waggling in the wind. I turn away and find myself looking through one of the portholes of the Foreskeen. Another of our passengers, Mrs Lapes, is demonstrating that she is prone to other things beside accidents. Her flabby white buttocks rise and fall like a half-collapsed tent agitated by a playful breeze. Beneath her, one of the stokers opens his mouth and delivers himself of a silent scream. Either the porthole glass is too thick or, as seems more likely, the poor devil is too exhausted to raise a sound.
I do hope that these distressing events are not a foretaste of what is to come during the rest of the holiday.
An hour later I am feeling in a much happier frame of mind. Reginald Parkinson has revealed himself as possessing all the qualities of instant decision-making and dynamism that I secretly attributed to him. He has appreciated that ‘the punters’ as he so endearingly calls the paying customers will be feeling ‘a trifle knackered’ as Penny so colourfully puts it, and will be eager to put their heads down – not quite in the same way as was Mrs Lapes when I last dared to look at her, I hope. To this end, he has booked the party in at what I first take to be the Hotel Twerp – I later find that the ‘An’ has fallen off, as has the service, food and one or two other features vital to the efficient running of any hotel.
However, as I stand beside Penny in the reception and watch our charges carrying their bags upstairs while the porters play Dutch auction bridge, such thoughts are far from my mind. ‘All I want is a bath,’ I breathe. ‘I can’t wait to expose myself to those suds.’
‘What sods?’ says Penny, sounding interested. ‘Did you pick up some sailors on your trip? Nice going, you can’t beat a jolly jack –’
‘I said “suds”!’ I say. ‘I’m talking about a bath. That’s the only thing I’m interested in.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Penny. ‘It’s your quaint accent. I find you very difficult to understand sometimes.’
I am feeling rather bitter towards Penny because of the cushy trip she has had out here, and this high-handed remark does nothing to improve my mood. Penny is very nice but she can be rather thoughtless sometimes. If you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth it can be uncomfortable for other people beside your mother.
‘What rooms do we have?’ asks Penny.
‘You?’ says the man behind the desk sounding surprised. ‘I am very sorry but we do not have any more rooms. They have all been taken by your party.’ He says something to one of the porters at the card table who shakes his head. ‘I had hoped that the Royal Suite might be vacant but they have not finished fumigating it yet. We had one of your famous British pop gropes here.’
‘Excuse me,’ I say, suppressing a smile. ‘I think you mean “group” not “grope”.’
‘You did not see them,’ says the man, shaking his head. ‘Many of the older people had not experienced anything like it since the British Army liberated the town.’
‘How historical,’ I say. ‘What do you suggest we do about finding accommodation?’
The man shrugs. ‘There are some hotels down by the docks. They are not so luxurious as this, but…’ his voice trails away as we watch another guest leaving the dining room on a stretcher.
‘I tell you what,’ says Penny. ‘Your need is greater than mine – at least, in some ways it is. You go off and find a hotel and I’ll finish tidying up here. You don’t know the Belgian for “stomach pump”, do you?’
I shake my head. ‘Are you sure that’s all right?’ In my heart of hearts I am dying to eacape. I am very fond of all of my charges – well, some of them are all right – but we have seen a lot of each other in the last few days. Jimmy Wilson, the filthy sex-mad beast who forced his unwanted attentions on me in the bathroom of my own home (see Confessions of a Lady Courier for distressing details), has recovered sufficiently from his ocean ordeal to start making suggestive remarks about where he wants to spend the night and it might be a good idea if I slept in another building. Wilson has convinced himself that I said he could come to my room on our first night abroad and in my present state of mental and physical exhaustion the very thought is enough to give me the vapours.
At the risk of boring regular readers I think it a good idea if I digress for a moment to explain my attitude to sexual matters. In these lax times, nobody who has principles that they are prepared to stand by should feel ashamed of shouting them from the mountain top until the cows come home. I am not a prude, far from it, but I do feel that the tide of licentiousness sweeping through the streets of our homeland is threatening to carry us away with it. As that nice lady with the ornamental spectacles has pointed out, the Roman Empire started to crumble when its citizens stopped wearing anything under their togas. It is all too easy to behave in a way that one does not totally believe in because one is afraid of being thought ‘square’ but I am one of the silent majority who is prepared to stand up and be counted. I believe that one’s body is a pre-packed deep frozen pork cutlet that should be delivered to the eventual purchaser with the polythene seal unbroken. In other words, I do not believe in sex before marriage. I am proud to say that I prize my virginity more than any other possession. But – and it can be a big but, sometimes – there are different kinds of virginity. I have always found it necessary to separate the physical act of being rent asunder by a gigantic pussy pummeller from the far more important question of one’s mental attitude to the occurrence. It seems to me that if one can honestly say that the whole distressing business took place without any conscious willingness on one’s part, then one’s virgin status is not impaired – if anything, it is strengthened by this baptism of fire. How can you say that you are a real virgin until you have experienced what you are supposed to resist? The devil you know makes a far more satisfying victim for one’s principles than the devil one doesn’t know. In the course of my adventures I have been the victim of many disturbing happenings but never once have I felt my principles irretrievably compromised. Get some principles and stick to them is my advice to all young girls who find themselves puzzled and uncertain in these troubled times – oh, and get yourself on the pill if you can. There are some very unscrupulous men about.
‘You go and find a hotel and give me a ring,’ says Penny. ‘I’ll tuck this lot up and come whizzing over. We might make a night of it. I feel like shaking a leg.’
I suppress a groan. If I shook a leg I think it might fall off. After my much-needed bath it is going to be bed for this little lady.
As I prepare to leave I see one of the party approaching, looking like a bearer of bad tidings. ‘I can’t make the tap in our room work,’ she says.
‘Which one?’ says the man behind the desk helpfully. I think he is talking about the room number but the woman produces a tap. ‘This one,’ she says.
At the same instant, a muffled shout can be heard from the top of the stairs. ‘Hurry up, Myrtle! I can’t keep my finger in much longer. It’s going numb!’ Penny leads a stampede for the stairs and I make my escape. Perhaps, on the whole, it is a very good job that we are going to spend the night in a different hotel.
Tired as I am, I cannot help feeling excited as I walk through the streets. At last I have set foot on foreign concrete. All around me are men and women who speak a different language, eat different foods, sleep in different beds. It is all so new and stimulating. Even the smells are different. Strange to think that only a few days before I had been leading a humdrum existence in Chingford – or West Woodford as Mum prefers to call it. What would the family do if they could see me now, striding through what I suppose must be the docks? Certainly, there are a lot of masts and smokestacks poking above the low roofs. How nice it would be if I could find a quaint little waterfront hotel in which to spend the night. Dusk is falling fast and the red lights are coming on all around me. It is very picturesque.
‘Hey, you jig, jig, focky, focky?’ I suppose that the language the man is speaking must be Flemish. I have never heard anything like it before. He is probably asking