All The Nice Girls (26 page)

‘Why struggle to shift a bloody great weight when a word at the right time will get the bloke who put it there to shift it for you gladly?’

‘I guess you’re right, Bodger.’

Dagwood and Caroline decided to throw an engagement party almost immediately, in the Tithe Barn (although Caroline had a few misgivings about the number of girls present who would have private memories of the place). After some discussion about whom they should invite they decided to make a clean sweep and invite everybody. Caroline’s invitations were easily given; she merely went through her address book. Dagwood’s were more complicated. He had no address book so turned out his pockets and discovered telephone numbers written on scraps of paper, old theatre programmes, laundry and shopping lists. There were a couple scribbled in eye-shadow pencil inside his cigarette case and several more on his desk blotter.

When Ollie saw the list of guests he said: ‘Where are you planning to have you party, Dagwood?’

‘In the Tithe Barn, of course.’

‘By the size of that list I should say you ought to hire the Town Hall.’

Dagwood frowned. ‘It does seem a lot, now you mention it.’ Dagwood ran his finger down the list. ‘A hundred and twenty three! ‘

‘I’m surprised it’s so few. You haven’t been exactly hiding your light under a bushel while you’ve been here, have you? Are you going to invite them all?’

‘I don’t see why not. I doubt if they’ll all be able to come.’ But in spite of the short notice, Dagwood and Caroline seemed to have picked a night when nobody had anything else planned. The ticks on the invitation lists multiplied. It looked as though the Tithe Bam was destined for a big night. ‘Now you’ve invited all these people,’ Ollie said, ‘what are you going to give them to drink?’

There was only one place to take such a problem.

‘You take my advice, love,’ said Daphne, ‘and don’t mess about wi’ cocktails. People like to know what they’re drinking and besides, you’ll spend the whole night mixing’em. You give them straight drinks and you won’t go far wrong.’

Guv offered to supply spirits, minerals and a firkin of best bitter at wholesale prices and deliver them free of charge. Daphne offered to lend twelve dozen assorted glasses. Dagwood was so touched by their gesture that he invited them both to come to the party, after closing time.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ Daphne said, ‘but we can’t come. I know Guv don’t like parties, for one thing. When you watch people drinking every day of your life you don’t feel like doing it in your spare time.’

‘How about you coming then, Daphne?’

‘Ah, I’d
love
to come but it wouldn’t be right. I’m a barmaid and it wouldn’t be right for me to be seen at your party.’

‘Daphne, what utter
nonsense!
You’ve got more right to come to my party than anyone else in this town!’

‘It’s kind of you to say that and I know
you
wouldn’t mind but there’s folks who would. Never you mind. Guv and I’ll drink a glass to you both here. Now love, stop chewing the fat, we’ve got work to do ...’

The logistical arrangements for the party went very smoothly. Guv arrived in his van at five o’clock with the liquor and the firkin. Gotobed and Quickly, who had volunteered their services as barmen, helped Guv and Dagwood unload the stores. The main living-room in the Tithe Barn had been cleared of all furniture except the table, which was placed in front of the long orchard window. The firkin was set up and broached in the kitchen. The rest of the liquor and the glasses were laid out on the table and on the windowsill for Able Seaman Quickly to dispense - leaving Gotobed to act as tray-carrier and freelance agent provocateur. Dagwood and Caroline had considered providing food for the party but had decided that the arrangements would be too complicated. They settled for two capacious Victorian chamber pots, loaned by Molly, which Caroline filled to the brim, one with potato crisps and the other with peanuts. Music was provided by the guitarist from the ‘Black Cat’ and two of his friends who took their places behind Dagwood’s bedroom rail, thus converting the bedroom into a minstrels’ gallery. Everything was ready.

‘Isn’t this heaven?’

‘Here we go! ‘ exulted Dagwood, seizing Caroline by the waist and doing a makeshift polka round the room.

If the village had not already guessed that something unusual was happening at the Watsons’ farm that evening, all doubts were dispelled by the cavalcade of motor cars which began to arrive from half past six onwards. They filled the farmyard first, then the lane, then the minor road at the end of the lane, and by seven o’clock were lining the main road for a hundred yards either side of the minor road junction. The small boys of the village, who seldom had the opportunity to spot strange number plates, had an enchanted evening, capturing a variety of motor cars, from Sir Rollo’s Rolls, through Mr Tybalt’s Riley, to the shipyard managers’ small Austins and Sarah Judworth’s bubble car.

Chubb was the first guest to arrive. He came on his bicycle which he parked outside the Tithe Barn front door and he arrived very early (while the musicians were experimentally picking out the first chords of ‘La Malaguena’ and Dagwood, Caroline and the two barmen were having one all round to fortify themselves). He brought with him half a dozen trout which Dagwood hurriedly hid under the bath where Sir Rollo (whose property Dagwood had no doubt they were) would be unlikely to see them.

Chubb asked for whisky, received his glass, and drained it in one swallow.

‘Arrh,’ he said, blowing out his cheeks. ‘That’s got the right sort o’ taste, Mister Dagwood, thank ye.’

‘Have another, Chubb.’

‘I will that.’

Chubb took his second glass. ‘Here’s the best o’luck to ye both, Miss Caroline.’

‘Thank you, Chubb, and the same to you,’ said Caroline, who was well acquainted with her father’s arch-poacher.

Chubb squinted at the diamond on Caroline’s finger for which Dagwood had mortgaged two months’ pay. He winked at Caroline. ‘He get that out of a cracker, did he?’

‘Chubb!’

Chubb cackled. ‘If your young man had stayed with me for another five years I coulda taught him something. Give me a lad at the age o’ten, make him work ten hours a day for ten years and he could be a man o’leisure like me for the rest of his days.’

‘I wish I could, Chubb. Excuse us a minute.’

The guests were beginning to flood through the front door. Mr Tybalt arrived, in his best drinking suit, with Maxine, in skin-tight black velvet. Behind them were Mr and Mrs Swales and the other Admiralty Overseers and their wives, the Overseers looking less harassed than Dagwood was used to seeing them and their wives looking like the wives of Admiralty Overseers. Happy Day and Mrs Day followed, with the other shipyard managers and their wives, the shipyard managers looking less pessimistic than usual and their wives looking like the wives of shipyard managers. Then came a miniature cross-section of Oozemouth society - some family friends of Sir Rollo’s who were mostly members of the Conservative Club; Sarah and Hilda Judworth with the point-to-point, Young Conservative, Young Farmer and Pony Club set; Vera, Barbara, Humphrey and a team from the ‘Black Cat’; Drusilla, Stella and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd VIs from the tennis club; Ollie and Alice; The Hon. Mrs Julian Dewberry; the Reverend Godfrey and Mrs Potter; Admiral and Patricia MacGregor; Sir Rollo and Lady Hennessy-Gilbert; Bill and Molly Watson; and The Bodger and Julia. Fiona came with her newly-captured fiancé, a rather bemused young man called Robin who was reading history at Cambridge. Doris also came with her young man - an inoffensive-looking boy called Norman; plainly the officer-like qualities which could control the Inspection Department at the ball-bearing factory were not likely to be tested by Norman. The girls all clustered round Caroline to inspect her ring. The men commiserated with Dagwood.

‘Cheers, Dagwood,’ said Mr Tybalt. ‘And many congratulations.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Looking around me, I can see that you haven’t been letting the grass grow under your feet while you’ve been here!’

‘That splendid strike helped.’

‘Yes, you looked as though you had mixed feelings about it when it ended! At least you haven’t done what a lot of naval officers do when they’re standing by ships up here. They get themselves some gloomy digs and sit gloomily in them every night and tell themselves what a horrible hole Oozemouth is. If you do that, of course it will be a horrible hole. But so would anywhere else.’

Maxine was looking about her with interest. ‘So this is the famous Tithe Barn,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about it but I was never invited!’

Dagwood looked at Mr Tybalt. ‘I could hardly do that,’ he said.

Mr Tybalt laughed. ‘It wouldn’t have been your sort of evening, Maxie. From what I hear it was life in the raw. Raw meat, raw wine and lying on the sofa in the raw!’

Maxine looked wistful. Dagwood blushed. ‘Not so loud, sir,’ he said cautioningly. ‘It’s good-bye to all that now!’

Gotobed and Quickly were dispensing drinks like men possessed - working on the old sailing-ship principle of one hand for the ship and one hand for themselves, which they interpreted as meaning one drink for themselves for every drink dispensed. They had already reached a state of fine careless rapture and were making it their business to see that everyone else followed suit. The noise level rose. The musicians in the gallery began to accompany their own renderings with full-blooded shouts. Cigarette smoke swirled up towards the skylight. Ollie, on whom alcohol always had a dramatic effect, had to shout to make himself intelligible to Lady Hennessy-Gilbert.

‘Have I told you the one about the Chief Stoker and the Yellow-and-Black Striped Bandit Kreit?’

‘No!’ shrieked Lady Hennessy-Gilbert. ‘You haven’t!’

It was a long story and several times during the telling Ollie was swept away by the crowd and had to continue the narrative by bellowing over a row of intervening heads but Lady Hennessy-Gilbert listened attentively and then screeched: ‘Not bad! Have you heard the one about the Honeymoon Couple and the Parrot?’

‘Which one do you mean?’

‘Listen!’

Agatha, the Student of Life from the ‘Black Cat,’ had Happy Day wedged in the angle of the bedroom stairs, Happy Day was looking unhappier than Dagwood had ever seen him.

‘You’re a perfect example of what I mean by the
New Tyrant
,’ Agatha was saying. ‘I can see the day coming when there will be a
blood-bath
in every shipyard in the country . . .’

Sid Burlap was also trapped in another corner, by the kitchen door. ‘Of course,’ boomed The Hon. Mrs Julian Dewberry, ‘I introduced them. It was at the Forest point-to-point. It was love at first sight. . .’

Sid Burlap nodded wordlessly.

Cyril Swales had had four quick, Quickly-sized gins and was now wearing what his friends of his younger days would have called his Drinking Grin; it spread almost from ear to ear and made him look like a mandarin sated with good living. Furthermore, he was displaying more courage than Dagwood would ever have believed of him. Under the eye of Mrs Swales he was gradually isolating Barbara from the rest of the throng. Being a short man he was achieving his object by fitting his head under Barbara’s splendid Byzantine bosom and rhythmically rising and falling on his toes. Barbara, who showed no surprise at this manoeuvre, was slowly being cut out of the crowd like a cow at a round-up.

Once Sir Rollo had recovered from the shock of seeing Chubb grinning demoniacally at him from the top of the stairs, he began to enjoy himself.

‘You’re the point-to-point fellow, aren’t you?’ he said to The Bodger. ‘Never laughed so much in all my life! Privately.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it, Sir Rollo,’ The Bodger said, smoothly.

‘Don’t go making a habit of it, not at our point-to-point. We got a stiff letter from the National Hunt Committee and we were damned lucky not to be warned off, the whole lot of us!’

The Bodger made apologetic noises.

‘You and your wife must come up and see us some time. Muriel and I will be glad to see you. Come to dinner some time, eh?’

‘We shall be very pleased, Sir Rollo.’

‘That fellow Leanover was telling me about you. Why don’t you stay on in Oozemouth and take a job in the yard? We’re always on the look-out for new talent.’

‘I couldn’t do that, Sir Rollo. The Navy’s very much a full time job.’

‘Well, resign your commission, man!’

‘You just can’t do that.’

‘What, can’t you just send in yer papers?’ Sir Rollo looked perplexed.

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘What a bloody funny outfit the Navy must be, if a man can’t retire when he wants to! ‘

Dagwood circulated diligently amongst the guests, followed closely by Gotobed who made sure that Dagwood’s glass was never empty. No matter how quickly Dagwood drank, the level in his glass seemed never to falter. By nine o’clock Gotobed’s handiwork was having its effect. From that point onwards Dagwood’s memories of his engagement party became disjointed. He had a recollection of the Reverend Godfrey Potter and Admiral MacGregor wringing his hand and giving him messages to pass on to Admiral Submarines when he next saw him. He could remember wishing Humphrey, from the ‘Black Cat,’ the best of luck with Patricia MacGregor and Fulke Judworth the best of luck in the Derby. He could dimly recall Major O’Reilly singing ‘The Sash Me Father Wore, it was old but it was beautiful’ in the vernacular.

By ten o’clock Dagwood had achieved that state of intoxication where he was possessed by an urgent desire to be hospitable to the whole world; his heart overflowed with good wishes; he wanted to go out into the highways and by-ways and compel them to come in. Dagwood went out into the yard and came upon a small tableau; Bill and Molly Watson were watching Gotobed demonstrate how to get a bucket of clear water from the old well.

The next morning The Bodger was sitting in his office trying to concentrate upon his work when the telephone rang. It was Mr Tybalt.

‘Frank, must you make so much noise with that telephone! That bell went straight through my head! ‘

Mr Tybalt sounded panic-stricken. ‘Bodger,’ he whispered, ‘I’ve got a little man outside who says he’s looking for Her Majesty’s Dockyard, Oozemouth.’