by David Nobbs
‘Yes … well …’ said Jenny, and she wandered off to examine the cobbled arcaded square of an idyllic stone town high above the valley of the Dordogne.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz.
Monsieur Albert bustled in, Gallic to his fingertips once more.
‘Sir! Madame! Greetings and congratulations,’ he said. ‘I am devastated that you wait. I am desolated lest you feel neglected. Edouard, ‘e will be ‘ere any moment with your champagne.’
‘Nice-looking town,’ said Paul.
‘Oh, please don’t leave Carol,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m sure she was whispering lovely things in your ear.’
‘Carol is engaged to Elvis.’
‘Do you expect me to be sorry for you?’
‘Jenny! I’m lost without you. Some days I haven’t even got the heart to read the Guardian’s foreign news. I’m turning back into the slob I was before I met you.’
‘I repeat … do you expect me to be sorry for you?’ said Jenny.
The Gallic Monsieur Albert made a tactful exit as Ted entered with a tray of eleven glasses, filled with champagne.
‘Ah!’ said Neville. He saw that it was Ted. ‘Oh!’ he added.
‘Good Lord!’ said Liz.
‘Ted!’ said Rita.
‘Dad!’ said Paul.
Ted smiled bravely, and held the tray out towards Neville.
‘Would you like to taste the wine?’ he said. He had to force himself not to say ‘sir’. He was damned if he’d say ‘sir’ to anybody, in front of Rita and that freckled ape she had in tow.
‘Well, I … I’m sure it’s …’ The immaculate Neville Badger frowned, not because Ted hadn’t said ‘sir’, which he too would have found embarrassing, but because he regarded it as a grave social solecism to ask the host to taste the wine at a wedding breakfast. But he couldn’t humiliate Ted by refusing. ‘Yes … right,’ he said. He took a glass of champagne and tasted it. ‘Very good!’
‘Madam?’ said Ted to Liz.
‘Thank you, Ted,’ said Liz, taking a glass and meeting the eyes of her former lover.
‘May I take this opportunity of wishing Madame the lasting happiness that has so far eluded her?’ said Ted.
‘Thank you, Ted,’ said Liz coldly.
Ted turned to Rita.
‘Well … this is a surprise,’ she said.
‘It certainly is, madam,’ said Ted, glancing at Gerry.
‘This is Gerry Lansdown. Gerry, this is my husband,’ said Rita.
‘Ah!’ said Gerry Lansdown.
Ted looked suspiciously at Gerry Lansdown as he offered him the champagne. He hadn’t liked the sound of that ‘ah’. It had sounded like an unexploded social bomb, as if Gerry had meant, ‘Ah! No wonder you weren’t prepared to have him back. I see in him all the character defects you’ve been telling me about with such relish these last weeks.’
He moved on to Jenny.
‘Thanks, Ted,’ said Jenny in a low voice. ‘Though I don’t feel much like it.’
‘Still worried because half the world is starving?’
‘No. I mean, I am, obviously, but no, I was just thinking how sad I am about the way everything’s turned out.’
She touched Ted’s arm, sympathetically, and he moved on hastily with his tray.
‘Is this a permanent post, Dad?’ said Elvis.
‘Elvis! Of course it isn’t! I mean … really! No! It’s just a fill-in while I develop my portfolio.’
‘Your portfolio?’ said Paul.
‘My designs. My toasting forks et cetera. Personalized coal scuttles and what-have-you. My portfolio.’ There was one glass left over. ‘Oh, are we only ten?’ he said. ‘I thought there were eleven.’
‘Simon hasn’t come,’ said Liz.
‘Ah!’ said Ted. Oh, versatile monosyllable! Ted’s ‘ah!’ was faintly insulting, as if he’d meant, ‘Ah! Well, I’m not surprised, under the callous and entirely distasteful circumstances of your characteristically self-centred decision to remarry so soon after driving your husband to his tragic end,’ but he hadn’t made it sound insulting enough for Liz to be able to accuse him of being insulting, so she had to content herself with giving him a cool look, which would serve as a response to his ‘ah!’ if he had meant what he hoped she realized he had meant, but which if he hadn’t meant anything specifically insulting could well have been just one more of the cool looks which she’d been giving him ever since he’d appeared.
‘Would you like a glass?’ said Neville.
‘Oh! Thank you very much, sir,’ said Ted. He was concentrating so hard on sounding sufficiently surprised at the offer of the drink which he had been expecting for so long that he let a ‘sir’ slip out. He closed his eyes momentarily in disgust at his carelessness. ‘Well, here’s to your happiness,’ he said.
They toasted Neville and Liz Badger. Then there was a moment’s embarrassed silence, during which Ted didn’t know whether to stay on as a guest or leave as a head waiter.
‘We can’t not offer them a glass of champagne,’ whispered Neville to Liz. He turned to Ted. ‘Waiter? Er … Ted?’ he said. ‘Could you get two more glasses?’
‘Certainly, s …’ Ted bit back the ‘sir’ almost in time. He felt slightly insulted but also rather relieved at becoming a head waiter again. But he was less than halfway to the kitchen when Neville commanded ‘Wait!’ He returned. Neville was saying, in a low voice, ‘If we ask them to have a drink we’ll have to ask them to eat with us. I mean, we can’t just send them off back to their table.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz wearily.
‘I think they’re discussing whether to ask us to join them,’ said Betty Sillitoe in a low voice. ‘Don’t look round,’ she hissed, as Rodney began to crane his neck.
‘Well, don’t you stare at them,’ he said.
‘I can’t never look in their direction,’ she said. ‘That’d look totally unnatural.’
‘Oh Lord!’ said Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, none of which were French or maize-fed.
‘Ted? Could you ask M’sieu Albère if I could have a word?’ said Neville Badger.
When Monsieur Albert came to have a word, Neville took him to one side and asked if he had any other bookings for lunch.
‘No, sir,’ said Monsieur Albert. ‘Usually we are vairy busy, but today …’ He gave a very French shrug. ‘… people make ze most of ze last sunshinings and Thursday, he is, ‘ow you say? … a leetle bit quiet, and …’
‘There’s no need to justify yourself,’ said Neville. ‘I’m not suggesting your restaurant’s a flop.’
Monsieur Albert gave Neville a sharp look.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Neville. ‘I’m on edge. It’s my wedding. What … what would you charge me to close the restaurant this lunchtime? Bearing in mind that you have no bookings.’
‘Well, sir … people might arrive … and I lose custom. It must cost you … a hundred pounds.’
‘You French drive a hard bargain. I’ll give you fifty.’
Monsieur Albert knew that he must accept. It would be pure profit and, in truth, there was little likelihood of any more custom. But for decency’s sake he pretended to reflect deeply on the matter before saying, ‘All right. Eet ees … ‘ow you say? … done!’
‘And Mr and Mrs Sillitoe will join us as our guests.’
‘Vairy good, sir.’
Neville approached Rodney and Betty, while Monsieur Albert turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’.
‘Liz and I would be absolutely delighted if you’d join us for lunch,’ said Neville.
‘Oh!’ said Rodney.
‘What a surprise!’ said Betty.
‘Well … yes … thank you,’ said Rodney.
Ted entered with a tray on which there were two glasses of champagne and an opened bottle.
‘Sir? Madam?’ he said to the Sillitoes, just as they joined the other guests in the bar. ‘As it’s such a special occasion, will you break the habits of a lifetime and indulge your
selves in a drink?’
‘Thank you, Edouard,’ said Betty icily.
‘Er … while I remember, wai … Edou … Ted,’ said Neville. ‘I’m afraid I forgot to ask, but could we have two vegetarian meals?’
‘Three,’ said Rita.
‘Ah!’ said Ted. (Another gem, meaning, ‘So the man’s a vegetarian. He’s probably also a hypochondriac and a suppressed homosexual and is almost certainly seeking a mother substitute in attaching himself to Rita.’) He turned to Gerry Lansdown, finding it hard to conceal his satisfaction. ‘You’re a vegetarian.’ It was a statement, not a question, and a statement expressed in the tone in which other men might have said, ‘I see! You interfere with small boys in public lavatories.’ Judge then of Ted’s amazement and dismay when Gerry said, ‘No. Morally, I feel I should be, but I’m afraid I’m too weak. I’m a founder member of the real men don’t eat quiche brigade.’
‘I’m the vegetarian,’ said Rita.
‘Good God! Rita! I mean …’ Ted realized that neither as estranged husband nor as head waiter did he have the right to criticize Rita’s eating habits. ‘Er … three vegetarian meals,’ he said. ‘Right. It is rather short notice, and … let’s be honest … Frenchmen and vegetarians are virtually contradictions in terms, but I’ll see what Alphonse can rustle up.’
Ted hurried out.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Rita,’ said Neville. ‘We had no idea.’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Liz.
‘I believe you,’ said Rita. ‘I imagine his appearance must have been quite as embarrassing for you on your wedding day as it was for me.’
‘What very nice wallpaper this place has,’ said Betty hastily.
‘Doesn’t it?’ said Rodney. ‘I noticed that.’
Ted leant wearily against the large table in the middle of the kitchen. Alphonse, the scruffy young chef from Bootle, stared at him as if he couldn’t believe that he’d just been asked, at this short notice, to prepare three vegetarian meals. Lil Appleyard and Ros Pennington, the double act with the double meanings, were putting the finishing touches to the salad gamishings for the lobster mayonnaise. Nobody had ever yet commented on the way they formed tiny vegetable genitalia with an injudicious juxtaposition of two radishes and a gherkin.
‘Oh dear oh dear,’ said Ted.
The cake-loving Sandra Pickersgill looked at him accusingly. ‘You said I was all that mattered,’ she said.
‘Sexually,’ said Ted. ‘Emotionally. But.’ He took a handful of cress and began to chew mechanically. Lil Appleyard gave him a dirty look.
‘Take your hands off my gamishings,’ she said.
‘Oooh!’ said Ros Pennington. ‘You dirty beast.’
‘But what?’ said Sandra.
‘What?’ said Ted.
‘You said “but”,’ said Sandra. ‘But what?’
‘There’s my two boys in there,’ said Ted. ‘They still mean a lot to me. She doesn’t.’
‘Oh no?’ said Sandra. ‘I saw the way you looked at her bit of stuff. You’re jealous.’
Alphonse dropped six eggs into a saucepan contemptuously, as if blaming them for not being lobsters.
‘Sandra! I’m not! Love! I’m not! But!’ Ted spread out his arms, appealing for moral support from Lil Appleyard and Ros Pennington. An error! There was to be no support from that quarter. Or from Alphonse. Suddenly they were all so deeply involved in their preparations for the wedding feast that they didn’t even seem to be listening to these exchanges. But Ted knew that they were riveted. Sandra waited patiently for him to continue. He continued. ‘Rita was a good wife. She was a good mother. She kept a good home. I mean … she did. I mean … I don’t like to see her gallivanting around. Spending time in London. Letting herself be used by that young whippersnapper. I mean … would you, in my position? Right. You wouldn’t. So.’
‘How do you know he’s using her?’
‘Sandra! She’s more than ten years older than him!’
‘You’re more than twenty years older than me. I’m not using you.’
‘That’s different.’
‘Are you using me?’
All these questions were exhausting him. He slumped into a chair in the comer. Sandra looked down on him. She was carrying a tray, with four portions of lobster mayonnaise on it.
‘No, love!’ he said.
He stuck his left hand up her nineteenth-century Provençale costume. The fingers of his right hand explored the hole in her twentieth-century tights. She shrieked and dropped the tray. Three of the plates broke, and four portions of lobster mayonnaise were scattered across the tiled floor. Monsieur Albert entered like twelve vultures which have spotted a corpse.
‘Sandra!’ he said. ‘You’ll be paying me by the end of the week!’
‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Ted, as he helped Sandra rescue what she could of the four starters. ‘Not this time. It was mine. I mean … you can’t take it out of her wages if it wasn’t her fault, can you?’
‘I can, if I want to. You’re all non-union,’ said the Geordie Monsieur Albert. ‘But I won’t.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll take it out of your wages instead.’
In the bar, over the champagne, two separate efforts were being made, by two different generations, to bridge some of the gaps that had developed between the Rodenhurst and Simcock families.
In both instances, the initiative was being taken by the Simcock representative.
Rita led Liz away from the group to a comer of the bar, beside a photograph of one of the smaller châteaux of the Loire.
Liz raised her eyebrows as she waited for Rita to speak.
‘I want to apologize,’ said Rita. ‘I didn’t come here to make bitchy remarks like that.’
‘Why did you come here? To show off your conquest? To let us all see how far you’ve travelled?’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Rita. ‘Perhaps I did. I hoped I’d come as a gesture of … I don’t know … goodwill. Reconciliation … after all our families have been through.’
‘That’s certainly why we invited you. I mean … let’s face it … our families are still linked by marriage.’
‘What do you mean, “Let’s face it.”?’ Rita looked round as she spoke. Paul was talking to Jenny. ‘Don’t you want Paul and Jenny to get together again?’
‘Of course I do. They’ve got a baby.’
Rita felt a sharp longing to see little Thomas again. They grew so fast.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want them to if they didn’t have a baby?’
‘Conversation’s impossible if you examine every word under a microscope, Rita,’ said Liz. ‘I hope Paul and Jenny get together again. I hoped you and I could strike up some kind of friendship against all the odds.’
‘What do you mean … “against all the odds”?’
‘Rita! No microscopes!’ Liz realized with a shock that there was humour in Rita’s eyes, that Rita had found it funny, not hurtful, when she’d said ‘Against all the odds’. She was disconcerted. This wasn’t the atmosphere in which she expected conversations between Rodenhursts and Simcocks to be conducted. ‘All I meant was,’ she said, conscious that it was a bit lame, ‘who’d have thought that you and I could ever be friends?’
‘Nobody in the old days,’ said Rita. ‘But things have changed. You need all the friends you can get.’
Their eyes met. Each held the look firmly. Who would have given way first, or would they have stared at each other for all eternity, if Ted hadn’t approached, with more champagne, and chucked a conversational stone onto their frozen village pond?
‘Making friends? How touching!’ he said.
The stone bounced. The ice cracked, but it didn’t break.
The ageless peace of the old stone hill town above the Dordogne formed the backcloth to Paul’s efforts to restore his relationship with Jenny.
‘You don’t really want to live on your own, do you?’ he said. ‘It must be hard work bringing up a baby on your ow
n.’
‘Two babies.’
‘Well, that’s all the more reason to … two babies??’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Jenny!’
Paul put a hand out, to touch his wife with the deep love that surged through him. She wriggled to get free of his touch, at exactly the moment when it occurred to him that it might not be his baby, and he withdrew his hand as fast as he could.
‘Ironical, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I must have conceived the night before the Crowning of Miss Frozen Chicken (UK).’
It was his! How could he ever have doubted it? She wasn’t … she wasn’t like him! Oh God!
She couldn’t see that he was thinking these things. He couldn’t see that she was wondering about the old man who was crossing the square in the photograph. Was he still alive? What was he doing at this moment? How strange for him to be so unaware that he was immortalized in this restaurant in northern England. It seemed an insult to the dignity of his life to use him as picturesque local colour.
‘The night before I found out that while I was in the maternity hospital you were having it off with the runner-up.’
‘Jenny! It doesn’t help to exaggerate.’
‘You weren’t having it off?’
‘She wasn’t the runner-up. She came third.’
The doorbell rang, and there was a rattling and banging on the locked door of the restaurant. Monsieur Albert rushed out with his sternest, most Gallic face. If it was those kids again …
‘We’re closed,’ he called out.
‘I’m invited,’ shouted the young man outside.
‘It’s Simon!’ said Liz.
Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, was well dressed in his usual rather anonymous way. He blinked and smiled nervously at the assembled guests.
Liz kissed him. ‘Simon!’ she said. ‘You’ve come!’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve come. I’ve … er … I’ve compromised. I wanted to show you I disapprove …’ Liz flinched. ‘… but I also wanted to show that I still love you.’ Liz touched his arm. Monsieur Albert locked the door, and Ted approached with a glass of champagne. Simon Rodenhurst stared at him in astonishment. ‘Thanks,’ he said feebly. ‘Yes,’ he continued to his mother. ‘So I decided to come to one and not the other. Then I decided that the ceremony was really the official wedding, so to show my disapproval that’s what I should stay away from, and the breakfast’s the really personal thing, so to show my love that’s what I should come to. Besides, I don’t like registry offices and I’m starving. Well, I hope I haven’t missed too much of the fun.’