by R J Gould
‘Hello, everyone,’ said Thomas as he and Margaret entered the dining room. ‘There’s a gym and a pool in the hotel. You should have told us, Wayne, we could have had a swim. Lovely facility isn’t it, Margaret?’
‘Yes, lovely.’
They sat down.
Reginald came in and took up his seat between Clarissa and Suzie. Now that they shared a secret they avoided eye contact with him.
The place between Suzie and Carol remained unfilled.
‘Anyone seen Jack?’ Wayne asked.
‘Dead, hopefully,’ Lil suggested.
Everyone - Desserts
With everybody bar one seated the waiter appeared and took orders for tiramisu (five), strawberry cheesecake (three), and fresh fruit salad (two). Carol ordered an extra cheesecake for Jack.
Clarissa conversed with her father – after all, he was paying for the do and was about to get some pretty bad news, so she decided to be charitable. She started with some exaggerated tales about her job. He liked listening to anything to do with work. Then they compared the strengths and weaknesses of the contestants on The Apprentice and made a five-pound bet on who out of their rival candidates would win or stay the longer on the show. Suzie chatted with Carol and Lil, and once again Lil took the opportunity to give an Oscar winning performance in describing the lead up to her trip to New York. Fiona and Henry were talking with enthusiasm, scrutinised by Clarissa for signs of falsehood or friction. Wayne provided Margaret and Thomas with details of his sandwich business and then made tentative plans for him and Clarissa to visit them over Easter.
Desserts were served and gleefully consumed while the guests conversed, Jack’s pristine cheesecake a lonely reminder of the artistic displays that had been presented on over-sized plates with multi-coloured drizzles of something or other.
‘You all sittin’ cosy?’ Jack slurred as he stumbled through the dining room door. ‘Disgrace, you all are ganging up on me.’
‘We’re not ganging up on you, Jack. Don’t be absurd. Sit down and eat your dessert.’
Jack ignored Carol’s request. ‘I don’t deserve this,’ he growled.
Henry got up and walked towards him. ‘Jack, it’s Wayne and Clarissa’s party. I think we should all make it as nice as possible for them and sort out any problems later.’
‘No one’s making it nice for me,’ he uttered as he slumped to the floor.
Henry lifted him back up. ‘I think you need to sit down, let me help you to your chair.’
‘Stand aside, mate. I got me own two feet.’
Henry did so, stepping back onto Reginald’s foot.
‘Leave this to me, will you?’ Reginald ordered. He turned to face Jack. ‘Look here, I’m not going to have you ruin this party. Either behave yourself or leave.’
‘I just want justice, mate.’
‘Don’t call me mate, I’m certainly not your mate. Now I suggest you go.’
Jack had had enough of rejection that day. No man would let him call them mate, and darling wasn’t allowed by the women. The Relate man, this bloke, his young floozy, his own wife, and her daughter. Wayne hadn’t said a word to him either.
‘Are you going to leave or do I have to call someone to escort you out?’
They’d all victimised him. Thomas and his back end of a bus wife. The other day tricked by Shirley and her new bloke with the big dick. Fuck the lot of them.
‘This is your last chance. Go!’ Reginald ordered.
With considerable difficulty due to the impact of alcohol on balance, Jack swung his arm back and flung his fist forward towards Reginald’s undamaged eye. There was a united gasp from the table as the fist connected with a sickening thud and Reginald fell to the floor. Jack tottered then collapsed on top of him.
Wayne and Thomas leapt up to assist Henry as he attempted to pull Jack off of Reginald, though not in time to stop Jack vomiting across poor Reginald’s shirt and tie. In what was to be Suzie’s last act of kindness towards her ex-future husband she lifted his head and cradled it in her remaining functioning arm.
Jack was escorted by Wayne and Thomas to the reception where a taxi was ordered. The manager arrived in the dining room with an ice pack for Reginald. Fiona noticed him smiling as he applied it to Reginald, who was whimpering in pain.
Half an hour later, they were all sitting at the table drinking tea or coffee with the exception of Lil who had left the room and was currently in fits of laughter explaining events to Matt. The New York story was nothing compared to this.
Fortunately, Reginald’s left eye injury was rather different to the right one. The latest impact was lower so the swelling and bleeding was predominantly on the top of his cheek. This enabled him to retain a small amount of vision. Through the one barely functioning eye he saw Wayne rise to his feet just as Lil was returning to the table.
‘Well, everyone, I had planned to say a couple of things, with Clarissa’s permission of course,’ he joked, turning to her and smiling. ‘It’s been quite a day, but we’ve all made it – well, all except one. The main thing I want to tell you is just how much I love Clarissa. I’ll do whatever I can to make her life as happy as possible.’ He got a little round of applause for that. ‘They call it chemistry, don’t they, when two people meet and feel immediately close. We have chemistry all right, from that first moment we’ve had it. All I knew about Clarissa that day was that she worked for a fashion magazine in a pretty plush office. I had no idea what she liked doing, whether she already had a boyfriend, what she wanted out of life. I knew she was a looker, of course.’ There was a titter of laughter. ‘And all she knew about me was that I was a sandwich deliverer. Let’s be truthful, that’s hardly a career that’s going to send a girl wild. On our first date we talked and talked about our lives, I reckon it was about seventy-five per cent Clarissa and twenty-five per cent me doing the talking. Mind you, as Mum and Dad know, even twenty-five per cent of a lot is masses for me. Enough said, really. Rest assured everyone that our lives together are going to be wonderful and you can all look forward to little Clarissas and Waynes running around one day. Not quite yet though.’
Everyone clapped as he sat down. Carol glanced across to Thomas, who was applauding with gusto. He caught her eye and they smiled, one that signified pride at a parenting job well done and a strong surge of mutual respect. Carol put her arm around Lil’s shoulder and gave her a noisy kiss on her cheek. Lil didn’t pull away in embarrassment and disgust, which was a first during her teenage years.
The thoughts and actions of Wayne’s family were disturbed by Clarissa standing up and coughing for attention. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but I want to now. Thank you, Wayne, and I love you very much and promise to make our lives blissful. I know I have my moments of impatience, even anger.’ Her mum was nodding in agreement, bloody cow. ‘But I’m working on them, Wayne, you’ll be pleased to know.’ Fiona applauded – alone. She stopped abruptly. ‘It’s certainly been quite a day, hasn’t it? God, I’ve learnt a lot. Let’s face it, we haven’t had a bundle of role models to base our future on, have we? I think it was Philip Larkin who wrote a poem, not one Henry taught me, I might add. The one about how your mum and dad fuck you up even though they don’t mean to. I used to think that poem was daring but no more than a tease. Now I think it just might be true. Thank you all for joining Wayne and me today and excuse me if I sound like a parent myself, but you all might need to think a little more deeply about how to behave and what you want from your own lives.’
Clarissa sat to somewhat muted applause as the adults in the party did just as she requested. They reflected on their behaviour over the past week or so. They cast their thoughts back to earlier years of wasted opportunities, foiled aspirations, and successes too. With varying degrees of sensitivity each one of the guests possessed a curious mix of pride and disgust, of satisfaction and self-pity.
And then it was back to practical matters, noted by Lil as she stood at reception texting Matt about her desperate need to meet up
that evening. Her mum was clutching a can of oil as she spoke to Thomas and Margaret.
‘Let’s all get a taxi back to the car and then I can drive you to Guildford Station.’
‘No, we can’t have you doing that, can we, Thomas? It’s far too much trouble.’
‘It’d be a pleasure, it’s hardly out of me way.’
‘And I could help check the car,’ Thomas suggested.
Lil looked across at Suzie, who was leading a distressed Reginald across the lobby. ‘But why, Suzie?’ he pleaded.
‘I’m not up to discussing why, Reginald, but you have two choices. I either stay overnight to help you get the car repaired tomorrow and sleep in a separate bedroom or else I get in the taxi with Fiona and Henry and head off home now.’
‘Taxi’s here,’ Henry called out from the hotel entrance. He looked across at Suzie. ‘Are you coming with us?’
Carol, Thomas, and Margaret approached Lil. ‘Your dad’s invited us to visit him and Margaret. Isn’t that nice?’
Lil hit send. She didn’t like to admit it but Clarissa was dead right. They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
Women’s Contemporary Fiction
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Published by Accent Press Ltd 2015
ISBN 9781783756858
Copyright © R J Gould 2015
The right of R J Gould to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN