Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

'Where have you been anyway?' I asked. 'Tonight, I mean.' I saw that she wore no gloves and her hands were long and slim like her features. There was a bright little ring on the second finger of her left hand.

  'Ruby Martin's,' she said.' That's why I suddenly thought of the rude rhyme we used to sing about her. We sat there nagging and I missed the bus, so I went back and telephoned my mum and had a cup of coffee, then I walked. I don't mind walking.'

  'You were playing hopscotch,' I said. 'I saw you.'

  'I can still do it,' she said as though she had surprised herself. 'Not so good as I used to, but I can still do it.' Then she remarked: 'I'm getting married next week.'

  I exclaimed: 'I'm getting married tomorrow! Well, today!'

  'Really! What a thing! Let's shake on it!'

  We were both laughing and we shook hands emphatically. But suddenly we stopped shaking and stood holding hands with mutual embarrassment.

  'Mind you,' she said, taking her hand away and shuffling on. ' Everybody gets married around this time. It's the end of the tax year. They'll be queueing up and the papers will be full of pictures of three hundred honeymoon couples in one hotel in Guernsey or somewhere. It's a wonder to me they don't shake those places off their foundations.' She put her hands into the deep pockets of her coat and walked on.

  'Three hundred simultaneous wedding nights is a bit of a risk, I would say,' I agreed. 'Anyone I know?'

  'Who?'

  'The person you're marrying.'

  She smiled at once. 'No, he's not from round here. He's from Cardiff. Peter Phillips. I met him at a holiday camp last summer. Who's yours?'

  I had a quick memory of her then, a moment of déjà vu a little girl and a boy comparing presents gained at the Sunday School Christmas Treat. The thought occupied me for a moment and she said: 'Did she go to our school?'

  'Oh, sorry,' I said, shutting away the little girl and looking at her now. 'No. I don't reckon you'd know her. Pamela Dunn. She went to Dolphin Road Secondary, so you probably wouldn't.'

  'No. She nice?'

  'Naturally,' I laughed. 'She is to me, anyway.'

  'It's a big thing,' she said moodily. 'Marriage.'

  'You're a bit young, aren't you?' I said pompously. 'To get married.'

  'What about you? You're the same. Eighteen. And you're at sea.'

  'I'm doing my officer training.' I said. 'When I get on a bit I'll be able to take her to sea with me. They're going to allow that again soon.'

  'Where's yours?' she asked.

  'St Chrisp's,' I answered. 'Three o'clock.'

  'St Michael and All Angels,' she recited. 'Twelve on Wednesday.'

  'Nice, getting married on a Wednesday,' I said. 'Away from the rush. I'll think about you.'

  'And I'll do the same. Promise.'

  We walked quietly now, dolefully, our heads down against the pointed wind. 'Pity we didn't know,' I said eventually. 'We could have had a double wedding.'

  She laughed at once, as she had done before. 'We could have invited all the old school gang,' she said. 'That would have been really funny.'

  'That's if we could round them up.'

  'I liked it at school,' she went on. 'Didn't you?'

  'Not much,' I admitted.

  'Do you remember they caught you wearing those ladies' knicks,' she giggled frankly. 'When they debagged you.'

  Even in the chill air I felt my face redden. 'For goodness sake don't talk about that,' I pleaded.

  'It was terrible,' she nodded. ' I tried to pull some of the boys away, but I couldn't. It was I who ran to get old Jones.'

  'Fancy reminding me about that,' I said limply. 'God, it was like a nightmare. I only had them on because I was cold and my own pants had got torn and I didn't want to tell my mother. They belonged to my rotten bloody sister, and she kicked up murder too. The bastards had to choose that day to debag me. That day of all days. I only wore them once.'

  'I cried about it,' she said slowly.' I really did. I went into the girls' lav and I burst into tears. I'll tell you something - I was wearing my old man's itchy vest that day. It's a good job they didn't do that to the girls. Either I wore it or I didn't wear anything under my dress and I was cold too.'

  'It's one of those odd things, I suppose,' I said. 'Afterwards you can see them as they really were; not all that important. But at the time it wasn't very funny.'

  'I cried,' she repeated. 'It upset me.'

  'You said,' I acknowledged. 'Thanks anyway.'

  'It was so cruel the way they threw you down and all ganged up on you. I could see your face, like a ghost, with blood on it down among all those boys' legs.'

  'We used to like each other, didn't we? You and me.'

  She laughed. 'We used to "go" with each other, as they said.'

  'We never actually "went" anywhere though, did we? We just passed those notes in class. "See you down the shops" or "see you in the park".'

  'Or "by the dump",' she smiled. 'I remember that one because I was turning out some old things one day and I must have kept it. I had to laugh because I thought how romantic it was. By the dump!'

  'Did you ever actually go to meet me?' I asked. 'Some-

  how I never used to believe those notes. It was just a bit of a game. Once I pinched two shillings from my mother's purse to take you to the Odeon, but I waited outside and you never came. So I didn't think you meant it and I didn't bother again.'

  'Well I turned up at the dump once, I know,' she said. 'I remember being frightened because all the seagulls were flapping around over the rubbish. They seemed enormous to me. Like eagles. When you didn't come I ran home crying and I decided to give you up.'

  'Give me up!' I exclaimed. 'That's rich, that is, when you think about it. We never had each other to give up. All there was were those notes.'

  'And you used to wink at me. First one eye then the other.'

  'Like this,' I said and I did it.

  She laughed: 'That's right. Seeing you do it again is so funny. I used to think it was ever so clever. Winking with both eyes. Isn't it odd, Arthur, remembering it all?'

  'Very odd,' I said. 'Do you still live in the same house?'

  'That's right,' she said, sadly I thought, but I could have been mistaken. 'Just round the corner here.'

  'We ought to be in bed with our big days coming up, me tomorrow, you on Wednesday,' I said.

  'Don't say it like that!' she said putting her hand over her mouth. 'We ought to be in bed!'

  'Sorry. I meant in our beds'

  'It's a bit late for the other thing,' she laughed.

  ' It certainly is. We should have kept sending those notes.'

  'And not turning up,' she said. Then she asked: ' Do you mind if I ask you something?'

  'No. Anything.'

  'Well, are you looking forward to it? Honestly looking forward to it? Tomorrow and after?'

  'Yes,' I said bravely. 'Yes, I suppose I am.'

  'Why were you thinking about running off to sea tonight, then? Like you said.'

  'Oh that. Oh, I only said that. Just a few last minute nerves, that's all.'

  'I know,' she agreed. We had stopped now and I knew her house was only twenty yards up the street. 'It's a bit frightening isn't it?'

  'It's bound to be,' I said as though I were wise. 'But it's probably one of those things that will be all right on the night.'

  She laughed quietly. 'I expect so. Just think when we next meet up we might have half a dozen kids each.'

  'That's what it's for, marriage,' I said. 'One of the things, anyway. It says in the service.'

  'I know,' she said. 'I thought it sounded a bit personal when the clergyman went through it with us. I mean, people know that without having to be told by a vicar.'

  'It will be all right,' I said reassuring both of us. I knew that she had to go now.

  'Well, I must go,' she said. 'Have a happy marriage.'

  'You too,' I mumbled. We were standing two feet apart, her feet still in the gutter.

  'Let's have a
quick kiss for old times' sake,' she said suddenly, cheerfully.

  I swallowed and nodded.

  We bent towards each other and kissed without our hands or anything touching. It was only a moment. Then she stood up on the pavement and went off towards her house. "Bye, Arthur,' she called as I went the other way. 'Lovely seeing you again.'

  ‘Bye Mary,' I returned. 'Have a good time.'

  'And you.'

  In the morning I listened early to the weather forecast for shipping. There was a force nine funnelling up the channel and no ships were leaving the South Wales ports because of the heavy seas. I would not have been able to run away anyway. The wind howled like a hooligan down the street and rain hit my window in handfuls.

  St Chrisp's church is on a promontory overlooking the sea, its steeple used as a navigation marker by ships coming into the port. Many times since then I have watched it raise its point over the horizon and thought of that day, very clear to me, but now long ago.

  The cars had to be left at the gate and it was a high exposed walk up through groggy gravestones to the church door. The entire wedding party climbed it angled like mountaineers into the wind. All my six aunts were gasping by the time they reached the top and Nardine had to be given a stiff mouthful of brandy in the very porch of the church. I can still remember my father pouring it into her with his sickening sexy concern, whispering: 'Never mind, girl, it's downhill when we go out and the wind's behind us.'

  Mad Aunt Ramona, who was let out especially and who had about that time become of a religious disposition, dropped on apparently spent knees in the same porch and resisted helping hands who sought to help her to her feet, shouting that she was praying. This was all very fine, but she made a substantial mound in the doorway and this, combined with the space taken up by the semi-prostrate Nardine, meant that the remainder of us were kept outside in the windy rain, until both women could be removed.

  Eventually they were all established inside the storm-caught building, coughing, spluttering and sneezing, Pamela's family one side, mine the other, all of them doing their share, as though to ensure that the others knew what sacrifices they had made to get to that height and occasion. One of Pamela's cousins, Rhoda, an extraordinary bell-shaped girl decorated in every variety of the then new-fashioned plastics, and in a myriad of wet hues and shining colours, began to wring the water from her galoshes. The resulting squirting sound took all the eyes from our side to theirs and she looked up from her under-pew squeezing to set the spark to the very first of the feuds between the families. I heard my Uncle Ned clearly say:' God, I thought she was having a piss.'

  Aunt Ramona had collapsed into prayer again, hands clutching the pious wood before her, making such a loud meal of it that the event might just as easily have been a funeral. To this was added the contribution of the organist

  who chose to run through 'For Those In Peril' with the rude gale banging at the stained-glass windows.

  Pamela arrived in bridal tears after her ascent of the church path. She had to be more or less re-assembled in the porch and the tougher blossoms of her bouquet which had not been torn away by the wind needed to be arranged so that they concealed the empty stalks of those blooms which had been more exposed and were then scattering themselves along the blowy coast. Her father had been slightly injured when the umbrella with which he was gallantly trying to shield his daughter blew inside out and one of the spokes was thrust in his eye. The bride eventually came down the aisle weaving through the puddles left by all the guests. It was at about that moment that I felt soggy water inside my left sock and knew that my shoe had a hole in it.

  The vicar, who naturally had good local knowledge, arrived covered in oil skins and wearing a sou'wester. At first many of those present thought that the coxswain of the Goldcliffe lifeboat had turned up, but with an almost mystic ritual the oilskins came off and the clergyman was revealed in his dry vestments.

  I forget his name now after all this time; he was a beleaguered looking vicar, young, but slightly astounded. He stared at the congregation as though wondering what they were doing in his church. He was never seen in the town and people said he spent all his time in bed; more of a recumbent than an incumbent. But having a church stuck out there like a lighthouse I didn't blame him.

  My bride looked lovely, her face as pale as her bridal gown, her train held by a couple of friends, dumb-faced as soaked mules. The rain which had caught her full-on as she scaled the climb to the church had struck her above the right eye and the black make-up from that lid was trickling idly down her cheek, but it did not bother her. She was a funny girl, that Pamela. I mean, she must have felt it running, and she must have known how unusual she looked, smiling at me and the vicar with that stuff wriggling down her cheek; but she didn't even give any sign that she knew. She was like that. She still is. I think. If something happens she can it happen and then close her mind to it. When we were choosing the hymns and the other music for the service she wrote down 'Persil's Trumpet Voluntary' on the paper the vicar gave her. Now I didn't know, and I still don't know after all these years, whether she really thought Purcell spelt his name like that or whether she did it out of her screwed up sense of humour.

  Like anything else, if she did it by accident, she would never admit it. She just let it stand. I never asked her about it, although it bothered me, on and off, for years, because I knew she would just laugh and then I would feel the foolish one. She was just like that.

  I don't think that St Chrisp's has ever had a noisier wedding. The organist had to pump his feet and bang his fingers down like fury before the wind inside out-sounded the wind outside. We had decided not to have the bell rung in the church on account of the expense, but throughout the service there came the miserable tolling of a rocking bell-buoy in the channel. From the pews issued every variety of cough, sneeze and snivel. One of her uncles had the most racking bronchial attack just as we were making our vows, and had to be belaboured about the shoulder blades by his adjacent relatives.

  Remarks came from both families, too, sharp, sounding like random pistol shots penetrating all the other intrusions. When I knelt at the chancel steps and her followers saw that I had a hole in my shoe the shots became a fusilade. Then, as I said, my father started his idiot laugh, giggling and stopping and giggling again and finally guffawing so that he had to stagger out to the porch until the hilarious spasm had subsided. I never asked him why he had laughed. I hardly needed to. He was my father.

  At the end of the service I led my wife between the iron smiles, to the porch, to the Trumpet Voluntary played on the organ. Pamela turned to me and with that confident challenge said: 'Persil's.' She said it as near to spelling it as she could and I nodded without argument. While we were in the doorway, crouched between gusts, before making a run for the cars, the organist shuffled around and gave us a little bow and said: 'It's Jeremiah Clarke, you know.' Somewhat stupidly, I realize now, I shook his hand and said I was pleased to meet him not realizing that he meant Clarke not Purcell wrote the music anyway.

  The wedding party descended in short panicky bunches, each making a ragged dash for it, like soldiers under fire crossing an exposed place. The bridesmaids screamed as they ran. To add to the illusion, one of my aunts and Pamela's bronchial uncle fell over between the muddy gravestones during their particular rush and her uncle added unnecessary drama by crying out above the wind: ' Leave me! Just leave me!'

  Pamela and I waited for our moment. The car was waiting two hundred yards down that violent hill. Then the clouds across the channel split at a seam and the cold sun briefly lit the disordered sea. I turned and saw a ship going out, a brave ship she must have been and a big one, pushing against the waves, dipping and bowing, but going on, going out to the ocean. The sun was cut off quickly as the clouds repaired the rent, and I turned guiltily and saw Pamela looking at me with something uncomfortably like amusement. It was as though I had been looking at another woman.

  'Why don't you run?' she suggested. 'Yo
u might catch it.'

  'Don't be silly,' I said. 'I was just looking at it that's all. It's a big one, isn't it?'

  'Huge,' she said, still with that one-sided smile.

  Someone from the bottom of the path whistled with their fingers which was the signal for us to run. I put my arm around her and was strangely and abruptly surprised to feel her quite substantial shoulders through the wedding dress.

  ' Don't hold me,' she wriggled.' We can run faster without holding.'

  We ran through the brown water toppling down the church path. About half a dozen of the remaining guests made the dash with us. Someone had gallantly suggested

  that if they grouped themselves in a sort of bodyguard against the weather they might shield the bride. It seemed a good idea, but half way down a dash of cold glassy rain struck us almost horizontally and scattered the escort like cowards. Everybody started running for themselves and it was all the bride and I could do to squeeze into the car, already full of wet, panting and complaining relatives.

  As we were about to move off, there came an unmistakable clerical call, like a mild, high pitched bird, and immediately the door opened and the vicar, covered in his stiff dripping oilskins, projected himself into the centre of the crowd.

  'Nearly forgot me,' he chortled. 'Fancy forgetting the vicar!'

  I thought perhaps I had better stand up for him. He accepted the offer breezily and squeezed his waterproofs between the bride and one of her cousins. All the way to the reception I stood, bent as if caught by some sudden serious crippling, in the car while my new wife glared at me from beyond the nasty parish oilskins.

  'Enough room everyone?' inquired the clergyman brightly, wriggling and sending rivers of rain down his hard creases on to the bride and the transfixed girl at his other side.

  The reception had been arranged at the Hortense Rooms, Dock Road, and, from its earliest moments, never showed any signs of aspiring to anything higher than a sparring ground for family wars which are still being bitterly fought. My family had battled within itself for years but now it closed ranks to face this new, sharp and eager adversary, Pamela's family.

  'Look at that old fool with a red pullover on,' I heard my Aunt Floss sneer. 'Is that her grandfather? And he's got a hole in it! Look, right in the front. Bloody cheek, going to a wedding like that.'