Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Beede nodded, despairingly, half an eye still fixed on the door. ‘Yes. Yes . I’m familiar with the place,’ he murmured.

Underneath his coat Beede was wearing his white hospital overalls, the bottom half of which were partially obscured by a pair of voluminous, plastic, all-weather trousers.

The assembled company sat quietly for a moment and quietly assessed his unconventional garb. Beede looked down at himself, mortified.

‘Remove your plastic trousers,’ Pat instructed him, ‘and then we can stick your all-weather gear in the laundry to dry off.’

‘Drove a Ducatti for over twenty years,’ Charlie fondly reminisced. ‘Well you kept it in the garage for twenty years,’ Laura corrected him, ‘gathering a thick layer of dust.’

‘That’s simply not true,’ Charlie snapped, ‘I used to love taking it out on the road to follow the Tour de France… ’

‘You did that once ,’ Laura scoffed, ‘the year we got engaged, then came staggering home — after three days, at most — with a dozen septic blisters all over your arse.’

‘Beede drives an old Douglas, Charlie,’ Tom quickly stepped in. ‘Makes a racket like a constipated mule on a diet of beans, it does.’

‘You’ll probably need to remove your boots first,’ Pat gently encouraged him.

‘Uh…’

Beede glanced down. ‘Yes…’

He noticed some suspicious-looking brown stains on the carpet behind him. ‘Oh dear…I’m afraid I should’ve…’

A lean, fine-boned but imperious-seeming woman suddenly appeared in the doorway wearing a pristine serving apron and matching cap. She was holding a grand silver server piled high with tiny rolls. On espying Beede in the act of disrobing, she froze.

Pat glanced over, unabashedly. ‘Is that the starter already, Emily? Because we’ve actually got one extra…’

‘So we’re back up to six again?’ Emily enquired, icily.

‘Yes we are.’

Pause

‘I see.’

‘Is that a problem?’

Longer pause

‘No. But it’ll put the entire first course back by at least half an hour.’ ‘That’s absolutely fine , dear,’ Pat beamed at her, ‘just do the best you can.’

Beede miserably yanked off his boots and his all-weather trousers. He was now a vision of social inappropriateness in head-to-toe dazzling white.

Emily remained in the doorway, inspecting his attire, blinking rapidly. ‘Are those the rolls?’ Pat asked, grabbing Beede’s boots and his waterproofs.

‘Yes they are.’

‘Well how about you slide those on to the sideboard and I’ll do the honours while you take Beede’s biking gear and hang it up in the laundry…?’

Emily opened a disdainful mouth to answer as Pat bustled towards her, but Pat jinked in first. ‘That’s wonderful . You’re an angel . She’s an angel, isn’t she, everybody?’

No takers

‘…and if you could just open an extra bottle of white and stick it in the cooler…Bang the rolls on to the sideboard, dear… that’s right. I’ll deal with those later.’

Emily slid the rolls on to the sideboard and was then promptly swaddled with Beede’s boots and muddy outerwear.

‘Let’s leave the helmet here, shall we?’

Pat displayed Beede’s dented piss-pot on a highly varnished incidental table next to a beautiful vase brimming with fabulous pink and red imported peonies.

As Emily left the room she shot Beede a look of compressed rage. Pat had already grabbed the salver of rolls. She held them aloft, on the flat of an upturned palm, and sashayed around the table dispensing them with a pair of matching tongs.

‘You’d never guess my lovely wife was once a cocktail waitress…’ Tom sighed (with a look of quiet satisfaction), gently patting her rump as she passed him by.

‘Yes you would,’ Laura chided him, ‘just look how beautifully she’s carrying that tray…’

‘That’s exactly what he meant , Laura,’ Charlie sniped.

‘Pat and I first met when we were working as bunnies,’ Laura informed Beede, ‘in the seventies.’

‘Is that so?’ Beede said.

‘Yes. Playboy bunnies,’ she dimpled, ‘with wittle white cotton-tails and loooong pink ears…’

Beede looked horrorstruck.

‘I think Beede’s probably already perfectly familiar with the concept of a Playboy bunny, Laura,’ Charlie snarled.

‘Beede,’ Pat pointed to an empty place on Cheryl’s left, ‘you squeeze in there, next to Cheryl. That’s right.’

Beede pulled out a chair and sat down. He removed a large, linen napkin from its silver ring and spread it out with methodical — almost exaggerated — care across his lap.

Cheryl watched on, intently.

‘You have my intense sympathy,’ she murmured, when he was finally done, ‘bright whites can be such bastards to maintain, can’t they?’

‘So an old Douglas , eh?’ Charlie returned staunchly to his former subject.

Beede glanced up, still struggling to process Cheryl’s last comment.

‘Pardon?’

‘Dragonfly?’

‘Uh…The bike? Yes .’

‘As a point of interest, how long did that marque actually survive?’ ‘I believe they ended production in ’56.’

Beede took a tiny, brown roll from his bounteous hostess.

‘So what’s the grunt?’

Beede’s brows rose slightly. ‘The engine’s a 348cc horizontally opposed twin cylinder four-stroke.’

‘Heavy, is she?’

‘365lbs.’

‘So top speed…I’m estimating seventy-odd?’

‘Seventy-five, at a push.’

‘How the hell d’you find parts?’ Tom butted in.

‘On the internet, mainly…’ Beede tore his tiny roll in half. ‘There’s a handful of extremely useful dedicated sites.’

‘So what do you do , Beede?’ Laura suddenly interjected, plainly still mesmerised by the bright gleam of his uniform.

Beede placed the two halves of his roll down on to his side-plate. ‘I run the Laundry Department at the Frances Fairfax.’

‘The laundry? Really? ’ Laura looked astonished.

Beede nodded.

‘ Wow… ’ Laura continued to look amazed.

‘Believe it or not,’ Pat stepped in, leaning over his shoulder and filling one of his glasses with wine and the other with sparkling water, ‘Beede here has actually been awarded the Freedom of the Borough for a lifetime of service to the community. It’s an incredible honour.’

‘The Freedom of the Borough?’ Laura parroted.

‘Yes,’ Beede muttered, embarrassed, ‘for what it’s worth.’

‘The Freedom of the Borough…’ Laura repeated. ‘What’s that mean , exactly?’

‘It means he can go anywhere he likes in the town without any kind of restriction,’ Cheryl told her.

‘Anywhere at all ?’

‘Oh God …’

Charlie shook his head, despairingly.

‘Of course…’ Cheryl smiled, ‘his big speciality is turning up — at mealtimes — to demand a free feed.’

Beede shifted in his seat, uneasily. Laura frowned, as if not entirely convinced.

‘There’s an ancient custom,’ Beede volunteered, spontaneously, ‘among certain nomadic desert tribes which demands that whenever you meet a stranger on his travels you’re duty-bound to feed and to water him: however much — or however little — food and water you actually have. It’s a charming — even altruistic —tradition in many respects but entirely based on pragmatism, because — of course — if ever you find yourself in dire need then you can always depend on the kindness of others.’