David Nobbs
Fair Do’s

Contents

Cover

Title Page

First Do

January: The Church Wedding

Second Do

February: The Christening

Third Do

April: The Grand Opening of Sillitoe’s

Fourth Do

June: The Farewell Party

Fifth Do

August: The Inauguration of the Outer Inner Relief Ring Road

Sixth Do

September: The Funeral

Seventh Do

October: The Civil Wedding

About the Author

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

First Do

January: The Church Wedding

A scruffy pigeon, a hopeless straggler in a race from Leek to Gateshead, shuffled across the hard blue sky as if embarrassed to come between the Social Liberal Democratic candidate for Hindhead and his Maker. Gerry Lansdown didn’t see the pigeon. His eyes were closed. He was praying.

‘Oh God,’ he prayed silently, gripping his top hat with tight, tense fingers, ‘thank you for what I am about to receive. Thank you for Rita Simcock.’

He opened his eyes and gazed up towards the God whose existence he had never doubted, although he had never thought of Him as a being so overwhelmingly superior to himself that it was necessary to worship Him, except during election campaigns.

The sun was astonishingly powerful for January, as if there were a hole in the ozone layer directly above Gerry’s head. The pigeon had gone. There was no sign of God either.

The ravishing Liz Badger bore down upon Gerry, arm-in-arm with her second husband, the immaculate Neville Badger, of Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger.

‘Hello, Gerry. You look wonderful,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’ Gerry tried to look as if the compliment was undeserved. He smiled cautiously at the woman who had once run off with his fiancée’s first husband. He kissed her, carefully, so as not to disturb her make-up.

‘Doesn’t he, Neville?’ said Liz.

But Neville Badger, immaculate in his morning dress, was months and years away, attending other services at this massive Norman abbey: his marriage to Jane, Jane’s funeral, and the marriage of Liz’s daughter Jenny to Paul, younger son of today’s bride.

‘Neville!’ Liz sounded as if she were summoning a recalcitrant Pekinese.

Her husband of four months sailed gently through time and made a soft landing beside her.

‘What?’ he improvised.

‘I was saying, Gerry looks wonderful.’

Neville gave Gerry a brief, unseeing glance.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.’

‘Isn’t Rita lucky?’

‘Oh yes. Absolutely. Lucky old Rita.’

‘I mean … isn’t he a simply gorgeous man?’

‘Yes, he … er … I mean, gorgeous isn’t a word I … you’re looking very handsome, Gerry.’

The rising star in the Social Liberal Democratic firmament simpered. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘So are both of you. I mean, you’re handsome and Liz is gorgeous.’

‘Thank you …’ said Neville.

‘Very much,’ said Liz.

The Badgers walked slowly towards the West Door. The path ran between old, neglected graves. Beyond the graveyard, blackened stone and brick and rusting concrete buildings jostled in narrow, untidy streets.

At the porch Neville stopped. ‘Liz?’ he said. ‘I don’t query the basic truth of what was said, but wasn’t that rather too much of a mutual admiration society?’

‘Oh, Neville,’ she said. ‘I was trying to make you jealous.’

‘What?’

‘By praising Gerry.’

‘Why should I be jealous?’ Neville was struggling to understand, knowing from experience that his puzzlement would irritate her.

‘I wanted you to think I find him attractive.’

‘Maybe you do. He is attractive … I imagine … to a woman … which you are.’

The wedding guests were strolling slowly into the church. Two glorious hats bobbed past, wide-brimmed navy to the left of the stationary Badgers, bowl-shaped orange to their right.

‘I’m trying to get you to show me how fiercely possessive you can be when aroused,’ explained Liz.

‘Oh, I see,’ said the doyen of the town’s lawyers. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh, Neville, you’re hopeless.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No. It’s why I love you, I suppose.’

‘Because I’m hopeless?’ Neville was aroused now that Liz no longer wanted him to be. ‘I see!’

‘No, you don’t. You see nothing.’

‘I see Jenny.’

Liz’s daughter Jenny was smiling broadly but nervously. Her hair was cropped shorter than her mother would have liked. She was almost eight months pregnant. She would soon become the first person ever to enter this most English of churches wearing a dress which illustrated the life cycle of the llama.

‘Hello, Mum,’ she said, knowing that Liz preferred to be called ‘Mother’. ‘Hello …’ she hesitated, as if making a serious attempt to call Neville ‘Dad’ for the first time. ‘Neville.’ She kissed her mother and almost kissed Neville.

‘Where’s Paul?’ said Liz.

‘He wouldn’t come. He says he’d find it impossible to dredge up a smile.’ Neither of Rita’s boys had welcomed their mother’s engagement to a man more than ten years younger than herself.

‘Oh dear,’ said Liz. ‘Honesty can be so socially inconvenient.’ She made the remark sound as though it might just possibly be witty.

Neville had dredged up a faint smile which appeared to be set in concrete as he listened to the conversation between his second wife and her daughter.

‘I think Paul’s trying to be ultra-honest in order to try to make me forget the time he was dishonest over Carol Fordingbridge,’ said Jenny.

‘How sophisticated his feelings are,’ said Liz. ‘No wonder he’s doing so well with his road sweeping.’

‘Oh Mum.’ Jenny began to cry, big drops out of clear eyes like a summer shower. ‘Oh Lord. Now look what you’ve made me do.’

She hurried off, blowing her nose angrily.

Liz clutched Neville’s arm. ‘Oh Lord,’ she said. ‘I didn’t … why do I always …? Darling, say something very nice, very quickly.’

As people drifted almost reluctantly into the great church, Neville Badger stood at his wife’s side, his baggy face creased with mental effort.

‘Those scrambled eggs we had this morning were really delicious,’ he said at last.

‘Oh, Neville, you’re hopeless.’

Liz swirled into the church, the sun glinting on her large silver three-leafed clover earrings. Neville scurried immaculately in her wake.

As soon as Gerry Lansdown saw Jenny blowing her nose, he extricated himself without reluctance from a discussion on the ethics of High Street credit with a loss adjustor from Camberley, and hurried over to favour her with one of his most winning smiles and eliminate this blip of sorrow from the great joy of his wedding day.

‘Jenny!’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Fine. Great.’ She gave him a brave but watery smile. ‘Terrific.’

‘Good. Good.’ He kissed her. He liked her. He felt that she might make a good Liberal one day, when she had learnt to accept the compromises necessary for the conduct of civilised life. ‘Is Paul all right?’

‘No, he’s got a touch of … er …’ To her fury, Jenny felt herself blushing. ‘A touch of … er … a slight … I can’t lie. Paul and I promised. No more lies. He’s refused to come.’

‘I see.’ Gerry frowned. He didn’t really care whether Paul came or not, but Rita would be very upset, and that would upset him. Blast the ghastly youth. ‘I see. But you did.’

‘Oh yes. I think one has to accept what happens in life, and try to make the best of it.’

‘Terrific.’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Jenny. A stylised llama on her chest heaved with embarrassment, looking as if it might be about to give stylised birth. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’ A distant siren put her agony into context. Somebody might be dying out there. She rallied. ‘Amazing day,’ she said.

It was indeed. Later, the Meteorological Office would announce that this had been the hottest January day since 1783. That day, in fact, Pontefract was hotter than Algiers.

Paul’s elder brother, the cynical Elvis Simcock, strolled semi-insolently towards them, running a hand through his hair to make sure that it was ruffled. At his side was his fiancée, the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge, whose one night stand with Paul was ignored but not forgotten. At Jenny’s wedding to Paul, when all the men had worn suits, Elvis had worn a sports jacket. Now, when the men were in morning dress, he was wearing a suit, a grey chalk-stripe, single-breasted suit, which matched his insolence, but not his ruffled hair.

‘Well Elvis has come anyway,’ said Gerry. ‘In a suit, not morning dress. How carefully calculated his little acts of rebellion are.’

‘You see, Gerry. You laugh at us,’ said Jenny.

Gerry ignored this remark, as he ignored all suggestions that he was less than perfect.

‘Couldn’t bring myself to wear morning dress, I’m afraid,’ said Elvis.

‘Why should you?’ said Gerry, smiling warmly, as if grateful to Elvis for giving him the opportunity to show his broad-mindedness. ‘What do appearances matter? Good for you, say I.’

Two low-flying jets from the American base at Frissingfold hurled themselves against the elegance of the scene, banked steeply over the sturdy Norman tower and were gone, leaving behind them a crying baby, several barking dogs, two shattered greenhouses and a group of Social Liberal Democrats staring at the ruthless blue of the winter sky with a range of emotions, from fury to reassurance, which reflected the unbridgeable gulfs between their various views on defence.

Carol Fordingbridge was the first to drag her eyes down from the ruptured sky. She was therefore the first to see Ted. Ted Simcock, first husband of Gerry’s bride-to-be, former owner of the Jupiter Foundry, was approaching in a hired grey morning suit that almost fitted.

‘Ted!’ said Carol.

‘Dad!’ said Elvis.

‘Hello.’ Ted smiled, well pleased with the effect that he had created. Gerry couldn’t have looked sicker if he’d come fourth behind the Green Party. ‘I … er … I just happened to be passing and I thought, “Good Lord! There’s Gerry in morning dress. It must be Rita’s wedding today. I’ll just pop in and …” Hello, Jenny.’ He broke off to kiss his daughter-in-law, frowning only briefly at the llamas. ‘Hello, Carol.’ There was a kiss for Carol too. ‘Hello, Elvis. “… just pop in and see the woman I was married to for twenty-five years launched on her new idyll of bliss.” As it were.’

‘You just happened to be passing, in full morning dress,’ said Gerry drily, his poise swiftly recovered.

‘Ah. Yes. I’m … er …’ Ted couldn’t help glancing down towards the pale stain on his hired, striped trousers, which he’d only noticed as he was putting them on. ‘I’m on my way to another wedding, funnily enough. Quite a coincidence. The wedding of …’ Ted’s attempt foundered ignominiously on the rocks of their disbelief. ‘Am I hell as like? I wanted to bury the hatchet. Give my blessing to Rita, who still means a lot to me, on what is after all the second happiest day of her life. It’s unconventional behaviour, I know, but then Ted Simcock has never given a fig for convention. I mean, I’m not coming to the reception, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Quite. I mean, that’s invitation only.’

‘Quite.’

‘Obviously. But churches are public. I have the right, if I read our unwritten constitution correctly. So, I thought, I’ll come to the church. In morning dress.’ Ted glowered at his elder son. ‘As befits.’

‘I thought you didn’t give a fig for convention,’ said Elvis, smiling with a self-satisfaction that he couldn’t quite conceal, even though he knew that his hero, Jean-Paul Sartre, would not have regarded such a tiny conversational triumph as worthy of self-satisfaction. But then Jean Paul Sartre hadn’t got a bad third at Keele University.

‘You have to know which figs you give for which conventions,’ said Ted. ‘That’s known as maturity of judgment in my book.’

Jenny’s brother Simon Rodenhurst approached, splendid in his wedding attire. He saw Elvis and Ted, tried not to look like an estate agent, and failed.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Ted! You here? Good Lord.’

They gave him looks which said, ‘Shut up, Simon. We’ve just been through all that.’

‘Hello, little sister,’ he said. ‘Where’s Paul?’

They gave him looks which said, ‘That’s another can of worms best not opened.’

‘What have I said?’ he said.

They gave him looks which said that it would have been better if he hadn’t said ‘What have I said?’

‘Come on, Simon,’ said Jenny. ‘Let’s get inside.’

‘We all better had,’ said Carol. ‘It’s nearly five to.’

Jenny approached the porch with Simon. Carol followed with Elvis.

Elvis called out, ‘You’re looking very spacious today, Simon.’

‘Oh belt up.’ Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, tossed his reply over his shoulder. A gust of wind caught his ‘Oh belt up’ and sent this example of his repartee swirling over the jumbled roofs of the town, over the turgid brown waters of the River Gadd, over the central Yorkshire plain, up and up through the weakening ozone layer into the blue beyond, to become a whisper around the planets long after this earth has been destroyed.

Rita’s fiancé and her ex-husband stood alone together, as the last of the guests made their way into the church, along with the funny little man with the big ears who went to all the weddings.

‘I hope my presence isn’t unwelcome, Gerry,’ said Ted.

‘Do you really want Rita to be happy?’ said Gerry.

‘Course I do, Gerry.’ Ted met Gerry’s piercing gaze firmly. ‘Course I do. I mean, what do you take me for?’

‘In that case you’re very welcome indeed, Ted.’

They shook hands.

‘Is there … er …?’

‘Somebody in my life? Yes, I’m glad to say my recent amour still flourishes.’ Ted had taken to using the occasional French word now that he was in catering.

A tall, attractive woman who had taken great pains to be of indeterminate age walked elegantly past them. Ted caught a whiff of expensive scent. She was wearing a bright yellow fitted top, yellow skirt, yellow pill-box hat, with a yellow bag and yellow shoes. The general effect was … yellow. On a summer’s evening it might have proved irresistible to moths and midges. On an early winter’s afternoon it proved irresistible to Ted. She turned and gave him a look which was unmistakeably meaningful although he felt that he must be mistaken over the meaning. Then she entered the church.

‘I’m … er …’ Ted tried to sound as if he hadn’t even noticed her. ‘I’m a very lucky man.’

He hurried into the church. Gerry Lansdown looked at his watch, and followed at a much more leisurely pace.

Ted Simcock, once the town’s premier maker of fire irons, now living in a furnished flat off the wrong end of Commercial Street with a waitress called Sandra, whom he had met at the DHSS when she was an unemployed bakery assistant, hesitated briefly on entering the church. He was about to sit on Rita’s side … after all, he hardly knew Gerry but had been married to Rita for a quarter of a century … but then he realised that this might not be entirely tactful, so he settled himself down near the back, on Gerry’s side, behind the thinning hair of moderate politicians, the carefully tasteful hats of their moderate wives, and the more arrogant hats of the wives of the microchip men.

Facing the massed ranks of Gerry’s friends and relations were the somewhat less massed ranks of Rita’s friends and relations, spiky aunts, uncouth uncles, spotty cousins, several of them not in morning dress. Less than two years ago, when she had been Liz Rodenhurst, Liz Badger had sat opposite them, and had tried to ignore them. She felt strange now, sitting among them, though still trying to ignore them.

Three rows behind her sat Rodney and Betty Sillitoe.

‘She’s late,’ whispered Betty, who was over-dressed as usual.

‘She’s exercising her prerogative,’ whispered Rodney.

‘You make it sound like a breed of dog,’ whispered Betty.

They shared a whispered laugh.

Ted Simcock, former provider of quality boot scrapers, now head waiter at Chez Albert in Bridge Street, looked round at exactly the same moment as Liz. They looked at each other with horror. At that other wedding eighteen months ago their exchanged glances had led to events which had broken up and reordered their world. Neville Badger, beside Liz, smiled blandly at Ted. Ted and Liz shied away hastily from the possibility that history might repeat itself. Ted craned his head to examine the great hammer roof. This was generally regarded as a magnificent example of early church architecture and a triumph for modern woodworm techniques, but Ted had no eyes for the vast pale beams, the carved angels, the faded red and gilt of the medieval paintwork. His head swivelled on, down again, towards the back of the church, where he met the gaze of the gleaming yellow lady. He looked away, she looked away, then they both looked back to see if they really had been giving each other meaningful looks. She smiled. He tried a smile that would make him look like a cool international sophisticate. It was a failure. He looked like a randy cocker spaniel.

The church clock proclaimed the quarter. Several people on Gerry’s side frowned. While a bride was expected to be late, a politician’s wife was expected to be punctual enough to be only slightly late.

Leslie Horton, water-bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, thundered through his limited repertoire without subtlety.

The best man, a drainage engineer from Dundee, who had been Gerry’s best friend at school, though more perhaps in retrospect than at the time, glanced at his watch and sighed.

Gerry smiled serenely at the new young vicar, who had not yet won the hearts of his congregation.

The long-haired Carol Fordingbridge was the first to mouth the possibility that had begun to form in a hundred barely credulous minds.

‘Wouldn’t it be awful if she didn’t turn up?’ she whispered.

‘Carol! She wouldn’t,’ whispered her fiancé with less than his usual cynicism. ‘She couldn’t. That’d be … awful.’

‘I know,’ breathed the former Miss Cock-A-Doodle Chickens excitedly. ‘Awful.’

They considered the awesome prospect in awful silence.

‘It’d be rather wonderful, though, wouldn’t it?’ she whispered.

The moment Leslie Horton had dreaded arrived. He had exhausted his programme of suitable pieces. The buzz of speculation in the congregation was growing steadily louder. Hats bobbed in horrified excitement. The new young vicar looked at Leslie Horton and shrugged with his eyes. Leslie Horton sighed with his shoulders and returned to the beginning of his repertoire.

The huge ribbed radiators had to fight valiantly against the stony chill of the abbey, even on this unseasonal day. With no joyous emotion to warm them, the ladies began to shiver. One of Rita’s uncles had a sneezing fit.

The vicar advanced upon Gerry, who tried to smile confidently. His smile curled at the edges like a slice of tongue approaching its ‘sell-by’ date. The eyes of the congregation were upon them.

‘If she isn’t here soon,’ whispered the vicar, ‘I’ll have to truncate the ceremony.’

‘Truncate the ceremony?’ hissed Gerry Lansdown. ‘I don’t want a truncated ceremony. I haven’t paid a truncated licence fee.’

‘I don’t approve of divorcees marrying in church, even though I understand your fiancée was not the guilty party,’ whispered the vicar, who was still referred to by his congregation as ‘the new vicar’, as if he would have to prove himself before earning the dignity of a name. ‘My predecessor was less strict. I’ve inherited you as a fait accompli. I do not intend you to be a fait accompli worse than death.’ He laughed briefly, with more self-congratulation than humour. ‘I have another wedding later, the groom is a councillor, and I do not intend to have to delay an important wedding in my very first week here.’

Gerry Lansdown’s hackles rose. His back arched. He was an insulted cat, ready for battle. But the vicar had gone.

‘She’s not coming, Rodney,’ whispered Betty Sillitoe, over-excited as usual. ‘She’s jilted him. How awful!’

‘She may have had an accident,’ whispered Rodney.

‘No. I know it. I feel it.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know whether to feel glad or sad.’

‘I never do these days,’ whispered Rodney. Affection softened his florid face as he added hurriedly, ‘Except about you.’

‘Aaaah,’ said Betty, so loudly that several heads craned to identify the source. They heard her, oblivious to them, saying, ‘I’d kiss you if we weren’t in church.’

In front of them, the ravishing Liz Badger whispered into the immaculate right ear of her husband, ‘Maybe Gerry isn’t getting married after all. Maybe you’ll still have cause to feel jealous.’

‘Liz!’ Neville’s protest was too heartfelt to be contained in a whisper. ‘I respect you far too much to feel that I need ever feel jealous.’

‘Oh, Neville,’ whispered Liz. ‘You’re hopeless.’

The clock struck the half hour.

‘Five more minutes,’ whispered the vicar.

Gerry’s lips twitched. ‘Your precious councillor will have to wait, vicar,’ he hissed. ‘I think you should know that I just happen to be the prospective Social Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hindhead.’

The vicar smiled thinly. ‘He’s a serving councillor, not prospective. And he’s chairman of the Tower Appeal Fund Committee. Five minutes.’

The hum of conversation grew louder still. Leslie Horton’s playing grew slower. The sun lit up the garish battle scenes in the modern stained-glass window, dedicated to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

Ted’s eyes were drawn to Liz’s again and he realised that he was smiling. Hurriedly he tried to look horrified.

The new young vicar made a signal to Gerry.

Gerry nodded resignedly. A crescent of blue, reflected from a stained-glass window, was falling across his face.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the vicar. ‘It looks as if something has happened. I’m afraid we have no alternative, for the moment, as we have further nuptials pending on a tight schedule at this ever-popular venue, but to respectfully suspend the wedding for the moment. Mr Horton, would you please play us out?’

Leslie Horton, water-bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, would wonder to the end of his days why he played ‘The Wedding March ’ at that moment.

The vicar raised his eyes to heaven, but received no immediate help.

In the town the traffic moved slowly. A police horse, en route to football duty, crapped hugely outside the Abbey National Building Society. Four overweight railway enthusiasts, sitting on the top deck of a bright yellow corporation bus, with engine numbers in their notebooks and no rings on their fingers, peered at the hats and morning dresses without envy, so far removed from any of their remaining hopes was the glittering scene. A six-year-old girl with an empty water pistol said, ‘There’s no bride. Mam, there’s no bride.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said her mam, giving her a whack for her accuracy.

The wedding guests stood uneasily in the tactless sunshine. The women had to hold onto their hats as another gust announced the fragility of the fine weather. The men found no opportunity to wear their top hats and wondered why they had hired them. The funny little man with big ears who turned up unbidden at all the weddings walked slowly away, shaking his head.

All those who were saddened by the turn of events wore long faces, to prove that they were saddened.

All those who weren’t saddened wore even longer faces, to hide the fact that they weren’t saddened.

Nobody looked sadder than Ted Simcock, except perhaps the photographer, the pasty-faced Wayne Oldroyd, from Marwoods of Moor Street. He cast a last baleful glance at Gerry, before shuffling off with his unused tripod.

Out of the inhospitable gravel on the south side of the church there grew a lone tree, a sickly, unshapely ash. Around this tree a munificent council had placed a round slatted seat. Onto this seat jumped Gerry Lansdown. His face was pale. His eyes were hot. His complacency was a distant memory.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried, and silence fell instantly. Everyone wanted to hear what he would say. What could he say? ‘Ladies and gentlemen. It seems that something has delayed Rita … or something. Until we find out what … and bearing in mind that many of you have travelled a long way, many from Hindhead and some from even further afield … and as the reception … er … and it seems criminal to waste all that lovely food.’ Gerry’s voice gained assurance as he touched on political matters. ‘We in the Social Liberal Democratic party believe that all waste of food is totally unjustified in a world where so many haven’t enough to eat … so, whatever has happened, if indeed it has, I think the best course will be to proceed with the reception as if nothing had happened … I mean, as if nothing hadn’t happened. Thank you.’

Gerry jumped down off the seat, and marched firmly through the throng, which parted before him like the Red Sea before the Israelites.

Ted’s spine tingled as he realised that Gerry was about to confront him. Illogically, he flinched. But Gerry’s voice was mild, almost pleading.

‘You know Rita better than any man on earth, Ted. Why has she done this to me?’

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Ted encouragingly. ‘She could have had an accident.’

‘What?’

‘I mean, not that I … just a minor accident. I heard a siren.’

‘I’ve checked. There’s been no accident. That was an officer going home for his lunch.’ The public figure in Gerry rose to the surface even at this moment of private grief. ‘I shall write a strong letter of protest.’ Then the private anguish returned. ‘She’s jilted me, Ted.’

The guests, drifting past towards their cars, tried to ignore them.

‘What can I say, Gerry, except …’ Ted fought to keep the tell-tale gleam out of his eyes ‘… I’m very, very sorry. I mean, I am. I’m shattered. Devastated. Goodbye, Gerry.’

He held out his hand.

‘There’s no need to go now,’ said Gerry, spurning the proffered extremity. ‘You may as well come to the reception.’

‘You what?’

‘We’re colleagues now. Members of the same exclusive club.’

In the distant, ordinary town, another siren blared urgently.

‘He’s had his lunch,’ said Ted, and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘Exclusive club? What exclusive club?’

‘The club of men who’ve been made miserable by Rita Simcock.’

‘Ah. Well. Yes. I suppose we … but, I mean, even so, is it appropriate that I, her ex-husband, should be present at …’

The elegant yellow lady turned to smile at Ted as she passed.

‘Thank you very much, Gerry,’ said Ted.

So Ted found himself back in the Garden Room of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, where, at another wedding, he … he didn’t even want to think about it.

The Clissold Lodge was situated in large, gently rolling grounds that had once belonged to Amos Clissold, the glue tycoon, whose slogan, ‘Ee! Buy gum! Buy Clissold’s’, still occupied a prime site on the station forecourt. Now it was a country hotel on the edge of town. ‘The hotel where country meets town,’ as its brochure claimed. Its red-brick exterior was austere and forbidding. The interior was more gracious, but slightly faded. In the appropriately chintzy, over-furnished lounge, four slightly faded chintzy ladies were keeping amnesia at bay with an afternoon game of bridge.

The Garden Room was a spacious function room of pleasing Georgian proportions. Outside its French windows, the low January sun shone on a charming walled garden. Bouquets of hot-house red tulips and imported freesias studded the room. The guests were chatting animatedly. Two smiling waitresses in smart black and white outfits were dispensing non-vintage Moet. There was a splendid three-tiered cake. On the long buffet table there sat a superb Bradenham ham, a magnificent sea trout in wine jelly, a large walnut and spinach terrine spiked with green peppercorns, fleshy langoustines from Brittany, cold roasts of Scotch beef and Welsh lamb, bowls of green salad, Waldorf salad, salade niçoise, bean salad, avocado and mangetout salad, and not a tuna-fish vol-au-vent in sight. It was a perfect reception, save only, a purist might complain, for the absence of the bride.

Gerry Lansdown was doing the rounds, welcoming, smiling, urging people to eat, not that they needed urging.

‘It seems wrong to enjoy anything on such an awful occasion,’ said Liz Badger, ‘but I have to admit, this sea trout in wine jelly is absolutely delicious.’ She was wearing a black and white tunic with sweetheart neck, black skirt, and an elegant black cocktail hat.

But Neville Badger, now the only Badger in Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger, wasn’t listening.

‘I must go and say something to Gerry,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I’m not an unimaginative man, Liz. I can imagine how he must be feeling.’ Neville searched for the mot juste. ‘Upset. I mean, I was thinking how I’d have felt if Jane hadn’t turned up at our wedding.’

‘But not me?’ Liz’s voice was icy. The sea trout was forgotten.

‘What?’

‘You married me as well. Or had you forgotten?’

‘Of course not. How absurd!’

‘It’s just that it was Jane not turning up that you instinctively thought of, because she meant so much more to you than I do. Thank you, Neville.’

‘No, Liz! Of course not. I love you. I’m the father of your child.’ Ted sauntered past, trying not to look down at the stain on his hired trousers. ‘Hello, Ted.’ He turned back to Liz and lowered his voice. ‘Well, no, not actually the father, but … no, I mentioned my marriage to Jane, I suppose, because I was married to her for so much longer than to you.’ Liz glowered. ‘So far,’ he added hopefully. ‘Anyway, Gerry needs support and it’s up to me to give it.’

‘Why you?’

Neville stared at Liz in astonishment, as if the answer were self-evident.

‘Because I’m a man of the world. An experienced professional man. A man whose working life brings him into daily contact with sorrow and distress. A man who knows what to say.’

‘What are you going to say?’

‘I don’t know. Oh Lord.’

Neville wandered off, to prepare himself for his errand of mercy. Left alone, Liz flashed a dazzling smile at the world, reducing the dazzle level sharply when she realised that she was smiling at Ted.

Ted approached his ex-lover cautiously.

‘Marvellous spread,’ he said.

‘Paid for by him, I should imagine. And rather more generously than the one poor Laurence laid on for Jenny’s wedding. Not a tuna fish vol-au-vent in sight.’

‘Odd, isn’t it?’

‘I think it’s very sensible. I hated those tuna fish vol-au-vents.’

‘I meant …’ Ted lowered his voice and looked quickly round the room, hoping most people weren’t looking at them, hoping the woman in yellow was looking at them. ‘I meant you and me, here, in this very room, where, less than two years ago, in this very room, we … went upstairs to the very room above this very room and … made love.’

‘I had remembered.’

Liz looked up at the ceiling, then at Ted, and shook her head ever so slightly at the memory of what she had done.

‘How is my baby?’ whispered Ted.

‘Flourishing. I wish you wouldn’t talk about him, Ted.’

‘I care about him. Does he … er … still takes after me, does he?’

‘No. He’s losing the resemblance rapidly. Which, I would say, shows a remarkable degree of tact for an eight-month-old baby.’

Liz walked away. Ted went to the buffet table, seeking a displacement activity. He grabbed the first bit of food that didn’t need cutlery – it was a slice of leek and stilton quiche, as it chanced – rammed a great piece into his mouth, and chewed slowly while he tried to regain his composure. He looked up to find the attractive yellow lady at his side smiling radiantly. He chewed desperately, tried to swallow, chewed again, tried to smile, chewed, and mumbled, ‘Hello. I’m Ted Simcock,’ through a porridge of half-chewed quiche.

‘Of course you are,’ said the symphony in yellow.

‘You what?’

‘I’ve had my card marked.’

At last the quiche was gone, and he could speak freely. He failed to take full advantage. ‘What?’ he said.

‘You’re opening a new restaurant in Arbitration Road.’

‘What?’ Really he might as well take another mouthful, if he couldn’t do better than this.

‘I’ve made it my business to find out about you.’

Her voice was cool, but not cold. It was classy without being shrill. He liked it. He liked her. He tried to think of something interesting to say. He said, ‘Good heavens.’

‘You interest me.’

‘Good Lord.’

There was a loud crash of plates.

‘Good God.’

It couldn’t be.’

He turned slowly, towards the kitchen door.

It was.

It was Sandra. Sandra, whom he’d met at the DHSS. Sandra, whom he had found a job at Chez Albert. Sandra, with whom he lived.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Oh heck.’

As she bent down to pick up the broken plates, the cake-loving Sandra Pickersgill flashed Ted a look of defiance. The left leg of her tights had snagged.

Gerry Lansdown, hoping that the dreadfulness of his predicament would disappear if he ignored it, was holding a determinedly casual conversation with his best man and his best man’s wife. They had exhausted the charms of Dundee and its environs, the state of the jam industry, the rope industry, and the royal burghs of Fife, and had turned to his native Surrey, far from this hard North Country into which he had strayed with such disastrous results.

‘I love that whole area,’ he was saying. ‘Farnham. Guildford. The Hog’s Back.’

Neville approached, concern creasing his bland face.

‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’ he said.

‘No. No.’ Gerry excused himself reluctantly from the enjoyable geographical chit-chat.

‘Only, I … er … I felt I had to come and talk to you. You see, Gerry …’ Neville became portentous, ‘I’ve been there.’

Gerry was puzzled. ‘Been there? Been where? Guildford?’

‘Guildford?’ It was Neville’s turn to be puzzled.

‘We were just talking about Guildford,’ said Gerry.

‘Oh! Oh, no. No, no, no, no.’ Neville felt that these repeated negatives might be construed as an unworthy slur on a fine town. ‘I mean, I have been to Guildford, but no, I … nice town, specially the old part. No, I meant, I too have … Jane and I went to the theatre, with friends … no, I … er … and a little Chinese restaurant, nice crunchy duck, funny how these things stick in the … no, I meant, I too have been through great sorrow. I too have visited the pit of despair. I know how you’re feeling.’

‘Ah.’

‘Dreadful.’

‘What?’

‘You’re feeling dreadful.’

Gerry’s lips twitched. ‘Fancy you sensing that,’ he said. ‘How shrewd.’

Neville was oblivious of Gerry’s anger. ‘I want to promise you,’ he persisted, earnest concern etched on his rather tired face, ‘not as a cliché, because it can be a cliché. You’ll get over this, Gerry. Time is a great healer.’

Gerry smiled faintly, and spoke very quietly, so that it was a while before Neville realised that he had actually said, ‘Why don’t you stuff a sea trout in your gob and drown yourself in wine jelly?’

Sandra came in from the kitchens bearing, somewhat precariously, a magnificent sea trout on a large Royal Doulton plate. Her expression matched that of the fish. She looked not to left nor to right. Guests made way for her. She plonked the fish on the buffet table, behind the wrecked carcass of its fellow.

Ted had been standing by the locked French windows, looking out on the paths and patios of the walled garden. The shadow of a cloud cast a brief winter gloom over the bare, pruned roses, the empty urns, the ornamental pond where silver carp lived out their monotonous lives. What a lot had happened, what monumental changes there had been, since he had sat in that garden, at Jenny and Paul’s wedding, trying to give Rita the courage to face the throng. And now … had her courage failed her, or had she shown a great degree of courage? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know what to do about Sandra and the yellow lady. He sensed Sandra’s entry with the sea trout.

He adjusted his trousers, remembered the dirty mark, shrugged, tried to look taller than he was, and sidled through the guests to the buffet, where he stood irresolutely beside his inamorata, trying hard to look as if he was interested not in her, but in the buffet; because, as far as he knew, nobody in the town knew of his affair with Sandra, except the staff at Chez Albert and, inevitably, the postman. In fact Ted had even promised Monsieur Albert, the eponymous owner of Chez Albert, that he had ended the association, since Monsieur Albert – who hailed from Gateshead – was installing Ted as manager in a sister restaurant, and thought Sandra insufficiently classy to be the bedfellow of one of his managers.

‘Sandra! What are you doing here?’ hissed Ted.

Sandra turned her hurt, pert face on him. ‘They phoned just after you left. They’d been let down. I held out for double overtime. I thought you’d be chuffed.’

‘Well, yes, very nice, Sandra, more than useful, we can put it towards those curtains, I’m dead chuffed. But.’

‘I know,’ said Sandra, ‘but I never dreamt you’d be here.’

‘No, well …’ The Sillitoes drifted past. They smiled at Ted. He changed his tune rapidly. ‘Could I have a sliver of salmon, please, waitress?’ The Sillitoes had passed out of earshot. ‘I didn’t know either, Sandra.’

‘You’re ashamed of me,’ said Sandra flatly. ‘You don’t want anyone to see you talking to me. And it’s sea trout, anyroad.’

They began to move along the buffet table. Sandra put dollops of the various salads on Ted’s plate as they talked.

‘Rubbish,’ said Ted. ‘It’s rubbish, is that, Sandra. I don’t want anyone to see you talking to me.’

‘You what?’

‘In case you get sacked and lose your double overtime.’ Liz was approaching. ‘I’ll have a bit of the salad niçoise, as we in the catering industry call it.’

Sandra put a sizeable dollop of salad on Ted’s plate. A piece of anchovy slid onto the carpet unnoticed.

‘So!’ she said, when Liz had gone. ‘A sensational development.’

‘Sensational!’ said Ted with relish, forgetting that he was supposed not to be pleased.

‘And you’re pleased.’

‘I am pleased. I admit it. But only because he’s not right for her, not because I … Rita and I are over, Sandra.’

‘I know.’

‘Honestly, love! We are! Over. Finito. You what?’

‘I know. I’ve seen how you talk to that tarty piece.’

‘Sandra! She is not a tarty piece.’ Ted realised his mistake. ‘And I’ve no idea who you’re talking about.’

‘So!’ A scoop of potato salad. ‘You’re smitten!’ A scoop of Waldorf Salad. A couple passed close by. ‘Bean salad, sir?’ said Sandra, playing Ted’s game scornfully.

‘Thank you, Sandra.’

The couple threw hostile glances at Ted. He recognised Rita’s sneezing uncle and his wife. Her hat matched his nose. They moved on without speaking. It was a deliberate snub, for what Ted had done to Rita.

‘I am not, Sandra,’ he said. ‘I am not smitten. But I like to get my facts right. And the lady to whom I assume you refer, with whom I had a brief sophisticated exchange of views on Beaujolais Nouveau, happens not to be a tarty piece. All right?’

‘“Beaujolais Nouveau”! The only Nouveau you’ve ever drunk is Theakston’s Nouveau. She’s a tarty piece and you’re besotted.’ Ted began to raise his voice, forgetting that he was supposed to be having a casual conversation with a waitress who happened to be a colleague.

‘She’s a classy, elegant, attractive woman and I am not besotted.’

For a moment they glared at each other, eyeball to eyeball. Ted, expecting a deadly insult, was surprised to hear Sandra say, ‘Mayonnaise, sir?’ He was even more surprised to see the huge scoopful of mayonnaise that she plonked onto his absurdly heaped plate. It dropped off the edges. There would be a yellow stain just beneath the pale stain on his trousers. He turned away, trying not to show his anger.

The Sillitoes sailed unsuspectingly towards him and met the full force of the gale.

‘Hungry?’ said Rodney, seeing Ted’s piled plate.

‘Get stuffed,’ said Ted, as he stomped off.

‘What did I say?’ said Rodney.

Betty indicated Sandra with her head.

‘Ah!’ Rodney nodded, as if he understood, then realised that he didn’t understand. ‘What?’

He found himself staring into Sandra’s disconcertingly knowing young eyes and turned away. Now the Sillitoes were on collision course with Neville and Liz.

‘Ah!’ said Neville. ‘The Sillitoes! Calmer waters!’

‘What?’ said Rodney. ‘Well, who’d have thought Rita’d ever do a thing like that?’

‘Will we ever understand the minds of …?’ Neville hesitated, ‘… people?’

‘You were going to say the minds of women, and then thought I’d accuse you of being sexist,’ said Liz.

‘What an awful thing for Rita to do, though,’ said Betty Sillitoe, over-explicit as usual.

‘Yes,’ said Liz. ‘How to upstage everybody by not being present.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ said Betty.

‘So, what are you two planning now that your chickens will never come home to roost again?’ enquired Neville.

Rodney Sillitoe, who still looked as though he had spent the night in a chicken coop in his suit, even though he was no longer the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, having let all his battery chickens go free in a fit of remorse, explained their new plans briefly, but with evident enthusiasm. ‘We’re opening a health food complex.’

‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ added Betty proudly.

Liz laughed. Her laugh trilled through the tense gathering like the cry of a curlew on a misty morning.

‘Liz!’ said Neville.

‘Sorry.’ Liz seemed contrite. ‘But Mr and Mrs Frozen Drumstick selling nut cutlets!’

‘Why does everybody think vegetarian food is just funny laughable old nut cutlets?’ protested Betty.

Liz’s dainty hand fluttered to her neck, to be impaled there, a dying butterfly. ‘My God! You’re serious converts,’ she said, and laughed again, a less elegant laugh, a magpie’s malicious cackle.

‘Liz!’ said Neville.

‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz. ‘I shouldn’t laugh at anything today, should I? Sorry, Neville. Social lapse over.’

There was an uneasy pause. Neville, usually the first to fill uneasy pauses, leapt in. ‘Can I get you two a drink?’ he asked, before remembering that it wasn’t wise to offer the Sillitoes drinks.

‘Oh thank you,’ said Betty. ‘Grape juice, please.’

‘Apple juice, please,’ said Rodney.

This time Liz’s laugh was an owl’s hoot.

‘Liz!’ said Neville.

It would have been impossible for all the guests to have remained hushed all afternoon. It would have been unnatural if they had all continued to behave unnaturally all afternoon. So, as the sun dipped, as clouds bubbled up in the increasingly unstable air, as champagne flowed and sea trout slithered down throats, and an Egyptian cherry tomato with no respect for class squirted down the waistcoat of a merchant banker from Abinger Hammer, it was only natural that stories should be told, that laughter should be heard, that cautiously desirous looks should be exchanged between the head waiter at Chez Albert and the mysterious yellow lady whose blonde hair might have been natural.

By the time Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, approached the cynical Elvis Simcock and his long-haired fiancée, Carol Fordingbridge, a casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that it was a happy occasion.

‘Hello,’ said Simon. ‘What an extraordinary … er … what can I say? What can one say? I’m … er … I’m …’

‘This is an unprecedented moment in our island’s history, Carol,’ said Elvis. ‘An estate agent lost for words.’

‘Here we go again,’ sighed Simon. ‘It’s bash an estate agent time. It’s mock an easy target time.’

‘You could say the situation leaves considerable scope for improvement,’ said Elvis. ‘Which is estate agent-ese for a ginormous cock-up.’

‘Except it isn’t,’ said Carol, who looked charming in an apricot crêpe, short-sleeved, belted dress.

‘What?’ said Elvis.

‘You never wanted your mum to marry him.’

‘No, but … I didn’t want her to do that to him.’

‘I believe you’re starting to like him now he isn’t going to be your new father.’

‘Well … he’s quite a nice bloke.’

Carol was appalled. ‘He’s a faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig,’ she said.

‘He’s quite a nice faceless, ambitious, self-satisfied, crummy, crappy, yuppie smoothie prig.’

‘Hey!’ said Simon. ‘When are you two love-birds going to name the day?’

‘Poor Simon. Thank God I’m not cursed with good manners,’ said Elvis.

‘What?’ said Simon.

‘Trying to change the subject so tactfully.’

‘Except it wasn’t tactful, was it?’ Both men were shocked by Carol’s vehemence. Vehemence wasn’t her stock-in-trade.

‘What?’ said the philosophy graduate feebly.

‘He won’t name the date, Simon, till I’ve passed my philosophy finals.’

‘What?’ said the bemused young estate agent.

‘Oh, bloody hell, stop saying “what” alternately, will yer?’ said this new vehement Carol. ‘I’ve yet to satisfy Elvis, Simon, that I’m a mentally worthy partner for his philosophic journey through life.’

‘What?’ said Elvis.

Carol stormed off, leaving one rather surprised young man and one very surprised young man.

‘Women!’ said the very surprised young man.

‘I know,’ said the rather surprised young man. ‘They have an uncomfortable habit of hitting on the truth, don’t they?’

‘Simon! That was almost clever.’

‘I know. I have the occasional flash.’

‘How is your sex life?’

‘Non-existent.’ Simon dropped his voice. ‘I’ve given it up. That married woman I showed round one of our properties was the last woman I will ever have in my life.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Elvis. ‘I had the distinct impression she was the first woman you’d ever had in your life.’

Simon’s concern for his image wrestled with his need to confess. The need to confess won.

‘She was the first woman and the last woman I’ll ever have in my life. I hate sex. It terrifies me,’ he said. ‘There! I’ve admitted it. I’m a happy man, Elvis.’

Simon’s sister Jenny was staring at the fading day, trying to fight back tears as she thought about her own wedding day, only seventeen months ago.

The sky was dotted with clouds now. Jenny watched their shadows. At her wedding, she had been real. Now she felt that she was a shadow.

These dark shapes that floated across the neat rectangles of that over-careful garden, what could they be to a young woman so sensitive to the prospect of cosmic disaster but the shadows of strange flying creatures, birds and mammals rendered enormous and grotesque by nuclear radiation on a vast scale, huge deformed multi-breasted limbless freaks with pitted scaly skins? She shuddered and turned away from the horror of it, towards the horror of the pretended normality of the Garden Room. She walked instinctively towards Elvis, her husband’s brother, and he seemed to walk equally instinctively towards her, so that what he said became curiously important to her.

On the whole, she wished that he hadn’t said, ‘Hello, Jenny. What on earth are you wearing?’

‘Thank you,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’s made out of llama wool by very poor Peruvian Indians who need our support.’

‘Several llamas died to make it possible,’ said Elvis. ‘And you a vegetarian.’

‘Nobody’s ever suggested that having a social conscience is easy, Elvis.’

At last Elvis noticed that Jenny was close to tears. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny,’ he said, and he looked momentarily surprised at his own sincerity. ‘You look lovely.’ He kissed her, warmly, on her cold cheek. ‘Paul’s a lucky man.’

‘So are you.’

‘You what?’ Elvis was puzzled.

‘Carol’s lovely too.’

‘Oh. Yes. Right. Right. You don’t resent her for what she did with Paul, then?’

‘Not any more. That’s all over. Sorted out. Helped us to move on to a deeper and ever more satisfying plateau of shared feelings and emotions.’

‘So you’re happy?’

‘Happy!’ snorted Jenny. ‘I thought you were a philosopher. Happiness is unattainable.’

Jenny left behind her a rather lost young philosopher, who, for all his cynicism, found it easier to cope with plateaux of shared feelings and emotions than with the possibility that happiness was unattainable.

Rodney and Betty Sillitoe steamed up, two frigates in rigid formation.

‘Elvis,’ said Betty. ‘We’ve a proposition to put to you.’

‘How would you like to work for me again?’ said Rodney.

‘For us,’ corrected Betty.

‘Oh yes. Absolutely. Us. Quite. What I meant.’

‘Work for you? What as?’ said Elvis.

‘In our health food complex,’ said Betty.

‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ said Rodney.

Elvis laughed. The Sillitoes looked hurt. He wiped the laugh from his face.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just … surprised. No, it sounds great. Sadly, though, it clashes with my career structure.’

‘Career structure?’ echoed Rodney faintly.

‘I’ve got a job,’ said Elvis. ‘With Radio Gadd. I’m …’ He couldn’t resist a self-satisfied smile, although later he would regret that he hadn’t been more modishly cool. ‘I’m moving into the media.’

Elvis hurried off, as if hot-foot on his first scoop.

Rodney and Betty exchanged looks of amazement, saw Gerry collapse wearily into a chair, and exchanged looks of social responsibility. They were lifeboats now, speeding to the scene of disaster.

‘It’s a lovely buffet, Gerry,’ said Betty.

‘Thank you,’ said Gerry politely, but from a long way away. He stood up, wearily.

‘It’s usually sit-down these days, isn’t it,’ said Betty. ‘But I like a buffet myself, on an occasion such as … this would have been.’

‘Betty!’ said Rodney. ‘It’s a very nice do altogether, Gerry. A great … er … well, not success exactly.’

‘Because of the … er … the non … er …’

‘Betty!’

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Gerry coldly. ‘I do still remember that my fiancée hasn’t turned up.’

They watched him stride away.

‘She’s well out of that,’ said Betty. ‘There’s a nasty streak there.’

‘Are you surprised?’ said Rodney. ‘He’s not exactly having a nice day.’

But Betty was no longer listening. Now that she didn’t touch alcohol, curiosity had become her tipple. And her sharp, sexual antennae had spotted Ted, far across the room, beyond the bewildered Liberal Democrats, beyond Rita’s guzzling, puzzling uncles.

‘Ooooh! Rodney! Look!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who’s that woman Ted’s talking to?’

Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind a planned health food complex with wholefood vegetarian restaurant, tried not to swivel round and look.

‘Betty!’ he said. ‘Don’t be so inquisitive. It’s not the right social attitude now you’re joint managing director of –’ Yet swivel round he eventually did. ‘Oooh!’

The objects of Rodney and Betty’s interest were oblivious to these ‘oooh’s’. They were oblivious to anything except each other.

‘You’re a fascinating man, Ted,’ the striking lady in yellow was saying. ‘You have a wonderful earthy appeal.’

‘Good Lord!’ said the man who had once made the best toasting forks in Yorkshire, bar none.

‘Are you surprised that I find you interesting?’

‘Oh no, not about that. Well, yes, a bit. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think I was big-headed or anything.’ Ted gazed into the yellow lady’s blue eyes. ‘No, I was surprised because … I mean … they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place twice.’

‘What?’ She was puzzled. ‘What lightning?’

‘Nothing. Er … Ted returned hastily to more mundane matters. ‘I … er … I don’t even know your name.’

‘Corinna Price-Rodgerson.’

Even mundane matters didn’t seem mundane. Ted Simcock was found interesting by a woman with a double-barrelled name. He caressed both barrels. ‘Corinna Price-Rodgerson! Corinna, would you …?’ The forgotten Sandra stalked past, a pile of plates wobbling dangerously. ‘Oh, you sauté your mushrooms first! How clever!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said the astonished Corinna.

‘I … er … I didn’t want the waitress to overhear our … er …’

‘You know her?’

‘No.’ There was a crash of plates. Ted closed his eyes. It was the best attempt he could make to blot out the incident, since it is impossible to close one’s ears. ‘No! No, but … not in front of the servants, eh?’

‘My God!’ There was double-barrelled astonishment in Corinna’s voice. ‘That’s an old-fashioned attitude even for my family.’

‘Tell me about your family.’

‘They’re all in East Africa. Daddy’s a bishop. He’s also a dish.’

‘You what?’

‘A lovely man.’

‘Ah. And … er … do you have … or I mean have you had … er … ever had … a husband, as it were?’

Corinna smiled. ‘No. I’ve never married.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘Thank you. Some women are choosy, Ted. They wait for Mr Right to come along.’

‘Yes, well … I’m divorced, as you probably … I was in business. I had a foundry specialising in … domestic artifacts.’

‘Domestic artifacts?’

‘Toasting forks. Boot scrapers. Door knockers. Fire irons. I needed a sea change. I moved laterally into catering. Oh, Corinna, you’re lovely.’

‘This room is so public,’ said Corinna. ‘Ted, I have an idea.’

‘Good God!’ said Ted. He couldn’t resist a quick glance at the ceiling. ‘Good God!’

‘What?’

‘Lightning does strike twice in the same place twice!’

‘What?’

‘You’ve got a room upstairs.’

Corinna Price-Rodgerson may have been a bishop’s daughter, may have regarded herself as pretty nimble socially, but Ted’s remark left her frankly at a loss. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Room upstairs? What room upstairs?’

‘Ah! No, I … er … when you said … I mean, there’s room upstairs. I mean, there are rooms upstairs. I mean, I imagine, I’ve never … funny hotel if there weren’t … and I thought, I’d like to book one. A double room.’ Sandra passed them again, giving Ted another glare. ‘Double cream! And a touch of kirsch! So that’s the secret!’

‘No,’ said Corinna Price-Rodgerson, with gentle rebuke in her voice. ‘You do know that waitress. That’s the secret.’ She handed Ted a card. ‘I think you and I should get together.’

‘“Financial consultant”!’ he read.

‘ ’Fraid so. I leave God to Daddy, and I look after Mammon. I might be able to help you, Ted. Why don’t you take me to dinner next Tuesday?’

Sandra bore down on them with a plate of canapés.

‘Sir? Madam?’ she said with controlled fury. ‘Some canapés?’

‘Oh, thank you, waitress,’ said Ted. ‘I’ll … er … I’ll try one of these Tuesdays.’

Ted reeled away, chewing his untasted canapé. Rodney and Betty Sillitoe loomed through the smoky afternoon fog and fetched up neatly on either side of him.

‘Ted!’ said Rodney. ‘The very man! We have an emerging new business, and you have a great big hole.’

‘What?’

‘In life,’ said Betty. ‘Where your foundry used to be.’

‘Oh!’ said Ted. ‘No. No.’

‘Can we let bygones be bygones?’ said Rodney. ‘Will you work for me … us?’

‘But I don’t have a great big hole,’ said Ted. ‘Monsieur Albert’s installing me as manager of his sister restaurant to Chez Albert. It’s called …’ He had the grace to hesitate. ‘Chez Edouard.’

‘Oh Ted!’ said Betty.

‘So, what’s this business of yours?’ said Ted.

There was a fractional pause, as though neither Sillitoe wanted to be the first to speak.

‘We’re opening a health food complex,’ said Rodney.

‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ said Betty.

Ted laughed, an honest snort of a laugh.

‘Yes, well,’ said Betty, ‘isn’t it lucky you have Chez Edouard and don’t need to join our rib-tickling, side-splitting venture?’

Betty and Rodney swept onwards, on a tide of injured pride, through the increasingly animated gathering.

‘Here’s somebody who won’t find it funny, anyroad,’ said Rodney. ‘Hello, Jenny love.’

Jenny accepted Rodney’s semi-avuncular kiss without enthusiasm. ‘It’s great,’ she said. ‘I can kiss you without feeling hypocritical, now you’ve given up battery chicken farming.’

‘The perfect cue!’ exclaimed Betty.

‘Betty and I are opening a health food complex,’ said Rodney proudly.

‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ enthused Betty.

And Jenny laughed. She shook with laughter. The baby in her womb shook with her. Several llamas shook with her. Then she saw the Sillitoes’ hurt faces, and a guilty hand flew to her mouth.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s terrific. Oh, well done!’

‘So, why the mirth?’ said Rodney.

‘Well, not because of the business,’ said Jenny. ‘Because … it’s you! Sorry.’

She laughed again. Rodney and Betty joined in, but not with much conviction.

Gerry Lansdown, standing with the Badgers, said grimly, ‘What a lot of laughter this gathering is causing.’

‘It’s nerves, Gerry,’ said Liz. ‘People are finding this difficult.’

‘Me too, funnily enough,’ said Gerry.

‘Marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Gerry,’ said Neville. His remark cut through the discussion like a rifle shot.

‘What?’ said Liz.

‘I was married for many years, Gerry. My wife died. Did I move quietly into the peaceful backwaters of bachelordom? No! Dived head first into the chill, choppy waters.’

‘Neville!’ Liz stormed off.

‘Oh Lord!’ said Neville. ‘Sorry, Gerry.’

Neville hurried off in pursuit of Liz, who had ceased storming a few yards away, in order to wait for him.

‘Liz!’ he said. ‘Don’t be a fool. I was only cheering him up.’

‘But how could you say such things?’

‘Because I didn’t mean them. I was just trying to get him to look on the bright side.’

‘You’re in danger of cheering up the whole world except me, Neville,’ said his bride of four months.

Outside in the ornamental pond, as the afternoon sagged, the carp swam round and round, unseen.

Inside, in the Garden Room of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, it seemed that social tension sharpened the appetite. A plague of locusts could not have made a more thorough job of the buffet. Just one lone langoustine languished on a vast plate. No one would have the cheek to eat it now.

Amid the debris, the cake remained conspicuously uncut. It would never wing its way, in tiny slabs, to expatriate nephews and trail-blazing uncles, who were assumed to be still alive, since no news of their death had been received. It would be sent, complete in, its magnificence, to Sutton House, a home for mentally handicapped children, where a beautiful girl of seventeen with a mental age of six would burst into tears because she would believe that it was her wedding cake.

And in the foyer of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, on that darkening brideless afternoon, a budding radio reporter who had suddenly remembered that he was a budding radio reporter put his duty to his chosen profession above his duty to a family that he had been given no opportunity to choose, and rang the newsroom of Radio Gadd.

‘Elvis Simcock here,’ he announced urgently, while the receptionist fed guests’ mini-bar purchases into the computer, and pretended not to listen. ‘The old abbey church has seen some sensational scenes, but it’s seen few scenes more sensational than the sensational scenes it’s seen today. The glittering wedding of popular local personality, Rita Simcock, ex-wife of prominent local ex-foundry owner, Ted Simcock, to Godalming micro-chip magnate Gerald Lansdown, a rising star in the Social Liberal Democratic firmament, was called off today when the bride failed to turn up, but the reception in the Garden Room of the famous old Clissold Lodge –’

He broke off as Rita entered through the swing doors. She stopped by the door to the Garden Room and turned towards Elvis. She raised a finger to her mouth, pleading for silence. Then she drew a deep breath and entered her reception.

‘Cancel all that,’ barked Radio Gadd’s ace reporter. ‘Cancel all that, urgent. The bride has just swept in, in a sensational scene. Await further news. This is Clissold Lodge … this is Elvis Simcock, the Garden Room, the Clissold Lodge Hotel.’

He banged the telephone into its cradle and hurried after his mother.

Heads turned to look at Rita. Other heads turned to see what it was that the heads were staring at. Silence draped the room like a hollow fog. Cousins and uncles and aunts shivered. Leaders of moderate opinion in Hindhead felt cold tingles down their spines. A description of a memorable meal in Esher was cut off in mid-timbale.

Rita stood in the double doorways of the function room and smiled, a brittle smile. She was wearing an inappropriately virginal white satin embroidered three piece suit, with a small flowered headband. She was clutching a small posy of freesias, which she hadn’t had the heart to dump in a rubbish bin.

‘Hello,’ she said brightly.

She walked towards Gerry. The guests parted before her as if she were a line of police horses.

Gerry Lansdown, white-faced, grim-lipped, tried on several expressions without success. Anger. Self-pity. Stoic resignation. Manly dignity. All failed him. He ended up smiling stiffly, sardonically, with eyes that hid everything.

‘Oh, Gerry,’ said Rita. ‘I think this is the worst moment of my life.’

‘I’m not enjoying myself as much as I’d expected, either.’ Gerry whipped her with sarcasm. ‘I can’t quite work out why. Can’t seem to put my finger on it.’

‘Oh, Gerry.’

‘Am I to get some more eloquent explanation of your incredible behaviour?’ asked her jilted fiancé coldly. ‘Or am I to have to make do with “Oh, Gerry”?’

‘Oh, Gerry.’

Janet Hicks, the red-headed waitress, remembered that Rita had smiled at her at the wedding of Jenny and Paul. She hurried up now, to reward that smile with a glass of champagne. Rita nodded her thanks. Janet, a martyr to verrucas, hobbled off.

‘How can I explain?’ said Rita.

‘Try.’

‘Suddenly I just couldn’t.’ Ted had edged his way to the front of the listening throng, and was hanging on his ex-wife’s words. ‘Suddenly I realised that it was a case of “out of the frying pan into the fire”.’

‘I’m a frying pan now. Terrific,’ said Ted.

‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.

‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Gerry.

‘Ted!’ Rita was belatedly astounded. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to see you happily launched on your new life.’

‘Oh, Ted.’ Rita turned back from her ex-husband to her ex-fiancé. ‘Oh, Gerry’. What words could begin to explain? ‘For the best part of my adult life I’ve felt like a doormat.’

‘Terrific. Thank you, Rita,’ said Ted.

‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.

‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Gerry.

‘I’m a frying pan,’ grumbled Ted. ‘She’s a doormat. What are the boys? Garden gnomes?’

‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.

‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Gerry.

For the first time, through the mists of her emotions, Rita saw the rapt, staring faces of the guests. She was appalled.

‘Is everybody listening to us?’ she said. ‘For God’s sake! Please! I’m trying to have a private conversation with my fian … with my ex …’ She shook the freesias in frustration, ‘… with Gerry.’

There was a brief, stunned pause. Neville turned hurriedly to Rodney and said, ‘How were your roses last year, Rodney?’

‘Covered in greenfly,’ said Rodney.

‘Really? Ours weren’t. Isn’t that extraordinary, Liz? Rodney’s roses were covered in greenfly and ours weren’t.’

‘Good old Neville,’ said Liz. ‘First to the social rescue yet again.’

All over the room, trivial conversations were cranked into fragile life, and Rita turned back to face her jilted fiancé, in total privacy, in the middle of the crowd.

‘I’m dreadfully sorry, Gerry,’ she said. ‘And after you’ve paid for all this.’

‘That’s hardly the aspect that upsets me most, Rita.’

‘Oh, Gerry. I had no idea I wasn’t going to be able to go through with it, or I’d have broken it off earlier. I’d have done anything to spare you this humiliation.’

‘I think anybody considering how you and I have behaved today might think it’s your humiliation, not mine.’

‘Thank you, Gerry.’

‘What for?’

‘For making it easier for me by being nasty.’ Rita was shocked by Gerry’s hot, hostile eyes, and tried an altogether less combative approach. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I set out today to marry you. Probably I still love you.’

‘Unfortunately it doesn’t say that in the wedding service.’ There was a remorselessly thorough quality to Gerry’s sarcasm. ‘“Do you take this man probably to love, perhaps to cherish even, in minor illness and in health, maybe almost till death or a long holiday do you part?”’

‘Precisely. So I couldn’t marry you. Look, all this is entirely because of me and because of my life history and how I see my role as a woman.’

‘Ah! Aha!’

‘Well all right. “Ah! Aha!” away. Gerry, I’m afraid I realised that I just don’t want to be a politician’s wife. Your brother said … er …’

‘What did my brother say? Why did I let him give you away? Where is he?’

Rita had found it difficult to decide who should give her away. Her father was dead, she had no brothers, her sons were out of the question. If she chose any other relative, she would offend her remaining relatives. So she had chosen Gerry’s brother and offended them all.

People were trying not to seem interested in how things were going between Rita and Gerry. But they wished, even the most unselfish and thoughtful and well-mannered of them wished, even Neville wished, that they could hear every word.

‘I wanted to face you on your own,’ the lovely bride that wasn’t to be was saying. ‘We were driving along, we were more than half way there, I said, “I can’t go through with it, Nigel.” He took me for a drink.’

‘He didn’t even try to persuade you? The bastard!’

‘He did try to persuade me. It was no use. I had four large gins in the Three Tuns, where my appearance caused quite a sensation. Pool players stopped in mid-clunk. “Nigel,” I said, “I don’t want to be the little woman who fondles his constituents’ babies. I’ve played second fiddle too long. I don’t want to be an appendage. I don’t want to be a smile on his manifesto.”’

‘And what did he say, my wonderful brother?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Rita! You must.’

Yes. She must. In not turning up at the church she had exhausted her capacity for acting against Gerry’s wishes.

‘Oh Lord! He said … he said, “But, Rita, he’ll never be elected. It’ll just be one humiliating campaign and then ‘Goodnight, Hindhead.””

‘The bastard!’

‘I said I didn’t believe that.’ Rita’s head was swimming. She was finding it difficult to control her speech. ‘You’re intelligent, good-looking, energetic. Apart from an unfortunate tendency towards niceness and honesty you have all the qualities a politicians needs.’ She frowned, aware that she had used too many plurals. She must concentrate. She must get things right. ‘But you see, Gerry, when the crunch came, I found I didn’t love you enough to give up my career.’

‘What career?’ Gerry didn’t attempt to hide his scorn.

‘Precisely! I must do something soon. I don’t love you enough to fill my garden with Bulgarian wine, Lymeswold cheese, and hordes of frantically argumentative moderates. I don’t love you enough to host elegant dinner parties for smiling Japanese businessmen with microchips on their shoulders. It came to me that I must release you before I trapped you. I’m so very, very sorry. And really, dear dear Gerry, there’s nothing more to be said and oh God I must explain to them before I cry.’

Rita scurried to the end of the room, clutching her posy fiercely. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she called out. Silence fell with suspect haste. She stood facing all her guests; all Gerry’s guests; her ex-husband, whose face was a vault of secrets; his ex-lover, whose face was an open book; Neville, his face creased in concentration and sadness; Jenny and her llamas on the verge of tears; Rodney and Betty frowning in unison, synchronised swimmers in a pool of sorrow; Elvis, unaware of Carol Fordingbridge’s drowning arm clinging hopefully to him; Simon, as concerned for another person’s predicament as it’s possible for a young man to be while remaining an estate agent; a pale shaft of late afternoon sunshine catching Corinna’s yellow dress; Sandra, her corn-coloured hair dishevelled, her apron crooked, her hands clutching a disturbingly large pile of dirty pudding plates, her fierce young eyes uncertain whether to look at Rita or Corinna; and, between Rita and all these people, the wrecked buffet, over which the uncut cake towered, a snow-covered cathedral that had miraculously survived the bombing of the surrounding city.

Rita looked at all this through wet eyes and saw none of it. Saw a blur. Lowered her eyes as if she might find on the floor the words that she sought.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I owe you all an apology for ruining this dreadful day. I mean this wonderful day that it would have been if I hadn’t ruined it. Ladies and gentlemen … and everybody else … what I’ve done today is because of being a woman, and the unhappiness of my first marriage.’

‘Terrific!’ said Ted. ‘I’m having a wonderful day.’

‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.

‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Gerry.

‘Shut up, Gerry,’ said Rita. ‘Leave this to me. Ladies and gentlemen, Gerry’s been very good to me. The best and most generous lover I’ve ever had.’

‘Tremendous!’ exclaimed Ted.

‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.

‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Corinna Price-Rodgerson.

‘Starved of true love as I had been for most of my life – shut up, Ted!’

Ted, who hadn’t spoken, looked outraged, as if he would never in his life dream of interrupting a woman.

‘I mistook my gratitude, my freedom, for love,’ continued Rita. ‘I thought I wanted to marry Gerry, but I can’t, because I’d only be a manifesto, and I don’t want to end up as a smile on his appendage.’

‘She’s drunk,’ said Betty quietly, but not quite quietly enough.

‘Yes!’ said Rita. ‘And it takes one to know one. I am a bit drunk, because I had three tuns at the Four Gins … and tonic.’ She raised her glass to her lips, then seemed to notice it for the first time. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘No!’ She put her hand over the top of the glass. ‘Coffee, please. Black. For a black day. Ladies and gentlemen, Gerry will meet a fine woman who will love him as I can’t, and you … you will all forget this day. Please! And … I’m so sorry.’

Rita hurried off, past people torn between compassion, horror and the knowledge of what a good story it would make. She was shuddering and gasping.

Elvis rushed over to her and took her in his arms.

‘Mum!’ he said. Despite his years of study, despite the vast riches of the English language, he could think of no words to add, so he repeated the one word that seemed appropriate. ‘Mum!’ And Jenny hurried over, tears streaming, llamas heaving, and said ‘Rita!’ and kissed her, and Rita said ‘Jenny!’ and Elvis hugged them both, and they looked round for a chair, and a rather florid man – he was an architect who designed futuristic tubular shopping fortresses and lived in a Georgian house near Hazlemere, did they but know it – saw the gesture, and his good manners overcame his feelings of solidarity with Gerry, and he brought over a chair, saying unnecessarily, ‘A chair,’ and Jenny said, ‘Thanks,’ and Rita subsided into the chair, and Elvis said, ‘Mum!’ and the riches of the English language remained unexplored.

Rita gave a tiny, tired grin. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said. ‘Suddenly I’m all right. I feel very small and very cold but very sober.’

‘How lovely she would have looked!’ Betty Sillitoe, over-sentimental as usual, gave a vast sigh. ‘How magnificent her dress would have been.’

‘It still is,’ protested the former big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.

‘You know what I mean.’ Betty sighed again. ‘It was sad to see her drunk, though.’

‘It’s always sad when somebody you like and admire lets themselves down in public. More grape juice?’

‘Please.’

Carol Fordingbridge smiled at Rita, but could think of nothing to say, so, sensibly under the circumstances, she said nothing. She tried to link arms with Elvis, but he shrugged her arm off. Behind them, cold streaks of orange and red were fading slowly to mauves and purples as the short day died.

Sometimes Rita dreaded asking the most simple questions, but this one couldn’t be avoided. ‘Where’s Paul?’

‘He refused to come,’ said Jenny, half embarrassed, half defiant.

‘Good for him,’ said Rita.

‘Oh terrific,’ said Elvis. ‘I face up to the total embarrassment of the occasion, because I love you, and Paul gets praised for copping out.’

‘Elvis! Your mother’s got enough problems without you getting in a temper,’ said Carol.

‘Temper?’ Elvis showed just a touch of temper at the suggestion. ‘I’m not getting in a temper.’

‘No. I know. I’ve seen your tempers,’ said his fiancée. ‘Like when I put tomato purée in the coq au vin.’

‘Carol!’

‘I don’t suppose Jean-Paul Sartre ever lost his temper because Simone De Beauvoir put tomato purée in the coq au vin.’

‘That’s the whole point.’ Elvis sounded wearily long-suffering beyond his years. ‘Simone De Beauvoir would never have put tomato purée in the coq au vin.’

‘Elvis!’ said Jenny. ‘Three quarters of the world are starving.’

‘I know. And I deplore it,’ said Elvis. ‘But I fail to see any logical link between that and putting tomato purée in coq au vin.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve got more urgent things to think about.’

‘No. Please,’ begged Rita. ‘I can’t take any more talk about the urgent things. Let’s talk about tomato purée.’ Nobody spoke. ‘Nobody has anything to say about tomato purée, it seems.’

‘Hello!’ Simon tossed his absurdly cheery greeting into their resonant silence.

‘Hello, Simon,’ said Rita. He was a man made for morning dress. In sweaters he was a fish out of water, in jeans a laughing stock. He was made for great occasions and Rita had ruined his great occasion, she had ruined everybody’s great occasion. Oh God! ‘Sorry to ruin your day.’

‘Not at all,’ protested Simon, with that bottomless willingness to please that would surely take him far up the ladder with Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. ‘Not at all. It’s been a terrific … well, not a terrific … not at all terrific, of course, but … apart from not being terrific, it’s been … well …’

Elvis finished it for him. ‘… terrific.’

‘Well, yes. Well, it has.’

Carol turned the torch of her beauty full onto Elvis’s face. It was a beauty to which only he, it seemed, was blind. And he was her fiancé. Strange are the ways of young love.

‘I’ve spotted a flaw in your logic,’ she said.

‘You what?’ Elvis was incredulous.

‘You said you’d faced up to the total embarrassment of the occasion, but you didn’t know it was going to be embarrassing when you faced it.’

‘I was talking of the embarrassment of Mum marrying Gerry, not the embarrassment of her not marrying him.’

Elvis stomped off. Carol gave a little embarrassed laugh.

‘I can’t seem to do anything right these days,’ she said.

‘Settle for celibacy, Carol,’ said Simon. ‘I have, and it’s terrific. I mean, look at all the chaos the sexual urges get people into.’

‘Yes! Oh yes!’ said Rita.

‘Oh Lord.’ He was appalled. ‘Oh no, Rita. I wasn’t meaning you.’

‘Come on, Simon.’ Jenny led her brother away as one would a small child who has become a nuisance.

Alone with Rita, Carol looked young and vulnerable. ‘Well, I’d …’ she began.

‘No, please, Carol, stay with me,’ begged Rita. ‘I have an awful feeling that the moment I’m on my own Ted will loom up, and I can’t face that yet.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Carol fetched a chair just vacated by Rita’s sneezing uncle, and sat beside Rita. Behind them, a large flock of rooks chattered homewards towards the long narrow wood that screened the hotel grounds from the Tadcaster Road. Their day was ending. Rita felt that hers would stretch ahead of her for ever.

There was an awkward but affectionate silence between the two women as each searched for a topic.

Carol found one first.

‘Is it wrong to put tomato purée in coq au vin?’ she asked.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Rita. ‘Ted never let me cook anything foreign.’

Times change. Ted Simcock, ex-foundry owner, ex-husband, ex-refuser of foreign food, handed his ex-lover and her second husband a card and said, unnecessarily, ‘Our card.’ They studied the card’s limited text without interest. He continued unabashed. ‘Our cuisine will be basically a marriage of the bountifulness of Yorkshire hospitality …’ he stretched his arms, to etch in the size of the portions, ‘… with the flair and je ne sais quoi of cuisine nouvelle.’ He garnished the air with his fingers.

‘Who’s your chef.’ It was just a social noise, not inquisitive enough to justify a question mark.

‘Ah! That’s the only slight snag at the moment. Genius doesn’t grow on trees.’ Ted handed his former lover’s husband a bright orange voucher. ‘Present that during our first week, you’ll get a free half-carafe of house wine.’

‘Thank you,’ said Neville politely.

‘Very generous,’ said Liz, her voice drier than Ted’s house wine was likely to be.

Ted moved on, to distribute his vinic largesse more widely.

‘I must go to Rita,’ announced Neville.

‘Neville!’ said Liz sharply.

‘She looks rather trapped with Carol, who has no conversation, poor girl. She’ll be feeling awful.’

‘No. You mean she’s found today an ordeal?’

Liz felt that she had delivered these little shafts of sarcasm rather well, dressing the depth of her feelings in an elegant lightness of tone, rather as a lark might sing if livid. Neville appeared not to notice. Liz raised her eyes larkwards as he ploughed on earnestly.

‘In Rita’s case I feel it’s my particular duty to talk to her. I suspect that she once carried a bit of a torch for me.’

‘Good God, Neville.’ Liz realised that her raised voice was attracting the interest of one of Rita’s aunts. She didn’t care. ‘I’d have thought that was a special reason for not talking to her.’

‘I’m going to talk to her, Liz. By all means come too, if you feel like it.’

‘Righty-ho, sir.’ Liz gave a mock salute and wished she hadn’t. If she kept longing for Neville to be masterful, it wasn’t fair that she should wax sarcastic every time he approached that state.

Carol was giving the lie to Neville’s assertion that she had no conversation, although perhaps laying herself open to the charge that she did not have a wide range of topics.

‘I use tomato purée in lasagne,’ she was saying.

‘I’m sure it’s delicious.’

Behind them a single shaft of crimson defied the onset of night. In front of them, the talk was frenzied. Only Rita and Carol and a couple of footsore aunts were seated in all that throng. Only Carol had the task of keeping a conversation going with the architect of the day’s sensational doings. She searched for something further to say, and, happily, inspiration struck. ‘I use tomato purée in moussaka,’ she said. ‘Probably that’s wrong too. Probably I’m dead ignorant.’

‘I’m sure you’re a very good little cook.’ Rita winced, regretting the ‘little’.

‘No. Elvis says he’ll have to do all the cooking when we give media dinner parties.’

‘“Media dinner parties”! My son, philosopher, rebel and slob, plans “media dinner parties”! Oh, Carol!’ She surprised Carol by leaning over and kissing her warmly.

Neville and Liz arrived, Neville smiling earnestly, Liz faintly.

‘Hello!’ said Neville too brightly. ‘All ship-shape and Bristol fashion?’

‘Absolutely.’ Rita managed a smile. ‘Carol and I have been having a fascinating chat about tomato purée.’

‘Jolly … good.’ Neville frowned as he considered the possibility of fascinating chats about tomato purée. ‘Rita, I wanted to say that, whatever you may think, and whatever you may think anybody else thinks, and I think if you knew what they were thinking you might find that they aren’t thinking what you think they’re thinking, I think, in fact I know, that I have never admired you as much as today.’

Rita burst into tears, threw her posy of freesias at Neville, and rushed from the room.

‘Neville!’ said Liz, before rushing off to comfort her old enemy.

Ted’s ex-wife and the woman who had taken him from her left the room arm-in-arm. Some heads turned to watch, others turned so as not to watch.

‘What did I say?’ said Neville Badger, puzzled doyen of the town’s legal community.

Ted stood beside Sandra, his waitress, his mistress, and watched as his ex-wife and ex-mistress left the room. The dollop of trifle on his plate was forgotten.

‘Well!’ he said. ‘Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship?’

He didn’t want the trifle. He was full to bursting. But he’d felt obliged to take some notice of Sandra, and, since he was determined to keep their relationship secret, he could hardly say, ‘Sandra! I want you. How about a bit tonight?’ He had therefore said, ‘Waitress, I wonder if you could rustle up a last dollop of trifle.’ An excellent ruse, the only drawback being that, the dollop of trifle having been rustled up, he now had to eat it.

‘She can’t keep her eyes off you.’ There was withering scorn in Sandra’s voice, as if anybody who couldn’t keep her eyes off Ted must be mentally deficient.

‘What?’ Ted was puzzled. ‘Who? Liz? Rita?’

‘The tarty piece!’

Ted willed his neck not to swivel. It was no use. He found himself gazing, across Rita’s craggy relatives, past Gerry’s poncy friends, far across the crowded function room towards his vision in yellow. Corinna was waiting for him to look. She smiled. His heart churned. He turned back to Sandra, who was also smiling, grimly.

‘Sandra!’ Ted spoke with a mouth full of trifle. ‘The “tarty piece” only happens to be double-barrelled. Her father’s only a bishop. And a dish.’

‘You what?’

‘A lovely man. And she’s nothing to me, anyroad. So, I’ve nothing to hide. So, I’m going to talk to her. All right? Good.’

He was aware of Sandra’s eyes boring into his back as he negotiated a path between the wedding guests, refusing to meet the eyes of uncles who had drunk all his whisky every Boxing Day and aunts who had given him so much aftershave and deodorant that he had begun to wonder about his personal freshness. What did Rita’s relatives matter now, in this wonderful world in which Corinna Price-Rodgerson had eyes only for him?

‘You’ve been avoiding me.’ She seemed amused.

‘No! Look, Corinna, meeting you today has been very, very exciting for me. I feel …’

‘Aflame with desire?’ She smiled, slightly awkward in her advances, as one might expect from a bishop’s daughter.

‘Lightning does strike twice in the same place twice!’

‘What?’ Corinna was again puzzled.

‘Nothing. I want to be alone with you, Corinna. I can’t wait for Tuesday …’ Sandra arrived with champagne. ‘… s will be stewsdays, stewsdays every Tuesday, Sundays and most days will be roast days … Sandra!’

Sandra continued to pour champagne into Ted’s glass long after it was full. The champagne cascaded onto the floor around his feet. Sandra smiled. Her smiles were formidable.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’

Ted turned eagerly to listen to Gerry. Anything was better than this confrontation between Sandra and Corinna.

Silence fell rapidly. Rita and Liz entered, having repaired Rita’s shattered face and make-up. Rita looked as if she might faint. Liz clutched her arm and squeezed it encouragingly. Nobody saw them. All eyes were on Gerry. What would he say? What could he say? On this, the worst day of his life, he held an audience spellbound for the only time in his inglorious political career. The irony escaped him.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ He stood where Rita had delivered her emotional speech. Gerry’s speech was carefully unemotional. His face was pale and pinched. He looked very young, and so very, very old. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I’m off now. I’d just like to apologise for the way the day has turned out, and to thank you all for coming, and for all the presents, which were just what we … would have wanted, and will be returned. I’m off to Capri. I had hoped that my bride would be with me, as I understand that this is customary on these occasions. But I’m going anyway; it’s all paid for, and I deplore waste of every kind. It says so in my bloody manifesto, so it must be true.’

Gerry Lansdown looked neither to left nor right as he walked past his wedding guests. He didn’t so much as glance at Rita. He strode out of her life forever, with his head held high.

Rita trembled.

‘Feel up to facing everybody?’ said Liz gently.

‘Oh yes. I don’t think I should run away now. And … thank you, Liz.’

Rita kissed Liz, and Neville, watching, beamed.

‘Our Liz is turning into a real trooper,’ said Rodney Sillitoe, watching from their position beside the apple juice.

‘Well she doesn’t see Rita as a threat, now she’s made such a fool of herself,’ said Betty.

‘That’s a bit ungenerous, isn’t it?’

‘No. It’s realistic. I don’t believe anybody ever does anything except for selfish reasons.’

‘Betty! You do.’ Rodney was astounded. ‘You’re a very sentimental person.’

‘Sentimentality is selfish. When I pat a little boy on the head and go, “There, there! Who’s a clever boy, then?”, who loves it? Me. Who hates it? The little boy. Selfish.’

‘But you’re an incredibly wonderful wife to me.’

‘Because you’re such an incredibly wonderful husband to me that it’s in my interest to be an incredibly wonderful wife to you.’

‘Aaaah! Let’s clink juices and drink to us.’

‘To us.’

They clinked juices.

With Liz at her side, Rita felt able to face her ex-husband at last.

‘Well!’ said Rita.

‘Yes,’ said Ted.

‘What a mess,’ said Rita.

‘Yes,’ said Ted.

‘Oh well,’ said Liz.

There was a brief lull, as if their loquacity had exhausted them.

‘So how did you feel, Ted?’ asked Rita. ‘Sad? Happy? Triumphant?’

‘Rita! As if I … I mean! Really! I felt embarrassed. For you. For Gerry. For me.’

‘For you?’ said Liz.

‘Rita made some rather nasty insinuations about my prowess as a lover.’

‘Ted!’ said Liz. ‘Not now.’

‘No, no. I know. Subject closed. Not the time or place.’ He paused. ‘But. Well, it was, wasn’t it? A bit below the belt. As it were.’

‘No, Ted, it wasn’t below the belt,’ said Rita. ‘I was referring to your emotional commitment, not your physical prowess. You’re all right in that department, and there are people in this room who could second that, I’m sure.’

Liz blushed. She was thoroughly disconcerted. Ted was astounded. He didn’t realise that Rita’s abrupt return to acidity had made her feel angry and confused about her dramatic new role as Rita’s friend and saviour.

‘I really must go and … er …’ Liz couldn’t find any way of ending her sentence.

Ted, not known for his social rescues, leapt to her aid. ‘See if Neville’s all right?’

‘Yes! Exactly! Thank you, Ted!’ Ted wished that Liz didn’t sound so surprised.

Ted and Rita looked into each other’s eyes and saw only the past, their marriage, the painful separation and divorce. The duty manager, Mr O’Mara, trim, precise, prissy and finger-clicking, was fussily organising the drawing of the curtains. It was that moment, on late winter afternoons, that is the most magical of the day for those who are happy at home, as they enfold themselves in a womb chosen and furnished by them; but which, for the lonely, the bored, the inadequate, the defeated, the frightened, is the bleakest moment of all, as they face the long dark evening, and welcome into their homes a group of Australians because, empty-headed and indifferently acted though they may be, they are better than loneliness, or more fun than their nearest and dearest.

Ted, feeling the bleakness, shivered, and reached out to touch Rita.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I have to say, Ted … we have to get this straight … my not marrying Gerry has nothing to do with any feelings for you. I’m not coming back to you, ever.’

‘Oh no,’ said Ted. ‘No, no, I know. No. I’ve … er …’ Corinna walked past behind Rita and flashed Ted a quick invitational smile. ‘I’ve … er … I’ve reconciled myself to that.’

‘So I see.’

‘What?’

‘That rather striking woman who just passed.’

It wasn’t the first time that Ted had wondered how Rita could see behind her.

‘Do you notice everything?’ he said.

‘I’m a woman.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re worried about your sexual prowess, and here you are surrounded by your conquests.’ Rita shook her head at the absurd neuroses of men.

‘Rita! Don’t exaggerate.’ But Ted couldn’t help looking slightly pleased.

‘Me. Liz. The striking woman. The waitress.’

‘Waitress? What waitress?’

‘The one you’re living with. The one you’re so busy trying to keep secret that everybody knows about her.’

Ted was appalled. ‘Rita! You mean …? Oh heck.’

‘I even saw Doreen from the Frimley Building Society going into the other bar. All we need now is the blonde Swedish nymphomaniac and Big Bertha from Nuremberg and we’d have the full set. Ted and his women.’

‘Rita!’ said Ted, desperately trying not to think, ‘Well, yes, I’ve had me moments,’ even more desperately trying not to think, ‘What a pathetic list, compared to Don Juan and President Kennedy and Simenon.’ ‘Why rake over cold ashes, Rita? Why spoon up dead custard? The past is dead. Dead. How is Doreen? How’s she looking?’

Rita gave Ted a long, hard stare, and didn’t tell him how Doreen was looking.

The immaculate Neville Badger of Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger approached. Liz followed, as if on this occasion she were his lapdog.

‘Well, here we are,’ said Neville. ‘Almost like … well, no, not really very like old times.’

‘No,’ said Rita with feeling. ‘Not really.’

It was as if Neville’s approach had been the signal for the full social rescue of Rita Simcock to be put into operation. Elvis and Carol arrived next. Rita’s mind whizzed. Would Carol talk about tomato purée? Did Elvis know that she had never been able to love him quite as much as she loved Paul?

‘Hello,’ said the great philosopher.

‘Hello, Elvis,’ said Liz, and a stranger would have sworn that she was pleased to see him. ‘I heard your sports bulletin yesterday. Very pithy.’

Elvis swelled with pleasure. ‘Thank you, Liz,’ he said. ‘I aimed for … pith.’

‘Then you succeeded.’

Was she mocking him? Could he avoid blushing? Luckily Simon and Jenny scurried up, Simon breezily, Jenny more warily.

‘Hello!’ said Simon. ‘Everybody gathered! Almost like … well, no, not really at all like old times.’

‘No,’ said Ted. With what depths of regret he invested the monosyllable.

‘I’m very grateful to you all for rallying round,’ said Rita, ‘but I think I ought to face the massed ranks of Gerry’s friends and relations now.’

‘I don’t think you should,’ said Ted. ‘They might lynch you.’

‘Thank you, Ted.’

‘No, but is there really any point?’ said Jenny. ‘Will anything you can say to them make anything any better? You’ve explained already. Can you add anything?’

‘Perhaps not,’ admitted Rita. ‘Perhaps we should just go home. “Home”!’

And indeed a few people were beginning to drift off, now that the curtains had been drawn. It was dawning on them that it wasn’t appropriate to linger to the end of such an occasion. Others were staying because they weren’t quite sure how to leave. Should one just drift away? That seemed rude. But was it appropriate to give thanks? And to whom?

‘When I tell Paul!’ said Jenny. ‘He’s going to be so sick he missed it. Oh Lord. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today. Oh Lord. I think I’m going to cry.’

‘Don’t cry! Please!’ implored Rita. ‘Nobody cry. Once I start –’ She changed the subject desperately, the words pouring out. ‘You know, Jenny, what you said about explaining. There’s something I didn’t explain. I couldn’t. Gerry wouldn’t have understood. One of the reasons I couldn’t marry him … it’ll probably sound very silly … he never had any doubts. I doubt whether I could live with somebody who had no doubts.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Simon.

‘I do,’ said Carol Fordingbridge. Elvis couldn’t prevent his eyebrows from rising caustically. ‘I do, Elvis!’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Elvis.

‘I have doubts,’ said Rita. ‘Tremendous doubts. I’m constantly testing my beliefs against my doubts. I don’t intend to hide that even from the selection committee.’

‘Well, no, quite right,’ said Ted. ‘Why should … selection committee? What selection committee, Rita?’

‘I’m trying to enter politics myself,’ said Rita. ‘In a modest way.’ She smiled modestly, shyly. ‘I’m putting myself up to be Labour candidate for the Brackley Ward council by-election.’

Jenny was the first to recover, but even she wasn’t quite quick enough. Later, Rita would wish that her friends hadn’t all been quite so stunned.

‘Great,’ said Jenny, hurrying forward to kiss her mother-in-law. ‘Fantastic. No, that’s really fantastic. Great.’

‘You! In politics!’ Ted didn’t attempt to hide his incredulity.

‘Thank you, Ted.’

‘I’ll have to preserve the full impartiality of my reports, Mum,’ said Elvis grandly.

‘Well of course you will,’ said his mother. ‘I’d have expected nothing less from you.’

Elvis sniffed her remark, suspecting mockery.

‘Labour?’ said Neville, as if the enormity of it had just filtered through.

‘Do you know nothing of my beliefs?’ said Rita.

‘Sorry,’ said Neville.

Liz let her head sink onto Neville’s arm in an affectionate exasperation.

‘If they’ll have me after this,’ said Rita. ‘Oh God.’ She doubled up, as if in physical pain. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just … I feel awful.’ Ted and Carol grabbed her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ She tried to smile up at their concerned faces. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I came in and faced Gerry and everybody, funnily enough I didn’t feel as bad as I expected. I suppose the drama of it keyed me up. But now, when it’s over, and when I wake up in the nights to come, in the months to come, and realise, no, it isn’t a nightmare, I, Rita Simcock, did this dreadful thing … will I ever feel able to smile again? Will I ever feel able to laugh again?’

Betty and Rodney Sillitoe sailed up. They were two galleons, laden to the gunwales with sympathy.

‘Hello!’ said Betty.

‘Hello!’ said Rodney.

‘All gathered together,’ said Betty encouragingly. ‘Almost like … well, no, not really very much like …’

‘No,’ said Ted. ‘Not very. Not really.’

A heavy little silence sat on them, as they reflected upon how unlike old times it was. Rita, whom they had come to support, was the first to make the effort.

‘So, what are you two busy bees up to these days?’ she asked the Sillitoes.

Rodney and Betty exchanged uneasy glances.

‘We’re opening a health food complex,’ said Betty.

‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ said Rodney.

Rita laughed.

Second Do

February: The Christening

Neville Badger looked down at young Josceleyn, snug in his up-market pram, and thought, ‘Will you, one day, ensure that there will still be a Badger at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger?’

A male mistle-thrush, head on one side as he listened between the gravestones for the faint underground stirrings that would indicate the approach of his unsuspecting lunch, saw the pram out of the comer of his bleak bright eye and refused to give ground.

Liz Badger, resplendent at the side of her immaculate husband, looked down at young Josceleyn and told herself for the umpteenth time, ‘There’s nothing of Ted in him.’

Rita Simcock joined them, bent to admire Josceleyn, and thought, ‘Is he really beginning to resemble Neville? Can emotional influences really produce so rapid a change?’ But all she said was, ‘Bless him.’

Neville smiled and said, ‘Well, it could have been worse. It could have been raining.’

The ravishing Liz Badger looked slightly less ravishing as she frowned at her husband’s banality.

A moist south-westerly air-stream had produced a soft, heavy, soupy grey day in which it was possible to shiver and sweat at the same time. Later, the Meteorological Office would declare it to be the most humid February day since 1868. That day, in fact, Selby was more humid than Rangoon. Yorkshire had awakened that Sunday morning to find a layer of red Saharan dust over everything. Compulsive washers of cars had smiled over their watery bacon, in their softly sweating, newly fitted kitchens. It wasn’t much fun, week after week, washing cars that were already clean. Here was a challenge.

‘We knew we were taking a risk, having it in February,’ said Neville to Rita. ‘But we realised that if we didn’t have it soon, he’d be walking. He’s very forward.’

‘Neville’s terribly proud of him. Almost as if …’ Liz didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t need to.

‘Quite,’ said Rita.

Neville carefully negotiated an uneven stretch of pavement, taking care to give Josceleyn a smooth ride. A man born to be a father, he had never had a child of his own. Rita made a mental note to refer to inadequate maintenance of pavements in her maiden speech, and Neville, as if he could read her mind – an ability of which he had never given the remotest sign – said, ‘Incidentally, congratulations … Councillor.’

‘Thank you very much.’ Rita couldn’t help being slightly coy.

‘Who’d have thought – ?’ Neville stopped so abruptly that it was clear he had been going to say something tactless.

‘When I was a down-trodden, neurotic housewife, that within two years I’d sweep onto the council by five votes after four recounts?’

‘Well, not exactly, no, but …’

‘Who would have?’

‘Precisely.’

The pram slipped smoothly towards the abbey over a more even stretch of path.

‘A small majority,’ continued Rita, ‘but a vital moment in our town’s history.’

‘What?’ Liz bit her tongue. She had meant to show no interest whatever in Rita’s political career.

‘It changes the balance of the council. This town is now Labour controlled. Exciting, isn’t it?’

Rita glanced at their faces, looking for the excitement which she knew she wouldn’t see. Neville tried not to look too appalled. Liz didn’t try.

‘I hope you don’t intend to talk politics today, Rita,’ she said as they rounded the heavily buttressed South West corner of the great building. ‘I hardly think it’s the time. Have you heard from Gerry? Did he enjoy his honeymoon on his own?’

‘Liz!’ Neville stopped the pram abruptly. Josceleyn whimpered.

‘Oh, I don’t think these things should be swept under the carpet, Neville, or they’ll hang over us forever,’ said Liz airily.

‘You put your carpets on the ceiling, do you?’ said Rita.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Liz. ‘I mention it purely in order to exorcise it, not to be nasty.’

‘I choose to believe you. And you’re right.’ Rita gave Liz a smile that was superficially innocent of malice. ‘No skeletons in cupboards. No carpets hanging over us. I understand that he had quite a good … God, Ted!’

Ted Simcock, former owner of the Jupiter Foundry, soon to be manager of Chez Edouard, smiled at them rather awkwardly. He was wearing a somewhat flash suit which he believed befitted his new status as a restaurateur.

‘Hello,’ he said, and he only just failed to sound at ease.

‘Have you invited him?’ said Rita under her breath.

Liz shook her head.

‘Ted! Really!’ said Rita.

‘Well, I … er … incidentally, congratulations, Councillor.’

‘Thank you very much.’ Again, Rita couldn’t help being slightly coy.

‘Who’d have thought …?’

‘Quite. But really, Ted! Turning up today!’

Liz leant across the pram, ostensibly to pull Josceleyn’s coverlet up over his neck, but actually to hiss, ‘Pretty tactless, Ted, even for you.’

Ted leant forward, ostensibly to have a close look at his son, but actually to hiss back, ‘You once said you liked me because I was tactless and uncouth.’

‘I hardly think we need mention that,’ hissed Liz.

Ted gave the three of them what he hoped was a proud, dignified look. ‘I think I of all people have the right to be here,’ he said. He realised that there were people within earshot, and added, out of the side of his mouth, ‘The baby is mine.’

‘No, no, Ted. No, no,’ said Neville. ‘You’re his father. He isn’t yours. He isn’t anybody’s. He’s himself. Circumstances have meant that it’s my duty … and my great privilege … to look after him till he’s old enough to look after himself.’

They were stunned. In the town, four young men roared out of the car-park of the Coach and Mallet in a souped-up Escort with a faulty exhaust, and the landlord’s caged-up Rottweilers, sensing their aggression, barked excitedly.

‘Well said, Neville,’ said Liz at last.

‘Yes. Marvellous,’ said Rita.

‘I wish you didn’t sound so surprised,’ grumbled Neville.

‘I care about the boy,’ said Ted, resuming his self-justification as if Neville hadn’t spoken. ‘I’d like to witness the service at least. I’ll give nobody any reason to suspect the truth. I mean, I won’t. I’m capable of being civilised and discreet. I mean … I’m a leading restaurateur. And I mean … I’m hardly likely to make a scene in front of my fiancée, am I?’

Rita and Liz were astounded. Ted’s startling information took rather longer to filter into Neville’s keen legal brain.

‘Well, all right,’ he said, ‘but if you do, Ted, if you do … your fiancée?’

‘You’re not marrying your waitress?’ Liz sounded as if she couldn’t believe that a man with whom she had slept could ever sink so low.

‘No, Liz. Nothing as disturbing to your social nostrils as that. I’m marrying Corinna Price-Rodgerson.’

‘Oh, Ted.’ It was Rita’s turn to sound shocked.

‘Thank you, Rita.’

‘Well, congratulations, Ted,’ said Neville.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Liz.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ echoed Rita.

Into the inappropriately cool silence that followed these congratulations there stepped the lady in question. Where before she had been yellow, she was now orange. She greeted them vivaciously, as if she had already taken them to her heart.

‘Congratulations, Corinna,’ said Neville and Liz in unison.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Rita, after just too long a pause.

‘Thank you,’ said Corinna graciously. ‘And congratulations to you too … Councillor.’

‘You see!’ said Ted. ‘Congratulations all round. Worry not. It’s going to be a wonderful day.’

It began to seem that it would indeed be a wonderful day. A narrow gash of hard cobalt appeared in the gloomy sky, and widened and softened as the banks of cloud rolled away. The sun shone warmly. The humidity seemed to stream up through the gap in the clouds, towards the amazing blue of that winter sky. Foreheads eased. People took sumptuous breaths. It was as if the lid had been taken off this pressured, gaseous universe.

Liz and Neville’s guests were gathering on the paths around the church. The sun shone on the earrings of elegantly dressed ladies and on the port-wine noses of men who had lived well. It shone on Matthew Wadebridge, a colleague of Neville’s at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger, and on Mrs Wadehurst, who was big in the Red Cross, and pretty big in the sunshine outside the abbey church. It shone on the bald head of the bluff, egg-shaped Graham Wintergreen, manager of the golf club, and on his golfophobe wife Angela. It shone on the queenly Charlotte Ratchett, of the furniture Ratchetts, greying but undefeated, no mean wielder of a number two iron in her hey-day. It shone on Morris Wigmore, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group on the Council, whose son had come to a sticky end in Brisbane, despite which, or perhaps because of which, he never seemed to stop smiling. It shone on Rodney Sillitoe, the former big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, in a crumpled suit and with a crumpled face, Band-Aid on his chin and no Betty at his side. It shone on Liz’s skeletal, ramrod uncle, Hubert Ellsworth-Smythe, who had made his money in Malaya and Burma, and lost it in York, Doncaster, Wetherby and Market Rasen. It shone on Simon Rodenhurst, up-and-coming estate agent, assiduous cleaner of teeth.

‘Hello,’ beamed Simon whitely. ‘Congratulations, Councillor!’

‘Thank you very much.’ This time Rita almost managed not to sound coy.

Simon beamed at the whole group: Neville and Liz and Rita and Corinna and … Ted!

‘Ted!’ he said.

‘I think you’ve met my fiancée, Corinna,’ said Ted.

‘Yes, we’ve … er … fiancée? Good God!’ Simon gulped. ‘I mean, “Good God is certainly giving us something to celebrate today!” Congratulations!’

Simon was less than overjoyed to see, approaching at a fast lick, and smiling broadly, Andrew Denton, Neville’s nephew, who was in banking in Leeds and not doing as well as had been hoped. Simon was even less overjoyed to see, approaching at a slower lick, Andrew’s wife Judy, whom he had once shown round a house, and then round his flat, and then round his bedroom, and then round his body. He was even less overjoyed to see Judy’s stomach. From what Andrew had said at his mother’s wedding to Neville, Simon was certain that what was in there was the result of the one and only indiscretion in his unintentionally celibate young life.

‘Fiancée!’ said Andrew cheerfully. ‘I heard that! Congratulations! Hello, all. Mrs Simcock! I heard! Congratulations!’

‘Thank you very much.’

Simon tried hard to look at something other than Judy’s stomach.

‘Quite a warm day,’ said Andrew Denton. ‘We won’t need heating. That’s lucky.’

There was a mystified pause.

‘Because we don’t want it to be a baptism of fire,’ he explained. ‘Joke,’ he added.

‘You remember my nephew do you, Simon?’ said Neville.

Curls of grey cloud swirled in from the West. The sun fought feebly, and was gone. The lid came down again. The day pulsed with moist pressure. The greyness, to which they had earlier been reconciled, was terrible now.

‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘Yes, I … er … I … er … yes.’

‘And you know my wife Judy?’ said Andrew. ‘Heavily pregnant, but still lovely.’

‘Yes, I … er … yes, I … I showed her round a … er … a … er …’ Simon was a rabbit frozen before life’s full beam.

‘House,’ said Judy. ‘It was a house, Simon.’

‘Yes. Absolutely. A house.’

‘And here’s the godmother, even more pregnant, but also still lovely,’ said Liz.

Jenny was wheeling her son, Thomas, in an altogether more mundane pram. She did indeed look fairly enormous, being due any day now.

‘Hello, everybody,’ she said. ‘Congratulations, Rita. Fantastic! Fantastic! Ted!’

‘You know my fiancée, don’t you?’ said Ted.

‘Fiancée? Fantastic.’ Jenny tried to invest this ‘fantastic’ with the enthusiasm she had shown in her previous ones. It was a gallant failure. ‘Well … congratulations. What a happy day.’

‘Where’s Paul?’ said Rita nervously.

‘We had a terrible row this morning, and he’s refusing to speak to me, and he wouldn’t come. Oh Lord. I was going to say he has this mystery virus, but I couldn’t lie, but I should have lied, I shouldn’t have spoilt things, not today.’

The suave Doctor Spreckley glared at the Christening party, as if they had no right to be there. There were only thirty-six people gathered round the fifteenth-century font, and he had fifty-eight Belgians in tow. Doctor Spreckley, precise and delicate wielder of instruments at the General and, more frequently, the Nuffield, had thrown himself enthusiastically into the town’s twinning with Namur. He had visited that charming city twice and on each occasion had managed to wield his instrument precisely, if not delicately. Since his wife had left him, because of his unfaithfulness, he had thought of very little except sex and food, and nowhere did that combination seem more promising than in gallant little Belgium. These last few months had seen an incomprehensible falling-off of these appetites, and today he was in a thoroughly sour temper. He no longer felt attracted to his physiotherapist from Liège. His roast beef dinner at the Grand Universal Hotel had been vile – goodness knew what the Belgians must have thought. He was damned if he would deny them a tour of the church just because of some blasted service.

And so, the new young vicar took that small gathering through the service of baptism accompanied by a loud echoing whispered commentary, in vile French, on the charms of his church, and by the tip-toeing of fifty-eight Belgians, many of whom may have been gallant, but very few of whom were little.

The three godparents stood at the front of the gathering, with Jenny between Simon and Andrew. She was holding Thomas, and she was terrified that he would cry.

The congregation recited along with the vicar, temporarily drowning Doctor Spreckley.

‘Heavenly Father, in your love you have called us to know you, led us to trust you …’

Simon did something he hadn’t done since boarding school. He prayed, silently.

‘Oh Lord,’ he said, ‘I expect you know this, well you know everything, but in case you were looking the other way or something … I mean, you must sometimes, you’re only human, well no, you’re not … anyway, the thing is, the only time I’ve ever … you know … it was with the wife of the other godfather. She’s … you know … and I think it’s very probably mine. I’m very sorry and I’ll never … you know … again with anybody ever, but what am I to do? I should never have agreed to take on the moral welfare of this child. Should I back out now? Help me.’

He finished just in time to hear the vicar say, ‘Therefore I ask these questions which you must answer for yourselves and for this child. Do you turn to Christ?’ And the parents and Godparents responded, ‘I turn to Christ.’

What should he say? ‘Sorry, vicar. No can do’?

‘I turn to Christ,’ he said.

‘Do you repent of your sins?’

This time Simon joined the others. ‘I repent of my sins,’ he said, so intensely that Jenny turned to look at him.

‘Do you renounce evil?’

‘I renounce evil.’ Andrew Denton was also surprised by Simon’s intensity.

‘We will now sing …’ The vicar paused to glare at the Belgians. ‘… hymn number one hundred and sixteen, omitting verses four and five.’

The dimly-lit House of God thundered to the uninspired playing of Leslie Horton, water-bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les.

‘All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,’ sang the congregation.

Rita glanced at Rodney. He looked rough. ‘Rodney’s on his own again,’ she thought. ‘I hope nothing’s wrong.’

‘Each little flower that opens

Each little bird that sings.’

The Belgians began to file out of the church. They had tickets for the rugby league match against Featherstone Rovers.

Jenny, oblivious of everyone, including the Belgians, told herself, ‘Concentrate on these young lives. Forget your own troubles. Pretend you believe, and pray.’

‘All creatures great and small

All things wise and wonderful …’

Ted craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Rodney. ‘Oh dear,’ he thought. ‘Don’t say they’re splitting up.’

‘The river running by,

The sunset and the morning …’

The long-haired Carol Fordingbridge looked charming in a grey and white floral patterned dress with white collar, and a natural straw hat with a black band. But Elvis in his thrusting young media person suit had no eyes for her charms.

‘Oh Lord,’ she prayed, ‘make the whole world happy. Get rid of poverty and disease, and make Elvis love me.’

‘All things wise and wonderful,’ sang that small congregation, dwarfed by the cool, echoing church. ‘The Lord God made them all.’

Even Liz, the high and mighty, the haughty and naughty, couldn’t resist a curious glance at Rodney.

‘Rodney looks awful,’ she thought. ‘Don’t say he’s got marital problems.’

‘How great is God almighty,

Who has made all things well …’

‘I wish He could make me well,’ thought Rodney. ‘But I deserve it. I have strayed, oh Lord.’

‘All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.’

The last notes of the organ reverberated around the empty nave, and died. There was total silence. The vicar couldn’t have taken Liz’s son from her with less confidence if the boy had been a great lump of soap.

Ted Simcock, former maker of door knockers, macho Yorkshireman, found himself smiling inanely as the vicar held his son awkwardly over the font, and as the infant splashed water over himself, baptising himself before the vicar could do it.

Ted’s smile died as he heard the vicar’s words.

‘Josceleyn Neville Selwyn, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’

‘Josceleyn Neville Selwyn,’ he thought. ‘My son is going to be known to the world as Josceleyn Neville Selwyn Badger.’

A greater sense of loss than he had ever known swept over Ted. He felt as if he was the biggest of a set of Russian dolls. He felt that if he could be opened up other Ted Simcocks would be found there, less puffed-up, less pretentious, better, more honest, more loving, more caring Ted Simcocks. Happier Ted Simcocks.

Liz Badger, mother of his baby, didn’t acknowledge at that moment that he existed.

Corinna Price-Rodgerson clutched Ted’s arm, and his sense of loss was almost swept away.

Stepping out of the church was like colliding with a damp flannel. The afternoon was as grey as the face of a dying man.

Outside the West Door, where mythological stone beasts hid among exquisite carved leaves, the new young vicar spoke with Neville and Liz, playing the conversation game, at which he was already being compared unfavourably with the old vicar by some inappropriately uncharitable Christians in his flock.

‘He looks so very like you, Mr Badger,’ he said. ‘I find that extraordinary.’

‘Yes, I … I find it rather extraordinary myself,’ said Neville.

‘So many people take these things for granted,’ said the vicar. ‘But the seed, the tiny seed, growing into a person that resembles its parents, every time I see it I think “This is a miracle.”’

‘In this case it certainly is,’ said Liz, half to herself. She moved off, taking Neville in her slip-stream, and the vicar made a mental note to be less religious in his small talk.

The guests stood around, chatting, waiting for their hosts to set off for the party.

Rita tackled Rodney. ‘Betty didn’t make it then?’ she prompted.

‘No. She was hoping so much … Oooh!’ He gasped with pain. ‘Excuse me, Rita.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Rita as she walked away. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’

Rodney was just lowering himself onto a wooden bench beside the church when he saw Ted and Corinna bearing down upon him. With a sigh he stood up almost straight again.

‘Are you all right, Rodney?’ asked Ted.

‘Yes. Grand.’ His voice was as contorted with pain as it had often been with drink. ‘Just grand. Right good. Top form.’

‘You know Corinna, my fiancée, don’t you?’

Corinna beamed at Rodney.

‘Your fiancée!’ said Rodney. ‘What happened to …’ Ted, behind Corinna, shook his head furiously. ‘… to the famous British reserve, our native shyness …’ Ted nodded. ‘… that you’ve got engaged so quickly?’

‘Love brooks no frontiers, Rodney.’

‘You what?’

‘Love breaks down barriers. Betty away again?’

‘Yes, she’s … er …’ he groaned again, ‘… excuse me. I have sinned, and I’m reaping the whirlwind.’

Rodney collapsed onto the bench.

Corinna continued to smile. She seemed happy to be silently benevolent until called upon to speak.

‘Oh dear,’ said Ted, as they walked away from the ailing former imprisoner of chickens. ‘Oh Lord. Oh heck.’

Liz and Neville stood watching the clusters of guests, as if they were outsiders who had no right to be there, rather than the raison d’etre for the elegant little shindig. Neville was looking worried.

‘He’ll be all right with his godparents,’ said Liz.

The pregnant, charmingly shapeless, slightly fey Judy Denton had carried little Josceleyn off, in practice for the days ahead.

‘It’s not that,’ said Neville. ‘I was thinking, it’ll look odd if we don’t invite Ted and Corinna back now they’re here. It’ll set tongues wagging.’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz. ‘Do we really still care that much about wagging tongues?’

‘And they have just announced their engagement. It’ll look a bit graceless.’

‘Oh Lord. Today of all days, Neville, I would like to be free of memories of Ted.’

‘He’ll be discreet. He’s with his fiancée, whose father is a bishop.’

‘Ah! So that means she’s so socially acceptable that we must ask her.’

‘No. Of course not. No, I think that, accepting as we must that your son … our son … is in reality the product of Ted’s … er …’

‘Spermatazoa.’

‘Liz! Well, yes, in a … that it would be a Christian gesture, on a Christian day, to invite Ted to … wet the baby’s head.’

A two-carriage Sprinter train clanked slowly through the quiet Sunday afternoon. A few married couples were walking along the paths that criss-crossed the churchyard. Their dogs were fouling the paths. They gazed at their shitting dogs with adoration. Ted and his orange fiancée bore down on Neville and Liz.

‘Well …,’ said Ted, ‘… we’ll just slip quietly away, so …good luck, eh?’

‘No, no,’ said Neville. ‘No, no. No need. I’d … er … we’d … er … I’d very much like it if you came to the … er …’

‘I thought it was family only,’ said Corinna.

‘Ted is very much family, Corinna, in a way,’ said Liz.

Ted leapt in much too quickly. ‘Liz is referring to the fact that our two families are linked by wedlock, darling,’ he said.

‘Well, yes, that’s what I assumed she meant,’ said Corinna with apparent innocence. ‘What else could she have meant?’

‘What else?’ agreed Ted. ‘Exactly. Nothing else. Precisely. My point exactly.’ He turned to the Badgers. ‘We’d love to come,’ he said. ‘Where are the junketings? À la maison de les Badgers?’

‘No, Ted,’ said Neville. ‘At the Clissold Lodge. But the Brontë Suite this time. It’s smaller.’

‘Then we’ll see you in the Brontë Suite,’ said Ted, and he winked to show them that they could rely on him, because he knew how to behave in public, but Liz and Neville, seeing him wink, thought, ‘Oh Lord. Ted doesn’t know how to behave in public. Can we rely on him?’

Simon was unused to holding babies. You didn’t get much call for it, at Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. He realised that Judy had found Josceleyn heavy, in her condition, but her handing over of him in public had seemed a tactless symbolic gesture under the circumstances. He was terrified that the boy would slip from his grasp, or choke to death, or merely scream his head off. He held him as if he were a carrier bag of doubtful strength full of bottles of Château Lafitte. He was terrified that Judy intended to begin a meaningful conversation. He would have welcomed the arrival of a third party, had it not been Andrew Denton, fellow godfather, life-long wag, husband of Judy, and official father of the child in Judy’s womb.

‘He does look a bit like his father, doesn’t he?’ said Judy, who was practising having maternal feelings by gazing at Josceleyn fondly.

‘Let’s hope our baby doesn’t look like his father, eh?’ said Andrew.

‘What?’ said Simon and Judy, aghast.

‘Because I’ve got an ugly mug,’ explained Andrew Denton. ‘Joke.’

‘Ah. Yes. Joke. Right,’ said Simon and Judy. And they laughed. They were worried that their laughs hadn’t sounded convincing, but Andrew hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. He was only too used to receiving unconvincing laughs.

The Brontë Suite, the fifth smallest of the fifty-seven Brontë Suites in hotels in Yorkshire, was barely half the size of the Garden Room. It looked out over the front of the hotel, where the gravel drive curved away through the park-like grounds, dotted with oaks and chestnuts, to the narrow woods that screened the hotel from the Tadcaster Road. It made no nod to the existence of the Brontë sisters beyond taking their name. There were dark polished wood panels interspersed with dignified striped green wallpaper. The modern stainless steel lights didn’t go with the crystal chandelier. The three paintings – of Bolton Abbey, Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey – had known more apposite days, when it had been the Abbey Suite. But what they lacked in relevance, they also lacked in quality.

On trestle tables at one end of the room, beneath Rievaulx Abbey, as it chanced, there was a fine array of sandwiches – smoked salmon, cucumber, rare roast beef – and fancy cakes and biscuits. There was also a christening cake, with baby and cradle atop it, and this was widely held to be consistent with the standards expected of the Vale of York Bakery in Slaughterhouse Lane.

Eric Siddall, barman supreme, polka-dotted bow tie slightly askew, as if to suggest that he had a vaguely rakish past, stood by a table on which there were several bottles of champagne, two of them in ice-buckets. There were fluted champagne glasses and tea cups. Eric looked uncomfortable when Graham Wintergreen, manager of the golf club, entered. Graham Wintergreen looked uncomfortable when he saw Eric.

The guests were filing in from their cars. Many carried little presents, which they handed to Neville and Liz, who didn’t unwrap them.

Rodney Sillitoe collapsed into one of several Restoration chairs dotted around the walls, but singly, as if to discourage social sitting. There was also the occasional occasional table.

The cynical Elvis Simcock made a bee-line for Rodney, leaving his fiancée in the social lurch. He fetched a second chair and sat beside Rodney.

‘Auntie Betty’s been away quite a lot lately, hasn’t she?’ he asked.

‘Yes. She’s having to look after an elderly aunt. She’s at Tadcaster more often than she’s at home these days.’ Rodney gasped and grimaced.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Elvis.

‘No. Last night I succumbed to temptation. I’m reaping the whirlwind.’

‘Would you be prepared to tell me what temptation exactly you succumbed to?’ persisted Elvis.

‘Meat.’

‘You what?’

‘Rump steak. Rare. Bloody. Marvellous. Bloody marvellous. Now I’ve got the gripes.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Elvis sounded disappointed.

‘Disappointed? Thought I was talking about “another woman”?’

‘No! ’Course not. Has it ever crossed your mind that when she’s at Tadcaster Auntie Betty might be seeing “another man”?’

‘It has crossed my mind, yes.’ Rodney raised Elvis’s hopes only to dash them. ‘Once. Just then, when you asked it. Of course it hasn’t, Elvis. We have the perfect marriage.’

‘Of course you do.’ Elvis sounded disbelieving, as befitted one so cynical.

Rita approached her new hosts. She sported a knitted navy suit with three-quarter-length coat and cream knitted top. Her hat, shoes and bag were white. Liz had plumped for a purple, pink and yellow silk jacket and skirt, with a lilac silk top and large lilac bows in her hair. Neville wore a dark suit.

‘Rita!’ he said. ‘There’s tea or champagne, except there isn’t any tea yet.’

‘Champagne then?’ said Liz. ‘Or does that clash with your image as a Labour councillor?’

‘I don’t deal in images, Liz,’ said Rita. ‘I deal in truth and justice. Oh Lord, that sounds pompous. I hope in time I’ll learn to be serious without being pompous. Champagne, please.’

Eric Siddall, barman supreme, sidled up as if on castors. ‘There you go, madam,’ he said, handing Rita a glass. ‘Just the job. Tickety-boo.’

‘Thank you, Eric,’ said Rita. ‘Eric! Are you working here now?’

‘As of last Monday fortnight, madam,’ said Eric. ‘There was … let’s say there was a clash of personalities at the golf club.’ He flung a hostile glance towards the bluff, egg-shaped Graham Wintergreen.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Eric,’ said Neville. ‘I noticed you’d gone of course.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Eric excused himself, leaving them regretting that they hadn’t asked him to elaborate.

‘So …’ said Neville, ‘… how are you faring, Rita?’

‘In what way?’

‘Well … in life. At home. The evenings. The nights. Without …’

‘Neville!’ said Liz.

‘Without what?’ asked Rita. ‘Gerry? Any man? Sex?’

‘No! Well, yes.’

‘Neville!’

‘I’m faring well. I’m not the sort of woman who feels incomplete without a man.’

‘Is that a dig at me?’ said Liz.

‘No,’ said Rita. ‘Good heavens, no, Liz. We’re friends now.’

‘Ah.’

‘Subject closed. Feminist speeches over.’ Rita did try to leave it at that. ‘I just hate the idea that without marriage men are fine but women aren’t. Men seem to have managed to project the idea that bachelors are admirable and spinsters are pathetic. As if marriage was an institution for the benefit of women, when it’s clearly almost entirely for the benefit of men.’

‘I see corduroy’s staging a revival,’ said Neville.

‘What?’ Rita and Liz were as united in their bemusement as they had ever been in their lives.

‘I read somewhere that corduroy is making a comeback. I was steering us towards safer waters,’ explained Neville. ‘Sorry.’

‘No. You’re absolutely right,’ said Rita. ‘Let’s try and avoid ructions of any kind, just this once.’

Sandra entered hurriedly and inelegantly with a large pot of tea and a large jug of hot water.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said to the Badgers, ‘but he’s a right dozy ha’p’orth, him.’

‘Sandra!’ Rita sounded appalled.

‘Oh Lord.’ So did Neville.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sandra plonked the tea and water down and picked up the milk jug.

‘You’ll see,’ said Liz.

Ted entered with Corinna.

Sandra dropped the milk jug onto the cups.

‘She’s seen,’ said Liz.

Ted also looked thunderstruck. ‘Oh heck. That’s torn it,’ he said. ‘Come on, Corinna. Let’s leave. It’s best. I mean, it is. Isn’t it?’

But his vision in orange was made of sterner stuff. ‘I don’t want to leave, Ted,’ she said. ‘I enjoy champagne. And I’m not frightened of a waitress. My father’s a bishop.’

Corinna Price-Rodgerson marched forward resolutely. Ted had no option but to follow.

‘Ted! Corinna!’ Neville’s enthusiasm for welcoming new arrivals was a bottomless well. ‘Tea or champagne?’

‘Champagne for me, please,’ said Corinna.

‘There you go, madam,’ said Eric Siddall, barman supreme. ‘No problem. Just the job. They can’t touch you for it.’

‘I think I’ll start with tea,’ said Ted. ‘I’ve got a mouth like an elephant’s …’ he glanced at Corinna, ‘… mouth.’

Ted’s choice of tea involved an encounter with Sandra, lover of cake and, until recently, lover of Ted. Well, so be it. It was unavoidable.

Sandra, who had made a creditable job of clearing up the worst of the mess that she had made, gave Ted a cup of tea and enquired, with suspect solicitude, ‘Do you take sugar, sir?’

Ted was uneasily aware that people were listening.

‘You know I … yes. Two, please,’ he said.

‘Nice to see you again, sir. We haven’t seen you around lately,’ said Sandra.

‘No, I … er … I … er … I’ve been … er …’

‘Tied up? I know how these things happen, sir.’

Jenny came in, carrying an electronic baby link.

‘They’ve put the babies in room 108,’ she announced.

‘They’ve what?’ said Ted.

‘That’s hardly appropriate,’ said Liz. ‘That’s the room he was … put in last time.’

‘Well they say they use that room as a kind of spare because it’s next to the boiler so it’s noisy at ni … What last time?’ said Jenny.

‘I didn’t realise it had ever really gone away,’ said Rita.

They all gave her blank looks.

‘Corduroy,’ she explained.

‘You’re religious,’ Ted told Corinna. ‘Come and have a look at our great Yorkshire abbeys.’

He led Corinna off to admire the paintings.

Rita slipped off without explanation.

‘What last time?’ insisted Jenny.

Neville excused himself without explanation.

‘Mum,’ said Jenny, suddenly alone with Liz. ‘He’s never been to the hotel before. Were you going to say “That’s the room he was conceived in”? Was he conceived during my wedding reception?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ admitted her mother. ‘I was so overjoyed at your marrying your road sweeper that I got carried away.’

‘Oh my God,’ wailed Jenny. ‘No wonder our marriage is going wrong. Oh Lord. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

She plugged in the baby-listening device.

Ted and his fiancée stood beneath Fountains Abbey. The artist had imposed his romanticism on the natural romance of the ruins. He had imposed his concept of beauty on their natural beauty. The result was uniquely, inspiredly ugly.

‘Your waitress showed a bit of style there,’ said Corinna.

‘Surprised?’ said her fiancé. ‘That’s stereotyped thinking, Corinna. That’s a very glib social judgement, is that.’

‘I do not make glib social judgements, Ted.’ Corinna’s rebuke was cool but affectionate. ‘I was brought up not to. Don’t forget, my father’s a bishop.’

‘Some chance,’ muttered Ted.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing. Well, you do rather drag it in. “Nice cup of tea, this. Incidentally, my father’s a bishop.”’ He lowered his voice, in order to talk about sex. ‘“That was magnificent. You’re the best lover I’ve ever had, Ted. Not that I’ve had that many. My father’s a bishop.”’

‘I’ve never said you’re the best lover I’ve ever had.’

‘No. You haven’t. Why not?’

‘Maybe you’re the only lover I’ve ever had.’

‘What?’ Ted’s astonishment slipped out. He worked hard to alleviate his tactlessness. He wasn’t entirely successful. ‘I mean, not that I’m surprised. No, it’s just that … statistically speaking, it’s very unusual for women to reach your … oh heck …I mean … well … great!’

‘Don’t forget, my …’ began Corinna. Ted joined in. ‘… father’s a bishop.’

They laughed.

Sandra watched. Her face was a rigid mask.

‘Sorry if I was a bit edgy, love,’ said Ted. ‘But, I mean … I am. It’s with seeing her. Being reminded what a … well, not a bastard exactly. I mean, I didn’t intend when I … I had no idea I’d be passionately loved by a beautiful, glamorous, sophisticated virginal goddess. I forget sometimes how attractive I am.’

Liz’s skeletal, ramrod uncle, Hubert Ellsworth-Smythe, who had never refused liquid refreshment in his life, stood with a cup of tea in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, regaling Angela Wintergreen with anecdotes about faux-pas at tiffin, and Angela Wintergreen was enchanted, because he hadn’t mentioned golf once. Matthew Wadebridge, Neville’s colleague, whose wife did charity work six evenings a week and snored in her chair on the seventh, looked out over the grounds, watched a heron flapping indolently through the murk in search of more promising waters, shivered, thought how long the night must be for herons and what jolly times he had in the Bacchus Wine Bar in Newbaldgate each weekday lunchtime, decided that perhaps being human wasn’t too dreadful after all, and turned back to the jollifications with renewed enthusiasm. Jenny Rodenhurst, charming despite her advanced pregnancy in a red and cream chiffon tent-style dress, with a natural straw hat and a shoulder bag hand-woven by the wives of Bolivian tin miners, approached her mother diffidently, wondering how to present Paul’s absence in a not wholly unfavourable light.

‘Mum?’ she began.

‘Paul’s absence from social functions is becoming habitual, Jenny,’ said Liz, driving a coach and pair through her daughter’s diffidence.

‘He hates do’s. Any excuse. Look, Mum, we’ve had difficulties arising from lack of mutual faith arising from Paul’s lapse with Carol, but our troubles pale into insignificance compared to floods in Cambodia and earthquakes in Armenia and poverty in the shanty towns of El Salvador. So, let’s not talk about it.’ She wanted to get away from the mother she had longed to talk to two minutes ago. She saw Eric at his drinks table. ‘Champagne!’ she said, and set off without further excuse. ‘Better not,’ she said, looking down at her swollen body. ‘Have you any orange juice, Eric?’

‘Certainly, madam,’ said the dapper, ageless Eric Siddall. ‘No problem. Here we go. Tickety-boo. And how’s that husband of yours?’

‘Fine,’ lied Jenny. ‘Great.’

‘Sometimes, I – not having ever myself – sometimes I look at married couples and I … but with you two, I see you, so devoted, such loving parents, and I … I do, I come over all unnecessary …’

‘Oh, belt up, Eric. You know nothing about it,’ said Jenny.

Eric Siddall, barman supreme, stared at Jenny aghast.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said. ‘Oh, Eric. Oh, I’m sorry, Eric.’

Eric bore his hurt with dignity.

‘No problem, madam,’ he said.

Betty Sillitoe had intended to make something of an entrance. Entering a room without Rodney at her side was, after all, something of a rarity. She had planned to stand in the doorway, smiling, looking really rather fetching, she felt, in her coral crêpe dress edged with apricot ribbon, and throwing her arms out in a gesture of affection; embracing them all in the warmth of her personality, as if she were the Pope and the Brontë Suite St Peter’s Square.

This touching tableau was ruined before it started, by Jenny hurtling tearfully towards her, trembling with self-disgust, wailing, ‘I shouldn’t have. Not today,’ and hurrying out into the lobby. Betty turned towards her in amazement, then turned back towards the room, and was embraced by Rodney before she had regained her composure.

‘Betty! You came!’ His delight removed all traces of regret for her lost entrance.

‘I’m sorry I missed the service,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t leave her while she was hallucinating.’

‘Hallucinating?’

‘She thought she was Joan of Arc. She might have burnt herself.’

‘Oh, Betty.’

Rodney embraced Betty again, even more warmly.

‘Rodney!’ she protested. ‘A bit of decorum in public, if you please. As befits joint managing directors of a major new business. I’d have been earlier but I popped home to change because this dress creases if you travel. Rodney, there’s a dreadful, soggy, wobbly, smelly mess on the kitchen table. What is it?’

‘Carrot and cashew nut roulade. A treat for tonight, for your homecoming.’

‘Oh, Rodney. I’m sorry.’

‘No. I knew it had gone wrong. I meant to throw it out.’

Neville, Rita and Liz came forward to greet Betty.

‘Hello, Neville,’ she said. ‘Hello … Councillor! Congratulations.’ Now at last she embraced the whole room in her gaze. ‘Ted! Corinna! Sandra!.’

Sandra approached, smiling serenely, ignoring Betty’s surprise. ‘Tea, madam, or champagne?’

‘Oh tea first, I think, please.’ Betty called out to Eric. ‘Eric? Later I’d like a drink. Do you have any fruit juices?’

‘What?’

‘I do not touch alcohol. It is a poison. Do you have any fruit juices?’

Even Eric Siddall, barman supreme, found it impossible to hide his astonishment entirely.

‘Yes, madam,’ he said, recovering. ‘Can do. No problem.’

Betty turned back to Neville, Liz and Rita. ‘Well, she said, ‘I suppose my absence has set you all wondering if Rodney and I’ll be splitting up next.’

‘No, Betty. Good Lord, no,’ said Rita.

‘You splitting up? That’s a good one,’ said Neville.

‘That’s the best laugh I’ve had in weeks,’ said Liz.

‘Absolutely,’ said Rita.

They laughed. It would be hard to decide which of the three laughs was the least unconvincing.

Underneath the hideously romanticised painting of Bolton Abbey, Elvis Simcock, elder son of Ted and Rita Simcock, was questioning Simon Rodenhurst, only son of Liz and the late Laurence Rodenhurst.

‘So, Simon, are you still planning to give up what it would anyway be an exaggeration to call your sex life?’

‘Too right. Today has confirmed that.’

‘What’s so special about today?’

‘The other godfather’s wife was the woman in question.’

‘The pregnant one?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Exactly.’

Elvis tried to hide his excitement at this revelation. He assumed a dignified, caring expression as he sought the words that he needed.

‘What exactly went through your mind,’ he enquired carefully, ‘when you realised that the woman you’d made pregnant on your one and only foray into the world-renowned delights of sexual intercourse was the wife of your fellow godfather?’

‘What do you think went through it, you steaming berk?’ countered Simon angrily. ‘I thought, “I am unfit to undertake the moral welfare of a mature garden slug with psychopathic tendencies, let alone an innocent infant boy. I must tell them I can’t do it.”’

‘But you didn’t tell them you couldn’t do it, did you?’

‘Because what could I say? “I can’t go through with this. I’m the twit who got Andrew’s wife preggers”?’ He changed the subject. ‘How’s things with Carol?’

‘Terrific. Great. Couldn’t be better.’

‘Hello,’ said Carol, as if she’d been waiting for her cue. ‘You’re Elvis Simcock, aren’t you?’ She held out her hand politely. ‘I’m Carol Fordingbridge, your fiancée. Remember me?’

‘Carol!’

Elvis was all the more furious because he knew that he had no right to be.

‘I’ve got to sit down,’ said Rodney Sillitoe, and, as though to prove that he hadn’t been lying, he sat down.

Betty looked round for another chair. Morris Wigmore leapt to his feet and handed her his chair, smiling. When Betty said that he shouldn’t have, he pooh-poohed the idea that he had made any sort of sacrifice. He smiled confidently, frankly at Betty, little knowing that she was thinking, ‘Why don’t I trust this man? Why does he send goose-pimples up my spine? If only his son hadn’t come to a sticky end in Brisbane, so that I could loathe him without feeing a heel.’

‘Last night I strayed,’ confessed Rodney in a near-whisper, when Betty had settled herself in her Restoration chair.

‘Strayed? How do you mean, “strayed”?’

‘What do you think I mean?’

‘Well, not a woman. You wouldn’t.’

‘Aaaah!’

‘So it must have been either alcohol or meat. The way you look, I’d say …’ Betty examined his rough, red, battered face lovingly, ‘… meat.’

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