cry! Please!’ implored Rita. ‘Nobody cry. Once I start –’ She changed the subject desperately, the words pouring out. ‘You know, Jenny, what you said about explaining. There’s something I didn’t explain. I couldn’t. Gerry wouldn’t have understood. One of the reasons I couldn’t marry him … it’ll probably sound very silly … he never had any doubts. I doubt whether I could live with somebody who had no doubts.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Simon.
‘I do,’ said Carol Fordingbridge. Elvis couldn’t prevent his eyebrows from rising caustically. ‘I do, Elvis!’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Elvis.
‘I have doubts,’ said Rita. ‘Tremendous doubts. I’m constantly testing my beliefs against my doubts. I don’t intend to hide that even from the selection committee.’
‘Well, no, quite right,’ said Ted. ‘Why should … selection committee? What selection committee, Rita?’
‘I’m trying to enter politics myself,’ said Rita. ‘In a modest way.’ She smiled modestly, shyly. ‘I’m putting myself up to be Labour candidate for the Brackley Ward council by-election.’
Jenny was the first to recover, but even she wasn’t quite quick enough. Later, Rita would wish that her friends hadn’t all been quite so stunned.
‘Great,’ said Jenny, hurrying forward to kiss her mother-in-law. ‘Fantastic. No, that’s really fantastic. Great.’
‘You! In politics!’ Ted didn’t attempt to hide his incredulity.
‘Thank you, Ted.’
‘I’ll have to preserve the full impartiality of my reports, Mum,’ said Elvis grandly.
‘Well of course you will,’ said his mother. ‘I’d have expected nothing less from you.’
Elvis sniffed her remark, suspecting mockery.
‘Labour?’ said Neville, as if the enormity of it had just filtered through.
‘Do you know nothing of my beliefs?’ said Rita.
‘Sorry,’ said Neville.
Liz let her head sink onto Neville’s arm in an affectionate exasperation.
‘If they’ll have me after this,’ said Rita. ‘Oh God.’ She doubled up, as if in physical pain. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just … I feel awful.’ Ted and Carol grabbed her. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ She tried to smile up at their concerned faces. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when I came in and faced Gerry and everybody, funnily enough I didn’t feel as bad as I expected. I suppose the drama of it keyed me up. But now, when it’s over, and when I wake up in the nights to come, in the months to come, and realise, no, it isn’t a nightmare, I, Rita Simcock, did this dreadful thing … will I ever feel able to smile again? Will I ever feel able to laugh again?’
Betty and Rodney Sillitoe sailed up. They were two galleons, laden to the gunwales with sympathy.
‘Hello!’ said Betty.
‘Hello!’ said Rodney.
‘All gathered together,’ said Betty encouragingly. ‘Almost like … well, no, not really very much like …’
‘No,’ said Ted. ‘Not very. Not really.’
A heavy little silence sat on them, as they reflected upon how unlike old times it was. Rita, whom they had come to support, was the first to make the effort.
‘So, what are you two busy bees up to these days?’ she asked the Sillitoes.
Rodney and Betty exchanged uneasy glances.
‘We’re opening a health food complex,’ said Betty.
‘With wholefood vegetarian restaurant,’ said Rodney.
Rita laughed.
Neville Badger looked down at young Josceleyn, snug in his up-market pram, and thought, ‘Will you, one day, ensure that there will still be a Badger at Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger?’
A male mistle-thrush, head on one side as he listened between the gravestones for the faint underground stirrings that would indicate the approach of his unsuspecting lunch, saw the pram out of the comer of his bleak bright eye and refused to give ground.
Liz Badger, resplendent at the side of her immaculate husband, looked down at young Josceleyn and told herself for the umpteenth time, ‘There’s nothing of Ted in him.’
Rita Simcock joined them, bent to admire Josceleyn, and thought, ‘Is he really beginning to resemble Neville? Can emotional influences really produce so rapid a change?’ But all she said was, ‘Bless him.’
Neville smiled and said, ‘Well, it could have been worse. It could have been raining.’
The ravishing Liz Badger looked slightly less ravishing as she frowned at her husband’s banality.
A moist south-westerly air-stream had produced a soft, heavy, soupy grey day in which it was possible to shiver and sweat at the same time. Later, the Meteorological Office would declare it to be the most humid February day since 1868. That day, in fact, Selby was more humid than Rangoon. Yorkshire had awakened that Sunday morning to find a layer of red Saharan dust over everything. Compulsive washers of cars had smiled over their watery bacon, in their softly sweating, newly fitted kitchens. It wasn’t much fun, week after week, washing cars that were already clean. Here was a challenge.
‘We knew we were taking a risk, having it in February,’ said Neville to Rita. ‘But we realised that if we didn’t have it soon, he’d be walking. He’s very forward.’
‘Neville’s terribly proud of him. Almost as if …’ Liz didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t need to.
‘Quite,’ said Rita.
Neville carefully negotiated an uneven stretch of pavement, taking care to give Josceleyn a smooth ride. A man born to be a father, he had never had a child of his own. Rita made a mental note to refer to inadequate maintenance of pavements in her maiden speech, and Neville, as if he could read her mind – an ability of which he had never given the remotest sign – said, ‘Incidentally, congratulations … Councillor.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Rita couldn’t help being slightly coy.
‘Who’d have thought – ?’ Neville stopped so abruptly that it was clear he had been going to say something tactless.
‘When I was a down-trodden, neurotic housewife, that within two years I’d sweep onto the council by five votes after four recounts?’
‘Well,
