by David Nobbs
It’s even more ironic really. Irritation causes Olive to walk out of the lounge faster than usual just as the opposite emotion, satisfaction, causes Arnold to walk into the lounge faster than usual. The resultant collision is dreadful to behold. Luckily, perhaps, there is nobody there to behold it.
The tray hits Arnold’s stomach like a heavyweight boxer’s low punch, winding him utterly, and the impact pushes the other end of the tray into Olive’s stomach, winding her utterly. The tray slips to the ground between them. They both instinctively lean forward in their search for breath, and there is a clash of heads. They both end up on the floor, seriously shocked.
Slowly, carefully, they try to stand, and find to their surprise that they can. They move their arms and legs about, testing them gingerly, and it seems as if nothing is broken, though there will be bruising on both their bodies, and there are squashed pieces of lemon drizzle cake and dregs of coffee on Olive’s new carpet.
Arnold now decides to be gallant and help clean Olive’s new carpet. Unfortunately Olive decides to clean the carpet at the same moment, and their heads clash again. They reel away. This time neither actually falls. They bend, more carefully, and busy themselves removing the lemon drizzle cake and broken china. Olive will clean the coffee stains in a moment.
As they finish removing the bits, they find themselves kneeling with their faces in close proximity, in a proximity greater than they have been since a memorable kiss inspired on a fine summer’s day almost fifty years ago by the superb views from the top of the Malvern Hills. Today there is no such inspiration. A kiss close to a new carpet that still smells of newness in a rather ordinary lounge to the noise of an April shower containing not a little hail banging against the immaculate Gothic windows of a semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac in the Pennines cannot be compared to the charms of the Malvern Hills, which once inspired Edward Elgar no less. Had Elgar lived in the cul-de-sac, what a loss it would have been to British music.
We have observed how easily cosy little routines can develop between people under unusual and temporary circumstances. Olive and Arnold have got into quite such a cosy little routine since Harry and Jill have gone away. Olive has invited Arnold round for coffee every morning at around eleven o’clock, and afterwards has said, ‘Won’t you stay for a spot of lunch now you’re here?’ Arnold has replied, invariably, ‘Well, I won’t say no.’ Olive hasn’t thought she was being at all forward in interpreting this as a yes, and there have followed meal after meal of a pleasant and traditional nature. You will be relieved – perhaps even mightily relieved – to learn that in his comments on Olive’s efforts, Arnold has shown a little more inventiveness than he had in accepting the offer of lunch in the first place. His responses have included ‘That’s my kind of food, Olive,’ ‘Thank you. Most palatable,’ ‘Thank you. I won’t need to eat again until this evening,’ and ‘That’s what I call a lunch.’ Not all his comments have reached those heights, but you get the idea.
This morning is no exception. The unfortunate collision makes no difference. The offer comes as usual, and is accepted as usual. One needn’t read too much into this routine. Arnold was utterly unable to feed himself, having never lifted a finger to do so in his life, and Olive was happy to be able to satisfy a man with her cooking as opposed to thinking that every day her husband was wishing that she was a more adventurous cook. On none of those occasions had any physical contact whatsoever taken place between them, not a kiss, not a hug, not even a handshake. Now all that has changed. They still haven’t kissed, nobody has ever called them fast workers. But a moment has occurred, they have come very close indeed to a kiss, and it seems reasonable to assume that it has led them to remembering past kisses and to thinking of the possibility of future embraces.
Certainly, at the end of this meal, if Harry and Jill were to hear the final exchange between Arnold and Olive, they might have been at least a little bit alarmed.
Arnold sighs, and says, ‘Well, I must get back to my book. I’m writing about how changes in the pattern of national tastes affected the cake factory, and it’s proving a bit sticky.’
‘You’ll sort it out, clever old you,’ says Olive.
‘Less of the “old” if you don’t mind,’ is Arnold’s light-hearted riposte, and then he stands up. ‘Thank you, Olive,’ he says. ‘That was delicious.’
Olive is amazed, almost overwhelmed, by his uncharacteristically enthusiastic adjective.
It’s perhaps fortunate that Harry and Jill will soon be home.
It’s twenty-five past one. Sunshine floods Marigold Boyce-Willoughby’s large modern kitchen, so at odds with the early Victorian elegance of the cul-de-sac. She looks up from the fridge, where she has been hunting for something that she would like to eat, and failing to find anything. She goes to the window, and looks out. She sees that there is quite an extent of blue sky. She realizes how lonely she is without a man. But a man is the last thing she wants. She has, in that unfortunate phrase of hers, had men up to here. She checks on the sky once more. There might just be time for her to get to the pub on time before the next shower. She needs the pub. She’s a social animal.
She adjusts her make-up hastily, and steps out into the cul-de-sac. It’s colder than she expected. Somehow it is always colder than she expects, in Potherthwaite.
Arnold Buss emerges from the Pattersons’ house, and raises his hat to her. He’s the only man in Potherthwaite who ever raises his hat. This isn’t because he’s more polite than other men. He’s the only man in Potherthwaite who wears a hat.
‘Good afternoon, Marigold,’ he calls. ‘Just popped in to Olive’s for an early lunch. Can’t boil an egg. She’s seeing me through till Jill gets back. Can’t wait. Good to see you. Are you well?’
‘Very,’ says Marigold. ‘While you and Olive are on your own, as it were, Arnold, how about a lunch with me and Sally at the Weavers’ on Thursday, when it’s the Pensioners’ Offer? Not that I’m a pensioner, of course.’
‘I’ll say you aren’t,’ ‘Marigold, the very thought, you won’t be a pensioner for decades,’ ‘You’ll never be a pensioner, in my book,’ and ‘You’ll look as lovely as you do today when you are one’ are just four of the things that Arnold doesn’t say. What he does say is, ‘You should try Olive’s plum chutney some time.’
Marigold is not detained by any urge to discuss Olive’s plum chutney. She can see a cloud on the horizon. She marches on, resolving to get to the pub before the next shower, resolving also to leave this town sooner rather than later. She speeds up. The Weavers’ serves till two, they say, but they have a way of making you feel rather guilty if you order after one forty-five.
She approaches the Weavers’ and suddenly she can’t go in. She can’t face the ladies who lunch. She can’t face the way they’ll smile, seeing her lunching on her own. No, she’ll go to the Dog and Duck. That’s a proper pub. That was where she used to go to drag Timothy home for his tea. He loathed her calling it ‘tea’, which of course was why she did it.
She enters the pub, and it’s like walking into a time warp. They’re all still there. The landlord calls them ‘The Lunchtime Heroes’, henpecked at home, giants in the pub at lunchtime. There’s David Fenton, the estate agent and the nearest thing Potherthwaite has to a really attractive man, which, to be brutally honest, is not very near, this isn’t Italy. There’s Ian Mallet, who ascribes his relative lack of success as an analyst to that chunky, plain, aggressive, physical, British name – Mallet – and whose wife’s nerves were such a very bad advertisement for his psychiatric skills. There’s Mick Webster from the travel agency ‘Unravel Your Travel’. Good place to have a travel business, Potherthwaite. Everyone wanted to get out.
There’s even a detectable gap where Timothy used to stand, as if her husband is still present even in his absence.
There’s a little chorus of greetings from the bored trio. All the words come out to her as if just one person is speaking. All the voices sound the same. ‘Well, hello stranger wh
ere have you been good to see you we’ve missed you look we’re all still here what’s it to be the usual G and T ice and a slice?’
The usual. G and T. Ice and a slice. Or the Pinot Grigio that wasn’t quite good enough. She can’t bear the thought. She can’t even be bothered to have a little private bet on which man will touch her first.
She can’t join them.
She can’t sit on her own, they would be furious. She would never live it down.
She does something that she has never felt comfortable about.
‘Sorry. No time,’ she says. ‘Just taken short. Chris, can I use the loo?’
‘Course you can, Marigold. You know where it is, do you?’
Laughter.
She hurries through to the loo. She doesn’t need it but she feels foolish just standing up in the cubicle so she sits down, counts thirty seconds, pulls the chain, leaves the cubicle, washes the hands that she hasn’t dirtied, dries the hands that she hasn’t dirtied with the new hand dryer which makes a noise like a jumbo jet taking off, goes back into the bar, and to her horror hears herself say, ‘That’s better.’
She waves at the terrible trio, says ‘Cheerio, chaps’ and hurries out of the pub. It’s pouring. She can’t walk in this. She enters the first place she can find. It’s Pizza Express. The schools have broken up and it’s full of children. It smells, not surprisingly, of pizza and of children. She has never had any children. After failure with three men the problem must be hers. She’s never had a pizza either. She doesn’t like them. ‘How do you know you don’t like them if you’ve never had one?’ That’s her husband speaking out of the past. One of her husbands. Take your pick. The waitress leads her to a seat that she doesn’t want, in a corner that she doesn’t like, near the loo that she is definitely not going to use. There are umbrellas everywhere. She hates umbrellas.
She feels as lonely in this crowded place as she has felt in her life. She longs to get up and walk out. But she’s a fighter, and she stays.
She orders the first pizza of her life.
Ben Wardle is eating his pizza in a strange manner, as befits a strange boy. He has chosen a capricciosa. It’s his favourite. A few years ago it disappeared from the menu of Pizza Express. The things he likes always disappear. T-shirts, shoes, clothes, toothpaste, fizzy drinks, TV programmes, pizzas. If he likes them, nobody else does. But pizza capricciosa has returned. His parents are worried by the way he doesn’t speak to people, except to Tricksy, of course, and with Tricksy they worry that he speaks too much, so that’s just as bad. His father, whom he no longer loves, feared he has a CSD, a Compulsive Speaking Disorder, causing him to speak torrents to Tricksy and not at all to anybody else. Later, his father redefined the acronym. It was still CSD, but now it stood for Conversational Selection Dysfunction. Ben once said that his father had SAD – Servile Acronym Dependency. Whatever Ben may be, thick he is not. His father often cites the fact that STD once meant Standard Trunk Dialcodes and now means Sexually Transmitted Diseases as evidence of the world’s CMD – Catastrophic Moral Decline.
‘I’ll have the pizza capricciosa,’ says Ben. ‘I’m glad to see it back. It was my favourite and it disappeared and now I see it’s back.’
His parents beam. He’s talking to the waitress, and talking like an adult. What a good idea this lunch was.
‘That’s right,’ says the waitress, who, miraculously, is British. ‘They took it off and they got more complaints about that than about anything else, so they brought it back,’ adds the waitress, who, miraculously, is intelligent and well-informed as well as being British.
‘That’s great,’ says Ben. ‘It’s good to know they take note of our preferences. It restores one’s faith.’
A slightly uneasy look passes between Ben’s mum and Ben’s dad. Is he being a bit TGTBT – Too Good to be True? Is he mocking? There’s always a risk, with Ben, when he does speak, that he’s mocking.
‘There is one thing, though,’ says Ben. ‘It says “NEW” on the menu in capital letters. But it isn’t new.’
‘Well spotted,’ says the waitress. ‘I don’t think they could admit that they’d taken notice of the public. They’d be inundated with suggestions. So they’ve changed it slightly. It’s ham hock instead of just ham. I think it’s better, actually, more fully flavoured.’
‘Thanks,’ says Ben, and he exchanges a smile with the waitress. His parents are very happy to see this. Maybe he does fancy girls after all.
Ben sees that his parents are happy. He knows why. They are decidedly homophobic. His father is xenophobic. And noiseophobic, particularly popophobic, and, in the world of pop, strongly rapophobic. Well, to be honest, he’s just phobic, really.
‘If you don’t mind my saying this,’ says Ben’s dad to the waitress, ‘you’re extremely knowledgeable and bright, for a waitress.’
Add ‘waitressophobic’.
‘I have a degree,’ says the waitress. ‘Couldn’t get a job. There were eleven thousand applications for this job.’
A realistic silence casts a shroud over the table for just a moment. Hail is battering the windows again. It’s England in springtime. A waitress drops a tray and several glasses break. Lots of people cheer. Ben wonders if foreigners do that.
When the pizza capricciosa comes, Ben starts to eat it from the outside in. It’s one way of doing it, and his parents aren’t worried by that. But when he starts to move slices of hard-boiled egg, olives, lumps of ham hock, pieces of anchovy, little capers, all the toppings in fact, from the edge into the middle, his parents look slightly concerned. He is now taking mouthfuls of a crust from which all toppings have been removed, leaving only tomato and cheese on it, while in the centre of the crust, the toppings are piling up, egg cheek by jowl with ham, anchovy and caper struggling to find space on the crowded base.
His mother is crippled by worry. Is he suffering from one of these syndromes, she is asking herself. One of those puzzling things beginning with the letter A that are cropping up all over the place?
His father’s mind is simpler, more direct, and more aggressive. He can stand it no longer.
‘Why are you eating it like that, Ben?’ he asks.
‘Because I want to.’
Ben is pleased to have forced his father to speak, and now he continues to eat in the same manner, forcing his father to speak again. He can be very annoying, as an offspring, even though we deduce that in the past he has often told his father that he loves him. But then we know that he will never tell him that again.
‘Why did you order it if you don’t like all the things on it?’ his father feels forced to ask.
‘I do. I love them. That’s why I’m saving them.’
‘Please, Ben, don’t get your father irritated. We don’t go out often and we’re having a lovely day,’ says his mother.
Ben considers this, and suddenly smiles. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘OK. I’m just having a bit of fun which will sound very silly and juvenile when I tell you, but you should be pleased about that because you always complain that kids grow up too quickly these days. What it is is, the base’s an island, and all the things on it are creatures, and there’s a tsunami, well, a very high tide anyway, and I’m saving the eggs and capers etcetera from the encroaching waters of the lagoon. And now comes the moment when I realize that I can’t save them, the island’s doomed, so I’m going to eat them, give them a quick death rather than a slow drowning. I’m a very compassionate boy.’
He grins. There’s a moment’s silence.
‘You have too much imagination,’ says his father.
Ben considers this, then smiles again.
‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘It’s just such a bugger that imagination is so little use in Potherthwaite. Somebody should come and change it.’
A pretty girl with flaxen hair, blue eyes and slim legs walks along the pavement of High Street West. She looks angry, and full of purpose. We have of course seen this girl before. She was carrying a vase.
She looks across th
e street and her eye is taken by a boy emerging from Pizza Express with two people who have the unmistakable depressing look of being parents. She has seen this boy around. He’s strange. Sometimes she’s seen him walking along the towpath as if in a dream, or, at least, a world of his own.
She sees that he is gazing at her, transfixed. Her heart leaps. She walks more slowly, as slowly as she feels that she can without losing her anger. She can feel his look on her back.
In their excessive desire that he should grow up normal, and their excessive worry that he won’t, which is in danger of being what his father calls an SFP and the rest of us call a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Ben’s parents notice the girl and Ben’s longing look and have mixed feelings. They are pleased that he is showing signs of sexual attraction towards a girl, but they are upset that the girl he has chosen to be obsessed by has a ring in her nose, a stud on her chin, holes in her jeans, garish red streaks in her hair, bare feet, bare flesh between her jeans and her T-shirt, and the message ‘Fuck You All’ on that T-shirt. Apart from that, she looks a model of a young British schoolgirl.
Sally’s train is eleven minutes late, due to the knock-on effect of rolling stock being delayed after somebody stole the points outside Pontefract. The light is beginning to fade, but she can still see the scenery of the Pother Valley clearly and she is, amazingly, looking forward eagerly to the first appearance of the outskirts of Potherthwaite.