by Fiona Walker
‘No way,’ Hugo growled. ‘Even if Niall behaved himself, Rory Franks would try to get inside your Y-fronts within five minutes.’
‘I’m not wearing Y-fronts.’
‘Make that two minutes then.’ He handed over his half-smoked cigarette and dived back out of the door again, slap into Sally and Matty.
‘You look gorgeous.’ Sally wandered in wearing a creased pink suit from the early-summer sales and kissed Hugo straight on the mouth.
Behind her, Matty had Linus strapped to his chest in a nylon padded Mothercare papoose, and was glowering perceptibly. He wasn’t wearing a suit, and his dung-coloured desert boots were filthy and tied with red laces, but at least there was no sign of the crocheted peace-cap.
He shot Hugo a dirty look. ‘I still can’t believe they’re going through with this,’ he hissed. ‘It’s a bloody farce. I’ve just seen Niall and he actually seems happy about it. I think he’s been drawing on the short straw again – no wonder Rory Franks is suddenly on the scene and looking as though snow wouldn’t melt.’
Sally gave Hugo a big wink and pushed her tousled hair back from her face. ‘Ignore him, he hates civil ceremonies because they’re so civilised. We brought Niall with us, by the way – he’s still outside getting snapped up.’
‘Thank God,’ Hugo sighed with relief. He caught Matty’s eye and looked hastily away.
‘So who is this best man Niall’s roped in?’ Matty asked, trying to sound casual.
‘Funny-looking bloke.’ Hugo shrugged, trying to sound the same. ‘Met Niall on holiday once apparently.’
‘Isn’t it beautiful here?’ Sally was gazing around dreamily. ‘Can we go near the front?’
‘I wouldn’t advise it – think of Flanders,’ Hugo muttered.
Several eventing friends of Tash’s had appeared with yet more presents.
‘I got them an alarm clock because I know Tash always oversleeps,’ giggled Lucy Field. ‘Terribly unromantic, but I couldn’t see her ever using a fondue set. Do you know what her dress is like?’
‘I think it’s well suited.’ Hugo took the presents to add to the expanding pile.
Twenty minutes later the rows had almost filled up.
Having been monopolised by the Cheers! photographer for a flattering five minutes, Sophia arrived with a very dour-looking Ben, who hadn’t been monopolised at all and was longing to be at an agricultural show in Malvern. Sophia was looking ravishing in a very short, very glossy red Gucci suit that would have made anyone else look like a roasted red pepper balanced on two wooden skewers. Her hat had such a wide brim and was so tightly pinned to her head that she was knocking off top hats all around her.
‘Isn’t this dreary compared to a church?’ she sniffed disapprovingly, then hissed, ‘I don’t want to sit near Matty. His kids are loathsomely boisterous and they look frightfully scruffy in their attendants’ outfits.’
‘You’ve been at the farm?’ Hugo gaped at her.
‘Of course.’ Sophia gave him an odd look. ‘Bloody Mummy seems to have been at the vodka all morning and wouldn’t let us upstairs at all, but I sneaked up to look at the children in their outfits just before we came here. Of course, my two look divine but Sally’s are a disgrace. Tor has already eaten the bow off the front of her dress. I can’t think why Tash asked them to follow her; they’ll be up her skirt in a trice.’
‘Can’t say I blame them,’ Hugo said smoothly, showing them into the seats beside Cass.
Ben gave him a sad look and patted his back before sitting down.
‘Bloody brave of you to do this.’ He coughed awkwardly. ‘Know how you feel about her.’
Hugo gave him the ghost of a wink and whisked off to welcome Tash’s rakish, heavy-lidded Uncle Eddy, who had brought along his wild-child wife Lauren, decked out in see-though purple plastic. She and Franny were already exchanging competitive glances.
Ben settled in beside his wife and scratched the back of his ear mindlessly with a service sheet. ‘Hugs is taking this awfully well,’ he said.
Sophia, who was gossiping madly with Cass, ignored him.
‘Awfully well,’ Ben repeated, moving up to make room for Eddy and Lauren. He thought it very odd that they hadn’t seen Tash that morning at the farm when they had arrived to deliver the kids. Alexandra had told them that she was in the shower, but they’d stayed for two coffees and a long bridesmaids and page-boys outfitting session and she’d apparently remained there throughout. He supposed women did strange things on their wedding day. Sophia had sucked breath-fresheners throughout the ceremony at theirs, one of which had flown out during the vows.
On the opposite side of the aisle, Gus was having trouble knowing where to seat Niall’s family as they all seemed to have long-running feuds with one another.
‘I’m not sitting next to me brother!’ snarled Niall’s sister Nuala. ‘He owes Sean three thousand, so he does.’
‘Perhaps here then?’
‘No way! My Auntie Kathleen hasn’t talked to us in years.’
‘Would you like to sit here?’ asked Gus in desperation, noticing the queue starting to buckle at the door as they waited to be seated.
‘Are you losing your mind, man?’ Nuala gaped at him. ‘I’m not spending an hour sitting beside my good-for-nothing lazy lump of a husband!’
‘Hello, Huggy Bear,’ purred a soft Scottish voice as Kirsty sidled alongside Hugo, looking ravishing in a long, clinging slither of oyster silk. She was clutching tightly on to Stefan’s vast hand in a proprietorial show as there were a lot of very pretty actresses eyeing him up from Niall’s side of the hall, the formidably beddable Minty Blythe included.
‘Bride or groom?’ Hugo said vaguely as he spotted the Cheers! photographer run inside to collect more films.
‘Well, I know you’ve been treating me like a stable hand all year,’ Stefan looked at him worriedly, ‘but I was originally taken on as a working pupil. Are you all right, Hugo my friend?’
‘Hmm?’ Hugo watched as the Cheers! photographer paused to talk to his assistant.
‘You seem just a wee bit fraught.’ Kirsty gave him a kiss on the cheek.
‘That’s because my main fraughts are with the bride and groom.’ He showed them both to a row near the back.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Stefan’s huge eyes regarded him anxiously. ‘Only you seem to be coming out in a rash.’
Hugo had been pecked on the cheek by so many female guests that his face was streaked with lip-stick stripes like some tribal warrior. He had another brief fag-break in the ante-room, where Niall was now sitting with a huge black coffee looking terrified as he shared a cigarette with the best man. He’d slipped into the little room by the lobby door to avoid being mobbed by his family in the long hall.
‘They’d frighten me out of my wits, so they would. That tabloid gang outside and the Cheers! guy almost finished me off. Talk about being shot to fame, I can’t face my Uncle Seamus’s box brownie right now.’
His morning suit had toast crumbs attached to the front and he had lost the top stud to his shirt so that it gaped open showing a few coils of chest hair. Instead of cuff-links, he had a couple of bendy bag seals wound through his button-holes. With his chaotic mane, wild black eyes and emerging stubble, he was the worst-groomed groom Hugo had ever encountered. Even his buttonhole appeared to have some sort of weed poking out of it. Peering closer, Hugo realised it was a tiny four-leafed clover.
‘I’m turning over a new leaf,’ Niall followed his gaze and laughed.
Outside on the gravel carriage sweep, Gus had just encountered Niall’s short, rapacious agent, Bob Hudson, and was trying to persuade him to relinquish his mobile phone, on which he was still talking.
‘I need it, mate.’ He gave Gus a wink. ‘I’m trying to get Dec Wiseman to confirm Niall as the lead for his next movie, The Quack Down – it’s all about an LAPD cop who gets a talking duck as a partner.’
‘Sounds very lame to me.’ Gus took the phone, switched it off and pocketed it.
‘Bride or Groom?’
‘Which is tastier? I go either way.’
‘Right, I should think.’ Gus marched him upstairs and placed him beside Rory Franks on Niall’s side of the hall, which at the moment had far fewer incumbents than Tash’s mainly because all of his acting friends were turning up appallingly late.
Reeking of stale whisky and still wearing his dinner suit from the night before, Niall’s old drinking partner, the morals-free Rory Franks, was flying on his first half-gram of coke of the day. His sexy, red-veined eyes scanned the room for talent. They briefly alighted on Minty Blythe before he remembered that he’d had her before. Then, having dismissed Franny as cheap and Lauren as jail-bait, he flashed Sophia a huge, let’s-fuck smile.
Turning as red as her suit, Sophia hastily looked away, almost blinding her aunt as the wide brim of her hat wiped away a lot of pearlised blue eye-shadow and a top set of false eye-lashes. A moment later and Sophia was screaming her head off as she mistook the eyelashes – which had landed on her sleeve – for a spider.
‘They’re mine!’ Cass whipped them back and, furtively pretending to look in her handbag, stuck them back on inside out.
Quickly giving up on Sophia, Rory decided that Franny wasn’t too cheap after all and flashed her the same smile he had afforded Sophia. She returned it with bells, balls and brio. Grinning to himself, Rory girded his loins in anticipation and hoped it was a short ceremony.
Sitting beside Franny, the lapels of his borrowed suit dusted with talc, Ted glared out front and decided to have another crack at India at the party that night. He was sick of using up his entire supply of KY Jelly every night just to get Franny out of her clothes. But, gazing around the hall, he realised that there was no sign of India at all – nor had Zoe or Penny appeared yet.
Five minutes before the ceremony was due to start, Pascal D’Eblouir strode through the high double doors wearing a very jazzy morning suit made from the lightest of pale grey wool, his topper almost twice the height of any of the others to make up for his short stature. He was sporting a bright green waist-coat and already wafting wine fumes.
‘Allo, mes braves!’ His grey eyes twinkled merrily as he opened his arms, ready to fall on the ushers’ cheeks. ‘It go well, non?’
Hugo shot him a warning look. ‘All according to plan so far.’
‘Bon!’ Pascal nodded. ‘I am late because I bring my mozer-in-law ’ere. Etty need the lavatory every half-hour – not to pee, but to check ’er maquillage. She ’as not shut up for two hours talking about weddings.’
‘Does she know then?’ Gus whispered.
‘Dieu, non!’ Pascal looked horrified. ‘Wiz any luck, she weel not even notice. She ’as just met anozer madame – er, mad woman – outside. They are posing for a magazine photographer. I sink they tell ’im they are two of ze Beverley Sisters.’
Hugo showed him to the front of the bride’s side, where Cass was currently squawking back across five rows to some distant great-aunt with a hearing aid that Tash couldn’t have hoped to do better than Niall.
He felt sick with trepidation. Particularly as his own mother had just swanned through the doors sweating in her show-off mink and dripping with the family’s paste jewels, accompanying a very grandlooking old woman who was so thin that her skin hung gracefully from her bones like a silk drape over a parrot’s cage. They were both wearing ostrich feather hats, although Hugo’s mother’s had considerably fewer feathers in it and the odd cigarette burn dotted randomly on the front.
‘Hugo darling, I want to sit with my new best friend!’ demanded Alicia with her usual plethora of decibels. For a moment the room – which was now almost full – fell silent.
‘You have no friends, Mother,’ he said dryly. ‘And what is he doing here?’
He backed away as Thug the pug emerged from his mother’s fur coat to snarl at him. As a concession to the wedding theme, Alicia had tied a white bow to his thickly studded collar. He had worn a similar – black – one to Hugo’s father’s funeral. Alicia was so mean, Hugo suspected that she had simply bleached it.
‘He didn’t want to stay at home. Anyway, Tash’s dog is outside with young Rufus.’ She thrust her chin out rebelliously, paste earrings swinging in time to her booming epiglottis. ‘I hear she’s to be married in cream – Etty told me. Terribly unflattering colour, especially on a rather ungainly girl like her.’
Hugo turned to the woman he took to be ‘Etty’. She looked unspeakably noble, and knew it, her wrinkled neck choked with genuine pearls and diamonds, her bony frame swathed in a beautifully tailored fifties suit that Hugo guessed was original and barely worn. She was the sort of woman who hadn’t increased a dress size since puberty.
A perfectly clear rouge thumb-print was dotted on to each of her jutting cheekbones and her eyes were gloriously knowing and dissipated.
‘I need to sit down, young man,’ she demanded grandly. ‘My knickers are slipping.’
Hugo hastily showed them both to a row at the rear of Tash’s side within convenient distance of the loos. He doubted either of them would be frail enough to need them, but he knew Thug had a tendency to throw up choc drops on the hour. The moment they sat down, Etty started announcing to all within earshot that it was she who was behind the wedding in the first place.
Vying to be the last to swan into the hall, Niall’s film friends were finally starting to arrive en masse now, pausing theatrically at the door to check that their outfits and celebrity status were clocked before entering. They were all madly discussing the press contingent which was gathered outside the gates.
‘Well, I was done by the Mirror and the Mail, darling, but bloody Terry Gale just ignored me.’
‘Only goes for girls with big tits, sweetie. Did that freelancer with the divine bum get you?’
‘In both directions. I’m sure the light was behind me – I’ll have ears like barn doors in the shot.’
‘Shouldn’t worry, love, – I just saw Lisette Norton getting out of a limo with a tit flashing. She’ll be everywhere – can’t you see it? “Niall’s ex makes boob at wedding.”’
‘No – “Niall’s first wife throws confet-tit.” She only just made it before the bridal cars too – now that’s what I call upstaging.’
Hands damp with trepidation, Hugo backed off to the ante-room as Gus dealt with them.
‘Think you’re needed out front,’ he told Niall, offering him a slug from his hip-flask.
Straightening his crumpled morning suit, Niall shook his head.
‘Sorry – thoughtless of me,’ Hugo apologised, putting it away. ‘You feeling okay?’
‘Fucking terrified.’
‘Lisette’s turned up after all,’ Hugo told him, expecting a tirade.
But Niall merely shrugged. ‘Bloody brave of her,’ he said simply. ‘Sit her next to someone sympathetic, huh?’ He kissed his best man on both cheeks. ‘See you in a minute. Thank you so much for doing this.’
Hugo’s eyes narrowed jealously, but he followed him out without complaint.
Standing nervously in the hall, Lisette was wearing a very demure grape-green trouser suit with her slinky mane neatly pinned beneath an oversized citrus orange top hat. Apart from a plunging neckline, which clearly revealed that she had nothing but hot skin underneath, she looked remarkably lacking in the usual carnality. Even her huge, hungry grey eyes were naked of their usual smudgy kohl.
‘Don’t look so miserable, darling.’ Hugo took her arm. ‘I think you might rather enjoy this.’
‘I nearly didn’t come,’ she muttered, sounding almost wretched. ‘I can’t believe they’re actually going through with it. It’s all my fault.’
‘Now that’s a confession I never thought I’d hear.’ Hugo found himself smiling delightedly. ‘You almost sound like a guilt-complex-wife.’
He sat her next to Cassandra’s rheumy husband Michael, who gave her an approving look.
‘Haven’t we met?’
Lisette flashed a wary smile. ‘As lon
g as you’re not my maker, then I hope so. Weren’t you in the Loire with the D’Eblouirs a couple of years back?’
‘Thought I recognised you. Never forget a face.’ His little rat’s eyes weren’t looking anywhere near her face as he said this.
Leaving them to it, Hugo checked on Niall, who was in an arm-lock and being thoroughly wept over by his mother.
‘I’m fine!’ he spluttered breathlessly when Hugo asked. ‘There’s Henrietta at the door – check everyone’s on their way, will you? I’m sure they’re late. Ouch – that hurts, Mother!’
‘She’s a lovely girl, son. But I’ll always be your mother!’
Beside her, Pa O’Shaughnessy lit another rolly. ‘Jesus, I tink the boy knows that.’
‘Don’t blaspheme in church, Daniel!’
‘This isn’t a church, woman.’
‘And may the merciful Lord forgive us for that!’ Ma burst into more racking sobs, almost breaking Niall’s neck. ‘Sure little Lisette’s at the back there, son, looking terrible sorry, so she is. Perhaps she’s not such a sinner after all. It’s not too late to change your mind. If you tell Tash you’re a good Catholic boy, she’ll understand.’
‘She’d kill him, so she would,’ Pa muttered, pulling a stray strand of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘And so would I.’
Hugo found Henrietta chatting to the butch female registrar by the door. An absolute bag of nerves, she was dressed in a very smart Windsmoor suit and cream trilby that matched her pale face. She was shaking so much that her pearl earrings rattled like chattering teeth.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked nervously as he showed her to the front pew.
‘Okay so far.’ Hugo glanced around. ‘I think we can safely say merry hell will break loose in about ten minutes, though. Bride on her way?’
‘Yup, they’re just doing another circuit of the village because that Cheers! chap was being horribly pushy – James is outside talking to him now. It’s his fault we’re late, I’m afraid. He held things up because a bird dropped a what-not on his suit while he was waiting by the car at Lime Tree Farm.’
‘Lucky then.’ Hugo settled her in and dashed back to check on the best man, passing the Cheers! photographer who was running into the hall from the opposite direction looking terrified.
