going to contribute something further to the conversation when Mrs. C. appears. I am glad to see that she is fully dressed and that there is no sign of Mrs. Dent. With a bit of luck we might still get away with our balls unsinged.
“Darling,” she squeals. “What a heavenly surprise. I had no idea you were going to be back before the weekend.” She gazes at Garth as if he had just floated out of the exit duct and flashes a quick glance round for me.
“Evidently,” says Mr. C., allowing himself to be kissed on the cheek. “I’m sorry to have spoiled your surprise.”
“Surprise, darling?”
“Having the ‘clunge outlets unclogged and the ‘spangers’—it is spangers, isn’t it?”; Garth nods—“having the spangers protected from furring up. It was very thoughtful of you. This sturdy servitor of aqua-hygiene has been telling me all about it.”
“Oh, well, yes.” Mrs. C. starts fingering a necklace she isn’t wearing and struggles for inspiration. “I thought it was about time somebody had a look at it.”
“Yes, indeed. Well, now you can tell me what you’ve been doing, while our friend here gets his clothes on.”
Thank God, I think, now they’ll piss off and I can slip out with Garth. But not a bit of it. The bastard sits right down on the edge of the springboard while Mrs. C. rabbits on about her painting and Garth slopes off to get dressed.
By now I am sweating like a pig and there is something crawling up my legs that feels as if it has come all the way from Africa with the undergrowth. Garth comes out of the changing-room and I can see my T-shirt sticking out of his hold-all.
“Goodbye,” says Mr. C. like a python talking to something that is already half-way down its throat. “I’d like to say I hope to see you again, but I’m certain that someone with your obvious talents will be moving on to bigger and better swimming-pools.”
Garth mumbles something cheerful and is half-way to the door when Mr. C.’s voice cuts in again.
“Oh, by the way, I believe my wife has been using a model who probably needs a lift back to town. Perhaps you can help her out?”
“Certainly, guv. It’ll be a pleasure.”
He bundles out and I wait hopefully for Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs to follow him. Mrs. C. doesn’t need any pushing, but Mr. C. suddenly starts loosening his tie.
“Are you coming, George?”
“No. I rather fancy a swim. I want to see if I can feel the chlorine level.”
“You what?”
“It doesn’t matter, dear. It was something the service man was talking to me about. I’ll see you later.”
He disappears into the changing-room and Mrs. C. gazes desperately round the room for me. She even looks into the pool as if she expects to find me holding my nose on the bottom. I have half a mind to make a run for the door, but before I can pull myself together Mr. C. has shot out of the changing-room sporting a pair of moth-eaten red woollen trunks. Why he bothers I can’t think.
“You go and get some supper, dear,” he says. “I feel like building up an appetite.”
And this is just what the bastard does. Up and down the pool he goes until the sweat is making a puddle at my feet and I have to lie on my stomach to get over the cramp in my legs.
He must have done about a hundred lengths before he clambers out and slowly towels himself down. It is now dark outside and I don’t relish exposing my body to the kind of weather Cromingham dishes out. I could eat a horse and the heat is giving me a headache. “Piss off out of it, Carstairs,” I murmur to myself and at last the bugger moves towards the door that leads into the house proper. A few more minutes and I will be able to escape while he is feeding his stupid face. I begin to move myself into a position from which I can get up when suddenly Carstairs pauses in the doorway and swivels his gaze to exactly where I am hiding.
“I must say you’re doing a most conscientious job checking those plants,” he says mockingly. “I’ll turn the heating up so that you don’t get too cold in case there’s a frost tonight. I know it may fur up the spangers but I’m certain your associate would understand.”
And with that he closes the door behind him and I hear the key turn in the lock. Bloody swine! He has known I was there all the time and been making me sweat it out—literally. Rage boils up inside me. I could probably sue him for the diabolical liberties he is taking. You can’t lock up people in your heated swimming-pool just because they might have been about to have an orgy with your old woman. This isn’t a police state yet, Mr. Carstairs! This and a few hundred other thoughts march through my mind as the humidity increases to a point where I can hardly breathe and snowflakes whirl down through the darkness outside.
What a carry-on! I might as well be spending the night in a Turkish bath; and if I do get out, other than in a sponge, I will probably freeze to death. Luckily I can crawl into the changing-room but, as I had suspected, the brilliant Garth has taken all my clobber. All I can find to wear is a pair of kid’s bathing trunks and a white coat such as worn by cricket umpires, doctors and ice-cream salesmen. Not much cop for the great outdoors. There is no outside door to the changing-room and the door to the house has been locked by creepy Carstairs. I try to slide open the sheet glass windows but they, too, appear to be locked. Apart from lifting the grille in the bath and chancing my luck down the outlet channel, there seems to be no alternative, other than smashing a window or waiting to be released. The destruction involved in the former is a bit monumental even by my standards and I decide to wait and see if Garth or Mrs. C. comes to the rescue.
Hours later I am still waiting and there is no sign of either of them. I have a pretty good idea where Garth is, and the very thought of it is more than I can bear in my condition. By this time I have returned to the changing-room, where it is slightly easier to breathe and am trying to sleep on one of the benches. I must have half dozed off when I hear a ‘click’ which sounds like a key turning in a lock. I listen for a moment but there is no other noise, and it is only desperation that makes me drag myself across to try the door. It opens! Either Mr. Carstairs has relented or Julia has managed to slip away and release me. Probably the latter. There is nobody on the other side of the door so I don’t hang about but tiptoe across the ankle-deep carpet and climb out by the first sash window I come to.
By the cringe, it is cold! It has stopped snowing and is now freezing hard and I almost wish I had hung on long enough to find a pair of shoes before doing a bunk. Unless I keep moving the soles of my feet stick to the ground and the wind cuts me like a knife. Luckily, I stop a bloke in a van at the end of the lane and scramble in before he has a chance to see my bare feet. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he does and drives like fury to the end of Mrs. B.’s road, where I thank him through chattering teeth and stagger the last hundred yards trying to keep my circulation going by swinging my arms.
Of course, I don’t have a front door key, so I have to steer a frozen finger to the bell-push and after a couple of rings a light goes on at the top of the stairs.
Mrs. B. pulls open the door and I practically fall into the hall before she can say anything. She has obviously been on the point of giving me the mother and father of all bollockings but my pitiful condition changes all that.
“Good heavens!” she gasps. “What on earth have you been up to? You look half dead.”
A glance in the hallstand mirror confirms her impression. There is a rim of frost across both eyebrows, my eyelashes look as if they had been dipped in sugar, and my hair is white. I might have been chipped out of a deep freeze.
“I b-b-b-b-b-b—” I croak and luckily the Florence Nightingale in Mrs. B. comes surging to the fore.
“Never mind,” she says urgently. “You can tell me later. If we don’t do something about you, you’re going to freeze to death. Can you get upstairs?”
I nod bravely and reach for the bannisters whilst she goes on ahead to run a bath. Can my