Confessions from a Package Tour

Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

Also by Timothy Lea and Rosie Dixon

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

When the SS Foreskeen finally docks at Antwerp I can hardly wait for the cattle to be driven ashore before leaving the coach. It is very cramped in that hold and after sixteen hours you can imagine the smell – the cattle don’t smell very nice either.

But perhaps I am going too fast. For the benefit of new readers let me start at the end. The end of Confessions of a Lady Courier. I am employed by Climax Tours (‘The Europe the others forgot’ – you must have seen their advertisements?) and my boss is Nicholas Bendon or Justin Cartwright or Benedict Jollybags or Jeremy Rafelsen-Bigg – for some reason that I can never quite understand, he keeps changing his name; something to do with wanting to be more people than he really is, I think. I always call him by his last name – I mean, the last name he has given himself. At the moment it is Reginald Parkinson.

Anyway, Reggy has hired me to take a coach party round Europe – there is also the driver, a strange Latvian called Jaroslov Hammerchick, but he doesn’t really count – not higher than ten, anyway. For days I have been trying to get the coach out of the country but you have no idea how difficult that can be – unless you have read Confessions of a Lady Courier. In the end, faced with gale force winds in the Channel, I am left with no alternative but to take the only means of escape available: a cattle boat travelling to Antwerp. I think it will be calmer once we get round the corner into the North Sea, but not a bit of it. We can’t see much in the hold but my tummy feels as if it is being swished around with an electric mixer. What really frightens me is when, all of a sudden, large quantities of water pour down the stairs. You can imagine the feeling, can’t you? I mean, you feel pretty trapped sitting in a coach in the bottom of a clapped-out cattle boat with the lights flickering on and off – mostly off – without that happening. And the crew! Panamanians they call themselves though it should be Panamaniacs. I have nothing against foreigners but this lot are really grubby. You don’t have to understand what they are saying to know what they mean. I certainly made no agreement with the captain that they were entitled to have sexual relations with any woman in the party under sixty and all this pinching and gesticulating is so vulgar. I do wish our lot would not do it. It only inflames the excitable citizens of Central America more. It is amazing how the most sober women seem to go berserk the moment the boat puts to sea. Maybe it is something to do with the ozone though I can’t see how any of them can smell it. What with the cattle and the cramped conditions the interior of the hold is more like the BO zone.

It is with a feeling of the most tremendous relief that I eventually come down the steps of the coach and set foot on – oh! Filthy animal! Why did it have to do that there? The inside of the boat was bad enough without the quay at Antwerp receiving the same treatment. It always amazes me how such dirty animals can produce all those nice things like butter, milk and those little creamy cheese segments with the pretty labels.

I scrape my shoe against a convenient bollard and look around the cobbled quay carefully. The cattle are disappearing towards a line of railway trucks and I wish that my own problems could be as easily solved. The first night of our ‘magic carpet ride through the cultural cornucopia of historic Europe’ was meant to be spent on the borders of the ‘romantic Rhineland’ but that was three days ago now and there seems little hope of us ever catching up with our schedule. It is half past six in the evening and a lot of those customers not bidding tearful farewells to weak-kneed Panamanians are suggesting very forcibly that they would like to go to a hotel. What am I going to do?

‘Yoo hoo, Rosie! Here I am!’ The familiar voice rings in my ears like the sound of the relieving cavalry’s bugler at the end of a John Wayne movie. I turn, and there she is – Penny! My companion in a number of adventures listed at the end of this book and fellow employee of Climax Tours. Reggy had said that he was going to send Penny to give me a hand but I had not expected her to arrive so soon.

‘Penny!’ I trill. ‘What a marvellous surprise. But how did you get here so soon? You’re looking so fresh and relaxed.’

‘I flew to Brussels and got a taxi. It was terribly easy, darling. Did you have a good trip? I hope you don’t mind me saying so but you’re looking a trifle peaky?’

‘Next time, I’ll take the Titanic if there’s a choice,’ groans Mr Betts, dumping a string bag full of baked beans tins on the quayside – Sid and Martha Betts do not trust foreign food.

‘Try not to sound quite so enthusiastic,’ I whisper to Penny. ‘The journey so far has not been a resounding success.’

‘Mine has,’ says Penny. ‘You know how they’re always saying that airline stewards are queer? Well, I can prove differently. Tamberlaine was unbelievable. The minute our eyes met I knew it was something special. The first class was empty so he invited me in for a quick one.’

‘A drink?’ I say.

‘No, darling. Procreation practice. The first time was heaven, but it was when he made me a life member of “The Mile High Club” that sparks really started to fly.’

‘How high was it?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, darling, but it seemed to be nudging my lower rib sometimes.’

‘I don’t mean that!’ I say, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment rush over me. ‘I meant how high was the plane?’

‘Excuse me,’ interrupts a slightly irritable voice. ‘Are we going to stay here all night? I haven’t slept in a bed since I left home. I don’t think it’s good enough. I came on this holiday because I was run down.’

‘Well, you’re going to be run down again if you stand there,’ says Penny, cheerfully. ‘You’re smack in the middle of the railway track.’

The man skips out of the way as the cattle train pulls out. ‘Look at all those lovely moo cows,’ says Penny. ‘They’ve got such soft faces, haven’t they?’

The man looks as if he is going to say something unpleasant and then controls himself. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if we’d got off before the cows,’ he grumbles.

‘They don’t have the same passport formalities as us,’ says Penny. ‘Life is much easier if you’re a cow.’

Once again the man opens his mouth and I deem it best to step in hurriedly – not in his mouth, of course.

‘We’ll soon be on our way,’ I say. ‘We’ll just wait for everybody to – er finish.’

It is terrible embarrassing because half the male passengers were in the middle of answering a call of nature behind the train when it pulled out. Now they are all facing us with their little pink front botties 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.

CHAPTER 2

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 if I have a light.

‘I no smoky,’ I say, holding an imaginary cigarette to my lips and shaking my head from side to side.

The man looks disappointed and shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his seamen’s jacket. ‘No luck?’ he says – at least, I think it must be ‘no luck’. The way he pronounces his words it sounds more like ‘no suck’, though that wouldn’t make sense, would it?

I shake my head again; he says something else I can’t understand and wanders unsteadily up the street. I do hope that he is all right. I watch him go up to another woman who listens to what he has to say and then steers him towards a doorway. She is no doubt going to give him succour. Oh dear, I feel like one of those people in the Bible who passed by on the other side. If only all the Belgians were able to speak English as well as the man at the Hotel Twerp – I mean, Antwerp.

My suitcase is beginning to get heavy so I look round eagerly for signs of a hotel. There are lots of bars and one or two clubs but no – wait a minute! There we are: Hotel de Plaisir. Luckily my French is good enough to tell me what it means: Hotel of Pleasure. Sounds jolly enough, doesn’t it? It is a bit shabby, set into the wall of the narrow street, but I suppose you could say that its condition adds to its charm. Certainly, the large red light above the door bathes the front of the building in a warm, welcoming glow.

I go through the door and am faced by a counter, behind which stands a small fat man wearing a beret and a hooped T-shirt. His moustache might have been applied with an eyebrow pencil and he looks at me suspiciously.

‘Good evening,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Do you speak English?’

‘Little,’ says the man unenthusiastically. I notice that he smells of garlic – in fact, everything seems to smell of garlic.

‘I’d like a room for two people,’ I say.

The man’s face splits into the imitation of a smile. ‘Good thinking,’ he says. ‘What you try to say? You want to work ’ere?’

‘I want to spend the night here with my friend – my girl-friend.’ I add that hurriedly because I don’t want the man to get the wrong idea.

‘You both working, are you?’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘My friend is at the Hotel Twit – I mean Twerp – I mean Antwerp, at the moment.’

‘Business good?’ says the man, starting to light an evil-smelling cigarette.

‘We’ve put up sixty tonight,’ I say, not without a touch of pride.

The man stubs his match against the end of his cigarette. ‘Sixty?! And now you want to come ’ere? On Sunday night? With the Russian one ’undredth and forty-second fleet paying a goodwill visit?’

‘It all helps to add a little colour, doesn’t it?’ I say gaily. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to squeeze us in?’

‘With your work rate, I would be imbecile not to,’ says the man, revealing a new sense of urgency and purpose. ‘Come, I show you to room.’

‘What time is dinner?’ I ask as, what I assume to be the manager, leads the way upstairs. ‘I could eat a horse.’

‘You could eat a whore’s what?’ says the manager, stopping on the bend of the stairs and looking at me suspiciously. ‘We no want any cabaret acts ’ere. Our customers are simple seafaring men who in most cases crave only the satisfaction of the most basic of appetites.’

‘Just like me,’ I say. ‘I don’t want anything fancy. Just something good, solid, substantial and filling.’

‘Y-e-es.’ The manager scratches the front of his trousers in a way that I find rather uncouth and continues to lead the way upstairs. To tell the truth, I have not really warmed to the man. A gentleman would have carried my suitcase. So much for all the stuff about Continentals falling over each other to kiss your hand. I thought it sounded too good to be true.

‘ ’Ere you are. This do you very well – like everything else, yes? ’O, ’O, ’O! English joke, no?’

‘No,’ I say, firmly, looking round the small, stuffy bedroom without attempting to disguise my lack of enthusiasm. ‘There’s hardly room to swing a cat in here.’

‘You no need to swing cat,’ says the man. ‘Flagellation is too sophisticated for my clientele. They like simple stuff.’ He looks round the door and closes it quickly. ‘Just like me! Welcome to Hotel de Plaisir.’ So saying, he unzips the front of his trousers and produces what at first glance I take to be a plug of chewing tobacco. I am about to tell him that I am not a chewer when I see what the thing really is. Despite my understandable lack of experience, I am able to recognise a cupid’s quiver – especially when it is quivering as much as this one.

‘How dare you!’ I say. ‘Put that away at once. I’ve got an empty matchbox somewhere if you don’t mind it bashing against the sides.’

‘Just a quick one!’ sings out the loathsome low-lander. ‘So I can recommend you to my customers.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ I say sternly. ‘This kind of shenanigans puts a totally different complexion on our relationship. I suggest that you accept my offer concerning the matchbox before it is too late. I have a pair of tweezers in my make-up bag.’ Of course, this kind of talk is all terribly forward and quite unlike the real me but I find that it is the only thing that a certain type of man understands.

‘Shenanigans?’ says the man slowly. ‘What is they?’

‘English lessons are extra,’ I say bravely. ‘Now, unless you pull yourself together, I’m going to check out of this hotel immediately. I don’t mind a little joke’ – I lean on the word little – ’but enough should be as good as a feast to a blind horse.’

‘Blind whores?’ says the manager looking puzzled. ‘You talk about the rest of the girls? They old; sure; toothless, maybe, but not blind.’

At this confusing moment, the door opens and a woman comes in. At first, I think she is wearing fancy dress. She can’t be a day under fifty and yet she is sporting a thigh-length mini skirt with a slit running up to her vaccination mark and a lurex top holding her sagging breasts as if they are the last two melons left at the bottom of a sack. You could use her high heeled shoes to plant potatoes and she is wearing more make-up than a New Guinea chieftain at a fertility rite – although it is less tastefully applied. The outfit is completed by a plastic rose which she holds between her teeth. Her teeth she holds between her finger and thumb.

‘Alors, Fifi mon ange,’ says the manager. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu veux, mon petit chou?’

His tone is pleasant enough but Fifi replaces her teeth and snaps at him savagely. I do not understand everything she says because, like so many foreigners, she speaks too fast but I do catch ‘… espèce de putain!’ accompanied by a ferocious glance at myself. I seem to remember that putain was not in the dictionary we had at school and meant something rather uncomplimentary.

‘Is this your mother?’ I say, bending over backwards to be pleasant, as is my wont. ‘Comment allez-vous, madam?’

I had not expected my inquiry after the lady’s health to be met with a kiss on both cheeks, but I am amazed when the tarty old frump spits on the carpet! Disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t know if this place appears in the RAC Continental Guidebook but I intend to kick up one hell of a fuss when I get back to England. No wonder more people are holidaying at our homespun watering places these days. It isn’t just because the country is bankrupt.

Things are made even more unpleasant when Fifi slaps the manager round the face and he punches her in the stomach. I had not expected anything quite so brutal from our Continental cousins and I steel myself against the inevitable shock that accompanies the sight of the manager enmeshing his fingers in the recumbent Fifi’s hair and proceeding to drag her from the room. I am even more disquieted when Fifi is revealed as wearing a wig. This whimsical female subterfuge is something that the manager presumably discovers when his headlong progress down the stairs is arrested by the landing two floors below. What a rum business it all is. Taking everything into consideration, I wonder if it would not be advisable that Penny and I gave serious thought to finding alternative accommodation?