David Nobbs - Fair Do’s

‘He looks so very like you, Mr Badger,’ he said. ‘I find that extraordinary.’

‘Yes, I … I find it rather extraordinary myself,’ said Neville.

‘So many people take these things for granted,’ said the vicar. ‘But the seed, the tiny seed, growing into a person that resembles its parents, every time I see it I think “This is a miracle.”’

‘In this case it certainly is,’ said Liz, half to herself. She moved off, taking Neville in her slip-stream, and the vicar made a mental note to be less religious in his small talk.

The guests stood around, chatting, waiting for their hosts to set off for the party.

Rita tackled Rodney. ‘Betty didn’t make it then?’ she prompted.

‘No. She was hoping so much … Oooh!’ He gasped with pain. ‘Excuse me, Rita.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Rita as she walked away. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’

Rodney was just lowering himself onto a wooden bench beside the church when he saw Ted and Corinna bearing down upon him. With a sigh he stood up almost straight again.

‘Are you all right, Rodney?’ asked Ted.

‘Yes. Grand.’ His voice was as contorted with pain as it had often been with drink. ‘Just grand. Right good. Top form.’

‘You know Corinna, my fiancée, don’t you?’

Corinna beamed at Rodney.

‘Your fiancée!’ said Rodney. ‘What happened to …’ Ted, behind Corinna, shook his head furiously. ‘… to the famous British reserve, our native shyness …’ Ted nodded. ‘… that you’ve got engaged so quickly?’

‘Love brooks no frontiers, Rodney.’

‘You what?’

‘Love breaks down barriers. Betty away again?’

‘Yes, she’s … er …’ he groaned again, ‘… excuse me. I have sinned, and I’m reaping the whirlwind.’

Rodney collapsed onto the bench.

Corinna continued to smile. She seemed happy to be silently benevolent until called upon to speak.

‘Oh dear,’ said Ted, as they walked away from the ailing former imprisoner of chickens. ‘Oh Lord. Oh heck.’

Liz and Neville stood watching the clusters of guests, as if they were outsiders who had no right to be there, rather than the raison d’etre for the elegant little shindig. Neville was looking worried.

‘He’ll be all right with his godparents,’ said Liz.

The pregnant, charmingly shapeless, slightly fey Judy Denton had carried little Josceleyn off, in practice for the days ahead.

‘It’s not that,’ said Neville. ‘I was thinking, it’ll look odd if we don’t invite Ted and Corinna back now they’re here. It’ll set tongues wagging.’

‘Oh Lord,’ said Liz. ‘Do we really still care that much about wagging tongues?’

‘And they have just announced their engagement. It’ll look a bit graceless.’

‘Oh Lord. Today of all days, Neville, I would like to be free of memories of Ted.’

‘He’ll be discreet. He’s with his fiancée, whose father is a bishop.’

‘Ah! So that means she’s so socially acceptable that we must ask her.’

‘No. Of course not. No, I think that, accepting as we must that your son … our son … is in reality the product of Ted’s … er …’

‘Spermatazoa.’

‘Liz! Well, yes, in a … that it would be a Christian gesture, on a Christian day, to invite Ted to … wet the baby’s head.’

A two-carriage Sprinter train clanked slowly through the quiet Sunday afternoon. A few married couples were walking along the paths that criss-crossed the churchyard. Their dogs were fouling the paths. They gazed at their shitting dogs with adoration. Ted and his orange fiancée bore down on Neville and Liz.

‘Well …,’ said Ted, ‘… we’ll just slip quietly away, so …good luck, eh?’

‘No, no,’ said Neville. ‘No, no. No need. I’d … er … we’d … er … I’d very much like it if you came to the … er …’

‘I thought it was family only,’ said Corinna.

‘Ted is very much family, Corinna, in a way,’ said Liz.

Ted leapt in much too quickly. ‘Liz is referring to the fact that our two families are linked by wedlock, darling,’ he said.

‘Well, yes, that’s what I assumed she meant,’ said Corinna with apparent innocence. ‘What else could she have meant?’

‘What else?’ agreed Ted. ‘Exactly. Nothing else. Precisely. My point exactly.’ He turned to the Badgers. ‘We’d love to come,’ he said. ‘Where are the junketings? À la maison de les Badgers?’

‘No, Ted,’ said Neville. ‘At the Clissold Lodge. But the Brontë Suite this time. It’s smaller.’

‘Then we’ll see you in the Brontë Suite,’ said Ted, and he winked to show them that they could rely on him, because he knew how to behave in public, but Liz and Neville, seeing him wink, thought, ‘Oh Lord. Ted doesn’t know how to behave in public. Can we rely on him?’

Simon was unused to holding babies. You didn’t get much call for it, at Trellis, Trellis, Openshaw and Finch. He realised that Judy had found Josceleyn heavy, in her condition, but her handing over of him in public had seemed a tactless symbolic gesture under the circumstances. He was terrified that the boy would slip from his grasp, or choke to death, or merely scream his head off. He held him as if he were a carrier bag of doubtful strength full of bottles of Château Lafitte. He was terrified that Judy intended to begin a meaningful conversation. He would have welcomed the arrival of a third party, had it not been Andrew Denton, fellow godfather, life-long wag, husband of Judy, and official father of the child in Judy’s womb.

‘He does look a bit like his father, doesn’t he?’ said Judy, who was practising having maternal feelings by gazing at Josceleyn fondly.

‘Let’s hope our baby doesn’t look like his father, eh?’ said Andrew.

‘What?’ said Simon and Judy, aghast.

‘Because I’ve got an ugly mug,’ explained Andrew Denton. ‘Joke.’

‘Ah. Yes. Joke. Right,’ said Simon and Judy. And they laughed. They were worried that their laughs hadn’t sounded convincing, but Andrew hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. He was only too used to receiving unconvincing laughs.

The Brontë Suite, the fifth smallest of the fifty-seven Brontë Suites in hotels in Yorkshire, was barely half the size of the Garden Room. It looked out over the front of the hotel, where the gravel drive curved away through the park-like grounds, dotted with oaks and chestnuts, to the narrow woods that screened the hotel from the Tadcaster Road. It made no nod to the existence of the Brontë sisters beyond taking their name. There were dark polished wood panels interspersed with dignified striped green wallpaper. The modern stainless steel lights didn’t go with the crystal chandelier. The three paintings – of Bolton Abbey, Fountains Abbey and Rievaulx Abbey – had known more apposite days, when it had been the Abbey Suite. But what they lacked in relevance, they also lacked in quality.

On trestle tables at one end of the room, beneath Rievaulx Abbey, as it chanced, there was a fine array of sandwiches – smoked salmon, cucumber, rare roast beef – and fancy cakes and biscuits. There was also a christening cake, with baby and cradle atop it, and this was widely held to be consistent with the standards expected of the Vale of York Bakery in Slaughterhouse Lane.

Eric Siddall, barman supreme, polka-dotted bow tie slightly askew, as if to suggest that he had a vaguely rakish past, stood by a table on which there were several bottles of champagne, two of them in ice-buckets. There were fluted champagne glasses and tea cups. Eric looked uncomfortable when Graham Wintergreen, manager of the golf club, entered. Graham Wintergreen looked uncomfortable when he saw Eric.

The guests were filing in from their cars. Many carried little presents, which they handed to Neville and Liz, who didn’t unwrap them.