Moonspender (31 page)

The service was great, marred only by the choir's late entry
during the anthem—I knew they'd never manage it without me—and an entirely
forgivable hiatus when Reverend said, "The ring, please," and stood
with his hand out. It honestly wasn't my fault that Hepsibah Smith's cassock
never does conceal her shape; anyway I didn't know I'd have to produce the ring
just Like that.

Tinker's croak saved me. "In your bleedin' right-hand pocket,
Lovejoy."
Sweatily
I hauled out Fixer's little
box and got the lid off after a struggle. I owed Tinker a pint for that—I could
feel the animosity
vibing
from Lize and Margaret and
Helen toward the old soak for his language.

Mr. and Mrs. Big Frank led us in procession after signing the
book, the organ belling away, and I was collared by a pretty lass with two tiny
bridesmaids as fighter escorts. "I'm Jenny," my new partner
whispered, "and I've heard about you."

Where do you look when you walk down an aisle? I tried the floor,
the rafters, the west window's stained glass. I tried saying hello, going red
as I caught the grins of the dealers and the fond smiles of the women, until
Jenny
Knowall
squeezed my arm to shut up. I settled
for Ro's nape in front of me until we were mercifully out into the sunshine and
Reverend was handshaking and smiling, "Never mind, Lovejoy. Everybody's
hopeless about the ring." A pint to the right bowler next cricket season
and I'll have his head knocked off, making cracks like that.

Fixer Pete was at the waiting cars, grinning like a Cheshire cat
and talking into a million-way wrist radio, ten-four and whatnot.

"Gone well, Lovejoy," he said, pleased. "So
far."

"Wasn't it a lovely ceremony!" Jenny exclaimed.

"Such a relief," I agreed, smiling. Fixer said hurry
into the Limousine. Twenty to four. Dead on time, as the saying goes.

27

The limo put us down outside the Minories. Already there was a
crowd assembling. I didn't want Sandy turning out to welcome me. In fact I'd
rather pretend I didn't even know him. A coach-and-four waited, the horses
plumed with white cockades and a coachman in bright green livery.

"Right," I told Jenny and the two
Littles
.
"Be sharp."

We scampered in. A nice thrombus of buses and
charabancs
was forming up. Several motors waited, engines running; these were the
latecomer dealers who'd sensed something was in the wind.

Beryl had help today, her sisters and a team of women whose job
was rushing about with mouthfuls of pins while Sandy screamed abuse at them. He
was resplendent—I think that's the word for a Richard III scarlet velvet
doublet with yellow-diamond sequined hose and enormous bishop sleeves. His
Faust slippers, in orange lame, blinded me. His worst feature was a giant
striped hat.

"
Yoohoo
, Lovejoy!" he trilled.
"Like my accessory?"

"Er, great." I was thinking we've got fifteen minutes
and here is this goon wanting me to praise his handbag. "Where's Ro, and
Big Frank?"

"Upstairs being 
welded
 into that
dress." He twirled admiringly before a mirror. "It's nearly as old as
she is. Lovejoy, my special effects!"

He flipped open the pink shoulder bag, tasseled velvet. It blared
out

"Light Cavalry." He tittered, rounded on Jenny.
"You. Upstairs, side gallery." Jenny and her pair scuttled off with
half-a-dozen matrons, as he called sweetly after, "Jenny dear. In our next
incarnation shall we give 
shape
 a try, all
rightee
?"

Jenny's laughter floated back. It narks me. Birds like Sandy,
despite his cruel invective. I was directed to the Georgian nursery gallery
("On the positively clear understanding you don't play with the dollies,
Lovejoy," from Sandy, setting the entire place laughing). They changed me
into an austere frock-coated doctor, cape and all. I felt a twerp.

Reverend Larkin arrived in all this caper, three minutes late from
traffic. The daft nerk looked full of enjoyment. Gloomily I sat in the hallway
listening to the females hurtling about. This masquerade was all very well, but
the lovely brass-faced clock by Joseph
Knibb
was
chiming four o'clock, nearly time for a magnificent wedding reception and
sundry jollity. For me it was one step nearer night, when I would meet the
murderous Ryan in Pittsbury Wood and risk getting myself executed. I honestly
felt abused. Why always me? Then I thought of Ben and George, poor sods. Of
course it hasn't always been me.

Ro descended the stairs. I caught my breath. She was exquisite in
those Honiton lace flounces, sleeve frills, and that lace bertha. Sandy spoiled
it all by coming ahead of her shedding tears of self-love, holding a freesia
spray, handbag playing "Sentimental Journey" enough to pop your
eardrums. Jenny and the
titchies
were pretty in
bridal cottons, white satin slippers. Beryl followed, her team flutteringly
seeing the veils didn't tangle. We had an ugly delay when little Millicent, one
of our tiny bridesmaids, suddenly wanted the loo, and a further one when
Babs
, her deputy assistant, wanted a turn.

We were a full ten minutes late when finally Beryl stood by the
outside door and anxiously asked Sandy if we could go.

We looked a sight, but the women thought it beautiful. Sandy was
really moved: "Think of the lacework if dear
Jane'd
worked for me!" Dear Jane was little Miss
Bidney
,
lace-maker of Devonshire, who, suddenly summoned to London for a royal
commission—Victoria's wedding dress no less—promptly fainted.

There must have been over two hundred people thronging the
pavement when Ro and Big Frank stepped out to applause and excitement at our
historic pageant. All traffic was stuck. People were standing out of cars to
see. A TV crew darted and swooped, poles held aloft. Why do half of them walk
backward?

While me and Jenny waited as the bridal couple departed, Beryl
came up behind and whispered a thanks to me for putting her museum on the map.
"And for inviting us to the reception, Lovejoy. So sweet."

"Fair exchange, love. I insisted that you got invited."
I'd have to pat Fixer on the head for thinking of that.

We were twenty minutes late getting away. Mel still blames me.

The High Street, full of Saturday shoppers, became a crowd-lined
thoroughfare with folk oohing and
aahing
at Ro's
queenly progress. We overtook it as it clattered past the George, and arrived at
Dogpits first. And I almost lost my nerve. Dogpits Farm seemed suddenly the
center of the known world.

Suzanne's restaurant was gone. In its place stood a lovely Gothic
facade in
Accrington
brick, only vaguely familiar as
the former exterior of the rehabilitation unit. The ornamental shaping, the
reticulated windows, were all there, with the great sculpted arches. It was
terrific. I was dying to see the hall's interior but Veronica Gold advanced,
talking into a black drumstick. More backward-walking blokes in jeans.

Inside, the hubbub was at least that of a football crowd, with
sudden laughs and the clink of glasses. Pierre the head waiter and sundry serfs
shepherded us through a lounge of subdued wall panels cleverly
ht
from gas mantles. It was like waiting to go on stage, in
a small room with an altar, would you believe, with a series of three
stained-glass windows set in the wall above it. Only repro, of St.
Botolph's
magic Descent from the Cross, but it couldn't be
faulted.

Mel pranced through in a tantrum about the flowers, and Suzanne
flowed out to admire the dresses. She was lovely with Little Millicent and
Babs
, taking them see the altar close to. And she said I
didn't look stupid at all, which was news. She gave Jenny the coldest of nods.

"Why's the altar set up here, love?" I asked her.
"Is this where the
fihn
. . . ?"

The signal came then, with flunkies sprinting. They took my sherry
off" me before I'd had a swig, which was unfair because, when the curtains
were peeled back and me and Big Frank stepped down, the place was crammed with
tables groaning under brimming glasses. Everybody turned to look, presenting a
sea of faces.

And the altar was where the bandstand had been—so I realized the
small anteroom had rotated, church windows and all, complete with Reverend
Larkin beaming in his 1830 getup. The cameras were rolling, if that's the
phrase, by the alcove windows with one high on a ladder.

Me and Big Frank made it to our places, the women dealers sniffing
and the blokes enviously playing mind games pricing our borrowed raiment.
During the pause before Ro and her entourage entered I had a quick scan, and
approved. Sandy had somehow got a score of cast-iron chandeliers, which shed a
fine light from gentle gas mantles. His adaptation of the windows to the low
alcoves was achieved by old sash-raisers—God knows where he'd got those. The
brass oil lanterns were reproduction, but in this day and age (customers will
nick anything antique) precautions are only natural. The walls were an
unbelievable Cumberland slate. The effect was of distances so elastic that you
could achieve any impression you wanted by judging the light. The ceiling was a
patterned Adam, another winner. That, the oak woodwork, the hint of
balustrades, and that original clerk's Davenport desk for Pierre to run things
... I bent my head, moved. It was splendid, as splendid as anything new I'd
ever seen. Most of the furnishings were old, and back among people where they
belonged. Everybody must have slaved. My vision blurred a bit.

I'd have been even more moved if I hadn't noticed Councillor and
Mrs. Ryan seated nearby. And the major and Candice being showily snob. And of
all people Ledger, with a homely lady in pearls, toasting me silently. And
Tinker, lost but game.

An organ sounded, I think one of the old positive-pressure manuals
—I couldn't see for the crowd—and the place rose to greet the bride. I was
getting more than a little narked at the proprietorial grin on Big Frank's
silly face as he stepped out to stand beside Ro's ephemeral form.

Sandy wept uncontrollably, this time into a papal flag hankie—his
joke—rimmed by tiny cowbells. He sounded like the Swiss Alps throughout, but
smiled glitteringly toward the cameras.

It was a lovely ceremony. This time I remembered the ring, but
thought all the time of a small bronze leopard lying alone cold in the ground
of New Black field, out in the dwindling day.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Suzanne announced from an arched
alcove that mysteriously appeared to one side of the stage. "This evening
we take pleasure in welcoming the lovely and famous Veronica Gold, who not only
came to film our Victorian wedding, but to broadcast her award-winning show
'Old Is Gold' from here."

She continued over the cheers, explaining the show would start at
nine after the break, and meanwhile for everybody to enjoy themselves. Sandy
and Mel were fetched out of phony self-effacement to be presented with bouquets
as cameras whirred.

Sandy started his account of the wedding dress well before time:
" 
Very
 few of us, 
dear
 Queen Vicky
excepted, can wear simplicity with grace," he began, spinning Ro on the
dais. "The eight-piece bodice emphasizes the 
terribly
 low
wide neckline. Risky? But of course! Actually, one has to be, well, slim
as 
me
 to carry it off. Note the point-waist, sitting above the
true waistline?" Doubtfully he prodded Ro with a long finger. "It's
here somewhere ..."

Added attractions were the antiques in the assembly room. All
guests were invited to inspect. . . . The stampede, thinly disguised as a
casual sprint, overwhelmed part of the proceedings, but Sandy already had his
audience and was in his element.

Weddings are a thrash now, between church and the late-night
swigging. There's teatime after the reception. Then dance and booze, then the
evening disco, and you stagger to your pit at cock shout. For once I was
pleased because—chatting to Goldie, praising Suzanne, introducing Beryl, seeing
that Lize met the
newsworthies
—I could keep a weather
eye on my major suspect.

"Ten hooks and worked bars," Sandy was cooing, spinning
Ro, "were quite enough for Queen Vicky's back fastening. It's 
nearly
 enough
for 
dear
 Rowena."

Ryan accosted me boldly enough, saying he admired the brickwork,
and being charming to Lize. The swine could really turn it on. Well, let's see
how much charm he'd muster when he came sneaking after me in that dark forest
waiting out there. . . .

"No wonder you weren't at work today, Lovejoy," Mrs.
Ryan murmured to me, circling conversationally. She looked good enough to eat
in a light calf-length dinger with the central split hem she knows I go for.
"Busy."

"It was hell," I concurred. "Mostly night work,
though."

"Was it indeed." She eyed Lize, and asked what now.

"Now?" I said, puzzled. "You mean the telly
show?"

"With you, Lovejoy. And me." Her head tilted, checking
we were safe to talk. "Has my estate outlived its usefulness?"