Читать книгу A Bit of a Do - David Nobbs - Страница 7

The doors at the back of the abbey church creaked open, and the radiant bride appeared on the arm of her noticeably less radiant father.

Jenny Rodenhurst looked stunning in her wedding dress, which had achieved that elegance of simplicity which only money can buy. It was entirely white, and successfully combined traditionalism with modernity. Her accessories were extremely spare, in view of all the suffering in the Third World. Her lengthy train was held by two bridesmaids. One of them was very young, and the other one was very fat.

Her father, Laurence Rodenhurst, was as perfectly dressed as it is possible for a man to be without ceasing to look like a dentist.

Leslie Horton, water bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, launched himself into a hefty rendition of ‘Here Comes The Bride’; and a brief burst of sunlight poured through the memorial stained-glass window dedicated to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, on whose side God had been in two world wars, though this hadn’t prevented them suffering heavy casualties.

The sizeable congregation craned their necks with varying degrees of shameless curiosity to watch the bridal procession, as it moved slowly past the stall of devotional literature, past the red arrow that indicated the distressingly slow progress of the Tower Appeal Fund, past the empty back pews and massive columns of the austere Norman nave, towards the less fearsome, more decorated beauty of the Early English chancel. Now the bride and her father were level with the least important of the guests, the third cousins twice removed, the employees who just couldn’t not be invited, and the funny little man with the big ears who turned up unbidden at all the weddings.

Rita Simcock, mother of the groom and wife of the town’s premier maker of toasting forks, was painfully aware that there were more people on the bride’s side than on theirs, that the people on the bride’s side were better dressed and more stylish. She was painfully aware that her younger son, Paul, the groom, was unemployed, and hadn’t had the haircut that he had promised, and looked a mess. She was painfully aware that her elder son, the cynical Elvis, although he had a philosophy degree from the University of Keele, was also unemployed, there being no vacancies for philosophers at the Job Centre just then, and looked almost as great a mess as Paul.

Liz Rodenhurst, mother of the lovely bride, a year older than Rita but looking ten years younger, was aware of all these things too, but her main emotion as she watched the slow procession was one of irritation with her daughter for having had her beautiful hair cropped short before this day of all days. It emphasized the slight heaviness of her jaw. How perverse the young were. But then it was perverse of Jenny to marry Paul at all. ‘If only I’d had the sense not to advise against it,’ she thought.

The procession had reached the more important guests, first cousins twice removed, second cousins once removed, friends, uncles, aunts with unsuitable hats, Rita’s slightly glazed parents, brothers, mothers, one wishing her son’s hair was shorter, the other wishing her daughter’s hair was longer – was nobody happy on this happy day? Certainly not the Reverend J. D. Thorough-good. Hardly a genuine churchgoer among the whole caboosh.

As Laurence came level with Liz, he gave her a brief glance. ‘What kind of a dash am I cutting?’ it asked.

In reply Liz smiled, a brief demonstration of a smile, indicating to her husband that he was to remember to look happy.

Laurence nodded imperceptibly, then smiled bravely, though not entirely successfully. He was a tall, slim man with cool eyes, handsome in a rather theoretical way, like a drawing of a good-looking man. His hair was receding quietly, sensibly, with impeccable manners. Men considered him a fine figure of a man. Women didn’t.

Ted Simcock nudged Paul, who stepped forward, almost tripping. At the sight of Paul, Laurence’s smile flickered, then fluttered bravely, like an upside-down Union Jack in a stiff, biting, easterly wind. And the sunlight disappeared brutally, as if it had been switched off.

Paul Simcock, the badly groomed groom, was twenty-one, and very nervous. His face seemed to be trying to hide beneath all that hair. His tie was very loosely tied – a compromise which pleased nobody. His inexpensive suit had almost been fashionable teenage wear when he had bought it. Five years later it was a museum piece. He had filled out in those five years, and it barely met around his groin, buttocks, chest and shoulders. He felt as if it had put him on in a great hurry. Buttons would burst and the zip fly open if he so much as gazed at a hard-boiled egg and Danish caviare canapé, and a pint of Theakston’s Best would be out of the question. How he wished now that he hadn’t been so stubborn in refusing his father’s offer of a new suit.

How he wished he hadn’t chosen the uncouth Neil Hodgson as best man.

The organ music ceased. ‘Dearly beloved,’ said the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood rather severely, as if hinting that they would be more dearly beloved if more regularly seen at church. ‘We are gathered here together in the sight of God …’

‘I don’t believe in Him,’ thought Jenny. ‘I wish we’d done it in a registry office.’

‘… woman in Holy Matrimony, which is an honourable estate,’ continued the vicar, whose own daughter had run off to London seventeen years ago and had never been seen again. Some said he retained the old words in all his services because for him time had stopped at that moment. ‘… instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency …’

Liz Rodenhurst looked round at exactly the same time as Ted Simcock. Her eyes glinted, and Ted, father of the groom, spurned offerer of new suits, turned away hastily and hung on the vicar’s words with exaggerated attention.

Liz smiled.

‘… and therefore is not by any to be enterprized, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites.’

‘No mention of women’s carnal lusts and appetites, I notice,’ thought Liz.

‘… but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly …’

‘Oh I hope so,’ thought Rodney Sillitoe, managing director of Cock-A-Doodle Chickens and close friend of the groom’s parents. ‘I’ll be watching her.’

‘I’ll be watching him,’ thought his wife Betty, who was overdressed as usual. ‘If he lets the side down today …’

‘… for which Matrimony was ordained,’ continued the vicar in his strong, steady, undramatic Yorkshire voice, so unlike those comedy vicars on television which his wife always switched off, though they amused him as evidence of the media’s tiny minds – not that either of them watched comedy or indeed television much, especially since time had stopped. ‘First it was ordained for the procreation of children …’

‘Yes, well,’ said Paul Simcock silently, but half expecting to be heard by God, because under the powerful influence of the devotional atmosphere it seemed possible that He might exist after all. ‘I’m afraid we jumped the gun a bit there.’

‘… the Lord, and to the praise of his Holy Name.’ The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood’s voice brought a touch of the hard limestone country into this town of the softer plains. ‘Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ted Simcock to his maker, and to his horror it almost came out aloud. His face, always slightly red, as if he overdid things, went even redder. He was a broad, bulky man, with slightly coarse features and fierce shaggy brows. His thick black hair was turning grey. Men didn’t consider him much of a figure of a man. Women did.

‘… that such persons as have not the gift of continency …’

‘All right?’ whispered Rita’s mother, the seventy-six-year-old Clarrie Spragg.

‘Oh aye.’ Percy Spragg’s answering whisper was much too loud, and Rita turned to give her father a frantic, warning glare.

‘… themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body. Thirdly …’

This time it was Ted’s eyes that were drawn to Liz’s fractionally before she gave him an unmistakeably meaningful glance. Laurence turned and saw Ted looking in his wife’s direction, and Ted developed a sudden interest in the magnificent hammer-beam roof. Another burst of sunlight was streaming into the huge old church. The day was improving.

‘Therefore, if any man can shew any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.’

The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood paused dramatically, and swept a severe gaze over the congregation. The sunshine seemed very far away, in another world.

‘Make somebody say something, please, oh Lord,’ prayed Laurence with a fervour that surprised him. ‘Save my daughter from this unsuitable marriage.’

‘I require and charge you both,’ said the vicar, damping Laurence’s brief hope, and the church darkened again as the summer’s day played grim meteorological jests with their emotions, ‘as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement …’

‘I don’t dread it,’ thought Rita. ‘That’s the day I come into my own.’

‘… know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful.’

Paul and Jenny smiled at each other a little uneasily, long-haired cheap-suited groom beside close-cropped, beautifully gowned bride, but united in their youth, their vulnerability and their love. They joined hands, and gave each other a little squeeze, and held their peace. Afterwards, both admitted that they had felt shivers and goose pimples at that moment.

‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together …?’

‘He promised me he’d have a haircut,’ said Rita to herself. ‘He promised.’ She had achieved, with her bottle-green two-piece suit and pink hat, the difficult feat of looking puritanical and over-dressed at the same time. Her austere hair style and natural air of worry made her look older than her forty-seven years. She had a hunched appearance, as if she were trying not to take up too much space.

‘… and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘Oh Jane!’ called out the immaculate Neville Badger silently from the bride’s side of the church, and this dapper doyen of the town’s lawyers also had a moment of horror when he thought that everyone must have heard, so loud did his agonized private cry seem to him: ‘Oh, Jane! Do you remember our wedding in this church?’

‘I will,’ whispered Paul, after a moment when it seemed that he would never speak.

The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood turned to Jenny. Was it possible that he didn’t think of his own daughter at this moment?

‘Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded …?’

‘Look happy, Laurence,’ Laurence told himself. ‘If you look happy long enough, you may even start to feel happy.’

‘… keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘Oh Lord,’ prayed the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Why did you take her from me?’

‘I will,’ said Jenny clearly, with an outward confidence that contrasted sharply with Paul’s delivery and made her parents feel that the money they had spent on her education had not been entirely wasted.

There was a slight commotion towards the back of the congregation. A second cousin twice removed had been overcome by emotion, and had to be removed. Rita was painfully conscious that it was on their side of the church.

Outside, in the bustling summer streets, people were peering at details of skiing holidays which they couldn’t afford, gawping at dresses which they would never wear, and slowly reading the meagre lists of unappetizing catering vacancies in the Job Centre. To the town’s seventy thousand inhabitants, the abbey church was so familiar as to be almost invisible.

The ancient market town had expanded rapidly with a mixture of light industry and heavy engineering, which were both now declining. A combination of ignorant councillors, apathetic citizens and ruthless property developers had removed almost all traces of its ancient heritage, except for the abbey church and the street names. Few tourists stopped off on their way to York, Durham and Edinburgh.

It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that at the moment when the great West Door creaked open, nobody was looking at the abbey, except for a visiting Greek-Cypriot builder who was staring openmouthed at the scaffolding which encased the massive tower.

Then suddenly the assertive strains of Leslie Horton, water bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, were mingling with the hum of the Saturday afternoon traffic. Now people stopped and stared, eager to see the lovely bride, the lucky groom, the proud parents, the hats and dresses of the aunts and cousins.

Six bachelor philatelists, on their way to an exhibition in the annexe of the Alderman Cartwright Memorial Museum (entrance by the side door, in West Riding Passage), watched from the top deck of a bright yellow corporation bus as the wedding guests filtered slowly under the four beautifully carved recessed arches of the Norman doorway. The philatelists were in a good mood, being as yet unaware that the exhibition of wildlife stamps had closed at one, due to local government cutbacks. One of them said, ‘They haven’t got too bad a day for it,’ and the other five were not disposed to argue. For the paths were almost dry now after the last brief shower, and there was almost as much blue in the sky as cloud.

The wedding guests stood around in uneasy knots, not quite knowing what to do with themselves, while the funny little man with big ears who turned up unbidden at all the weddings hurried off to the Baptist Chapel, where a promising event was scheduled for three o’clock.

‘Did you see Paul’s hair?’ said Rita Simcock in a low voice.

‘I could hardly miss it,’ said Ted rather less softly. ‘It was on the top of his head, as usual.’

‘S’ssh!’ she hissed. ‘He promised he’d have it cut, Ted. He promised. I mean … what will they think? They already think we’re not good enough for them.’

‘He’s a dentist, Rita, not First Lord of the Admiralty,’ said Ted.

‘S’ssh! Here they come,’ whispered Rita urgently. ‘Look happy!’ She turned to face the Rodenhurst parents, who were approaching with the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Didn’t it go off well?’ she said, giving a radiant smile that had no radiance in it.

‘Very well,’ said Liz.

‘You must be very happy,’ said Neville Badger. He was in his early fifties, but his recent grief seemed to set him apart as a member of the previous generation. ‘Jenny looked a picture,’ he said, turning to Liz and Laurence. ‘A picture. I think she’s putting on a bit of weight. It suits her.’

‘Do you all know each other?’ said Laurence. ‘No? Ah! Neville Badger, a very old friend. Paul’s parents, Ted and Rita Simcock.’

Neville Badger shook hands with Ted and Rita. Ted said, ‘I own the Jupiter Foundry. I expect you’ve heard of us.’ Rita frowned at him. Neville Badger didn’t hear him, because of a passing motorcyclist with a faulty silencer and a hang-up about his virility; and when Ted repeated his statement, Neville Badger said, ‘Actually, no.’

‘Oh,’ said Ted. ‘Well, we … er … we make fire irons, companion sets, door knockers, toasting forks …’

‘Are you a dentist, Mr Badger?’ said Rita, breaking in hastily before Ted gave the whole of his firm’s sales list, and smiling excessively.

‘Oh no! No!’ said Neville Badger too vehemently. He gave Laurence an uneasy, apologetic glance. ‘No. I’m with Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger.’

‘Taxidermists?’ asked Ted.

‘Solicitors!’ said Rita frantically. She flashed him an angry glare, then switched on another nervously ingratiating smile for Neville. The sky was dotted with small white clouds, and in another remarkable meteorological coincidence … or celestial joke … the sun was popping in and out in ironical counterpoint to Rita’s expressions. The sun shone when she frowned. The skies darkened when she smiled.

‘I love a good wedding, don’t you, Mr Badger?’ she said.

‘Yes, I … I do … I … excuse me.’

Neville Badger moved off abruptly. Rita stared after him in horrified astonishment, and the sun came out.

‘His wife died six weeks ago,’ explained Liz.

Two bright pink spots appeared on Rita’s cheeks, and Ted gave her a look which said, ‘You’ve done it again.’

Rodney and Betty Sillitoe were approaching. Rodney was forty-eight, Betty fifty-one, but she looked the younger. Rodney Sillitoe was wearing a very good suit, but it looked as if he had fallen asleep in a chicken coop while wearing it. Betty Sillitoe was so enthusiastically overdressed that she almost carried it off. Her dyed blonde hair peeped cheerfully out at the world round the edges of a yellow hat which wouldn’t have been out of place in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Betty was always the first to draw attention to her dark roots. She dyed her hair to sparkle, not deceive.

‘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-boiled 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.’

‘Do you really think my words don’t mean much?’ said Liz. ‘Surely they aren’t a total surprise?’

‘Well … no … I suppose I’ve realized for quite a while that you were … er …’

‘… aflame with sexual hunger.’

‘Yes. No!!! I mean … Liz! … really!’ He glanced round the crowded, buzzing room. Nobody seemed to be listening to them. ‘I knew you were … not unattracted. I sensed you didn’t find me repulsive.’

‘I sense you don’t find me repulsive either.’

‘Well … no … I don’t. Of course I don’t. I mean … you aren’t. Have you tried the tuna fish vol-au-vents? They’re delicious.’

Ted thrust his plate in front of Liz’s nose – her exquisite nose, with those delicately flared nostrils that troubled him so deeply. As a diversion, the plate was a failure. ‘Don’t you want me?’ said Liz, spurning the proffered delicacies.

‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Of course I do, Liz. But.’

He turned abruptly, wriggling to get away with all the desperation of one of the nice, fat roach that he hoped to catch in the autumn competition on the so-called Wisbech trip, when they actually fished the straight, flat Ouse, miles from anywhere. How he wished it was the Wisbech trip today. The long coach ride south, to the flat, fertile Fens. The long, silent hours by the Ouse, under the wide sky. The long coach ride home. Good company. Good fishing. Good ale. Good singing on the coach. He even wished he were at home, at the sink, washing up. Washing up was an underrated pleasure. Not as exciting as sex, but infinitely safer.

He hadn’t shaken Liz off. Realizing that she was following him, realizing how revealing that would be to anybody who suspected, he felt that he had no alternative but to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to get away. He turned to face his tormentor.

‘What do you mean, “but”?’ said Liz. ‘You can’t just say “but” and walk off. It’s unacceptable behaviour both socially and grammatically.’

‘I suppose I meant … oh heck … that this is awful.’

‘Awful? It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. I’m alive again.’

‘Oh yes, I agree. Absolutely. It’s very exciting. It’s absolutely wonderful. But.’

‘… it’s awful?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Oh dear. Poor Ted. Poor poor Ted.’

Liz walked away, leaving him stranded. He bit altogether too ambitiously into a hard-boiled egg, and almost choked.

‘But you promised, Paul. And I mean … what must they think?’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? Never mind the greatest emotional commitment I’ll ever make in my life. Just the parrot-cry of the narrow-minded. “What must they think?”’

They were seated, Paul and his mother, in an alcove in the man-made walled garden. It was a pleasant place of bricked paths and patios, studded with benches and urns. In the centre there was a small, round pond, in which silver carp held an eternal buffet among the water lilies, bladderwort and floating hyacinths. There were arches across which climbing roses had been trained. The clematis were in flower, and in a sheltered corner there was a fig tree, spreading its branches widely but producing only tiny fruit, most of which would drop off before they ripened. Perhaps it was no wonder, in this northern climate hostile to ripening figs, if Rita’s emotional juices had dried out as her hair thinned and grew lifeless, and the worry lines deepened. The peace and calm of this garden couldn’t reach her. It was always November, now, in Rita’s garden.

‘You don’t understand the way their minds work,’ she said. ‘They look down on us. We’re trade. They’re professions. In his own mind, he’s practically on a par with doctors, that one.’

‘In Bolivia, Mum, they have sixty-five per cent infant mortality,’ said the lucky groom with restrained fury. ‘The average life expectancy of the tin miners is thirty-seven. The typical diet is boiled maize, followed, if they’re very lucky, by more boiled maize. Extra boiled maize as a treat at Christmas. So I honestly don’t think my having my hair cut matters very much.’

‘Exactly!’ Rita was briefly triumphant. ‘So it’s not much to ask to have it done, then, is it?’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Paul, leaping to his feet. ‘All right, then. See you later.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘That new unisex place in Newbaldgate.’

‘Paul! Not now! You’re the groom.’

‘So?’

‘Nobody goes for a haircut during their wedding reception.’

‘Then it’s time to break the mould of British social behaviour. I mean I pay my mother the compliment of assuming that she wouldn’t set out to spoil my wedding reception unless she felt that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. So, I shall have a haircut. I don’t want to start me honeymoon riddled with guilt. It might make me impotent. Then they will laugh at me.’

‘There’s no need to be disgusting!’

But Paul had gone in, through the French windows. He walked straight through his wedding reception, through the public rooms of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, down the wide steps, along the semicircular drive, past the rhododendrons and the cawing rooks in the long, narrow wood that screened the grounds from the Tadcaster Road, and out onto the surprisingly warm pavements of the outside world. He hopped onto a number eight bus, and was at the unisex hairdresser’s before the last of his anger had drained away, and he began to wish that he hadn’t gone there.

Ted didn’t see his son pass. His eyes were on Liz, who was approaching him again in a manner that made him feel excited and nervous.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, raising her eyes and her glass of champagne to him. ‘Words are too easy.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Action’s the thing.’

‘Absolutely. Pardon?’

‘Meet me in room 108 in five minutes.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ve booked room 108. For them to change in before they go away. For me to do my hair in if it was blown to bits in the churchyard. Meet me there in five minutes.’

Ted looked round nervously. The hum of conversation was so loud that Kim Philby could have passed secrets to the Russians in the middle of the room without anybody noticing. But he was still nervous.

‘Liz!’

‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Well … yes … of course. Of course I do. But.’

‘Oh! “But” again. But what?’

‘I’m the groom’s father. You’re the bride’s mother. It’s their wedding day.’

‘Is doing it any worse than wanting to do it?’

‘No, but … I mean … they might come in themselves.’

‘In the middle of their wedding reception? Besides, I have the key.’

‘Yes, but … they’ll be cutting the cake. There’ll be the speeches.’

‘We’ll be back. Nobody’ll miss us in this crush.’

‘Yes, but … we’re pillars of the local community. I mean … Liz! … they don’t do things like that, pillars of the local community. They don’t.’

‘Yes, they do. They just don’t get found out. As we won’t. We’ll never get a safer moment.’ She moved closer towards him, so that briefly their bodies touched. He had to admit that the sensation beat washing up into a cocked hat. ‘I thought you were a man of nerve,’ she said.

‘Oh heck,’ riposted the man of nerve.

‘We’re off on holiday tomorrow. A month with Laurence! I want to remember you and me every day of that month, Ted. Give me something to remember.’

‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell, Liz.’

‘Room 108 in five minutes.’

And then she was gone.

‘Oh heck,’ said Ted. ‘Oh utterly and confounded heck. Oh good God almighty.’ Rita was approaching. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Can I have a word, Ted?’ said Rita anxiously.

‘Yes, if it doesn’t take too long. I mean … oh God.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Rita chose an alcove on the other side of the garden, as far away as possible from the one in which she had talked to Paul. That was one recess she never wanted to see again!

The sun was high in a sky that was now almost entirely blue. Ted’s bushy eyebrows asked the rather weary question, ‘What is it this time?’

‘It’s Paul,’ said Rita. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Ted. ‘They’re never splitting up already! I know youngsters don’t regard marriage as sacred, but …’ He glanced at his watch. ‘… an hour and ten minutes!’ He wished he hadn’t looked at his watch. It reminded him that three of the five minutes had already gone.

‘No! He’s gone to have his hair cut.’

‘Is he mad? Rita!! You’ve been on at him, haven’t you?’

‘I may have just touched on it.’

Rita began to cry. The immaculate Neville Badger approached them. He was adrift on the afternoon’s unfamiliar currents, and was looking for somewhere to drop anchor. He saw that Rita was crying, and developed a sudden interest in silver carp.

‘Love!’ said Ted desperately. ‘What’s up, love?’

‘Everybody says what a picture Jenny looks.’

‘Well … she does.’

‘Nobody says what a picture Paul looks.’

‘Well … he doesn’t.’

‘Bolivian tin miners indeed!’

‘You what?’

‘She’s changing him. He’s never even mentioned Bolivia before. He’s never even sent charity Christmas cards.’

‘He’s never sent any Christmas cards.’

‘This is what I say. She’s changing him.’

An airship was drifting slowly overhead. It had the name of a cigarette firm printed on it in huge letters, and was travelling towards the athletics meeting which the firm had sponsored in a moment of guilt. Did anybody look down from the airship? If so, could they have seen Ted glance surreptitiously at his watch? Five minutes and seventeen seconds. Zero hour plus seventeen. Oh good! Oh God!

He stood up.

‘Don’t leave me alone,’ implored Rita. ‘I hate functions. I feel so … dreary … drab … dull.’

‘Don’t be silly, love,’ said Ted, trying desperately to encourage her, and swiftly. ‘Don’t be so self-conscious. I mean … nobody’s looking at you.’ He realized, even as he said it, that it was not the most felicitously expressed piece of encouragement in the history of the world.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m just a grey smudge.’

‘Love!’ he said. ‘You aren’t a grey smudge. You’re not! I mean … love … I’m a man of discernment. A leader of industry. Would I have married a grey smudge? I mean … would I?’

‘I wasn’t a grey smudge when you married me!’

‘Rita! Love! Look, I’m an Englishman. I’m a Yorkshireman. So, I can’t come out with sweet nothings. I mean … I just can’t. But … I promise you, love … you aren’t … to me … in any way … a grey smudge.’ The die was cast. He knew that he couldn’t not go to room 108, whether he wanted to or not. He would always feel that he should have gone. ‘So … come on. Circulate. Mingle. We’ll never establish our social equality with the Rodenhursts by sitting in comers and moping, will we?’

He led her in through the French windows, into a wall of talk.

Behind them, Neville Badger gloomily dropped a dollop of pilchard mousse into the pond. The silver carp fought for the privilege of devouring their distant relation.

‘There’s Laurence,’ said Ted. ‘Talk to him. Do your bit. Use your charm. Establish our social credibility.’

‘Where are you going?’ Rita was near to panic.

‘If you must know,’ said Ted, lowering his voice, ‘I feel a pressing need to perform a certain natural function.’ It wasn’t a total lie.

‘Ted!’ said Rita, scandalized. ‘You don’t talk about that sort of function at this sort of function!’

‘Well, you asked.’ He steered her over to Laurence, who was moving away from the champagne table with a recharged glass. Ted carried straight on towards the doors which led into the bowels of the hotel.

Rita glared at him, then turned to Laurence and gave him what she hoped was a charming smile. It wasn’t.

‘It’s a lovely buffet,’ she drooled, hating her ingratiating voice. ‘The tuna fish vol-au-vents are a revelation.’

‘They have a good reputation here.’

‘It’s a lovely do altogether. I do like lovely dos.’ Oh shut up, Rita. Listen to yourself. Unfortunately, Laurence had shut up as well. The seconds ticked by, and Rita felt that everyone in the room was gloating over her discomfiture. She felt absolutely enormous, and also about two inches high.

‘Have you had your holidays yet?’ she heard Laurence ask from what seemed like a great distance.

She heard herself start up again. ‘No. We’re going to the South of France with Rodney and Betty Sillitoe. You met them. He’s the one who’s the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.’ Oh God, Rita, why did you have to drag that in? ‘We like France. Well, let’s face it, it’s a bit more sophisticated than Spain these days. We like something a bit out of the ordinary. Where are you going?’

‘Peru.’

They would. They just ruddy well would.

Her parents hobbled painfully towards them, and her heart lurched in anticipation of further disasters.

‘Hello!’ said Laurence, glad of any interruption. ‘And how are Mr and Mrs Twigg?’

‘Spragg,’ said the bow-legged Percy Spragg.

‘Are you really?’ said Laurence. ‘That’s grand! Jolly good! I love these old dialect words.’

‘Dialect words?’ said Percy Spragg, puzzled.

‘Spragg.’

‘That’s my name.’

‘Ah.’

Rita felt real fondness for her father then, for the first time in many years. It wasn’t destined to last long.

‘Well, how are you, anyway?’ said Laurence.

‘Grand,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Just grand. By ’eck, Mr Rodenhurst, all them cars in t’car park. We’ve seen some changes in us lifetime, eh, Clarrie?’

‘Oh aye,’ said the barrel-chested Clarrie Spragg. ‘We’ve seen a few changes all right, Perce.’

‘I remember when it was all horses,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Horse manure all over t’ roads.’

‘Percy!’ said Clarrie.

‘We used to shovel it up off t’ roads when it were still steaming.’

‘Dad!’ said Rita.

‘It were the ’alcyon age of rhubarb, never to return.’

‘What a fascinating snippet of social history. Excuse me,’ said Laurence, and he moved over to talk to his brother, who was held by many to be the leading gynaecologist in Crewe.

‘Why do you have to show me up?’ hissed Rita.

Her father’s eyes glinted maliciously.

‘Because you always think I’m going to show you up,’ he said.

The afternoon sun streamed into room 108. Liz had pulled back the purple coverlet on the double bed. The sheets looked crisp and worldly.

Amos Clissold stared down at them sternly from the wall above the bed, as he did from the wall above every bed in the hotel. Ted wanted to turn the gum magnate’s disapproving face to the wall. He wanted to put the Gideon Bible in the drawer of the bedside table. He didn’t dare, for fear that Liz would laugh at him. As he slowly undid his shoes, he found himself wondering about hotel soap. What happened to all the unfinished cakes left by departing guests? Did the chambermaids take them home and recycle them, to supplement their meagre incomes? He tried to force his mind into more amorous channels. To no avail! Damn it, he could hear the hum of conversation and laughter from his son’s wedding reception.

‘Do you usually make love with your clothes on?’ asked Liz.

‘I can hear the reception.’

‘They’re chatting. They’re laughing. They haven’t missed us.’

‘No, but … I mean … Liz … if we can hear them, maybe they’ll hear us.’

‘Above all that noise? That sounds promising!’

‘Oh, Liz!’

‘We’re wasting time, and even I agree we shouldn’t be away too long,’ said Liz. ‘Don’t you want me?’

She removed the last of her clothes and stood before him, bronzed from her sun lamp, just a slight fleshiness about the thighs and stomach, maybe the breasts not quite as high as once they were, but he knew then that he would have wanted her if a hundred photos of the Archbishop of Canterbury had been staring down at him.

‘Oh, yes! Oh Liz! Oh heck!’ he said.

‘Oh, Betty!’

Betty Sillitoe, who was over-perfumed as usual, was standing by the champagne table, sipping her drink. ‘All a bit much?’ she said.

‘Dad talked to Laurence about horse manure.’

‘Think yourself lucky he said manure.’

Rita poured herself half a glass of champagne. She had reached her limit. Any further crises would have to be met out of her own resources.

‘You’re the only person I feel close to,’ she said. ‘Not even the boys any more. What’s happening to me? I want to scream, Betty.’

‘Well … weddings.’ Betty put an arm round Rita affectionately. ‘I’m standing by the drink where I can keep an eye on Rodney and see he doesn’t drink too much, bless him.’ She sipped her drink and pointed towards her husband, smiling.

Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, was standing by one of the sash windows on the far side of the room. He was in earnest conversation with the radiant bride.

‘Your dress is lovely, Jenny,’ he was saying. ‘Lovely.’

‘Thank you.’ She was holding her luxurious train over her arm. ‘It’s funny. You seem quite human.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today. Not when you’re a guest at my wedding.’

‘I didn’t know it was rude to call somebody human,’ said Rodney Sillitoe.

‘No, but you know what I meant. You seem quite nice, but you run a kind of concentration camp for chickens. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

‘Yes, you should, because you mean it, and I admire you for it.’

‘It’s just that I think that if we think we have the right to exploit animals because we’re superior to them, that makes us inferior to them because they never exploit us. Does that make me a crank?’

‘No!’

‘He can’t resist an attractive young woman,’ said Betty Sillitoe.

‘Don’t you ever feel jealous?’ said Rita.

‘Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He just likes being near attractive young women.’

‘I envy you.’

‘Rita! She does look a picture, I must say.’

‘Must you?’

‘Rita!’

‘Chickens aren’t like people, Jenny. They don’t have the same feelings. They don’t have the same expectations of life style.’

‘I know. Fish have no nerves in their mouths, foxes enjoy being hunted, lobsters get a sexual thrill out of being boiled alive. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

Jenny looked round the crowded room. She was searching for help, but no help was at hand. She didn’t want to go on with this conversation, on this day of all days. and yet she couldn’t let it go.

‘But how can you live with yourself?’ she said, ‘knowing how your chickens live.’

And Betty, from her strategic position beside the champagne, smiled indulgently as she watched their lips move.

‘I love him for his foibles,’ she said.

‘You must feel envy sometimes,’ said Rita.

‘No. I wouldn’t want anything in my life to be different from what it is.’

Rita closed her eyes, and swallowed her champagne as if it were medicine.

‘I envy you,’ she said.

‘I don’t look at it the same road as you, Jenny,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re units. Costed items. I employ three hundred people in an area of high unemployment. I couldn’t do that without my rationalized, cost-effective methods.’

The window could have afforded them a pleasant view over the park-like grounds. They could have seen peacocks strutting, songthrushes holding their heads sideways as they listened for their afternoon tea, and a distant water tower, ringed by pines. Rodney and Jenny spurned these attractions.

‘I suppose that’s what people do,’ Jenny said. ‘Compartmentalize. I mean, they say Himmler was very fond of dogs. Or was it Goebbels?’

‘It must have been dogs,’ said Rodney. ‘I don’t think he was at all fond of Goebbels.’

‘No! I meant … oh! How can you joke when I’m comparing you to … oh, not that I mean that you’re really … sorry.’

‘Bless you!’ said Rodney Sillitoe, and he gave her an avuncular kiss which, like many avuncular kisses, held a distant echo of kisses less avuncular.

Jenny was angry. ‘You’re being patronizing now,’ she said. ‘You’re forgiving me because I’m an attractive young thing. I don’t want that. I hate that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

She kissed him.

‘Bless them,’ said Betty Sillitoe, watching the kiss.

‘I envy you,’ said Rita.

And in room 108, the father of the groom withdrew from the mother of the bride, in a moment of exquisite ambiguity, of relief and regret, of pride and shame, of ecstasy and horror. It was three minutes to four, and in the lounge and on the terrace the residents were ordering afternoon tea.

Exactly below the wet patch in the double bed in room 108 was the dry, happily innocent head of the bride’s only brother, Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. He was talking to Elvis Simcock, the groom’s only brother.

‘I’m sorry to hear you can’t get a job, Elvis,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then, Simon,’ said the cynical Elvis. ‘That makes me feel much better about the total uselessness of my life.’

‘I’m trying to be pleasant, Elvis,’ said Simon.

‘Effort, is it?’ said Elvis.

‘I just thought that as we’re related by marriage it might be a good idea if we tried to get on with each other.’

‘You’re right,’ said Elvis. ‘I’ll try. Sorry, Simon.’

Elvis gave Simon a semi-apologetic, semi-embarrassed hint of a smile, and they stood for a moment in a reasonably companionable silence as they searched for suitable topics of conversation.

‘Were you named after …?’ began Simon Rodenhurst.

‘Of course I was, you stupid twit!’ said Elvis Simcock, and he stormed out through the French windows.

And Rita, seeing this, said ‘Oh dear’ and sighed deeply.

‘Rita!’ said Betty Sillitoe, her blonde hair with its unashamedly dark roots mocking her friend’s joylessly careful appearance. ‘Rita! You can’t take responsibility for how the whole of your family behaves, or you’ll crack up. Relax. Have a drink.’

She poured half a glass of champagne for Rita, and topped up her own glass in order to be sociable.

‘Thanks, but I’ve had enough,’ said Rita. She put her glass down. Betty drank half her glass and refilled it from Rita’s glass, so that Rita wouldn’t feel guilty about the waste. You will crack up, Rita, she thought. You’re heading for a collapse, my girl, and where will we be then? What’ll happen to our cosy foursome, our holiday in the South of France, our pleasant life together, our just reward for the modest wealth that we create for this community?

And Rita looked at the door and wondered why on earth Ted was taking so long. And she wondered how long Paul would be, and how they would explain his haircut. Where was her family when she needed them? Spread to the four winds. The panic came over her in waves, and she wanted to scream, and she mustn’t.

Luckily, she hadn’t realized, in all the crush and her self-obsessed panic, that Liz was also absent.

And Ted Simcock drifted into a half-sleep, vaguely conscious of Liz Rodenhurst’s warm buttocks lodged in his crotch in the great warm tent of sensuality and satisfaction which was room 108 of the Clissold Lodge Ho …

The Clissold Lodge Hotel! He sat bold upright, every part of his body rigid, except one.

‘Come on, Liz,’ he said, leaping out of bed. ‘We’ve got to get downstairs.’

As Simon Rodenhurst wandered out into the walled garden, determined to effect an improvement in his relationship with the cynical Elvis Simcock even if it ended with neither of them ever speaking to each other again, he passed the immaculate Neville Badger, drifting slowly into the Garden Room through the weeds of his Sargasso Sea.

Elvis Simcock was making faces at the carp. It was a one-sided game.

‘I wish I was as thick as a fish,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry about … er …’ said Simon. ‘But you really shouldn’t have a chip on your shoulder about something as unimportant as a name.’

‘How would you like it, Simon, if you were called Garfunkel?’

‘What did you read at university?’

‘Dirty books mainly.’

‘No. I meant …’

‘I know what you meant. That was a little thing we Simcocks call “a joke”. Philosophy.’

‘Philosophy!’

‘Don’t sound so scornful. I’ve registered as a philosopher down the Job Centre. No luck yet. Although the way relations are between the two sides of industry in this country I’d have thought a bit of logical thought might come in handy.’

‘Why don’t you work for your father?’

‘I have some pride. Our sort of people tend not to rely on that kind of privilege.’

They watched the carp in silence for a few moments, until that entertainment palled.

‘What do you do?’ Elvis made it seem more of an accusation than a question.

‘I’m an estate agent.’

‘Ah!’

‘What do you mean – “ah!”?’

‘I meant “Ah! I can’t think of anything to say in response to something so incredibly boring, so I’ll say ‘Ah!’”’

‘You can mock, but selling houses is a bit more useful than philosophy.’

‘Well, I doubt if Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche would agree with that.’

‘Bertrand, Russell and Neetcher? It rings a bell. Are they those big estate agents over at Beverley?’

‘They are among the most famous philosophers in the history of Western thought, you ignoramus,’ said the cynical Elvis Simcock.

‘It was what we Rodenhursts call “a joke”,’ said Simon Rodenhurst of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch.

And the carp swam round and round. Round and round.

Liz entered first, as casually and inconspicuously as she could.

Laurence detached himself without regret from a discussion about video recorders – his cousin Leonard was saying what a burden they were, all those programmes you’d recorded and never had time to watch, so you ended up getting up at seven on Sundays to catch up with them – and approached his wife. His eyes were cold.

‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

‘Having it off with the king of the door knockers.’

‘What?? Liz!!’ Laurence had turned quite white.

‘I’m joking! Do you think I’d do a thing like that in the middle of my daughter’s wedding reception? And, if I did, do you think I’d tell you?’

‘Well, where have you been?’

‘I needed some fresh air. In the immortal words that you have used to me so often, I have a headache.’

Liz moved on, towards Betty Sillitoe and Rita.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I feel the need for some more champagne.’

‘I’m practically a fixture in this comer,’ said Betty, pouring a glass for Liz.

‘Good idea,’ said Liz. ‘Best place to be.’

‘Oh, not for the drink. To keep an eye on my wretched husband. He has been known to overindulge.’

‘Haven’t we all?’

‘No,’ said Rita, and she could feel the telltale pink spots appearing on her cheeks.

‘What?’

‘I know how much I like. I know how much is good for me. I won’t change my ways just to please the so-called fashionable.’

‘And why should you?’ said Liz, pushing Rita’s hostility round the post like any competent goalkeeper.

‘I must say, Mrs Rodenhurst, it’s a lovely do,’ said Rita, accepting that her hostility hadn’t landed on its target. ‘The tuna fish vol-au-vents are quite an eye-opener.’

‘“Mrs Rodenhurst”! Call me Liz! We’re related now, Rita. Incidentally, where’s that lovely husband of yours?’

‘Well … er … Mrs … Liz … er …’ Rita dropped her voice, and the pink spots blazed. ‘I can’t really say.’

‘A mystery! How intriguing!’

‘No. There’s no mystery. He’s …’ The voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He’s answering an urgent call of nature.’

Liz seemed to find this amusing. She actually laughed. Really, there was no accounting for tastes.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Liz. ‘Well, enjoy yourselves.’ And she moved on.

‘She hates me,’ said Rita.

Ted felt that the casual air with which he returned to the reception was totally unconvincing. Everybody must be able to see how furtive and nervous he felt.

Rita made a beeline for him.

‘You took your time,’ she said. It was a question in the form of a statement.

‘Sorry,’ he said. He lowered his voice to a near-whisper, and answered her statement. ‘I’ve been really badly. I think it must be the tuna fish vol-au-vents.’

‘They’re delicious, Ted. They’re different.’

‘They’re different all right. I happen to be allergic, that’s all. Remember Sorrento.’

‘Sorrento?’

‘I had tuna fish then.’

‘That was twenty-four years ago!’

‘What difference does that make? It’s lifelong, is an allergy.’

‘Why did you eat them if you’re allergic?’

‘I didn’t know I was allergic. I mean … love … I’ve only just discovered the common denominator.’ Rita made no reply. ‘Tuna fish.’ Still Rita said nothing, and Ted realized that she was close to tears. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Sorrento,’ she gasped.

‘What?’

‘We were happy then.’

‘Rita!’ He looked round desperately at the apparently happy and increasingly noisy throng. He had to stop her bursting into tears, here in the middle of the reception. He’d never live it down. ‘Rita! We’re happy now. I mean … we are. Aren’t we?’

‘I’m not. I’m absolutely miserable.’

But he knew then that she wouldn’t cry. She had herself under control. Good old Rita. Oh God! What had he done? Well, he knew what he’d done. What he meant was, why had he done it? Well, he knew why he’d done it too. Oh God!

‘Oh, Rita,’ he said. ‘Why? I’m happy. I am, love. I mean … reasonably. I mean … life’s no picnic, but … I’m not unhappy. So … I mean … why are you?’ He had managed to steer her over to the champagne table during these tortured exchanges. ‘Hello, Betty,’ he said. He took a glass of champagne. Rita took it away from him immediately.

‘You shouldn’t drink champagne if you’ve been badly,’ she said.

‘Oh. No. True. Right.’ Was she suspicious? Married twentyfour years, and he didn’t know. Oh God. Whether she. was suspicious or not, he vowed to give Liz up. He would give up sex entirely and stick to marriage and washing up and fishing. He felt briefly better after making this decision. Then he remembered Paul’s absence. He led Rita away from Betty Sillitoe and asked her if anybody had noticed that he was missing.

‘No.’

‘Oh good.’

‘Good? It’s a great tribute to our son’s personality, isn’t it? The first man in the history of the universe to go for a haircut in the middle of his wedding reception, and nobody even notices.’

‘Oh, Rita! I hope they don’t notice.’

‘Don’t you think they’ll be a bit surprised when he comes in with a short back and sides?’

Jenny approached them, still holding her train. Her arm ached. What a palaver. If only they’d done it in a registry office.

‘Have you seen Paul?’ she asked, as if she had read their thoughts. ‘Only I’ve just realized I haven’t seen him for quite a while.’

‘My word!’ said Rita. ‘Married for over an hour, and you’re still so devoted to him.’

Jenny stared at Rita, thunderstruck, dismayed.

‘Rita!’ said Ted.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rita. ‘I’m on edge.’

Jenny touched Rita gently with her free arm. ‘I want us to be good friends,’ she said.

‘So do I, Jenny,’ said Rita. ‘So do I.’ She kissed her daughter-in-law on the cheek.

‘Well, where is he?’ said Jenny. ‘I’m worried.’

‘He’s gone for a haircut,’ said Ted.

‘A haircut?? During his wedding reception??’

‘It’s probably my fault,’ said Rita. ‘He’d promised to get one, and I ticked him off about it.’

‘Are you thinking of coming on the honeymoon?’ said Jenny.

‘What?’ It was Rita’s tum to look thunderstruck and dismayed.

‘If he goes for a haircut during his reception because you tell him to, he may need you on the honeymoon to tell him what to do.’

Jenny blundered off in tears towards the door, and at that moment Paul entered, rather sheepishly. He hadn’t had a haircut.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘I went for a walk. I was nervous.’

‘That’s not much of a haircut,’ said Jenny. ‘Was it worth it, I ask myself.’ And she stormed out of the room.

‘Oh heck,’ said Paul.

Now it was a wonderful summer’s afternoon, cloudless, windless. The buzzing hour. Light aircraft. Distant mowers. Imminent wasps. Whatever could buzz, did buzz. How lucky they would have been with the weather, if such considerations had still been important.

The residents having tea on the glass-roofed terrace watched the frantic groom chase the tearful bride along the hotel drive. The families on the putting green flinched as Jenny let her superb train trail along the gravel.

‘Jenny! Come back!’ yelled Paul.

‘Why?’ shouted Jenny, still running at full pelt. She’d been quite an athlete at school. In fact she could have played hockey for the county, if she hadn’t found the atmosphere surrounding organized sport so reactionary.

‘Because it’s your wedding reception,’ gasped Paul through bursting lungs. ‘You’ll always regret it if you spoil it.’

‘That didn’t stop you,’ shouted Jenny. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t go to the pictures while you were out.’

She was fitter than him! He was making no impression on the gap between them. He felt that he was making no impression on the emotional gap either. ‘Jenny!’ he panted. ‘I did it to stop her thinking she could get me to do what she wants any more.’

‘By doing what she wanted? That’s a funny way of showing it,’ shouted Jenny over her shoulder, pounding on towards the Tadcaster Road.

She was drawing away from him! He felt a pang of sexist humiliation. He felt a pang of guilt at feeling a pang of sexist humiliation. He struggled on desperately. ‘I never intended to have my hair cut,’ he croaked. ‘I just wanted to frighten her. That’s all, love. Oh, Jenny, please! I love you! I love you!’

Paul’s shouted endearments caused a sentimental chemist to miss a two-foot putt on the seventh hole. It also caused Jenny to turn and wait for him. She held out her arms, and he buried himself in her loveliness. They clung to each other, motionless. Eva Blumenthal, a florist from Freiburg, watching their youthful embrace with delight and not a little envy, missed the teacup at which she was aiming and poured half a pot of scalding tea down the crotch of her husband Fritz, a com chandler from the same ancient city. They play little further part in this tale, and sympathetic readers should be assured that they are happily married, with two boys, one daughter, a labrador and a BMW, and that they enjoyed their holiday, except for the ruining of a pair of Italian trousers and a Saturday night.

Paul and Jenny set off slowly back towards their reception, blissfully unaware that they were the object of so much attention.

‘I don’t want to lie to you,’ said Paul. ‘I did intend to have my hair cut.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘There was a queue. Just as I got to the front a man barged in in front of me. Just because he had an appointment. I saw red and stormed out.’

‘What a stormy day.’

‘Well … I’m on edge. Weddings.’

‘I know.’

‘Come on,’ said Paul, increasing his pace sharply. ‘Everybody must be wondering where I am.’

‘Yes,’ said Jenny doubtfully.

‘Anyway, it all ended up all right. I’ve taught her a lesson, and I haven’t had the haircut she wanted.’

‘I wish you would have a haircut,’ said Jenny.

‘What chance have they got?’ said Rita, after the happy couple had returned and normality had been largely restored.

‘They’ll sort it out,’ said Ted. ‘You’ll see.’

There were distinct signs of impending speeches. The best man, the uncouth Neil Hodgson, was sorting the tele-messages and looking sick.

‘What does marriage mean these days?’ said Rita.

‘Love! Give them a chance.’

‘What does our marriage mean?’

‘Love! It means I love you, love.’

‘Do you?’

‘Love! I mean … really!’

‘I’m frightened for them. I mean … what chance have they got if they haven’t got any back-up?’

‘Back-up?’

‘Our two families making a real effort to be friendly to each other.’

‘I’m doing my bit,’ said Ted.

Laurence Rodenhurst made quite a good speech, which drew a few modest laughs from the guests. His Aunt Gladys from Oswestry described it as ‘very appropriate’. She employed understatement in her choice of adjectives almost as much as the classless Nigel Thick used overstatement, and Laurence, a boy again, as always in her presence, blushed with pleasure at this high praise. ‘At least the bridegroom was brief,’ was her comment on Paul, but she couldn’t bring this degree of enthusiasm to the uncouth Neil Hodgson’s reading of the telegrams. She refused to call them tele-messages. And if ‘Get Stuck In’ was considered a suitable message from a teacher, it was no wonder that the nation was full of vandals and hooligans and drug addicts and sex maniacs and anarchists and businessmen who couldn’t speak a word of Japanese.

Then there was the cutting of the cake. Soon that great three-tiered masterpiece, created by the Vale of York Bakery in Slaughterhouse Lane, would be travelling in tiny wedges in white boxes to distant, not-quite-forgotten relatives in Braemar, Vancouver and Alice Springs.

Now, as Laurence had arranged, the two waitresses took up permanent station at the champagne table, in the hope that this would deter all but the most unashamedly avid consumers of free booze. The waitresses couldn’t afford to buy champagne, on their wages, and yet the smiles of this good-natured duo were a great deal less tired than their feet, even with people who treated them like automatic vending machines. Pam Halliday, the blonde, was dreaming of a big win on the Australian pools, and the ranch-style bungalow she would build for her parents. Janet Hicks, the redhead, was trying to forget her verruca. That night, in the public bar of the Crown and Walnut, she would drink pint for pint with Derek Wiggins, who drove a lorry for Jewson’s, and after-wards … well, it would be nice to get the weight off that verruca. She smiled deep in her eyes and got a rather startled look from Ted Simcock.

Ted sighed with instinctive envy of Janet’s Saturday night, as he took his champagne out into the walled garden and approached his wife. There were quite a lot of people in the garden now, but Rita was just sitting there in a far, hidden comer, on a wrought-iron bench all on her own, not looking at anything. All was not well. In front of her there were two urns, in which geraniums, lobelia and begonias were flowering. Beside her there was a hydrangea. Rita had once said that, if she had been born a shrub, she would have been a hydrangea.

‘Rita! What on earth are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly. Come on, love. Please! Mingle!’

‘Why? Nobody wants to talk to me. I see it in their eyes when I approach. “Oh God, here she comes.”’

‘Rita! Love! That’s rubbish. I mean … it is. Absolute rubbish. Now come on! Make an effort, for Paul’s sake. You can do it.’

‘Just give me a minute.’

‘Right.’ He kissed’her. ‘Love!’

He entered the Garden Room, looking back to give her an encouraging ‘see how easy it is’ smile.

Ted’s aim in entering the Garden Room was to summon up reinforcements to deal with Rita. It was family rally-round time. They must show her how much they loved her. Meeting Laurence was a nuisance.

‘Reinforcements for Liz,’ said Laurence, who was carrying two glasses of champagne.

‘Ah.’

‘I’m a lucky man, aren’t I?’

‘Pardon?’

‘My wife’s a very attractive woman.’

‘Yes, I …’ Ted looked briefly into Laurence’s eyes, searching his intentions, wondering how much he knew. He found nothing, just two blue eyes searching his brown eyes. He hoped that Laurence was finding nothing except a pair of brown eyes searching his blue eyes. ‘Yes, I … I suppose she is. I mean … I hadn’t really … well, I mean, I had noticed, you couldn’t not, it sticks out a … but … I mean … it hadn’t exactly … if you see what I … Yes. Yes, I suppose she is. Yes, I suppose you are. Very. Yes.’

‘I thought Paul made a good speech, considering.’

Ted wanted to say, ‘What the hell do you mean – “considering”?’ but actually said, ‘Thank you. I thought he did very well.’

He approached Paul, who was talking with a group of his friends in front of the wrecked cake. ‘Paul?’ he said, and his tone made Paul move away from his friends. ‘Paul? Your mother’s in the garden on her own. She looks lost.’

‘Oh heck. I shouldn’t have gone off like that.’

‘You’re a good lad.’

At the other end of the buffet, the cynical Elvis Simcock was talking to Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. Replenishments had ceased, and the buffet was now a pretty sad display. There were a few sausage rolls and slices of wet ham wrapped round cubes of pineapple, and quite a mound of tuna fish vol-au-vents, but many of the more popular plates were bare except for a few wisps of cress. Simon was shovelling sausage rolls into his mouth at a speed of which only nurses and people who have been to boarding schools are capable. ‘Give up, Simon,’ Elvis was saying. ‘We’ve tried politics, religion, the royal family, the class system, sex, the nuclear holocaust, the meaning of life, estate agents’ fees, blood sports, cars and Belgian beer, and we haven’t found anything we agree about yet.’

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Ted.

‘Please do,’ mumbled Simon Rodenhurst, sending a thin spray of soggy pastry and suspiciously pink sausage meat over Ted’s suit. ‘Oh Lord,’ he apologized, and his cheeks briefly matched the sausage meat.

Ted asked Elvis to go to the rescue of his mother. The great philosopher looked for a moment as if such a task were beneath him, then did a brief mime of the US cavalry. Ted didn’t understand it, but assumed that it meant that he agreed.

‘Hello, Mum,’ said Paul. ‘Are you all right?’

Rita tried a cheery smile. ‘Fine,’ she said.

High cloud was beginning to move in from the west, and the sun was more watery now. They’d been so lucky, considering.

‘Mum?’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I went off like that.’

‘I thought you were going to miss the cutting of the cake. What would they have thought?’

Elvis approached.

‘Oh hello,’ he said, with unwonted heartiness. ‘I wondered where you were, our Mum.’

‘Who sent you?’ said Rita.

‘What?’

‘You’ve both come out to cheer me up. I thought for a moment it was spontaneous.’

‘Surprisingly good speech, I thought, Paul,’ said Elvis, ignoring this, ‘but your friend Neil Hodgson was the worst best man I’ve ever come across. I couldn’t make out whether he was drunk or dyslexic.’

‘Dyslexia’s a very serious condition, Elvis. You shouldn’t make light of it.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Elvis was genuinely contrite. ‘He is dyslexic, is he?’

‘No, he’s drunk, but he could have been.’ Paul grinned triumphantly, then turned serious. ‘It’s yet another proof that this is not a caring society. I mean, fancy calling the condition of not being able to spell by a word nobody can spell.’

‘All this caring about things, Paul,’ said Rita, and Paul turned guiltily towards her. He had almost forgotten she was there. ‘It worries me. You never used to care about things.’

Elvis looked up at a glider drifting peacefully towards Scummock Edge. He wondered how small they looked to the pilot. He wondered how small they really were.

‘You never used to turn a hair about dyslexia among Bolivian tin miners,’ said Rita, unheard by Elvis.

‘They don’t have that problem,’ said Paul.

‘Oh good.’

‘They’re illiterate.’

‘She’s changed you.’

‘Yes. Until I met Jenny I was a great wet slob.’

‘I loved that great wet slob. He was my son.’ Rita burst into tears.

‘Mum!’ said Paul. ‘Mum! What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve worn myself to a frazzle trying to lead a good life. A frazzle. Ask Doctor Gillespie. Is it asking too much that there’s somebody somewhere who likes me?’

‘Mum!’

Paul put an arm round his mother, and even the cynical Elvis sat on the other side of her and put an arm round her too, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last had any physical contact with Elvis.

‘I like you, Mum,’ said Paul, and he kissed her. ‘I love you.’

‘We both love you,’ said Elvis, and he too kissed her. ‘You just drive us up the wall, that’s all.’

As soon as the lovely bride saw Paul’s face, she detached herself from her friends and came to meet him. ‘What on earth is it?’ she said.

‘Our two families. It really pisses me off. Mum’s got the idea that they aren’t hitting it off. And she’s right, isn’t she?’

‘Oh God,’ said Jenny. ‘Bloody families.’ She was still holding the train of her dress, even though it had been torn and stained during the chase along the hotel drive. ‘It’s supposed to be our great day and here we are having to hold a summit conference.’ And indeed, as their reception swirled noisily around them, the young couple in the middle of the now untidily elegant Garden Room did look as if they were bowed down by the responsibilities of high office. ‘We’ve got to do something about it, for our own sakes if not for theirs. I will not start my married life under a cloud. Look, you get my father to talk to your mum. I’ll work on your dad and my mum.’ Despite her politics, Jenny still found it difficult to refer to her father as ‘dad’, except to his face where she was encouraged by her knowledge of how much it irritated him.

‘Right,’ said Paul. He looked nervously across at Laurence, who was nodding and smiling at what looked like a very boring story. ‘Oh heck.’

As soon as Laurence broke away – who else but his gynaecological brother would even know three jokes about hysterectomies, let alone tell all three, in swift succession, at a wedding reception? – Paul approached him, trying to think of an opening gambit.

‘Hello,’ he said, in the absence of any greater inspiration.

‘Hello, Paul.’

No help there.

‘Hello.’ Pause. Can’t go on saying ‘hello’ for ever. ‘Er … will you do something for me?’

‘Of course!’ Unwise. Qualify it rapidly. ‘If I can, that is. What … er … what is it you want me to do?’

‘Mum.’

Total blankness.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mum. She’s a bit upset.’

‘Oh. “Mum”! Upset?’

‘Yes. You know, losing a son, all that. You know my mum. Well, no, you don’t, but … you know.’

‘You’d like me to have a little chat with her?’

‘Well … yes … if you could. Now that we’re related. She’s … er … not always that good with people. You know. So, if you could sort of … you know … without her knowing that … you know … that’d be great.’

‘Fine. Fine. Well … fine. Yes. I’ll just top up my glass and … er … steam in. Yes.’

Jenny had to wait for her chance to talk to Ted. He was being buttonholed by Elvis. They were standing in front of the buffet, blocking access to the plate of tuna fish vol-au-vents, but nobody seemed to mind.

‘Dad?’ Elvis was saying. ‘What would you do if I said that I’d like a job at the foundry? I mean, it’s a hypothetical question.’

‘Of course. Well, I’d say “Oh ho! We’ve changed our tune a bit, haven’t we?”’

‘Supposing I said, “Yes, I admit it. I have. I realize now that toasting forks have their place in the scheme of things. Mankind needs door knockers as well as linguistic analysis.”’

‘Well … I’d … I’d say the same thing as I said to our Paul. I’d say … “You’ll respect yourself more if you can make your own way in the world.” So, it’s lucky the question’s hypothetical, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes, it is. Very lucky.’

Elvis went off to insult Simon Rodenhurst, but before Jenny could steam in, Ted had seen Neville Badger looking lost, and had steamed in on him.

‘There’s no need to bother with me, you know,’ was Neville’s encouraging opening gambit.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I shouldn’t have come. People disappear when I approach them. They form groups to exclude me.’

‘Surely not? This is England. This is Yorkshire.’

‘Oh, I don’t blame them. They aren’t being callous. They just can’t cope. Oh God, here comes poor Neville who talks about his dead wife and has tears in his eyes. You’d think a solicitor would know that grown men don’t cry. It’s so embarrassing.’

‘Neville!’

‘She’d have loved this day. She adored Jenny.’

‘What can I say?’

‘Precisely. Leave me be, Ted. I’m a ship without a rudder, drifting on a cold grey sea.’

‘Exactly! So you’re the very man.’

‘What?’

‘I know a harbour where there’s a peeling old houseboat that could do with a lick of paint.’

‘Peeling old houseboat?’

‘My wife. She’s in the garden. She’s finding this difficult too. Would it be too much trouble for you to …?’

‘… bring my charm to bear? Why not? There’ll be some point in my existing for ten minutes or so.’

‘Take her some tuna fish vol-au-vents. She loves them.’

‘Right. I’ll just top up my glass and … steam in.’

Neville Badger turned away to collect his cargo of vol-au-vents, and Jenny bore down on Ted.

‘Hello, Jenny!’ said Ted with an exclamation mark in his voice which meant, ‘How lovely you still look.’

‘I’d like to feel that our two families can be friends,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh, so would I. Very much so. Very much so.’

‘Go and talk to Mum. I’d like you to get to know her better.’

‘Bloody hell. I mean …’

‘Please! She won’t eat you.’

‘Possibly not.’

‘If only you’d give her a chance, I’m sure you’d get on. She isn’t too bad.’

‘No, I … er … I’m sure she … well … right … yes … OK … I’ll … I’ll give her a chance, Jenny.’

Jenny led Ted over to Liz, who was at one of the windows, admiring the peacocks with Laurence’s Aunt Gladys from Oswestry.

‘Such stylish birds,’ Aunt Gladys was saying. ‘They quite put some people to shame.’

‘Do you mind if I borrow Mum, Auntie Gladys?’ said Jenny.

‘You may borrow your mother,’ said Aunt Gladys. ‘But I do hate to hear you call her “Mum”.’

Aunt Gladys sailed away, an old tea-clipper, splendid and obsolete. She had found an artificial pearl in her portion of cake, and Liz had felt that her outrage was almost as much because it wasn’t real as because it shouldn’t have been there at all.

‘Mum?’ said Jenny. ‘I want you and Ted to be friends.’

‘Oh! Well, that’s nice.’ Liz’s eyes met Ted’s briefly. Neither dared hold the look for long. ‘That’s very nice. Well … I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to be friends, do you, Ted?’

‘No. No, I don’t. No … I don’t see why we … er … shouldn’t try and be friends at all.’

‘Good.’ Jenny moved off, with the satisfaction of a job well done.

‘If she knew,’ said Liz.

‘I know. I feel terrible,’ said Ted.

‘Oh Lord. You don’t suffer from post-coital depression, do you?’

‘Liz! Please! I mean … really! Liz!’

‘Do you want to forget it happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again?’

‘You know I don’t.’

‘Well, then. Nobody’s suffered. Nobody knows.’

‘I think Laurence suspects.’

‘Well, yes, possibly. But Laurence and I have an arrangement. I do what I want, provided I’m reasonably discreet, and he doesn’t do anything.’

Ted looked round nervously. Nobody was listening. ‘Liz!’ he said. ‘I don’t regard what we did today as reasonably discreet. I’m out of my depth.’

‘You’re going to find that you’re a better swimmer than you ever believed,’ said the bride’s mother.

‘Oh heck,’ said her new lover, who had so recently promised himself that he would give her up.

The glider was barely more than a speck now, the same size as the kestrel that was hovering above the grounds in the gentle but freshening breeze.

Rita still sat in her comer, behind the urns, beside the hydrangea, protected from the breeze by the mellow brick wall, recently rather untidily repointed by employees of J. G. Frodsham and Nephew.

‘Hello! There you are!’ said Laurence, as if he’d been hunting for her for hours.

‘Yes. Here I am. Hello.’

Rita made an effort, and smiled. Despite her smile, Laurence sat beside her and rested his arm on the bench behind her, as if to suggest that, had the back of the bench not been there, he would have embraced her actual flesh.

‘You know, Rita, you and I have a lot in common,’ he said.

‘How do you make that out?’

‘Well … I may seem to you to be the happy professional man … successful society dentist, lovely house, beautiful wife, two highly satisfactory children, suave, good-looking, confident. Actually I’m a seething mass of doubts and inadequacies.’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m a seething mass of doubts and inadequacies?’

‘No! Good heavens, no!’

‘Well, why do you say we have a lot in common, then?’

The breeze brought the first faint smell of tomorrow’s rain over the warm, walled garden, stirring the shrubs. The symmetrical elegance of the place was defiled by abandoned plates, with dollops of wasted pilchard mousse and mayonnaise.

‘Why on earth should anybody think you aren’t good with people?’ said Laurence.

‘Who told you that?’ said Rita. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Laurence. The faint gleam in Rita’s eyes disconcerted him, and the knowledge that it was there surprised her. It was a faint indication that somewhere, beneath all the anxiety, there still remained vestiges of a sense of humour, that all might not yet be completely lost in the fragile, never-to-be-repeated adventure that was Rita Simcock’s brief life on earth.

‘People are being sent out in streams to see if I’m all right,’ she said. ‘It’s very worrying.’

‘Aren’t you going to come in? It’s cooling down.’

‘In a minute. Now, please, Laurence, leave me alone.’

‘Right. Right.’

And Laurence Rodenhurst returned to the Garden Room, not feeling quite as suave and confident as he had when he came out.

And Rita sighed with relief and stretched out her tense legs in her quiet arbour.

Enter the immaculate Neville Badger, bearing tuna fish vol-au-vents.

‘Ah! There you are,’ he said, as if he had been hunting for her for hours.

‘All right,’ said Rita. ‘Who sent you?’

At the very moment when Rita said, ‘Who sent you?’ Eva Blumenthal, in room 109, was gently rubbing unsalted Welsh butter over the genitals of her husband Fritz, in an effort to alleviate the com chandler’s pain. In the Garden Room, exactly below this touching scene, Jenny was telling her young husband that she felt sick.

‘I thought it was only in the mornings,’ said Paul.

‘It’s the tension,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve let the baby down, pretending it doesn’t exist. Who knows what insecurities that may lead to? The science of the unborn baby is in its infancy.’

‘Love!’ said her husband of more than three hours. ‘Love!’

‘I think I might be going to be sick.’

‘Well, walk out calmly. Look natural.’

‘“What will they think?”’

‘What?’

‘They say as men get older they start to resemble their mothers.’

‘That’s a dreadful thing to say.’

Paul walked off in a huff, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Neville Badger entered from the garden, with his plate of tuna fish vol-au-vents. He saw Jenny walking slowly away from the buffet, trying to look calm and natural while feeling sick. Suddenly it became absurdly important to him that he shouldn’t be entirely defeated in his efforts to get rid of the vol-au-vents. He hurried over to her.

‘Jenny!’ he said. ‘Have a tuna fish vol-au-vent.’

She gasped, clasped her hand over her mouth, and rushed out.

Neville Badger stared after her.

Paul rushed past.

‘Paul! Have a …’

‘Sorry,’ said Paul, stopping briefly, out of politeness. ‘It was a dreadful thing to say, but it was dreadful of me to say that it was a dreadful thing to say. I mean, in her condition. I mean, on her wedding day. Well, our wedding day.’ Paul felt that this explanation discharged his social obligation to Neville Badger, and hurried off after Jenny.

Neville stared after him.

Ted approached. ‘Any luck with Rita?’ he enquired.

‘No,’ said Neville. ‘Sorry. Have a tuna fish vol-au-vent.’

‘Thanks.’ Ted took a vol-au-vent.

‘Tut tut!’ said Laurence, hurrying forward to snatch the pastry case out of Ted’s hand before he could put it in his mouth. ‘Tut tut! You mustn’t eat that. You’re allergic.’

Laurence put the tired little delicacy back on Neville Badger’s plate, and his eyes met Ted’s.

How much had Ted done?

How much did Laurence know?

‘Lovely wedding,’ said Betty Sillitoe, who was over-powdered as usual, and she raised her almost empty glass in tribute.

‘Thank you,’ said Liz.

‘No, I mean it. Really lovely. Really really lovely.’

‘Well, they do these things well here.’

‘Yes, but the point I’m trying to get across is, it’s been a lovely wedding.’

‘The message is getting through, I do assure you,’ said Liz, her voice drier than the champagne, and she hurried on.

‘Terrible snobs, those Rodenhursts,’ announced Betty Sillitoe to nobody in particular.

‘We’ve made it, haven’t we?’ said her husband Rodney, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.

‘You what?’ said Ted, who would have been astounded if somebody had pointed out that he was saying ‘What?’ or ‘You what?’ to people who had been on their side of the church, and ‘Pardon?’ or ‘I beg your pardon?’ to the Rodenhursts and their friends and relations.

‘In life,’ explained Rodney Sillitoe. ‘We’ve made it in life. Who’d have thought it, a couple of dunces like us at school, and now I’m exporting frozen chicken drumsticks to Botswana and your door knockers in the shape of lions are gracing every front door on a neo-Georgian housing estate in Allwoodley. We’ve made it. Moderately prosperous. Happily married. Stayed the course. Survived. And remained friends. I’ve never told you this, Ted, but your friendship is one of the most important things in my life.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Ted! Do we have to be drunk before we can express affection?’

‘No. Sorry. Sorry, Rodney. No, what you said, it … it touched a chord … I mean … it hit a spot. I … sorry.’

‘Ted!’ Rodney was alarmed. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No!’ said Ted overemphatically. ‘It’s an auspicious event. A right good do. A happy day. Nobody’s happier than Betty.’

They looked across at Betty, who waved from the other side of a crush of mixed relations and friends, and gave an unmistakeably drunken lurch.

‘Oh Lord,’ said Rodney. ‘I’ll see if I can get her off the premises without a scene, bless her.’

‘I envy you,’ said Ted.

Rita decided that she had summoned up enough reserves of strength to enter the fray. She entered the fray from the garden at exactly the same moment as the happy couple entered it from the hotel.

Ted approached Rita, and the four of them met in the middle of the room.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Ted.

He was speaking to Rita, but it was Paul who answered.

‘She’s been sick,’ he said.

‘Sick?’ said Rita.

‘Usually only in the mornings, but today in the afternoon,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh heck,’ said Ted.

‘Everybody! Please!’ shouted Jenny.

‘What?’ said Paul.

‘I’ve got to, Paul,’ said Jenny. ‘Everybody! Please! I have an announcement!’

Paul and Jenny stood with their backs to the remains of the cake. The guests gathered from the comers of the room, they poured in from the garden, uncles and aunts, friends and colleagues, Simcocks and Rodenhursts, cousins once, twice and three times removed, people who were longing to go home, people who were hoping it would go on for hours because they never knew what to do after a wedding, you felt flat and not entirely sober and there was the whole evening still to go, and you wished it was the first night of your honeymoon. Even Percy and Clarrie Spragg, who had been nodding off peacefully in a comer, perked up and hobbled painfully over to join the throng.

The only guests who were not gathered round to hear Jenny’s announcement were the Reverend and Mrs Thoroughgood, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, Elvis Simcock, Simon Rodenhurst, and Neville Badger. The Reverend and Mrs Thoroughgood had gone to their dark, lonely home; Rodney Sillitoe had managed to get Betty out of the room, but was meeting problems in the lobby; Simon and Elvis were arguing in a far comer of the garden; and Neville Badger was walking in the grounds, tears streaming down his face, telling his dead Jane all about the day’s events while he waited for the moment when he could decently take his leave.

Jenny looked grimly determined. Paul looked nervous.

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Jenny.

There were some sharp intakes of breath, but nobody said anything.

‘We should have told you when we found out,’ she ploughed on doggedly. ‘But all the invitations were issued, and we couldn’t very well send out a newsletter, and the white dress was ordered and everything. We thought of cancelling it and just doing it quietly in a registry office, but we knew everybody was looking forward to a bit of a do, a white wedding and everything, and you’d probably bought presents – I mean, that’s not why we didn’t cancel it, but if you’ve bought the present and then your invitation’s cancelled, and you’re left with a toaster you don’t want, it’s a bit annoying, so we decided to go through with it and not tell anybody and then go away or something round about the time so you didn’t cotton onto the dates and even if you did cotton on later, well, by then it would be a fait accompli anyway.’ She began to cry. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Jenny!’ said Paul. ‘Come on, Jenny. Come on, love.’

‘I’m sorry,’ sobbed Jenny. ‘We should have just done it quietly on our own like we wanted, but we wanted you all to have a lovely do like we knew you wanted.’

‘Come on,’ said Paul. ‘Let’s go and get changed and be on our way. Come on, love.’

He led her tenderly to the door. Afterwards, Rita felt quite proud of how tender he had been.

‘I feel much better now I’ve told everybody,’ wailed Jenny, and off she went with Paul to room 108, where Liz had carefully remade the bed, though Ted would later wonder whether, as they believed nobody had used the bed, the chambermaids would change the sheets before the next occupancy and, if they didn’t, whether the next occupants would notice.

There was a massed tactful movement of guests to the four corners of the room, to the walled garden and to the toilets. One or two even set off home without saying goodbye, feeling that it would be the least embarrassing thing to do.

Ted and Rita and Liz and Laurence stood in silence for a moment, and then Clarrie Spragg came forward and asked Ted for the car keys.

‘I’m going to sit him in the car,’ she said. ‘He’s had enough.’

Ted started to fish out the car keys. His hands were shaking slightly.

‘I ’aven’t,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘I want to stick it out to the bitter end.’

‘I’m not sure if I appreciate that phrase,’ said Liz.

Clarrie Spragg began to lead Percy out, and everything might have been all right if Betty Sillitoe hadn’t lurched in, with Rodney hanging onto her, trying to stop her. Naturally, Percy stopped to watch.

‘No, Rodney, it must be said,’ said Betty Sillitoe. ‘Can’t go without telling them. Rude. It was a lovely wedding. Lovely. Obviously it wasn’t perfect. The tuna fish vol-au-vents were disgusting, and, all right, there were some of the biggest snobs in this town in this room – no names, no dentists’ drills – but it was a lovely wedding, give or take a few snobs and vol-au-vents, and that’s the main thing.’

Betty Sillitoe staggered out of the room.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Rodney.

‘Never mind,’ said Laurence grimly.

‘You don’t mind much, do you?’ said Liz to Rodney.

‘Not much, no,’ said Rodney. ‘I love her for her foibles, you see.’

‘I envy you,’ said Liz.

Betty blundered in again.

‘Come on, Rodney,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see we’re interrupting a family row?’

Once more, Betty Sillitoe left the room.

‘Goodbye,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘Thank you. Sorry.’ And he too left.

Rita had watched this display by their closest friends with even more horror than Ted, but it was Ted who felt obliged to say, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Please!’ said Laurence, rubbing it in while appearing to dismiss it. ‘You can’t be held responsible for the behaviour of your friends.’

‘So our Paul couldn’t wait, eh?’ said the barrel-chested Percy Spragg, who was still only halfway to the door. ‘I’m not surprised. She’s a right cracker.’

‘Or your relatives,’ added Laurence, not quite softly enough.

‘Go to the car, Dad,’ said Rita.

‘Wants to get rid of me,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Didn’t want me to come.’

‘Dad!’ said Rita, pink spots flaring. ‘The things he says!’

‘Never has welcomed me in her house.’

‘Dad!’

‘Pretends it’s Ted, but Ted’s all right.’

‘Dad!’ said Ted.

‘Come on, Father,’ said Clarrie Spragg.

‘A bit different from our wedding, eh, Clarrie?’ said Percy. ‘July the twenty-first, 1938. Long time ago, i’n’t it?’

‘Jolly well done,’ said Laurence.

‘I never forget the date ’cos it was exactly two months to the day after our Rita was born,’ said Percy.

Rita gasped, and Ted pulled a chair forward. She crumpled into it.

‘Percy!’ said Clarrie. ‘You wicked old man!’

‘I wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t want me out of the way. Come on, Mother.’ Percy lowered his voice to a whisper, discreet for the first time now that it was too late. ‘I need to go.’ Out loud, he added, ‘It’s the only good thing in this bloody awful business of growing old. You don’t have to give a bugger.’

Percy and Clarrie hobbled from the room with agonizing slowness, agonizing to them because of their age and rheumatism and arthritis, agonizing to everyone else for fear that Percy would start up again with further revelations.

Liz flashed Rita a smooth, cool, social, understanding smile, as of one woman to another who is very nearly her equal.

‘There’s no need to look at me like that, Mrs Rodenhurst,’ said Rita.

‘I was smiling, Mrs Simcock,’ said Liz.

‘Well, I don’t need your smiles, thank you very much,’ said Rita. ‘Your family isn’t exactly as pure as the driven snow.’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ said Laurence.

‘Well, your daughter’s pregnant on her wedding day,’ said Rita.

‘Your son did have something to do with that,’ said Liz.

‘I hope,’ said Ted.

‘Ted!’ said Rita.

‘Mr Simcock!’ said Laurence.

Elvis Simcock and Simon Rodenhurst entered from the garden.

‘I bet you fifty pounds you never make it as a philosopher,’ Simon was saying. ‘I mean, who ever heard of a famous philosopher called Elvis?’

Elvis didn’t mean to knock Simon out, just to give him a good, hearty biff. But the rising young estate agent, who had also drunk rather more than he should have, fell backwards across the buffet table. He caught his head on the edge of a large plate, which jerked up into the air. Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, slid slowly onto the ground, the upturned plate crashed onto his forehead, and a shower of tuna fish vol-au-vents descended on his inert body.

Rita fainted.

The immaculate Neville Badger entered, complete with hat, and gazed at the scene with eyes that saw nothing.

‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, and thank you. Sorry if I … it was just too soon. I just couldn’t cope with the sight of so many people enjoying themselves.’