Chapter Six
The whole fifteen minute conversation has almost worn me out and I haven’t done anything resembling work. I decide to look for a kettle and make life-giving coffee before attempting any further exchanges with the badly dressed self-confessed sex goddess.
Even at my thought, she appears suddenly from the bar area via the garden and pours her own coffee. Right now I am not pleased to see her. She is obviously a nymphomaniac. I need half an hour on my own to get my bearings and gather my recently displaced wits.
I can hardly sack her, yet anyway. I haven’t been ogling her. I have successfully fought the randy girl’s suggestiveness. I am pleased with myself. Actually I suppose if I am honest, I have looked her up and down but that is all. She is well formed but not my type and no milk has been spilt.
Five or ten years ago at home in Camelann things might have been different. I would have been all over her like a rash. Almost without my own knowledge I had built myself a reputation locally. There was hardly a time when I hadn’t a female companion. But now those days are well and truly over. I didn’t go in search I didn’t have to. They came at me like flies around a fly-paper. Even more were attracted by my little brother, Dusty.
My mind goes into rewind and visions of my short liaison with Alice Copestick.
Alice and Mervyn are long married now. Their chunky blonde youngster will tower over both of them and is currently eating them out of house and home.
Danny’s a nice well-mannered kid with the gift of the gab. I stop and chat to him whenever I catch him without a mobile phone impaled into his face. It’s good for a growing kid to have an independent mentor. Kids will often listen to an outsider rather than a parent.
Mervyn and I get along. We’re not close friends. A pint together occasionally when Mervyn will take the opportunity to brag about the lad being just like his father. ‘A chip off the old block’ he will repeat at every chance. I nod my agreement and wonder if things had been different. It’s always left to me to change the subject.
I miss my little brother. Dusty and I have a unique relationship for siblings. We get on, always have. We don’t squabble. We look out for each other. We look out for our Ma.
Dusty has a well established business of his own. A small fleet of what he fondly calls sea-buses take holidaymakers by boat to other coastal towns. I always knew the kid would do well. He certainly helped me with the Lighthousekeeper when we were struggling to build the trade after I took it on from Cap’n Bligh and Blencathra when that pair retired.
The kid would turn up in Lost Souls Creek at midnight with a boat-load of lager louts who believed they needed ‘one more for the road’ even though they could hardly walk and certainly couldn’t drive. Newquay has that effect on teenagers.
Every morning Dusty would need to hose down all the suddenly discarded food and beer the youngsters have sprayed all over his pine decking.
Every evening he is at the quayside; taking cash in exchange for tickets for another excursion into alcohol hell.
Dusty is yet to settle down but Ma and I live in hopes. Despite his own misspent youth, the kid will make a good partner for someone, someday. I’m certain of it.
I grab my coffee and step outside for a quiet cigar. Looking out over the flat grasslands, I suddenly become aware of a strong smell. It is the unmistakable smell of the porcine variety. A pig farm is obviously operating close-by. So much for the late-night snorting and grunting, I think as I enjoy my smoke in a silent, well-earned solitude.
On returning bar-side I find the slightly less lumpy Letitia. She has discarded the tablecloth now but retains the sunglasses.
Letitia is emptying the last of the black buckets. She is sitting them all inside each other. I can hardly help noticing she is bending over a tad more than I believe to be necessary to do the chore.
I feel better after my short break. I feel safe enough to question the still bedraggled girl that may have once been a contortionist, again.
“What’s the story on all this then?” I point at the growing plastic tower.
“What, these buckets?” She smiles and I know she knows I had been admiring her elasticity.
“Yeah, the buckets. What happens?”
“It rained yesterday afternoon.”
‘Right so?’ I remembered the lousy journey and the constant spraying of my windscreen from an endless convoy of articulated Lorries.
“It’s the thatch roof up there; it leaks.” The pointing finger is unnecessary. I know where the roof is. “The rain takes hours to come through the thatch and I know where all the leaks are.”
“So do I now, all over the bleddy place by the looks of it.”
“Nah just along the bar. Kitchen’s okay. It’s just here. Sometimes we have to have the buckets out when we’re open. Trouble is they get knocked over and everything gets wet anyway.”
I stayed at the Merry Maiden for almost one full month. A month in Letitia’s company is plenty. The new, permanent owners are due but just one half has arrived as I am emptying the buckets myself one miserable grey morning. I have to make the same explanations as the girl had a couple of weeks ago, before I make my departure.
Easter was easily the
The large caravan park across the road had suddenly filled up with long weekenders on Thursday evening. Business was frantic. Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and the bank holiday Monday lunch-time saw the Merry Maiden packed to the rafters. Letitia shows exactly why she is a barmaid and I should add, a damned good one. She works her socks off and thankfully that was all at.
Although fully qualified myself in the culinary field, I have a chef in the kitchen and he virtually empties all the cupboards of any food stuffs and begins to panic he had nothing edible left for Monday night. He needn’t worry. Monday night is virtually cancelled without our knowledge.
Some time during Monday afternoon everyone has packed up and gone back home to
Bob is well over six feet tall and he can drink the hind legs off an alcoholic donkey. Bob also has a habit of carrying around his own tankard. At the completion of each pint, he will just wave the mug in the air and shout ‘more, more, fill ‘er up’! Bob is also black from head to toe. I couldn’t see his toes obviously.
I am pleased to see the bloke slide in the door. He is the distraction I need from the constant suggestiveness of my high performance barmaid. My chef doesn’t need to be distracted. He realizes my reluctance to react and uses it to his own advantage. It works out well all round.
On Monday evening the slot machine is silent, the car-park is empty and the bar is vacant. Apart from one of us dropping a coin in the juke-box at regular intervals, the four of us do little but empty and refill our glasses.
By nine O’clock I have given up hope of further custom. I sling towels over the beer pumps, pull the door shut and the four of us have a good session, paid for by the mountain of tips that had accrued over the long holiday weekend.
One other punter did come knocking at the door late on but we four pretended not to hear. I guess he or she soon retreats to the off-license in the village.
Bob is a godsend. He keeps me entertained. There is just the one awful point in the evening when Letitia seems to be on the verge of suggesting the four of us retire to the bedroom in the garden.
There was a time many moons ago when I might have seconded the motion but we all change.
Bob and I have to listen to the chef’s impressive chat-up techniques. Letitia decides to give us all a pictorial description of her vast array of horizontal exploits. It seems the pair are in competition to outdo each other. It is like listening to pornographic tennis.
Letitia’s re-countings are graphic and much too long. It seems not just the Merry Maiden’s bar-top had been employed by her and my predecessor. The stainless steel preparation table in the kitchen had also seen action as had the bar-billiards table and the cellar. I almost feel sorry for her as there is no mention of car bonnets.
Letitia’s exploits remind me of some of my own. My memory revisits Chapel Cove first. Jen’ and I had taken in a restaurant. A little celebration of something, I don’t remember what but I do remember the high-light of the evening. We agreed to take a midnight stroll on Church Cove beach.
We had walked, talked and laughed. Eventually we set out a blanket on the moist sand. I found glasses and Champagne from the back of the taxi where I had put them earlier in the evening. The driver had winked at me as I collected the pieces.
The taxi was parked in the car-park at the back of the beach. The driver was armed with flask and food. I’d told him as I handed over a fifty pound note, it would be a long night. ‘Take as long as you like Maccy.’
Jen and I watched the moon pecking at the water’s surface. Invisible gulls cried a sad message as we stretched out.
Now, I’m a big lad and the Champagne has little effect on me. I had walked back to the taxi and fetched another.
Jen’ wore her provocative pose well. I opened the bottle; put my thumb over the top and shook it.
She screamed and swore at the coldness of the spray. She came at me. We fell where we stood. Like two giant crabs we fought and squirmed out of our clothes. The blanket was a damp ball. It was time for something more.
I shook the blanket of sand and laid it on an upturned punt. Jen’ was on my wave-length. She readied herself in front of me and waited and waited.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I’d said.
“Not now Maccy.”
“There, up there.” I pointed to the towering cliffs.
“Shit!”
A dozen or more globes of light hovered and lowered haphazardly on the cliff-side. The balls of light were coming in our direction.
Jen’ and I grabbed at the clothes we could find and ran across the beach to the taxi. The driver was asleep in the back.
I had told Jen’ to get in the passenger side and I would drive. I turned on the ignition and stared through the screen. The lights were closing on us. I had struggled with the key, swearing again and in panic.
They were on us, rapping on the glass and yelling, screaming, baying, naked. Slowly I undid the window. Hands clawed at me.
“Maccy, Maccy, MACCY!”
“Get off me, get off.”
“You were asleep. I was telling Chef and Bob about the time me and my man was on a caravan roof and it broke.”
“I’m sorry Letitia. I’m just too bleddy knackered.”
“Frickin’ men!”
I put all Letitia’s furniture-hopping down to the bedroom being at the bottom of the garden and the wife trawling the aisle of the local supermarket.
Bob is first to leave and I disappear next a little later. I leave Letitia and the chef to their own devices, vices.
I just catch sight of the disheveled chef as he creeps out early the next morning.
And then it is all over as one half of the new management couple arrive on time and it is my last day in West Sussex.
Smartly dressed, dapper Derek is obviously excited at the prospect of he and his partner managing the Maiden and I take the time and trouble to explain to the feller the workings and the peculiar trade patterns of this country pub.
In quieter tones I tell him all about lusty Letitia and her fondness and cravings for sexual experimentation, especially on the larger items of furniture, that doesn’t include the one-armed bandit. Of course it doesn’t exclude it either, and that he had better be on his guard if alone in her presence.
I decide to leave Letitia to explain further the idiosyncrasies of the thatched roof.
I flush and wince as Derek eventually explains his partner is called Tim that they are gay and have just spent a month on their honeymoon in the Scilly Isles which is the reason for my having to be here temporarily.
Not being anti gay in any way but the sainted Scilly Isles seemed to be the perfect honeymoon spot for the pair in my opinion.
There is some justice in the world after all. Letitia will be barking up the wrong tree with these newcomers. I am a tad disappointed I can’t be a fly on the wall when the other half finally arrives but not, I hasten to add, on the bar, at their first meeting.
Whatever she is; Letitia is a great bar-maid. She never bothers me again until the following day as I prepare to leave. She throws her arms around my neck and without hesitation, slips her tongue inside my mouth and pushes her groaning chest into mine as I am about to leave through the doorway.
Needless to say, neither of us will mention it, though the likelihood of a future meeting is most unlikely. I am quite flattered actually and the exchange helps make up for her first day threats. There’s nothing worse than being made to feel guilty when you’ve done nothing untoward. Even as my memory travels back in time to Kansas I suddenly do feel guilty. I have no idea why I should but I do. Ashley is fast becoming a pain n the butt.
The Maid Marian nightmare, for me, is over but it hasn’t been so terrible as night-mares go.
One last thought that did occur to me was how on earth were Tim and Derek, two confirmed gays gonna manage a Merry Maiden and the Merry Maiden. On second thoughts—Merry Maiden Letitia was not quite—merry yes—maiden she is not.
I wasn’t what might be called reluctant to leave. It had been interesting and it had been a challenge.
The area manager has called with my new instructions, I have to move on to Derbyshire and its beautiful rocky Dales. I have to look after a licensed hotel. There is me thinking I’d just left the peak district behind me, in West Sussex.