A Bit of a Do

by David Nobbs

  ‘We do, don’t we? Over thirty years and we still love each other.’

  ‘But the driving’s important, too. I mean, take today. I can … not get drunk, because I’m not … but have a bit too much, knowing you’re driving.’

  ‘I thought you were driving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh dear. I think the system’s broken down,’ said Betty. ‘Because, because I thought you were driving, I’ve had … well, not too much too much, but a bit too much. I mean, I wouldn’t describe myself as drunk exactly. More …’

  ‘… totally plastered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rodney and Betty Sillitoe roared with laughter.

  Everybody looked at them.

  Ted permitted himself a slight smile, then gave a last glare in Gerry Lansdown’s direction, and returned to the kitchen.

  ‘You are jealous,’ said Sandra. She took an uneaten profiterole from the top of a pile of dirty dessert plates, popped it into her mouth, and added, with her mouth full, ‘You keep looking at them.’

  Alphonse, the scruffy young chef from Bootle, had set off for his meagre lodgings on his motorbike, to sleep for two hours in a tiny, dank bedroom which smelt of petrol, chips and semen. Lil Appleyard and Ros Pennington were clearing up and washing up. In the pocket of Ros Pennington’s apron there was a shrivelled gherkin. It would be greeted with roars when she produced it in the Crown and Walnut that evening.

  ‘Sandra!’ said Ted. ‘I do not keep looking at them. I am not jealous. I mean … I’m not!’

  Sandra hesitated, then took the remains of another profiterole. Ted frowned. Her love of cake and buns bordered on the obsessive. She even backed Chelsea and Dundee on the pools each week. One day, if he wasn’t careful, her buxom charms, the delicious amplitude of her catering-size breasts and bottom, would degenerate into mere vastness.

  ‘Sandra!’ he said. ‘Don’t eat the leftovers. It’s disgusting. It’s unhygienic. You can catch things off used cake.’

  ‘Your eyes hardly left them,’ she said.

  ‘Sandra!’ he said. ‘I am not jealous! I mean … love … I’m not. It’s over. I wouldn’t have her back if she came to me on bended knee.’

  ‘Some chance of that. She’s got a new feller.’

  ‘Sandra! You’re so naive sometimes. Rita’s using him. To make me jealous. Because she wants me back. She is.’

  ‘I thought you said he was using her.’

  Lil Appleyard and Ros Pennington waited breathlessly for Ted’s reply.

  ‘They’re using each other,’ he said.

  ‘Well that’s all right then, isn’t it?’ said Sandra.

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you!’ Ted was almost shouting now.

  ‘Well why go on about it, then?’

  ‘It’s you who’s going on about it,’ he cried through gritted teeth. ‘Oh God! Sandra!’

  He swept out to the restaurant.

  Tears were streaming down Neville Badger’s face, and his lips moved silently as he spoke to his dead wife.

  ‘Oh, Jane,’ he was saying. ‘I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want a new life. I didn’t want the agony to end. Forgive me.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He jumped, and almost justified his presence in the cubicle. Then his heart slowed again. It was a male voice, quite unlike Jane’s.

  ‘Fine, Arthur. Andrew told me a joke that I found rather indigestible.’

  The almost immaculate Arthur Badger laughed and returned to the restaurant.

  Neville Badger, elegant doyen of the town’s legal community, blew his nose, pulled his trousers up, pulled the chain from force of habit, left the cubicle, washed his face, couldn’t find any towels, tried using the hand dryer, got a repulsive faceful of hot air, and summoned up the strength to return to his wedding breakfast and his new wife.

  Ted was taking orders for brandies and liqueurs. Liz tried to prevent him from asking the Sillitoes, but he didn’t seem to see her frantic but discreet signals.

  Liz asked Neville if he was all right. He frowned, as if she’d committed a social solecism by almost mentioning a natural function, common to all, whose existence in the world was completely ignored by polite society. Liz smiled uncertainly at him. He gave her a cool, unsmiling look which terrified her. Then, at last, unnaturally, with difficulty, he smiled.

  Rita and Gerry were deep in private conversation again. Neville thought this rather rude. It was also extremely inconvenient. It meant he’d have to talk to Andrew Denton. So he listened, discreetly, to their conversation, hoping that he would find some suitable peg on which to hang his interruption. He was horrified to hear Rita say, ‘I’m not saying I don’t love you. I’m saying I don’t want to marry you.’ He sighed, wished that he wasn’t a gentleman, and turned to talk to Andrew Denton.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ said Gerry, no longer overheard by Neville.

  Rita’s reply was barely audible even to Gerry. ‘Live together,’ she said.

  ‘You really are determined to throw off your conventional past, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything terribly unconventional about two consenting adults living together these days,’ said Rita. ‘I’m just not sure I can throw off my past enough to do something as bold as marry you.’

  Three fourth-form boys from the Abbey School, in their straw hats and smug blue blazers, pressed their noses against the windows of Chez Albert, made loud raspberries, and ran off, laughing. Is there any hope left for the human race? thought Paul, with that angry contempt which people so often feel for a stage of life which they have not long left.

  Gerry Lansdown didn’t even notice the boys. ‘It’s a little awkward, Rita,’ he said. ‘In my position.’

  ‘You mean I might lose you votes?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it as crudely as that, but, yes, it is true that a politician can’t really afford to have a private life that isn’t blameless.’

  ‘You’re prospective Liberal candidate for Hind-head, not shadow foreign secretary.’

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘I mean does the word Liberal really mean anything to you?’

  ‘Are you asking me to quote my election manifesto?’

  ‘Gerry!’

  Rita felt that they were on the verge of their first row, here in public, at a wedding breakfast. Ted would witness it. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  ‘I’m only saying I’d prefer to marry you,’ said Gerry. ‘Of course I’ll live with you if you won’t marry me.’

  ‘Oh, Gerry, I’m so happy.’ Rita began to cry. She hurried from the table. Liz raised her eyes at Gerry. He smiled reassuringly. Liz felt a pang of disappointment.

  Ted, approaching with a tray of brandies and liqueurs, interrupted Rita before she could leave the room.

  ‘Rita!’ he said. ‘You’re crying! What has he done to you?’ ‘We’re going to live together.’

  ‘I knew it! He’s an unprincipled swine!’

  Rita blew her nose. ‘Give up, Ted,’ she said. ‘Our marriage is over.’

  ‘Oh no! No!’ said Ted. ‘No! I know that, Rita! No, I was just thinking of you. I just don’t want you to be unhappy, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not. Oh God, so why am I crying?’ She turned to look back at the wedding party. Only Gerry appeared to be aware that she was talking to Ted, though Liz’s lack of interest struck her as suspicious. Gerry half rose, asking her in mime whether she wanted to be rescued. She shook her head, tried to smile reassuringly, and turned to Ted. ‘Shouldn’t you be serving those liqueurs?’ she asked. ‘Elvis’ll die if he doesn’t get his green chartreuse.’

  ‘Rita! You can’t see it because you’re besotted,’ said Ted, absurd in his evening dress in the middle of the afternoon. ‘He’ll use you and when he’s finished with you …’ Sandra entered with coffee. Ted changed his tone abruptly. ‘… would you like a liqueur?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Rita, giving Sandra a sharp glance. ‘I
’ll take this one.’ She took a liqueur at random. It was Andrew Denton’s Cointreau, as it chanced. ‘Cheers!’ She raised the little glass of almost colourless liquid, sipped, and grimaced.

  ‘Rita!’ said Ted. ‘You don’t drink liqueurs, and that was ordered.’

  ‘I do now, and you can pour another one.’

  ‘Rita! Listen!’ Ted went behind the bar to pour another liqueur. He put the tray on the counter. Rita went through the wroughtiron arch into the bar area and perched herself on a bar stool, a thing she had never done in her life, a position she had always felt was only adopted by fast, loose women. Twenty-five years of married life faced each other across the counter of the deserted bar. Exactly behind Ted, and slightly above him, the French barman also stared at her. ‘Listen,’ repeated Ted. ‘You can’t see it because you’re besotted. But … I mean … be honest, Rita. He’ll use you and when he’s finished with you he’ll cast you aside like a clapped-out old car sponge that’s losing its fluff.’

  ‘Thank you for that flattering image.’

  ‘Oh no! No! Rita! Love! I didn’t mean I’d ever think of you as a …’ He couldn’t bring himself to repeat it.

  Rita could. ‘… clapped-out old car sponge that’s losing its fluff.’

  ‘Absolutely. I mean, who could?’

  ‘Except him?’

  ‘Exactly. Now you’re beginning to see it!’

  Ted put the replacement Cointreau on the tray, and picked the tray up.

  ‘It was my idea that we should live together,’ said Rita quietly, looking over Ted’s head to the French barman.

  Ted put the tray down again. ‘Rita!’ he said. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you suggested living in sin?’

  ‘No. Hind-head. The Liberals believe you must build the political power base on local foundations.’

  ‘Liberals?’

  Rita wished that Ted could have found something more original to resemble at that moment than a bewildered cod. But she also began to feel sorry for him. ‘Gerry is prospective Liberal candidate for Hind-head,’ she explained.

  ‘Ah!’ Ted briefly permitted himself a simper of satisfaction at this ‘ah!’. It was a good one, one of his best. It meant ‘Ah! He’s a politician. I always knew there was something wrong with him. And this explains quite a lot about your behaviour.’ He couldn’t resist the temptation of expanding on his theme, in case Rita hadn’t understood all the nuances implicit in his ‘ah!’. ‘No wonder you’re going all cranky,’ he said.

  ‘Cranky?’

  ‘Vegetarian. Feminist. Caring about animals and the poor and Bolivia and things. Cranky.’

  ‘He wants to marry me.’

  Ted looked as though he’d been bashed over the head with a bewildered cod. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘Good. Good. I’m glad he’s serious. Good. But.’

  There was a long pause. ‘What do you mean … “but”?’ Rita was forced to say at last.

  ‘Well … I mean … what do you know about him? Where did you meet him?’

  ‘In Harvey Wedgewood’s dressing room. Then we ran into each other at a CND rally.’

  ‘I knew it! He’s a bloody freak!’ Ted had a terrible thought. ‘Rita! What were you doing there?’

  ‘I don’t want to go into the nuclear debate now,’ said Rita, ‘but even if you aren’t a unilateralist it’s clear to me that cruise missiles are an appallingly risky option which only make military sense if you consider them not as a defensive weapon but in the context of the West adopting a policy of limited nuclear response, whereby we’d respond to a conventional attack by being the first to use nuclear weapons, and that is totally unacceptable to me. I wouldn’t want to live in a country that had taken such a step or to participate in any victory it might bring. Mind you, I’m beginning to think I am a unilateralist because I believe it’s obscene to spend so much on defending ourselves when there’s such need elsewhere in the world. I’m not actually sure a society as selfish as that is worth saving.’

  ‘I’m glad you don’t want to go into the nuclear debate now,’ said Ted weakly. ‘I suppose you got all that from him.’

  ‘Of course! Mere woman that I am, I am incapable of independent thought!’

  ‘Rita! Love! I didn’t mean that! I mean … I didn’t. I just meant … he’s a politician. He’s pumping you with propaganda.’ Ted sneered in the general direction of Gerry Lansdown, through the wrought-iron screen.

  ‘You shouldn’t believe all you read in the Tory papers, Ted,’ said Rita. ‘Those CND rallies are attended by a lot of respectable people of all ages from many walks of life. Ordinary people like me.’

  ‘Ordinary? I’m beginning to wonder if you are ordinary any more.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It wasn’t a compliment! All right, I’ll excuse you, it’s your bodily chemistry, but what’s his excuse?’

  ‘What??? My bodily chemistry??’ And I’d begun to feel sorry for him, thought Rita.

  ‘Come on, Rita. I mean … be honest. It is, isn’t it?’ Ted mouthed the offending words, even though they were alone in the bar. ‘The change.’

  Rita felt her cheeks going red. It wasn’t the pink spots. It was anger. Splendid, fierce anger. She didn’t care if he did mistake it for a hot flush.

  ‘How dare you??’

  ‘Rita. People’ll hear. What will they think? I mean … keep it casual.’

  Rita smiled. In a bright, casual voice, she said, ‘You prejudiced, bigoted, blinkered, chauvinistic, rude, small-minded sod.’

  ‘Rita!!!’

  ‘Ted! People! Casual!’

  ‘Yes, but … I mean … look, OK, he’s not a freak. Fair enough. But.’

  ‘Again, I’m forced to ask “but what?”’

  ‘He’s a Liberal namby-pamby. Middle of the road. Always sitting on fences.’

  ‘A minute ago he was pumping me full of fiery radical convictions. Now he’s sitting on fences. You can’t have it both ways. Unless you mean he’s sitting on fences around American air bases.’

  ‘Rita!’

  Sandra returned towards the kitchen. She gave them a look. Rita didn’t see her. Ted gave Sandra a determinedly casual look. Rita looked round to see the object of his determinedly casual look, but she had gone.

  ‘I mean,’ said Ted. ‘I mean … do you? Know anything about him? He could be a con man.’

  ‘He’s been adopted by the Liberals.’

  ‘It’s been known, Rita. What do you personally know about him?’

  ‘He played rugby for Rosslyn Park. He’s a good cricketer. He loves opera. His father’s a headmaster. His mother’s a J.P. His brother’s a doctor. I’ve met them all. Gerry owns a small but successful micro-chip factory in Godalming.’

  ‘Good!’ said Ted after a pause. ‘Good! Well … good. I mean … he sounds all right. I’m glad, Rita.’ He paused, then resumed, as if he took her silence for disagreement. ‘I am! I mean … I am!’

  ‘Is there anybody in your life, Ted?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m glad to say there is. Very much so, in fact. Yes. Sexual and emotional fulfilment have crossed the Simcock threshold.’

  ‘I’m glad, Ted. Would you like to tell me about her?’

  There was a crash of plates from the kitchen.

  ‘Not a lot, no.’

  Ted didn’t like the look in Rita’s eye. Did she suspect about Sandra? Well, if she did, she did. What did it matter now? Why not admit it? Because he couldn’t. He found himself saying, ‘She’s … er … a bit of a public figure in this town. I mean … discretion, eh?’

  ‘I understand,’ said Rita. Did she? ‘Well, I’m glad there is somebody, Ted. You’ll be anxious to get the divorce through as quickly as I am, then.’

  Rita moved off, leaving Ted flabbergasted. He pulled himself together and hurried over with the brandies and liqueurs. He gave Liz a big smile as he handed Rodney and Betty Sillitoe their drinks.

  Betty raised her glass to Rodney, but he didn’t respond.

  ‘It’
s the skeleton at the feast,’ he said. ‘It’s the spectre in the cupboard.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Betty, puzzled. ‘What is?’

  ‘My chickens. Can you reconcile your kindly husband with the cruel beast who keeps living creatures cooped up in misery?’

  ‘I must admit. Sometimes at night I dream I’m like that. Cooped up. Awful.’

  ‘We’ve had a good innings,’ said Rodney. ‘We’ve got a bit set by. What say we go off and do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Set my chickens free.’

  Betty had a vision of hundreds of chicken trussers, all built like Beverley Roberts, singing ‘Set My Chickens Free’ in marvellous, full-throated unison as they busily untrussed chickens. The vision faded in the face of Rodney’s intensity.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she said.

  ‘Never been less serious in my life.’

  ‘It would be rather nice.’

  Rodney stood up. ‘Er … Betty and I have work to do,’ he announced, ‘back at work, where I work. So … er …’

  Betty Sillitoe, who was over-emotional as usual, stood up, lurching only slightly. ‘Thank you very much for inviting us,’ she said. ‘Well, not inviting us exactly. Seeing us there and thinking “Oh Lord, have to …”’

  ‘Betty!’

  ‘“… have to invite them now,” but you did, that’s the point, and thank you.’

  Rodney and Betty were swaying like poplars in a gale. Liz gave Neville an urgent stare, and he awoke to his responsibilities with a start.

  ‘You can’t drive like that,’ he said, hurrying over to them.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Rodney. ‘I’ll get a taxi. Here. My key cars.’ He handed his car keys to Neville Badger with great solemnity, as if fulfilling his part in some traditional ceremony. ‘There. Proof. Taxi. Work to do. Come on, Betty.’

  Liz took Betty by the arm, Neville took Rodney, and they steered the Sillitoes to the door as fast as they could without provoking resistance.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Rodney. ‘Betty didn’t mean …’ He turned to the other guests. ‘Goodbye, each,’ he said. ‘Where was I? Oh yes. I would like you to know that I do not agree with Betty.’