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:
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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