A Bit of a Do (6 page)

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

Jenny stared at Rita, thunderstruck, dismayed.

‘Rita!’ said Ted.

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

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

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

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

‘He’s gone for a haircut,’ said Ted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh heck,’ said Paul.

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

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

‘Jenny! Come back!’ yelled Paul.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Why didn’t you?’

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

‘What a stormy day.’

‘Well … I’m on edge. Weddings.’

‘I know.’

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

‘Yes,’ said Jenny doubtfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Love! Give them a chance.’

‘What does our marriage mean?’

‘Love! It means I love you, love.’

‘Do you?’

‘Love! I mean … really!’

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

‘Back-up?’

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

‘I’m doing my bit,’ said Ted.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Nothing.’

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

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

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

‘Just give me a minute.’

‘Right.’ He kissed’her. ‘Love!’

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

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

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

‘Ah.’

‘I’m a lucky man, aren’t I?’

‘Pardon?’

‘My wife’s a very attractive woman.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’re a good lad.’

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

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Ted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elvis approached.

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

‘Who sent you?’ said Rita.

‘What?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh good.’

‘They’re illiterate.’

‘She’s changed you.’

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

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

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

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