Fair Do's (7 page)

‘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.