Resurgence

by M. M. Mayle

  If time passed slowly before eleven, it’s at a near standstill now. Colin looks at his watch for the third time in five minutes, compares it to a mantle clock, decides that half twelve is not too soon to start getting dressed for the two o’clock ceremony if he goes about it with the same speed Anthony uses when dressing for school.

  Alone in a children’s bath done up with Disney Princess wallpaper, misgivings come at him every which way. Is his shoulder length hair too long, should he shave again, will his deodorant last, is his mouthwash strong enough? All qualms that would never surface otherwise.

  Then it’s the clothing he feels unsure about. The pricey tuxedo that was good enough for the Institute Awards telecast suddenly seems shoddy. And didn’t the imperious by-the-book wedding coordinator already tell him it was inappropriate for an afternoon ceremony? What of the new parts of the outfit? Are they proper enough? Posh enough?

  He brushes his teeth with his own brush and borrowed toothpaste, spatters the mirror, and questions what the fuck he’s going on about. Wasn’t it just this morning he was praising himself for all that’s been accomplished during the last year?—during the last four and a half months, to put a fine point on it. And wasn’t it just a couple hours ago that he took actual pleasure from being shooed away as too great a temptation to Laurel’s libido.

  “So what’s the problem, then?” he says to his reflection, shakes off the remaining trepidation and takes so long getting dressed that Chris comes looking for him, bitching and moaning for him to get his arse in gear or they’ll be late.

  Staggered departure in three unmatched vehicles identifies them as sparse traffic rather than a motorcade when they leave the Thorne property for the church. They exit Wheelwright Road at the far end, through one of two checkpoints set up by the local constabulary, and go some distance along the main road before encountering the prearranged escort of security forces that close in, front and back.

  Colin, at the wheel of one of the Range Rovers with Bemus in the passenger seat—riding shotgun, as he likes to call it—feels like a dodgy dignitary with a price on his head as he accepts their protection, the biggest concession he’s had to make so far.

  A lesser concession is agreeing to approach the small parish church through the secluded lychgate, traditional portal for the dead destined for burial in the cemetery beyond.

  He regrets neither concession when he samples crowd noise from the throngs held back by police barriers at the front of the church, and contents himself that Laurel and her entourage will be afforded the same level of shielding at this point in the proceedings.

  Inside the church, the security guard falls back and he becomes aware of early arrivals, some of whom flutter little waves or nod approval as Chris hurries him to the sacristy, where they’re to wait till word comes of the bride’s arrival.

  He’s not so hurried that he fails to notice the deep chancel, rounded archways, and geometric carvings pointing to Norman origins and providing splendid backdrop for cheery flower bouquets marking the pews and flanking the altar. And he’s not so preoccupied that he fails to spot the twin anachronisms of a videographer in the organ loft and a still photographer in the ambulatory.

  Within the sacristy, he wonders what’s concealed in dark oaken cupboards and dressers, how many feet it took to wear hollows in the stone floor, who else of note waited here to recite vows. If it didn’t represent a surrender to fear, he might even wonder if a would-be assassin is lurking in the crowd outside.

  Snatches of Handel’s Water Music are heard, indicating things are settling down on the other side of the sacristy screen. He looks over at Chris, sleek and polished in severe black suit and ponytailed hair, wearing his regulation world-weary expression.

  “I hope you know you’re not second choice,” Colin says. “I would’ve wanted you beside me even if Nate was still in the picture.”

  “I know,” Chris says, “but it is hard to escape his influence, innit? I’m not talkin’ about the obvious—the balloon extravaganza—I’m talkin’ about his seal of approval being on just about everyone and everything involved today. You aware of that?”

  “I’m aware. Try hiring the best there is of anything in the UK and Nate will have been there first. Rather like the Royal Warrant, he is.”

  “Has anyone told you this is the church he had in mind if things had turned out . . . differently . . . back then?”

  “Yeh, my mum told me. Why else do you think I resisted coming in through the lychgate?”

  Strains of Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music filter into the holding area. If he remembers the playlist, that will be followed by Purcell’s “Trumpet Tune” as tooted by the wheezy pipe organ, the signal that the bridal procession’s about to begin.

  The enrobed vicar enters from some inner sanctum, takes for granted their readiness before preceding them into the sanctuary. The fifty or so guests assembled there include Sam and Gemma Earle, and the full complement of Terra Firma household staff and gardeners. Band members Jesse and Lane are prominent, along with their respective wives and children. David Sebastian is present in a nonprofessional capacity and minus the company of Mrs. Sebastian, who doesn’t like to fly; the five other senior partners of the law firm bearing his name all have escorts. The other American delegation are from the New York District Attorney’s office and look the part. Bemus, Tom Jensen, and Michael Chandler fill an entire pew; Anthony and Simon are up front in the VIP seats with their grandmother.

  Missing are his semi-estranged sister, who declined an invitation, and his fully estranged father who didn’t rate one. No representative of the Rayce Vaughn family is present, either. To focus on those negatives even for a tick is to take emphasis away from where it belongs—on the chosen few who do matter enough and care enough to have been made witnesses to the ceremony.

  Sight of the wedding coordinator haring up a side aisle towards the narthex, two-way radio receiver to her ear, is a better signal than the musical prompts that things are about to happen.

  To the serene melodic line of Pachelbel’s greatest hit, Susa Thorne, brushed up to full cover girl status, leads the parade. Amanda, never prettier, comes second. The budding beauty that is Emily comes next. Once the three attendants are installed on the opposite side of the altar and turned to face the remaining procession, he takes notice of their drab-colored wispy-looking costumes and the sprays of ferns, twigs, and green-brown orchids they’re carrying. If they were going for wood nymph, they’re spot–on.

  Muffled “ohs” and “ahs” from the congregation return his attention to the center aisle, where the frilled and beribboned Thorne girls suffering their way into the spotlight—suffering, because they so clearly want to giggle over the task of scattering flower petals along the route.

  Simon, who was only leaning out of a front pew till now, scrambles to his feet and up onto the seat as the little girls draw near. Loudly lisping each of their names in his inimitable manner, he scolds them for dropping the flower petals, thereby amusing everyone but the vicar.

  The opening measures of the Bach chestnut, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” restore solemnity to the occasion and announce that the moment is at hand.

  Every cliché that ever described a bride floods his mind when Laurel starts down the aisle on the arm of her eldest brother. He’s probably openmouthed as well as devoid of original thought whilst she executes that hobblewalk peculiar to brides.

  He needs to exclaim. To express utter awe. And if he does—in his usual way—he’ll be polluting a religious service. He concentrates on certain features of her appearance: on the perfection of her gown; how perfectly her hair is arranged; how perfectly the pearl necklace bridges the shallow place between her collar bones; how perfectly she is smiling at him as the distance between them slowly diminishes.

  “Sod it,” he mouths, closing the gap in three quick strides. He takes her from her brother and wraps her in a soft embrace—soft, because she’d swat him if he crushed her gown or mussed her hair. She
only rolls her eyes a bit when he lets go and escorts her the rest of the way to the altar, where the vicar is still not amused. Everyone else is, though, and it may take a reprise of the Bach to get things quieted down again.

  The vicar gets on it straightaway with the welcoming of the congregation, standard explanations, and the age-old question about anyone objecting to the marriage. Then it’s the declarations that nobody could get through without being fed the lines. After that, it’s the tried and true vows that can’t be improved upon no matter how hard anyone tries, and it’s all he can do to say them. Even with help. Not that there’s any reluctance on his part. There’s fear, maybe—fear that he’s about to fall prey to the emotional state Laurel flirted with earlier.

  He gets through the “till death us do part” section without incident and begins to believe he can go the distance. Then he’s derailed during the exchange of rings.

  “With my body I honour you . . . all that I am I give to you . . . and all that I have I share with you,” Laurel says just as she’s supposed to. But she isn’t supposed to press his wedding ring to her lips before she works it onto his finger. When she does, that’s it. By the time they’re proclaimed husband and wife, he’s spilt over to the extent salt is tasted when they kiss—kiss at such length that the terminally unamused vicar clears his throat and rustles his robes for attention.

  The prayers and readings that follow are counterpoint to the litany that’s suddenly playing in his head. Like a mix tape it is, of all those long-ago wheedlings, pleadings, coaxings, and outright demands that he resume full consciousness. He’s not jolted by this intrusion; he’s not hearing voices per se. Neither borrowed text nor adlib wordings are standing out, just the universal message to “please come back, please give active living another go” is getting through.

  The reminder resonates over and above the hymn the choir sings as Anthony and Simon are beckoned forward, along with witnesses, Emily and Chris. They all troop into the sacristy for the signing of the marriage register and the adoption papers. Simon, now gone silent and shy, loses himself in the billows of Laurel’s gown; Anthony, as self-contained as he’s ever been, watches intently as signatures are fixed to both documents.

  As a made-official family, they reenter the sanctuary to a standing ovation and the requisite Mendelssohn thundering into the highest reaches of the fourteenth-century edifice.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Afternoon, August 14, 1987

  The ride home is high profile all the way. No one would mistake the vintage Rolls Royce for anything but a wedding party conveyance, and nothing’s to be done for the media reps in hot pursuit. Circumventing the public posting of marriage banns by securing a common license was never a guarantee word wouldn’t leak out about time and place. Hence the heavy security detail that’s keeping a determined press corps at a distance.

  Laurel hasn’t let go his hand since they left the church; she hasn’t said much either. But who could with Anthony nattering away in the front seat and Simon, sprawled between them in the back, showing signs further delay of his afternoon lie-down could have dire consequences

  At the entrance to Wheelwright Road, the wedding coordinator herself waves them through the police barricade, calling out to mind clearances when they’re required to squeeze by the lineup of motor coaches awaiting the order to proceed to the gate.

  At home, Laurel is adamant about being the one to put Simon down for his nap, even if it does delay the formation of a receiving line on the terrace. Whilst she’s performing her first duty as the boy’s legal mother, the remainder of the wedding party and the guests from the church arrive. They’re soon followed by a queue of six coaches carrying the bulk of the invitees.

  Laurel returns in time to hear predictable reaction to the balloons chorused at regular intervals. The second most repeated statement remarks on the brilliance of whoever thought to organize group transport from a Middlestone rallying point, thereby eliminating any number of inconveniences. After that topic’s been exhausted, talk centers on how bloody drop-dead gorgeous everything is, starting with the bride and moving straight through to the weather.

  Despite their exposure to the world of superstardom in Paris, Laurel’s brothers and sister are clearly staggered by the presence of so many headliners in one place. Emily resembles Amanda in her novice days, gone wide-eyed and round-mouthed when faced with the basic lineup from the Concert for Rayce, and then some. The new brothers-in-law, Benjie and Mike, recall his behavior the first time he confronted a lineup of guitar gods backstage at an award show—desperate to appear cool; desperate not to appear unapproachably cool.

  A good hour goes by before the main flow of guests shifts to the open-sided marquee, where refreshments are in abundant supply. Their migration from the terrace provides the first opportunity to compare notes with the bride as though they’d independently witnessed the event.

  “You holding up, then?” He eyes Laurel, who looks a bit pensive after the marathon meet-and-greet-session.

  “I’m fine. Are you? I was a little worried about you at the church.”

  “Your fault, it was. If you hadn’t kissed my ring I wouldn’t have—”

  She bursts out laughing.

  “I fail to see what’s funny about—”

  “You make it sound like I knelt down and kissed your ring in veneration . . . like you’re the Pope or something.”

  “I don’t know why you’d think that. I’ve never once asked you to refer to me as ‘Your Holiness.’”

  That gets him a smart punch in the shoulder and another burst of laughter—one of the best sounds heard all day.

  They slowly make their way to the refreshment tent, stopping to exchange perfunctory chat with stragglers who missed out on the receiving line.

  “What a grand twist you’ve put on it,” a friend of his mum’s shrills, dribbling champagne down her featureless front. “This is so much better than being invited to the church and left out of the wedding breakfast the way the skinflints go about it.”

  Another favorable comment comes from a similar source, this one gone dithery about the unconventional timing of the affair. “How brave you are to fly in the face of convention,” she says with an extravagant gesture that lets cigarette ash fall where it may.

  “That’s in my job description, actually—flying in the face of convention. Expected of me, it is,” Colin says with a straight face.

  “I think she means choosing Friday instead of the traditional Saturday, and scheduling the wedding breakfast for late afternoon,” Laurel says.

  “Oh. I thought she meant getting married when so few do anymore.”

  Before the lighthearted exchange can continue, word comes from the house that Simon is awake and ready to join the party.

  “I’ll get him,” Colin says and encourages Laurel to chat up the New York contingent she hasn’t yet spent time with.

  Laurel is more than ready to withdraw from the coterie of her countrymen when he returns with Simon, who’s clamoring to join his brother and the two dozen or so other sprogs contained in the supervised play yard. Then it’s the photographer clamoring for the bridal couple to retire to the wisteria arbor for the official portrait. That done, they overhear all manner of comment on the promenade back to the refreshment area.

  “No, you’re wrong,” says one voice, “the honeymoon’s set for Maui, not Bali. Saul Kingsolver’s leant his Hawaiian villa. All part of the plan to return Elliot to the Pinnacle label, it is.”

  “Never happen,” says another voice. “Colin’s about to sign with Virgin. If he’s borrowing anyone’s tropical hideaway, it’ll be Branson’s.”

  A bit farther along the way they tune in another topic.

  “I’m told she’s retaining interest in the New York firm against the day she practices again,” a female voice states.

  “I’m told she’s relinquishing all ties in the States, selling the family home, even bringing her invalid father over here to live out his years,” a second v
oice replies.

  They edge around a small group expounding near the fountain in the sculpture garden.

  “I heard they called in Hunter Hawthorne to do the prenup. Strong indicator there he’ll replace Sebastian as counsel of record. Who knows, he could even be shortlisted for manager.”

  “That assumes Isaacs won’t pick up the reins again.”

  “He’s out. Definite, that is. They’re saying now it was Isaacs’s decision to walk away.”

  “What of that little dynamo who put together the Concert for Rayce and got Verge back together . . . Andrea what’s-her-name?”

  “Amanda, Amanda Hobbs, it is and she’s no longer a candidate. Took herself out of competition when she hooked up with Isaacs. Fatal error and ultimately Elliot’s loss, the way I see it.”

  They move beyond range of these experts and into the orbit of others who are no less confident of their assertions and no better informed. Laughable, most of it, and mostly harmless unless too many of these partial truths find their way into print.

  At a stopping place, one of the long stone benches bordering the terrace, they’re immediately brought champagne and a tray of finger foods. More photographs are taken, more guests congregate, pay their respects and retreat.

  “Were you bothered by any of that? By the gossip shit we overheard?” Colin asks when the crowd’s thinned a bit and he’s drained his glass.

  “No, I have my mantra to sustain me.” Laurel rather smirks and sets her glass aside to concentrate on the selection of over-engineered tidbits. Around a mouthful of some great delicacy, she reminds him that people believe what they want to believe, what’s convenient and entertaining to believe. In a sing-songy voice she recites the essence of the oration delivered in a New Jersey car park the first time she saw herself misrepresented in the popular press. “Hasn’t it been shown over and over again that the best and only defense against speculation is to be true to oneself?”