Confessions from a Luxury Liner

‘Oh look,’ I say. ‘It’s turned cloudy. Do you want me to take it back?’

‘It’s supposed to do that, you twit!’ hisses Sid. ‘Piss off and find some ice.’

So I am across the dance floor like a ball of mercury and amazed to find that the plastic pumpkin on the counter of the Orchestra Bar is full of ice. I snatch it up and have taken one step back the way I came when the geezer behind the bar buries his voice in my earhole.

‘Here! Where do you think you’re going?’ he says.

‘I want some ice,’ I say.

‘Well, you can’t take that,’ he says.

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Don’t give me a bad time. My patience is becoming exhausted. I’m not nicking your bleeding pumpkin for a kiddy’s piss pot. I just want some ice for a couple of drinks.’

‘I don’t care if you want it to embalm your pet lizard,’ says the bloke. ‘You’re not taking that tub.’

As it turns out, the bloke is right. I take another couple of purposeful strides and the ice bucket is jerked out of my hands as if it is attached to a chain fastened to the counter – which it is. A shower of iced balls fly across the floor and four couples fall arse over tit in the middle of their ladies’ excuse me. I am fortunate to be able to pick up half a dozen balls and lose myself in the confusion. When I get back to Sid and the girls, my hands are dripping and the balls have nearly disappeared – I gave them a quick suck in case they had picked up any dirt, which did not help. After all my efforts, I am not overthrilled to find that the birds have finished their drinks.

‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘I’ve got six balls and you don’t want any of them.’

‘Stop lying and being disgusting,’ says Sid. ‘You must learn to judge when you’re giving offence.’ He turns to Gloria. ‘Would you care to take the floor?’

‘Watch him,’ I say. ‘He won’t even help you carry it out to the lorry.’

I know what I said a few paragraphs ago but sometimes you don’t care, do you? Sid goes past me with a look of disdain illuminating his noble features and soon he and Gloria are dancing their way into the record books. That leaves me with Natalie and my bus fare home. It is for this latter reason that I ignore her blood red fingernails toying with the stem of her empty glass.

‘I believe Gloria’s husband is afloat?’ I say, revealing that easy gift for conversation that makes it so amazing that I am one of the few people in the country who has never appeared on the Michael Parkinson Show.

Natalie looks puzzled. ‘A what?’ she says. ‘He’s English.’

I think hard and realise that there has been a misunderstanding. ‘No,’ I say with a light laugh. ‘I mean, he is a seafaring man, a jolly jack tar, “fifteen men on a dead man’s chest” and all that kind of thing.’ I lean forward and give her my Robert Newton. ‘ “Them as dies ’ll be the lucky ones. Aaaargh, Jim boy. Aaaargh!” ’ Natalie draws back and looks around nervously. Maybe I should have gone a bit easy on the eyeball rolling. Still, you see worse on children’s television. Much worse.

It is not something that I particularly care to be seen doing in public but it occurs to me that in the present situation there is probably no way out. ‘Do you fancy a—?’ I say, jerking my head towards the dance floor.

Natalie closes her eyes momentarily as if racked by a sharp pang of toothache. ‘All right,’ she says.

Like I have said before, my dancing is lousy but I don’t think I can come to too much harm because the floor is crowded with snogging couples and they are playing the ‘Tennisknee Waltz’ or some such tune calculated to act as an emetic if you do not have the strength to shove your fingers down your throat. All I will have to do is change my weight from one foot to the other and hope that she does not leave her plates lying about where harm can come to them. It might even be the start of something beautiful. I push her deep into the scrum of bodies so that none of the herberts standing around the side of the floor can see me making a berk of myself and wait for the loudest of the boum, boum, boums before gliding my left foot forward with an easy flowing motion that catches her just above the instep.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘The floor’s a bit fast tonight, isn’t it?’

‘Are you barmy?’ she says. ‘Surely you can do a waltz?’

‘I think it’s you,’ I say. ‘You’ve got me all excited. That’s a lovely perfume you’re wearing. What is it? I’d like to get some for my Mum.’ Natalie does not look as flattered as I would like her to be and I am swift to try and set her mind at ease. ‘For her birthday,’ I say. ‘She’d like to smell like you, I know she would. I always get her perfume – sorry, was that your leg again?’

‘No, it belonged to the man behind me,’ she says. ‘Can’t you keep in time with the rhythm? One, two, three. One, two - ouch!’

‘Sorry!’ I say. I stop and pull her very close to me so that I don’t have to see the look of suffering on her face. ‘Let’s start again. Right foot forward.’ I notice one of the bouncers who was near the Orchestra Bar peering at me like he recognises me, and burrow into the centre of the floor as he beckons to one of his mates.

‘What was that supposed to be?’ says Natalie.

‘That was the Lea shuffle,’ I say. ‘It’s very handy when you’re being crowded.’

‘You’ve ruined my shoes,’ she says. ‘It’s the first time I’ve worn them, too.’

‘They’re lovely,’ I say. ‘I like that snakeskin pattern.’

‘That’s not snakeskin,’ she says. ‘That’s where you’ve been standing all over them with your rubber soles!’

Before I can make further headway, there is a roll on the drums and Greasebonce, the MC, grabs the mike and leaps to the edge of the stage like he has plans to shove it up somebody’s jacksy. ‘Yes, folks. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for!’ he trills. ‘Let’s have you all on the floor. It’s time for our Elimination Spot Waltz!’

I have a picture of couples circling round the floor trying to eliminate each other’s spots until the duo that has accumulated the biggest pile of blackheads is declared the winner and given a giant jar of Germolene. It is not the kind of thought you want to dwell on.

‘We don’t want to do this, do we?’ I say.

‘Oh yes we do!’ Natalie grips me tightly. ‘The couple last week won a colour TV set.’

‘They’re giving them away as paperweights at the moment,’ I say.

Natalie does not reply. An expression of grin-and-bear-it determination has settled on her face.

‘Carry on dancing, boys and girls.’ I think Natalie fancies Greasebonce. There is a repulsive glint of desire in her over-made up eyes as she gazes upon his plum-coloured, braid-trimmed jacket and the yellow ruffles piled up on his chest like the overspill from a cracked boiled egg.

I grit my teeth and concentrate hard. One, two, three - ouch! One, two, three - ouch! I am not too worried because we will soon be eliminated. I have never won anything in my life. Boum-ting! The cymbals dash and my hampton gives a nervous twitch – it always does when somebody bashes a couple of cymbals together. Greasebonce leaps from the stage and makes his way to the middle of the floor.

‘Everybody behind me—’ he pauses so that all the stupid birds can go, ‘Oooh!’ – ‘off the floor please.’

‘That’s us, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘No!’ Natalie clings to me with an intensity that I would be happy to experience in different circumstances. ‘Carry on dancing!’

Now that half the people have left the floor it is much more difficult to hide and I begin to feel a right Charlie as the crowds build up to clock my diabolical style. Everybody else circles round us like Indians attacking a wagon train and Sid is there, rising and falling as if dancing on a switch-back. Gloria has her head turned over her left shoulder as if he has bad breath – knowing Sid, he probably has.

Boum-ting! Surely, this time I will be delivered.

‘The first ten gentlemen to bring me a pair of lady’s tights or stockings!’

‘Ooh!’ Natalie whips up her skirts and starts undoing one of her stockings. She has a nice pair of legs, I must say. It is quite sexy, really, because all around me, birds are flashing their goodies. Sid is taking it very seriously because his bird is lying on her back and he is peeling her tights off in one continuous pull. ‘Come on!’ Natalie clearly thinks that I should be lending a hand so I start fiddling with one of her suspenders. I make a lousy job of it because I want to make blooming certain that we do not get in the first ten. Also, because I quite enjoy the feeling of her soft, silky flesh beneath my fingers and the thought that I am touching her up in front of hundreds of people. ‘Oh, give it here!’ She brushes my fingers away and pulls her stocking down to knee level as Greasebonce announces that he has his ten couples and that they have all been eliminated. Most of the blokes just picked their partners up and carried them over to him, so the striptease was unnecessary.

I am now getting desperate. The floor seems as wide as Horse Guards’ Parade and I hear a burst of laughter as I try and do a turn and sock some bloke on the hooter with my elbow.

‘You’re dancing the wrong way!’ hisses Natalie.

‘I know I am,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been properly taught.’

‘I mean, you’re dancing the wrong way round the floor,’ she says. ‘That’s why you keep bumping into people.’ Amazing, isn’t it? I never realised it was like the dodgems. I do another turn and kick her so hard in the shin that she is dancing an Irish jig when there comes another bash on the cymbals.

‘Ooh we are having fun, aren’t we?’ says Greasebonce. ‘What are we having?’

‘Fun!!’ shout the idiots lining the floor.