“A bit awkward, that.”
“Very,” Yasmin said. “I knew that if I let him come near enough to grab me, all he’d get in his hand would be a squashed banana.”
“So what did you do?”
“I kept jumping out of the way,” she said. “And in the end, of course, it became a chase with him chasing me all round the room and knocking things over right and left.”
“Rather strenuous.”
“Yes, and in the middle of it all the door opened and there stood that dreadful little maid again. ‘Monsieur Proust,’ she said, ‘all this exercise is bad for your asthma.’
“‘Get out!’ he yelled. ‘Get out, you witch!’”
“I imagine she’s fairly used to that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure she is,” Yasmin said. “Anyway, there was a round table in the middle of the room and so long as I stayed close to it I knew he couldn’t catch me. Many a girl has been saved from a dirty old man by a round table. The trouble was he seemed to be enjoying this part of it, and soon I got to thinking that a good old chase around the room was probably an essential preliminary for those chaps.”
“A sort of pipe-opener.”
“Right,” she said. “And he kept saying things to me as we circled round and round the table.”
“What sort of things?”
“Dirty stuff,” she said. “Not worth repeating. By the way, putting that banana in was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Too big a bulge,” she said. “He noticed it at once. And all the time he was chasing me round the table, he kept pointing at it and singing its praises. I was longing to tell him it was just a silly old banana from the Ritz Hotel but that wasn’t on. It was driving him up the wall, that banana, and the Blister Beetle was hitting him harder every second, and suddenly I had another problem on my hands. How in God’s name, I thought, am I going to get the rubbery thing on him before he jumps me? I couldn’t exactly say it was a necessary precaution, could I?”
“Not really.”
“I mean after all, what earthly reason had I even to be carrying the bloody thing?”
“Tricky,” I said. “Very tricky. How did you get out of it?”
“In the end I said to him, ‘Do you want me, Monsieur Proust?’
“‘Yes!’ he screamed. ‘I want you more than anyone in my life! Stop running!’
“‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘First you must put this funny little thing on him to keep him warm.’ I took it from my pocket and slung it across the table. He stopped chasing me and stared at it. I doubt he’d ever set eyes on one before. “What is this?’ he cried.
“‘It’s called a tickler,’ I said. ‘It’s one of our famous English ticklers invented by Mr. Oscar Wilde.’
“‘Oscar Wilde!’ he cried. ‘Ha, ha! A great fellow!’
“‘He invented the tickler,’ I said. ‘And Lord Alfred Douglas helped him.’
“‘Lord Alfred was another fine fellow!’ he cried.
“‘King Edward the Seventh,’ I said, laying it on, ‘carried a tickler on his person wherever he went.’
“‘King Edward the Seventh!’ he cried. ‘My God!’ He picked up the little thing lying on the table. ‘It is good, yes?’
“‘It doubles the rapture,’ I said. ‘Put it on quickly like a good boy. I’m getting impatient.’
“‘You help me.’
“‘No,’ I said. ‘Do it yourself.’ And while he was fiddling around with it, I–well–I absolutely had to make sure he didn’t see the banana and all the rest of it, didn’t I? And yet I knew the dreaded time had come when I was going to have to take my trousers down. . .”
“A bit risky, that.”
“It couldn’t be helped, Oswald. So while he was fiddling around with Oscar Wilde’s great invention, I turned my back on him and whipped down my trousers and assumed what I imagined was the correct position by bending over the back of the sofa . . .”
“My God, Yasmin, you don’t mean you were going to allow him–”
“Of course not,” she said. “But I had to hide my banana and keep it out of his reach.”