‘I am Bob Hartson, a Pillar of medium height . . .’ a ripple of knowing laughter greeted this sally. Kerry’s stepfather was a tall man with the muscle-bound body of a retired wrestler. The corrugated face beneath his corrugated grey hair was red and unvisited by imagination.
‘. . . and I would like to introduce to the Pillars of Sussex my guest – Mr Nigel Ackford.’
His sponsor looked on indulgently, as the young man at the far end of the table rose unsteadily to his feet. His suit was perhaps a little too sharp and his tie a little too pastel for the tastes of some of the guests, but he said what protocol demanded of him.
‘I am very honoured to be here, even at the pediment of the great Pillars.’
The formula was greeted by raucous laughter and wild applause, disproportionate to any possible interest or wit in what had just been said. Jude doggedly continued clearing the dessert dishes.
In the remains of one sherry trifle a cigarette butt had been stubbed. Max wouldn’t like that. It wasn’t the first thing of the evening Max wouldn’t like. Normally, he would have returned home by this time, and missed seeing the latest insult to his cuisine, but that evening he had tried to neutralize his anger by drinking vodka. The ploy hadn’t worked – the alcohol seemed to make him even testier – but it had ensured he’d have to stay the night in one of the staff rooms. He might not have cared about the dangers to himself, but there was no way he was going to put his precious Ducati at risk from drunken driving.
Donald Chew, by now almost comatose with drink, smiled approvingly as the new president rose to his feet to reply to the young guest. James Baxter wore the heavy, over-elaborate chain which had, until recently, hung around Donald Chew’s neck. Baxter had spent his life in local government, working mostly in the planning department, and was seeing out his last couple of years before retirement in a job where, in spite of a fine-sounding title, he could do little harm. His main professional duty now seemed to be lunching, and he took disproportionate pride in being president of the Pillars of Sussex. He cleared his throat portentously before his reply.
‘Your words are pleasing to the highest Pillar of Sussex. Welcome, and may you enjoy our dinner.’
Since they’d already finished eating, this didn’t seem to make sense, but Jude had, much earlier in the evening, realized logic played little part in the protocol of the Pillars of Sussex.
‘And tell me, Mr Ackford,’ the President rumbled on, ‘a little of yourself . . . or of those details which you are willing to share with the Pillars of Sussex.’
This was greeted by another automatic ripple of hilarity. Not for the first time, Jude wished she understood the rituals of male laughter. Its triggers seemed to have nothing to do with the humour of what had just been said; there were just certain prompts which, in an all-male assembly, required an immediate responsive guffaw. How to recognize these prompts Jude had no idea; she reckoned she never would – having been born the wrong gender.
Trifle dishes balanced up her arm, a skill mastered in her late twenties when she’d run a cafe, Jude made her way back towards the kitchen. As she left, she heard Nigel Ackford begin to present his professional credentials to the assembled Pillars.
‘After being educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, and studying law at Bristol University, I was articled to Renton and Chew in Worthing . . .’ A rumble of appreciative recognition greeted the name. Donald Chew was his boss. The young man moved in the right circles. He was one of them. ‘I qualified as a solicitor two years ago, and was fortunate enough to be kept on by Renton and Chew, working mostly at the moment on the conveyancing side, though I hope in time to expand my portfolio of skills to include . . .’
When Jude and Suzy returned to the dining room with the coffee, the rituals were over. Guests had been welcomed, a new member initiated, and a toast drunk to ‘Pillars past, Pillars now standing, and Pillars yet to be erected.’ The wording of this last invocation, innocently coined in the late nineteenth century, was followed by the obligatory sniggering guffaw that in such company greets any form of the word ‘erect’.
This was the sound that met the two women as they entered. Then the rituals gave way to speeches. Expressionless, Suzy and Jude set out cups, saucers and coffee pots as, sycophantically and with a few limp jokes of his own, James Baxter introduced the evening’s guest speaker, the president of a local rugby club, ‘Who I’ve heard speak before and who I know will give us all a lot of good laughs. So, if any of my fellow Pillars suffer from weak ribs, be warned you’re likely to crack a few!’
The guest speaker started with a reference to the wives and girlfriends marooned at home by the Pillars’ dinner, and took this as a springboard for a sequence of quick-fire jokes about women, of a crudeness Jude found hard to credit. She caught Suzy’s eye and received the unspoken message to grin and bear it.
Jude realized she and Suzy had become invisible. They were merely functionaries, fulfilling their task of serving coffee. The fact that they had identities, the fact that they were women, the fact that one of them was a great beauty of her generation and was now dressed in a stunningly expensive designer black dress, had no relevance at all.
The jokes continued, each cruder than the last, and the raucous responses to them fed the communal hatred and fear of women. As Jude and Suzy slipped, unnoticed back into the kitchen, the fumes of misogyny rising from the Pillars’ table were almost visible.
The clearing-up took a long time, though fortunately the Pillars of Sussex did not keep very late hours. There had been much bold talk of ‘staying in the bar all night’, but their stamina did not match their bravado. Most of the men had had two or three pints before dinner, plenty of wine with the meal, and were pretty incoherent before they started on post-prandial Scotches, brandies, ports and further pints.
The drunkest of the lot was Nigel Ackford. Bob Hartson kept plying his guest with more drinks, and seemed to take pleasure in watching the young man’s movements grow more random, and in hearing his speech become more slurred.
‘Are you staying tonight, Bob?’ Jude heard Nigel say at one point. ‘Or are you being driven home?’
‘No, I’m going to stay. Geoff’s kipping down here too. He can drive me back in the morning.’
Nigel Ackford waved his glass. ‘Time I bought you one, Bob.’
‘No. This evening’s my treat, and that means everything. Here, sexy Suzy, same again, please!’
Jude was once again impressed by Suzy’s forbearance, as she watched her behind the bar, dispensing orders with efficiency and an automatic smile. Even Suzy’s automatic smiles were beautiful.
None of the men noticed this. Though their conversation was still largely composed of jokes predicated on rampant lust, the presence of a real woman seemed not to impinge on their collective consciousness.
With Suzy cornered behind the bar, Jude found she was doing the initial stages of clearing the dining room on her own. Kerry, who should have been helping, was sitting with her adoring stepfather, Bob Hartson, who, apparently amused by her precocious relish for alcohol, kept plying the girl with drinks. At no stage did Suzy make any attempt to remind Kerry of her duties.
The atmosphere in the bar was raucous, and the conversation degenerated into ever more misogynistic jokes and playground insults. Only Donald Chew seemed marginalized from all the banter. He smiled and joined in the automatic guffaws which greeted every punchline, but looked aloof, not quite one of the boys, as he continued steadily to drink and unsteadily to sway. He was the first to say he was off to find his bed.
‘Ooh, sweetie!’ someone shrieked after him in a mock-camp voice. ‘Hope you find someone nice in there waiting for you!’