by David Nobbs
She smiled with just a touch of relish.
‘… I dream that when the Potherthwaite Arm of the Rackstraw and Sladfield Canal is perhaps officially reopened, Ellie Fazackerly will walk from her home in Cadwallader Road, down the pedestrianized High Street, turn right into Quays Approach, and witness the grand opening ceremony. Maybe – is it too fanciful to think? – right here in Potherthwaite we will create a symbol of hope and encouragement for all the obese of the land.’
There was thunderous applause.
She realized that already she was getting carried away again.
‘But let’s not get carried away,’ she said to her audience, and also to herself. ‘There’s a lot of work to be done, and it’ll be hard work and sometimes very boring work. I believe we can do it. I believe we can persuade the good people on our council to support our dream and help us make it happen. I believe that it is in the interests of every one of us that Potherthwaite transforms itself. It won’t happen overnight. I look forward to the next years, together.’
There was loud applause, almost hysterical applause, dangerous applause, as if everything had been done already, as if dreams could be made real just by putting them into words.
Sally was overwhelmed with congratulations. There was excitement on all sides. It was heady stuff. Lots of people made offers of help. She was kissed by several people. Long Raincoat approached and she went blank and couldn’t remember who he was or where she had met him. Luckily when he spoke he reminded her. ‘Lots of people want to have a word with you,’ he said, ‘so I won’t take up too much of your time – I learnt that on the taxis, as I told you on the footbridge – but I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you’ve said, everything, absolutely everything, and this is my phone number, and please ring me if you think there is anything I could do, anything at all I could do, and now I’ll leave you in peace because I can see that there’s lots of people dying to have a word with you, so I’ll leave the field clear to them, just saying I mean it, I really do, any time, any time, I’m not one of those people who say things and don’t mean it, any time, I really do mean it.’ Linda Oughtibridge looked at her with a strange, pursed smile, and said nothing. The vicar gave her an awkward kiss, smiled broadly and looked very sad. Gunter Mulhausen gave her a stiff little bow, shook her hand and said, ‘This will not go unnoticed in Schleswig-Holstein, I can assure you.’ Arrangements were made, for those who wished, to go for a drink at the Dog and Duck. Sally explained to Rog and Sue that she would always acknowledge that the project had been born at the Weavers’ Arms but that the whole town must have the chance to be equally involved. Councillor Frank Stratton shook hands with her in the most decorous manner and said, ‘Very interesting. Lots to mull over.’ Jill and Harry congratulated her enthusiastically and Harry said, ‘Olive and Arnold will regret not coming.’ Jill looked as if she didn’t agree.
They swept off to the pub, Sally carried helplessly on a tidal wave of enthusiasm. It was heady stuff. Somewhere, deep down, she felt a tiny note of caution, but she wouldn’t let it spoil her night, she felt so much love for all these people. The drink flowed, there were nibbles laid on by mine excited host – mine almost delirious host, in fact. She had done it. She had risen to the occasion. She wanted this to go on for ever. People were beginning to drift away, and she didn’t want them to – that tiny feeling of distant fear returned, almost but not quite stilled by their enthusiastic words. She felt that, because this was her evening, she couldn’t leave until everyone else had left.
Marigold bumped into her at the end of the evening and they found themselves walking away together.
‘None of those bastards came,’ said Marigold.
‘Sorry?’
‘I came here, bought them all drinks. David Fenton, thinks he’s so handsome. Mick Webster from the travel agent’s, he can disappear up his short weekend break from now on. I even invited that randy little tosser, Bill Etching. None of them came. Bastards. I’ve had men up to here. I’m starving. Are you?’
‘There’ll only be Indians open. Do you fancy a curry?’
‘I love them.’
‘I haven’t had one since I met Barry.’
‘Shall we?’
‘Please.’
They hurried up High Street West like two excited schoolchildren, then turned right into Vernon Road.
Decisions, decisions. Should they go to the Old Bengal, the New Bengal or the Taj Mahal?
‘I don’t know any of them,’ said Sally.
‘The man in the New Bengal rushes out to persuade you to go in,’ said Marigold.
‘Horrid,’ said Sally. ‘Let’s not go there then.’
‘I often wonder what happened in their family to cause the rift,’ said Marigold.
‘I don’t want anything to do with rifts tonight,’ said Sally. ‘Let’s go to the Taj Mahal.’
‘As good a reason as any.’
They walked past the Old Bengal. The head waiter of the New Bengal scuttled out of his restaurant, beaming.
‘Plenty room. Very comfy. Very welcome,’ he said. ‘Lovely curry. Many balti. Very nice.’
They shook their heads, smiled in embarrassment, walked past his almost empty restaurant, and entered the Taj Mahal, which was not full but pleasantly busy. Drunk young men didn’t frequent Indian restaurants late at night any more. They were able to drink late in pubs and then go on to clubs. There were four clubs at the end of Vernon Road. It was Potherthwaite’s Reeperbahn.
The tables in the Taj Mahal were set in two long rows, one at either side of the long, thin restaurant. The music was soft and modern Indian and the paintings on the walls were vaguely modern too. When they were seated, and had surprised themselves by ordering large bottles of Cobra beer, Marigold commented on the head waiter of the New Bengal.
‘It’s so sad that he never realizes his mistake,’ she said. ‘It’s so sad that in half the world the British descend from their cruise ships, are pestered by vendors, and so buy nothing. If only they were ignored like at home they’d empty the shops.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sally. ‘I’ve never been on a cruise. Barry didn’t like them.’
‘Having never been on one?’
‘Absolutely.’
They began to talk about their husbands. Although they had said that they were starving, they hadn’t even looked at their menus when the waiter came to take their order. What they were really hungry for, although they didn’t realize it, was company and support.
The beer was cool and refreshing, and they sipped it with pleasure while they continued to talk. Marigold talked most, as was her wont. Besides, on the subject of men, she had more to talk about. She waxed lyrical and entertaining on the subject of her exes.
Malcolm Stent, an electrician, had been quite good-looking but obsessed with football and with nothing very electric in the way of sexual technique.
‘I wore very sporty gear. I was still a working-class girl. I spent four long seasons supporting Charlton Athletic. Oh my God. That ground was not my happy valley. I should have walked out, but I didn’t want to hurt him. Naive? I must have been the most naive person in Gravesend. He was knocking off a hairdresser in Dartford. He walked out on me. Ran off with the left full back of the Arsenal ladies’ team. Or was it the right full back? I can’t remember now. Anyway, she was a bitch and she couldn’t head the ball for toffee. I went all respectable and safe, went for solid employment and regular money. I looked quite good …’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘… and I got a job as PA to an international businessman. I discovered that I looked rather splendid in business garb.’
‘I can quite believe it.’
‘And then I met this Dane.’
The food arrived during Marigold’s description of life with Henrik Larsen.
‘He was one of our top contacts in Scandinavia. I went out with him, fell in love with him, went to bed with him, married him, went to Aarhus with him.’
She broke o
ff to take a mouthful of curry.
‘This food’s delicious.’
‘Mine too. Lovely.’
Marigold dipped a king prawn into the sauce and popped it into her mouth. Sally waited patiently.
‘It turned out that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark and I had married it.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Sally.
Marigold smiled through her next mouthful, then continued.
‘He had an open marriage, and I had open sandwiches.’
Sally laughed a ‘I know you want me to laugh but I’m laughing in a way that shows that I sympathize totally with your misfortune’ kind of laugh. She felt so sympathetic, so close to Marigold, such warmth for her that she was almost resenting the breaks for food.
‘I decided I’d make sure I left him this time. I managed it by two and a half hours.’
‘What?’
‘I left after breakfast. He came back at lunchtime, took his things, left a note, didn’t see the note I’d left. We both spent a fortune on hotels that night and the house stood there empty.’
Suddenly, as the memories came back, Marigold began to attack her food with angry enthusiasm, spearing each remaining prawn as if it was Henrik Larsen. Sally tried, meanwhile, to make an entertaining routine out of life with Barry Mottram.
‘I didn’t mind having to eat the boring food that was all he liked,’ she said. ‘That didn’t take long. It was buying it and cooking it that I hated. It took so long, and it was so unchallenging. In the end I realized that he only really liked what his mother had cooked. I realized that I was a surrogate mother.’
‘She’s dead, is she?’
‘Oh yes. He wouldn’t have dared kill himself if she wasn’t. And do you know, with all that cooking, in the last years he never once thanked me. Never ever.’
Sally mopped up the last of her sauce with her naan bread.
‘That was really lovely,’ she said. ‘What a lot of pleasures I must have missed. I said to him once, “You never thank me for your food.” He said, “I finish it, don’t I? Isn’t that praise enough?” I said, “No, it is not.” He said, “Praise can be false, Sally. Praise can be fiction. An empty plate is a fact.” He looked pleased with himself, as if he’d said something as witty as Oscar Wilde. Cheer me up, Marigold. Tell me how awful Timothy was.’
Marigold didn’t take much persuading.
‘He was cruel. Simple as that. He was physically cruel and he was mentally cruel. A friend – well, an acquaintance, I don’t really have any friends except you – said that at least he wasn’t unfaithful. That is not good news when a man is cruel, Sally. It means he’s at home every sodding night.’
The waiter brought piping-hot towels, too hot to hold comfortably as they washed their hands.
‘At least when Henrik was pursuing his Danish pastries I could have long hot baths and read romantic novels. Timothy was always there, and he was always cruel, except when we had visitors, and then he made up for it afterwards. The awful thing was that this time I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want to leave the flat. I wanted him to go. When he went off with Miss American Dental Floss or Miss Venezuelan Tits or whatever it was, I was glad. I was glad, Sally.’
The waiter tried to present them with dessert menus full of photographs of intensely coloured sweets. They shook their heads firmly.
‘Just the bill, please,’ said Sally.
‘But, you know, this time it was harder than ever. Meeting people. Telling them. Admitting failure number three. My spirit is being very slow to come back.’
The bill arrived. They divided it into two without discussion. Instinctively, each knew that this was a moment of togetherness, of equality, of sharing. For either to have insisted or even offered to pay the lot would have been a social solecism. This was beautiful.
But Vernon Road was not beautiful. It was dark and cold and windy. The clubs were open, and, although it wasn’t the weekend, youngsters were making their alcoholic ways to them in considerable numbers. Girls who were almost naked were shivering towards oblivion.
As they approached High Street West, Sally and Marigold’s walking grew slower and slower, despite the cold. They could have ordered a taxi, but, if they had, the question of where they were going would have arisen too abruptly.
At the corner of Vernon Road and High Street West they stopped.
‘You don’t want to go back to that house on your own, do you?’ asked Marigold.
‘No.’
Sally’s answer was a whisper.
‘Come back with me. Have a liqueur. Stay the night. I have a spare room.’
‘Thank you.’
They walked more briskly now, wanting comfort, wanting Marigold’s flat, wanting Marigold’s central heating, wanting Marigold’s liqueurs.
Marigold drank Baileys. Sally chose Cointreau. They sat at either side of the log-effect fire, and stretched their legs out, like two old men in a club. They were tired, they needed to sleep, but they didn’t want to be alone. They didn’t want to break out of the warm cocoon of this sudden friendship.
This was true friendship. Only the fire, in this cosy confessional, was artificial. They sat there long into the night. They sipped their liqueurs, talking softly, and in the end they had that one too many.
Marigold confessed first, admitting that she was fearing the rest of her life, dreading the continuation of her inability to have a happy relationship with a man. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the night,’ she admitted, ‘and see myself, in old age, talking to my budgie.’
Then it was Sally’s turn, and she broke down altogether, told Marigold, with streams of tears, that she felt a complete failure, told her all about the suicide letter that Barry hadn’t even sent to her, told her that the number of people who had come to the meeting, and the strength of their expectations, made her deeply uneasy, that her very triumph terrified her, told her that she couldn’t go on with the Transition movement, she hadn’t got it in her.
Marigold came over to her then, took her in her arms, and whispered, ‘You have, you know,’ and they hugged and kissed and waves of affection and love were transmitted between them. In this moment of pure friendship and shared vulnerability, they gave way to words that might not have been altogether wise. They swore undying friendship, love and support. They swore that they would never let any man come between them.
After that they at last felt so exhausted that they were ready to brave the solitude. Marigold showed Sally to the guest room, and within five minutes they were both asleep in their separate beds.
BOOK FOUR
Conrad
EIGHTEEN
The great cities of Italy
‘There are so many great cities in Italy, and their beautiful historic centres are almost entirely unspoilt, but each city has a really individual character. The greatest of all has to be Venice. La Serenissima. The Most Serene. Isn’t that a beautiful name? A city built on water. The main street is a canal, “The Grand Canal”. We stood on the Rialto Bridge, looking down at a great bend in the canal, both sides lined with great palaces. The canal was a mass of boats, long crowded river buses, elegant gondolas, showy launches, stunted removal boats, laden delivery boats, and the bridge was crowded with tourists, of all ages from small children to great-grandparents, all staring in astonishment. “So many tourists,” he moaned. I said nothing. I was just overjoyed to see so many people so happy in this rotten world. But I was blind. I never knew what a gulf there was between us. It seems so odd, looking back. You may ask why he went to such places.’
It didn’t look as if Ellie had been intending to ask anything, let alone anything as personal as that. It was hard for Sally to know if Ellie was really interested. The plan seemed to be working, much to her surprise, but would it hold?
‘He ticked the sights off, satisfied that he’d seen them. He was a great ticker off. Sights, Christmas cards, business tasks. Tick them off. The children, if they were out of line, tick them off too.’
&n
bsp; Ellie, her mouth tiny between her huge cheeks, smiled as best she could. So did Ali and Oli, who were squashed into large chairs, one at either side of the bed.
‘Florence, which the Italians call Firenze, is very different. More austere, more classical, less obviously romantic. It was the central figure in the Renaissance, the greatest art movement the world has ever known. It’s a vast open-air museum, yet throbbing with life from elegant restaurants to nuns on Vespas.’
‘I’d love to see a nun on a Vespa,’ said Ellie.
‘You will,’ said Sally very seriously. ‘I’ll take you. I’ll take all three of you to Italy.’
Her plan had always seemed like a long shot, because it depended not only on Ellie, but also on Ali and Oli. The plan came in two parts. The first part was that Sally would buy all their food, deliver it to them twice a week, with instructions for Ali and Oli to follow – simple cooking instructions, for none of the food was complicated, but also strict instructions on what to have when. It was as generous as a slimming diet could possibly be, but it would still leave the three sisters very, very hungry, and Ellie obviously much hungrier even than Ali and Oli.
The carrot (ha ha) that Sally dangled had seemed, when she first mentioned it, quite unfit for purpose. She would visit them regularly, at least twice a week in addition to her food deliveries, and she would talk to them about all the beautiful places that there were in this world, places that they would never see unless they followed the plan, places that she would take them to if they did follow the plan.