All She Wants

by Jonathan Harvey

  I sighed. ‘Is it? Is it really? He’s always been more girly than most lads. He’s obsessed with the Eurovision Song Contest. He’s never had a girlfriend. He does your roots, for God’s sake! And what did he ask for for his fifth birthday?’

  ‘I forget,’ she said dismissively She hadn’t forgotten. She knew full well.

  ‘A pair of ruby slippers, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Mum, this was a done deal years ago.’

  Mum visibly smarted. ‘Oh, so are you trying to say I’m stupid?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. But just because he’s gay, it doesn’t make him a bad person.’

  ‘No,’ she seemed to agree. ‘But gross indecency in a public place might.’

  ‘Well, maybe he went to Otterspool Prom because there was nowhere else to go. Have you ever thought of that?’

  Mum looked to Dad and muttered, ‘There’s no talking to her, Malcolm.’

  Greg put his arm round me and said softly, ‘Shall we go and find Joey?’

  I nodded. Mum looked at Dad. ‘Malcolm, fetch me a gin.’

  We found Our Joey sat at the bus stop with his bag on his knees. I was right, he had nowhere to go, so Greg suggested we all go back to his and he could stay the night there. I phoned Mum from a phone box and told her, informing her that I’d be staying the night as well. Usually she’d kick up a fuss about me sleeping over with Greg, but the fight had gone out of her today. She was probably relieved that I wasn’t having some lezzie bunk-up with Teresa-May, so she let it go.

  We returned home the next day, me and Our Joey, and as is the tradition of the great British family, nobody said anything about the police caution, Our Joey’s departure, or indeed his sexuality. It was a white elephant in the dormer bungalow. The elephant grew bigger each day till its trunk was practically cracking the roof. It was then that Our Joey burst out over tea one night, ‘I promise I’ll never go to Otterspool Prom again. I’ll never get into trouble. I’ll meet a nice fella and you’ll be proud of me!’

  I looked from Mum to Dad, panicked slightly by their alarmed expressions. Mum considered him for a second, before saying, ‘Malcolm? Pass the Daddies.’

  And Dad passed her the brown sauce.

  Over the coming months, the incident wasn’t mentioned again. None of the neighbours found out, the only people who knew about it apart from immediate family were Debs, Hayls and Greg, and they knew better than to blab. Mum’s way of coping with it was to pretend it never happened. Her one concession to Our Joey being gay was that every now and again, when a handsome fella was on the telly, she’d go, ‘Oh he’s dishy.’ And she’d look to Our Joey and Our Joey would nod, even if it was Eamonn Holmes or Richard Madeley or someone. And then something brilliant happened. Mum’s friend Maureen from work started bragging that her daughter had just come out as a lesbian. It was all she’d bang on about at the factory, and the women in their section seemed to be jealous that she had such an exotic child. So Mum outdid her by announcing that Our Joey had been gay for years and she was really cool with it and practically let him have orgies in the through lounge every weekend while she cracked open a tube of Pringles and played a selection of disco classics on the accordion. After that she started to be irritatingly down with the gays. Whenever she mentioned him in conversation she’d say, ‘My lovely gay son Joey,’ almost daring people to disagree. She encouraged him to write to anyone she thought was slightly camp on the telly, asking them out on a date (he didn’t). Never did keeping up with the Joneses play so much in Our Joey’s favour.

  And, eventually, mine. Her new found laissez-faire attitude altered her opinion of my engagement. Although me and Greg hadn’t set a date for the big day, she returned home one night and placed a book on the kitchen table in front of me.

  Plan Your Wedding: With Idaho Manchester.

  ‘Mum!’ I gasped, tears pricking my eyes, ‘You shouldn’t have! Let me . . . let me give you the money!’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You’re all right, love.’ God, she could be so nice. ‘It’s from the library.’

  Still, it was the thought that counted.

  TEN

  Hello, I’m Idaho Manchester. I’ve been co-ordinating weddings for over twenty years. Yes! Twenty years! I know, I don’t look old enough. But can I let you in on a little secret? It’s not the surgeon’s knife that has kept me so fresh – it’s my hands-on work with loving couples and their families as they plan the most important day of their lives. I feel truly blessed by God to have found such a wonderful, life-affirming vocation. I design weddings with a personal touch and creative eye, and guide my brides and grooms graciously throughout the planning process, from innovative concept to flawless execution. Here, in this purse-sized book, you can benefit from my decades of expertise for a fraction of my usual fee! Everybody is unique. You’re unique. Let’s see if I can help you design the perfect wedding that is as individual as you are . . .

  ‘Can I just say?’ said Hayls, squatting on the end of my bed, looking at a photo on the back cover of the book. ‘Idaho Manchester is a SHOW!’

  ‘I know,’ added Debs, kneeling on the floor next to Hayls, ‘she looks like she’s taken that perm off, given it a few minutes in the frying pan, then chucked it back on her head!’

  We were having a Grease-style slumber party. Us girls had Carmen rollers in our hair and Our Joey was wearing a face pack while we drank white wine spritzers and listened to CDs.

  ‘She’s definitely had surgery round her eyes,’ Our Joey joined in as he backcombed the hair on an old gonk of mine. ‘It’s just a shame they didn’t manage to correct her squint at the same time.’

  ‘Stop being so bitchy you lot!’ I moaned. ‘That book’s gonna make my wedding go without a hitch.’

  It was true, though, Idaho Manchester wasn’t the prettiest lady in the world. Her photo showed her leaning on the back of a couch, her head resting on a lacy gloved hand, and it was taken with so much soft focus that whenever I looked at it I thought I needed an eye test. But for me, right now, she was Saint Idado, who was going to sort out all my problems.

  ‘She sounds like a fucking drag queen,’ murmured Our Joey.

  ‘And listen to this!’ screeched Hayls, reading from the inside cover, ‘Idaho lives in The Hamptons with a menagerie of cats and parakeets!’

  ‘The bitch isn’t even married?!’ That was Debs.

  ‘No wonder she’s wearing gloves, she’s covering up the fact that she’s not got so much as an engagement ring, never mind a wedding band!’

  ‘Stop picking on her!’ That was me. I’d read the book so many times I felt Idaho was my friend. I’d even toyed with inviting her to the wedding, so helpful was the book, with its handy hints not to drink caffeine or alcohol before the service in case you needed to go for a wee during the vows.

  ‘She’s weird,’ Hayls continued. ‘Obsessed with weddings coz no man’d go near her.’

  ‘You’re so cruel!’ I said, incredulous. Though thinking about it, maybe they had a point.

  ‘Show us your ring again, Jode?’ said Debs, and I waggled my beautiful engagement ring aloft while they all cooed.

  ‘Oh tell us the story again. It’s so romantic!’ said Debs.

  I saw Our Joey roll his eyes. ‘Romantic?’

  ‘I think it’s dead romantic, yeah,’ said Hayls all dreamy-eyed, toying with the hearing aid we all knew she didn’t really need.

  So I told it anyway.

  Greg and I had traipsed round all the jewellery shops in the centre of Liverpool and he was starting to think I was very high maintenance because I couldn’t decide on a ring I liked. I wanted something classic, but with a twist. I just couldn’t really say what that twist might be. I liked the look of the diamondy ones, but of course they were vastly expensive, then some days I fancied a ruby, or an amethysty one, or even a sapphirey type. Our trips round Liverpool always ended with disappointment, though on the upside, we found a café that served something called rocky road pie, which we both discovere
d we loved. In fact, we adored it, and on some trips to the city centre we couldn’t be bothered hauling our tired arses round the shops, so we headed straight for the café instead. One day I decided to put Greg out of his misery. It was a Tuesday, it was raining and it felt like the end of the world because not only had we not brought an umbrella with us – I’m so crap at being a girl sometimes. Proper girls carry microscopic emergency umbrellas with them at all times. Even in the desert – so we were soaked to the skin, but when we got to our café of choice the blousy server told us the rocky road pie was off. I burst out crying – I was pre-menstrual, you know how it goes – and Greg delivered a tirade of abuse to the not-so-blousy-but-actually-looking-a-bit-scared server who had ruined our day. He said something about ‘this country going to the dogs’, which sounded more like his dad than him, but he was only trying to defend my honour – or my desire for chocolate-based confectionery anyway. She tried to placate us with banoffee pie, which Greg took as a huge insult – ‘How can you even compare the two? They’re not like for like. Rocky road is the king of pies’ – which I thought was going a bit far as the banoffee looked lovely, and with that he walked out of the café. Through my tears I gave an apologetic smile to the unimpressed server and followed him out. On the bus home Greg was tense and irritable, a junkie who’d not been able to get his fix. I came up with what I thought was the perfect solution. I told him that because this engagement-ring-finding business was turning into a nightmare/joke, maybe we needed to rethink. Neither of us wanted our wedding to be too conventional, so what if we did away with the whole notion of even having an engagement ring? We knew we were engaged. The whole world knew we were engaged. Why did we need a ring to prove it? Clever, huh? Greg considered it for a while, then said, ‘Before Mum died she made me promise that if I ever got a girlfriend I’d treat her right and do the right thing. You’re having an engagement ring.’ His tone added ‘whether you like it or not’. We continued our journey in silence.

  That weekend Greg invited me to his house for a candlelit dinner for two. His dad was out and their Teresa-May had gone to an Ann Summers party in Poulton-le-Fylde, so we had the place to ourselves. Greg cooked a three-course meal and served wine in proper big glasses. It was magical. For a starter he’d made carrot and coriander soup – I say made; he’d opened the carton and heated it up. Still, it was lovely. For our main course we had sausage, egg and chips – again, a triumph – and then came the pièce de résistance. I had no idea what pudding was going to be, but when he opened the fridge he brought out the most amazing rocky road pie. It was huge and it was ours, and he’d made it all himself from scratch! How amazing was that? He spent a while turning the pie round on its plate. I wasn’t quite sure what he was doing but it felt quite self-indulgent, so I urged him to get a move on (swearing may have been involved). Eventually he cut me a slice of pie, decanted it onto a smaller plate, then handed it to me with a fork, like it was the most precious thing on God’s earth. After he cut himself a slice we tucked in. And IT. WAS. HEAVENLY. It was like eating an orgasm. We both sat there groaning. And in that moment I decided that this was the sort of cake we should have at our wedding reception. And that Greg should make it. He was practically a Michelin-starred chef in my eyes by now! But when I took my third bite, something went wrong. I have a tendency to be gluttonous, and if I like the taste of something I’ll often shovel it in and swallow without even chewing or tasting it. Which is what I did with the third mouthful. And instantly regretted it.

  I tasted something very un-rocky road pie-like passing through my throat, something metallic, and instantly started to choke. Greg looked alarmed.

  ‘Ah bollocks!’

  I wanted to say ‘What?!’ but couldn’t speak. Instead I swallowed.

  ‘I hid your engagement ring in the pie. I thought you’d find it.’

  Too bloody right I found it. I found it passing down my pigging intestines.

  ‘Quick!’ Greg said, getting up. ‘Make yourself sick!’

  We ran to the bathroom, where I shoved my fingers down my throat, but no matter how much I tried I only managed to dry retch. And all the while I could feel the ring slipping further and further down inside me. It seemed to be skipping around in there, going this way and that; it just felt weird. The further down it went, the more able I was to speak, though I was shaking with a panic attack as I called Greg all the names under the sun.

  ‘I wasn’t trying to kill you!’ ‘I’m really sorry!’ ‘I just thought you’d cut into it and see it and . . .’ ‘It was meant to be romantic!’ ‘I thought the worst thing that could happen was you’d bend your fork,’ he kept on saying. He dived for the phone and called 999.

  Again, there may have been swearing on my part.

  ‘Hello, yes, my fiancée’s swallowed her engagement ring. I’d baked it in a rocky road pie you see and . . . Sorry? Oh yeah. No, she’s a bit shaky. No, it hasn’t got any jaggedy bits on it, it’s quite smooth, it’s like a band with a jewel inside it. Diamond actually. Sorry? Er . . . no, I’ve had three glasses of wine, I don’t think I can.’

  As he gave them the address of the farm I realized an ambulance was being sent out for me. I convinced myself I was going to die. I could just see the headlines now: GIRL KILLED BY ENGAGEMENT RING. God, the mortification.

  When the paramedic arrived she said I wasn’t going to die. It took her about five minutes as she had a stutter.

  At the hospital they took an X-ray. My first view of my engagement ring was as a white highlight next to my white bony spine (good job it was bony, if it hadn’t been I’d’ve got a shock). I was dreading the doctors having to open me up to get it out, but a nice friendly fat guy in very tight blue overalls, which I took to mean he was a doctor, he seemed very knowledgeable if not, told me with a chuckle that there was no need for surgery. I’d have to ‘poop’ it out instead.

  Yes, he actually said ‘poop’.

  They sent me home with instructions to eat lots of prunes and fibre and wait for nature to take its course. Which it did. I shall spare you the details in case you have a queasy stomach. Needless to say, I never intend to swallow any type of jewellery again, though I will say this. I don’t think I’ve ever bought so much Dettol in my life.

  The engagement ring was beautiful. It was Greg’s mum’s engagement ring, and even though Debs and Hayls had him down as a tight-arse cheapskate for giving me something that hadn’t cost him anything, I was incredibly touched. He loved his mum. His dad loved his mum. So for them to let me have her ring showed just how much they thought of me. Just looking at it could make me weep. Not in a sad way, but in a ‘God I can’t believe my luck!’ kind of way. I really was the luckiest girl on the planet.

  After telling the story Our Joey led the girls in an impromptu rendition of ‘Brown Girl In The Ring’, changing the line ‘show me emotion’ to ‘show me a motion’ – a gag I thought had gone out with the ark, and I told them so. God they were childish.

  Greg and I had set a date for 15 August that year, his mum’s birthday, and with only a few months to go our preparations were gathering momentum. Well I say ‘our’, it was really ‘my’ – I’d taken control of everything and Greg seemed to like it that way. Idaho Manchester became my best friend. I had reborrowed the book from the library about eighty times and whenever I was convinced there was something I’d forgotten I’d quickly thumb through her tome and she would quickly put my mind at rest. If I’m honest, I’d already covered most things in my Hello Kitty wedding jotter, but just knowing an expert was on hand in case there were finer details I’d forgotten – like whether or not to invite people’s pets to the wedding. I don’t know where she got that idea from?! – was terribly reassuring.

  The best thing about the book was that it had a chapter called ‘Checklist for Problems on the Day’. I jotted down her headlines, thought of a few of my own and wrote up my solutions in the jotter:

  Caterers Do a No Show – Not gonna happen. Greg making the cake. Mum’s mate Maureen
’s daughter Lesley is doing the food through her catering company Lesley Spreads – Mum thought it was called Lezzy Spreads for a while, what with her being a big lezzer – and if they don’t turn up Mum’ll kill them.

  Car Won’t Start – No problem. Get a bus/taxi, or walk. Church only two streets away.

  Breath Stinks – Strong mints in chief bridesmaid’s purse. I think purse is American for handbag. Now wondering whether each bridesmaid should have a nice big handbag to match their dresses, but don’t really see the point of expense. Our Joey suggested combining the handbag with the flowers, so we each carry a handbag with flowers cascading out of it, but I think this might be too much. Will think on. (See Emergency Kit below for mints thing.)

  Bad Weather – Am having parasol as part of my look anyway, but rain shouldn’t be a problem as middle of August. Greg says we should get a load of umbrellas and keep them at the back of the church, then take them to the barn. Good thinking, Batman.

  Emergency Kit – Idaho suggests having an emergency kit to cover all eventualities. Genius idea, Idaho! This will include:

  •

  Clear nail varnish – In case tights get laddered.

  •

  Spare tights – In case tights get seriously frigged.

  •

  Tampon – In case come on my blob. Might put one in anyway?

  •

  Spare false nails.

  •

  Rescue remedy – In case have a whitey.

  •

  Spare make-up – This bag’s gonna be huge! Better give it to Mum to mind.

  •

  Hairspray – In case of hair emergencies or rain affecting hair if parasol blows away in force-ten gale.

  •

  Make-up-remover pads – In case cry so much look like panda.

  •

  Antihistamine tablets – In case allergic to flowers.