George found himself shaking David’s hand and saying, “David,” which was not part of the plan at all.
“You must be very proud indeed,” said David.
“That’s not the point,” said George.
The woman slipped away.
“No,” said David. “You’re right. Everyone says it. But it is rather a selfish way of looking at it. Whether Katie’s happy. That’s the important thing.”
Christ, he was slippery. George was beginning to see how he had wormed his way into Jean’s affections.
To think that he had worked with this man for fifteen years.
David raised an eyebrow. “Mind you, Sarah was telling me that Katie and Ray are paying for all this themselves.” He swept an arm over the room as if he owned it. “Now that is a canny move, George.”
He had to do it now. “I’m afraid—”
But David interrupted, saying, “How’s the rest of life?” and George’s head was starting to spin a little and David sounded so earnest and so caring that George had to fight back the urge to confess to David that he had cut himself with a pair of scissors and ended up in hospital after finding his wife having sexual intercourse with another man.
He realized that he was not going to ask David to leave. He did not have the strength. Morally or physically. If he tried to eject David he would probably cause a commotion and embarrass Katie. Maybe doing nothing was for the best. And surely today, of all days, was one during which he should put his own feelings to one side.
“George?” asked David.
“Sorry?”
“I was asking how things were going,” said David.
“Fine,” said George. “They’re fine.”
134
Katie pushed the salmon out of picking range.
She quite liked the idea of ending her wedding day not feeling bloated, and she wanted to leave a bit of space for the tiramisu.
Ray was idly fondling her leg under the table. To his left Mum and Alan were talking about hellebores and ornamental brassicas. To her right Barbara was telling Dad about the joys of caravanning. Dad looked very happy indeed, so he was presumably thinking about something else at the same time.
They were sitting about six inches higher than everyone else. It was like something off the telly. The waitresses in their white jackets. The clink of posh cutlery. The little rumble of canvas.
It was weird seeing David Symmonds seated on the far side of the marquee, chatting to Mona and dabbing the corners of his mouth with a napkin. She’d pointed him out to Ray and now she was going to ignore him, like she was ignoring the barking from Eileen and Ronnie’s dog which had been relocated to a nearby garden and was mightily pissed off about the fact.
She licked her fingers and cleaned the bread crumbs from her side plate.
Tony and Jamie were still holding hands very publicly at the table. Which was sweet. Even Mum thought so. Ray’s parents seemed oblivious. Maybe their eyesight wasn’t up to scratch. Or maybe all men held hands in Hartlepool.
Dad touched her arm. “How’s tricks?”
“Tricks is good,” said Katie. “Tricks is very good.”
The tiramisu arrived and it was a bit of an anticlimax, frankly. But the chocolates that were served with the coffee were fantastic. And when Jacob came to snuggle in her lap he was more than a little disappointed to find that she’d already eaten hers (Barbara valiantly surrendered her own to keep the peace).
Then there was a loud rap on the table, the chatter subsided and Ed got to his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is traditional at weddings for the best man to stand up and tell crude stories and offensive jokes and make everyone feel really uncomfortable.”
“Quite right,” shouted Uncle Douglas.
Nervous laughter ran round the marquee.
“But this is a modern wedding,” said Ed. “So I’m going to say some nice things about Katie and some nice things about Ray. I’m going to read a few telegrams and say a few thank-yous. Then Sarah, Katie’s best woman, is going to stand up and tell crude stories and offensive jokes and make everyone feel really uncomfortable.”
More nervous laughter ran round the marquee.
Jacob sucked his thumb and fiddled with her wedding ring, and Ray put his arm round her and said, quietly, “I love you, wife.”
135
George sipped at his dessert wine.
“Anyway, she dropped the earlobe,” said Sarah. “So this policeman has to poke around in the footwell. And I don’t know how many of you ever sat in that Fiat Panda, but you could lose, like, a whole dog on the floor of that car. Apple cores. Cigarette packets. Biscuit crumbs.”
Judy was holding a napkin over her mouth. George was unsure whether she was trying to suppress laughter or preparing to vomit.
Katie’s friend was surprisingly good at public speaking. Though George found it hard to believe the Paul Harding story. Was it really possible that a young man could climb out of Katie’s bedroom window, fall from the kitchen roof and break his ankle without George knowing? Perhaps it was. So many things seemed to have been kept from him or simply escaped his notice.
He took another sip of the dessert wine.
Jamie and Tony were still holding hands. He had absolutely no idea how he was meant to react to this. Only a few months ago he would have stopped it happening to prevent other people being offended. But he was less sure of his opinions now, and less sure of his ability to stop anything happening.
His grip on the world was loosening. It belonged to the young people now. Katie, Ray, Jamie, Tony, Sarah, Ed. As it should do.
He did not mind growing old. It was foolish to mind growing old. It happened to everyone. But that did not make it painless.
He wished only that he commanded a little more respect. Perhaps it was his own fault. He recalled spending some time that morning lying in a ditch. It did not seem like a terribly dignified activity. And if one did not act with dignity, how could one command respect?
He leant over and took hold of Jacob’s hand and squeezed it gently, thinking how alike they were, both of them circling in some outer orbit, thousands of miles away from the bright center where the decisions were made and the future was shaped. Though they were moving in opposite directions, of course, Jacob toward the light and himself away from it.
Jacob’s hand did not respond. It remained limp and lifeless. George realized that his grandson was asleep.
He let go of Jacob’s hand and emptied his wineglass.
The blunt truth was that he had failed. At pretty much everything. Marriage. Parenthood. Work.
He never did start painting again.
Then Sarah said, “…a few words from the father of the bride,” which took him completely by surprise.
Luckily there was some introductory applause, during which he was able to gather his thoughts. As he did so he recalled the conversation he had had with Jamie before lunch.
He got to his feet and looked around at the guests. He felt rather emotional. Precisely which emotions he felt it was difficult to say. There were a number of different ones, and this in itself was confusing.
He raised a glass. “I would like to propose a toast. To my wonderful daughter, Katie. And to her fine husband, Ray.”
The words, “To Katie and Ray,” were echoed back at him.
He went to sit down again, then paused. It struck him that he was making a kind of farewell performance, that he would never again have sixty or seventy people hanging on his every word. And not to seize this opportunity seemed an admission of defeat.
He straightened up again.
“We spend most of our time on the planet thinking we are going to live forever…”
136
Jean gripped the edge of the table.
If she’d been any nearer she could have reached across to grab George’s sleeve and force him back into his seat, but Katie and Ray were in the way and everyone was watching them and she could see no way of intervening without making matters worse.<
br />
“As some of you may know, I have not been well recently…”
God in heaven, he was going to talk about harming himself and going to hospital and seeing a psychiatrist, wasn’t he. And he was going to do it in front of pretty much every person they knew. It was going to make Jamie kissing Tony seem like very small beer indeed.
“We all look forward to retiring. Doing the garden properly. Reading those birthday and Christmas books we never got round to reading.” A couple of people laughed. Jean had no idea why. “Shortly after I retired I discovered a small tumor on my hip.”
Wendy Carpenter was in the middle of chemotherapy right now. And Kenneth had that lump taken out of his throat last August. Lord alone knows what they were thinking.
“I realized that I was going to die.”
Jean focused on the sugar bowl and tried to pretend she was in that nice hotel in Paris.
137
Jamie was watching his father weep in front of seventy people and experiencing something which felt very like appendicitis.
“Me. Jean. Alan. Barbara. Katie. Ray. We’re all going to die.” A glass rolled off a table and shattered somewhere toward the back of the marquee. “But we don’t want to admit it.”
Jamie glanced sideways. Tony was staring at his father. He looked as if he’d been electrocuted.
“We don’t realize how important it is. This…this place. Trees. People. Cakes. Then it’s taken away. And we realize our mistake. But it’s too late.”
In a nearby garden Eileen’s dog barked.
138
George had lost the thread somewhat.
The dessert wine had not sharpened his mind. He had been a good deal more emotional than he had intended. He had mentioned the cancer, which was not festive. Was it possible that he had made a fool of himself?
It seemed best to round off his speech as quickly and elegantly as he could.
He turned to Katie and took her hand. Jacob was dozing on her lap, so the gesture was a little clumsier than he had planned. It would have to do.
“My lovely daughter. My lovely, lovely daughter.” What was he trying to say, precisely? “You and Ray and Jacob. Never. Never take one another for granted.”
That was better.
He let go of Katie’s hand and glanced round the marquee for one final time before taking his seat and caught sight of David Symmonds sitting in the far corner. The man had been facing the other way during the meal. Consequently George had been spared the sight of him while he was eating.
It occurred to George not only that he might have made a fool of himself but that he might have done this while David Symmonds was watching.
“Dad?” said Katie, touching his arm.
George was frozen halfway between sitting and standing.
The man looked so self-satisfied, so healthy, so bloody dapper.
The images started to come back. The ones he had tried not to picture for so long. The man’s saggy buttocks going up and down in the half-light of the bedroom. The sinews in his legs. That chickeny scrotum.
“Dad?” asked Katie.
George could bear it no longer.
139
Jean screamed. Partly because George was climbing across the table. Partly because he’d knocked a pot of coffee over and the hot, brown liquid was running toward her. She leapt backward and someone else screamed. George jumped off the table and began walking down the marquee.
She turned to Ray. “For God’s sake, do something.”
Ray froze for a second, then got out of his seat and headed off after George.
He was too late.
Jean saw where George was going.
140
George stopped in front of David.
It was very, very quiet in the marquee.
George took aim and swung his fist at David’s head. Unfortunately David’s head moved at the last minute, George missed his target and he was forced to grab hold of someone’s shoulder to prevent himself falling over.
Luckily, when David stood up in order to make his escape, his feet became entangled in his chair and he fell clumsily backward, his arms circling wildly as if he was trying to backstroke out of George’s reach across the tablecloth.
This gave George a second opportunity to punch him. But punching someone was considerably harder than it looked in films, and George had had very little practice in this department. Consequently his second punch hit David in the chest, which was not satisfying.
The chair was in the way. That was the problem. George kicked it to one side. He leant down, grabbed the lapels of David’s jacket and head-butted him.
After this it was hard to know quite who was hitting whom. But there was a lot of blood and George was fairly sure it belonged to David, so that was good.
141
The image which stuck in Jamie’s mind was that of a tiramisu and its accompanying spoon tumbling in slow motion through the air at head height. His father and David Symmonds had fallen backward onto the table. The near side had collapsed and the far side had shot up like a seesaw, firing a variety of objects into the air (one of Katie’s friends was very proud of having caught a fork).
From this point on it felt more like a road accident. Everything very clear and detached and slow. No abdominal pain anymore. Just a series of tasks which had to be done to prevent further injury.
Ray bent down and began detaching Jamie’s father from David Symmonds. David Symmonds’s face was covered in blood. Jamie was rather impressed that a man of his father’s age was capable of doing that kind of damage.
Jamie and Tony looked at one another and made one of those instant, unspoken decisions and decided to go and help. They got to their feet and jumped across the table, which would have been rather Starsky and Hutch, except that Jamie got a buttered roll stuck to his trouser leg.
They reached the far side of the marquee together. Tony knelt down next to David because he’d done a first-aid course and because David seemed to have come off worst. Jamie went to talk to his father.
Just as he arrived Ray was saying, “What in God’s name did you do that for?” And his father was about to reply when Jamie’s brain shifted into warp speed and it dawned on him that no one knew why his father had done it. Only him and Katie, his mother and his father. And David, obviously. And Tony, because Jamie had been filling him in on all the gossip before lunch. And the reason his mother had run out of the marquee was because she thought everyone else was going to find out. Though if Jamie acted quickly they might be able to pass the incident off as drug-induced craziness. Because after that speech it was pretty clear to everyone that his father was not in his right mind.
So when his father said, “Because—” Jamie slapped a hand across his mouth to stop him saying anything else, and he might have done it a bit too hard because the smack sound was quite loud and Ray and his father both looked startled, but it stopped his father talking at least.
Jamie leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”
His father said, “Nnnnn.”
Jamie turned to Ray and said, “Take him indoors. Upstairs. The bedroom. Just…just keep him there, all right?”
Ray said, “Right you are,” as if Jamie had asked him to shift a sack of potatoes. He got Jamie’s father to his feet and began walking him out of the marquee.
Jamie went over to Tony.
David was saying, “The man’s a maniac.”
Jamie said, “I’m really sorry about that.” Then he turned to Tony and said, quietly, “Take him into the living room and call an ambulance.”
Tony said, “I don’t think he needs an ambulance.”
“Or a taxi or whatever. Just get him out of the house.”
“Oh, right, I see what you mean,” said Tony. He put his hand under David’s arm. “Come on, mate.”
Jamie stood up and turned round and realized that all of this had taken only a matter of seconds and the remaining guests were sitting stock-still and completely speechless, even
Uncle Douglas, which was a first. And they were clearly expecting some kind of explanation or announcement, and Jamie was the person they were expecting it from, but he had to talk to his mother first, so he said, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and ran out of the marquee and found her standing on the far side of the lawn being consoled by a woman he didn’t recognize, while Ray and Tony ushered his father and David into the house, both of them keeping a tight hold on their charges to prevent any of the three coming into contact with one another.
His mother was crying. The woman he didn’t recognize was hugging her.
Jamie said, “I need to talk to my mother on her own.”
The older woman said, “I’m Ursula. I’m a good friend.”
“Go back inside the marquee,” said Jamie. The woman did not move. “Sorry. That sounded rude. And I didn’t mean to be rude. But you really do have to go away quite quickly.”
The woman backed off, saying, “OK,” in that careful voice you use with psychopaths to keep them calm.
Jamie took hold of his mother’s arms and looked her in the face. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I can explain everything,” said his mother. She was still crying.
“You don’t need to,” said Jamie.
“No,” said his mother. “That man, the one your father hit—”
“I know,” said Jamie.
His mother paused briefly and then said, “Oh my God.”
Her legs went a little rubbery and Jamie had to hold her upright for a couple of seconds. “Mum…?”
She steadied herself with a hand on his arm. “How did you know?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Jamie. “Luckily no one else knows.” He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this manly and competent. He had to move fast before the spell was broken. “We’re going back in. I’m going to make a speech.”
“A speech?” His mother looked petrified.
Jamie was a little nervous himself.