worried because they are not inter-acting. If they are not inter-acting, they are not having a good time. And if they are not having a good time they are going to start whining about everything when Slat gets here.”
“I don’t reckon the British are ready for a place like this. They’re such bloody hypocrites they can only enjoy it if they’re doing it on the quiet. Tell ’em to come out in the open and get on with it and they don’t want to know.”
“What about that monster gang-bang at Melody Bay?”
“They were all pissed and they were being told what to do. It was like bingo or community singing. Give ’em a lead and they’re alright. That’s what I’ve been meaning to say to you for a long time now. This place is too free and easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if we organised some kind of game or activity which gave them a chance to get on the job even though that wasn’t the main purpose of it, I reckon they’d be more likely to respond.”
“Yeah, you might have a point there. ‘Hide and seek’ through the huts, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly. Bit talking of huts reminds me. You’ll have to keep Dad away from Sir Giles. You’ll never get him to play ball.”
“No. The miserable old sod will shop the lot of us. And then there’s that bleeder Grunwald – running about somewhere. Oh my Gawd, we might as well knot ourselves.”
“You mean you might as well knot yourself, and Ted maybe. I’m just a humble employee remember.”
“That’s right. Wait till I’m down then start putting the boot in.”
“Pull yourself together, Sid, we’re—I mean you’re not done for yet. If we give Dad enough booze we can keep him in his hut till his post war credits come up. As for Grunwald, I reckon he’s probably tried to swim back home to Blighty. Nobody’s seen him for weeks.”
“Bloody kraut. We should never have employed him in the first place. They’re all the same, you can’t trust one of them. That bleeding wop yodler is another one. I’ll swing for him before I’m much older.”
It is obvious that poor old Sid is cracking up fast and I seek to introduce a more positive note into the conversation.
“Let’s try something tonight,” I say. “While they’re all at supper, I’ll hide a piece of paper with a letter of the alphabet on it in each of the huts. The person that can produce the longest word by collecting the most pieces of paper will be the winner. We can announce it during supper.”
“It sounds bloody complicated to me. Supposing they just had to bring back a pair of knickers?”
“No, Sid! That’s too obvious. I’ve been trying to tell you. What we want to do is slip it in casually – that’s what they want to do, too.”
“Oh, have it your own way. I can’t think straight any more. If your idea gets them whizzing round the huts it might get us somewhere I suppose.”
In fact the idea is a success beyond my weirdest dreams. The customers all perk up when they are told there is going to be fun and games, and they charge off up the hill to a man, many of them without waiting for their coffee. This is a disappointment because coffee is an “extra” but you can’t have everything. The winning word “squelch” comes up three hours later from a very dishevelled blonde and the dance floor of the Candlelight Casino is full for the first time I can remember. I organise a couple of spot waltzes and a hokey cokey and the customers are practically sobbing their gratitude.
Sidney slides off early saying that he must get some sleep, and maybe it is as well that he does because Rosie’s demented passion for Italy’s answer to Tom Jones is horrible to see. She sits there in her turquoise crimplene, hugging her rum and coke to her not insignificant bosom and sending him messages with her eyes which need to be read through dark glasses.
“She’s got the hots for him alright, hasn’t she?” says Ted at my elbow. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Mind your language,” I say, “that’s my sister, remember. I’m not certain I want to do anything. She’s a big girl now.”
“Yeah, but remember what Sidney said.”
“Oh stop flapping. Just because you’re senior cringer it doesn’t mean you have to run along behind Sid with a roll of bog paper. You’ve been a real pain ever since you tasted power.”
“It’s alright for you to go on like that. You’re his brother-in-law. You’re fireproof, whatever happens.”
Pathetic, isn’t it? You can see we are all on edge. The entertainments business is murder on your nerves, I can tell you.
“Belt up, will you? Look, they’re dancing.”
“Blimey! He’s holding her close isn’t he? She’s practically out the other side of him.”
“I want to hear what they’re saying. We’d better dance.”
“It’s going to look a bit conspicuous, isn’t it?”
“Not with each other, you berk!”
I grab some grateful bird and steer her out into the middle of the sweaty darkness to where Ricci and Rosie are locked in each other’s arms and totally unaware of the existence of anyone else. Ricci’s liver lips are an inch away from Rosie’s lughole and he is making with the honeyed words as usual.
“Cara mia,” he yuks. “I toucha you and I am inflatable. My body bursts with love. I wanta to kiss your little pink toes, to nobble your finger tips, to do everything to you that a man can do to the body of the woman he loves.”
And he dives on her mouth so that for a moment I think he is trying to swallow her head. Blimey but it is torrid – horrid too.
Eventually he has to come up for air and they separate with a noise like someone unstopping a blocked up sink.
“My darleeng,” he breathes. “I am very much enamelled with you. I musta maka lova to you. Eeza impossible to wait. I am a volcano. I pour all over you.”
He is pawing all over her alright. Good job Sid is not a finger-print expert.
“But my husband,” says Rosie unconvincingly.
“Where eeza he? He does not lova you like me. He cannot lova you like me. I am fire and he is water. Come to my hut. You must. You must.”
“But—”
“No! Do not but me. Come, say nothing. Come.”
And before you can say “Anthony Cheetham” he has taken her by the hand and is pounding towards the sign marked “Egxit”.
Without quite knowing what I am doing I dump my surprised partner and spring after them. I don’t really give a monkey about Sidney’s feelings but on the other hand I don’t trust Hairy further than I can throw him, and after all, he is a wop, isn’t he? I mean, it is not as if he was one of our blokes.
I follow about twenty yards behind and have to stop every few minutes while they go into another clinch. They just don’t care do they? God help them if Sidney pops out to water the cactus.
I have a vague idea of where Ricci’s hut is from when I left the pieces of paper for the game. As I recall it, the pong of the muck he uses on his hair was stronger than that of the disinfectant.
Love’s young nightmare has just moved through the first row of huts and I am about to follow when suddenly there is a terrible scream from just beside me and a fat woman wearing curlers and nothing else shoots out of a hut.
“Ooh, you pig,” she yells. “You filthy, dirty old man.”
Somehow, I know what I am going to see even before I look into the hut. Dad standing there in his socks and his plastic mac, looking confused.