by Fiona Walker
Joining his lanky assistant, he hastily clipped his camera on to the tripod with shaking hands.
A moment later James French strode into the hall, looking thoroughly disapproving and extremely haughty, his fleshy face absolutely immobile as he stalked to the front row and sat down beside his wife. There was a slight hush amongst the guests.
Two rows from the front, Cass was clutching Sophia’s red satin arm in alarm. ‘I thought your father was giving Tash away?’ she hissed, pointing to the front where James’s head was dipped towards his wife’s now.
‘She wouldn’t let him,’ Sophia sniffed. ‘Poor Daddy was terribly upset. They had a frightful row at Henry’s christening, don’t you remember?’
‘So who is giving her away?’
‘Mummy.’
‘How ghastly.’
‘I know.’ Sophia wrinkled her nose. ‘Very Islington.’
Gus was at the long gallery door now, welcoming Penny with desperate relief. She had brought along Wally the farm collie and Zoe’s paranoid Dalmatian Enid, both of whom were wearing the same fat, ivy-coloured bows. Despite looking enchanting, Enid was scrabbling to escape, her clipped nails sliding around on the polished wood floor, her pale brown eyes rolling in terror.
‘Hope the bride doesn’t behave like that,’ Gus watched her warily. ‘All set?’
‘On their way.’ Penny winked. ‘She didn’t fit into the dress Alexandra brought. We had to dig mine out of the loft in the end, but it’s covered with fake blood from the time Rufe wore it to a fancy dress as the Bride of Dracula. We’ve been at it with the Vanish all morning.’
‘Hope the bride doesn’t do that either,’ Gus gulped anxiously.
Rufus wandered in behind Penny. At his feet, Beetroot was still scratching madly at her bow.
‘The car’s had to go around again – a whole load more guests have turned up.’
The very last arrivals were several eventers who had come straight from a competition the other side of Reading and were hugely embarrassed to be still wearing their grass-stained cross-country gear.
‘It started late,’ Brian Sedgewick muttered apologetically. ‘Someone let cows on to the course last night and they ate the entire centre of the Hay Wain water complex. I bought Tash and Niall an alarm clock as a wedding present.’
Gus had to put them on Niall’s side as there was no room left on Tash’s. Several actors in front craned around enviously.
‘Starring in the latest Jilly Cooper adaptation?’ one asked enviously, eyeing a jodhpured thigh. ‘I went up for that. Bastards threw me out because I couldn’t ride. I ask you! I said, “Darling, I’m an actor – I can act riding.” Oh – here they come!’
Suddenly Roger Allice clicked his knuckles theatrically at the rear of the hall and launched into a very depressing Grieg concerto as the female registrar walked slowly to the top of the aisle, smiling benevolently at everyone. She looked like a wannabe vicar in a black suit with a very narrow white collar as she flicked open her service book and waited for the bridal party.
‘One of us,’ said an actor delightedly. ‘Check the Doc Martens.’
‘Where’s the bloody best man?’ Matty asked fretfully, gazing around the hall. ‘He isn’t here yet. I absolutely refuse to get up there if they’re short-staffed.’
‘I’ll do it then,’ Sally told him, consulting the service sheet. ‘Bloody hell – Rory Franks is reading a Yeats poem – “All Things Can Tempt Me”. One would imagine so. Or perhaps “An Acre of Grass”. Oh, look, your mother’s here.’
Dashing through the doors, Alexandra raced to the front pew wearing an amazing lilac trouser-suit ensemble that fluttered around like a dropping sail. Her floppy seventies hat looked likely to render her airborne at any second, flapping madly in her haste. Only Alexandra could look so ludicrously chic and fragile in such an outfit.
‘Bloody hell, my mother’s dressed as one of Pan’s People,’ Matty groaned, closing his eyes.
Sophia was clutching Cass’s arm this time. ‘That’s Mummy!’
‘So who is giving Tash away?’
‘The mysterious best man?’ Sophia suggested vaguely.
‘I could do with a Best man,’ Marcus piped up, suddenly taking an interest. ‘Or a Guinness. Or even a lager, man.’
‘Trust Niall to have a hippy wedding,’ Cass sniffed disapprovingly. ‘I’ve always said Tash was too good for that druggy Irish layabout.’
Alexandra was settling between Henrietta and Pascal in the front row. ‘All going well,’ she informed them excitedly.
Henrietta bit her lip edgily. ‘Are Emily and Beccy behaving themselves?’
‘Having great fun, darling.’ Alexandra was craning around to wave cheerfully at members of her family. ‘Isn’t this a hoot?’
Henrietta swung around too as a noisy chattering from the stairwell beyond the doors heralded the imminent arrival of the bride and her raucous attendants.
‘Where’s the bloody best man?’ demanded James French, noticing that there was still a gap at the front like the missing black piano key where Niall and the registrar were standing with a one-man space between Hugo, Gus and Rufus lined up to their right.
The next moment, the ante-room door swung open at the rear of the hall and a tall, slim figure in a very baggy morning suit raced up the aisle on endless legs to take up the empty space beside Niall, topper still in place. Only a few wedding guests got to view the best man’s face as the figure flashed past. Of those that did, Bob Hudson let out a low whistle.
‘Bloody attractive man. Should be in films.’
Rory Franks watched the passing bottom impassively. ‘Sometimes I wish I was gay,’ he sighed, rubbing his itching nostrils.
‘Sometimes I wish you were too.’ Bob gave him a game wink.
As soon as the best man was in place beside Niall, the topper came off and revealed hair scraped back into a chaotic pony tail.
‘A bit eighties,’ Sophia sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Who d’you suppose it is?’
‘One of his dreadful acting cronies, I suppose.’ Cass craned to see. ‘Looks a bit of a – you know – a woofter.’
Rufus was fighting to keep hold of Beetroot, who was straining her head towards Niall’s right-hand man, her rope-thin tail spiralling joyously.
‘For Christ’s sake, don’t let her go,’ Niall muttered as he stared out front. ‘She’ll have my leg off. And she smells something awful.’
Beetroot let out a couple of high-pitched barks of frustration.
‘I’m sure I know the best man from somewhere,’ mused Julia Ditton.
But the wedding guests were suddenly distracted by the emergence of the bride, absolutely swathed in silk and lace. For a moment she stood alone in the doorway – pale, fragile and solitary.
There was a general hush of anticipation as the guests craned around to get the first view of her. On Niall’s side a couple of flash cameras went off and an actor could be heard muttering in a loud stage whisper: ‘Dreadful dress.’ The Cheers! photographer was clicking away like mad from his standpoint at the front of the aisle.
There was certainly nothing spectacular about her dress – it emphasised her narrow waist and slender shoulders, but was essentially a large frou-frou meringue – and her veil was far too thick and heavy. Yet she radiated such total calm and confidence that eyes remained glued to her as though hypnotised. She looked absolutely beautiful.
Jiggling Linus distractedly, Matty drew in a sharp breath of admiration. ‘Tash looks staggering,’ he whistled.
‘Who on earth’s that walking in behind her?’ Sally muttered. ‘Bloody rude turning up so late.’
There was some puzzled murmuring amongst the guests as an exquisite, tall, blonde figure in a simple dark green dress came through the door and walked to the bride’s side. To the guests’ utter astonishment, she then took her left arm and started to lead her towards the aisle.
‘Who is that giving Tash away?’ Etty was peering with interest. ‘Is that one of my grandc
hildren?’
‘Search me.’ Alicia offered Thug another choc drop. ‘I hope this is a short ceremony – Gordons is looking a bit fragile. What is that dreadful racket?’
At the rear of the hall, Roger Allice had paused momentarily to sneeze and then struck up his own specially commissioned composition which Niall had asked for as an alternative to the wedding march. It was a very Phillip Glass number full of rhythmic repetitions and twirling top notes. The beat was so fast that for a couple of seconds the bride and her entourage were thrown into a confused quick-march, but they slowed as a bridesmaid tripped over the train and almost brought them all down.
Smiling behind a misty lace veil, the bride turned to face the long expanse of aisle and finally spotted the wide shoulders of her extremely scruffy groom.
Behind her, the bridal party was a glorious hotchpotch. Henrietta’s elder daughter Emily smouldered sexily in a very short dark green dress. Beside her, her sister Beccy looked like a close relative of Mary Poppins in a broad-skirted number of a similar design, but possessing about six times the fabric. Tottering after them came Sophia’s sickly children, Lotty and Josh, who were both starting to snivel loudly as they spotted their sympathetic au pair clutching Henry in a back row.
They were followed by Sally and Matty’s two elder children, Tom and Tor. Crew-cut Tom, who was decked out in a bottle green Victorian suit, was discreetly playing on a computer game and Tor was grinning broadly at everyone in sight, most of her front teeth missing and her white rose head-dress falling over her eyes. She was the only bridesmaid not carrying a flower basket because she’d thrown it from the car window on the journey there. Bringing up the rear was Polly, wearing a version of the green silk number that was wildly fashionable and bore no resemblance to the rest – it had a button-through A-line hipster skirt, Vivienne Westwood-style corset bustier and a flowered head-dress in the shape of a baseball cap. She was also carrying a video camera, its red light flashing as she frantically caught all the action on VHS.
‘Oh, doesn’t Tor look sweet?’ Sally gazed at them indulgently.
‘Who’s that giving Tash away?’ Matty was peering at the figure in green. ‘She looks terribly familiar.’
‘It’s Zoe Goldsmith’s daughter!’ Sally let out a surprised laugh. ‘It’s India. India Goldsmith.’
The motorised drive of the Cheers! camera had started to clash with Roger’s Phillip Glass composition, which was getting thoroughly carried away now and had reached an extraordinary movement that sounded as though he was hitting the piano keys with a mallet. Cowering beside Penny, Enid the Dalmatian started to howl with distress.
At the top of the aisle, Niall was shaking so much that the best man had to take his hand and root it to a chair for support.
‘She’s here. She looks terrific. You’re about to be married. Good luck.’
Niall finally managed to look around, dark eyes swimming with pride. ‘Jesus, she’s beautiful, isn’t she? Utterly beautiful. I can’t believe she’s going to be my wife.’
At the rear of the hall, Lisette was watching the bridal train with increasing suspicion and listening avidly to the conversation in front of her.
‘I must say Tash has put on a lot of weight again,’ Cass was saying. ‘She looks terribly squat – shorter, if that’s possible.’
‘That’s not the dress I saw in Paris,’ Sophia gasped. ‘She must have positively porked out recently – she can’t fit into it anymore, I bet. That must be hired.’
‘Jolly thick veil, too. D’you think she’s developed spots?’
‘Bound to, she was always prone to them. She must be stooping or something – she almost looks shorter than Em.’
‘Was she looking fat at Badminton then?’
Sophia turned around so sharply that the brim of her hat poked her aunt in the eye once more. Behind her, Ben was almost floored as it smacked him simultaneously on the forehead ‘That’s the odd thing – she looked rather slim then. It’s hardly possible to pile it on in a week, is it?’
‘My dear, we are talking about Tash here.’
‘True.’
Lisette watched the bride pass and grew even more suspicious. Standing to the right of Niall and his strangely familiar best man, Hugo suddenly craned around and caught her eye in the briefest of winks.
Lisette looked from him, to Niall, to the Cheers! photographer and then the bride. Something about the stance was uncanny; the way she walked reminded her of someone. Then she caught sight of the neurotic, bow-decked dalmatian at Penny Moncrieff’s feet, positively gyrating with recognition as the bride passed, and found herself starting to smile. Dear, theatrical Niall had finally found a woman who could match him in the imagination stakes. Moments later, to the astonishment of all around her, she started to laugh out loud too.
Niall wasn’t marrying Tash French at all, she realised. He was marrying the woman that her last-ditch tabloid story had accused him of sleeping with for the past month. The woman with whom he was hopelessly in love. Niall was marrying Zoe Goldsmith.
She was way ahead of the rest of the guests in her mental gymnastics. When the veil went back, there were a few exclamations that Tash had gone blonde. When the best man twisted a long neck around to check for the ring in a waistcoat pocket, there were a few more intakes of breath, and confused murmurings.
But it was not until the registrar cheerfully announced that they were gathered together to watch Niall being united in marriage with Zoe that the communal gasps seemed to suck all the air from the room, and the Cheers! photographer got so thoroughly carried away that his camera fell off its tripod.
‘I don’t know the bride from a bar of soap,’ Alicia told Etty loudly as she fed Thug yet more choc drops. ‘But I know the best man – friend of Hugo’s. Nice chap, can’t remember his name . . .’
When the new bride and groom retired to the ante-room to sign the register, Rory Franks was prodded hard in the ribs and realised that this was his cue. Fumbling and swearing for a few seconds as he searched for his photocopied words under his chair, he finally clambered over Niall’s agent and staggered to the front, tripping over several bridesmaids.
Tall, hugely attractive but utterly wasted by booze and drugs, he scanned the page with his reddened eyes and, finding that he couldn’t focus, threw it over his shoulder and trusted to memory. He was supposed to be reading ‘He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven’, but didn’t know that by heart, and resorted to Shakespeare instead. Shooting Franny a top-shelf wink, he started to recite in his gruff, feral voice:
‘Oh never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify!
As easy might I from myself depart,
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again
Blah blah blah blah . . .’
He paused as he forgot a few lines, but such was his magnificent presence that only a few guests noticed. Striking up again with a wide smile, he went on:
‘Never believe, though in my nature reign’d
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so prepost’rously be stain’d,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:
For nothing this wide Universe I call,
Save thou, my Rose: in it thou art my all.’
Forty-Five
* * *
‘I THINK NIALL WAS weeping with joy when he said “I do”,’ Penny sighed dreamily. ‘That is so romantic.’
‘I was crying too,’ Gus grumbled. ‘That dog of Tash’s smells so high, all our eyes were watering.’
Posing for Cheers! photographs on the rear lawns of Fosbourne Holt House, Tash stood beside Niall’s mother for a brief moment. At first hysterical, then struck dumb and finally apoplectic at the bridal switch, Ma had now been pacified by several large tots of Bushmills from her own case and was crying openly once more, delighted that her
son appeared to be so deliriously happy with his new bride.
‘She seems a sweet thing, so she does,’ she wept, giving Tash a huge kiss on the cheek, leaving a great smear of lipstick that would be immortalised in photographs for generations to come like a strawberry birthmark. ‘But you could have warned me, child. I’ve given yourself and Niall a decanter with your initials engraved on it. D’you think you can change a T to a Z?’
‘Easily,’ Tash assured her.
Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ Ma eyed her sagely. ‘You may yourself marry a man whose name begins with N.’
‘I doubt that.’ Tash spotted Hugo watching to see that she was okay.
‘Ah, well.’ Ma pulled the cigarette from her husband’s mouth and re-did his tie as the photographer started barking orders. ‘I might be able to give it to another couple if not. I ’clare, I go to enough weddings, but none quite like this.’
Sally and Sophia were gathering the bridesmaids and pageboys together, most of whom were either in tears, riot or revolt.
‘You will smile for the camera, Lotty, or all your teeth will fall out,’ Sophia told her wailing daughter.
Sally removed Tom’s Nintendo and tried to stop Tor from stuffing her rose head-dress up her skirt.
‘I always think we girls should wear hats and no knickers,’ she told her, plonking it back on her head and turning to Sophia. She was thoroughly overexcited by the day’s events.
‘Did you have any idea?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Well, I was rather amazed that they were going through with it all, and I had guessed something was awry,’ Sophia told her, pulling up Josh’s trousers by picking the little boy up by the waistband and waiting for him to drop further into them. ‘But I never would have believed this, no. I mean, is it legal?’
‘Apparently Niall sorted it all out last week – although I think several cases of champagne changed hands to speed things through. It’s not like church where one has to call the banns and all that religious stuff – one just reapplies for a licence, warns the registrar to say a different name in the ceremony, and you’re hitched.’