Revenge of the Wedding Planner

by Sharon Owens

  I had a lot on my mind in any case, because the following morning I was going into the university to have a chat with Emma about her suspected eating disorder. Well, she didn’t know we were going to be talking about anorexia and how bad it would be for the baby. And I’d already decided I wasn’t going to interfere in her life or Alexander’s to any great extent. It was just a little nudge in the right direction. Some helpful hints and ideas, that’s all it was. We’d arranged to meet for coffee in the snack bar to finalize plans for the drawing-room conversion. She couldn’t decide on a country-cottage kitchenette theme or modern beech units and a concealed sink. I didn’t want to talk about it at home because Bill was so uncomfortable with the whole thing. He wanted them to live independently from ‘the mother ship’ and pay their own gas bill and peel their own spuds. Fat chance. Young people today are worse than useless at keeping house. They think all meals begin with the words ‘remove lid and pierce film’. If the washing machine goes on the blink they just lie daydreaming on the sofa and gaze at the ceiling until help arrives. My kids do, anyway, and they’re good kids. I thought I might get Emma to compromise a little on the bedsit – maybe just go for the bathroom but not the kitchenette? Well, she doesn’t eat much, does she, I thought spitefully.

  So, Emma had a diet cola with lots of ice and an under-ripe green apple. I had a messy cappuccino with three sugars, two sausage rolls bursting out of their pastry at both ends (plastered with salt and HP sauce) and a rather lopsided giant chocolate muffin with a soft chocolate centre, which I didn’t actually want but I was trying to make a point. By the way, that canteen could do with a new manager; they’re far too free and easy with the presentation. We found a clean-ish table and sat down. Emma looked as if she was going to gag as I ate every last crumb of my food. I even scooped up the last drop of brown sauce with my forefinger and licked it off. Then I wished I hadn’t as I’d just been jangling loose change in my pocket, but there you go.

  ‘So, Emma,’ I said, red in the face from my fatty feast, ‘tell me, how is the world treating you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve found this amazing new exercise video,’ she said, sucking an ice cube. ‘It’s so cool, it really minimizes your thighs.’

  So does breast-feeding, I thought.

  In my opinion, exercise videos were invented for people who don’t do enough housework. But I let her prattle on about stretches and abs for half an hour while I smiled until my face ached. Eventually, pleasantries out of the way, I tried to convince her to go into therapy for her countless food issues. Then, I suggested she ought to gain roughly three stone for her own sake as well as the baby’s. Not to mention marry my son as soon as possible so they’d all have the same name, come the birth.

  ‘No matter what they say,’ I advised her, ‘I do believe you get to see a doctor earlier on in the labour stages if you’re a married woman.’ And to that end, I wanted Emma to allow me to arrange an unusual and highly romantic (i.e. very low budget) civil wedding for the two of them. With an outdoor setting, perhaps, and a home-made buffet which I would serve picnic-style at Dunluce Castle, for example? Or we could have had chilled salmon steaks and a medley of salads at the Giant’s Causeway? On an off-peak day when there were no tourists about. Or even just back at our house with fairy lights on the chandelier and white ribbons everywhere.

  Yes, well.

  It did all seem very reasonable and sensible to me at the time. If she’d truly loved Alexander, she’d have married him anywhere. That was my opinion, but I’d been thinking of love 1984-style. Back then, people didn’t think about the future or how they’d cope for money and a roof over their heads after they were wed. Not like now when girls don’t want to get married until they are nearly forty and their ovaries are already battening down the hatches and preparing to submerge. But at least they have a designer fridge, a pension plan and a company car of their own by then. Or maybe young women nowadays simply have no faith in a man’s ability or willingness to support them for sixty years. Take your pick.

  Basically, Emma wasn’t interested in any of my brilliant ideas.

  ‘Now, Emma,’ I told her, ‘you know this media career of yours is going to be, at best, a long shot. You’ve got to be practical and I’ve a lifetime’s experience in putting on family events on a tight budget.’

  A few petty accusations and nasty counter-accusations, and a lot of tears later, Emma stormed off in a white-hot rage. After telling me I was a fat interfering fat old dragon with fat legs (note, she called me fat three times in the one sentence) and that I had ‘uber-weird’ fashion sense. Which was really too outrageous for words because she wears old-men scruffy shirts over Lycra cycling shorts all the time, presumably to make her stick-thin figure look even more skinny than it does already. At least I make an effort to accessorize my hair clips to my handbag. And her knees! I’ve seen better legs hanging out of a nest. (That’s what cheeky lads in Belfast say to particularly thin girls.) But Emma said I only wanted them to get married because I was afraid of what the neighbours might think. That I was an old fogey and a bossy witch! Me! And that she would not be going into therapy, would not in a million years be gaining three stone, would under no circumstances be marrying ‘a Mummy’s Boy’ like my Alexander and would definitely not be getting spliced to anybody beside a cheapskate buffet of iced buns and Coronation Chicken in some ‘weird’ ruined castle.

  Uppity little madam, I thought to myself.

  We’d all like to live the life of Riley but we can’t afford it, can we, darling?

  No, dear.

  We can’t.

  If wishes were horses then beggars could ride. Or some other such nonsense.

  I wanted to shake her hard but you simply can’t go around manhandling pregnant women, can you? It just wouldn’t look right, no matter that she deserved a good gonk. Gonk is what we in Belfast call a shock, by the way. I said, if she’d set her heart on Ashford Castle (which is very far from being ruined, it’s the most lavish hotel in Ireland) she should have said something sooner. And we’d get the Killers to provide the music at the reception while we were at it and she could have a gown made by elves out of spun gold. She told me to get stuffed (or words to that effect) and she raced off into the corridor as fast as her feeble hunched-over frame would allow. I mean, she could hardly pull the glass door of the canteen open but once she was past that particular obstacle, she moved at quite a fast pace.

  I ran after her, though, right into the English Department lecture theatre and I shouted, ‘Why are you sleeping with my son, then, if you don’t love him? Tell me that! He seems to think the two of you are getting married!’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Were you only passing the time with Alexander until Mr Right came along? Why didn’t you use birth control if you don’t love him? Why did you bother to tell Alexander about the baby if you weren’t going to stay with him? Why are you breaking his heart, Emma?’

  ‘Leave me alone, I said!’

  ‘You’ve got to eat properly when you’re pregnant, Emma. I thought all you university students were supposed to be intelligent? I’m going to have to tell your doctor you’ve got an eating disorder, you know. You need help, pet.’

  ‘Would you bloody well go away? Nutcase!’

  ‘Is this why the suffragettes fought for the vote? Is it? So you girls could all become a bunch of anorexic flibbertigibbets? Honestly, you’ve got no end of freedom in this country nowadays and all you can be bothered doing is vomiting up your dinner and starving yourselves into an early grave and sleeping around with disrespectful layabouts and having nervous breakdowns. I’m absolutely fed up to the back teeth with all of this carry-on, I really am. I’m fucking sick and tired of it!’

  Which was totally out of order, to be fair to Emma. To fling out the family secrets like that in front of a hundred or so stunned students who were innocently sitting there, waiting for a resit class to begin. And she wasn’t a flibbertigibbet, either. She was very ill indeed. But I was confused beyo
nd reason at that point. Come on now, don’t be so quick to judge me. What would you do in my (designer) shoes? Support for my side was almost entirely male, I have to say. The boys were nodding slowly in tacit agreement, while the girls looked at me like I was dirt on the sole of their shoes.

  ‘Leave it, Mrs Grimsdale,’ Emma said, crimson with embarrassment. ‘I’m far too young to get married. I want to have a life first. I don’t want to give up my studies and become a domestic drudge.’

  A drudge like me, I thought. I suppose that’s what she means? The girls in the room began to clap their support. As if Emma could ever have matched my efficiency with a floor-cloth. She wishes! Talk about delusions of grandeur.

  ‘I won’t leave it,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think you can move thirty-nine boxes of stuff into my house and let my son wait on you hand and foot, and then tell me you don’t want to marry him! Is he not good enough for you, then? Is the name Grimsdale not good enough for you? Is that it?’

  Cue, sniggers from the audience. I mean, the class.

  ‘Well, don’t think you’ve got it all figured, Emma, my dear, because I’m going straight home to cancel the builders, I’ll tell you that for nothing,’ I added venomously. ‘And you can traipse back to your own family and stop using my home as a hotel and storage depot. I’ll give you too young to get married! You can forget about the beechwood doors and the kitchenette now, lady! There’ll be a concealed sink over my dead body!’

  More sniggers.

  ‘And you can start showing some gratitude towards my husband and myself for paying your medical fees while you’re at it. Right? We’re not made of money! Little Miss Independent still needs a handout from the boring old fogeys, it would seem? Not too proud to let a plumber and a PA pay for your fancy consultant! Eh? And don’t you fucking call me a drudge! I’m a fucking home-maker and proud of it.’

  Yes, I know. I swore at Emma. And I’m not a big fan of swearing at the best of times. Even if it is labelled ‘Alternative Comedy’ on the telly and it wins loads of awards now instead of being censored. So yes, I actually swore at a pregnant anorexic girl in front of a hundred or more witnesses. It’s pretty hard to defend that so I won’t even try.

  ‘Shove it, then,’ she said quietly.

  I expect she didn’t have the energy to shout at me after pulling open that big glass door all by herself. Wait till the labour pains kick in, Emma love, I thought, then you’ll know the meaning of the word ‘workout’. Then again, she won’t have to go through labour, I remembered suddenly. What with the planned C-section and all (thanks to Bill’s and my life savings). But no, it seemed Emma was fed up with me and my charity.

  ‘Shove your money where the sun doesn’t shine,’ she said, adding sadly, ‘I’ll take my chances on the NHS.’

  Immediately, I felt contrite.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter about the money, really it doesn’t. That was just me losing my rag, forget it. The main thing is your health, Emma. You need to start eating, pet. You might harm the baby if you don’t eat properly. The baby gets all its nutrition from your body. Think of the baby and please be reasonable. I’m only trying to help you.’

  At which point the tutor showed up and asked me to leave the building before he called the police. He actually pulled me over to the lecture-theatre door by the elbow. Very aggressively, I might add. Emma was already sobbing onto the shoulder of some girl with long hair and a check shirt. I staggered, shaking, to the foyer where I took out my frustration on two hippy-type women sitting chatting behind a trestle table. They were handing out pro-abortion leaflets. I’m ashamed to say I put my heel to the table and kicked it, scattering leaflets and cups of cold coffee all over the floor. Not noticing someone taking a sneaky snap of me kicking the table over, on their mobile phone.

  ‘Will you stop tormenting these poor girls with your have-it-all balderdash?’ I gasped when the table top had stopped reverberating. ‘Have you any idea how young they are? How vulnerable? They shouldn’t be having sex at all. It’s the boys you should be targeting with your information leaflets. Tell them to sort themselves out with a bit of hand-relief, and leave the girls alone. They’re barely into puberty now and you’re recommending oral sex, it’s outrageous!’

  ‘Right-wing nutcase,’ they said calmly, starting to tidy up. (I suppose they get this sort of reaction on a daily basis.) ‘It’s people like you who have left the world in the state it’s in.’

  ‘I am not and have never been a right-wing nutcase,’ I retorted at once. ‘I’m a vegetarian, for your information. I’m all for freedom of choice and women’s rights. Just not when it’s my first grandchild and my son is suicidal. There’s a girl in there who doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s killing herself with an eating disorder and we’re all supposed to stand politely by and do nothing. Somebody needs to take control.’

  Yes, well, in retrospect I can see how that might have sounded. Just a teensy bit bossy?

  ‘Please go away,’ they said, ignoring my obvious distress. ‘You’ve clearly got some serious issues to deal with. We’re counsellors, not psychiatrists.’ And they gave my blue fringe a strange look. One of the women whispered something to the other one and they both laughed uproariously.

  I was deeply offended.

  ‘What was that? What did you say? What exactly are you insinuating?’

  I had no idea what they meant unless it was to suggest I was hoping to cop off with a younger man or something, with my blue hair.

  ‘I’m a happily married woman,’ I declared. ‘I’m forty and proud of it. So you two can keep your smutty insinuations to yourself.’

  And I pointed at them several times for good measure. A few bystanders started to giggle. Some of them saluted me in a sarcastic way. Honestly, I didn’t know where to look. I ran out of the building in floods of tears.

  On the way home I made a detour into the expensive salon and had the blue fringe dyed black to match the rest of my hair. Just so nobody from the university would recognize me again, and not because I felt I looked like a saddo of some kind.

  The table-kicking picture ended up on the back page of a local free newspaper two days later under the title ‘Mystery Rebel Disrupts University Life’. But nobody in my family noticed because by then Emma had broken up ‘for good’ with Alexander and we were taking it in turns to keep suicide-watch on him. I’d been only half serious about Alexander’s low mood when I had a go at the two women in the foyer, but sadly it turned out to be anything but an exaggeration. Bill took two weeks off work, and father and son went out on long walks together in the countryside. Alicia-Rose washed all the painkillers in the house down the sink. Ditto the bleach, weedkiller and rat poison. Andrew and Christopher stayed up late every night to make sure Alexander didn’t sneak out to the twenty-four-hour garage to buy more. Bill was very depressed when he saw my blue fringe had disappeared. He still hadn’t seen the tattoo because I’d been changing into my pyjamas every night while he was brushing his teeth. All in all a stressful period.

  Oh, don’t look at me like that.

  I was only trying to help.

  12. Emma

  Why do an awful lot of actresses and pop tarts these days talk like five-year-old girls? You know what I mean? Little breathless whispery voices like cartoon characters. All wide-eyed innocence and perfect teeth and shy eyelash-fluttering. Yet they still have vulgar great breast implants which they flaunt, caress and cram into uplift bras every chance they get. Thongs on show, come-to-bed eyes. Pelvises vibrating like clockwork toys. What does it all mean? That the guy won’t even have to do the thrusting once they get into bed together because they’re more than qualified to do it for him? Never mind bed, now I come to think of it, anywhere will do. I won’t name names but they know who they are. All but shoving the camera up their vaginas on MTV and then having to be shielded from countless sex-mad stalkers by twenty-stone bodyguards, every time they leave the house. All right for them, they can afford bodyguards. What are the rest of us supp
osed to do?

  I am utterly, utterly bored of it, to tell you the truth. It’s nothing but sex, sex and more sex on the television. The girls are no age, either. The younger the better, it seems. I bet most of them don’t know their capital cities from a smack in the mouth. I’m no Mary Whitehouse, no, dear, but I really am exhausted to the point of nausea (actual nausea) of wannabe starlets in ripped denim shorts whispering on the television about their new video or movie or whatever. And then, said video or movie shows them feeling themselves up with their tongue hanging out and a himbo covered in body oil sniffing round their crotch. While they stare into the lens like some bewildered crazy crack-whore of fifty-five. Is it the pop industry managers’ fault, is it the consumers’ fault, or what?

  ‘It was such a lot of fun,’ they always say about the making of the video or the movie or whatever. Everything nowadays is either fun, hot, wicked or cool. That’s it! Just four adjectives are necessary now. Nothing is crushingly boring or supremely tedious or mildly amusing or downright hilarious. None of them ever say, ‘Do you know what, mister? I think I’m too rich. I’m going to give it all away and spend some time reading actual real books in my local library.’

  We lap it up, we really do. The more extravagant and spoilt our stars become, the more money we want to throw at them. Five million quid on an engagement ring? Fabulous diamond, sweetie! Here’s another ten million for flogging any old tat you like, and don’t spend it all in the one shop. Fantastic! I blame this vacuous showbiz nonsense for what happened to Emma after she moved her stuff out of our home. Oh, yes, she’d broken up with Alexander again, did I say? She had some idea she was going to be a famous TV presenter or something, you see, so she stuck rigidly to her daily regime of diet cola and green apples and she went down to six stone and she lost the baby. Our first little grandchild. A week later, her weight dropped by another four pounds and her parents finally faced facts and had her sectioned into a private clinic in London. They took her over there on the plane. She didn’t want to go but she was too weak to hold onto her bedroom-door handle so off she went to the clinic, in the clothes she stood up in. Her father had to remortgage their house to pay the fees. We were all numb with sadness. Emma’s own mother wept with abandon when they came round to Eglantine to tell us the awful news.