Chapter 5: The Road to Port Argeles pier

During the time spent in Spain I rang the Hotel Imperial in Menton every Thursday at 4 pm and spoke to Yolande. She always sounded as if she was pleased to hear from me and I would report where I was and give an edited version of what I’d been doing.

I had first rang her from Marseille -- after spending two nights in feverish groin to groin combat with a horny German female tourist – informing her the trip to Spain was to be female free. She may not have believed me as she knew I ‘entertained’ mature females as part of my employment with Maurice as I knew she ‘trained’ young waiters in silver service serving as part of her employment at the Hotel Imperial, thus we studiously ignored the elephant in the room, or in our case on the telephone, of us both having sexual partners when apart.

I didn’t count my one night stands as ‘sexual partners’. There were always plenty of female tourists looking for a nameless night of lust, and even if we exchanged names before committing the deed I never recalled them the following morning any more than my paramour of the night would remember mine. Rayliene of course was an exception because, strictly speaking, she wasn’t a one night stand as we had spent six nights together.

.

Spain’s telecommunication infrastructure was not up to the standard encountered in France. I could not directly dial the international code number for France and then the number for the Hotel Imperial but rather had to be manually plugged through several exchanges by operators whose grasp of French was as nebulous as the Spanish telephone system. Often the connection would drop out without warning leaving me, and probably Yolande also, shouting ‘hello’ down an unresponsive line.

Once back in France normal service was resumed and even from a small town like Banyuls sur Mer I could directly dial Menton and have a trouble free conversation with Yolande.

Maurice did more than wet his whistle in Banyuls sur Mer. He wetted the entire wind section of an orchestra; consequently I saw neither hair nor hide of him for four days. When eventually he emerged from the house of sin, looking tired but triumphant, he decided we would remain in town for several more days. Banyuls sur Mer had a small casino that employed less vigilant and diligent security than the larger casinos of Cannes, Antibes, or Nice and Maurice hoped to increase his disposable income now somewhat depleted after a sojourn in the expensive house of sin. I also suspect he was looking forward to more whistle wetting once he had regained strength enough to blow. I refrained from whistle wetting as now I was back in France and in closer contact with Yolande my conscience pricked me, advising I should remain celibate until returning to Menton even if fraternising with Yolande would not recommence until November when Maurice left for Morocco.

My good intentions lasted until we reached Port Vendres, our next stop after leaving Banyuls sur Mer

Although I had spent a considerable amount of time in the Pyrenees when banished to Fort Nonookie I had not been as far as the easternmost end of the mountain range. I had taken the recruits on the Navigation and Survival course to visit the small town of Le Boulou to pay our respects to The Little Drummer Boy, whose statue proudly stands in the town square, commemorating his death, and his part in hurling back the invading Spanish Royalist Army intent on throttling the newly established Republic of France.

With time on my hands I had the opportunity to explore the region and spent the best part of a week running around the area surrounding Port Vendres before being ordered to bed, not on doctors’ orders but on Maurice’s orders. He had snared a mature/young female couple and I was slated to entertain the mature half of the duo while he entertained the younger. I was amazed by his renewed vigour after his epic exploits in Banyuls sur Mer, marvelling at his re-found joie de vivre and refreshed, reignited libido. Although Maurice had regained his good humour I still sensed there was something bothering him, and was peeved he had not shared whatever it was with me.

Port Vendres boasted a five star hotel, Hotel Côte Vermeille (The Vermillion Coast Hotel) besides a casino larger than the one in Banyuls sur Mer but ‘enjoying’ a similar standard of security. Maurice was quick to take advantage, using his mathematic and memory skills to make inroads into the casino’s profit. Fortunately for the casino, a mature/young female pair were visiting the casino and Maurice, still lusting after young female flesh in spite of all the whistle wetting carried out in Banyuls sur Mer, swooped down on the pair likea wplf on the fold, eager to exchange casino for copulation.

Maurice and I shared a room at the Hotel Mediterranean, a smaller and cheaper hotel than the Vermillion Coast Hotel, not due to lack of money but lack of room in the latter hotel. The target pair of female were staying in a shared room in the Vermillion Coast Hotel and as neither Maurice nor I were prepared to entertain our respective dates in the same room at the same time a rather convoluted system was employed to ensure privacy for each pair when entertaining.

During the afternoons we would escort the two females around the small but attractive town of Port Vendres visiting the busy harbour, the fortress of La Mauresque, and of course the casino where I and the mature lady would get up close and personal on the dance floor while Maurice shepherded the young girl around the banks of one arm bandits. We would swap partners after an hour or so and I admit the mature female did more to arouse me than the young girl when belly to belly in a waltz. I realise a waltz is something rarely encountered by a teenager and I suppose she wasn’t sure of how much or how little of her lithe body should be moulded against her partner’s. Whatever, it was the mature woman who was to be the recipient of my aroused lust and doubtless Maurice had his own methods of ensuring there was a wet and willing female waiting when he finally bedded her.

After our promenade around Port Vendres we would accompany the pair back to the Vermillion Coast Hotel and arrange to meet for dinner in the hotel’s excellent restaurant that catered for guests and non-guests. After dinner Maurice and the two female would leave for an après dinner stroll around the town, during which he and the girl would slip past the unattended reception desk at the Hotel Mediterranean and up to Maurice’s room where entertainment commenced. The mature female would return to the Vermillion Coast Hotel and whisk me up to her boudoir and what had begun on the dance floor of the casino was consummated on the bedroom carpet before segueing into the bed and divers other places.

I did suggest to Maurice we swap venues on alternate days but he declined the offer. It puzzled me at first until I remembered the ornately carved wooden rocking chair that took up a corner of our room at the Hotel Mediterranean. Utilising the chair during his entertaining of the young girl would be a sure method of getting his rocks off!

I don’t fully recall the names of our partners at Port Vendres; one was Gillian and the other Lillian but I can’t remember who was which. The mature female, Gillian/Lillian, was supposedly the aunt of the young girl, Lillian/Gillian, and they lived in Brussels but I think they were Luxembourgeois for they spoke French without the excruciating, nerve shredding, Belgic accent. One evening, near the end of stay in Port Vendres, Gillian/Lillian, Maurice, and Lillian/Gillian had left the Vermillion Coast Hotel en-route for the Hotel Mediterranean and the chair that rocks Maurice’s socks off leaving me in the lounge bar of the Vermillion Coast Hotel readying myself for another evening/night /early morning of lascivious movements in a bed. I noticed the barman was having difficulty with some of the customers, especially from an irascible American who was getting irate as his order of a Harvey Wallbanger had failed to materialise for the simple reason the barman had no idea what were the ingredients of this cocktail.

“Vodka, Galliano, and orange juice,” I hissed over the bar to the harassed barman. “It’s a Screwdriver with added Galliano, it’s as simple as that.”

The man still looked bewildered.

“You do have a bottle of Galliano behind the bar?” I asked.

“Err ... I expect so. I’m not the regular barman but have been drafted in as he has had an accident. I know how to mix a Martini and that’s about all!”

“I’ll come behind the bar and mix a Harvey Wallbanger while you make a jug of Martini; there’s bound to be customers wanting one,” I said and ducked under the counter.

Once behind the bar it was like old times and I dispensed the cocktails in such a timely manner that soon the crowd of disgruntled customers had dissipated and both the temporary barman and I had time to draw a breath. It was then the under manager came into the lounge, saw a strange face behind the bar and bustled over.

“I’m sorry sir but hotel guests are not permitted behind the bar.”

“I’m not a guest but a customer, and I’ve saved your hotel from a horde of angry guests and customers.”

The temporary barman explained what had happened and the under- manger was effusively apologetic. “I’m sorry if I appeared officious but we are not insured for guests being in the working areas of the hotel. I am extremely grateful for your help. There is a trained barman arriving later and I would be happy to pay you to run the bar until he arrives.”

I had nothing better to do until Gillian/Lillian’s return, and as luck would have it the barman arrived minutes before Gillian/Lillian. She saw me behind the bar and sashayed over. “Give me a long slow comfortable screw against the wall,” she said licking her lips in anticipation.

“Certainly Madame. It will be delivered via room service.” My reply had her beaming her delight and she disappeared up the stairs in a flash. I followed, only slightly slower bearing gifts, having found the requisite ingredients of Southern Comfort liqueur and sloe gin to add to the Harvey Wallbanger for the cocktail she had ordered,.

My stint behind the bar was rewarded by the manager of the hotel shaking my hand and ignoring the fact I had been sleeping (but not for long) in a guest’s bedroom for a week and enjoying an après copulation hotel breakfast each morning. Of course, Gillian/Lillian would be billed for that.

“We can always use a trained barman if you are ever looking for work,” he said handing over a handful of franc notes.

“I’m trained in other areas of hospitality,” I said. “Maintenance, reception, kitchen hand, and porter.”

“A man of many parts.” He said admiringly, “all of which seem to have quite a way with female guests!”

Two days later Gillian/Lillian and Lillian/Gillian left for Brussels,. Maurice and I saw them off from Perpignan railway station. We then moved from Port Vendres along the coast a few kilometres to Collioure, a place similar in size to Port Vendres but with some expensive, bijou-type, fashion and jewellery outlets, and many more architecturally significant buildings, especially fortresses, plus a Modern Art museum that was the first stop for Maurice.

It was while browsing the high class shops that lined the sea front I spotted a ruby necklace reminiscent of the one Alfie Hinds had ‘liberated’ from an African despot.

“That looks like Heather’s necklace,” I said in surprise. Maurice stopped and glanced at the jewellery in the shop window.

“Nothing like it,” he said dismissively. “And didn’t we decide if Alfie had wanted Heather to have the necklace and earrings he would have written something to that effect on the package they were in?”

I nodded, but deep in my heart I still thought that the jewellery, now safely ensconced in my safe deposit box in Liechtenstein, belonged to Heather - Alfie’s great love.

Maurice’s attention was seized by the oscillating buttocks of a young girl walking by in a jaw dropping short skirt; she must have been all of 15.

“I wonder if she has an older female relative for you,” he mused.

“What have you been taking to have such an unquenchable libido? Your chin should be dragging in the dust with the energy expended in Lillian/Gillian and the young girls of the Banyuls-sur-Mer brothel?”

Maurice smiled. “It was someone I met in the House of Delights, as the brothel is officially known, to thank for my increased and ever present libido, an Englishman who must have been at least eighty years old. He had already fornicated with all the female members of the establishment, including the Madam, and was ardent and priapic enough to want to repeat the experience but was lacking in money rather than energy. I asked him how he managed to be so virile at his age and he told me his grandson had given him a packet of magic powder that had fuelled his geriatric peregrination through the House of Delights and the female working therein. His grandson was employed at some pharmaceutical research establishment in Kent, which I understand is a county in England and not a mispronunciation of the vulgar term for the vagina...”

“I know Pfizer have laboratories at Sandwich, which is a town in Kent,” I interrupted.

“Sandwich! The English have named a town after a snack?”

“No, the snack was named after John Montague, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who spent much time at the gaming table and asked for food to be brought to him so that he would not waste valuable gaming time. Some enterprising footman slapped a slab of roast beef between two slices of bread and hey presto ‘the sandwich’ was born, although I believe this fast food snack had an earlier history but was not known as a ‘sandwich’ until the mid-eighteenth century.”

“As ever, Philippe, I am impressed by your vast store of knowledge; inconsequential knowledge but knowledge none the less. It is a characteristic I think you have acquired from the English. A nation of shopkeepers, and keepers of mindless, meaningless bric-a-brac like their tattered memories of a long gone Empire.”

Maurice had a smile on his face that took some of the sting from his remarks, and I accepted his comment concerning the English and their regard for trivia. I recall one of the highlights of Enoch and Hilda Entwhistle’s nights out at the Wheeltappers and Shunters Club in Accrington was on a Quiz Night, where members of the club spent the entire evening giving answers to questions on arcane and trivial subjects that no one but a Train spotter would have an answer.

Train spotting is an English ‘hobby’ that defies logic. A train spotter spends hours on cold, draughty railway platforms garbed in an Anorak (a hooded, waterproof, threequarter length jacket), holding a pencil and pad and wearing a back pack containing a packet of sandwiches and a flask of tea. He (trainspotting is exclusively a male hobby – say no more) makes a note of the serial number of each engine pulling the trains that pass through the station during the freezing hours. When he returns home the train spotter crosses off the engines’ serial numbers he noted while trainspotting in his copy of The Train Spotters’ Book of Engine Numbers. One has to ask oneself why? Wouldn’t it be quicker and more comfortable to tick off all the numbers in the comfort of one’s house rather than spend hours freezing one’s bollocks off on a draughty cold railway platform?

“You were asking about the magic powder, Philippe.” Maurice roused me from my thoughts and I shook myself away from memories of Accrington. Ernie Entwhistle was a train spotter and once invited me to go trainspotting with him. I found it more interesting watching paint dry, and infinitely warmer.

“Yes, I understand the Englishman got the substance from his grandson who works at a research laboratory belonging to the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company?” I said.

“Correct. The old fellow, strapped for cash after his extraordinary but expensive exploits with the female staff of the brothel, offered to sell me some of the powder – ‘a couple of wraps’ – as he called them.”

“And you bought some?” It was more a statement than question.

“Yes. Cost me two hundred francs but was well worth...”

“You paid two hundred francs for a couple of wraps?” Although I knew Maurice to be generous he was never fool hardy with his money and to lay out that amount of cash on what could well have been a scam was most unlike him.

“Two hundred francs a wrap,” he said, without turning a hair.

I was astounded. Surely Maurice could see he was being scammed. I said as much to him but he shook his head.

“Not at all, Philippe. The powder did as advertised and I kept my end up through four nights of almost non-stop fornication.”

“But to trust a complete stranger...”

“I knew the Englishman was a gentleman by his bearing and his upper class English accent. The girls called him ‘Sir Lance a Lot’ and they can always tell a wrong ‘un from the real thing. Besides he was a Church of England Bishop!”

.It took me a moment to process the information that a man in Holy Orders frequented a brothel. Then I recalled many of the most frequent customers of the House of Joy were from Grenoble Cathedral and the associated Seminary. Those Catholic priests had taken a vow of celibacy but I knew Protestant clerics were free to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh.

“Have you any of the powder left?” I asked, having judged the Bishop to be a fornicator rather than being forsworn.

“Not enough for two,” Maurice replied quickly.

“I don’t mean for me. I would like to analyse the substance; the powder could be something that might come back later and bite you on the bum.”

“I’ll take that chance,” he said. “And where would you get it analysed?”

“Any half decent pharmacy will have the necessary equipment.”

“And you just stroll in and ask to analyse some drug?”

“No, I will wait until a young assistant is left in charge then walk in and flash my Regional Health Authority Inspectorate credentials. I will then check the modular structure of the magic powder under the spectrographic equipment in the dispensary.”

“Where will you get the necessary credentials?”

I pointed to an establishment across the road, ‘The DIY Print Shop.’

Maurice was dubious about my plan. “Do you know what the necessary credentials look like?”.

“I do, but I doubt a teenage assistant will.”

It took me less than half an hour to mock up a laminated, credible looking, authorisation with associated ID photo. hen It was just a matter of waiting until lunch time when the proprietor of the Collioure Pharmacy went for a long languid and liquid lunch leaving a spotty faced youth in charge.

My officious manner and seemingly bona fide documentation had him believing I was an inspector for the Regional Health Authority and, with spotty face serving a doddering old man customer who didn’t seem to know what he wanted and had the young man up and down ladders grabbing bottles of potions from the cupboards (Maurice acting as the doddering old gentleman) I soon had the mystery substance under the spectrographic analyser equipment in the dispensary.

I checked the molecular structure diagram produced by the analyser against the world wide database of molecular structures of chemical substances held by the French Ministry of Health and identified the substance as Sildenafil, a synthetisation of nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen and azoimide, used to treat angina. There seemed to be little side effects for someone in the good health of Maurice and the product was not suspected of being addictive.

I asked a few desultory questions of the teenager regarding the operating regime of the pharmacy, wrote some gibberish on my clip board, and then gave a glowing report concerning the faultlessness of the pharmacy to the teenager.

“There is just one thing I might have to flag up and that is the dispensary being left in the charge of a minor. You are not yet eighteen I take it?”

The teenager blushed. “No, not for another three months.”

“Well I think it best you not mention this visit to your boss. He will get a written report but I will not make any mention of you being left in charge as it seems you are quite a capable young man.”

“I’ll vouch for that,” Maurice said. He held up a packet of condoms. “Fenimore put me onto these ribbed and flavoured English Hoods. He reckons the girls go crazy when getting plugged by someone wearing one of these, and he should know, as he’s quite a Lothario.” He dug the boy – Fenimore(!) – in the ribs and laughed. We exited the shop leaving an embarrassed but beaming Fenimore behind us.

“Is his name really Fenimore?” I exclaimed when we were out of sight and sound of the teenager.

Maurice nodded. “Yes his mother was reading ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ when she was pregnant with him.”

“I suppose it could have been worse, she might have named him Chingachgook.”

“That’s his brother’s name!”

After we both finished bellowing with laughter, much to the bemusement of passers-by, I suggested it might be prudent to move on from Collioure in case of any come backs from the pharmacy proprietor.

“Fenimore might let slip an Inspector called and arouse his suspicions, “I said.

“I leave our next move entirely to you, Philippe. You have amazed me with your skills, a veritable Victor Lustig. I’m surprised you have not made a living at it.”