Over on top table things are looking ever more strained. Richard and Andrew are having an intense conversation. Louise and Carol have moved their chairs back slightly so they have more room to insult each other. Alistair is openly flirting with Bev, and still no one is talking to Alice. She stares ahead, flicking her food around, then suddenly gets up from her chair. She walks straight towards me, looking extremely stressed.
‘Do you have a cigarette?’ she asks, her jaw practically clamped together.
‘But you don’t smoke,’ I reply.
‘I do now!’
As we stand outside, under the pale-blue evening sky, she takes a deep drag on her cigarette.
‘Who the hell have I married?’ she asks, exhaling. ‘His parents are hideous, the best man is in love with him, and half his friends keep giving me the nudge-nudge-wink-wink, like I am supposed to know a whole load of stupid secrets that they keep alluding to. I think my husband is gay,’ she says, looking totally shocked.
She wouldn’t be the first, obviously. I have organized two marriages that were never consummated – they both ended in divorce through lack of interest. The first was because the groom was actually gay, but the second groom just didn’t fancy his wife. He later remarried and has two children with another woman. I don’t know what happened to the bride.
‘Just because the best man is in love with the groom doesn’t mean the groom is gay,’ I say, trying to sound positive. ‘A lot of people find their love unrequited.’
Alice is not listening to me. She stubs out her cigarette and walks back into the marquee. I follow her, only to catch the tail end of an argument that has kicked off between Louise and Carol.
‘If my son is a poof, then your daughter is a slut!’ shouts Carol, standing up from her seat with her hands on her hips. She reaches across the table and picks up a full bottle of red wine. I think for one terrible second she is going to chuck it at Louise. Instead she turns to Alice, who is standing right next to her, and slowly and very deliberately empties the whole bottle down the front of her dress. The whole reception falls silent as they watch her. Alice is so shocked that she can’t move. The only person who reacts is Grace, who runs screaming through the tables to pull her sister out of the party.
It takes the sisters about fifteen minutes of persuasion before they let me into the locked Portaloos. Alice is hysterical, her make-up is all over her face and her hair is everywhere; her sister has been scrubbing at the dress with Molton Brown soap for the last ten minutes and has only succeeded in sealing in the stain. I pour a bottle of white wine over the red and some of the pink fades. But the frock is ruined. Richard keeps hammering on the door, shouting apologies for his mother and informing us all that she has been removed from the party. But Alice still won’t let him in.
Three cigarettes later, Alice suddenly decides to clean her face and rejoin the party. The relief on Richard’s face as she finally opens the door is endearing, yet she brushes off his overtures and entreaties and takes hold of her sister’s hand before walking back into the marquee.
The Taylor Six have already struck up and are valiantly trying to keep the party going. There are a few revellers swinging their hips to the toe-tapping tunes, the most exuberant of whom is Alistair, who seems to have his hands all over a firm twentysomething backside while grinding his hips into her thigh. However, despite Alice’s valiant attempts to get her own wedding back on track, the joy has kind of gone out of the occasion. The wedding cake remains uncut and half the symphony of summer puddings sit on the tables untouched. The couple do manage a dance together, although it is obviously not the first.
So by the time the buses arrive to take the guests back to the village, they line up quite keenly. It is Bev who asks if anyone has seen Granny, as the marquee begins to clear. Bernard looks at me and I roll my eyes. The old bag could be anywhere. We both set off into the shadows, recruiting Nigel as we go. In fact it is Nigel who finally finds her, passed out like Jesus Christ in a bed of white arum lilies.
‘Louise is going to be furious,’ I say, hoiking the woman off the floor. ‘I don’t understand how anyone this old can get this pissed.’
Bernard and I frogmarch her to the bus, where an anxious Bev is waiting.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she says. ‘You all right, Gran?’ she shouts.
‘Me teeth,’ says the woman through flapping lips and gums. ‘I’ve lost me teeth. I was a little bit sick around the back.’
Bernard rolls his eyes and marches back behind the Portaloos.
‘Bag!’ he says. I hand him a plastic carrier as he bends down and starts to rummage in the chunky pile of puke by the wheel. ‘This is beyond the call of duty,’ he says, inhaling through his mouth. ‘Here they are,’ he says.
He walks into the loos and I watch him rinse the teeth under the tap, then I follow him as he hands them back to Gran, who is now sitting happily on the bus. She mumbles a sort of half thank you and slips them straight back into her mouth.
Bernard and I knock back a few stiff vodkas and smoke four cigarettes in quick succession.
‘I love a wedding,’ declares Bernard, throwing his cigarette butt into a bush. ‘All human emotion is on display. Are you coming to clear up?’
‘One more cigarette,’ I say, staring up at the stars. ‘It is such a lovely evening.’
Bernard disappears, leaving me standing at the bottom of the garden by the stream. There is a rustle in the bushes and a familiar figure arrives.
‘There you are,’ she says, the moonlight catching her very pretty smile. ‘I have been looking for you for ages.’
‘Really?’ She licks her lips. I can feel my heart beating faster. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ I ask.
‘Actually, you can.’ She moves a little closer to me. I can hear the rustle of her dress.
‘Yes?’ My mouth is totally dry. I swallow. ‘What can I do?’
‘Come to bed with me.’
I hesitate, not sure I’ve heard her correctly. ‘I am sorry?’
‘Come on,’ she says taking my hand. ‘I won’t ask again.’
It is six in the morning and I am woken from my nice warm large double bed by the sound of a straining engine. I unwrap myself from Grace’s warm soft embrace, step over her pink frilled bridesmaid’s dress and wander stark-naked over to the window. The dawn is just breaking over the fields and in the middle of the lawn is a large blue van, trying to drag the Portaloo trailer across the soft, damp grass. The engine chokes and coughs with the strain; the trailer skids and stalls and then suddenly there is a loud cracking sound as the three-Portaloo unit detaches itself from the van and tips up into the air. There’s a loud whooshing noise as a blue river of sewage and sods of toilet paper pours across the lawn, engulfing an ornamental cherry in its wake.
‘Granny’s tree!’ comes a scream from the next-door room.
My mobile immediately starts to buzz in my jacket. I look at it and recognize Louise’s number. I think for a second about ditching the call. But I can’t. ‘We have control, from the first piece of paper to leave the office to the last piece of rubbish picked up off the floor at the end.’ Bernard’s motto rings in my ears.
‘Good morning,’ I say, picking up.
‘Is it?’ snaps Louise. ‘From where I am standing the shit has almost quite literally hit the fan. It’s all over the lawn. It’s pouring towards the stream and, most hideous of all, it’s covered Granny’s tree!’ She is beginning to sound quite hysterical.
‘Don’t panic. Leave it with me,’ I say, staring back out of the window at the huge, glutinous, all-engulfing electric-blue lake. For once she is not exaggerating. I hang up. I sigh, look longingly across at the gently snoozing Grace and start scrolling through the numbers on my phone.
And so begins another busy morning at the coalface of the ultimate service industry.
About the Author
Imogen Edwards-Jones is the bestselling author of Hotel Babylon, Air Babylon, Fashion Babylon, Beach Babylon and Pop Babylo
n, as well as novels such as My Canapé Hell and Shagpile. She lives in west London with her husband and their young daughter.
Also by Imogen Edwards-Jones
THE TAMING OF EAGLES
MY CANAPÉ HELL
SHAGPILE
THE WENDY HOUSE
HOTEL BABYLON
TUSCANY FOR BEGINNERS
AIR BABYLON
POP BABYLON
THE STORK CLUB
FASHION BABYLON
BEACH BABYLON
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WEDDING BABYLON
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552156936
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781446497296
First published in Great Britain
in 2009 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Corgi edition published 2010
Copyright © Imogen Edwards-Jones 2009
Imogen Edwards-Jones has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
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of the author’s sources. In some cases, names and sequences or the detail of
events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. The author has
stated to the publishers that, except in such respects not affecting the
substantial accuracy of the work, the contents of this book are true.
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