Rosie Dixon - Confessions from a Package Tour

I shake my head. ‘Are you sure that’s all right?’ In my heart of hearts I am dying to eacape. I am very fond of all of my charges – well, some of them are all right – but we have seen a lot of each other in the last few days. Jimmy Wilson, the filthy sex-mad beast who forced his unwanted attentions on me in the bathroom of my own home (see Confessions of a Lady Courier for distressing details), has recovered sufficiently from his ocean ordeal to start making suggestive remarks about where he wants to spend the night and it might be a good idea if I slept in another building. Wilson has convinced himself that I said he could come to my room on our first night abroad and in my present state of mental and physical exhaustion the very thought is enough to give me the vapours.

At the risk of boring regular readers I think it a good idea if I digress for a moment to explain my attitude to sexual matters. In these lax times, nobody who has principles that they are prepared to stand by should feel ashamed of shouting them from the mountain top until the cows come home. I am not a prude, far from it, but I do feel that the tide of licentiousness sweeping through the streets of our homeland is threatening to carry us away with it. As that nice lady with the ornamental spectacles has pointed out, the Roman Empire started to crumble when its citizens stopped wearing anything under their togas. It is all too easy to behave in a way that one does not totally believe in because one is afraid of being thought ‘square’ but I am one of the silent majority who is prepared to stand up and be counted. I believe that one’s body is a pre-packed deep frozen pork cutlet that should be delivered to the eventual purchaser with the polythene seal unbroken. In other words, I do not believe in sex before marriage. I am proud to say that I prize my virginity more than any other possession. But – and it can be a big but, sometimes – there are different kinds of virginity. I have always found it necessary to separate the physical act of being rent asunder by a gigantic pussy pummeller from the far more important question of one’s mental attitude to the occurrence. It seems to me that if one can honestly say that the whole distressing business took place without any conscious willingness on one’s part, then one’s virgin status is not impaired – if anything, it is strengthened by this baptism of fire. How can you say that you are a real virgin until you have experienced what you are supposed to resist? The devil you know makes a far more satisfying victim for one’s principles than the devil one doesn’t know. In the course of my adventures I have been the victim of many disturbing happenings but never once have I felt my principles irretrievably compromised. Get some principles and stick to them is my advice to all young girls who find themselves puzzled and uncertain in these troubled times – oh, and get yourself on the pill if you can. There are some very unscrupulous men about.

‘You go and find a hotel and give me a ring,’ says Penny. ‘I’ll tuck this lot up and come whizzing over. We might make a night of it. I feel like shaking a leg.’

I suppress a groan. If I shook a leg I think it might fall off. After my much-needed bath it is going to be bed for this little lady.

As I prepare to leave I see one of the party approaching, looking like a bearer of bad tidings. ‘I can’t make the tap in our room work,’ she says.

‘Which one?’ says the man behind the desk helpfully. I think he is talking about the room number but the woman produces a tap. ‘This one,’ she says.

At the same instant, a muffled shout can be heard from the top of the stairs. ‘Hurry up, Myrtle! I can’t keep my finger in much longer. It’s going numb!’ Penny leads a stampede for the stairs and I make my escape. Perhaps, on the whole, it is a very good job that we are going to spend the night in a different hotel.

Tired as I am, I cannot help feeling excited as I walk through the streets. At last I have set foot on foreign concrete. All around me are men and women who speak a different language, eat different foods, sleep in different beds. It is all so new and stimulating. Even the smells are different. Strange to think that only a few days before I had been leading a humdrum existence in Chingford – or West Woodford as Mum prefers to call it. What would the family do if they could see me now, striding through what I suppose must be the docks? Certainly, there are a lot of masts and smokestacks poking above the low roofs. How nice it would be if I could find a quaint little waterfront hotel in which to spend the night. Dusk is falling fast and the red lights are coming on all around me. It is very picturesque.

‘Hey, you jig, jig, focky, focky?’ I suppose that the language the man is speaking must be Flemish. I have never heard anything like it before. He is probably asking if I have a light.

‘I no smoky,’ I say, holding an imaginary cigarette to my lips and shaking my head from side to side.

The man looks disappointed and shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his seamen’s jacket. ‘No luck?’ he says – at least, I think it must be ‘no luck’. The way he pronounces his words it sounds more like ‘no suck’, though that wouldn’t make sense, would it?

I shake my head again; he says something else I can’t understand and wanders unsteadily up the street. I do hope that he is all right. I watch him go up to another woman who listens to what he has to say and then steers him towards a doorway. She is no doubt going to give him succour. Oh dear, I feel like one of those people in the Bible who passed by on the other side. If only all the Belgians were able to speak English as well as the man at the Hotel Twerp – I mean, Antwerp.

My suitcase is beginning to get heavy so I look round eagerly for signs of a hotel. There are lots of bars and one or two clubs but no – wait a minute! There we are: Hotel de Plaisir. Luckily my French is good enough to tell me what it means: Hotel of Pleasure. Sounds jolly enough, doesn’t it? It is a bit shabby, set into the wall of the narrow street, but I suppose you could say that its condition adds to its charm. Certainly, the large red light above the door bathes the front of the building in a warm, welcoming glow.

I go through the door and am faced by a counter, behind which stands a small fat man wearing a beret and a hooped T-shirt. His moustache might have been applied with an eyebrow pencil and he looks at me suspiciously.

‘Good evening,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Do you speak English?’

‘Little,’ says the man unenthusiastically. I notice that he smells of garlic – in fact, everything seems to smell of garlic.

‘I’d like a room for two people,’ I say.

The man’s face splits into the imitation of a smile. ‘Good thinking,’ he says. ‘What you try to say? You want to work ’ere?’

‘I want to spend the night here with my friend – my girl-friend.’ I add that hurriedly because I don’t want the man to get the wrong idea.

‘You both working, are you?’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘My friend is at the Hotel Twit – I mean Twerp – I mean Antwerp, at the moment.’

‘Business good?’ says the man, starting to light an evil-smelling cigarette.

‘We’ve put up sixty tonight,’ I say, not without a touch of pride.

The man stubs his match against the end of his cigarette. ‘Sixty?! And now you want to come ’ere? On Sunday night? With the Russian one ’undredth and forty-second fleet paying a goodwill visit?’

‘It all helps to add a little colour, doesn’t it?’ I say gaily. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to squeeze us in?’

‘With your work rate, I would be imbecile not to,’ says the man, revealing a new sense of urgency and purpose. ‘Come, I show you to room.’