All The Nice Girls (22 page)

‘I’ve got it down to a fine art now,’ he told Ollie. ‘If we haven’t had food, drinks and a quick best of three on the sofa inside two hours I reckon I’m losing me grip.’

‘How about your landlady?’ Ollie asked realistically. ‘How does she react to all this?’

‘No trouble at all.’ Molly was indeed the ideal landlady. She never complained, no matter how late the lights burned in the barn nor how early in the morning Dagwood’s car started in the yard. But she could hardly avoid noticing the stream of Oozemouth feminine society visiting her barn and she could barely conceal her curiosity about Dagwood’s social life. At last, she could not resist asking him.

‘How do you get them to come to the flat, Dagwood?’

‘Oh, just ask them,’ Dagwood said, airily.

‘And they just come?’

‘Oh yes. They’d do the cooking too, if I let them.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘Of course not. I do it myself. There’s nothing to it, really. I can’t think why people make such a fuss about cooking. Mind you, when I say cooking, I mean making sure the stuff’s not actually raw. There’s more to cooking than that, of course.’

‘Oh yes?’ Molly said, in a small voice. This was obviously a new Dagwood, Dagwood resurgent. Molly remembered the initial Dagwood: Dagwood and the coal, Dagwood and the milk, Dagwood and the electricity man. Molly appreciated something which Dagwood probably did not suspect himself; that he was, in his own way, very attractive to women.

But Dagwood’s path was not always smooth. He had grossly oversimplified the true state of affairs to Ollie. He met stumbling blocks, psychological impedances whose existence he had never suspected until he encountered them. There was Drusilla, the secretary of the tennis club. She was one of the most useful acquaintances Dagwood made in Oozemouth. She was a bouncing, buxom, rosy-cheeked, healthy girl who knew everybody. She was excellent company, ready to make up a party and go anywhere, no matter how short the notice. She was almost always available when Dagwood called her and he often accepted invitations for functions where he needed a partner knowing that, if all else failed, Drusilla would be available. Dagwood came to know her so well that he found it impossible to associate any suggestion of sex with her. The essential feminine mystery had been dispelled by too frequent, hearty contact. Dagwood discovered that he was too friendly with Drusilla even to think of her as a woman.

Conversely, there was Sonia, who was quite the most beautiful girl Dagwood met while he was in Oozemouth. She very rarely came home, being a model in London, and on the only occasion she came to dinner with Dagwood the evening was an utter failure. Acting on his own private theory (that the more glamorous the girl, the more like a tramp she should be treated), Dagwood suggested strip poker-dice whereupon Sonia obediently, and in due course, stripped to the skin and sat in her chair waiting expectantly for Dagwood. Her disrobing was performed so unemotionally that Dagwood was dumbfounded. His purpose was sapped. Paradoxically, now that the only possible outcome of the game had actually come about, Dagwood could do nothing except recommend that Sonia dress again and he would drive her home.

Fiona, once she had discarded her plaster leg, proved to be almost as difficult. The better Dagwood came to know her, the clearer it became that she was more than a match for a thousand Dagwoods. She was so perfectly constructed and assembled and instructed that she might have been the prototype for the perfect Modern Partner. She was the sort of property fulsomely described by estate agents. Dagwood could even imagine the advertisement: ‘Desirable Modern Partner. All mod. cons. Runs h. & c. Easy reach. Immed. poss. Freehold (or catch as catch can). Spacious dog house (suit antisocial dwarf). Many other attract, features. 38x19x36. Offers.’ She moved into a clinch as competently as a Cumberland wrestler and she left Dagwood in no doubt that he could go as far along his chosen path as he wished, provided always that journey’s end was the altar.

Drusilla, Sonia and Fiona happened to come in quick succession after each other. Dagwood’s confidence was undermined.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he complained to Ollie. ‘Three times I’ve reached the moment critique and three times I’ve shied off like a scalded cat.’

‘Whatever happened to the food and drink and best of three on the sofa and all that jazz?’ Ollie asked cynically.

‘It’s not as simple as all that.’

‘I wondered when you were going to find that out. What seems to be the trouble?’

‘It’s different each time. There was a girl called Drusilla. I couldn’t go on because it would have been like seducing a chum. Then there was a girl called Sonia. That time I was stymied because it would have been like seducing one of those photographs they stick up outside strip clubs. Last time it was Fiona. It would have been like seducing a slot machine ...’

‘A unique experience, I imagine . . .’

‘ ... You put a penny in and the right answer comes out each time. I hate to admit it, but it looks as though the women’s magazines have got something. It’s got to be not only the right time and place but also the right person.’

‘It’s an idealistic view,’ said Ollie, ‘but you’re beginning to get the right idea.’

Weekends were occasionally a problem for Dagwood. Whenever his social engagement diary happened to be blank he faced the prospect of entertaining, and feeding, himself from Friday evening to Monday morning. Dagwood was therefore pleased and relieved when The Bodger rang up on Friday morning with a suggestion.

‘What are you doing with yourself this weekend, Dagwood?’

‘Nothing much, sir.’

‘Then how would you like to come sailing?’

‘That sounds a very good idea, sir.’

‘My wife and I are taking a boat down the coast tomorrow and we need an extra deckhand to haul on things and make the tea and so on. Are you fit?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Good. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning at the yacht club basin.’

‘What’s the boat called, sir? How will I know it?’

‘It’s got one mast and a blue hull and it’s called
Fancy That
. It’s a pretty soft sort of name but it’s not our boat. We’re only borrowing it. Tomorrow morning then.’

‘Aye aye, sir! ‘

‘And you’d better bring a couple of blankets. We’ll be sleeping on board tomorrow night.’

‘Right sir.’

Carrying his blankets and an old oilskin over his arm, Dagwood arrived at the yacht club, where
Fancy That
was tied up to the mole, at five minutes to nine. The first person he saw was Caroline. She was wearing sandals, blue jeans, a yellow anarak over a light blue sweater and she had a flower-patterned silk scarf round her throat. Her curly black hair was loose and Dagwood noticed a band of freckles over her nose. Dagwood’s heart executed a quick entrechat and returned, quivering, to earth again.

‘Hello Caroline, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m a deckhand,’ Caroline said, simply.

‘How extraordinary, so am I! Have you done it before?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve done a lot of sailing already this summer.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

Dagwood felt a twinge of pain. He had been so unreasonably annoyed with Caroline on the night of Hilda’s party that he had made up his mind there and then to forget all about her. He had found the decision easier to make than to carry out.

The Bodger’s head popped up from the sail locker hatch in the forepeak.

‘There you are, Dagwood. Come and give me a hand to get some sails up.’

Fancy That
had originally been built in Germany and there was still a reminiscently Prussian look about her stiff flat bow and squarely chopped-off stern. Her owner, a stockbroker whom The Bodger had met in the Conservative Club, was obviously house-proud about her. Her standing rigging was new, her decks were freshly varnished and her running gear in mint condition. She also had a good sail outfit. The Bodger passed up a couple of foresails, a workmanlike green genoa and a stout brown canvas stormsail. Then he reached a brand new sail, candy-striped in red and white nylon. ‘What sort of sail is that?’ Caroline asked.

‘A spinnaker,’ said The Bodger. ‘If the wind stays as it is we should get a chance to use it as soon as we’re outside. The genoa will get us out to the entrance. Hop down and start the engine, Dagwood.’

The engine was just by the galley where Julia was experimenting with the primus stove.

‘Hello, Dagwood,’ she said. ‘Have you come to give me a hand?’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid. I’ve come to start the engine, if I can find it.’

‘It’s just under my feet here. I’ll move.’

The engine and its auxiliaries were much more sophisticated than Dagwood had hoped for. Dagwood was not expected to swing starting handles and wrestle with decompression levers. The engine was a four-cylinder diesel fitted with a battery- operated starter. Dagwood primed the fuel pump and pressed the starter button. The engine turned, fired for a few revolutions, and then stopped. Dagwood tried several times. The engine fired and stopped. Dagwood swore in frustration. As a technical officer, his professional reputation depended on this engine.

‘Having trouble?’ said The Bodger, from above.

‘It probably hasn’t been started for a bit, sir. It’ll go once the injectors are all properly primed.’

Dagwood tried again. This time there was only a click from the starter.

‘That sounds bad,’ said Julia.

Every time Dagwood tried the starter he heard the same maddening click.

‘What’s the trouble, Dagwood?’

‘Have you got a screwdriver, sir?’

‘There’s a marling spike up here.’

‘That’ll do.’

Dagwood slid aside a small plate in the flywheel cover, inserted the marling spike and levered the flywheel round a little way. When he tried the starter once more the engine went away with a roar, spurting out a plume of blue smoke and, a little later, a trickle of circulating water.

‘The flywheel had stopped in a position where the starter couldn’t engage,’ Dagwood explained. ‘I had to shift the flywheel round a few teeth.’

‘That’s very clever of you, Dagwood,’ Caroline said, admiringly.

Dagwood shrugged casually. ‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’

‘Just as well we had a technical officer on board,’ said The Bodger. ‘Now that we’re mobile, let’s go.’

With The Bodger sitting like Ulysses at the tiller, Dagwood keeping a careful eye on the engine and Julia and Caroline both trying to look like hardened sea-dogs,
Fancy That
threaded through the yachts in the basin and out into the river where they stopped the engine, ran up the mainsail and hoisted the genoa. It was a soldier’s wind and they went down river on a full reach. As they left the city behind a dull opaque filter seemed to lift off the river and the sky. The sun came out and the water colour changed from brown to blue. The air was keen and clear, smelling of the sea. At the fairway buoy The Bodger bore away to bring the wind almost astern.

‘Now’s the time for that spinnaker,’ he said. ‘Julia darling, you steer while Dagwood and I hoist it.’

Julia was appalled. ‘But where shall I steer?’

‘Anywhere, so long as you keep the wind just over your left shoulder.’

The Bodger and Dagwood bent on the spinnaker, slung the boom and led the sheets. Dagwood and Caroline hoisted when The Bodger gave the word. The giant sail flapped, half-filled, flapped again, and bellied out in a glorious balloon in front of the boat.

‘Oooh
doesn’t
that look lovely!’ cried Caroline.

The Bodger looked critically along the curve of the spinnaker. ‘It’s filling nicely,’ he admitted.

Dagwood had been impressed by The Bodger’s handling of the sail and the gear. Although it must have been the first time he had ever sailed in the boat he had arranged the sheets and organised the operation as smoothly as though he had designed the boat. It was plain that The Bodger knew more about sailing than he ever admitted.

The Bodger took over the tiller again. The girls went below to change into bathing costumes, Julia in deep midnight blue and Caroline in a rich plum red.

‘Wowee!’ The Bodger whistled. ‘I haven’t seen that one before! ‘

‘I got it at the sales last January,’ Julia said. ‘It’s the best time to buy a bathing costume.’

‘Well I’m damned.’ Once again The Bodger could only wonder at the feminine instinct for a bargain, which could buy a bathing costume in January.

It was the first time that Dagwood had had an opportunity properly to admire Caroline’s figure and he now saw that his original speculations about her at
Seahorse
’s refit conference had been absolutely correct.

‘Did you get yours at the sales, Caroline?’ he asked.

‘No, this is two years old, I’m afraid.’

‘I must say it still looks very nice.’

‘Thank you, Dagwood.’

The Bodger, overhearing this piece of dialogue, smiled cunningly to himself.

Julia and Caroline together mastered the galley equipment sufficiently to produce a lunch of stew, peas, potatoes, and tinned peaches and cream. Afterwards they all stretched themselves out to sunbathe, taking it in turns to steer. The brisk wind lasted until teatime when, with a miraculous concord, wind and sea fell quiet all at once. The Bodger struck down the spinnaker before it collapsed and hoisted the large genoa. For a time The Bodger tacked to and fro, pursuing the darker wind smudges on the sea but the wind had died almost completely. The sea calmed and they drifted for a while under a sun which blazed down from a sky cleared of cloud. Towards evening The Bodger was rewarded by a light wind which sprang up off the land, carrying with it a fragrant smell of corn, warm earth, heather and honeysuckle.

‘That’s it,’ said The Bodger. ‘I can smell it. Beer!’

Just before supper they arrived at the entrance to a small harbour about fifteen miles along the coast from Oozemouth. Dagwood started the engine while The Bodger took out a chart.

‘It’s a pretty narrow opening this one,’ he said. ‘It’s got a dog-leg in the middle. There should be two leading marks to start with and a church spire once we get round the corner.’