‘Oh, come on Daf. Just keep thinking about your bad back. Just another half an hour, sir, and you’ll be the proud owner of a bed that will give you ten years of comfortable, health promoting, restorative, restful sleep.’

‘What did the two of you say to Mrs Chessington?’ A voice rang out musically and they turned to face a ginger haired boy, his freckled face broken into a smile, his even teeth all the more white against the charcoal of his suit. Striking the campest of poses with his arms folded across his chest he continued, ‘She’s come over all queer and had to have a sit down. Mind you,’ he said with a classic limp wristed gesture, ‘I did say to her, when we saw you coming in, that she ought to let me see to you; but there we are, that’s what seniority and commission does, and the most inappropriate person dives in and ends up upsetting the customers. I’m so sorry if she embarrassed you both.’ He thrust his clammy hand out to be shaken with, ‘I’m Geoffrey Morgan, but you can call me Geoff.’

‘I think it’s probably for us to do the apologising,’ Dafydd protested. ‘Tom did go a bit over the top with her, didn’t you dear?’

‘Bullshit!’ Tom retorted, mirroring Geoff’s stance. ‘I only gave as good as I got! Anyway, Geoff dear,’ he said, shaking the boy’s hand, ‘why don’t you sell us a bed?’

Geoffrey Morgan’s impersonation of an airline steward made Mrs Chessington seem like a trainee on a government scheme but it soon became apparent that her tutelage had produced something of a clone.

‘This one is a beautiful example of fine English craftsmanship,’ he said, running his fingers along the mattress. ‘It’s a good eight inches deep, and with these three rows of hand stitching to secure the outer springs to the border, it stays firm to the very edge. Just feel how firm it is.’

Now even Dafydd began to play the shopping game as both he and Tom felt the firmness of the mattress edge, nodding their agreement with Geoff’s commentary.

‘Now,’ Geoff said, arms folded across his chest again, his hips swaying slightly, ‘you two are going to need a five-foot, aren’t you?’ They both smiled. ‘And probably six-foot-six long?’ he asked, his right elbow shifting into his left hand, his chin nestling into the palm of the right one. ‘Can’t have your toes hanging over the edge now, can we? Let me think now…. This range…. the five foot has got 2,346 springs, and the more springs you have, the greater the support and comfort.’ And patting the damask covering with its floral motifs, encouraging each of them to feel its luxuriousness, he offered them again the script which Mrs Chessington had already recited.

Ridiculous though the details were, Tom and Dafydd drank in his attentiveness and savoured it.

‘But let me impress upon you, gentlemen,’ Geoff’s performance had reached its climax, his eyes expressing a message wholly absent from Mrs Chessington’s pitch, ‘the only way you can know if a bed is going to be right for you, is to lie on it.’