by David Nobbs
‘I won’t,’ said Simon Rodenhurst with feeling.
‘I believe we’ll be happy,’ said Neville Badger, hoping that his words would make him feel happier.
The limousine slid smoothly up Moor Street into Tannergate, turned right, and passed the heavily scaffolded abbey church, where less than fourteen months ago Jenny had married Paul.
‘Good. I hope we will, too,’ said the second Mrs Badger.
‘Jane thinks so, too.’
‘Oh Neville!’
‘Oh, I know she’s dead, but, you see, I do still feel that she’s with me. I can’t help that.’
They swung down Westgate, past the heavily scaffolded frontage of the Angel Hotel. Liz remained silent. Neville wondered if she was upset.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want to have secrets from you.’
Liz patted his hand, but didn’t look at him.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have married me if she didn’t approve.’
‘Happy?’ said Gerry Lansdown, as they sped south towards Hind-head and his potential supporters.
‘What a question,’ said Rita.
‘Listen with me,’ pleaded the cake-loving Sandra Pickersgill.
‘All right,’ said Ted.
The sun was streaming into the yard, helping to rot the food in the bins and plastic bags. Soon they’d go home. Ted didn’t want to. He wasn’t feeling up to what Sandra would expect of him.
Sandra removed her headphones. Two bars of what sounded to Ted like cacophonous rubbish rang out. A rat scurried away, terrified. The music stopped.
‘We’ve got an urgent report from our motoring unit,’ boomed Dave-Boy Yarnold, the popular Radio Gadd disc jockey. ‘It’s for drivers heading towards Langstone-on-Gadd and Ecclesedge. The B6879 to Langstone-on-Gadd and Ecclesedge is covered in chickens just below Upper Mill. That’s right. I said chickens! Apparently they’ve escaped from a battery chicken farm and are running around all over the place. So drive those lorries carefully, or you may end up with an instant cock au van.’
‘That’s Rodney,’ said Ted. ‘He’s done it!’
He thought that the next record sounded quite nice. Sandra switched it off in disgust.
‘Cheer up, Ted,’ she said, putting her arm round him. ‘It’s a happy day.’
‘Is it? It wasn’t happy for her ex-husband.’
‘No … well …’
‘Poor Laurence. Nobody ever thought he felt anything.’
‘Well, there you are. That’s it.’
‘What?’
‘Life. You never know what people are thinking inside those heads.’
A mangy grey cat entered the yard. Ted threw a catering-size tin of meadow-fresh mushrooms at it, and it fled.
He hoped Sandra didn’t know what he was thinking, inside his head. He was thinking that he just didn’t know what to think.
‘Don’t be morbid,’ she said. ‘Don’t think about him. Everything else has turned out right well.’
‘Has it?’
‘’Course it has. I mean the happy couple are happy, obviously, and so are your Elvis and Carol. And it’s worked out really well for your Paul and Jenny. It’s even worked out for the chickens.’
‘Has it?’
‘’Course it has. Freedom’s important. I think so, anyroad.’
‘I’m not sure if it is for chickens.’
Sandra hesitated before continuing. An autumn wasp hovered around them. Ted swatted it angrily. Why should it pick on them, in this cornucopia of decay? It floated lazily away, drunk on fermenting food. Sandra found the courage to continue.
‘It’s happy for Rita and Gerry, too,’ she said. ‘It is, Ted. Face it. It is.’
‘I just don’t see it, Sandra,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but … I mean … I don’t.’
‘You don’t see it because you never appreciated what you had till you didn’t have it.’
‘All right, but … I mean … whichever way you look at it, love … I mean, it is. Isn’t it? Ridiculous.’
‘Love is ridiculous.’
‘Yes.’
Sandra slid her left leg across his legs, and kissed his cheek. Her breath had the sweet stickiness of a wasp’s breakfast.
‘A year ago you might have said it’s ridiculous if somebody had said you’d be a head waiter and you’d spend the rest of your life with a sacked bakery assistant you met at the DHSS,’ she said. ‘But it isn’t ridiculous, is it?’
‘No. Of course it isn’t.’
‘Well, cheer up, then,’ she said. She placed her left hand gently on his crotch. ‘Don’t you love me?’
‘Sandra! Love! What a question! Of course I do!’ He kissed her gently. ‘Madly!’ he said. ‘Deliriously! Totally!’ He kissed her again, much more enthusiastically, running his tongue round the gap in her top teeth. Then, slowly, he withdrew from the embrace. ‘But,’ he said.
About the Author
David Nobbs’s first break as a comedy writer came on the iconic satire show That Was The Week, That Was, hosted by David Frost. Later he wrote for The Frost Report and The Two Ronnies and provided material for many top comedians including Les Dawson, Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd and Dick Emery.
Apart from his nineteen novels, David is best known for his two hit TV series A Bit of a Do and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
His new radio series With Nobbs On aired on Radio 4 in 2012.
Other Works
Also by David Nobbs
NOVELS
The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger
It Had to be You
Obstacles to Young Love
Cupid’s Dart
Sex and Other Changes
Going Gently
Fair Do’s
A Piece of the Sky is Missing
Ostrich Country
The Itinerant Lodger
REGINALD PERRIN SERIES
The Legacy of Reginald Perrin
The Better World of Reginald Perrin
The Return of Reginald Perrin
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
PRATT
Pratt à Manger
The Cucumber Man
Pratt of the Argus
Second from Last in the Sack Race
NONFICTION
I Didn’t Get Where I am Today
Copyright
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
Harper
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This eBook edition 2012
1
First published in Great Britain by
Methuen London 1986
Copyright © David Nobbs 1986
David Nobbs asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
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available from the British Library
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