Revenge of the Wedding Planner

by Sharon Owens

  I was deeply unsettled. I don’t like change, not even in the lives of other people.

  Then Julie poured another cup of tea and drank it slowly, gazing up at the red-glass chandeliers and with only the hint of a tear in her eye. What a trooper Julie is, I thought. At the time I supposed she had her reasons but I couldn’t figure out why she would want to break up with her lovely boyfriend. I was sure he would have liked the chance to discuss things and maybe they could have reached some sort of compromise.

  Gary Devine was the best-looking man I had ever seen in real life. Conventionally handsome, if you know what I mean. The living image of Andy Garcia. Big honest eyes, thighs rounded and hard like telegraph poles, thick head of glossy black hair. (And it’s not even dyed, like mine is.) Great lover too, according to Julie. She never went into details. She just laughed once and said Gary definitely knew what he was doing in the bedroom. Nicely spoken, he was. Never used to swear in the company of ladies.

  What does Gary do for a living, I hear you ask?

  Says a lot about a man, doesn’t it?

  Well, Gary’s a riding instructor with his own stables in Crawfordsburn. Julie met him in 2002 when she was learning to ride a horse. She was seeing this older man called Bert at the time and she was tinkering with the idea of getting married. Only tinkering, now, she hadn’t set a date or anything. She was talking about a Robin Hood theme, hence the horse-riding lessons. Bert was a paper products (loo-roll) millionaire and a very keen rider himself. Julie didn’t love Bert but he was filthy rich, as it were. ‘People will always need toilet tissue.’ That was Bert’s motto.

  We had quite a few laughs over it. Until Julie fell off the horse into a deep puddle of sticky black mud and Bert laughed his head off. Big mistake. Nobody laughs at Julie twice. She swiftly dumped Bert for Gary Devine, just as soon as she’d washed off the mud in the stables’ showers. Julie moved in with Gary that evening, actually.

  ‘I’m going to stay in a new spa in Galway.’ That was Julie’s follow-up nugget of news. She took a thick gold-edged business card out of her handbag and laid it gingerly on my knee. ‘That’s the name of the place, there. They’ve got shocking-pink armchairs in the foyer.’

  So they had. There was a picture of the foyer on the business card. Shocking-pink armchairs, all present and correct. Lots of glass walls and exotic flowers in tall vases. An indoor stream and some gorgeous hunks in white towelling robes standing casually by the stairs. Having a cosy little chat, by all accounts. It all looked so natural and spontaneous. Not! Bully for you in your white robes, I thought resentfully.

  Normally, I’d be extremely impressed with shocking-pink armchairs in the foyer and gold-edged business cards but that day I could feel the sands of time shifting beneath my feet and I knew that both our lives were on the cusp of major change. Don’t ask me how I knew. I mean, Julie was only breaking up with her boyfriend. It happens all the time. People get together and they split up again. But this was different. Call it a woman’s intuition. I just knew the transition period would be long and difficult for everyone concerned.

  ‘I see,’ I replied in a whisper.

  ‘Super place, so I hear,’ Julie went on. ‘I expect I’ll spend more time lying by the pool than being slathered in smelly potions and all that caper but I’m so looking forward to the peace and quiet. Windows right down to the ground, they have. See? It’s like being outside except, of course, it’s warm.’

  We both peered at the card again. It did seem a five-star sort of operation, which was only what I expected of Julie Sultana. She wasn’t likely to lie low in a rural guest house with tufted chenille bedspreads and crumbs in the jam. Julie is nothing if not stylish.

  And then, break-up announced, she got on with the rest of the business instructions.

  ‘Now, Mags, will you be able to cope with Dream Weddings on your own while I’m away? Only, my mobile will be switched off in case Gary rings me. Which he’s bound to do. Let’s see, there’s that peasant shindig coming up tomorrow afternoon, for a start. I should never have taken them on as clients. What possessed me? Janine Smith and the rest of her motley crew! Never less than six of them clumping into the lighthouse for appointments, sometimes with small kids in tow. Mags, no more under-twelves in the lighthouse! We don’t want one of them falling down the bloody stairs. Right?’

  ‘Yes, Julie.’

  I thought: See! She does care about children.

  ‘We don’t want to be hit with a crippling lawsuit,’ Julie added. ‘Just when we’re starting to do so well.’

  Oh, I thought. Good point, all the same. We didn’t want any little ones breaking their necks. Those steps are only four inches wide on the inside tread. And the banister is a rope, which isn’t as easy to hold on to as you’d think, the way it loops up and down to the fixings.

  ‘No more children in the lighthouse, agreed,’ I parroted.

  ‘And the dress will take a team of engineers to put on, silly mare. She’ll be killed trying to walk down the aisle, honestly she will. She’ll probably faint with heat exhaustion. Make sure you’re close by with the Rescue Remedy, Mags. Why do women get so carried away on their wedding day? It’s only a piece of paper when all’s said and done.’

  Well, that last comment was very telling, I thought to myself. But I said nothing.

  ‘It’s okay, Julie,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll manage.’

  I was terrified, to tell you the truth. I preferred Julie and me to go together if we had to meet clients in their own homes and attend weddings and so on. But I could see she was having some sort of crisis. Shame about Gary, though. I’d always thought Gary was very nice. I hoped she’d miss him so much she’d come home after ten minutes of ‘forest sounds and hot stones’, make it up with him and still be available to help me squash the bride (the aforementioned Janine Smith) into her pumpkin coach. And we still weren’t convinced the extra-volume pink tulle (fifty layers of it) Janine had ordered wasn’t highly flammable. And the bride and groom were both heavy smokers.

  ‘I’ll check my mobile once a day for messages,’ Julie said. ‘Around lunchtime, probably. Emergencies only, mind. Don’t contact me unless Janine Smith actually gets hurt falling out of the pumpkin coach. You know what, don’t tell me anything about that vile wedding. I’m so ashamed of the entire farce. And don’t agree to put a shot of her on our website, either. Little wannabe. Let her give Closer magazine a ring instead. We’re not an elitist set-up, Mags, but even I draw the line at plastic tiaras and nylon nipple-skimmers.’

  Nipple-skimmer is what we in the business call a low-cut bridal gown. Just a private trade joke. I nodded mutely. You can’t argue with Julie. That’s another thing you’ve got to understand if you want to be Julie’s friend. You can’t ask searching questions and you can’t argue with her if you don’t agree with what she says. She’s very stubborn, is Julie. Anyone else would assume Julie was a bit of a spoilt madam, not letting people have their say, but not me. I knew her too well, you see. And I knew all about Charlotte and Sidney. And they’re the reason I let Julie get away with blue murder sometimes.

  4. Charlotte and Sidney

  Charlotte and Sidney were Julie’s parents but she didn’t love them very much when she was growing up. In fact, she hated her father, in particular, so much that she also hated anyone who was even called Sidney. She once put the squeeze on this man called Sidney McCreevy. He was asking for it, mind you. Wouldn’t settle the bill for his daughter’s wedding and it was well into six figures, what with the way plans had expanded during the run-up. And Julie can’t be doing with late payers. We could have gone to court but that would’ve dragged on for years so Julie decided to take matters into her own hands. She threatened to tell Mrs McCreevy that her husband was up to no good with his secretary. Julie knows all the gossip in this town. Julie and her five best friends, the Lisburn Road Coven: they know everything. That’s how Julie came to be the owner of the lighthouse on Lagan Road. Sidney McCreevy gave it to her in lieu of a cheque. And he�
�s still seeing his secretary to this day.

  Marriage is a curious thing, isn’t it?

  How many couples do you know? Forty or fifty, probably. And how many of them can you honestly say are blissfully happy? Come on, now. How many couples do you know, for a fact, go rolling about on their Habitat rugs every weekend? Not many, I’ll wager. Well, me and my Bill are actually a bit like that except with rugs from Ormeau Carpets instead of Habitat. But most marriages are a little mundane, like a Cheddar cheese sandwich curling up at the edges. That’s Julie’s opinion and maybe she’s right? I’m not being smug, you understand. I’m only going by what I’ve been told on the maternity wards. Some women will really dish the dirt on their husbands when they’ve recently had their undercarriage stitched up like an army blanket while hubby sits watching ‘a qualifier’ on some pub telly. But to continue with Julie’s theory, most wives don’t really fancy their husbands and, like cheap bread, the poor guy looks grey in a certain light but he’s better than nothing. And the wives ask themselves, well, who gets to eat gourmet food every night? So they make do with their man (the equivalent of a Cheddar doorstep) and they tell themselves it could be worse and at least he doesn’t batter them round the scullery when he gets drunk, and if he wasn’t there, who would cut the grass and put the shelves up? Right?

  Okay.

  But Charlotte and Sidney, Julie’s parents? Oh, dear. Brace yourself for this. It’s not pleasant. They were completely mad. Both of them. Absolutely mental, doolally, bonkers, up the left, round the twist, gaga, potty, basket cases. We’re not supposed to use those derogatory words any more, are we? It’s not politically correct to say someone’s a Grade One Nut Job. We’re supposed to say that people are dealing as best they can with some serious issues and they’re having a spot of therapy at the moment or they’ve had a hard life and that’s why they’re a little ‘eccentric’. Fair enough. But Charlotte and Sidney were in a league of their own when it came to marital disharmony. They were a poster campaign for quickie divorces. They drove each other insane in that big house on the edge of the city, surrounded by sycamore trees. And poor Julie was a thoroughly miserable witness to their out rageous carry-on. It was a nuclear war in that house, from what I gather. Each of them with a finger poised above the red button, waiting for the mushroom cloud of Armageddon to erupt. Married her for a bet, that’s what Sidney said to Charlotte when they returned from their honeymoon in Bundoran in 1964. She still had the silver horseshoe wedding charm dangling off her wrist.

  ‘Guess what? I married you for a bet, Charlotte my darling,’ Sidney said when he’d carried his new bride over the threshold of his rented rooms in the Holy Lands district of South Belfast.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Charlotte said, tapping her ears with a pink vinyl clutch bag. ‘Can you say that again, Sidney? I don’t think I heard you right, my sweetness.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I married you for a wager! Now, Mrs Sultana, where’s my dinner? The kitchen is through there. I’m extremely partial to a little bundle of shredded Savoy cabbage lightly fried in bacon grease. Only, don’t use too much, my love, as I prefer my rashers crispy. Thank you very much.’

  Charlotte, rather predictably, keeled over like a ton of bricks onto the worn linoleum, and would you believe, he left her lying there in a heap and went for a nice long soak in the bath. He was an evil man, that Sidney Sultana.

  He seemed to draw strength from the misery of others, Julie’s father. Never missed a wake, for instance. Always first at the front door to shake hands with the griefstricken family, swiftly followed by a good long gawp at the deceased. Or, as Catholics persist in calling them, ‘the remains’. Nice. Sidney actually kept a count of the wakes he had attended on the back of an envelope, tucked into his car’s sun visor for handiness. I’m not making this up. Now, I’ve always found prolific wake-attenders to be very strange characters. I’m not talking about close friends and relatives, you understand. I’m talking about those people who pop into every wake in town when they were only ever a casual acquaintance. Morbid voyeurs asking questions about the circumstances of the death.

  ‘Did he suffer at the finish? Were there any last words?’

  Or, ‘Was she conscious at all, the poor woman? Did she know the end was nigh?’

  Give me the heebie-jeebies, people like that. I might dress like a vampire’s grandmother sometimes but I’m no coffin-chaser, believe you me. I’ve always found death to be a very upsetting subject. I love beautiful things: jet beads, ornate gates and bedsteads, lace curtains, beaded handbags, long-stemmed wine glasses. Men with good bone structure. Ostrich feathers. Roman noses and red roses. But death and all associated subjects? I don’t want to know, missus. Just wanted to clear that up.

  So, yes, day one of married life for the Sultanas. Charlotte drops like a sack of spuds into the corner and he nips off for a sandalwood bubble bath. The wretched woman should have crawled out of that tenement house on her hands and knees when she came to, and she might have done just that except Julie was already on the way. A brave little speck of hope in a marriage that was doomed from the very beginning. Charlotte was feeling unwell during her last few days at the seaside, you see. A fluttery feeling in her tummy, she told Julie years later. And she just knew she was pregnant. So being a good wife, she pretended she hadn’t heard what Sidney had said, pretended she hadn’t fainted onto a pile of old newspapers and punctured bicycle tyres. And off she went to the corner shop to purchase some new potatoes, a fresh Savoy cabbage and a pound of lean bacon.

  Tragic.

  Some background for you?

  Okay.

  Sidney Sultana was a betting man. He loved a gamble. He loved a good bet. He owned a chain of betting shops across Belfast and a shiny big BMW saloon car, which he kept in ‘mint’ condition at all times because he never knew when he might be able to offer a lift to a pretty young girl. Oh, yes, he was always on the sniff, the dirty dog. Before his marriage to Charlotte and during it. Up to all sorts of tax dodges, he was. Kept a mountain of cash around the office, the bank never saw the half of it. Sidney had lived in rented rooms all his adult life even though he could easily have afforded a decent house. I’ve never been able to work out why he did that. Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it? Maybe he worried that some of the customers he’d bankrupted would burn him out? Maybe he simply didn’t fancy the upkeep?

  Whatever.

  Basically, what happened was that his old poker associates bet him ten thousand quid that he couldn’t wed a lady from the upper classes and of course Sidney went all-out to win that ten grand. Even though he was rotten with money already and didn’t need it. He pursued Charlotte relentlessly and when he got her to fall in love with him, well, her disappointed family had no choice but to swallow their distaste and arrange the nuptials as best they could. The reception was like a Laurel and Hardy film, so I believe, with Charlotte’s posh relatives hiding behind potted palms in the hotel, to avoid having to converse with the riotous Sultana tribe.

  Charlotte’s father reluctantly signed over a plot of land as a wedding present and Sidney finally became a homeowner. He built a vulgar great house on the land, with three garages and a swimming pool even though neither he nor his heartbroken bride could swim a stroke. As a little twist, though, he built the house facing away from the view just so his wife couldn’t enjoy the scenery unless she was standing at the sink in the scullery. The despicable excuse for a man. He taunted Charlotte with that bet through every day of her nightmare pregnancy. He flaunted his mistresses before her, buying them gifts of perfume and satin underwear and leaving them lying around the house for a day or two with gift tags attached. (The gifts, not the mistresses.) He embarrassed his wife in front of their dinner guests. Time and time again he made a show of her, criticizing her prim and proper clothes and her dowdy taste in footwear and her lumpy mashed potatoes.

  He didn’t have it all his own way, though. They never had another child because after the baby was born Charlotte refused to share a
bed with Sidney ever again. She was a doormat, certainly, but she wasn’t a masochist. She thought he might be planning to wear her out with back-to-back pregnancies so she moved into one of the other bedrooms (taking Baby Julie with her) and she had a lock put on the door. Of course, any fool knows the average lifespan of mothers in this country used to be something laughable like forty-five in the years before contraception became widely available. Thousands of women ended up in early graves. Anaemic and undernourished, forced to scrub and cook all hours, they simply collapsed with exhaustion beside the mangle. A bloody disgrace it was. Hard to believe it’s still going on in developing countries, isn’t it? This quiet annihilation of women.

  Anyway, Julie heard them rowing about sex, in the garden one night, when she was about seven. Sidney shouting that Charlotte wasn’t giving him what he was entitled to by law and ‘in the eyes of the Catholic Church’. And her vowing to ‘hack it off’ with a knife if he ever came near her. It was a complete mystery to Julie why they carried on like this for ten years. And Sidney didn’t relent in his atrocious behaviour for one single minute. Personally, I think it was a class thing and Sidney hated Charlotte because she was educated and refined, but that doesn’t explain why he married her to begin with. I mean, if he’d wanted a common wife with a rampant libido and a swarthy tongue in her head, why the hell didn’t he propose to someone like that instead and save us all a lot of bother?

  Such trouble to go to for a wager!

  Sidney shouted at Charlotte and he threw things at the wall above her head and he even took an axe to the kitchen in the new house one night when he’d had too much to drink. It was almost as if he was trying to drive his own wife to suicide. That’s what Julie thinks, looking back. Sidney knew full well that Charlotte was a sensitive sort who wasn’t used to such deadly melodrama, but he didn’t care. In fact, he delighted in seeing her weep with misery. Stuck-up cow, he used to call her. She would cry for hours on end and beg him to explain why he’d married her if he hated her so much and he would always yell back, ‘How many times, you stupid woman? I married you for a bet!’