6. A FEW PINTS AND TWO GLASSES OF RED

We'be met everyone just about, so let's visit the pub.

The Shell and Cockle had been where it was longer than there had been either a caravan come camping park or a naturist’s resort. There were a few houses scattered around, some of them tiny cottages into which farm workers had once shoe-horned their families, and some larger homes verging on mansions, where sea and fresh air fanciers who could afford it had built their homes. Now there was only the pub, which by necessity had started to welcome whole families in their largest bar, renamed the Family Room. The other bar, much smaller and originally called the Snug and now just the Taproom was now the only area in the place where children were barred.

The Shell and Cockle was situated between the caravan park and the naturist’s resort, closer to the caravans but still within easy walking distance of where the unclothed spent their holidays, and during the warmer months some of them dropped their usual habits and climbed into some clothes in order to have an evening out at the pub. It was a reasonably short walk for them to stagger back, though some took their cars and risked a non-existent constabulary when driving, sometimes erratically, back to their camp.

Old timers, regulars, even young lovers, needed peace and calm so they used the Taproom, but there was a jukebox to the annoyance of some.

Trayda and Angela had made their way there. Neither one of them had broached the idea but both had assumed the other was thinking the same way, and still dressed for summer they sauntered towards that haven of peace and, they hoped, sanity.

The Taproom was quiet when they got there, but there was the sound of young voices making their way from the Family Room. Of the people in the Taproom they only recognised Bernie Elliott, the youthful but sultry Merry-go-round operator, who cuddled a pint pot containing very little beer, holidng it tight as if it might leak away if he didn’t.

“Why hello,” said Angela brightly to him when she and Trayda had a glass of red wine each, “it’s quiet in here!”

“It was!” he replied, grumpily.

“Do you mind if we join you?” asked Trayda, “we don’t know anyone round here. Not yet, anyway.”

“It’s a free country,” was his terse reply.

“Is this where all you fairground people hang out?” asked Trayda when they were seated.

“Some fairground,” was his cryptic reply.

“I mean, the stalls outside Sandy Shores?” insisted Trayda, “because it seems to be a nice pub.”

“If you say so.”

“And it’s quite reasonable,” contributed Angela.

“Too busy by half,” he growled.

“Can I buy you a drink?” asked Trayda, recognising the signs of a man nursing a pint pot until it had all evaporated away, and unable to afford to refill it.

He perked up at that, quite considerably. His eyes opened wide with anticipated pleasure and “that’s very civil of you,” he accepted with a sudden smile.

“We’re strangers round here,” said Trayda unnecessarily as she handed him a refilled pint of foaming ale.

“Aye, I know that,” he said, sipping his beer, then he apparently pulled himself together and decided that being sultry might not generate too many more pints from strangers who could get fed up with his monosyllables. “Where you from?” he asked, “if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Not at all,” smiled Angela, “we’re from Brumpton, about ninety miles away, and we’ve come to celebrate being single again!”

“Both of you?” he asked, “both single again at the same time?”

“We do most things at the same time as each other,” Trayda assured him, “we were even born the same day as each other.”

“So you share the same birthday?”

Angela nodded. “And you? Are you married?” she asked.

He was about to reply when the door burst open and a middle-aged man with an extravagant tan and bulging eyes burst in.

“Is she here?” he barked.

F**s shook his head. “Not this evening,” he replied, apparently knowing who the newcomer was on about.

“Is who in here?” asked Trayda.

“His misses,” F**s answered for the stranger, “he runs the nudist place up the road, he and his lovely lady...”

“You mind what you say about my Annie!” almost shouted the newcomer.

“But she is lovely,” said F**s, “you ask anyone round here. She’s the loveliest creature for miles around, excepting present company,” he added, eyeing Trayda and Angela apologetically.

The bulging eyes blinked. “Has she been in?” he asked, “’cause she said she was coming here, and I want her!”

“Not been here. Try the other side. She sometimes pops in there,” F**s told him, and he glared at the three of them and stormed out.

“He’s a handful, he is,” the Merry-go-round man told the women, “Bill Hampton, or William as he prefers to be called. Runs his nudey place all right and gets folk back year after year, but when it comes to people face to face he’s a difficult man to talk to. I feel sorry for that wife of his. I wasn’t lying when I said she was a stunning looker, because she is, and he don’t know how lucky he is to have her.” It had been a long speech for F**s, and he needed a good swig of his pint in order to regain his usual composure.

oo0oo

Foxy Dingall liked it when the day was over and he could lock away Mr Punch and Miss Judy for the night and get on with some sensible drinking.

It wasn’t for him, going to the pub. He could get enough cans to keep him happy for the price of a couple of pints at the Shell and Cockle, and there was a great deal more beer in the cans. So he sat in his caravan parked next to his Punch and Judy outfit and watched his television, can in hand. He enjoyed his evenings because his swazzle could take a rest and he was never quite sure who might pop by for a chat and a small percentage of his beer. Why, if he was lucky a random visitor might produce beer of his own.

Sid Goodman came round at least once a week. Once he had locked the office door and there were no new arrivals due he could leave the place to get on without him.

And it was this night he chose to call on Foxy, bringing with him his own selection of cans.

“Best keep your eyes on that Stokesey fellow,” he began when he had opened a can and sat down heavily on the only free chair.

“Why’s that?” asked Foxy, not liking the ice cream bloke himself. To his mind, if the kids spent their pocket money on ice cream they weren’t going to have much to spend on watching the antics of Mr Punch and his much abused wife.

“There have been rumours,” murmured Sid, “nasty rumours, rumours I don’t like to repeat...”

“But you are?” nudged Foxy, who wasn’t averse to enjoying the odd rumour himself.

“His downfall will always be women,” sighed Sid, “pity, I know, because everyone loves a good woman...”

“But we’re both single,” interrupted Foxy.

“Through choice, mark you, through choice,” acknowledged Sid, “we didn’t need to be single. We might have accepted any one of goodness knows how many women into our lives if it had been a choice, but we chose not to...”

Foxy hadn’t chosen any such thing, but he let it pass. His past always seemed to catch up on him and let him down as imagined beautiful potential partners suddenly left him out of their plans.

“Well, the lass they say young David Stokesey was with last night was short of being sixteen by a good month,” declared Sid, “and everyone knows what folks think of nonces like that!”

“Who told you?” asked Foxy.

“It’s everywhere! You must have heard!” said a suddenly excited Sid.

“Well, I haven’t,” Foxy told him, “and if you must know, last night Stokesey was having a pint with me in this here van.”

“He was?”

“He was. So you can put that rumour in your pipe and smoke it, mate. It just can’t be true.”

“Oh dear.”

“Why?”

“Well, I happened to mention it to her folks. They’re on my site and I thought it only right and proper...”

“Then you’d better unmention it.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they know better anyway,” sighed Sid, and he opened a second can.

© Peter Rogerson 23.03.19