A Bit of a Do

The procession had reached the more important guests, first cousins twice removed, second cousins once removed, friends, uncles, aunts with unsuitable hats, Rita’s slightly glazed parents, brothers, mothers, one wishing her son’s hair was shorter, the other wishing her daughter’s hair was longer – was nobody happy on this happy day? Certainly not the Reverend J. D. Thorough-good. Hardly a genuine churchgoer among the whole caboosh.

As Laurence came level with Liz, he gave her a brief glance. ‘What kind of a dash am I cutting?’ it asked.

In reply Liz smiled, a brief demonstration of a smile, indicating to her husband that he was to remember to look happy.

Laurence nodded imperceptibly, then smiled bravely, though not entirely successfully. He was a tall, slim man with cool eyes, handsome in a rather theoretical way, like a drawing of a good-looking man. His hair was receding quietly, sensibly, with impeccable manners. Men considered him a fine figure of a man. Women didn’t.

Ted Simcock nudged Paul, who stepped forward, almost tripping. At the sight of Paul, Laurence’s smile flickered, then fluttered bravely, like an upside-down Union Jack in a stiff, biting, easterly wind. And the sunlight disappeared brutally, as if it had been switched off.

Paul Simcock, the badly groomed groom, was twenty-one, and very nervous. His face seemed to be trying to hide beneath all that hair. His tie was very loosely tied – a compromise which pleased nobody. His inexpensive suit had almost been fashionable teenage wear when he had bought it. Five years later it was a museum piece. He had filled out in those five years, and it barely met around his groin, buttocks, chest and shoulders. He felt as if it had put him on in a great hurry. Buttons would burst and the zip fly open if he so much as gazed at a hard-boiled egg and Danish caviare canapé, and a pint of Theakston’s Best would be out of the question. How he wished now that he hadn’t been so stubborn in refusing his father’s offer of a new suit.

How he wished he hadn’t chosen the uncouth Neil Hodgson as best man.

The organ music ceased. ‘Dearly beloved,’ said the Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood rather severely, as if hinting that they would be more dearly beloved if more regularly seen at church. ‘We are gathered here together in the sight of God …’

‘I don’t believe in Him,’ thought Jenny. ‘I wish we’d done it in a registry office.’

‘… woman in Holy Matrimony, which is an honourable estate,’ continued the vicar, whose own daughter had run off to London seventeen years ago and had never been seen again. Some said he retained the old words in all his services because for him time had stopped at that moment. ‘… instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency …’

Liz Rodenhurst looked round at exactly the same time as Ted Simcock. Her eyes glinted, and Ted, father of the groom, spurned offerer of new suits, turned away hastily and hung on the vicar’s words with exaggerated attention.

Liz smiled.

‘… and therefore is not by any to be enterprized, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites.’

‘No mention of women’s carnal lusts and appetites, I notice,’ thought Liz.

‘… but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly …’

‘Oh I hope so,’ thought Rodney Sillitoe, managing director of Cock-A-Doodle Chickens and close friend of the groom’s parents. ‘I’ll be watching her.’

‘I’ll be watching him,’ thought his wife Betty, who was overdressed as usual. ‘If he lets the side down today …’

‘… for which Matrimony was ordained,’ continued the vicar in his strong, steady, undramatic Yorkshire voice, so unlike those comedy vicars on television which his wife always switched off, though they amused him as evidence of the media’s tiny minds – not that either of them watched comedy or indeed television much, especially since time had stopped. ‘First it was ordained for the procreation of children …’

‘Yes, well,’ said Paul Simcock silently, but half expecting to be heard by God, because under the powerful influence of the devotional atmosphere it seemed possible that He might exist after all. ‘I’m afraid we jumped the gun a bit there.’

‘… the Lord, and to the praise of his Holy Name.’ The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood’s voice brought a touch of the hard limestone country into this town of the softer plains. ‘Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ted Simcock to his maker, and to his horror it almost came out aloud. His face, always slightly red, as if he overdid things, went even redder. He was a broad, bulky man, with slightly coarse features and fierce shaggy brows. His thick black hair was turning grey. Men didn’t consider him much of a figure of a man. Women did.

‘… that such persons as have not the gift of continency …’

‘All right?’ whispered Rita’s mother, the seventy-six-year-old Clarrie Spragg.

‘Oh aye.’ Percy Spragg’s answering whisper was much too loud, and Rita turned to give her father a frantic, warning glare.

‘… themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body. Thirdly …’

This time it was Ted’s eyes that were drawn to Liz’s fractionally before she gave him an unmistakeably meaningful glance. Laurence turned and saw Ted looking in his wife’s direction, and Ted developed a sudden interest in the magnificent hammer-beam roof. Another burst of sunlight was streaming into the huge old church. The day was improving.

‘Therefore, if any man can shew any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.’

The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood paused dramatically, and swept a severe gaze over the congregation. The sunshine seemed very far away, in another world.

‘Make somebody say something, please, oh Lord,’ prayed Laurence with a fervour that surprised him. ‘Save my daughter from this unsuitable marriage.’

‘I require and charge you both,’ said the vicar, damping Laurence’s brief hope, and the church darkened again as the summer’s day played grim meteorological jests with their emotions, ‘as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement …’

‘I don’t dread it,’ thought Rita. ‘That’s the day I come into my own.’

‘… know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful.’

Paul and Jenny smiled at each other a little uneasily, long-haired cheap-suited groom beside close-cropped, beautifully gowned bride, but united in their youth, their vulnerability and their love. They joined hands, and gave each other a little squeeze, and held their peace. Afterwards, both admitted that they had felt shivers and goose pimples at that moment.

‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together …?’

‘He promised me he’d have a haircut,’ said Rita to herself. ‘He promised.’ She had achieved, with her bottle-green two-piece suit and pink hat, the difficult feat of looking puritanical and over-dressed at the same time. Her austere hair style and natural air of worry made her look older than her forty-seven years. She had a hunched appearance, as if she were trying not to take up too much space.

‘… and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘Oh Jane!’ called out the immaculate Neville Badger silently from the bride’s side of the church, and this dapper doyen of the town’s lawyers also had a moment of horror when he thought that everyone must have heard, so loud did his agonized private cry seem to him: ‘Oh, Jane! Do you remember our wedding in this church?’

‘I will,’ whispered Paul, after a moment when it seemed that he would never speak.

The Reverend J. D. Thoroughgood turned to Jenny. Was it possible that he didn’t think of his own daughter at this moment?

‘Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded …?’

‘Look happy, Laurence,’ Laurence told himself. ‘If you look happy long enough, you may even start to feel happy.’

‘… keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘Oh Lord,’ prayed the immaculate Neville Badger. ‘Why did you take her from me?’

‘I will,’ said Jenny clearly, with an outward confidence that contrasted sharply with Paul’s delivery and made her parents feel that the money they had spent on her education had not been entirely wasted.

There was a slight commotion towards the back of the congregation. A second cousin twice removed had been overcome by emotion, and had to be removed. Rita was painfully conscious that it was on their side of the church.

Outside, in the bustling summer streets, people were peering at details of skiing holidays which they couldn’t afford, gawping at dresses which they would never wear, and slowly reading the meagre lists of unappetizing catering vacancies in the Job Centre. To the town’s seventy thousand inhabitants, the abbey church was so familiar as to be almost invisible.

The ancient market town had expanded rapidly with a mixture of light industry and heavy engineering, which were both now declining. A combination of ignorant councillors, apathetic citizens and ruthless property developers had removed almost all traces of its ancient heritage, except for the abbey church and the street names. Few tourists stopped off on their way to York, Durham and Edinburgh.

It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that at the moment when the great West Door creaked open, nobody was looking at the abbey, except for a visiting Greek-Cypriot builder who was staring openmouthed at the scaffolding which encased the massive tower.

Then suddenly the assertive strains of Leslie Horton, water bailiff and organist, who hated to be called Les, were mingling with the hum of the Saturday afternoon traffic. Now people stopped and stared, eager to see the lovely bride, the lucky groom, the proud parents, the hats and dresses of the aunts and cousins.

Six bachelor philatelists, on their way to an exhibition in the annexe of the Alderman Cartwright Memorial Museum (entrance by the side door, in West Riding Passage), watched from the top deck of a bright yellow corporation bus as the wedding guests filtered slowly under the four beautifully carved recessed arches of the Norman doorway. The philatelists were in a good mood, being as yet unaware that the exhibition of wildlife stamps had closed at one, due to local government cutbacks. One of them said, ‘They haven’t got too bad a day for it,’ and the other five were not disposed to argue. For the paths were almost dry now after the last brief shower, and there was almost as much blue in the sky as cloud.