A Three-Towel Conundrum

Loathe as I am to get into discussions of decency in a public arena, I find I am strangely drawn to what I believe is known as the three-towel conundrum.

Picture the scene, if you dare.

I, the Derrig of the Derrigs of that ilk, was returning from a visit to some of my admirers in a far-off part of the provinces. After nights of carousing and debauchery I was returning to my abode (adobe? check sp.) and was unceremoniously forced from my mode of transport by inclement weather.

Approaching a nearby inn, I was offered rooms which on taking the six flights of stairs up, I found locked from the inside! I descended to my landlord and expressed dismay at this turn of affairs. He immediately provided a ladder by which I could gain access via the outside of the building through the window, claiming to have mislaid the key.

I mounted the ladder and ascended, passing by a window where my view was arrested and then shocked beyond belief.

My sight was struck by a most curious tableau. A young woman –clothed! – was laid athwart the bed, facing the wall. At her back stood another young woman having apparently only momentarily stepped form the shower. She was all too clearly dripping wet all over, beaded in droplets of warm water which ran in rivulets down her torso, damp about the body and arraigned only in a towel enclosing her presumably wet tresses and a second towel knotted at her waist. Imagine the view!

The scene bordered on one of those dream-like visions captured by deChirico.

Barely an hour later I completed the ascent to my room and fell panting on my bed.

The next morning I approached the landlord and questioned him closely on the inhabitants of the room, which was clearly located beneath mine.

At first he looked shocked and then became pale.

“Answer me, landlord!” I demanded.

“Why good sir,” he quoth. “There is a tale I fear to tell.”

“Tell on,” I said. “I fear no words.”

“Well, sir – that room remains locked and we have discarded the key at sea for the sake of the sanity of our other guests. The room was once occupied by two maidens, thrown together by chance in a travelling incident.”

“Forsooth, a likely enough tale, mayhap,” I saith verily unto him.

“One of them,” continueth he, “availed herself of the bathing facilities and without a thought for her room-mate used BOTH towels, being wet all over. Her room-mate tried in vain to conceal her wrath, but soon flew into a rage and tore the towels from her, and used them in a merciless and quite gratuitous flogging of her hapless victim. In the morning we knocked on the door but got no answer. We were forced to break into the room and all we found…”

“Yes? Yes? Get on with it man!” I ejaculated.

“Was three towels!”

“You said there were but two of the hellish items!” I cried, staggering away from the landlord.

“Did I? No it was definitely three.”

I stumbled from the Inn clutching my chest, bewailing the curse that had fallen upon me and how I had been condemned to recall the vision of just the two towels.

But, having said that, the vision has often been a great comfort to me in my many hours of need.