hadn’t shaken Liz off. Realizing that she was following him, realizing how revealing that would be to anybody who suspected, he felt that he had no alternative but to pretend that he hadn’t been trying to get away. He turned to face his tormentor.
‘What do you mean, “but”?’ said Liz. ‘You can’t just say “but” and walk off. It’s unacceptable behaviour both socially and grammatically.’
‘I suppose I meant … oh heck … that this is awful.’
‘Awful? It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. I’m alive again.’
‘Oh yes, I agree. Absolutely. It’s very exciting. It’s absolutely wonderful. But.’
‘… it’s awful?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Ted. Poor poor Ted.’
Liz walked away, leaving him stranded. He bit altogether too ambitiously into a hard-boiled egg, and almost choked.
‘But you promised, Paul. And I mean … what must they think?’
‘That’s it, isn’t it? Never mind the greatest emotional commitment I’ll ever make in my life. Just the parrot-cry of the narrow-minded. “What must they think?”’
They were seated, Paul and his mother, in an alcove in the man-made walled garden. It was a pleasant place of bricked paths and patios, studded with benches and urns. In the centre there was a small, round pond, in which silver carp held an eternal buffet among the water lilies, bladderwort and floating hyacinths. There were arches across which climbing roses had been trained. The clematis were in flower, and in a sheltered corner there was a fig tree, spreading its branches widely but producing only tiny fruit, most of which would drop off before they ripened. Perhaps it was no wonder, in this northern climate hostile to ripening figs, if Rita’s emotional juices had dried out as her hair thinned and grew lifeless, and the worry lines deepened. The peace and calm of this garden couldn’t reach her. It was always November, now, in Rita’s garden.
‘You don’t understand the way their minds work,’ she said. ‘They look down on us. We’re trade. They’re professions. In his own mind, he’s practically on a par with doctors, that one.’
‘In Bolivia, Mum, they have sixty-five per cent infant mortality,’ said the lucky groom with restrained fury. ‘The average life expectancy of the tin miners is thirty-seven. The typical diet is boiled maize, followed, if they’re very lucky, by more boiled maize. Extra boiled maize as a treat at Christmas. So I honestly don’t think my having my hair cut matters very much.’
‘Exactly!’ Rita was briefly triumphant. ‘So it’s not much to ask to have it done, then, is it?’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Paul, leaping to his feet. ‘All right, then. See you later.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘That new unisex place in Newbaldgate.’
‘Paul! Not now! You’re the groom.’
‘So?’
‘Nobody goes for a haircut during their wedding reception.’
‘Then it’s time to break the mould of British social behaviour. I mean I pay my mother the compliment of assuming that she wouldn’t set out to spoil my wedding reception unless she felt that it wasn’t too late to do something about it. So, I shall have a haircut. I don’t want to start me honeymoon riddled with guilt. It might make me impotent. Then they will laugh at me.’
‘There’s no need to be disgusting!’
But Paul had gone in, through the French windows. He walked straight through his wedding reception, through the public rooms of the Clissold Lodge Hotel, down the wide steps, along the semicircular drive, past the rhododendrons and the cawing rooks in the long, narrow wood that screened the grounds from the Tadcaster Road, and out onto the surprisingly warm pavements of the outside world. He hopped onto a number eight bus, and was at the unisex hairdresser’s before the last of his anger had drained away, and he began to wish that he hadn’t gone there.
Ted didn’t see his son pass. His eyes were on Liz, who was approaching him again in a manner that made him feel excited and nervous.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, raising her eyes and her glass of champagne to him. ‘Words are too easy.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Action’s the thing.’
‘Absolutely. Pardon?’
‘Meet me in room 108 in five minutes.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’ve booked room 108. For them to change in before they go away. For me to do my hair in if it was blown to bits in the churchyard. Meet me there in five minutes.’
Ted looked round nervously. The hum of conversation was so loud that Kim Philby could have passed secrets to the Russians in the middle of the room without anybody noticing. But he was still nervous.
‘Liz!’
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘Well … yes … of course. Of course I do. But.’
‘Oh! “But” again. But what?’
‘I’m the groom’s father. You’re the bride’s mother. It’s their wedding day.’
‘Is doing it any worse than wanting to do it?’
‘No, but … I mean … they might come in themselves.’
‘In the middle of their wedding reception? Besides, I have the key.’
‘Yes, but … they’ll be cutting the cake. There’ll be the speeches.’
‘We’ll be back. Nobody’ll miss us in this crush.’
‘Yes, but … we’re pillars of the local community. I mean … Liz! … they don’t do things like that, pillars of the local community. They don’t.’
‘Yes, they do. They just don’t get found out. As we won’t. We’ll never get a safer moment.’ She moved closer towards him, so that briefly their bodies touched. He had to admit that the sensation beat washing up into a cocked hat. ‘I thought you were a man of nerve,’ she said.
‘Oh heck,’ riposted the man of nerve.
‘We’re off on holiday tomorrow. A month with Laurence! I want to remember you and me every day of that month, Ted. Give me something to remember.’
‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell, Liz.’
‘Room 108 in five minutes.’
And then she was gone.
‘Oh heck,’ said Ted. ‘Oh utterly and confounded heck. Oh good God almighty.’ Rita was approaching. ‘Oh,
