by David Nobbs
‘I foresee one possible snag. Rita works for you.’
‘So?’
‘Well, Rita and I have reached a … a plateau of peace. I’d hate to embarrass her by having her working under me.’
‘Oh no,’ said Rodney. ‘There’d be nothing like that.’
‘Oh good.’
‘You’d be working under Rita, Ted,’ said Betty.
‘You can stuff your organic fruit and vegetables,’ said Ted.
Simon tried to make his approach to Arthur Badger, Neville’s slightly less charming and immaculate elder brother, appear totally casual. They discussed the loss to the community, and the impossibility of putting into words adequately what they were failing to put into words adequately.
‘Incidentally,’ said Simon, as if he’d just thought of it, ‘Why are Andrew and Judy not here?’
‘We couldn’t contact them. They’re touring in France. They’re determined not to let the little one hamstring their life-style.’
‘Ah. How are they?’
‘Blooming.’
‘And … the little one?’
‘Excellent. She’s a real little flirt already.’
‘Terrific. Terrific.’ Simon searched for something else to say, but couldn’t find anything. ‘Terrific.’
‘You should see her,’ said Arthur Badger. ‘I guarantee it’ll make you start to want to have babies of your own.’
‘Yes. I must. Terrific.’
Did Arthur Badger know?
‘What’s happening this weekend, about visiting Paul?’ asked Jenny.
They were sitting on the oatmeal settee. Elvis put his arm round her as he said, ‘Oh, love, it isn’t the time or place.’
‘It never is with you, is it?’
‘Yes, it is, but this isn’t.’
‘Well, I’d like to see him.’
‘We’ll go together. And tell him … about us.’
‘We can’t tell him while he’s in prison. He’s got enough to contend with.’
‘It’s all very well for you, Jenny. You were his wife, now you aren’t. I was his brother and still am.’
‘He’s still the father of my children.’
‘He’s the father of my children too.’ Elvis was a little upset that his remark seemed to surprise Jenny. ‘Well, that’s what I think of them as, now. I think we should go on Sunday, together, and I should say, “Hello, Paul. I know you’re very worried about Jenny since your marriage broke up because of what you did, but you needn’t worry, she’s found another feller and a good home for your children and you’ll be given full access because you know the feller. In fact, you’re related to him. In fact, it’s me.”’
Even as he spoke, Elvis realised the impracticability of the suggested scenario, so he wasn’t surprised, and in fact was rather relieved, though he would never have admitted it, to hear Jenny say, ‘This isn’t the time or place.’ He patted her left thigh with his right arm, stood up abruptly, and sighed. Then he forced himself to tackle her mother.
‘I’m sorry about my bleeper,’ he said.
‘No. Please.’ Liz smiled at him. ‘Neville wanted everything to be normal.’
‘Yes, but … a funeral isn’t normal.’
‘You must understand. My husband was a certain type of Englishman who believed that you don’t show emotion. All the misery he revealed after his first wife died was a source of great shame to him. To see us overcome with grief today would horrify him. We must respect his wishes. And you did that. Thank you.’ Liz moved off towards the hall. Elvis stared after her, somewhat dumbfounded. He tried not to look quite so dumbfounded. She came back. ‘We all must die. You know that. You’re the philosopher.’ Elvis was failing in his effort not to look quite so dumbfounded. ‘If death is unpleasant, then life becomes a journey towards something unpleasant, so death cannot be unpleasant. Neville was happy for much of his life. And he went quickly. So, please, none of you grieve for him. And as for me, I don’t have any feelings, do I? I’m inhuman.’
She strode out into the hall, leaving Elvis even more dumbfounded than before.
Liz had no idea where she was going. Her sole aim had been to leave. Since she was facing the door of the dining room, she walked towards it, less because she wanted food than because she had no other need which might have caused her to change course.
As she passed the foot of the stairs, she felt a tingle all down her spine. She felt as if her hair was standing on end, and hundreds of tiny insects were scampering across her scalp. She stopped dead in her tracks. She knew that she wasn’t alone in that brown hall.
She turned her head very slowly, half knowing what she would see; half frightened of seeing it, half frightened of not seeing it.
She saw her dead husband, Neville Badger, of Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger. She saw him sitting at the top of the stairs, with his feet on the second stair down, and his face silhouetted against the inappropriately dim light from the landing window. She saw that he was wearing a light, immaculate, grey suit, with grey shoes, grey socks, a grey shirt and a grey tie. She saw that he had a small harp across his knee. She saw that his face was not happy, not sad, but serene. She heard him say, firmly, clearly, one word. It was, ‘Sorry.’
She felt a lesser tingling of the spine, a lesser crawling of the scalp, a lesser bristling of the hair. She became aware that she was being watched. She turned her head and saw Rita standing at the door of the living room.
She turned away and looked up the stairs again. There was nobody there.
Rita knocked on the door of what she guessed was the master bedroom.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you all right?’
It seemed an age before Liz said, ‘Come in.’
It was a restful room, with cream walls and a blue carpet. Liz sat, hunched up, almost foetal, on the crumpled pillows of the double bed, with her stockinged feet on the silvery, quilted counterpane. Well, no, not her stockinged feet. She wore tights. Rita wondered how you described such feet. You couldn’t say ‘her tighted feet’. Then she met Liz’s glistening eyes, and all foolish thoughts vanished from her mind, and she felt what she wouldn’t have believed she could ever have felt: she felt warmth and compassion for Liz.
‘Liz!’ she said. ‘I saw.’
Beside the bed, on a mahogany bedside table, there was an expensive alarm clock, a glass of water and a box of pills. On the other bedside table there was only a lamp. No water, no pills. No need.
‘You saw what?’ said Liz at last. All her reactions seemed delayed.
‘In the hall.’
‘Neville?’ Liz was astounded, suddenly alert.
‘Neville?’
‘I thought I saw him. At the top of the stairs. Complete with harp.’
‘I know. I saw. Well, not Neville and the harp. I saw you thinking you saw him. I saw …’ Why was it so difficult to say? ‘I saw how much you loved him.’
‘Well, yes. Yes, I did.’
Liz made a small gesture, indicating that Rita should sit on the bed. Rita sat, awkwardly. She felt a shyness at this proximity.
‘I never realised,’ she said.
‘No, nor did he.’
‘What?’
‘I never told him. Not properly. Not the depth of it.’ Liz gave a sob of pure grief. ‘You always think there’s time.’ Another sob.
‘I know,’ said Rita, with feeling, remembering the death of her father on the dance floor. She was crying too, and this embarrassed her. She had no right to feel as unhappy as Liz. Not today. Yet how could she not feel for Liz? How, for all the power of human imagination, can one know what someone else feels unless one has felt it oneself? How, therefore, when knowing, could Rita not remember how she knew? How, therefore, could she not weep?
‘The other Sunday,’ said Liz, smiling through her tears, fighting to avoid a moment of desperate shared emotion that she would perhaps come to regret, ‘at Sunday lunch, all the family were there, Simon and Lucinda and Jenny and the children … and Elvis …
and I longed to say, “I love you, Neville, with all my heart,” but I looked at Simon and Lucinda and Jenny and the children … and Elvis … and I said, “Would you like some more horseradish, darling?” instead. I tried to make it sound like, “I love you with all my heart,” but I don’t, think he picked up on the sub-text.’
‘Neville wasn’t strong on sub-texts.’
‘No. He said, “No, thanks. I’m not actually the most tremendous horseradish freak.” I think if he’d known what I meant he’d just have said “yes”. Neville always wanted to do the right thing, make people happy, not be a nuisance, and he’s ended up being the most enormous nuisance to me.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Not wanting any unseemly grief.’
They became aware of the whining of a micro-light aircraft as it passed over the house like a huge disgruntled hornet. They both seemed slightly astonished that there was still a world outside this hothouse.
‘Forcing me, in consideration of his wishes,’ continued Liz, ‘to come in bright clothes, enduring universal disapproval.’
‘No one disapproves, Liz.’
A touch of the tartness returned. ‘In politics less than a year, and lying in your teeth already.’
‘All right. People do disapprove, but only because they don’t understand. So … explain.’
‘What? And demean myself to that rabble? Arrogant, aren’t I? Well, arrogant, naughty, unfaithful Liz learns her lesson and is given her come-uppance. A cruelly moral lady, Dame Fortune.’
Liz tried another smile. It wasn’t a success, so Rita knew that the attempt had been sincere.
‘Shall we end this stupid feud?’ said Liz.
‘Yes, please,’ said Rita.
‘Peace?’
‘Peace.’
At the moment when Liz and Rita were concluding their emotional exchange in Liz’s bedroom, Simon was concluding a rather less emotional exchange on the telephone in the hall.
‘A hundred and eighty-two thousand. Not a penny less,’ he was saying. He saw Elvis emerge from the living room, looking for him, and said hurriedly, ‘Look, must rush. Bye.’ He smiled uneasily at Elvis, hoping that he hadn’t heard.
But Elvis had heard. ‘Carrying on business at your stepfather’s funeral!’ he said. ‘I think that’s disrespectful, and so will Jenny.’
‘It was urgent, and Neville wanted everything to be normal.’
‘I’m sure he hoped that human greed could be suspended for an hour or two. Well, in that case, if you’re showing no respect, I’ll tell you what I know about you. You are involved, up to your badly-washed neck, in arranging phoney mortgages for ruthless property speculators to whom the council is giving hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money to provide squalid bed and breakfast accommodation for the many homeless it can’t afford to house because it’s spending so much money on these phoney mortgages you are helping to finance.’
‘How much?’ said Simon, who had gone pale.
‘That’s typical of your sort,’ said Elvis scornfully. ‘Straight to the cheque book. It won’t work, Simon.’
‘Mother will be very upset to hear what you’re doing,’ said Simon. ‘And so will Jenny.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Elvis.
‘Oh Lord!’ said Simon and Elvis.
They were being approached, the moment they returned to the room, by Jenny and Lucinda.
‘What’s going on?’ said Jenny.
She led Elvis away, behind the oatmeal settee, where they were separated from Simon and Lucinda by Graham Wintergreen, the manager of the golf club, who was talking about golf to Mrs Wadebridge, who was talking about the Red Cross to Graham Wintergreen, and by Barbara Perkins, who was listening to the gallantry and randiness of Liz’s skeletal, ramrod uncle, Hubert Ellsworth-Smythe, who dared not sit down lest he be forced by good manners to offer his seat to a lady, who would humiliate him by refusing to accept it because he looked at death’s door.
‘What’s going on?’ repeated Jenny.
‘Nothing, love.’
‘Are you sure? What have you and Simon been talking about?’
‘Nothing, love. Nothing to do with … anything to do with you.’
‘What are Simon and Lucinda talking about?’
‘Nothing. Nothing to do with anything to do with anything to do with you, love.’
‘If you were telling the truth, you’d have said you didn’t know what they were talking about.’
‘I don’t. And since I don’t I assume it’s nothing to do with anything to do with anything to do with anything to do with you.’
‘I hope you’re telling the truth. I couldn’t bear it if you lied to me.’
‘Oh heck,’ thought Elvis.
On the far side of Hubert Ellsworth-Smythe, who had an enormous interest in Barbara Perkins, who had no interest in him, and of Mrs Wadebridge, who had no interest in golf or Graham Wintergreen, who had no interest in the Red Cross or the enormous Mrs Wadebridge, Simon and Lucinda were showing an enormous interest in Elvis and Jenny.
‘If it’s nothing important,’ Lucinda was saying, ‘why is Jenny so interested?’
‘She’s always been like that. It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you trust me?’
‘Yes, of course. I trust you utterly.’
‘Do you? Ah.’
‘I shouldn’t be saying this, on an occasion like this.’ Lucinda lowered her voice to a primly naughty undertone. ‘I can barely wait for our wedding night, when you take my body.’
‘Well … er … terrific.’ Simon gulped. ‘I … terrific.’
‘You may not be the subtlest person in the world …’
‘I see!’
‘You aren’t exactly a genius, you aren’t exceptionally good-looking …’ Lucinda peered at Simon through her thick glasses, ‘… fairly good-looking, but not exceptionally … but I’ve never met a man I feel I can trust as I feel I can trust you.’ She kissed him.
‘And … er … this is why you can hardly wait for our wedding night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh Lord!’ thought Simon, who had not yet known her body.
The atmosphere in ‘Antibes’ was becoming more animated. More than one person, uneasy about this, found consolation in remarks such as ‘He’d have enjoyed this’ and ‘This is the way he’d have wanted it.’
Morris Wigmore, Deputy Leader of the Conservatives, whose son came to a sticky end in Brisbane, felt aroused by Angela Wintergreen’s tense mouth and unhappy eyes. What safe subject could he broach? Of course!
‘What about Ballasteros on Sunday?’ he said. ‘Incredible. Who else could get a birdie via the car park?’
‘Excuse me,’ said Angela Wintergreen grimly.
She found herself on collision course with Ted, and turned away, unable to cope.
Ted was oblivious to Angela Wintergreen. He had other fish to fry. He was steeling himself for a difficult encounter with Rodney and Betty Sillitoe.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘These … er … these other offers that I’ve been … er … offered. They’re … er …’
‘Non-existent,’ said Betty.
‘Betty!’ said Rodney.
‘I had been going to say they were unexciting,’ said Ted. ‘Unenticing. Oh, what the hell? You’re right. They’re nonexistent.’
Ted laughed. So did Rodney and Betty. Rodney’s laugh was a quiet growl, but Betty’s was a shrill peal, a memory of a distant foolish youth.
Betty stopped laughing abruptly. ‘Oh Lord!’ she said. ‘Folk’ll think we don’t care.’
‘They know we care,’ said Rodney. ‘Sorry, Ted, you were saying?’
‘Yes. Yes, I was. I’ve been thinking, and I think it’d be wrong of me to refuse to work for you just because I’d be working under Rita. I’m a bigger man than that.’
‘Much bigger,’ said Rodney.
‘Much, much bigger,’ said Betty.
Rita stood by the unlit fireplace with Geoffrey. It seemed to be their
corner as of right. Well, he was Liz’s brother.
‘I’m ashamed I didn’t see what you saw, that Liz is putting on a big, brave act,’ said Rita.
‘Well perhaps this is the first time she’s experienced real emotion for anyone other than herself.’ Geoffrey’s voice might have been made for crowded rooms. Even when they were on their own he talked as if there were fifty people in the next room who mustn’t overhear him. ‘Perhaps this late awakening of love is a characteristic of us Ellsworth-Smythes.’
‘Don’t talk about love,’ said Rita. ‘I find our joy indecent today.’
‘Hello, Rita. Hello, Geoffrey,’ said Ted, and they jumped. They’d been so involved with each other that they hadn’t noticed his slow approach. ‘I bring you good news, Rita. I’m going to be working under you.’
‘What?’
‘I knew you’d be pleased. I’m going to work for the Sillitoes. It’ll be right cosy being close to each other again, won’t it? Working with a person like me who spreads such joy and happiness around.’
He limped off. Rita called after him.
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Ted.’
‘You what?’
‘Blaming yourself for Neville’s death.’
‘I don’t. I blame the design of cars.’
Ted resumed his painful progress. Rita was still wondering what he meant when Geoffrey said, ‘Marry me,’ so it took a moment to sink in.
‘You what?’
‘Marry me, Rita.’
‘What a time to propose!’
‘I studied the sexual stimulation of grief among primitive peoples. I never thought I’d experience it myself.’
‘Are you feeling grief?’
‘Yes. For Neville. For Liz. For myself, for not recognising that my hostility to her was thwarted brotherly love. And, grieving for her, I’m filled with love and desire for the person whom my marrying will hurt Liz most in the whole world. Awkward syntax for an awkward situation.’
‘We can’t get engaged today.’
‘Not publicly, no, but just between the two of us, will you marry me?’
