7: GOAT AMOK

  It was a few minutes before the start of the midday shift two weeks later, and most of the Chuck Wagon dining room staff were sitting around with cigs, coffees or teas and the remnants of food in the staff canteen, where they had been since the end of the morning shift half an hour before.
   "Charlie Tango Delta Oscar, request air cover, come on," said Jack.
  "You look very glaucous this morning, cocksucker Kevin," said Carlos solicitously. "You drink too much last night, perhaps? Perhaps a cup of tea will be analeptical."
  "One can but hope," said Kevin.
  Forbes sniggered to himself.
  "All units to the kiddies' sandpit, major confront in progress," said Jack. "Request back-up...being overrun...khh..."
  "Is my blouse ready yet, Kevin?" asked Rose.
  "I'm afraid not. I still haven't been able to find the right thread. I'd hate to do a botched job."
  "Well, there's no rush," she smiled kindly.
  "We have a Mr. Palmer in The Chuck Wagon," said Jack. "Repeat, a Mr. Palmer, wanker on the loose. Do not approach."
  Forbes giggled to himself. The reason Jack was saying things like 'Charlie Tango Delta Oscar' was that he had got hold of a security guard's walkie-talkie from somewhere and was broadcasting over it.
  The reason Rose was asking Kevin about her blouse was that Kevin was supposed to be sewing some buttons on it for her. In the staff room two days before she had told of how, tiredly undressing the previous night, she had attempted to take it off under the mistaken impression that she had already unbuttoned it, and half the buttons had come flying off. She supposed she would have to sew them back on, she concluded wanly, but she wasn't much good at that sort of thing..."I'll do it," Kevin had said instinctively, as he always did whenever she needed anything doing. To his surprise, she had agreed immediately and with warm gratitude, and had handed the blouse over promptly. Kevin couldn't sew any more than he could sing opera or operate power tools or mend an electrical plug, and all he had done with the blouse so far had been to stroke it, fondle it, kiss it, put his head inside it, and hang it over the back of a chair in his chalet and pretend she was in it.
  The reason Forbes was sniggering and giggling to himself was that he was filling in the self-assessment forms Palmer had handed round that morning. These were Palmer's own innovation and he had typed and copied them personally; they contained a couple of spelling mistakes that Kevin found adorable and the words WE VALUE YOUR INPUT! at the bottom. The idea was that you frankly and critically assessed your own performance at the job so far. By common consent Forbes was filling them in for everyone. In answer to the question, 'How do you rate your own performance?' he had written on Brian's sheet: 'I deserve to be plunged head-first into a vat of whale smegma for my incompetence. I have brought dishonour on the glorious name of the corporation. Cursed be the day that the misbegotten she-donkey who called herself my mother spewed me forth from her putrid loins. There is only one way to atone, and that is with my life. See you in hell, Palmer.'
   On Carlos's he had written:
  'I am simple Portuguese peasant boy. I am no fucking good at my job. I should be made to sleep in stable with other livestock.'
  On Wang's:
  'You want knife in back? You no fuck with me. Sleep with one eye open, Johnny Englishman.'
  And on Veronica's:
  'You are the most attractive man I have ever seen. Come to my chalet at midnight. Wear nothing but a raincoat and a pair of sock-suspenders.'
  In answer to the question, 'How do you think you might be able to improve your performance?' he had written on Rose's form:
  'I have been thinking of lap-dancing for some of the male customers.'
  Conversely for Jack:
  'I suppose I should stop indecently exposing myself to female customers.'
  And for Kevin:
  'I'm going to try to stop wanking myself off into the cream pastries every morning.'
   His answers to 'Do you have any suggestions as to how we might be able to improve the work environment?' had included: 'Kill Desmond', 'Hang Desmond's flayed carcass upside down from the ceiling', and 'Hose down the clientele with disinfectant before they enter'.
  ("I think we may have a morale problem," said Palmer when he saw the responses.)
  "Desmond has been pushing crack in The Chuck Wagon," said Jack into the walkie-talkie. "All units locate and destroy, repeat, locate and destroy. Use extreme violence."
  "Request clarification," came Big Chief's crackly voice. "Clarify, repeat, clarify."
  A few minutes ago Big Chief had been sitting drinking coffee at the other end of the canteen, his own radio squawking on the table in front of him, until Jack had broadcast a report that Welsh Separatist guerillas were shooting hostages in the Darby and Joan club. Big Chief had risen immediately, calmly finished his coffee, and walked out with the air of a man who had finally heard the call to arms he had been awaiting all his life.
  "You know what he did a few weeks back?" said O'Rourke, the boy formerly known as the pixie. "He got a message over his radio that there was a Mr. Sutcliffe in his office, the code for a psycho with a knife. So him and half a dozen of his biggest boys went to his office and found this guy inside, and rushed him and really beat the shit out of him. Turned out Mr. Sutcliffe was the guy's name and he was there to sell him some security equipment."
  O'Rourke was a fund of such camp lore. He had recently been transferred from the fairground for his part in the introduction of the play-area goat into the dodgem-car rink. He had protested vigorously against being sent to The Chuck Wagon, and upon first entering the dining hall had immediately pressed the back of his hand to his forehead in the manner of a Southern belle in a Tennessee Williams play, cried, "The heat! The heat!" and pulled a spectacular faint, crumpling full-length to the floor at Mr. Palmer's feet, later explaining that proximity to the furnace-like temperatures of the kitchen exacerbated the symptoms of a rare blood disorder to which he was heir, and lobbying passionately for his immediate re-transfer to fresher climes on health grounds. Unsuccessfully, however; even he, who told tales of facing down machete-wielding mobs in the heart of Toxteth, was no match for Desmond's basilisk stare.
  O'Rourke and Jack currently spent most of their time hatching outlandish plots to get Desmond. He had subjected each of them to several pay-dockings and tongue-lashings of late, and had recently sunk even lower in everyone's estimation when Seamus and Veronica had testified that he had got an unmistakable erection while bollocking them for something one day.
  Desmond at the moment was sitting over in a corner of the canteen with a crony of his, a horrible one-eyed Scottish bastard who performed Desmond's function in the canteen. Kevin had passed them on his way back from getting his tea and had heard them talking.
  "They're all scum," Desmond said.
  "Criticize my fucking food?" said the Scottish bastard. "There's not one of them got two hot meals a day before they came here."
  "Like fuck they did. The shitholes they were dredged up from? Scum, that's all they are."
  "I've worked out how to get him," said Jack, putting down his radio and glaring over at Desmond now. "We spike his coffee with trips."
  "Dodgy," said O'Rourke, shaking his head. "Not worth the grief. The week before you come here one of the ride operators got spiked by someone whose bird he'd got off with. He fucking lost it when he was on duty, wouldn't let anyone get off the Waltzer for half an hour. Just kept sending them round again as soon as they stopped. When they finally escaped they couldn't walk straight, they all kept spinning round and falling over. Management found out what had happened and had security take every fucking chalet apart looking for drugs. Too much fucking grief." He thought for a second."We've got the radio. How about if we plant some drugs in his chalet and get security to turn it over?"
  "I reckon we're being too subtle. All we need is for half a dozen lads to wait for him in a dark alley one night. You up for that, Kevin?"
  "Er...depends...my tennis elbow, you know..."
  Brian came round drumming up subscriptions to the Chuck Wagon national lottery syndicate. Almost everyone paid up and contributed numbers they'd had semi-mystical visions of. Brian himself was keen on 12, because he'd seen his dead grandmother sitting at the table of that number, and 43, because he'd seen it written out in strands of spaghetti on a plate he was clearing.
  "In numerals or letters?" enquired Forbes.
  "What do you think?"
  "It could have been alphabetti spaghetti."
  "So are you in?"
  "Certainly not," said Forbes. "A lottery is no pastime for an Englishman. It's a pastime for excitable Latins, jabbering away in their foul-smelling cantinas, gathered round ancient televisions kissing the embalmed fuck-fingers of dead prelates and clutching locks of the madonna's pubic hair. An Englishman should seek to make his pile by honest endeavour. A pox on Anthea Turner."
  "I'd have thought you'd be in favour of it," said Jack. "It means people like us pay for people like you to go and look at dead sheep in art galleries."
  "Heavens, that does seem unfair. What foul pleasures would you rather the money was spent on? Ratting pits? Pit-bull fights? Defence funds for condemned Rottweilers, perhaps? Karaoke machines and tattoo parlours? Or should we just use it all to buy the Gladiators some new jock straps and have Cilla Black refurbished?"
  Forbes could be alarmingly forthright at times. Just as he didn't care if no-one understood his allusions, neither did he care if everyone heard his insults. The previous day Kevin had been sitting with Jack in the staff room when Forbes had come in for his break, groaning theatrically and complaining about the customers. "How did I come to end up among such people?" he had moaned plaintively. "They are all tracksuits and trainers and football conversations. If I had the power to abolish three things, it would be football, tracksuits, and training shoes." Kevin had already agreed with Forbes on this topic once; on the other hand, he had just finished a lengthy discussion with Jack extolling the virtues of various football players, and the day before had responded enthusiastically when Jack had shown him the new tracksuit he had bought. Kevin was something of a social chameleon. He had even noticed that his speech patterns sometimes fluctuated depending on whether he was with Jack or Forbes; in particular, he tended to adopt a rough-and-ready Northern lad idiolect when with Jack. Now he was trapped between the two of them. He had read or thought he'd read about some sort of crab or snail or something that didn't have a shell of its own but inhabited shells that some other manner of thing had left behind, moving about naked from one to another; he felt like one of those caught out in the open between carapaces. Kevin thought he might be the one person in the world who had failed to decide on a persona early on and stick to it. The further thought had occurred that perhaps this lack of well-defined character traits such as Jack or Forbes had was one of the reasons he had never done anything in life. Maybe he should choose an image once and for all, and quickly. Or maybe, on the other hand, Jack and Forbes were rigidly defined, limited caricatures of people, and he was flexible, liquid, full of infinite potentialities, what was the word, amorphous - no, he was protean, like Bowie. This thought had pleased him. Anyway, he had left the staff room hastily and left them to it.
  Desmond rose and walked towards the door. "Move your arses, you lot, you've got two minutes to get there or you lose an hour," he yelled at them as he went.
  "Don't you think you overdo the Blimp bit sometimes?" said Kevin to Forbes as they headed towards The Chuck Wagon.
  "Being an anachronism is the only act of rebellion left in today's society," said Forbes. "But it is no mere affectation to say I was born after my time. I do not belong in this world of scratchcards and fast-food emporia and baseball-cap-wearing yobs gobbing on the pavement. I belong in a cleaner, gentler England."
  "Here, Forbes, here's that skunk you wanted," said O'Rourke, coming up and thrusting a large bag of cannabis buds in their faces. "Just got it, absolutely gorgeous, look how juicy it is, oo, mm, here, Kev, just smell that-"
  O'Rourke suddenly lost control of his facial muscles and froze dead with a skunk bud poised under Kevin's nose; they had stepped inside The Chuck Wagon to find it filled with about sixty policemen.
  Evans walked in behind them. "Oh hell," he said, jaw dropping. He nudged Kevin. "That telly I sold you, boy - where is it now?"
  "In my chalet. Why?"
  "Oh bloody hell," said Evans, and dashed back out again. O'Rourke very slowly put the skunk back in his pocket and turned and sauntered out too.
  It turned out there was a child missing and the police had been called in to search for it; Kevin experienced a momentary flash of paranoia in case someone unearthed his application form with the bit about watching children in parks. There was an exceedingly sombre atmosphere as the massed ranks of police ate their lunch almost in silence. Even the Chuck Wagon muzak system, a recent innovation of Palmer's which constantly and mindbendingly churned out a programme consisting of a selection of classic Western themes alternated with a tape featuring such dregs of the sixties as The Crying Game and Tell Laura I Love Her, was temporarily mute. The mood even penetrated to the kitchen were Kevin and Forbes were.
  "Reminds me of the sort of atmosphere we had at mealtimes at Biggin Hill when we found two eggs on our plate," said Forbes staring out at the dining hall from the dishwashers' hatch. "Two eggs; that meant there was a do on that night, you know."
  "I was at Biggin Hill," said skanky George.
  "Really," said Forbes with a sceptical yawn. "Wingman to Bader, no doubt. Spending your off-duty hours tossing down oysters and Bucks Fizz and wiping your mouth on WAAF girls' gussets. George was the model for Scotty in The Dawn Patrol."
  "That was the First World War," said Kevin. "And anyway, shut up." Kevin had long harboured a romantic picture of George as a war hero reduced to his present pass by the indifference of a forgetful society, and had just completed a series of stumbling mental calculations and decided it was possible George was old enough to be telling the truth.
  "I was there," George insisted aggrievedly. "I wasn't a flyer. I was in the kitchen."
  "Oh," said Kevin. "Still, I bet you could tell some stories, eh George? You must have seen some sights there."
  "Oh aye...I could that...The scale of the thing was incredible...It was a heroic effort...The food we shifted...eighteen hundred meals a day we had to shift, and no fancy microwaves like nowadays," (he went into one of his disgusted mutters) "baahdon'toldwithem, y'cankeepemforme...and if they had to go up suddenly we'd get no notice, whole lot'd go to waste, else we'd have to stand around and keep it warm 'till they got back,and we'd have to give 'em two eggs apiece when they were going on missions, they'd bloody moan if they didn't get 'em...Bloody Brylcreem boys, thought they were God's gift, no notion of how hard we worked...I scarcely had a moment to meself the whole time."
  "What a uniquely depressing view of history," said Forbes. "Any other rare behind the scenes glimpses of inspiring periods in Britain's past, George? Were you the slop-man at the Cafe Royal, perhaps? Chief bottle-washer at the Establishment club? Spud-basher at Agincourt?"
  "Less of your cheek," said George.
  Kevin decided he would do almost anything to avoid a life like the ones George and Albert had had. Of the two, he would narrowly prefer that of George, who seemed to have known several periods of very nearly interesting poverty and said he had once walked from Leeds to Liverpool because he had nothing better to do, but he was probably better cut out to live that of Albert, who, it seemed, had lived a life like a very long lukewarm bath, cocooned in the suburbs, performing the same humble clerk's job every day until his retirement, coming home to his TV and his flower beds, finally ending up working here in his twilight years, as much to have somewhere to go during the day as because he needed the money - Kevin had got all this from a few short exchanges he had overheard Albert having with an old cleaning woman in the canteen the other day; Albert had still not spoken to Kevin to speak of (his comment when Kevin had filled him in on the missing kid situation had been a more than usually noncommittal "Um."). Of course, who was Kevin to say that George and Albert's lives had not been worthwhile or happy? They were still to be avoided at any cost if it was at all possible. But he was slowly coming to the conclusion that it might not be possible.
  Perhaps Rasputin had spotted Kevin's gloomy face. At any rate, he now came over and mumbled, rather humbly, "I made this for you," and presented him with a large apple pie.
  "Er...thanks," said Kevin. Rasputin at the moment was making a habit of behaving towards Kevin as Kevin behaved towards Rose. Kevin had been thinking of asking him to sew the buttons on Rose's blouse.
  "They let me make them every now and again," Rasputin explained. "It's my speciality. I make them for all my special friends."
  "Thanks," said Kevin more heartily, spirits genuinely lifted by this gift. He started to eat it as Rasputin watched approvingly. It was a bloody good apple pie, possibly worth a kiss for Rasputin. Oh well, thought Kevin, if all else in his life failed him he could always let Rasputin take care of him. He started to modify the Welsh cottage fantasies to feature Rasputin in the kitchen in an apron instead of Rose.


  When the policemen returned to The Chuck Wagon at tea-time the mood had lifted. The child had been found. It had merely made an abortive escape attempt and had stowed away in the caravan of a couple who had left the camp that day, where it had been discovered when they stopped at a lay-by a hundred miles away. It had been returned forthwith and thrown in the cooler.
  Kevin had discovered that, not only was the telly he'd bought knock-off - ripped off, in fact, from a guest's caravan - but that Evans, under the impression that the sixty policemen had come to look for it, had smashed it into a thousand pieces and distributed it over half the bins on the site, having broken into Kevin's chalet for this purpose and incidentally broken Kevin's sink, to which the telly had been chained to prevent theft.
  After his initial spurt of annoyance at this turn of events, Kevin found that a part of him was perversely pleased at the loss of the TV. It had kept him in, by no means every night, but still more than was healthy. Far too much of his life had been spent sitting in front of one. He would now be forced to take part more in the life of the camp, such as it was. He must forget about his dreams of escape for the moment. Too much of his life seemed to have been spent living in an imagined future, waiting for an often-postponed day of liberation from one thing or another. Maybe the secret of life was to live in the here and now, take everything as it came, enjoy the present for all it was worth no matter how meagre and restricted and unsatisfactory the circumstances.
  He and Forbes were out in the dining hall now.
  "It has been noticed," said Forbes to Kevin at length as they propped up the wall together, "that you haven't fucked anyone since you have been here. People are starting to talk. It has even been bruited about the servants' halls that you may be a homosexualist."
  "Apart from my crush on Mr. Palmer, I'm not."
  "I hardly thought so. One has only to look at your face when one of the more lissom of our feminine co-workers wafts past you to recognize that your idolatry of the female gender is of such a degree to make Robert Graves look like a misogynist. Which is, I might say, a sure sign of a lack of experience."
  "I just, you know, haven't got round to it yet."
  "Steps must be taken to remedy the situation."
  "You haven't got off with anyone either."
  "Not so. Last night I sought and successfully obtained solace from the vast and untrammelled bosom of that female entertainer you saw me with in the bar before you left."
  "What, Big Annie?"
  "Even she."
  Kevin was surprised and said so. Forbes had always seemed to him - had professed to be - a supremely asexual creature.
  "My libido doesn't often make exigent demands of me," the latter admitted, "and for the most part I regard women as a blight upon the earth. However, when the sap does rise within me, I find it healthiest to relieve my tensions as speedily and unfussily as possible. Ordinarily I am self-sufficient - I prefer to think of myself not as a wanker, but rather as a liberated man who is responsible for his own orgasms - but it is difficult to have one off the wrist with any degree of decorum while sharing a chalet with two other people. I therefore decided to avail myself of the services of the amply-endowed Annie. It was a far from unpleasant experience. You probably noticed that the whites of my eyes had a special shine this morning."
  "Actually, people have been commenting that you've been smiling. I think it made them nervous."
  "I have indeed been unwontedly bonhomous today. There is a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I feel kindly disposed towards the world and all its creatures. I wish you to share in my happiness. We must fix you up with someone, for the sake of your complexion if nothing else."
  "No thanks."
  "It will do you a power of good, Kevin, and also restore your tarnished reputation. It won't do for you to be thought of as some sort of Savonarola figure. Leave it to me."
  "Really, thanks but no thanks. I'm not gonna go out there and plan to get a fuck. It's so unromantic. If it's gonna happen, it'll happen. I'll meet the right girl one day and that'll be it."
  "That simply won't do. Your state of pristine innocence is touching, but it must end. It leads only to bedsheets spattered with semen, and paper stained with poetry. It is time for you to assume the awful responsibilities of manhood. I shall be honoured to be the sponsor at your initiation." He sniggered. "The Virgil to your Dante."
  "Really, Forbes, no."
  Forbes said no more on the subject. But Kevin noticed that from time to time throughout the shift he would dart over to tables at which unaccompanied girls sat, particularly off-duty members of staff, and converse with them for a while, occasionally gesturing over at Kevin. They inevitably shook their heads decisively, however, often after glancing at Kevin, often, fortunately for his pride, simply after looking at Forbes. But supposing one of them agreed to whatever it was Forbes was proposing? Shouldn't he make at least some effort in this direction? This could be the first step in his new regime of taking part fully in the life of the camp and living in the here and now. But no, no, a thousand times no. Forbes eventually seemed to lose heart with his quest and Kevin thought no more about it.


  Back in his chalet some time after the conclusion of the shift, Kevin had laid Rose's blouse out on his bed and was busily stuffing the upper part of it with rolled-upsocks in the approximate size and shape of Rose's breasts, when there was a knock at his door. It was Forbes, bearing a small bottle of whisky and a packet of condoms.
  "It's on," he said. "Don your glad-rags immediately. We are to be partners in an all-in necking match."
  "What?"
  "We are going on a double-date. My bird is called Clare, a girl of impeccable upbringing resident in the chalet next to mine who works in reception. You are squiring a shop-soiled cherub by the name of Donna, a supermarket cashier and Clare's chalet-mate. She is by all accounts a most obliging sort and well-schooled in the arts of love. She has big convexities. We are meeting them in the Roxy club in half an hour."
  "Forbes, I said no."
  "Your lips say no, but your loins say yes. It's all settled, anyway. You would do well to adjust yourself to the fact. This may help you." He uncapped the whisky bottle and handed it to Kevin.
  Kevin drank and stared glumly at the condom packet lying on his bed. "Christ," he said, "I feel like I'm in an American teen movie. What did you say to them, anyway, would one of you like to fuck my mate?"
  "By no means. I couched the proposal rather as if I was in the business of running a superior sort of escort agency. Ostensibly, we are merely taking them out for a few drinks and some sophisticated chit-chat, with no pressure on either side to start petting. However, if this Donna is not the closest thing to a certain fuck, then I am no judge of lack of character. Simply place your mitts on whichever erogenous zone happens to be most convenient at an appropriate point of the evening, frictate gently, and before you know it you'll be standing at the foot of her bed singing, 'Girl, you'll be a woman soon,' while she lies naked before you in an attitude of erotic abandon, one arm flung back behind her head, moaning, 'You have conquered me, Kevin, come reap the harvest of your victory.'"
  Kevin had a sudden flash of himself as David Essex in That'll Be The Day, writing a big red number 1 on Donna's back in lipstick. It didn't ring true somehow. He took another swig of whisky.
  "I hate you for this," he told Forbes as he started to get changed.
  "You may well hate yourself in the morning. But tonight - ooh la la!"
  What the hell, thought Kevin, as the whisky started to do its work, it did just sound like an innocent couple of drinks. He could handle that. If, on the other hand, by some chance it turned out that Forbes' hyperbole about this Donna was justified...well, it was certainly true that if he was going to teach Rose about sex, then someone was going to have to teach him first. And it was certainly humiliating to be the only person on camp, apart from obviously Palmer and presumably George and Albert, who wasn't making it with anyone. Even Desmond had a wife and kids somewhere and a chippy stashed away in the personnel department. ("There's no accounting for other people's tastes in music or men," Forbes had said philosophically when Kevin related this astonishing fact to him.) Yes, it was certainly time he, Kevin, joined the orgy, even if it was only for a snog.
  "Might as well finish this whisky before we go," said Forbes before they left.
  "So what's your bird like?" Kevin asked as they headed towards the club.
  "A very nice girl. Irish. Catholic. You know what they go like as soon as they're sprung from the convent school and put the B and I line between them and the dead hand of papism. And they all think Englishmen are great lovers. No sex education over there; all the Irish boys try to gain entry through the belly-button. Yes, I have high hopes. This could be twice in two nights for me. My poor overworked gonads will be like dry husks."
  "What about Big Annie?"
  "No longer in the picture. It was understood to be a one-night thing. Well, understood by me, anyway."
  "Hey, there's Jack."
  A man-sized caricature of the cartoon character Garfield the cat was walking into an alley ahead of them. Jack had taken to wearing the Garfield costume after the evening shift had finished to earn extra money. The idea was that he walked around entertaining small children and enticing their parents to go and pay to have their picture taken with him.
  Kevin and Forbes followed him into the alley. A small boy had run in ahead of them. Jack had his dick out of the Garfield costume's zippered fly and was urinating against the wall.
  "Garfield, Garfield!" cried the small boy.
  "Fuck off, kid, I'm having a slash," said Garfield gruffly. The small boy started to cry and ran away.
  Jack's interpretation of the Garfield role was a somewhat unusual one. His Garfield was a rather gonzo feline who, as well as urinating against walls, went round taxing ice-cream cones and candy-floss off little kids, pawing the breasts and buttocks of fit girls, getting in fights with their boyfriends, and periodically pulling his own head off in order to enjoy cigs or spliffs. Jack did this now as he saw Kevin and Forbes.
  "Where you going?" he asked as he pulled a crumpled joint from inside one of the detachable paw-gloves.
  "Going to get laid," said Kevin.
  "About time too. Speaking of which, either of you got a leather belt I can borrow? She's whipping me tonight."
  She was Veronica, with whom Jack was back together again. They were, in fact, inseparable, partly because she was shagging him senseless every night, fulfilling his every fantasy and inventing a few more that neither he nor Krafft-Ebing nor anyone else had ever heard of, and partly because she had decided they were going to be faithful to each other from now on and had told him that if she caught him messing around with anyone else she would cut his cock off. This enforced monogamy was a sore trial to Jack, but he was at least partly compensated by the prodigious sexual olympics he and Veronica were engaging in nightly. A few days ago Jack had asked Kevin if he knew where he could lay on his hands on a length of electrical cord or similar as she was tying him up that evening. The week before he had described how she had fellated him on the back row of the cinema while The Lion King was playing. Only yesterday, apparently in earnest, he had asked Kevin if he was on for a threesome. "She says her and her mate'll do one for me," he had explained, "only I have to give her a two-lad one first, and she thinks you're cute. How about it? It'd be a fuck for you, anyway." Two, in fact. "No, we wouldn't have to do anything puffy together, well not too much, maybe just a cock-fight or something." Kevin had said he would take the offer under advisement, and reflected that all those people who had told him to get out of the house more had been right after all; here he was not three weeks away from home and being offered some troilism, yet.
  Encountering Jack served to make Kevin feel he had made the right decision in coming out with Forbes. He wanted a tiny little piece of what Jack was getting nightly. Surely it was at least possible.
  After telling Jack that, no, they didn't have a leather belt and, yes, they would have some of the joint, Kevin and Forbes made their way to the nightclub.
  "They don't seem to be here yet," said Forbes at the bar. "We'd better get some drinks in."
  They drank a couple of doubles apiece, the first one downed and the second one sipped, without there being any sign of the girls. Kevin was glad of it. He had got cold feet again. This was a very bad idea. Forbes looked pissed already. Kevin supposed he was too and wished he felt it.
  "You're on a sure thing with this Donna," said Forbes.
  "So you said."
  "Did I mention mine's Irish, by the way?"
  "Yes, you did."
  "Don't mention the potato famine. And don't tell any Pope jokes."
  "I don't know any."
  "Don't you? I know tons." He told some. "Their idea of contraception is to close the window so the stork can't get in," he added. "She'll probably scream when she sees me coming towards her with an honest protestant Trojan on my dong."
  "Probably."
  "Hope she doesn't insist on the rhythm method. I haven't brought my Casio. Which rhythm are you supposed to use, anyway? Bossanova? Samba?"
  They had some more drinks.
  "I think we've been stood up," said Kevin after a while.
  Forbes looked around frowning.
  "Where are those whores?...Ah, good evening, ladies," he said to the girls, who had just appeared behind him.
  Donna had a tangled mass of dark hair piled up on her head and a rather brutish and vicious-looking but by no means unattractive face. She was dressed fetchingly but not tartily in a short leather skirt and boots and a top of lycra or something, scooped low to show the tops of the convexities Forbes had mentioned. Kevin, who had fully expected Bernard Manning in drag, was pleasantly surprised by her outward appearance and decided it should be possible to generate some sort of passion for her given the least sign of reciprocity. He had been worried in case she registered massive disappointment upon seeing him, but she scarcely seemed to look at him at all and projected nothing beyond a sullen boredom with and resentment of everything around her, which Kevin, who had spent several minutes deploring the ambience and decor of the club, chose to interpret as a sign of good taste rather than, what was equally likely, the outward mark of a deeply held conviction, similar to the one that was again troubling him, that this whole sodding escapade was hideously doomed from the start.
  Clare had light blonde hair hanging down around her shoulders. She was pretty and looked sensible but not severe, smiling a lot to reveal flawless teeth. She wore a simple printed dress with flat shoes and had a white woollen cardigan draped around her shoulders, rather sweetly Kevin thought.
  Forbes performed some introductions and asked the girls what they would like to drink. Donna asked for a bacardi and coke with plenty of ice and Clare for a straight coke. Forbes pressed her to have something alcoholic.
  "How about a nice glass of Bailey's?" he asked her smiling winningly. "Or a pint of Guinness? Or, er, some poteen or something?"
  "Just a coke, thanks."
  Forbes rolled his eyes at Kevin, a gesture Clare visibly caught.
  They took the drinks and sat down at a table in a booth facing the dancefloor, which was beginning to fill up, but far enough away from the nearest music speakers for conversation not to be a problem. Kevin sat next to Donna with Clare on the other side of her and Forbes on the other side of Clare.
  "Well, here we are then," said Forbes. Clare smiled. "So, you're Irish then," Forbes said to her genially. "How is the Auld Sod?"
  Staring blankly ahead of her Donna drained her drink in two consecutive swigs and then proceeded to crunch the ice cubes with the fierce determination of a parrot gnawing on a bit of cuttlefish. Then she stared pointedly into the bottom of her empty glass until Kevin went and got her another one.
  "How come yer wearing black?" she asked him upon his return. Most of Kevin's leisure wear was black. "It's not very disco-ey, is it?"
  "I'm in mourning for Freddie Mercury," he told her arbitrarily, inwardly conceding her point.
  She scowled in puzzlement. "But he died four years ago."
  "I know," said Kevin solemnly. "I haven't changed these clothes since."
  "Well I call that weird," said Donna.
  A silence fell, between Kevin and Donna at least; Forbes and Clare were talking amongst themselves. Kevin wondered how to kick-start a conversation. 'So, you're a strumpet, then?'
  "So, you work in the supermarket, then?" he said at last.
  Still staring out at the dancefloor Donna gave an Albert-like grunt and a curl of the lip that he took to be an affirmative.
  "How are you finding it?" he asked lamely.
  "It's a job."
  Kevin nodded sagely as if this had given him much food for thought.
  "I'm in the Chuck Wagon," he offered after a while. "That's a job too," he added after another pregnant pause.
  "I know a lad who works in the Chuck Wagon," she said grudgingly.
  After a few seconds expectant silence Kevin told himself that any slender conversational lead must be doggedly pursued and said: "What's his name?"
  Donna span round to look at him with a look of alarm and disbelief. She stared at him like that for some seconds, then turned to look at Forbes, then back to Kevin again. "I thought he was your mate," she said in astonishment and something approaching anger. "I don't know what his name is, Holmes or something weird. Don't you even know each other?"
  Feeling a distinct sense of vertigo, Kevin said, "I meant the boy who works in the Chuck Wagon."
  "He works in the Chuck Wagon," said Donna impatiently, staring at him as if he was even stranger than she'd first thought.
  Kevin nodded. Donna returned to her scrutiny of the dancefloor.
  Kevin took a long drink and tried again.
  "Where you from, then?"
  "Bradford."
  "Like it there?"
  "It's gone downhill," she muttered darkly.
  Kevin waited briefly for a discourse on the socioeconomic factors of decline in Bradford and then said: "In what way downhill? Has there been a landslide or something?"
  "You what?" She turned to look at him in irritated confusion.
  "Never mind," said Kevin, fast losing the will to live.
  She looked at him suspiciously for a bit and then turned back to face the dancefloor. Kevin gestured towards it desperately. "You like this music?" he asked.
  "It's shit."
  "What sort do you like?"
  "Not this shit."
  He gave up. He sensed things weren't going too well with Forbes and Clare either. They had at least been talking animatedly while Kevin was struggling with Donna but Clare seemed angry about something and was shaking her head violently and Forbes had a mocking sneer on his face.
  An Asian boy came round and collected the empty glasses. Donna glared at him as he departed.
  "Did you see the way that Paki stared at me tits?" she asked everyone indignantly.
  "They're well worth a stare," said Forbes gallantly. "Possibly they reminded him he had to go to the mosque tomorrow."
  "You can't move for bloody mosques where I come from," said Donna bitterly. "If they don't like our bloody religion why don't they stay at home instead of coming here taking our jobs and leering at our women?"
  "Actually," said Kevin solemnly, "I'm a Muslim." He looked at her mournfully.
  She gave a guilty start and looked at him in confusion.
  "You don't look like one," she said frowning. "I thought your name was Kevin."
  "My full name is Kevin al-Fayed. Kevin is a proud Muslim name. Kevin was the name of one of the prophet's original followers. It means 'Desert Lion.'"
  "That's how he ended up here," said Forbes. "The advert said 'Mecca for holidaymakers.' He just saw the word 'Mecca' and signed up. He thought he was going on a pilgrimage."
  "It's why I wear black," said Kevin. "I'm a lay mullah."
  "Yes, he's one of those blokes who wails from the top of mosques," said Forbes. "Of course, you know what they're saying, don't you? 'Ohhh, fuck you you pork-eating Christian sons of dogs.'"
  Donna seemed quite agitated.
  "Don't mind me, lad," she said to Kevin. "No offence meant. I mean, you should have said you were muslim, shouldn't you?" she said aggrievedly. "I speak me mind, me. This music's shit," she added, either as evidence of this last or in an attempt to change the subject.
  Not long after that the two girls went to the toilet together.
  "Can we swap birds?" Kevin asked Forbes.
  "I'd be happy to," said Forbes glumly.
  "Wouldn't be very polite, though, would it."
  "No, I suppose not. Oh, God, why do we have to bother talking to them? Can't we just cut straight to the shagging? Listen. Shortly after they return, at a signal from me, put your hand on your bird's tit. I will do likewise, and we shall see what transpires."
  Forbes got some more drinks in.
  "What were you two arguing about?" Kevin asked on his return.
  "I was merely endeavouring to correct some of her misconceptions about Irish history."
  The girls were gone a long time.
  "What do they do in there?" Kevin wondered.
  "Talk about us."
  "What do you think they're saying?"
  "They're probably debating how many more drinks they can screw us for without screwing us," Forbes muttered. "No, I know what they're saying. 'Have you seen the size of the good-looking one's feet?'"
  "What?"
  "Supposed to be a reliable guide to penis size." He lifted up his own rather outsize feet, smiling smugly. "It's not, actually," he said, and threw back his head and cackled.
  "I don't think they're coming back," said Kevin after a while.
  "No, here they are now, look. Are you sure we can't swap?"
  "Quite sure."
  The girls, however, seemed to have different ideas, for upon their return, whether by accident or design, Donna ended up sitting next to Forbes and Clare next to Kevin. Kevin wasn't sure what to think about this. It presumably meant that Donna wasn't interested in him - that was probably putting it mildly - but it might also mean that Clare was. At any rate, it relieved him from the ordeal of trying to talk to Donna, for which praise be.
  "How's it going, Desert Lion?" said Clare to Kevin with a grin.
  "So you're Irish then?" said Kevin grinning back. This was more like it.
  Kevin and Clare hit it off immediately. Kevin, inspired by a fear that she might suddenly change places with Donna again, was on rather good form, he thought, perhaps tending to lunge into every possible conversational opening a trifle haphazardly and over-eagerly, but coming out with a quite impressive succession of what Brian would call merry quips, which Clare seemed to appreciate far beyond his own estimate of their worth. Forbes, on the other hand, seemed to be faring rather less well with Donna than either he had with Clare or Kevin had with Donna. Donna for the most part was sitting in a morose silence gazing into the middle-distance, occasionally turning to respond to something Forbes had said with the words "Cheeky bugger!" delivered at a high pitch of outrage. Forbes seemed to have sobered drastically, a situation he was setting out to remedy speedily and methodically, making frequent trips to the bar and returning with two drinks for himself to everyone else's one. During his third such trip Donna leaned across to Clare, said, "Fuck this for a lark, I'm off," and got up and disappeared across the dancefloor.
  "Where's my bird gone?" Forbes demanded belligerently on his return.
  "She saw someone she knew," said Clare helpfully, and returned quickly to her conversation with Kevin. Kevin by this point was allowing himself to entertain a vague hope that it might be possible to snog Clare at some point in the not too distant future and feeling that, whether he did or not, just sitting here exchanging life stories and merry quips with her was the best thing that had happened to him since he had been at the camp. He was rather put out when, a few minutes later, the neanderthal security guard Gary came and stood at the other side of the table, greeted Clare familiarly, and proceeded to conduct a smirking, semi-flirtatious conversation with her. Gary was presumably on duty, but then a large part of the security guards' duties seemed to consist of hanging round pretty girls flirting with them while simultaneously looking alert and vigilant and ready for danger and sending each other enigmatic messages over their walkie-talkies. Clare seemed to be responding to Gary as warmly as she had done to Kevin. Forbes, now slumped sulkily on the other side of Clare, glared at him.
  "Excuse me," Forbes said to Gary suddenly, "this happens to be our bird. Why don't you push off and find your own?"
  "I'm not bothering you, am I?" said Gary to Clare.
  "No."
  "I'm not bothering the lady."
  "It's immaterial whether you're bothering her," said Forbes, "we've been buying her drinks all night."
  Perhaps fortunately just then a distraction arrived in the shape of Rose, who sat down on the other side of Kevin with a shy smile of greeting to everyone. Kevin's heart leapt. Instantly forgetting all about Clare, he moved instinctively closer to Rose and thanked his stars that Gary was there to dispel any notion that he and Clare might have been in any way together.
  "Rose!" he cried. "You look lovely tonight. Would you like a drink?"
  "Thankyou, Kevin, a Southern Comfort would be nice," smiled Rose.
  "I drink them!" cried Kevin eagerly. "They're nice, aren't they?"
  "I'll go," said Forbes rising. "I don't expect to find you here when I get back," he said to Gary as he headed to the bar.
  "So, Rose, how are-" began Kevin, only to find that Rose was raptly intent on Gary, who was now including her as part of his audience as he started to tell an anecdote of how he had hurt some drunk who had been acting up in one of the bars the other night. She seemed every bit as impressed with him as Clare and smiled continuously at him. Kevin applied himself bleakly to his drink.
  Forbes returned with a trayful of drinks and Gary left almost immediately afterwards; the two events were almost certainly not connected but Forbes was pleased to think they were. "I saw him off," he muttered as he sat down. Kevin sat silent, unable to think of anything to say to Rose apart from a stern lecture on how such troglodytes as Gary were not for her. Soon after Rose waved at someone across the dancefloor and left too. Kevin swigged his new drink and resumed his interrupted conversation with Clare, somewhat less eagerly than before. Forbes had got four shorts for himself and set about downing them swiftly one after the other. Halfway through the third he paused and cocked his head as though listening to something. "The click," he said with a big sigh, and smiled at them. "Everything's going to be all right." He finished the drink and started on his fourth.
  Clare was telling Kevin that she was going to university next year. "What subject are you going to do?" he asked.
  "Hotel management," she said.
  "I studied hotel management under George Steiner at Cambridge," said Forbes. "I broke with him over his deconstructionist critique of the bellboy as rough trade."
  Clare ignored him. "So where are you going to do it?" asked Kevin.
  "Well I'm hoping to get in the same place as my boyfriend. He's-"
  "Excuse me," said Forbes incredulously, "did I just understand you to say you have a boyfriend?"
  "In Ireland, yes."
  "And I suppose you're faithful to him, aren't you?"
  "Well we're engaged, actually, so-"
  "Well what a bloody waste of time and money," said Forbes disgustedly.
  "So you want to go to the same place as him," said Kevin quickly. "What course is he doing?"
  "Civil Engineering."
  "How fascinating," said Forbes. "Why doesn't he do a course in Uncivil Engineering? Then he can go round going 'No I won't build your fucking bridge.'"
  "Civil Engineering," said Kevin desperately. "So, what, he wants to get into, like-"
  "I used to be an Uncivil Servant, you know," said Forbes. "I used to say to people, 'No you can't have any fucking dole.'" He laughed loudly to himself.
  "He'd like to get into construction or some sort of architectural work, he-"
  "Listen, listen," sniggered Forbes, tapping her on the shoulder. "I'm trying to get my licence in Uncivil Aviation. Then I can tell people, 'Fly your own fucking plane.'"
  Clare glanced coldly at him and turned back to Kevin.
  "So the place you want to get into, it's in Ireland?" said Kevin.
  "Yes, it's-"
 "Ah, yes, Ireland," said Forbes. "I was forgetting you were Irish. I suppose you like Irish folk songs?"
  "Some of them," said Clare.
  "I despise Irish folk songs," said Forbes. "Always whining on about something Oliver Cromwell did to their great-grandmothers."
  "Shut up, Forbes," said Kevin.
  But Forbes was in no mood to shut up.
  "Do you want to hear my Irish folk song?" he said. "I'll sing it for you. Hang on - I need a beard." He took Clare's white cardigan from her shoulders and bunched it around his jaw as a beard. "Right. This is my Irish folk song." And in a horrible croaking, rasping voice, very vaguely to the tune of Wild Colonial Boy, he started to sing:

"As I was going out to Derry for to buy a piiiig
  I did spy a pretty young maid and we did dance a jiiig
  And then she died in the potato famine
  And I was sent to Australierrr
  Oliver Cromwell raped my grandma
  Der-de-der-de-derrr."


  "That's my Irish folk song," he concluded, and pitched forward onto the floor taking the table with him.
  "We'd better get him to bed," said Clare.
  They picked him up between them in a fireman's lift and started to steer him towards the door. Forbes, however, proved not to be completely tractable. Halfway to the exit he suddenly pointed wildly, broke free of them, and lurched across the dancefloor.
  "Big Annie!" he cried. "I want to hug Big Annie!"
  When Kevin and Clare caught up with him in the middle of the dancefloor he was enveloped in the embrace of a Junoesque female in entertainer's uniform.
  "I love you, Big Annie," Forbes mumbled fervently, head nestling between her breasts.
  "Yes, sweetie," said Big Annie kindly, indulgently patting his head. "You'd better get him home now," she said, relinquishing him to Kevin and Clare.
  "Home," said Forbes. "Home."
  He was complaisant again until they got him to the lobby, where he wrenched himself free once more.
  "Want to ring my mother," he muttered, lurching over to a payphone and fumbling coins into it. "I insist on ringing my mother."
  "Tomorrow, Forbes."
  "Now." He punched numbers and rested his forehead against the wall, breathing stertorously. There was the sound of a voice from the other end of the line. "Fucking answering machine," he muttered in disgust. He cleared his throat and started to speak clearly and precisely. "Hello, Mother. This is Forbes, your son. You may remember a brief pain in your cervix about twenty-six years ago, that was me. I'm just ringing to let you know I'm still alive, I can't think why. I got your letter. I was particularly interested by the part where you expressed the hope that I had finally found some direction in my life. I'm twenty-six years old and I'm waiting on tables in a fucking holiday camp, you unbelievable cretin. Tell my father happy birthday, I didn't forget. There's...a tie or something in the post. That's about it, really. I'm off to kill myself now. You may auction my clothes off on behalf of whatever species of malformed children you're involved with this year. Thanks for providing food and lodging for the first eighteen years and I'll see you in hell." He hung up.
  "We can go now," he said.
  Forbes sang his Irish song again as they steered him back to his chalet. "You can handle him from here," said Clare when they got close to it, disappearing into the chalet next door. Forbes collapsed on his step in the act of putting the key in the door. Kevin got him inside and laid him out on the bed.
  "You were terribly rude to that girl," he said as he took Forbes' shoes off.
  "Fuck her. Obvious IRA sympathizer. Fuck 'em all."
  "All Irish?"
  "All women." He appeared to pass out.
  Kevin rolled him over so that his mouth was pointed towards the floor and spread a towel under it in case he was going to be sick. He tried to remember what the other things were that people did for him when he himself got like that but it was mostly just painting his face to look like a cat.
  Outside he swayed unsteadily in the moonlight as he closed the door behind him. For the first time he realized he was very drunk himself. He went and knocked on Clare's door.
  "Are you all right?" he asked when she opened it.
  "I'll recover."
  "I'm sorry about that."
  "It wasn't your fault."
  He nodded. "Well. Goodnight then." He loitered hopefully on her doorstep.
  She studied him curiously. "You were hoping to get off with me, weren't you?"
  "I wouldn't have minded."
  "You're sweet." She kissed him on the cheek. "Goodnight." She started to close the door.
  "Listen, I've just had a thought," said Kevin. "This might sound really cheeky, but can you sew? You see I've got this-"
  "Jesus." She slammed the door in his face.
  Kevin started to wend his way back to his chalet. Halfway along the next chalet block he came upon a remarkable sight. Jack was dragging the playground goat along by its rope. Veronica was next to him giggling. Dear God, thought Kevin, they were involving animals in their sex acts now. Then he saw that O'Rourke, also giggling, was unlocking the door of a nearby chalet. Jack saw Kevin and beckoned him over.
  "Desmond's chalet," he explained. "Got the key off a chalet maid. Desmond's out with his fancy bit. We're going to put the goat inside."
  Now more certain than he had been at the start of the evening that he had fallen into an American teen movie, Kevin watched disbelievingly as they kicked, prodded and dragged the goat into Desmond's chalet. He followed them in and watched in even more disbelief as O'Rourke started to feed the goat wraps of speed while Jack started to pull Desmond's clothes out of his drawers and tried to feed them to it.
  He was never quite sure exactly what happened next, but suddenly the goat had broken free of whoever was supposed to be holding it and was charging straight at Kevin, who was standing in the open doorway, with a look of pure hatred in its eyes.
  Kevin turned and ran and kept on running. He had felt instinctively that the goat's objective was him personally rather than just the open door and freedom, and this was proved correct by the continuing sound of hooves on concrete right behind him. He didn't even bother looking over his shoulder until he had run two hundred yards and reached the end of the staff chalets, and then it was to see that the goat was still charging furiously after him and little more than ten feet to the rear. Kevin carried on running through the streets of the camp and didn't stop until he was back in the nightclub. The goat pursued him all the way but he was finally able to shake it off in the middle of the dancefloor.


  Back in his chalet some time later, Kevin topped up the brace of nerve-steadiers he had had before leaving the club with a drink from his quiet-night-in gin bottle, looked out of the window at the lights of the fairground, and tried hard to rehash the events of the evening as some sort of positive experience.
  Turning, he saw Rose's blouse lying forlorn and neglected on his bed. Oh, Rose, Rose! Smiling, he picked up the blouse and started to waltz around the room with it.
  "Dear Rose...Darling Rose..."
  She was so sweet. She was the only one for him. He had tried half-heartedly to betray her tonight, but some guiding hand had prevented him. It was possible even to see the goat incident as a symbolic rebuke for his own goatishness. Now more than ever he was sure they were meant to be together. He had a duty to save her from the Garys of the world and teach her the meaning of true love.
  Kevin undressed and got into bed. He rubbed the blouse against his cheek as a comforter, smelling her fresh and fragrant aroma on it, whining softly to himself.
  "Happy blouse!" he crooned. "Fortunate blouse! Would that I could be you...Was ever blouse so blessed?" he mumbled. "Did ever satin enfold such a precious charge? Guard well thy mistress, blouse, protect her dear form from the elements, for on her my one hope of happiness depends...Ahh...Ahh..Mm..."
  Sometime during the night he had a memorable dream. The first he remembered of it he was holding the goat by its rope. It was straining at its tether and eventually he had to set it free. He was waiting for someone at a bar in a railway station which was inside the camp. He had been waiting a long time and he began to fear he had been stood up. Then the girl he had been waiting for turned up. She was dressed like and had the body of Donna but had Rose's face, although with Donna's hair-do. He was so pleased to see her he didn't rebuke her for being late. "You were hoping to get off with me, weren't you?" she said. "I wouldn't mind," he said. She told him to steal some drinks and food from the bar and he did so. Then they stole a car and escaped from the camp, crashing through the gate and exchanging gunfire with the guards as they went. "Where are we going?" he said. "It doesn't matter, just come with me," she said. "Okay," he said. Then she snogged him vigorously. At the point where the dream turned wet he woke up and hoped none of it had got on Rose's blouse.



Chapter 8
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