A Bit of a Do (30 page)

Neville recovered slowly, and waited for her opening gambit with stoic resignation. Used in these last months to being avoided, he was suddenly being approached from all sides.

‘I’m all right for a lift home, am I, Neville?’ Rita asked.

Neville slowly realized, with a feeling of immense relief, that
somebody had said something which he understood. Perhaps the nightmare was over. ‘Oh, absolutely!’ he said. He put an arm round Rita and hugged her warmly, in impulsive gratitude for her comprehensibility. ‘Dear Rita! You’re a breath of sanity in a mad world!’ He realized that he had his arm round her, and withdrew it as speedily as good manners permitted.

What
has
happened? thought Rita. Had she suddenly become a raging beauty? True, ‘You’re a breath of sanity in a mad world’ was hardly what every woman wanted to hear from the man in her life, but Neville’s hug had proclaimed a different message. Rita tried not to show how fast her heart was beating.

What
has
happened? thought Neville. Here’s another one approaching. Suddenly I’m not poor embarrassing old Neville any more. I’m the sparkling epicentre of a town’s social whirlpool!

‘You couldn’t by any chance give me a lift home,’ said the new arrival.

‘Absolutely,’ said Neville with a hint of disappointment, for it seemed that his popularity was as much for his car as his personality. Rita noticed the hint of disappointment, and her heart leapt. ‘The more the merrier,’ said Neville, and Rita saw with pleasure the displeasure that Liz couldn’t quite hide when she realized that she was going to have to share her lift with Rita. ‘Come on, girls!’ said Neville, and he put one arm round Rita and the other arm round Liz, and Rita and Liz gave each other false smiles and wondered which of them Neville would drop off first, or, more important, which he would drop off last and, as he yawned and lurched at the same time, whether he would drop off before he dropped either of them off, and Laurence and Ted tried to hide their dismay as they watched the trio depart, and Rita’s last sight of Ted that night was of him lolling nonchalantly against a radiator, with steam … yes, steam! … rising from his backside! And Betty Sillitoe, flushed with her winnings, felt the pleasure drain away as she witnessed the total failure of her plans for reconciliation all round, and Neville Badger, utterly oblivious of the effect their exit was having on so many people, breezed out, his weariness forgotten in the pleasure of having a woman on each arm, and the moment he was out of the door, he remembered Jane and felt … yes yes! … a sharp pang of the old loss, so that it wouldn’t matter at all which of them he dropped off last.

And at the bar Rodney Sillitoe found himself between Harvey Wedgewood and Jenny, who was handing back their empty glasses because she counted barmen among the world’s underprivileged, which would have hurt the dapper, ageless Eric Siddall deeply if he’d known.

‘Help me, Jenny,’ said Rodney.

‘What?’ said Jenny cautiously, alarm bells ringing.

‘I keep my chickens in conditions that would make the average Siberian labour camp look like a Masonic dinner by comparison with.’

‘Oh, Rodney!’

‘My chickens never go to Masonic dinners. My chickens never get the chance to roll one trouser leg up and become chief constables. You’ll help me let them out this time, won’t you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jenny. ‘I just don’t think it’s the right way to go about it.’

‘I’m disappointed in you, Jenny.’ Rodney turned to Harvey Wedgewood, the actor, who wasn’t as pretty, but might prove more receptive. ‘How do you feel about doing something really amazing tonight?’

‘Absolutely,’ boomed Harvey Wedgewood, the actor. ‘But with whom?’

‘With me.’

Harvey Wedgewood fixed a withering glare on Rodney.

‘Sir!’ he thundered. ‘You have allowed a popular prejudice against the theatre to cloud your judgement!’

‘No! Not that!’ said Rodney, but Harvey Wedgewood had stalked off with a greater sense of being wronged than he had ever shown as Lear. Rodney turned to Eric Siddall, his last chance. ‘Alec?’ he said. ‘Will you help me?’

‘If I can, sir,’ said Eric Siddall. ‘What can be done will be done. Have no fear.’ He made no further attempt to correct Rodney’s belief that he was called Alec. In the end, the customer is always right. ‘What can I do for you, sir? Speak and I shall listen.’

‘All my chickens have come home to roost and it’s time to let them roost where they like.’

‘What? Sir.’

‘We’re going to let my chickens out of the factory. Set them free.’

Eric Siddall slid off along his invisible rails, grabbed an empty glass, and hesitated. The perfect barman was about to make his first mistake. He flung his right arm up in the air.

‘Oh no,’ said Rodney. ‘Is she?’

Betty hurried over. To Rodney she said, ‘Oh, Rodney!’ To Eric she said, ‘Thanks, Alec, but I thought you said you couldn’t raise your right arm.’

‘Oh dear!’ said Eric Siddall, barman supreme.

‘Oh, Betty,’ said Rodney. ‘Are you drunk again?’

‘Not me!’ said Betty. ‘You!’

Betty and Rodney stared at each other, then turned to stare at Eric Siddall.

‘Alec!’ they said.

‘Oh dear,’ said the dapper, ageless Eric Siddall, suddenly naked of catch-phrases.

Now there was much putting on of coats. The room rang with good nights loud and good nights soft, good nights sincere and good nights false. There was a sudden rush for copies of
With A Hey Nonny No.
Harvey Wedgewood signed them both with pleasure.

‘Your taxi’s arrived, Mr Wedgewood,’ said Graham Wintergreen to Harvey Wedgewood’s surprise, since he hadn’t ordered one.

Melissa Holdsworthy, the tall, handsome sculptperson, strode out majestically with a last, meaningful glance at the suave Doctor Spreckley. Betty Sillitoe managed to get Rodney Sillitoe to the car. At last the actor was gone. Graham Wintergreen breathed a sigh of relief.

‘No reconciliation, then?’ said Ted, as Laurence put his coat on prior to leaving alone.

‘No. Nor you?’

‘No. Well … we’re better off without them, Laurence. We are!’

‘Please don’t try to pretend you’ve done me a favour,’ said Laurence.

‘Laurence! Don’t be like that,’ said Ted. ‘I mean … we’re in the same boat, you and I. I mean … we are!’

Then Laurence was gone, and Paul and Jenny were approaching
with the carrycot and Elvis Simcock and Simon Rodenhurst converged on them too, and Elvis turned and gazed straight into the gauche Davina Partridge’s hot, uncomfortable eyes, and she blushed and bolted for the last time that night, and the cynical Elvis said, ‘I wonder how much her parents paid for the education that screwed her up. Probably sent her to a finishing school in Switzerland which finished her completely,’ and Simon Rodenhurst knew that Elvis was really talking about him, and couldn’t think of anything witty to say, and scowled, and scurried off with an impulse to ask Davina Partridge out to dinner, but as usual with women he was too late, the whole covey had gone. And Elvis hurried off to insult Simon one last time, and Paul and Jenny were left alone with Ted.

‘You certainly find out who your friends are at a time like this,’ said Ted, whose backside was now completely dry.

‘We’re your friends, Dad,’ said Paul.

‘Definitely,’ said Jenny.

‘I thought you were angry with me for what I did,’ said Ted.

‘We are,’ said Paul. ‘But I don’t think we expect people to be perfect any more.’

Ted and Paul hugged each other, and Ted and Jenny kissed each other, and Ted set off for his lonely home, and Paul and Jenny kissed each other.

‘Except you,’ said Jenny.

‘You what?’ said Paul.

‘I think you’re perfect,’ said Jenny.

She turned to wave cheerfully to the long-haired Carol Fording-bridge, who was in a group that were just leaving. Carol managed to catch Paul’s eye, behind Jenny’s back, and her look said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll never tell,’ and then she was gone.

‘I have a perfect husband,’ said Jenny. ‘I have a perfect marriage.’

‘Oh heck,’ thought Paul.

The mournful swish of the windscreen wipers was making Rodney Sillitoe feel nervous. If only he hadn’t decided to act as compère as well as host.

It was established policy to give all the regions a tum at hosting the most prestigious event in the intensive poultry farming calendar. It was established tradition that the managing director of the largest firm in the chosen region should act as host. Last year, when the chicken caravan had rolled into Dumfries, Norman Preston, the ebullient head of Border Frozen Products Ltd, had also acted as compère, and by common consent he had handled a difficult evening with skill and humour. ‘Anything Norman Preston can do, I can do better,’ had been the sentiments of Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. Now he wasn’t so sure. He wished he’d chosen one of the disc jockeys from Radio Gadd.

He had been thrilled to learn that the Grand Universal Hotel would be opening at last a fortnight before the crowning. Instead of the drab ballroom of the clapped-out Angel, his great moment would come in the gleaming new Royalty Suite of the Grand Universal. Now he wasn’t so sure about that either. It would be too new, too impersonal, too efficient. He longed for the cosy, raddled charm of the Angel. He even felt nostalgic about Alec Skiddaw’s boils. What was good enough for Terry Wogan, Ian Botham, Des O’Connor, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, General Dayan, Frank Carson, Michael Heseltine, Professor A. J. Ayer and Joan Sutherland, should have been good enough for him.

Rodney sighed deeply as he pulled off the Flannerly Roundabout into the cul-de-sac. Onto the top of the signpost, which for many years had read ‘C.E.G.B. Only’, the Automobile Association had tacked a rather pathetic small yellow sign which stated, but only for those with excellent eyesight, ‘Hotel And’.

‘It’ll be all right,’ said Betty Sillitoe, who was overdressed as usual.

‘Welcome to Yorkshire’s first Grand Universal Hotel,’ said a dripping billboard.

‘I wonder if I was wise to invite Ted,’ said Rodney Sillitoe.

Twenty minutes later the cold, relentless spring rain was still falling on the bare flowerbeds and immature saplings of the muddy, semi-landscaped gardens of the Grand Universal Hotel. In front of the hotel, facing the ring road, the flags of all the nations were flapping petulantly in the breeze, indignant at landing up in this bleak comer of the globe. Beside the hotel, a large car park, studded with yet more immature trees which in less than twenty years might become adequate windbreaks, stretched down to the concrete banks of the muddied, rain-swollen Gadd.

Ted Simcock looked up defiantly at the glass-and-concrete structure of the hotel. He was delighted to see that it was already disfigured by one narrow, rusty, dribbling stain. He hoped it was a harbinger of structural problems to come.

The glass doors hissed open like alarmed snakes at his approach, and hissed shut behind him with the disapproval of puritanical women. He walked smack into a wall of plastic sexuality. There was a faint smell of air freshener. Piped music tinkled all about him, and in the centre of the vast foyer a fountain tinkled. He found it hard to lift his feet across the luxurious carpet. He felt clumsy, cloddish, wet. He was sure everyone knew that he was bankrupt. He glared about him with a defiance which he thought concealed, but which in fact revealed, his lack of confidence. His prized raincoat, the most expensive that Beacock and Larkin’s stocked, felt like a flasher’s mac. How fervently he wished that he didn’t have to ask the way to the Royalty Suite.

To his right, a huge noticeboard told him, uselessly, what time it was at that moment in every Grand Universal Hotel in the world.

Behind the reception desk, a much smaller noticeboard announced the day’s events. ‘Royalty Suite: Miss Frozen Chicken (UK). Hawaiian Room: Consolidated Linen. Balinese Room: Mr E. G. Davies (Private Party). Your duty manager: Mr F. Lombardo.’

The music tinkled to a stop, and a sing-song female voice, its human equivalent, announced, ‘We have a message for Sir Hamish McTaggart. Will Sir Hamish McTaggart please contact the reception desk situated in the ground floor foyer immediately? Thank you.’

Ted felt tempted to pretend that he was Sir Hamish McTaggart, a rich eccentric in his flasher’s mac. It was lucky he didn’t. There was no Sir Hamish McTaggart. There was no Consolidated Linen or Mr E. G. Davies (Private Party). Early bookings were poor, and the manager, Mr Gilbert Pilgrim, was as frightened of looking a failure as Ted.

The Royalty Suite was on the first floor. Ted only took the lift because he couldn’t find any stairs. There wasn’t the slightest noise when the doors closed, no sickening lurch of his nervous stomach as they set off, not a groan, not a hiss, not a shudder, to indicate that they were moving. Ted was reluctantly impressed.

The doors slid open silently, and he stepped back into the foyer.

‘Sorry, sir. Bugger’s been on the blink all week,’ said an elderly porter, who appeared to be wearing the uniform of a colonel in the New Zealand Army.

He was quite surprised when Ted gave him fifty pee.

The patriotically decorated bar of the Royalty Suite was airy, well lit and gleaming. The carpet was red. The wide, square armchairs were blue. The walls were white. Everything was set at right angles. The chrome ashtrays revolved when pressed, and could mash large cigars into tiny pieces.

The moment Rodney Sillitoe saw Ted, he approached him. The room had an enormous capacity for devouring crowds and didn’t yet appear at all full, but he knew that it would take courage for Ted to enter it.

‘Ted!’ he said. Ted would have known who he was even if he hadn’t been his best friend, because Rodney wore a name tag. All the representatives of the intensive poultry industry wore name
tags. ‘I’m glad you came!’

Ted took some pieces of paper from his pocket, and handed one to Rodney.

‘Thank you for inviting me,’
read Rodney. ‘What’s up, Ted? Have you lost your voice?’

Ted handed another piece of paper to Rodney, with grim satisfaction.

‘
No. I’m not talking to you
,’ read Rodney. ‘Ted! There’s no need to take it like that.’

But Ted was already on his way to the bar, by a circuitous route which took him right past Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch, so that good manners obliged Simon to turn away from a group of name-tagged chicken executives to greet him.

‘Ted! Good to see you!’ lied Simon.

Ted handed Simon one of his pieces of paper.

‘
Or to you
,’ read Simon. ‘What?’

But Ted hadn’t waited for a reply.

The males wore drab, sombre suits. The females wore colourful, glamorous evening dresses. It was the bird world in reverse. Simon joined drab Rodney and his gleaming gold-and-red mate Betty.

‘Ted wouldn’t talk to me,’ he said.

‘He isn’t talking to me,’ said Rodney. ‘He’s accepted my invitation, and he isn’t talking to me.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ said Betty.

‘Will he talk to you?’ said Simon Rodenhurst.

‘If he doesn’t, I’ll give him a talking to such as he’s never had,’ said Betty Sillitoe.

‘Thank you for inviting me,’ said Laurence Rodenhurst.

‘Don’t thank me,’ said the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Thank Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. Rodney’s invited me and my guests at his expense. It’s my reward for fifteen years of legal service. I think he genuinely believes he’s doing me a favour.’

‘And you thought that if you have to endure it, why shouldn’t I?’

‘Exactly. No!’

‘Neville?’ Laurence led Neville over to the wide windows, which afforded an excellent view over the rain-drenched ring
road. All the main function rooms looked east, away from the town, over the ring road to the twee, red-brick houses of an almost completed executive housing estate. Right opposite the hotel and the flags of all the nations, across the busy, perilous ring road, there was a smaller row of sodden, flapping flags marking the Show House, which would soon afford its lucky executive purchaser a magnificent view of the Grand Universal Hotel. ‘I’m probably being a bit rude, as your guest,’ said Laurence, ‘but will you give me a straight answer to a straight question?’

‘It depends what the question is,’ said Neville Badger frankly.

‘The question is …’ Laurence pressed down on an ashtray. Its top spun fiercely, as it mashed the air. ‘… are you involved in an intimate relationship with Liz?’

‘This is what you were hinting at the horse-racing evening, isn’t it? I didn’t understand at the time.’

‘Don’t prevaricate. You aren’t in court now. Are you having an affair with my wife?’

‘Certainly not! When I realized that must be what you’d been driving at, I couldn’t understand why. Why on earth should you think that?’

‘On the slenderest evidence. Liz told me she loved you.’

‘What???’

A taxi detached itself from the stream of traffic, and slid into the cul-de-sac. It carried Rita Simcock. She hated spending money on taxis, but if she’d come by bus she’d have got splashed with mud between the ring road and the hotel, and she didn’t want Neville to see her all splashed with mud.

Neville, unaware of this, was staring at Laurence with something near to horror. Laurence didn’t take his eyes off the ring road.

‘She said it was serious and the real thing,’ he said.

‘She did? Good Lord. Good Lord! She said … she loved me? I assure you this is complete news to me, Laurence.’

‘Is it? You took her to dinner at the Clissold Lodge last Thursday fortnight.’

‘My God! Have you been employing a private detective?’

‘The wine waiter told me. He’s a patient of mine. He’s an awful gossip.’

‘He’s an awful wine waiter. I’ve seen Liz twice since that
evening at the golf club. It was pleasant. Intimate in the manner of old friends. But totally platonic. Well, there may have been the vaguest tingle of sexuality. You know Liz.’

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Me, in that sense, I do assure you,’ said Neville Badger, with all the hurt dignity at his command.

Betty Sillitoe waited until Ted had got his drink from the dark, intense Alec Skiddaw, who had seen not only the signed photographs but also the writing on the wall, and had left the Angel the moment the Grand Universal opened.

‘Hello, Ted,’ she said, approaching him warily. ‘I gather you aren’t talking to Rodney.’

Ted didn’t reply.

‘Aren’t you talking to me?’ she asked.

‘I’m talking to you, Betty,’ said Ted wearily. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you.’

They sat, side by side, on the square blue chairs with gleaming chrome arms.

‘Ted!’ said Betty. ‘Life’s too short. Rodney’s your best friend.’

‘Was.’

‘Ted!’

‘Was, Betty! I mean … Betty … it was my life, the foundry.’

‘It was a tumble-down mess of rusting sheds.’

‘It was mine, Betty. I mean … it made things. Good things. The best toasting forks this side of Scandinavia. I mean … it did. So when it fails, what does my “best friend” do? He rushes in and buys it. I mean … stupid birds crapping on the very spot where quality door knockers had been lovingly fashioned by skilled craftsmen. I mean!’

‘You got a quick sale at an excellent price. Rodney was helping you in your fight to return to solvency.’

‘It wasn’t an excellent price. It was the market price.’

‘For a site in that condition in that area sold at that speed under those circumstances, the market price was an excellent price.’

‘He was helping himself. A quick sale when he needed it. Be honest, Betty. He was.’

‘I won’t deny it was convenient. But … business is business.’

‘Exactly. This is it. It doesn’t count for much, when business is
concerned, doesn’t lifelong friendship. So … I won’t speak to him.’

Tinkle tinkle of piped music. God, its complacency was irritating when you were angry. And Betty was angry. It was another reversal of bird life, the glamorous female being fiercely protective of her drab mate. She pulled angrily at her chair to swing it round, to face Ted, to use her anger. But the bloody things were fixed to the floor. Everything conspired to keep people at a distance from each other. Tinkle tinkle. Only piped emotions please. ‘This is his big night,’ she said, fighting her anger down. ‘Please … for me … don’t spoil his big night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ted.

‘Why have you come?’ said Betty.

‘To spoil his big night,’ said Ted.

Laurence Rodenhurst and Neville Badger were also finding that the only way to sit was side by side. If you sat facing each other, you were so far apart that you had to shout. It reminded Laurence of an airport lounge. No wonder he felt a tension which grew with every tinkle of music, so carefully chosen to dispel tension by Grand Universal’s consultant industrial psychologists.

‘Do you promise me there’s nothing behind these dinners with Liz?’ he asked tensely.

‘Nothing. I’ve taken Rita out more than Liz.’

‘Maybe, but only because you keep having to make up to her for being rude to her.’

‘I suppose so, though actually I find her quite good company. I admire her spirit in refusing to have Ted back.’