A Bit of a Do (7 page)

‘Mum!’

Paul put an arm round his mother, and even the cynical Elvis sat on the other side of her and put an arm round her too, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last had any physical contact with Elvis.

‘
I
like you, Mum,’ said Paul, and he kissed her. ‘I love you.’

‘We both love you,’ said Elvis, and he too kissed her. ‘You just drive us up the wall, that’s all.’

As soon as the lovely bride saw Paul’s face, she detached herself from her friends and came to meet him. ‘What on earth is it?’ she said.

‘Our two families. It really pisses me off. Mum’s got the idea that they aren’t hitting it off. And she’s right, isn’t she?’

‘Oh God,’ said Jenny. ‘Bloody families.’ She was still holding the train of her dress, even though it had been torn and stained during the chase along the hotel drive. ‘It’s supposed to be our great day and here we are having to hold a summit conference.’ And indeed, as their reception swirled noisily around them, the young couple in the middle of the now untidily elegant Garden Room did look as if they were bowed down by the responsibilities of high office. ‘We’ve got to do something about it, for our own sakes if not for theirs. I will not start my married life under a cloud. Look, you get my father to talk to your mum. I’ll work on your dad and my mum.’ Despite her politics, Jenny still found it difficult to refer to her father as ‘dad’, except to his face where she was encouraged by her knowledge of how much it irritated him.

‘Right,’ said Paul. He looked nervously across at Laurence, who was nodding and smiling at what looked like a very boring story. ‘Oh heck.’

As soon as Laurence broke away – who else but his gynaecological brother would even know three jokes about hysterectomies, let alone tell all three, in swift succession, at a wedding reception? – Paul approached him, trying to think of an opening gambit.

‘Hello,’ he said, in the absence of any greater inspiration.

‘Hello, Paul.’

No help there.

‘Hello.’ Pause. Can’t go on saying ‘hello’ for ever. ‘Er … will you do something for me?’

‘Of course!’ Unwise. Qualify it rapidly. ‘If I can, that is. What … er … what is it you want me to do?’

‘Mum.’

Total blankness.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mum. She’s a bit upset.’

‘Oh. “Mum”! Upset?’

‘Yes. You know, losing a son, all that. You know my mum. Well, no, you don’t, but … you know.’

‘You’d like me to have a little chat with her?’

‘Well … yes … if you could. Now that we’re related. She’s … er … not always that good with people. You know. So, if you could sort of … you know … without her knowing that … you know … that’d be great.’

‘Fine. Fine. Well … fine. Yes. I’ll just top up my glass and … er … steam in. Yes.’

Jenny had to wait for her chance to talk to Ted. He was being buttonholed by Elvis. They were standing in front of the buffet, blocking access to the plate of tuna fish vol-au-vents, but nobody seemed to mind.

‘Dad?’ Elvis was saying. ‘What would you do if I said that I’d like a job at the foundry? I mean, it’s a hypothetical question.’

‘Of course. Well, I’d say “Oh ho! We’ve changed our tune a bit, haven’t we?”’

‘Supposing I said, “Yes, I admit it. I have. I realize now that toasting forks have their place in the scheme of things. Mankind needs door knockers as well as linguistic analysis.”’

‘Well … I’d … I’d say the same thing as I said to our Paul. I’d say … “You’ll respect yourself more if you can make your own way in the world.” So, it’s lucky the question’s hypothetical, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes, it is. Very lucky.’

Elvis went off to insult Simon Rodenhurst, but before Jenny could steam in, Ted had seen Neville Badger looking lost, and had steamed in on him.

‘There’s no need to bother with me, you know,’ was Neville’s
encouraging opening gambit.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I shouldn’t have come. People disappear when I approach them. They form groups to exclude me.’

‘Surely not? This is England. This is Yorkshire.’

‘Oh, I don’t blame them. They aren’t being callous. They just can’t cope. Oh God, here comes poor Neville who talks about his dead wife and has tears in his eyes. You’d think a solicitor would know that grown men don’t cry. It’s so embarrassing.’

‘Neville!’

‘She’d have loved this day. She adored Jenny.’

‘What can I say?’

‘Precisely. Leave me be, Ted. I’m a ship without a rudder, drifting on a cold grey sea.’

‘Exactly! So you’re the very man.’

‘What?’

‘I know a harbour where there’s a peeling old houseboat that could do with a lick of paint.’

‘Peeling old houseboat?’

‘My wife. She’s in the garden. She’s finding this difficult too. Would it be too much trouble for you to …?’

‘… bring my charm to bear? Why not? There’ll be some point in my existing for ten minutes or so.’

‘Take her some tuna fish vol-au-vents. She loves them.’

‘Right. I’ll just top up my glass and … steam in.’

Neville Badger turned away to collect his cargo of vol-au-vents, and Jenny bore down on Ted.

‘Hello, Jenny!’ said Ted with an exclamation mark in his voice which meant, ‘How lovely you still look.’

‘I’d like to feel that our two families can be friends,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh, so would I. Very much so.
Very
much so.’

‘Go and talk to Mum. I’d like you to get to know her better.’

‘Bloody hell. I mean …’

‘Please! She won’t eat you.’

‘Possibly not.’

‘If only you’d give her a chance, I’m sure you’d get on. She isn’t too bad.’

‘No, I … er … I’m sure she … well … right … yes … OK … I’ll … I’ll give her a chance, Jenny.’

Jenny led Ted over to Liz, who was at one of the windows, admiring the peacocks with Laurence’s Aunt Gladys from Oswestry.

‘Such stylish birds,’ Aunt Gladys was saying. ‘They quite put some people to shame.’

‘Do you mind if I borrow Mum, Auntie Gladys?’ said Jenny.

‘You may borrow your mother,’ said Aunt Gladys. ‘But I do hate to hear you call her “Mum”.’

Aunt Gladys sailed away, an old tea-clipper, splendid and obsolete. She had found an artificial pearl in her portion of cake, and Liz had felt that her outrage was almost as much because it wasn’t real as because it shouldn’t have been there at all.

‘Mum?’ said Jenny. ‘I want you and Ted to be friends.’

‘Oh! Well, that’s nice.’ Liz’s eyes met Ted’s briefly. Neither dared hold the look for long. ‘That’s very nice. Well … I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to be friends, do you, Ted?’

‘No. No, I don’t. No … I don’t see why we … er … shouldn’t try and be friends at all.’

‘Good.’ Jenny moved off, with the satisfaction of a job well done.

‘If she knew,’ said Liz.

‘I know. I feel terrible,’ said Ted.

‘Oh Lord. You don’t suffer from post-coital depression, do you?’

‘Liz! Please! I mean … really! Liz!’

‘Do you want to forget it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again?’

‘You know I don’t.’

‘Well, then. Nobody’s suffered. Nobody knows.’

‘I think Laurence suspects.’

‘Well, yes, possibly. But Laurence and I have an arrangement. I do what I want, provided I’m reasonably discreet, and he doesn’t do anything.’

Ted looked round nervously. Nobody was listening. ‘Liz!’ he said. ‘I don’t regard what we did today as reasonably discreet. I’m out of my depth.’

‘You’re going to find that you’re a better swimmer than you ever believed,’ said the bride’s mother.

‘Oh heck,’ said her new lover, who had so recently promised himself that he would give her up.

The glider was barely more than a speck now, the same size as the kestrel that was hovering above the grounds in the gentle but freshening breeze.

Rita still sat in her comer, behind the urns, beside the hydrangea, protected from the breeze by the mellow brick wall, recently rather untidily repointed by employees of J. G. Frodsham and Nephew.

‘Hello! There you are!’ said Laurence, as if he’d been hunting for her for hours.

‘Yes. Here I am. Hello.’

Rita made an effort, and smiled. Despite her smile, Laurence sat beside her and rested his arm on the bench behind her, as if to suggest that, had the back of the bench not been there, he would have embraced her actual flesh.

‘You know, Rita, you and I have a lot in common,’ he said.

‘How do you make that out?’

‘Well … I may seem to you to be the happy professional man … successful society dentist, lovely house, beautiful wife, two highly satisfactory children, suave, good-looking, confident. Actually I’m a seething mass of doubts and inadequacies.’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m a seething mass of doubts and inadequacies?’

‘No! Good heavens, no!’

‘Well, why do you say we have a lot in common, then?’

The breeze brought the first faint smell of tomorrow’s rain over the warm, walled garden, stirring the shrubs. The symmetrical elegance of the place was defiled by abandoned plates, with dollops of wasted pilchard mousse and mayonnaise.

‘Why on earth should anybody think you aren’t good with people?’ said Laurence.

‘Who told you that?’ said Rita. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Laurence. The faint gleam in Rita’s eyes disconcerted him, and the knowledge that it was there surprised her. It was a faint indication that somewhere, beneath all the anxiety, there still remained vestiges of a sense of humour, that all might not yet be completely lost in the fragile, never-to-be-repeated adventure that was Rita Simcock’s brief life on earth.

‘People are being sent out in streams to see if I’m all right,’ she
said. ‘It’s very worrying.’

‘Aren’t you going to come in? It’s cooling down.’

‘In a minute. Now, please, Laurence, leave me alone.’

‘Right. Right.’

And Laurence Rodenhurst returned to the Garden Room, not feeling quite as suave and confident as he had when he came out.

And Rita sighed with relief and stretched out her tense legs in her quiet arbour.

Enter the immaculate Neville Badger, bearing tuna fish vol-au-vents.

‘Ah! There you are,’ he said, as if he had been hunting for her for hours.

‘All right,’ said Rita. ‘Who sent you?’

At the very moment when Rita said, ‘Who sent you?’ Eva Blumenthal, in room 109, was gently rubbing unsalted Welsh butter over the genitals of her husband Fritz, in an effort to alleviate the com chandler’s pain. In the Garden Room, exactly below this touching scene, Jenny was telling her young husband that she felt sick.

‘I thought it was only in the mornings,’ said Paul.

‘It’s the tension,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve let the baby down, pretending it doesn’t exist. Who knows what insecurities that may lead to? The science of the unborn baby is in its infancy.’

‘Love!’ said her husband of more than three hours. ‘Love!’

‘I think I might be going to
be
sick.’

‘Well, walk out calmly. Look natural.’

‘“What
will
they think?”’

‘What?’

‘They say as men get older they start to resemble their mothers.’

‘That’s a dreadful thing to say.’

Paul walked off in a huff, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Neville Badger entered from the garden, with his plate of tuna fish vol-au-vents. He saw Jenny walking slowly away from the buffet, trying to look calm and natural while feeling sick. Suddenly it became absurdly important to him that he shouldn’t be entirely defeated in his efforts to get rid of the vol-au-vents. He hurried over to her.

‘Jenny!’ he said. ‘Have a tuna fish vol-au-vent.’

She gasped, clasped her hand over her mouth, and rushed out.

Neville Badger stared after her.

Paul rushed past.

‘Paul! Have a …’

‘Sorry,’ said Paul, stopping briefly, out of politeness. ‘It
was
a dreadful thing to say, but it was dreadful of me to say that it was a dreadful thing to say. I mean, in her condition. I mean, on her wedding day. Well, our wedding day.’ Paul felt that this explanation discharged his social obligation to Neville Badger, and hurried off after Jenny.

Neville stared after him.

Ted approached. ‘Any luck with Rita?’ he enquired.

‘No,’ said Neville. ‘Sorry. Have a tuna fish vol-au-vent.’

‘Thanks.’ Ted took a vol-au-vent.

‘Tut tut!’ said Laurence, hurrying forward to snatch the pastry case out of Ted’s hand before he could put it in his mouth. ‘Tut tut! You mustn’t eat that. You’re allergic.’

Laurence put the tired little delicacy back on Neville Badger’s plate, and his eyes met Ted’s.