know. And I deplore it,’ said Elvis. ‘But I fail to see any logical link between that and putting tomato purée in coq au vin.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve got more urgent things to think about.’
‘No. Please,’ begged Rita. ‘I can’t take any more talk about the urgent things. Let’s talk about tomato purée.’ Nobody spoke. ‘Nobody has anything to say about tomato purée, it seems.’
‘Hello!’ Simon tossed his absurdly cheery greeting into their resonant silence.
‘Hello, Simon,’ said Rita. He was a man made for morning dress. In sweaters he was a fish out of water, in jeans a laughing stock. He was made for great occasions and Rita had ruined his great occasion, she had ruined everybody’s great occasion. Oh God! ‘Sorry to ruin your day.’
‘Not at all,’ protested Simon, with that bottomless willingness to please that would surely take him far up the ladder with Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. ‘Not at all. It’s been a terrific … well, not a terrific … not at all terrific, of course, but … apart from not being terrific, it’s been … well …’
Elvis finished it for him. ‘… terrific.’
‘Well, yes. Well, it has.’
Carol turned the torch of her beauty full onto Elvis’s face. It was a beauty to which only he, it seemed, was blind. And he was her fiancé. Strange are the ways of young love.
‘I’ve spotted a flaw in your logic,’ she said.
‘You what?’ Elvis was incredulous.
‘You said you’d faced up to the total embarrassment of the occasion, but you didn’t know it was going to be embarrassing when you faced it.’
‘I was talking of the embarrassment of Mum marrying Gerry, not the embarrassment of her not marrying him.’
Elvis stomped off. Carol gave a little embarrassed laugh.
‘I can’t seem to do anything right these days,’ she said.
‘Settle for celibacy, Carol,’ said Simon. ‘I have, and it’s terrific. I mean, look at all the chaos the sexual urges get people into.’
‘Yes! Oh yes!’ said Rita.
‘Oh Lord.’ He was appalled. ‘Oh no, Rita. I wasn’t meaning you.’
‘Come on, Simon.’ Jenny led her brother away as one would a small child who has become a nuisance.
Alone with Rita, Carol looked young and vulnerable. ‘Well, I’d …’ she began.
‘No, please, Carol, stay with me,’ begged Rita. ‘I have an awful feeling that the moment I’m on my own Ted will loom up, and I can’t face that yet.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Carol fetched a chair just vacated by Rita’s sneezing uncle, and sat beside Rita. Behind them, a large flock of rooks chattered homewards towards the long narrow wood that screened the hotel grounds from the Tadcaster Road. Their day was ending. Rita felt that hers would stretch ahead of her for ever.
There was an awkward but affectionate silence between the two women as each searched for a topic.
Carol found one first.
‘Is it wrong to put tomato purée in coq au vin?’ she asked.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Rita. ‘Ted never let me cook anything foreign.’
Times change. Ted Simcock, ex-foundry owner, ex-husband, ex-refuser of foreign food, handed his ex-lover and her second husband a card and said, unnecessarily, ‘Our card.’ They studied the card’s limited text without interest. He continued unabashed. ‘Our cuisine will be basically a marriage of the bountifulness of Yorkshire hospitality …’ he stretched his arms, to etch in the size of the portions, ‘… with the flair and je ne sais quoi of cuisine nouvelle.’ He garnished the air with his fingers.
‘Who’s your chef.’ It was just a social noise, not inquisitive enough to justify a question mark.
‘Ah! That’s the only slight snag at the moment. Genius doesn’t grow on trees.’ Ted handed his former lover’s husband a bright orange voucher. ‘Present that during our first week, you’ll get a free half-carafe of house wine.’
‘Thank you,’ said Neville politely.
‘Very generous,’ said Liz, her voice drier than Ted’s house wine was likely to be.
Ted moved on, to distribute his vinic largesse more widely.
‘I must go to Rita,’ announced Neville.
‘Neville!’ said Liz sharply.
‘She looks rather trapped with Carol, who has no conversation, poor girl. She’ll be feeling awful.’
‘No. You mean she’s found today an ordeal?’
Liz felt that she had delivered these little shafts of sarcasm rather well, dressing the depth of her feelings in an elegant lightness of tone, rather as a lark might sing if livid. Neville appeared not to notice. Liz raised her eyes larkwards as he ploughed on earnestly.
‘In Rita’s case I feel it’s my particular duty to talk to her. I suspect that she once carried a bit of a torch for me.’
‘Good God, Neville.’ Liz realised that her raised voice was attracting the interest of one of Rita’s aunts. She didn’t care. ‘I’d have thought that was a special reason for not talking to her.’
‘I’m going to talk to her, Liz. By all means come too, if you feel like it.’
‘Righty-ho, sir.’ Liz gave a mock salute and wished she hadn’t. If she kept longing for Neville to be masterful, it wasn’t fair that she should wax sarcastic every time he approached that state.
Carol was giving the lie to Neville’s assertion that she had no conversation, although perhaps laying herself open to the charge that she did not have a wide range of topics.
‘I use tomato purée in lasagne,’ she was saying.
‘I’m sure it’s delicious.’
Behind them a single shaft of crimson defied the onset of night. In front of them, the talk was frenzied. Only Rita and Carol and a couple of footsore aunts were seated in all that throng. Only Carol had the task of keeping a conversation going with the architect of the day’s sensational doings. She searched for something further to say, and, happily, inspiration struck. ‘I use tomato purée in moussaka,’ she said. ‘Probably that’s wrong too. Probably I’m dead ignorant.’
‘I’m sure you’re a very good little cook.’ Rita winced, regretting the ‘little’.
‘No. Elvis says he’ll have to do all the cooking when we give media dinner parties.’
‘“Media
