by Alan Bennett
‘He’s such a straightforward boy,’ said his mother. ‘I blame myself.’
One does not have to be in the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights to find Betty’s decision to marry Graham deplorable. She wasn’t wholly infatuated, though she liked the way he looked; but, so too did he and that unfatuated her a bit. Still, she could be forgiven for thinking that her money entitled her to someone out of her own league. Besides she liked her maiden name no more than her future mother-in-law did. It was time for a change.
Handsome as he was, for Graham their association was not without its humiliations. He drove, as has been said, a sports car and if it was being serviced his garage lent him an old Ford Escort. Drawn up in his vehicle at the traffic lights Graham was painfully aware of the pitying looks of other drivers.
They were the same looks he got, he imagined, when he went out with the plainish Betty and it was to avoid such embarrassment (and because he was very fond of his car) that made much of what Graham’s mother called ‘their courting’ both nocturnal and motorised.
They were parked in a beauty spot.
‘Your mother blames me,’ said Betty, undoing his belt.
‘She’ll get over it,’ said Graham lifting himself up in the car seat so that she could ease down his pants. ‘After we’re married I think we should have a joint account.’
‘What’s that?’ asked his wife-to-be and though this was supposed to be the first one she’d seen she meant the account.
‘It’s just an arrangement so’s you won’t have to come running to me for money every five minutes.’
‘And the reverse,’ thinks Betty. ‘Kiss?’
‘To begin with,’ said Graham, ‘then just sort of use your imagination.’
Betty having no parents to make the arrangements for her it fell to Mrs Forbes to oversee the preparations of the wedding, a burden which she shouldered reluctantly, only too conscious of its tragic irony. Still she felt a church ceremony was essential if only to demonstrate that the bride was neither pregnant nor Jewish. But that an occasion to which she claimed to have looked forward half her life should turn out to be a public humiliation seemed almost a punishment.
‘I can just see the looks on their faces,’ she complained to the dressing-table mirror. Weddings were critical occasions and had to be carried off. Though hardly popular she had a wide circle of like-minded friends, many of whom would be only too pleased to see her discomfited, and a tear ran down her cold-creamed face. Mr Forbes, sitting up in his pyjamas with his laptop felt a pang of sympathy, though it was soon dispelled.
‘Have you talked to Graham?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not yet? What sort of a father are you?’
‘It has to be in church, I suppose?’
It was a question no one had thought to put to the bride though Betty and to some extent Graham would have been quite happy with the registry office. But mindful of his mother and also of the presents Graham thought they should make the effort.
‘At least it’s not a white wedding,’ said Mrs Forbes, heaving herself into bed. ‘She’s so dark people might think she was Asian.’
‘If it has to be in church,’ said Mr Forbes, ‘I hope it will be in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer.’
‘What else should it be in accordance with?’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘The Highway Code?’
‘It may have escaped your notice,’ said her husband, ‘but the services these days are different. For a start one has to shake hands with one’s neighbour.’
‘In my recollection,’ said Mrs Forbes, ‘one seldom had a neighbour. There were only ever about four people there.’
‘Then they’ll have to go at least twice because of the banns. I hope…’ said Graham’s father (and this time choosing his words carefully), ‘I hope they know the facts of life.’
‘Graham is twenty-three.’
‘That won’t deter Canon Mollison.’
The vicar was old. The chief love of his life was the steam engine, and his version of the facts of life which he had been dispensing over many years relied heavily on the piston, the furnace and the eccentric rod, helpful did one want to travel from London to Darlington but no preparation for the rigours of modern marriage.
MR FORBES SELDOM saw his son on his own. They had never been out for a drink together, for instance, or to a football match as fathers and sons are supposedly wont to do. Graham was so much his mother’s child that the father tended to think of him if not quite as his mother’s agent then certainly her roving reporter and so was always somewhat wary in his presence. Morning suits being in order Mrs Forbes sent the pair of them off to Moss Bros to get kitted out. It was an awkward occasion made more so by it being assumed that as father and son they would be happy to share a dressing room.
A shy man, Mr Forbes had seldom seen his son undressed since he was a boy and even more seldom had Mr Forbes allowed himself to be so seen. The suits in question were hung up waiting and Graham, emboldened by the presence of several full-length mirrors briskly stripped down to his underpants. Mr Forbes was more tentative and it was only when he was reluctantly in his shirt tails that he found his dress trousers had gone missing. So while they were located he sat miserably on a bench feeling both wizened and portly and tucking his veinous legs as far as he could well out of view. It was an unnecessary precaution as Graham scarcely noticed his father, altogether absorbed in his several reflections and the trousers which he felt were too loose to be properly becoming. It was at this point with Graham standing in front of the mirror arranging and re-arranging his genitals that Mr Forbes remembered his wife’s instructions.
‘Your mother thinks that you and Betty should go and see the vicar.’
‘What for?’ Graham put his hand down his trousers to try dressing on the left.
Mr Forbes looked down at his inadequate legs. He needed to ask if his son and his fiancée had made love but since his son was his wife’s representative he phrased it accordingly.
‘Has the engagement been consummated?’
‘Frequently.’
‘Your mother says you mustn’t tell the vicar that.’
‘I imagine he’ll have the good manners not to ask.’ Mr Forbes looked away as Graham took off his trousers, unashamedly loosening his crotch in the process. Actually the truth was they hadn’t done it yet, though they’d done just about everything else but he was unlikely to say that to the vicar or to his mother either.
Mr Forbes’s trousers now arrived and with them a greater degree of parental boldness.
‘If you are getting married in church, Graham, the vicar likes you to pretend you believe in God. Everyone knows this is a formality. It’s like the air hostess going through the safety drill. God’s in His heaven and your life jacket’s under the seat.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with whether we’ve done it or not.’
‘When you are as old as Canon Mollison,’ Mr Forbes said patiently, ‘one of the few perks of the job is talking to young people about the sexual act. What in any other context would probably get him arrested, in the vestry passes for spiritual advice.’
‘It must be a very depressing job,’ said Graham.
Still, he looked wonderful and reluctantly taking leave of the mirror he briefly inspected his father. He would do.
So in due course Graham and Betty went to church and the banns were read and they had the session with the vicar. When they came out Betty burst out laughing, which she had been wanting to do inside (Graham had just been bored). Now she made Graham see the funny side of it so that Graham, who had never come across a woman who made jokes, realised, almost for the first time, that he might actually like her.
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE his wedding Graham was in bed with a youth called, he thought, Gary. Gary was well built. His smooth flesh was cool, hard and perfectly proportioned, and contemplating the silent back Graham decided it was like the flesh of heroes as described in classical mythology.
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��And they didn’t have much in the way of small talk either,’ mused Graham. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’ murmured the youth, half-asleep.
‘Just thinking aloud,’ said Graham. Was his name not Gary but Trevor? Graham tried half-saying the name to himself. No response. The smooth back rose and fell. Of course many people (many boys he meant) didn’t thank you for saying their name. In these circumstances, names tended to be left off along with everything else.
Gary stroke Trevor had a silver chain round his neck from which hung a thin, oblong medallion. It lay now somewhere between his chest and the pillow. It was likely, Graham reasoned, or at least possible that this slip of metal would carry its owner’s name, so, stealthily stroking his way to a different district of the vast back he began to edge the medallion round into view. He was relying on the young man being asleep as such a manoeuvre was not easy to disguise, fiddling with someone’s identity disc hardly to be incorporated into, or interpreted as, any form of love play known to Graham, though curiosity about everything attached to his companion’s person must surely count as a compliment.
Graham lightly lifted the chain free of the young man’s neck, and gently pulling it round he eased it free of a low-lying curl. Even his ears were perfect, at any rate the one he could see, neat, simple, the lobe furred with a faint, fair down. Slowly the nameplate edged into view, faintly misted from the heat of its wearer’s body. One side was plain: Graham turned it over.
‘Shirley,’ the young man said. ‘I fuck her on Fridays.’
‘Is that nice?’ asked Graham.
‘She thinks so.’
‘Why Fridays?’ asked Graham.
‘Her hubby plays squash.’
There was a pause while Graham thought about Shirley and the young man.
‘You like that,’ said the boy.
‘What?’
‘Me and Shirley.’
‘Why?’ said Graham.
‘It feels to me you do.’
‘Actually,’ said Graham, ‘I was just looking at your back.’
‘Yeah. I swim. Stroke my bum.’
Graham did so though somewhat abstractedly wishing he could remember the name of its owner. Still, it wouldn’t do any harm, Graham decided, to make it plain that he too had irons in other fires.
‘I’m getting married in the morning.’
‘Ding dong the bells are going to chime,’ said the putative Trevor.
‘How do you know?’ said Graham, who was not into musicals. ‘It might have been in a registry office.’
‘Allow me to wish you every happiness. Actually, though, not there. Just where my bum joins my legs. It’s one of the lesser-known erogenous zones.’
At the word erogenous Graham decided he couldn’t be called Trevor and began to lose interest a little.
‘In fact,’ the young man went on, ‘I think I maybe discovered it. If my bum were an orchid it would probably bear my name.’
This was hardly the down-to-earth lorry driver ferrying a load of hard core from Rochdale to Penzance he had earlier claimed to be.
‘You seem very articulate for a lorry driver.’
‘I read, don’t I. In lay-bys. When you see lorries parked in lay-bys that’s what they’re doing nine times out of ten. Reading. What’s she like? Pretty?’
‘No,’ said Graham honestly.
‘Big tits?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Expecting?’
‘No.’
‘So what’re you marrying her for?’
‘There are other things,’ said Graham primly.
‘Oh sure. Don’t stop. I like it. It’s my favourite thing.’
Graham wearily complied but changed the subject.
‘Great flat.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Quite classy.’
‘I like it.’
‘And the shower is great.’ They had sampled the bathroom earlier. ‘Pricey?’
‘I manage. So,’ and he put his head on his arms, ‘no more of this then?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Graham. ‘I shall just have to play it by ear.’ See what I can get away with was what he meant. A good deal, he fancied, as the disparity between Betty’s looks and his own gave him plenty of room to manoeuvre; it would be some time before she ran out of gratitude; that was only fair.
‘I suppose in the circumstances this is your stag night?’
‘You could call it that. What kind of lorry is it you drive?’
‘A big one.’
‘Not a juggernaut, I hope. I disapprove of those on environmental grounds.’
‘Well,’ said the bum without a name, ‘we have to get the goods from Point A to Point B. This time tomorrow night I shall be in Penzance.’
‘I shan’t.’
‘You don’t have to stop at my bum. One thing is supposed to lead to another. That’s what it’s all about. I don’t think your mind’s on this, Toby. You’re thinking of Miss Right.’
Graham wasn’t. His thoughts were in the usual place and he was wondering why he should be the one to have to do the stroking.
‘On balance,’ said the supposed Trevor, ‘I prefer it straight. You get through more energy. It’s the post-coital rabbit I can’t stand. Turn over and I’ll do the same for you.’
As Trevor, whose name was actually Kevin but who had said it was Gary, stroked the back of Graham’s legs he wondered whether Toby thought this was for free. The question had not been discussed in the bushes where they had met but Kevin which was to say Gary got the feeling that Toby which was to say Graham thought he was doing him the favour and wondered how he might make this misconception plain. Still, as he lightly stroked the underside of his partner’s buttocks in the feathery way that he himself preferred he felt a glow of self-satisfaction that he was doing to someone else what he most liked having done to him.
‘I don’t like that,’ said Graham. ‘It tickles.’
Abandoning Toby’s ticklish bum the young man turned on his back, clasping his hands behind his head. His armpits were top scorers, too, thought Graham, though in what context he could not imagine. Butlin’s possibly, or Channel Five.
‘Do you like your name?’ Graham said.
‘Gary?’ said Kevin. ‘Yes. Yes I do like my name. In fact,’ and he raised himself on one elbow and looked down his body, ‘I like everything about me. My feet, my belly, my face…and, of course, that. I’ve never had any complaints anyway. And while we’re on the subject I think it’s about time you did something about that, Toby.’
‘All right, Gary,’ said Graham, now that the body beside him had a name, feeling his ardour rekindled, ‘what would you like me to do, Gary?’
‘Be my guest, Toby,’ said Kevin. ‘Oh, and in the circumstances, the wedding and so forth, this one’s on the house.’
THE WEDDING THE FOLLOWING DAY went off without a hitch, the vicar, having previously noted the disparity in looks between the bride and groom, pronouncing it a most Christian marriage.
The bride’s side of the church was only thinly populated even with some of those syphoned off from the over crowded pews on the groom’s side. Betty’s parents had been elderly and most of her surviving relatives were elderly too and reluctant to make the journey north. It was unsatisfactory but as Graham’s mother reasoned had Betty’s family turned out in force it might have confirmed her suspicions about her daughter-in-law’s racial ancestry.
There were no bridesmaids, what few women friends Betty had not really bridesmaid material. This was another blessing as the risk with bridesmaids is that they are prone to point up the inadequacies of the bride.
‘Not difficult in this case,’ thought Mrs Forbes. Or Mrs Forbes senior as she now was.
Where the best man and the ushers were concerned Graham was spoiled for choice and a bevy of high-spirited young men gave the occasion an element of whoopee it might otherwise have lacked.
Still, some of their reactions were unexpectedly heartfelt and at the climax of
the service the best man was seen to brush away a tear, a gesture not seen by Mrs Forbes, who was too busy weeping herself, the happiest couple of all and wholly untearful not Graham and his bride so much as the bride and Mr Forbes, whom she had chosen to give her away. They were radiant.
At the reception both Betty and her new mother-in-law were surprised by what good dancers many of Graham’s friends turned out to be even if Graham himself took the floor reluctantly, doing a dutiful round with his mother and then with Betty but thereafter leaving it to his friends, many of whom seemed quite happy to dance on their own.
The unlikely king of the floor, though, was Mr Forbes. He had always been a good dancer; indeed it was one of the reasons why Mrs Forbes had picked him out. These days he seldom got the opportunity to show off his talents but as he waltzed his wife elaborately around the floor it was plain that, despite having overfortified himself with champagne, he had lost none of his skill and together they made an impressive couple.
This was deceptive. The drink had emboldened Mr Forbes and made him uncustomarily combative and he used the freedom of the dance further to explore the permitted limits of his sexual vocabulary.
‘Balls?’ he quickstepped. ‘Scrotum?’
Mrs Forbes stony-eyed gave no indication of having heard but maintained throughout a fixed and ghastly smile as her now foxtrotting partner remorselessly plied her with smut. ‘Pussy? Fanny? Arse?’
He might have been murmuring endearments in her ear and it could have been a touching spectacle. Certainly as the number ended the guests broke into spontaneous applause which Mr Forbes acknowledged as holding his wife’s hand she gracefully curtseyed. She had never been so unhappy in her whole life.
HAVING JUST BOUGHT a flat into which they were anxious to move straightaway the happy couple had forgone a lengthy honeymoon in favour of a weekend at a country-house hotel.
What Graham chose to call their ‘fooling around’ had been virtually unrestrained and surprisingly enjoyable and all with some sort of vehicular setting…the front or back seat of the car, his or the more commodious model belonging to his father. That they had never, in Graham’s words again, ‘gone all the way’ was partly because he was, if only in regard to the opposite sex, quite old-fashioned but also because he had never even in the alternative sphere been into penetrative sex and wanted to put it off as long as possible.