Fair Do's Page 19

  ‘Perhaps slightly naive if you gave it all to Corinna.’ Rita spoke gently, as if embarrassed to be given the chance of making such an overwhelming reply. ‘Especially as you say you knew she wasn’t what she said she was.’

  ‘She showed me the deeds. A hotel restaurant in Nairobi. A prime corner site in Mogadishu. It all looked so legal, I never dreamt.… Oh, Rita. Love is blind. I mean, you know what sexual passion is like.’

  ‘I do now, yes.’

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Rita was contrite. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Ted. I didn’t mean … but, you see, what I’ve found with Geoffrey is so unexpected, so utterly …’ she searched for a word that would express the strength of it without sounding boastful ‘… good, that I feel the need to shout about it. I’m only human.’

  ‘So, I’ve got very little left. Just enough to pay for all this. Perhaps. I’m ruined, Rita.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’

  ‘Tomorrow? Cry. Today? Have a wonderful party.’

  Ted rubbed his hands together and strode boldly round the edge of the dance floor towards the Sillitoes. The Dale Monsal Quartet, still in mercilessly Gallic vein, were giving their unique version of ‘Clopin Clopant’.

  The joint big wheels behind Sillitoe’s were sitting watching the dancing and sipping champagne with a contentment that almost purred.

  ‘Hello, Rodney,’ said Ted jovially. ‘Hello, Betty. Friendship – you can’t whack it.’

  ‘What’s happened, Ted?’ asked Rodney.

  ‘Happened? Does something have to have happened before I tell you how much I value your friendship?’

  ‘No! ‘Course not!’ said Betty. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened, for God’s sake. Sorry. No, I just thought, seeing you two sitting there, making utter prats of yourselves, I felt a surge of warmth for you both.’

  ‘What do you mean, “making utter prats of ourselves”?’ Rodney seemed greatly puzzled.

  ‘Dressed as peppers.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ Betty glanced at the great yellow pepper which encased her. ‘I forgot. But what do you mean – “prats”?’

  ‘Well … I just meant … everybody dressed as Napoleon, Noël Coward, Queen Elizabeth, two Queen Elizabeths …’

  ‘Yes!’ Rodney and Betty laughed.

  ‘And you, peppers. You look ridiculous.’

  ‘I see!’ said Betty with as much hurt dignity as a pepper could muster.

  ‘I see nothing ridiculous in coming as peppers,’ said the red-faced, red-capped, red pepper at her side. ‘It’s a little less pretentious than identifying with Napoleon.’

  ‘Well said, Rodney. It needed to be said.’

  ‘Our costumes symbolise not only our business.’

  ‘That’s unimportant, comparatively.’

  ‘They symbolise healthy eating, organic eating. We’ve come as organic peppers, incidentally, with no pesticides.’

  ‘They symbolise the environment.’

  ‘Red for danger, because it’s in danger.’

  ‘Green for … green, because that’s the solution.’

  ‘And yellow?’

  Ted’s question staunched the flow of rhetoric completely. Betty looked down at her yellow costume, and looked to Rodney for an answer. Came there none. The Sillitoes were two distinctly nonplussed peppers.

  Then inspiration, that occasional visitor, knocked on Rodney’s brain.

  ‘Birth control,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely. Bir … you what, Rodney?’ said Betty.

  ‘Yellow for fighting the menace of the population explosion. Because one in three people in the world is born Chinese.’

  ‘Aaaah! That’s clever, Rodney.’ Betty leant across and kissed him, no mean feat when they were both wearing peppery bell-tents. ‘I love him,’ she said proudly to Ted.

  ‘And I love her,’ echoed Rodney.

  ‘Thank you, Ted,’ said Betty.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For being happy with Corinna. Because, because you’re happy, we don’t have to hide how happy we are for fear of seeming smug, which we did have to do, while you weren’t happy.’

  ‘So we’re happy that you’re happy.’

  ‘Very happy.’

  ‘Where is Corinna?’

  ‘Er … ill.’

  ‘Ted!’

  ‘Nothing serious.’ Ted smiled, trying to look calm, trying to allay Betty’s intuitive alarm. ‘Touch of the dreaded lurgies.’

  He adjusted his Napoleonic hat and sauntered off, attempting not entirely successfully to look a picture of insouciance.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dale Monsal, whose face would have made the Stag at Bay look insouciant. He had abandoned his boater. His hair was slicked wispily and shinily onto his pate. ‘Next, in more modern vein, a tune forever associated with a star long dead, but still shining brightly in the showbiz constellation. Or is he dead? Rumours that he has been sighted are rife. Of whom do I speak? I’ll give you a clue. It isn’t Hitler.’

  Dale Monsal gave a series of deep, pneumatic wheezes. They were to laughter what his quartet was to music.

  ‘Yes,’ he announced, almost dramatically. ‘You’ve guessed it. It’s Elvis.’

  The Dale Monsal Quartet wound themselves up into ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. And Elvis Simcock glowered.

  ‘Ignore it, Elvis,’ said his lover.

  ‘I was ignoring it till you said “ignore it”.’

  ‘Don’t let’s row. We mustn’t ever row. I couldn’t bear it. Come on, dance. Show people that you don’t mind being called Elvis.’

  ‘I do mind.’

  ‘All the more reason for showing that you don’t, then.’

  So, the great communicator danced grumpily with his pepper. Vicar and schoolgirl, Robin Hood and squaw, transvestite and nun tried to relive their youth. And Ted Simcock approached his ex-wife, who was watching peacefully with her bearded anthropologist.

  ‘May I borrow Rita, Geoffrey?’ asked Ted.

  ‘She isn’t a library book,’ said Geoffrey.

  ‘Thanks, Geoffrey,’ said Rita, but she allowed herself to be led away by Ted. ‘You asking me to dance?’ she asked her ex-husband in astonishment.

  ‘They’re playing my music, Rita.’

  Neville beamed bottomlessly at the happiness of his fellow men. Liz gave a snort of irritation and slipped across to buttonhole her brother before Rita returned.

  ‘You don’t really find her attractive, do you?’ she said, indicating the other Queen of England with a tiny movement of her flaming head.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Geoffrey softly. ‘Very much. Do you disapprove?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’

  ‘She isn’t one of us, Geoffrey. She isn’t our class.’

  ‘Oh. Of course! How dim of me.’

  ‘You may mock, but this is England.’

  ‘Surely that doesn’t matter today, even in England?’

  ‘It’s still important to some people. Not everything this country once stood for has been lost along with my magnolia. Rita’s father was a common little man who talked in public about … breaking wind, but he didn’t use those words, he used a – what’s the opposite of a euphemism? A malphemism, I suppose.’

  ‘Good heavens.’ Her brother’s reply was silkily sarcastic. ‘And the vulgarity will come out in Rita, who will start behaving like a common fishwife, a phrase which I have always thought very unfair to fishwives, who aren’t common at all; they’re extremely rare.’ The Dale Monsal Quartet were playing ‘Rock Around the Clock’ now. Liz was annoyed to find herself leaning forward to hear Geoffrey’s outwardly gentle words, even though she knew that she would hate what she heard. ‘You’re worried that when I take her to the anthropologists’ dinner she’ll ask all the other anthropologists how often they fart.’

  They were back in the nursery, in times long forgotten.

  ‘You’ve always hated me, haven’t you?’ sa
id Liz.

  ‘Yes.’

  Geoffrey Ellsworth-Smythe smiled.

  Napoleon rocked, Queen Elizabeth rolled, Dale Monsal almost smiled, Dick Whittington goosed his cat, the can-can dancer phoned the baby-sitter, Sir Walter Raleigh smiled deep in his courtly beard, and only Ted and Rita knew Ted’s dreadful secret.

  Neville Badger, carrying his helmet, smiling innocently, like a man who has never falsified anybody’s confession, hurried to the social rescue of Carol Fordingbridge.

  ‘Hello. Lovely,’ he announced.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen Gertie Gitana.’

  ‘So do I, but I’m Marie Lloyd.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen Marie Lloyd. Men were men then.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I’d have expected young men to swarm round you like bees round a honeypot. If I was a young man I would.’

  ‘You’d look ridiculous.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Swarming, on your own. For the record, Neville, not that it’s any of your business, but I was asked out tonight by a physics teacher, a welder and a quality control supervisor at the biscuit factory. I turned all three down because I wanted to be at Ted’s farewell.’

  ‘I always try to say the right thing.’ Neville was truly bewildered. ‘Why do I always end up putting my foot in it.’

  ‘Because you always try to say the right thing,’ said Carol Fordingbridge. ‘It’s a right daft basis for conversation, is that.’

  She moved off, only to return instantly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She kissed his bemused cheek. ‘You mean to be kind.’

  The rock and roll came to an end. The middle-aged clapped wildly, to preserve their youth for a few more seconds.

  In the bar, Elvis and Jenny found Simon and Lucinda united by long cigarette holders and silence.

  ‘Enjoying yourselves?’ asked Elvis unnecessarily.

  ‘No.’ In his embarrassment, Simon had forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to be speaking to Elvis. ‘Coming as Noël Coward has been the biggest mistake of my life. It’s shown me what a dimwit I am.’

  At the counter, Alec Skiddaw was telling a long story to Larry Benson, who wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his lady wife, and about how she was no lady.

  ‘The brains we inherit are a matter of luck, Simon,’ said Jenny, ‘so if you find you’re … well, not thick exactly…’

  ‘Oh, charming. Who’d have sisters?’

  In his indignation, Simon raised his voice. The onion seller, who was chatting up Alice-in-Wonderland and finding that she wasn’t taking him seriously because of his strings of onions, gave him a brief glance before returning to his lost cause.

  ‘Well you called yourself a dimwit,’ said Jenny.

  ‘It’s all right for Simon to say it,’ said Lucinda. ‘It’s not all right for anyone else to say it.’

  ‘Right! No risk in you being called thick,’ said Simon admiringly.

  ‘No. Just wet.’

  ‘You what?’ said Elvis.

  ‘Coming as Mae West has shown me how crabby and inhibited and English I am,’ said Lucinda. ‘I’ve been going out with Simon for weeks and I haven’t once said …’ She embarked on an impression of Mae West without conviction, “Come up and see me some time.” Nor has he. Said to me to come up and see him some time.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon. ‘I want to save …’

  ‘Save what?’

  ‘All that.’

  ‘You see. Passion. Sex …’

  ‘Lucinda!’

  ‘Our writhing, intertwined bodies …’

  ‘Lucinda!’

  ‘What does Simon call it? “All that”! He’s as bad as me.’

  There was a supercilious smile on Elvis’s thrusting media man face, but Jenny was listening with steadily dawning delight.

  ‘But, sweetybonce,’ Simon continued, ‘if I’d gone on after that, what do you think I’d have said? “I want to save ‘all that’ …?”’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘Until … we’re married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this a proposal?’ Lucinda sounded almost incredulous.

  Simon looked almost appalled at this unexpected turn in the conversation.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said, as if moved by logic rather than emotion, ‘I suppose it is. Will you marry me?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I will.’

  They tried to shift their fixed, intimacy-proof chairs. They leant across the chrome arms and kissed. Their kiss, though uncomfortable, was long.

  ‘Congratulations!’ said Elvis, watching them with an air of disbelief. ‘A union of true estate agents.’

  ‘Elvis!’ Jenny’s outrage was softened by affection.

  ‘Simon may be thick,’ persisted the cynical Elvis Simcock, ‘Lucinda may be wet, but between them they ought to be able to find a really nice house to be thick and wet in.’

  ‘Elvis! Don’t be stupid,’ said Jenny.

  ‘But he is stupid,’ said her brother ferociously.

  Gentle applause filtered in from the function room.

  ‘Well at least I’m clever enough not to come in fancy dress,’ said Elvis. ‘A Noël Coward who can’t be witty, a Mae West who can’t be sexy, a Marie Lloyd who can’t sing.’ He shook his head, sadly, regretting the infinite folly of the rest of humankind.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dale Monsal, with the animation of a constipated walrus, ‘a lovely young lady, Miss Carol Fordingbridge, alias the legendary Miss Marie Lloyd, will now transport you back, across the great prairies of time, to the vintage years of the music hall.’

  The long-haired Marie Lloyd flounced prettily onto the stage, just as her ex-fiancé entered from the bar with his lover.

  There was warm applause. Carol began with a pretty little bustle-bouncing dance. Elvis’s half opened mouth looked a quarter cynical, a quarter astonished, and half baked.

  All eyes were on Carol as she began to sing.

  ‘I’m very fond of ruins, ruins I love to scan.’

  Her voice was confident and charming, if not expert.

  ‘You’d say I’m very fond of ruins if you saw my old man.’

  Her cockney accent was quite adequate. Ted watched her wistfully.

  ‘I went out in the country for a stroll the other day.’

  She was capturing the style and spirit of Marie Lloyd. The invisible man nodded his bandaged head in time with the music. Elvis gawped. Jenny, seeing Elvis gawping, frowned.

  ‘I love to study history and the pubs along the way.’

  Jenny linked arms with Elvis.

  ‘I came across an abbey that was crumbling all to bits.’

  ‘You do still love me, don’t you?’ asked Jenny.

  ‘Fool,’ said Elvis.

  Alec Skiddaw was surprised to see Ted Simcock enter the bar at that magical moment, when all his guests were held in a time warp by Carol Fordingbridge.

  ‘Pint of Guinness, please,’ said Ted flatly.

  ‘My ex-brother-in-law – well, he’s my brother-in-law again now – he likes his Guinness,’ said Alec Skiddaw as he poured Ted’s pint. ‘His first wife, my sister, who’s now his third wife, she drinks Courvoisier.’ He handed Ted the dark bitter brew with its milk-white top.

  Ted held his pint up and stared at it. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘As black as my mood.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said Alec Skiddaw.

  ‘I was watching that girl. Carol. Pretty, Lively. Bright.’ Carol’s lively, bright voice floated prettily in from the function room. ‘Life ahead of her. And I was thinking of my life, behind me. A mess, Alec.’

  ‘A mess, sir? You? I find that hard to believe. You’re a man of substance.’ There was an indignant edge to Alec Skiddaw’s voice, as if his own life was so much worse that Ted had no right to complain.

  ‘An utter and total mess, Alec.’

  Ted spoke so darkly
, so intensely, that all the wind was knocked out of Alec Skiddaw’s sails. He searched hard for a suitable reply.

  ‘That was what broke their marriage up, first time round,’ he said. ‘She poured her Courvoisier in his Guinness, and he poured it all over her new perm.’

  Carol was thundering towards the end of her song.

  ‘Outside the Oliver Cromwell last Saturday night.’

  Ted slid back in with his Guinness, and stood at the back of the crowd.

  ‘I was one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.’

  There was warm applause. Elvis clapped as in a dream. Carol took a brief curtsey. Neville whispered to Dale Monsal. Dale Monsal nodded gravely.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, as if announcing the outbreak of war. ‘It’s time to silence the strings and put the lid on the ivories for a few moments. Mr Neville Badger would like to address a few words to your host.’

  Rita shivered. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

  Neville climbed onto the platform, and Elvis’s bleeper went.

  ‘News desk!’ he said excitedly.

  ‘Not now!’ said Jenny, but already Elvis was gone.

  ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ began Neville. He produced a police whistle and blew it enthusiastically. ‘It’s a fair cop.’

  ‘Oh, Neville,’ said Liz to herself.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, penguins, peppers and polar bears,’ continued her husband. ‘This is a sad day.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ thought Ted.

  ‘A sad day,’ said Neville again. ‘Ted Simcock is leaving us. Nairobi’s gain is our loss. Many of us here today, and not gone tomorrow, though he will be, may never see that loved and trusted face again.’

  ‘Don’t overdo it,’ thought Rita.

  ‘Tonight, Ted has laid on a fabulous do. The champagne has flowed. The caviare has gone down like …’ Neville searched for a suitable simile.

  ‘A lead balloon,’ suggested Rodney to himself.

  Neville found his simile. ‘Like caviare. We’ve had music.’

  ‘Almost,’ thought Betty.

  ‘We’ve had dancing. Sadly, one important person has missed our junketings. Her name is Corinna Price-Rodgerson.’