A Bit of a Do

Finally, Nigel Thick took pictures of all the guests, clustered round the great doorway in an amorphous throng. This picture offended his artistic sensibilities, but pleased his commercial instincts. It was ghastly, but everyone in it would buy a copy.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Say cheese.’

‘Cheese,’ said everybody except Laurence and Ted. Laurence said nothing. Ted said ‘fromage’. There was a little laughter, but not enough.

‘Great!’ said the carefully classless Nigel Thick. ‘Tremendous. Terrific. Marvellous. Fantastic. Fantabulous.’

The less-favoured guests began to move away, through narrow, unlovely streets of domestic brick, municipal stone and financial concrete, towards the drizzle-stained multistorey car park, which sat on the town like a stranded, truncated liner. On their left, in the bus station, laden shoppers clambered onto local buses bound for Bradeley Bottom, Upper Mill and Knapperley. Servicemen and girls with green hair sat in half-empty buses bound for York, Leeds, Wakefield, Goole, Doncaster, Wetherby, Selby and Hull. Beyond the bus station, in the cattle market, the last few cattle were waiting to be sold, like unattractive boy evacuees left till last in church halls. Old chip bags and empty packets of salt and vinegar-flavoured crisps bowled along the pavements in the fresh breeze. The town smelt of salt and vinegar and stale beer. The wedding guests felt out of place, and hurried to their cars.

The close relatives drifted slowly along the broad path between the graves, towards Tannergate, where shoppers gawped, and the beribboned limousines waited.

‘Made an assignation with him yet?’ said Laurence Rodenhurst under his breath.

‘What?’ said his wife Liz. ‘With whom?’

‘“With whom?” she says, grammatical even under attack. With the toasting fork tycoon. The knight of the companion set. Well, he’s your type, isn’t he? He has that rough, coarse quality that you regularly mistake for manly strength. I saw you looking at him! Just don’t let me catch you doing anything more than look at him, that’s all.’

‘Oh dear! What would you do if I did? Tear up a paper napkin?’

And, equally sotto voce, as they too walked away between the graves, the Simcock parents sparred.

‘Why did you have to say “fromage”?’

‘People laughed.’

‘Out of pity and embarrassment. Why do you have to ruin the greatest day of my life?’

‘I thought our wedding was supposed to be the greatest day of your life.’

‘It was supposed to be.’

After walking away from Ted in anger, Rita found herself on her own. That was bad. Then Laurence approached her. That was worse.

There was absolutely nothing to say.

‘How old is your father?’ said Laurence at last.

‘Seventy-eight.’

‘Is he really?’ He paused. ‘Is he really? Well done.’ Another pause. ‘Well done indeed.’

Meaningless social noises. Nervous spasms expressed in words. Then silence.

Ted and Liz were following more slowly. Their words were overflowing with meaning.

‘I want you,’ said Liz in a low voice.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ted.

‘I ache for your body.’

‘Oh heck.’

‘We’ll see you at the hotel, then,’ said Paul, when all four parents had at last arrived at the cars.

Ted kissed the radiant bride. ‘You look a picture, love,’ he said. ‘A picture.’

This time, Rita found it impossible to hide her irritation.

The reception was held in the Garden Room of the Clissold Lodge Hotel. There were two three-star hotels in the town. The Clissold Lodge belonged to Superior Hotels Ltd, who stood for quality. The Angel belonged to Quality Hotels Ltd, who stood for almost anything. The Clissold Lodge was therefore, at least until the Grand Universal opened, the best hotel in town. It was a late Georgian pile of no great beauty, a forbidding mass of darkening red brick, set in its own spacious grounds on the northern edge of the town. It had been erected by Amos Clissold, who made a fortune out of glue. His advertising slogan ‘Ee! Buy gum! Buy Clissold’s’ hadn’t changed for a hundred and twenty years. But after four generations of glue tycoons the dynasty had dissolved, other men had taken over the glue factory, and the Estate had sold the house.

The Garden Room was round the back. It was pleasant, spacious, dignified. French windows led out into its own private, walled garden, so that, when the sun shone, functions could be held indoors and out. And now the sun was shining quite warmly. Well, it would for the Rodenhursts, thought Ted.

There was a splendid-looking buffet down one wall, with a turreted three-tiered cake, and at the far end from the French windows there was another table with champagne bottles and glasses. The two waitresses wore smart black-and-white outfits. Paul and Jenny wondered how much, or rather how little, they were being paid.

Ted’s plate was laden with pork pie, tiny sausage rolls, hard-boiled egg with Danish lump-fish roe, potato salad, Russian salad, tuna fish vol-au-vents, quiche lorraine, pilchard mousse, cottage cheese and anchovy savoury, and a frozen prawn and tinned asparagus tartlet. The buffet was perhaps not quite as magnificent as it looked, he thought, with gastronomic sorrow and social pleasure. He approached the immaculate Neville Badger, who was looking somewhat lost as he wrestled with a glass of champagne, a plate of canapés, and his grief.

‘I … er … I do hope my wife didn’t upset you earlier,’ said Ted.

‘No! Not at all!’ said Neville Badger.

‘I mean … she isn’t the greatest one in the world for saying the right thing.’

‘No, no. I assure you. No problem.’

‘Are there many Badgers left at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger?’

‘No. Only me. My brother’s in finance in Leeds, and …’ Neville stopped, as if either the subject, or he, or perhaps both were exhausted.

‘Your own children haven’t followed you?’ Ted asked.

‘No … I … we couldn’t have children. Oh Lord. Excuse me.’

Neville Badger hurried off. Liz Rodenhurst approached the dumbfounded Ted.

‘You look so lost, so uncouth,’ she said admiringly.

‘Well … thank you.’ Ted accepted the compliment doubtfully. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, as Jenny walked radiantly past them, bearing plates of food for a group of friends by the French windows.

‘No,’ said Liz. ‘She’s attractive. That’s very different. But not beautiful. Except perhaps today.’

‘I can see where she gets it from,’ said Ted. ‘Being attractive, I mean, not being not beautiful.’

‘Thank you. I think.’

‘Liz?’ Ted paused until the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood had passed rather fiercely by, en route to do his duty by talking to Rita’s parents, who were perched on chairs beside the fire extinguisher like wallflowers at a dance. Ted didn’t want the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood to hear what he had to say. On the other hand, he didn’t want to delay too long, in case Rita came in from the garden. ‘Liz? What you said earlier. I mean, wasn’t it? A bit naughty. I mean … words … they needn’t mean much, but they can be … you know … I mean, can’t they? … Disturbing. Dangerous.’

‘Do you really think my words don’t mean much?’ said Liz. ‘Surely they aren’t a total surprise?’