A Bit of a Do (13 page)

‘I think we should live together,’ said Liz.

‘Absolutely. It’s the only way.’ Too close. Dangerous. Push her away just a little, without offending her. Oh God. ‘I mean … is there absolutely no possibility that it’s his?’

‘Don’t you want to live with me?’

‘Absolutely. It’s like a dream. I was just … exploring possibilities. ‘Course I do. Like the clappers. But.’ He saw her expression. ‘I mean not but.’

‘Your enthusiasm sounds pretty temperate to me.’

‘No. No, love!’ Too far apart now, pull her closer, lovely feel of her flesh. Push her away! ‘It’s just … Rita, Laurence, the family, everything.’ Smile. Ha ha! Oh God! ‘Yes, of course I do. Madly. But … oh heck. That’s all. How?’

‘How? How what?’

‘How do we go about it?’

‘Oh. Well … we just go away together. Quickly. Suddenly. A clean break.’

‘Yes. Yes. Absolutely.’ Almost trod on her feet. Swing round. Bump gently into manager of National Westminster Bank. ‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Tonight?? You are function-fixated.’

‘It’s not easy for me either. I’ve never left Laurence before, you
know. I’m worried my courage’ll run out if I don’t.
Now,
Ted! When the dance finishes. Before the realities of our daily life engulf us for ever.’

The music finished. There was applause.

‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dale Monsal, as flat as a London pint. ‘We’re going to take a very short breather now. We’ll see you again in a very few minutes.’

Possibly, thought Ted. Or possibly not.

Finding Rita still alone, Laurence felt obliged to dance with her on the resumption of the musical activities. It was a particularly nondescript tune, which neither of them knew. In fact, it was an extraordinarily nondescript tune. In fact, it was so extraordinarily nondescript as to be, in the final analysis, not nondescript at all.

He held her as lightly as he could, with the tips of his fingers. They were both embarrassed by even this degree of physical contact, and they were glad when the memorably forgettable dance ended.

Rita went to the ladies’ powder room. On her way back she lingered briefly in the bar. Betty Sillitoe bought her a drink and, to keep her company, bought one for herself as well.

Rita became aware that it was quite a while since she had seen Ted.

Laurence wandered among the tables, stopping to exchange a word here and there with colleagues. Some felt that they should advertise, to correct the popular misapprehension that dentistry under the National Health Service was becoming extortionate. Laurence was not in favour. He wanted people to believe it was extortionate, so that he could continue to charge high prices. He edged swiftly past the Mercers’ table, for fear that Mr Mercer would invite him to the football, or Percy Spragg would wax lyrical over horse shit. He took Neville Badger to the bar and bought him a drink. The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw thought they looked depressed, so he started to tell them about his ex-brother-in-law from Falkirk, but the inseparable Finchams were waiting for service and looking impatient, and they never heard the end of the tale.

Laurence became aware that it was quite a while since he had seen Liz.

Eventually Rita and Laurence both returned to Laurence’s empty table. The Dale Monsal Quartet were in skittish vein, and some fifty of the dentists and their guests were making chicken gestures as they performed a comic dance. Rodney Sillitoe was imitating his product with enthusiasm. Simon Rodenhurst was cavorting overenthusiastically with the rather embarrassed fiancée of a dental mechanic. The pianist beamed. The clarinetist sparkled and fluttered her eyelashes. Dale Monsal managed a tiny, lighthearted twitch of the lips.

If the town was on the verge of a new, uninhibited bacchanalian era, where impersonating dancing chickens was considered
de rigueur
in respectable professional circles, it seemed that Rita and Laurence were to be excluded. They were linked in disapproval, and yet as far away from each other as ever.

After the chicken dance was over, the Dale Monsal Quartet flirted coyly with the world of pop. Their choice was too radical for the old and too conservative for the young. The Angel Hotel’s repertoire of strobe effects had never looked less adequate.

Rita was beginning to realize that it was quite a while since she had seen Liz, and Laurence was beginning to realize that it was quite a while since he had seen Ted. Both of them were beginning to realize that the other might well be beginning to realize what they were beginning to realize.

The Dale Monsal Quartet erupted into ‘Rock Around The Clock’. The lady clarinetist looked very audacious. Middle-aged people relived their youth with dangerous abandon.

The Dale Monsal Quartet subsided into another waltz. Now Laurence felt the need to talk, because otherwise he would have to ask Rita to dance.

‘How were the beaches in the South of France?’ he asked.

‘Too full of overweight topless German women for my taste.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Bottomless too in many cases.’

‘Oh dear!’

There was a pause, while Laurence reflected on these horrors.

‘I mean, I know Filey has its critics,’ said Rita, ‘but it’s not full of
overweight nude German women.’

‘They’d catch their death.’

‘It’s an ill wind.’

‘Absolutely.’

The immaculate Neville Badger approached unsteadily.

‘I must go home,’ he said. ‘It’s past my bedtime. Thank you, Laurence, for a … er … an …’ He lapsed into silence, unable to find an adjective which would describe his evening truthfully but not hurtfully.

‘You’re in no condition to drive,’ said Laurence.

‘Paul’ll drive him,’ offered Rita. ‘He won’t mind.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind,’ said Neville. ‘Where’s Liz? Must say goodbye to Liz.’

Rita’s eyes met Laurence’s briefly.

‘Come on, Neville,’ she said hurriedly, and led him off.

Neville stopped by the double doors. He seemed embarrassed.

‘I owe you an apology, Rita,’ he said, in a voice only slightly thickened by alcohol. ‘I was a trifle abrupt earlier.’

‘You’re under a strain,’ said Rita. ‘I understand.’

‘That’s no excuse. Jane believed in good manners. She’d have been deeply shocked. That sort of thing lets her down, it lets me down, it lets Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger down.’

‘Never mind,’ said Rita, touching his arm quite naturally as she could never have touched Laurence’s. ‘The point is, already you’re coping better. You’re going to be all right. Time is a great healer.’

‘Oh shut up,’ said Neville Badger.

Paul and Jenny would have looked uncomfortable on the edges of the impossible chairs in the sparsely populated Gaiety Bar, even if a signed photograph of Michael Heseltine hadn’t been staring at them.

‘Do you promise never to lie to me again?’ said Jenny, as Neville Badger strode angrily through the bar, unseen by them.

‘If I say “yes” and later on I do lie to you,’ began Paul, as Rita passed through more slowly with a look of stunned shock on her face, ‘the “yes” will have been a lie as well. If I say “no” and later I lie to you again, at least I won’t have lied about lying to you. If I say “no” and I never lie to you again, which I hope to do – not to lie, I mean – I won’t have told a lie today saying “no” because I’ll only
have said that I can’t promise not to tell a lie, I won’t actually have said that I will tell a lie. So the answer’s got to be “no”.’

‘I love you!’ said Jenny.

Paul kissed her, and they went up to the bar. They had an uneasy feeling that Michael Heseltine’s eyes were following them. Before Paul could order their drinks, Rita and Neville carne back in.

‘Are you sober?’ Rita asked him.

‘Of course I am,’ said Paul. ‘I haven’t been here long enough to get drunk.’

‘Oh good. You won’t mind driving Neville home, then, will you?’

‘Thank you, Paul. That’s very kind of you,’ said Neville, who had his overcoat on.

‘Thank you, Paul,’ said Rita. ‘It’s good of you to volunteer.’

Neville Badger turned to Rita and said, ‘Goodnight, Rita. What can I say? I …’ and he kissed her, and he said, ‘I’m sorry’ again, and then he said, ‘Where’s Liz?’ and Paul exchanged a look with Jenny and Jenny said, ‘I’ll say goodnight to her for you,’ and Neville said, ‘Am I being a nuisance?’ and Jenny said, ‘Of course not, Uncle Neville. Paul’s happy to do it,’ and Paul grunted, and Rita stood watching Neville’s back as he went out with Paul, and remembering his insults and his kiss, and wondering, and then she thought of Ted and Liz, and her eyes met Jenny’s, and they both looked away, and didn’t quite meet the eyes of Michael Heseltine, and Rita sighed and set off for the ballroom and came face to face with her father.

‘How’s tha doing, our Rita?’ said the barrel-chested Percy Spragg. ‘Tha hasn’t had much time for thy old father, whatever tha’s been up to.’

‘Dad!’ said Rita. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t say “our Rita”.’

‘I know tha does, our Rita. Well, don’t mither thysen. I’ve been on my best behaviour. My table are right interested in my tales of the olden days. They had no idea of the traffic problems posed by horse manure in big cities.’

‘Dad!’ said Rita. ‘I can’t take you anywhere.’

‘Aye, I’ve noticed.’

‘Well, are you surprised? I mean … why do you always have to be so crude?’

Percy Spragg gave the malicious, irresponsible, infuriatingly crafty, heart-achingly smug grin of a man on the verge of second childhood. ‘Because you don’t take me anywhere,’ he said.

Rita went back into the ballroom. Laurence was sitting on his own, and she felt that she had no alternative but to rejoin him.

‘I’m watching your friend Rodney,’ said Laurence.

Rodney Sillitoe was dancing on his own, much too flamboyantly. Rita wished Laurence hadn’t described him as ‘your friend’.

‘So this time it’s Rodney who’s got drunk,’ he said. ‘I’ll say this for your friends, Rita. They’ve a high entertainment value.’

Rita began to steel herself for the question that would have to be asked.

Elvis Simcock, off duty now, entered the Gaiety Bar for a drink.

The first thing he noticed was a signed photograph of Professor A. J. Ayer. The great philosopher’s message to the world was, ‘I ate well, therefore I was. Freddie.’

The second thing he noticed was Simon Rodenhurst.

‘Another shipping order for your drunken friends?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘I could get you sacked, if I reported your behaviour tonight,’ said Simon.

‘Oh, please do! I loathe the job, and if I’m sacked I can go straight back on the dole.’

‘There’s not much point, then, is there?’ said Simon. ‘Besides, I enjoy having you waiting on me, and we’ve got the Estate Agents’ Dinner Dance next month.’

‘Oh my God! They haven’t got one of those as well!’

Alec Skiddaw refused to serve Elvis. He wasn’t supposed to serve staff, he explained intensely. Rules were rules, and it was more than his life was worth to break them, he added darkly.

‘Give him one on me,’ said Simon.

‘Oh well, that’s different, sir,’ said Alec Skiddaw. ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ he repeated to Elvis, ‘but rules are rules.’

‘They are,’ said the cynical Elvis. ‘That is indisputably true. Boring and tautologous, but true. Rules aren’t fishnet stockings. They are rules.’

Alec Skiddaw stared at him in amazement. Simon Rodenhurst scurried off with his tray of drinks. Betty Sillitoe felt the need to
explain her presence on the bar stool.

‘I only try to stop him drinking because it makes him so miserable,’ she said. ‘He’s so happy when he’s sober and he’s so miserable when he’s drunk. It worries me. Which is his real self?’

‘I only studied philosophy for three years, Auntie Betty,’ said Elvis Simcock. ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer questions like that.’

Rita closed her eyes and ran naked into the cold sea of her fears.

‘Laurence?’ she said. ‘Do you think there’s anything between Ted and Liz?’

There! It was done! It was out in the open! For about three seconds, it was a relief.

‘You mean … are they having an affair?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite so … but, yes, I suppose I do.’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, I do think they’re having an affair.’

‘Oh my God! Oh no! Laurence, they can’t be.’

Rodney Sillitoe was cavorting more flamboyantly than ever.

‘But you’ve just asked me,’ said Laurence. ‘You must have thought they were.’

‘Yes, but I hoped you’d tell me I was imagining things. 1 hoped you’d say I was sick in my mind and tell me to pull myself together.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘Keep calm, Rita. People may be watching.’

‘Calm! Our youngest children have only been married for two months, my husband is having an affair with your wife, and you tell me to keep calm!’

‘Absolutely. Because it won’t last, you know. Liz is far too much of a snob.’ Laurence saw Jenny approaching. ‘Close ranks,’ he said urgently. ‘Make small talk.’ He turned to Jenny, as if noticing her for the first time, and said, ‘Oh hello, Jenny! Rita was just telling me that they found the scenery in Provence very spectacular, but not as green as England.’