by Wade, Calvin
I stood up. Plastic glass of champagne still in my hand.
“No, nothing like that. Put your glass down.” Richie insisted as he got to his feet too.
I did as I was told. This was the moment for me that everything changed. The moment that drew a line under the ‘Agony Years’ and started the ‘Ecstasy Years’. Richie went down on one knee.
“Jemma Watkinson,” Richie looked right into my eyes, his pupils were enlarged, “will you do me the immense honour of becoming my wife?”
There were no doubts. Nothing to ponder. I just had an intense feeling of joy.
“Definitely. Nothing could make me more proud!”
Richie had a box in his hand. My immediate feeling was one of fear. Richie was not the most artistic of men, I could imagine his choice of engagement ring being something unconventional but not necessarily something pleasant on the eye. I did not have too long for fear to set in, Richie flicked the box open and inside was a hula hoop crisp. He slipped it on to my ring finger.
“I didn’t want to choose an engagement ring for you. I thought, seeing as though you’d be wearing it for the rest of your life, you should choose it yourself. Get something you really love. For now though, this will have to do. If you’re hungry, you can always eat it!”
I started to laugh and cry simultaneously. Everything was perfect. The sun shone brightly, we sipped champagne, I trembled with delight.
“One thing I forgot to ask!” I said once my jangled nerves began to settle.
“What’s that?” Richie enquired.
“Have you asked my father’s permission?” I questioned, keeping a poker face.
Richie looked at me with a furrowed brow.
“Your father? I have no idea who your father is!”
“Neither have I and neither has he!!”
“Do you want me to show you how he did it?”
“Did what?”
“Created you!”
“Here?”
“Why not?”
I looked around there was no-one in sight.
“True! Why not?”
So the first thing we did as an engaged couple was make love on Loughrigg Fell. It was also the second thing we did and the third! I told you, we were frequent back in the day!
Jemma
It was a Wednesday night. “Caffeine Corner” had been quiet all afternoon, it had been deadly boring and I was due on. Richie had been working on one of the cashier tills in the Building Society because two of the women had been off sick and there was a one hundred pounds discrepancy on his till. It was short too, which he said was worse. Thus, we were ripe for a row. Coronation Street had just finished, we were in the lounge at Mill Street and before the next programme started, I just mentioned matter-of-factly, that we needed to book Christ Church soon otherwise it may be booked up for the big day. Cue, argument!
“No way, Jemma, absolutely no way!”
“What do you mean, ‘no way’?”
My legs had been resting on Richie’s on the settee, I took them off!
“I refuse to get married in a church!”
“Hang on a second, whose wedding is this?” I enquired, upset that Richie was making unilateral decisions.
“Ours,” Richie replied reluctantly, before adding, “not just yours!”
“I didn’t say it was just mine, but should we not be making decisions together, compromising on certain things, to keep each other happy?”
“Jemma, I’ll compromise with you about everything, in fact, there is no need for us to compromise, when it comes to this wedding, you can do exactly what you want and I’ll go along with it, with one exception. I am not saying my vows in a church. If you make me do that, I’ll be carrying a placard with ‘Here Under Protest’ written on it!”
“Why?”
“Jemma, you know why! I’m an atheist!”
“But I’m a Christian!”
“No, you’re not! You’re a half hearted Christian! When was the last time you went to church?”
“I’ve been to Christ Church several times since I came out of Styal and when I was in jail, I went to chapel every day.”
I know Christians have been accused by non-believers of sometimes adopting a superior attitude, but Richie was the one with the superiority complex. He looked at me as though I was a twelve year old who still believed in Father Christmas.
“Why would you of all people believe in God, Jemma?”
“What do you mean ‘YOU OF ALL PEOPLE’?”
“Well, you haven’t been treated very fairly in life, have you? Beaten by your mother, jailed for a killing you didn’t commit, it doesn’t seem your prayers have been answered!”
“But look at me now! OK, my life was tough, but I came through it and now I am getting married to you. Who’s to know God’s influence on that?”
“I know!” Richie replied, “There wasn’t any influence! He doesn’t exist!”
Richie was often a stubborn man. If he knew something or at least felt he knew something, he refused to back down, even when he turned out to be wrong.
“Richie, if you know categorically that God does not exist, why are you wasting your time persuading me? You should be out and about explaining things to all the incredibly intelligent people who are Christians and continue to believe because they have read the Bible, understand it and have a true faith. People far more intelligent than you.”
“Jemma, just because there are intelligent Christians, that does not prove a thing! There are intelligent people who believe in every religion under the sun and there are intelligent atheists. I just don’t see there being a man on high, who looks down on everything we do, keeping score and ultimately punishing us for bad behaviour like the world’s Headmaster! Also, you can supposedly only get into heaven if you believe in God, so there must be millions of cavemen and early aborigines in Hell feeling pretty hard done to, because no-one taught them about God. He also seems to punish every other species other than man, which seems more than a little harsh given he created everything. God gives the majority of humans eighty years on earth and then an eternity in heaven, but gives caterpillars a matter of weeks, but tries to placate them by allowing them to fly around a bit at the end!”
Richie was in full flow now, but in a supercilious way.
“Richie, you can trivialise Christianity if you want to, but I’ve read the Bible, several times over and it gives my life meaning. I have faith in Jesus Christ and I have faith in God. Have you ever even read the Bible?”
“No. Not in full. I’ve read bits.”
“Well, how can you just dismiss it then, when you’ve not read it?”
“I haven’t put my hand in a fire either, but I still know it’s hot!”
“What?”
“Sometimes you only need a basic understanding of something to realise how it works.”
“That’s just complete rubbish! How ridiculous! You cannot decide there’s no God when you haven’t read the Bible!”
“Hypocrite!”
Richie enjoyed this type of argument. I would get annoyed but he would just find it all very entertaining. The advantage I had over him though was my persistence. I would not back down.
“Richie, why am I hypocrite?”
“Have you ever read the Qur’an?”
“No.”
“OK. You just said I couldn’t possibly dismiss Christianity if I haven’t read the Bible. If that’s the case, how can you dismiss Islamic faiths, if you haven’t read the Qur’an? Read up on every religion, Jemma, before you decide the Christians are right. Make an informed choice, like you’re telling me to do! Who knows where you’ll want to get married then, you may want to marry in a mosque or a synagogue. You’re just siding with the only religion you’ve ever been taught about! That’s not being broadminded, it’s just jumping on the bandwagon!”
This was one of those arguments were no-one could win, as neither of us was ever going to agree with the others viewpoint. I didn’t want to win the battle t
hough, I wanted to win the war. I wanted to get married in a church!
“To repeat.I have read the Bible. I understand and believe the general message within it and I want to get married in a church. Can you not respect my wishes?” Richie gave me the look he had once given me, when I had burst out laughing and spat some of my soup out, around his parents dinner table, when his Mum had said her soup had been made with a lot of “cumin”.
“This is like, ‘there’s a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza,!’ Why would I respect your wishes, if your wishes involve me getting married in a Church? That would mean that you would not be respecting my wishes!”
“Why are you so against getting married in a church, Richie?”
“I’d feel like a hypocrite getting married in a Church. Devoting my life to you in front of a God that I don’t believe in!”
“So what? Why would you be bothered? If you don’t believe in God, it’s not as though you’ll be punished in the afterlife, as you don’t even believe there is one! I’d feel like I betrayed God, if I didn’t get married in a Church.”
Richie pulled another face. This one was his “AS IF!” face.
“Betrayed God!” he scorned, “did you not betray God when you lied under oath at your trial?”
“I did not lie!”
“You did not tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God!”
“I did.”
Admittedly, I did not say this convincingly.
“Did you mention in court that you just happened to see your sister pushing your mother down the stairs?”
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe…not.” Richie paused between the two words for dramatic effect.
“But it was an altruistic lie.” I added in my defence.
“God might not see it that way, Jemma.”
Admittedly, at this stage, I was losing this battle.
“Don’t give me that! You don’t even believe in God, Richie!”
Richie laughed smugly, “I think the safest option would be for us to get married in a Registry office. I wouldn’t want my bride to be getting struck down by a lightning bolt, sent by a vengeful God, as she walks down the aisle!”
Richie tried to grab me in one of those bear hugs that always ended up in sex. I resisted. I was not in the mood!
“Don’t be trying it on. If I don’t feel you love me, you won’t be having sex again this side of the twenty first century!”
“You’ve just got a cob on because you’re losing the argument!”
“No, I’m not! You forget God forgives those who repent of their sins and I have truly repented of mine. I have absolutely no doubt that I have been forgiven in the eyes of the Lord. We are getting married in a church and that’s that!”
“Oh not, it’s not!”
“Oh yes, it is!”
The pantomime continued into the early hours and then again in the days that followed. Twelve months later, Richie and I were married at Christ Church, Aughton with a reception at the Briars Hall, Lathom. Richie did not carry a placard revealing that he was ‘Here Under Protest’!
Richie
Jim and I stood propping up the bar or to be more accurate, the bar managed to take our weight and prop us up.
“I’m going to bed!” I slurred, letting go of the side of the bar tentatively, like a novice ice skater would let go of the edge.
“NO! NO! NO! NO!” Jim stated, pulling me back by the shirt collar, “this is your stag do, Richie, I’m your best man, you’re going nowhere! Look at your mates, they aren’t falling by the wayside, they’re driving hard!”
Jim did one of those funny forward, circular rotations of his hand, like a master of ceremonies would do in olden times when announcing a returning knight to the Queen. In this case, there were no returning knights, just eight deranged friends, pogoing around a Copenhagen dance floor in frenzied fashion, to the sound of Vic Reeves and The Wonderstuff’s version of ‘Dizzy’. They were gathering up helpless Scandanavian women like a tornado in the desert would gather up tumbleweed.
“Jim, I’ve partied hard with these boys for the last thirty six hours. My bed is calling me now. Please just let me go!”
“No! What sort of brother would I be, if I let you go? This is your stag do! Hopefully your only stag do! By Monday, it will all just be a memory. You need to breathe in the vibes, savour the moments, for soon your friends will scatter and you will be left with a fat wife, spoilt kids and an enormous mortgage!”
“Thanks for that! Jemma’s not fat.”
“Not yet! Wait until she’s married! Women feast on contentment!”
“Anyway, I’d still love Jemma if she was fat.”
“No, you wouldn’t! Why do people say that and pretend to be nice? You’d only love her until someone younger, prettier and skinnier gave you a nod and a wink!”
I stared at Jim like he was a lunatic, which he was.
“Does Amy know all about your bizarre judgements on the female species?”
“Yes. Amy’s aware that she’s the luckiest girl in the world!”
“I bet you tell her often enough!”
“Every day, mate! Every day!”
Jim was still the misogynistic, chauvinistic pig, he had been since he was a teenager or so he would have you believe. The truth was, when Amy was around, he would do anything for her. Amy was most definitely the one who wore the trousers.
“Jim, seriously, I need to go to bed!”
“Richie, this place will shutting up shop in half an hour, the boys that don’t pull will be ready to go home with us then. Let’s go and join them or at the very least, have another pint at the bar. My treat!”
“It isn’t a treat though, is it Jim?” I protested, “I must have had thirty pints since we got to Denmark! If I have another one, I might drown!”
“Stopping being so melodramatic! These are your last days of freedom! Enjoy them!”
Jim still had the capacity to infuriate me like no other.
“Will you shut up about it being the last days of freedom, Jim! I’m lucky to be marrying Jemma. She’s a bloody good woman, loyal, passionate, interesting, beautiful, sexy, every day is an adventure and I’m thankful that something or someone brought us together. I love her, Jim. In fact, I don’t just love her, I adore her!”
Jim feigned a yawn.
“Bog off,” I continued, “anyway, can we not just get out of here? If none of these maniacs manage to pull a desperate Dane, their attention will be turning to me in half an hour. I’m the stag and I’ve had nothing depraved done to me yet. Remember what they did to ‘Dogger’ in Brighton? Tied him to the lamppost naked in the middle of the gay area, didn’t they? Covered him in flour and then wrapped him in clingfilm! They didn’t collect him until the following morning and it was barely morning either, because the pissheads overslept! His willy had the girth of a baby worm when they untied him!”
Jim smiled knowingly at me.
“Richie, I don’t know why you’re saying ‘they’, from all accounts you were one of the perpetrators!”
“Exactly! That’s why we have to flee now!”
“We could go here!”
Jim dug deep into his trouser pocket and found a crumpled flyer which he handed to me. Due to the darkness, my drunkenness and the flashing lights, it was difficult to make out. There seemed to be a cartoon on one side of the flyer with a semi-naked Danish version of “Jessica Rabbit”. On the other side, it said something along the lines of, ‘See the best of what Copenhagen has to offer, in the flesh. Two free entries with this flyer’
“Why would I want to go to another club, Jim?”
“It’s a lapdancing joint!”
“A what?”
“You pay for naked lovelies to dance for you!”
“I can’t be arsed Jim, I just want to go to sleep!”
“Richie, you get married in three weeks, you may never see a naked woman again!”
“Jim, are you off again? Of course I will, Jemma!
That’s the only naked body I want to see.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Eh?”
“I told you, women feast on contentment, once they are full, they don’t need sex. Sex for women is all about their uncertainty and the desire to feel wanted. Once they know they are wanted they stop playing the game. A cat only plays with a mouse until it kills it.”
I laughed.
“You talk some crap, Jim! You obviously don’t know Jemma! She has a lot of sexual energy. It probably built up whilst she was in jail.”
“There was a bloke at work who was going out with a right horny minx, but he says from the day he got married, he never saw his wife naked again. Not once!”
“Who?”
“Ben Scott!”
“Ben Scott from Moss Delph Lane? He’s got four kids!”
“I know he has, but he created them in darkness! She was another one that went chunky after the wedding so she made him switch the light off!”
“Are you trying to put me off getting married?”
“No, but I do reckon the old jokes right!”
“Which one?”
“The one that says when a bride gets into the church, she sees three things, the aisle, the altar and you and that’s what she’s thinking…..I’ll alter you!”
“Jim, I am not going to the lapdancing joint!”
“Why?”
“I’m tired and I’m skint!”
“Skint! Don’t worry about that! I’ll pay!”
“You’re going to pester me until I agree to this, aren’t you?”
“That’s what brothers do!”
“Dizzy” finished and before my mates had chance to draw breath, the DJ put on Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’s “Only Living Boy In New Cross” and as the frenzy continued, Jim and I snuck out.
The lapdancing bar was rather amusingly called ‘Nipples and Tipples’ and was in a seedy looking road on the edge of the city. I have no idea what part of the city it was, there just seemed to be bikes everywhere, so Jim and I managed to find two that were not locked up, mine actually had a basket and a bell on but I was past caring and I followed Jim as he weaved his way across the city. Jim seemed to know exactly where he was going, which probably meant he had made a strategic plan to go lapdancing all along and had mapped his route out. We dumped the bikes one hundred metres from the club and sauntered up a slight hill to the entrance. We handed our flyer in to two tough looking bouncers in penguin suits and were directed down a staircase that seemed to descend forever. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, I was half expecting to see a horned devil with a multitude of sinners ,shovelling coal into a roaring furnace. Once I reached the dimly lit club though, I did see the sinners but there was no horned devil, although Jim was most definitely a horny devil. On arrival, we stood at the bottom of the staircase, looking like naughty schoolchildren. Lapdancing joints were not commonplace back then and, despite the drink, I had not felt this embarrassed since I had charged into my parents bedroom as a fifteen year old, to find my mother’s head at the top of the bed and my father emerging sheepishly from the bottom end.
