by Nick Hopton
‘So, she’s sewing this veil on her lap and all the women in the hairdressers want to know about her wedding. And several who have already been done insist on staying to see the veil tried on on top of the new hairdo, do you see?’
‘Uh huh,’ grunted Si in what he hoped was an uninterested tone.
‘Then at the hotel they’ve booked, all the guests get stuck into the drinks before the Registry officials come along to marry them. So half are tipsy in the service, which is in the hotel dining room. And there’s the Rolls Royce which circles the hotel twice just for the hell of it, although all the guests are inside and can’t see the bride arriving. Amazing, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Si although he was having trouble making sense of Mary’s rambling. Her face was aglow. He realised that when she was at her most natural, she was not very pretty. Then he felt ashamed for harbouring such a superficial thought. ‘Sounds like fun,’ he lied guiltily.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Mary paused on a smile.
This was becoming uncomfortable. ‘What did you say your friend’s name was?’
‘Oh, she wasn’t really a friend.’
‘Huh? I thought…’
‘I read about it in a magazine. They had all the pictures too and the costs and contact numbers for the catering companies. Everything you’d need to plan a wedding, really.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve still got it back at my flat. I’ll show you it later if you’d like?’
‘Right.’ Si felt a burning desire for a pint, some male company and a good game of something sweaty and violent.
~
‘Just occasionally, Si, I could do with a bit of romance, you know.’
Si looked blank. He wasn’t sure what had brought on this outburst. One minute they’d been discussing how busy their lives were in London—or rather, how high-powered Mary’s job was— then Si found himself under attack.
‘Uuhh,’ he gurgled. He looked around desperately for the waiter. He’d order another bottle of wine. That should distract Mary. But as he beckoned the waiter over, Mary launched her second scud.
‘I suppose you think that romance is just the bit before sex… Don’t you?’
The waiter obviously caught some of this and decided to stay clear. Ignoring Si’s increasingly frantic gestures, he executed an impressive imitation of a turning oil tanker, curving slowly off his original trajectory and setting course for a distant table with a solicitous smile, although there was clearly no need for his services there.
Damn you. Si sucked in between clenched teeth.
‘The least you could do is listen when I talk to you.’
Talk? Talk? You call this talking? But instead he said: ‘No, you’ve got me wrong, if you think that. I’m a romantic at heart…’
Mary snorted. ‘Romantic. Don’t make me laugh. You see, that’s the problem with you, Si; you don’t have the first idea what you are. You lack self-knowledge. Know what I mean?’
Mary had calmed down and was speaking intensely with her I’m-only-telling-you-this-’cause-I-care look on her face. Si didn’t know which of these two Marys irked him more. He let her go on. It clearly made her feel better, believing that she was imparting wisdom to an inferior being.
He stared miserably at his empty wine glass. The worst thing was, she was probably right. If he was honest with himself, he had very little idea who or why he was.
~
‘Gran?’
‘Hello, my darling. What a nice surprise.’
‘Are you all right? Why are you shouting?’
‘Oh, sorry. The music’s a bit loud. Hold on a minute.’
There was a clunk as Elspeth put the phone down, and Mary could just make out waves of dark orchestral sound crashing around the big rooms in her grandmother’s house. She got a sudden urge to jump on a train and take a holiday in the country. If only. These days her time was not her own. It had been different when she was a student. Whenever things got tough at college, she’d take refuge at her grandmother’s. In those days her sweet old grandfather had also been there. The recollection filled her with longing.
‘That’s better. Sorry about that. My hearing’s not what it was and I sometimes get a bit carried away. It’s such a crime to play Wagner at a low volume on the gramophone, don’t you think?’
Mary laughed. Her grandmother sounded so earnest. ‘Of course it is, Gran.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad you agree. And you know those wonderful speakers your mother gave me really create a very loud noise.’
‘Gran, you don’t need to make excuses.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that. No, I just don’t want you thinking I’ve gone cuckoo or anything.’
Mary already felt cheered up. Elspeth had to be the best grandmother in the world; probably everyone thought that about their own, she realised. But hers was extra special. ‘Gran?’
‘Yes, dear? There I am prattling away and you clearly want to talk to me about something.’
‘Well, kind of.’
‘Go on, dear.’
‘You know when you met Grandpa?’ Mary could almost hear the pained intake of breath at the other end of the line. She pushed straight on. ‘Well, did you know straight away?’
‘Know? Oh, I see what you mean.’ The lustre in the old lady’s voice had dimmed. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. He was so dashing… Why do you ask? Have you met someone?’ Elspeth perked up at the prospect.
‘No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Elspeth waited diplomatically for her granddaughter to elaborate.
‘There is someone but I just don’t know where it’s leading. Does that make sense?’
‘Of course it does. Modern society must be so confusing.’
‘I’m not sure it’s society, Gran. I think it might be me.’
‘Nonsense, child. It’s not like you to be confused about such things. You’re normally so clear-headed and confident.’
‘I know. But I don’t feel very confident at the moment.’
‘Hmm. It’s difficult to advise you, Mary, without having met the young man. What’s his name?’
‘Simon.’
‘Oh, so it’s the same one as before, then?’ She sounded surprised.
‘Of course it is. What do you think, Gran? I don’t change my boyfriends weekly.’
‘Oh well, one never knows. What with the permissive society and so forth. Sounds like quite a lot of fun, if you ask me. If I was your age, goodness knows what I’d get up to.’
‘Gran,’ Mary exclaimed, outraged.
‘Tsk, tsk. Don’t be such a prude. I was a young girl once. I know what goes through your mind when a handsome fellow’s about…’
‘Gran, you’re terrible. There’s me phoning to ask for some wise guidance and all I get is encouragement to sleep around.’
‘Well, sometimes sex is the best cure for unrequited love.’
‘I never said it was unrequited,’ Mary bridled.
‘Oh, in that case… What’s the problem, dear? Just carry on working your charms and he’ll be sure to fall into your net sooner or later. Men are rather stupid at times. You have to be patient, and don’t let him see you’re particularly bothered about whether or not he responds.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Had nothing changed? sighed Mary.
‘Of course I am. Don’t forget, I’ve been at this for far longer than you have.’ She giggled mischievously, and Mary joined in despite herself.
‘Now, much as I love talking to my favourite granddaughter, I must go and turn off the oven. I’ve got a cake baking. It’s to send to your mother,’ Elspeth continued, apparently thinking out loud. ‘Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong with Beatrice; she can’t cook to save her life, and spends all her time at the hairdressers or reading trashy novels. Ah well, no peace for the wicked…’ Then she recalled she was on the phone to her granddaughter. ‘So, goodbye my dear. I hope you’ll ring me again soon.’
‘I will. Bye, Gr
an.’
‘And don’t go worrying about Simon. I’m sure it’ll all work out just fine. Goodbye.’ The line went dead.
~
Mary gave Si a video camera for his birthday.
‘This is way OTT,’ protested Si when he’d finished unwrapping the shiny designer paper: complex asymmetrical patterns just discovered on the tomb walls of an ancient civilisation.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s not every day you’re twenty-eight. Now aren’t you going to say thank you? I reckon I deserve at least a passionate peck.’
Embarrassed by his churlish reaction, but still astounded by the value of the present, Si leaned across the marble table top and pulled her face gently towards him. He kissed her carefully, self-consciously, with gratitude.
Mary pushed her lips against his greedily, almost as if she wanted to extract every last bit of passion as recompense for the camera.
A sense of duty more than inspiration moved Si to pick up the camera and christen it with some footage of Mary. He filmed her eating an elaborate ice cream, smiling attractively through the Dreamboat Surprise which kept threatening to escape through her parted lips and run down onto her chin. The scene was so fifties that Si wondered if it would come out in hand-tinted Technicolor.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ she purred, and, leaning towards the camera’s silent, dispassionate eye, she puckered her lips into a passable imitation of a film diva. ‘Mwwa!’
Si stopped filming and, feeling the familiar physical surge, he laid the camera carefully on the table.
‘What do you say? Shall we get the bill and go?’
Mary treated him to one of her rare seductive looks. ‘Darling, I thought you’d never ask.’
~
Greta Andrews lived in a big Georgian terrace house in Westbourne Park Road with her husband Michael. She’d first come to London from Ireland in the early eighties to visit her older brother Eamon. She’d planned to spend the summer, but had ended up marrying a handsome Englishman whom she’d met in Sainsbury’s.
‘You can’t marry him,’ Eamon had protested. ‘He’s a Prod and an Englishman.’
‘So what? I thought you were always telling me that the English weren’t so bad after all, that they had lots of money and you were happy to take it off them.’
‘Oh sweet Jesus. That’s different.’
‘Is it?’
Eamon furrowed his brow. ‘What’ll mother say?’
‘I don’t care what she says. What’s she ever done for me? And since when have you cared what she thinks about anything? Listen, Eamon, I’m marrying Michael and that’s that. If you want, you can come to the wedding. But if not, I don’t care.’
They got married in the Finchley registry office in October and had the wedding lunch at Eamon’s pub. There was a good turnout, although neither set of parents came.
After the couple had left, Eamon and his friends drunkenly agreed that Michael was a good man… for an Englishman.
When the Sleeper turned up some years later on Greta’s doorstep she set down the baby and looked him up and down. ‘Come in. Eamon told me you’d be coming about now.’
The Sleeper peered past her down the elegant hallway and wondered if Eamon had told the truth when he said the room wouldn’t cost much. The house looked posher than any he’d ever been in.
Greta sat him down at a scrubbed pine kitchen table which had a view over the garden. ‘Coffee?’
‘Aye, thanks. Two sugars, please.’
‘They’ll rot your teeth.’
‘That’s what my ma always says.’
‘She’s right and you should listen to her.’
He thought about what Eamon had told him of Greta’s stormy relationship with her mother, but decided not to say anything. Short of anything else to say and not wanting to broach the subject of the room for rent until she did, he asked her how she’d got her name.
Greta laughed and the Sleeper noticed for the first time how attractive she was. She had some of Eamon’s better features, like the strong jaw and piercing green eyes, but it all fitted together better in her.
‘Not very Gaelic, is it?’ She raised an eyebrow coquettishly, and he smiled, foolishly tongue-tied. ‘Well, Andrews is my husband’s name, of course, and he’s as English as they come. You’ll meet him later, but he’s at work now. He works in the City, you know.’
‘Oh.’ The Sleeper didn’t know, and in fact he wasn’t sure what people who worked in the City were like. He’d not met any in West Hampstead at Mrs Donnelley’s. Presumably, he’d be one of those short-haired, well-scrubbed tall public school types in pin stripes. He wondered how a girl like Greta had fallen for such a man, the antithesis of her working class Irish origins.
‘Greta’s another story. My mother wanted to call me Mary if I was a girl. After her mother. But my father never got on with my grandmother, too religious, he always said, and so he refused point blank. They almost split up over what to call me. The arguments raged for nine months and they were both hoping that I’d be a boy to solve the problem. I’d have been James then. You see, my father had literary pretensions, and even when I turned out a girl he wanted me to be a writer.’
The Sleeper stared, but she seemed not to notice.
‘Anyway, finally, a week before I arrived, my parents went to the cinema to see a film. It must have been a rerun because it was a Greta Garbo film… Blue Angel, I think they said. Whatever, they both loved it so much that they agreed on the spot that if I was a girl I’d be called Greta. So there you are.’ She threw back her head and laughed again.
He joined in without really knowing why.
That evening he told Mrs Donnelley that he was moving the next day.
‘So soon?’ she was clearly surprised.
‘Aye, I’ve found a great place. Really posh and you know what, Mrs Donnelley, it’s even cheaper than here.’
Mrs Donnelley sniffed and carried on making the tea. ‘Well, I’ve never heard you complain before.’
‘No complaints, Mrs Donnelley. It’s just I think I’ve landed on my feet.’
‘Pride comes before a fall…’
He laughed. It would be good to exchange fiery old Mrs Donnelley with her laddered tights and greasy teas for the refinement of Greta Andrews’ kitchen. If he was going to have to wait around—and as far as he could make out, there seemed little likelihood of a break in the cease-fire for the time being—then he might as well do it in style. Blend into the community, they’d told him. Well that was what he was about to do. To be honest, and he knew it was a terrible thought, he kind of hoped the cease-fire would hold.
~
Si wrapped his overcoat round him as tightly as it would go. It was bitterly cold. Beside him, Mary whinged about the ordeal he was putting her through. ‘This is stupid… Si, I’m freezing… How much longer?’
Si suppressed his irritation. After all, it had been his mistake to bring her to the match. ‘Another five minutes, my love.’
The capacity Old Trafford crowd roared as Cantona ghosted into space, but he couldn’t quite get on the end of a looping Giggs cross.
Mary seemed impervious to the excitement of the sixth round FA Cup tie. ‘Then can we go?’
‘Well, that’ll be half time and then there’s the second half…’
‘What d’you mean, second half? Are you telling me there’s more?’
‘Well, of course there is. Soccer matches are divided into two equal halves each lasting forty-five minutes…’
‘Si,’ she whimpered, ‘you’re saying that the second half is as long as the first half?’
‘Yes, of course it is. That’s why it’s called a half.’
‘Oh, I can’t take it much more. I’m so cold. And it’s not as if anything has happened. It’s so boring.’
Si couldn’t disagree with this last point. It had been a dull first half, apart from a disallowed Southampton goal, which had looked perfectly okay to him. Andy Cole had also been pulled down in the five-yard box, and Un
ited should have had a penalty, but otherwise it had been pretty routine stuff.
But Si didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t here for United or for Southampton. He was here to cheer on his friend. And he’d been warmed to the cockles by the few touches Jimmy had made. In his first full start for Manchester United he was performing well. Since signing for the biggest club in Britain, Jimmy had gone from strength to strength. Now he was competing for a regular first team place and, although he owed his start tonight to the absence through injury of Lee Sharpe, he seemed to be capitalizing on his chances.
‘I’ll tell you what… You try and enjoy the match and then I’ll treat you to the best dinner we can find in the poshest restaurant in Manchester. How’s about that?’
Mary perked up a bit. It had taken some persuading to get her to come up to Manchester for the match, especially mid-week. She wasn’t particularly enamoured of the north. Or rather her image of it, as she’d never been to Lancashire before. Si had been forced to resort to bribes such as a night in a smart hotel, and turning the trip into a mini holiday by taking a half-day off either side of the game—not easy given that Dougy was breathing down his neck these days. But the decisive factor seemed to have been an article in Cosmopolitan magazine which described Manchester’s clubbing nightlife and pronounced the city as the coolest in Europe—this had forced Mary to make a reassessment and agree to the visit.
Mary was nothing if not predictable in her appreciation of what she considered appropriate romantic behaviour by a suitor. Si’s dinner proposal had touched the right button. ‘Oh all right. You’re a real sweet talker, aren’t you?’ She put her mittened hand in Si’s and gave it a squeeze. ‘It’d help if I knew which one was Jimmy; then I could cheer him on when he got the ball.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry; I assumed you knew. He’s the number 22, there, see?’
‘In the red?’
‘Yes, in the red.’
‘If Manchester are in the red, then who’s in the yellow?’
‘I told you before… Southampton.’
‘Ahh.’ Mary fell silent for a minute and made a determined effort to follow the game. ‘Why is Jimmy number twenty two if there are only eleven players in the team?’