When Hungry Paul came downstairs the next morning—his body trained for early starts on Mondays—he found Grace was already sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown, drinking tea quietly and enjoying the gentle orange morning sky. She had just been out to fill the bird feeders, which reminded her of her own neglected feeders at home.
‘Hey champ,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ said Hungry Paul, kissing her on the forehead, ‘Married yet?’
‘No, not yet. I came down early in case Andrew had broken in and was waiting for me, but alas, all I found was a pot of leftover marrowfats. Did you sleep well?’
‘Like a baby, not that babies are good sleepers, as any parent will tell you. How about you?’
‘Slept like a tired log. I thought I’d be a bit wound up with wedding details, but once I started reading one of the paperbacks on the shelf in my old room my head started nodding, so I just had to give up in the end.’
‘What book was it?’ asked Hungry Paul.
‘That Night It Rained—one of your old favourites.’
‘That’s a great book. Or should I say the first fifty pages are great. I have read them several times. I have also read the last page, so I can tell you how the crime is solved, if you’re interested? I’m going to make some porridge—can I fix you something?’
‘I’m okay thanks. I’ve had some muesli. Thanks for last night by the way. Our little chat, I mean.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, you know me, I don’t usually make speeches, but that was from behind the breast pocket of my pyjamas. I felt a bit talked-out afterwards actually. Just as well I’m not doing a speech today—are you doing one?’
‘Just some thank yous. Nothing complicated.’
They enjoyed a nice relaxed breakfast, not talking too much, Grace drinking tea from a Crunchie Easter egg mug and Hungry Paul from one that professed ‘I ♥ London.’
Before long Helen and Peter came down, full of babbling excitement and making breakfast with all the chatty chaos of a daytime cookery programme, family houses being so easily transformed from a monastery to a circus once the morning peace is broken and all the early energy of the day begins to gather. Helen turned on the radio and was fiddling around to try and find something other than news or white noise, not realising that she had accidentally bumped the FM switch to LW. Peter sat with his back to the wall and had a go at the unsolved crossword clues from the Sunday paper, which was a leisurely way to spend time on such a busy day, and something which did not go unnoticed by Helen. Hungry Paul took over responsibility for the radio, popped it back into FM, and before long they were listening to ABBA, a band nobody in the house ever put on by choice, but one which met with broad approval whenever they came on the radio by chance. It was nice for Grace to be in a busy house again.
After breakfast Peter answered the door to the wedding hairdresser, who had arrived with two aluminium cases of make-up and hairdressing gear. Even at 8am, she was already dressed as if she were on her way to the divorcée discount drinks night. Not long afterwards, Grace’s two bridesmaids arrived: Karen, whom she had known since college but didn’t see that much these days; and Patty, a girl from her old job who used to be her drinking buddy, back at a time in their lives when that was a synonym for best friend. Peter would have to stay on at the house until the wedding car arrived four hours later, an absolute eternity for an introverted middle-aged man to spend with three hyper young women and their hairdresser. Helen, who had opted out of the limelight and didn’t want to walk down the aisle herself, would bring Hungry Paul and Leonard to the church first thing to set out the flowers, tie bows to the aisle ends, and run the Hoover over the church carpet if necessary, as she reasoned that the usual cleaners wouldn’t have been in over the bank holiday weekend. Once they had set up the church, the plan was to check into the hotel early where they would get dressed and ready for the church service.
Helen became a little tearful when it was time to go, knowing that the next time they saw each other Grace would be in her wedding dress and things would be very much under way. She waited outside Leonard’s house and beeped with the engine running, as if picking him up for a high school date. Leonard came down the drive dragging his overnight case behind him in one hand and draping his suit bag over the opposite shoulder. He had spent a quiet and contemplative weekend at home by himself, where he had given the house a good clean and generally used his hands to keep his mind busy. On Saturday he had gone to the concert hall alone to see a performance of the Bach cello suites, his heart gently pulsing with the music as he indulged in a little aching over Shelley. Overall though, aside from a few little moments that he allowed himself, he didn’t wallow or daydream too much.
Leonard decided to sit in the front with Helen, rather than in the back with Hungry Paul, who was enjoying a bit of quiet with the window down. As the shotgun seat also brings stereo privileges, he was given first choice of the cracked CD boxes jammed in the cubby between the front seats. Leonard, being both a gentleman and a consensus builder, ran his choices by his other two passengers and got ready consent, both Helen and Hungry Paul having surprisingly good taste for people who didn’t talk about music much. In the end he chose an Everly Brothers Best Of, which was somewhat drowned out by the Fiat’s plucky engine, as it struggled with motorway speeds. Leonard did feel a little self-conscious as Phil and Don played song after song about heartbreak, worried that Helen and Hungry Paul might think that he was in a pining mood, so he overcompensated with inane chatter to the effect that he really loved a good old wedding.
When they arrived at the church, which was miles outside their own parish and at the junction of a country crossroads, it was open but unoccupied. Inside, the air still held the sacramental smells of Easter: incense, candles and exhaled prayers. It was a small cruciform building with a vaulted wooden ceiling but otherwise free of any grand features. On Grace’s instructions, they would only use the rows of seats in the central nave, leaving both transepts empty and available in case any locals dropped by for the mass, as she had been told locals sometimes did. Leonard briefly indulged his usual church habit of looking at the depiction of the Stations of the Cross; though not a believer, he admired the Passion as a piece of epic and timeless storytelling. The Stations in the church had flat, two-dimensional figures that had little in the way of real feeling. The eleventh station, in which Christ is nailed to the cross, had a cartoonish Roman in it, with an almost sadistic smile as he raised the mallet in his hand. Having spent many hours trying to capture Romans with sensitivity, the image jarred with Leonard. He knew that the legionary responsible would have had to drive the nail between the bones of the forearm near the wrist, while taking care not to severe any major arteries or veins. It would have been surgical violence, done without thuggery or glory. He wondered how that legionary became assigned to the job, which was surely a career backwater. Was it the same legionary who offered Christ vinegar and who was party to the drunken jeering? How does a man like that feel every morning, waking up sick with another day of brutality before him? Who would marry such a man? What would a man in that situation hope for from life?
Leonard was soon recalled from his daydream by Helen who asked him to help Hungry Paul lift the altar flowers in from the car. The flowers from Easter Sunday were still on display, so Helen put them to good effect around the church to cheer up the place on what was beginning to look like an overcast day. Leonard and Hungry Paul tied the bows to the aisle ends with all the inept enthusiasm of a schoolboy trying to teach himself to tie shoelaces. In the end Helen redid them herself, and asked the boys to do the cleaning-up instead, which turned into a two-man job with Leonard hoovering and Hungry Paul pointing out the bits he missed. It didn’t take long to make the church look well, its simplicity being hard to improve upon. Before they left, Helen couldn’t help pausing at the bottom of the aisle to enjoy the view that would meet Grace on her arrival, the butterflies from her own wedding day recreated from memory as she stood there.
They got to the hotel in plenty of time. It was an old country house with notions of castlehood; inside, it was a moneyed mix of old and new, and looked recently renovated. There was expensive modern art in the reception area, some of which looked a little formulaic for Leonard’s tastes, and real books lining the walls, though no sign of classics like The Mill on the Floss or That Night It Rained.
As each other’s plus ones, Hungry Paul had booked a room for himself and Leonard to share. They were brought there by an older concierge who made chit chat as best he could on the way, though Hungry Paul was unable to respond because of his internal panic over whether and how to tip a man who was old enough to be his father. Their room was bright and modern with a lovely view over the mountains and two complimentary bottles of water. Though it seemed churlish to nit-pick, Leonard couldn’t help noticing that it appeared to have just one double bed, and a four-poster one at that.
‘You’re taking this plus one business quite seriously aren’t you?’ he asked Hungry Paul.
‘I thought there would be two beds, not one.’
‘What did you ask for when you were booking?’
‘I just said we needed a room for me and my plus one. But, when she checked, I deliberately told her I wanted a double room, not this!’
‘But this is a double room. A double room means a double bed!’
‘I thought that was a twin room! I mean I did doubt myself but then I figured that you have conjoined twins, so a twin room must be when the two beds are conjoined so to speak, and if you have double of something you have two of it—I mean if you asked for a double scoop of ice cream you don’t just get one giant scoop—so I thought there would be double the number of beds,’ explained Hungry Paul.
‘So what will we do? Will we see if there’s another room?’
‘We can try, but I know that Grace said that this hotel was booked out by wedding guests ages ago. The latecomers had to book the B&B down the road, so I think it’s going to be difficult unless someone we know is willing to swap.’
‘Okay, well that seems unlikely. Looks like we’ll just have to share then. I hope your pyjamas have a full trouser leg—none of this boxer short business, with hairy legs making their way over to my side,’ said Leonard.
‘I’m a paisley man like yourself, Leonard. Full and respectable coverage, though I do like to stick a leg out for coolness.’
‘Me too. Okay, so that’s that. Left or right?’
‘How about I take right as it’s closer to the bathroom in case I need a sleepy wee during the night.’
The two men then did their best to get ready and dressed for the wedding, while sensitively avoiding any unnecessary embarrassment, although, inevitably, when you share a small hotel room you can’t help but notice things like the surprisingly ostentatious colour of a clean pair of pants laid out on the bed.
For the third time that week Hungry Paul wore his new suit, to which he had added his purple Quality Street tie and another new shirt, this time with single cuffs. Leonard wore the suit he had bought for his mother’s funeral, its sombre greyness transformed by his birch leaf green tie.
When the time came, they met with Helen at the hotel reception where she was chatting with Andrew’s parents. Hungry Paul often marvelled at Helen’s ability to set aside any occasion and engage in small talk. If she were taking the penalty in a cup final she would still find a moment to chat to the opposing goalkeeper about his plans for when he retired, or if she were transplanting a baboon’s heart into a sick child on the operating table, she would comfortably enquire of the nurse whether her grandson still had braces. Her interest in people was genuine and inquiring, her view being that people often opened up more easily over the smaller things.
When they returned to the church, there were some young men from Andrew’s extended family smoking outside, something Hungry Paul thought looked wrong at a wedding though he couldn’t say why exactly. The sacristan was lingering and looking to speak to someone discreetly about his honorarium, and was eventually put in touch with the best man, who had been among the smokers. Inside, Leonard and Hungry Paul took up their positions at the foot of the aisle to guide people to the bride or groom side, and to hand out the homemade wedding missalettes, the typing and formatting of which had caused Grace to develop a maritime swearing habit. Most guests seemed to know instinctively which side to go to, even Grace and Andrew’s shared friends, who revealed a subtle bias in electing for one side over the other. Leonard was happy to help out, especially as it spared him a socially awkward half hour idling in his seat alone, but also because it legitimised his status at the wedding—a ‘friend of the brother of the bride’ didn’t otherwise sound like someone who ought to have made the cut at a wedding where numbers were known to be tight.
Things were a bit more complicated for Hungry Paul. His lack of assertiveness and lifelong social invisibility meant that people tended to walk by him before he had a chance to establish eye contact and offer to help. Also, he was not good with faces and worse with names, a failing that was not helped by the passage of time during which he had forgotten the existence of grown-up cousins who now looked very different to their childhood selves. They all seemed to know him though. His father’s brother, Uncle Michael, came up and gave Hungry Paul a two-handed handshake and called over his two adult sons to say hello. As kids, they used to like sniffing the glue in Hungry Paul’s art box whenever they visited. Uncle Michael’s wife, Jane, had died a few years previously and he had gone off the rails a bit, doing sex tourism in the Far East, then becoming a seminarian, before settling back to a more normal retirement mix of volunteering for the church and doing evening courses.
Hungry Paul’s Aunt Sarah—his mam’s sister, who had made the cake at his parents’ wedding—came over and gave him a warm hug and a kiss which landed on his ear. She had never married but had a long-time ‘special friend’ Colette, who came with her everywhere, including to the wedding. Sarah hadn’t been asked to make the cake this time, and was expected to be hard to please when it was being handed out later on.
Hungry Paul also recognised a few of Grace’s old college friends and friends from the local area: a mix of Taras, Susans, Lisas, Lindas and Louises, who were all a lot taller than he remembered because of their wedding heels, and who had between them a mixed taste in plus ones. One couple did catch his eye though: a dapper man in his eighties with a glorious, wave-like backcomb and his elderly wife whose hair was dyed dark brown, which made it look as though her face was emerging happily from a hedge. Neither of them was above five feet tall and they smiled the whole time. The man clapped Hungry Paul on the lower back and leaned in to speak, but then seemed to change his mind and instead offered his elbow to his wife and glided off to sit in the second row on the groom’s side, smiling and waving to everybody.
The church had been filling up steadily, with a gentle simmering of conversation around the place. The women were complimenting each other’s outfits; the more experienced of them knew to bring a coat or fake fur stole to an April wedding. The men did that usual male small talk thing, keeping it light and general. Friendliest of all were the plus ones who had no choice but to be amiable good listeners for the day. The sacristan was busy at the altar making sure all was as it should be, like a roadie for the headline act. The priest was speaking with Andrew’s parents and with Helen, who had been feeling self-conscious sitting by herself. Up at the very front, Andrew was chatting away with his best man, and exuded his usual composure, every bit the consummate groom. He wore a beautifully-cut blue Italian suit, a burgundy tie and a crisp white shirt, with double cuffs and a set of pearl cuff links his father had worn at his own wedding. The only signs of his nerves were the quick little glances he made towards the frosted glass of the vestibule, where Grace would arrive whenever she was ready. Throughout it all, the organist, who was no slouch as a negotiator by all accounts, played background voluntaries, a mix of warm gelatinous chords and some playful cantering with the right hand, ignoring the church organ’s demonic side.
It was the sudden scurrying of the outside smokers into the church that confirmed the arrival of the bridal party. The organist paused his playing and a general, giddy hush fell on the church as everyone stood up. Hungry Paul stood beside his mother at the front of the church as Helen got a tissue ready for herself. Leonard, a natural people-watcher, looked ahead at the priest who had an avuncular smile spread across his face, giving away his secret that the early romantic stages of the ceremony were the bits he liked best. Andrew stood calmly and happily, privately grateful to Grace for being punctual on the one day that it truly mattered to him.
The bridesmaids entered first, slightly shy under the paparazzo enthusiasm of the guests and their phones, and walked up the aisle one at a time to take their places at the front.
Then, with a nod from the photographer and with no small appreciation of dramatic tension, the organist struck the opening notes of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto No.5 in F Minor, otherwise known to Andrew as the song Grace had picked from Hannah and Her Sisters.
And there she was.
She stood for a moment, demure and delighted, wearing an expression intended to sing ta-da!
She wore a stunning tea-length ivory satin dress. But everyone’s eyes were drawn to the flash of colour in her jade green shoes, a choice that was both unexpected and yet somehow quintessentially Grace. She walked up the aisle linking Peter’s arm as he made every effort to go slowly, a beautiful pride welling inside of him. Andrew had watched Grace through every step and thanked Peter with the subtlest of smiles as he took Grace’s two hands in his own.
‘Well, here I am,’ said Grace simply.
‘You look so beautiful,’ answered Andrew, simpler still.
All around the church, girlfriends were squeezing the hands of their plus ones, and wives were leaning into their husbands’ shoulders. The priest, not wishing to break the moment but nonetheless duty-bound to get on with things, offered some welcoming words to Grace and Andrew and to the wider congregation. He introduced each part of the service by explaining its symbolic importance, which was an experienced way of tipping the participants off that it was their turn to approach the altar for their bit. His homily was a light-hearted meditation on love and family, emphasising the philosophical over the spiritual, churchmen being well used to glossing over the question of religious commitment in order to focus on a longer game, with baptisms, communions and confirmations all still to play for.
Throughout the previous few weeks Grace had consistently said that the religious service was the bit she was least looking forward to, as she felt fraudulent in her lack of faith, but now that it was under way she wanted it to go on forever. Even though she had slaved over the missalette, and so should have known the readings and prayers off by heart, she sat in rapt attention listening to them as fresh new words and sentiments, lived advice about abiding love and its many depths and difficulties. Though her recollection of mass as a child was one of countless long hours, the wedding service seemed to flash by, happiness bending her sense of time.
When the moment came to repeat their self-composed vows, the rings that they had sworn to wear for life slipped on easily. And so, among their family and friends, through an ancient ritual that never gets old, they became married.
When the service was over, they made their smiling way back down the aisle to Handel’s ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’, the organist worth every penny.
After photos, congratulatory hugs and choruses of good wishes, Grace and Andrew climbed into the back of their Regency Red Jaguar Mark 2, which Grace had chosen in homage to her TV hero, Inspector Endeavour Morse. Sitting there, on red leather seats and with limited leg-room, they held hands and waved out the window like a pair of royals.
‘Well now,’ said Grace. ‘That was nice.’