Sometimes, out of the blue, the fates like to choose you to mess with, and completely ruin your whole day. Sitting in a vast and beautifully ornate Tuscan church in the middle of a wedding, Charley Taylor was blissfully unaware that this was going to be one of those days.
Although strictly speaking, blissful wasn’t an accurate description of her mood since, much as she loved weddings, she was finding this one bit of an ordeal. The service was in Italian, obviously, and she couldn’t understand a single word, so she was impossibly anxious she’d do something glaringly wrong and make a complete spectacle of herself. She glanced around nervously at the surrounding sea of faces. There were literally hundreds of guests and, apart from Ricky, sitting next to her, she didn’t know a single soul.
Perhaps sensing her unease, Ricky slipped his hand over hers, gave it a reassuring squeeze and then, leaning close to her ear whispered, ‘I love you.’
She could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘I love you too,’ she mouthed back.
The two of them had only flown in from Bristol the previous evening and Charley hadn’t had time to meet any of his relatives properly. Although she’d been introduced to his sister (the bride) and all the bridesmaids, his parents and a vast array of aunts and uncles and cousins, everyone had been swept up in the whirlwind rush of wedding preparations, and she could barely put a name to a face. She turned her attention back to the ceremony and reminded herself to focus on meticulously copying what everyone else was doing. Oh my God, she thought, how utterly mortifying would it be to make a fool of myself and embarrass Ricky in front of his entire extended family? Funnily enough, less than an hour later, she found out.
It was while everyone was traipsing into the grandiose medieval lodge for the reception that the fates decided to start having fun. Buried in the middle of the tide of guests surging into the entrance hall, Charley found her right heel had suddenly caught in a metal grating in the floor and promptly stuck there, yanking her to an abrupt halt. The crowd surrounding her carried on obliviously, sweeping her irresistibly onwards, but without her shoe.
Bloody hell! She grabbed Ricky’s arm and hissed, ‘I’ve lost my shoe!’
‘What?! Oh!’ Ricky immediately turned around and, loudly exclaiming, ‘Scusi, scusi!’ he tried to force their way against the oncoming waves of relatives whilst, she assumed, rapidly explaining her predicament in Italian.
Instantly, and with an astonishing degree of melodrama and noise, at least twenty well-meaning people dropped to their knees to try to rescue the shoe which, despite the efforts of several men and the heated advice of even more women, proved to be irretrievably wedged. Cheeks burning, Charley begged them to leave the shoe and let her and Ricky deal with it. But they didn’t understand her English and so the commotion continued until one particularly determined young man grasped hold of the offending article and started twisting it ferociously.
‘Please don’t force it!’ Charley pleaded, ‘You’ll—’ A loud cracking sound interrupted her. ‘—break it,’ she finished.
Beaming triumphantly, the young man proudly presented Charley with her shoe, minus the heel, which was still jammed in the floor. Spontaneous applause broke out so, slapping a cheerful look on her face, Charley thanked the lad profusely, then slipped the remains of her shoe onto her foot and resigned herself to making even more of an exhibition of herself by spending the rest of the day limping heavily. Bloody, bloody hell! Why? Out of all the hundreds of women here, why did this have to happen to me?
The fates hadn’t finished with Charley yet, intent on turning the reception into an absolute nightmare for her. To start with, Ricky’s mother was determined to introduce Charley – or more precisely ‘Ricky’s girlfriend’ – to each and every guest in the entire room. Charley hobbled along dutifully as she and Ricky were endlessly paraded around until she’d completely lost track of who was who, who was related to who, and how. She just hoped to God she wasn’t expected to remember any names. Naturally, everyone bombarded her with questions, mostly in Italian for Ricky to interpret, and she began to feel like a broken record continually repeating herself. ‘No, I haven’t hurt myself, I’ve just broken my heel… Yes, I live in England… We’ve been together about six months… We met at his bike shop… I run a Prosecco-themed shop…’
At last, having completed the marathon tour, Ricky’s mother patted Charley’s cheek affectionately and drifted off, no doubt to resume her multiple duties as mother of the bride. Which would have been a blessed relief for Charley, except Ricky was immediately annexed by a gang of his friends and relatives. Watching his face light up with every embrace and re-union, she couldn’t blame him; he hadn’t seen most of them for years, since he’d moved to England. Nevertheless, it left her trapped in the corner of a crowded room, hemmed in by people she didn’t know and couldn’t even talk to.
She was just about to do what any smart woman would do in those circumstances – bolt to the Ladies’ and hide – when she was pounced upon by a gaggle of older women who, with much fluster and arm-flapping, herded her into a group of young women and girls corralled in the centre of the room. Before Charley could grasp what was happening, Ricky’s sister had leapt onto a chair, turned her back on the room, and blindly hurled her bouquet into the throng. There were squeals of delight as a host of hands shot up into the air to catch it, but to Charley’s horror the bloody thing flew straight at her face. Instinctively, she put her hand up to protect herself – and promptly caught it.
There was a deathly hush, during which several hundred people turned to look at Charley, and then the entire room erupted and everyone within arm’s length grabbed her and kissed her on both cheeks, including Ricky’s mother who had somehow pushed her way through the throng to sweep her into an ecstatic embrace.
Oh brilliant. Why? Why did you do that? she cursed herself furiously. All but drowning in a tidal wave of strangers, her eyes frantically scanned the room for Ricky. She found him, beaming sheepishly, amongst a bunch of cheering lads who were all slapping him on the back. Shooting him an imploring look, she saw his face immediately cloud and he tried to break free and push his way towards her, only to be enveloped into a hug by a huge bear of a man and disappear from her sight once more. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell, could this afternoon get any worse?
As it turned out, yes, it could. Acutely aware that she was still clinging onto the wedding bouquet and no doubt looking either optimistic or pathetic, or possibly both, she tossed it irritably onto the nearest table – and promptly knocked over a bottle of wine. What seemed like gallons of dark red wine flooded all over the pristine white tablecloth. A chorus of horrified cries rent the air as a dozen or so people all dived into the scene, busying themselves with righting the bottle, mopping up the wine, and generally making a crisis out of a drama.
‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry!’ wailed Charley, immediately trying to help, but she was shoed away by multiple reproachful hands.
To her dismay, her eyes started prickling and she realised she was close to tears, and then she felt a firm hand suddenly take hold of her elbow and gently pull her away from the melodrama. Assuming it was Ricky, she turned gratefully, only to discover an elderly lady in his place. Calmly and majestically, the old woman steered Charley across the room, the mass of people miraculously parting to let them through. Then, pausing only to casually pick up two glasses of sparkling white wine and hand one of them to Charley, the woman led her outside. She headed for a stone bench, under the shade of a wooden pergola running along the side of the building and, taking hold of Charley’s arm with her free hand to steady herself while carefully holding her wine glass with the other, she lowered herself onto the seat and then patted the space next to her. Charley sat down beside her.
‘I do not speak English,’ the lady informed her slowly, shaking her head apologetically.
Frankly, Charley was infinitely relieved – at least she’d be spared another interrogation. ‘I’m sorry. Non parlo Italiano,’ she replied, shrugging helplessly and pretty much exhausting her Italian.
‘Ha!’ The older woman rolled her eyes good-humouredly, then she tapped her chest to introduce herself. ‘Nonna di Ricky. Grandmother.’
Charley made the same gesture and said, ‘I’m Charley. Ricky’s girlfriend.’
‘Sì, sì,’ nodded the woman, and Charley felt vaguely ridiculous since it was patently obvious everyone knew who she was.
The elderly woman raised her glass in salutation to Charley, then she leant back, sighed happily, and waved her arm at countryside in front of them, clearly inviting Charley to take in the fabulous views. Charley happily obliged. After all the minor disasters and unwanted attention inside it was bliss – sheer bliss – to be sitting in the fresh air with the warm May sun on her skin and enjoying a generous slice of peace and quiet. Charley’s eyes roamed across the Tuscan countryside in front of her, taking in the small villages and churches peppering the hillsides and the vibrant patchwork of fields, some of which she guessed were vineyards, all bordered by the characteristic tall, thin trees of the region. Occasionally, Ricky’s grandmother would leisurely lift an arm to shade her eyes, casually wave the glass in her other hand to indicate something in the distance and utter a word or two. Whether she was naming the villages, or the types of trees, or a passing bird, Charley had absolutely no idea, a fact that didn’t seem to matter to either of them.
Shortly afterwards Ricky came looking for her, full of apologies. His grandmother instantly berated him in a tirade of Italian, with a lot of head-shaking and finger-wagging, leaving him looking like a scolded child.
‘She’s telling me off for not looking after you properly,’ he told Charley, crouching down in front of her and pulling a face. ‘She’s right, and I’m sorry.’
‘No. It’s fine,’ Charley assured him hurriedly and leant forward to take hold of his hand. ‘I know you have a lot of people you want to catch up with.’
He smiled at her gratefully then after a moment asked, ‘Are you ready to come back in?’
Charley looked across to the old woman, serenely comfortable beside her, and then turned back to Ricky. ‘Do you mind if I stay here with your gran a little longer?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied and then, raising her hand to his lips, he kissed it, which won him an approving nod from his grandmother and made Charley melt inside. He gave them both a deeply loving look before he stood up and headed back indoors.
The two women sat peacefully in the May sunshine, in an oasis of calm, sipping their drinks and sharing the occasional comment, in the full understanding that neither of them understood a word the other was saying, but not caring a fig.