by David Nobbs
‘You’re in no condition to drive,’ said Laurence.
‘Paul’ll drive him,’ offered Rita. ‘He won’t mind.’
‘Oh, that’s very kind,’ said Neville. ‘Where’s Liz? Must say goodbye to Liz.’
Rita’s eyes met Laurence’s briefly.
‘Come on, Neville,’ she said hurriedly, and led him off.
Neville stopped by the double doors. He seemed embarrassed.
‘I owe you an apology, Rita,’ he said, in a voice only slightly thickened by alcohol. ‘I was a trifle abrupt earlier.’
‘You’re under a strain,’ said Rita. ‘I understand.’
‘That’s no excuse. Jane believed in good manners. She’d have been deeply shocked. That sort of thing lets her down, it lets me down, it lets Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger down.’
‘Never mind,’ said Rita, touching his arm quite naturally as she could never have touched Laurence’s. ‘The point is, already you’re coping better. You’re going to be all right. Time is a great healer.’
‘Oh shut up,’ said Neville Badger.
Paul and Jenny would have looked uncomfortable on the edges of the impossible chairs in the sparsely populated Gaiety Bar, even if a signed photograph of Michael Heseltine hadn’t been staring at them.
‘Do you promise never to lie to me again?’ said Jenny, as Neville Badger strode angrily through the bar, unseen by them.
‘If I say “yes” and later on I do lie to you,’ began Paul, as Rita passed through more slowly with a look of stunned shock on her face, ‘the “yes” will have been a lie as well. If I say “no” and later I lie to you again, at least I won’t have lied about lying to you. If I say “no” and I never lie to you again, which I hope to do – not to lie, I mean – I won’t have told a lie today saying “no” because I’ll only have said that I can’t promise not to tell a lie, I won’t actually have said that I will tell a lie. So the answer’s got to be “no”.’
‘I love you!’ said Jenny.
Paul kissed her, and they went up to the bar. They had an uneasy feeling that Michael Heseltine’s eyes were following them. Before Paul could order their drinks, Rita and Neville carne back in.
‘Are you sober?’ Rita asked him.
‘Of course I am,’ said Paul. ‘I haven’t been here long enough to get drunk.’
‘Oh good. You won’t mind driving Neville home, then, will you?’
‘Thank you, Paul. That’s very kind of you,’ said Neville, who had his overcoat on.
‘Thank you, Paul,’ said Rita. ‘It’s good of you to volunteer.’
Neville Badger turned to Rita and said, ‘Goodnight, Rita. What can I say? I …’ and he kissed her, and he said, ‘I’m sorry’ again, and then he said, ‘Where’s Liz?’ and Paul exchanged a look with Jenny and Jenny said, ‘I’ll say goodnight to her for you,’ and Neville said, ‘Am I being a nuisance?’ and Jenny said, ‘Of course not, Uncle Neville. Paul’s happy to do it,’ and Paul grunted, and Rita stood watching Neville’s back as he went out with Paul, and remembering his insults and his kiss, and wondering, and then she thought of Ted and Liz, and her eyes met Jenny’s, and they both looked away, and didn’t quite meet the eyes of Michael Heseltine, and Rita sighed and set off for the ballroom and came face to face with her father.
‘How’s tha doing, our Rita?’ said the barrel-chested Percy Spragg. ‘Tha hasn’t had much time for thy old father, whatever tha’s been up to.’
‘Dad!’ said Rita. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t say “our Rita”.’
‘I know tha does, our Rita. Well, don’t mither thysen. I’ve been on my best behaviour. My table are right interested in my tales of the olden days. They had no idea of the traffic problems posed by horse manure in big cities.’
‘Dad!’ said Rita. ‘I can’t take you anywhere.’
‘Aye, I’ve noticed.’
‘Well, are you surprised? I mean … why do you always have to be so crude?’
Percy Spragg gave the malicious, irresponsible, infuriatingly crafty, heart-achingly smug grin of a man on the verge of second childhood. ‘Because you don’t take me anywhere,’ he said.
Rita went back into the ballroom. Laurence was sitting on his own, and she felt that she had no alternative but to rejoin him.
‘I’m watching your friend Rodney,’ said Laurence.
Rodney Sillitoe was dancing on his own, much too flamboyantly. Rita wished Laurence hadn’t described him as ‘your friend’.
‘So this time it’s Rodney who’s got drunk,’ he said. ‘I’ll say this for your friends, Rita. They’ve a high entertainment value.’
Rita began to steel herself for the question that would have to be asked.
Elvis Simcock, off duty now, entered the Gaiety Bar for a drink.
The first thing he noticed was a signed photograph of Professor A. J. Ayer. The great philosopher’s message to the world was, ‘I ate well, therefore I was. Freddie.’
The second thing he noticed was Simon Rodenhurst.
‘Another shipping order for your drunken friends?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘I could get you sacked, if I reported your behaviour tonight,’ said Simon.
‘Oh, please do! I loathe the job, and if I’m sacked I can go straight back on the dole.’
‘There’s not much point, then, is there?’ said Simon. ‘Besides, I enjoy having you waiting on me, and we’ve got the Estate Agents’ Dinner Dance next month.’
‘Oh my God! They haven’t got one of those as well!’
Alec Skiddaw refused to serve Elvis. He wasn’t supposed to serve staff, he explained intensely. Rules were rules, and it was more than his life was worth to break them, he added darkly.
‘Give him one on me,’ said Simon.
‘Oh well, that’s different, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ he repeated to Elvis, ‘but rules are rules.’
‘They are,’ said the cynical Elvis. ‘That is indisputably true. Boring and tautologous, but true. Rules aren’t fishnet stockings. They are rules.’
Alec Skiddaw stared at him in amazement. Simon Rodenhurst scurried off with his tray of drinks. Betty Sillitoe felt the need to explain her presence on the bar stool.
‘I only try to stop him drinking because it makes him so miserable,’ she said. ‘He’s so happy when he’s sober and he’s so miserable when he’s drunk. It worries me. Which is his real self?’
‘I only studied philosophy for three years, Auntie Betty,’ said Elvis Simcock. ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer questions like that.’
Rita closed her eyes and ran naked into the cold sea of her fears.
‘Laurence?’ she said. ‘Do you think there’s anything between Ted and Liz?’
There! It was done! It was out in the open! For about three seconds, it was a relief.
‘You mean … are they having an affair?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite so … but, yes, I suppose I do.’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, I do think they’re having an affair.’
‘Oh my God! Oh no! Laurence, they can’t be.’
Rodney Sillitoe was cavorting more flamboyantly than ever.
‘But you’ve just asked me,’ said Laurence. ‘You must have thought they were.’
‘Yes, but I hoped you’d tell me I was imagining things. 1 hoped you’d say I was sick in my mind and tell me to pull myself together.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘Keep calm, Rita. People may be watching.’
‘Calm! Our youngest children have only been married for two months, my husband is having an affair with your wife, and you tell me to keep calm!’
‘Absolutely. Because it won’t last, you know. Liz is far too much of a snob.’ Laurence saw Jenny approaching. ‘Close ranks,’ he said urgently. ‘Make small talk.’ He turned to Jenny, as if noticing her for the first time, and said, ‘Oh hello, Jenny! Rita was just telling me that they found the scen
ery in Provence very spectacular, but not as green as England.’
Jenny sat down, scraping her chair along the floor.
‘Yes,’ said Rita. ‘It was … very spectacular, but … not as green as England.’
Jenny looked from one to the other, somewhat astonished.
‘The scenery in Peru is very spectacular,’ said Laurence. ‘Especially the Andes. They’re so …’ He searched for the mot juste.
‘… high?’ prompted Rita.
‘Exactly! Very high indeed!’
‘Come on, Laurence,’ said Rita. ‘Let’s dance.’
‘Oh!’
Rita practically dragged Laurence onto the floor. Her behaviour shocked Laurence, astounded Jenny, and was quite a surprise to Rita herself. But, appalling as dancing with Laurence was, it was better than enduring conversations like that. And there was something that he had to explain.
‘What do you mean … “Liz is far too much of a snob”?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why say it?’
‘You’re forcing me to spell it out. Ted is not quite her social equal.’
‘He’s got his own business.’ They swung round slowly underneath the Dale Monsal Quartet. Rita had to raise her voice. ‘He employs twenty-two men. He exports to sixty-three countries.’
‘He’s done extremely well for himself,’ said Laurence, ‘but socially, Rita, socially selling door knockers to Arabs hardly compares with being a dentist’s wife. I mean, do you want this affair to last?’
‘Of course not, but I don’t want it not to last because he isn’t good enough for her.’
‘The indestructibility of English snobbery!’
‘The snobbery’s on your side, Laurence.’
‘Without wishing to be snobbish, Rita, I would suggest that you are far more snobbish than me. People who are … “upwardly mobile” … always are.’
Rita didn’t mind these particular pink spots. They were the children of anger, not shame. How typical of those who had never needed to be ‘upwardly mobile’ to mock so ruthlessly, to put the whole concept, which was so desperately important to many people who had a natural wish not to remain at the bottom of any heap if they could avoid it, into patronizing verbal inverted commas.
The music ended. There was applause, momentarily giving Rita the unpleasant feeling that the dancers were applauding Laurence’s remark.
She glared at him. His face was smooth, impassive, cool. She understood why people killed.
‘And now, by popular request,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as a wet Sunday in unlicensed Aberystwyth, ‘we pay a return visit to the rhythmic paradise that is Latin America. Take it away, señors and señoritas.’ (He pronounced them ‘seniors and senior eaters’, turning graceful, dark-skinned dancers into a Darby and Joan hotpot supper.)
The seniors and senior eaters took it away, and Rodney Sillitoe grabbed hold of Rita while she was still staring at Laurence.
‘Oh,’ she gasped.
Rodney was a bull-fighter. Rita was his red rag. The whole of the Dentists’ Dinner Dance was his bull.
Rita squirmed. The more she squirmed, the more she imitated the swirling of a red rag, and the more hugely pleased Rodney was.
It was a very different Rodney Sillitoe who entered the Gaiety Bar three minutes later, when the Latin American music had ended. All the liveliness had gone out of him. The big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens was maudlin and morose.
Betty Sillitoe was talking with Jenny.
‘There she is!’ said Rodney. ‘The girl who once told me I was the Hermann Goering of the British food industry.’
‘Rodney!’ said Betty.
‘No, but I sort of did,’ said Jenny. ‘Oh Lord!’
‘No! Please!’ said Rodney. ‘You did right. A drink for my friend, Eric.’
‘Alec,’ said the dark, intense Alec Skiddaw.
‘Well, just an orange juice,’ said Jenny.
‘And a whisky for me, and a …’
‘… tonic for me,’ said Betty.
‘Tonic??’
‘I’m looking after you.’
Above the bar there was a photograph of a smiling Joan Sutherland, with the message ‘Magnifico! Joan Sutherland’.
‘Typical of an opera singer,’ said Rodney. ‘Always use Italian. Their own language isn’t good enough for them. Bloody snobs. But you did right, Jenny.’
‘What?’
‘I am Hermann Goering. As I stand here, warm and well fed, but thirsty … hurry up with that whisky … but, apart from that, in the pink, out there, under the stars, except that it’s raining, but you know what I mean, are rows of low huts. Stalag Hen Thirty Two. The battery chicken archipelago. A monument to man’s inhumanity to chicken. Eric, you’re a total idiot, what do you say?’
‘Eighty pee, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw coldly.
‘About my chickens. And where’s my whisky? Don’t you think my chickens lead a dog’s life?’
‘I’m not here to have opinions, sir. I’m just a minion. I’m here to serve.’
‘Well, serve me my whisky, then!’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘I have discretionary powers not to serve those who in my judgement have had enough.’
Rodney Sillitoe gasped.
‘That incident with the Rotarians would never have happened if I’d been on that night,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘That chandelier cost three hundred and forty six pounds.’
‘You mean … we go on living with them as if nothing’s happened?’ After escaping from Rodney, Rita had returned to Laurence’s table. Angry with him she might be, but their fortunes … or misfortunes … were inextricably linked.
‘It’s easy enough, if they’re discreet,’ he said.
‘But I mean … what sort of marriage is that?’
‘The best available under the circumstances.’
‘I can’t live with him … knowing!’
‘Rita! I implore you not to rock the boat.’
‘Maybe they’ve already rocked the boat. They’ve been gone a long time.’
‘You mean … they’re … “at it” now?’ Laurence could hardly bring himself to say ‘at it’. ‘Where?’ A dreadful thought struck him. ‘In your car?’ An even more dreadful thought struck him. ‘In my car? Liz wouldn’t.’
‘I mean, maybe they’ve walked out on us.’
‘They wouldn’t. Not tonight. Ted’s my guest!’
‘I agree it would be very rude.’
‘Rude? Unforgivable. Those tickets cost me fourteen pounds fifty.’
‘Laurence!’
‘I know. Extortionate for that rubbish, when you think the wine was extra.’
‘I meant … how can you talk about money at a time like this?’
‘Because now you are imagining things. Liz wouldn’t leave me. Certainly not for … and not tonight. The Dentists’ Dinner Dance is the highlight of my social calendar. She knows that. She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. Would she?’
‘Come on, Jenny,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘We have a job to do.’
‘A job?’
‘You were right. We’re going to let my chickens go free. Woof! Open the doors. All fly away to a better life.’
‘Stop him, Jenny,’ said Betty. ‘He might even do it.’
‘Come on, Jenny,’ said Rodney, clambering off his stool with difficulty. ‘Help me make amends for a wicked life.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m waiting for Paul.’
‘Jenny!’ Rodney put his face close to hers and breathed alcohol fumes over her, as if he thought that might help to persuade her. ‘Jenny! Did Che Guevara say “Sorry, chaps. The revolution’s cancelled. We’ve got visitors.” Did he? He did not!!’ These last words were roared with such ferocity that Larry Benson’s lady wife spilt her sweet martini and made a very unladylike comment.
‘It isn’t the way to do it,’ said Jenny.
‘Oh. What is the way to do it?’
‘Close down th
e factory.’
Rodney Sillitoe considered this option seriously, head on one side, like a song thrush.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I will. On Monday. Well, not close down. I’ll make umbrellas.’ He peered into Jenny’s face anxiously. ‘You aren’t one of those umbrella liberation people, are you?’ he asked.
The moment Rita entered the car park she knew that their car was gone. She picked her way carefully among the patches of oil, and stood in the empty space between the Volkswagen Golf and the Rover 3000, as if still refusing to believe the evidence of her eyes. She looked around, as if searching for clues to where they had gone. She felt as if all the blood had been drained out of her body. She couldn’t possibly survive. She wouldn’t possibly have enough strength to remain standing.
She walked slowly back towards the ballroom, surprised to find that life was still going on, surprised to find that her legs still obeyed her.
She would continue to keep up appearances. It was the strongest motivation for survival that she could find.
Rodney Sillitoe seemed to have forgotten the umbrella idea. He was again trying to persuade Jenny to let his chickens out.
‘I can’t take advantage of you in that condition,’ said Jenny.
‘Never mind my condition! What about my chickens? Do they ever get a chance to go to dinner dances and eat frozen people? You’re all talk and no do. You armchair rebels make me sick!’
Jenny burst into tears and rushed out.
‘Rodney!’ said Betty.
‘I know. I’ve made her cry,’ said Rodney. ‘Hermann Goering? More like Adolf Hitler.’
Once again Laurence was alone at his table, on this the highlight of his year. He was the eye of a social cyclone, motionless in the middle of the room, while the Dale Monsal Sound washed all around him, and the buzz of the Dentists’ Dinner Dance rose steadily towards its crescendo. Among the dimly lit tables he was hardly noticed and outwardly he looked serene, as if waiting for a gin and tonic rather than bad news. When Timothy Fincham, hurrying back to Helen, called out breathlessly, ‘Where’s your lovely wife got to?’ he replied with a smile, ‘Just taking a breather.’ This meaningless response satisfied the self-centred oaf! When Larry Benson, of fitted kitchen fame, said, ‘Chicken was foul, wasn’t it?’ he said, ‘Chicken. Fowl. Very good!’ and laughed as if the mindless berk were Oscar Wilde.