Authors: David Nobbs
How much had Ted done?
How much did Laurence know?
‘Lovely wedding,’ said Betty Sillitoe, who was over-powdered as usual, and she raised her almost empty glass in tribute.
‘Thank you,’ said Liz.
‘No, I mean it. Really lovely. Really really lovely.’
‘Well, they do these things well here.’
‘Yes, but the point I’m trying to get across is, it’s been a lovely wedding.’
‘The message is getting through, I do assure you,’ said Liz, her voice drier than the champagne, and she hurried on.
‘Terrible snobs, those Rodenhursts,’ announced Betty Sillitoe to nobody in particular.
‘We’ve made it, haven’t we?’ said her husband Rodney, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.
‘You what?’ said Ted, who would have been astounded if somebody had pointed out that he was saying ‘What?’ or ‘You what?’ to people who had been on their side of the church, and
‘Pardon?’ or ‘I beg your pardon?’ to the Rodenhursts and their friends and relations.
‘In life,’ explained Rodney Sillitoe. ‘We’ve made it in life. Who’d have thought it, a couple of dunces like us at school, and now I’m exporting frozen chicken drumsticks to Botswana and your door knockers in the shape of lions are gracing every front door on a neo-Georgian housing estate in Allwoodley. We’ve made it. Moderately prosperous. Happily married. Stayed the course. Survived. And remained friends. I’ve never told you this, Ted, but your friendship is one of the most important things in my life.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Ted! Do we have to be drunk before we can express affection?’
‘No. Sorry. Sorry, Rodney. No, what you said, it … it touched a chord … I mean … it hit a spot. I … sorry.’
‘Ted!’ Rodney was alarmed. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No!’ said Ted overemphatically. ‘It’s an auspicious event. A right good do. A happy day. Nobody’s happier than Betty.’
They looked across at Betty, who waved from the other side of a crush of mixed relations and friends, and gave an unmistakeably drunken lurch.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Rodney. ‘I’ll see if I can get her off the premises without a scene, bless her.’
‘I envy you,’ said Ted.
Rita decided that she had summoned up enough reserves of strength to enter the fray. She entered the fray from the garden at exactly the same moment as the happy couple entered it from the hotel.
Ted approached Rita, and the four of them met in the middle of the room.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Ted.
He was speaking to Rita, but it was Paul who answered.
‘She’s been sick,’ he said.
‘Sick?’ said Rita.
‘Usually only in the mornings, but today in the afternoon,’ said Jenny.
‘Oh heck,’ said Ted.
‘Everybody! Please!’ shouted Jenny.
‘What?’ said Paul.
‘I’ve got to, Paul,’ said Jenny. ‘Everybody! Please! I have an announcement!’
Paul and Jenny stood with their backs to the remains of the cake. The guests gathered from the comers of the room, they poured in from the garden, uncles and aunts, friends and colleagues, Simcocks and Rodenhursts, cousins once, twice and three times removed, people who were longing to go home, people who were hoping it would go on for hours because they never knew what to do after a wedding, you felt flat and not entirely sober and there was the whole evening still to go, and you wished it was the first night of
your
honeymoon. Even Percy and Clarrie Spragg, who had been nodding off peacefully in a comer, perked up and hobbled painfully over to join the throng.
The only guests who were not gathered round to hear Jenny’s announcement were the Reverend and Mrs Thoroughgood, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, Elvis Simcock, Simon Rodenhurst, and Neville Badger. The Reverend and Mrs Thoroughgood had gone to their dark, lonely home; Rodney Sillitoe had managed to get Betty out of the room, but was meeting problems in the lobby; Simon and Elvis were arguing in a far comer of the garden; and Neville Badger was walking in the grounds, tears streaming down his face, telling his dead Jane all about the day’s events while he waited for the moment when he could decently take his leave.
Jenny looked grimly determined. Paul looked nervous.
‘I’m pregnant,’ said Jenny.
There were some sharp intakes of breath, but nobody said anything.
‘We should have told you when we found out,’ she ploughed on doggedly. ‘But all the invitations were issued, and we couldn’t very well send out a newsletter, and the white dress was ordered and everything. We thought of cancelling it and just doing it quietly in a registry office, but we knew everybody was looking forward to a bit of a do, a white wedding and everything, and you’d probably bought presents – I mean, that’s not why we didn’t cancel it, but if you’ve bought the present and then your invitation’s cancelled, and you’re left with a toaster you don’t want, it’s a bit annoying, so we decided to go through with it and not tell anybody and then go away or something round about the time so
you didn’t cotton onto the dates and even if you did cotton on later, well, by then it would be a
fait accompli
anyway.’ She began to cry. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Jenny!’ said Paul. ‘Come on, Jenny. Come on, love.’
‘I’m sorry,’ sobbed Jenny. ‘We should have just done it quietly on our own like we wanted, but we wanted you all to have a lovely do like we knew you wanted.’
‘Come on,’ said Paul. ‘Let’s go and get changed and be on our way. Come on, love.’
He led her tenderly to the door. Afterwards, Rita felt quite proud of how tender he had been.
‘I feel much better now I’ve told everybody,’ wailed Jenny, and off she went with Paul to room 108, where Liz had carefully remade the bed, though Ted would later wonder whether, as they believed nobody had used the bed, the chambermaids would change the sheets before the next occupancy and, if they didn’t, whether the next occupants would notice.
There was a massed tactful movement of guests to the four corners of the room, to the walled garden and to the toilets. One or two even set off home without saying goodbye, feeling that it would be the least embarrassing thing to do.
Ted and Rita and Liz and Laurence stood in silence for a moment, and then Clarrie Spragg came forward and asked Ted for the car keys.
‘I’m going to sit him in the car,’ she said. ‘He’s had enough.’
Ted started to fish out the car keys. His hands were shaking slightly.
‘I ’aven’t,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘I want to stick it out to the bitter end.’
‘I’m not sure if I appreciate that phrase,’ said Liz.
Clarrie Spragg began to lead Percy out, and everything might have been all right if Betty Sillitoe hadn’t lurched in, with Rodney hanging onto her, trying to stop her. Naturally, Percy stopped to watch.
‘No, Rodney, it must be said,’ said Betty Sillitoe. ‘Can’t go without telling them. Rude. It was a lovely wedding. Lovely. Obviously it wasn’t perfect. The tuna fish vol-au-vents were disgusting, and, all right, there were some of the biggest snobs in this town in this room – no names, no dentists’ drills – but it was a
lovely wedding, give or take a few snobs and vol-au-vents, and that’s the main thing.’
Betty Sillitoe staggered out of the room.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Rodney.
‘Never mind,’ said Laurence grimly.
‘You don’t mind much, do you?’ said Liz to Rodney.
‘Not much, no,’ said Rodney. ‘I love her for her foibles, you see.’
‘I envy you,’ said Liz.
Betty blundered in again.
‘Come on, Rodney,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see we’re interrupting a family row?’
Once more, Betty Sillitoe left the room.
‘Goodbye,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘Thank you. Sorry.’ And he too left.
Rita had watched this display by their closest friends with even more horror than Ted, but it was Ted who felt obliged to say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please!’ said Laurence, rubbing it in while appearing to dismiss it. ‘You can’t be held responsible for the behaviour of your friends.’
‘So our Paul couldn’t wait, eh?’ said the barrel-chested Percy Spragg, who was still only halfway to the door. ‘I’m not surprised. She’s a right cracker.’
‘Or your relatives,’ added Laurence, not quite softly enough.
‘Go to the car, Dad,’ said Rita.
‘Wants to get rid of me,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Didn’t want me to come.’
‘Dad!’ said Rita, pink spots flaring. ‘The things he says!’
‘Never has welcomed me in her house.’
‘Dad!’
‘Pretends it’s Ted, but Ted’s all right.’
‘Dad!’ said Ted.
‘Come on, Father,’ said Clarrie Spragg.
‘A bit different from our wedding, eh, Clarrie?’ said Percy. ‘July the twenty-first, 1938. Long time ago, i’n’t it?’
‘Jolly well done,’ said Laurence.
‘I never forget the date ’cos it was exactly two months to the day after our Rita was born,’ said Percy.
Rita gasped, and Ted pulled a chair forward. She crumpled into it.
‘Percy!’ said Clarrie. ‘You wicked old man!’
‘I wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t want me out of the way. Come on, Mother.’ Percy lowered his voice to a whisper, discreet for the first time now that it was too late. ‘I need to go.’ Out loud, he added, ‘It’s the only good thing in this bloody awful business of growing old. You don’t have to give a bugger.’
Percy and Clarrie hobbled from the room with agonizing slowness, agonizing to them because of their age and rheumatism and arthritis, agonizing to everyone else for fear that Percy would start up again with further revelations.
Liz flashed Rita a smooth, cool, social, understanding smile, as of one woman to another who is very nearly her equal.
‘There’s no need to look at me like that, Mrs Rodenhurst,’ said Rita.
‘I was smiling, Mrs Simcock,’ said Liz.
‘Well, I don’t need your smiles, thank you very much,’ said Rita. ‘Your family isn’t exactly as pure as the driven snow.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ said Laurence.
‘Well, your daughter’s pregnant on her wedding day,’ said Rita.
‘Your son did have something to do with that,’ said Liz.
‘I hope,’ said Ted.
‘Ted!’ said Rita.
‘Mr Simcock!’ said Laurence.
Elvis Simcock and Simon Rodenhurst entered from the garden.
‘I bet you fifty pounds you never make it as a philosopher,’ Simon was saying. ‘I mean, who ever heard of a famous philosopher called Elvis?’
Elvis didn’t mean to knock Simon out, just to give him a good, hearty biff. But the rising young estate agent, who had also drunk rather more than he should have, fell backwards across the buffet table. He caught his head on the edge of a large plate, which jerked up into the air. Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, slid slowly onto the ground, the upturned plate crashed onto his forehead, and a shower of tuna fish vol-au-vents descended on his inert body.
Rita fainted.
The immaculate Neville Badger entered, complete with hat,
and gazed at the scene with eyes that saw nothing.
‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, and thank you. Sorry if I … it was just too soon. I just couldn’t cope with the sight of so many people enjoying themselves.’
Laurence Rodenhurst felt that it was rather vulgar of a three-star hotel to decorate the walls of its bars with signed photographs of celebrities. He appeared to be looking with extreme disfavour on the smiling face of Terry Wogan, who had signed his picture with the message ‘Super nosh. Pity about the flab. Love – Tel’. But Laurence’s expression might equally have been because he was talking to Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame.
The Angel Hotel stood in Westgate, which sloped gently away from the abbey church towards the westerly loop of the Gadd. Seven building societies, four shoe shops and the great concrete frontage of the Whincliff Shopping Centre had replaced its old town houses. Only the Angel’s long, peeling facade remained to recall the street’s Georgian heyday.
The Angel’s yellowish Georgian facade concealed a crumbling, rambling, heavily altered medieval interior. The Gaiety Bar, whose beamed roof was concealed by plaster except for one small hole, was situated next to the ballroom and was used as a private bar for functions held there. It was just too small to be impressive. The green-and-white striped wallpaper bore the stains of a decade, and there were large damp patches not quite hidden by furniture and radiators. The tables were extremely low, and customers reclined so steeply in the armchairs that their knees were level with the table tops. It was rumoured that the chairs had been designed by the brother of an unscrupulous osteopath. Bar snacks were served in the Gaiety Bar at lunchtimes, although the furniture made it almost impossible to eat them; but perhaps this was the aim, since they were almost inedible. The brown leather upholstery was beginning to burst. Everyone said that the Angel had known better days, though nobody could actually remember them. But it had one great advantage for events such as the
Dentists’ Dinner Dance. There was still nowhere else in the town with a function room of the size required, at least not until the Grand Universal opened.
The standing room around the bar was slowly filling up with dentists and their guests. The men wore lounge suits, the women short dresses. Liz Rodenhurst’s black dress was restrained and bold, simple and revealing, elegant and sexy. Her back and shoulders and, almost certainly, her breasts were tanned.
Laurence had invited his son Simon, Jenny and Paul, Ted and Rita Simcock, and Neville Badger. None of them had yet arrived.
‘In Peru they drink a thing called pisco sour,’ Laurence was telling Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame. Larry Benson was looking everywhere but at Liz’s cleavage.
‘Laurence!’ said Liz. ‘Don’t bore Larry to death over Peru. He hasn’t paid you for his gold bridge yet.’
She moved off energetically.
‘Your wife is stunning,’ said Larry Benson, trying to breathe in her lingering aroma without being seen to do so. He ran a small firm called Kitchen Wonderland. His wonderland was situated between two Indian restaurants, at the wrong end of Commercial Street.
‘Yes,’ said Laurence, whose chosen apéritif that night was gin and tonic. ‘It’s local brandy mixed with lemon juice and beaten white of egg. Surprisingly enough, it’s very good.’
‘She must have been quite a sensation in Peru,’ said Larry Benson, whose tipple was whisky.
‘Yes. Though why I say “surprisingly” I don’t know. They wouldn’t drink it if it wasn’t. Peruvians aren’t daft. Oh Lord, here are Paul’s parents.’
Ted and Rita Simcock approached bravely. They were already aware that they were the only people in the room in evening dress.
‘Oh God, they’re in evening dress!’ said Laurence. He turned towards them, putting on a smooth, false smile.
‘Ted! Rita! Good to see you.’
He introduced them to Larry Benson.
‘I’m sorry, Laurence,’ said Rita, pink spots showing on her cheeks. ‘I feel mortified. Ted said it was evening dress.’
‘Never mind,’ said Laurence. ‘It sometimes is. It’s up to the incumbent dentist. In my presidential year, it
was
evening dress.’
It would have been, thought Ted. ‘Anyway, you both look terribly distinguished.’
Laurence Rodenhurst was lying. Ted always looked like a head waiter in evening dress, and Rita’s long, heavy, dark blue gown hung around her in folds that made her look more curtained than dressed.
‘What did his wife see in him?’ said Larry Benson, the moment Laurence had gone to buy them drinks. ‘She could have had anybody. She’s an amazingly lovely woman.’
‘Is she? I hadn’t really … er …’ For an awful moment Ted thought he was going to blush. He looked round and saw Liz, chatting to Timothy Fincham, president of the area dental association for the year. Helen Fincham was at his side, as always. Ted’s eyes practically popped out of his head at the sight of Liz’s stunning outfit. ‘Yes … I … er … I suppose she … er … are you a dentist, Barry?’
‘Larry. No, I’m in kitchens.’
‘So am I, most of the time,’ said Rita. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m not amazingly lovely.’
There was a pause. Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame, sensed that perhaps he had not been entirely tactful. Ted spent longer studying a smiling photograph of Ian Botham than its message, ‘A smashing evening. Cheers. Ian’, could possibly justify. Rita looked round the room, seeking escape, finding none. Larry Benson seemed on the verge of one or two remarks, only to abandon them. Would it be fanciful to imagine that one of the abandoned remarks had been, ‘But you
are
amazingly lovely, Mrs Simcock’?
At last he hit upon a gem that satisfied him. ‘Are you a dentist, Fred?’ he said.
‘Ted. Oh no, no. I run a little foundry, forge type of effort. You’ve probably heard of us. The Jupiter Foundry.’
‘No,’ said Larry Benson. After another brief pause he added, ‘Well, excuse I. Must go and rescue my lady wife.’
‘Rita!’ said Ted, when Larry Benson had gone.
‘Well! People!’
‘I agree, but … I mean … Rita!’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Rita!!’
‘Is this some memory training like the Americans? Do you keep repeating my name for fear you’ll forget it?’
‘Rita!’
‘Well, you’ve no interest in me.’
‘Rubbish.’ He looked round, and met Liz’s eyes. She winked. He looked away hastily. ‘Absolute rubbish. You’re my wife, Rita.’
‘Precisely. What on earth gave you the idea he’d said evening dress? I feel awful.’
‘Rita! Love! Brazen it out. Show a bit of style.’
‘I haven’t got any style. I don’t like style. I don’t trust style.’
Laurence returned with a whisky and American for Ted, and a gin and tonic for Rita. They raised their glasses in acknowledgement of his generosity, and Ted found his head swivelling in Liz’s direction. It seemed to have developed a life of its own, his head.
Liz blew him a kiss, a very brief kiss, so discreet that he could hardly believe that he hadn’t imagined it, but still a kiss from a dentist’s wife in a bar that contained her husband, his wife, several dentists, and guests from all walks of the town’s professional life. He turned away rapidly, and found Rita looking straight at him. He went cold all over. How much did she know?
‘How’s business, Ted?’ enquired Laurence with no overwhelming curiosity.
‘Oh, absolutely! Absolutely! What? Ah! Oh, it’s beginning to move again. I’m pinning great hopes on our new novelty boot scrapers with the faces of famous prime ministers.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Laurence. ‘That sounds … that
is
new.’
‘I’ve got some in the car, if you’d like to see them.’
‘Well, I’d … but I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘No trouble. I’d like to see what you think.’
Ted rushed out before anybody could dissuade him.
There was a brief, awkward pause.
‘How’s Mother?’ asked Laurence.
‘The doctors seem quite pleased with her,’ said Rita.
‘Jolly good. I was sorry to hear about it.’ There was another pause, mocked by the apparently easy chatter that was welling up all around them. ‘How was the South of France?’
‘Very nice, considering. We only had rain once, but he came out in this terrible prickly heat.’
‘Oh dear! Where?’
‘Well …’ Rita dropped her voice, to make sure that no more dentists would hear her than was absolutely unavoidable. ‘In a rather awkward place.’
‘I meant … in what town?’ Laurence’s face wore a look of faint amusement at the absurdity of all the world except himself.
‘Oh! Avignon. He had to give the bridge a miss.’
There was another pause, in that early evening of pauses.
‘The weather in Peru is usually very predictable,’ said Laurence. ‘It’s dry in the dry season and wet in the wet season.’
‘Well, I suppose it would be.’
‘But, funnily enough, it wasn’t when we were there. It had all gone topsy-turvy.’
‘It’s all these satellites.’
Rita wished she could lose her talent for producing conversation stoppers.
Ted removed his sample case from the boot of his Cavalier 2000 GL, looked round the dark, oily, glassed-in car park of the old coaching inn, and went through the narrow passage that linked it with the. outside world. He stood on the pavement of Westgate, gulping in the comparatively fresh air, less polluted these days – partly because of genuine environmental progress, partly because the bulk of the county’s pollution was exported on the prevailing winds to the lakes and forests of Sweden, and partly because so many of the factories were shut down.
Dusk had descended on Dolcis, and Lotus, and Saxone, and Freeman, Hardy and Willis, and on the marbled facades of the Halifax, Abbey National, Leeds, Harrogate and Wakefield Building Societies, and on the grimy concrete mass of the Whincliff Shopping Centre, and on the offices of the Argus, which had been painted off-white and were now off-off-white, and on all the other buildings of the sloping, curving, once-lovely street.
Three young welders on a pub crawl were hunched against the rising wind as they struggled from The Blue Posts to The Three Tuns, and a coachload of laughing women descended from a blue village bus and made their way arthritically down West Riding Passage to the bingo in the old Regal in Slaughterhouse Lane.
Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, drove his red MGB into the car park of the Angel Hotel, and
didn’t see Ted.
How Ted wished he was spending this evening somewhere unpretentious, like the dear old Crown and Walnut.
He sighed, and returned to the Gaiety Bar.
Perhaps it was because of the extreme discomfort of the chairs, or perhaps it was because of the natural herd instincts of the English, but the gathering throng of dentists and their guests were standing shoulder to shoulder around the bar, as if penned there by an invisible sheepdog.
‘This time last year she would have danced till dawn. She had more energy than anybody.’ The immaculate Neville Badger’s voice cracked. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Neville!’ said Liz.
‘Embarrassing, isn’t it? The man keeps breaking down in public. And him a past captain of the rugby club. Funny how you can never tell the ones with no moral fibre.’
‘Neville! Don’t be absurd.’ Liz kissed him. ‘Dear Neville!’
What on earth was Ted showing her husband, with Rita such an aghast spectator?
‘Other people’s tragedies
are
so desperately boring, aren’t they?’ said Neville Badger.
‘What? Oh, Neville, no! You could never bore me. No, I was just intrigued to know what Ted’s showing Laurence.’
Ted was showing Laurence a boot scraper. There were rungs for scraping boots, and beside them, at one end, the upturned face of Clement Attlee, moulded in lead and ridged for the reception of mud.
‘Clement Attlee,’ said Ted.
‘Amazing,’ said Laurence.
‘Thank you for a great evening – Des,’ said a smiling photograph of Des O’Connor. Nobody could remember ever seeing him in the Angel Hotel, but he must have visited it when appearing at the theatre.
‘You’ve got to have them these days, gimmicks,’ said Ted. ‘I mean … who could resist grinding his boots on the face that nationalized the railways?’
He produced a similar object, with the face of Sir Winston
Churchill complete with lead cigar. Laurence frowned his disap proval of this liberty, but Ted said, ‘It’s got to be bipartisan, has business.’
‘Do you … er … do you have any of the present incumbent?’ asked Laurence.
‘No,’ said Ted. ‘I tried, but the mould cracked.’
Jenny entered. She was wearing a patterned south Indian dress which prettily solved the problem of not outraging the conventions while not conforming to them. She was beginning to show distinct signs of pregnancy, if you looked hard enough, and since she was attractive, people often did. Only that week the manager of Beacock and Larkin’s, gents’ outfitters but a ladies’ man, had placed a hand on her stomach ‘to see if I can feel it moving’, and that hadn’t fooled her, and she had taken her custom elsewhere – to Leonard’s, of Bridge Street, if the truth be known. The custom in question had consisted of a tie for Paul to wear tonight, his only tie having been chewed by the unruly mongrel of some visiting anarchists. And then, after all that, Paul had refused to wear a tie. All in all, the purchase couldn’t be said to have been one of Jenny’s most conspicuous successes.