Fair Do’s

‘Hello,’ he said, and he only just failed to sound at ease.

‘Have you invited him?’ said Rita under her breath.

Liz shook her head.

‘Ted! Really!’ said Rita.

‘Well, I … er … incidentally, congratulations, Councillor.’

‘Thank you very much.’ Again, Rita couldn’t help being slightly coy.

‘Who’d have thought …?’

‘Quite. But really, Ted! Turning up today!’

Liz leant across the pram, ostensibly to pull Josceleyn’s coverlet up over his neck, but actually to hiss, ‘Pretty tactless, Ted, even for you.’

Ted leant forward, ostensibly to have a close look at his son, but actually to hiss back, ‘You once said you liked me because I was tactless and uncouth.’

‘I hardly think we need mention that,’ hissed Liz.

Ted gave the three of them what he hoped was a proud, dignified look. ‘I think I of all people have the right to be here,’ he said. He realised that there were people within earshot, and added, out of the side of his mouth, ‘The baby is mine.’

‘No, no, Ted. No, no,’ said Neville. ‘You’re his father. He isn’t yours. He isn’t anybody’s. He’s himself. Circumstances have meant that it’s my duty … and my great privilege … to look after him till he’s old enough to look after himself.’

They were stunned. In the town, four young men roared out of the car-park of the Coach and Mallet in a souped-up Escort with a faulty exhaust, and the landlord’s caged-up Rottweilers, sensing their aggression, barked excitedly.

‘Well said, Neville,’ said Liz at last.

‘Yes. Marvellous,’ said Rita.

‘I wish you didn’t sound so surprised,’ grumbled Neville.

‘I care about the boy,’ said Ted, resuming his self-justification as if Neville hadn’t spoken. ‘I’d like to witness the service at least. I’ll give nobody any reason to suspect the truth. I mean, I won’t. I’m capable of being civilised and discreet. I mean … I’m a leading restaurateur. And I mean … I’m hardly likely to make a scene in front of my fiancée, am I?’

Rita and Liz were astounded. Ted’s startling information took rather longer to filter into Neville’s keen legal brain.

‘Well, all right,’ he said, ‘but if you do, Ted, if you do … your fiancée?’

‘You’re not marrying your waitress?’ Liz sounded as if she couldn’t believe that a man with whom she had slept could ever sink so low.

‘No, Liz. Nothing as disturbing to your social nostrils as that. I’m marrying Corinna Price-Rodgerson.’

‘Oh, Ted.’ It was Rita’s turn to sound shocked.

‘Thank you, Rita.’

‘Well, congratulations, Ted,’ said Neville.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Liz.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ echoed Rita.

Into the inappropriately cool silence that followed these congratulations there stepped the lady in question. Where before she had been yellow, she was now orange. She greeted them vivaciously, as if she had already taken them to her heart.

‘Congratulations, Corinna,’ said Neville and Liz in unison.

‘Yes, congratulations,’ said Rita, after just too long a pause.

‘Thank you,’ said Corinna graciously. ‘And congratulations to you too … Councillor.’

‘You see!’ said Ted. ‘Congratulations all round. Worry not. It’s going to be a wonderful day.’

It began to seem that it would indeed be a wonderful day. A narrow gash of hard cobalt appeared in the gloomy sky, and widened and softened as the banks of cloud rolled away. The sun shone warmly. The humidity seemed to stream up through the gap in the clouds, towards the amazing blue of that winter sky. Foreheads eased. People took sumptuous breaths. It was as if the lid had been taken off this pressured, gaseous universe.

Liz and Neville’s guests were gathering on the paths around the church. The sun shone on the earrings of elegantly dressed ladies and on the port-wine noses of men who had lived well. It shone on Matthew Wadebridge, a colleague of Neville’s at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger, and on Mrs Wadehurst, who was big in the Red Cross, and pretty big in the sunshine outside the abbey church. It shone on the bald head of the bluff, egg-shaped Graham Wintergreen, manager of the golf club, and on his golfophobe wife Angela. It shone on the queenly Charlotte Ratchett, of the furniture Ratchetts, greying but undefeated, no mean wielder of a number two iron in her hey-day. It shone on Morris Wigmore, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group on the Council, whose son had come to a sticky end in Brisbane, despite which, or perhaps because of which, he never seemed to stop smiling. It shone on Rodney Sillitoe, the former big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens, in a crumpled suit and with a crumpled face, Band-Aid on his chin and no Betty at his side. It shone on Liz’s skeletal, ramrod uncle, Hubert Ellsworth-Smythe, who had made his money in Malaya and Burma, and lost it in York, Doncaster, Wetherby and Market Rasen. It shone on Simon Rodenhurst, up-and-coming estate agent, assiduous cleaner of teeth.

‘Hello,’ beamed Simon whitely. ‘Congratulations, Councillor!’

‘Thank you very much.’ This time Rita almost managed not to sound coy.

Simon beamed at the whole group: Neville and Liz and Rita and Corinna and … Ted!

‘Ted!’ he said.

‘I think you’ve met my fiancée, Corinna,’ said Ted.

‘Yes, we’ve … er … fiancée? Good God!’ Simon gulped. ‘I mean, “Good God is certainly giving us something to celebrate today!” Congratulations!’

Simon was less than overjoyed to see, approaching at a fast lick, and smiling broadly, Andrew Denton, Neville’s nephew, who was in banking in Leeds and not doing as well as had been hoped. Simon was even less overjoyed to see, approaching at a slower lick, Andrew’s wife Judy, whom he had once shown round a house, and then round his flat, and then round his bedroom, and then round his body. He was even less overjoyed to see Judy’s stomach. From what Andrew had said at his mother’s wedding to Neville, Simon was certain that what was in there was the result of the one and only indiscretion in his unintentionally celibate young life.

‘Fiancée!’ said Andrew cheerfully. ‘I heard that! Congratulations! Hello, all. Mrs Simcock! I heard! Congratulations!’

‘Thank you very much.’

Simon tried hard to look at something other than Judy’s stomach.

‘Quite a warm day,’ said Andrew Denton. ‘We won’t need heating. That’s lucky.’

There was a mystified pause.

‘Because we don’t want it to be a baptism of fire,’ he explained. ‘Joke,’ he added.

‘You remember my nephew do you, Simon?’ said Neville.

Curls of grey cloud swirled in from the West. The sun fought feebly, and was gone. The lid came down again. The day pulsed with moist pressure. The greyness, to which they had earlier been reconciled, was terrible now.

‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘Yes, I … er … I … er … yes.’