So pretty soon he’s down at their table, smoking his cheroots and hinting strongly that he was in Army Intelligence during the war, although he was careful not to say which war, and that he could kill a man in a dozen different ways with his bare hands without breaking a sweat.

Now he takes the bustiest and blondest of the tourists on a quick spin around the dance floor, such as it was, while one of her friends warbled “Strangers in the Night” from the stage. He appeared to be having a fine time, although the tourist was somewhat taller than he was, and his grin was on a level with her bosom.

And then, the dance done, he announced it was his turn again, and, because if there was one thing you could say about Fat Charlie’s father it was that he was secure in his heterosexuality, he sang “I Am What I Am” to the room, but particularly to the blondest tourist on the table just below him. He gave it everything he had. He had just got as far as explaining to anyone listening that as far as he was concerned his life would not actually be worth a damn unless he was able to tell everybody that he was what he was, when he made an odd face, pressed one hand to his chest, stretched the other hand out, and toppled, as slowly and as gracefully as a man could topple, off the makeshift stage and onto the blondest holidaymaker, and from her onto the floor.

“It was how he always would have wanted to go,” sighed Mrs. Higgler.

And then she told Fat Charlie how his father had, with his final gesture, as he fell, reached out and grasped at something, which turned out to be the blonde tourist’s tube top, so that at first some people thought he had made a lust-driven leap from the stage with the sole purpose of exposing the bosom in question, because there she was, screaming, with her breasts staring at the room, while the music for “I Am What I Am” kept playing, only now without anyone singing.