Death by Hammock

Sarah Stevens is a tall, big nosed, big arsed, privately educated Surrey girl, a type that has aroused my primeval side and led on occasion to an association that in the end has always been a mistake. Such liaisons, sometimes sexual, I think, when in retrospective mood, a contributing element in my disappointment, but have on the other hand justified a lot of drinking. I can’t remember if I enjoyed the sex. I cannot remember it so I suppose not much is the answer. Did they? Not much I reckon.

She started of as a dressmaker, got her own business doing wedding dresses, was good at it until all those bride mothers got her broken. She went around the world on the insurance money, learnt to dance, poles and salsa, whatever was the fashion. I met her drifted up in Dar es Salaam sitting in a beach bar covered in a hairy dog. She was ready to ditch a short broke German and not so interested in the fat one who would take his place.

We went to down to Ruaha.

"Do you expect to sleep with me just because you take me to a game park"

I stopped the car.

'After fifteen years in Africa I would hardly want to drive fourteen hours to see another elephant"

But I had no such expectations, Surrey girls, decide themselves when it is time to go to Ascot.
We hung out a bit, I liked her tales, but it did not go far. She gave me one of the better dear john lines in my career: too fat, too old, too ugly. I laughed, it was all true at least, though now I am rather thinner.

Back in London town she did more dancing, Salsa rather than pole, got hooked up with a Columbian who hunted in those Piccadilly places. He told me that he could not understand why these girls some from as far as Manchester came to dance Salsa and lost their handbags so easily. But I could. Sarah got in with him, got pregnant, it was her age to do so, fading thirties. She put the Colombian up in my flat for a while, Surrey Girls, do have a ruthless side beneath that big smiling diplomatic charm. And a good line in brutal endings, perhaps that is where I learnt it. Rachel Warren was even better in put downs, a phone call form the Tesco Check out queue: "Your clothes are in your car"

Juan was not so hot as a petty criminal, credit card stealing, street muggings, female Japanese tourists were a good bet, these mix badly with speeding tickets, driving without insurance and belting the missus. These can attract the attention of Plod.
"This is not Columbia" I told him, but to no avail and soon enough Juan was with Her Majesty more often than on the streets. Whilst doing time our Colombian was offered the acquaintance of a well known Lord also in residence who expressed a considerable interest in acquiring prime pieces of Colombian art. Snow sculptures. So on release Juan financed with the benefits of Sarah's credit card went off to seek out such valuables, whilst his mother, son, and the parrot kept up Sarah's home.
The old school pals conferred and decided that Sarah must be rescued, came up with an officer once of the Black Watch called Frederique Christiaan Von Winkle Hesse-Nassau. He is a rather hapless fellow, he would have been rather out of time in the century before last but these members of the decadent officer class are still about, protected by regimental traditions, the comradeship of the Officer Mess and often the convenience of The Official Secrets Act. He is tall, gangly, inbred with a white office made pate.

Juan and Winkle came to meet, he sat on the couch cradling his regimental bayonet whilst Juan bayed and pounded in the streets. In the end our hero avoided confrontation by calling Plod who, belatedly arriving, discovered Colombian in serious breach of his parole conditions so it was a do not pass go and do not collect two hundred pounds but straight back to Porridge. Eight months later when he re-emerged to have another go it was me sitting in the lounge. No more Juan trouble.

Von Winkle Hesse Nassau having left the army, a rather vague career, but ending in tears on an aero plane from Ulster, set up a furniture importing operation but the realities of commerce were not a world he could know. Officers rallied round and he settled in a job about which he told me rather more than he should have. I suppose with a bottle of whisky it is tempting to make sure that the lower classes know their position in natures order. I am not prepared to talk about that with the likes of you was the preferred genre of answer, complete with a wave of the hand and a sulk. That it was an insult would not occur, a cockroach cannot be insulted. But on such insults have most slaughters been predicated.

Von Winkle swung his adopted son most violently in the hammock. It is his belief, as in Sparta, that the brutalising of males before the age of five is the most vital part of their education and must be done before they get into the hands of the mamby pambies who run schools today. Having done his duty Von Winkle plonked himself in the hammock, whereupon the supporting pole, rotten and finally weakened by his disciplining, snapped and cracked him most smartly on his very white pate whilst the sand below gave a most undignified thump to the imperial posterior. The cut was long and quite deep. I have kept my cuts together with toilet paper but Von Winkle, for fear of ugly scars, signs of hanging out with the cockroach class, went, with my car to the clinic and had seven neat stitches inserted. There was no lasting damage but dignity, the insult, required a most humble apology and some financial compensation. He never got the apology, but got the compensation by the simple expedient of reneging on his hotel bill. They are all cads in the end.

I was rather disappointed in my pole but I suppose there is only so much one can expect of a rotten hammock pole. I told Joan Lawrence who came around amongst quite a few Zombies recently, now that the hotel is quieter, that I had thought death by hammock might have been a good way to do for the Butler.

Her eyes were very blue, translucent.

"Michael, you will have to think again:"

The Washermans hat covered all the expressive bits of his visage, but I think I saw the momentary flare of a nostril. One has to have a sense of humour.