by David Nobbs
‘Oh no it isn’t,’ thought Rita.
‘Why is she not here?’ asked Neville rhetorically.
‘Should I tell them?’ thought Ted.
‘Because she is indisposed. Never mind. I don’t mean, never mind that she’s indisposed; we all mind.’
‘Oh, Neville,’ groaned Liz silently.
‘I mean, we will continue to enjoy ourselves.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ thought Simon.
‘We will enjoy ourselves, despite her sad absence, which makes the heart grow fonder, and so say all of us. This isn’t the time for speeches.’
‘Well shut up, then,’ implored Geoffrey secretly.
‘So I want to end …’
‘Hooray,’ thought Jenny.
‘… by asking you all …’ Neville beamed with the innocence of a man who has never raised a truncheon in anger, ‘… to join me …’
‘Oh no!’ thought Rita.
‘… in singing …’
‘Oh Lord!’ thought Liz.
‘… “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.’
‘Oh heck!’ thought Ted.
Neville led the singing. All Ted’s guests joined in. Witch and vampire, polar bear and nun, yellow pepper and Noël Coward, all sang enthusiastically.
Ted stepped onto the platform. He faced his guests and adjusted his hat. His complexion was pale.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I …’ his voice was shaky, ‘I’m overcome. I am. I’m overcome. The way you sang that song. The revelation of how you feel about me. It was … a revelation. Ladies and gentlemen, don’t regard this as “goodbye” – more “au revoir”. I will probably see you all again sooner than you think.’
‘Hooray!’ cried Neville.
‘Shut up!’ hissed Liz.
‘So … no sadness, eh?’ But Ted’s voice was breaking. ‘Oh Lord. What a sentimental old fool I am. Thank you.’
Ted hurried off the platform. There was loud applause.
As Ted blundered blindly through the gathered guests towards the exit, Elvis rushed in, his media-hound face weighty with exciting news.
Jenny and Rita scurried over to hear it.
‘It’s our Paul,’ said Elvis. ‘He’s been arrested.’
‘Arrested? What for?’ said Ted, just as Neville reached them, his face alive with concern.
‘There’s been a big demonstration. He threw an egg at the Prime Minister.’
‘Did it hit?’ asked Rita.
‘Was it free range?’ asked Jenny.
‘Was it infected with salmonella?’ asked Neville.
‘Belt up!’ screamed Ted. ‘Belt up, the lot of you.’
It was a long time since any cord had been wained in Cord-wainer’s Road. One side of the street was occupied by the back of the crisis-torn Whincliff Centre, that rusting off-white elephant, that stained concrete cathedral of consumerism, through whose bright nave unholy music tinkled. On the other side stood a building site, where two sandwich bars and a pub had been. A huge sign announced that the Probert McEwan Group regretted any inconvenience, as if the building site was an accident they hadn’t been able to avoid. Beyond the construction site stood the police station, three-storied, modern, flat-roofed, with three rows of straight, disciplined windows; a dull, obedient building, unprovocative but unavoidable.
The summer wind complained bitterly as it attempted to destroy the Whincliff Centre. It tore a poster of a wanted man from the front of the police station. Empty chip bags bowled along the pavement beside the scurrying feet of Queen Elizabeth the First and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Napoleon was already in the police station, standing in the reception area at a long window of double thickness. Behind the window there stood a police sergeant, who had raised one eyebrow a quarter of a millimetre at the sight of the angry old Corsican.
The small reception area was bleak enough to be inhospitable without seeming so unwelcoming as to arouse hostility. Along both walls were uninviting benches. There were two pairs of cheap hard chairs at either side of the entrance.
‘Do you realise who I am?’ said Ted. ‘Ted Simcock,’ he added hastily, in case the sergeant was thinking of saying Napoleon.
The sergeant looked blank.
‘One time owner of the Jupiter Foundry.’
The sergeant continued to look blank.
‘Latterly chef de cuisine at the Restaurant Chez Albert.’
The sergeant discovered new depths of blankness.
‘I have friends who are masons,’ said Ted. ‘If you don’t let me in there, you’re on your way out, matey.’
Rita and Geoffrey entered. The sergeant raised half of one eyebrow at their costumes.
Ted clanked over to Rita with un-Napoleonic haste.
‘That puffed-up petty Hitler behind his reinforced glass won’t let us see our son,’ he said.
‘You’ve put his back up, haven’t you?’ said Rita. ‘You’ve got to treat people right.’
Geoffrey took in the details of this unfamiliar room with quiet astonishment, as if witnessing a tribal rite of which he had no knowledge.
Rita walked quietly, unthreateningly towards the sergeant. He awaited her without expression. She turned on a smile that made her feel vaguely uneasy: a winning smile, a politician’s smile, a smile with which one might kiss a baby before reintroducing hanging.
‘Good evening, officer,’ she said.
The sergeant smiled minimally.
‘My name’s Rita Simcock. Councillor Rita Simcock. I know this is an extremely busy time for you, a weekend evening, but I’m very concerned about my son, and I would very much appreciate it if I could possibly see him for just a few moments.’
The sergeant smiled. ‘No,’ he said.
Ted almost laughed. Geoffrey squeezed Rita’s arm.
‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ said the sergeant, ‘but at present we have nobody to supervise a visit. We have this student demonstration, two road accidents, one armed robbery and the usual tribal warfare between lager louts.’
‘Interesting,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I must study that.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Rita.
‘By all means, madam, but I can make no guarantees,’ said the sergeant.
Liz swept in, with Neville following as if attached to her by an invisible tow-rope.
The sergeant raised half an eyebrow at Liz’s costume and a whole one at Neville’s.
‘We were at a fancy dress party,’ said Rita.
‘I’d guessed,’ said the sergeant drily. ‘The level of intelligence in the force isn’t quite as low as it’s sometimes painted.’ He didn’t even deign to raise half an eyebrow at the entry of Elvis and his green pepper.
Rita and Geoffrey waited beneath a hideous identikit picture of a wanted man. On the opposite bench, defiantly alone, beneath a warning against drinking and driving, sat Ted. Neville and Liz stood. Elvis and Jenny sat on the chairs to the right of the doorway.
‘What’s the point of your seeing him?’ said Elvis.
‘He needs me.’
‘Jenny!’
‘Not in that way. Trust me. But he is still the father of my children. And he needs our support. Including yours. And I feel ashamed of how wrong I was. I thought after we’d split up he’d end up as the great wet slob he was before we met.’
‘You approve of what he’s done, don’t you?’ Elvis spoke very quietly, trying not to look as if they were having an argument.
‘Don’t you?’ said Jeany. ‘I thought you were committedly anti-establishment.’
‘Do you know what Aristotle, Nietzsche, Kant, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre had in common?’ said Elvis with lofty maturity. ‘None of them splattered their opponents with eggs. You win with arguments, Jenny, not eggs.’
‘I must have a word with Ted,’ said Neville.
‘Must you?’ said Liz.
Neville strode off purposefully. The abandoned Queen of England sat down angrily on one of the chairs to the left of the entrance, benea
th a notice exhorting the public not to do the burglar’s job for him.
Neville plonked himself on the bench beside Ted.
‘I hope you appreciated my little speech, Ted,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Oh good. What?’
‘I wanted to strangle you. I might yet.’
‘There are times when I’m glad you’re going to Nairobi,’ said Neville with the sadness of a man disappointed by human nature.
‘Oh belt up about Nairobi,’ said Ted. ‘You know nothing.’
Neville strode back to his smouldering wife. He was puzzled and hurt.
‘He insulted me,’ he said.
‘What did you expect?’ snorted Liz.
She stormed off, and made Geoffrey move up so that she could sit beside him.
A middle-aged lady with a worried face entered the bleak reception area. She stared with disbelief at Napoleon. She stared with even greater disbelief at Elvis and the green pepper. Her astonishment grew as she saw Sir Walter Raleigh sitting between two Queen Elizabeths. Small wonder that she battened with huge relief upon the policeman seated in the corner, with the round, puzzled, but reassuring face of a man who has never knee’d a suspect in the groin.
‘Ah!’ she said.
Neville stood up politely.
‘Have a seat, madam,’ he said.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, only slightly puzzled by this unexpected solicitude. She sat, and sighed. ‘It’s my son.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My eldest. He’s disappeared.’
‘Oh no. Oh I am sorry.’ Neville sat beside her and asked gently, ‘When did this happen?’
The words gushed out. ‘He didn’t come home last night, but I didn’t think owt about it, he stays with his friend sometimes, you know young people, so I wasn’t right bothered, but his friend hasn’t seen him.’
‘Oh dear! Was he … did he seem unhappy at home?’
‘It’s difficult to tell.’ Their faces were close, hers worried, his deeply concerned. ‘He hasn’t talked much lately, not to say talk. But he used to talk, when he did talk, about what a dump this place is. He hankered after London. Well, they do, don’t they?’
‘I fear so. They hanker away. Awfully worrying for you, though. Oh, I am sorry.’
‘Well, thank you.’ She was too absorbed in her worry to be more than vaguely surprised by the man in blue’s concern. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’
‘What do you mean, “what are you going to do about it?”?’ Neville’s bewilderment was total.
So was the worried mother’s. ‘What do you mean, “what do you mean, ‘what are you going to do about it?’?”?’ she said. ‘I mean, “what are you going to do about it?”’
‘I’m not going to do anything about it. Why should I do anything about it?’
‘Well, you’re a policeman.’
‘Oh. Oh Lord!’ Neville glanced down at his uniform, appalled. ‘Yes. No.’
‘You what?’
‘I’m not a policeman. I’m at a fancy dress party. I mean, I was. I’m here now. My wife’s daughter by her first marriage’s husband has thrown an egg at the Prime Minister.’
‘So why did you ask me all them questions?’ asked the worried mother indignantly.
‘I thought you wanted to talk about it. I was being kind.’
‘You great twassock!’
Everyone turned to look at Neville. He tried to look unruffled. The worried mother stormed over to the sergeant’s window.
Rita leant across Geoffrey to say to Liz, ‘It’s absurd, not talking at a time like this. Absurd. Tell her, Geoffrey.’
‘Don’t start using Geoffrey as a mediator, Rita,’ said Liz, and Sir Walter Raleigh found himself looking from one Queen Elizabeth to the other, as if watching a long rally at real tennis. ‘He isn’t exactly neutral. Exposure to tropical weather has unhinged his mind. He hates me and loves you.’
‘Liz! You spoke to me,’ said Rita. ‘Hardly honeyed words, but it’s a start.’
The identikit face of the ghastly criminal stared expressionlessly, inhumanly at these exchanges.
‘I’ll speak to you briefly, Rita, just to say that I never thought I’d find myself in one of these places.’ Liz was sailing on a rising tide of fury. ‘This is the most humiliating moment of my life.’
‘I know. Contact with real life. Absolutely remarkable.’
‘So this is where it’s led to, the disastrous mingling of our two families.’
‘If you so hate the disastrous mingling of our two families, perhaps you shouldn’t have mingled so disastrously with Ted at our children’s wedding.’
Liz could find no instant reply. Geoffrey seized on his chance to speak.
‘I think I may go back to study the head-hunters of Borneo,’ he said. ‘I need a bit of peace and quiet.’
‘Now listen,’ said the sergeant, when he’d heard the mother’s story. ‘We’ve got another major incident – a suspected murder – it’s going to be one of those nights, there’s only me to deal with this lady whose son has disappeared, your son has not disappeared, so I really do suggest that you all go home and leave us to try and stem the collapse of Western civilisation.’
For a moment nobody spoke or moved. Then Ted stood up.
‘Well … it’s back to the glittering party, then,’ he said.
In the bleak, unlovely street, the wind still howled, and the chip bags still ran their infernal race, pale greasy little chaps without legs or arms or eyes, bowling along on their moth-like bodies, visitors from an environment even more inhospitable than Cordwainer’s Road.
And how the party glittered, in the flexible, multi-purpose function room, in the Royalty Suite of the Grand Universal Hotel. It’s true that Punch, alias Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame, and Judy, alias Larry Benson’s lady wife, who was no lady, had carried their disguises a little too far, and a large knobbly pepper mill is a dangerous instrument with which to belabour your partner’s head. It’s true that no memorable witticisms had issued from ‘The Master’s’ lips, nor any seductive boldness from Mae West’s. It’s true that the invisible man was suffering from a fierce heat rash. It’s true that the music of the Dale Monsal Quartet failed entirely to make up in vitality what it lacked in accuracy. It’s true that the absence for more than an hour of the host, both Queen Elizabeths, Sir Walter Raleigh, the policeman, the green pepper and the only person not in fancy dress had not passed entirely unnoticed. But these were minor flaws. The room was pulsating to the rhythms of ‘Brazil’. The vicar was still cavorting with the schoolgirl. The nun whirled the pearly queen around. The Viking held Alice-in-Wonderland in his horny embrace. And Rodney and Betty Sillitoe were dancing the samba with as much style as it has ever been danced … by a red pepper and a yellow pepper.
The two Queen Elizabeths and Sir Walter Raleigh tried to enter unobtrusively. In vain!
‘Rodney! They’re back!’ said Betty.
‘Don’t look.’
‘No. Right.’
The two peppers danced on, swirled round stylishly, and approached each other again, stalks bobbing in time with the music.
‘It isn’t stylish, isn’t curiosity,’ said Rodney.
‘No. Right.’
‘It’s not concomitant with our status as leading business people …’ Rodney paused as they went out of earshot, then resumed as they swung round and approached tach other again, ‘… who are living proof that profit and the environment can go together.’
‘Absolutely. Something’s happened, though.’
‘Oh, I know.’
Elvis and Jenny made an attempt at an inconspicuous entrance. To no avail!
‘Elvis and Jenny are back too!’ said Rodney. ‘Go and pump Rita, tactfully, without seeming to pump her.’
‘Good idea.’
Betty danced off in search of Rita.
The doors slid open, sibilantly. Napoleon entered from the windswept forecourt just as Sandra was crossing t
he vast foyer with the duty manager’s dinner.
‘Sandra!’
Sandra’s tray crashed onto the thick pile carpet. The piped music tinkled on.
‘Oh Sandra!’
‘I only do that when you’re around,’ said Sandra indignantly. ‘I’ve only broken one cup in the last six weeks.’
‘Are you working here now?’ said Ted foolishly, kneeling to talk to his former lover.
‘No. It’s my day off. I come in as a hobby.’ Sandra scraped œufs Benedict and carpet fluff into a slightly broken bowl. ‘I got sacked at the Clissold Lodge.’
Ted managed to stop himself saying, ‘I’m not surprised.’ Instead, he said quietly, ‘Sandra! You were right.’
‘You what?’ Sandra spooned fluffy kidneys Turbigo on top of the œufs.’
‘About Corinna. You were right.’
‘Oh?’
‘She was a tarty piece.’
‘I know. “Was”?’
‘Yes. Was.’
‘Oh! Well!’
‘Yes. She … er … she’s conned me out of all me money and disappeared off the face of the earth.’
Sandra stood up. Ted stood too. They rose together.
‘You should have stayed with me, shouldn’t yer?’
‘Yes, Sandra, I …’
But Sandra had gone, striding off towards the kitchens with the duty manager’s wrecked dinner.
‘I should,’ he finished to nobody.
Ted walked slowly towards the lift, which would transport him to the first floor, to the Royalty Suite, to his glittering farewell.
A large yellow pepper approached Queen Elizabeth the First.
Rita was picking at the remains of the buffet. The Dale Monsal Quartet were playing ‘Spanish Eyes’.
‘Hello, Rita,’ said Betty. ‘You’ve … er … I haven’t … er … well, seen you around for an hour or so.’
‘No.’
There was a pause. It became clear that Rita wasn’t going to break it.
‘Nor Ted.’
‘He’s over there.’
‘I know, but before he was over there he wasn’t over anywhere for ages. And I … er … we … er … couldn’t help wondering if … well … something had happened.’