by David Nobbs
Gerry smiled faintly, and spoke very quietly, so that it was a while before Neville realised that he had actually said, ‘Why don’t you stuff a sea trout in your gob and drown yourself in wine jelly?’
Sandra came in from the kitchens bearing, somewhat precariously, a magnificent sea trout on a large Royal Doulton plate. Her expression matched that of the fish. She looked not to left nor to right. Guests made way for her. She plonked the fish on the buffet table, behind the wrecked carcass of its fellow.
Ted had been standing by the locked French windows, looking out on the paths and patios of the walled garden. The shadow of a cloud cast a brief winter gloom over the bare, pruned roses, the empty urns, the ornamental pond where silver carp lived out their monotonous lives. What a lot had happened, what monumental changes there had been, since he had sat in that garden, at Jenny and Paul’s wedding, trying to give Rita the courage to face the throng. And now … had her courage failed her, or had she shown a great degree of courage? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know what to do about Sandra and the yellow lady. He sensed Sandra’s entry with the sea trout.
He adjusted his trousers, remembered the dirty mark, shrugged, tried to look taller than he was, and sidled through the guests to the buffet, where he stood irresolutely beside his inamorata, trying hard to look as if he was interested not in her, but in the buffet; because, as far as he knew, nobody in the town knew of his affair with Sandra, except the staff at Chez Albert and, inevitably, the postman. In fact Ted had even promised Monsieur Albert, the eponymous owner of Chez Albert, that he had ended the association, since Monsieur Albert – who hailed from Gateshead – was installing Ted as manager in a sister restaurant, and thought Sandra insufficiently classy to be the bedfellow of one of his managers.
‘Sandra! What are you doing here?’ hissed Ted.
Sandra turned her hurt, pert face on him. ‘They phoned just after you left. They’d been let down. I held out for double overtime. I thought you’d be chuffed.’
‘Well, yes, very nice, Sandra, more than useful, we can put it towards those curtains, I’m dead chuffed. But.’
‘I know,’ said Sandra, ‘but I never dreamt you’d be here.’
‘No, well …’ The Sillitoes drifted past. They smiled at Ted. He changed his tune rapidly. ‘Could I have a sliver of salmon, please, waitress?’ The Sillitoes had passed out of earshot. ‘I didn’t know either, Sandra.’
‘You’re ashamed of me,’ said Sandra flatly. ‘You don’t want anyone to see you talking to me. And it’s sea trout, anyroad.’
They began to move along the buffet table. Sandra put dollops of the various salads on Ted’s plate as they talked.
‘Rubbish,’ said Ted. ‘It’s rubbish, is that, Sandra. I don’t want anyone to see you talking to me.’
‘You what?’
‘In case you get sacked and lose your double overtime.’ Liz was approaching. ‘I’ll have a bit of the salad niçoise, as we in the catering industry call it.’
Sandra put a sizeable dollop of salad on Ted’s plate. A piece of anchovy slid onto the carpet unnoticed.
‘So!’ she said, when Liz had gone. ‘A sensational development.’
‘Sensational!’ said Ted with relish, forgetting that he was supposed not to be pleased.
‘And you’re pleased.’
‘I am pleased. I admit it. But only because he’s not right for her, not because I … Rita and I are over, Sandra.’
‘I know.’
‘Honestly, love! We are! Over. Finito. You what?’
‘I know. I’ve seen how you talk to that tarty piece.’
‘Sandra! She is not a tarty piece.’ Ted realised his mistake. ‘And I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.’
‘So!’ A scoop of potato salad. ‘You’re smitten!’ A scoop of Waldorf Salad. A couple passed close by. ‘Bean salad, sir?’ said Sandra, playing Ted’s game scornfully.
‘Thank you, Sandra.’
The couple threw hostile glances at Ted. He recognised Rita’s sneezing uncle and his wife. Her hat matched his nose. They moved on without speaking. It was a deliberate snub, for what Ted had done to Rita.
‘I am not, Sandra,’ he said. ‘I am not smitten. But I like to get my facts right. And the lady to whom I assume you refer, with whom I had a brief sophisticated exchange of views on Beaujolais Nouveau, happens not to be a tarty piece. All right?’
‘“Beaujolais Nouveau”! The only Nouveau you’ve ever drunk is Theakston’s Nouveau. She’s a tarty piece and you’re besotted.’ Ted began to raise his voice, forgetting that he was supposed to be having a casual conversation with a waitress who happened to be a colleague.
‘She’s a classy, elegant, attractive woman and I am not besotted.’
For a moment they glared at each other, eyeball to eyeball. Ted, expecting a deadly insult, was surprised to hear Sandra say, ‘Mayonnaise, sir?’ He was even more surprised to see the huge scoopful of mayonnaise that she plonked onto his absurdly heaped plate. It dropped off the edges. There would be a yellow stain just beneath the pale stain on his trousers. He turned away, trying not to show his anger.
The Sillitoes sailed unsuspectingly towards him and met the full force of the gale.
‘Hungry?’ said Rodney, seeing Ted’s piled plate.
‘Get stuffed,’ said Ted, as he stomped off.
‘What did I say?’ said Rodney.
Betty indicated Sandra with her head.
‘Ah!’ Rodney nodded, as if he understood, then realised that he didn’t understand. ‘What?’
He found himself staring into Sandra’s disconcertingly knowing young eyes and turned away. Now the Sillitoes were on collision course with Neville and Liz.
‘Ah!’ said Neville. ‘The Sillitoes! Calmer waters!’
‘What?’ said Rodney. ‘Well, who’d have thought Rita’d ever do a thing like that?’
‘Will we ever understand the minds of …?’ Neville hesitated, ‘… people?’
‘You were going to say the minds of women, and then thought I’d accuse you of being sexist,’ said Liz.
‘What an awful thing for Rita to do, though,’ said Betty Sillitoe, over-explicit as usual.
‘Yes,’ said Liz. ‘How to upstage everybody by not being present.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ said Betty.
‘So, what are you two planning now that your chickens will never come home to roost again?’ enquired Neville.
Rodney Sillitoe, who still looked as though he had spent the night in a chicken coop in his suit, even though he was no longer the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, having let all his battery chickens go free in a fit of remorse, explained their new plans briefly, but with evident enthusiasm. ‘We’re opening a health food complex.’
‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ added Betty proudly.
Liz laughed. Her laugh trilled through the tense gathering like the cry of a curlew on a misty morning.
‘Liz!’ said Neville.
‘Sorry.’ Liz seemed contrite. ‘But Mr and Mrs Frozen Drumstick selling nut cutlets!’
‘Why does everybody think vegetarian food is just funny laughable old nut cutlets?’ protested Betty.
Liz’s dainty hand fluttered to her neck, to be impaled there, a dying butterfly. ‘My God! You’re serious converts,’ she said, and laughed again, a less elegant laugh, a magpie’s malicious cackle.
‘Liz!’ said Neville.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz. ‘I shouldn’t laugh at anything today, should I? Sorry, Neville. Social lapse over.’
There was an uneasy pause. Neville, usually the first to fill uneasy pauses, leapt in. ‘Can I get you two a drink?’ he asked, before remembering that it wasn’t wise to offer the Sillitoes drinks.
‘Oh thank you,’ said Betty. ‘Grape juice, please.’
‘Apple juice, please,’ said Rodney.
This time Liz’s laugh was an owl’s hoot.
‘Liz!’ said Neville.
By the time Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, approached the cynical Elvis Simcock and his long-haired fiancée, Carol Fordingbridge, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that it was a happy occasion.
‘Hello,’ said Simon. ‘What an extraordinary … er … what can I say? What can one say? I’m … er … I’m …’
‘This is an unprecedented moment in our island’s history, Carol,’ said Elvis. ‘An estate agent lost for words.’
‘Here we go again,’ sighed Simon. ‘It’s bash an estate agent time. It’s mock an easy target time.’
‘You could say the situation leaves considerable scope for improvement,’ said Elvis. ‘Which is estate agent-ese for a ginormous cock-up.’
‘Except it isn’t,’ said Carol, who looked charming in an apricot crêpe, short-sleeved, belted dress.
‘What?’ said Elvis.
‘You never wanted your mum to marry him.’
‘No, but … I didn’t want her to do that to him.’
‘I believe you’re starting to like him now he isn’t going to be your new father.’
‘Well … he’s quite a nice bloke.’
Carol was appalled. ‘He’s a faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig,’ she said.
‘He’s quite a nice faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig.’
‘Hey!’ said Simon. ‘When are you two love-birds going to name the day?’
‘Poor Simon. Thank God I’m not cursed with good manners,’ said Elvis.
‘What?’ said Simon.
‘Trying to change the subject so tactfully.’
‘Except it wasn’t tactful, was it?’ Both men were shocked by Carol’s vehemence. Vehemence wasn’t her stock-in-trade.
‘What?’ said the philosophy graduate feebly.
‘He won’t name the date, Simon, till I’ve passed my philosophy finals.’
‘What?’ said the bemused young estate agent.
‘Oh, bloody hell, stop saying “what” alternately, will yer?’ said this new vehement Carol. ‘I’ve yet to satisfy Elvis, Simon, that I’m a mentally worthy partner for his philosophic journey through life.’
‘What?’ said Elvis.
Carol stormed off, leaving one rather surprised young man and one very surprised young man.
‘Women!’ said the very surprised young man.
‘I know,’ said the rather surprised young man. ‘They have an uncomfortable habit of hitting on the truth, don’t they?’
‘Simon! That was almost clever.’
‘I know. I have the occasional flash.’
‘How is your sex life?’
‘Non-existent.’ Simon dropped his voice. ‘I’ve given it up. That married woman I showed round one of our properties was the last woman I will ever have in my life.’
‘That’s funny,’ said Elvis. ‘I had the distinct impression she was the first woman you’d ever had in your life.’
Simon’s concern for his image wrestled with his need to confess. The need to confess won.
‘She was the first woman and the last woman I’ll ever have in my life. I hate sex. It terrifies me,’ he said. ‘There! I’ve admitted it. I’m a happy man, Elvis.’
Simon’s sister Jenny was staring at the fading day, trying to fight back tears as she thought about her own wedding day, only seventeen months ago.
The sky was dotted with clouds now. Jenny watched their shadows. At her wedding, she had been real. Now she felt that she was a shadow.
These dark shapes that floated across the neat rectangles of that over-careful garden, what could they be to a young woman so sensitive to the prospect of cosmic disaster but the shadows of strange flying creatures, birds and mammals rendered enormous and grotesque by nuclear radiation on a vast scale, huge deformed multi-breasted limbless freaks with pitted scaly skins? She shuddered and turned away from the horror of it, towards the horror of the pretended normality of the Garden Room. She walked instinctively towards Elvis, her husband’s brother, and he seemed to walk equally instinctively towards her, so that what he said became curiously important to her.
On the whole, she wished that he hadn’t said, ‘Hello, Jenny. What on earth are you wearing?’
‘Thank you,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s made out of llama wool by very poor Peruvian Indians who need our support.’
‘Several llamas died to make it possible,’ said Elvis. ‘And you a vegetarian.’
‘Nobody’s ever suggested that having a social conscience is easy, Elvis.’
At last Elvis noticed that Jenny was close to tears. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny,’ he said, and he looked momentarily surprised at his own sincerity. ‘You look lovely.’ He kissed her, warmly, on her cold cheek. ‘Paul’s a lucky man.’
‘So are you.’
‘You what?’ Elvis was puzzled.
‘Carol’s lovely too.’
‘Oh. Yes. Right. Right. You don’t resent her for what she did with Paul, then?’
‘Not any more. That’s all over. Sorted out. Helped us to move on to a deeper and ever more satisfying plateau of shared feelings and emotions.’
‘So you’re happy?’
‘Happy!’ snorted Jenny. ‘I thought you were a philosopher. Happiness is unattainable.’
Jenny left behind her a rather lost young philosopher, who, for all his cynicism, found it easier to cope with plateaux of shared feelings and emotions than with the possibility that happiness was unattainable.
Rodney and Betty Sillitoe steamed up, two frigates in rigid formation.
‘Elvis,’ said Betty. ‘We’ve a proposition to put to you.’
‘How would you like to work for me again?’ said Rodney.
‘For us,’ corrected Betty.
‘Oh yes. Absolutely. Us. Quite. What I meant.’
‘Work for you? What as?’ said Elvis.
‘In our health food complex,’ said Betty.
‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ said Rodney.
Elvis laughed. The Sillitoes looked hurt. He wiped the laugh from his face.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just … surprised. No, it sounds great. Sadly, though, it clashes with my career structure.’
‘Career structure?’ echoed Rodney faintly.
‘I’ve got a job,’ said Elvis. ‘With Radio Gadd. I’m …’ He couldn’t resist a self-satisfied smile, although later he would regret that he hadn’t been more modishly cool. ‘I’m moving into the media.’
Elvis hurried off, as if hot-foot on his first scoop.
Rodney and Betty exchanged looks of amazement, saw Gerry collapse wearily into a chair, and exchanged looks of social responsibility. They were lifeboats now, speeding to the scene of disaster.
‘It’s a lovely buffet, Gerry,’ said Betty.
‘Thank you,’ said Gerry politely, but from a long way away. He stood up, wearily.
‘It’s usually sit-down these days, isn’t it,’ said Betty. ‘But I like a buffet myself, on an occasion such as … this would have been.’
‘Betty!’ said Rodney. ‘It’s a very nice do altogether, Gerry. A great … er … well, not success exactly.’
‘Because of the … er … the non … er …’
‘Betty!’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Gerry coldly. ‘I do still reme
mber that my fiancée hasn’t turned up.’
They watched him stride away.
‘She’s well out of that,’ said Betty. ‘There’s a nasty streak there.’
‘Are you surprised?’ said Rodney. ‘He’s not exactly having a nice day.’
But Betty was no longer listening. Now that she didn’t touch alcohol, curiosity had become her tipple. And her sharp, sexual antennae had spotted Ted, far across the room, beyond the bewildered Liberal Democrats, beyond Rita’s guzzling, puzzling uncles.
‘Ooooh! Rodney! Look!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who’s that woman Ted’s talking to?’
Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind a planned health food complex with wholefood vegetarian restaurant, tried not to swivel round and look.
‘Betty!’ he said. ‘Don’t be so inquisitive. It’s not the right social attitude now you’re joint managing director of –’ Yet swivel round he eventually did. ‘Oooh!’
The objects of Rodney and Betty’s interest were oblivious to these ‘oooh’s’. They were oblivious to anything except each other.
‘You’re a fascinating man, Ted,’ the striking lady in yellow was saying. ‘You have a wonderful earthy appeal.’
‘Good Lord!’ said the man who had once made the best toasting forks in Yorkshire, bar none.
‘Are you surprised that I find you interesting?’
‘Oh no, not about that. Well, yes, a bit. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think I was big-headed or anything.’ Ted gazed into the yellow lady’s blue eyes. ‘No, I was surprised because … I mean … they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place twice.’
‘What?’ She was puzzled. ‘What lightning?’
‘Nothing. Er … Ted returned hastily to more mundane matters. ‘I … er … I don’t even know your name.’
‘Corinna Price-Rodgerson.’
Even mundane matters didn’t seem mundane. Ted Simcock was found interesting by a woman with a double-barrelled name. He caressed both barrels. ‘Corinna Price-Rodgerson! Corinna, would you …?’ The forgotten Sandra stalked past, a pile of plates wobbling dangerously. ‘Oh, you sauté your mushrooms first! How clever!’