♪ ♫ ‘Oh yes it’s Ladies’ Night and the feeling’s right! ♫ Oh yes it’s Ladies’ Night, oh what a Night!’ ♫ ♪ ☢ ♡ ♫
Sweet relief. The Beast of the Bedroom not at home. A scrawled message in blood-red lipstick on the fridge-magnet of a bloated sheep — the Beast having bolted ahead to help with the feast. The remains of the week’s haddock pie ossifying on the back burner and requiring resuscitation or burial. Gerbil James inspects somberly the drinks trolley. Empty. The last of the cooking sherry drained he marches out the house and hops into the car. Down the hill he rolls to the off-licence, stuttering back, but the task of parking out front takes several attempts, murdering the Beast’s best bloomers under the wheels of the Volvo estate.
Festering in a favourite mock-leather chair with a tumblerful of firewater and fretting for the local news to scream from the screen.
Fester Featherstonehaugh-Major, furry grey man from the Home Office, refusing to comment on the rumours of unrest, riot, inmate rebellion, mass casualties, and worse, that Springwood Penal Enterprises PLC will not be paying a dividend on its profits this year.
Booked by the Beast for seven o’clock, the young baseball-capped taxi driver complaining of being made to wait twenty-minutes (while the Gerbil finishes a half-bottle of firewater). ‘Which means I’ll have to charge you double, guv. And you smell — I fink it’s your penguin suit — hah!’
But the best laid plans of Gerbils to sneak in by the back door thwarted by the Beast of the Bedroom lying in wait and leading him by the ear into the front lobby where he sways and smiles under the banners and streamers, and listens to the slug-like lady-mounds of flesh crawling from the crumbling woodwork. Mrs Blunkett paws him with sweaty-palmed and bosom-powdered sympathy and tells him he is bearing up well for a little man.
The Headmaster (Rutting Stag) of Lower Springwood High is outraged and demands that action be taken to counter the threat of the Reds who lurk under everybody’s beds. The local Undertaker (Water Vole) is impressed and wonders if they might work out an arrangement per stiff on a more permanent footing.
A beautiful banquet. The Brown Rat who is so old he can remember the days of parliamentary democracy swears blind Springwood Lodge is famous for its spreads — pâté-de-foie-gras of course. Scallops swimming in champagne. Roast ox stuffed with wood pigeon. And finally, in honour of the Duchess Fergie of Yorkie, Death by Chocolate.
For three hours wax-smooth waiters hover over the painted ladies. Each course served with a swish of the screens, a bang of the gong. The night melts into liquid crystal, the clatter of knives and forks, the clink of glasses, fur stoles, the shuffling feet of the hired servants, and each course laid with a separate wine glass. Cuban cigars pass from left to right, dresses bust at the buttons as under the portraits of past Grand-Pooh-Bears they feast at High Table.
Ching! Ching!
Bong!
‘Sssssshhh!’
‘Warf! Warf! Me lords, laydees — ah! such beau-ti-ful lay-dees!’ — The (Chief Constable) Grand-Pooh-Bear, salivating in a scrambled-egg gold chain, thrashing his gavel.
‘Sssshh!’
‘Lay-dees! How it warms the cockles of me heart to see so many beau-ti-ful lay-dees again this year.’
‘Here! Here!’
‘Rats!’ parps the Grand-Pooh-Bear unsteadily and brandishing his gavel. ‘Rats! Beavers! — and where would we be without our Stags? — It gives me great pleasure to declare open this gathering of the Great and the Good of Lower Springwood.’
Rocking applause a-leaping the table cutlery.
‘But before I do, I feel it would be remiss of me to dwell in much detail on the troubles we have been hearing in our newspapers and reading on our screens befallen that once great prison of Springwood recently entrusted to the care of this — this man here ...’
Inflamed faces, frowning by candlelight, forging a furnace of discomfiture that frazzles moth-like the final flickers of self-respect.
‘... So much in our news lately … ’
‘Here! Here!’
‘… And I know we can rest safely in our beds when I say he will not be exposing any further travesties in the near future ...’
‘Here! Here!’
‘... without first consulting his superiors.’
‘Here! Here!’ Reluctant rustle of applause.
‘Ahem. But now, Liddies and Genitalmen, we come to the highlight of this evening’s entertainment ...’
A delicious wave of expectation rollicks the room.
‘... Ah! The star of the show! Look, laydees! Our darling Eric!’
A loosening of lips, a parting of knees, and the lay-dees with the fur wraps clap their greasy hands, and the Beavers rap the table with approval, and the laughing and the stamping and the raising of glasses, and oh what a lovely time is spun by all as under the spotlight in trots Eric the Goat, so handsome in his red sash, goaty beard shampooed and brushed, bobtail wagging, and under the silver ball he trots with narrow satyr eyes turned upon the female flesh.
— ‘Eric the Goat, ladderers and generalmen! Mascot of Springwood Lodge!’ Harder the plump ladies pump and louder they cheer to see their darling Eric milking the applause like an old pro, gold medallion swinging low between his hairy legs, and off he trots the happiest goat in Christendom.
‘Ladderers and Grumblemen, will you please show your appreciation, another fine performance this year from Eric!’
An invitation to which they go wild.
Before the last bang of the gavel, before the last crumble of Stilton cripples the stomach, before the strike of the band, Governor Gerbil James deserts his post and slips anchor beneath the bar, back turned on the puff and perfume of the paso-doblists. Losing land-legs with every swivel of the stool. And every bottom lick of a tumbler.
Over the shoulder he scowls into a dizzying blur of flapping dinner jackets and bloated bellies, and round and round spins the silver ball showering the dancefloor with showers of champagne fish. Here she blows!
Lady Blunkett — aided and abetted by the dead fox around her neck — winning the battle of the paso-doblists and squeezing between immense bosoms the last drops of life from Blunkett. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of sweat sprayed on tables as they swish and swirl, or in Blunkett’s shoes whelp and thrash, to the same paso-doble the same eight-piece band pumps to the same dead souls in the same dresses and the same shoes and the same warpaint.
‘Evenin’, old son.’
The massive gold mirror behind the bar a moving mural of red, yellow and violet neon merging at the edges. ‘Free more police, Jack.’ The Governor of Springwood Gaol spins angrily to confront the frilly-shirted sauce-front of Whitelaw. ‘Why diddum you ring today? Ellery udder sod did.’
‘Didn’t get a chance. After we seed to your man Knees we had this high-powered meeting with the Big Boys. You know haaw it is.’
‘Hew did those speeches we agreed on?’
‘Course, old son. Relax.’
‘Hang weird he say?’
‘Knees stick to his story. Criminals do, old son.’
‘Hang ... hang ... weird he stash my cash?’
‘Our cash, Archie! Our cash!’
The mountain pine of Pym sways with the funk and funereal beat of the paso-doble. ‘We got your man Knees on the run. Didn’t have a clue what to say.’
The Governor lifts a crooked finger. ‘Sn-snot a word to a shoal.’
‘Careful, old son. You’ll fall.’
‘We’re gunner be rish! Wery shoon. Hick! Can smell it.’
‘You the dog with the nose.’
The blue frilly shirt and rub-smooth tuxedo of the master of burial ceremonies puts the paso-doble out of its misery, but resurrects a Highland Fling. The dead fox round the neck of Mrs Blunkett a half-step ahead. And where the fox leads the death-throes of Blunkett follow.
‘We’ll ring in sick bright ’n’ breezy first thing Monday hafternoon.’
‘Free more good, Jack. Jack! Free — More — Good!’ He back-hoofs the hard shin of Pym in the style of David Beckham — ‘Pay yer man fizzes drinks.’
Pym unfurls a rollmop of tasty tenners, and the Gerbil’s green eyes burn filaments in their sockets: ‘Lady Luck hell blow our way. Can smell it hin my water.’
‘Ooo beasting hell! Stand by yer beds!’
From the blur of a blue lagoon materialises the whaling monstrous tentacles of silk chiffon and the besequinned bosom of the Beast of the Bedroom.
‘Well good evening, boys,’ she coos.
Glowering with the stomp of a streetfighter. But hairier.
‘Evenin’, Missus James.’