Fair Do’s. David Nobbs

Entering a room without Rodney at her side was, after all, something of a rarity. She had planned to stand in the doorway, smiling, looking really rather fetching, she felt, in her coral crêpe dress edged with apricot ribbon, and throwing her arms out in a gesture of affection; embracing them all in the warmth of her personality, as if she were the Pope and the Brontë Suite St Peter’s Square.

      This touching tableau was ruined before it started, by Jenny hurtling tearfully towards her, trembling with self-disgust, wailing, ‘I shouldn’t have. Not today,’ and hurrying out into the lobby. Betty turned towards her in amazement, then turned back towards the room, and was embraced by Rodney before she had regained her composure.

      ‘Betty! You came!’ His delight removed all traces of regret for her lost entrance.

      ‘I’m sorry I missed the service,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t leave her while she was hallucinating.’

      ‘Hallucinating?’

      ‘She thought she was Joan of Arc. She might have burnt herself.’

      ‘Oh, Betty.’

      Rodney embraced Betty again, even more warmly.

      ‘Rodney!’ she protested. ‘A bit of decorum in public, if you please. As befits joint managing directors of a major new business. I’d have been earlier but I popped home to change because this dress creases if you travel. Rodney, there’s a dreadful, soggy, wobbly, smelly mess on the kitchen table. What is it?’

      ‘Carrot and cashew nut roulade. A treat for tonight, for your homecoming.’

      ‘Oh, Rodney. I’m sorry.’

      ‘No. I knew it had gone wrong. I meant to throw it out.’

      Neville, Rita and Liz came forward to greet Betty.

      ‘Hello, Neville,’ she said. ‘Hello … Councillor! Congratulations.’ Now at last she embraced the whole room in her gaze. ‘Ted! Corinna! Sandra!.’

      Sandra approached, smiling serenely, ignoring Betty’s surprise. ‘Tea, madam, or champagne?’

      ‘Oh tea first, I think, please.’ Betty called out to Eric. ‘Eric? Later I’d like a drink. Do you have any fruit juices?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I do not touch alcohol. It is a poison. Do you have any fruit juices?’

      Even Eric Siddall, barman supreme, found it impossible to hide his astonishment entirely.

      ‘Yes, madam,’ he said, recovering. ‘Can do. No problem.’

      Betty turned back to Neville, Liz and Rita. ‘Well, she said, ‘I suppose my absence has set you all wondering if Rodney and I’ll be splitting up next.’

      ‘No, Betty. Good Lord, no,’ said Rita.

      ‘You splitting up? That’s a good one,’ said Neville.

      ‘That’s the best laugh I’ve had in weeks,’ said Liz.

      ‘Absolutely,’ said Rita.

      They laughed. It would be hard to decide which of the three laughs was the least unconvincing.

      

      Underneath the hideously romanticised painting of Bolton Abbey, Elvis Simcock, elder son of Ted and Rita Simcock, was questioning Simon Rodenhurst, only son of Liz and the late Laurence Rodenhurst.

      ‘So, Simon, are you still planning to give up what it would anyway be an exaggeration to call your sex life?’

      ‘Too right. Today has confirmed that.’

      ‘What’s so special about today?’

      ‘The other godfather’s wife was the woman in question.’

      ‘The pregnant one?’

      ‘Precisely.’

      ‘Oh my God.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      Elvis tried to hide his excitement at this revelation. He assumed a dignified, caring expression as he sought the words that he needed.

      ‘What exactly went through your mind,’ he enquired carefully, ‘when you realised that the woman you’d made pregnant on your one and only foray into the world-renowned delights of sexual intercourse was the wife of your fellow godfather?’

      ‘What do you think went through it, you steaming berk?’ countered Simon angrily. ‘I thought, “I am unfit to undertake the moral welfare of a mature garden slug with psychopathic tendencies, let alone an innocent infant boy. I must tell them I can’t do it.”’

      ‘But you didn’t tell them you couldn’t do it, did you?’

      ‘Because what could I say? “I can’t go through with this. I’m the twit who got Andrew’s wife preggers”?’ He changed the subject. ‘How’s things with Carol?’

      ‘Terrific. Great. Couldn’t be better.’

      ‘Hello,’ said Carol, as if she’d been waiting for her cue. ‘You’re Elvis Simcock, aren’t you?’ She held out her hand politely. ‘I’m Carol Fordingbridge, your fiancée. Remember me?’

      ‘Carol!’

      Elvis was all the more furious because he knew that he had no right to be.

      

      ‘I’ve got to sit down,’ said Rodney Sillitoe, and, as though to prove that he hadn’t been lying, he sat down.

      Betty looked round for another chair. Morris Wigmore leapt to his feet and handed her his chair, smiling. When Betty said that he shouldn’t have, he pooh-poohed the idea that he had made any sort of sacrifice. He smiled confidently, frankly at Betty, little knowing that she was thinking, ‘Why don’t I trust this man? Why does he send goose-pimples up my spine? If only his son hadn’t come to a sticky end in Brisbane, so that I could loathe him without feeing a heel.’

      ‘Last night I strayed,’ confessed Rodney in a near-whisper, when Betty had settled herself in her Restoration chair.

      ‘Strayed? How do you mean, “strayed”?’

      ‘What do you think I mean?’

      ‘Well, not a woman. You wouldn’t.’

      ‘Aaaah!’

      ‘So it must have been either alcohol or meat. The way you look, I’d say …’ Betty examined his rough, red, battered face lovingly, ‘… meat.’