Neville smiling earnestly, Liz faintly.
‘Hello!’ said Neville too brightly. ‘All ship-shape and Bristol fashion?’
‘Absolutely.’ Rita managed a smile. ‘Carol and I have been having a fascinating chat about tomato purée.’
‘Jolly … good.’ Neville frowned as he considered the possibility of fascinating chats about tomato purée. ‘Rita, I wanted to say that, whatever you may think, and whatever you may think anybody else thinks, and I think if you knew what they were thinking you might find that they aren’t thinking what you think they’re thinking, I think, in fact I know, that I have never admired you as much as today.’
Rita burst into tears, threw her posy of freesias at Neville, and rushed from the room.
‘Neville!’ said Liz, before rushing off to comfort her old enemy.
Ted’s ex-wife and the woman who had taken him from her left the room arm-in-arm. Some heads turned to watch, others turned so as not to watch.
‘What did I say?’ said Neville Badger, puzzled doyen of the town’s legal community.
Ted stood beside Sandra, his waitress, his mistress, and watched as his ex-wife and ex-mistress left the room. The dollop of trifle on his plate was forgotten.
‘Well!’ he said. ‘Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship?’
He didn’t want the trifle. He was full to bursting. But he’d felt obliged to take some notice of Sandra, and, since he was determined to keep their relationship secret, he could hardly say, ‘Sandra! I want you. How about a bit tonight?’ He had therefore said, ‘Waitress, I wonder if you could rustle up a last dollop of trifle.’ An excellent ruse, the only drawback being that, the dollop of trifle having been rustled up, he now had to eat it.
‘She can’t keep her eyes off you.’ There was withering scorn in Sandra’s voice, as if anybody who couldn’t keep her eyes off Ted must be mentally deficient.
‘What?’ Ted was puzzled. ‘Who? Liz? Rita?’
‘The tarty piece!’
Ted willed his neck not to swivel. It was no use. He found himself gazing, across Rita’s craggy relatives, past Gerry’s poncy friends, far across the crowded function room towards his vision in yellow. Corinna was waiting for him to look. She smiled. His heart churned. He turned back to Sandra, who was also smiling, grimly.
‘Sandra!’ Ted spoke with a mouth full of trifle. ‘The “tarty piece” only happens to be double-barrelled. Her father’s only a bishop. And a dish.’
‘You what?’
‘A lovely man. And she’s nothing to me, anyroad. So, I’ve nothing to hide. So, I’m going to talk to her. All right? Good.’
He was aware of Sandra’s eyes boring into his back as he negotiated a path between the wedding guests, refusing to meet the eyes of uncles who had drunk all his whisky every Boxing Day and aunts who had given him so much aftershave and deodorant that he had begun to wonder about his personal freshness. What did Rita’s relatives matter now, in this wonderful world in which Corinna Price-Rodgerson had eyes only for him?
‘You’ve been avoiding me.’ She seemed amused.
‘No! Look, Corinna, meeting you today has been very, very exciting for me. I feel …’
‘Aflame with desire?’ She smiled, slightly awkward in her advances, as one might expect from a bishop’s daughter.
‘Lightning does strike twice in the same place twice!’
‘What?’ Corinna was again puzzled.
‘Nothing. I want to be alone with you, Corinna. I can’t wait for Tuesday …’ Sandra arrived with champagne. ‘… s will be stewsdays, stewsdays every Tuesday, Sundays and most days will be roast days … Sandra!’
Sandra continued to pour champagne into Ted’s glass long after it was full. The champagne cascaded onto the floor around his feet. Sandra smiled. Her smiles were formidable.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’
Ted turned eagerly to listen to Gerry. Anything was better than this confrontation between Sandra and Corinna.
Silence fell rapidly. Rita and Liz entered, having repaired Rita’s shattered face and make-up. Rita looked as if she might faint. Liz clutched her arm and squeezed it encouragingly. Nobody saw them. All eyes were on Gerry. What would he say? What could he say? On this, the worst day of his life, he held an audience spellbound for the only time in his inglorious political career. The irony escaped him.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ He stood where Rita had delivered her emotional speech. Gerry’s speech was carefully unemotional. His face was pale and pinched. He looked very young, and so very, very old. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I’m off now. I’d just like to apologise for the way the day has turned out, and to thank you all for coming, and for all the presents, which were just what we … would have wanted, and will be returned. I’m off to Capri. I had hoped that my bride would be with me, as I understand that this is customary on these occasions. But I’m going anyway; it’s all paid for, and I deplore waste of every kind. It says so in my bloody manifesto, so it must be true.’
Gerry Lansdown looked neither to left nor right as he walked past his wedding guests. He didn’t so much as glance at Rita. He strode out of her life forever, with his head held high.
Rita trembled.
‘Feel up to facing everybody?’ said Liz gently.
‘Oh yes. I don’t think I should run away now. And … thank you, Liz.’
Rita kissed Liz, and Neville, watching, beamed.
‘Our Liz is turning into a real trooper,’ said Rodney Sillitoe, watching from their position beside the apple juice.
‘Well she doesn’t see Rita as a threat, now she’s made such a fool of herself,’ said Betty.
‘That’s a bit ungenerous, isn’t it?’
‘No. It’s realistic. I don’t believe anybody ever does anything except for selfish reasons.’
‘Betty! You do.’ Rodney was astounded. ‘You’re a very sentimental person.’
‘Sentimentality is selfish. When I pat a little boy on the head and go, “There, there! Who’s a clever boy, then?”, who loves it? Me. Who hates it? The little boy. Selfish.’
‘But you’re an incredibly wonderful wife to me.’
‘Because you’re such an incredibly wonderful husband to me that it’s in my interest to be an incredibly wonderful wife to you.’
‘Aaaah! Let’s clink juices and drink to us.’
‘To us.’
They clinked juices.
