by David Nobbs
‘Well, that all went off splendidly;’ she said.
Ted made the introductions. Rita wished he’d tried to hide the pride in his voice when he added, ‘Rodney’s the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens,’ as if he were a prize salmon Ted had caught, and she knew that Liz had picked this up. Why else should she have exclaimed, as she shook hands with Rodney and gazed into his grizzled, lined face, ‘Ah! A man of power!’
‘Your girl looks a picture,’ the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens told her. ‘A picture.’
Rita tried to hide her irritation at all this praise of Jenny, and then found that she had a far greater irritation to hide. Her parents were hobbling painfully towards them.
Percy Spragg was a bow-legged, barrel-chested old man who appeared to be wearing a demob suit. Clarrie Spragg was a bowlegged, barrel-chested old woman whose face had set over the years into a fearsome and entirely misleading hardness in repose. She looked as if she had bought her clothes at a 1940s jumble sale at which she had arrived late. They looked to Rita as they bore down upon her like two pill boxes left over from our wartime coastal defences.
‘Well, that were grand,’ said Clarrie Spragg.
‘Grand,’ echoed Percy Spragg.
Ted effected the introductions reluctantly.
‘By ’eck, your daughter’s a belter,’ Percy Spragg told the Rodenhursts, who flinched and smiled at the same time. Rita glared at her father, and Clarrie Spragg wasn’t too pleased either.
Clarrie managed to force herself in between Percy and the group. She whispered grimly, ‘Just you mind your Ps and Qs, Percy Spragg.’ Her expression softened. ‘All right?’ she whispered.
‘Oh aye,’ said Percy Spragg much too loudly, and a playful gust sent his words streaming out over the gravestones which surrounded the abbey church. ‘I’ve only been once since breakfast.’
Rita glared, and Ted hurried over to remove a Co-op carrier bag which was being drummed against one of the gravestones by the wind. As he bent to pick it up, another gust lifted Liz’s dress and revealed an achingly tempting knee. He looked away hastily.
‘Right, everybody,’ said Nigel Thick, the carefully classless young photographer from Marwoods of Moor Street. ‘We’re all set. Let’s have the happy couple.’
There was a murmur of conversation and excitement, a communal release from tension like an echo of a distant mass orgasm, as the guests found that they had a definite role to play once more. They were watchers, admirers, murmurers of ‘aaaah!’ at appropriate moments. The uneasy knots broke up and reformed in a homogeneous mass. Except for Elvis Simcock, who prowled on the edges looking cynical, as befitted a young man who had studied the great philosophers and knew how weak-minded mass sentimentality is.
Paul and Jenny stood framed against the magnificent West Doorway of the old abbey church. A low-flying military aircraft struck a discordant note.
‘I feel awful,’ whispered Jenny, smiling rather desperately.
‘Why?’ whispered her husband of ten minutes.
‘Right! Big smiles! Radiance pouring from every pore!’ commanded the classless Nigel Thick. He thought that the taking of wedding photos was beneath him, but he was clever enough not to show this. He came out with all the right words, delivered with automated enthusiasm.
Radiance poured somewhat stickily from every pore, and froze on the cool breeze.
‘Great! Terrific!’ lied Nigel Thick.
‘Wearing white,’ whispered Jenny, free to answer Paul’s question at last. ‘Hypocrisy’s the national disease, and we’ve started to build our marriage on hypocritical foundations.’
‘Jenny!’ whispered Paul.
‘OK,’ said the young photographer classlessly. ‘Now a nice dreamy one. Two lovebirds gazing into each other’s eyes.’
Two extremely embarrassed and shy lovebirds gazed into each other’s eyes.
‘Aaaaah!’ went the uncles and aunts and cousins.
‘Great!’ said Nigel Thick, who intended to change his name to Barry Precious and become famous. ‘Tremendous. Fabulous.’
‘The cost of my dress could feed an African family for twenty years,’ whispered Jenny.
‘Jenny! Forget all that just for today,’ whispered Paul.
‘OK,’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Now a real sexy one.’
The happy couple made a brave stab at a real sexy one, and Jenny blushed prettily.
‘Nice!’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Very nice.’ Nice was the least complimentary of all his adjectives. He only used it when he meant ‘Really awful!’ but the massed ranks of the guests didn’t seem to feel that it was awful. Another satisfied communal ‘Aaaah!’ drifted away across the town’s jumbled-up skyline towards the foetid River Gadd.
‘If our child grows up selfish and deceitful, it’ll be our fault,’ said Jenny. She didn’t need to whisper, as a police siren was blaring.
‘Jenny!’ said Paul.
‘OK,’ shouted Nigel Thick, in competition with the siren. ‘Let’s go for something a bit more informal. Right? OK.’
‘Is that all the man I’ve committed myself to for life can say – “Jenny!”?’ said Jenny.
‘Jenny!’
Jenny laughed and gave Paul a quick, spontaneous kiss. She had almost forgotten the watching throng.
‘Good,’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Great. Terrific. Fantabulous.’
‘“Committed for life!”’ whispered Paul, as the siren faded into the western suburbs. ‘It sounds like a prison sentence.’
‘Oh Paul, you don’t think that, do you?’
‘No! Love! ’Course I don’t.’
They kissed.
‘Aaaah!’ went the crowd.
‘Ugh!’ went the cynical Elvis Simcock.
‘Very good!’ went the classless Nigel Thick. ‘Terrific! Nice one! Tremendous!’
Jenny and Paul disengaged in some confusion, as self-consciousness returned.
‘OK,’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Happy couple out. Four proud parents in.’ One day these people would have coffee-table books of his photographs. His mother still called them his ‘snaps’. He was sure she did it deliberately.
The four proud parents took up their positions, Simcocks together, Rodenhursts together.
‘Anything you ever want in the ironmongery line, Laurence,’ said Ted. ‘Custom-built door knockers, personalized coal scuttles, you name it, I’ll give it at cost price.’
‘Well well!’ said Laurence. ‘It seems that this union can be of great benefit to our family, Liz!’
Liz and Ted both gave Laurence sharp looks. Rita gave Ted a furious look. Laurence’s smooth face remained innocent of expression.
‘OK,’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Big smiles. Happiest day of your life.’
They all smiled, with varying degrees of artificiality and success.
‘Terrific,’ lied Nigel Thick.
‘In fact, Ted,’ said Liz, ‘we already have one of your companion sets in our drawing room.’
‘Oh! In your “drawing room”! Well well!’ said Ted. He added, somewhat archly: ‘I trust it’s giving satisfactory service.’
‘Actually the tongs have buckled,’ said Laurence.
‘OK,’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Nice dignified one. Nice and solemn. Four pillars of local society, linked by wedlock.’
They found being dignified and solemn easier than smiling.
‘Great! Tremendous! Magnificent!’
‘I’ll bring you a replacement,’ said Ted. ‘Gratis. Have no fear.’
‘Ted!’ hissed Rita. ‘Don’t talk business at functions. Mr Rodenhurst doesn’t talk about dental appointments at functions.’
‘OK,’ said the future Barry Precious classlessly. ‘Now change partners. Symbolize that you’re all one big happy family.’
The two couples changed places.
‘Actually, I think you’re both due for a check-up,’ said Laurence smoothly, his face a mask. ‘I’ll get my girl to send you one of our cards.’
‘OK,’ said Nigel Thick
. ‘Arms round each other. Nice and friendly. No inhibitions.’
Liz’s arm went round Ted, and he felt his bottom being stroked. Had he imagined it? No! There it was again, and a quick playful nip. He was terrified. Of course his bottom, by its very nature, was round the back, out of sight of people he was facing, but still …! Liz’s arm was round his waist now. One finger stroked him very gently. It was too small a gesture to be seen by the assembled guests. But still …! He could feel the sweat running down his back.
Laurence put his arm round Rita with fastidious distaste. He looked like the leader of a nation embracing the wife of a hated rival at the end of a conference at which only a meaningless, bland communiqué had been issued.
‘Relax!’ said Nigel Thick. ‘Let it all hang out.’
Laurence regarded this phrase with extreme distaste. He found it impossible to comply but, for the sake of Jenny and social decorum, he did manage to make a bit of it almost hang out. Rita smiled like the Queen being offered sheeps’ eyes at a Bedouin banquet. Ted and Liz were more successful.
‘Great! Terrific! Fantabulous! Marvellous! OK. Happy couple back in, with the two brothers.’
A robin watched beadily from its vantage point on a nearby gravestone as the four proud parents moved away. Ted gave Liz a warning look. Laurence noticed it, but Rita didn’t. She was too busy indicating to Elvis that he was to smile. He made a wry face at her.
Elvis Simcock was twenty-four. He was taller, more self-possessed and wilder than his brother, and he was the only man at the wedding not wearing a suit, though he could have looked quite smart in his red cord jacket and tight brown trousers if he’d wanted to.
Simon Rodenhurst, Jenny’s older brother, who was twenty-three, was well dressed in a rather anonymous way, a provincial professional young man who had never felt any urge to rebel. He worked for the estate agents, Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. His face had an immature, unformed look, as if it were waiting for his personality to be delivered.
‘Elvis?’ said Jenny. ‘Have you met my brother Simon?’
‘No. That’s one of the many pleasures I’ve missed out on so far,’ said Elvis Simcock, and his ‘hello’ to Simon Rodenhurst was barely more than a grunt.
‘OK. Big smiles. Bags of brotherly love,’ said Nigel Thick.
Paul’s and Jenny’s smiles were a bit strained. Simon’s was perfectly judged. The cynical Elvis’s was grotesque, way over the top, a grinning fiend.
‘Amazing!’ said Nigel Thick, with more than his customary accuracy. He took pictures of the four proud parents with the happy couple, of the happy couple with the two bridesmaids, of the two bridesmaids together, of the very young bridesmaid on her own and therefore also inevitably of the very fat bridesmaid on her own, of the bride on her own and therefore also inevitably of the groom on his own, of the proud parents and the happy couple with Rita’s parents. Ted’s parents and Laurence’s parents were dead, and Liz’s widowed mother had remarried, lived in South Africa, and had been advised by her doctor not to travel.
Finally, Nigel Thick took pictures of all the guests, clustered round the great doorway in an amorphous throng. This picture offended his artistic sensibilities, but pleased his commercial instincts. It was ghastly, but everyone in it would buy a copy.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Say cheese.’
‘Cheese,’ said everybody except Laurence and Ted. Laurence said nothing. Ted said ‘fromage’. There was a little laughter, but not enough.
‘Great!’ said the carefully classless Nigel Thick. ‘Tremendous. Terrific. Marvellous. Fantastic. Fantabulous.’
The less-favoured guests began to move away, through narrow, unlovely streets of domestic brick, municipal stone and financial concrete, towards the drizzle-stained multistorey car park, which sat on the town like a stranded, truncated liner. On their left, in the bus station, laden shoppers clambered onto local buses bound for Bradeley Bottom, Upper Mill and Knapperley. Servicemen and girls with green hair sat in half-empty buses bound for York, Leeds, Wakefield, Goole, Doncaster, Wetherby, Selby and Hull. Beyond the bus station, in the cattle market, the last few cattle were waiting to be sold, like unattractive boy evacuees left till last in church halls. Old chip bags and empty packets of salt and vinegar-flavoured crisps bowled along the pavements in the fresh breeze. The town smelt of salt and vinegar and stale beer. The wedding guests felt out of place, and hurried to their cars.
The close relatives drifted slowly along the broad path between the graves, towards Tannergate, where shoppers gawped, and the beribboned limousines waited.
‘Made an assignation with him yet?’ said Laurence Rodenhurst under his breath.
‘What?’ said his wife Liz. ‘With whom?’
‘“With whom?” she says, grammatical even under attack. With the toasting fork tycoon. The knight of the companion set. Well, he’s your type, isn’t he? He has that rough, coarse quality that you regularly mistake for manly strength. I saw you looking at him! Just don’t let me catch you doing anything more than look at him, that’s all.’
‘Oh dear! What would you do if I did? Tear up a paper napkin?’
And, equally sotto voce, as they too walked away between the graves, the Simcock parents sparred.
‘Why did you have to say “fromage”?’
‘People laughed.’
‘Out of pity and embarrassment. Why do you have to ruin the greatest day of my life?’
‘I thought our wedding was supposed to be the greatest day of your life.’
‘It was supposed to be.’
After walking away from Ted in anger, Rita found herself on her own. That was bad. Then Laurence approached her. That was worse.
There was absolutely nothing to say.
‘How old is your father?’ said Laurence at last.
‘Seventy-eight.’
‘Is he really?’ He paused. ‘Is he really? Well done.’ Another pause. ‘Well done indeed.’
Meaningless social noises. Nervous spasms expressed in words. Then silence.
Ted and Liz were following more slowly. Their words were overflowing with meaning.
‘I want you,’ said Liz in a low voice.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ted.
‘I ache for your body.’
‘Oh heck.’
‘We’ll see you at the hotel, then,’ said Paul, when all four parents had at last arrived at the cars.
Ted kissed the radiant bride. ‘You look a picture, love,’ he said. ‘A picture.’
This time, Rita found it impossible to hide her irritation.
The reception was held in the Garden Room of the Clissold Lodge Hotel. There were two three-star hotels in the town. The Clissold Lodge belonged to Superior Hotels Ltd, who stood for quality. The Angel belonged to Quality Hotels Ltd, who stood for almost anything. The Clissold Lodge was therefore, at least until the Grand Universal opened, the best hotel in town. It was a late Georgian pile of no great beauty, a forbidding mass of darkening red brick, set in its own spacious grounds on the northern edge of the town. It had been erected by Amos Clissold, who made a fortune out of glue. His advertising slogan ‘Ee! Buy gum! Buy Clissold’s’ hadn’t changed for a hundred and twenty years. But after four generations of glue tycoons the dynasty had dissolved, other men had taken over the glue factory, and the Estate had sold the house.
The Garden Room was round the back. It was pleasant, spacious, dignified. French windows led out into its own private, walled garden, so that, when the sun shone, functions could be held indoors and out. And now the sun was shining quite warmly. Well, it would for the Rodenhursts, thought Ted.
There was a splendid-looking buffet down one wall, with a turreted three-tiered cake, and at the far end from the French windows there was another table with champagne bottles and glasses. The two waitresses wore smart black-and-white outfits. Paul and Jenny wondered how much, or rather how little, they were being paid.
Ted’s plate was laden with pork pie, tiny sausage rolls, hard-boil
ed egg with Danish lump-fish roe, potato salad, Russian salad, tuna fish vol-au-vents, quiche lorraine, pilchard mousse, cottage cheese and anchovy savoury, and a frozen prawn and tinned asparagus tartlet. The buffet was perhaps not quite as magnificent as it looked, he thought, with gastronomic sorrow and social pleasure. He approached the immaculate Neville Badger, who was looking somewhat lost as he wrestled with a glass of champagne, a plate of canapés, and his grief.
‘I … er … I do hope my wife didn’t upset you earlier,’ said Ted.
‘No! Not at all!’ said Neville Badger.
‘I mean … she isn’t the greatest one in the world for saying the right thing.’
‘No, no. I assure you. No problem.’
‘Are there many Badgers left at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger?’
‘No. Only me. My brother’s in finance in Leeds, and …’ Neville stopped, as if either the subject, or he, or perhaps both were exhausted.
‘Your own children haven’t followed you?’ Ted asked.
‘No … I … we couldn’t have children. Oh Lord. Excuse me.’
Neville Badger hurried off. Liz Rodenhurst approached the dumbfounded Ted.
‘You look so lost, so uncouth,’ she said admiringly.
‘Well … thank you.’ Ted accepted the compliment doubtfully. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, as Jenny walked radiantly past them, bearing plates of food for a group of friends by the French windows.
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘She’s attractive. That’s very different. But not beautiful. Except perhaps today.’
‘I can see where she gets it from,’ said Ted. ‘Being attractive, I mean, not being not beautiful.’
‘Thank you. I think.’
‘Liz?’ Ted paused until the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood had passed rather fiercely by, en route to do his duty by talking to Rita’s parents, who were perched on chairs beside the fire extinguisher like wallflowers at a dance. Ted didn’t want the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood to hear what he had to say. On the other hand, he didn’t want to delay too long, in case Rita came in from the garden. ‘Liz? What you said earlier. I mean, wasn’t it? A bit naughty. I mean … words … they needn’t mean much, but they can be … you know … I mean, can’t they? … Disturbing. Dangerous.’