Timothy Lea - Confessions from a Luxury Liner

Now that half the people have left the floor it is much more difficult to hide and I begin to feel a right Charlie as the crowds build up to clock my diabolical style. Everybody else circles round us like Indians attacking a wagon train and Sid is there, rising and falling as if dancing on a switch-back. Gloria has her head turned over her left shoulder as if he has bad breath – knowing Sid, he probably has.

Boum-ting! Surely, this time I will be delivered.

‘The first ten gentlemen to bring me a pair of lady’s tights or stockings!’

‘Ooh!’ Natalie whips up her skirts and starts undoing one of her stockings. She has a nice pair of legs, I must say. It is quite sexy, really, because all around me, birds are flashing their goodies. Sid is taking it very seriously because his bird is lying on her back and he is peeling her tights off in one continuous pull. ‘Come on!’ Natalie clearly thinks that I should be lending a hand so I start fiddling with one of her suspenders. I make a lousy job of it because I want to make blooming certain that we do not get in the first ten. Also, because I quite enjoy the feeling of her soft, silky flesh beneath my fingers and the thought that I am touching her up in front of hundreds of people. ‘Oh, give it here!’ She brushes my fingers away and pulls her stocking down to knee level as Greasebonce announces that he has his ten couples and that they have all been eliminated. Most of the blokes just picked their partners up and carried them over to him, so the striptease was unnecessary.

I am now getting desperate. The floor seems as wide as Horse Guards’ Parade and I hear a burst of laughter as I try and do a turn and sock some bloke on the hooter with my elbow.

‘You’re dancing the wrong way!’ hisses Natalie.

‘I know I am,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been properly taught.’

‘I mean, you’re dancing the wrong way round the floor,’ she says. ‘That’s why you keep bumping into people.’ Amazing, isn’t it? I never realised it was like the dodgems. I do another turn and kick her so hard in the shin that she is dancing an Irish jig when there comes another bash on the cymbals.

‘Ooh we are having fun, aren’t we?’ says Greasebonce. ‘What are we having?’

‘Fun!!’ shout the idiots lining the floor.

‘That’s right,’ says Greasebonce. ‘Now, how many couples on the floor are married?’ Half a dozen hands go up. ‘You’re out! You’ve got your prize already. Carry on dancing.’

‘Why are you just standing there?’ says Natalie.

‘Everybody is looking at me,’ I say. ‘I’m making a fool of myself. Let’s get off.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘We could win a prize. I’ll lead. You follow me.’

I do not think that I have ever felt a bigger berk in my life than in the few minutes that I stumble round that floor. Natalie is trying to do the whole ‘Come Dancing’ bit and I am more flushed than the toilet in a prune tasters’ commune. I wish the floor would open and swallow me up. Why won’t the music stop? Why—? Boum-ting!

‘Oh! It’s exciting, isn’t it! What shall we do now?’ Greasebonce pretends not to hear when one of the band tells him. ‘Right! Who’s got a birthday in November?’

‘I have,’ I say.

‘Ssh!’ says Natalie. ‘He’ll have us off.’

‘Me, me!’ I shout. I am practically jumping up and down.

‘Anybody else?’ There is a long pause and then another geezer sticks his mitt in the air.

‘Right! We’ve got our finalists. Everybody else off the floor, please.’

‘Oh my gawd!’ I close my eyes.

‘Smashing! You are clever.’ When I open them again, Natalie is looking at me with something approaching admiration.

‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘I get involved in a lot of road accidents as well.’

To my horror, I see that Greasebonce is approaching us with a couple of balloons in his mitt. ‘Right!’ he chortles. ‘One of these on each of your heels. The first couple to burst both the other couple’s balloons is the winner.’

‘I can’t stand it!’ I whimper.

‘Don’t be like that,’ says Natalie. ‘You’ve been stamping on my feet all evening. Surely a couple of balloons won’t give you any trouble?’

‘Couldn’t they just shoot me?’ I say.

‘Finalists at opposite ends of the ballroom, please.’

‘Good luck, Natalie!’ Gloria is grinning like an oval xylophone and next to her I see Sid bury his face in his hands and start shaking his head. I feel like a prisoner dragging an iron ball as I trudge down to the band rostrum. If it was near one of the exit doors I would make a break for it.

‘When you’re ready, maestro.’ Greasebonce turns to Ted Bennett – him of ‘Ted Bennett and the Bennettmen’ – and Ted stops picking his nose with his baton and wipes it under his armpit – his baton, not his hooter. Everybody is cheering and shouting and I wish I could feel the adrenalin running through my blood – come to that, I wish I could feel my blood running through anything. ‘Ready, steady, dance!’

‘Right,’ says Natalie, very firm and determined. ‘Keep cool. Left foot back. One, two, three. One, two, BANG!

I have only stood on my own balloon, haven’t I? A roar of laughter goes up and something inside me snaps. A Lea can only take so much. If these herberts want to take the piss then I will give them something they can really get their teeth into. Fed up with trying to dance, I grab Natalie and charge towards the other couple who are gliding towards us like they are on roller skates. I see the bloke’s eyes widen in terror but it is too late for him to take defensive action. He is locked into a complicated spin turn and at my mercy. I am not quite certain what I intend to do with the lovely creature in my arms but, as so often happens with me, fate takes the decision. I get my feet wrapped round the balloon string and pitch forward so that I throw Natalie on the floor. There are two bangs almost simultaneously and a roar from the crowd. When I prize my hooter off the boards it is to find that both the opposition balloons have been burst and that ours is still intact. The other couple are hopping mad and Greasebonce is clearly undecided what to do. Fortunately, Sid makes an opportune appearance.

‘Great dancing, Timmy,’ he says. ‘That last stem Christie was really something. You’ll soon be on to parallels.’

‘Dancing!’ says the beaten finalist in a voice that sounds as if someone has opened an umbrella down his throat. ‘He can’t dance a step! He threw his partner at us.’

‘That’s his ballet training,’ says Sid. ‘You reveal your ignorance when you talk like that. The Russians have been after him for years.’

‘Rubbish!’ says the bloke.

‘Careful, Dame Margot!’ says Sid. ‘If you don’t learn to be a good loser my boot will be doing a double reverse spin turn up your khyber!’

‘That’s nice!’ says the bloke. ‘That’s very nice.’

‘I was afraid you’d think so,’ says Sid. ‘Tell me, are those white streaks in your hair natural or do you keep pigeons?’

‘I don’t know quite what to do,’ says Greasebonce.

‘I’d declare him the winner,’ says Sid, pointing at me. ‘It would be nasty if violence broke out and the hall was wrecked. I happened to be here the last time there was a spot of bother and I remember how unpleasant it was. It took months to get the place operational again – and, talking about operations, I’m trying to remember how many stitches the MC had—’

‘The winners, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s give them a big hand.’ Greasebonce snatches up my mitt like he is scared it might blow away and raises it aloft with Natalie’s. There is a roar from the crowd and a louder roar from the bloke we were dancing against. Sid has just stood on his instep.