White City Blue

  Will I be the same person after today? Are you ever the same person after today? I’m scared. The future scares me. The past is so much safer, worn out though it is. I wish I could stay there. I can’t. I mustn’t.

  Strange thoughts. I walk over to the CD tower and put one on. Something old, reassuring – Tom Waits’s Frank’s Wild Years. It’s melancholy. His voice is like a struggling earth mover.

  One by one, I lay out my clothes. Everything is brand new. This is about rebirth, like all true ceremonies. To be reborn you have to die.

  A wedding is also a funeral.

  The last part of me that is hanging on will go today. If I have the courage to finish what I have begun. After all, it’s not too late. All I have to do is pick up the phone. The thing could be done in a matter of seconds. Of course, it would be embarrassing and awkward. A lot of people would be disappointed. My mother, it would break her heart.

  But it will sink into nothing in months and years. Everything fades to nothing in time.

  I move towards the telephone, but do not pick it up. Film/life. Right answer/true answer. Past/future. All these choices. I wish there weren’t all these choices. Life would be so much easier if everything just happened. Perhaps it does, more or less. The wind of circumstance so strong against the flickering of your will.

  A car drives past, the stereo blasting, some anonymous contemporary soul about love and strength and sexual conquest. I wait until it passes. I stare at my clothes on the bed. They are all wrapped in dry-cleaner’s plastic, or shop packets, and a slight breeze makes the cellophane crackle. Tom Waits’s moan is audible in the room once more.

  Left to right. One pair of Calvin Klein briefs, charcoal grey, thirty-inch waist. They’re one size too small, but I can’t bring myself to face the fact that I’ve expanded a couple of inches. One Giorgio Armani white poplin shirt, double fronted, sharp, stiff collar, single pocket. Brand new black Gucci shoes. Plain black Muji socks.

  The suit. Off the peg from Prada. Single-breasted, three-button, narrow-cut, black cashmere, high-waisted, zip fly, no turn-ups, single vent at the back. Secured at the waist with a Mulberry crocodile-skin belt. A single white carnation in a vase stands by the bedroom table ready for cutting, to wear in the lapel. A plain, shot silk dark green tie, the only touch of colour.

  The wedding is at midday. I have a sudden picture of the person I am marrying turning in small circles, like a figure in a musical box, in white in front of the mirror. I wonder what it is they are thinking. I wonder if they have doubts. I wonder what they will be wearing under the dress. I think of crimson, moistened lips under the cool white material.

  I move to the bathroom, where I draw a bath, hot to the point of pain. The room fills with steam until the mirrors are misted and the furniture is a blur through fog. Then I sink into the bath, wincing as the sharp heat gnaws at me. I sit absolutely motionless for a long time. The phone rings once, twice, but I do not go to answer it.

  I fill my palm with shaving gel the colour of emeralds, spread it on to my face and adjust my face in front of the mirror. I’ve put too much on. Gobbets fall from my chin into the bath. Gradually I whittle away at the foam with my razor until my face is clean. There is a small nick showing blood on the left side of my neck. Tiny bubbles adhere to the side of the bath. The plughole is distorted and enlarged by the lens of the water.

  I leave the bath, dry myself and put a scrap of toilet tissue on the cut. I take a deep breath, then go into the bedroom and dress. The cashmere of the suit feels like perfect felt, contrasts with the collar of the shirt, which is stiff and constricting.

  Fully dressed now, I inspect myself. I look grave, composed rather than handsome. I am falling into the film of my life again, that same sense of absence, of disinterested amazement. Everything slowed up and deliberate. An exaggerated pulse of calm beats through the room.

  I am not sure what to do next. I walk around the room as if testing myself for presence. I feel my own weight pushing down from my shoulders.

  I stop at the wall where my friends are displayed. They stare down at me, most of them smiling for the camera. Lost smiles from my past.

  A photograph catches my eye. It is a paddling pool. Me, Colin, Tony and Nodge naked, grinning at the automatic camera. We are all slightly out of focus, as if the subjects of an Impressionist painting. Only the pool in the foreground has developed clear and sharp, sun spots decorating the surface. We are so young.

  We all have our arms around each other and are swaying slightly off balance. We are all holding up beer cans. You can even see the label – Hofmeister. I notice for the first time that Colin’s hand, to the left corner of the picture, is clenched tight against my shoulder as if holding on for dear life. The knuckles are white. The muscles in his thighs are knotted as if struggling to stand upright. There is a football floating in the pool. I’ve never noticed that before. It’s funny how that can happen. How you can see something a thousand times, then suddenly see something entirely new in it.

  There is a loud buzz from the front door that makes me buck. I smooth my hair nervously. My shoes click on the wooden flooring, seem to echo. I open the door. It’s Nodge. Jon.

  He is shaved – not only his face, but his head, which has been subjected to a full number-one cut. He is wearing a beautiful sky-blue suit, a crisp white shirt, a plain dark tie. There is a white carnation in the lapel. He is tanned, and is a stone lighter than he was. Instead of the once-Plasticine frame of this face, there are the outlines of hard cheekbones. He is smoking a cigarette – a Gitanes – with perfect grace. His unibrow is carefully trimmed and plucked.

  He steps forward and he wraps his arms around me in a hug, holds and doesn’t let go for about five seconds. I smell some faint, delicate citrussy aftershave. Then he stands back a few feet and inspects me.

  The bee’s fucking knees, Frankie.

  You too, Jon. The bee’s fucking knees.

  Outside, his Metrocab with two lines of bunting on the bonnet, polished up and gleaming like new. He surveys it proudly, then says, screwing up his eyes against the cigarette smoke and the bright sunshine, How are you feeling?

  I consider this carefully, retreating back into my house. He follows me, hands now thrust into pockets.

  I’m not feeling anything in particular. I don’t think I’ve felt so absolutely neutral in my life. It’s like an… out of body experience.

  Don’t worry, he says with a warm smile. It’ll be fine.

  He says this with absolute conviction. It makes me feel better. Not so long ago he would have just grunted or left a long condemnatory silence. But it is clear to me now that he is completely on my side. I feel an enormous gratitude well up inside me.

  I pull at my cuffs, adjust my tie. I am a real fuck-off groom, I decide. Full on.

  I sit down on the settee, no, the sofa, to compose myself for a few minutes. No. I sit down on the fucking settee. That’s what it is. That’s who I am. I go to the toilet. I sit in the lounge, I have dinner at lunch-time and I have tea at dinner-time.

  Shall we go? says Nodge.

  Have you got the ring?

  He takes a small plain gold hoop out of his pocket and holds it up to the light. A shackle, a halo.

  Too early yet.

  We both sit down in comfortable silence.

  After a while, Nodge says, I’ve booked a holiday.

  I knew it, I say. You’re going to Fiji, aren’t you? After all these years.

  Nodge looks puzzled.

  No, he says. Pevensey Bay. In Sussex.

  I start to laugh and he joins in.

  Way to go, Jon.

  I check the clock. I feel preternaturally centred, shocked before the event. I rise, take a last look at myself, then we walk out of the house, Nodge first, and I climb in the back of his cab and he takes the wheel. It’s an hour to go until the wedding, but I want to be on the steps to greet everybody. My mum’s bought a new video camera especially for the day and she’s eager to use it.

 
It’s five minutes to the church. Nodge and I don’t speak. I stare out of the window. On the corner at Shepherd’s Bush Green, a clutch of young, ill-looking, hair-gelled men stand on the corner, holding cans of beer. One is wearing a QPR shirt. They see the cab approach, clock the bunting and the QPR sticker on Nodge’s windscreen and begin shouting and applauding, and waving hello. I wave too, but I, unlike them, am waving goodbye.

  We pull up at the church. There is a single figure, my mum, waiting on the steps. She’s nearly seventy now, and she’s absolutely done up to the nines. Her grey hair has been teased into an elegant bob, her dress is covered with some orange flower I can’t name. She is wearing a large maroon hat.

  To my right, coming up the road, I see some of the bride’s relatives, dressed in high style, all little black dresses and £300 shoes. My mum looks like a dumpy housewife from Shepherd’s Bush, which is what she is. She shifts nervously.

  Then she looks at me, and the pride and happiness in her face beam out at me like headlights on a Series 5 Beemer. Her shy, apologetic self has been wiped out for this day and replaced with some strange incandescence. I have never seen her so happy. I walk up to her and throw my arms around her, and think how much I love her, and how glad I am she is a dumpy suburban housewife and not someone else. She stands back and surveys me and says only this.

  Frankie.

  But there is a birth, a childhood, a whole life buried in the word. Her eyes are rimmed with balancing tears. We hold the moment. Then she looks away, as if embarrassed, and starts dithering and fussing and fumbling with the video camera. I feel a strange expansion inside myself, start to laugh idiotically.

  The bride’s relatives arrive, and I muster myself into some kind of gravitas and greet them with a polite, All right?

  I kiss their cheeks, although I do not know them.

  They are composed, self-possessed, elegant. Even their handshakes are elegant. Once, they would have made me feel small.

  This is all so nice, I think to myself, as I await the guests. Perhaps it really is happening. Perhaps I really will be able to go through with it.

  One by one they arrive, friends and strangers both. It is as if the past is washing over me, suddenly renewed. Faces from the board on my wall brought to life again, sometimes after years’ absence. They are all bright with proffered happiness. I find it incredible, surprising. Each of them, one by one or in couples, files past me, shaking hands, hugging, grinning, wishing me well. Nodge leads them to their place in the aisles.

  The last remnants of the guests are straggling into the church now. A breeze is freshening and I worry that my hair is being forced into uncomplimentary angles. I push it down with the palms of my hands. Then I cover my face with the balls of my palms and push against my eyes and rub, as if to wake myself up. When I remove them, a figure is standing there, in a cheap, badly fitting dark blue suit. He seems fragile, lost, and is blinking too rapidly.

  Colin.

  Colin doesn’t say anything, but just nods and blinks some more and tugs furiously at the left lapel of his suit with thumb and forefinger.

  I’m… so pleased you could come.

  I feel ridiculously formal, a petty officiator. My voice sounds robotic. I didn’t expect him to be here, although I sent the invite. I haven’t seen him since the day in the park. Then suddenly Colin falls forward into my arms, and I hug him stiffly. Almost immediately he pulls back as if he has shocked himself. When he speaks, finally, it is in a firm, solid voice that sounds too evenly spaced, as if rehearsed.

  Frankie, I’m very happy for you. Congratulations, and I hope… I hope…

  Suddenly the words dry, as if he has forgotten some carefully prepared script. He stands silent for a moment, his mouth working as if trying to chew juice out of tobacco. Then he speaks again, forlornly, in almost a whisper.

  I brought this for you.

  He is holding a small, badly wrapped package. He turns the package around and around in his hands. The gaily coloured paper rustles. It is secured with brown gaffer tape rather than clear tape.

  What’s in the parcel?

  It’s a wedding present.

  I take the scruffy package. It’s small enough to fold and put in my pocket.

  Thanks, Colin.

  Yeah. Like I said.

  He begins to retreat slightly, slowly, then a little faster, down one step then another.

  Congratulations…

  Then, without another word, he bolts. He walks not into the church, but away, round the corner and out of view, at a fast, almost desperate pace.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, turn and see that it is Nodge standing there. He seems fatherly, grave. Behind him, the vicar, professionally smiling while looking at his watch. He looks up and beckons. I feel a tightening in my stomach, turn and begin to walk towards the church doors. I feel suspended, weightless, as if I am treading water.

  Heads turn towards me as I make my way down the aisle. My eye focuses on a large stained-glass window to my right showing unrecognizable saints prostrating themselves before Jesus. Looking away, I see the heads continuing to turn. I am a wind parting corn. I am aware of a slight tremble being set up within me, like there was a pager vibrating next to my heart.

  I come to the altar, where the vicar stands in his cassock. I rock back and forward in my shoes, giving out a slight, repetitive squeak. We wait. There is an epidemic of muffled coughing and whispers drifting towards me from behind. Then the wedding march strikes up and the congregation rustles like a warehouse full of cellophane.

  The bride is approaching down the aisle, absurdly, fluorescently white. She seems stern, wreathed in concentration. I try to take the sight of her within me, to absorb and incorporate it, but somehow it bounces off. She is a woman in a white dress. Who I barely know, who I’ve spent less time with than half the people in this room. Who is a mystery, an enigma, a lottery ticket, a wild guess. She sweeps towards me, but I cannot give way. Then she is beside me, and I feel a sheen of sweat break out on my brow. The irrevocability of the moment hits me like a mortar. The vicar is smiling. Nodge stands firm to my right like a tree.

  Now the vicar has started speaking, beginning the seal on our partnership as it was begun, with a volley of cliché, rendered both more and less real by its familiarity.

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…

  Dearly beloved. Who’s he referring to? To us? To the congregation? Is he saying he is in love with the congregation? That’s stupid. Or is he saying that they are our dearly beloved? Why am I thinking about this now? It’s a mere ritual. My wife to be is looking at me through her veil. Her briskness has departed and I see something I haven’t seen in her before, a deep nervousness, a fear that bleeds out of her like mist. I see that she is trembling, and I put my hand out to steady her. She vibrates softly, as if fending off cold. Some kind of blackness envelops me.

  Vaguely, through the blackness, I hear the vicar’s voice, and he is asking if anybody present knows any reason why the couple here should not be duly joined in matrimony, and I hear my own voice, and I am astonished at the voice which is saying, I have a reason.

  – I have a reason, because marriage is a leap in the dark against the odds.

  – I have a reason, because there are other women I could have as easily married and there are dozens more who I could yet marry, and this meeting here today is a product of circumstance and panic and a kind of long stretched out accident of sleepwalking.

  – I have a reason, because the woman standing next to me is not something sheathed in white and incorruptible, but is something as frightened and lost and stumbling as everybody else, and we are both just whistling in the dark.

  – I have a reason, because I don’t want my freedom to do what I wish blotted out by another’s purposes.

  – I have a reason, because I want things to stay the same for ever and ever, because I want my past like a blanket over me, because I don’t want to be someone else.

  – I have a reason, b
ecause I am stupid and have no idea how to make myself happy, let alone anyone else.

  – I have a reason, because this piece of theatre was just meant to be an excuse for a party, a bit of a lark, and it’s all gone too far, it all sounds too serious, too transformative, too real.

  – I have a reason, because I want to be left alone, to stay in the playground, to be with my boyfriends, to laugh at women and keep life where it deserves to be, as a joke, a game, a giggle, an endless jockeying for position.

  – I have a reason, because I’m scared.

  And I hear the voice, all in these few seconds, and I say nothing, because the voice is inside me, because the tide of events is too strong now, and because, and because, and because…

  I want it to be over.

  I want it all to change, whatever the result.

  The vicar smiles at me and asks, Do you take this woman?

  And without any hesitation and in a voice which amazes me in its strength and certainty, I say, I do.

  And then he says, Do you, Veronica Tree, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?

  Veronica says the same, and the vicar says stuff about pronouncing us man and wife, and we kiss, and at that moment – as advertised – I am changed, in the twinkling of an eye.

  The reception is a happy, drunken affair at a large room above the Bush Ranger, in which I dance with my mum, and I dance with Veronica’s dad, and everyone laughs and shouts and falls over and makes stupid speeches.

  Now we are driving to my house to get changed for the honeymoon, with Veronica by my side. We are both a little bit drunk and laughing at anything at all. We stagger up the stairs together, and I find myself ridiculously carrying her over the threshold. I look in her face and somehow I know that I would not have loved her as much, no, not that, would have loved her differently, if we had not been through what today we shared.

  Is my freedom gone? What the fuck is that? A little drop of life between childhood and marriage. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Marriage is what happens when you learn that life is bigger than you.