Because Angelo was there, did I mention that? In the months before the wedding, there had been some debate about his presence, but it would have seemed paranoid and conventional on my part to banish all her former boyfriends, not to mention that it would have halved the guest list. So here was good old Angelo, drinking heavily and providing, I imagined, a sardonic commentary on the event. To Angelo’s gang, I was clearly something of a Yoko Ono figure. Never mind. I focused my thoughts on my wife. ‘Wife’ — how strange that sounded. Would I ever get used to it? I brought the speech to a sentimental but sincere conclusion, kissed my wife — that word again — and raised a glass in her honour.
We danced to Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of ‘Night and Day’, Connie’s choice. My only specification had been that our first dance shouldn’t be anything too fast or wild, so we rotated slowly like a child’s mobile. It can’t have been much of a spectacle, because after the first few revolutions, Connie started to improvise ducks and spins that left us momentarily tangled, to laughter from the guests. Then we cut the cake, we circulated, and occasionally my eyes would scan the room over the shoulder of a colleague or an uncle, searching out Connie, and we’d smile or pull a face or just grin at each other. My
My father, looking slighter since my mother’s death, left early. I had offered to find a hotel for the night, an indulgence that appalled him. Hotels, he thought, were for royalty and fools. ‘I have a perfectly good bed at home. I can’t sleep in strange beds anyway,’ he said. Now he was keen to catch the Ipswich train ‘in case your sister starts to sing again’. We laughed, and he placed one hand on my shoulder. ‘Well done,’ he said, as if I’d passed my driving test. ‘Thanks, Dad. Bye.’
‘Well done,’ was Angelo’s phrase too, as he maliciously embraced me then brushed the cigarette ash off my shoulder. ‘Well done, mate. You won. Treat her well, yeah? Connie’s a great girl. She’s golden.’ I agreed that she was golden, and thanked him. My sister, ever the keen-eyed critic of other people’s work, hung off my neck, drunk and emotional and gave me her feedback. ‘Great speech, D,’ she said, ‘but you forgot to tell Connie how gorgeous she is.’ Had I forgotten? I didn’t think I had. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear.
And then, a little after midnight, exhausted and wine-mouthed we were in a cab, heading to a smart hotel in Mayfair, our one concession to luxury. We didn’t make love that night, though I’m reassured that this is not uncommon among newly married couples. Instead we lay facing each other, champagne and toothpaste on our breath.
‘Hello, husband.’
‘Hello, wife.’
‘Feel different?’
‘Not particularly. You? Suddenly feel jaded? Trapped, confined? Oppressed?’
‘Let me see …’ She rotated her shoulders, flexed her wrists. ‘No, no I don’t think so. Early days, though.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Was it the happiest day of our lives? Probably not, if only because the truly happy days tend not to involve so much organisation, are rarely so public or so expensive. The happy ones sneak up, unexpected. But to me at least, it felt like the culmination of many happy days, and the first of many more. Everything was still the same and yet not quite the same, and in the moments before sleep I felt the kind of trepidation that I still feel the night before a long, complicated journey. Everything is in place, tickets, reservations and foreign currency, passports laid out on the table in the hall. If we are at our best at all times, or at least endeavour to be so, there is no reason why everyone shouldn’t have a wonderful time.
Still, what if something goes wrong along the way? What if the plane’s engines fail, or I lose control of the car? What if it rains?
