A Bit of a Do

‘Amazing!’ said Nigel Thick, with more than his customary accuracy. He took pictures of the four proud parents with the happy couple, of the happy couple with the two bridesmaids, of the two bridesmaids together, of the very young bridesmaid on her own and therefore also inevitably of the very fat bridesmaid on her own, of the bride on her own and therefore also inevitably of the groom on his own, of the proud parents and the happy couple with Rita’s parents. Ted’s parents and Laurence’s parents were dead, and Liz’s widowed mother had remarried, lived in South Africa, and had been advised by her doctor not to travel.

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?’

‘Well … no … I suppose I’ve realized for quite a while that you were … er …’

‘… aflame with sexual hunger.’

‘Yes. No!!! I mean … Liz! … really!’ He glanced round the crowded, buzzing room. Nobody seemed to be listening to them. ‘I knew you were … not unattracted. I sensed you didn’t find me repulsive.’

‘I sense you don’t find me repulsive either.’

‘Well … no … I don’t. Of course I don’t. I mean … you aren’t. Have you tried the tuna fish vol-au-vents? They’re delicious.’

Ted thrust his plate in front of Liz’s nose – her exquisite nose, with those delicately flared nostrils that troubled him so deeply. As a diversion, the plate was a failure. ‘Don’t you want me?’ said Liz, spurning the proffered delicacies.

‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Of course I do, Liz. But.’

He turned abruptly, wriggling to get away with all the desperation of one of the nice, fat roach that he hoped to catch in the autumn competition on the so-called Wisbech trip, when they actually fished the straight, flat Ouse, miles from anywhere. How he wished it was the Wisbech trip today. The long coach ride south, to the flat, fertile Fens. The long, silent hours by the Ouse, under the wide sky. The long coach ride home. Good company. Good fishing. Good ale. Good singing on the coach. He even wished he were at home, at the sink, washing up. Washing up was an underrated pleasure. Not as exciting as sex, but infinitely safer.

He hadn’t shaken Liz off. Realizing that she was following him, realizing how revealing that would be to anybody who suspected, he felt that he had no alternative but to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to get away. He turned to face his tormentor.

‘What do you mean, “but”?’ said Liz. ‘You can’t just say “but” and walk off. It’s unacceptable behaviour both socially and grammatically.’

‘I suppose I meant … oh heck … that this is awful.’

‘Awful? It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. I’m alive again.’

‘Oh yes, I agree. Absolutely. It’s very exciting. It’s absolutely wonderful. But.’

‘… it’s awful?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Oh dear. Poor Ted. Poor poor Ted.’

Liz walked away, leaving him stranded. He bit altogether too ambitiously into a hard-boiled egg, and almost choked.

‘But you promised, Paul. And I mean … what must they think?’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? Never mind the greatest emotional commitment I’ll ever make in my life. Just the parrot-cry of the narrow-minded. “What must they think?”’

They were seated, Paul and his mother, in an alcove in the man-made walled garden. It was a pleasant place of bricked paths and patios, studded with benches and urns. In the centre there was a small, round pond, in which silver carp held an eternal buffet among the water lilies, bladderwort and floating hyacinths. There were arches across which climbing roses had been trained. The clematis were in flower, and in a sheltered corner there was a fig tree, spreading its branches widely but producing only tiny fruit, most of which would drop off before they ripened. Perhaps it was no wonder, in this northern climate hostile to ripening figs, if Rita’s emotional juices had dried out as her hair thinned and grew lifeless, and the worry lines deepened. The peace and calm of this garden couldn’t reach her. It was always November, now, in Rita’s garden.

‘You don’t understand the way their minds work,’ she said. ‘They look down on us. We’re trade. They’re professions. In his own mind, he’s practically on a par with doctors, that one.’

‘In Bolivia, Mum, they have sixty-five per cent infant mortality,’ said the lucky groom with restrained fury. ‘The average life expectancy of the tin miners is thirty-seven. The typical diet is boiled maize, followed, if they’re very lucky, by more boiled maize. Extra boiled maize as a treat at Christmas. So I honestly don’t think my having my hair cut matters very much.’

‘Exactly!’ Rita was briefly triumphant. ‘So it’s not much to ask to have it done, then, is it?’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Paul, leaping to his feet. ‘All right, then. See you later.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘That new unisex place in Newbaldgate.’

‘Paul! Not now! You’re the groom.’

‘So?’

‘Nobody goes for a haircut during their wedding reception.’

‘Then it’s time to break the mould of British social behaviour. I mean I pay my mother the compliment of assuming that she wouldn’t set out to spoil my wedding reception unless she felt that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. So, I shall have a haircut. I don’t want to start me honeymoon riddled with guilt. It might make me impotent. Then they will laugh at me.’

‘There’s no need to be disgusting!’

But Paul had gone in, through the French windows. He walked straight through his wedding reception, through the public rooms of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, down the wide steps, along the semicircular drive, past the rhododendrons and the cawing rooks in the long, narrow wood that screened the grounds from the Tadcaster Road, and out onto the surprisingly warm pavements of the outside world. He hopped onto a number eight bus, and was at the unisex hairdresser’s before the last of his anger had drained away, and he began to wish that he hadn’t gone there.

Ted didn’t see his son pass. His eyes were on Liz, who was approaching him again in a manner that made him feel excited and nervous.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, raising her eyes and her glass of champagne to him. ‘Words are too easy.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Action’s the thing.’

‘Absolutely. Pardon?’

‘Meet me in room 108 in five minutes.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ve booked room 108. For them to change in before they go away. For me to do my hair in if it was blown to bits in the churchyard. Meet me there in five minutes.’

Ted looked round nervously. The hum of conversation was so loud that Kim Philby could have passed secrets to the Russians in the middle of the room without anybody noticing. But he was still nervous.

‘Liz!’

‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Well … yes … of course. Of course I do. But.’

‘Oh! “But” again. But what?’

‘I’m the groom’s father. You’re the bride’s mother. It’s their wedding day.’

‘Is doing it any worse than wanting to do it?’

‘No, but … I mean … they might come in themselves.’

‘In the middle of their wedding reception? Besides, I have the key.’

‘Yes, but … they’ll be cutting the cake. There’ll be the speeches.’

‘We’ll be back. Nobody’ll miss us in this crush.’

‘Yes, but … we’re pillars of the local community. I mean … Liz! … they don’t do things like that, pillars of the local community. They don’t.’

‘Yes, they do. They just don’t get found out. As we won’t. We’ll never get a safer moment.’ She moved closer towards him, so that briefly their bodies touched. He had to admit that the sensation beat washing up into a cocked hat. ‘I thought you were a man of nerve,’ she said.

‘Oh heck,’ riposted the man of nerve.

‘We’re off on holiday tomorrow. A month with Laurence! I want to remember you and me every day of that month, Ted. Give me something to remember.’

‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell, Liz.’

‘Room 108 in five minutes.’

And then she was gone.

‘Oh heck,’ said Ted. ‘Oh utterly and confounded heck. Oh good God almighty.’ Rita was approaching. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Can I have a word, Ted?’ said Rita anxiously.

‘Yes, if it doesn’t take too long. I mean … oh God.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Rita chose an alcove on the other side of the garden, as far away as possible from the one in which she had talked to Paul. That was one recess she never wanted to see again!

The sun was high in a sky that was now almost entirely blue. Ted’s bushy eyebrows asked the rather weary question, ‘What is it this time?’

‘It’s Paul,’ said Rita. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Ted. ‘They’re never splitting up already! I know youngsters don’t regard marriage as sacred, but …’ He glanced at his watch. ‘… an hour and ten minutes!’ He wished he hadn’t looked at his watch. It reminded him that three of the five minutes had already gone.

‘No! He’s gone to have his hair cut.’

‘Is he mad? Rita!! You’ve been on at him, haven’t you?’

‘I may have just touched on it.’

Rita began to cry. The immaculate Neville Badger approached them. He was adrift on the afternoon’s unfamiliar currents, and was looking for somewhere to drop anchor. He saw that Rita was crying, and developed a sudden interest in silver carp.

‘Love!’ said Ted desperately. ‘What’s up, love?’

‘Everybody says what a picture Jenny looks.’

‘Well … she does.’

‘Nobody says what a picture Paul looks.’

‘Well … he doesn’t.’

‘Bolivian tin miners indeed!’

‘You what?’

‘She’s changing him. He’s never even mentioned Bolivia before. He’s never even sent charity Christmas cards.’

‘He’s never sent any Christmas cards.’

‘This is what I say. She’s changing him.’

An airship was drifting slowly overhead. It had the name of a cigarette firm printed on it in huge letters, and was travelling towards the athletics meeting which the firm had sponsored in a moment of guilt. Did anybody look down from the airship? If so, could they have seen Ted glance surreptitiously at his watch? Five minutes and seventeen seconds. Zero hour plus seventeen. Oh good! Oh God!

He stood up.

‘Don’t leave me alone,’ implored Rita. ‘I hate functions. I feel so … dreary … drab … dull.’

‘Don’t be silly, love,’ said Ted, trying desperately to encourage her, and swiftly. ‘Don’t be so self-conscious. I mean … nobody’s looking at you.’ He realized, even as he said it, that it was not the most felicitously expressed piece of encouragement in the history of the world.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m just a grey smudge.’

‘Love!’ he said. ‘You aren’t a grey smudge. You’re not! I mean … love … I’m a man of discernment. A leader of industry. Would I have married a grey smudge? I mean … would I?’

‘I wasn’t a grey smudge when you married me!’

‘Rita! Love! Look, I’m an Englishman. I’m a Yorkshireman. So, I can’t come out with sweet nothings. I mean … I just can’t. But … I promise you, love … you aren’t … to me … in any way … a grey smudge.’ The die was cast. He knew that he couldn’t not go to room 108, whether he wanted to or not. He would always feel that he should have gone. ‘So … come on. Circulate. Mingle. We’ll never establish our social equality with the Rodenhursts by sitting in comers and moping, will we?’

He led her in through the French windows, into a wall of talk.

Behind them, Neville Badger gloomily dropped a dollop of pilchard mousse into the pond. The silver carp fought for the privilege of devouring their distant relation.

‘There’s Laurence,’ said Ted. ‘Talk to him. Do your bit. Use your charm. Establish our social credibility.’

‘Where are you going?’ Rita was near to panic.

‘If you must know,’ said Ted, lowering his voice, ‘I feel a pressing need to perform a certain natural function.’ It wasn’t a total lie.

‘Ted!’ said Rita, scandalized. ‘You don’t talk about that sort of function at this sort of function!’

‘Well, you asked.’ He steered her over to Laurence, who was moving away from the champagne table with a recharged glass. Ted carried straight on towards the doors which led into the bowels of the hotel.

Rita glared at him, then turned to Laurence and gave him what she hoped was a charming smile. It wasn’t.

‘It’s a lovely buffet,’ she drooled, hating her ingratiating voice. ‘The tuna fish vol-au-vents are a revelation.’

‘They have a good reputation here.’

‘It’s a lovely do altogether. I do like lovely dos.’ Oh shut up, Rita. Listen to yourself. Unfortunately, Laurence had shut up as well. The seconds ticked by, and Rita felt that everyone in the room was gloating over her discomfiture. She felt absolutely enormous, and also about two inches high.

‘Have you had your holidays yet?’ she heard Laurence ask from what seemed like a great distance.

She heard herself start up again. ‘No. We’re going to the South of France with Rodney and Betty Sillitoe. You met them. He’s the one who’s the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.’ Oh God, Rita, why did you have to drag that in? ‘We like France. Well, let’s face it, it’s a bit more sophisticated than Spain these days. We like something a bit out of the ordinary. Where are you going?’

‘Peru.’

They would. They just ruddy well would.

Her parents hobbled painfully towards them, and her heart lurched in anticipation of further disasters.

‘Hello!’ said Laurence, glad of any interruption. ‘And how are Mr and Mrs Twigg?’

‘Spragg,’ said the bow-legged Percy Spragg.

‘Are you really?’ said Laurence. ‘That’s grand! Jolly good! I love these old dialect words.’

‘Dialect words?’ said Percy Spragg, puzzled.

‘Spragg.’

‘That’s my name.’

‘Ah.’

Rita felt real fondness for her father then, for the first time in many years. It wasn’t destined to last long.

‘Well, how are you, anyway?’ said Laurence.

‘Grand,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Just grand. By ’eck, Mr Rodenhurst, all them cars in t’car park. We’ve seen some changes in us lifetime, eh, Clarrie?’

‘Oh aye,’ said the barrel-chested Clarrie Spragg. ‘We’ve seen a few changes all right, Perce.’

‘I remember when it was all horses,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Horse manure all over t’ roads.’

‘Percy!’ said Clarrie.

‘We used to shovel it up off t’ roads when it were still steaming.’

‘Dad!’ said Rita.

‘It were the ’alcyon age of rhubarb, never to return.’

‘What a fascinating snippet of social history. Excuse me,’ said Laurence, and he moved over to talk to his brother, who was held by many to be the leading gynaecologist in Crewe.

‘Why do you have to show me up?’ hissed Rita.

Her father’s eyes glinted maliciously.

‘Because you always think I’m going to show you up,’ he said.

The afternoon sun streamed into room 108. Liz had pulled back the purple coverlet on the double bed. The sheets looked crisp and worldly.

Amos Clissold stared down at them sternly from the wall above the bed, as he did from the wall above every bed in the hotel. Ted wanted to turn the gum magnate’s disapproving face to the wall. He wanted to put the Gideon Bible in the drawer of the bedside table. He didn’t dare, for fear that Liz would laugh at him. As he slowly undid his shoes, he found himself wondering about hotel soap. What happened to all the unfinished cakes left by departing guests? Did the chambermaids take them home and recycle them, to supplement their meagre incomes? He tried to force his mind into more amorous channels. To no avail! Damn it, he could hear the hum of conversation and laughter from his son’s wedding reception.

‘Do you usually make love with your clothes on?’ asked Liz.

‘I can hear the reception.’

‘They’re chatting. They’re laughing. They haven’t missed us.’

‘No, but … I mean … Liz … if we can hear them, maybe they’ll hear us.’

‘Above all that noise? That sounds promising!’

‘Oh, Liz!’

‘We’re wasting time, and even I agree we shouldn’t be away too long,’ said Liz. ‘Don’t you want me?’

She removed the last of her clothes and stood before him, bronzed from her sun lamp, just a slight fleshiness about the thighs and stomach, maybe the breasts not quite as high as once they were, but he knew then that he would have wanted her if a hundred photos of the Archbishop of Canterbury had been staring down at him.

‘Oh, yes! Oh Liz! Oh heck!’ he said.

‘Oh, Betty!’

Betty Sillitoe, who was over-perfumed as usual, was standing by the champagne table, sipping her drink. ‘All a bit much?’ she said.

‘Dad talked to Laurence about horse manure.’

‘Think yourself lucky he said manure.’

Rita poured herself half a glass of champagne. She had reached her limit. Any further crises would have to be met out of her own resources.

‘You’re the only person I feel close to,’ she said. ‘Not even the boys any more. What’s happening to me? I want to scream, Betty.’

‘Well … weddings.’ Betty put an arm round Rita affectionately. ‘I’m standing by the drink where I can keep an eye on Rodney and see he doesn’t drink too much, bless him.’ She sipped her drink and pointed towards her husband, smiling.

Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, was standing by one of the sash windows on the far side of the room. He was in earnest conversation with the radiant bride.

‘Your dress is lovely, Jenny,’ he was saying. ‘Lovely.’

‘Thank you.’ She was holding her luxurious train over her arm. ‘It’s funny. You seem quite human.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today. Not when you’re a guest at my wedding.’

‘I didn’t know it was rude to call somebody human,’ said Rodney Sillitoe.

‘No, but you know what I meant. You seem quite nice, but you run a kind of concentration camp for chickens. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

‘Yes, you should, because you mean it, and I admire you for it.’

‘It’s just that I think that if we think we have the right to exploit animals because we’re superior to them, that makes us inferior to them because they never exploit us. Does that make me a crank?’

‘No!’

‘He can’t resist an attractive young woman,’ said Betty Sillitoe.

‘Don’t you ever feel jealous?’ said Rita.

‘Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He just likes being near attractive young women.’

‘I envy you.’

‘Rita! She does look a picture, I must say.’

‘Must you?’

‘Rita!’

‘Chickens aren’t like people, Jenny. They don’t have the same feelings. They don’t have the same expectations of life style.’

‘I know. Fish have no nerves in their mouths, foxes enjoy being hunted, lobsters get a sexual thrill out of being boiled alive. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

Jenny looked round the crowded room. She was searching for help, but no help was at hand. She didn’t want to go on with this conversation, on this day of all days. and yet she couldn’t let it go.

‘But how can you live with yourself?’ she said, ‘knowing how your chickens live.’

And Betty, from her strategic position beside the champagne, smiled indulgently as she watched their lips move.

‘I love him for his foibles,’ she said.

‘You must feel envy sometimes,’ said Rita.

‘No. I wouldn’t want anything in my life to be different from what it is.’

Rita closed her eyes, and swallowed her champagne as if it were medicine.

‘I envy you,’ she said.

‘I don’t look at it the same road as you, Jenny,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re units. Costed items. I employ three hundred people in an area of high unemployment. I couldn’t do that without my rationalized, cost-effective methods.’

The window could have afforded them a pleasant view over the park-like grounds. They could have seen peacocks strutting, songthrushes holding their heads sideways as they listened for their afternoon tea, and a distant water tower, ringed by pines. Rodney and Jenny spurned these attractions.

‘I suppose that’s what people do,’ Jenny said. ‘Compartmentalize. I mean, they say Himmler was very fond of dogs. Or was it Goebbels?’

‘It must have been dogs,’ said Rodney. ‘I don’t think he was at all fond of Goebbels.’

‘No! I meant … oh! How can you joke when I’m comparing you to … oh, not that I mean that you’re really … sorry.’

‘Bless you!’ said Rodney Sillitoe, and he gave her an avuncular kiss which, like many avuncular kisses, held a distant echo of kisses less avuncular.

Jenny was angry. ‘You’re being patronizing now,’ she said. ‘You’re forgiving me because I’m an attractive young thing. I don’t want that. I hate that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’

She kissed him.

‘Bless them,’ said Betty Sillitoe, watching the kiss.

‘I envy you,’ said Rita.

And in room 108, the father of the groom withdrew from the mother of the bride, in a moment of exquisite ambiguity, of relief and regret, of pride and shame, of ecstasy and horror. It was three minutes to four, and in the lounge and on the terrace the residents were ordering afternoon tea.

Exactly below the wet patch in the double bed in room 108 was the dry, happily innocent head of the bride’s only brother, Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. He was talking to Elvis Simcock, the groom’s only brother.

‘I’m sorry to hear you can’t get a job, Elvis,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then, Simon,’ said the cynical Elvis. ‘That makes me feel much better about the total uselessness of my life.’

‘I’m trying to be pleasant, Elvis,’ said Simon.

‘Effort, is it?’ said Elvis.

‘I just thought that as we’re related by marriage it might be a good idea if we tried to get on with each other.’

‘You’re right,’ said Elvis. ‘I’ll try. Sorry, Simon.’

Elvis gave Simon a semi-apologetic, semi-embarrassed hint of a smile, and they stood for a moment in a reasonably companionable silence as they searched for suitable topics of conversation.

‘Were you named after …?’ began Simon Rodenhurst.

‘Of course I was, you stupid twit!’ said Elvis Simcock, and he stormed out through the French windows.

And Rita, seeing this, said ‘Oh dear’ and sighed deeply.

‘Rita!’ said Betty Sillitoe, her blonde hair with its unashamedly dark roots mocking her friend’s joylessly careful appearance. ‘Rita! You can’t take responsibility for how the whole of your family behaves, or you’ll crack up. Relax. Have a drink.’

She poured half a glass of champagne for Rita, and topped up her own glass in order to be sociable.

‘Thanks, but I’ve had enough,’ said Rita. She put her glass down. Betty drank half her glass and refilled it from Rita’s glass, so that Rita wouldn’t feel guilty about the waste. You will crack up, Rita, she thought. You’re heading for a collapse, my girl, and where will we be then? What’ll happen to our cosy foursome, our holiday in the South of France, our pleasant life together, our just reward for the modest wealth that we create for this community?