“Why doesn’t he come right out with it and say he knows?” I remark to the girl, “I hate people who are always beating around the bush.”
“Bugger,” says Sidney, slamming down the telephone.
“Have you got the up-to-date entry figures? Thank God. Add ’em up quick will you, darling, otherwise I’m up the schittenstrasse mitout ein paddle.” He turns back to me. “Right, I’ve got to go now.”
“So I gather.”
“We’ll send you a form to fill in, but that’s just a formality. Consider yourself hired.”
“Thanks, Sid—”
“Don’t thank me. Just don’t drop me in it, that’s all. I’ve got enough problems at the moment.” All the time he is talking, he is walking me to the door and the next moment I find myself alone in the corridor wondering which way it is to the lift. Poor Sid. I have never known him like this before. Big business has certainly taken its toll of Clapham’s answer to Paul Newman. If this is what Sir Giles and Funfrall Enterprises do for you I am not sure whether it is worth the fringe benefits.
The thought is still playing on my mind three weeks later as I stand at King’s Cross Station weighing up the paperback covers. Honestly, I have never seen so much tit in my life. It is getting so if you see a cover with five naked birds plastered across it, you know it is a reprint of “Little Women”.
I am supposed to be catching the 15.30 to Nowheresville and, as at all such moments of decision, my feet are colder than a penguin’s chuff. What with Sid’s list of ‘dont’s’ and the memory of his face when he was talking to Mr. Big on the telephone I feel like jacking it all in and sliding off home for a cup of tea and a wad. Trouble is that leprosy would be more welcome there than me at the moment. Mum has made it clear that she will never forgive the matted hairs on her fireside rug and Dad keeps throwing out offensive remarks about the stain on the sofa and making a great show of examining every chair in the place before he sits on it. All in all, it is more than a person of my sensitive nature can stand.
Luckily the path of duty is made smoother for me by the sight of a right little darling sweeping past and pausing only to totally ignore me. Sid always reckoned that when a bird really fancied you she went out of her way to treat you like air and I think he had something. I have known chicks who would cross the road when they saw me coming. Anyway, this particular specimen is carrying a suitcase and she gives a lift to my Y-fronts by getting into my train. Pausing only to slam down 30p for an epic entitled “Terrible Hard Says Alice” which I remember Sidney raving about, I slope in after her and wander down the corridor casually glancing into the compartments until I find her. My luck is in, because she has discovered an empty compartment and is just struggling to get her case on to the rack as I appear. Nice curve to her calves there is too as she teeters with the case at shoulder height. Nearly doing myself a nasty injury in my haste, I gallop through the door and prepare to show her how strong and gentlemanly I am.
“Here, let me do that,” I yodel, snatching the case from her fumbling fingers, pausing only to destroy her with the fruits of about half a ton of Colgate and years of hard brushing (children, please note), I toss it lightly on to the rack and follow up with another flash of the gnashers. She has a nice smile too, and we stand there beaming at each other so it might make you feel sick. She is blonde and she has big blue eyes and mouth so generous it looks as if it might give away kisses to strangers. I wouldn’t mind receiving the rest of her as a free gift, either. Smashing tits, as Wordsworth would say, and all the better for nestling under one of those thick woolly sweaters which make you think of stroking animals – or what you thought of stroking in the first place. I wouldn’t complain to my M.P. about her legs, either. Speaking as I find, all in all and putting it bluntly, she is definitely a looker who could well have her way with me if she played her cards right.
“Oh, thank you so much.”
“No trouble.”
We have another little smile and I make sure to sit down in the opposite corner to her. I want to fill up the compartment and I don’t want to crowd her too much to begin with. After all, we have six hours alone together.
But I speak too soon. Just as I am beginning to feel the first little electric thrill of anticipation as she crosses her legs, and the train gives a sympathetic jerk forward, so the compartment door slides open and a strong contender for the Upper Class Twit of the Year award hoves into view. In fact, I do him an injustice. If I was betting money I would put the lot on his nose – all fourteen inches of it.
“Phew, oh I say,” he chortles, “damn close thing, eh what?” He crashes one of his great nobbly brown shoes onto my multi-patterned suedes without giving any sign that the encounter has caused him pain, bashes his pigskin case against my knees and slumps down opposite my bird. I can see that she is no more pleased to see him than I am and this makes his presence doubly choking.
He is wearing a sort of poor man’s Sherlock Holmes uniform with a check cloak and a non-flap Deerstalker that looks as if it ought to be covered in trout flies. In fact, any kind of fly could cover the whole blooming lot of him without feeling it was living above its station.
“Had the devil’s own job finding a cab,” he confided, as if we cared. “There must have been a garden party at Buck House, or something.”
There is nothing there for me so I exchange a commiserating glance with Big Eyes and look out across the corridor to where there is a large expanse of tunnel on which to project my thoughts.
Captain Chinless is obviously desperate for conversation because he slips into full bore.
“My own, fault, I suppose. Didn’t leave enough time, eh, wha-a-at?” He strings out the last word so that it sounds like someone gargling. “But demned if I was going to rush my lunch. Very bad for the indigestion, that’s what nanny used to say. Chew each mouthful sixty five times – or was it fifty five? No, I think it was sixty five – that’s the only sound way to digest it, wha-a-at?”
If he is going to keep on like this to Newcastle I’m going to swing for him and that is the honest truth.
“The family never missed a train when nanny was around. Nanny Pecksmith; that was her name. I can still see her as if it was yesterday. Remarkable woman. Tremendous disciplinarian. Hated television. Used to read Pilgrims Progress to us all the time and the next one, what was that called?”
“Carry on Pilgrims Progress?” I say.
“No, it wasn’t that.”
“Onward Pilgrims Progress?”
“No, no. That’s a hymn.”
“Oh, of course.”
Tragic isn’t it? The world’s most attractive male animal thwarted by this throwback from Berks peerage and I don’t mean Burke’s. The poor Lea-besotted bird in the corner must be heartbroken.
“Tea is now being served,” says the waiter in the pumice stone coloured white jacket.
“Oh, super. Just what the doctor ordered. Would you care to join me for a spot of tea?” says Sherlock Twit.
“I’d love to,” says my bird.
And the consequence is that they have disappeared up the corridor before I can say Fascist Hyena. It is diabolical, isn’t it? The titled twit hasn’t even asked me if I fancy a cup of tea. I try and immerse myself in my book but even the multiple talents of Christopher Wood fail to wrest my uneasy mind from the thought of Sherlock and Big Eyes grappling over the tea table. She is obviously the kind of chubbycheeked scrubber that hands it out to everybody and I did not move fast enough. The thought of losing out to Lord Shagnasty is more than I can stand.
I consider wandering down there after them but I can’t see where it is going