Obstacles to Young Love

by David Nobbs

  ‘I’d have thought a taxidermist ought to be able to stuff a pancake,’ she says, smiling to show that this is just a gentle tease.

  But he takes it seriously.

  ‘I should never have become a taxidermist,’ he says.

  ‘You do all right, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a struggle. I have no flair. You should have seen my dad in his heyday, Hannah.’

  His naughty, barely controllable right hand is at it again, tracing the inside of her right thigh under the table.

  ‘How old would Sam be now?’ she asks.

  If she had repeated, ‘Timothy! Behave!’ his hand might not have responded. But at the mention of Sam it has nowhere to go, and returns to its rightful place. He wonders if she deliberately uses Sam references to cool him down.

  They’d been up on the moors when he had first mentioned Sam’s death. The whole story had come pouring out. She had stroked his cheek as she listened in silence, and he had wondered if he could use her emotion to persuade her to have sex with him, there among the heather. But he had banished this shameful thought.

  He doesn’t reply to her question, because he can’t remember to the exact year how old Sam would be now.

  She doesn’t seem to notice. Perhaps the question has done its job. He swings the lazy Susan back, and watches her assemble a quietly elegant pancake and eat it with natural grace.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned Sam. Wrong time.’

  ‘There is no wrong time, Hannah. Some part of me on some level of consciousness is thinking about him at every minute of the day. For many reasons, as I’ve told you, I have had to learn to live with this and I manage it without too much difficulty.’

  And slowly, so slowly, it becomes easier. A year is a long time. Each year it will become just a little easier.

  But, goodness, how a bit of sex would help. Tonight? Any chance?

  He does a little better with his next pancake.

  Hannah is a believer. She goes to church quite regularly. The last few Sundays they have gone together. He has found himself praying to God to intervene and persuade her to make love to him, explain to her that as the twentieth century draws to a close certain of his rules can be sensibly relaxed. He has been aware that this is ridiculous, but he has continued to do it.

  Today, because the weather was so unusually lovely for Coningsfield, they have skipped church and driven out into the countryside. That, and the Rubens, have given a naughty feel to the day. Tonight, he can’t help feeling, there is a chance.

  Their only discussion about sex outside marriage took place a couple of weeks ago in the unlikely setting of the Pizza Hut. She told him that she thought sex outside marriage was wrong. He noticed that she said ‘outside marriage’ not ‘before marriage’. He had no idea what she would say if he asked her to marry him.

  Unfashionable though it might be in late twentieth-century Coningsfield, she felt that something would be lost for ever if they had casual sex together. He might have accepted this view more easily if what was being lost had included her virginity. But that had gone when she was fifteen with a boy called Ginger Wallace. ‘He works at Asda now,’ she had told him contemptuously, as if his job was his punishment for taking her virginity.

  It just wasn’t fair.

  She looks at her watch and says, ‘I must go and get my beauty sleep.’

  There is no way in which he can interpret this remark as being promising.

  ‘So early?’ he says limply.

  ‘We’ve a busy day tomorrow. I can’t let Mr Finch down.’

  Mr Finch is her boss at Amalgamated Plastics. She has described him as ‘up and coming’. This is another remark that doesn’t altogether thrill Timothy.

  They walk out of the Happy Valley into the unhappy town. He holds her hand demurely as they stroll through the dying evening towards the taxi rank.

  He knows better than to try any ‘funny business’, as she calls it, in the taxi. She knows a boy called Greg Watson who practically did it in the back of a taxi, and the driver lost concentration and hit a milk float. God works in a…etc.

  He gets the taxi to stop a few doors away from her house in the Upper Cragley Road. Yes, her dad is richer than Naomi’s.

  They walk slowly up the hill. He turns to her, puts his arms round her shoulders, rests his cheek against her lusciously full one, turns his mouth towards hers, gently parts her lips, feels her willing tongue enter his mouth and slide itself along the jagged edge of his teeth. He hears her gasp. This is all so silly.

  ‘Hannah?’ he breathes. ‘Will you marry me?’

  He just misses the last bus, and he hasn’t enough money for a taxi, and the pain in his exhausted balls is so acute that he can barely walk. But it isn’t that which really worries him on his long, bent walk home.

  What worries him most is that you should marry for love, not because you’re desperate to get your end away.

  The bee, how it buzzes. The bonnet, will it hold?

  ‘I think that’s dreadful,’ says Naomi.

  ‘Dreadful,’ agrees Colin. ‘Appalling defending. He was left completely unmarked.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about that striker. He crossed himself when he scored.’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, you’ve no sense of proportion. What is it with women? We’re one–nil down against a crap team of part-timers from some Balkan country that didn’t exist until it fell off the edge of another Balkan country that nobody had ever heard of, and you go on about the scorer crossing himself.’

  ‘It’s you who’ve got no sense of proportion. It’s serious. It’s rude. It’s arrogant.’

  They are sitting in front of a television set in the rather bare front room of their small house in a street that’s coming up, round the corner from a street that’s going down, just to the north of the Angel, Islington. They are watching football. Colin hid his love of football until she was safely hooked. It’s one of the things she resents about him. Only slightly, of course. They are, after all, happily married. And he’s good in bed, even though his penis isn’t quite as large as Timothy’s, as she is sometimes almost tempted to tell him, for, despite their happiness, he can be an irritating bloke at times.

  He wants to watch the match. They’ve only got thirty-eight minutes left to equalise in, plus however many extra minutes the ref allows for injuries and delays, but unfortunately he’s Greek, and liable to seek revenge for the theft of the Elgin Marbles. Nevertheless, he can’t resist going back to their discussion.

  ‘What’s rude about crossing himself?’

  ‘It’s such an insult to the goalie. He’s saying, “God’s on my side, not yours.”’

  ‘It’s harmless, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Sportsmen are doing it all over the place. “I owe it all to God.” “I’m dedicating my victory to God.” “I prayed to God, and he answered my prayers.” As if any kind of God could take sides. It’s pathetic.’

  ‘Anyway, leave it. I want to watch the football.’

  ‘Oh, that’s far more important, isn’t it? I’d forgotten. Men have such a great sense of proportion. Unlike women. And please don’t address me as “woman” again. I hate it. It’s very rude.’

  ‘Well, I agree with that. I’m sorry. But I was irritated. Can’t I even watch the football in peace?’

  How typical of him to chuck that little word ‘even’ in, suggesting this is just one more in a long line of unstated grievances, stoically borne.

  Her irritation with him had begun before the match even started. She’d said, ‘I suppose you want to eat on our laps,’ and he’d said, ‘Plates might be easier.’ She could have taken that from some people, but not from the man who was supposed to be writing funny lines for her. He’d been upstairs all day, writing the second series. If her jokes were going to be like that, what was the point? And he hadn’t said a thing about the lasagne, which she’d thought was one of her best.

  Wh
at is it about men and their game? She wants to continue the discussion. She so wishes that he’d understood. Well, no, he must have understood. She wishes he’d take it seriously. But she remains quiet. She’s had her say.

  But now the part-timers are on the attack again, and unfortunately another of them scores, and he crosses himself too.

  ‘Bloody hell, another one’s done it,’ she exclaims.

  ‘Oh, Naomi, shut up,’ he yells. ‘We’re two–nil down.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ve worked bloody hard all day. Sodding hard. It’s not always easy writing comedy, you know.’

  ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘Oh. I’m so sorry if I don’t reach the high standards you’d like.’

  ‘You do for the other actors. Not for me. You never give me anything funny.’

  ‘Because you don’t make it funny. You aren’t funny.’

  Suddenly this is serious. He looks appalled at what he has said, which makes her think it may be the truth, which makes it more serious still. He can’t cope with this. She knows what he’s going to say, and sure enough he does.

  ‘I’m going to the pub.’

  The pub, his crutch.

  She hears the door slam.

  She feels awful. They have only been married for a few months, and it’s come to this. What can she do? She really doesn’t want to argue and fight. She hates arguing and fighting. But it would be ridiculously premature to give up on their marriage just yet.

  The truth, she used to tell herself, always the truth. Now she has spoken the truth to Colin, and he, maybe, has spoken the truth to her. And these are truths that should never be spoken.

  She thinks again, as she thinks so often, of how she wasn’t able to tell, either to her mother or to Emily, the truth of what she felt about her mother’s death. That failure hangs over her every day of her life.

  The football is still on. She’s simply forgotten to switch it off. And now, just as she’s about to switch it off, luck takes a hand again, and gives her a chance.

  She rings him on his mobile.

  ‘They’ve got one back. It’s two–one. You ought to come back and see the end.’

  He does. He gives her a quick kiss and says, ‘Thanks, darling.’ That ‘darling’ is as near to an apology as she will ever get.

  She gets him another beer, without being asked.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ he says again.

  He’s actually rather moved by what she’s done. He longs for them to be happy. He doesn’t want to give up on a marriage that has barely begun. He senses that she’s in a sexy mood. He thinks about suggesting they go to bed, there and then, or even rip their clothes off and do it on the carpet. In fact, he will suggest it.

  Not yet though. There are only eleven minutes in which to get an equaliser. Surely even the most aroused of women can wait eleven minutes, plus whatever the Greek ref adds on?

  Timothy would not look back on his second wedding day as one of the highlights of his life. In fact, he wouldn’t even look back on it as one of the highlights among his wedding days. He finds its scale embarrassingly large, and he isn’t even entirely sure that he’s marrying the right woman.

  This morning, of all mornings, he had the dream, his nightmare. He almost always does when he would particularly wish not to have it. Maybe the anxiety expressed in the dream is actually not anxiety about the subject of the dream. Maybe the dream is a metaphor for other anxieties, although, in that case, it’s hard to see why it always takes exactly the same form.

  Certainly he is particularly anxious this morning. He’s used to a degree of gentle scorn, but even he is anxious not to be totally humiliated at his wedding. He had hoped for something quiet, in view of the fact that a church wedding was out of the question due to his status as a divorced man. He has reckoned, however, without Hannah’s father. He’s a stockbroker, and he’s anxious for his stock to be well and truly broked on this great day.

  Hannah’s mother, Eileen, wants a quiet wedding. She doesn’t want anyone else to share the shame of Hannah’s choice. But Freddie has said to her, ‘We have two choices, Eileen. We go hole in corner, or we brazen it out. And, to be fair, he’s not a bad lad, as taxidermists go.’ This is a strange remark, as Timothy is the only taxidermist he has ever met. He still hasn’t even met Roly.

  The wedding is taking place at Langenthwaite Castle, a luxury moated hotel, licensed to provide wines and spirits, hold weddings, and charge £350 a night for bed and breakfast. Unlike most moated castles, it was built in the nineteenth century.

  Hannah is not a particularly gregarious girl, but she has quite a few friends, and they all have boyfriends. She also has two sisters and a brother, and they have partners. And then there are the aunts and uncles, the nephews and nieces, the cousins twice removed but still coming back. It’s a large family, and it begins to mount up. And then there are Freddie’s contacts. Freddie lives by his contacts, and has invited as many of them as can reasonably be persuaded to come. And there are Freddie and Eileen’s bridge friends, and their golf friends, and Freddie’s rugby league friends. Then there are the people from Amalgamated Plastics, notably Hannah’s boss, the up-and-coming Mr Finch. Altogether, there’ll be at least a hundred on the bride’s side. Freddie is in denial over the minor detail that this is not a church wedding. The guests will be led to their seats, on the groom’s side or the bride’s side, by ushers in morning dress, which Freddie spelt as mourning dress in a letter to Timothy about the arrangements.

  How can Timothy compete? There’s his father, of course, and Liam, and Liam’s friend, invited so that Liam has company. There are his godparents, Uncle Percy Pickering and Auntie May Treadwell. But his is not a family rich in relatives, and until now that has been regarded as a bit of a boon. There’s Tommo and his wife, whose name Timothy can’t remember. There’s Dave Kent and his wife, whose name Timothy doesn’t want to remember. There’s Steven Venables and his partner – Steven’s a real bonus, he’s rich, and will soon be richer, because he’s got a new job. Timothy can’t quite remember what, but it’s prestigious. Steven has promised to add a bit of tone by bringing the Porsche. And it’s said that his partner is exotic, she’s a circus artiste from Krakow who does amazing things on the trapeze, though it’s doubtful if there will happen to be a trapeze handy at Langenthwaite Castle.

  But who else? Surprising people will have to be roped in.

  Roly can bring a couple of the friends he’s made in the Home for the Blind during his summer stays. Well, he could invite more, but how many blind people can you have at a wedding without rendering it slightly ridiculous? Their old neighbour Miss de Beauvoir (Mrs Smith) is very touched to be invited, as are some of the people who’ve supplied dead birds, fish, animals and materials over the years, the manager of Big Cats at Kilmarnock Zoo, the Master of Foxhounds at Bradbury Flintstock, the sales manager of Guisethorpe Foam Products, Herr und Frau Müller from Lubeck, who have provided Timothy with so many of his bird and animal eyes over the years. Mr Prentice, his old drama teacher, made miserable for fifteen years by the mother of the boy he passed over for the part of Romeo and Mr Cattermole, his long-retired R.E. teacher, who has aged with spectacular suddenness since his retirement, are both astounded to be invited, along with their good ladies, but the invitation makes it clear that this is to be a lavish black tie affair, with a champagne reception and a four-course dinner, and then dancing, and carriages at one a.m.

  ‘I smell money, Muriel, and I smell vulgarity,’ says Mr Prentice. ‘We’ll not go.’

  ‘I smell lots of champagne. We’ll go,’ says Muriel.

  ‘One a.m., Hilda,’ says Mr Cattermole. ‘That brings back memories.’

  ‘One a.m.!’ says Hilda. ‘You won’t make eight thirty.’

  Timothy even thinks of inviting Sniffy Arkwright, but he doesn’t want everyone to know just how short of invitees he’s been, so he doesn’t.

  In the final count the bride’s guests outnumber the groom’s by one hundr
ed and fourteen to twenty-six, which, amazingly, is almost identical to Timothy’s blood pressure as he was admitted to hospital four days before he met Hannah for the first time.

  The wedding day dawns cool and breezy, but blessedly dry. Timothy is awake before six, and has only slept fitfully. He has a bad attack of nerves. He dreads the whole event, its flamboyance and extravagance. All that long, endless, slow, tick-tock-tick-tock-of-clock morning he wonders if he is capable of going through with it. He also wonders if he is capable of not going through with it.

  When would he break it off? How would he break it off? Tommo drives him to the castle, up the long drive towards its mighty medieval phoniness, over the drawbridge to his fate, looking, in his morning suit or mourning suit, like a penguin immortalised by an inexperienced taxidermist.

  He walks into the spacious, high-vaulted Lancelot Room, done out like the church that it isn’t. He walks slowly down the central aisle, Tommo at his side. Tommo would be a solid, bulky, reassuring presence, were it not for his eyes, which do not reassure because they are full of compassion.

  His legs are not his own. He has no control over them. He’s smiling at people, Liam so freckly, Mr Cattermole so frail, Miss de Beauvoir so select, Steven gleaming with confidence and self-satisfaction, his exotic partner looking very superior, but then you would expect a trapeze artist to be a bit above it all. He smiles at the massed ranks of golfers, bridge players, financial consultants, venture capitalists, bankers, wankers and their partners. How can he disappoint them? He cannot do it now. Later, perhaps? When the vicar asks for objections. Yes, vicar, I, the groom, object. I still love Naomi.

  But there isn’t a vicar. There’s a registrar. Do registrars ask if there are any objections?

  What does it matter? He isn’t going to object.

  Now the music blares out, beautiful, irresistible, enriched by cliché, strengthened by memory, powered by repetition. And Hannah, his bride to be, sails down the aisle of the Lancelot Room like one of the sloops in Naomi’s father’s pictures – no, don’t think of Naomi! Think Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. She’s like a swan, with her long, pale neck. Her father’s smile is fixed, he has never seen so fixed a smile. He would love to unfix her father’s smile, shatter it into a thousand pieces, but how could he make Hannah cry?