The Society Game

by H. Lanfermeijer

  I handed Dad a mid-morning beer.

  ‘Okay, so go on. Was it worth the wedding planner’s invitation? What was it like?’ I enquired.

  ‘What you’d expect from the average £100,000 wedding.’

  ‘A hundred grand?’

  ‘And remember this was just over twenty-five years ago. At the time your mother and I didn’t have a penny to our name and we were sitting on reception chairs that cost more than our monthly outgoings. It was iniquitous, but then my bank balance wasn’t Mark’s or in fact any of the guests there, so I was a lone scoffer. I actually bruised that day from the times your mother bashed my arm to tell me to shut up.

  ‘The whole wedding was at the Fairbank stately home in Hertfordshire. It’s a grand place owned by the Fairbanks. You might remember in the papers recently, about the son who was in line to inherit from his father, Lord Fairbank? The young lad had died of a heroin overdose and his twenty-nine-year-old body was found decomposing in a ditch off the M3. His older brother had committed suicide some years earlier so, now, the estate will pass to Lord Fairbank’s new child with his ‘twenty-something’-year-old Scandinavian wife. Let’s hope the five year old doesn’t follow the same path of his poor rich brothers else the Lord will be in a bother as to what to do with the estate. I doubt he could father many more children, especially as he’s already eighty-three but you never know what other illegitimate children of his are out there to claim their dead dad’s fortune.

  ‘Now, whether it was the curse of the sixteenth century building or whether the guests were all on a revenge attack against their liver, but most were absolutely inebriated by midday.

  ‘So, for example, when Janet and I walked into the Elizabethan entrance, we were initially taken aback by how beautiful the hall was. There were priceless paintings of Fairbank ancestors staring down at the huge hallway with century old armour guarding a six-foot-tall stone fireplace. The hallway was flooded with multi-coloured light from a huge domed stained glass window. But instead of wallowing in the opulent elegance of this place and marvelling at the English craftsmen of yesteryear, your mother and I were greeted by a young woman in a blue dress unconscious at the bottom of the staircase. One breast had fallen out and it was on display for drunken men to laugh at as they passed her. No one attempted to help her and when we tried she told us to ‘F-off’. I stress, she was literally the first person we saw and it was midday.

  ‘We were ushered round to the back of the manor and offered champagne about every five steps that we took by anxious, nervous, young waiters. I was put off the champagne and canapés quite early as when I reached for my first, some bloke pushed passed me and the waitress to vomit red liquid in an indoor tree pot which was standing between us. A ficus tree as I recall.

  ‘Outside was as beautiful as indoors but, thankfully, in comparison, there was calm. This may have been due to the magnificent view of the Chilton Downs which was displayed in all its glory from the marble balcony that led down to a topiary maze. This 200-year-old maze began the grounds for the estate and there was a gentle summer breeze that greeted us, however, I suspect the calming effect of outdoors could also be the fact that the outdoor bar was some way from the balcony, so very few people were there.

  ‘Anyway, we had been ushered outside to wait for the arrival of the bride. The ceremony was to take place under the sycamore trees but first Janet had to walk in her heels to the helipad about half an acre away as Janet had been coaxed into walking Olivia down the aisle.

  ‘This was the last thing your mother wanted as she was still angry over the snide remarks Aunt Olivia taunted us with down the phone over how cheap our wedding was going to be and afterwards an insincere, ‘well done on being able to pull it off’.’

  ‘She didn’t say that in her letter to me. She said she loved your wedding.’

  ‘She did? Well trust me Jason, she’s just mellowed in her old age. So, about three days before the wedding we were tempted to call in sick after Olivia rang to patronise Mum over whether she understood exactly how to greet her from the helicopter and how to walk her down the aisle.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. She arrived by helicopter which meant there was a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ as she flew overhead and careered her way down to the helipad. It was as if Neil Armstrong was landing on the moon all over again but this time my new wife was there standing on a black piece of cardboard to greet him as he landed. Poor Janet, nobody thought that where she was ordered to stand meant she would be blasted by the prop wash of the blades whilst your aunt landed. We all couldn’t help laugh at the spectacle, me included, at your mother’s expense. She was wearing this blue and white spotty dress which wrapped itself around her despite all your mother’s valiant attempts to tame it back down her legs. But the funniest part was, when the blades stopped turning and the air stopped churning, the dress had settled back down but your mum’s hair was still wrapped around her face and when she walked down the aisle it looked as though a wild poodle had dropped on her head. In contrast, I have to confess, your Aunt looked pretty good.’

  ‘Go on then Dad, impress me; what was she wearing?’

  ‘I don’t know, don’t ask me, the standard uniform every bride wears – a white long dress. At least your mother bucked convention and wore yellow. If you want more detail your mother will be here soon; she’s popping in on the way back from the library.

  ‘Actually, one thing I do remember well: Mark was wearing a white suit and he was also really drunk. As Olivia walked towards him he didn’t look back and didn’t acknowledge her until she stood adjacent to him. I suspect it was because he needed the world to stop spinning before he gave a cursory nod to his bride. When the vows were read it seemed like all he wanted to do was get back to the bar; he repeated his vows in a monotone voice and nodded when they were announced: ‘Mark Mathew Hopkins and wife,’ then he cheered to his work mates who were sat directly behind him and pulled Olivia forcefully towards him as if she was the UEFA cup he had just won. Ahh! The doorbell, your mother’s here. No more beer for me then.’

  Mum sat on the spare garden chair after brushing it down then sat on her jacket to protect her skirt.

  ‘Really Jason, you’re thirty odd, it’s about time you bought some decent garden furniture; John Lewis has a sale on. You must go and see.’

  ‘I promise Mum, it’s next on my list of stuff to buy after furniture for my house, a new car, and a decent holiday.’

  ‘Sarcasm gets you nowhere. I’m only thinking of you and I’m worried about you. You seem so down at the moment. Are you getting enough sleep?’

  ‘Nope but no change there. Anyway, I was asking Dad about Aunt Olive’s wedding. What do you remember?’

  ‘Drunk and stoned guests rolling about at the Fairbank estate – darling, you must visit, it’s stunning; the manor is open to guests during the summer.

  ‘Don’t roll your eyes. Anyway, I also remember being whipped by helicopter air and almost breaking an ankle trying to walk behind Olive who looked amazing thanks to the trickery of the designers. She did look amazing, don’t you agree Colin?’ Dad nodded over his gardening fork,

  ‘She was very thin, but her dress cleverly hid this. It was a silver white dress with crystals around the bodice. The dress hugged around her bottom then flared out to about a two metre train; she looked extremely shapely thanks to the padding the designers had sewn around her bottom and hips to fill it out.

  ‘I, on the other hand, looked like the wicked witch of Oz who had just arrived via a typhoon and because I was driving home I couldn’t drink, so I also felt like the school teacher checking on a teenage school disco.

  Oh my! And the engagement ring Mark had presented her with a few weeks before the wedding; I hadn’t seen it until then. It was a red diamond surrounded by cluster diamonds. Apparently, a million carats of diamond are mined per year but only twenty carats are mi
ned per year of red diamond. That is why they are so rare and expensive and the deeper the colour the greater the rarity and subsequent cost. Olivia’s was blood red.’

  ‘Where was your engagement ring? I don’t remember ever seeing it.’

  ‘My engagement ring was a new washing machine, don’t laugh, that machine lasted for years and in any case, I prefer the simplicity of my simple gold band and wrapping your father around my other fingers.’ Mum winked then continued.

  ‘But Jason, oh, the guests were so rude! For example; after the wedding breakfast in the banqueting hall, there was a group of men piling wine glasses in a tripod stack. The glasses would fall and break and as I watched I could see the waiters getting angry until eventually one brave lad came over and asked a man called Edward to stop.

  ‘“Why should I?” this fluffy blond-haired man barked back to the waiter.

  ‘“Please sir, we don’t want to spoil your fun,” the waiter said, ‘but we have to collectively pay for all breakages, plus it’s dangerous for both you and us, who ultimately have to clear the broken glass away.”

  ‘This reasonable request was met with a nonchalant shrug from Edward and a few bursts of dismissive laughter from Edward’s audience.

  ‘“So you, a waiter,” he replied, “are asking – no, demanding – I cease my engineering experiment in stacking glasses, when I’m the guest of the couple who have paid a vast fortune for the use of this place? And that very couple have not asked me to stop and if they were here they would probably be aiding my waterfall experiment. In addition, waiter, they have paid, not only for the use of this place but for everything and everyone in it so, as a guest of the beneficiary I can, by default, make full use of its contents in any way I see fit and that includes breaking glasses and watching you clear it up. As for you having to pay for the broken glasses then may I suggest you get a better job?’ He paused, ‘Oh no, you can’t. You have an education given to you off the back of a state funded fag packet.”

  ‘Edward then deliberately smashed another glass and his audience applauded. Sadly, the waiter walked back to the kitchen. However, as a lesson Jason, the only reason I remember Edward’s name was because I saw his face on the news some years later. He was Edward Tawn, the man who defrauded Merissa Bank by investing the pension pot in dodgy stock for his personal gain. All employees lost their pension when the stock plummeted and he was sent to her majesty’s hotel for a number of years.

  ‘There were some decent guests but they were mainly Olive’s friends, such as her Liberty work mates or lovely Carolanne. She was there with Toby her then boyfriend (and now husband). We still see them from time to time as they don’t live too far from us. Carolanne was her usual chirpy self, albeit far too pretty for me to stand too close to,’ Mum giggled.

  ‘Carolanne has always been effortlessly cute, her hair seemed to bounce in time with her chatting and no matter how well I thought I looked that day I always paled into obscurity when I stood next to her. That day she was wearing a blue tulip dress with yellow stilettoes. I coveted those shoes all day, they would have gone so well with my blue polka dot dress. But that aside, we had fun together and later that evening we all stood in awe at Olive’s change of dress for the evening reception. Olive’s second ensemble was a long sequined gown that hugged her tiny frame but, thanks to padding and her newly padded bust, your aunt looked like a Disney heroine.’

  ‘She looked like a silver-fish, Janet,’ Dad exclaimed.

  ‘Oh what do you know Colin, you didn’t even notice when I had my hair chopped last week.’ Mum then whispered to me, ‘Two inches was slashed from the end of my hair and he didn’t notice! Anyway, as if two dresses weren’t enough, at midnight Olive changed again for the fireworks over the lake. This time she was in a short, slinky, silk, midnight-blue dress with a velvet wrap. Your aunt looked like she had been commissioned to model the Vogue edition on what to wear at an extravagant wedding. I liked all her outfits but I was envious of the wrap as it was really chilly watching the fireworks and your father hadn’t bought a jacket for me to steal. Did he tell you he insisted on wearing jeans? Jeans to a wedding, what was he thinking?!’

  ‘Give up, Janet, it was twenty-five years ago!’

  ‘Well, if you had been dressed appropriately then I could have had your jacket.’

  ‘I kept you warm by cuddling you throughout the display and, in any case, it was a blessing as you wanted to go home, declaring you were too cold.’

  Mum nodded and added.

  ‘We were also quite bored by the end of it as there were only a few heads still on this planet and those who were still sober, like Carolanne and Toby, were waiting for the strike of one when they could slink away. Everyone else were boring drunks.

  ‘I couldn’t relax at this wedding; it was a show which had many impressive dance moves but very little passion.’

  Mum sighed and put on her gardening gloves to help Dad. I half-heartedly offered to help but thankfully was met with a plea for two Earl Grey teas. This I didn’t have, so instead I offered two filter coffees. Before I left for the kitchen I asked about their honeymoon.

  ‘Where else?’ Dad smirked, ‘two weeks in the Maldives.’

  ‘That was one good thing for Olive; at least she could go diving, even though she was on her own,’ interjected Mum.

  ‘And where was your honeymoon?’ I asked.

  ‘A week in Devon and it was beautiful; just you, your father and me – very special memories.’

  Mum and Dad left just after lunch and I was left staring at the doomed beans. I returned to my beer-stained garden chair and started on Aunt Olive’s manuscript before Jessica arrived for her replacement dinner date of Chinese takeaway.

  Olive

  Twenty-five years ago…

  The honeymoon was strained as Mark was visibly bored and by the end of the two weeks this boredom morphed into frustration and then into anger at everything – from the way the sheer voile curtains billowed throughout the night, in tune with the lapping sea surrounding our private beach hut, to how the waiters would dare to clear away his glass and impertinently replace it with the same drink before he had completely finished the first.

  I managed to escape him for two hours each morning to dive in the clear waters of the Indian Ocean. I saw turtles, sting rays, sharks and a rainbow of electric colours from the majesty of the underwater kingdom.

  These dives were the greatest show I had watched underwater but I had no one to share it with other than to secretly text James of the days’ sightings. He always wrote back that he was excited for me and he would joke how he wished he was there with me instead of work. Mark purposefully ignored my exuberant offerings about the world just beneath our water hut. As a protest to me, he even refused to go snorkelling declaring that it was all boring, and he had seen enough in fish tanks in restaurants and who cares about fish anyway?

  ‘The oceans, other fish, people who survive on fish, shall I go on?’ I replied.

  ‘Missing the point as usual. What I’m trying to say is this so called paradise is costing nearly fifteen grand; you know you can buy a house in the north for the cost of this holiday…’

  ‘Honeymoon.’

  ‘Whatever you want to call it. They can’t even get in a decent whisky, but I’m supposed to be compensated by fish?’

  He flopped back on the bed blindly searching for the television remote.

  ‘How much longer of this hell hole?’ he whined.

  Apathy was creeping into our marriage and it was only day four of the honeymoon. Occasionally I asked if he would like a walk. He always refused, allowing me to wander alone along the silky, smooth sand with the gentle, clear water tickling my toes and the sun following me as my companion. When I returned to Mark, he was invariably sitting on the beach hut swing chair with his feet resting on our balcony frame. If any part of his body was destined to burn then his feet were
to be the victim and naturally, after just a few days, his feet resembled lobster slippers which added to his anguish over his now hatred of my paradise island.

  By day five, I increased my dives to twice a day. The second dive was an hour after lunch so I would sneak away by two. He didn’t notice as by now he was reacquainted with his laptop – after just a week’s absence he was back replying to work emails. Each day I would return just before five; he would ignore my entrance and continue to ignore me until I had changed for dinner. At that bewitching moment Mark Matthew Hopkins shrugged off his bad mood, turned off work and stepped out with his wife to find the bar.

  ‘Finally something to do here,’ he pronounced every night.

  ‘Other than diving, relaxing and enjoying this paradise,’ I replied.

  ‘Exactly. Boring and complete waste of money,’ he scoffed.

  ‘A full moon,’ I noticed, ‘it seems larger here don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t. I’m trying out their rum tonight – given up on their selection of whisky. They’re an insult to my taste buds. These people don’t have the faintest idea what they’re doing. Bring back the UK.’

  ‘And back to your drinks cabinet in grey England.’

  ‘Shut up, Olivia,’ he said as he sat down on the bar stool and turned from me to the bar man.

  He was not interested in anything I had to say and I had little interest in his monosyllabic offerings. But my honeymoon was blissful for the diving and the beauty of the island and I often wished I could relive those two weeks, but without my husband.

  It was the beginning of October when we returned. I now had far more time on my hands as I had stopped working for Liberty’s as, although I had become a manager there, Mark decided it was inappropriate for me to work as it was taking a job away from someone who needed the money and adding that I had worked for nearly ten years and I had contributed enough to the government’s tax pot. I agreed. As compensation Mark increased the limit on my credit card.