Behind the Scenes at the Museum (34 page)

‘Goodness, Ruby,’ the other one says, tossing her melted-lemon-drop coiffure, ‘what on earth did you do with them all?’

‘Two sisters,’ I reply faintly. ‘I only have two sisters, and Patricia isn’t lost, she’s coming back.’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ they say in perfect harmony, but by now I’ve already backed off to the other side of the room and go off in search of refuge. Out in the hallway I can hear a television blaring,
And it’s Ball with the corner . . . Hurst . . . and a chance at goal
– and then a great uproar, both from the TV and the TV Lounge, and
It’s all smiles in the Royal Box
. I open the door and peep in and amongst a smog of tobacco smoke and alcohol find most of the male members of the wedding party executing a tribal war dance, hallooing the name of Martin Peters. I would like to stay and watch but out of the corner of my eye I spy a twin and make a run for the Ladies.

Where, to my great surprise, I discover my mother, somewhat the worse for wear – her drum-hat dented, her feet shoeless, and quite astonishingly drunk. ‘You’re drunk!’ I gasp at her. She gives me a bleary-eyed look and starts to say something but is overcome by an attack of hiccups.

‘Breathe!’ a voice says commandingly from one of the cubicles, followed by the sound of flushing water, and I wait with interest to see who is going to emerge. It’s Auntie Gladys. ‘Breathe!’ she reminds Bunty again and Bunty obediently takes in a huge gulp of air and proceeds to choke on it. ‘That should do it,’ Auntie Gladys says, giving her a comforting slap on the back. But it doesn’t and Bunty’s hiccups recommence with a new vehemence. I offer to give her a fright but she declines with a weary gesture of her hand as if she’d already had quite enough frights. The decor of the hotel Ladies is pink and fluorescent, and three of its walls are unflatteringly mirrored. Bunty, sitting askew on a little boudoir-stool like a toadstool, is reflected to infinity in the mirrors – a disturbing vision of a mother who seems to go on for ever.

‘Where are your shoes?’ I ask, deciding to be practical in the face of all this tipsy emotion, but receive only a loud hiccup in reply. Auntie Gladys rakes in her capacious handbag and produces a little bottle of Mackintosh’s smelling-salts which she wafts in front of Bunty’s nose, causing her to gag and tilt alarmingly on the stool. ‘She’s all right,’ Auntie Gladys says reassuringly to one of my reflected images in the mirror. ‘She’s just had a bit too much to drink; she was never a drinker your mother.’ I volunteer to go and fetch a glass of water and as I leave the Ladies I can hear my mother muttering something that sounds very much like, ‘I’ve had enough.’

The barman, who is very nice and rather handsome, puts a slice of lemon, two ice-cubes and a little parasol in the glass of water when I tell him that my mother isn’t very well and gives me a Coke for free. My progress back to the Ladies is erratic. First of all I encounter Adrian who tells me he’s got a new dog, a Yorkie, appropriately enough. ‘It would be funny, wouldn’t it?’ I say, ‘if only people in Alsace kept Alsatians, and only people in Labrador had Labs and the Welsh had Welsh terriers and the Scots had Scottie dogs – but then who would have poodles? And what kind of dogs would people in Fiji keep—’ until Adrian says, ‘Shut up, our Ruby, there’s a good kid,’ and lifts a strand of my lank and greasy teenage hair and makes a face. ‘Who cut this, Ruby?’ He shakes his head in distress. ‘Still,’ he comforts, ‘at least, it’s not as bad as their Sandra’s.’ Their Sandra’s hair is appalling, a great towering bouffant confection that wouldn’t look out of place at the court of the Sun King. There are probably birds nesting in it.

I’ve no sooner left Adrian than I’m suddenly ambushed by a posse of Sandra’s aunties who question me closely about Ted’s family background. The crimplene Inquisition is very unhappy about the state of affairs at the reception which is now in its third hour without any sign of a toast or a cutting of the cake. It is only with the greatest difficulty that I extricate myself from this grilling and almost immediately trip over one of the small bridesmaids and utter an oath which turns the air as royal a blue as Auntie Eliza’s outfit. There are several sharp intakes of breath from the Methodists as I resume my journey to the Ladies.
And it’s a free kick to West Germany. One minute to go, just sixty seconds – every Englishman coming back, every German going forward
. The tension coming out of the TV Lounge is visible, like the smoke of gunfire. A terrible groan rises up from somewhere deep within the collective national unconscious,
Jack Charlton has collapsed, head in hands
. Every Englishman in the TV Lounge is also in a state of collapse and I hurry on my way, only to be confronted by a seething bride. ‘Have you seen Ted?’ she demands in a very vexed way.

‘Ted?’

‘Yes, Ted – my bloody, so-called husband!’ Sandra twirls round, surveying the corridors of the hotel like a snapping crocodile.

‘Where are they all?’ she asks, a puzzled look on her face.

‘All who?’

‘The men.’

I watch with interest as enlightenment dawns slowly on Sandra’s face. She gives a little scream of frustration and stamps her satin foot. ‘Bloody World Cup! I’ll kill him, I will, I’ll kill him,’ and with that, she’s off, lifting up her long white dress and steaming off, picking up her mother in her wake. I look around for Lucy-Vida because I’ve just thought of something worse than being pregnant and unmarried (being Ted) but there’s no sign of her so I continue my progression to the Ladies, finally unhindered.

Two of the three cubicles in the Ladies are occupied and I bob down to check for Bunty’s feet, shod or otherwise, and experience a frisson of alarm when I see that both cubicles are occupied by identical pairs of feet. A pair of voices speak, ‘Who’s that?’

‘Just Ruby!’ I shout, beating a hasty retreat.

She’s unaffected. ‘Bloody World Cup,’ Sandra says, her eyes like arrow slits as she turns to Ted in disgust. ‘Aren’t you ashamed, isn’t your wedding day more important than the World Cup?’

Ted can’t help himself somehow. Until this moment of his life lies have fallen from his lips like rain, but on this occasion, this very public, important occasion, we watch in horror as he drops, like a parachutist without a parachute, onto the hard rock of truth.

‘Of course not,’ he says. ‘It’s the bloody Final!’

Whack! goes Sandra’s hand against his cheek. ‘Steady on!’ Ted says as she reaches for the nearest handy missile, which happens to be the bridal bouquet on the wedding-cake table. ‘Sandra,’ he whines in a feeble attempt at mollification but Sandra is white-hot now and all the silver horseshoes in the world aren’t going to help Ted. ‘We haven’t had any speeches,’ she screams at him. ‘We haven’t had any toasts, we haven’t cut the bloody cake! What kind of a wedding do you call this?’ I
t’s all over, I think – no, it’s . . . And here comes Hunt
. . .

‘You’re just riff-raff!’ Beatrice’s voice booms out as she elbows her way towards her new son-in-law, handbag at the ready. Alarmed, Ted tries to back away but he almost trips over a small bridesmaid underfoot (they’re like vermin) and in an attempt to avoid crushing her he loses his balance and lurches towards the table bearing the wedding cake. Everything seems to go into slow motion as Ted pitches and reels, his arms flailing like windmills, in a desperate attempt to regain his balance and avoid the irresistible, inevitable accident which we can see hanging before our eyes. The tiny bridal couple on top of the cake sway and totter as if they were sitting on top of a volcano.
Some people are on the pitch – they think it’s all over
—Ted moans as his feet go under him and in one dreadful slapstick movement he falls, face first, into the wedding cake.
It is now!
A kind of strange sigh moves round the watching audience of guests as if now they can relax because at least they know that the worst possible disaster has happened and anything else cannot be as bad. (I’m not so optimistic.)

The strange silence in which we have been wrapped, broken only by the TV commentary, dissolves instantly and a great babble and squeak rises up from the wedding party. Beatrice’s ‘riff-raff’ insult is just finding its target and, as it hits home, battle lines can be seen to form. ‘Riff-raff?’ Uncle Clifford says. ‘
Riff-raff?
Who are you calling riff-raff?’ This is said to Beatrice, who barks back, ‘You, you and all your family – that’s who I’m calling riff-raff! Any objections?’

‘I most certainly bloody have!’ Clifford says, and looks around for support. His eyes rest naturally on his only son, who, unaffected by the combat-stations being taken up all over the room, is still deep in his engrossing conversation with the barman. Uncle Clifford’s brow pleats. ‘That’s queer,’ he says suspiciously, but is unable to elaborate on this judgement because Beatrice clouts him so hard with her handbag that his glasses fall off. Within seconds the place is in turmoil with people bashing and thwacking each other at random. I notice that George and Bunty – the two people who could teach them everything about finesse and technique – are absent from the fray. I feel I have no particular allegiance to either warring party, blood-ties or not, and I try and slip away unnoticed. For preference I would have exited on the buffet-room side as I have reached a state of near starvation, but it has been completely cut off by the skirmish between the immediate wedding party – Ted and his Best Man defending their corner against Sandra and all the little bridesmaids. ‘Ruby!’ Sandra shouts when she sees me. ‘Come on, your place is over here with me!’

‘No, it bloody isn’t!’ Ted yells at her. ‘She’s my niece!’

‘She’s my chief bridesmaid!’ Sandra counters furiously, and a whole new fight develops about whose colours I should be supporting. I struggle to the exit on the TV Lounge side, losing my hair-band and a shoe in the process. I’m looking forward to the relative calm of the TV Lounge. For a second I’m not sure what it is I’m looking at but then the complex, struggling black-and-white heap in the middle of the floor, which at first sight resembles an epileptic penguin, resolves itself into something even more distressing – George and one of the buffet waitresses deep in sexual congress. ‘Oh bloody, bloody Nora!’ my father exclaims in the throes of ecstasy and collapses in a sated heap on top of her. Underneath him, the waitress looks like a squashed insect, arms and legs waving helplessly. She suddenly sees me and the look of horror on her face is well-nigh indescribable. She’s struggling ineffectually to escape from my father but his dead weight remains slumped on top of her. I have never witnessed an orgasm before but even in my ignorance I feel that by now my father should at least be lighting a post-coital cigarette and sighing with satisfaction instead of lying there speechless. With one great heave, the waitress manages to push her way out from underneath and George rolls onto his back, open-mouthed and motionless. His last words seem to linger in the fetid air of the TV Lounge. I’m about to ask the waitress if by any chance her name actually
is
Nora when I think better of it. This hardly seems the right time and place for introductions. She, meanwhile, is struggling to adjust her uniform, never taking her eyes off George, a dreadful expression of dawning realization on her face. We both drop to our knees, either side of George, and look at each other in dumb horror – it is quite apparent to both of us by now that George is not in a stupor of satisfaction but is quite, quite dead. Kenneth Wolstenholme carries on regardless.
This great moment in sporting history as Bobby Moore goes up to get the World Cup
. . .

The waitress leans over and listens to his soundless chest. ‘Do you know who he is?’ she whispers, and when I say, ‘He’s my father,’ she gives a little yelp of horror at the new ramifications that this adds to the scenario. ‘I don’t usually do this sort of thing,’ she says helplessly, but whether she means casual sex with wedding guests or inadvertently killing them in the process, isn’t entirely clear, and there’s no opportunity to pursue this as Bunty suddenly appears in the doorway and we both flinch at the sight of her, now hatless as well as shoeless, and even more intoxicated than before. She stares in mute astonishment at the tableau in front of her. Poor George cuts an undignified figure, lying there sprawled on his back with his flies still gaping – but zipping them up doesn’t really seem like an appropriate last rite. ‘We think he’s had a heart attack,’ I say loudly to Bunty, trying to break through the haze of alcohol surrounding her. ‘Can you call an ambulance?’

‘It’s too late for that,’ the waitress says flatly, and Bunty gasps and lurches over towards him. ‘Did you know him?’ the waitress asks tenderly, her tenses already adjusted to the event. ‘He’s my husband,’ Bunty replies, dropping down on her knees to join us and the waitress has to suppress another little yelp. ‘I’ll get an ambulance,’ she says hastily and removes herself from the TV Lounge as swiftly as she can. ‘We have to do something,’ Bunty says agitatedly and, taking a deep breath, she leans over and starts giving George artificial respiration. Where did she learn this?
Dr Kildare
, probably. It’s strange to watch her trying to give him the kiss of life – while he was alive I never saw her kissing him and yet here she is, now he’s dead, kissing him with all the passion of a new bride. To no avail. Finally she sits back on her heels and gazes blankly at the TV screen which is by now an ocean of triumphant Union Jacks.