Chapter One (Second Draft)

Chapter One




With bear-like determination she stalked over to sit next to me from the other side of the saloon bar.

'Are you gay?' she asked bluntly.

'No, I am a crocodile.' I answered mysteriously and with a heavy heart.

She sucked through a straw on a Snowball (a mixture of Advocaat and Lemonade).

I did not know actually who she was. I strongly suspected she belonged to a criminal gang and I was being propositioned, perhaps lured into a world in which my lower middle class upbringing had not equipped me to cope with. I was feeling vulnerable.

She was not phased by my reply for long. Another pint of rough cider appeared in front of me.

'Are you gay?' she repeated. My face showed perplexity.

'You just asked me,' I replied.

'And you came up with what you must know is rather a strange reply.'

'Well, it was rather a strange question,' I answered back.

I was wired and running on a heady mixture of adrenalin and alcohol.




I sensed she was beginning to get irritable, if not a shade angry. My mind scan guessed she was deciding if I was mad or drunk or both, or perhaps she thought I was high on illicit drugs?

Her full breasts heaved with her excited breathing and stretched the thin brownish cream fabric of her blouse. Her long blonde hair was streaked with a red dye. But my gaze was already wandering.

'There is nothing wrong with being gay,' she suggested.

I was jerked back to attention.

'Crocodiles get a very bad time of it,' I replied with an outwardly broad and friendly smile. 'You may think that we cannot cry, but it is just that you cannot see our tears.'

I took a large gulp of cider.

'So I am not gay at all, I am miserable,' I admitted.

'Is that why you drink?'

I shook my head.

'I come into the pub for company. To find some friends, but most of the time, I seem to be surrounded by idiots.'

She was conventionally attractive in a rough hewn artisan sort of way.

'Do you go to work?' I asked.

'If looking after a family of six boys and a young girl is work, yes, I work very hard.'

'I suppose you know a lot of things, about children and barbecues and picnics,' I suggested.