by Kirsty Eyre
‘One day I hope to be a grandmother,’ Joely says, her head in my lap as we lounge on the lawn.
‘I’m sure you will,’ I say, but can’t imagine age ever creeping up on Joely. It’s hard to imagine how anyone with such porcelain-smooth skin and glossy dark hair could ever get old. She’s just not that kind of person.
Joely walks her fingers across my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I hid away with my work earlier.’ She kisses me gently on the neck, making her way higher and higher until her tongue is in my ear. ‘I was just nervous.’
‘It’s OK.’
The beech hedge rustles, causing us both to look round. There’s nothing there. I look into the field beyond, where the cows graze silently, nipping at wood sorrel and celandines. My eyes are about to leave the field when I notice a ruddy-faced sweaty man staring at us over the fence, his skin covered in tattoos and his face full of piercings.
Dad appears with a bag of sawdust. ‘I see you’ve met Nathan,’ he says, waving to the hairy man over the hedge. ‘He’s from the agency. Does the odd day for me here and there. Nathan, this is my daughter, Billie.’ Nathan stands up properly so we can see him over the hedge and pulls at the plaited tuft of hair sprouting from his chin. He stares at Joely.
‘And her friend, Joely,’ Dad adds.
I go to wave, but he looks away. What is it about farming staff and people skills? It’s as if their love of animals is inversely proportional to their love of people. I’ve seen various people come and go. When the farm was bigger, Dad had a toothless operations manager called China, who found it impossible to look anyone in the eye, let alone talk to them, but he was brilliant with the herd and understood each and every one of them.
Joely hugs her knees to her chest. ‘What time are we leaving tomorrow?’
If I can just get Joely through the next twenty-four hours, we should be OK.
Baslow Methodist Church is a tiny building on School Lane, no bigger than a cottage. It may not be a particularly grand piece of architecture, but it has played host to every religious event of my family for the last four generations on account of my great-great-grandfather’s affinity for the vicar; I’m convinced, the source of my gay genetics.
I’m struggling in one of Joely’s wrap dresses. It may be designed for ‘any shape, any size’ but definitely requires more chest than I’ve got for it to sit right. A sea of hats and suits mingle on the pavement opposite. Grandma has driven to Bakewell to pick up her friend, Beatrice, who’s moved into a flat above The Bridle Shop and can no longer drive. Heads swivel towards Joely.
‘Do I look OK?’ Joely says, adjusting the tiny silver dragonflies in her ears.
‘Perfect.’ I nod hello to a couple I don’t know.
‘I should have worn the other earrings.’ She examines her reflection in a small compact mirror.
‘Joels, you look great.’
‘Do you mind if we go back for the other earrings?’
‘Trust me, the dragonflies look perfect.’
She snaps the compact mirror shut and exhales sharply.
A group from Auntie June’s belly-dancing club make a beeline for us and are about to pounce, when one of them twists her ankle on the kerb, her pantaloons shedding gold sequins onto the pavement. Joely spots her escape and marches me towards the village shop.
‘We need to buy confetti!’ She flings me into the store, out of earshot and away from prying eyes.
Ginger, the three-legged village cat, wanders down the cereal aisle towards us.
‘Everybody is staring!’ Joely hisses behind the cornflakes.
‘They’re not,’ I say, aware that Marjorie Pearce, the store owner, is openly staring at us right now from behind the till. Her snow-white hair has been chopped into a bob, which swings under her ears as she moves this way and that, trying to get a better look at us. She’s bony thin these days and wouldn’t look amiss on a broomstick.
‘They are.’ Joely shivers, her legs and arms covered in goose bumps.
‘Well, fuck them!’ I say, glaring at Marjorie, whose birdlike frame is now pivoting on tiptoes, neck craned, spying on us over the chewing-gum stand like an inquisitive meerkat. ‘They’ve had plenty of years to get their head around it. They must be used to the idea by now.’ As the words leave my mouth, I realize that, although that should be the case, it really isn’t. Take Marjorie, for example.
Marjorie has known me since I was six. She has a boy a year older than me and a girl a year younger than me, and we were all at primary school together. She’s given me lifts to gymnastics displays, trampolining competitions, book clubs and swimming lessons. And while she took me under her wing as a nipper, me being motherless and her being maternal, she dropped me like an illegitimate brick as soon as village rumours of me ‘getting the bus the wrong way’ morphed into concrete evidence, when her son caught me with my tongue down the throat of a fellow girl guide.
‘Looking for anything in particular?’ Marjorie bobs her head this way and that like an owl trying to get comfortable, white curtains of hair swaying at the sides of her pointy chin.
‘We’re good, thanks,’ I say, grabbing Joely’s hand and exiting the shop. We don’t need confetti that badly.
‘See you in a few moments at the party!’ she shouts at our retreating backs.
Outside, the happy-once-again couple arrive in a shiny black trap pulled by a shiny black carthorse. Auntie June looks several shades darker than usual and is crammed into a segmented, cream satin dress that someone should have told her not to wear. Uncle Pete looks like he’s dressed for golf.
A small crowd of people whoop and cheer as Auntie June clambers down, her full-length dress getting caught in the wheel. Someone behind me whistles ‘Here Comes the Bride’, prompting Uncle Pete to follow with Chopin’s ‘Death March’. Auntie June bends over to pick up her fallen bouquet of white roses and in doing so, falls out of her low-cut dress, giving everyone an eyeful.
Uncle Pete climbs down from the other side, a Canon camera clanking around his neck. ‘Billie!’ he says, singling me out. ‘You’re a dab hand at photography, aren’t you?’ He lifts the strap over his head and hands me the camera. ‘Time to put that diploma to use!’
I don’t have a photography diploma. He’s probably thinking of the evening photography course I did eight years ago purely because I had a crush on a girl who was doing that module (Anne-Marie, willowy blonde, wore Gucci Rush), which I quit when Anne-Marie told me she had a boyfriend and our teacher congratulated me on an accidental shot of my bedroom carpet when I was playing with the settings. However, I sense by the lift in Joely’s face that she is impressed that I do have a photography diploma and figure this is not a moment to disappoint.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Uncle Pete, this is Joely.’
‘La belle Française!’ He bows in what he considers playful camaraderie but Joely interprets as mocking. ‘Nice to meet you, Joely.’
She flashes a withering smile and I want the earth to swallow me up. It’s not like Uncle Pete isn’t a moron but, still, a little tolerance wouldn’t go amiss.
Auntie June joins us. ‘Thanks for stepping in, Billie.’ She giggles as Uncle Pete helps himself to a handful of her bottom as they play out one of their demonstrably frisky phases that we have to endure biannually when Uncle Pete is dry and remorseful for sleeping with whoever he’s slept with. Joely flashes me a look; although it’s widely accepted that you can’t pick your family, it’s still pretty mortifying.
‘Have you met Joely?’ I try to get things back on track.
‘Hi,’ Joely says, admiring Auntie June’s dress. ‘You look beautiful.’
I can’t tell whether Joely really does think my auntie looks beautiful or not, partly because of her poker face, and partly because Auntie June clearly looks like an enormous chrysalis.
‘Your dad’s not sure he can make it.’ Grandma appears at my side in the sky-blue twinset she wears to every church occasion. ‘Hoof crisis, apparently.’ She drops her phone back into her
navy handbag and tuts.
We both know Dad is skiving. He hates anything to do with weddings and public displays of affection.
Beatrice totters over in pleated lemon yellow, a cream handbag wedged in the crevice of her inner elbow. She’s very shaky these days and has to walk with a stick.
‘Have you introduced Joely to your auntie Bea?’ Grandma says.
Auntie Beatrice is not a real aunt but is as good as. She and Grandma met at primary school in Hathersage and they’ve been thick as thieves from Girls’ Brigade to the Women’s Institute. Puberty, childbirth, the menopause and widowhood; they’ve been through everything together, their womance spanning nine decades.
‘Who’ve we got here then?’ Beatrice says, squinting at Joely.
‘Beatrice, this is Joely,’ I say.
Joely smiles. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Beatrice turns to me. ‘You know, the whole women-with-women thing wouldn’t have been allowed back in our day.’
‘I remember you saying,’ I reply, raising an eyebrow at Joely, who glances round the car park. Beatrice has rolled this gem out a good few times over the years, but this is the first time she’s opened Pandora’s box in front of a new girlfriend.
I make up an excuse about needing the loo and usher Joely into the church garden.
‘You OK?’ I say.
‘Your family are a little—’
‘Embarrassing?’ I suggest.
‘They don’t like me,’ she says.
‘Of course, they like you, they’re just … Well, you know what families are like.’
Her phone rings, which she answers straight away, scuttling past Uncle Pete, who demonstrates his golf swing to a lady in leather. Resignedly, I pick up the camera.
Click. A troupe of semi-naked belly-dancers awaiting their moment under a floral pagoda. Click. Auntie June’s original bridesmaids, who have tripled in size since their debut. Click. Marjorie, store keys jangling from her bony fingers, scavenging hyena-like for gossip. Click. Tazzy, local lollipop lady and Village Intelligence, named after the Tasmanian devil on account of her Australian ancestry, cuddly exterior and deadly-strong bite. Click. Doreen Peterson, a plump, cheery old soul with rosy cheeks and a whiskery face, who moved into the village from Cornwall a year ago when her son got a job up here. Rumour has it, she’s bought out the butcher’s to open a bakery, which the evil son persuaded her to call ‘Buns & Baps’, the pun completely lost on her. Click. Paul Pickering, ginger, always wears a waistcoat, not to be confused with his twin brother, Andy Pickering, my dad’s ex-farmhand (also ginger), who recently got charged with sheep rustling. Click. Joely leaning against the entrance to the church, a faraway look in her eyes. Click. Uncle Pete, his hand down one of the bridesmaid’s tops.
‘Please replace divots!’ a bald man with bad sunburn yells in a harsh Northern Irish accent as the belly dancers thunder across the lawn in preparation for their dance. Graham Pearce, Marjorie’s husband and Dad’s feed-provider, lurches towards me, his head a shiny lobster pink. ‘Bell Ender!’
That’s the thing about being called ‘Belinda’ when someone with a strong Northern Irish accent pronounces it.
I go to take his photo.
He frowns. ‘Did you ask for consent?’
He’s obviously joking. Or is he? I can’t tell. I never could when I was little, either. It’s weird to think that I was once sick on his carpet and used to help his children raid his record collection when he was out.
‘Who’s the lovely lady then?’ He gestures to the car park with his can of Carlsberg, where Joely is immersed in her phone conversation.
‘That’s Joely,’ I say proudly.
He lowers his voice. ‘I think it’s wonderful. Take no notice of what the others say.’
‘Right,’ I say, bracing myself for what’s coming next but, luckily, we’re saved by the bell, which announces the start of belly dancing.
Tambourines jingle. Tassels swish. Sequins gleam and flesh undulates. Track number two from ‘Sexy Sadie’ sees Auntie June transforming into some sort of braying unicorn a bit too close to a bed of begonias, and I’m so bloody relieved that Joely misses the whole thing, frowning at her phone in the shade of a rhododendron bush.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask when she finally wanders back over.
‘Just work.’ She slips her phone into her bag.
For a company dedicated to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to ‘do more, feel better, live longer’, KSG seems hellbent on destroying the health of its employees. Still, I’ve got a pretty big meeting with KSG tomorrow and I’ve not checked my phone once. I know this party’s not exactly her cup of tea, but she could surely fake it a bit. It’s not like the ‘Culture under Attack’ installation exhibition she took me to was particularly my bag, but I still managed to nod and smile in the right places, because it’s common decency not to piss on each other’s bonfires.
We head into the church. I keep having to yank up the wrap dress and check I haven’t exposed a nipple.
‘I always feel strange when I visit a religious building,’ Joely says. ‘Like I haven’t merited the right to enter.’
‘Brace yourself. It’s not exactly Notre Dame.’ I smooth the dress down over my hips.
The church is draughty. Grandma helps Beatrice up the aisle and takes her place front right. I sit down next to her and look to Joely, who adjusts the clasp on the front of her dress, sending a waft of hyacinth and cedar in my direction. She puts her hand on my knee and I ripple with pride. Perhaps I’ve been too harsh on Joely. Weddings are always difficult when you don’t know anyone.
The order of service contains a flyer for ‘Knit, Natter, Craft and Chatter’. Beneath the lyrics to ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, there’s a blurry photo of Auntie June and Uncle Pete cutting the cake on their wedding day. She’s all toothy and un-composed and his whole face is a grin.
The church organ starts up and a large lady in vicar’s robes waddles to the front.
‘Oh dear!’ Grandma says loudly as the vicar takes to the pulpit only a few inches away from us. ‘This one’s rubbish!’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ I whisper, bracing myself for an onslaught of fattist comments – anyone slightly paunchy and Grandma has them down as elephantine.
Grandma peers over her hymn book. ‘Her hemline’s all over the place!’
The vicar’s eyes become slits and her voice rises a few decibels. She reads a poem pledging the fusion of hearts and minds, and the cultivation of compassion. Pews creak, bottoms fidget and bags rustle until Auntie June and Uncle Pete recite their vows, promising to love, honour and trust each other. Auntie June talks about embracing the joy of equanimity, and I can’t be the only one wondering whether that means she has the right to sleep around too. Finally, he pushes a sapphire onto her finger (she’s removed her previous eternity rings for the occasion). Grandma mutters her disgruntlement at the elaborateness of it all and Beatrice has fallen asleep. I’m beginning to wish I’d never subjected Joely to any of this, when she takes my hand and squeezes it under her shawl, and I don’t want this weekend to end.
On the way out, Grandma introduces me to a group of tea-drinking, bourbon-dipping pensioners as ‘the queer one’. A lady in beige trousers and a floral blouse asks us if we’d ‘like to make friends with God’ at next week’s pizza night. I explain we’re only up for the weekend, Joely clinging to my arm, her knuckles all white.
In the corner of the car park stand the horse and trap, and I drag Joely over to admire it slash escape the casual homophobia. She admires the vintage carriage, running her fingers over the gold-embossed Yorkshire rose on the back.
‘I wouldn’t. It’s quite dirty,’ a familiar voice says. Lorna Parsons appears from behind the horse, a deep frown etched on her forehead. She wears white jodhpurs and a herringbone blazer with a trim of navy velvet. Lorna Parsons, who is leaving newspaper cuttings about gay saunas with my dad. Lorna Parsons, who humiliated me at school and ea
rned me the most abhorrent nickname a girl can get. I shudder at the memory, the words ‘bull sperm’ ringing in my ears. Lorna Parsons: my countryside nemesis.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I thought these days Guy was the horsy one and you were all about cows?’
‘We help each other out.’ She busies herself with the bridle.
‘It’s beautiful.’ Joely gestures to the trap, her face alight with wonder.
‘My mum found it dumped behind some caravans at the back of the livery.’ Lorna yanks at the bridle with impatience, the buckle not doing what it should. ‘She decided to restore it.’
‘Lorna, this is my girlfriend, Joely. Joely, this is Lorna, my dad’s vet.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ Joely says. She turns to me. ‘What’s a livery?’
Lorna looks up and, I swear, does a double-take at my wrap dress and looks away again.
‘It’s a kind of farm where you stable horses,’ I say.
Joely looks horrified.
‘Stable,’ I say. ‘Not staple.’
‘It’s not really a farm,’ Lorna says haughtily.
‘OK, it’s a place to keep horses.’ I exhale sharply.
‘It’s a lot less interesting than a farm,’ Lorna says, battling with the bridle. ‘I should know, I grew up there.’
Joely zones out. ‘Can we take a ride?’
Lorna rearranges her fringe over the scar on her forehead, her eyes glued to the problematic strap. ‘I shouldn’t really.’
‘What about just to the end of the lane and back?’ I say.
‘OK, if we’re quick,’ Lorna says.
Joely hitches up her dress and climbs the side step. I go to follow but Lorna blocks my path with her arm. ‘Other side,’ she says. ‘I need to be in the middle if I’m to steer.’
I walk round to the other side and clamber in. The seat cushion feels as though it’s been stashed in a damp stable for decades and smells of mildew. Joely eyes the dog-hair-ridden blanket strewn over the back rest with suspicion. There isn’t much leg space, something that doesn’t bother a short-arse like me, but encumbers Joely, who is forced to dangle her legs out of the side.