Authors: David Nobbs
Jenny sat down, scraping her chair along the floor.
‘Yes,’ said Rita. ‘It was … very spectacular, but … not as green as England.’
Jenny looked from one to the other, somewhat astonished.
‘The scenery in Peru is very spectacular,’ said Laurence. ‘Especially the Andes. They’re so …’ He searched for the
mot juste.
‘… high?’ prompted Rita.
‘Exactly! Very high indeed!’
‘Come on, Laurence,’ said Rita. ‘Let’s dance.’
‘Oh!’
Rita practically dragged Laurence onto the floor. Her behaviour shocked Laurence, astounded Jenny, and was quite a surprise to Rita herself. But, appalling as dancing with Laurence was, it was better than enduring conversations like that. And there was something that he had to explain.
‘What do you mean … “Liz is far too much of a snob”?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why say it?’
‘You’re forcing me to spell it out. Ted is not quite her social equal.’
‘He’s got his own business.’ They swung round slowly underneath the Dale Monsal Quartet. Rita had to raise her voice. ‘He employs twenty-two men. He exports to sixty-three countries.’
‘He’s done extremely well for himself,’ said Laurence, ‘but socially, Rita, socially selling door knockers to Arabs hardly compares with being a dentist’s wife. I mean, do you want this affair to last?’
‘Of course not, but I don’t want it not to last because he isn’t good enough for her.’
‘The indestructibility of English snobbery!’
‘The snobbery’s on your side, Laurence.’
‘Without wishing to be snobbish, Rita, I would suggest that you are far more snobbish than me. People who are … “upwardly mobile” … always are.’
Rita didn’t mind these particular pink spots. They were the children of anger, not shame. How typical of those who had never needed to be ‘upwardly mobile’ to mock so ruthlessly, to put the whole concept, which was so desperately important to many people who had a natural wish not to remain at the bottom of any heap if they could avoid it, into patronizing verbal inverted commas.
The music ended. There was applause, momentarily giving Rita the unpleasant feeling that the dancers were applauding Laurence’s remark.
She glared at him. His face was smooth, impassive, cool. She understood why people killed.
‘And now, by popular request,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as a wet Sunday in unlicensed Aberystwyth, ‘we pay a return visit to the rhythmic paradise that is Latin America. Take it away, señors and señoritas.’ (He pronounced them ‘seniors and senior eaters’, turning graceful, dark-skinned dancers into a Darby and Joan hotpot supper.)
The seniors and senior eaters took it away, and Rodney Sillitoe grabbed hold of Rita while she was still staring at Laurence.
‘Oh,’ she gasped.
Rodney was a bull-fighter. Rita was his red rag. The whole of the Dentists’ Dinner Dance was his bull.
Rita squirmed. The more she squirmed, the more she imitated the swirling of a red rag, and the more hugely pleased Rodney was.
It was a very different Rodney Sillitoe who entered the Gaiety Bar three minutes later, when the Latin American music had ended. All the liveliness had gone out of him. The big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens was maudlin and morose.
Betty Sillitoe was talking with Jenny.
‘There she is!’ said Rodney. ‘The girl who once told me I was the Hermann Goering of the British food industry.’
‘Rodney!’ said Betty.
‘No, but I sort of did,’ said Jenny. ‘Oh Lord!’
‘No! Please!’ said Rodney. ‘You did right. A drink for my friend, Eric.’
‘Alec,’ said the dark, intense Alec Skiddaw.
‘Well, just an orange juice,’ said Jenny.
‘And a whisky for me, and a …’
‘… tonic for me,’ said Betty.
‘Tonic??’
‘I’m looking after you.’
Above the bar there was a photograph of a smiling Joan Sutherland, with the message ‘Magnifico! Joan Sutherland’.
‘Typical of an opera singer,’ said Rodney. ‘Always use Italian.
Their own language isn’t good enough for them. Bloody snobs. But you did right, Jenny.’
‘What?’
‘I am Hermann Goering. As I stand here, warm and well fed, but thirsty … hurry up with that whisky … but, apart from that, in the pink, out there, under the stars, except that it’s raining, but you know what I mean, are rows of low huts. Stalag Hen Thirty Two. The battery chicken archipelago. A monument to man’s inhumanity to chicken. Eric, you’re a total idiot, what do you say?’
‘Eighty pee, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw coldly.
‘About my chickens. And where’s my whisky? Don’t you think my chickens lead a dog’s life?’
‘I’m not here to have opinions, sir. I’m just a minion. I’m here to serve.’
‘Well, serve me my whisky, then!’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘I have discretionary powers not to serve those who in my judgement have had enough.’
Rodney Sillitoe gasped.
‘That incident with the Rotarians would never have happened if I’d been on that night,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘That chandelier cost three hundred and forty six pounds.’
‘You mean … we go on living with them as if nothing’s happened?’ After escaping from Rodney, Rita had returned to Laurence’s table. Angry with him she might be, but their fortunes … or misfortunes … were inextricably linked.
‘It’s easy enough, if they’re discreet,’ he said.
‘But I mean … what sort of marriage is that?’
‘The best available under the circumstances.’
‘I can’t live with him … knowing!’
‘Rita! I implore you not to rock the boat.’
‘Maybe they’ve already rocked the boat. They’ve been gone a long time.’
‘You mean … they’re … “at it” now?’ Laurence could hardly bring himself to say ‘at it’. ‘Where?’ A dreadful thought struck him. ‘In your car?’ An even more dreadful thought struck him. ‘In
my
car? Liz wouldn’t.’
‘I mean, maybe they’ve walked out on us.’
‘They wouldn’t. Not tonight. Ted’s my guest!’
‘I agree it would be very rude.’
‘Rude? Unforgivable. Those tickets cost me fourteen pounds fifty.’
‘Laurence!’
‘I know. Extortionate for that rubbish, when you think the wine was extra.’
‘I meant … how can you talk about money at a time like this?’
‘Because now you are imagining things. Liz wouldn’t leave me. Certainly not for … and not tonight. The Dentists’ Dinner Dance is the highlight of my social calendar. She knows that. She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. Would she?’
‘Come on, Jenny,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘We have a job to do.’
‘A job?’
‘You were right. We’re going to let my chickens go free. Woof! Open the doors. All fly away to a better life.’
‘Stop him, Jenny,’ said Betty. ‘He might even do it.’
‘Come on, Jenny,’ said Rodney, clambering off his stool with difficulty. ‘Help me make amends for a wicked life.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m waiting for Paul.’
‘Jenny!’ Rodney put his face close to hers and breathed alcohol fumes over her, as if he thought that might help to persuade her. ‘Jenny! Did Che Guevara say “Sorry, chaps. The revolution’s cancelled. We’ve got visitors.” Did he? He did not!!’ These last words were roared with such ferocity that Larry Benson’s lady wife spilt her sweet martini and made a very unladylike comment.
‘It isn’t the way to do it,’ said Jenny.
‘Oh. What is the way to do it?’
‘Close down the factory.’
Rodney Sillitoe considered this option seriously, head on one side, like a song thrush.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I will. On Monday. Well, not close down. I’ll make umbrellas.’ He peered into Jenny’s face anxiously. ‘You aren’t one of those umbrella liberation people, are you?’ he asked.
The moment Rita entered the car park she knew that their car was gone. She picked her way carefully among the patches of oil, and
stood in the empty space between the Volkswagen Golf and the Rover 3000, as if still refusing to believe the evidence of her eyes. She looked around, as if searching for clues to where they had gone. She felt as if all the blood had been drained out of her body. She couldn’t possibly survive. She wouldn’t possibly have enough strength to remain standing.
She walked slowly back towards the ballroom, surprised to find that life was still going on, surprised to find that her legs still obeyed her.
She would continue to keep up appearances. It was the strongest motivation for survival that she could find.
Rodney Sillitoe seemed to have forgotten the umbrella idea. He was again trying to persuade Jenny to let his chickens out.
‘I can’t take advantage of you in that condition,’ said Jenny.
‘Never mind my condition! What about my chickens? Do they ever get a chance to go to dinner dances and eat frozen people? You’re all talk and no do. You armchair rebels make me sick!’
Jenny burst into tears and rushed out.
‘Rodney!’ said Betty.
‘I know. I’ve made her cry,’ said Rodney. ‘Hermann Goering? More like Adolf Hitler.’
Once again Laurence was alone at his table, on this the highlight of his year. He was the eye of a social cyclone, motionless in the middle of the room, while the Dale Monsal Sound washed all around him, and the buzz of the Dentists’ Dinner Dance rose steadily towards its crescendo. Among the dimly lit tables he was hardly noticed and outwardly he looked serene, as if waiting for a gin and tonic rather than bad news. When Timothy Fincham, hurrying back to Helen, called out breathlessly, ‘Where’s your lovely wife got to?’ he replied with a smile, ‘Just taking a breather.’ This meaningless response satisfied the self-centred oaf! When Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame, said, ‘Chicken was foul, wasn’t it?’ he said, ‘Chicken. Fowl. Very good!’ and laughed as if the mindless berk were Oscar Wilde.
As Rita approached, she gave him a smile which he couldn’t interpret.
‘Our car’s gone,’ she said brightly, as she slid into her seat.
‘Oh my God!’ He clutched at a straw. ‘Maybe they’ve … gone for a drink?’
Laurence couched this in question form to involve Rita in the effort of trying to find it a not totally unconvincing suggestion. She made no effort to oblige.
‘I hardly think so.’
‘Gone for a quick … erm … in some deserted spot?’
Laurence couldn’t hide his distaste as he thought of his wife having a quick … erm … with Ted in the back of a Cavalier 2000 GL on the waste ground beside the canal. But even this disgusting prospect was a palliative to the even more unwelcome possibility which Rita now repeated with apparent calm.
‘I think they’ve left us,’ she said.
‘Oh my God! What are we going to do?’
‘Smile.’
‘What?’
‘Keep up appearances. You said so yourself. At least until we’re sure.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Laurence smiled. It was as surprising as an owl’s grin. ‘This is dreadful.’
‘Yes.’
Rita laughed, a merry little trill that was almost successful.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing. I’m keeping up appearances.’
‘Oh. Right. Well done.’ Laurence chuckled horribly, and switched the chuckle off much too suddenly. It sounded like an aberration in the plumbing. ‘Not being rude, Rita, but I’d have expected you to go completely to pieces.’
‘Thanks,’ said Rita. She almost added, ‘I’m so glad you weren’t being rude.’ She was almost light-headed. Was this hysteria? Hang on, Rita. You never lacked courage. ‘Well, yes, so would I. It’s odd. I’ve spent most of my life dreading the worst. Now that it’s happened … well … it’s odd, but it doesn’t seem quite as … I mean, it does, it’s awful, but … well, I suppose there’s nothing more to fear, and that’s almost a relief. I mean, the world’s still here. We’re still alive.’
‘At least she didn’t take my car,’ said Laurence, as if it were a private thought which he’d said out loud by mistake.
‘I really believe you find that a consolation.’
‘No. No! But it means she may still have some feeling for me. Why, Rita? We were happy. Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. We … existed pretty satisfactorily, on the whole. Rita, she must come back. I can’t face it. The empty house. Telling the family. Facing my friends. The patients. The girls at the surgery. The cleaning lady. All that sympathy. All that pity. All that emptiness. Oh my God.’
‘Keep calm,’ said Rita. She looked round, and gave a short bark of a laugh, like a walrus that has heard a dirty joke.
‘Calm!’ said Laurence. ‘You tell me to keep calm when my wife … it’s my fault. I’ve failed her.’
Rita overcame her natural revulsion, and put a consoling hand on Laurence’s arm.
Jenny, approaching, saw this, looked alarmed, and veered away. They didn’t notice her, but they couldn’t miss Percy Spragg. If Aunt Gladys from Oswestry was a tea-clipper, Rita’s father was an old Thames barge. The wind was failing. Would he make it?