He gripped her arm.
‘You’re drunk. Get out of my way.’
‘Come on, he wain’t know.’
She considered letting him have one quick kiss, but knew that if she did he would run straight to George and distress him by showing off about it. Her knees were trembling, and she felt sick. ‘He will if you don’t stop being so daft.’
‘Don’t care if he does. If he says ote I’ll thump ’im. He’s got no guts, our George ain’t. You’ll have a lot better time if you come to bed with me, duck.’
They had once held George by one arm over the opening of an old mine shaft, threatening to drop him into oblivion, keeping him suspended for as long as their strength lasted. It was good fun. They laughed at his screams for mercy, but George told her that he couldn’t forget, no matter how friendly they had been afterwards.
‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll shout for somebody.’ She hoped no one would hear, because she was ashamed and angry at not having asked one of the bridesmaids to come out with her.
He swayed. ‘Not even a kiss, then?’
There was no difference in their height, and she wondered, as he tensed his shoulders, why she didn’t lift her fist to him, but she could only back away as he fumbled for her breasts.
‘Come on, let’s have a bit!’
The door opened. ‘Leave her alone, can’t you?’ her father said. ‘A damned fine bunch she’s got us married into!’
Her joy was smashed at his implication that she was to blame. The wedding was his first contact with George’s relations, and he liked none of them. Having worked in a shop most of his life, he had kept his family what was still known as ‘respectable’. ‘I’ve never had much money, but you learn to keep your head above water,’ he said, neither boasting nor complaining, ‘as if your neck was made of cork!’
He didn’t dislike George less than any other young man who might have wanted to marry his daughter, but had hoped they would separate before it came to a union she would never get out of. He had kept quiet in case his words only brought them closer, and he saw his mistake, though knew it would have made no difference anyway in these enlightened times.
Harry was charming, and sober. ‘Don’t get like that, Albert.’
‘Go back inside,’ he told Pam, ‘or they’ll miss you.’ The flower in his button-hole was lopsided, and a strand of well-creamed hair had fallen over his forehead. ‘If ever you bother her again’ – and the grin of conciliation immediately pulled itself inwards from Harry’s face – ‘I’ll hammer you. You can tell that to anybody else in your lot. And if they don’t like it, they’ll bloody get summat as well.’
It was difficult to know whether he would have succeeded, but moral force was on his side, which might give speed and weight in any physical dispute. Harry was not cowed, but stepped aside in case there should be any doubt that he wanted the incident to end.
They taunted George, who after the first champagne drank only orange squash. He wasn’t man enough to pour real booze inside. Was he frightened he wouldn’t be able to ‘get it in’ later on? Alf was shouted down, but he had said it. Other advice followed which they made sure George heard, such clattering laughter proving their possession of him for as long as he lived.
She sat by her father at the top table, overhearing an argument. ‘It must have been at least five hundred years ago,’ Bert said.
Harry sat with legs sprawled. ‘It couldn’t have been. He was born about two hundred years ago, I’d say. No more than that.’
‘I’ll bet it was seven or eight hundred.’ Bert, the eldest of the four brothers, was tall and thin in those days, as opposed to corpulent now. He had a close-set face, shrewd but not tight, knowing without being predatory, the chairman of the brothers rather than their leader, who thereby got his own way more often than not, and was unassailable in his position. He was more right than he knew in assuming Jesus to have been born above seven or eight hundred years ago, but then, it was in his nature to be so.
‘Bet you, then,’ said Harry, still truculent after getting no kiss from Pam and being unjustifiably threatened by her father, whom he would forever think of as a miserable bastard unable to take a bit of fun.
Bert called to the next table: ‘Hey, Tom, how many years ago was it Jesus was born? This daft bogger said it was only two hundred.’
Tom, his brother-in-law, was more knowledgeable. ‘Two bloody thousand, more like. Must a been. The bloody Romans killed ’im, didn’t they? Nailed ’im on a cross. I learned it at Sunday School.’
Pam’s father leaned: ‘Somebody should tell ’em what year it is,’ he whispered.
Alf began a joke so that she as well as George would hear, and when George protested that he had heard it all before, one of his friends from work said he hadn’t, though Pam knew that even if the whole world could retail it backwards Alf was set on spouting it for her especial benefit. She longed for them to scatter to their various homes, or to the pubs.
He pushed his tongue out as if it needed air, pulled it in as if it had had too much of a good thing, swirled it around his mouth, gave it a drink of ale by way of encouragement, then smiled with contrition as if, because they had waited long enough for his joke, he would now make amends and get on with it. Short and wiry, he was less fit than the others. All his teeth were false, and he’d been operated on for ulcers. But he kept his position of equality among his brothers by sheer pertinacity, and by masking the unshakeable vulnerability of his features with a humour that took account of nobody’s feelings, theirs least of all but, most important, not even his own.
‘There was this courting couple, see? Ah, pass that ale. I’m dying o’ thirst. My tongue’s got cramp again: it’s blocking my windpipe. Well, they worn’t going to get married for a couple o’ months, and he was askin’ her to let him have it. “Go on, duck,” he said, “I can’t wait. Honest, I’ll go barmy if you don’t let me have a bit.” She said no, not till they was married. It worn’t right, she said. A proper tight-arse, she was. Well, he kept on trying to get it, and she thought of every way to put him off, but no, no excuse was good enough. She just couldn’t stop his gallop.’
Pam knew every phrase, though not what the end of the tale would be. He told it with a glitter in his eyes, raised eyebrows, winks – all the right gestures. She prayed that God in heaven would annihilate him. Her hand held a glass whose tight shape gave comfort.
‘Any road up,’ he went on, ‘she thought of an excuse that he wouldn’t be able to get round.’ He glanced, to be sure she listened, though knowing she had no option. ‘Cheer up, duck! Yer en’t lost ote, ev yer? It wain’t be long now though!’
He squared himself, held a fist high. They all laughed, telling him to leave her alone and get on with it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the daft sod kept on at her to let him have a bit of the old you-know-what, but at last she said: “No, Teddy,” or whatever his name was, “I can’t let you have it, because it’s Lent.” Well, our Teddy goes dead white at this, and shouts: “What do you say? Lent? Lent? You’d better get the bloody thing back then if it’s lent, because we’re going to be needing it soon!”’
Those who hadn’t been listening looked across on hearing laughter as if someone had tapped a rock and let it loose. ‘Here, just a minute, I’ve got another one …’
Alf wanted to prove that though he may not have a sense of decency he was at least blessed with a memory. ‘It’s about this couple who went on their honeymoon. But let me get a quick sup at that Shippoes first. I’m as thirsty as a straw dog in the desert!’
Most of the women talked among themselves at other tables, knowing better than to bother hearing jokes that would make them feel as if every man in the world wanted them only for that. Pam counted the minutes as they moved on the clock. She picked up her empty glass with a grip so tight she was afraid it would split.