A Bit of a Do (32 page)

‘I could have told you the whole story twice by now,’ said Alec Skiddaw.

Rodney Sillitoe moved off, taking his drink with him. He intended to keep himself nicely topped up until his duties were over.

Jenny had waited reasonably patiently through all this, and wasn’t too upset when Alec Skiddaw served the bluff Graham Wintergreen, of the golf club, next. But when he began to tell Graham Wintergreen the tale of his ex-brother-in-law, she snapped.

‘Excuse me,’ she called out. ‘Are we going to have to wait all night while you read “A Book At Bedtime”?’

‘I do apologize for being a human being, madam,’ said Alec Skiddaw.

‘I’m going to complain to the manager about your attitude,’ said Jenny.

‘Jenny!’ said Paul, trying to keep up with her as she made her way to the door. ‘You aren’t one of those trendy upper-middle-class socialists who treat real working people like dirt.’

‘Oh!’ said Jenny.

‘We laugh at people like that, Jenny! That trendy couple who went to that play about the evils of apartheid and were rude to the coloured girl in the box office. That left-wing playwright who had that play about the horrors of elitism on at the technical college, and it was so obscure that nobody could understand it except other left-wing playwrights.’

Jenny gasped, and ran from the room.

Paul hurried after her, and came face to face with Rodney Sillitoe.

‘Ah! Paul! The very man,’ said Rodney.

‘I can’t stop,’ said Paul. ‘I’ve got to talk to Jenny.’

‘You’ve got to talk to Carol Fordingbridge and all. She says it’s urgent.’

Rita watched Neville Badger stand up and walk away from Laurence. Her heart missed a beat. Her legs refused to move. By the time she had got herself to her feet, she had already realized that Neville was on his way to greet Liz, who had just entered, nine months pregnant and still alluring.

She sat down again, and watched.

‘Hello, Liz, you look …!’ said Neville. Liz hoped that if he had finished the sentence he’d have said ‘beautiful’ and not ‘enormous’. Thank goodness the human eye couldn’t detect the thumping of hearts. ‘Come and meet my other guest.’

‘Other guest?’ She tried valiantly to hide her disappointment.

‘Laurence.’

Liz tried valiantly to hide her horror. The object of her hidden horror and disappointment approached across the vastness of the angular room, concealing … what?

‘Hello, Liz,’ he quipped.

‘Hello, Laurence,’ was her sparkling rejoinder.

The trio were an islet of silence, in a rippling river of talk.

‘Oh dear,’ said the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘I feel rather like the Secretary General of the United Nations.’

The long-haired Carol Fordingbridge stood in front of the mirror in room 205 in her bright golden swimsuit, and tried to see what the judges would see. They would certainly see her magnificent long hair, but was length of hair an important factor? Her breasts didn’t seem quite large enough, her waist quite slim enough, her hips quite rounded enough. Her calves were fractionally muscular. She told herself that she felt happy with her body, that men liked it, that she was incredibly lucky, that the contest was all nonsense anyway, that it really didn’t matter whether she won or not.

It was no use. It was the most important day of her life. Winning could change her life.

She tried several poses, hoping to make her breasts look larger.

Her sophisticated evening wear was lying on the mauve coverlet of the bed, with clean undies beside it.

She jumped when the knock on the door carne, even though she was expecting it.

‘Come in,’ she said. Too late, she thought of hiding the undies.

Paul carne in. He too was nervous. ‘What is this?’ he said. ‘Good God!’ he added, as he saw her swimsuit.

‘I’ve aimed to be stunning but tasteful. Do you like it?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ He looked round the impersonal, fawn-and-mauve bedroom. Anywhere rather than at her stomach. He examined the etching which hung above the bed. It showed the North Bridge in olden days. The Gadd was lined with half-timbered hostelries leaning tipsily towards each other, where now there stood the massive DIY Centre. Oh God, let her not be pregnant. He ventured a quick, nervous look at her stomach. It looked reassuringly flat. ‘Yes,’ he repeated. Perhaps she’d sent for him so that he could take her, there and then. She looked tense and tension sometimes made people very sexy. If she did want him to take her, would he be a) thrilled b) appalled c) both d) indifferent? ‘Very much. Lovely.’ He couldn’t. Not with Jenny outside. Not with Uncle Rodney knowing where he was. ‘Very much. As you say, stunning but tasteful.’ He felt relieved at discovering that he knew that he wouldn’t take her, and then he felt disappointed at discovering that he felt relieved. He felt a wave of desire. He felt that he would take her. The fear switched his desire off. ‘I like it a lot. I … er … what do you want, Carol?’

‘Sit down.’

Carol Fordingbridge sat in the armchair. Paul removed a sash which was lying on the upright chair by the writing desk. It read ‘Miss Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.’

‘Good God,’ he said, and sat down.

‘When you had your one-night stand with me, you never dreamt you were having the future winner of the in-house beauty contest and second favourite for Miss Frozen Chicken (UK), did you?’ she said.

‘Oh God,’ he said.

‘I’m 9–2 at Ladbrokes and 6–1 at William Hill’s.’

‘Carol? Why have you dragged me here?’

‘I saw you and Jenny opening that door. Why?’

His first reaction was of relief. She wasn’t pregnant. She didn’t want him to take her there and then. But the relief didn’t last long. He was in trouble.

‘We like fresh air,’ he said, flinching at the lameness of his reply.

‘Paul! I know Jenny. What are you two up to?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

He held his hands clasped together, for fear one of them would find its way onto one of Carol’s magnificent knees.

‘Do you want me to tell Jenny about us?’ she demanded. ‘“Hello, Jenny. Your heroic, caring, feminist husband had it off with me the night after his son was born.”’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t I? This is my big night.’

There was silence. Paul knew that he would have to be the one to break it. He let it go on a little longer, to preserve his dignity. He was surprised to find that he could be as calculating as that.

‘We’re letting in a group of protestors against exploitation of women … and chickens. They’re going to disrupt the judging.’

‘Get it called off or I’ll tell Jenny.’

‘You don’t need to tell her. Why don’t you just tell the authorities what’s going to happen? You needn’t tell them how you found out or about us being involved.’

‘I can’t. I’ve a good chance of winning.’

‘Well, that would improve it. You’d be a heroine.’

‘Exactly. So if they gave me the title then, it’d look as if that was why they were giving it, so they wouldn’t give it. So you get it called off or I’ll tell Jenny.’

‘But Carol! We have to do it. Exploiting female flesh is wrong, and fatally inhibits the establishment of female equality through all aspects of human endeavour. Can’t you see that? There’ll never be an equal number of women MPs and women judges while women agree to be assessed on beauty rather than brains.’

‘It isn’t just beauty. There’s personality and deportment. That’s the next best thing to brains.’

‘Personality and deportment! It’s an insult.’

He loved Jenny so much. He was full of indignation on her behalf. He hated his own sexuality, which had made him behave so out of character. There were two Pauls – sensitive man and selfish animal. He looked at Carol Fordingbridge’s flesh, so near to him, and was pleased to find that it no longer held any appeal for him: it was utterly theoretical in its attractions.

‘This beauty contest can open avenues for me that I never dreamt of,’ Carol was saying. ‘Miss Frozen Chicken (UK) 1981 went on to be Miss Kidderminster, Miss West Mercia and Miss European Processed Meat Products (Category Two). It’s my chance to escape from the “Take a letter, Miss Fordingbridge” syndrome, which
is
female exploitation.’

‘I can see that from your point of view,’ he said, ‘but from the point of view of women as a whole …’

‘From the point of view of women as a whole, why don’t you protest about my sister?’ She leapt up, towered over him, paced the little bedroom like a tigress. She was magnificent. He adored her. He had to fight the tiger in him. ‘She works on the supermarket check-out. Hour after hour taking dog food and baked beans and Hungarian courgettes and frozen bubble-and-squeak out of wire baskets and having to ring for Miss Priddle because there’s no price on them, and Miss Priddle acting as if it’s
her
fault. Hour after hour with hardly a word of human contact, till her head buzzes and aches and her brain dries up and she comes home pale and knackered, just because she doesn’t happen to be as attractive as me. That’s exploitation of women. This is fun.’

There were times when Paul wished he’d never developed a moral conscience at all. Moral issues were so complicated.

‘I agree maybe we should go down there as well,’ he said, feeling like a candidate who is failing to convince on the doorstep at the end of a very long day, ‘but that doesn’t make this right.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Two minutes, Miss Fordingbridge.’

‘Right.’

‘How can I call it off, anyway?’ he said, with a last flicker of doomed defiance. ‘What’ll I tell Jenny?’

‘That’s your problem.’

‘Oh heck.’

When Jenny returned to the Royalty Suite, her first thought was to apologize to Alec Skiddaw. The piped music still tinkled, and there was a harsh, grating, unlovely sound as a group of middle-aged men laughed at a dirty joke told by Mr Gilbert Pilgrim, the manager, who had been invited as a guest at this, the first major function in his hotel. Despite his efforts to be one of the lads, Mr Gilbert Pilgrim remained a man whom one could never think of as mere Gilbert Pilgrim, without the ‘Mr’. He was short and darkhaired, with a bulbous nose.

Alec Skiddaw was talking to the classless Nigel Thick, who was recording the evening for posterity. Nigel Thick was saying ‘terrific’ and ‘amazing’ at suspiciously regular intervals.

Jenny waited patiently. At last Alec Skiddaw saw her and broke off. ‘Yes, madam?’ he said, so coldly that she almost didn’t apologize after all.

‘I want to apologize for my behaviour just now,’ she said. ‘It was inexcusable.’

‘Thank you very much indeed, madam,’ said the dark, intense Alec Skiddaw, looking somewhat embarrassed.

Jenny moved on, her good deed done. She approached Rodney Sillitoe, who had just finished his rounds of the contestants.

‘Where’s Paul?’ she asked.

‘He was taken short,’ whispered Rodney. Inspired lies had never been his forte.

Neville Badger had left Laurence and Liz on their own, in the increasingly faint hope that this would force them to talk to each other. Indecision swept over Rita. Should she approach him? Would he approach her? He didn’t approach her. She must approach him. He seemed quite happy to be approached. She hoped he couldn’t see how flustered she was.

‘Hello, Rita,’ he said – quite warmly, she thought.

‘Hello, Neville. Have you been avoiding me?’ Rita wished she hadn’t said that, but Neville didn’t seem to mind.

‘Good Lord, no!’ he said. ‘No! I’ve been rather occupied. Attempting reconciliations.’ He shook his head slowly, in disappointed mystification at the behaviour of the human race.

‘Thank you for last Tuesday,’ said Rita. ‘It was a lovely evening.’

‘It was, wasn’t it? I thought it was a good place.’

They’d been to the new Italian place in Tannergate. Neville had said that, next time, Rita must try the seafood salad. But when would the next time be? There was a brief pause, during which he might have asked her to dinner again, but didn’t. Perhaps he was shy. He seemed shy. She must be positive. She didn’t feel positive.

‘I … er …’ she began. Come on, Rita. It’s really very simple. And he can always say ‘no’ if he doesn’t want to. ‘I … er … I wondered if you’d care to brave the perils of my cooking …’ Oh why had she phrased it so coyly? ‘… and come to dinner some time.’

‘That would be lovely, Rita! I’d like that!’

Before they had a chance to discuss dates, the music stopped and a disembodied male voice announced, ‘Are about to begin. Would you kindly make your way to the flexible multi-purpose function room? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the main events of the evening.’

There was laughter and cheering at this recorded cock-up. A vein throbbed dangerously near the left temple of Mr Gilbert Pilgrim, the manager. Rodney Sillitoe felt a pit opening up in his stomach. They should have stuck to the Angel. What further teething troubles would there be? Betty clutched at him, perhaps to give support, perhaps to receive it, perhaps a bit of both.

Two panels in the wall that separated the bar from the flexible multi-purpose function room slid open without snags. Neville Badger escorted Laurence and Liz. Laurence wore a slightly twisted smile that seemed to have been set in concrete. Liz was approached by Simon, who took the arm of his pregnant mother. He smiled bravely, trying to ignore her swollen belly, pretending that this embarrassingly obvious evidence of her recent regrettable peccadillo didn’t worry him in the slightest. Rodney assured Jenny that Paul would find them, and she drifted in with the rest of the gathering. Rodney frowned as he heard Elvis telling a mystified EEC Rolled Turkey Breasts Standards Coordinator that flexible multi-purpose function room sounded like some form of advanced superloo.