Over the course of the next hour the pub began to fill with more and more people obviously going to the wedding. Lots of people were kissing and greeting each other and women were squealing in a way that made me wonder how any of them could have been invited by V. I was on my second pint by then and as it hit my stomach I became aware that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I checked my watch and it was two fifteen, so I stood to begin the five-minute walk to the chapel. But as I did so a woman broke off from one of the groups and came towards me, a broad smile on her face. I knew I knew her, but it took me the whole of her approach to work out she had been one of V’s friends at university.
‘Mike,’ she said, ‘how lovely to see you.’
We kissed on both cheeks in that bizarre way people do nowadays, her hat nearly falling off in the process. ‘Hello,’ I said, not remembering her name, even though I knew we’d spent a fair proportion of time together over the years. She’d been for dinner at our flat, with her boyfriend, whose name I also couldn’t remember.
‘You look well,’ she said. ‘Was America good?’
‘Yes, fantastic.’
‘How long have you been back?’
‘Oh, a few months.’ I shifted my weight, my brain still scrabbling for her name.
‘Come over. James would love to say hello.’
I let her lead me over to a group of people, where a man I recognised as James shook me by the hand. The other people in the group looked at me expectantly. ‘You remember Ben and Siobhan, don’t you?’ James said. ‘What did you read again?’
‘Economics.’ I smiled at the people I didn’t recognise.
‘Oh yes,’ James said. ‘We were all English.’
Louise! It came to me finally.
‘What are you doing with yourself now then, Mike?’ James asked.
‘I work in the City. How about you?’
‘Oh, we’re all in the media, in various ghastly forms.’ James laughed, although I could tell he was really pleased with the fact.
‘It’s lovely that you came,’ Louise said. ‘I always think it’s so nice when people remain friends, even after tricky break-ups.’
I looked at her, not entirely sure what she was talking about.
‘Have you met Angus?’ James asked.
‘No, not yet.’ I said.
‘Oh, he’s a top bloke. We went to Dorset with them at Easter and it was a real laugh.’
I looked between the smiling faces and wondered what they were doing. The thought even occurred to me that V had set this up as well. But I couldn’t contemplate that because my mind felt mugged by the thought of Dorset and what that meant. Of the thought of V anywhere other than the house in Kensington, work or Steeple House. It made me feel quite shaky.
‘We should get going,’ I said, looking at my watch again.
‘Oh, there’s hours yet,’ James said. ‘Brides are always late. Louise kept me waiting twenty minutes; I began to think she wasn’t coming.’
Everyone laughed except me. ‘No, there’s only twenty-five minutes. I’m going to get going.’
I waited a few seconds but nobody moved, so I turned and walked away. ‘See you there,’ I heard Louise calling after me.
There were quite a few people at the chapel by the time I arrived, which meant James was wrong and I was right. I told the young boy at the door I was with the bride and was directed to the left-hand side of the chapel, where I sat about five rows back, but near the aisle, so V could see me when she came in. Angus was standing near the front, chatting to another man with a shock of ginger hair. He looked different in the flesh, slightly shorter than I remembered from my brief glimpse of him getting out of the taxi. And maybe also slightly slimmer. He hadn’t made much of an effort with his hair, which still looked too long, and there was a hint of stubble on his face, making him look absurd on his wedding day. He rubbed his hands over his chin and even though he was smiling, his eyes looked nervous.
I thought he seemed unsure as to whether or not V was coming. It was entirely possible they had had a massive row as the day grew closer and she realised what she was doing. It occurred to me that maybe she wanted me to stop the wedding in some way. Maybe I was meant to stand up at that moment when the vicar asks if anyone present knows of any lawful impediment to the marriage. I sat very still for a while, considering this, but in the end I concluded this could not be what was expected of me. V hated scenes; she would especially hate one in front of all her family and friends. No, she had brought me here to bear witness and my role in the destruction of this marriage would be much more subtle.
By the time I looked up the chapel had filled to such an extent that people were standing at the back and the man sitting next to me had his legs pressed right up against mine. There was a clatter of heels on the floor and I turned and saw Suzi rushing in. She was beaming, her face set in an expression of happiness which didn’t look entirely real, especially sitting as it was underneath a large pale yellow hat which did nothing for her complexion. Her dress was the same pale yellow and as she wafted down the aisle I thought she looked like a giant slab of cheese. She caught my eye as she passed; her smile faltered momentarily, but then intensified. She too, I realised, wanted me to bear witness.
The music started and the room fell silent. I could feel V in the entrance to the church, like a wire was attached between us, strengthening and tightening. We all stood and I could see from the rapt expression on Angus’s face that she was beginning her slow walk. I held myself very still, knowing I could move my head and see V in an approximation of what she would wear to our wedding, because of course she would save the best dress for me.
The people opposite were all smiling and exclaiming and there wasn’t much time left, so I turned my head, just at the moment she came level with our pew. She glanced up and our eyes locked for a moment, before she looked away. But I saw the jolt in her. I knew then what it had cost her to put me through this and I wanted in some way to let her know I was OK and I understood.
Her dress was made of very old lace, draped over a fitted, shimmering gown which flowed around her body like water. It glistened as she moved, revealing and yet hiding her perfect body in tantalising fashion. It was scooped out at the back, revealing her spine and the muscles which held her together, her pale brown flesh a reminder of all the times I had held her. Her hair flowed in loose ringlets, fixed in places by small white flowers. She radiated, purely and simply, and my heart reached out to her as she passed, screaming and weeping in my chest.
I barely heard the service as my blood was rushing through my ears. I stood and sat at the right times and sang the hymns, although I couldn’t tell you what they were now. I listened to V’s best friend Alice and Angus’s brother read extracts about love from books I didn’t recognise. And I tried to avoid looking at V and Angus standing side by side, the quick smiles they gave each other, or the note of joy in his voice when he said, ‘I do.’
The air felt thin and my vision was starting to become pitted, almost as if I was losing sight of something. It had also become unbearably hot in the little chapel and I doubted there was enough air for the number of people there. Finally V and Angus went to sign the register and the people next to me began to chat in a low murmur. I rolled the wedding service sheet into a cylinder, my hands tight against the card. And for the first time, maybe ever, I felt a rising anger for V. This had been a stupid idea of hers; it went above and beyond what had been needed. This was a binding contract; it was going to take pain and time to extricate herself from it and I still wasn’t even clear what she expected of me. I looked then at her forehead as she sat in the seat just vacated by Angus, as she steadily signed her name, and I wondered again what was going on beneath her skin, inside her skull.
If I had been standing close enough I think I might have taken the heavy golden cross from the altar and smashed it against her head, in order to delve about in the red mess of her brain to try and understand what she meant by it all.
It wa
s a relief to emerge into the bright sunlight and stand back a bit while everyone shouted and cheered and threw their confetti high into the sky, like colourful acid rain. The air was filled with excited chatter and noise and children ran between the gravestones. But I felt tired and weak and could feel a pain building between my shoulder blades, a reminder of the punishing run I’d done that morning.
A woman had set a tripod up in front of the doors and people were being summonsed and posed, until only V and Angus were left. He drew her towards him, his arm encircling her waist, and she raised her head upwards to meet him and they kissed, slowly, like they had done in the kitchen the night I’d watched from the shadows. I readied myself for movement, waiting for her hand to reach for her bird, but as I had the thought I realised she wasn’t wearing any jewellery round her neck, nothing at all. Only small pearls on her lobes. My breathing quickened as I tried to work out this new sign, but for the moment nothing came to me.
We followed the path which led to the field at the bottom of Steeple House and went through the gate into the garden, which had been magically transformed into a land of wonder. A huge white marquee stood on the lawn, bedecked with flowers and garlands, shading lots of round tables on which glass sparkled and shimmered. A long table greeted us, loaded with popping bottles of champagne and fizzing glasses. I was handed one as I walked by and sipped straight at it, even though my head already felt addled and my stomach was as empty as a cave.
Emptiness is such a familiar yet terrifying sensation for me, scorched on to my physical memory so deep it drags me backwards through time to when it wasn’t in my power to feed myself. A time when I had no money to buy myself even a loaf of bread. A time when I was always alone, even when my mother was with me. A time in which I couldn’t make myself lovable and I didn’t know how to love. A time when it had seemed as if I was never going to fill the deep, all-encompassing void in my soul.
Luckily at the reception there were lots of young girls dressed in black and white holding laden trays of food. Except the food on offer was all one bite and I knew I couldn’t take a handful like I wanted to. I drifted to the edge of the party, pretending to admire Suzi’s flower beds, really wishing I could snip the heads off the flowers one by one, leaving them dead or dying in the border.
Everyone else had splintered off into groups and the noise they were all making was too loud and close. I circled the outside of the party, looking for V, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. It was possible, I supposed, that she and Angus were continuing their argument elsewhere. Or maybe she had broken down and admitted everything to him; maybe seeing me during the ceremony had been too much. I took another glass of champagne as a tray passed me, even though the bubbles were hurtling themselves around my empty stomach, pressing the void higher and higher, squeezing my heart and blocking my throat.
A queue was forming in front of the marquee, so I went to join it, standing between people who were still chatting, as if everyone had so much to say. It took me a minute to realise that V and Angus were standing just by the entrance to the marquee, smiling and shaking hands, kissing cheeks and sometimes exclaiming and hugging. I wiped my palms against my trousers, but they slicked again immediately. I was five people away from them and the line was inching ever closer.
The short, fat woman in front of me kissed Angus dramatically and then held V’s face in both her hands and kissed her lips, exclaiming as she did so at her beauty. Angus turned to me, his cheeks high with colour and his mouth already smiling. He reached out and shook my hand with a tight grip. ‘Hello, thanks for coming. Sorry, you are?’ Up close his skin was lined and he was definitely older than us, my early forties estimation had been correct.
V was still being mauled by the fat lady but I could feel her straining towards me. ‘Mike,’ I said.
His eyes widened for a moment and his glance flicked my length. ‘Oh, Mike.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hello, Mike,’ V said, now free.
I turned to her. ‘You look amazing.’
She blushed, but I stepped towards her, leaving Angus to deal with the next person. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you get my present?’
She laughed lightly. ‘Yes, we did. It’s very beautiful. Thank you.’
‘I mean every picture,’ I said, my eyes refusing to leave her face.
She glanced over at Angus, but he hadn’t heard. ‘Oh, well.’
‘Where are you going on honeymoon?’
She hesitated. ‘South Africa.’ She turned towards Angus again and I realised Angus and the woman he was with had stopped talking and there was almost the feeling of a surge from the line, as if I was holding everyone up.
‘You’re on table fourteen, I think,’ V said, her smile back on her face. ‘The plan is just over there.’
I walked over to the seating plan, but my eyes had lost focus and it took me ages to find my name and then my table, which was in a far corner, under the slope of the marquee. I was the last person to my place and I had to fit myself in next to a mousy-looking woman and an older man.
The mousy woman turned out to be a cousin of Angus’s, although she hadn’t seen him for three years, and the older man was a family friend of V’s parents. I spoke first to the mousy woman, who was interesting only in that she was able to impart some facts about Angus. She didn’t appear to like him much. She called him ‘the family star’ and said she wasn’t surprised he’d ended up with someone as fabulous as Verity and didn’t I think they’d have beautiful children, a thought so disgusting it made me want to gag. She was keen to tell me how fabulously wealthy he was and what a success he’d made of his company, which he’d started from scratch, although I thought Angus’s scratch was probably a lot nicer than mine. She also confirmed he was older than V, thirty-eight to be precise, a bit younger than my estimation, which meant he hadn’t weathered well.
I moved on to the man towards the end of the main course. He said he knew who I was, although we’d never met, which seemed strange, but also made me think that I had obviously featured strongly in all their lives over the years. He had been in the army, he told me, and asked if it was a career I had ever considered. Banking is a hiding to nothing, he said, playing around with numbers and pretending things were important which were not. It was, he continued, why the country was in the mess it was in, this inability we had to grasp what really mattered.
But my brain felt suffocated by the fact that V was going to South Africa and I was finding it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. South Africa had been where we had always wanted to go and the thought that she would be seeing it for the first time with that repulsive upstart Angus was almost too much. I couldn’t help looking over at him throughout the meal. He was sitting at the long table which ran across the top of the marquee between V and Suzi. His arm was running along the back of V’s chair, but he was saying something to Suzi which was making her laugh. V was chatting to an older man on her other side who could only have been Angus’s father. I wondered what V thought, looking at him, ruining the surprise of what her future would hold in store were her marriage real.
And all at once I was struck by the thought that when we got married I would have two blank spaces where my parents were supposed to be. In fact, I would have blank spaces everywhere. I wouldn’t have cousins to sit next to ex-girlfriends. I wouldn’t have ex-girlfriends. I wouldn’t have friends, or even acquaintances. I thought stupidly of Kaitlyn and her washed-out face, perhaps the only person I knew whom I could legitimately invite, apart from Elaine and Barry of course.
I put down my knife and fork as the salmon defeated me and thought I might have to get up and excuse myself, when it came to me. I realised suddenly what V was doing with this marriage, almost as if she’d written it on to a piece of paper and given it to me. This was not the marriage she wanted. This was the marriage Suzi wanted. V was not this traditional bride, this doting daughter, this white virgin. V in fact was the complete opposite of this. V was dark and musty a
nd throbbing. V craved. V craved me.
I lied when I said the Crave in that nightclub in Piccadilly Circus was our last. Our last Crave actually happened in America, the first summer I was living there. And it wasn’t even a proper Crave, although now I realise it was the moment when V knew that the rules could change and how much fun that could be.
V came out for two weeks and we flew south, picking up an old Chevy in which we drove routes we’d heard about in songs. We slept in hokey motels which looked like sets of horror films and ate in diners where the waitresses were all too old and sad. We swam naked in rivers and drank beer on the side of the road, sleeping it off in the car.
‘I feel like a Crave,’ V said one evening. We were lying in bed in a cheap motel in Dakota with the neon lights from the sign leaking in through the window on to our naked bodies. The motel was on the edge of an even cheaper town, where we had seen people dressed in cowboy boots and Stetsons.
‘They’d probably shoot us out here,’ I said, kissing the top of her head.
‘No, I was thinking something different,’ she said, her voice slightly muffled against my chest.
‘Different how?’
She sat up and her spine was ridged in her back as she curled her arms round her legs. ‘I want to sleep with a woman. Just once. And I want you to be there.’
I didn’t know how to answer at first. I was torn between the desire to do anything to make her happy and the repulsion at the thought of anyone else getting that close to V.
She turned round and I could see the need in her face. ‘It wouldn’t mean anything. It would just be sex. I just want to know what it’s like.’
‘OK,’ I said. And if I am being totally honest the thought was quite pleasant, desirable even. I knew how much V loved sex and what we made each other feel like and if she wanted to try something different then it was better that it was with me.
Our Kind of Cruelty Page 9