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  They kissed, then looked up to see Rita beaming at them.

  ‘It is good to see you back, Betty,’ said Rita. ‘You two are rocks on our shifting sands.’

  ‘Rodney and I were talking the other day, Rita,’ said Betty. ‘Weren’t we, Rodney?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we were.’

  ‘You tell her.’

  ‘Right. Tell her what?’

  ‘What we were talking about.’

  ‘Oh! Right!’ Rodney thought hard. ‘What were we talking about?’

  ‘Offering her a job in our new health food complex and vegetarian restaurant.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Absolutely. Rita, will you come and work for me?’

  ‘For us!’

  ‘Us. Yes. Quite. Absolutely. What I meant. Us.’

  ‘I’d love to!’

  ‘Rita!’ Betty leapt up and embraced Rita. The two women hugged each other. A golden, organic future stretched before them.

  Even in the midst of so much happiness, Neville managed to find a mission of mercy.

  ‘Carol looks lost,’ he said.

  ‘Neville!’

  ‘I want this to be a great day, Liz. For everyone.’

  Neville scurried off to Carol’s conversational rescue.

  Liz sighed.

  ‘Carol, hello,’ said Neville.

  ‘Hello.’

  Carol did indeed look lost. Her eyes were suspiciously moist.

  ‘You look marvellous.’ Neville beamed.

  ‘Well, thank you very much.’

  ‘No, you really do.’

  ‘Well, you just said so.’

  ‘No, what I mean is, sometimes one says these things without meaning them, but I do mean it. You really are … very lovely. Elvis is a lucky young man.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ Carol’s eyes belied her smile. ‘Isn’t he just? Incredibly lucky.’

  The edge in her voice escaped Neville completely. ‘Named the day yet?’ he asked innocently, pleasantly.

  ‘No we sodding well haven’t named the sodding day.’ Carol stalked off, then returned almost immediately. She wasn’t far from tears. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today. No scenes today. All smiles today. Happy day today.’

  Neville looked deeply puzzled.

  ‘Er … jolly good,’ he said.

  Rodney and Betty smiled at Ted and Corinna rather cautiously from their chairs.

  ‘No doubt Rodney has told you, Betty. I can’t imagine him overlooking anything so momentous and so gratifying to our many friends.’ There was an irritatingly smug tone in Ted’s voice. He knew that Rodney hadn’t told Betty. ‘Corinna and I are engaged.’

  ‘No, Ted, he didn’t.’ Betty flashed Rodney the look of rebuke that Ted had hoped for. ‘Congratulations! But what about …?’ Betty stopped in mid-sentence.

  ‘More tea, anybody,’ interrupted Sandra.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Ted.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Rodney. ‘Time to move on to something …’

  ‘Weaker,’ interrupted Betty hastily.

  ‘Thank you, Sandra,’ said Corinna, her composure utterly unruffled. ‘I’ll stick to champagne.’

  ‘Right.’ Sandra set off with her tea pot and milk jug, then stopped, between Ted and Corinna. ‘Happy day, i’n’t it? I love children, me.’ She flashed an almost subliminal look at Ted. ‘I’d like to have some of me own one day.’ She moved off. An awkward silence followed, proving that, although she had found no takers for tea, Sandra’s mission had not been in vain.

  ‘So, how’s Chez Edouard coming on?’ asked Rodney eventually.

  ‘Very well indeed.’ Ted’s face lit up. ‘We chose the shade of dralon only yesterday. And what about you? What are you calling your great vegetarian emporium?’

  ‘It’s difficult,’ said the former big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. ‘We thought of amusing names like “Absolutely Nuts” and “Bags of Beans”.’

  ‘“Loadsalentils”,’ chortled Betty. ‘“Finger on the Pulses”.’

  Rodney and Betty chuckled.

  Ted and Corinna didn’t.

  ‘Abandoning humour, we tried plain factual ones,’ said Rodney. ‘“The Arbitration Road Natural Food Centre” etcetera. In the end we settled on just plain “Sillitoe’s”.’

  ‘We think it has a ring to it,’ said Betty.

  ‘Arbitration Road?’ said Ted. ‘You’re in Arbitration Road? What number?’

  ‘182 to 184, if it’s of any significance,’ said Rodney.

  ‘It is of some significance,’ said Ted. ‘Chez Edouard is at 186. We’re going to be neighbours.’

  ‘Well …’ It was unusual to find Betty lost for words.

  ‘Sell up now,’ said Ted.

  ‘You what?’ said Rodney.

  ‘Next door to Chez Edouard. Wholefood vegetarian. In Yorkshire? You stand no chance. Do they, my petal?’

  ‘No chance.’ Corinna smiled lovingly at her fiancé. He basked in her agreement.

  ‘Good luck, anyway,’ said Ted.

  As they walked away, Ted raised his eyebrows to Corinna. ‘Poor deluded fools, I really am extremely sorry for them,’ said Ted’s thick, unkempt eyebrows.

  ‘He called her “my petal”,’ said Betty.

  ‘I’m going to have to lie down,’ said Rodney, as if Ted’s calling Corinna ‘my petal’ had been the final straw.

  But before Rodney could lie down, he would have to stand up, and before he could stand up, the dapper, ageless Eric Siddall arrived.

  ‘Sir, madam, your juices,’ he announced.

  ‘Thank you, Eric.’ Betty Sillitoe, over-solicitous as usual, smiled warmly at Eric, for fear that he could see that his arrival was unwelcome to Rodney.

  ‘You’re surprised to see me here and not in my usual haunt,’ began Eric, taking Betty’s smile as an invitation to open his heart. ‘I had … problems.’

  Betty looked at Rodney, wondering whether to cut Eric short. But Rodney’s curiosity overcame his discomfort.

  ‘Problems?’ he said.

  ‘My … er …’ Eric lowered his voice. ‘My proclivities … such as they are these days, but we won’t go into … are not towards people of the opposite sex. Do you catch my drift?’

  ‘We catch your drift,’ said Betty.

  ‘No one could ever say I’ve not been discreet. I’ve never advertised my … proclivities. But … well, let’s say they were …known. A bookmaker who’d known me from my sea-going days passed a rather unfortunate remark after a mixed foursome. Mr Wintergreen made it clear that my continued presence, after years of good service, was no longer welcome. “Take any golfer you like,” he said. “Nick Faldo, Bernhardt Langer, Jose-Maria Olafabal. Not a poofter among the whole caboosh.” That’s what he said. “Poofter”. No thought for my feelings. “Go somewhere more suitable,” he said. “A theatre bar. The Conservative Club. Start afresh, with a clean sheet. As it were.” Well! I thought of going for unfair dismissal, but … my name in the papers, that just isn’t me, I’m afraid, and with the climate we’re moving back into … so, well, anyway, the manager here snapped me up. I think I know why, and I dread the day when … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burden you with my …’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Betty. ‘It was riveting. Well, not riveting exactly. More … sad.’

  Rodney groaned.

  ‘I really am going to have to lie down,’ he said.

  Betty hurried over to consult her hostess.

  ‘He’s not well,’ she said. ‘I want to lie him down. Could we use the bed in the room the babies are in?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Liz. ‘It’s room 108. Out of the lift, turn right, third on the … or something like that, I was told. I haven’t been there.’

  Liz hurried off to break up a tête-à-tête that had developed between Neville and Rita.

  ‘Rita’s been telling me all about the imminent effect of her election on council policy,’ said Neville.

  ‘Riveting,’ Liz was sorry that she had hurried off to br
eak up the tête-à-tête.

  ‘Little me, Rita Simcock, shifting the balance of power single-handed,’ said Rita.

  ‘So what exactly will be your first big issue?’ said Neville, as if he hung on the answer.

  ‘The inner relief ring road.’

  Liz was no longer sorry that she had hurried off to break up the tête-à-tête.

  ‘What about it?’ she asked.

  ‘There are two proposed routes.’

  ‘Yes. We know. One of them passes near us.’

  ‘Does it? Oh.’ Rita didn’t sound deeply surprised. ‘Well, I think the council would have voted for the inner inner relief ring road. Now, thanks to my election, we should be able to get the outer inner relief ring road through.’

  ‘But that’s the one that passes near us,’ said Neville.

  ‘Is it? Oh … well, the outer road destroys far less property, so, although it’s more expensive, we have to go for it. There’ll be under-passes beneath Crudgely Hill and the Alderman Potherbridge Memorial Park. The only properties it’ll destroy will be one or two houses in Broadlands …’

  ‘That’s where we live, Rita.’ Liz didn’t attempt to hide how appalled she was.

  ‘Is it? Oh. Well, yes, I suppose it is. And the odd, mainly rather clapped-out property in the Tunstall Road area and the top end of Arbitration Road. Well, I hope you won’t be affected.’

  ‘Do you, Rita?’ Liz sounded sceptical.

  ‘Well, of course I do. I’ve always been very fond of Neville.’

  ‘Well, of course Rita does, Liz. She’s always been very fond of me.’ Neville had never lacked talent as an echo. ‘Now, let’s not argue. No clouds on silver linings today. More champagne!’

  Rodney and Betty Sillitoe tip-toed into room 108, so as not to wake the sleeping infants. Rodney made a bee-line for the double bed, but Betty went briefly to look at little Thomas and little Josceleyn, breathing milkily in the cots provided by the management.

  ‘Ah!’ said Betty, over-sentimental as usual. ‘Bless their little cotton socks.’

  ‘Come and lie down and give me a quick cuddle,’ said Rodney.

  Betty crept quietly towards the very bed in which, nineteen months ago, Ted and Liz had conceived one of the two young boys now sleeping so peacefully in that very room.

  The room had been refurbished since then. It was now safely, relentlessly beige. Amos Clissold no longer stared down from the wall above the bed, as he had once done from the wall above every bed. He had been removed after the under-manager at a DIY store had blamed the severity of his look for his inability, half-jokingly admitted to the receptionist, to consummate his marriage on the first night of his honeymoon. The receptionist had later joked that she hoped the honeymoon wouldn’t be DIY throughout.

  Above the bed there now hung a heavily romanticised, faux- naïf painting of a Northern industrial scene, very sub-Lowry, described by an art critic who had slept beneath it as, ‘Dark satanic Mills and Boon.’

  Below the painting, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe cuddled in exhausted contentment.

  In the baby-free, champagne-bubbling Brontë Suite, the social chatter was intensifying, keeping the gloom of the outside world narrowly at bay. But Jenny’s sharp maternal antennae could have picked up Thomas’s cries if a baby link was plugged in on the opposite side of a runway at Heathrow, and she heard something now.

  ‘Sssh everybody,’ she said. ‘I think I can hear something on the baby alarm.’

  Only Liz heard Jenny’s soft, diffident pleading.

  ‘Sssh!’ commanded Liz imperiously. ‘Sssh!’

  Her skeletal, ramrod uncle joined in the shushing. So did Graham Wintergreen and Neville. Soon there was absolute silence. All eyes were on Jenny, who was bending down, listening to the baby link.

  The unmistakable voice of Rodney Sillitoe, still thick from past excesses, rang out.

  ‘Rub it gently,’ he said. ‘There. Where it’s sore. Aaah!’

  ‘Rodney!’ came Betty’s reply. ‘Two teetotal vegetarians cuddling in broad daylight!’

  ‘Well, we can’t deny ourselves every pleasure.’

  Not a person moved in the Brontë Suite. Jenny, her hands only inches away from the power point, never even thought of switching the voices off.

  After a brief silence Betty’s voice came again. ‘Careful, Rodney! I thought you were ill. You’re squashing my breasts.’

  Neville Badger was the first to recover the use of his limbs and voice.

  ‘Yes, well, may as well switch it off, while there are adults up there,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes. We don’t want to eavesdrop on unseemly scenes in upstairs rooms,’ said Ted, and he immediately wished he hadn’t.

  Neville switched the plug off, sparing the Sillitoes the broad-casting of any further indelicacies and sparing his guests from any further need to pretend that they weren’t enjoying their eavesdropping.

  Rodney and Betty became aware of low voices issuing from the bathroom of room 108. They clambered carefully, quietly off the bed. Carefully, quietly Rodney opened the bathroom door.

  The bathroom had tiled walls, with the occasional Dutch windmill and sailing barge to break up the remorseless pink. The plastic three-quarter-length bath was green. The plastic washbasin was green. The plastic lavatory was green. On its plastic green seat cover sat Elvis Simcock, fully dressed. He was holding his head in his right hand in a pose reminiscent of that other great thinker, Rodin’s. His left hand held a small tape recorder to which he was giving his complete attention.

  Rodney and Betty stared in astonishment. As they eavesdropped on this strange scene, they were unaware that everybody in the Brontë Suite had so recently been eavesdropping on them.

  ‘“Disappointed?”’ came Rodney’s voice from the tape recorder. ‘“Thought I was talking about another woman?”’

  Betty raised her eyebrows.

  Rodney controlled his anger.

  ‘“No!”’ came Elvis’s reply. ‘“’Course not. Has it ever crossed your mind that when she’s at Tadcaster Auntie Betty might be seeing another man?”’

  ‘“It has crossed my mind, yes.”’ Betty looked horrified. ‘“Once. Just then, when you asked it.”’ Betty, standing incredulous at the door, relaxed. ‘“Of course it hasn’t, Elvis. We have the perfect marriage.”’

  ‘Aaah!’ whispered Betty.

  ‘“’Course you do,”’ came Elvis’s sceptical reply on the tape recorder.

  ‘Cynical young puppy,’ whispered Betty.

  ‘“So, Simon,”’ came Elvis’s voice, ‘“are you still planning to give up what it would anyway be an exaggeration to call your sex life?”’

  The Sillitoes were riveted.

  ‘“Too right. Today has confirmed that.”’

  ‘“What’s so special about today?”’

  ‘“The other godfather’s wife was the woman in question.”’

  ‘“The pregnant one?”’

  ‘“Precisely.”’

  ‘“Oh my God.”’

  ‘“Exactly.”’

  ‘We shouldn’t be listening to this,’ whispered Betty.

  ‘No,’ whispered Rodney. ‘Sssh!’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘“What exactly went through your mind when you realised that the woman you’d made pregnant … ”’

  Rodney groaned as the gripes struck him again.

  Elvis looked up, horrified. He switched the tape recorder off. He tried to stand, but slipped, falling into the tiny gap between bath and lavatory, cracking his bony backside against the toilet roll holder. He got to his feet. It was not a manoeuvre executed with dignity.

  ‘What the …?’ he said.

  ‘Sssh!’ whispered Betty.

  ‘Don’t wake the little ones,’ whispered Rodney.

  ‘Rodney’s not well,’ whispered Betty. ‘He came to lie down.’

  ‘What the hell are you up to?’ whispered Rodney.

  ‘I’m practising interviewing techniques. For my career,’ whispered
Elvis.

  ‘On the toilet?’ whispered Betty.

  ‘There’s a baby-listening device in there. I didn’t want anyone downstairs to hear.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ In his horror Rodney still remembered to whisper. ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Oh Rodney!’ whispered Betty. ‘Oh Lord.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ whispered Rodney indignantly. ‘When you spoke to me downstairs, so full of concern, you were using me.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’ Elvis forgot to whisper. The Sillitoes put their fingers to their lips. ‘I was interested. A chat show host’s no good if he doesn’t have a genuine interest in people.’

  ‘Chat show host?’ whispered Betty.

  ‘I’m going to have to lie down again,’ whispered Rodney.

  ‘Funny, us being friends now,’ said Jenny Simcock, née Rodenhurst, hoisting her Bolivian bag further onto her shoulder.

  ‘Hilarious,’ said the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge.

  ‘Oh, Carol.’

  They’d been looking at the painting of Fountains Abbey, finding it easier than meeting each other’s eyes. Now Carol looked Jenny in the face, forcing her to return the look.

  ‘I’m right sorry about what I did with Paul, Jenny,’ she said.

  ‘Carol! It’s over.’

  ‘No. It isn’t. It’s only just begun. You said so yourself. The miasma of deception drifts across the plains of love and obscures everything that’s good.’

  ‘That sounds like me,’ acknowledged Jenny ruefully.

  ‘I’ll never do anything like that again if I live to be a hundred.’ Carol looked up at the ruined abbey. Perhaps she was wondering about the destructive effects of age. ‘I’m not sure if I want to live to be a hundred.’

  ‘You and Elvis’ll be all right.’

  ‘We won’t. He’s become ambitious. He’s ashamed of me. He refuses to use my window.’ After the closure of Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, Carol had got a job in the Midland Bank in Westgate, where Elvis banked. ‘And I love him. Stupid, i’n’t it?’

  ‘It is rather.’

  ‘I think he looks at me and thinks anybody stupid enough to love him is too stupid for him to love. What about you and Paul?’