Free Rebuilding Coventry by Sue Townsend

believe that Mr Ridgely had looked up my skirt
accidentally. I also thought that he was an unusually clumsy man, constantly
brushing against me and falling in my path. Once, when putting up the office
Christmas decorations, he had fallen off a ladder on top of me. We lay sprawled
on the lino, he still on top of me. Mr Ridgely took too long in getting to his
feet.
    ‘Let’s
just lie like this, together, for a while, shall we?’ he muttered into my neck.
‘I’m tired. I need a rest. My wife is very demanding; she won’t let me sleep.’
    Being
very young and stupid I’d thought he meant that his wife insisted on him doing
DI Y until the early hours. I imagined Mr Ridgely insulating his loft by
torchlight.

 
     
     
     
     
    12
On the Beach
     
    ‘Christ, I’m starving!’
said Sidney. ‘How much longer?’
    Sidney
and Ruth were sitting in an open-sided shack which was on a beach near to
Albufeira. They had given their order to a distracted middle-aged woman in a
print dress an hour and a half previously. They had not seen her since. A small
child had served them bread, butter and sliced tomatoes. Then the child had
disappeared, shrieking, into the sea.
    The
cook, a manic extrovert, wore a sea captain’s hat, a skimpy bathing pouch and
orange flip-flops. During this time he had done no cooking. Instead, he’d been
drawing water from a well in a bucket and throwing the contents over the heads
and tables of his Portuguese customers. His fancy was then to force his sodden
customers to rise to their feet and box with him. After that he embraced them
and shouted for a bottle before sitting down at their wet table to have a
drink.
    Ruth
said: ‘It must be a local custom, Sid.’
    Sidney
said: ‘If he chucks a bucket of water over me I’ll drop him one. That’s our custom
in the East Midlands.’
    Ruth
sighed and looked at the view, which was almost as good as the brochure had
promised. There it was: pale yellow sand, dramatic orange rocks, light blue sky
and dark blue sea. The brochure had recommended that they try one of the beach
shack restaurants; the piri-piri chicken was supposed to be ‘mouth-wateringly
good’.
    A few
insects fell from the woven grass roof onto Sidney’s head. Ruth watched them scampering
around in his hair, but she didn’t say anything. She was too hot and couldn’t
be bothered. On the other side of the shack the cook rose to his feet, threw
his head back and balanced a glass of brandy on his forehead. A toothless old
woman dressed in black started to clap and soon everyone in the shack, apart
from Sidney and Ruth, was on their feet, swaying and stamping on the crude
boarded floor, encouraging the cook.
    ‘I’ve
never seen such a show-off,’ whispered Ruth.
    Sidney
mouthed: ‘He’s coming over, look away!’
    Too
late. The cook was approaching their rickety table for two. Then his brown,
hairy belly was brushing against Ruth’s fair, English arm.
    ‘OK,
Americans?’ bellowed the cook.
    ‘No,’
shouted Sidney. ‘We’re not OK, and we’re English and we want our food.’
    ‘Ah Ingleeshe,
Bobby Charlton — yes?’
    ‘Yes!’
said Sidney, who hated football.
    ‘President
Reagan — yes?’
    ‘No,’
said Sidney, ‘Margaret Thatcher.’
    ‘Winston
Churchill?’
    ‘He’s
dead,’ said Sidney. ‘Morto.’
    ‘Princess
Di … Rolls Royce?’
    ‘Yes,
and while you’re here, old cock, piri-piri chicken please, for two, with
potatoes and a salad and a cold bottle of vinho verde. That is, if it’s
not too much trouble. I mean we’ve only been waiting nearly two bloody hours,
watching you prat around, you big tub of lard.’ Sidney said all this with a
charming smile. The cook took the glass from his forehead, drank the contents
and gave Sidney a friendly thump on the head, which hurt Sidney and killed the
insects. The cook shouted harsh instructions to the toothless crone who caught
a passing chicken, and strangled it, after a short struggle.
    Within
another half hour pieces