Fair Do’s. David Nobbs

       January: The Church Wedding

      A scruffy pigeon, a hopeless straggler in a race from Leek to Gateshead, shuffled across the hard blue sky as if embarrassed to come between the Social Liberal Democratic candidate for Hindhead and his Maker. Gerry Lansdown didn’t see the pigeon. His eyes were closed. He was praying.

      ‘Oh God,’ he prayed silently, gripping his top hat with tight, tense fingers, ‘thank you for what I am about to receive. Thank you for Rita Simcock.’

      He opened his eyes and gazed up towards the God whose existence he had never doubted, although he had never thought of Him as a being so overwhelmingly superior to himself that it was necessary to worship Him, except during election campaigns.

      The sun was astonishingly powerful for January, as if there were a hole in the ozone layer directly above Gerry’s head. The pigeon had gone. There was no sign of God either.

      The ravishing Liz Badger bore down upon Gerry, arm-in-arm with her second husband, the immaculate Neville Badger, of Badger, Badger, Fox and Badger.

      ‘Hello, Gerry. You look wonderful,’ she said.

      ‘Thank you.’ Gerry tried to look as if the compliment was undeserved. He smiled cautiously at the woman who had once run off with his fiancée’s first husband. He kissed her, carefully, so as not to disturb her make-up.

      ‘Doesn’t he, Neville?’ said Liz.

      But Neville Badger, immaculate in his morning dress, was months and years away, attending other services at this massive Norman abbey: his marriage to Jane, Jane’s funeral, and the marriage of Liz’s daughter Jenny to Paul, younger son of today’s bride.

      ‘Neville!’ Liz sounded as if she were summoning a recalcitrant Pekinese.

      Her husband of four months sailed gently through time and made a soft landing beside her.

      ‘What?’ he improvised.

      ‘I was saying, Gerry looks wonderful.’

      Neville gave Gerry a brief, unseeing glance.

      ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Absolutely. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.’

      ‘Isn’t Rita lucky?’

      ‘Oh yes. Absolutely. Lucky old Rita.’

      ‘I mean … isn’t he a simply gorgeous man?’

      ‘Yes, he … er … I mean, gorgeous isn’t a word I … you’re looking very handsome, Gerry.’

      The rising star in the Social Liberal Democratic firmament simpered. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘So are both of you. I mean, you’re handsome and Liz is gorgeous.’

      ‘Thank you …’ said Neville.

      ‘Very much,’ said Liz.

      The Badgers walked slowly towards the West Door. The path ran between old, neglected graves. Beyond the graveyard, blackened stone and brick and rusting concrete buildings jostled in narrow, untidy streets.

      At the porch Neville stopped. ‘Liz?’ he said. ‘I don’t query the basic truth of what was said, but wasn’t that rather too much of a mutual admiration society?’

      ‘Oh, Neville,’ she said. ‘I was trying to make you jealous.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘By praising Gerry.’

      ‘Why should I be jealous?’ Neville was struggling to understand, knowing from experience that his puzzlement would irritate her.

      ‘I wanted you to think I find him attractive.’

      ‘Maybe you do. He is attractive … I imagine … to a woman … which you are.’

      The wedding guests were strolling slowly into the church. Two glorious hats bobbed past, wide-brimmed navy to the left of the stationary Badgers, bowl-shaped orange to their right.

      ‘I’m trying to get you to show me how fiercely possessive you can be when aroused,’ explained Liz.

      ‘Oh, I see,’ said the doyen of the town’s lawyers. ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Oh, Neville, you’re hopeless.’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘No. It’s why I love you, I suppose.’

      ‘Because I’m hopeless?’ Neville was aroused now that Liz no longer wanted him to be. ‘I see!’

      ‘No, you don’t. You see nothing.’

      ‘I see Jenny.’

      Liz’s daughter Jenny was smiling broadly but nervously. Her hair was cropped shorter than her mother would have liked. She was almost eight months pregnant. She would soon become