by David Nobbs
‘Oh Lord.’
‘Oh Lord?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Oh Lord.’
Rita took a quick look round the room. Nobody was taking any notice of them. There was no excuse for delaying this important conversation.
‘Why should I marry?’ she said. ‘I’m not incomplete without a man. I love you, but do I want to enter into a male-dominated institution and change my name to Ellsworth-Smythe?’
‘I’ll change mine.’
‘To Simcock?’
Geoffrey paused fractionally. ‘Hopefully not, but if you insist. But why not your maiden name?’
‘Spragg?’
‘Why not? You loved your parents.’
‘Would you?’
‘Women change their names without a second thought. Why shouldn’t I? Anyway, I rather like it.’ He tried it on for size. ‘Geoffrey Spragg. Blunt. Honest. Down to earth. We were Smiths before some social-climbing twit Ellsworth and Smythed us. I’ve never felt double-barrelled.’
‘This proposal – the discovery that Ted’s going to be working in close proximity wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘What?’
‘In all the films that I really like, a man arrives at a small town, alone, by train or on horseback. There’s trouble. He sorts it out. He leaves, alone, by train or on horseback. I’ve been that man all my life. The last few weeks I’ve begun, rather timidly, to wonder if I want to be alone any more. Suddenly, just then, I felt a magnificent shaft of naked jealousy. Marry me, Rita. I’m not leaving town on the Santa Fe.’
‘I’ll let you know.’
‘That would be very kind.’
Rita reeled away, and came face to face with Alec Skiddaw before she was ready for further human contact.
‘Champagne, madam?’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
‘My sister-in-law’s uncle fell off some scaffolding at the age of ninety-three,’ he said, filling her glass.
‘Good Lord!’
‘Yes! And you’re forced to wonder. Because he was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and ascribed his longevity to righteousness and abstinence, but my sister-in-law’s uncle drank like a fish, not that I think fish do, they’re fed up to the back teeth with water, if you ask me. Anyroad, he was in the pub crib team till he was eighty-eight, and he only pretended he was resigning because of failing eyesight. The real reason was his girl-friend. She was eighty-five, and she wanted him to meet her from her pottery class, because she was frightened of being mugged, and he didn’t want the lads in the crib team to think he was hen-pecked. And that was in Ross-on-Wye, not Chicago.’
‘What?’
Alec Skiddaw gave Rita a slow, dark, intense stare. If he’d had a boil, it would have throbbed.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was rude of me, Alec. Your stories are always absolutely riveting, but I was thinking. I have a difficult decision to make.’
She moved off.
‘Whether to have a vol-au-vent or a tortilla chip, no doubt,’ mumbled Alec Skiddaw bitterly when she had gone.
As she came slowly down the stairs and heard the rumble of chatter from her sitting room, Liz felt sick. They were all still here. She’d known they would be, of course. She knew that it would be worse when they’d gone, of course. But that didn’t make it any easier, or any pleasanter, to walk back into that room.
She pretended that Neville was watching her. Smile in place. Best foot forward. You can do it, darling. There. Well done, darling.
Rita raised her eyebrows and mouthed, ‘Are you all right?’ Liz nodded, smiled slightly, and shrugged. ‘As well as can be expected,’ said her shrug.
Neither woman wanted to seem to snub the other so soon after their declaration of peace. Yet neither wanted to talk further, for further talk could add nothing to that moment, and might well begin to rub the gloss off it.
It was Carol Fordingbridge who came to the rescue, buttonholing Rita and leaving Liz free to stroll casually into a room from which her absence, she realised with a touch of her normal asperity, had only been noticed by a few.
‘I’ve been trying not to tell you, because it doesn’t seem right to be pleased about anything today,’ said Carol, with suppressed excitement, ‘but I’ve done it, and I feel terrific.’
‘You’ve done what, Carol?’
‘I’ve enrolled for three “A” levels. I’ve taken the first tentative steps up the ladder to self-fulfilment.’
‘Well, that’s great, Carol.’ Rita hugged her protégé. ‘Great! Well done.’
‘Who knows where it’ll end? The poly, university. Wouldn’t it be a laugh if I got a better degree than Elvis? And it’s all thanks to your encouragement. I’ve given men up completely. They only want one thing. Yesterday this fitter with two tattoos asked me out, and I thought, “Simone de Beauvoir never went out with a fitter with two tattoos.”’
‘Don’t become a snob, Carol, whatever you do.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t because he was a fitter, or because of the two tattoos. But, I mean, they’re all the same, men, aren’t they?’
‘Perhaps not all men, Carol.’
‘You what?’
‘Geoffrey’s proposed to me.’ Rita tried desperately not to seem remotely coy in front of her protégé.
‘You’ve turned him down?’ It was only just a question.
‘Well … not in so many words. It isn’t as simple as that.’
‘Would you say it isn’t as simple as that if he wasn’t a successful anthropologist, but a fitter with two tattoos?’
The protégé stomped off. The teacher looked rueful.
The return of Liz had led some people to wonder if it was time to make a move. Nobody wanted to leave, except Angela Wintergreen. The champagne was excellent, the food was pleasant, the house was nice, and they were an agreeable, select bunch. Chide them not, gentle reader. While they remained there, connected to each other through Neville Badger, there was a sense in which he seemed to be there. When at last they went their separate ways, into the Neville-less town, then they would feel the awful irreversibility of loss.
For the moment the problem was solved. They couldn’t take their leave. Liz was talking with Ted.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ted was saying. ‘One of the many sad aspects of this sad affair is that my son, our son, is now without a father for the second time.’
‘You aren’t suggesting that you and I …?’
‘No. Bloody hell, no. I mean … no. Not that I … but no. I mean, it’s over. I mean, it is. But when he’s grown up, he won’t remember Neville. I mean … he won’t. I’m offering, Liz, to visit him, take him to the zoo, fill a gap in his psyche, that kind of thing.’
‘Are you saying all this because you feel so guilty?’
Ted looked puzzled. He might have scratched his head, if one arm wasn’t in a sling and the other clutching a crutch. ‘Guilty? What do you mean?’
‘Well, if you hadn’t offered to take him fishing …’
‘If you think like that you’d never offer to do anything. “I would have asked you out to dinner. Better not, in case a meteorite falls on your head.”’ Ted had been surprised, in fact, that Neville had accepted his impulsive offer.
‘And you must have thought, “If only I hadn’t accepted when he offered to drive for a bit.”’
‘You can’t deal in “if onlys” in life. I don’t blame myself. I blame the design of cars. He tried to indicate right, but he got the windscreen wipers instead. This car hit us broadsides. They should put these things in the same place in every car. Look, we’ll talk about it some other time, eh? About little …’ He could hardly bring himself to utter the hated name. ‘Josceleyn. ’Cos I’d like to have one son I could be proud of. Hello, Elvis. All right?’ Elvis, passing on his way to get champagne, nodded. ‘Good.’ He turned back to Liz. ‘I mean not that my lads are bad lads.’ Ted’s face took on a soft, almost gentle expression. With his
bandaged forehead, his bruising and his neck brace, he suddenly looked very vulnerable, almost a baby, a great, tired, creased, haggard baby. ‘Liz?’ he said, very gently. ‘About Neville. It was quick. He knew nothing about it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Look on the bright side, love. Where he is …’ Ted looked up at the ceiling, ‘well … who knows? We don’t, do we? We can’t. Maybe he’s happy.’ He smiled, trying to sell the idea of Neville’s happiness. ‘Maybe he’s reunited with Jane.’ His smile died. He realised his faux pas even as he was uttering it.
‘It would stretch a point for me to regard that prospect as looking on the bright side,’ said Liz.
She swept off, looking momentarily too fearsome to be approached by any leave-takers.
Betty Sillitoe emerged, glass in hand, from the dining room, where she’d demolished a drumstick in secret, just as Ted limped sideways through the door of the living room, holding his injured arm carefully away from the door and the wall.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘You know.’
She offered to help him. He accepted politely, although he didn’t really need help.
The downstairs lavatory was at the back of the hall, beneath the stairs. Betty took Ted’s arm and began to lead him towards it, very slowly.
‘Ted,’ she said, and she put her left hand firmly on the crutch, where it fitted onto his right arm, making it impossible for him to move. She leant forward and turned to look into his face. ‘It’s going to be lovely having you working for us. Lovely.’
‘Thanks.’
She removed her hand. Ted tried to hurry towards the lavatory. His need was increasing in relation to its proximity.
‘No, I really mean it,’ said Betty, putting her hand over the crutch again for emphasis. She gazed into his face. ‘It’s going to be lovely.’
‘Thanks.’
She removed her hand. Ted hobbled a couple of steps hurriedly. Down came the hand again.
‘All right, you said we’d be bankrupt by Christmas, but that’s forgotten.’
‘Thanks.’
Off came the hand. Ted set off like an injured greyhound. On went the hand.
‘OK, you called us freaky creaky nut cutlet folk, but that’s forgiven. Because – and this is the point – it’s going to be lovely having you working for us.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Even if you are a stubborn, opinionated sod.’
‘Thank you, Betty,’ said Ted desperately. Her hand came off the crutch again, and he hobbled hurriedly to the door. ‘You can’t come any further.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, if you need help … No need to be coy.’
‘I’m not coy, but I can manage.’
Betty was holding the lavatory door now. ‘Nothing to be coy about,’ she said. ‘We’ve all got them. Well, no, women haven’t, but they’ve got other things. We’ve all got parts of the body, of various peculiar kinds, and I’ve seen it all before. I was a nurse before I met Rodney.’
‘Thank you very much, Betty, but I’m all right.’
‘Right. Message received. You’re coy. Understood.’
She let go of the door at last.
‘Betty, I am not coy, but I can manage,’ he repeated, and he shut the door in her face.
‘If you get into difficulties,’ shouted Betty, as if he were miles away, ‘shout “nurse”.’
She drained her glass and put it behind a rubber plant. She found another glass hidden behind the rubber plant. It was half full. She sniffed it, then sipped it.
Rodney knew that he ought to be concentrating on what Alec Skiddaw was saying, and did manage to pick out the occasional word so that he could comment and appear to be listening, but where was she? ‘Alice Springs! Good Lord, Alec. A bit different from Daventry.’ How would he cope if she died, when he hated it if she even left the room? ‘In the bedroom! Good Lord! I hate snakes.’ It wasn’t his death that he feared. He wouldn’t be around to suffer. It was hers. ‘Ayers Rock! Amazing!’ They’d done everything together. People warned them how dangerous it was to be everything to each other. ‘To jump? Good Lord!’ Let’s hope I go first. No! Can’t let the dear old duck down. Betty on her own, without me – unthinkable. ‘Well, I suppose there aren’t many places to jump from in the outback.’ Let’s hope we go together. Unlikely. Possible. Shanghai flu? Plane crash? Maybe we ought to have a suicide pact. Pills. Shouldn’t be too hard. Or something more spectacular, a grand gesture. Knaresborough. Nice thought, if a trifle morbid. ‘We might just do that.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said Alec Skiddaw.
‘Sorry. I was thinking,’ said Rodney. ‘Morbid, in a way. Yet, in a way, not. About jumping. Betty and me. When we’re old. Off the viaduct in Knaresborough, maybe, hand in hand, together, into the Nidd. Sorry. It was your friend who jumped off Ayers Rock that set me off.’
‘But he didn’t. That’s the point.’
‘You what?’
‘My cousin persuaded him not to. Because he was from Daventry, too, and they found friends in common. That was the whole point of the story.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I … er … didn’t quite catch every word of it, I’m afraid. Fascinating, though, Alec. Fascinating.’
Where was she?
When Ted emerged from the lavatory he didn’t see Betty at first, and he jumped when she suddenly stepped into his path and said, ‘All right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever loved someone, Ted, and been too shy to tell them?’
‘No, I … shyness, that’s never been a …’
‘I have.’ Betty stood in front of him, staring into his face, swaying only slightly. ‘I have met a man, and loved him for many years, and said nothing. Met him regularly, and said nothing. I don’t think I need tell you who that man is.’
‘You mean …?’ Ted could hardly bring himself to believe it. ‘You mean …?’
‘Precisely. Someone not a million miles from this spot on which I’m standing on. Then the time came when I realised I had to admit my secret love, so my secret love would be no secret any more.’ Betty looked puzzled. ‘That sounds familiar. Is it Shakespeare?’
Ted tried to think, but it wouldn’t come. He wasn’t that familiar with Shakespeare.
Betty gave up the hunt. ‘I realised that the time had come to say, “I love you with all my heart.”’
‘Betty!’
Ted launched himself at her.
‘Not you!’ she shrieked. ‘Ted! Ted!’
She pushed him off her. He lost his balance, tried to regain it with his crutch. The crutch slipped. He fell towards Betty. She tried to get out of the way and slipped. They fell together. Ted gave a screech of agony as his broken limbs crashed to the ground.
Rodney rushed into the hall, closely followed by Rita and Geoffrey. Elvis and Jenny weren’t far behind.
They gazed down on Ted and Betty, entwined and gasping on the carpet by the bottom of the stairs.
‘What’s happened?’ said Rodney.
‘He attacked me,’ said Betty.
‘Ted!’ said Rita.
‘He made advances upon my person.’
‘With an arm and a leg in plaster? That must be some kind of record,’ said Rita.
‘She told me she loved me,’ said Ted.
‘I didn’t, Rodney,’ said Betty desperately. ‘I told him I loved you.’
‘Oh Betty!’ The dreadful realisation dawned on Ted. ‘You mean …? Oh heck. Oh, Betty. I’m … oh, Betty.’ He tried to get up, raising his head and chest slowly. He failed. His head crashed onto the brown carpet. He gave a cry of pain.
By now Simon and Lucinda and Liz and Carol were among those who had come out to see what was happening.
Rita and Geoffrey tried to lift Ted up.
Rodney tried to lift Betty up.
‘Help us, somebody,’ said Rita, so urgently that Rodney hurried to her aid, dropping Betty like a sack of coal.
‘Rodney!’ cried Betty.<
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Rodney swung back to Betty’s aid. Morris Wigmore and Elvis helped Rita, and Simon and Liz helped Rodney with Betty.
At last Betty and Ted were on their feet again, and Ted was reunited with his crutch. Betty was shaken, and Ted very shaken.
‘I told him how I’d been a nurse,’ Betty explained to Rodney, ‘and how when I first met you, when I was a nurse, when you were in hospital with … well, I won’t tell them what you had … and how shy we were, and all those years before we realised we loved each other. You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘ ’Course I do,’ said Rodney. ‘ ’Course I do, love.’ He turned to Ted. ‘All right, Ted?’
‘I think so.’
‘No more bones broken?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. You’re sacked.’
‘You what?’
‘Thinking Betty and I are like everyone else, playing around …’ Rodney looked uneasily at Rita, and Liz, and Elvis and Jenny, and Simon, and Carol. ‘Well, not everyone else … So conceited you think every woman loves you. You’re sacked.’
‘I haven’t even started work yet.’
‘You’re still sacked. Two hundred pounds a week down the drain.’
‘Two hundred pounds a week! I had more like four hundred in mind.’
‘You can have it. You’re sacked. Four hundred pounds a week down the drain.’
Betty gave a shriek of laughter.
‘Come on, old girl,’ said Rodney. ‘Home.’
He led Betty towards the front door. People began to drift back to the living room.
Liz held the front door open, perhaps out of politeness, perhaps to make sure they went through it.
‘It’s been a lovely party, Liz,’ said Betty. ‘Most enjoyable.’
‘Betty!’ said Rodney.
‘Well, not enjoyable. Awful. Well, not awful. What I mean is, you made the best of a bad job. Well, not a bad job. A … I … good night. Well, not night. Afternoon.’
Betty blundered out, into the front garden.
‘I’m sorry, Liz,’ said Rodney. ‘It’s the emotion. I’m so sorry.’