A Bit of a Do. David Nobbs
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Only me. My brother’s in finance in Leeds, and …’ Neville stopped, as if either the subject, or he, or perhaps both were exhausted.
‘Your own children haven’t followed you?’ Ted asked.
‘No … I … we couldn’t have children. Oh Lord. Excuse me.’
Neville Badger hurried off. Liz Rodenhurst approached the dumbfounded Ted.
‘You look so lost, so uncouth,’ she said admiringly.
‘Well … thank you.’ Ted accepted the compliment doubtfully. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said, as Jenny walked radiantly past them, bearing plates of food for a group of friends by the French windows.
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘She’s attractive. That’s very different. But not beautiful. Except perhaps today.’
‘I can see where she gets it from,’ said Ted. ‘Being attractive, I mean, not being not beautiful.’
‘Thank you. I think.’
‘Liz?’ Ted paused until the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood had passed rather fiercely by, en route to do his duty by talking to Rita’s parents, who were perched on chairs beside the fire extinguisher like wallflowers at a dance. Ted didn’t want the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood to hear what he had to say. On the other hand, he didn’t want to delay too long, in case Rita came in from the garden. ‘Liz? What you said earlier. I mean, wasn’t it? A bit naughty. I mean … words … they needn’t mean much, but they can be … you know … I mean, can’t they? … Disturbing. Dangerous.’
‘Do you really think my words don’t mean much?’ said Liz. ‘Surely they aren’t a total surprise?’
‘Well … no … I suppose I’ve realized for quite a while that you were … er …’
‘… aflame with sexual hunger.’
‘Yes. No!!! I mean … Liz! … really!’ He glanced round the crowded, buzzing room. Nobody seemed to be listening to them. ‘I knew you were … not unattracted. I sensed you didn’t find me repulsive.’
‘I sense you don’t find me repulsive either.’
‘Well … no … I don’t. Of course I don’t. I mean … you aren’t. Have you tried the tuna fish vol-au-vents? They’re delicious.’
Ted thrust his plate in front of Liz’s nose – her exquisite nose, with those delicately flared nostrils that troubled him so deeply. As a diversion, the plate was a failure. ‘Don’t you want me?’ said Liz, spurning the proffered delicacies.
‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘Of course I do, Liz. But.’
He turned abruptly, wriggling to get away with all the desperation of one of the nice, fat roach that he hoped to catch in the autumn competition on the so-called Wisbech trip, when they actually fished the straight, flat Ouse, miles from anywhere. How he wished it was the Wisbech trip today. The long coach ride south, to the flat, fertile Fens. The long, silent hours by the Ouse, under the wide sky. The long coach ride home. Good company. Good fishing. Good ale. Good singing on the coach. He even wished he were at home, at the sink, washing up. Washing up was an underrated pleasure. Not as exciting as sex, but infinitely safer.
He hadn’t shaken Liz off. Realizing that she was following him, realizing how revealing that would be to anybody who suspected, he felt that he had no alternative but to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to get away. He turned to face his tormentor.
‘What do you mean, “but”?’ said Liz. ‘You can’t just say “but” and walk off. It’s unacceptable behaviour both socially and grammatically.’
‘I suppose I meant … oh heck … that this is awful.’
‘Awful? It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. I’m alive again.’
‘Oh yes, I agree. Absolutely. It’s very exciting. It’s absolutely wonderful. But.’
‘… it’s awful?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Ted. Poor poor Ted.’
Liz walked away, leaving him stranded. He bit altogether too ambitiously into a hard-boiled egg, and almost choked.
‘But you promised, Paul. And I mean … what must they think?’
‘That’s it, isn’t it? Never mind the greatest emotional commitment I’ll ever make in my life. Just the parrot-cry of the narrow-minded. “What must they think?”’
They were seated, Paul and his mother, in an alcove in the man-made walled garden. It was a pleasant place of bricked paths and patios, studded with benches and urns. In the centre there was a small, round pond, in which silver carp held an eternal buffet among the water lilies, bladderwort and floating hyacinths. There were arches across which climbing roses had been trained. The clematis were in flower, and in a sheltered corner there was a fig tree, spreading its branches widely but producing only tiny fruit, most of which would drop off before they ripened. Perhaps it was no wonder, in this northern climate hostile to ripening figs, if Rita’s emotional juices had dried out as her hair thinned and grew lifeless, and the worry lines deepened. The peace and calm of this garden couldn’t reach her. It was always November, now, in Rita’s garden.
‘You don’t understand the way their minds work,’ she said. ‘They look down on us. We’re trade. They’re professions. In his own mind, he’s practically on a par with doctors, that one.’
‘In Bolivia, Mum, they have sixty-five per cent infant mortality,’ said the lucky groom with restrained fury. ‘The average life expectancy of the tin miners is thirty-seven. The typical diet is boiled maize, followed, if they’re very lucky, by more boiled maize. Extra boiled maize as a treat at Christmas. So I honestly don’t think my having my hair cut matters very much.’
‘Exactly!’ Rita was briefly triumphant. ‘So it’s not much to ask to have it done, then, is it?’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Paul, leaping to his feet. ‘All right, then. See you later.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘That new unisex place in Newbaldgate.’
‘Paul! Not now! You’re the groom.’
‘So?’
‘Nobody goes for a haircut during their wedding reception.’
‘Then it’s time to break the mould of British social behaviour. I mean I pay my mother the compliment of assuming that she wouldn’t set out to spoil my wedding reception unless she felt that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. So, I shall have a haircut. I don’t want to start me honeymoon riddled with guilt. It might make me impotent. Then they will laugh at me.’
‘There’s no need to be disgusting!’
But Paul had gone in, through the French windows. He walked straight through his wedding reception, through the public rooms of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, down the wide steps, along the semicircular drive, past the rhododendrons and the cawing rooks in the long, narrow wood that screened the grounds from the Tadcaster Road, and out onto the surprisingly warm pavements of the outside world. He hopped onto a number eight bus, and was at the unisex hairdresser’s before the last of his anger had drained away, and he began to wish that he hadn’t gone there.
Ted didn’t see his son pass. His eyes were on Liz, who was approaching him again in a manner that made him feel excited and nervous.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, raising her eyes and her glass of champagne to him. ‘Words are too easy.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Action’s the thing.’
‘Absolutely. Pardon?’
‘Meet me in room 108 in five minutes.’