A Bit of a Do (29 page)

‘It’s a very enjoyable evening, isn’t it?’ said Betty Sillitoe, as she steered Rita over to their table by the curtained windows.

‘Yes. Very enjoyable.’

‘It wasn’t a bad meal, was it, considering?’

‘I enjoyed it. Ted hates goulash.’

‘Rita!’

‘Well!’

‘You had a nice long chat with him, didn’t you?’

‘Well, long, anyway.’

Betty gave Rita an assessing look, raised her glass to her lips, realized it was empty, looked round, saw Rodney going over to the bar, sighed, gave Rita another assessing look, and spoke.

‘You get on well with Neville, do you?’ she asked.

‘Ted’s told you what I said, hasn’t he?’

‘No!’ Betty met Rita’s disconcertingly amused stare, and quailed, and amended her reply slightly, to ‘Yes’, and wondered, because Rita was not a person before whom one usually quailed. ‘Is there … er … I mean …?’

‘I don’t know, Betty. I really don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘I think it surprised me almost as much as Ted when I said it. But I’ve been thinking. He has been behaving oddly. Neville. Very
rude sometimes. Really abrupt. Then sometimes, like tonight, incredibly charming. Really attentive. When he came round to pick me up he brought flowers. Ted has never ever brought flowers. I mean … is it that impossible? Am I that awful?’

‘Rita! Of course not!’

‘And I just wondered … I don’t know … maybe he was being so rude because he was fighting against the fact that he was beginning to find me … I can’t say it. It sounds too silly.’

‘… attractive.’

‘Yes. I mean it looks like it tonight. And I thought maybe the rudeness was out of a sort of loyalty to his wife’s memory. Then I thought maybe I’d been reading too many stories in the doctor’s waiting room. But if you’ve noticed it too … I don’t know.’

Neville walked past, and gave them a charming smile, completely unaware that they were discussing him. They smiled back. Rita blushed a little, but no pink spots appeared.

‘What would you do if he did?’ said Betty.

‘Did what?’ said Rita.

‘Did anything.’

‘He’s a very attractive man.’

‘Rita!’

Silence fell between these old friends.

‘Would you like a drink?’ said Betty, as a device for creating movement.

‘Just a tonic, please.’

‘Stay there. I’ll get them.’

To Betty’s relief, Rita did stay there. Betty took her empty glass towards the bar, turning to give Ted a meaningful look. Ted waited for a few seconds, and then, seemingly casually, joined her at the far end of the bar from Rodney.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘It’s just possible.’

‘Oh heck,’ he said. He wanted to move off, but Betty insisted that he stay and have a drink, in case Rita was watching.

When Betty had returned to Rita, Ted set off in pursuit of Neville Badger. Neville was talking to Colonel Partridge. He introduced Ted.

‘Oh yes,’ said Colonel Partridge. ‘You’re the chap whose firm’s failed, aren’t you? Bad luck. Thing like that, tragic. Makes a chap feel so useless.’

‘I wonder if I could have a word in private, Neville,’ said Ted.

If Neville Badger felt any displeasure at this interruption, one faintly raised eyebrow was all he showed of it.

‘You’re a kind-hearted man, aren’t you?’ said Ted, when they had detached themselves from Colonel Partridge.

Neville looked surprised.

‘Well … I … er …’ he said.

‘Exactly! I mean … you are. You’re known for it.’

‘Well … thank you. I try to be.’

‘Your late wife was a kind-hearted woman, wasn’t she?’

‘Very much so.’

‘I think you’re the sort of man who’d … out of respect for your wife’s memory, if nothing else. I mean … aren’t you?’

‘What?’

‘The sort of man who’d never want to hurt anybody deliberately.’

‘Well … yes … I hope I am, Ted.’

‘Right! So! You may think … well, nobody seems too bothered, nobody will get hurt. You’d be wrong, Neville. Very wrong. Need I say more?’

Neville Badger peered gravely at Ted, straining to understand. ‘Yes, I think you do need,’ he said.

‘You mean … you haven’t caught my drift?’

‘Frankly, Ted, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh.
Oh
!’ Ted thought for a moment. ‘In that case, maybe we’d better say no more about it,’ he said at last.

‘About what?’ said Neville.

‘Good man,’ said Ted. ‘You won’t mention any of this to anybody, will you?’

‘I couldn’t, if I wanted to,’ said Neville.

Ted felt vaguely reassured by this conversation, but didn’t know if the feeling was justified. Neville Badger felt vaguely alarmed, but didn’t know if the feeling was justified.

The fifth race proved as exciting as the first four.

Simon Rodenhurst approached Rodney Sillitoe and Ted, as they queued for their winnings. ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

‘I didn’t want to win,’ growled the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. ‘I wanted to give.’ Rodney handed his ticket to Graham Wintergreen, who gave him his winnings.

‘You do give, Mr Sillitoe,’ said Simon. ‘You’ll be giving new jobs to the community when we find those new premises for you.’

Ted, in the act of handing his ticket to Graham Wintergreen, froze. ‘New premises? Are you moving?’ he said.

‘Expanding,’ said Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, proudly. ‘I’m handling it personally.’

Ted hardly noticed that Graham Wintergreen had given him his winnings. He couldn’t have claimed it as a great triumph – he’d only won because he’d chosen to back the same horse as Rodney – but he’d still felt pleased at the prospect of collecting some money. Now even that pleasure had been spoilt. He pocketed the money automatically, as they walked away from the tote desk.

‘Sorry. Was it a secret?’ asked Simon, looking from one to the other.

‘It
was,
yes.’

‘Only from me, Simon,’ said Ted. ‘Clearly I wasn’t supposed to know.’

‘Ted!’ said Rodney.

‘Well, according to your story you were on a knife-edge, not expanding,’ said Ted.

‘I am,’ said Rodney, trying hard not to sound like an even bigger wheel behind an even bigger Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. ‘I’m forced to expand in order not to collapse. I’m on a treadmill of failure. You don’t want me to collapse, do you?’

‘’Course I don’t,’ said Ted. ‘But … I mean … I’d appreciate being told the truth. I mean … I’d appreciate not being patronized because you think I can’t face the truth because you think I’m a failure.’ He stomped off.

‘Sorry,’ said Simon Rodenhurst.

‘Take my advice, Simon,’ said Rodney. ‘Don’t have friends. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.’

Rodney Sillitoe moved off to the bar. It was only right, if he kept on winning, that he should buy a few drinks for the less fortunate. Betty tried to stop him buying a large one for himself,
but he explained that it would look mean if he didn’t.

Ted queued and placed his bet for the sixth race, glad to have something to do. All around him there was chatter and warmth and self-assurance. There was smug enjoyment of success. Only
he
was bankrupt. Only
he
had failed. Only
he
had lost his lover. Only
he
was in danger of losing his wife. As he moved away from the tote he found himself approaching Neville Badger, and decided to veer away. Before he could do so, Neville veered away from him. The insufferable cheek of the man.

Graham Wintergreen announced the auctioning of the horses for the last race, and Ted knew that he couldn’t face the humiliation of sitting there again, unable to afford to bid. But he didn’t want people to say that he hadn’t had the courage to stick it out to the end.

The gents! That was the answer. He locked himself in a cabinet, away from that petty and ignorant throng. What did they know? His boot scrapers with the faces of famous prime ministers had been ahead of their time. His toasting forks were too elegant for a utilitarian age. He was a man out of his time.

He heard the distant cheering for the sixth race. How hollow it all was. How false that undiscriminating rabble were. Anger coursed through him, and he pulled the chain savagely. He had forgotten that he was sitting there fully dressed. The water splashed up and soaked the seat of his trousers.

Betty Sillitoe had won at last, and queued for her winnings, hoping that, as Rodney had lost, it would be safe to leave him on his own for a few minutes.

Rodney bought drinks for everyone at the bar, to celebrate the fact that at last he had lost.

Ted slid back into the bustling bar and stood with his back to the radiator.

Rita couldn’t decide whether to approach Neville Badger, so she walked slowly towards him, giving him the chance to approach her. But Harvey Wedgewood approached her first.

‘Are we going to meet again, Rita?’ he demanded.

‘I very much doubt it.’

‘Now listen. I’ve landed a very small part in a new production of
Hamlet.
They seem to think I can bring a bit of much-needed light relief to the gloomy ramparts of Elsinore. I want you to promise to come and see it and come backstage afterwards.’

‘You’d be horrified if I did. If you remembered me.’

‘I’m not that drunk! Now promise!’

‘All right. I promise!’

‘Good. Good. Good Rita.’ He spoke to her as if she were a puppy. ‘A little kiss for Uncle Harvey.’ He kissed her expansively, fruitily, boozily, not at all as if she were a puppy. He broke off as he saw Laurence passing by, on his way to have a talk with Neville Badger, for which he had been screwing himself up for half an hour. ‘It’s Dan, Dan, the dental man,’ he cried, catching Laurence in his huge goalkeeper’s clasp.

Laurence wriggled free from the human contact like a desperate eel.

‘My good friend Laurence,’ exclaimed Harvey Wedgewood. ‘Do you know my good friend Rita? Of course you do. Now listen to Uncle Harvey. You two have been badly bruised. Why don’t you lick each other’s wounds?’ He saw the distaste on Laurence’s face and added, hurriedly, ‘As it were.’ He lurched away from them, had a thought, and was among them once more. ‘Laurence dreams he’s Welsh,’ he announced. ‘Rita dreams she’s a rabbit. Together you can dream you’re Welsh rabbits.’ He laughed, and was gone.

‘What an awful man,’ said Laurence.

‘I rather like him,’ said Rita. After a pause she added, ‘Don’t worry. I prefer you.’

‘What?’ gasped Laurence.

‘Your place or mine?’

‘What?’

‘For our affair. Harvey has a point, don’t you think? We undeniably have the wounds. So … why don’t we lick them?’

Laurence was making heroic efforts not to look too horrified.

‘Thank you,’ said Rita.

‘What for?’

‘For making those heroic efforts not to look too horrified. I’m teasing, Laurence.’

‘Teasing?
Teasing?
You?’

‘I know! What
can
have got into me?’

Rita bobbed away from him, feeling wonderfully irresponsible,
drunk with the delicious power of not caring what people thought of her. She would speak to Neville Badger before the bubble burst, as burst it must, that being the fate of bubbles.

Laurence watched her in astonishment, and scurried off, also to speak to Neville, who seemed a safe haven after the typhoons of Rita’s appalling playfulness. Laurence reached him before Rita. Neville felt apprehensive. Something in Laurence’s manner reminded him of Ted. He feared another conversation which he wouldn’t understand.

‘Neville?’ said Laurence. ‘May I have a word?’

Neville Badger’s heart sank. It sounded ominous. ‘Well … yes … of course,’ he said.

Laurence interpreted Neville’s apprehension as evidence of guilt. ‘As one of my oldest friends,’ he said, and Neville flinched slightly, ‘would you think very hard before embarking on a course of action that would hurt and humiliate me?’

It was a nightmare! ‘Well, of course,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid I … er …’

‘I think you know what I’m talking about!’

‘No! I don’t!’ The sincerity, even desperation, in Neville’s denial was unmistakeable.

Laurence stared at him. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about?’ he said.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you talking about, Laurence?’

Laurence thought furiously. Maybe he was on the wrong tack altogether. Liz could be very mischievous. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not sure that I know what I’m talking about.’

Laurence moved off hurriedly, and Rita was able to approach at last, wondering why the immaculate Neville Badger, that urbane and dignified man, was gawping in total mystification and disbelief, as if he were the Messiah and had just made his Second Coming in the middle of an English Christmas.