A Bit of a Do. David Nobbs
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thou have this man to thy wedded …?’
‘Look happy, Laurence,’ Laurence told himself. ‘If you look happy long enough, you may even start to feel happy.’
‘… keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’
‘Oh Lord,’ prayed the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Why did you take her from me?’
‘I will,’ said Jenny clearly, with an outward confidence that contrasted sharply with Paul’s delivery and made her parents feel that the money they had spent on her education had not been entirely wasted.
There was a slight commotion towards the back of the congregation. A second cousin twice removed had been overcome by emotion, and had to be removed. Rita was painfully conscious that it was on their side of the church.
Outside, in the bustling summer streets, people were peering at details of skiing holidays which they couldn’t afford, gawping at dresses which they would never wear, and slowly reading the meagre lists of unappetizing catering vacancies in the Job Centre. To the town’s seventy thousand inhabitants, the abbey church was so familiar as to be almost invisible.
The ancient market town had expanded rapidly with a mixture of light industry and heavy engineering, which were both now declining. A combination of ignorant councillors, apathetic citizens and ruthless property developers had removed almost all traces of its ancient heritage, except for the abbey church and the street names. Few tourists stopped off on their way to York, Durham and Edinburgh.
It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that at the moment when the great West Door creaked open, nobody was looking at the abbey, except for a visiting Greek-Cypriot builder who was staring openmouthed at the scaffolding which encased the massive tower.
Then suddenly the assertive strains of Leslie Horton, water bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, were mingling with the hum of the Saturday afternoon traffic. Now people stopped and stared, eager to see the lovely bride, the lucky groom, the proud parents, the hats and dresses of the aunts and cousins.
Six bachelor philatelists, on their way to an exhibition in the annexe of the Alderman Cartwright Memorial Museum (entrance by the side door, in West Riding Passage), watched from the top deck of a bright yellow corporation bus as the wedding guests filtered slowly under the four beautifully carved recessed arches of the Norman doorway. The philatelists were in a good mood, being as yet unaware that the exhibition of wildlife stamps had closed at one, due to local government cutbacks. One of them said, ‘They haven’t got too bad a day for it,’ and the other five were not disposed to argue. For the paths were almost dry now after the last brief shower, and there was almost as much blue in the sky as cloud.
The wedding guests stood around in uneasy knots, not quite knowing what to do with themselves, while the funny little man with big ears who turned up unbidden at all the weddings hurried off to the Baptist Chapel, where a promising event was scheduled for three o’clock.
‘Did you see Paul’s hair?’ said Rita Simcock in a low voice.
‘I could hardly miss it,’ said Ted rather less softly. ‘It was on the top of his head, as usual.’
‘S’ssh!’ she hissed. ‘He promised he’d have it cut, Ted. He promised. I mean … what will they think? They already think we’re not good enough for them.’
‘He’s a dentist, Rita, not First Lord of the Admiralty,’ said Ted.
‘S’ssh! Here they come,’ whispered Rita urgently. ‘Look happy!’ She turned to face the Rodenhurst parents, who were approaching with the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Didn’t it go off well?’ she said, giving a radiant smile that had no radiance in it.
‘Very well,’ said Liz.
‘You must be very happy,’ said Neville Badger. He was in his early fifties, but his recent grief seemed to set him apart as a member of the previous generation. ‘Jenny looked a picture,’ he said, turning to Liz and Laurence. ‘A picture. I think she’s putting on a bit of weight. It suits her.’
‘Do you all know each other?’ said Laurence. ‘No? Ah! Neville Badger, a very old friend. Paul’s parents, Ted and Rita Simcock.’
Neville Badger shook hands with Ted and Rita. Ted said, ‘I own the Jupiter Foundry. I expect you’ve heard of us.’ Rita frowned at him. Neville Badger didn’t hear him, because of a passing motorcyclist with a faulty silencer and a hang-up about his virility; and when Ted repeated his statement, Neville Badger said, ‘Actually, no.’
‘Oh,’ said Ted. ‘Well, we … er … we make fire irons, companion sets, door knockers, toasting forks …’
‘Are you a dentist, Mr Badger?’ said Rita, breaking in hastily before Ted gave the whole of his firm’s sales list, and smiling excessively.
‘Oh no! No!’ said Neville Badger too vehemently. He gave Laurence an uneasy, apologetic glance. ‘No. I’m with Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger.’
‘Taxidermists?’ asked Ted.
‘Solicitors!’ said Rita frantically. She flashed him an angry glare, then switched on another nervously ingratiating smile for Neville. The sky was dotted with small white clouds, and in another remarkable meteorological coincidence … or celestial joke … the sun was popping in and out in ironical counterpoint to Rita’s expressions. The sun shone when she frowned. The skies darkened when she smiled.
‘I love a good wedding, don’t you, Mr Badger?’ she said.
‘Yes, I … I do … I … excuse me.’
Neville Badger moved off abruptly. Rita stared after him in horrified astonishment, and the sun came out.
‘His wife died six weeks ago,’ explained Liz.
Two bright pink spots appeared on Rita’s cheeks, and Ted gave her a look which said, ‘You’ve done it again.’
Rodney and Betty Sillitoe were approaching. Rodney was forty-eight, Betty fifty-one, but she looked the younger. Rodney Sillitoe was wearing a very good suit, but it looked as if he had fallen asleep in a chicken coop while wearing it. Betty Sillitoe was so enthusiastically overdressed that she almost carried it off. Her dyed blonde hair peeped cheerfully out at the world round the edges of a yellow hat which wouldn’t have been out of place in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Betty was always the first to draw attention to her dark roots. She dyed her hair to sparkle, not deceive.
‘Well, that all went off splendidly;’ she said.
Ted made the introductions. Rita wished he’d tried to hide the pride in his voice when he added, ‘Rodney’s the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens,’ as if he were a prize salmon Ted had caught, and she knew that Liz had picked this up. Why else should she have exclaimed, as she shook hands with Rodney and gazed into his grizzled, lined face, ‘Ah! A man of power!’
‘Your girl looks a picture,’ the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens told her. ‘A picture.’
Rita tried to hide her irritation at all this praise of Jenny, and then found that she had a far greater irritation to hide. Her parents were hobbling painfully towards them.
Percy Spragg was a bow-legged, barrel-chested old man who appeared to be wearing a demob suit. Clarrie Spragg was a bowlegged, barrel-chested old woman whose face had set over the years into a fearsome and entirely misleading hardness in repose. She looked as if she had bought her clothes at a 1940s jumble sale at which she had arrived late. They looked to Rita as they bore down upon her like two pill boxes left over from our wartime coastal defences.
‘Well, that were grand,’ said Clarrie Spragg.
‘Grand,’ echoed Percy Spragg.
Ted effected the introductions reluctantly.
‘By ’eck, your daughter’s a belter,’ Percy Spragg told the Rodenhursts, who flinched and smiled at the same time.