GRISELDA MAKES SOME MONEY

Griselda meets a strange wealthy man in the bar...

“That’s it!” snapped Griselda as she stormed back into the cabin in the persona of her nubile niece where she and Bumptious Tiddles were staying (in very separate beds, so there was nothing improper going on even though the cabin was absurdly small and the beds consequently unreasonably close together). Bumptious was sitting on his bunk, scowling out of the porthole and wondering for the zillionth time what had gone wrong with his life since he had called at the silly old woman’s home back in Swanspottle.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked, frowning.

She held a hand out to him. He raised his eyebrows when he saw what it contained: two fifty pound notes!

“Where did you get that from?” he asked. “I didn’t know you had that much money on you!”

“I didn’t!” she rasped as her shape wibbled and wobbled until she was her crotchety old self again. “I don’t like money! I’m into plastic in a big way.”

“Then where did you get it?” demanded Bumpy, who always found money to be truly fascinating, an attitude which was undoubtedly one of the essential personal ingredients for those making a life-choice of politics to take on board.

“It’s not funny!” snapped the now-geriatric Griselda.

“I’m not laughing,” he smirked.

“Then you’d better not!”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“Promises should be kept on pain of death!” she warned him, her eyes heavy with accusation combined with a dreadful threat.

“Where did you get it from, then?” he asked irritably, “have you been holding up the purser at the point of a gun?”

“I don’t have a gun!” she snapped.

“I know that. I’m not interested in your sudden wealth. It doesn’t matter to me one jot if you’ve been around robbing old ladies as they sleep peacefully in their cabins. I don’t think there’s anything fascinating about the notion of you blackmailing the Captain because you found him asleep at his steering wheel when he should have been looking out for icebergs.”

“Then I won’t tell you...”

“Then don’t, not even if you’ve turned from a sweet innocent little wench into a money-crazed prostitute with a table of prices that would make a decent man’s eyes water!”

“How did you know that?” she demanded, her eyes wide open.

“What?”

“About me being a … a … a lady of the night?”

“You? You? I was joking!” stammered Bumpy.

“Then I’d best tell you what happened, and allay any gossip you may chance upon,” she muttered, “I don’t want you to think that I’m putting myself about for financial gain!”

“I never thought….”

“Then don’t!” Her interruption was fierce and contained the sort of threat he didn’t like to think about even though the two words rapped at him didn’t seem to amount to much.

“I was in the bar with a glass of stout,” she said after a moment during which she satisfied herself that she’s quashed any further disruption to the flow of her words.

He merely nodded his head.

“I was standing there, leaning on the bar, telling a romantic little story about a pair of butterflies to that friend of yours, that Sailor John. I offered him a job back at Swanspottle.”

He couldn’t help it. “You did?” he asked.

“I said so, didn’t I? I watched him polishing the glasses and the cloth he used was clean, and he didn’t spit on it either! They could do with someone like him at the Crowne and Anchor!”

“Maybe,” he grunted.

“Anyway, an overweight character in tweeds slid up to the bar so close to me I could smell his genitalia, which didn’t appeal to me, and he nudged me in the ribs.”

“’Hey babe,’ he said to me, and without looking I could tell he was winking.

“’Do you mind?’ I protested, ‘that might have hurt me!’

“’Chicks like a bit of a bruise,’ he said, making his eyes do somersaults, ‘it makes them feel wanted!’

“’Cluck cluck!’ I snorted and carried my drink to a table in the corner. And you know what: the slimy creep followed me! He carried his rather large undiluted gin and plonked it on the table where I sat! He hadn’t got the message that the last thing I wanted to do was sit near a bloke who smelt of his own balls!”

“I should think not,” Bumptious put in, trying to sound sympathetic whilst wondering whether his own precious parts emitted an unwanted aroma.

“’I don’t want to impose on you,’ he said to me, which sounded odd to me because that’s exactly what he was doing, ‘but I need someone to talk to and my wife doesn’t understand me...’

“’I’ve heard that before,’ I snapped back at him, ‘in fact, I’ve lost count of how many men have said that to me over the years...’ That wasn’t strictly true, of course, because he made it only half a dozen, but an old woman can exaggerate, can’t she?”

Bumptious nodded, feeling intrigued.

“Anyway, he hadn’t finished. ‘Come with me to my cabin won’t you?’ he said, out of the blue as if I’d been angling for an invitation. ‘It’s first class, and you can tell her that I’m easily understood and she’s got nothing to fear from other women… I know she doesn’t love me because if she did she’d understand me and she doesn’t. The two go hand in hand, don’t they? Loving and understanding?’”

“He might have had a point there,” mumbled Bumpy because she’d left a gap in her explanation and he felt obliged to fill it.

“He did not!” snapped Griselda, “and even if he did it’s not relevant here! The testicle-flavoured bloke took his wallet from out of his pocket, removed two fifty pound notes, and placed them on the table in front of me.

“’These are yours if you’ll come along,’ he said, nudging up to me. ‘All I want you to do is prove to my wife that I can be trusted...’

“I should have run off there and then, but I was curious,” confessed Griselda, “and I was, if you recall, disguised as my niece. I was probably a bit too confident of my own abilities to control any situation, though I can if I put my mind to it! I don’t want you to think that I can’t!”

“So you took his money…?”

Griselda nodded sombrely. “I wasn’t going to leave it for any old Joe Bloggs to pick up! He led me to his cabin, and it’s nothing like ours! It’s a luxury pad, believe you me!

“I’ll call my wife,’ he said, smirking, and I knew instantly that his wife was make-believe, a fabrication, he didn’t have one, probably has had half a dozen over the years, tender young women who get sucked in by his wealth and fifty pound notes, get taken blushing down the aisle but end up being rejected because the man’s never satisfied. Anyway, I was having none of it. The moment I saw himself undoing his trouser zip I knew I was in danger of doing something I might I might live to regret...”

“So you didn’t?” asked Bumpy.

“Of course I did!” snapped Griselda, “the moment those trousers of his hit the deck I couldn’t help myself! In a trice I did it, and aren’t I glad!”

“Did what?” asked a now curious parish counsellor.

“It was when he almost roared what do you think of this baby then when he pulled his pants down...”

“And?”

“I thought if he thought he’d got a baby there then that’s what he’d better have,” smirked Griselda. “So that’s what he’s got. A baby, and not a very big one either. But it can cry if it feels like it, loud and long and very, very scarily!”

“Oh goodness me,” sighed Bumptious, making a serious promise to himself that he wouldn’t say anything to this old woman that might rebound disastrously onto himself.

© Peter Rogerson 14.02.18