Inflatable Hugh Read online

  A further complication was that Khan, on detecting that the members of VAST were not exactly falling over themselves to accept him, had begun to issue dark mutterings on the subject of racial discrimination. With this hanging over their heads, and the possible repercussions it might bring with it, it had finally been decided to accept Khan as a member, with the provision that when he accompanied one of the other members to a sex shop he dispensed with his headwear, wore a suit and covered up his hook. Khan had agreed, although with some reluctance, and was duly elected. However all the members were well aware that a close eye would have to be kept on the Afghan, and with good reason, as he had exhibited increasingly militant tendencies of late. For example instead of writing to the owner of the sex shop that was formerly a barber shop he had advocated eschewing a letter altogether and going round there and snapping off his pole.

  When addressing Khan Willoughby always took care to apply a conciliatory tone to his voice, ever-mindful of the Afghan’s hook and the damage it might wreak if its owner suddenly went berserk. He did this now, in reply to Khan’s questions as to why the society needed funds. “Well for all manner of things, Mr Khan,” he said. “The hire of this room for example. Our visits to far flung sex shops. Stationary and stamps so that we may write to these sex shops in an attempt to get them to....”

  Khan exploded. “Bah! Write to them? What is point? They laugh at our letters. I piss on them. We should go to them, demand they stop their filthy doings!” He raised his hook high in the hair. A glint of light reflected on it, making the implement look even more fearsome than it already was. “If had this through their jocular would not be laughing at us.”

  “Their jocular?” said Mrs Wisbech, wondering what part of the anatomy a jocular was.

  “Their jocular, their jocular, their jocular vein!” screamed Khan impatiently, pointing the hook at his throat.

  Mr Willoughby had no doubt that if sex shop proprietors had Khan’s hook through their jugular vein they would not only fail to laugh at them but would probably be incapable of ever laughing again, and a good thing too, but felt constrained to point out to the Afghan that, as effective as this course of action might be, it was not the way forward.

  “Well should be way forward,” said Khan. “We sit here chewing fats and footypussing around while wife and children dare not look in shop window in case it have disgusting sex toy in it.”

  Mrs Wisbech stepped in. “We share your concerns of course, Mr Khan, but in this country there is a way we go about doing things.”

  “Yes. Footypussing way.”

  “The word is pussyfooting actually, Mr Khan,” advised Miss Preece.

  “Pussyfooting, footypussing, fuckingpussy, make no difference what you call it. While all time filthy sex toys like wankee-doodle-dandy offend followers of Allah!”

  “Like what?” said Mr Grimshaw.

  “It’s something new from America apparently,” said Willoughby. “Mr Khan brought it in. He showed it to me before the rest of you arrived.”

  “My children they play with it!” said Khan, his eyes burning like hot coals. “I find them playing with wankee-doodle-dandy, find on rubbish council tip.”

  “What exactly is a wankee-doodle-dandy?” asked Miss Preece. “I’ve heard of a Yankee-doodle-dandy.”

  “Apparently it’s a sort of male masturbation apparatus,” said Willoughby. “The male equivalent of a vibrator.”

  “Not same as vibrator. Eldest son Atash not able get hand stuck in vibrator, able get hand stuck in wankee-doodle-dandy. Did get hand stuck in wankee-doodle-dandy. Can not wipe bottom properly now, damage bottom-wiping hand.”

  “Can’t he use his other hand?” said Mr Seal, helpfully.

  “Not possible. One hand for eating, other hand for wiping shitty bottom. Not use hand that wipe shitty bottom to eat with, not use hand to eat with to wipe shitty bottom.”

  Mrs Bean pulled a face. “Please, Mr Khan, too much information.”

  Fr Flannery was about to ask Khan which hand he used to wipe his bottom with, feeling that it might be a bit dodgy if his religion dictated he had to wipe it with the hand that had been replaced by a hook, and if that was the case would he consider converting to Catholicism to alleviate the problem, but the Afghan had already returned to his theme. “Too much footypussing,” said Khan. “Why we call Vigilantes Against Sex Toys? We not vigilantes. If was vigilantes would be going for their joculars.”

  “Being vigilantes doesn’t imply that we should go for their joculars....jugulars, Mr Khan. “We are vigilantes only in the sense that we are self-appointed guardians of the public’s morals.”

  “Footypussing.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I piss on you.”

  “Now steady on Mr Khan, there’s no need for that sort of talk,” scolded Willoughby.

  Khan fell silent and returned to his brooding. Willoughby sighed. There was trouble ahead he was sure.

  ****

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As a wine connoisseur Pugh could never inhale his own excrement without being reminded that a leading wine merchant, Alastair Hanson of Haynes, Hanson and Clark if his memory served him correctly, had once remarked that very good burgundy smelled of shit. Pugh had never found conclusive evidence of Hanson’s contention but could vouch wholeheartedly for its veracity if the burgundy was included in a melange of fine French cuisine.

  He was reminded of this as he took a moment off from another day of worrying about his dire situation, leaned to one side, lifted a buttock an inch or so off his chair and farted. There was no one else in the room so it didn’t matter, and even if there had been it still didn’t matter, he was the Secretary of State for Transport and if the Secretary of State for Transport couldn’t fart in his own office then who could? The embossed wallpaper and thick carpets would quickly absorb it anyway. He’d maybe have to open a window.

  The room was instantly perfumed with the aroma of what pate de fois gras, langoustine a la crème au gratin and Nuits Saint Georges smelt like after it had fought its way through his overworked digestive tract and marinated and matured in his bowels overnight. Pugh inhaled. The smell was disgusting. He knew it would be even more disgusting for someone else, other people’s farts always smelled worse than your own, and imagined how nice it would be if one of his Junior Ministers was to pop by and get a good whiff of his latest creation. Wishful thinking; none of his immediate subordinates would dare to drop into his office unbidden. On a couple of occasions he had ordered them to come, and had conjured up a fart on demand, but he had to be in a playful mood to do that sort of thing and today his mood, with all his worries bearing down on him, was quite the opposite of playful.

  The single sheet of paper, placed there by Myra a few minutes ago on his empty Sherwood Forest desk, informed him that he had only one appointment that day, a lunchtime meeting with a delegation of government officials and transport consultants from Sierra Leone. Did they have transport in Sierra Leone, he wondered? Apart from elephants? Where exactly was Sierra Leone anyway? Africa, wasn’t it? Probably, it sounded African. But Sierra sounded a bit South American too - ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’, that film with Humphrey Bogart, that was in South America, and they’d gone around on horses and donkeys in that when they weren’t squabbling over gold. He’d have to ask Myra before the delegation arrived; all the members of the delegation would be able to speak at least a bit of English if they were anything like the usual darkies who came a lot more often than they were welcome, but he didn’t want to risk making a fool of himself by asking them about the current situation vis a vis their elephants if they rode about on donkeys. He flicked down the switch on his inter-com. “Get me everything we have on transport in the Sierra Madre, Myra.”

  “The Sierra Madre, Minister?”

  “Where that delegation I’m lunching with come from.”

  She corrected him. “Sierra Leone.”

  “That’s the place. It is in Africa is it?”

 
“It was the last time I looked, Minister.”

  Pugh raised his eyebrows on hearing his secretary’s final sentence. Had he detected a slightly mocking tone in her voice? Was it possible she was being sarcastic? Could it be that as she was aware he would soon be out through the door and a new man ensconced in his seat that it was making her a little disrespectful? Because she’d never shown him any disrespect before. Not once. It had always been Minister this Minister that Minister the other since day one. Myra was far better educated than he was, he knew that, but never at any time in the past had she shown this, never been in the slightest bit uppity about it. But that was then and this is now, and now was when he would very soon be out on his ear. He resolved to monitor the situation; the last thing he wanted on top off all his other problems was subordinates showing him disrespect.

  Of course it could simply be that Sierra Leone used to be in Africa but wasn’t there anymore. There could have been a border change following a war, they were always fighting each other over there when they weren’t fucking each other; maybe that was what Myra had meant when she’d said it was in Africa the last time she’d looked? Countries were always changing their borders nowadays, and their names, Sri Lanka, Bejing, Mumbai and all that rubbish.

  Whilst waiting for Myra to come up with the goods Pugh began to wonder what it was like in Sierra Leone, what it was like under its African or South American skies. Better than the shithole that was England in a wet January, that was for sure. But was it worthy of a fact-finding mission? What were the beaches like over there and the booze and the nosh and the nightlife and the availability and quality of legover? The weather would be hot, whether it was in Africa or South America, definitely. Could it perhaps be a more desirable destination than the Maldives, which he had earmarked as the next country deserving of a fact-finding mission? And would be leaving for in the not too distant future.

  Regarding the Maldives, he didn’t know if there were any facts to find there, or even if it had a transport system to find facts about, but more importantly what he did know was that it was looked upon by those Members of Parliament who had visited it as a very rewarding location in which to spend a couple of weeks.

  It was almost six months since he’d been on his last fact-finding mission so another one was well overdue; his jollies were not normally spaced so far apart. Why had he left it so long? Then he remembered why so much time had passed since his last excursion at the expense of the British tax payer. It was because the bastard newspapers had kicked off about it and made his life a bloody misery when they’d found out he’d taken his girlfriend Lorelei along with him as his ‘secretary’ (the newspapers’ quotation marks). Naturally he had claimed that Lorelei was indeed his secretary and a fully qualified and extremely efficient one at that, but a telephone call to her by one of the red tops asking her if she used Pitman, Gregg or Teeline and Lorelei’s reply of “Whassaat?” had indicated otherwise.

  Pugh sighed yet again. Six months without a jolly! If a week is a long time in politics surely six months should be plenty of time for the press to forgive and forget, but would it have? Not if he knew it. Fleet Street could be like a dog with a bone when it wanted to be, and after Loreleigate, which one newspaper had wittily named it, he didn’t fancy being the bone again.

  He would have to go on a fact-finding mission soon though, press or no press, he really needed a break, some time to himself, time away from it all, time to think out his future. He wouldn’t be able to take Lorelei though, otherwise the media would go berserk. She wouldn’t like being left behind in the cold of an English winter while he was living it up in the Maldives, or possibly Sierra Leone, but if it meant the difference between him soaking up the sun for a couple of weeks or not soaking it up she would just have to lump it.

  He knew that what he really needed, what he needed more than anything, even more than another jolly, was a good idea. An idea that would make him some money, so that it wouldn’t really matter when the time came that the axe fell and he lost his job and his living along with it. Not a fortune – although a fortune would do very nicely thank you – but enough to live on in the manner to which he had become accustomed. An idea like the one the bloke who invented that revolutionary vacuum cleaner had come up with....what was he called now? Tyson.... Dyson.... Mike Dyson, that was him. Mike Dyson, lucky old, jammy old Mike Dyson. Or that Yank, Colonel Sanders, the lucky bugger who invented that Kentucky Fried Chicken shite with the secret recipe. An idea like that. A good idea that would make him a mint. It needn’t be an idea for something useful like a vacuum cleaner either; an idea similar to the one the bloke whose idea it had been to persuade people to walk along dragging a Nordic Pole in each hand would do just as well.

  Pugh couldn’t think about the Nordic Pole phenomenon without wondering all over again at the bizarreness and sheer unlikelihood of it all. It was truly amazing; people had been walking around unaided quite happily for hundreds of years then somebody comes along and persuades them they need a couple of fancy pointed sticks, at anything from a tenner to fifty quid a throw, to enable them to put one leg in front of the other, and makes a bloody fortune out of them doing it. Lucky bastard.

  A good idea in a growth industry was what he wanted. Cancer; that was a ‘growth’ industry. He smiled to himself at his thought, happy in the knowledge that even in adversity he had still managed to retain his sense of humour. But what were the growth industries in Great Britain nowadays. Assuming there were any left? There weren’t any in manufacturing. Cars, engineering, steel, they were all either gone or in the ownership of foreigners; the Krauts, the Japs, the Yanks, even the Spanish for God’s sake.

  Not alcohol or tobacco either. Apart from a privileged few only the young could afford to drink much in the way of alcohol these days. And as far as smoking went fewer and fewer people than ever were doing it and the Government was doing its level best to ensure that the few who did smoke did it even less. Though God knows where they would get the money from that they currently got from the tax on tobacco if they ever succeeded in stopping it altogether. The dim buggers hadn’t thought about that. Probably alcohol if anybody was still drinking it by then.

  Or the sex industry. Now that was a growth industry, you’d only got to look at the small ads in any newspaper; prostitution, sex toys, blow-up dolls, phone sex, you name it you could get it, and more of it than you ever could before. He thought about it for a moment. Yes, a good idea in the sex industry would be ideal. But then there would be Phil to contend with, prissy Phil and all the fuss he’d created when he’d found out about the mobile massage parlour, so best look somewhere else for a good idea.

  An idea suddenly struck him from completely out of the blue. Not a good idea, not the good idea he was searching so desperately for, but an idea that might lead him to having a good idea. If he couldn’t come up with something of his own maybe he could merge other people’s good ideas to form a new idea of his own? He chewed on it a little, gave it a coat of looking at. A Nordic vacuum cleaner perhaps? Sort of a Hoover Constellation type thing with a pair of horns sticking out of the top of it, like a Viking helmet? A sort of novelty hoover. It would be popular with the Nordics, but did Nordics have carpets to hoover, they all had wooden floors over there didn’t they? He was sure they’d all had wooden floors when he’d gone there on that fact-finding mission to Amsterdam, when he’d been at Environment. Nordic Fried Chicken, perhaps? Kentucky Fried Nordic Poles? Kentucky Fried Hoovers? “Kentucky Fried arseholes,” he spat out, losing whatever was left of his temper on recognising he was going up yet another blind alley.

  The Secretary of State for Transport had spent many hours sat in his office with his head in his hands trying to come up with a good idea but had yet to come up with an even half good idea. On one occasion he thought he’d had a good idea, when he came up with the notion of the mobile massage parlour, which he’d imagined at the time would be a racing certainty to succeed. The idea had arrived, as welcome as it had been unexpected, wh
ilst he’d been spending a weekend in his double-flipped country cottage in his Derbyshire constituency.

  The circumstances that provoked the idea were fortuitous. A mobile hairdresser had called on Lorelei to titivate her hair prior to an evening at the pub and whilst waiting for her he had turned on the TV. He hadn’t expected to find anything worth watching on his high definition set from amongst the low definition programmes the television companies offer up as entertainment on Saturday evenings, so was pleasantly surprised when his channel hopping dropped him off

  in the middle of a documentary about dodgy massage parlours. An hour later when they were walking down to the pub, and with the dodgy massage parlours still fresh in his mind, they had passed a mobile blacksmith shoeing a horse in the drive of a large house. “Look at that, a mobile blacksmith!” Lorelei had exclaimed. “Whatever next?” And immediately, wonderfully, Pugh had known what next. A mobile massage parlour. For surely such an enterprise would be a welcome attraction for a businessman desirous of a bit of hanky panky, but too tired from a day at the office to make the journey into town? Surely such a service would be popular with another businessman, similarly desirous of hanky panky, but who might be afraid to venture into an area where hanky panky could be had in case someone saw him and shopped him to his better half?

  Plans were drawn up immediately. A feasibility study carried out. Using his contacts Pugh acquired, gratis, a large van that had recently been retired from service as a Derbyshire County Council mobile library. Using fond memory he then acquired one Lucy Lambert to provide the massage and extra services which the mobile massage parlour would provide. The inside of the van was stripped of its pine bookcases and fitted out as a massage parlour; the walls were decorated with expensive wallpaper, the floor was covered with a carpet even more expensive than the one Pugh had in his office, soft lights were added, sweet music, exotically perfumed unguents, sex aids, the lot. All claimed as necessary Parliamentary expenses of course.