‘Calm down,’ reprimanded Catherine. ‘You look like you’ve got the DTs.’
Adam was laughing, circulating and being jolly Ginger Man. He looked totally different with all that hair off, thought Stevie. She wouldn’t have said ‘softer’, because no one with that nose and scar could have looked remotely soft. ‘Less hideous’, was the assessment she preferred.
Jo and Matthew were at opposite ends of the room. She was talking to some other women, poised and elegant and not spilling her sherry. Matthew was chatting to the best man. Stevie tried really hard not to look over but her eyes kept gravitating towards him. She noticed that he was trying equally hard not to let his eyes wander over to Jo, but, like herself, he was failing.
‘Hi there!’ Pam burst in and kissed them all. She had a champagne glass in one hand and a long menthol cigarette in the other.
‘Congratulations,’ said Stevie. ‘You look fab.’
‘So do you actually, Stevie. Have you lost weight?’
‘A bit,’ said Stevie.
‘Sorry to hear about you, hon, hope it all works out for you.’
‘Oh er, yes. Don’t worry,’ said Stevie, plastering on a smile and manipulating a change in subject. ‘So, where do we put your presents? I hope you like this.’
‘God knows, me mam’s got that bit organized. Course I’ll like it. I’d like it even more if it were a pair of slippers. I tell you, my pissing feet are killing me in these shoes. Don’t know how I’m going to manage to dance.’
Pam, the less than traditional bride, then swanned off with a ‘see ya later’ on her massive satin heels and left them standing in a quiet triangle.
‘Sorry, but I had to tell her about you and Matthew,’ said Catherine with a little apologetic smile. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to be sitting next to him if he turned up, so I asked my Auntie Madge to alter the seating plan.’
‘I would never have thought of that,’ said Stevie. Sitting next to Matthew would have been torture. She squeezed Catherine’s hand gratefully. ‘Thanks.’ It was so typical of her thoughtfulness; no wonder they’d been friends for so long. You would always want to hang onto someone like her.
‘You need to sort this wedding thing out with him, quick,’ Catherine went on. ‘I don’t want to upset you and so I won’t say anything else, but in the next few days you have to find out where you stand.’
‘I know,’ said Stevie.
‘I’d chuffing cancel it if I were you,’ said Eddie, taking a big glug of the Barnsley Bitter he’d had to buy because Catherine had nicked his sherry to give to Stevie. ‘He’s definitely not the bloke I thought he was at all.’
No one answered him, but, yes, they were all thinking the same.
‘Laydeees and gelmen, would ye kindly make yer way tae the dinen arearrr,’ came Adam MacLean’s cannon of a voice.
‘If he’s doing a speech after, no one will understand a flaming word,’ said Catherine, giving Stevie a little tension-busting giggle.
They looked at the seating plan and Stevie found that she was sandwiched between Eddie and Oh no–A. MacLean! Luckily, her mind was playing tricks on her and it was actually A. MacLeod, who was a young spaghetti-string of a teenage boy who kept pulling at his collar as if it was strangling him.
Matthew was somewhere further down the table on her side and out of spying sight and Jo was halfway down an adjacent table, between two middle-aged men in kilts who seemed more than happy with the seating arrangements. She certainly didn’t look very victimy, considering she was sitting five people away from her psychotic soon-to-be ex-husband, who was behaving with remarkable dignity in the circumstances, Stevie thought. He actually seemed very jocular. She didn’t notice him glance over at Jo once, and by crikey, she was watching for it.
‘Stop looking at them,’ hissed Catherine. ‘I would kick you but I’d snag your tights.’
‘Sorry,’ said Stevie, and tucked into her turkey main course. It was a full-blown Christmas dinner. Pam had wanted a Christmas wedding, hence the fur cape, but she didn’t want to risk the weather, so she had the best of both worlds–sunshine and turkey, except for the lone vegetarian kid to her right, pushing a nut roast around on his plate. She had never seen an unhealthier-looking pallor on anyone. She almost wanted to kidnap him and force-feed him some chops and see if they might turn his own chops a better colour.
There was Christmas pudding and mince pies to follow, then when coffee was served, the newly-weds cut the cake–a massive three-layered chocolate creation that apparently had more rum than butter in it, according to the best man’s speech, during which everyone laughed and the air seemed charged with love and smiles.
Stevie’s wedding wasn’t going to be as big or nearly as grand as this, but her dad was giving her away and she was having frothy pea soup, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, and raspberry meringue roulade or fudge cake for afters at the White Swan, a lovely pub out in the countryside near Penistone. Matthew’s brother was flying in from Canada to be best man and she had picked pink roses for her bouquet. Everything was in place, and so far, he hadn’t called it off.
‘So why is he wearing his suit now at someone else’s wedding? And looking gorgeous in it for someone else, not you,’ said that annoying voice in her head again. She wished it would contract a serious and sudden case of laryngitis.
Her thoughts came back to the table as glasses were raised to ‘the Happy Couple’. Stevie raised hers along with the others and tried hard to smile convincingly. Matthew was sleeping with someone else and she was in the process of moving out of his house. How feasible was it that they were going to be ‘the happy couple’ themselves in three weeks’ time?
There was no ordinary disco for Pam’s night entertainment, oh no. She had a Ceilidh band and a dance demonstration team clad in Highland clobber, stripping the willow and reeling about, not unlike Uncle Dennis had started to do after three sherries.
‘He’ll have to leave his car behind, by the looks of it,’ said Catherine, as he fell off his chair without breaking the rhythm of his hand-clapping.
‘This is a dance called “Blooo Bunnets’” said a hairy accordion player, who looked like a smaller, ‘before’ model of Adam MacLean.
‘Blue Bonnets? I used to do this at school,’ said Eddie.
‘You? Doing country dancing?’ said Catherine with an amused squeak.
‘Aye, I was good an’ all. All the lasses wanted me for a partner.’
‘Get on up there then, lad.’ Catherine pushed him towards the dance floor.
‘Knickers! I can’t remember how you do it.’ He retreated shyly.
‘You don’t have to–they show you.’
‘I’m still not.’
‘Go on, you know you want to.’
‘Get off, you big bully!’
As Catherine and Eddie continued their giggly fight, Stevie watched as Matthew started to edge slowly towards Jo. It took him another four minutes before they engaged in conversation. Maybe they were pretending to ‘get it together’ at the wedding, not having a clue that she and Adam MacLean already knew what had been going on between them.
‘I see contact has been made,’ said Catherine, nodding over at the treacherous twosome.
‘Yes, I noticed. I’ll bet they’re making a show in front of MacLean and me that this is their actual starting-point.’
‘The next dance is “The Birds and the Bees”,’ said Accordion Man. ‘Come on, now, let’s have you up herrre, laddies and lassies.’
A flurry of sherried-up aunts and uncles hit the floor.
‘Looks fun,’ said Catherine. ‘Do you want a go? Eddie’ll partner you.’
‘Eddie won’t,’ said Eddie.
‘Where’s the bonny bride hersel’?’ shouted someone from the demo team and started chanting to get Pam up dancing. ‘C’moan, it’s good luck tae dance this wan.’
‘Right–well, if I’m going to make a twat of myself, then everyone is. Come up, get up,’ slurred Pam. She stubbed out her fag and t
hen shovelled Eddie and Catherine and Stevie forwards, like a giant snow-plough. Everyone hit the dance floor because Pam had said so.
‘Stevie, you can road-test Will for me,’ said Pam, shoving her new husband in front of Stevie at the end of the formation. ‘Adam, get your Scottish backside over here!’
‘I don’t know what to do at all,’ said Stevie.
Will whispered, ‘Join the club, Stevie, but you know what she’s like. Just do this one dance then she’ll leave you alone, I promise.’
‘Now’s your chance, big boy, to seduce me with your fancy footwork,’ said Catherine, giving her husband a saucy wink.
‘Don’t blame me if you end up moaning in the morning that you’ve had no sleep,’ said Eddie.
‘Oh promises, promises,’ said Catherine.
Pam dragged Adam opposite to her and he and Stevie glared at each other diagonally.
‘We’re a six, we need to be an eight,’ said Eddie.
‘Hark at Fred Astaire!’ said Catherine.
‘Oy! We need another two over here!’ shouted Pam.
A spare ‘two’ was pushed over from where it was clinging onto the next ‘eight’ hoping no one would notice it was superfluous.
‘Oh God,’ said every single one of them, even half-sloshed Pam, as Matthew and Jo took up their awkward positions next to Eddie and Catherine. However long this dance lasted, it was going to be too long.
The demonstrators ran through the sequence. It all looked quite simple in a twizzling-about way. In real life it proved to be slightly more difficult.
Pam cocked up and ended up going the wrong way, taking Will as her partner. This cast Stevie in the path of Adam MacLean, and as Pam barked, ‘Never mind, carry on,’ Stevie was forced to link his arm and be spun around at G force.
‘So, how’s yerrr nose?’ he asked, as they changed direction. He pointed at it as if she might have forgotten where it was.
‘Fine, thank you–and yours?’ Stevie asked, not knowing quite why she had asked that. Then again, at that point she was trying to coordinate skipping backwards with not being sick.
‘Okay last time I looked,’ he said humourlessly, tripping forward and catching her hand. He was surprisingly nifty on his feet for an Aberdeen Angus, Stevie thought.
‘So, ready to hear whit I have tae say yet? You don’t look as if you’re making much progress your way.’
‘And you are, I suppose?’ said Stevie, quirking her eyebrow.
‘Aye, I most certainly am!’
Stevie twirled around him with a little sarcastic, ‘Ha!’ and followed it with, ‘No, thank you. I think I’ll pass on this and every other occasion to discuss your “master plan”.’ Her arm brushed against Jo as she skipped down the back of the formation to meet Matthew. It was like being touched by an electric cattle prod. Stevie jerked to the side, bouncing into Will, and would have fallen over if Adam MacLean hadn’t grabbed her elbow. By comparison, Jo’s steps were perfect. She and Matthew looked like John Travolta and that Stephanie woman in Saturday Night Fever who were so spiritually and bodily synchronized. As if Stevie needed any more proof of how gauche she was by comparison.
Adam cast her off and she did a figure of eight around Pam and then bumped clumsily into Matthew, who stared straight ahead of him in a ‘God, get me out of this quick’ kind of way. Then Adam caught both of Stevie’s hands at the top of the line and trotted down the middle of the other three partners with her. They were huge hands. Hands that smacked women. It made her feel ill to touch him and she tried to pull them away but MacLean hung on firmly.
‘So ye’re no gonnae listen, I take it?’ he grumbled out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Not in this lifetime,’ panted Stevie.
Adam sneered, like Elvis having a bad day.
‘Well, let’s hope you’re better at ho’ding onto your man than you are at dancing,’ he said gruffly as he let Stevie’s hands go and relinquished her to Will, who spun her round ‘Gay Gordon’ style for the last few bars of the reel. As soon as the final chord had sounded, Adam and Jo and Matthew were gone from the dance floor, three people united in their desperate desire to get right away from the lumpy woman with her sherry-stained skirt and scabby nose.
Catherine led her friend gently off into the shadows, leaving her flushed-face, exhilarated husband applauding. He had truly found his dancing legs and was skipping about like Rob Roy with fleas.
‘How awful was that?’ said Catherine. ‘I thought it would never end.’
‘Trust Murderous McKilt to be in our group,’ said Stevie, all sorts of sad and angry thoughts blasting through her body. ‘I didn’t expect to end up dancing with him when I set off with Will.’
‘Well, you got back with your original partner in the end,’ said Catherine. ‘Maybe it’s symbolic,’ she added, trying to give Stevie a bit of hope, however weak it might sound.
‘Maybe,’ said Stevie.
Oh poor love, thought Catherine, watching her friend’s eyes follow Jo to a quiet table for two in the opposite corner. Matthew joined her tentatively a few moments afterwards in a move choreographed slickly as the sweetly named Birds and Bees dance.
Catherine could tell Stevie had had enough by now, but she continued to clap with the others at another jolly reel, watching the pairings split and repair. Eddie still hadn’t left the dance floor. Having refreshed his passion for square-dancing, he was presently flinging his bulk about with Auntie Madge and wondering if they sold men’s kilts on eBay.
‘I think I’ll slip away home now,’ said Stevie. ‘I don’t think my stiff upper lip can take any more.’
Catherine nodded and kissed her on the head.
‘I’m proud of you. You’ve acted like an absolute lady. Have a long lie-in tomorrow and pick Danny up whenever. He won’t thank you for being early.’
Stevie didn’t doubt it. It didn’t appear that she was high up on anyone’s list of ‘people to be happy to see’.
Stevie asked the lady on Reception to phone her a taxi, then she sat on the big squashy couch, listening to the jolly strains of the music next door. The taxi wasn’t long in coming but no sooner had she got to the glass exit doors than Matthew’s voice came from behind.
‘Stevie, Stevie, wait!’
She turned around, a hopeful flutter in her heart, but he wasn’t making much eye-contact, which wasn’t exactly an encouraging sign.
‘Sorry, bad timing. Your taxi’s here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ she said. Her heart was thumping like a tom-tom issuing a distress signal.
‘Stevie, is it okay if I pop around tomorrow? About nine?’
‘In the morning?’
‘No, in the evening, when Danny’s in bed.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
Outside, the taxi driver gave an impatient jab on his horn.
‘Okay, see you tomorrow then,’ said Matthew, then he waved weakly and disappeared quickly back inside to the party.
‘Yes, see you tomorrow,’ said Stevie to his cold slipstream.
Chapter 17
A fortnight ago, Adam had never even seen the bloody woman, and now it seemed that everywhere he went, she was there as well. If her hatred of him hadn’t been so obvious, he would have thought she was stalking him. His gym, the wedding and now the supermarket on a quiet Sunday morning. Was there no peace?
He had been careful not to drink too much at the wedding last night. He didn’t want to give her or Matty Boy or Jo a speck of ammunition to use against him and he needed to keep control of the situation at all times. He had behaved impeccably and had even used the loo out in Reception so he wouldn’t bump into Matthew and scare him into making a mess of what looked like a very expensive suit.
He had been quite surprised at how controlled she had tried to be too, although she was really a bag of nerves, any fool could have seen that. What was it she had said when he asked her which side of the church she was to sit on? Broom? He had nearly laughed aloud at that. Broom!
He also noticed how much her eyes were taken up with the three other main players in this ridiculous production. Admittedly, he himself had been fascinated to watch Matthew and Jo stage-manage their ‘coming together’, just before ‘The Birds and the Bees’. He had suppressed a wry smile at their guile, although seeing Jo flirt with another man in that way poked at something ancient and violent within him. She and Matty Boy had stayed together all evening after that, careful not to give away any clues to their already established intimacy by making every move look casual, though this had been sabotaged somewhat as Jo kept having to sneak out her purse to pay for the drinks that Matthew went up to the bar to get. She wouldn’t have liked that one bit, and might have just won him Round 2 by default, which offset some of the feelings that were twisting in his gut like a blunt, rusty knife.
He saw that Matty Boy had run after his estranged partner when the time had come for her to leave, although he was gone less than a minute. Adam wondered what all that was about. Couldn’t have been much, because he went straight back to the table and there was a moment of discreet but heavy-duty talk between him and Jo. Not that he was watching them much. He was trying really hard to look as if he was unbothered and jolly. It was all part of his master-plan.
Dragging his thoughts back to the here and now, he watched her, hovering around the salad vegetables here in the local supermarket. She was wearing jeans and a green sweatshirt which complemented her ruffled blonde hair. She looked quite neat now and she had certainly scrubbed up nae bad in that little red suit and hat at the wedding, he had thought, although she must have wanted to die when Jo turned up in a reversal of the same colours. Jo looked so gorgeous that he would not have been able to stop himself kissing her and carrying her home, if she had given him the slightest encouragement. Something inside him had creaked when he saw her looking so long and lovely in that beautifully expensive suit, although commonsense told him that it was his stomach making that sound through hunger. His heart knew different.
No little boy with her again–so who had she palmed him off onto today, Adam wondered. He just bet the Mother of the Year awards were stacked high on her mantelpiece. Mind you, the kid was better off away from a mother with a temper like that. It must have been sheer luck that he hadn’t been hurt in the crossfire when she threw pans in temper at Matthew.
The Birds and the Bees Page 9