my way through the caravans. The fair is now in full swing and the music is grinding out above the hum of the generators. I come round a corner and focus on Madame Necroma’s caravan just as the door opens and the good lady appears at the top of the steps. She is looking decidedly dishevelled and unhappy and pulling a coat round her shoulders. Behind her appears Millie looking embarrassed and I sink back into the shadows. The driver of the police car is the last to leave and he looks round behind him before closing the door. Where is Sid?
‘You’ve got nothing on me!’ says Madame Necroma. ‘Bleeding fuzz! I’ll have you for this.’ She turns on Millie. ‘You’ll have the curse for seven years!’
Before I can work out quite what she means by this statement, the trio disappear round a caravan. How very strange. I can only imagine that Sid has emerged and sloped off to his pad in trendy Vauxhall. He was never the patient type. But hist, what ist? The caravan seems to be trembling. Maybe I had better take a butcher’s. I keep a tight grip on the front of my round the houses and shuffle across the bruised grass littered with fag packets. Up the steps and I try the door. It opens. Inside, it looks just as it did when I last saw it. There is a bowl of Japanese fighting fish but they can’t be belting each other hard enough to set up the vibration that is running through the caravan. I look down at the crumpled bed and – wait a minute! There is only half a bed compared with what there used to be. I switch my gaze to the side of the caravan and see a piece of material I recognise. It is a fragment of Sid’s lumber jacket – we call it that because it is so diabolical that nobody knows how he could have lumbered himself with it. It is protruding from the door of a cupboard. The door of a cupboard that is shuddering as if someone is pressing against it from the inside. Could it be that –? No! It seems impossible – but yet – stranger things have happened to Sidney Noggett.
I grab hold of the handle in the wall and pull. Nothing happens so I pull with both hands and my trousers fall down. Hardly have they touched the floor than the missing half of Madame Necroma’s bed swings down to carpet level. On it sprawls the bright pink body of a naked man lying amongst a pile of discarded clothing and crumpled Tarot cards. His face looks like a chimpanzee’s bum after it has slid down a helter skelter without a mat.
‘Blimey!’ I say. ‘Are you all right, Sid?’
Sid does not answer me but looks round the caravan. ‘Don’t say she’s gone!’ he says. ‘We were just getting to the interesting part.’
‘I can’t believe that she was a nail,’ says Sid.
‘Stands to reason,’ I say. ‘That’s why the fuzz had the caravan under surveillance. I bet they’re pumping her down at the station at this very minute.’
Sid winces and then shakes his hand sadly. ‘I thought she had something,’ he says.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I say, ‘You’d better have a dunk with the Dettol. Use one of the egg cups if you can get your –’
‘I didn’t mean that!’ says Sid. ‘Where’s your romantic streak? I was referring to our instantaneous report.’
‘You mean rapport,’ I say. ‘A report is a bang – still, I suppose, when you come to think of it –’
‘Sometimes you meet someone and it’s as if you’ve known them all your life,’ muses Sid. ‘Making love seemed as natural as the couple of quid I gave her.’
‘I thought you didn’t have any money?’ I say.
‘I found I had another quid on me,’ says Sid. ‘I reckon it would have worked, too.’
‘What would have worked?’ I say.
‘She said that she would be able to get nearer to the reality that was me if we made love.’
‘And did she?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ says Sid. ‘There was this bang on the door and “wump!” She presses a button and half the bed with me on it whips into the wall.’
‘So you got nothing out of her?’ I say.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ says Sid. ‘She was completely at one with me about the environment. She had this feeling that our heritage was very precious and that we would squander it at our peril.’
‘That’s nice,’ I say.
‘And she resolved my uncertainty about the future,’ says Sid. ‘With her help I think I’ve found the answer.’ He leans back and taps his nail file against the end of his finger.
‘Go on,’ I say. I am referring to Sid’s effort to cut through the handcuffs with Mum’s nail file but he is making indifferent progress and is clearly more interested in his latest crack-pot scheme.
‘You might well cock your lug holes,’ he says. ‘This little number represents everything I feel like doing at the moment. A return to nature and a life free from stress and strain. I can almost hear the rooks crowing.’
‘Cocks crow,’ I say. ‘Rooks caw. What is it, Sid? Put me out of my misery.’
‘A camping site by the seaside,’ says Sid. ‘What could be simpler?’
‘You mean caravans?’ I ask.
‘Caravans, tents, anything. All you need is a bit of water and somewhere for them to have a Tom Tit and clean their Teds. A field will do. It’s a doddle to look after, and all the time you’ve got the sky as a ceiling above your head, You wake to the sound of birdsong. You’re in the middle of people who are enjoying themselves. And the moment was never riper. With this once great country of ours temporarily in diarrhoea straits, more and more families are taking holidays at home, discovering the joys of their own countryside.’
‘Where are you thinking of doing this?’ I ask.
Sid rubs his hands together. ‘Funny you should say that. When it came to a site I really fell on my feet.’
‘They look as if something fell on them,’ I say – somebody once described Sid as comatose and hammer toes.
‘Don’t take the piss,’ says Sid. ‘You’re going the right way to get a button down hooter when you go on like that. Just ask intelligent questions and you might learn something.’
‘Which one of Madame Necroma’s relations owns a field near the sea?’ I ask.
‘Her aunt,’ says Sid. ‘Wait a minute! How did you know she had a relation who owned a field?’
‘I’ve got mystic powers,’ I say. ‘I can foretell every time you are going to be conned. How much did you pay for this place?’
‘I haven’t paid anything yet,’ says Sid. ‘I’m not a fool! I’m not going to buy it without seeing it. It might be totally unsuitable. Really, Timmo, you do get up my bracket when you imply that I’m some kind of Charlie when it comes to sussing out job opportunities.’
He is still fuming when Dad comes in. I am a bit choked because I had not wished to be caught in a situation which might alarm my sensitive parent. ‘What have you two skiving ’arstards been doing?’ he says as I thrust my arms out of sight beneath the table.
‘Nothing,’ I say automatically.
‘I can believe that,’ says Dad. ‘Now, I’m going to say two words that should strike terror into your hearts: hard work.’
‘Why? Do you want us to translate them for you?’ says Sid.
Dad is clearly feeling righteous after putting in one of his irregular days at the lost property office and does not warm to Sid’s merry quip. ‘Bleeding disgrace!’ he snarls. ‘A working man does an honest day’s labour and he has to put up with two of his family behaving like bloody kids. Haven’t you got anything better