by David Nobbs
Sally’s celebrations began at the stuffy old George Hotel, in the Market Place. She knew that she must start there, or she would never get there, and it wouldn’t do to offend the town’s premier hotel. She had been an intermittent regular there in her first life. Barry, a lawyer to his fingertips, would never have gone into any of the other pubs.
In the George many people shook her hand, including Barry’s partner, Tom Caldwell, and Councillor Stratton, who pumped her hand, kissed her, and said, ‘I always knew you had it in you.’
Tricksy’s father Alan bought her a drink, said it was sad that Tricksy and Ben were no longer friends, ‘but that’s youngsters for you’.
‘That’s youngsters for you,’ agreed Sally, without really having any idea what she was agreeing with.
Alan told her that Tricksy had left university to go round the world with a potter from Finland on the back of the potter’s motorbike.
She managed to edge towards the door, and quietly slipped out into the square. The hum of conversation from councillors, lawyers and estate agents faded. The wind had dropped, and a moon that looked as if it had been painted by Atkinson Grimshaw was casting eerie reflections in the puddles. Half of Sally longed for sleep. The other half would talk and drink all night in its relief.
Her next stop was the Baggit Arms, up the hill, beyond Baggit Park, quite a step, but she had to go there. The Baggit Boys, now that they were on her side, must be kept on her side.
The Baggit Arms was packed with noisy revellers. She entered to a most boisterous welcome. Luke Warburton offered her a drink, and she opted for a pint of bitter. This was a PR exercise, and she might as well go the whole hog.
She didn’t mention her plan to paint the boring stucco of the estate’s houses with fascinating, fabulous paintings. She would keep this suggestion on hold until the dullest, greyest days of February, when the spirit of the flood would need a boost. The leaders in the very separate community of the estate had been deeply touched by the trust invested in them, by the sense of responsibility that their tasks had brought out. For this generation in this sort of estate, the choice was between extremely dreary safe jobs, unemployment, or a really quite high risk of death in wars for causes that they would find it very difficult to take up with enthusiasm. It was a desperate choice. But here at least they could take their share of responsibility in the successful Transition of the town. What a glorious thing is responsibility. Anyone who has seen children taking part in youth theatre will have noticed it. However small their role, they are responsible to the whole team. They grow under it, they thrive under it. And afterwards, when there is nothing to follow it, they lose it. Potherthwaite must not lose the Baggit Estate. Sally’s visit to the Baggit Arms was no sinecure, but a moment of real hope for the town, and for her. She drained the last of her pint to loud acclaim. It was so easy to win popularity that she felt a little ashamed.
She wished Luke goodnight and he said an astonishing thing. He said, ‘Thank you, Sally. You’ve given me summat great, you. You’ve given me a second life, you have.’ Then he kissed her, with touching awkwardness. She reflected, as she added him to the list of men who had kissed her, that in her first life she had hardly been kissed at all. Oh, Sally, Sally, she told herself, for quarter of a century of adult life you weren’t kissable. She shuddered.
It felt like the middle of the night when she entered the Weavers’ Arms. Well, she had to call in there, it was where it had all started. The Weavers’ was quieter. In its heart it wasn’t a pub at all. It was a restaurant. Sue was doing her best, but Rog looked out of place behind the bar.
She caught sight of Marigold and Conrad, deep in conversation in an alcove at the back. Instinct told her that this was a very bad moment to interrupt. Instinct was right.
Conrad had made a triumphant entry into the town centre, congratulated by everyone as they buzzed from one pub to another. The pub was extremely proud of being the place where the Transition movement in Potherthwaite really began, and it seemed the natural place in which to pop the question.
Yes, Conrad was going to pop the question, the question for which Marigold longed. He was skilled socially, it was easy work for him to accept congratulations, slip out of conversations without causing offence, and find himself in the furthest, quietest, darkest corner of the pub. Something about the determined, single-minded way he did it led Marigold to expect the suggestion at last.
‘I’ve grown to feel happier and happier with you, Marigold,’ he began, just as Sally entered the pub. She had been so right in her belief that it would be a bad moment to interrupt, and we may reflect, now that we have paused, that because Conrad is such a private man we cannot know whether he had experienced doubts himself about marrying again, and about marrying a woman with such a bad track record in the marital department. He was one of those men who never quite let you know them. Nevertheless, when he said, in his straightforward flood controller’s English, ‘Marigold, will you marry me?’ it struck her with sudden panic that all she really knew about him was that he had a big willy and a passion for cream buns. Where was the joy that she had rehearsed? She felt her genitals tightening. She hardly had enough air to breathe, let alone reply. Her mouth was dry, so dry that she had to sip her drink, although she felt it to be a very ill-timed gesture. She forced herself to look into his eyes, hoping for reassurance. What she found was hope, fear, vulnerability she had never imagined. She closed her eyes. Her body sank, and the world rotated, as it did when she’d had too much to drink. She must speak. She remembered what Sally had said. Sally had said that you couldn’t live your life fearing and mistrusting half the human race. Sally thought she would be safe with him. She adored Sally. Sally would be so thrilled to hear her happy news, so she just had to have happy news to tell her. ‘Yes, please,’ she said at last. ‘Oh, Conrad, yes.’
Sally watched them while accepting yet another free drink, this time, as so often, from Sue. At last she decided that it was time to make her way to them.
‘Oh, darling,’ said Marigold. ‘Oh, darling, darling Sally, Conrad and I are engaged.’
Sally didn’t attempt to pretend to be surprised. ‘I’m so pleased for you both,’ she said. If you put in a line all the people who have said, ‘I’m so pleased for you both,’ while meaning, ‘That’s my chance gone for a Burton, then,’ you’d have something not far smaller than the Great Wall of China, but in that pub, in that moment, Sally discovered that at last she really did mean it with all her heart. She hugged Marigold, and hugged her again, and hugged her a third time for luck, and said, ‘I’m so happy I could cry.’ Conrad just smiled, smiled and smiled and smiled. And then yawned. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m pooped. I’m whacked.’
Marigold added a third fact to her knowledge of Conrad. He had a big willy, a passion for cream buns and he would never use a word like ‘knackered’.
Sally left them to it, and moved back out into the square. She felt a sudden surge of happiness. In overcoming her jealousy of Marigold she had won a victory, she had won her freedom; she had an overwhelming feeling that one day, perhaps even this evening, she would meet a man she could love, and who could love her.
She contemplated going home to bed, but then she thought that she would drop in at the Potherthwaite Arms, if it was still open. Well, she had to really. She had almost become a regular there. She owed them a visit. She wasn’t the sort of woman who avoided a pub because it had a reputation for being slightly insalubrious.
There was a sense of unconsummated joy about the pub that night. Its motor was missing. People had been doing their best to live up to the joy they should be feeling, but it wasn’t quite the same without Marigold, without her legs curved voluptuously round her bar stool, and there were only a few customers left.
But then who should follow her in but the Revd Dominic Otley and Linda Oughtibridge? Linda was smiling as she had never smiled before, a smile full of joy, a smile utterly free from hidden meanings. He looked bashful. A small cheer broke out
from the remaining drinkers. The vicar looked like an embarrassed boy who couldn’t admit that he was ecstatic.
‘The doctor wanted to keep me in hospital,’ he said. ‘For observation. I wasn’t having that. “Young man,” I said. “I have waited all my life to become a hero. I’m not going to miss a minute of it. I want the whole town to observe me, not just you.”’
There was another cheer. The landlord bought him a pint of bitter and a large whisky.
‘I didn’t know you were such a good swimmer, Dominic,’ said Sally.
‘Olympic triallist,’ said Dominic shyly.
‘Why do you never talk about it?’
‘It was a long time ago, and it’s got nothing to do with anything.’
Oh, Dominic Dominic, thought Sally. It may have nothing to do with anything, but people would have looked at you with more respect for every day of the rest of your life, if they’d known.
Sally proposed a toast to Dominic, raised her glass to him, and set off towards the door. At that very moment, in came Harry and Jill, on their way back from a final inspection of the boat that had so nearly become their love nest.
‘I’m so sorry about—’ began Sally.
‘No apologies, please,’ said Harry. ‘The lovely Jill, your dear friend, has eased the pain of the evening by agreeing to become my wife.’
‘Oh, I’m so thrilled,’ said Sally, and she kissed them both. ‘Will you … um …?’
‘Probably,’ said Jill.
‘Definitely,’ said Harry.
‘Definitely probably,’ said Jill.
Sally, realizing how drunk they were, abandoned any further questions.
‘Onwards and …’ began Jill. She threw her arms up in the air with such a lurch of enthusiasm that she knocked herself off her feet and fell to the floor.
‘Onwards and downwards,’ said Harry.
Sally finished her drink, and set off, as she thought, for bed. But instead of turning right, she found that she had turned left. She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want this night to end. Ever.
Besides, if she went to all the pubs that she had frequented, except the Dog and Duck, that would be rather insensitive.
At the last moment she almost didn’t go in. She knew that she’d already had too much to drink.
But she had not yet seen Ben or Lucy, and she did so want to share a corner of this blessed night with them. And also, even more importantly, she still had a feeling that, on this happy and exciting night, she might meet the man of her dreams. It was an absurd thought, fanciful, romantic, deeply sentimental, but if she went straight home to bed she would never know if she had missed the greatest chance of her life.
He was sitting on his own, as if he had deliberately moved away from the few remaining revellers. He was staring moodily into his glass of beer, and the expression on his face suggested that he was regarding it as half-empty, rather than half-full.
His face lit up at the sight of Sally.
‘Sally!’ he said. ‘What’ll you have? What’s it to be?’
Could she really face more white wine? But a switch to spirits would be fatal.
‘A small white wine, please, Eric,’ she said.
Eric bought the wine, she joined him at his table, and they clinked glasses.
‘A penny for them,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Your thoughts. Your expression is enigmatic. You look like the Mona Lisa, though much larger, of course.’
She knew what he meant, but it hadn’t come out sounding tactful. Very little of what Eric Sheepshank said came out sounding tactful. She was almost tempted to tell him what she had been thinking, which was that it seemed typical of her life that she should have an irrational feeling that she was going to meet the man of her dreams, and then she should meet a man with no foreskin, which didn’t matter, but also with no warmth and no charm, which did.
‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said lamely, leaving him feeling very suspicious.
‘On your own?’ asked Eric Sheepshank, talented sculptor and stater of the obvious.
‘Yes. On my own.’
‘What’s wrong with people?’
‘What?’
‘Lovely woman like you. On your own. What’s wrong with people? Got to do something about that.’
‘What do you suggest we do about it?’
‘I suggest that I take you back to my boat, which entirely due to you is actually pleasant enough to invite a woman like you, a lovely woman like you, on to – because women, you know, they deserve, they need, particularly lovely women, and particularly particularly lovely women, and you are particularly lovely … lost my thread a bit.’
‘On to the boat.’
‘Ah yes. Absolutely. For a nightcap.’
‘I couldn’t drink any more.’
‘No, no. Never drink. No drink on board. Gave it up. At the suggestion of a very lovely woman, who has helped save my life, which is why, seeing her on her own, which is disgraceful, I wish to see her not on her own, on this very night, having a little nightcap, which I don’t have, because of her, which is bad luck really. Shame.’
‘Yes, it is a shame, Eric.’
‘I drink here. It’s what it’s for. Because it’s a pub, and that’s what they’re for. But I don’t have any at home. That’s what did the damage, you see. Too easy. Drink now, only in the pub. Had one or two tonight. In the pub. Here, in fact. Thought I might see Ben. No Ben. Growing up, you see. Growing up fast. Nudge nudge. Would it be all right, do you think, to buy you a nightcap, here, and take it back to the boat, because, you see, on your own, lovely woman like you, I don’t like to see it.’
‘It’s a lovely thought,’ said Sally, ‘but I’m tired, I’m going home.’
She wanted to kiss him, because it suddenly seemed to her that he was the only other person in Potherthwaite on that great night who was alone. He had once kissed her when she praised his sculptures, but for her to instigate a kiss was beyond possibility. That beard. It looked as if the bits were from the same egg as last time she’d seen it. It didn’t seem likely that he would spill egg on his beard, clear it up, and then spill an identical amount of egg on the same bit of his beard. The odds were against it.
She stood up abruptly, called out, ‘Goodnight, everyone,’ to the almost empty pub, and set off for the Quays, and her first-floor flat. The rain had stopped, the clouds had gone, the stars were shining, and as the cold air hit her she began to feel very drunk. By the time she got to the bottom of High Street East she had to stop and rest herself against a shop window to prevent herself fainting. She longed for a man’s arm to support her.
The shop was one of Ben’s. It was beautiful. She set off again. Ben’s shops looked lovely. The whole street would look lovely. She had achieved amazing things. She wished she wasn’t alone, but it didn’t matter. Well, it would be nice not to be alone.
She negotiated Quays Approach very carefully. The moon was shining on the canal. The waters were still again. She had a shock as she saw Harry and Jill’s re-sunken boat. She wanted to cry, and now it mattered very much that she had no shoulder to cry on.
How quiet it all seemed after the storm. The Porchesters’ boat looked so sweet in the moonlight, so warm and welcoming. A mellow light shone in the cabin. She tried to walk the last yards to her flat quietly.
‘On your own? Won’t do. Come in and have a noggin,’ called out Terence Porchester cheerfully.
Sally had two more drinks – ‘Cointreau isn’t really a drink, Sally, not a serious drink, eh, Felicity?’ before, at twenty-five past four, she finally stumbled to her front door, supported on her left by the great bulk of Terence Porchester, and on her right by the tiny form of Felicity Porchester.
She went into her bedroom very carefully, and soon she was in bed and fast asleep.
Potherthwaite slept. Jill Buss could hear Harry’s snores from the neighbouring house and hoped he wouldn’t drink the way he had tonight when, if ever, they were in bed together in the
ir narrowboat. Conrad and Marigold slept together in deep contentment. Matt Winkle fell fast asleep, most precariously, on his stomach, on the tiny top step of his ladder, his hands dangling in front of him and his feet behind, just inches from the top of his very own great lake. The early shift found him there. He no longer looked like a god. Gods don’t cry.
And Ben and Lucy? Ben felt humiliated by the fiasco of his rescue attempt, which had led to the need for him to be rescued. Lucy was thrilled by his demonstration of love and courage, and pointed out that, if he hadn’t failed, the Revd Dominic Otley would have been denied his act of heroism. Lucy led him to a most perfect spot for their lovemaking, there in his cosy studio, beside his lovely miniature scale model of the High Street. And there, with their feet outside the Potherthwaite Deli, and their faces beside the Kosy Korner Kafé, they celebrated most energetically the fact that neither of them had drowned.
BOOK SIX
The Last Day
Of course it wasn’t actually the last day. There didn’t need ever to be a last day, that was the joy of it.
FORTY-TWO
Morning
What a lot of wasted daylight there is on summer mornings. The political parties could agree in five minutes to give us an extra hour’s daylight on summer evenings, perhaps even two extra hours. But no party would benefit, only the nation, so it is of no interest to them.
It was barely five o’clock when Sally awoke from a restless sleep, but already the sun was making its appearance in the lower valley.
It was the first day of the first ever Potherthwaite Festival. More than half a year had passed since the battle against the deluge, and it had passed too quickly. The last few days had been manic, and Sally was certain that something major had been forgotten. She was on the point of leaping anxiously out of bed, but she restrained herself, controlled her anxiety with reflections on what a great day this was, and how she owed it to herself to enjoy it, and levered herself gently and calmly out of the left-hand side of the bed. Intelligent, rational woman though she was, she felt that she might ruin the whole day if she got out on the right-hand side.