinking that I never wanted to see another woman. Now I can hardly wait to get inside that bedroom. I stretch out my hand and run it lightly over her tulip bulb backside. This is the life. Free bed and never bored. She pauses outside a door and presses a finger to her lips. I remove it and we dissolve into a deep kiss. She puts a hand behind my thigh and pulls me towards her savagely. She does not say much, this girl, but her heart is in the right place. The rest of her is not badly situated, either. Just to make sure, I slip my hand up underneath the back of her skirt and am browsing happily as she reaches behind her and turns the knob–the doorknob, I hasten to add, though you could be excused for asking!
I press forward and imagine us doing a slow motion shuffle towards the bed as the door swings open. This is a very beautiful thought and it is therefore doubly choking when I glance inside and see that one of the two beds in the large dog’s kennel is already occupied. Occupied is perhaps the wrong word. It has a large naked man lying in it with his tonk flopped on one side, like a boiled leek. He seems to be asleep. Audrey is apparently unaware that she has a guest because she hooks her hand into the waist band of my trousers and starts to pull me into the room.
‘Hem, hem,’ I murmur with the discretion that has made the name Lea synonymous with upper crust gentility (you wouldn’t believe I only got ‘O’ level woodwork, would you?). ‘Did you know you had company?’
That bird spins round and says a few words I have not heard since Nat and Nan were last on the rampage. ‘Filthy bastard’ is the most repeatable phrase she utters.
‘A friend of yours?’
‘We finished a long time ago. He’s taking a terrible liberty.’
‘Do you want me to throw him out?’
‘No. You’d better not. I know! We’ll go round to his room. It will serve him right. He can have a nice sleep here.’
Phew! Thank goodness for that. For a moment I could see that lovely piece of nookey slipping through my fingers.
‘Wait a minute.’ There is a piece of pink ribbon lying on the dresser and I carefully slip it under the uninvited guest’s tonk and tie a floppy bow in it. Call me a romantic if you like, but it is little gestures like that that make the world a happier place to live in.
Audrey grabs my hand and leads me along the corridor and down a small flight of stairs. I bet she could find her way there blindfold if she had to.
‘Who was that?’ I whisper to her.
‘The night porter,’ she says. ‘Petheridge.’
No wonder there was no sign of anybody when we blundered into the broom cupboard. Petheridge obviously confines his activities to the upper floors.
‘He doesn’t share, does he?’ I ask nervously.
As I have said before, I am not a great one for unveiling my nasty in the presence of others than those who have been invited to witness the experience.
‘Not on Thursdays,’ she says comfortingly and pushes the door open on a small room smelling of Boots After Shave lotion. There, to my relief, is a tiny cot, empty as the day it left the great bed maker. I do not wait to look under it for burglars but pull Audrey to me and slip my hands under her skirt as if picking a mushroom. Her tongue nearly beats