Authors: David Nobbs
‘Betty!’ said Ted, arriving on the scene. ‘You can’t sit here all night by yourself,’ and he led her back to the ballroom.
‘I don’t exist, I suppose,’ grumbled Alec Skiddaw darkly, intensely to nobody in particular, and his boil throbbed indignantly.
Rodney Sillitoe flung himself into the Latin American rhythm with more verve than finesse. Jenny followed more carefully.
Laurence Rodenhurst danced correctly but stiffly, with a self-
satisfied expression as if he thought he was excellent. Liz was going through the motions in a rather perfunctory way, but there was still a hint of distant sexuality, even when she was dancing with her husband.
Neville Badger danced as if he had been dancing with Rita all his life. He smiled warmly. He really was a charming and attractive man. She felt a thrill such as she hadn’t experienced for a long while. ‘I’m still alive,’ she thought, surprised. Once, he squeezed her hand.
Ted resisted Betty Sillitoe’s attempts to get him onto the floor. He watched Liz. Turned away rapidly and watched Rita. Watched Jenny and Rodney Sillitoe. Watched Liz. Turned away rapidly and watched the hot, rhythmic Brazilian movements of the clarinetist’s breasts. It was carnival time in her outsize bra. Turned away rapidly. Watched Liz. Turned away rapidly and smiled uneasily at Betty Sillitoe and Paul. How much did they know?
The applause was enthusiastic, and several middle-aged people were badly out of breath.
‘From Latin America the Dale Monsal Quartet transport you over the Atlantic by magic carpet to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as Ted’s singing in the bath. ‘Take the floor, ladies and gentlemen, for a whiff of old Vienna.’
To Rita’s joy, Neville showed no desire to leave the floor. Rodney appeared happy with Jenny’s company. Even Laurence was happy to remain. He wanted a private chat, and where was safer?
‘Exactly the same thing is happening as at the wedding,’ he said, as the Dale Monsal Quartet attacked the Blue Danube, with very few false notes. ‘Mrs Chicken is desperately trying to make sure Mr Chicken doesn’t drink too much, and she’ll be the one who ends up drunk.’
‘You find people so amusing, observed from a distance, don’t you?’ said Liz. ‘What a pity you don’t like us so much close to.’
‘I do, Liz. It’s just that the Rodenhursts have never found affection easy to express.’
‘Perhaps because you have so little affection to express.’
‘I have feelings, Liz. I just keep them bottled up.’
‘Like chutney.’
‘Exactly. Well, not exactly like chutney, no.’ Laurence felt almost certain that the lady clarinetist had just winked at him. He looked away, and met the eyes of the male, black pianist. And the pianist definitely winked at him! And grinned hugely, with what looked like the joy of being alive. Again, Laurence looked away hurriedly. ‘I’m British, Liz,’ he said. ‘My affection doesn’t come bursting out in great surges.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘You don’t want to get close to me. You want to get close to the toasting fork tycoon. You’re having an affair with him, aren’t you? Don’t answer that! I don’t want to know. Just make sure you’re very, very discreet. And, please, don’t dance with him tonight.’
‘Won’t that be guaranteed to set tongues wagging in this town?’
Laurence considered this, and almost missed a step.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Dance with him once, but don’t hold him too close.’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘But hold him close enough not to arouse suspicions.’
Rodney Sillitoe’s hands as he guided Jenny sedately round the floor were firm, tactful, not a bit naughty. The expression in his eyes was appreciative of her attractions, but not lustful. He seemed to be glad that she was attractive, for Paul’s and the world’s sake. She really didn’t understand it.
‘I just don’t see how a nice man like you can enjoy dancing while you’re keeping thousands of living creatures in conditions that would make a Siberian prison camp seem like a Young Conservatives’ disco,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not when you’ve asked me to dance. But I don’t.’
The music stopped. There was gentle applause.
‘Oh, Jane!’ said Neville Badger.
‘I’m Rita,’ said Rita.
‘Yes. Yes. Of course you are,’ said Neville Badger.
Laurence and Liz and Jenny joined Ted and Paul and Betty Sillitoe at the table. Neville Badger led Rita off for a drink, in case she was upset at being mistaken for Jane. The Dale Monsal Quartet launched themselves into a quickstep.
‘Come on, Paul,’ said Jenny.
‘Leave him alone, Jenny, if he doesn’t want to,’ advised Laurence.
‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘Marriage is a totality of shared experience.’
‘So that’s where I went wrong!’ said Laurence, and he left the table abruptly.
‘Why are my parents so touchy today?’ said Jenny, watching her departing father, wondering. Then she pulled Paul onto the dance floor.
‘Don’t overdo it,’ he said.
‘I’m all right!’ she insisted.
‘I can only do disco dancing,’ he said.
Ted and Liz and Betty Sillitoe watched Paul and Jenny bopping vaguely in a far comer of the floor, hardly moving, holding each other tight, swaying gently.
‘He’s slipped off to the bar. I’m sure of it. Excuse me,’ said Betty, and she slipped off to the bar to see if Rodney had slipped off to the bar, and there were Ted and Liz, secret lovers, alone together in the middle of the crowded, noisy, smoky ballroom.
‘… night-life. Well, he thought it was a bona fido labrador. He never dreamt it was my ex-brother-in-law’s first wife, who’d been on the sauce in Colwyn Bay. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw appeared to have found an unexpectedly good listener in Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. He was getting nearer to telling the whole of his tale without interruption than he had ever been. ‘Then up pipes the tax inspector, doing his amateur ventriloquy, saying to the dog, his then wife, now his ex-wife, “Gelt up, you stupid gitch.” Well …’
‘There you are!’ said Betty Sillitoe. ‘Come on, love. You had an awful lot of wine with the meal. Better give it a rest or you’ll regret it.’ And she led Rodney back into the ballroom to rejoin Timothy and Helen Fincham, their almost-inseparable hosts.
‘I’m just a figment of the imagination, I suppose,’ muttered Alec Skiddaw darkly, intensely.
‘How can you be so sure it’s mine?’ said Ted urgently.
‘Look casual, Ted. People may be watching.’
‘Hell’s bells.’ Ted smiled excessively casually at a passing lady dentist, who almost stopped because she thought she must be supposed to know him. ‘I mean … Liz … how can you be so sure?’
‘There’s nobody else.’
‘What about Laurence?’
‘Laurence and I don’t sleep together any more.’
‘I assumed you … you know … took precautions.’
‘No point if there’s nothing to take them against. You could have, though.’
‘Liz!’ Ted suddenly remembered to smile cheerfully. ‘I don’t go to wedding receptions armed with rubber goods.’ A casual wave to Larry Benson’s lady wife, who was actually no lady. ‘Anyroad, I’d have thought … I mean … that the chances were pretty remote at your age.’
‘Oh thank you!’
‘Oh Lord. Oh heck. Sorry.’ Liz’s face was like thunder. ‘Look casual. Look happy.’
Liz smiled sweetly. ‘What a tactless, uncouth man you are,’ she quipped.
‘No … I meant … you don’t look your age,’ he riposted smilingly. ‘So sometimes I forget how … how you aren’t quite as amazingly young as you seem.’
‘Don’t try to recover,’ said Liz. ‘I like you because you aren’t smooth. I like you for what you are. Your own man. Proud. Rough.’
‘Good Lord. Liz? I suppose you’ve thought of …’ A nod to the Mercers, smile as if not a care in the world. ‘… er … having a … I mean … not having the … er … you know.’
‘Yes. I have. I’ve decided to have the baby. But I absolutely adore York.’
‘What?’ Ted saw Neville Badger and Rita approaching, and understood. ‘Ah! Yes. Right. York. The Minster. The Shambles. Hello, love.’
‘It was rather, wasn’t it?’ said Neville, sinking wearily into a chair with the air of a man who has sunk into many, many chairs in his lifetime. ‘Poor Rodney.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I thought you said the dinner was a shambles.’
‘No. York.’
‘York a shambles? I can’t agree. Delightful city.’
‘No. There’s a street in York called The Shambles.’
‘I know.’
‘I know. I mean, I know that you know. I mean, I assume that you know. Most people do.’
Neville Badger looked bewildered, Ted embarrassed, Rita suspicious, Liz amused.
With one accord Rita and Liz gave Ted a look, indicating that he should dance with Liz. ‘Right,’ he said, and they both gave him another look, indicating that he shouldn’t have acknowledged their first look. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and they both raised their eyes in irritation with him for acknowledging the second look. He was sweating. He was no good at this sort of thing. ‘Liz?’ he said. ‘Are you prepared to brave the perils of my clumsy feet?’
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Liz.
They moved onto the dance floor, and the music stopped.
Liz laughed.
Ted didn’t.
‘Another dance, Neville?’ said Rita. Her boldness surprised her.
‘No. Please. Thank you.’
‘It might help to take you out of yourself.’
‘I don’t want to be taken out of myself. Who’d I be then?’
Rita’s pink spots returned, but Neville Badger didn’t see them. He was already halfway to the bar.
‘It’s worse than being on the telly,’ said Ted.
He was trying to remember the name of the slow foxtrot. They were dancing self-consciously, taking care not to be too near each other, or too far away. Both were aware of Rita, seated alone now, and of Laurence, standing with young Mr Young and old Mr Young and giving them not an inkling of his low opinion of their professional ability. Both knew that Rita and Laurence were watching with eyes like tape measures. Ted remembered the title of the music. It was ‘Embraceable You’. Some chance of embracing.
‘Don’t be grumpy,’ said Liz.
‘I am grumpy,’ he said. ‘Making me make love during the
wedding reception. Choosing just before dinner to tell me you’re pregnant. Constantly referring to pregnant pauses. Blowing me kisses in a crowded bar. You flirt with danger as much as with me. It turns you on.’
‘You turn me on. I’m having your baby.’
‘Oh heck. What are we going to do?’
The Dale Monsal Quartet seemed to be in a trance. Dale Monsal was swaying almost imperceptibly. The black pianist was smiling dreamily to himself. The drummer was glaring. The clarinetist ogled, smiled, simpered, fluttered, and her great breasts bobbed slowly in time with the quietly seductive rhythm, to which more than thirty couples gently moved and slowly sweated.
‘It’s impossible to dance to this music,’ complained Paul, who was disco dancing a couple of feet away from his hot, tired, pregnant, almost immobile and apparently rather worried wife. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
Paul moved closer, and took hold of her. They moved round, very slowly, in each other’s arms.
‘Jenny, there is.’
‘No.’
‘I can tell. Come on! No secrets. A totality of shared experience.’
‘I think my mother and your father are having an affair.’
Paul stood still, thunderstruck, and the managing director of White Rose Carpets Ltd collided with him. Paul was oblivious of this. He was watching Ted and Liz.
‘You shouldn’t have told me,’ he said.
‘Don’t you want me to have your baby?’ said Liz softly.
‘Of course. It’s a great thrill. But.’
‘Ah. “But” again. But what?’
‘Well … I mean … at your …?’
‘… age?’
‘Oh heck. But … I mean … isn’t there? Some risk?’
‘I suppose so.’ Like her daughter, Liz felt that the risks were negligible for Rodenhursts, née Ellsworth-Smythes. ‘I know some people probably think I’m selfish.’ She paused, giving Ted time to
deny this, but he didn’t. ‘But I’ve had two children. Watched them grow up. I couldn’t have an abortion after that. The third child is already real for me. It’s a person.’ She lowered her voice still more. ‘I want your baby.’
‘Well … good. Good. But … I mean … Laurence! … I mean …’
‘Well, obviously I shan’t be able to go on living with Laurence.’
‘No. Quite. Well … good. Good.’
‘Look bright and jolly.’
‘Oh. Yes. Right. Sorry. Oh heck.’
Ted was finding it harder than Liz to seem bright and casual. He found it difficult to believe that the other dancing couples were interested only in each other, and not in them. He wondered if Rita or Laurence could lip-read. The clarinetist was smiling straight at him. He looked away, as if there was a danger of having her baby too. Oh God.