Secrets of a Happy Marriage

by Cathy Kelly

  Yvonne was small, skinny, clearly lived on her nerves and was anxious about everything: the speed of the wedding which had been planned in a mere three months; whether March was a good time to get married in the first place, what with the threat of rain; and finally, about Cari’s slender ivory dress and plans for her bouquet and headdress, like something from a fairy story about forest maeneds. Where were the lilies, the tiara, the plans for fake-tan application so that Cari would look like a bronzed South American showgirl before she went on her honeymoon, a look that Yvonne felt was necessary?

  ‘Is it weddingy enough?’ she’d worried, when Cari showed her the dress. ‘You could carry off a full skirt, you know. Girls lose weight before the wedding.’

  Cari’s jaw clenched.

  Yvonne worried about the bridesmaids’ outfits too.

  Cari had chosen an unusual colour green, a pale sage-green silk to tie in with her forest faery look, and the church flowers would all have sage-green ribbons trailing down from them, as would Cari’s own bouquet.

  ‘Isn’t green unlucky in weddings?’ Yvonne fretted. ‘Plus, it’s not a colour that suits everybody,’ she’d said. ‘I’m in pink – that could look strange. Pink totally doesn’t go with green and it might look as if I’m not happy with the wedding theme and I’d hate anyone to think that because I love you, Cari. I mean, I don’t like the green but—’

  ‘Ma, it will be lovely,’ said Jacinta, Barney’s sister, who was a rock of sense from coping with her mother’s nerves all her life.

  But Yvonne’s wedding anxiety was well beyond being handled by her own daughter and would probably – and Cari was only guessing – need a fleet of psychiatrists to sort it out.

  ‘Cari, you know I love the colour of the wedding, don’t you?’ said Yvonne anxiously.

  ‘You handle her, Mum,’ Cari had begged Nora on the quiet. ‘I know she means well but I cannot cope with neurotic people. I’m busy at work, so’s Barney, and we’re planning a wedding not Middle Eastern Peace Talks.’

  ‘If I’m in pink, it will look so different,’ Yvonne was still repeating plaintively with high notes of anxiety. ‘So out of step compared to the rest of you. What do you think people will say?’

  Cari didn’t care particularly what people said. Neither did Barney for that matter. But Yvonne worried endlessly about what people would say: would people like the meal choices, would people think it was acceptable that the wedding was being held in March instead of what she considered to be the more normal wedding time of May or June, should she change her wedding outfit because the shop might take it back but green wasn’t her colour and she looked like she had gastroenteritis when she wore it …

  ‘People get married all year round,’ Nora had said, trying to calm Yvonne, but that wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ said Cari again, ‘will you look after her, I’m busy at work and I can’t keep her calm. I don’t know how Barney has been able to cope with her all these years. And then I think, she’s going to be my mother-in-law now and I’m going to have her round for dinner – it’s frightening.’

  Nora laughed heartily. ‘That’s one of the problems of getting married,’ she said, smiling. ‘You don’t just marry a man, you marry his family. His father’s very relaxed – ying and yang time.’

  ‘Obviously out of necessity,’ muttered Cari.

  Barney’s father, Owen, was the exact opposite of his wife: calm and easy-going. He hadn’t minded the speed at which the wedding plans had taken place, had seemed to have understood that once Cari and Barney decided to get married, that they wanted to get married now. So while Yvonne was anxious about the whole notion of a very short engagement, Owen was laid-back about it. There was no secret to it all, no second blue line in a pregnancy testing kit that had pushed them forward. Barney and Cari had simply decided that they wanted to get married after living together for a year.

  The day was approaching fast. Cari was no Bridezilla. In the same way that she organised everything at work, she and her mother had organised everything. Bridesmaids dresses: check; menu for the wedding: check; flowers: check. Barney was looking after the honeymoon and he wanted it to be a secret.

  ‘Come on, you have got to tell me where we are going, I need to pack, you know,’ Cari had said.

  Barney had grinned and dragged her into his arms.

  Cari was a tall woman in her heels and one of the many things she loved about Barney was that he was taller and stronger, so that when he pulled her into his arms, it felt good.

  ‘Look, you controlling minx,’ he said, ‘for once in your life let me organise something and just relax.’

  ‘Relaxing is not what I do best,’ said Cari, but she was smiling.

  Marriage was special, different: it would be thrilling to start this new life by letting go of some of her control. Besides, and she would never admit this to anyone apart from Jojo, there was something incredibly exciting about going on a honeymoon when she didn’t know where she was going.

  ‘Don’t ever tell anyone I said this, but it’s sort of sexy not knowing where we’re going,’ she said to her cousin on the phone.

  ‘Sexy?’ teased Jojo. ‘I thought you didn’t do the duke and his girlfriend novels.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want,’ Cari said, laughing herself. ‘I know – very anachronistic of me to be turned on by this but I am. Nobody ever organises anything for me because I organise it. But Barney put his foot down about this: said he wanted a traditional honeymoon where I knew nothing about it. Nothing’s a secret about the wedding night any more: we all know everything, we’ve all lived with each other before we get married now. This brings back a thrill …’

  ‘You old crazy romantic, you,’ Jojo said.

  Cari sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’

  Everyone at work knew about the honeymoon secret – they all talked about it.

  ‘It’s so romantic,’ sighed Mo from sales.

  Even Declan, Cari’s new junior editor, loved the idea, ‘I’d quite like to be whisked away somewhere exotic not knowing where I was going,’ he said with a wistful hint.

  Cari hoped he had someone in his life to do some whisking but she’d felt they didn’t know each other well enough for her to ask.

  Only Jeff, company MD, had any concerns at all. ‘I don’t know how you are going along with this, Cari,’ he’d said, almost grumpily. ‘It’s so unlike you to let someone else decide things.’

  Cari had immediately felt defensive: ‘It’s just something Barney and I agreed on. And we’d probably have killed each other trying to figure out what to do for the honeymoon, and this way, the choice is made.’

  ‘Be sure and take plenty of books in case you hate it,’ said Jeff, sounding like Eeyore after a bad day in The Hundred Acre Wood.

  ‘I will,’ said Cari brightly, slightly annoyed that Jeff, who had been her mentor and her friend for so long, didn’t seem to approve of this part of the wedding, but then for some other weird reason Jeff didn’t really approve of Barney either.

  Oh, he kept it well hidden, but Cari knew Jeff and Barney didn’t like each other, which was strange and odd, because everyone loved Barney and everyone loved Jeff. They were two entirely lovable people and yet they could barely disguise their dislike for each other.

  Barney called Jeff ‘that big dope who runs your office’, which annoyed her no end.

  Jeff didn’t call Barney anything but she was sure if she’d asked – not that she wanted to – she’d hear something she didn’t like.

  She discussed the whole thing with Jojo who advised her not to worry about it.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, who cares if they get on or not, it’s not as if you are going to be living in each other’s pockets. Men can be territorial.’

  ‘That’s probably it,’ agreed Cari.

  Yet what were they being territorial about?

  On the morning of the wedding, it wasn’t the gloriously sunny day that every bride dreamed about. There was a faint Marc
h drizzle and a definite sense of coolness in the air. No matter, Cari thought, as she stood outside the back door in her parents’ house and tried to get a feel for the temperature. She had a beautiful crocheted shawl to wear over her dress, a garment that looked like fine lace if fine lace was the soft cream of antique threads dipped in tea, then decorated with hints of olive- and sage-green embroidery, with a few silken tassels thrown in for good luck.

  Along with her meadowflower bouquet, and the faery look of her dress, not to mention the crown of flowers in her hair, it was full of all sorts of other hippyish things that she completely loved, and which she knew poor Yvonne hated. Cari had seen Yvonne’s outfit, which was a bright pink coat and sleeveless dress, classic mother-of-the-bride, with a bit of a feathery hat thing that Yvonne called a fascinator and which Cari’s father, Mick, was naughtily calling a ‘fornicator’, a joke that made him giggle like an irrascible schoolboy each time he said it.

  Mick appeared at the back door with two mugs of tea.

  ‘Tea for the condemned woman,’ he said, holding out a mug.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Cari, ‘you are a sweetheart.’

  ‘You know,’ her father said, ‘I think the sun might be peeking out behind those clouds. You might get a bit of sun for your wedding, after all.’

  Cari had smiled up at him. He was so good and kind, and she was looking forward to seeing his proud face as he walked her down the aisle. ‘I don’t need sun for my wedding,’ she said, ‘the sun will come from the inside, that’s where all the best glows come from,’ she said happily.

  ‘You have to keep that sort of philosophical stuff to a minimum,’ said Mick gruffly, ‘or else I will cry, and I will never be able to hold my head up in the pub again.’

  By eleven o’clock, the house on Longford Terrace was full of people, with laughter and giggling and the clinking of glasses coming from every room.

  ‘Will somebody help me with my corsage,’ roared Maggie. ‘I just can’t seem to get it right and I’m afraid I’m going to rip the silk on this blasted dress.’

  ‘Here, let me,’ said Jacinta, Barney’s sister, who had proven herself to be a remarkably helpful bridesmaid.

  She was definitely more like Barney than her mother, Cari decided: kind, clever, and the silken sage-green dress suited her beautifully, went gloriously with her slightly mousy curls, despite her mother’s anxious wailing that the colour would drown her and make the rest of them look like plague victims.

  Mick had opened some champagne and Nora was cautioning against people drinking too much.

  ‘Just half a glass,’ she said to everyone and then spent the next hour trying to get them to eat a sandwich. ‘I don’t want you all plastered before we get to the church, half a glass is all.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Nora,’ said Lottie, Jojo’s mum. ‘Nobody is going to be plastered.’

  Lottie was sick then, but nothing was going to stop her being in the house on Longford Terrace for the day of Cari’s wedding. She was pale and her beautiful face was rounded from the steroids but she was still smiling, putting a very brave face on it.

  Nora kept looking at her dearest friend and worrying that it wouldn’t be long now. None of the girls seemed to be aware of it, not Jojo that was for sure. Not even Paul, who was back from New York with his new wife, Lena, and should have seen the huge decline in his mother since he’d seen her last just a few weeks before, seemed to have the slightest notion that Lottie was dying.

  It was strange, Nora thought, that doctors could talk gravely to families about their beloved relatives living with cancer and how they were doing the best they could, and how it didn’t seem to sink in. Perhaps it was because Lottie was so full of life, had such a life force within herself, that nobody believed that she could actually cease to exist.

  And soon, Nora thought sadly, soon that would be the case.

  Her beloved Lottie would be gone and what would they all do then?

  ‘Ma,’ came a roar from upstairs. ‘Will you come and help me with my flowers?’

  ‘They’re perfect,’ said the hairdresser’s voice just as loudly and with a hint of irritation in it.

  ‘I just want my mum to have a look at them,’ said Cari.

  The hairdresser was probably used to being second-guessed on all things bridal. It must be tough working on weddings, Nora thought.

  She raced up the stairs again. There would be no problem getting in her 10,000 steps today – she must have done 10,000 already, what with running around the house, making sandwiches, trying to press them on people, opening and closing the front door as half of Longford Terrace arrived to say Happy Wedding Day to them all, and making sure the dogs didn’t get out onto the road because Prancer, in particular, was madly keen to see what was going on out on the road and were there any bins he could knock over and attack. Nora was looking forward to it all so much, knew she’d cry when Cari and Barney said their vows, but she was exhausted.

  Perhaps that was the secret to a good wedding: concentrating on the aftermath glow?

  When Cari was ready, she stared at herself in her old bedroom mirror, a bedroom she hadn’t slept in for a very long time until the night before, and looked at a woman that was both her and not her.

  The bridal make-up was subtle because Cari hadn’t wanted her normal, businessy look today, and the simple flick of a cat’s eye on each eyelid and a hint of pink lip gloss only emphasised her delicate features. Her dark hair was twisted and twirled into a riot of curls with a coronet of little white flowers around her head. She looked different, like the faery she wanted to be for her wedding day.

  During the planning of it all, Barney had teased her for wanting such a romantic wedding.

  ‘Here you are having a romantic dress and a romantic wedding, and you’ve always insisted you’re not a romantic at all,’ he’d said.

  ‘I know,’ Cari said, feeling a tiny bit foolish. ‘But I have always sort of dreamed of something Celtic and different … does that make me a silly old thing?’

  ‘No, makes me love you,’ Barney had said.

  Thinking about that moment reignited the ember of unease that resided within Cari’s heart. Barney didn’t say things like that any more, not for the last month at least and it worried her.

  She had said as much to him once: was everything all right? Was he happy, did he want to go ahead with it all?

  He had almost snapped her head off.

  ‘Of course everything is all right, work is just difficult, that’s all. Cari, the world doesn’t end just because we are getting married you know.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ She had held her hands up. ‘Fine I get it, work, busy – yes. I get it, totally, so go off and kill some dinosaurs, He-Man.’

  But the niggle wouldn’t go away. He had been distant at the rehearsal dinner the night before, as if his mind was on a different planet altogether.

  It wasn’t just with her, she’d noticed: it was with other people too. Barney was always very kind to his mother and Cari had noticed that he’d snapped her head off a couple of times at the dinner, so much so that Cari had intervened and said: ‘Barney, don’t be such a pig, apologise to your mother. I know you have got a lot on your plate, but really.’

  ‘Thank you,’ sniffed Yvonne, who had had two glasses of wine and was tearful.

  ‘You look beautiful, darling,’ said her mother now, coming into the room quietly. And Cari automatically smiled back at her mother’s reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s all make-up and artifice, you know that.’

  ‘No, it’s you, my darling daughter, and I love you. Your father and I are so proud of you today,’ Nora said. ‘All days, actually.’

  Finally, it was just Cari and Mick waiting to go to the church. Maggie had gone at last, after one huge hug, crying because she always was emotional, but Cari hadn’t cried.

  She felt too wound up and worried. That weird feeling was still there and she picked up her mobile phone and looked at its blan
k screen with irritation before throwing it into her tiny wedding handbag. There were no messages, no last minute things from Barney saying, ‘sorry about last night, I was just a bit stressed, nothing. Can’t wait to marry you.’

  That was the sort of thing he used to do – but not any more. Maybe weddings stressed men too?

  ‘Are you ready, me darling girl?’ said Dad, standing at the door.

  Mick Brannigan wasn’t built for a tuxedo, not like his brothers, Kit and Edward. Kit looked as if he had been born into one, a sort of silver-haired James Bond character. And as for Edward, he had the most expensive of dress suits, made abroad and tailored to fit him perfectly. But at that moment Cari thought that her father, who had never had much money in his life and was wearing a beautiful dress suit hired from the shop down the road, looked better than he ever had and better by far than either of his brothers.

  She beamed up at him. ‘I’m ready, Pa,’ she said.

  The Star of the Sea Church in Silver Bay was one of the prettiest churches Cari had ever been in. Today, it looked positively beautiful, with the much anticipated sun finally gleaming on it and the promise of all the flowers inside, along with the people she loved – not to mention the man she adored standing waiting for her.

  They weren’t late. Cari didn’t really hold with the whole bride rolling up half an hour late shenanigans at weddings. She had been about to say it to Barney the night before and thought better of it. Maybe his being off with her was just nerves and that would make it worse.

  But how could he have any nerves, how could he think she wouldn’t come? Wasn’t that why men got nervous before their weddings – at the thought that their bride-to-be wouldn’t turn up in the church and that they’d be left standing there looking like fools in front of their friends and relatives?