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A Bit of a Do

Page 10

by David Nobbs


  The applause was enthusiastic, and several middle-aged people were badly out of breath.

  ‘From Latin America the Dale Monsal Quartet transport you over the Atlantic by magic carpet to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as Ted’s singing in the bath. ‘Take the floor, ladies and gentlemen, for a whiff of old Vienna.’

  To Rita’s joy, Neville showed no desire to leave the floor. Rodney appeared happy with Jenny’s company. Even Laurence was happy to remain. He wanted a private chat, and where was safer?

  ‘Exactly the same thing is happening as at the wedding,’ he said, as the Dale Monsal Quartet attacked the Blue Danube, with very few false notes. ‘Mrs Chicken is desperately trying to make sure Mr Chicken doesn’t drink too much, and she’ll be the one who ends up drunk.’

  ‘You find people so amusing, observed from a distance, don’t you?’ said Liz. ‘What a pity you don’t like us so much close to.’

  ‘I do, Liz. It’s just that the Rodenhursts have never found affection easy to express.’

  ‘Perhaps because you have so little affection to express.’

  ‘I have feelings, Liz. I just keep them bottled up.’

  ‘Like chutney.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, not exactly like chutney, no.’ Laurence felt almost certain that the lady clarinetist had just winked at him. He looked away, and met the eyes of the male, black pianist. And the pianist definitely winked at him! And grinned hugely, with what looked like the joy of being alive. Again, Laurence looked away hurriedly. ‘I’m British, Liz,’ he said. ‘My affection doesn’t come bursting out in great surges.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘You don’t want to get close to me. You want to get close to the toasting fork tycoon. You’re having an affair with him, aren’t you? Don’t answer that! I don’t want to know. Just make sure you’re very, very discreet. And, please, don’t dance with him tonight.’

  ‘Won’t that be guaranteed to set tongues wagging in this town?’

  Laurence considered this, and almost missed a step.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Dance with him once, but don’t hold him too close.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘But hold him close enough not to arouse suspicions.’

  Rodney Sillitoe’s hands as he guided Jenny sedately round the floor were firm, tactful, not a bit naughty. The expression in his eyes was appreciative of her attractions, but not lustful. He seemed to be glad that she was attractive, for Paul’s and the world’s sake. She really didn’t understand it.

  ‘I just don’t see how a nice man like you can enjoy dancing while you’re keeping thousands of living creatures in conditions that would make a Siberian prison camp seem like a Young Conservatives’ disco,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not when you’ve asked me to dance. But I don’t.’

  The music stopped. There was gentle applause.

  ‘Oh, Jane!’ said Neville Badger.

  ‘I’m Rita,’ said Rita.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Of course you are,’ said Neville Badger.

  Laurence and Liz and Jenny joined Ted and Paul and Betty Sillitoe at the table. Neville Badger led Rita off for a drink, in case she was upset at being mistaken for Jane. The Dale Monsal Quartet launched themselves into a quickstep.

  ‘Come on, Paul,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Leave him alone, Jenny, if he doesn’t want to,’ advised Laurence.

  ‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘Marriage is a totality of shared experience.’

  ‘So that’s where I went wrong!’ said Laurence, and he left the table abruptly.

  ‘Why are my parents so touchy today?’ said Jenny, watching her departing father, wondering. Then she pulled Paul onto the dance floor.

  ‘Don’t overdo it,’ he said.

  ‘I’m all right!’ she insisted.

  ‘I can only do disco dancing,’ he said.

  Ted and Liz and Betty Sillitoe watched Paul and Jenny bopping vaguely in a far comer of the floor, hardly moving, holding each other tight, swaying gently.

  ‘He’s slipped off to the bar. I’m sure of it. Excuse me,’ said Betty, and she slipped off to the bar to see if Rodney had slipped off to the bar, and there were Ted and Liz, secret lovers, alone together in the middle of the crowded, noisy, smoky ballroom.

  ‘… night-life. Well, he thought it was a bona fido labrador. He never dreamt it was my ex-brother-in-law’s first wife, who’d been on the sauce in Colwyn Bay. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw appeared to have found an unexpectedly good listener in Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. He was getting nearer to telling the whole of his tale without interruption than he had ever been. ‘Then up pipes the tax inspector, doing his amateur ventriloquy, saying to the dog, his then wife, now his ex-wife, “Gelt up, you stupid gitch.” Well …’

  ‘There you are!’ said Betty Sillitoe. ‘Come on, love. You had an awful lot of wine with the meal. Better give it a rest or you’ll regret it.’ And she led Rodney back into the ballroom to rejoin Timothy and Helen Fincham, their almost-inseparable hosts.

  ‘I’m just a figment of the imagination, I suppose,’ muttered Alec Skiddaw darkly, intensely.

  ‘How can you be so sure it’s mine?’ said Ted urgently.

  ‘Look casual, Ted. People may be watching.’

  ‘Hell’s bells.’ Ted smiled excessively casually at a passing lady dentist, who almost stopped because she thought she must be supposed to know him. ‘I mean … Liz … how can you be so sure?’

  ‘There’s nobody else.’

  ‘What about Laurence?’

  ‘Laurence and I don’t sleep together any more.’

  ‘I assumed you … you know … took precautions.’

  ‘No point if there’s nothing to take them against. You could have, though.’

  ‘Liz!’ Ted suddenly remembered to smile cheerfully. ‘I don’t go to wedding receptions armed with rubber goods.’ A casual wave to Larry Benson’s lady wife, who was actually no lady. ‘Anyroad, I’d have thought … I mean … that the chances were pretty remote at your age.’

  ‘Oh thank you!’

  ‘Oh Lord. Oh heck. Sorry.’ Liz’s face was like thunder. ‘Look casual. Look happy.’

  Liz smiled sweetly. ‘What a tactless, uncouth man you are,’ she quipped.

  ‘No … I meant … you don’t look your age,’ he riposted smilingly. ‘So sometimes I forget how … how you aren’t quite as amazingly young as you seem.’

  ‘Don’t try to recover,’ said Liz. ‘I like you because you aren’t smooth. I like you for what you are. Your own man. Proud. Rough.’

  ‘Good Lord. Liz? I suppose you’ve thought of …’ A nod to the Mercers, smile as if not a care in the world. ‘… er … having a … I mean … not having the … er … you know.’

  ‘Yes. I have. I’ve decided to have the baby. But I absolutely adore York.’

  ‘What?’ Ted saw Neville Badger and Rita approaching, and understood. ‘Ah! Yes. Right. York. The Minster. The Shambles. Hello, love.’

  ‘It was rather, wasn’t it?’ said Neville, sinking wearily into a chair with the air of a man who has sunk into many, many chairs in his lifetime. ‘Poor Rodney.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I thought you said the dinner was a shambles.’

  ‘No. York.’

  ‘York a shambles? I can’t agree. Delightful city.’

  ‘No. There’s a street in York called The Shambles.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I know. I mean, I know that you know. I mean, I assume that you know. Most people do.’

  Neville Badger looked bewildered, Ted embarrassed, Rita suspicious, Liz amused.

  With one accord Rita and Liz gave Ted a look, indicating that he should dance with Liz. ‘Right,’ he said, and they both gave him another look, indicating that he shouldn’t have acknowledged their first look. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and they both raised their eyes in irritation wi
th him for acknowledging the second look. He was sweating. He was no good at this sort of thing. ‘Liz?’ he said. ‘Are you prepared to brave the perils of my clumsy feet?’

  ‘Well, if you insist,’ said Liz.

  They moved onto the dance floor, and the music stopped.

  Liz laughed.

  Ted didn’t.

  ‘Another dance, Neville?’ said Rita. Her boldness surprised her.

  ‘No. Please. Thank you.’

  ‘It might help to take you out of yourself.’

  ‘I don’t want to be taken out of myself. Who’d I be then?’

  Rita’s pink spots returned, but Neville Badger didn’t see them. He was already halfway to the bar.

  ‘It’s worse than being on the telly,’ said Ted.

  He was trying to remember the name of the slow foxtrot. They were dancing self-consciously, taking care not to be too near each other, or too far away. Both were aware of Rita, seated alone now, and of Laurence, standing with young Mr Young and old Mr Young and giving them not an inkling of his low opinion of their professional ability. Both knew that Rita and Laurence were watching with eyes like tape measures. Ted remembered the title of the music. It was ‘Embraceable You’. Some chance of embracing.

  ‘Don’t be grumpy,’ said Liz.

  ‘I am grumpy,’ he said. ‘Making me make love during the wedding reception. Choosing just before dinner to tell me you’re pregnant. Constantly referring to pregnant pauses. Blowing me kisses in a crowded bar. You flirt with danger as much as with me. It turns you on.’

  ‘You turn me on. I’m having your baby.’

  ‘Oh heck. What are we going to do?’

  The Dale Monsal Quartet seemed to be in a trance. Dale Monsal was swaying almost imperceptibly. The black pianist was smiling dreamily to himself. The drummer was glaring. The clarinetist ogled, smiled, simpered, fluttered, and her great breasts bobbed slowly in time with the quietly seductive rhythm, to which more than thirty couples gently moved and slowly sweated.

  ‘It’s impossible to dance to this music,’ complained Paul, who was disco dancing a couple of feet away from his hot, tired, pregnant, almost immobile and apparently rather worried wife. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Paul moved closer, and took hold of her. They moved round, very slowly, in each other’s arms.

  ‘Jenny, there is.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can tell. Come on! No secrets. A totality of shared experience.’

  ‘I think my mother and your father are having an affair.’

  Paul stood still, thunderstruck, and the managing director of White Rose Carpets Ltd collided with him. Paul was oblivious of this. He was watching Ted and Liz.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told me,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want me to have your baby?’ said Liz softly.

  ‘Of course. It’s a great thrill. But.’

  ‘Ah. “But” again. But what?’

  ‘Well … I mean … at your …?’

  ‘… age?’

  ‘Oh heck. But … I mean … isn’t there? Some risk?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Like her daughter, Liz felt that the risks were negligible for Rodenhursts, née Ellsworth-Smythes. ‘I know some people probably think I’m selfish.’ She paused, giving Ted time to deny this, but he didn’t. ‘But I’ve had two children. Watched them grow up. I couldn’t have an abortion after that. The third child is already real for me. It’s a person.’ She lowered her voice still more. ‘I want your baby.’

  ‘Well … good. Good. But … I mean … Laurence! … I mean …’

  ‘Well, obviously I shan’t be able to go on living with Laurence.’

  ‘No. Quite. Well … good. Good.’

  ‘Look bright and jolly.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Right. Sorry. Oh heck.’

  Ted was finding it harder than Liz to seem bright and casual. He found it difficult to believe that the other dancing couples were interested only in each other, and not in them. He wondered if Rita or Laurence could lip-read. The clarinetist was smiling straight at him. He looked away, as if there was a danger of having her baby too. Oh God.

  ‘I think we should live together,’ said Liz.

  ‘Absolutely. It’s the only way.’ Too close. Dangerous. Push her away just a little, without offending her. Oh God. ‘I mean … is there absolutely no possibility that it’s his?’

  ‘Don’t you want to live with me?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’s like a dream. I was just … exploring possibilities. ‘Course I do. Like the clappers. But.’ He saw her expression. ‘I mean not but.’

  ‘Your enthusiasm sounds pretty temperate to me.’

  ‘No. No, love!’ Too far apart now, pull her closer, lovely feel of her flesh. Push her away! ‘It’s just … Rita, Laurence, the family, everything.’ Smile. Ha ha! Oh God! ‘Yes, of course I do. Madly. But … oh heck. That’s all. How?’

  ‘How? How what?’

  ‘How do we go about it?’

  ‘Oh. Well … we just go away together. Quickly. Suddenly. A clean break.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Absolutely.’ Almost trod on her feet. Swing round. Bump gently into manager of National Westminster Bank. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?? You are function-fixated.’

  ‘It’s not easy for me either. I’ve never left Laurence before, you know. I’m worried my courage’ll run out if I don’t. Now, Ted! When the dance finishes. Before the realities of our daily life engulf us for ever.’

  The music finished. There was applause.

  ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as a London pint. ‘We’re going to take a very short breather now. We’ll see you again in a very few minutes.’

  Possibly, thought Ted. Or possibly not.

  Finding Rita still alone, Laurence felt obliged to dance with her on the resumption of the musical activities. It was a particularly nondescript tune, which neither of them knew. In fact, it was an extraordinarily nondescript tune. In fact, it was so extraordinarily nondescript as to be, in the final analysis, not nondescript at all.

  He held her as lightly as he could, with the tips of his fingers. They were both embarrassed by even this degree of physical contact, and they were glad when the memorably forgettable dance ended.

  Rita went to the ladies’ powder room. On her way back she lingered briefly in the bar. Betty Sillitoe bought her a drink and, to keep her company, bought one for herself as well.

  Rita became aware that it was quite a while since she had seen Ted.

  Laurence wandered among the tables, stopping to exchange a word here and there with colleagues. Some felt that they should advertise, to correct the popular misapprehension that dentistry under the National Health Service was becoming extortionate. Laurence was not in favour. He wanted people to believe it was extortionate, so that he could continue to charge high prices. He edged swiftly past the Mercers’ table, for fear that Mr Mercer would invite him to the football, or Percy Spragg would wax lyrical over horse shit. He took Neville Badger to the bar and bought him a drink. The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw thought they looked depressed, so he started to tell them about his ex-brother-in-law from Falkirk, but the inseparable Finchams were waiting for service and looking impatient, and they never heard the end of the tale.

  Laurence became aware that it was quite a while since he had seen Liz.

  Eventually Rita and Laurence both returned to Laurence’s empty table. The Dale Monsal Quartet were in skittish vein, and some fifty of the dentists and their guests were making chicken gestures as they performed a comic dance. Rodney Sillitoe was imitating his product with enthusiasm. Simon Rodenhurst was cavorting overenthusiastically with the rather embarrassed fiancée of a dental mechanic. The pianist beamed. The clarinetist sparkled and fluttered her eyelashes. Dale Monsal managed a tiny, lighthearted twitch of the lips.

  If the town was on the verge of a new, uninhibited bacchanalian era, where impersonat
ing dancing chickens was considered de rigueur in respectable professional circles, it seemed that Rita and Laurence were to be excluded. They were linked in disapproval, and yet as far away from each other as ever.

  After the chicken dance was over, the Dale Monsal Quartet flirted coyly with the world of pop. Their choice was too radical for the old and too conservative for the young. The Angel Hotel’s repertoire of strobe effects had never looked less adequate.

  Rita was beginning to realize that it was quite a while since she had seen Liz, and Laurence was beginning to realize that it was quite a while since he had seen Ted. Both of them were beginning to realize that the other might well be beginning to realize what they were beginning to realize.

  The Dale Monsal Quartet erupted into ‘Rock Around The Clock’. The lady clarinetist looked very audacious. Middle-aged people relived their youth with dangerous abandon.

  The Dale Monsal Quartet subsided into another waltz. Now Laurence felt the need to talk, because otherwise he would have to ask Rita to dance.

  ‘How were the beaches in the South of France?’ he asked.

  ‘Too full of overweight topless German women for my taste.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Bottomless too in many cases.’

  ‘Oh dear!’

  There was a pause, while Laurence reflected on these horrors.

  ‘I mean, I know Filey has its critics,’ said Rita, ‘but it’s not full of overweight nude German women.’

  ‘They’d catch their death.’

  ‘It’s an ill wind.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  The immaculate Neville Badger approached unsteadily.

  ‘I must go home,’ he said. ‘It’s past my bedtime. Thank you, Laurence, for a … er … an …’ He lapsed into silence, unable to find an adjective which would describe his evening truthfully but not hurtfully.

 

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