A Bit of a Do (34 page)

‘Jenny told you that, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, but …’ He was sweating. The room seemed to have got extremely small and hot. Yet Carol looked so cool and soft and absurd, sitting there in her bra and panties, nibbling plain crisps.

‘But what, Paul?’

‘She didn’t know that I was going to …’

‘… blackmail me?’

‘Well … yes.’

The long-haired Carol looked him straight in the face. Her lovely, soft face looked troubled and disappointed rather than angry. She was forcing him, in her quiet, seemingly unassertive way, to return her gaze. He longed to turn away.

‘He was a pig,’ she said, with a slight shudder. ‘He got me drunk. Drink and sex don’t seem to mix very well with me.’ Paul closed his eyes. ‘When Mr Rodenhurst found out, he sacked me, even though it had happened three years before. I couldn’t go for unfair dismissal, could I, with all the publicity?’ She turned away, tired of it all. ‘Oh go on. Tell the judges. Ruin my chances. I probably wouldn’t have won anyway.’ She swept the packet of crisps off the dressing table.

‘Oh heck,’ said Paul. ‘I can’t. I can’t blackmail you, Carol.’ He picked up the packet of crisps. ‘I’ll tell Jenny.’

‘There’s no need,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell Jenny either.’

He kissed her gently, on the cheek. She smelt of plain crisps.

‘I’m going to,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to. I can’t live with it.’

‘Paul!’ It seemed important to her. ‘Don’t tell her!’

He squeezed her hand gently. ‘I hope you win,’ he said. ‘I adore you.’

‘Paul!’

‘Oh no. Just as a friend. It’ll be a disgrace if you don’t win.’

‘I know. I’m a bloody genius.’

He hurried out, before she saw his tears.

When he returned to the bar, he tried to look sick. He sat in the chair beside Jenny and squeezed her hand. He tried to move his chair closer, and set it at a more intimate angle.

‘Oh God, this place!’ he said. ‘Jenny?’

Jenny turned a frightened face towards him. She hadn’t liked the sound of that ‘Jenny?’.

‘Jenny? There’s something I’ve got to tell you. When you were in hospital … having Thomas … the night he was born … it was a very … well, not disturbing … emotional experience. I mean I’d never been a father before. I was knocked all of a … not that there’s any … I got drunk. Very drunk. Because I was happy. Because we … oh God. Carol and I …’

‘Oh no!! Oh God!!!’ It was the cry of a rabbit cruelly caught in a trap. It was a dark, helpless, three-in-the-morning scream. Its anguish horrified him.

‘It only happened once.’

‘Oh good! What a relief!’ Her sarcasm was glacial. It came from two hundred thousand years before mankind began to evolve.

If only mankind hadn’t evolved.

‘Listen! Jenny! Please!’ He’d do anything to make up to her for that moment. Hack off his legs at the knees. Hack off the offending organ. Fat lot of good that would do for his marriage. Oh God! ‘When I went out there the first time tonight, it was to see Carol. She said she’d tell you about us if we didn’t call off the protest, but when you told me about her and her uncle I went back and told her I’d tell the judges about her if she told you about us. Then I realized I couldn’t tell the judges, and she said she couldn’t tell you about us. So I needn’t have told you. I’m telling you because I want to.’

‘Is that supposed to make a difference?’

‘It does to me.’

‘Sod you!’ She set off towards the exit. He followed her desperately.

‘Jenny! It means I’m terribly sorry! It means I love you!’

She turned and faced him. He shrank back from her hostility.

‘So!’ she said. ‘It’s over. Our pathetic marriage. Your laughable commitment. Your brief career as a father.’

‘No, I …’ He tried to touch her.

‘Take your dirty hands off me,’ she screamed.

Alec Skiddaw entered, with olives borrowed from Norbert in the Polynesian Bar.

‘You pathetic little rat!’ shouted Jenny, as she swept past him.

The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw looked stunned, then hurt, then furious. Paul broke off his chase to turn back and explain to him. He felt they owed him that much. ‘Not you!’ he said. ‘Me. She was shouting at me.’

He had only stopped for a moment, but when he emerged into the wide corridor in front of the lifts, she had gone.

The last of the scantily clad girls had passed across the stage, and the diners had turned to their turbot mousse at last.

‘Mmm!’ said Rodney Sillitoe, the even bigger wheel behind an even bigger Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. ‘Very subtle. Very delicate.’

Ted Simcock glared at his former friend and, just for a moment, wished that he could stop not speaking to him. He wanted to say, ‘In other words, totally bloody tasteless.’

They were served by a waitress in her late fifties, with a heart of gold, a face like a chipped gargoyle, and huge veined legs like pillars of Stilton. Her name, though they would never know it, was Annie Smailes. ‘I couldn’t be in it tonight, ‘cos I’m working,’ she told them cheerfully.

Rodney and Betty Sillitoe laughed. Rita tried to laugh. Ted tried not to laugh.

Annie Smailes removed Paul and Jenny’s uneaten carrot mousses with mock horror.

‘He’ll be livid, him,’ she said.

Paul had pressed for the lifts, but no lift had come. He had found the bare, stone service stairs, and had hurtled down them to the
ground floor. There had been no sign of her in the foyer. A bald, albino man had emerged from the lift. Paul had rushed into the lift and returned agonizingly slowly to the first floor. He had asked a plump woman to check if there was anybody in the ladies. There hadn’t been. He had gone down the service stairs again, and run to the crèche.

Thomas was gone. Jenny had taken their boy.

Now Paul rushed out into the rain. There was no sign of her. He went over to their battered old ecology-coloured Citroën Diane. It was still there, but that wasn’t surprising, as Jenny didn’t drive.

He felt deeply angry with Carol Fordingbridge. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t led him on …! He wondered if she had closed the emergency exit as she had threatened. He felt a deep disgust with the whole evening, and hurried round to the back of the hotel.

The door was closed, and he couldn’t open it from outside. Paul couldn’t remember when he had ever hated a door as much. He banged on it furiously, and almost broke his hand.

Annie Smailes waddled back, a gloriously unsuitable figure in this temple of the impersonal. She served the Sillitoes and Ted and Rita with their entrecôte steak
marchand du
vin. When she found no takers for the two portions of soya bean loaf
marchand du
vin she said, ‘I daren’t think what he’ll say now. I don’t. I daren’t think. He’ll go bloody spare, him.’

Rodney basked in glory. Betty basked in Rodney’s glory. Ted imprisoned himself in self-pity. Across the room, Liz felt the first faint indications that her time was near.

Only Rita was really worried about the absence of Paul and Jenny. She told herself that it was foolish. They were adult. They knew their own minds. But she couldn’t help it. She had carried Paul in her womb. She would carry him there till she died.

Paul made his way through the labyrinth of corridors, and reached the emergency exit from the inside. He pushed it open, looking for something to wedge against it to keep it open while he went outside to find something to wedge against it to keep it open. There was nothing. Except his shoes. Oh God, was it worth it? Yes!

He wedged his left shoe in the door, and hopped out into the rain. He hopped across the muddy waste. There was still just enough light to see, and he soon found the very same stone that he had used before, where Carol Fordingbridge had dropped it. He picked it up, overbalanced, put his left foot in a puddle and dropped the stone, which splashed him from head to foot. He picked it up angrily and stormed back. He replaced the shoe with the stone, put the shoe on over his sodden, muddy sock, and squelched off through the rain to the car.

Jenny had the car keys! He’d given them to her to keep in her bag, in case he lost them, which he once had.

He shouted abuse at the weeping skies.

Dinner carne to an end. The locals agreed that it had been better than the Angel. The visitors made mental notes never to go to the Angel. The locals felt it was much on a par with the Clissold Lodge. The visitors made mental notes never to go to the Clissold Lodge.

The girls paraded in their sophisticated evening wear. Carol was the nineteenth to appear. There was deafening applause. Her sophisticated evening wear consisted of a silver gown glittering with sequins. It clung to the curves of her body.

‘Carol’s hobbies are travelling, cooking, roller skating, and collecting antique jewellery,’ announced Rodney Sillitoe. ‘Her ambition is to drive a formula one power boat.’

Betty felt that Rodney was getting tired, yet she wished that there were a hundred girls, so proud was she of him.

There was more applause as the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge made a pretty, unaffected exit.

‘Last, but not least, of our tremendous twenty, all the way from Bridport, in Dorset, Jocasta Winkle, of the Ambrosia Poultry Corporation.’

There was another fanfare. Jocasta Winkle entered to cheerful applause and a few whistles. She was a short girl with a huge personality, and an even larger bust. Her sophisticated evening wear had been designed to make her look like a peacock, with holes instead of eyes. It hadn’t worked. She looked as if she were wearing a blue-and-green parachute which the mice had enjoyed. She knew she wouldn’t win, and gave a cheerful, totally
uninhibited wave. There was another roar.

‘Jocasta’s hobbies are sketching, meeting people, dancing, keeping fit, watching rugby, and designing all her own clothes,’ said Rodney. ‘Her ambition is to open her own fashion house.’

There was a last burst of applause as Jocasta Winkle made her cheerful exit.

A buzz of conversation burst out in the flexible, multi-purpose function room. Rodney stilled it with his hand.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the judges will begin the hard work of reducing the terrific twenty to the fabulous five. In the meantime, the staff will take your orders for coffee and liqueurs.’

He got a good round of applause as he stepped down, and when he got back to their table, Betty kissed him and said, ‘You were wonderful.’ Rita said, ‘Yes, Rodney. Well done.’ Ted passed Rodney a note. He read it, and passed the after-dinner mints. Betty raised her eyebrows to heaven, and Rita passed Ted a note under the table.

Ted read the note aloud. ‘
Please talk to Rodney. All this passing notes is so childish.
’ To Rita he said, ‘What are you doing if you aren’t passing notes?’

‘That’s completely different,’ said Rita. ‘I passed you a note because I didn’t want them to know, not because I’m not speaking to you. Rodney’s enough on edge with his compèring without your contribution.’

‘I am not on edge,’ said Rodney. ‘I have the natural pent-up excitement of the performer. That’s not being on edge.’

‘I didn’t intend “on edge” to be rude, Rodney,’ said Rita. ‘I just meant the success of the whole evening depends on you. You can do without overgrown schoolboys passing you notes.’

‘Rita!’ said Ted. ‘I have a real grievance. I’ve been stabbed in the back by my best friend. That’s standing on your adult dignity, not behaving like an overgrown schoolboy.’

‘Oh God, Betty,’ said Rita. ‘Why do men have to take umbrage so easily?’ She turned to Ted. ‘Ted! Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair, make it up with Rodney.’

‘What do you mean, “Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair”?’ said Betty.

Rita screamed. The conversation in their vicinity faltered, then
carried on as if nothing had happened, so that Rodney and Betty wondered if they’d imagined it, until Ted spoke.

‘Rita!’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Screaming,’ said Rita calmly. ‘We all used to be such good friends, and now we can’t open our mouths without rubbing somebody up the wrong way. And I find that very unpleasant. So I screamed. All right?’

‘No, Rita, it is not all right,’ said Ted. ‘I mean … Rita! … people do not scream at public functions.’

‘All the more reason for doing so, then,’ said Rita.

And she screamed again.

‘Am I imagining things, or did Rita just scream?’ asked Neville Badger.

‘I think she did,’ said Laurence. ‘I wonder if she’s going off her head.’

‘I think she’s discovering how to express her feelings,’ said Liz. ‘That can be quite intoxicating, Laurence.’

‘Is the insinuation in that particular verbal hand grenade that I can’t express my feelings?’ said Laurence.

‘Good Lord, no!’ said Liz. ‘I’m sure you’d be able to express them, if you ever had any.’

‘Children! Please!’ said the immaculate Secretary General of the United Nations.

Simon Rodenhurst turned to Neville Badger earnestly. ‘Don’t be discouraged,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t bother to be rude if they didn’t care.’ He leant forward, to include Laurence and Liz. ‘That’s psychology,’ he added, with a hint of pride.