Looking for Mrs Dextrose (26 page)

As we drove down the main street, Charlie pointed out the theatre where he planned to ply his trade. It was the size of a church hall, wood-built and painted light green, with an art deco arch
over its front door and two signs: one depicting the name of the joint (‘Flattened Hat Theatre’) and the other advertising the current act (‘TONIGHT: THE SUICIDE POETS’).
The Suicide Poets sounded like an indie band so I made a mental note to consider checking them out. I had missed hearing decent music. Might be just the tonic: a
soupçon
of
culture.

Frankly, I was looking forward to some time off, though hilariously I was supposed to now be on holiday. Pretanike, I estimated, was barely a couple of hundred miles away: a few hours drive.
Yes, I had earned a break.

“I’ll drop you at a B&B I know, OK?” said Charlie.

“Will you be staying there?” I asked.

I needn’t have worried. “No, ’fraid not, boys. I know some people, they let me kip on the sofa for free.” He added hastily, “I’d ask if you could stay too,
only they’re, er, their spare room caught fire.”

Dad, who had become increasingly antsy as we neared the town, drumming his fingers and staring intently forwards, mouth open, butted in, “Mink the minking B&B! Where’s the
minking bar?”

It was what I had dreaded but had figured inevitable. Could I talk him round? Charlie stopped the truck.

“Dad. Look at me.”

Though the sweating had stopped, the liquid had undermined various of his scabs, which were now peeling off, and his few patches of proper flesh had become wrinkly. His hair was flat and
unkempt, hideously greasy with terrible loose ends, and his beard looked like something the North Pole plumber had pulled from Santa’s plughole.

He glared.

What could I say to him that had not already been said? He had got this far without me, still breathing, if hardly unscathed.

“Nothing? Right then.” He stuck two fingers up to me then Charlie. “Mink you. And mink you.”

As he was about to close the door, I blurted out, “You’re only hurting yourself.”

He turned. “You think I don’t know?” And walked away.

Had I misheard him?

“Wait…” I called after him, but he did not stop.

Charlie nudged me in the back and pointed. “That’s your B&B,” he said.

Unfortunately, next door to the B&B was an establishment with this lettering beneath its eaves:

Dextrose was making for it like the parched heading for an oasis. At nine in the morning.

Back to square one. I shook my head and felt like weeping.

Charlie had a parting joke – “Two elephants walk off a cliff. Boom boom!” – which it took me a while to get.

I shook his hand. “Thanks,” I said. “You saved our lives.”

“True,” he said, polishing fingernails.

And it probably was. We had not passed a single vehicle since he had picked us up and nothing had overtaken us, least of all Hilda in her wheelchair. Had Charlie not spotted us at the roadside
in the dark, our tongues might now have been doubling as sandpaper and we’d have been all out of Sheep Shavings. A complete stranger – Kai’s son, to boot – he had put
himself out to help us.

I felt for my wallet. “Could I pay you something? For the petrol? Gas?”

He shook his head. “I was going this way anyway.”

“Well, just in case you…”

“Got the business, remember? Keep your money, mate. Maybe one day you’ll get me to tune your bagpipes?”

“Sure,” I replied.

The Desert Rose Guest House was a two-storey, pink-washed, detached house, with white window frames and red roses growing around the door. I sniffed a bloom as I stood on the
doorstep and realised it was plastic.

Once inside I was faced with a staircase and, running beside that, a corridor. To my left was a window in the wall, with a shelf and a bell. ‘Ring for service’, said a sign, so I
did.

Ping! It was the sort of sound holidaymakers were accustomed to hearing. The sound of imminent service.

The carpets were crimson and black, floral designed, heavy on the eye. Behind the window was a small office featuring desk and chair, obsolete-looking PC and paperwork along the opposite wall.
On the desk were plastic roses and framed prints of further roses nestled among the paperwork.

The office door opened and a middle-aged woman walked in. She wore a pleated grey skirt, white shirt with pearls at the neck, and thin red cardigan. Her hair was brown and loosely permed. She
pulled the window across and sat down. I could see the powder on her cheeks.

Then she smiled and I noticed her teeth were stumpy, blackened and rotten, like a mouthful of mixed raisins and peanuts.

“Welcome to the Desert Rose Guest House,” she said. “My name is Rose. How may I help you?”

I couldn’t get past the teeth.

She repeated herself, with emphasis. “How may I
help
you?”

“I’d like a room, please!” I over-trilled.

“What’s the name?” she asked, picking up a pen.

Could she not afford dentures? “Dextrose,” I said. “Pilsbury Dextrose.”

When the forms had been completed, monies paid in advance – Quench had been indecently generous, so there were pots still to spare – and I had been informed of meal
times and the key and shower situation, she rang the bell herself.

Ping! It made me want to press it again.

“My daughter will show you to your room,” said Rose.

A young woman appeared as if from nowhere. A vision. She was not conventionally beautiful. But she did something to me.

“I’m Clemmie,” said the vision. “Can I take your bags?”

In her mid-20s, she wore denim dungarees over a white T-shirt and her brown hair was tied in bunches. Her cheeks were flushed, she was quite stocky and wore horn-rimmed tortoise-shell specs,
popular in the Fifties. Her thin smile and the way she’d leaned her head to one side when she’d asked about my bags – so coy. I was entranced.

I realised I hadn’t spoken. “Oh, yes, uh, sure! Thank you so much!”

She brought her head up to vertical and raised her eyebrows. “So?”

“So, er, what?”

“So where are your bags?”

“Oh. Sorry! Hahaha! I don’t have any.”

“You’re a funny guy,” said Clemmie.

It was then that I spotted something awry among her teeth. No, please. No.

“Do you…” I stopped.

“Sorry?” she said.

Braces! She was wearing chunky metal dental braces!

“You’re wearing braces!” (I narrowly avoided adding, “Phew!”)

“Yuh. Er, sure.”

“Cos your mother…” Erk.

“Yeah, she has bad teeth. You’re not the first to point it out. It’s OK. You should see my Dad’s mouth.”

“No thanks! …I mean, er, sure, why not? I mean…”

“Follow me,” she cut in, saving my blushes. “I’ll show you to your room.”

“This is the Rose Room,” said Clemmie, unlocking the door at the top of the stairs and ushering me inside. As I entered I heard a subtle hiss beside my right ear
and felt a fine spray envelop my head. It smelled of fake flowers, went right up my nostrils and I choked violently.

“Sorry about that,” said Clemmie. “Motion sensor. It sprays rose-scented air freshener when you enter the room. Mum’s idea. I hate it. That’s why I let you go in
first.”

The tease.

I sat on the bed and bounced a few times. Boy, did it feel good. Actual comfort.

The room was terribly rose-themed. Rose wallpaper, a white wardrobe with painted pink roses climbing up its sides, pink ceiling, and walls covered with rose prints.

“How many rooms do you have?” I asked.

“Two,” she said.

“What’s the other one called?”

“Also the Rose Room.”

“Then I shall take this one!” I declared, all jaunty.

“I know,” said Clemmie. “You’d already booked it.”

I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“So…” I said.

“Well, if you need anything, just ring the bell downstairs.” She turned to go.

“No, wait!” What to say? “Er. I was planning to take the day off.”

“Oh right, so you’re working here?”

“No, no,” I chortled. “I’m on holiday.”

She wrinkled her nose; her glasses slipped down and she pushed them back up with a finger. “So you’re taking a day off – on holiday?”

“It’s a long story.”

“OK,” she said, once again turning to leave.

I had to keep her talking. “So I was wondering. What’s worth doing in Flattened Hat? Entertainment-wise?”

Clemmie shrugged. “Not much.”

“There must be something!”

“Well, I’m going to see the Suicide Poets tonight…”

My in! “Great!” I said, too quickly. “That sounds great. I’d love to see them too.”

She looked at me askance. “You like poetry?”

The Suicide Poets weren’t an indie band? “Sure. I love poetry! I wandered lonely as a cloud and all that.”

“OK,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you in there.” And she was gone.

I had a date!

I gazed out of the window, set on the rear of the property and facing out over a newish-looking red-brick housing estate. People were heading to work, or out shopping, on foot,
by car; it all looked so… normal. This was precisely what the doctor had ordered: everyday relaxation, untroubled by psychotics.

Flinging myself flat on my back onto the soft mattress, pillows behind my head, I savoured the soft linen while trying to ignore the cloying smell of air-freshener. It was only a single bed, but
I was pretty sure I could squeeze in one more…

When I woke it struck me that the room, which had been flooded with sunlight, was now dark and illuminated by artificial light filtering in through the window.

Night-time. Surely not? I looked at my Timeco Z112.2 XG. It read 19.41. I’d slept for almost ten hours. Hardly surprising, I supposed.

But wait. Clemmie. The Suicide Poets. What time would they be onstage? I dared not miss them.

Launching myself off the bed, I immediately felt dizzy.

Any self-respecting lothario would have taken a shower. I was too nervous of missing the performance, and so my date, to spare the time. Instead I peeled off my safari suit – wishing I had
a change of clothes as I did so – and slooshed myself down from the sink. The cool water felt like a balm.

As I dressed again I pushed out creases and brushed off dust with a hand. This is what explorers looked like, I decided. Clemmie would surely trade my exotic tales for a little wear and
tear.

As I left the Rose Room that pesky sensor hit me with another squirt of atomised old-lady. Hardly the aromatic effect I was after. Then again… it was a scent of sorts. So I shimmied back
in and out for a further brace of blasts.

Good to go.

I wondered whether to ring the bell for Clemmie on the way down the stairs, but the house was very quiet so I assumed she must already be out. Plus, I definitely didn’t want to
have to talk to her mother or father. They might demand to know my romantic intentions while their teeth fell out.

The reception was dark and unmanned. I opened the front door and closed it gently behind me.

The night air was soothingly warm, the perfect antidote to the itchy heat of the Nameless Highway. It would be just a short walk back up the main drag, the route Charlie had
driven in on, to my goal. (And my girl.) Thoroughly refreshed and brimming with hope, I felt like I was bouncing on air.