8. MARMADUKE RUNS AWAY

Yet another episode in the life of the political Marmaduke Lauderdale.

Marmaduke and Dragona’s first evening of their honeymoon was to be remembered for all the wrong things.

It wasn’t long after they arrived that a bell deep in the bowels of the hotel summoned them to the dining room for dinner. By deep in the bowels it must be stressed that there was no real huge and mysterious size to the place, but the sonorous tone of the bell gave an echoing impression of size, which in reality didn’t exist.

So they both got changed, she hiding in the bathroom so he couldn’t see what she was doing while he removed his wedding suit and dressed in another.

While she was dressing he heard Dragona giggling to herself

The owner, proprietor, call him what you will, hadn’t stayed long after he presented them with a bottle of red wine, which Dragona pulled a rancif face at when she peered closely at is label.

“I know this stuff,” she said, “I’ve bought it in the past, until I saw sense. It’s from the Saveway supermarket and it’s pretty naff.”

“So you like red wine?” he asked, not really bothered whether she did or did not.

“Don’t open it yet,” she advised, “it might not be as good as it looks. Save it until later, when we’ve loosened our drinking muscles. Then we might not recognise poison when we taste it!”

“That’s what I was thinking,” murmured Marmaduke, who hadn’t been thinking anything of the kind, and particularly about poison.

“I don’t know about you, but I could eat a horse,” she told him, “not literally, of course, horses are best on green fields running around, but the saying goes that a starving soul might eat one.”

“I wonder what he’s got on the menu?” mused her brand new husband, hoping that horse had n othing to do with it.

“He seemed to know you,” smiled Dragona, “he said something about you being mates at school. Fancy that! I’ll bet you’re pleased to see him!”

“Not exactly mates,” mumbled Marmaduke, “but we went to the same public school and shared a dormitory with half a dozen other lads. He always wore dazzling pyjamas as I remember, enough to blind you on a dark night.”

“And what were yours like then, my grumpy husband?” she asked, “nice blue stripes I should think.”

“They’re quite ordinary,” he muttered, “so ordinary that I can’t remember. I was only a kid, you know!”

“And what are they like now? Nice and bright and with a bulge us ladies would die for?” she asked in a teasing voice, her eyes suddenly twinkling, making her look nothing like a left wing menace when he looked at her. Suddenly she didn’t look so bad. Maybe it could work, he mused, if she draped herself over his shoulders when they were in company, and kept quiet. There was a socialist twinge to her voice that he hadn’t noticed before, but some of the upper echelons in the party might. He couldn’t have her expressing any anti-social opinions, could he, not in the company of important billionaires?

“If you’re interested I wear a baby doll nightie,” she said, provocatively, she hoped “flimsy and tiny and as comfortable as a sandpaper nightie would feel, but it does make me look sexy. Wait until we go to bed. You won’t be able to control yourself when you see me!”

That shut him up. The last reason he had wanted to be married had to do with a wife people might wear when she was asleep. And as for not being able to control himself… what kind of man did she think he was? A teenage groper like he never had been? But he felt he ought to contribute to the conversation.

“Mine are grey these days,” he said, “a nice neutral colour, comfortable, cotton I think, and very warming on cold winter nights when the central heating has shut down.”

“Isn’t that what you want a wife for?” she teased, “to make sure you don’t freeze to death when the cold winds blow?”

That shut him up and brought images of Colin Fairfax and his ridiculous pyjamas back into his mind, completely unbidden and equally unwelcome now that he’d met the adult version of his old friend, no longer a sweet boy but a grown man with a ridiculous moustache.

“Let’s go to dinner,” he said abruptly, “the bell did chime, or was I imagining it?”

“For my horse,” she teased, and he scowled at her, but she wasn’t looking. Instead she was bending down to adjust her tights that had wrinkled on one foot.

She had changed out of her scarlet wedding dress and was wearing a quite frumpy skirt, not pleated and a little too tight to look what he thought might be attractive, not that he had much in the way of opinion of ladies fashion. He'd rarely given the subject a moment’s thought.

As for himself, he had changed as well, from one suit into its twin, same colour, same style, same material. He had others like it in his wardrobe at home, but didn’t mention it. They fitted the persona of the person he wanted to be, politically steady and conservative with a small c.

He was happy that she had chosen a frumpy look. It suited the image of the two of them that he wanted to advertise. Two serious people with a solid and stable attitude to life, nothing showy or flash about them. But then everything changed when they got into the dining room.

“Do you remember Bucks Fizz?” she asked.

“The orangey drink?” he queried.

“No, silly, the singing group who represented the UK in the Eurovision singing thing years ago,” she said when they were standing by the table that must have been their because a sign said GROOM AND HIS TOTTY in glittery capitals. It might have been meant to be a pleasant friendly touch but the fact that two or three gravy stains running across it indicated that it must surely have been used before, and not cleaned afterwards.

“I don’t like music much,” he replied, “unless it’s by Beethoven or Mozart, of course.”

The dining room was quiet, just a handful of other patrons sitting in awkward silence as they turned to curiously watch the bridal couple make less than a celebratory entrance . It was a silence that Dragona took full advantage of.

“You see,” she told him quietly, “the two pretty ladies in the group did this!” And she theatrically tugged at her skirt, pulling it away from her body and revealing the tiniest mini skirt underneath it, attractive and in a very royal tartan.

The other diners, already quiet, became dead silent until one of the men started clapping, slowly, as if he was heralding in a coffin to a funeral. But the applause was meant to be a critique of someone whose station in life was beneath his. It was ironic and insulting, and it was joined by a handful of others combined with one woman whooping in what might have been a kind of admiration.

As far as Marmaduke was concerned, that marked the beginning of the end of their honeymoon, and he spent the next two minutes standing perplexed and wondering if there was a section in the Guinness book of records for the shortest marriage ever recorded.

Then he stood up, looked at her, scowled and said “You know the way home, I hope?” and stormed towards the exit, only to bump into the proprietor, Colin Fairfax.

“You picked a lovely lass there, old chum,” Colin told him, “I well admire those legs.”

“She’s not for me,” snarled Marmaduke, “not only is she a Marxist, she thinks that showing her husband up is the funniest thing on Earth!”

“Then can I have her?” asked Colin, “I’ve got a collection of damsels here and about, and she’d be the prettiest of the lot! Remember our school days when me and a couple of lads escaped to the village nearly every week? For the village girls I mean, lovely they were, and fresh, innocent… And she’s s bit of a Marxist, you say? Lovely.”

“Then she’s all yours!” snapped Marmaduke, and he stormed out.

He’d not been out of the hotel for more than a few seconds than he realised he’d left his luggage, what little he had that is, in the honeymoon suite and that his transport had been Dragona’s electric car.

“Damn it!” he cursed, and without giving his future problems a second thought he took out his phone and tried to ring his mother, the only person he could think of who might be able to help him get home.

“I need transport home, mother,” he almost shouted, “you sold me a bad one when you sold me Dragona!”

“But it’s fifty miles!” she protested, “There’s no way I’m getting my car out with half a bottle of bucks fizz inside me! Now my son, you’ve made your bed and so you’d better lie on it! You got married today and if you leave your pretty young bride in the lurch I’ll let the whole world know all about it! You’ll lose your seat and that’s a certainty! Now you get back and make it up to her before you end up in everyone’s black books!”

© Peter Rogerson. 25.05.22

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