Flowers on the Grass (24 page)

“Oh, go away,” Mr. Brett told Dickie. “You’re spoiling the group.”

Before meals, the Blue Boys went through the bars, rounding campers up towards the dining-room, for the waitresses could not cope with mass feeding if people came in late. Dickie found Mr. Brett in the Maxime Bar, which was done up in something that looked like red velvet, with can-can dancers painted round the walls.

“Getting on all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Brett said. “I’ve been snooping round. Oh God, this is an incredible place.”

“You’re dead right,” said Dickie, choosing to take this in a proud Gaydays spirit. “Come on, soaks!” He raised his voice. “Grub up! Come on, let’s see some action there. Time, gentlemen,
please!”

Brett sat with him at one of the staff tables near the door. Every time a girl came in late Dickie had to get up and kiss her, while people called encouragement and rattled knives against glasses, and the girls shrieked, scuffled and ran. He had to do it with middle-aged women, too, for part of their holiday fun was that they were as carefree as girls again, with no thought for where the meal was coming from or who was going to wash it up.

“Why don’t you sit still and get on with your soup?”
Brett shouted at him when he sat down after the fifth embrace. You had to shout, with two thousand people eating in here.

“What’s this?” said Barney. “Sedition? Mustn’t discourage a keen young chap from his duty. Men have been shot for less than that. O.K., Dickie boy, you can relax now. All the skirts are in. Oh God, my turn for it tonight, and my
dear
, what it does to my
digestion
!” He put one hand behind his head and the other on his waist, affecting the traditional stage pansy voice. People at nearby tables, not hearing the joke, but seeing that he was fooling, told each other what a scream Barney was, and an old lady, who had to laugh every time she thought of how he had teased her at the concert on her first night, nearly choked herself on a piece of suet crust.

Camp announcements were read out at the end of meals, when the fury of knives and forks had abated and tea drinking had set in. It was Dickie’s turn at the microphone today. Leaving his pudding, for rhubarb was the only thing about the camp he didn’t like, he went to the middle of the room, grasped the stand of the microphone and said into it at the right strength for coming out a yell: “Hey, hey, campers!”

“Hey, hey, Dickie!” they yelled back at him and his heart glowed. He felt that the whole vast room was with him.

The list of announcements had a few suggestions for jokes pencilled in the margin, for no notice, except the times of Divine Service, was ever read out straight and seriously. Adding a few of his own, Dickie followed up most of the suggestions, for Captain Gallagher liked you to use his jokes. He was listening now from the corner of the room, for, whoever you were at Gaydays, you took your soup, joint and sweet with the mob. “The dreams of Democracy,” said another notice in the Captain’s office, “have here become flesh and blood.”

When Dickie made a pun, or put a whistle in the middle of a long word, or made one of the deliberate Spoonerisms suggested in the margin, cries of “Good old Dickie!” rose at him from all sides like the surge of waves to the shore. At the end he got them all singing the chorus of the camp song, “Gaydays are playdays for you and for me,” dragging it a little, because they were full of food.

When he went back to his table, Mr. Brett, who was frowning as if the noise hurt his head, asked: “Do you have to do that at every meal?”

“Mm-hm,” said Dickie cheerfully. “Someone does.”

“Breakfast, too?”

“Mm-hm.”

Brett groaned. “What time does the bar shut in the afternoon?” he asked.

“Not till three,” Barney said. “We’ve got a club licence.”

“Thank God,” said Brett, looking at his watch. “Please may I get down?”

Although the day-by-day organisation of Gaydays Camp was tightly planned and enforced, the Blue Boys were cunning enough to rearrange things among themselves behind Captain Gallagher’s back. If Pete, for instance, wanted to sneak a day off to see his girl-friend, the others would cover up for him, taking over his jobs and saying he had “Just gone down to the other end of the camp” or was “Here a minute ago”, if the Captain was looking for him. If damp weather made Barney’s leg disinclined to lead the Boomps-a-Daisy or the Hokey-Cokey round the ballroom, he would swap it for the spelling bee with John, who in turn would swap with Pete, who had a cold, for a netball game on the windswept sports field.

Dickie never wanted to unload any of his jobs, but was always happy to take on someone else’s. There was not a job in the camp he did not enjoy, except seeing people off at the end of their holiday, and on to him was unloaded all the things that no one else wanted to do. It was always Dickie who had to take the indefatigables for cross-country hikes in the rain, Dickie who conducted the various denominations to their temples of worship in Northport, Dickie who had to organise the Old Folks’ whist drive. He did not mind. He liked the older campers, because they were fond of him.

“You ought to be married, dear,” they told him. “When are you going to find yourself a nice girl?”

He hedged, joking that there was safety in numbers. He had not been interested in any particular girl since the chip-fryer had gone out of his life. He was adept enough at the flirtatious quips and banter which the Blue Boys were required to bandy with the girls at the camp, but he did not want any of them for his own if they expected you to treat them like that all the time. The strain would be too great. Besides, marriage would mean chucking the camp, and that he would never do until it chucked him. How long could one go
on being a Blue Boy? Old Charley was only forty when they unfrocked him, but he looked more, and was getting rheumatic, which did not do. A Blue Boy had to bounce. Nora was forty-five, but she did not have a bounce. She was the babies’ guardian angel and the kiddies’ Auntie Nora. Perhaps when Dickie lost his bounce he could make a niche for himself as Uncle Dickie. His fondness for children was the only thing that might persuade him to marry, if ever he could find a girl who was beautiful without being smart and quick at repartee. It was always Dickie who dressed up as a clown at the children’s parties, Dickie who was an unseasonable Father Christmas when there was a present-giving.

It was also always Dickie who had to be pushed into the swimming pool with all his clothes on. This little ceremony took place every Saturday whatever the weather, and those who had seen it before enjoyed it just as much for being flavoured with anticipation instead of surprise. It was the most popular joke in the whole of the camp repertoire, working on the infallible principle of the banana skin or custard pie.

It started after lunch on Saturday with a mass parade round the camp, led by the band. Ronnie Cucciara’s band deserved their respectable, restful position in a Torquay hotel during the winter, for they led a chequered career at Gaydays. In the morning, wearing lounge suits, they played light music in the lounge, or, if fine, put on uniforms like commissionaires and played marches in the bandstand. In the afternoon, wearing Tzigane costumes in which they looked as silly as they felt, they played for the tea dance in the ballroom, or, if warm enough, in the outdoor Viennese café, which meant lugging their instruments right across the camp. This was all right for
some
, grumbled the double bass, but he didn’t see why he couldn’t have several instruments at strategic points, like the pianist. After supper, the band were in the orchestra pit of the theatre in evening dress, and then at last in the ballroom, coming into their own as Ronnie Cucciara’s All-star Melody Band, “bringing it to you hot and strong and sweet to urge your dancing feet”, with Ronnie’s wife Mara, in a too-youthful chiffon dress, to sing the numbers.

For the Saturday parade through the camp the band were dressed as the Seven Dwarfs, with Mara in a kind of nightgown
as Snow White. All the Blue Boys turned out for this. Kenny with his accordion and a string of children trailing him, so that it was a safe bet that at least fifty per cent of the campers would tell each other he looked like the Pied Piper. Johnny doing cartwheels and flip-flaps, finishing with a handstand on the edge of the pool, bending his legs back and back until everyone thought he
must
fall in, for they knew someone had to; but no, it was not him, and he just flipped himself upright on to dry land again at the last split second of balance.

Larry walking arm in arm with as many girls as could hang on to him. Pete chivvying the stragglers along in the rear. Finally, when everyone was round the pool and the Seven Dwarfs struck up, “I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside”, Barney chasing Dickie up the ladder to the high diving-board, where they struggled together on the edge until Barney said: “You’ve had it,” and pushed him off to turn a double somersault twenty feet to the water, while the crowd went mad with joy. One day, Dickie would manage to pull Barney in with him. Then they would go madder still.

The water was icy cold today. As Dickie turned in the air with one fleeting upside-down glimpse of pink gaping faces, he could feel the coldness rushing up to meet him, then—Bang! he was in, and thought his heart had stopped. But when he broke surface again, flinging back his hair, he was grinning and waving and shouting “Hey, hey!” to the crowd, the centre of attraction in bis big moment of the week.

When he swam to the side, showing off his crawl, and climbed out, everyone gathered round him, touching him in surprise to see how wet he was. There were always one or two dear ladies who thought it was cruel and a shame, and he must go straight in for a change and a hot cup of tea.

In hot weather he usually let his clothes dry on him, enjoying the vitality of generating enough heat to evaporate cold and wet. Today, however, he made for his cabin, sneezing.

“Hey, hey!” said a voice calmly, and he turned to see Brett with his sketch-book, grinning. “Got a swell one of you doing your act,” he said, “though I doubt if anyone will believe it; and if they do, they’ll think this place must be a madhouse.”

“Which it is,” said Dickie happily. “Let’s see.”

“No, get
away
!” cried Brett as if he were a dog. “Don’t drip on it. You’re
wet
. I’ll show you later—if you’re still alive.”

“Never killed me yet.” Dickie felt warm now, and very well. He walked jauntily, knowing that people were looking at him, pointing him out.

“Do you have to do this every week—in this climate?” Brett asked. “There must be easier ways of earning a living.”

“I don’t mind, honestly,” said Dickie. “Really I quite like it.”

“Who are you kidding?” They parted at the end of the line of staff cabins, and Dickie went whistling away to change and fling his wet clothes at Dillie, who was good to him, and would dry them in one of her private corners where hot pipes ran.

At the concert after supper Brett was in the audience with his sketch-book. Dickie, on the stage in the opening tableau of Blue Boys and Green Girls, hoped that he would be recognisable in some of the pictures. It would be fun in the doldrums of winter to get the publicity book and cheer himself up with his summer self. He would take it to the Ideal Home Exhibition and show it to the boys and girls of whatever stand he was on. He was going to try for the lime-juice stand next year. They had a bar behind the scenes, where they kept gin, to show trade buyers how good the lime juice tasted.

Brett was looking full at him. He must be drawing him. Dickie gave him a big wink. In spite of his still unconverted attitude, Dickie could not help liking him. He felt that he knew him quite well, even just meeting him on and off during this one day. He would win him round yet, if only for the sake of the camp, for what was the good of an advertising man who did not like the product he was boosting?

Les Cowan, the entertainments manager who compered the show, was tall, thin and bald, with trenches of surprise across his never-ending forehead. He had two stock tricks. One was to outline himself with his hands in a kind of Mae West figure that wasn’t there. The other was to sweep a hand over his shining dome and shake back the illusion of glorious locks. He frequently alluded to himself as a gorgeous beast. He was not very funny, but he was a north-country man, which helped. In winter he toured in pantomime, as a broker’s man or an ugly sister, or Tweedledum (or dee), pitting gents against ladies to sing the words of a song on a screen let down from the flies, and making the children shout “Hello, Les!” every
time he came on to the stage. If they did not shout loudly enough, he went off and came on again with his hat turned back to front. It never failed.

He did that tonight, and the campers, sorry to have disappointed him, greeted his second appearance as the Nazis used to greet Hitler.

The concert was an informal, haphazard show, with laughs as easy to get as water from a tap and the willing unselective applause of a B.B.C. studio audience. The campers were encouraged to perform. The trouble was to stop them. Tonight Mr. Reg Barber of Darlington had been trying for five minutes to turn a ping-pong ball into a hard-boiled egg. Every time he whisked away his handkerchief and said “Oh, darn it!” with a fallen face, the audience clapped hopefully, not sure if that was meant to be the trick.

Reg Barber tried again. He seemed prepared to go on trying all night. Dickie in the wings saw that Brett was asleep with his sketch-book fallen from his knees. The clapping threatened to become ironical. There were cries of “Wot, no eggs?” and a bunch of youths at the back began to stamp, when the loudspeaker suddenly crackled into the announcement: “Will Mr. Barber of cabin A.43 please go there at once as his children are crying!”

Genuine applause now, for Mr. Barber was a sympathetic character again, having children.

“But look here-” he protested, but Les Cowan was saying: “Come on, Pa,” and hustling him off, handkerchief, ping-pong ball, egg and all, and out through a side door like a popular murderer being snaked out of the Old Bailey.

“Only way to get him off,” said Les returning, mopping his forehead.