Read Waiting for Godalming for Free Online

your tab?”
    “I’m out,” says I. “You have me there.”
    Oh how we laughed again.
    “By the by, Laz,” says Fangio to me, when the laughter has died down once more in the bar that bares his name. “I’ve been thinking of taking up a hobby. Is there anything you’d recommend to me?”
    “How about slimming?” I offered in ribald recommendation.
    “Would that involve eating less?” asked Fangio. “Because as you know I gorge like a pig, for it’s my only pleasure.”
    “Rubber bondage?”
    “Well,
almost
my only pleasure. I was thinking of something cerebral that required next to no exercise, cost but a penny or two and could win me a first prize at the annual bartenders’ orchid-breeding competition.”
    “How about orchid-breeding, then?”
    “What, with my back? Come off it.”
    “Hang-gliding?”
    “Too high.”
    “Bass-playing?”
    “Far too low.”
    “Asking after the good health of folk?”
    “Fair to middling. Mustn’t grumble.”
    “How about a card game?” says I.
    “Not with you, you cheating Arab.”
    “No, not with me, Fange. How about taking up a card game as a hobby?”
    “Well,” the fat boy stroked at his chins and a bird blew by in Brooklyn. “I used to play cards a lot when I was a grunt in ’Nam.”
    “You’re still a grunt in my book, Fange.”
    “Thanks very much, my friend.”
    “So,” says I. “Card games it is. What kind of card game do you fancy?”
    The Fange gave his chins another stroke for luck and asked, “What games do you know?”
    I made the face of thought, and pretty damn well too. “There’s Cribbage, Blackjack, Patience, Parliament, Chase the Ace, Rummy, Chemmy, Piquet, Strip Poker, Stud Poker, Seven Card Stud Poker, Bridge, Whist, Old Maid, Happy Families, Three Card Brag, Smiling Faces, Pontoon, Batter My Old Brown Dog in a Basket, Snap, and Snip Snap Snorum.”
    “What about six card walkabout?”
    “Yes, there’s six card walkabout. Strip Jack naked. Boil my brains in a barrelful of bran, Cock the snoot at the Cockney cowboy, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee and Kick butt west of the Pennines.”
    “You’re just making these up now, aren’t you?”
    “Have been for quite some time, actually.”
    “So how do you play Kick butt west of the Pennines?”
    “With aces wild and one-eyed Jacks worth double if you put one on top of a black ten or nine.”
    “Very much the same as Batter my old brown dog in a basket, then?”
    “Same rules apply,” says I. “Do you want me to continue?”
    “Have you any more real card games on offer? Or are you just going to carry on making up ones with foolish names?”
    “Just carry on, I suppose.”
    “Continue then.”
    “There’s Hamper the Scotsman. Whoosh goes a wimple. Cover the rabbit. Body Chemistry 4 …”
    “Body Chemistry 4?” says Fangio. “Surely that’s a 1994 movie starring former
Playboy
playmate Shannon Tweed. The one where she has it away with a character called Simon on top of a pool table.”
    “Well, you can play cards on top of a pool table, can’t you?”
    “Not if someone’s having it away.”
    “No, you’re right. Forget about Body Chemistry 4. There’s Round my hat with a pigeon on a string, Beat the bad boy Berty, Jump around Shorty and Set ’em up Joe …”
    “You sure know your card games, buddy.”
    “Listen, Fange,” says I, “in my business, knowing your card games can mean the difference between getting it up on a cold winter’s night, or getting them down in a Dormobile. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”
    “I know where you’re coming from there,” says Fange, and who was I to doubt him?
    We paused for a moment and chewed some more fat.
    “That was good,” said Fange.
    “What, the fat?”
    “No, the toot. That was a good bit of toot we just talked there. A first class piece of toot.”
    “Glad that you enjoyed it. Do you want me to make up a few more card games?”
    “No,” said Fangio, shaking his jowls. “The