By

Craig Ennew

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Seven: The Naked Man Story

This week: Craig recalls a memorable night in Salisbury.

By the time you’ve finished reading this week’s post, you’ll be forgiven for thinking, ‘That’s all very well, but what’s it got to do with moving to West Lulworth?’ The truthful answer is, ‘Precious little.’ But sometimes a story associated with a place soon to become part of your past needs to be recorded for posterity. And as Salisbury legends go, this tale is almost up there with the Skripal poisonings. For this reason, it requires laying down like a fine wine before we gather up all our belongings and beetle off to the coast.

When in company, my wife and I often like to drop in the line: ‘You mean we’ve never actually told you the Naked Man story?’ For a while, it was all we ever talked about. Even the Tesco delivery man got the abridged version from my wife as she emptied the blue crates onto the hallway floor on the morning following events. Sometimes, we’ve begun telling the story to friends, only to hear that they’ve already heard it elsewhere. ‘Oh my God!’ they say, ‘That was you?’

Home comforts: spectacles and wallet

So: make yourself comfortable, strap in, and enjoy the ride.

It’s Saturday evening and we’ve been eating out in Salisbury with friends. Both wine and banter are free-flowing and, living close to the city centre, we invite everyone back to ours for a quick night-cap. There, waiting for us to return is my eldest daughter. She’s been baby-sitting The Boy, now safely tucked up in bed while she and her mates are ‘pre-ing’ in her room ahead of a wild night out at the Chapel nightclub.

For the uninitiated, ‘pre-ing’ is the practice of loading up with booze before you paint the town red. Bar prices have rocketed since the millennials took over the world. Back in the day, Generation X never had this problem. In 1988, learning that the price of a pint was now more than a quid had been my ‘Where were you when Princess Dianna was killed?’ moment. For the record, it was Saturday, 20th August at The Forrester’s Arms, Melksham (the pint, that is, not the death of Princess Di). At the time of this story, and as a parent to girls in their late teens, I found pre-ing reassuring: I could keep one eye on the state they were in before they staggered out of the house – at which point, we were usually heading off to bed.

Anyhow. We come back – six of us – ready to release my daughter and her mates to the dark underbelly of Salisbury nightlife. We exchange pleasantries in the hall – she’d checked on The Boy fifteen minutes earlier, and he’d been fast asleep- before she and her mates leave. Subsequently, we settle in the sitting room, glasses charged with vin rouge. One of the couples haven’t seen our house before, and I have a vague recollection of my wife giving them a quick tour – but the story I am about tell suggests that can’t have actually happened.

After an hour or so, the friends leave. ‘I’m heading up to bed, love;’ my wife says, ‘don’t be too long.’ I tell her that I’ll lock the back door and will be just behind her; but just as I’m putting the last of the glasses in the dishwasher, she has already made it back downstairs and is stood in the doorway of the kitchen, eyes wide.

“You need to come upstairs… NOW!”

‘What?’ I say. I stare at her. She can barely speak. For a moment, I wonder if she’s mid petit-mal. Then the hysterical giggling begins. ‘What is it?’ I repeat. I look down, half-expecting to see a wine stain on my crotch or something similar.

She can barely get the words out. ‘You need to come upstairs. NOW!’ she splutters. ‘But you have to go ahead of me.’

My wife is practically pushing me up the stairs. ‘It’s a spider, isn’t it?’ I ask, fearfully. She doesn’t reply. All sorts of hideous possibilities flood my mind. ‘Can I have some sort of clue, at least?’

‘Just go and look,’ she says. She points towards our open bedroom door. 

I step inside. My eyes scan the walls and the floor for eight-legged predators. I take off my right shoe, prepared to instantly flatten any scuttering beastie. ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat,’ my wife whispers. She gestures towards our bed. We always fold our duvet back over the end of the iron bedstead to air the bed during the day, so my vantage point from the doorway is obscured. My wife shoves me in the back. ‘Go on!’ she says. ‘Go and have a look!’

I tiptoe forward. There, lying dead still on our bed, is a man. A stark-bollock-naked man.

He’s probably in his early thirties and not in the best of shape – in more ways than one. To save our blushes, he has rested in the foetal position: his crown jewels are mercifully not on show in their display cabinet. One of his hands is pressed tightly against his squashed face, which is turned towards the wall; the other is tucked between his legs. My voice comes out as a croak. ‘Who in the name of God is that?’

‘I have no idea.’

I sidle around the edge of the bed, noting that the bastard has naturally chosen my side to collapse on. Nope – I’d never seen him in my life before either. My wife creeps up behind me. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggests, ‘We ought to go and sleep in the spare room?’

‘Spare room?’ I hiss, incredulously.

‘Oh hang on – you’re right,’ she says. ‘We can’t. The girls will be back later – they’ll need the beds.’ Her face brightens. ‘Maybe we should get him into the bathroom? We could find some blankets from the airing cupboard!’

I turn to stare at her. Clearly, she’s watched too many episodes of Four in a Bed. ‘That’s not what I meant!’ I say in a sort of whispered scream. ‘There’s a total stranger lying naked in our bed, and you’re already checking we’ve got enough bacon in for the Full English the next morning.’ But in my head, I’m weighing up the dangers of not letting him sleep on. What kind of state will he be in, roused? Will I have to summon my inner Liam Neeson? I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. But I do have are a very particular set of clause analysis skills that I can bore you to death with.

I need to think. I push past my wife, heading back towards the bedroom door. That’s it – I’ll call my daughter. She must know something about this.

At the other end of the phone, I can hear the strains of Hi-Ho Silver Lining in the background as my eldest shouts above the nightclub din, ‘I swear to God, Dad – it was just me and my mates. We didn’t let anyone else in. I promise…’ There’s a pause. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’m coming back.’ The poor girl is terrified. On her watch, some bloke has entered the house, crept past The Boy’s bedroom door, stripped his kit off, and climbed onto our bed. Perhaps it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that a male friend had wanted somewhere to crash and remembered her old man’s address?

As we wait for her to arrive by the back door, my wife looks down to the ground.  ‘I wonder how he got past Bobby the Dog?’ she asked.

‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘You could get a marching oompah band past that soppy old sod without waking him up.’

Ten minutes later, the three of us– my wife, my daughter (who has returned, pale and breathless), and myself, are stood around Rip Van Winkle once more. I feel more than a little uncomfortable standing beside my eldest with all this flaccid white flesh on display. Again, my daughter says, ‘I swear to God, Dad – I’ve never seen him before in my whole life.’ But the colour is returning to her cheeks – perhaps it is the relief of knowing that this time it really isn’t her fault.

He – whoever it is – is completely oblivious to any of this. Some of his clothes lay beside the bed on the floor, semi-folded. I’m reminded that, when I go to bed, I always fold my clothes – even if I’ve had a few too many. My eyes move to the chair that serves as a bedside table – my bedside table. There sits his wallet, spectacles perched neatly on top. I point at them. ‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ I scoff.

‘Shouldn’t we wake him up or something?’ my daughter suggests.

‘I’ve tried,’ I said. ‘I shouted in his ear. He barely stirred.’

‘Give him a prod,’ suggests my wife.

My lips curl with disgust. ‘I’m going nowhere near him,’ I say. ‘We don’t know where he’s been. Anyway, he might get the wrong idea. And you never know what state he’ll be in. He might go wild. He might throw up all over the bed…’

My wife folds her arms.  ‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘We’re calling the police.’  She’ll happily lay on a four-star B&B service to a naked stranger; but she draws the line when it comes to him potentially soiling the bedsheets.

Ten  minutes and one phone call later, two police cars pull up outside the house.  The station is just up the road and, to their credit, the response is speedy once they’ve heard that a small boy had also been in the house when the intruder came in.  

‘Alright then,’ said the one who looks like he might be in charge, ‘Where’s Goldilocks?’ I nod in the right direction and three officers go up to the room by themselves. We hear low voices, an ominous squirting sound and, just a few minutes later, they come back downstairs: a policeman either side of the stranger, now awake, wet and wrapped in a blanket. He barely looks at us.

At the foot of the stairs, one of the policemen stops and turns the man towards us. ‘Have you got anything you’d like to say to these people?’

The stranger tries to focus on me, swaying slightly. ‘Sorry mate,’ he mumbles.

I stared blankly back. I think: what kind of a person actually does this? I mean, I’ve had a few too many on one or two occasions. I may have occasionally fallen asleep on a friend’s couch or maybe at a bus stop at midnight…. but I would never, ever have been so far out of it as to feel it was the best of ideas to wonder into a random house somewhere, get into the alltogether and pass out on their bed. And what if he’d crashed into The Boy’s room?

I have nothing to say other than, ‘That’s alright.’  And then they’re gone.  I pour myself another glass of wine, my daughter goes back to her mates in the nightclub and my wife disappears upstairs to check on The Boy and change the sheets.

Setting out on a dog-walk the next morning, I find a jacket half-way down our road and a leather belt draped over a neighbours’ gate. Clearly, he’s been multi-tasking – walking down our road, getting undressed and picking his final resting place at the same time. I gather them up and turn them in at the police station, along with the wallet and glasses.

Over the next week or so, I half expect a resolution. Are the police going to ask us if we want to press charges? Will we get an apology from our uninvited guest? – maybe a sheepish anonymous note through the letter box; perhaps a little bunch of flowers on the doorstep?

But there’s nothing.  No follow-up, save some rumour from a friend of a friend of a friend who’s telling a story on a Monday morning back in the office about how he got so drunk at the weekend, that he found his way into some random house and sleept the night there.  No-one believes him apparently.

Meanwhile, I reflect on my appalling Britishness: avoid confrontation at all cost unless you’re behind the wheel of a car.  I’d even spared him the indignity of having his identity revealed by avoiding peering into his wallet.  I regret that now.  I should have raided the bloody thing and removed forty quid for the privilege of enjoying a last-minute booking at Auberge d’ Ennew.

My wife has a different take. ‘At least, of all the houses in the street he picked ours,’ she says. ‘We should feel quite flattered, really.’

©Craig Ennew 2024

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