The Stranger at the Wedding, page 2
Inside the church, I’m greeted with a wash of fifty faces. Friends, family, colleagues, well-wishers. They all turn in unison to look at me, little Annie from the farm. Me, who had once dreamed, and dared through my dreaming, to take centre stage, but until now, never had.
I go to move, to make the first tentative step towards my future, but my feet are rooted to the spot. The organ stirs and all I feel is a cold panic that runs down my left leg and into the soles of my silvery shoes. Help, I want to scream, but my voice has been taken. A prisoner inside my own body. Then, just when I think I can’t do this, just when the crowd weighs too heavy and the organ soars too low, I see Mark at the far end of the aisle in his vintage baby-blue suit. Handsome, dependable, devilish Mark. The only man who could take the trouble from my eyes. And as I place that first step on the threshold of the aisle and feel the tug of an arm bear me forward, as a wave bears a lost sailor to shore, I hope beyond hope that I will make him happy, for he has made me Real.
2
Whenever anyone asks me how Mark and I first met, I never quite know what to say. It wasn’t a thunderclap or a right hook to the temple; it wasn’t a forest fire or an orchestral swelling. No one turned off gravity and the oceans didn’t upend. It was gentle. It was slow. It was two cold marbles grazing each other and finding a little warmth.
I’d like to say that we met at a cinema, two lone souls in an empty auditorium, dimly aware of the other’s existence until the lights came up and all we saw was each other; or a dropped glove in the manner of Cinderella’s glass slipper – retrieved, cherished and returned to the appendage of the rightful owner many years later. But it was far simpler than that. Unremarkable, even. You see, we met on a commuter train. Not the Orient Express or a bullet train hurtling to Kyoto for the first sakura of spring. No. We met on the 05.38 service to London Bridge, and not a dining car in sight.
‘Excuse me. Ma’am?’
I looked up from my window seat to a squat gentleman with horn-rimmed glasses bearing down at me.
‘Could you move your bag?’
The man sat down beside me and opened a newspaper, which blew into my face with each gust of wind that caught the carriage.
Up and down the train, bleary-eyed commuters drifted in and out of sleep, their heads gently falling to the windows or to the shoulders of their neighbours. The same old faces dozing in the same old patterns on the same old train, rolling past the same old landscapes. My life, I had to admit, had hit a bump in the road or else a kink in the track – which was mad, for had anyone else been gifted my lot, they would have thought themselves lucky. I had a good job, a small but perfectly formed two-bedroom flat in the city, a place in the country and a handful of close friends.
I was lucky, but I wasn’t happy and I hated myself for that.
I was beset by the nagging feeling that my life was somehow empty. I tried to fill it as far as possible – I joined a gym, but lacked the motivation; I took up karate, but couldn’t bear to make contact; I’d put a film on, but spend the entire time flicking through dating apps on my phone, awaking to the credits and a red wine puddle soaking into my jeans. I was existing, not living.
So, I guess you could say my life had stalled. But before you go getting visions of Bridget Jones – lone girl in the big old city looking for Mr Right or Mr Right Now – don’t. I’d never been one for romance, which I’d long written off as a fiction. Apart from the odd drunken swiping (more left than right), I wasn’t looking for love and I’d decided I wouldn’t much know what to do with it. Imagine my surprise, then, when love found me.
The train pulled into the next station, and amid the crush of commuters fighting for a seat, on he stepped, composed. A long lock of dark-brown hair broke free to graze his forehead, just above his eyebrows. He stood in the middle of the aisle, one arm held aloft, gripping the bar for support, as the train sped away from the station and took a sharp bend. There was something in the way he held himself – with a natural grace that spoke of great inner confidence – and the way he smiled gently at a thought that had passed through him, that inspired in me a wealth of feeling that I often struggle to put into words. The more I looked at him, the more I thought I understood him: the job he held, the people he met, the procession of ex-girlfriends who left love-starved voicemails on his phone. He could be whomever I wanted him to be.
The lights went out in the carriage, and when they came back on, the man was looking at me, his genes declaring themselves in the brightest shade of blue I had ever seen. I made to speak, to break the spell, but a gust of wind rattled the length of the carriage and caused my neighbour’s newspaper to hit me full in the face.
The man saw. The man smiled.
*
And now I see him as I did in that moment, save that this time he’s in his baby-blue suit, standing by the altar, waiting patiently for me. My beautiful bridesmaids – Karen and Laura – are standing opposite in their pastel-pink dresses, each with a clutch of golden lilies pressed to their chests. They smile out at me too, knowing intimately how much I thought this day might never come to pass, and how utterly glad I am that it did. My cold feet have grown warm.
I reach the end of the aisle, stumble a little, nearly fall into him, recover, and find myself passed from mother to future son-in-law as though the two are exchanging goods. Despite the pomp and circumstance – the painted ladies and pretty dresses, the eager attendees, the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce out front, the carefully choreographed ceremony and the joyous solemnity of the occasion – in this very moment, and this very moment alone, I feel like cattle. And this is my meat market.
The vicar addresses us, the couple, the church, but the words do not register. This has all happened before and this shall happen again. My parents were married here, and my father’s parents before them. Friends, cousins, uncles, aunties have stood here too, in this exact spot, under the mottled light of these stained-glass windows, beside these mighty stone arches, afore the throng of fifty pairs of seated eyes, and have made their vows, pledged their presents, their futures, to one another. They have sworn to live out their remaining years together, and I am about to do the same. Our union is just the latest in a long line of unions – some of which shall remain intact, some of which shall be broken. Not ours. We shall remain strong; Mark and I shall prosper. We have each, individually, weathered so very much. We shall both, together, weather so much more.
As Mark reaches up to my face and gently lifts my veil, I want to cry. I fight hard to hold back, but I catch myself. Oh, no, you don’t, Annie. Almost there. I try to shake these last self-sabotaging thoughts from my head and look to the room, to the faces staring back at me – to Karen, who has loved and will always love; to Mother, who cannot love; to dear patient Laura, who only wanted the best for me; to Mark’s father and Jean, his wife; to all our friends and colleagues, who sit there with bushy-tailed anticipation.
Until I see a face that is stark for its unfamiliarity. This man is all angles – high, prominent cheekbones, a severe pointed chin and slick dark hair swept from temple to temple above a furrowed forehead. His clavicles stand proud against his shirt. He regards me now with a cool, detached stare, as though he is looking right through me and has seen something that he doesn’t like, something that has fired a bitterness in his mouth.
Mark gently takes my hand in his and I turn to him. ‘I’m terrified,’ he says quietly as the vicar gestures for the church to fall silent.
The stranger regards me still.
‘Me too,’ I whisper.
3
I began seeing the man on the train each morning on my commute. We wouldn’t talk – we’d always be a few seats apart – but we’d share a look here or an eye-roll there at the expense of an obnoxious fellow commuter.
‘You’ve got to do something, Annie. He’s all you ever talk about.’
Laura sat on the terrace, casting ash to the street below. She had come over, ostensibly to pick up a scarf she’d left some months previously, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason. She was here to check on me.
‘Like what?’ I said, projecting my voice from the kitchen, where I sat forcing a wedge of pitta into a tub of week-old hummus.
‘Like fucking talk to the guy.’
My face shrivelled. ‘I can’t. I – It’s like I lose all sense of myself. I become …’
‘An idiot? It’s a crush, Annie. We’ve all been there.’
‘No. It’s more than that, it’s …’
Laura laughed and threw her cigarette butt into the neighbour’s back garden.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’
‘Oh, stop being so precious.’ Laura slid her small frame through the gap in the sliding door to the kitchen and helped herself to some pitta.
‘Was it always this hard?’ I said.
‘The pitta?’
I looked at her as you might a petulant child throwing a shit-fit in a supermarket.
‘Dating.’
‘We’re not at school any more. You can’t wait for the class clown to tug on your pigtails or staple your dress to a notebook before he finally plucks up the courage to persuade one of his mates to ask you out on his behalf. You have to go get them. You want something, you take it.’
Laura demonstrated by tearing off another strip of pitta, rolling it into a cigar and forcing it into her mouth. She smiled through bulging cheeks.
‘See?’
I rolled my eyes.
‘We just need a game plan,’ said Laura. ‘A plan of attack. Like when Danny Matthews tried to talk Mrs Holliday into going to the sixth form prom with him. He didn’t blunder in half-cocked; he had it all mapped out. The rose petals in the top drawer of her desk, the vomit-inducing messages scrawled on the dirt-encrusted bonnet of her car …’
‘It didn’t work though.’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘No, he wasn’t at the prom that night.’
‘You’re right, he wasn’t – because he was at Mrs Holliday’s house instead.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said in utter disbelief.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
Laura had a habit of embellishing the past. She was never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
‘Fine. So, what do you suggest I do, oh wise one?’
‘A note.’
A bus from the darkening street below seemed to hiss and sigh as it unloaded its weary passengers into their evenings.
‘A note? You’re taking this school analogy a bit too far.’
‘Think about it. Your only chance is on a crowded train – the eyes of a hundred commuters on you. You don’t want to make him uncomfortable. Keep it cool; slip him a note just before the doors open, and walk off. Very nice, very classy.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then you wait.’
Laura caught her half reflection in the glass frame of a Vermeer print I had found at a car-boot sale one summer in Devon. With quiet abandon, she adjusted her hair and ran a tidying finger around the gloss that had overshot the edges of her upper lip.
‘But it’s not me, is it? When have I ever been so forward with a guy?’
Laura turned back, remembering herself, remembering me. ‘Why should the man always have to make the first move? What happened to Little Miss Independent?’
I hated to admit it, but she had a point. And waiting for men to approach me hadn’t exactly worked out.
‘OK, say I do it. What if he doesn’t call?’
‘Then you have your answer. Sink or swim. Lord knows I can’t put up with your lovesick moping for much longer. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.’
With that, Laura scooped her jacket from the kitchen counter, planted a kiss on my forehead and made for the door. She had a date, but then when didn’t she?
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ I held out the scarf to her.
‘No, you keep it. Never much cared for cashmere anyway. Too decadent.’
When Laura had gone, I poured myself a large glass of wine and sat staring down at a blank scrap of paper. Its emptiness taunted me. How could I distil a thumping array of feelings, feelings I had no right to – I didn’t even know the man – into a pithy and blasé note? Is this silly? Then I thought back to Danny Matthews – his daring in the face of near-certain defeat, regardless of the outcome. So, I wrote it, climbed on to the sofa and fell asleep with the candles still burning.
You should do one silly thing each day; this is mine for the year. Drink?
The next morning, as the train approached his stop, and I fought hard to suppress all the voices in my head that told me such an endeavour was foolish, that he was bound to say no, that he was too good for me, I confess to feeling a little giddy. For the first time in my life, I was taking action.
The train stopped and the carriage filled with the usual crush of bodies. I was beginning to recognise these people – there was Lady-of-the-Manor, her nose always tilted towards one o’clock; Marcel-Marceau with his face like flour; Mr Pug; and, finally, Sir Cough-a-Lot, Arthur’s most irritating knight, whose only power, as far as I could see, was an acute ability to pepper others with his germs. But the man I was looking for, the only one who mattered, was nowhere to be seen.
My heart sank as the station receded and I felt as though the platform had contracted into the pit of my stomach. I straightened myself out. He must be sick, I thought. That’s it. Day off work. Nothing more. He’ll be back tomorrow. Wednesday it is.
But Wednesday it wasn’t. Or the day after that.
Two weeks went by.
He must be on holiday, I told myself. A fortnight in Sicily – Taormina first, then on to the south coast and Syracuse, no doubt. He seemed the type to travel a great deal, I reasoned.
After five weeks had passed, I had to concede that I’d lost him. That was that.
He’d left my life just as quickly as he’d entered it.
*
The vicar’s words wash over me, and the church itself seems to shift on its foundations.
If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.
I turn to look out over the sea of faces again. The familiarity comforts me. Until it doesn’t. Until I see that angular man, the stranger in the room, the man who could unhem all that is being sewn today. But he does not speak out. He does not motion. He simply sits there with a knowing look, a raw grin forming at the edges of his mouth.
Mark Anthony Lane, do you take Annie Lucy Clark to be your wedded wife, to live together in marriage?
Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honour and keep her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to her, for as long as you both shall live?
The building shifts once more as the vicar moves to seal our whirlwind romance under the eyes of God. I wonder whether Mark knows what he’s going through with. I don’t deserve him.
‘I do,’ says Mark. Two little words that wash out the old and birth the new. We will build new things. New memories, new friendships, new ideas. The past stays put. And that is for the best.
And then it is my turn to make my pledge. There is not a doubt in my mind, no other consideration and nothing left to say but I do.
The rings?
Mark’s best man steps forward with a red velvet cushion, embroidered with two small letters: A + M. Mark reaches to the cushion and takes the smaller ring; his hands shake slightly as he slides it into position on my fourth finger. He is claiming me, and I am happy to be claimed.
I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage. With my body I honour you, all that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you.
Mark’s words track the vicar’s, then mine track Mark’s. I slide the larger ring into place on his finger. He turns to the congregation – to our friends, our families – and holds his hand up for all the world to see. I too have claimed him and he wants everyone to know it.
And by the powers vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
There is a swelling in the church, an outpouring of joy. Kiss her, shouts someone.
Mark moves towards me.
Wait for it, cautions the vicar wryly. A pause. And then … You may now kiss the bride.
Hands clasp hands and laughter rings out. Mark grabs me with a force I have never known him capable; his lips meet mine and we fit. Our love is finally sealed for all to see. Mark is my only. And I am only his.
People stand and clap and cheer. There is laughter and there are tears too, but the right kind. The happy kind. Even Mother looks on adoringly. I do not want to forget this moment.
As I stand here at the altar, Mark before me and my eyes held in his, I notice in my periphery, just beyond Mark’s shoulder, a sombre dot among a riot of colour.
The stranger in the crowd, the uninvited guest, smiles. He sits there, and he smiles.
And that smile belies a great, rotten truth: something wicked this way comes.
4
‘Hear ye, hear ye, Lords and Ladies of the fairer land, peasants of the marshes, townspeople from beyond the verges and all gentle hill folk. We have been gathered here in the name of Princess Karen who has chosen on this most auspicious day to be wed to noble Sir Kenneth Carson, the whitest knight with the blackest steed in all of Albion.’
Dad gestured to a topless Ken doll stood in the centre of the garden table. Around him sat a medley of stuffed animals, many of whom had seen better days. Rupert Bear was missing a button eye, his red cable-knit coming apart at the seams; Cookie Monster was short a handful of blue fur, ripped from him during a tussle with our bellicose one-year-old former neighbour; and Tinky Winky’s coat-hanger-shaped antenna was hanging on by a mere thread.
‘As father of the bride, it is incumbent upon me to offer a few words in celebration of this most magical union.’
Dad was not a man of facts and figures, of statistics or algorithms. He couldn’t read the stock market or file his own taxes. Those things didn’t interest him; storytelling did. He was a born raconteur, possessed of a vivid imagination, which is perhaps why he found his natural calling as a copywriter. People don’t buy products, he once told me. They buy stories. It was a sentiment that was pressed into him long ago by his father, an adman who turned a small advertising agency into a global player. With one simple slogan that came to be plastered on trains, lorries, billboards, ships, phone boxes and mountaintops – you might have even seen it yourself and not given it a second thought – a slogan that travelled around the world many times over and still refused to stop, still refuses to stop. A slogan can change lives, my granddad said. And he was right: it had changed my dad’s and it had changed ours.
