A Bit of a Do. David Nobbs
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said Laurence, glad of any interruption. ‘And how are Mr and Mrs Twigg?’
‘Spragg,’ said the bow-legged Percy Spragg.
‘Are you really?’ said Laurence. ‘That’s grand! Jolly good! I love these old dialect words.’
‘Dialect words?’ said Percy Spragg, puzzled.
‘Spragg.’
‘That’s my name.’
‘Ah.’
Rita felt real fondness for her father then, for the first time in many years. It wasn’t destined to last long.
‘Well, how are you, anyway?’ said Laurence.
‘Grand,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Just grand. By ’eck, Mr Rodenhurst, all them cars in t’car park. We’ve seen some changes in us lifetime, eh, Clarrie?’
‘Oh aye,’ said the barrel-chested Clarrie Spragg. ‘We’ve seen a few changes all right, Perce.’
‘I remember when it was all horses,’ said Percy Spragg. ‘Horse manure all over t’ roads.’
‘Percy!’ said Clarrie.
‘We used to shovel it up off t’ roads when it were still steaming.’
‘Dad!’ said Rita.
‘It were the ’alcyon age of rhubarb, never to return.’
‘What a fascinating snippet of social history. Excuse me,’ said Laurence, and he moved over to talk to his brother, who was held by many to be the leading gynaecologist in Crewe.
‘Why do you have to show me up?’ hissed Rita.
Her father’s eyes glinted maliciously.
‘Because you always think I’m going to show you up,’ he said.
The afternoon sun streamed into room 108. Liz had pulled back the purple coverlet on the double bed. The sheets looked crisp and worldly.
Amos Clissold stared down at them sternly from the wall above the bed, as he did from the wall above every bed in the hotel. Ted wanted to turn the gum magnate’s disapproving face to the wall. He wanted to put the Gideon Bible in the drawer of the bedside table. He didn’t dare, for fear that Liz would laugh at him. As he slowly undid his shoes, he found himself wondering about hotel soap. What happened to all the unfinished cakes left by departing guests? Did the chambermaids take them home and recycle them, to supplement their meagre incomes? He tried to force his mind into more amorous channels. To no avail! Damn it, he could hear the hum of conversation and laughter from his son’s wedding reception.
‘Do you usually make love with your clothes on?’ asked Liz.
‘I can hear the reception.’
‘They’re chatting. They’re laughing. They haven’t missed us.’
‘No, but … I mean … Liz … if we can hear them, maybe they’ll hear us.’
‘Above all that noise? That sounds promising!’
‘Oh, Liz!’
‘We’re wasting time, and even I agree we shouldn’t be away too long,’ said Liz. ‘Don’t you want me?’
She removed the last of her clothes and stood before him, bronzed from her sun lamp, just a slight fleshiness about the thighs and stomach, maybe the breasts not quite as high as once they were, but he knew then that he would have wanted her if a hundred photos of the Archbishop of Canterbury had been staring down at him.
‘Oh, yes! Oh Liz! Oh heck!’ he said.
‘Oh, Betty!’
Betty Sillitoe, who was over-perfumed as usual, was standing by the champagne table, sipping her drink. ‘All a bit much?’ she said.
‘Dad talked to Laurence about horse manure.’
‘Think yourself lucky he said manure.’
Rita poured herself half a glass of champagne. She had reached her limit. Any further crises would have to be met out of her own resources.
‘You’re the only person I feel close to,’ she said. ‘Not even the boys any more. What’s happening to me? I want to scream, Betty.’
‘Well … weddings.’ Betty put an arm round Rita affectionately. ‘I’m standing by the drink where I can keep an eye on Rodney and see he doesn’t drink too much, bless him.’ She sipped her drink and pointed towards her husband, smiling.
Rodney Sillitoe, the big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, was standing by one of the sash windows on the far side of the room. He was in earnest conversation with the radiant bride.
‘Your dress is lovely, Jenny,’ he was saying. ‘Lovely.’
‘Thank you.’ She was holding her luxurious train over her arm. ‘It’s funny. You seem quite human.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today. Not when you’re a guest at my wedding.’
‘I didn’t know it was rude to call somebody human,’ said Rodney Sillitoe.
‘No, but you know what I meant. You seem quite nice, but you run a kind of concentration camp for chickens. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’
‘Yes, you should, because you mean it, and I admire you for it.’
‘It’s just that I think that if we think we have the right to exploit animals because we’re superior to them, that makes us inferior to them because they never exploit us. Does that make me a crank?’
‘No!’
‘He can’t resist an attractive young woman,’ said Betty Sillitoe.
‘Don’t you ever feel jealous?’ said Rita.
‘Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He just likes being near attractive young women.’
‘I envy you.’
‘Rita! She does look a picture, I must say.’
‘Must you?’
‘Rita!’
‘Chickens aren’t like people, Jenny. They don’t have the same feelings. They don’t have the same expectations of life style.’
‘I know. Fish have no nerves in their mouths, foxes enjoy being hunted, lobsters get a sexual thrill out of being boiled alive. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not today.’
Jenny looked round the crowded room. She was searching for help, but no help was at hand. She didn’t want to go on with this conversation, on this day of all days. and yet she couldn’t let it go.
‘But how can you live with yourself?’ she said, ‘knowing how your chickens live.’
And Betty, from her strategic position beside the champagne, smiled indulgently as she watched their lips move.
‘I love him for his foibles,’ she said.
‘You must feel envy sometimes,’ said Rita.
‘No. I wouldn’t want anything in my life to be different from what it is.’
Rita closed her eyes, and swallowed her champagne as if it were medicine.
‘I envy you,’ she said.
‘I don’t look at it the same road as you, Jenny,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re units. Costed items. I employ three hundred people in an area of high unemployment. I couldn’t do that without my rationalized, cost-effective methods.’
The window could have afforded them a pleasant view over the park-like