Behind the Scenes at the Museum (33 page)

The bride and groom, from the back anyway, display a remarkable similarity to the little figures on top of a wedding cake. The bride is in white and is reliably reported (by Ted) to be a virgin. Indeed, it is only my uncle’s extreme sexual frustration which has finally driven him up this nuptial cul-de-sac. He has delayed getting married as long as possible – from his first Odeon date with Sandra to this final altar rendezvous has taken him eight years. When finally forced to set a date for the event by a touchingly romantic ultimatum from Sandra (‘If you don’t name the day they’re going to be shovelling your brains up in Coney Street’), Ted put the date as far in the future as he could. How could he know then that 30th July 1966 would turn out not only to be the final of the World Cup, but that England would be playing – and not only that, but that she would be playing against our family’s sworn enemy – the Hun!

The bridesmaids are in pale peach polyester-satin and our dresses, like the bride’s – big, round, puffy dresses with big, round, puffy sleeves – make us all into Crinoline Ladies. Our satin slippers are dyed to match our dresses, as are our carnation posies, and on our heads we wear artificial peach-coloured rosebuds on vice-like Alice-bands.

I stifle one yawn after another but unfortunately there is no stifling the deep embarrassing rumble that my stomach gives out every now and then – precipitating a rash of parrot-squawks and giggles from the bridesmaid clutch.

The minister asks if anyone has a good reason for the marriage not to go ahead and everyone looks at Ted as he is the most likely person to object, but he stiffens himself manfully and the service proceeds with only the slightest falter on the part of the minister as Lucy-Vida tries to pull her skirt down to cover her crotch.

My first wedding is turning out to be rather disappointing. When I get married it won’t be a peach polyester affair. The church I get married in will be a very old one – they’re two-a-penny in York, of course – perhaps All Saints on Pavement with its lovely lantern tower – or St Helen’s – our very own Shopkeeper’s church! The church will have the musty smell of old timbers and the stonework will be like Belgian lace and the windows will be jewelled lozenges of colour. The church will be illuminated by banks of tall white candles and all the pews and side chapels will be decorated with gardenias and trailing dark-green ivy and waxy-white lilies like angels’ trumpets. My antique-lace dress will fall in drifts of snow and it will be garlanded and swagged with rosebuds as if the little birds who helped Cinderella dress for the ball had flown round and round me, nipping and tucking and pinning. There will be peals of bells ringing the whole time and I will be spotlighted by a single, dusty shaft of sunlight. The congregation will be drowning in rose petals and all the men will be in elegant morning dress (Ted has not even bought a new suit for the occasion). And there will be
no
bridesmaids.

One of the little polyester bridesmaids is scuffing the back of my shoe with her satin foot and another one is poking her nose and wiping the resultant slimy grey crop on her dress. I hiss at them to stop but they make faces back at me. Will this ever end?

At last, the bridal pair vanish into the vestry and someone plays Bach, very badly, on a tired organ while the divided congregation – his and hers – whisper frantically to each other about what they think of it so far. Finally, ‘The Wedding March’ bleats triumphantly and we sweep down the aisle while everyone grins like idiots at us, not so much from pleasure as relief. ‘Flippin’ heck, my bladder’s killing me,’ Auntie Eliza says to noone in particular, as I pass by, while the extraterrestrial floral pair swivel robotically in their pew so that their eyes can follow the bride who rejected them and Auntie Gladys can be heard sighing gratefully, ‘Well, at least noone fell over.’

The photographs on the steps of the church seem to take longer than the service and it’s only when the next wedding party arrives and both sets of guests mill around outside the church and get mixed up, that any attempt is made to move on to the reception and the wilting bridesmaids are allowed to droop into the big black Austin Princess that’s tied up with white ribbons in the street below. I sulk unattractively in the back of the car – I feel like Alice when she grew tall, a huge outsize girl crammed in amongst identical smaller ones. I’ve just fallen into a fitful and disturbing doze when we draw up at the hotel and are disgorged from our car. The ‘do’ is not temperance and the bar of the hotel in Fulford fills up rapidly as if we had just crossed the Sahara instead of York city centre.

My little flock scatters to the four winds and are hugged and congratulated by their respective parents for being so pretty, charming, cute, delightful and so on. I can’t see George and Bunty anywhere but eventually I sight George across the room, talking to a plump woman dressed strikingly in a vivid royal blue two-piece underneath a vast red-and-white straw sombrero. On closer inspection, this turns out to be Auntie Eliza, a lipstick-smeared glass in one hand and an undelivered wedding present in the other. She pulls me to her bosom and deposits slurpy kisses all over both my cheeks and tells me how lovely I look. I’m about to congratulate her on wearing such patriotic colours on this day of national importance but she pushes the present into my hand and orders me to go and ‘Put it on the pile – it’s only tablemats,’ and get her a plate of something from the buffet ‘while I’m at it’.

The buffet, which occupies two long, cloth-covered trestles against the walls of an adjacent room, is, apparently, a departure from the usual sit-down tradition in Sandra’s family. I know this because the female guests on the distaff side – mainly coutured in pastel crimplene – are in there, walking up and down the tables and discussing the buffet and its innovatory significance. They make funny noises like a cornfield in a high wind,
tsk-tsk, shu-shu, foo-foo
and hold their handbags high under their bosom like pantomime dames. ‘It can’t hold a candle to a real sit-down do,’ someone says to a susurrating chorus of agreement. ‘Remember our Linda’s do – roast topside and all the trimmings?’ ‘And oxtail soup,’ someone reminds her and they promenade another length of table, pointing to the flabby character of the ham slices (‘They might at least have had a proper York ham’), and the anaemic egg sandwiches (‘More salad-cream than egg’) and regarding with suspicion the two waitresses employed to dole out such fare. They spy me with the present still in my hand and smile encouragingly. ‘Present pile’s over there, love,’ one of them says, indicating another table laden with toasters in duplicate and Pyrex in triplicate, but luckily, no sign of any other tablemats.

I load a plate from the buffet for Auntie Eliza; she’s the least fussy person I know, especially about food, so I pile it indiscriminately with everything on offer, except for the trifle which is as virgin and untouched as the bride herself under its veil of hundreds and thousands which have already melted into a rainbow smear.

When I get back to Auntie Eliza and my father they are at least three double gins the worse for wear and there is still no sign of their respective spouses – Uncle Bill and Bunty. How Auntie Eliza is going to manage a plate, a glass, a cigarette and my father is difficult to say so I act as her dumb butler, holding the plate for her which she attacks with admirable relish. ‘They’re a rum bunch, that Sandra’s lot,’ she says, nodding in the direction of the nearest crimplene-clad guest and taking a bite out of a mushroom vol-au-vent which immediately starts deconstructing itself everywhere. ‘They all look like they’ve got pokers stuck up their arses,’ she adds cheerfully, unaware that the bride’s mother, a formidable woman called Beatrice – part-Soroptimist, part-Sumo wrestler – is well within earshot. George spots her advancing bulk and makes a visible effort to pull himself together. ‘Hey-up,’ he says, striving for diplomacy and failing miserably. ‘Here’s the mother-in-law.’

George is extricated from this situation by Ted, who is gesturing urgently to him from the door. I pick up scattered bits of vol-au-vent from the floor and then make my excuses and leave. My stomach is making alarming noises, so I head back to the buffet. I’m just wondering where all the male members of the party have disappeared to – there’s hardly a man in sight and there surely hasn’t been another world war while I wasn’t looking – when I come across a tearful Lucy-Vida, a considerable proportion of her heavy black eye make-up streaked down her cheeks. She sniffs noisily and wipes her face with the purple feather boa that’s draped around her neck. ‘Biba,’ she sighs tragically. ‘I think you’d be better off with a Kleenex,’ I offer, steering her away from the busy centre of the room and towards a row of spindly chairs behind the table that holds the wedding cake. The table is further adorned by the bridal bouquet and the bridesmaids’ posies, as well as an assortment of good luck in the shape of black cats, silver horseshoes and bunches of white heather. Sandra’s wedding cake is a mere two-tier hummock, whereas I shall have a towering five-tier Mont Blanc of carved and moulded snow and roses from Terry’s.

We sit like wallflowers at an Assembly Rooms’ ball, watching the other guests parade and parry while we whisper our secrets. Lucy-Vida’s secret is a distressing one, to say the least. ‘I’m only bloody knocked up, kid,’ she blurts out, gazing blindly at the wedding cake, which is growing in my eyes, not in stature but in symbolic significance, for as she continues with her story it becomes clear that there is to be no cover-up of almond paste and royal icing for Lucy-Vida. ‘’E was only bloody married, wasn’t ’e?’ she says, the passion and betrayal still visible in her smudged eyes. She sighs heavily and sags farther into the uncomfortable chair. She’s very pale, her lips as bloodless as a hungry vampire’s. Perhaps she has been named for Lucy Harker, after all, although her pale visage might just be due to her make-up. Or her condition. She looks at her stomach and shakes her head in disbelief. ‘And now I’ve got a bloody bun in t’oven!’ After a few seconds of silent contemplation, she adds, ‘Me dad’ll kill me.’

‘Never mind,’ I try and comfort her. ‘It could be worse,’ but even though we furrow our brows and rack our brains, we can’t come up with anything much worse than this. ‘You’re not going to Clacton, are you?’ I ask, remembering what happened to Patricia only too well. Lucy-Vida looks at me doubtfully, ‘Clacton?’

‘To a mother-and-baby home, to have it adopted, like Patricia.’

She clutches her stomach protectively, and says fiercely, ‘Not bloody likely!’ and I experience a little pang of jealousy towards Lucy-Vida’s unborn offspring. Although it could be hunger, in fact I feel quite dizzy from hunger, especially when I get up too quickly and offer to get Lucy-Vida something from the buffet. She blanches at the very idea and I stagger off, eager for a bridge roll, but have hardly negotiated my way round the wedding cake before I’m waylaid by a baleful pair of flower twins. ‘So, Ruby?’ one of them says coldly. This rather enigmatic question hangs in the air between us, gathering weight, while I try to think of a suitable reply. ‘So,’ I say lamely after a while. A slight toss of the head on the part of one of them reveals the under-chin freckle and identification gives me confidence so I borrow Bunty’s smile (where
is
my mother?) and say brightly, ‘Hello, Rose, how are you?’ She smiles, a chilly gleam of triumph in her eye. ‘I’m Daisy, actually, Ruby.’

‘You’ve got the freckle,’ I reply stoutly. ‘I can see it.’ The other twin takes a step nearer to me and tilts her chin to reveal an identical freckle. Horror! I want to lift up a fingernail and scratch at it to see if it’s real, but I’m too much of a coward. I stare from one to the other in a state of serious confusion; I feel as if I’ve just stepped through the looking-glass and can’t find a mantelpiece to hang onto.

‘Are you enjoying being a bridesmaid, Ruby?’ one of them – the one on the left – asks. It feels like a trick question, but I’m not sure what the trick is. ‘Of course,’ the other one says, as smoothly as a snake, ‘people feel sorry for you. I expect that’s why they chose you.’

‘Sorry for me?’ I repeat blankly, blinking at the novelty of this concept.

‘Losing so many sisters,’ the one on the right says with a dramatic sweep of her arm. ‘To lose one,’ the other twin says, ‘might be considered careless . . .’ ‘. . . but to lose three,’ the other twin continues seamlessly, ‘well . . . that’s a bit suspicious, don’t you think, Ruby?’