"Fuck me with a feather duster!"
"Later, Mrs. Neptune. I want to see this. Not sure I want to hear it, though."
Dunnett handed the DJ a CD and seized the microphone between long-nailed fingers. He tossed his hair and nodded. The first bars of a blast from the past belted out and he launched into his party piece.
"You keep saying you got something for me
Something you call love but confess
You've been a'messin' where you shouldn't 've been a'messin'
And now someone else is getting all your best…"
The accent was a curious mixture of Edinburgh and Galveston. I had not heard anything quite like it outside a speech therapy class.
"…You keep lyin' when you oughta be truthin'
You keep losin' when you oughta not bet
You keep samin' when you oughta be a'changin'
What's right is right but you ain't been right yet…"
Loretta Swat was leaning against the Barbados policeman with a glazed expression on her face. Parrot was impassive, presumably thinking this was the normal fare on cruise ships. He may have been right, though I doubt anything quite like this had been seen on the Caribbean Conch for many a long year.
Swat's impressive frontage was back in place, presumably with the aid of either a cantilever brassiere or a bicycle pump. Jay nudged me.
"I wonder if she kept her top on with him. He looks like a tit man to me – she may have had a battle!"
"Shush, I'm enjoying the concert."
Jay turned her gaze back to the stage and gave my handbag a nudge with her foot.
"…Well, these boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do.
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you…"
The bass played its meaningful downward scale and Dunnett sneered out the final two lines.
"…Are you ready, boots?
Start walkin'!"
The music reached its crescendo as Dunnett strutted about the stage glaring at his audience through swinging blonde hair. I had a feeling he had missed out a verse, but I wasn't complaining.
The DJ took out the CD and slipped it into his pocket before leading the applause.
"Your very own Dr. Nancy Sinatra Dunnett! A big hand for the medical profession!" Sotto voce he added behind his hand, "Is there a doctor in the house…?"
"Bravo! Bravo! Encore!"
Someone threw a bread roll at me as I gave a loud whistle of appreciation. The doctor bowed in my direction and tripped off the stage toward la Swat.
Out of the corner of one eye I saw the Boner-Drippits return to the fray, taking a vacant table near the stage. I couldn't see either of them doing a turn, unless it was to recite an improving verse and give a lecture on the iniquity of eating animal flesh. That didn't mean they should not provide some entertainment for the multitude though…
Out of the corner of my other eye I spotted a small movement under the buffet table.
"Wait here."
Jay looked at me curiously as I ambled over to the buffet and accidental-done-a-purpose knocked a stray bun to the floor. I bent down to retrieve the bun and reached under the table.
In Antigua they call them mahogany mice, because if you stamp on them you break your foot. It is said that they and sharks are the only creatures which would survive nuclear holocaust.
It was the work of a moment to capture the cockroach and secure it in the coffin. I tied the string tight.
With my best innocent expression I returned to my wife and the pleasure of an evening's entertainment aboard the good ship Caribbean Conch.
Even the DJ looked a mite incredulous at Dunnett's routine, or maybe it was the purple hot pants. I wondered if the good doctor had run them up himself.
"Well! That's what I call a hard act to follow. Come along, ladies and gents, there's a great surprise in store for the lucky winner. I promise you, you won't be disappointed!"
I glanced at Harry. For some reason he was suddenly looking incredibly smug although he still showed no signs of getting up on the stage and doing his party piece. Not drunk enough yet, no doubt. Probably just as well – we'd been asked to leave a number of establishments on account of my beloved's piece de resistance and I really didn't fancy a night in the boiler room or wherever the Captain might stow away delinquent passengers. To my amazement, my ex lover scraped back his chair and stood up, a little unsteadily.
"I don't believe it! Boner is getting up. I thought he despised this kind of thing as immature frivolity."
"Is he, sweet-cakes?"
Harry had his best enigmatic "It wasn't me" look on his face. He was definitely up to something. I watched Boner approach the stage. He was really behaving very oddly, taking two steps forward and one to the side, as if practicing some obscure square dancing routine. Frippery was beginning to look rather cross. The DJ obviously presumed the latest star turn had simply had one Hermaphrodite too many and smirked indulgently as he gave Boner a hand up onto the stage. The two men had a brief discussion and the DJ rummaged in his case of CDs. It wasn't long before the familiar strains of "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" issued from the huge speakers and I groaned.
"Not again! Can the man not try something new?"
Boner grabbed the mike and was just about to launch into the first verse when a high-pitched voice cried:
"Oh do wait for Gigi! I simply adore a little Rogers and Hammerstein! Let's sing a duet!"
For once, Mrs. Goldfinkel was not dressed in her signature pink. It was unclear which male member of the present company had loaned her an outfit but he had to be an extrovert. The suit was scarlet with broad, sequin-encrusted lapels. Harry sniggered as the Black Widow bounced up to the stage and grasped a second microphone with consummate glee.
"Bloody hell, it's Liberace!"
"Shh! Hee hee! Boner's furious at being upstaged – just look at his face."
"Never mind his face, he seems to have a bad case of ants in his pants. Funny that."
Mrs. Goldfinkel had started to sing in a shrill soprano but my ex seemed unable to utter a note. His long lilac frock twitched from side to side as he shuddered and squirmed. I hissed at Harry, who was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
"Did you put itching powder in his Y-fronts? How on earth did you manage that?"
"Nope. Better than that. Keep watching."
"Chicks and geese and ducks better scurry…"
"Aaahh!"
The Black Widow shot Boner a rather perplexed look but kept on singing like a trouper, as her partner howled, then inexplicably fell over backwards and started to break-dance. It wasn't long before his curly brunette wig flew off and landed on Miss Swat's chest with a resounding hairy smack.
"Watch that fringe and see how it flutters…"
"Ooyahooyahooyah!!!"
"Well, ah'll be damned, if that's not the final straw!"
The Swat glared malevolently at the disheveled hairpiece, which perched upon her outsized boobs like a lap dog in need of a session at the poodle parlor. There was a great trembling in her bosom, as if her breasts formed the epicenter of some fleshy earthquake. Accompanied by an anguished scream, her bust collapsed, Boner's wig falling to a forlorn fuzzy heap upon the dance-floor. Wild with fury, the blonde thrust an accusing finger at Dunnett, who blanched and tried to shrink back into the crowd.
"He done it! Jezebel indeed!"
Meanwhile Mrs. Goldfinkel was doing her utmost to keep the show going, to a fascinating syncopated rhythm from the drumming of Boner's running shoes against the floor of the stage. He now appeared to be wrestling with the Invisible Man. It was very unusual, if not avant-garde entertainment.
"The cows'll moo in the clover…"
Loretta Swat was jumping up and down, her boobs protruding from the approximate level of her belly button. Inspector Parrott looked like an unshockable kind of chap but even his eyebrows had hit the upper level. Dr. Dunnett was backing away from the blonde advancing upon his velvet clad form with a murderous glint in her thickly lashed eyes.