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Then the registrar led the happy couple in, and I heard for the first time that Stan is short for Stanford and not Stanley as I’d imagined. All I can remember of the ceremony was that blandness was the order of the day and the word ‘friendship’ cropped up a lot.
Around 50 people done up in all their finery turned up for the church blessing, which was a different kettle of fish altogether. For a start there was music and singing and the vicar made jokes and we laughed and some of the women also cried. At one point we raised a joyful hymn of praise for God’s perfect gifts to our race so freely given. And a friend of Stan’s got up and went to the lectern and read out that bit in Ecclesiastes about there being a time for everything, including a time to kill, a time to hate and a time to tear down. In the courtyard immediately after the service one or two I spoke to confessed to being scandalised by such bigoted and violent language, but not surprised by it, because, as we all now know, religion is the source of most if not all of the evil being done in the world today.
After that everybody went on board a river boat, which cruised up and down for three hours while we ate and drank and toasted the bride. I couldn’t turn round without being confronted with someone I hadn’t seen for many years and having to go through all that entails: the extravagant, largely false, exclamations of surprise and delight, the hugs, the kisses, the first person’s cherished memories of that early friendship listened to with mounting horror and amazement by the second, and then always that question: so didn’t you ever get married, then?
In retrospect it was perhaps a bad idea to try not to touch a drop at my sister’s wedding reception. Maybe a pantomime drunk brother hugging and kissing with the best of them would have honoured her and Stan better than the sober, reserved one that they saw on the day. The main difference between the two versions of me was that instead of talking to people without listening, I just listened. But I performed a useful role, I think. A man I hadn’t seen for 35 years raised his arm and declaimed incomprehensible home- made poetry at me. A woman I hadn’t seen for 25 told me how her heart was simply overflowing with love for Stan and my sister, and to prove it she burst out crying and stood there wailing with happiness.
The sanest person there was a bloke who said he was ‘old Bill’ and just back from the Notting Hill Carnival where he’d earned two grand before tax for an enjoyable weekend seconded to the Metropolitan Police. He said there were thousands more than the officially stated 6,000 police on duty over the weekend. And he was surprised by the calling cards the Met lads handed out, football-hooligan-style, which said, ‘You’ve met the Met.’ Pathetic, he said. In retaliation his team plastered a Met transit van with his own force’s even more pathetic ‘Helping people. Serving communities’ publicity stickers.
And then this other woman I hadn’t seen for 25 years, smudged mascara, took my face in her hands and insisted, pleaded, then angrily ordered me to say how wonderful and lovely the day had been so far.
In the cocktail bar after the river boat I ran up the white flag and piled in to the Bellinis. I was fine after that.
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