Authors: David Nobbs
‘Elvis?’ said Jenny. ‘Have you met my brother Simon?’
‘No. That’s one of the many pleasures I’ve missed out on so far,’ said Elvis Simcock, and his ‘hello’ to Simon Rodenhurst was barely more than a grunt.
‘OK. Big smiles. Bags of brotherly love,’ said Nigel Thick.
Paul’s and Jenny’s smiles were a bit strained. Simon’s was perfectly judged. The cynical Elvis’s was grotesque, way over the top, a grinning fiend.
‘Amazing!’ said Nigel Thick, with more than his customary accuracy. He took pictures of the four proud parents with the happy couple, of the happy couple with the two bridesmaids, of the two bridesmaids together, of the very young bridesmaid on her own and therefore also inevitably of the very fat bridesmaid on her own, of the bride on her own and therefore also inevitably of the
groom on his own, of the proud parents and the happy couple with Rita’s parents. Ted’s parents and Laurence’s parents were dead, and Liz’s widowed mother had remarried, lived in South Africa, and had been advised by her doctor not to travel.
Finally, Nigel Thick took pictures of all the guests, clustered round the great doorway in an amorphous throng. This picture offended his artistic sensibilities, but pleased his commercial instincts. It was ghastly, but everyone in it would buy a copy.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Say cheese.’
‘Cheese,’ said everybody except Laurence and Ted. Laurence said nothing. Ted said ‘fromage’. There was a little laughter, but not enough.
‘Great!’ said the carefully classless Nigel Thick. ‘Tremendous. Terrific. Marvellous. Fantastic. Fantabulous.’
The less-favoured guests began to move away, through narrow, unlovely streets of domestic brick, municipal stone and financial concrete, towards the drizzle-stained multistorey car park, which sat on the town like a stranded, truncated liner. On their left, in the bus station, laden shoppers clambered onto local buses bound for Bradeley Bottom, Upper Mill and Knapperley. Servicemen and girls with green hair sat in half-empty buses bound for York, Leeds, Wakefield, Goole, Doncaster, Wetherby, Selby and Hull. Beyond the bus station, in the cattle market, the last few cattle were waiting to be sold, like unattractive boy evacuees left till last in church halls. Old chip bags and empty packets of salt and vinegar-flavoured crisps bowled along the pavements in the fresh breeze. The town smelt of salt and vinegar and stale beer. The wedding guests felt out of place, and hurried to their cars.
The close relatives drifted slowly along the broad path between the graves, towards Tannergate, where shoppers gawped, and the beribboned limousines waited.
‘Made an assignation with him yet?’ said Laurence Rodenhurst under his breath.
‘What?’ said his wife Liz. ‘With whom?’
‘“With whom?” she says, grammatical even under attack. With the toasting fork tycoon. The knight of the companion set. Well, he’s your type, isn’t he? He has that rough, coarse quality that you regularly mistake for manly strength. I saw you looking at him!
Just don’t let me catch you doing anything more than look at him, that’s all.’
‘Oh dear! What would you do if I did? Tear up a paper napkin?’
And, equally sotto voce, as they too walked away between the graves, the Simcock parents sparred.
‘Why did you have to say “fromage”?’
‘People laughed.’
‘Out of pity and embarrassment. Why do you have to ruin the greatest day of my life?’
‘I thought our wedding was supposed to be the greatest day of your life.’
‘It was supposed to be.’
After walking away from Ted in anger, Rita found herself on her own. That was bad. Then Laurence approached her. That was worse.
There was absolutely nothing to say.
‘How old is your father?’ said Laurence at last.
‘Seventy-eight.’
‘Is he really?’ He paused. ‘Is he really? Well done.’ Another pause. ‘Well done indeed.’
Meaningless social noises. Nervous spasms expressed in words. Then silence.
Ted and Liz were following more slowly. Their words were overflowing with meaning.
‘I want you,’ said Liz in a low voice.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ted.
‘I ache for your body.’
‘Oh heck.’
‘We’ll see you at the hotel, then,’ said Paul, when all four parents had at last arrived at the cars.
Ted kissed the radiant bride. ‘You look a picture, love,’ he said. ‘A picture.’
This time, Rita found it impossible to hide her irritation.
The reception was held in the Garden Room of the Clissold Lodge
Hotel. There were two three-star hotels in the town. The Clissold Lodge belonged to Superior Hotels Ltd, who stood for quality. The Angel belonged to Quality Hotels Ltd, who stood for almost anything. The Clissold Lodge was therefore, at least until the Grand Universal opened, the best hotel in town. It was a late Georgian pile of no great beauty, a forbidding mass of darkening red brick, set in its own spacious grounds on the northern edge of the town. It had been erected by Amos Clissold, who made a fortune out of glue. His advertising slogan ‘Ee! Buy gum! Buy Clissold’s’ hadn’t changed for a hundred and twenty years. But after four generations of glue tycoons the dynasty had dissolved, other men had taken over the glue factory, and the Estate had sold the house.
The Garden Room was round the back. It was pleasant, spacious, dignified. French windows led out into its own private, walled garden, so that, when the sun shone, functions could be held indoors and out. And now the sun was shining quite warmly. Well, it would for the Rodenhursts, thought Ted.
There was a splendid-looking buffet down one wall, with a turreted three-tiered cake, and at the far end from the French windows there was another table with champagne bottles and glasses. The two waitresses wore smart black-and-white outfits. Paul and Jenny wondered how much, or rather how little, they were being paid.
Ted’s plate was laden with pork pie, tiny sausage rolls, hard-boiled egg with Danish lump-fish roe, potato salad, Russian salad, tuna fish vol-au-vents, quiche lorraine, pilchard mousse, cottage cheese and anchovy savoury, and a frozen prawn and tinned asparagus tartlet. The buffet was perhaps not quite as magnificent as it looked, he thought, with gastronomic sorrow and social pleasure. He approached the immaculate Neville Badger, who was looking somewhat lost as he wrestled with a glass of champagne, a plate of canapés, and his grief.
‘I … er … I do hope my wife didn’t upset you earlier,’ said Ted.
‘No! Not at all!’ said Neville Badger.
‘I mean … she isn’t the greatest one in the world for saying the right thing.’
‘No, no. I assure you. No problem.’
‘Are there many Badgers left at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger?’
‘No. Only me. My brother’s in finance in Leeds, and …’ Neville stopped, as if either the subject, or he, or perhaps both were exhausted.
‘Your own children haven’t followed you?’ Ted asked.
‘No … I … we couldn’t have children. Oh Lord. Excuse me.’
Neville Badger hurried off. Liz Rodenhurst approached the dumbfounded Ted.
‘You look so lost, so uncouth,’ she said admiringly.
‘Well … thank you.’ Ted accepted the compliment doubtfully. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, as Jenny walked radiantly past them, bearing plates of food for a group of friends by the French windows.
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘She’s attractive. That’s very different. But not beautiful. Except perhaps today.’
‘I can see where she gets it from,’ said Ted. ‘Being attractive, I mean, not being not beautiful.’
‘Thank you. I think.’
‘Liz?’ Ted paused until the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood had passed rather fiercely by, en route to do his duty by talking to Rita’s parents, who were perched on chairs beside the fire extinguisher like wallflowers at a dance. Ted didn’t want the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood to hear what he had to say. On the other hand, he didn’t want to delay too long, in case Rita came in from the garden. ‘Liz? What you said earlier. I mean, wasn’t it? A bit naughty. I mean … words … they needn’t mean much, but they can be … you know … I mean, can’t they? … Disturbing. Dangerous.’
‘Do you really think my words don’t mean much?’ said Liz. ‘Surely they aren’t a total surprise?’
‘Well … no … I suppose I’ve realized for quite a while that you were … er …’
‘… aflame with sexual hunger.’
‘Yes. No!!! I mean … Liz! … really!’ He glanced round the crowded, buzzing room. Nobody seemed to be listening to them. ‘I knew you were … not unattracted. I sensed you didn’t find me repulsive.’
‘I sense you don’t find me repulsive either.’
‘Well … no … I don’t. Of course I don’t. I mean … you aren’t. Have you tried the tuna fish vol-au-vents? They’re delicious.’
Ted thrust his plate in front of Liz’s nose – her exquisite nose, with those delicately flared nostrils that troubled him so deeply. As a diversion, the plate was a failure. ‘Don’t you want me?’ said Liz, spurning the proffered delicacies.
‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Of course I do, Liz. But.’
He turned abruptly, wriggling to get away with all the desperation of one of the nice, fat roach that he hoped to catch in the autumn competition on the so-called Wisbech trip, when they actually fished the straight, flat Ouse, miles from anywhere. How he wished it was the Wisbech trip today. The long coach ride south, to the flat, fertile Fens. The long, silent hours by the Ouse, under the wide sky. The long coach ride home. Good company. Good fishing. Good ale. Good singing on the coach. He even wished he were at home, at the sink, washing up. Washing up was an underrated pleasure. Not as exciting as sex, but infinitely safer.
He hadn’t shaken Liz off. Realizing that she was following him, realizing how revealing that would be to anybody who suspected, he felt that he had no alternative but to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to get away. He turned to face his tormentor.
‘What do you mean, “but”?’ said Liz. ‘You can’t just say “but” and walk off. It’s unacceptable behaviour both socially and grammatically.’
‘I suppose I meant … oh heck … that this is awful.’
‘Awful? It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. I’m alive again.’
‘Oh yes, I agree. Absolutely. It’s very exciting. It’s absolutely wonderful. But.’
‘… it’s awful?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Ted. Poor poor Ted.’
Liz walked away, leaving him stranded. He bit altogether too ambitiously into a hard-boiled egg, and almost choked.
‘But you promised, Paul. And I mean … what must they think?’
‘That’s it, isn’t it? Never mind the greatest emotional commitment
I’ll ever make in my life. Just the parrot-cry of the narrow-minded. “What must they think?”’
They were seated, Paul and his mother, in an alcove in the man-made walled garden. It was a pleasant place of bricked paths and patios, studded with benches and urns. In the centre there was a small, round pond, in which silver carp held an eternal buffet among the water lilies, bladderwort and floating hyacinths. There were arches across which climbing roses had been trained. The clematis were in flower, and in a sheltered corner there was a fig tree, spreading its branches widely but producing only tiny fruit, most of which would drop off before they ripened. Perhaps it was no wonder, in this northern climate hostile to ripening figs, if Rita’s emotional juices had dried out as her hair thinned and grew lifeless, and the worry lines deepened. The peace and calm of this garden couldn’t reach her. It was always November, now, in Rita’s garden.
‘You don’t understand the way their minds work,’ she said. ‘They look down on us. We’re trade. They’re professions. In his own mind, he’s practically on a par with doctors, that one.’
‘In Bolivia, Mum, they have sixty-five per cent infant mortality,’ said the lucky groom with restrained fury. ‘The average life expectancy of the tin miners is thirty-seven. The typical diet is boiled maize, followed, if they’re very lucky, by more boiled maize. Extra boiled maize as a treat at Christmas. So I honestly don’t think my having my hair cut matters very much.’
‘Exactly!’ Rita was briefly triumphant. ‘So it’s not much to ask to have it done, then, is it?’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Paul, leaping to his feet. ‘All right, then. See you later.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘That new unisex place in Newbaldgate.’
‘Paul! Not now! You’re the groom.’
‘So?’
‘Nobody goes for a haircut during their wedding reception.’
‘Then it’s time to break the mould of British social behaviour. I mean I pay my mother the compliment of assuming that she wouldn’t set out to spoil my wedding reception unless she felt that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. So, I shall have a haircut. I don’t want to start me honeymoon riddled with guilt. It
might make me impotent. Then they will laugh at me.’
‘There’s no need to be disgusting!’
But Paul had gone in, through the French windows. He walked straight through his wedding reception, through the public rooms of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, down the wide steps, along the semicircular drive, past the rhododendrons and the cawing rooks in the long, narrow wood that screened the grounds from the Tadcaster Road, and out onto the surprisingly warm pavements of the outside world. He hopped onto a number eight bus, and was at the unisex hairdresser’s before the last of his anger had drained away, and he began to wish that he hadn’t gone there.