Marry Him

by Marina Ford

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” he asks, as he steps back from it. “Five months isn’t a lot of time to plan a wedding. We have to be strict with ourselves.”

  “You’re the one who set the date,” I say, stretching. He wants us to use the Jamaica tickets for a honeymoon. “Come back to bed.”

  “Can’t. I only have two hours before work, and I’ve got to narrow down the caterers to three options so we can taste-test them. Siobhan insists on importing the champagne from France, and I’m not sure she realises that this isn’t like Aunt Wendy’s sixtieth, where she can just forget the champagne in her old mate’s garage in Canterbury, and we all go down the pub instead.”

  He’s cute when he’s all severe and responsible. I crawl to the foot of the bed and tug on his hand to get him closer.

  “I know what would relax you,” I say with a smile. “And it’s got nothing to do with Aunt Wendy’s sixtieth.”

  “Joe, we really don’t have the time,” he says, as I draw his shirt down his arms. “You could help me out, actually, and research bands. I’ve contacted three, but at such short notice, they’re all booked up. I thought you might know someone.”

  “Sure,” I say, kissing his chest, up to his collarbone, and then up his neck.

  “Joe . . .”

  Fortunately, it turns out that there’s a way to get Harry instantly horny.

  “Yes, future husband?”

  I can feel the shift immediately. His hands come up around me, and I reach his mouth at last.

  “That’s not fair,” he complains between kisses. “You’ve weaponised our engagement.”

  I grin.

  “Turn around,” I tell him.

  It works like a charm. I don’t know what it is about the word husband. To him, it’s like an aphrodisiac. It started in Dublin, where he ravished me right after the proposal, and so far it continues to hold up its power. If I knew he was going to like it so much, I’d have done this ages ago.

  His mouth is on mine, his arms are around me, and I know him so well, it’s like playing a favourite instrument. I know the weight of him, I know his strength. Over the years, I have lifted him and squeezed him, I have spread him and enfolded him, so that now every move of mine has a corresponding move from him and I can tell what he wants me to do by how he twists and pulls, or pushes and wriggles into place.

  “Husband,” I whisper against the warm skin of his neck, and I can feel the gentle shiver, the little buzz of electricity at the word. It’s a power I have. He’s embarrassed about his own reaction—there’s a flush in his cheeks—but I love it. I love that I can do this now.

  It’s like a best-of album, a compilation of all we like, compact, efficient, quick, and delectable. The sheets brush, the bed creaks, he’s in my arms, my very own, mine, and he presses me to him with the same strength, kissing me with the same meaning. Mine, mine, mine, his kisses are saying.

  “I love you,” he says, pressing lube into my hands. He squirms when I reach down and behind him, and I feel a thrill when I prepare him, a rush of blood, a pounding in my chest. It’s not the same I love you that he says when he leaves for work, or the I love yous we exchange before going to sleep. Or the love you with which we say goodbye over the phone. It’s the I love you that means look what you’re doing to me, you sexy bastard, and it makes me grin.

  Afterwards, when he wraps me in his arms, heat beating off his skin, our pulses still racing, he mutters, “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

  “Mhfhrhg,” I mutter, contentedly, against his nipple.

  His phone rings half an hour later and startles us both into consciousness. He falls out of bed and picks it up, while I blink against the brightness in the room and then drop back on my pillow and marvel that the day has only just begun and I achieved so much already. I made Harry Byrne come. That’s got to count for something.

  Harry doesn’t sound so happy. Whoever’s on the phone with him has said something annoying, because his hand is in his hair and he’s pacing.

  “Yes? Well, that’s impossible,” Harry says. I lift up onto my elbows and watch him. He throws me a worried glance and then retreats into the other room, closing the door behind him. Weird.

  I can hear his muffled voice. “What kind of incompetent . . . No, I’ll take care of it. Yes, I said I would, and I will.”

  I try to guess who it might be. He’s only got one client he doesn’t like talking about, who calls at all hours of the day and night. Like last night. He’s never worked with anybody that persistently annoying. I’m including Malcolm in this.

  “Okay. I’ll speak to you later. Bye,” Harry says.

  When he returns, I ask, “Work?”

  He looks up, as if barely registering that I said anything. He’s got frown lines on his forehead, and his hair is standing up from where he tugged at it earlier.

  “I’ve got to shower and go,” he says, reaching for his shirt. I was careful—when I stripped him of it, I left it hanging neatly off the side of a chair. I fall back on the pillows and throw my arm over my face to shield myself from the brightness of the day. The bathroom door closes behind him.

  Harry comes back from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, smelling of shower gel and cologne. “By the way, I thought we could have dinner with my parents this Saturday. Are you free?”

  My brain is too slow. I’m still distracted by the phone call. I can’t think of an excuse.

  “It’s time we tell them,” Harry says, buttoning up.

  “They’ll find out eventually,” I mumble.

  “They have to find out from us.”

  “They will, when we say ‘I do’ in front of a registrar. Really, you’re obsessing over technicalities here.”

  He smiles and shakes his head at me.

  “Saturday,” he says. “Make sure you’re free.”

  His phone rings, and he looks at the screen, sees who it is, and shuts it off.

  “Who was that?”

  “Nobody.” He puts the phone away.

  I can’t help it: I watch him across the room, study his expression. It’s not merely these phone calls (which seem to have become more frequent). He’s stopped opening his bank statements in front of me. Whenever the post arrives, he takes his letters into his office and locks them in a drawer. Once, when he forgot to log out of his email inbox on the laptop and it appeared when I moved the mouse, he jumped so quickly to close it down, he tripped and bashed himself in the shin. He had a stonking bruise afterwards, but when I asked him what was the matter, he evaded my question.

  Now, too, he changes the subject.

  “I think I left it at work,” he mutters. “Do you know if Maya sent me the quote from the chair people? I thought I pinned it to the wall.”

  Fuck it. I’m asking him.

  “It’s not Kieran who’s calling, is it?”

  This makes him freeze mid-move. He’s just been bending over to check under his desk while buttoning his shirt, but now he lifts up, slowly, to look at me. “What?”

  The longer he’s not speaking, the longer I have to imagine him going, I suppose we should talk . . .

  I have a gnawing feeling, like a prickle up my spine.

  “No,” he says. “No, it’s not Kieran.”

  He takes his phone out of his pocket and shows me his last calls. It’s a long number.

  “Where is this from?” I ask.

  “It’s a lady in Australia. She has no idea about time zones, apparently. Remember? I told you about her before?”

  Maybe I’m being ridiculous. “Sorry.”

  He takes my face in his hand and kisses me.

  But why does this client have his private mobile number? And why does he hide his bank statements? And his emails?

  It’s nothing. I know it’s nothing. It can’t be anything, because why would it be? I mean, what earthly reason would he have to marry me, of all people, if he really was in fact trying to get back together with Kieran? I’m being ridiculous.

  Kieran has been travel
ling a lot, lately, though.

  I’m being paranoid.

  I watch Harry, frowningly, as he begins to rush again.

  “Oh,” he says, when he puts his engagement bracelet on, “remember about the bands. And are you sure you still want to design the invitations yourself?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Leave it to me.”

  In Harry’s world, that means Help me. “I’ve sent you some ideas,” he says. “Check your email. And don’t forget.” Like he’d let me. Like he won’t text me at some point today to remind me. He throws his tie around his collar and allows me to tie it for him while he puts his cuff links in.

  “If I get in early, I might get the caterers done before my meeting,” he says. “Thank God for Maya. Yesterday, she printed out all the forms for me, put them in a folder and cross-referenced them. Harriet saw it and made a huge deal out of it. I’m pretty sure she’s going to try and poach Maya from under me.”

  “The girl’s going to have to move on eventually.”

  “I know,” he sighs. “Just not now.”

  I finish with his tie, and he checks himself out in the mirror. He looks like one of the characters on Mad Men. I want to undress him again.

  “Okay, love, I’ll see you later.” He turns, kisses me, and reaches for his suit coat. “Be back by six.”

  I don’t like preparing the wedding. Of course, getting married itself is fine, but the preparations are a nightmare.

  Harry and Maya have always been close, but now that they have a wedding to plan, they’re texting each other constantly. One time, he texted her while we were having sex. He denied it afterwards, and I know he’s embarrassed about it, but it happened. To be fair, we were at it for a long time, but still—he reached over to his nightstand and texted her an idea for table names.

  Knowing that he’s so into this stuff, I make an effort. I offered to design the invitations because he is very particular that our wedding reflects “us.” And now that he suggested I take care of the music, I wait until he leaves the flat, and then look up Frank’s friend and DJ, Verena, to tell her that I need a band.

  Verena’s astonished to hear from me. “You’re getting married? You?”

  “Yes,” I patiently reply. “Harry’s very traditional, and he wants a good reception, so I mean to make that happen. Anything you can swing for me?”

  “It’s a bit short notice,” she says. “But I’ll think of something.”

  She promises to get back to me on this. I make a tick on the giant calendar on our wall. Harry will be ecstatic about it.

  I have my own secrets from Harry. For example, my nearly daily trips to the gym. Frank signed up on recommendation from his therapist, who thinks it’s a good way to manage his postdivorce depression. Harry’s fed up with Frank’s constant negativity about marriage, so I don’t tell him that I see Frank this often—but I reckon my going to the gym with him is a good way to a) encourage Frank to go, and b) get fit before my wedding night.

  Besides the exercise alone, I cheer Frank up by letting him think he can lift more than me. It’s also fairly easy to play on his vanity and raise his gloomy mood that way. I comment on how toned his abs look now, and he’s mildly mollified.

  “Are you checking me out, perv?” he says, colouring a little, evidently pleased.

  “Sure,” I say, generously. “I’d hit that if I weren’t already taken.”

  It makes him smile.

  Afterwards, we’re cooling off in the car. It’s a pleasant late-spring day—the sort of day you wish you could spend in front of a lake, or lying in a meadow with a good book. Not in a gym car park, in front of a bunch of warehouses, the sun beating down on your bonnet, the wind sweeping the earthy scent of the pet store across the road at you.

  The exercise does calm Frank down a little. It punctures through his energy, and he talks about Gabriella almost without his usual heat.

  “She’s not even bothering to show up at the meetings. It’s just her lawyer,” he says. “I mean, what’s she afraid of? What does she think I’ll do to her?”

  “Does she want anything? Money?”

  “All she wants, apparently, is to be rid of me as soon as possible.”

  I don’t know what to say. It’s all the more awkward because he’s my best man. But when I suggested that perhaps I’d go without a best man, he flipped out and demanded to know what that was supposed to mean. So I offered him the job, and he angrily accepted, warning me that all marriages end in either divorce or death.

  The horrible thing is that I don’t know what went wrong between them. Their marriage was impetuous, sure, but they seemed to get on so well, for a time. And then she announced she wanted a divorce—according to Frank, entirely out of the blue.

  I’d warned her. In Vegas, I had that talk with her, and I did suggest it had all been too rapid. But she’d been determined to go through with it at the time, and I certainly never saw a flicker of wavering in her then.

  I consider briefly what to do about it, but then remind myself that it’s not my place to do anything. As much as it pains me to see him like this, all I can realistically accomplish is sit there and listen to him pour out his sorrow.

  “How about a drive?” I say, turning the key in the ignition.

  He moves his seat back a little to stretch. “Let’s go.”

  On Saturday, Harry and I drive up to Harpenden to dine with his parents and tell them about the engagement.

  “Stop fidgeting,” he says, as we leave the comfort of our street, for the heavy Saturday-morning traffic.

  “Why don’t we put it in a letter?” I ask. “That way they can deal with it in their own time, and we can go and see them afterwards, when they’ve rehearsed a response.”

  “You’re being silly,” he says. “Siobhan already knows, and she’s thrilled. Ollie is on our side. My mum loves you and she loves weddings. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

  “Yeah, you do, or else you would have mentioned him.”

  “My dad will be fine. Come on—” he puts a hand on my knee “—relax. Do you remember what he said the other day? He said your work was impressive.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “No, he said he was impressed anybody would buy my doodles,” I say. “Like I’m a crook who gets by by selling people snake oil.”

  Harry laughs.

  “And then he asked me if I ever intended to get a real job,” I continue. “Which is probably why he thought that my spending two months designing that escutcheon that hangs over the front door at his club was just a hobby for me. You do know people charge a lot of money for that sort of work, right?”

  Harry’s amused. “He received a lot of compliments for that thing, and you know he’s the worst for expressing his feelings.”

  I don’t think Harry appreciates the gravity of this situation. But there’s no turning back. When we arrive at his house, his mother Bonnie embraces him and then me and immediately starts telling us all about every single member of Harry’s enormous family. His cousins are breeding like rabbits, so there’s a lot to go through, and then there are the various medical procedures the elder generation of Byrnes and Linfords have lined up, which we must hear about.

  I like Bonnie.

  She, like all of Harry’s friends and family, was a devout Kieran fan and staunchly anti-Joe when Harry and I first got together, but she was my first convert.

  Mr. Byrne, in fact, is the only Kieran-fan who continues to persist in his belief that either Kieran and Harry will reunite or else Harry might change his mind about homosexuality altogether. This last remains his favoured option.

  As we enter the sitting room, the old man gets up from his armchair with a heavy sigh. He hugs Harry and then reluctantly shakes my hand.

  “So,” he says to Harry, “which way did you come, then?”

  In a tradition as old as time, the two then go over the various roads that we could have taken but didn’t, Harry’s reasons for
choosing the roads he did, and his dad’s opinion about why Harry’s choices were all catastrophically wrong. You’d think we didn’t just arrive safely, soundly, and on time. Meanwhile, Bonnie looks up at me and asks, “What happened to all your lovely hair, dear?”

  Without thinking I say, “Oh, it’s a funny story!” but then I catch Harry’s eye, and realise that they don’t know about Dublin yet, and so I say, “I cut it off.”

  She blinks at me. Ollie and Siobhan, who already know the story, smile.

  “That’s—that’s very funny, dear,” Bonnie says, patting my arm consolingly. “Would you like a drink?”

  I accept a drink and then let her take me off to her atelier—their refurbished attic, really—where she keeps her latest work (in fact, I’m the one who taught her how to paint). In all, it’s like any other visit with Harry’s parents.

  We sit down to dinner quite amiably.

  Three years ago, Siobhan and Ollie told us that they were trying to conceive, and as nothing came of that, they are now trying different fertility treatments, which is the primary subject of conversation at the table. They’re matter-of-fact about it, and Bonnie is full of good advice, which is not at all awkward. She says things like: “Remember to do it in the mornings” and “You have to lift your legs right up after he, you know, deposits himself inside of you” and all this while ladling spoonfuls of something that resembles soup and is made up of hot cream, oysters, mushrooms, carrots, and pineapple onto our plates. Bonnie is “creative” with her cooking.

  If anybody asked me, this doesn’t seem the appropriate time to mention the engagement, but Harry is absolutely bursting with the news. So, when there’s a lull in the conversation (right after Ollie, with a perfectly straight face, accepts old Mr. Byrne’s stricture to do “it” often and to do it properly), Harry takes my hand, under the table, and says, “Actually, Joe and I have some news of our own.”