by David Nobbs
‘Jenny? There’s something I’ve got to tell you. When you were in hospital … having Thomas … the night he was born … it was a very … well, not disturbing … emotional experience. I mean I’d never been a father before. I was knocked all of a … not that there’s any … I got drunk. Very drunk. Because I was happy. Because we … oh God. Carol and I …’
‘Oh no!! Oh God!!!’ It was the cry of a rabbit cruelly caught in a trap. It was a dark, helpless, three-in-the-morning scream. Its anguish horrified him.
‘It only happened once.’
‘Oh good! What a relief!’ Her sarcasm was glacial. It came from two hundred thousand years before mankind began to evolve.
If only mankind hadn’t evolved.
‘Listen! Jenny! Please!’ He’d do anything to make up to her for that moment. Hack off his legs at the knees. Hack off the offending organ. Fat lot of good that would do for his marriage. Oh God! ‘When I went out there the first time tonight, it was to see Carol. She said she’d tell you about us if we didn’t call off the protest, but when you told me about her and her uncle I went back and told her I’d tell the judges about her if she told you about us. Then I realized I couldn’t tell the judges, and she said she couldn’t tell you about us. So I needn’t have told you. I’m telling you because I want to.’
‘Is that supposed to make a difference?’
‘It does to me.’
‘Sod you!’ She set off towards the exit. He followed her desperately.
‘Jenny! It means I’m terribly sorry! It means I love you!’
She turned and faced him. He shrank back from her hostility.
‘So!’ she said. ‘It’s over. Our pathetic marriage. Your laughable commitment. Your brief career as a father.’
‘No, I …’ He tried to touch her.
‘Take your dirty hands off me,’ she screamed.
Alec Skiddaw entered, with olives borrowed from Norbert in the Polynesian Bar.
‘You pathetic little rat!’ shouted Jenny, as she swept past him.
The dark, intense Alec Skiddaw looked stunned, then hurt, then furious. Paul broke off his chase to turn back and explain to him. He felt they owed him that much. ‘Not you!’ he said. ‘Me. She was shouting at me.’
He had only stopped for a moment, but when he emerged into the wide corridor in front of the lifts, she had gone.
The last of the scantily clad girls had passed across the stage, and the diners had turned to their turbot mousse at last.
‘Mmm!’ said Rodney Sillitoe, the even bigger wheel behind an even bigger Cock-A-Doodle Chickens. ‘Very subtle. Very delicate.’
Ted Simcock glared at his former friend and, just for a moment, wished that he could stop not speaking to him. He wanted to say, ‘In other words, totally bloody tasteless.’
They were served by a waitress in her late fifties, with a heart of gold, a face like a chipped gargoyle, and huge veined legs like pillars of Stilton. Her name, though they would never know it, was Annie Smailes. ‘I couldn’t be in it tonight, ‘cos I’m working,’ she told them cheerfully.
Rodney and Betty Sillitoe laughed. Rita tried to laugh. Ted tried not to laugh.
Annie Smailes removed Paul and Jenny’s uneaten carrot mousses with mock horror.
‘He’ll be livid, him,’ she said.
Paul had pressed for the lifts, but no lift had come. He had found the bare, stone service stairs, and had hurtled down them to the ground floor. There had been no sign of her in the foyer. A bald, albino man had emerged from the lift. Paul had rushed into the lift and returned agonizingly slowly to the first floor. He had asked a plump woman to check if there was anybody in the ladies. There hadn’t been. He had gone down the service stairs again, and run to the crèche.
Thomas was gone. Jenny had taken their boy.
Now Paul rushed out into the rain. There was no sign of her. He went over to their battered old ecology-coloured Citroën Diane. It was still there, but that wasn’t surprising, as Jenny didn’t drive.
He felt deeply angry with Carol Fordingbridge. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t led him on …! He wondered if she had closed the emergency exit as she had threatened. He felt a deep disgust with the whole evening, and hurried round to the back of the hotel.
The door was closed, and he couldn’t open it from outside. Paul couldn’t remember when he had ever hated a door as much. He banged on it furiously, and almost broke his hand.
Annie Smailes waddled back, a gloriously unsuitable figure in this temple of the impersonal. She served the Sillitoes and Ted and Rita with their entrecôte steak marchand du vin. When she found no takers for the two portions of soya bean loaf marchand du vin she said, ‘I daren’t think what he’ll say now. I don’t. I daren’t think. He’ll go bloody spare, him.’
Rodney basked in glory. Betty basked in Rodney’s glory. Ted imprisoned himself in self-pity. Across the room, Liz felt the first faint indications that her time was near.
Only Rita was really worried about the absence of Paul and Jenny. She told herself that it was foolish. They were adult. They knew their own minds. But she couldn’t help it. She had carried Paul in her womb. She would carry him there till she died.
Paul made his way through the labyrinth of corridors, and reached the emergency exit from the inside. He pushed it open, looking for something to wedge against it to keep it open while he went outside to find something to wedge against it to keep it open. There was nothing. Except his shoes. Oh God, was it worth it? Yes!
He wedged his left shoe in the door, and hopped out into the rain. He hopped across the muddy waste. There was still just enough light to see, and he soon found the very same stone that he had used before, where Carol Fordingbridge had dropped it. He picked it up, overbalanced, put his left foot in a puddle and dropped the stone, which splashed him from head to foot. He picked it up angrily and stormed back. He replaced the shoe with the stone, put the shoe on over his sodden, muddy sock, and squelched off through the rain to the car.
Jenny had the car keys! He’d given them to her to keep in her bag, in case he lost them, which he once had.
He shouted abuse at the weeping skies.
Dinner carne to an end. The locals agreed that it had been better than the Angel. The visitors made mental notes never to go to the Angel. The locals felt it was much on a par with the Clissold Lodge. The visitors made mental notes never to go to the Clissold Lodge.
The girls paraded in their sophisticated evening wear. Carol was the nineteenth to appear. There was deafening applause. Her sophisticated evening wear consisted of a silver gown glittering with sequins. It clung to the curves of her body.
‘Carol’s hobbies are travelling, cooking, roller skating, and collecting antique jewellery,’ announced Rodney Sillitoe. ‘Her ambition is to drive a formula one power boat.’
Betty felt that Rodney was getting tired, yet she wished that there were a hundred girls, so proud was she of him.
There was more applause as the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge made a pretty, unaffected exit.
‘Last, but not least, of our tremendous twenty, all the way from Bridport, in Dorset, Jocasta Winkle, of the Ambrosia Poultry Corporation.’
There was another fanfare. Jocasta Winkle entered to cheerful applause and a few whistles. She was a short girl with a huge personality, and an even larger bust. Her sophisticated evening wear had been designed to make her look like a peacock, with holes instead of eyes. It hadn’t worked. She looked as if she were wearing a blue-and-green parachute which the mice had enjoyed. She knew she wouldn’t win, and gave a cheerful, totally uninhibited wave. There was another roar.
‘Jocasta’s hobbies are sketching, meeting people, dancing, keeping fit, watching rugby, and designing all her own clothes,’ said Rodney. ‘Her ambition is to open her own fashion house.’
There was a last burst of applause as Jocasta Winkle made her cheerful exit.
A buzz of conversation burst out in the flexible, multi-purpose function
room. Rodney stilled it with his hand.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the judges will begin the hard work of reducing the terrific twenty to the fabulous five. In the meantime, the staff will take your orders for coffee and liqueurs.’
He got a good round of applause as he stepped down, and when he got back to their table, Betty kissed him and said, ‘You were wonderful.’ Rita said, ‘Yes, Rodney. Well done.’ Ted passed Rodney a note. He read it, and passed the after-dinner mints. Betty raised her eyebrows to heaven, and Rita passed Ted a note under the table.
Ted read the note aloud. ‘Please talk to Rodney. All this passing notes is so childish.’ To Rita he said, ‘What are you doing if you aren’t passing notes?’
‘That’s completely different,’ said Rita. ‘I passed you a note because I didn’t want them to know, not because I’m not speaking to you. Rodney’s enough on edge with his compèring without your contribution.’
‘I am not on edge,’ said Rodney. ‘I have the natural pent-up excitement of the performer. That’s not being on edge.’
‘I didn’t intend “on edge” to be rude, Rodney,’ said Rita. ‘I just meant the success of the whole evening depends on you. You can do without overgrown schoolboys passing you notes.’
‘Rita!’ said Ted. ‘I have a real grievance. I’ve been stabbed in the back by my best friend. That’s standing on your adult dignity, not behaving like an overgrown schoolboy.’
‘Oh God, Betty,’ said Rita. ‘Why do men have to take umbrage so easily?’ She turned to Ted. ‘Ted! Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair, make it up with Rodney.’
‘What do you mean, “Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair”?’ said Betty.
Rita screamed. The conversation in their vicinity faltered, then carried on as if nothing had happened, so that Rodney and Betty wondered if they’d imagined it, until Ted spoke.
‘Rita!’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Screaming,’ said Rita calmly. ‘We all used to be such good friends, and now we can’t open our mouths without rubbing somebody up the wrong way. And I find that very unpleasant. So I screamed. All right?’
‘No, Rita, it is not all right,’ said Ted. ‘I mean … Rita! … people do not scream at public functions.’
‘All the more reason for doing so, then,’ said Rita.
And she screamed again.
‘Am I imagining things, or did Rita just scream?’ asked Neville Badger.
‘I think she did,’ said Laurence. ‘I wonder if she’s going off her head.’
‘I think she’s discovering how to express her feelings,’ said Liz. ‘That can be quite intoxicating, Laurence.’
‘Is the insinuation in that particular verbal hand grenade that I can’t express my feelings?’ said Laurence.
‘Good Lord, no!’ said Liz. ‘I’m sure you’d be able to express them, if you ever had any.’
‘Children! Please!’ said the immaculate Secretary General of the United Nations.
Simon Rodenhurst turned to Neville Badger earnestly. ‘Don’t be discouraged,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t bother to be rude if they didn’t care.’ He leant forward, to include Laurence and Liz. ‘That’s psychology,’ he added, with a hint of pride.
‘Is it? Ah!’ said Neville. ‘I’ve always assumed that people are nice to each other because they like each other, and nasty because they don’t. But I’m probably very naive and simple.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I’d rather hoped somebody might deny that.’
A young Italian waiter took their orders. Southern Comfort for Simon, malt whisky for Laurence, vintage port for Neville, nothing for the expectant Liz. The young waiter’s name, though they would never know it, was Sandro Bernini. He was feeling sad about the death of the olive trees on his parents’ farm and excited about the arrival of his girlfriend from Poggibonsi. Being young, he was feeling more excited about his girlfriend than he was feeling sad about the olive trees. Being a waiter, he concealed all these feelings.
‘Was that Elvis’s psychological theory?’ asked Liz.
‘Well … yes, actually,’ said Simon.
‘You’re becoming rather friendly with him, aren’t you?’
‘No! We argue all the time.’
‘According to his theory, that makes you bosom pals.’
‘Would you object?’
‘I wouldn’t say it would be a friendship that would advance your career.’
‘Are you in a strong position to criticize liaisons with the Simcock family, “dear”?’ asked Laurence.
‘I’m sure Paul will be a good husband to Jenny,’ said Neville.
‘She could have done a lot worse,’ said Simon.
‘Oh yes,’ said Liz. ‘Virtually every other road sweeper in England would have been worse.’
‘You really are a terrible snob, mother,’ said Simon.
‘I think I’m rather a good snob,’ said Liz.
‘Olympic class,’ said Laurence.
Liz turned her face on her husband like a hose. ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said, ‘which is just as well, as it’s your only talent.’
Laurence held her look, and gave a faint smile. ‘I am a snob,’ he said. ‘And I regret it. If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t have married me.’
There was an icy silence. The Secretary General of the United Nations looked extremely discouraged.
‘Cheer up, Uncle Neville,’ said Simon Rodenhurst, of Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. ‘This is very encouraging.’
Rodney Sillitoe returned to the microphone. The lights dimmed, and Sandro Bernini arrived with the liqueurs. There was a loud fanfare.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Rodney. ‘The judges have selected their short list of five. I shall now introduce the girls individually, and put a few questions to them. Finalist number one is …’ He paused, relishing the power. ‘… Denise Saltmarsh, of Choice Chicky Chunks Limited.’
Jimmy ‘Lino’ Parsons nudged Alderman George Cornwallis, monumental mason, monumental bore, and mayor. Alderman George Cornwallis woke up abruptly, and fingered his mayoral chains as if to check that he really was mayor. He looked at Denise Saltmarsh as she entered in her swimsuit to modest applause and yet another fanfare, and remembered what he had done. It had been understandable. Attractive young girls didn’t offer themselves to Alderman George Cornwallis every day, or even every decade, but still … Ginny Fenwick was staring straight at him, as if reading his thoughts.
The applause died down. Denise Saltmarsh smiled radiantly.
‘Hello, Denise,’ said Rodney Sillitoe. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘I don’t know really,’ said Denise Saltmarsh in her mournful Halesowen accent. ‘I feel quite … you know …’
‘Confident?’
All four male judges were tense, willing Denise Saltmarsh to be brilliant.
‘Well … yes … sort of,’ she said.
‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney, and paused, momentarily at a loss. Interviewing was proving harder than compèring. ‘Tell us more about this interesting hobby of yours,’ he said. ‘These ancient Ming vases.’ There was a pause. Denise Saltmarsh didn’t speak, so Rodney had to continue. ‘How did you get interested in them?’
Denise Saltmarsh thought. She smiled radiantly. The male judges willed her on. She smiled radiantly. ‘I don’t know, really,’ she said. ‘I just like them.’
There was a sticky pause. Rodney was sweating. Denise Saltmarsh was smiling radiantly. ‘You were telling me your great-uncle had a house full of Chinese curios, and they fascinated you,’ said Rodney, with only a hint of irritation.
‘Yes, that’s right, he did,’ said Denise Saltmarsh. Rodney waited, and she realized that more was expected of her. ‘And they did,’ she added. ‘Fascinate me, I mean.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney, and he became aware that he was saying ‘jolly good’ too often, and it was something he never said. ‘Tell me more about this unusual ambition of yours. Why do you want
to be a freelance hair stylist?’
‘I don’t know really,’ said Denise Saltmarsh. ‘I just do.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Thank you, Denise Saltmarsh.’
There was modest applause, as Denise Saltmarsh left, smiling radiantly.
‘And now,’ said Rodney, ‘our second finalist …’ Again, the pause. ‘… our very own Carol Fordingbridge.’
There was loud applause as the long-haired Carol Fordingbridge entered in her stunning but tasteful swimsuit.
‘So, how are you feeling now, Carol?’ asked Rodney.
The four male judges willed her to say something really dumb.
‘Well, I’m a bit tense,’ she said. ‘But not too bad. I’m pleased to have got into the last five, and if I can go further, it’ll be a bonus.’
‘Too good to be true?’ wrote Craig Welting, managing director of Radio Gadd, shielding his note from Ginny Fenwick.
‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Tell us about this unusual ambition of yours. Why do you want to drive a formula one power boat?’
‘Well, I love the sea,’ said Carol, ‘and I love boats, and I enjoy speed, and I don’t see why the men should have it all their own way.’ She smiled, to take the sting out of her words, but Edgar Hamilton, president of the Food Additives Consultancy Council, clutching at straws and shielding his note from Ginny Fenwick, wrote ‘Feminist?’
Ginny Fenwick wrote, ‘These judges are a load of wankers,’ in shorthand, and shielded it from nobody.
‘Jolly good,’ said Rodney. ‘Tell us more about this unusual hobby of yours. What got you interested in collecting antique jewellery?’
The doors burst open, and ten women and five men, mostly young, mostly wearing jeans, poured into the room. They were led by the tall sculptperson, Melissa Holdsworthy, prematurely grey, fiercely handsome. She carried a banner which read, ‘We’re people too.’
Other banners stated, ‘Ban beauty contests’, ‘Stop treating women as objects’, ‘End this humiliation’, ‘Ban intensive farming’, ‘“No” to battery chickens’, ‘“No” to battery people’, ‘Don’t judge us by our bodies’ and ‘Preserve British manhood – pickle a man tonight’. One girl had a tee shirt with ‘Chicken farmers are pigs’ on the front, and ‘Pig farmers are chicken’ on the back. They all shouted at the tops of their voices.
