by Georgie Hall
The men all wore morning suits and rose buttonholes, my groom a picture of handsome blonde convention, anxious smile gleaming. I remember fleetingly thinking that if there’s just one day a man can be a peacock, surely it’s his wedding, so why can’t we share that glory equally?
But there’s only one Paddy in the world. Beneath the hired grey trousers and black tailcoat was a totally unique man. He is true to himself, no matter what he wears, as constant as the North star, a point on which my life always knows the way. I just wish I’d taken the time to appreciate it that day, but I was too busy eyeing the exits.
*
‘There’s no respect for tradition these days,’ grumbles an old bargee moored behind me as we watch the wedding party across the water.
The newlyweds are posing for shots beyond a thick veil of weeping willows, the flat-faced beefcake groom strutting around, shamelessly on-trend with a skinny-fitting petrol blue suit and no socks. His bride – a ringleted pillar-box redhead – keeps striking a Statue of Liberty pose with a champagne flute that’s more Tank Girl than blushing virgin. Her meringue’s bodice is corseted with punky geometric bows at the back, I notice – no doubt also one of this year’s trends – and she has a conspicuous tattoo at the nape of her neck. There’s something a bit odd about their body language, also about the ultra-fashionably dressed guests drifting around disinterestedly. It’s all show. Maybe that’s what marriages have become, I think sadly: ‘I now pronounce you man and wife; you may take a selfie.’
I’m grateful to still have Annie singing in my ears about original sin.
Heading inside the boat, I sing along as her mother tells her she can fool with her brother but not a…
‘“Missionary man”!’ I join in, looking round for something new to use to try to crack the Ashwell’s Patent Toilet Lock. The need for a wee is increasingly urgent. I remove an AirPod and knock on the door. ‘Are you OK in there Edward?’
Silence.
‘Edward!’
‘Mum, please don’t sing,’ he says in his monotone. ‘I am fine. I’ve measured the porthole and in the event of an accident caused by your inexperience navigating riverways in a narrowboat, I could fit through it, although I’d rather stay in here and play my 3DS if that’s OK, because I’ve almost reached the fifth level with Sonic. And before you ask, I’m not hungry because I’ve eaten two ganache truffles and one with toffee in it. And do you know these chocolates are for someone called Emma?’
‘Yes, Dame Emma Thompson. A fan mistook me for her.’
‘That’s so random.’
‘Actually no, Edward,’ I say in a firm maternal voice (not unlike Emma’s), ‘Random would be a wedding boat holding us up, on which Summer’s art mentor is the photographer!’
‘What’s random about that? She’s mentioned it enough times. Isn’t that why you chose this route?’
‘Of course I plotted it specifically to say hello to Mr Owusu,’ I seethe grumpily. ‘I’ve even brought spare champagne to toast the happy couple!’
Edward is too literal for sarcasm. ‘It’s irresponsible to handle rivercraft while under the influence of alcohol, Mum.’
‘Especially when there’s no toilet facilities available,’ I agree bleakly.
‘Have you finished talking?’
‘Yes.’ Pulling my phone from my pocket, I furtively check location tracking again. This isn’t the ‘cutting edge’ project Summer was talking about, surely? A wedding? I’m relieved to see that her avatar remains over her school.
*
I found it hard to think of my teachers having a life outside the classroom. At Shand Abbey Girls School (‘We’re Shags Forever!’), I was shocked to my core to learn that timid geography teacher Mrs Gorse loved sky diving in her spare time, Mr Nimmo the sexy piano tutor’s synth band had appeared on Opportunity Knocks, and my favourite English teacher Miss Ruskin – a dryly witty Dorothy Parker type – was an active member of The Sealed Knot who loved nothing more than re-enacting the Battle of Edgehill dressed as a buxom royalist.
Teachers were our sacred deities, our surrogate family, our first celebrities. To see them out of context often confused our small world construct. (Many of us feel the same about our parents’ working lives or private pastimes, mystery worlds we never see.)
A crush burns straight through context, seeing only what it wants to see, screening out all obstacles. While some see a polite, besuited part-time art teacher, Mr Owusu, others see loud and ambitious young photographer Kwasi – and a few of us still remember K-O the cool kid whose sheer raw talent, as well as his accent, made him stand out. Add enough filters of bright shiny love, and he’s elevated above it all to a legend, a god amongst gods.
*
Back outside, the wedding boat hasn’t budged. I jump back off The Tempest and pace around the moorings anxiously, wondering if anybody has noticed she is missing yet.
I want to get her much further along the river before I message Paddy, however hard my conscience is pricking (not to mention the pressing need for the secret behind springing the door lock, both to liberate Ed and my bladder). I’m still worried that Matteo recognised the boat. What if he really did run from the mill to Weir Brake Lock to try to shout for my attention? What if he alerts Miles? What if Mum does?
Don’t panic. They have no idea you’re here.
In my ears, Annie is repeatedly telling me to ‘believe’ and she’s right. I struggle with religion, but sometimes it does help to give it a passing nod, especially at my age.
Spotting the wooden board for All Saints’ Church, I take the freshly-strimmed track next to it and find myself alongside a pretty little village graveyard, shaded by yews, Annie now reassuring me ‘There Must Be an Angel’. Weird timing.
Out of respect for the dead, I close Spotify and pull out my AirPods. Now I can hear the wedding boat music – a kitschy jazz – along with chatter, laughter, shouting and swearing. I can’t make it all out, but I distinctly hear two ‘fook!’s from Kwasi. He never did strike me as having the temperament for wedding work – or teaching, come to that. He’s all livewire and unedited energy. As an earlier adopter of swearing myself, I feel his pain.
Especially with this bladder at capacity. ‘Fuckety, fuckety, fuck, fuck, fuck!’
I resist an urge to cross myself. I’m an atheist after all. But I do quietly apologise to the dead around me for what I’m about to do as I look around for a discreet spot to have a wee.
There’s a piece of string threaded through metal ground pegs by the path stopping walkers from getting too close to the graves, but I can still read their inscriptions. Many are couples buried together, I realise – Ronald and Jane, Tony and Gill, Alan and Margaret – they could be friends of my parents, enjoying an afterlife dinner party. It’s strangely reassuring.
I move further along and find I’m parallel with a freshly flowered grave from a recent burial, just a few lilies on the mound of earth. I stretch over to read the words stamped on the temporary wooden cross where the headstone will soon be placed.
Seeing my own name, I almost black out.
*
From teens to early twenties, I imagined my own funeral a lot, and in much detail. Always a burial, pretty churchyard, hearse pulled by black horses, lots of flowers, veiled mourners, The Smiths playing live in tribute, readings by Jeremy Irons (Yeats) and Julie Christie (Rossetti), tributes led by John Gielgud (‘the British Theatre has been robbed of its brightest rising star’). And, naturally, my exes all lined up side by side (numbers swelled by Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, et al) wailing, ‘Why did I let her go? How could Eliza die?’
Now I don’t like imagining my funeral.
Funny, that.
*
Elizabeth Fitch, 1919–2019.
Not my name at all, but a 100-year-old near-namesake. Twice the woman I am. What a survivor!
Now I look more closely, I can see there’s a rectangular shape where a headstone has been removed, presumably taken to a mason to be inscribed w
ith her name alongside an existing one. I hope that means Elizabeth will be joining her husband at the dinner party.
While it might not be a sign from above, the doppelganger name has popped up goosebumps of compassion. I want to lay some flowers for her, and while I still badly need a wee, I can’t possibly widdle near my namesake’s resting place. At least not until I’ve shown my respect.
Gripped with once-in-a-lifetime religious fervour, I sprint back to the lock to cross the footbridge, surprised to find the handsome bearded groom smoking furiously midway. (Black tobacco; very existential.) With him an oriental girl in a sharply tailored suit is holding the wedding bouquet in one hand and an oversized vanity case in the other, talking too fast. I catch ‘we have to do this his way’ and ‘we all know she’s way too frickin’ young for you’.
They look at me blankly as I try to get past.
I give it my best Richard Curtis eccentric-woman-at-wedding cameo, indicating the boat festooned with blooms and foliage, some of it already fallen into the river. ‘I was wondering if I might beg a flower or two for a friend’s grave?’
‘Be my guest.’ The girl thrusts the bridal bouquet at me then borrows the groom’s cigarette for a drag.
‘You can’t give me these!’
‘I caught them, lady, and trust me I’m not the marrying kind.’ They exchange a smirk. (Do I sense drama of the sort with face-slappings unbefitting of an English country wedding?)
‘Thank you! They’re beautiful.’ I beam at her, then at the groom. ‘And congratulations!’
‘Ha!’ He reclaims the cigarette, taking a final drag before flicking it into the water. (Paddy would go apeshit at littering Britain’s waterways, but I’m torn by the fact they’ve just handed me a hundred quid’s worth of floristry.) Then he leans towards me, whispering in a thick, Eastern European accent, ‘My new wife, she run away whenever I kiss her.’
‘Gosh. How tricky on your wedding day!’ I laugh politely, tempted to suggest he ditches the Gauloises habit. Then I look down at the flowers again, hand-tied peonies as garishly red as the bride’s hair. Elizabeth deserves these. And I can pay with some words of wisdom. ‘I was a bag of nerves on my wedding day too,’ I tell the groom quickly, ‘but something my father said to me proved entirely true: “A wedding’s just your ticket to love; it’s marriage that’s the journey”.’
They both swallow snorts of laughter, which isn’t quite the reaction I was hoping for. I feel even more outdated.
‘You really should put some socks on. You’re asking for foot odour like that.’ Waving my flowers gratefully, I beat a hasty retreat to rejoin Elizabeth.
*
When I got married, I felt an almost overwhelming urge to run, both in the build-up and on the day. I was sick with the urge to race off, dizzy with it. The only thing I can compare it to is vertigo, but I’d never suffered it at that point so I didn’t recognise it; I thought it was stress.
Then I had children and, BOOM. I experienced real vertigo. I was sick with the fear of falling, dizzy with it, heart palpitating. Since motherhood, my vertigo has blighted holiday sightseeing more than once, yet it makes no sense: as a child I thought nothing of scrambling from clifftops to isolated Cornish coves, as a teenager I climbed up the Eiffel Tower, in my twenties I sunbathed on high London roofs.
When I read up on vertigo to try to understand the illogical fear of open heights, it came as a shock to learn that it stems from a desire to throw yourself off.
Which must mean I really wanted to run away from my wedding.
I can’t deny, I feel a bit dizzy right now.
*
I lay the bouquet on Elizabeth’s newly covered grave and recite some Shakespeare from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Might not be her cup of tea at all, but she’s dead so she won’t care.
‘If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.’
With a silent apology and a quick check to make sure nobody’s around, I seek out a quiet spot behind a yew to have the wee and the relief is blissful.
As I grope for a dock leaf to use as loo paper, a cold sensation on my backside makes me headbutt the tree trunk. It’s a smiling labrador, wet from the river. A voice out of sight shouts, ‘Horatio!’
Horatio and I exchange a look of understanding before I hoick up my trousers double quick, wondering what possessed me to match button flies with a D-ring belt.
‘Hello!’ the dog walker and I hail heartily as I march back towards the riverbank, still trying to do up the belt.
Kwasi’s voice drifts across from the lock island. ‘Will you fooking get back here! Your wife’s waiting and she’s getting well pissed-off!’
With the restaurant boat blocking the lock, I’ve no choice but to wait too, and share her sentiment. This is not going as planned: I have a family stowaway locked in the loo; I’m behind schedule; I haven’t bought a change of trousers.
Shirley Valentine’s midlife trip to a Greek island turned into forever; Elizabeth Gilbert travelled the world to find herself in Eat, Pray, Love; a glamorous American played by Diane Lane restores her mojo and a villa Under The Tuscan Sun; Sue Townsend, the late and great creator of Adrian Mole, wrote a book about a woman of a certain age (and rage) who went to bed for a year.
I have elected to escape in a narrowboat for just one night and I’m already feeling crowded, delayed and inappropriately dressed. It’s all too disappointingly familiar. As is my sudden urge to give up, go home and snuggle up with Arty and the biscuit tin.
But Arty is no longer alive. I miss her more than ever.
*
Several boats are waiting below the lock as the wedding party continues laying siege to the island, jazz plinking from Lady Charlecote’s windows, glasses clinking.
The bride and groom have been reunited for a group shot beyond the willows. Both are drawing Kwasi’s wrath. ‘All I’m asking you to do is look at him like you fancy him! And you, mate, need to be more of a fooking gentleman!’
The redhead says something inaudible, to which the groom yells, ‘Is enough! I take no more sheet from little beetch!’ and struts off to smoke another cigarette while Kwasi draws the bride aside for an urgent pep talk, his arm around her. (Now I know post-millennials are far more fluid about these things than older birds like me, but I’d struggle to look fooking happy if Paddy didn’t step up to the plate himself to apologise/rationalise/do the pep talking at this point, especially on our wedding day.)
I can hear Kwasi laying on his flattery with an f word. ‘You’re my fooking Dora Maar, our Linder, the next Juno Calypso and a fooking goddess! These pictures will be mint!’ Even from here, I can see his shoulders rolling and white smile flashing.
(I’ve always admired that brand of youthful self-belief which dances from foot to foot as though on hot coals like so many wild young men do. It’s Edward who is our family dancer, bopping around when he’s overexcited about gaming.)
Pausing by the narrowboat’s porthole bathroom window, I peer in to see him cross-legged on the floor, his headphones on, studying his 3DS intently, Emma’s chocolate box open beside him. When my shadow darkens the room, Ed looks up and lifts his console to take a photograph of me, for which I pose with a reassuring smile and a double thumbs up. Act it.
Should I be kicking the door down to set him free, I wonder? Isn’t that what Emma Thompson would do? (Although an Oscar-winning Dame of the British Empire, Cambridge graduate and human rights activist is hardly likely to abscond with a boat she can barely steer for a childish dare. And even if she did, she’d call a locksmith to free her son before continuing.)
Sitting on a bench, I take out my phone and contemplate it for a moment, feeling defeated and angry, ready to switch off Do Not Disturb and call Paddy to fess up and beg help.
Pride won’t let me do it. I slot my earphones back in for female empowerment instead. Thank you Annie: we’re st
raight back with ‘There Must Be an Angel’. We could all use one of those.
A movement on the lock footbridge catches my eye, a flurry of white. But this is no angel.
‘Dad!’
I look up, pulling an earphone out. Surely it can’t be? How could I miss it?
My daughter is in a big white dress with big red hair.
Summer is the bride.
‘When I saw The Tempest I was like OHMYGOD! I love you, Dad!’ she’s shouting down at the boat (it seems she missed seeing me too, this motherly master of disguise in dark glasses and hat). ‘Where are you? DAD?’
I stand up, pulling out the other AirPod and losing the disguise.
‘Start the engine, Dad!’ She hurtles blindly towards The Tempest, mascara tears running down her face. ‘I need to get the fuck out of here!’ Then she slams on the brakes in shock as I step in front of her. ‘MUM!’
‘What’s going on, Summer?’ Her face is very different, but I can’t think why, the make-up immaculate as ever.
She pushes past me, eyes white-rimmed and fierce. ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘No matter, we need to get going NOW!’
I hesitate, glancing at the bathroom porthole. Ed’s face is peering out. Calm voice, Eliza. ‘We’re not going anywhere until I know what’s happening, Summer.’
She dodges past me. ‘I’ll start the engine!’
‘Who is that bearded man with no socks on?’ I hurry after her, feeling light-headed. ‘Please tell me you haven’t just married him? And how in HELL did you get that tattoo?’
She has a phrase inked across the top of her spine in a swirly font.
‘I’ll explain later.’ She’s already jumping onto the bow, her netted skirts wider than the deck. ‘The lock gates are opening, look!’
Which is when I realise that amid much whooping and light piano jazz, the restaurant boat is on the move, and the lock is being speedily reset by half a dozen wedding guests, no longer stylishly aloof but cranking and heaving and loudly ordering the waiting boats back so we can power straight in and out. I recognise a couple of faces from Summer’s sixth form crowd.