style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I said I didn’t believe that.’ Rita’s head was swimming. She was finding it difficult to control her speech. ‘You’re intelligent, good-looking, energetic. Apart from an unfortunate tendency towards niceness and honesty you have all the qualities a politicians needs.’ She frowned, aware that she had used too many plurals. She must concentrate. She must get things right. ‘But you see, Gerry, when the crunch came, I found I didn’t love you enough to give up my career.’
‘What career?’ Gerry didn’t attempt to hide his scorn.
‘Precisely! I must do something soon. I don’t love you enough to fill my garden with Bulgarian wine, Lymeswold cheese, and hordes of frantically argumentative moderates. I don’t love you enough to host elegant dinner parties for smiling Japanese businessmen with microchips on their shoulders. It came to me that I must release you before I trapped you. I’m so very, very sorry. And really, dear dear Gerry, there’s nothing more to be said and oh God I must explain to them before I cry.’
Rita scurried to the end of the room, clutching her posy fiercely. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she called out. Silence fell with suspect haste. She stood facing all her guests; all Gerry’s guests; her ex-husband, whose face was a vault of secrets; his ex-lover, whose face was an open book; Neville, his face creased in concentration and sadness; Jenny and her llamas on the verge of tears; Rodney and Betty frowning in unison, synchronised swimmers in a pool of sorrow; Elvis, unaware of Carol Fordingbridge’s drowning arm clinging hopefully to him; Simon, as concerned for another person’s predicament as it’s possible for a young man to be while remaining an estate agent; a pale shaft of late afternoon sunshine catching Corinna’s yellow dress; Sandra, her corn-coloured hair dishevelled, her apron crooked, her hands clutching a disturbingly large pile of dirty pudding plates, her fierce young eyes uncertain whether to look at Rita or Corinna; and, between Rita and all these people, the wrecked buffet, over which the uncut cake towered, a snow-covered cathedral that had miraculously survived the bombing of the surrounding city.
Rita looked at all this through wet eyes and saw none of it. Saw a blur. Lowered her eyes as if she might find on the floor the words that she sought.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I owe you all an apology for ruining this dreadful day. I mean this wonderful day that it would have been if I hadn’t ruined it. Ladies and gentlemen … and everybody else … what I’ve done today is because of being a woman, and the unhappiness of my first marriage.’
‘Terrific!’ said Ted. ‘I’m having a wonderful day.’
‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.
‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Gerry.
‘Shut up, Gerry,’ said Rita. ‘Leave this to me. Ladies and gentlemen, Gerry’s been very good to me. The best and most generous lover I’ve ever had.’
‘Tremendous!’ exclaimed Ted.
‘Shut up, Ted,’ said Rita.
‘Yes, shut up, Ted,’ echoed Corinna Price-Rodgerson.
‘Starved of true love as I had been for most of my life – shut up, Ted!’
Ted, who hadn’t spoken, looked outraged, as if he would never in his life dream of interrupting a woman.
‘I mistook my gratitude, my freedom, for love,’ continued Rita. ‘I thought I wanted to marry Gerry, but I can’t, because I’d only be a manifesto, and I don’t want to end up as a smile on his appendage.’
‘She’s drunk,’ said Betty quietly, but not quite quietly enough.
‘Yes!’ said Rita. ‘And it takes one to know one. I am a bit drunk, because I had three tuns at the Four Gins … and tonic.’ She raised her glass to her lips, then seemed to notice it for the first time. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘No!’ She put her hand over the top of the glass. ‘Coffee, please. Black. For a black day. Ladies and gentlemen, Gerry will meet a fine woman who will love him as I can’t, and you … you will all forget this day. Please! And … I’m so sorry.’
Rita hurried off, past people torn between compassion, horror and the knowledge of what a good story it would make. She was shuddering and gasping.
Elvis rushed over to her and took her in his arms.
‘Mum!’ he said. Despite his years of study, despite the vast riches of the English language, he could think of no words to add, so he repeated the one word that seemed appropriate. ‘Mum!’ And Jenny hurried over, tears streaming, llamas heaving, and said ‘Rita!’ and kissed her, and Rita said ‘Jenny!’ and Elvis hugged them both, and they looked round for a chair, and a rather florid man – he was an architect who designed futuristic tubular shopping fortresses and lived in a Georgian house near Hazlemere, did they but know it – saw the gesture, and his good manners overcame his feelings of solidarity with Gerry, and he brought over a chair, saying unnecessarily, ‘A chair,’ and Jenny said, ‘Thanks,’ and Rita subsided into the chair, and Elvis said, ‘Mum!’ and the riches of the English language remained unexplored.
Rita gave a tiny, tired grin. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said. ‘Suddenly I’m all right. I feel very small and very cold but very sober.’
‘How lovely she would have looked!’ Betty Sillitoe, over-sentimental as usual, gave a vast sigh. ‘How magnificent her dress would have been.’
‘It still is,’ protested the former big wheel behind Cock-A-Doodle Chickens.
‘You know what I mean.’ Betty sighed again. ‘It was sad to see her drunk, though.’
‘It’s always sad when somebody you like and admire lets themselves down in public. More grape juice?’
‘Please.’
Carol Fordingbridge smiled at Rita, but could think of nothing to say, so, sensibly under the circumstances, she said nothing. She tried to link arms with Elvis, but he shrugged her arm off. Behind them, cold streaks of orange and red were fading slowly to mauves and purples as the short day died.
Sometimes Rita dreaded asking the most simple questions, but this one couldn’t be avoided. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘He refused to come,’ said Jenny, half embarrassed, half defiant.
‘Good for him,’ said Rita.
‘Oh terrific,’ said Elvis. ‘I face up to the total embarrassment of the occasion, because I love you, and Paul gets praised for copping out.’
‘Elvis! Your mother’s got enough problems without you getting in a temper,’ said Carol.
‘Temper?’ Elvis showed just a touch of temper at the suggestion. ‘I’m not getting in a temper.’
‘No. I know. I’ve seen your tempers,’ said his fiancée. ‘Like when I put tomato purée in the coq au vin.’
‘Carol!’
‘I don’t suppose Jean-Paul Sartre ever lost his temper because Simone De Beauvoir put tomato purée in the coq au vin.’
‘That’s the whole point.’
