A Bit of a Do (35 page)

‘Is it? Ah!’ said Neville. ‘I’ve always assumed that people are nice to each other because they like each other, and nasty because they don’t. But I’m probably very naive and simple.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I’d rather hoped somebody might deny that.’

A young Italian waiter took their orders. Southern Comfort for Simon, malt whisky for Laurence, vintage port for Neville, nothing for the expectant Liz. The young waiter’s name, though they would never know it, was Sandro Bernini. He was feeling sad about the death of the olive trees on his parents’ farm and excited about the arrival of his girlfriend from Poggibonsi. Being young, he was feeling more excited about his girlfriend than he was
feeling sad about the olive trees. Being a waiter, he concealed all these feelings.

‘Was that Elvis’s psychological theory?’ asked Liz.

‘Well … yes, actually,’ said Simon.

‘You’re becoming rather friendly with him, aren’t you?’

‘No! We argue all the time.’

‘According to his theory, that makes you bosom pals.’

‘Would you object?’

‘I wouldn’t say it would be a friendship that would advance your career.’

‘Are you in a strong position to criticize liaisons with the Simcock family, “dear”?’ asked Laurence.

‘I’m sure Paul will be a good husband to Jenny,’ said Neville.

‘She could have done a lot worse,’ said Simon.

‘Oh yes,’ said Liz. ‘Virtually every other road sweeper in England would have been worse.’

‘You really are a terrible snob, mother,’ said Simon.

‘I think I’m rather a good snob,’ said Liz.

‘Olympic class,’ said Laurence.

Liz turned her face on her husband like a hose. ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said, ‘which is just as well, as it’s your only talent.’

Laurence held her look, and gave a faint smile. ‘I am a snob,’ he said. ‘And I regret it. If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t have married me.’

There was an icy silence. The Secretary General of the United Nations looked extremely discouraged.

‘Cheer up, Uncle Neville,’ said Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. ‘This is very encouraging.’

Rodney Sillitoe returned to the microphone. The lights dimmed, and Sandro Bernini arrived with the liqueurs. There was a loud fanfare.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Rodney. ‘The judges have selected their short list of five. I shall now introduce the girls individually, and put a few questions to them. Finalist number one is …’ He paused, relishing the power. ‘… Denise Saltmarsh, of Choice Chicky Chunks Limited.’

Jimmy ‘Lino’ Parsons nudged Alderman George Cornwallis,
monumental mason, monumental bore, and mayor. Alderman George Cornwallis woke up abruptly, and fingered his mayoral chains as if to check that he really was mayor. He looked at Denise Saltmarsh as she entered in her swimsuit to modest applause and yet another fanfare, and remembered what he had done. It had been understandable. Attractive young girls didn’t offer themselves to Alderman George Cornwallis every day, or even every decade, but still … Ginny Fenwick was staring straight at him, as if reading his thoughts.

The applause died down. Denise Saltmarsh smiled radiantly.

‘Hello, Denise,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘I don’t know really,’ said Denise Saltmarsh in her mournful Halesowen accent. ‘I feel quite … you know …’

‘Confident?’

All four male judges were tense, willing Denise Saltmarsh to be brilliant.

‘Well … yes … sort of,’ she said.

‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney, and paused, momentarily at a loss. Interviewing was proving harder than compèring. ‘Tell us more about this interesting hobby of yours,’ he said. ‘These ancient Ming vases.’ There was a pause. Denise Saltmarsh didn’t speak, so Rodney had to continue. ‘How did you get interested in them?’

Denise Saltmarsh thought. She smiled radiantly. The male judges willed her on. She smiled radiantly. ‘I don’t know, really,’ she said. ‘I just like them.’

There was a sticky pause. Rodney was sweating. Denise Saltmarsh was smiling radiantly. ‘You were telling me your great-uncle had a house full of Chinese curios, and they fascinated you,’ said Rodney, with only a hint of irritation.

‘Yes, that’s right, he did,’ said Denise Saltmarsh. Rodney waited, and she realized that more was expected of her. ‘And they did,’ she added. ‘Fascinate me, I mean.’

‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney, and he became aware that he was saying ‘jolly good’ too often, and it was something he never said. ‘Tell me more about this unusual ambition of yours. Why do you want to be a freelance hair stylist?’

‘I don’t know really,’ said Denise Saltmarsh. ‘I just do.’

‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Thank you, Denise Saltmarsh.’

There was modest applause, as Denise Saltmarsh left, smiling radiantly.

‘And now,’ said Rodney, ‘our second finalist …’ Again, the pause. ‘… our very own Carol Fordingbridge.’

There was loud applause as the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge entered in her stunning but tasteful swimsuit.

‘So, how are you feeling now, Carol?’ asked Rodney.

The four male judges willed her to say something really dumb.

‘Well, I’m a bit tense,’ she said. ‘But not too bad. I’m pleased to have got into the last five, and if I can go further, it’ll be a bonus.’

‘Too good to be true?’ wrote Craig Welting, managing director of Radio Gadd, shielding his note from Ginny Fenwick.

‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Tell us about this unusual ambition of yours. Why do you want to drive a formula one power boat?’

‘Well, I love the sea,’ said Carol, ‘and I love boats, and I enjoy speed, and I don’t see why the men should have it all their own way.’ She smiled, to take the sting out of her words, but Edgar Hamilton, president of the Food Additives Consultancy Council, clutching at straws and shielding his note from Ginny Fenwick, wrote ‘Feminist?’

Ginny Fenwick wrote, ‘These judges are a load of wankers,’ in shorthand, and shielded it from nobody.

‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Tell us more about this unusual hobby of yours. What got you interested in collecting antique jewellery?’

The doors burst open, and ten women and five men, mostly young, mostly wearing jeans, poured into the room. They were led by the tall sculptperson, Melissa Holdsworthy, prematurely grey, fiercely handsome. She carried a banner which read, ‘We’re people too.’

Other banners stated, ‘Ban beauty contests’, ‘Stop treating women as objects’, ‘End this humiliation’, ‘Ban intensive farming’, ‘“No” to battery chickens’, ‘“No” to battery people’, ‘Don’t judge us by our bodies’ and ‘Preserve British manhood – pickle a man tonight’. One girl had a tee shirt with ‘Chicken farmers are pigs’ on the front, and ‘Pig farmers are chicken’ on the back. They all shouted at the tops of their voices.

Alderman George Cornwallis thought it was a terrorist attack, and hid under the table. Miss Amaryllis Thrupp fled. It was
important, out of professional loyalty to the Theatre Royal Repertory Company, that her beauty remain unscarred. Jimmy ‘Lino’ Parsons hurled himself at the nearest protestor, slipped, twisted his ankle, fell, spraining his knee, and ended up, as always, on the floor. Craig Welting, the Australian entrepreneur of the air-waves, enjoyed the happiest moment of his life to date. He punched an attractive leftist activist viciously in the mouth. Ginny Fenwick sat calmly at the judges’ table, writing furiously in shorthand.

Rodney Sillitoe rushed out to inform the reception desk and summon help. Several fights broke out. Simon Rodenhurst yelled ‘Scrag them. Scrag them,’ from the safety of his seat. Ted did battle with one of the male protestors. Graham Wintergreen, completely forgetting to look bluff, snarled and scowled and loudly regretted that he couldn’t take part. ‘Bloody high bloody blood pressure,’ he grumbled furiously. ‘Can’t do anything with bloody high bloody blood pressure.’ ‘Calm down, dear,’ said his wife Angela. ‘Remember your blood pressure.’

Craig Welting grabbed a male protestor’s banner, and tried to hurl it onto the stage. Unfortunately, as he wound himself up to throw, the male protestor twisted him round, and he flung the banner right into the middle of the judges’ table, where it knocked his own large glass of vintage port all over Ginny Fenwick’s despatches. She looked up, stood up, hurled the banner back at him, sat down, and calmly continued to write. She looked as if she thought it was the Intercontinental Hotel, Beirut, and the vintage port was blood. The banner sailed far over Craig Welting’s head and poleaxed the hotel’s duty first-aid officer as he rushed into the room.

Rita watched with a distaste which. Ted completely misunderstood.

Mr Gilbert Pilgrim, the manager, could remain on the sidelines no longer. He strode towards the smallest of the female protestors and attempted to capture her, thus incurring the full and mighty wrath of the tall, handsome Melissa Holdsworthy. She strode up to him, grabbed him by the hair, and attempted to yank him fiercely backwards off the poor, overwhelmed girl. All that happened was that his wig came off. Melissa Holdsworthy, expecting to grapple with the full weight of an overfed man and finding that she was holding only a repulsive object which looked
like a hairy frisbee, hurtled backwards. With great athletic skill, she regained control, narrowly missed three tables, swung round three times like a hammer thrower, hurled the wig into the air, and remained, arm outstretched, a magnificent figure, a Greek athlete in the first ever Olympic games, motionless, as if posing for a vase, while the wig sailed across the flexible multi-purpose function room like a dead chihuahua and landed smack on top of the bluff Graham Wintergreen’s bald head. It was the furthest that a hotel manager’s wig had ever been thrown onto a bald head by an avant-garde sculptress during a melee in the middle of a beauty contest on a Saturday night since records began.

By the time the in-house security men turned up, nine protestors had been overcome, and it was the work of a moment to pin the other six to the ground. Alderman George Cornwallis, monumental mason and mayor, realizing that it wasn’t a terrorist attack, surreptitiously removed all the loose change from his pockets and spread it on the floor. Mr Gilbert Pilgrim retrieved his wig, in great embarrassment, Alderman George Cornwallis picked up the change noisily, and emerged from under the table saying, ‘Think I’ve managed to retrieve it all. Good God! What’s happened??’ and order was restored.

The police arrived shortly after order was restored, and took the fifteen protestors away. The protestors refused to cooperate, letting their bodies go limp, and had to be carried out. At the suggestion of the duty manager Mr F. Lombardo, who had been conspicuous by his absence until the police arrived, they were removed by a side door to avoid bad publicity. Mr Gilbert Pilgrim, who was wearing his wig again and would never be heard to refer to its brief departure from the top of his head, was not yet up to such clear thinking, but then, as he would tell Mr F. Lombardo later, he’d been ‘in the front line’.

Since the protestors were totally limp and inactive, and the police took them with such avuncular kindness, it was surprising that two of the protestors later had ribs broken and one sustained a broken leg. The police said that they went berserk in the Black Marias, and only Paul, Jenny, Elvis, Rita and Ginny Fenwick had serious doubts about their version of events.

How much effect can protests have? It didn’t seem that anybody changed their minds that night about the ethics of beauty
contests, or of intensive chicken farming, but several waiters and waitresses would never again feel quite the same about their manager, Mr Gilbert Pilgrim.

The night skies still wept for the town’s lost innocence. Inside, Rodney Sillitoe returned to the microphone. The lights were dimmed. Everything returned to normal. Well, almost normal. Many people found the behaviour of Rita surprising.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Rodney. ‘I must apologize for the delay. And I would like to thank all those of you who helped to remove those misguided young people.’

‘They weren’t misguided,’ shouted Rita. ‘They were right.’

‘Rita!’ said Betty and Ted in unison.

‘Well, they were,’ said Rita quite loudly, but no longer shouting. ‘And after all
they
weren’t violent. We were.’

‘They asked for everything they got,’ growled Ted.

‘I don’t think they were right,’ said Rodney. ‘However, Rita does have a point about the violence.’ Mr Gilbert Pilgrim couldn’t stop his fingers from moving up to his wig. ‘They were not the initial perpetrators of violence. That is true. And I do have to admit to a sneaking admiration for their courage and passion.’

‘Is he going soft too?’ groaned Ted, and there were other cries of dissent.

‘No, no,’ said Rodney. ‘Please! My point is this. No violence was intended to us personally, so there’s no reason why we should let it spoil our evening, on which many people have spent a lot of money.’

‘Hear hear,’ exclaimed a drumsticks size controller, and there was laughter.

Rodney introduced, and interviewed, the three remaining finalists. They were Beverley Roberts, Hannah Macpherson, and Glenys Williams of Cambrian Chickens. He asked them how they got their unusual hobbies and ambitions, and many and varied were the replies.

The judges filed out. Both Ginny Fenwick and Amaryllis Thrupp offered helpful arms to Jimmy ‘Lino’ Parsons, and he availed himself of both, so as not to offend either.