3. A SUNNY CAMPSITE

Trayda and Angela are seen arriving...

When the two women arrived at their destination, it was to see a tidy campsite on their left and a small area with stalls and food vans on a narrow gap between road and rocky coastline on their right. There was the tempting scent of burgers in the air, and somewhere a Punch and Judy man was exercising his swazzle, out of sight but not out if earshot.

“Very summery,” commented Trayda, looking around.

The sign outside Sandy Shores Park was apparently freshly painted and incorporated an image of a tent, a caravan and several happy faces. Trayda pulled up outside its entrance and they both looked in.

“So far so good,” murmured Angela.

“There are quite a few other campers here,” pointed out Trayda, “you might find one of those tents is home to the hunky male that you seem so keen on meeting.”

“Yes. There are more tents than caravans,” replied a disappointed Angela, “I was hoping for the comfort of a stranger’s bed rather than his groundsheet!”

“You really are starved of love and all that passion, aren’t you?” grinned Trayda.

“It’s no joking matter!” protested Angela, “ever since that red head put in an appearance and poisonous Phil got duffed up because of it I’ve been a little lonely girl with only my old teddy bear for affection, and he’s so old his stuffing’s falling out. Makes the bed untidy by morning. I’m thinking of investing in dirty teddy coloured sheets!”

“Come on, let’s go and see what’s what. I paid a deposit but he’ll want the balance I suppose.”

“Who’s this he?”

“He said his name was Sid and that he’d greet us on arrival,” replied Trayda, and she pulled car and caravan slowly onto the site. “He said he’s always here when he’s expecting campers.”

A rather insignificant, maybe even weedy, man seeming to be in his middle years made his way out of an office, a small brick shed with one door and one window and not far from the gate, and waved them down.

“Name of Sibsey?” he asked. His voice was high pitched, almost feminine, and Trayda, who had met a few men she bracketed as his type rather suspected his appearance failed to hide from her the suggestion of a dodgy past. In her mind she had a catalogue of ‘types’ and she knew which of these to automatically distrust.

“That’s us,” she replied, warily.

“Peg seven,” he said, pointing to a corner where a small peg suggested a pitch for her caravan. “Welcome to Sandy Shores. It looks like you’ve chosen a fine week for it! Now if you’ll just step this way into the office we’ll tidy things up.”

The office was as small on the inside as it had seemed from outside, one cluttered room with a desk and two chairs and not much room for anything else, and it seemed that Sid Goodman had very casual attitude to filing papers away and generally being orderly. But he did manage to put his hands on a hard-backed notebook in which he’d written her details from the phone call when she’d made the booking.

“We only have two rules here,” he said, apparently trying to sound cheerily free and easy. “Firstly, not too much noise because noise disturbs people as don’t want to be disturbed and secondly no public nudity. That’s for the place down the road and we don’t want it. Not insured.”

“Place down the road?” enquired Angela.

“Happy Valley they calls it though I can’t see much fun in walking around in the altogether, cold on the skin when it’s overcast and wet and blistering when it’s hot and sunny, if you see what I mean.”

Trayda did see what he meant and agreed with him. She paid the balance for a week at Sandy Shores and returned to their car.

It didn’t take long for them to park by the white peg with ‘7’ clearly marked in black on it. Trayda made sure the van was level as she lowered its four corners whilst Angela took an empty water barrel from the boot of the car and went in search of a tap.

Half an hour later they were sorted, with a cable snaking towards an electric power supply, and Trayda had the kettle on.

“It’s nice here,” murmured Angela, nursing her mug of coffee, “seems clean and … pleasant.”

“Yes, lovely. But what did you make of Sid?” asked Trayda.

“Funny little guy. At a guess I don't think he’s the bedroom sort,” declared Angela, “far too weedy, if you ask me. I wonder if he’s got a Mrs Sid?”

“I doubt it,” Trayda suggested, “I very much doubt it indeed from the look of him.”

“You know this place is called Sandy Shores?” queried Angela, “but I didn’t see too much in the way of sand out where the beach should be. Instead, I saw an awful lot of craggy rocks the other side of that smelly burger van and those other sad looking stalls.”

“We’ll have this coffee and go to explore,” decided Trayda, “maybe it will be fun!”

“Well, it’s a lovely day and I think I’ll slip on my little cream shorts,” Angela told her, “Mr Sid may not like nudity, but he’d better not complain about semi-nudity!”

“And I’ll wear a short summer frock, all cotton and cool,” agreed Trayda, “bags that I’m ready first!”

oo0oo

Foxy Dingall was unhappy.

He’d plied a fortune into his puppets and the Punch and Judy outfit that he’d been assured by its previous owner would make his fortune and had been unable to find a legitimate pitch anywhere. The town a few miles down the road, Southwesthampton, usually abbreviated to Sampton, wouldn’t give him a licence. Some scumbag had mentioned that time he’d spent in prison and word had got around that he was unsuitable as a children’s entertainer, not that his previous had anything to do with kids. He’d been what they called a fraudster and managed to separate a small army of pensioners from their pensions before being caught and it being shown that the highly decorated share certificates promising a healthy return in next to no time had been printed from his own computer on a printer in his spare room and had no veracity outside his imagination.

So he’d done time and now had this Punch and Judy outfit and nowhere to use it where he might make a decent return for the cost of buying it.

So he’d set up stall here, where nobody was bothered whether he had a licence or not. Sid Goodman, owner of the camping site, didn’t because, as he put it, a few entertainments added a glow to his paradise.

One of the things that was making Foxy unhappy lay in the lack of punters in need of entertainment. He’d gone to a great deal of trouble to memorise the scripts that had come with the outfit. He’d smartened up Punch, Judy, the policeman, the hangman and the crocodile until they glowed and even had provided a tidy glow to the little stage on which his puppet actors played out their roles. And he’d worked on his swazzle technique until, to him, it sounded pitch perfect.

But Sandy Shores didn’t attract the kind of punters with kids and his income was barely enough to keep him in beer. Some nights he had to go without it altogether, and that peeved him.

He’d even distributed a few flyers to the nudist camp down the road in the hope that he’d get an audience from there, but there were no kids allowed so it had been a waste of time.

But that was only one of the things that was making Foxy unhappy. The other was the caravan that had just pulled on to Sid Goodman’s site. Or rather, the car that was pulling it and the driver of that car.

He couldn’t be perfectly sure because it has been a few years back, but he was reasonably certain that its driver was the very copper who had arrested him and got him sent to jail in the first place, and she had been so spiteful during interviews, as if it was his fault that the old farts he’d swindled out of their savings were so gullible. She hadn’t understood that a man has to make a living.

And now, if she was anywhere near him he knew one thing. Trouble wouldn’t be so far behind her.

© Peter Rogerson 20.05.19