“I know you think that’s wrong, Carole, but believe me, if my mother was in charge, (a) the wedding wouldn’t be at all well organized, and (b) being responsible for it would probably give her a nervous breakdown.”
“Well, you know best. That sounds fine.”
But Carole wasn’t convinced it was fine. Also the mention of a ‘nervous breakdown’ raised the disturbing possibilityof instability in the family of her future daughter-in-law. Carole Seddon was very old-fashioned about the concept of mental illness. She liked to think that she kept her emotions so firmly under control that she herself was in no danger of such a lapse, and tended to be judgemental towards those who did succumb. A psychologist might have reckoned that this attitude reflected her fear of losing control of her own mind, but then Carole Seddon was not a psychologist – nor indeed had she ever consulted one.
“There’s also the matter of money,” said Stephen. “Gaby’s mum and dad would do anything for her, but the fact is that they haven’t really got a bean…”
“Afraid not,” his fiancée concurred. “They’ve only got Dad’s pension.”
“…whereas we’re fortunate enough to be quite well-heeled at the moment. So it was always going to be us who were going to pay for everything.”
Carole thought of her handsome civil service pension and her carefully squirrelled savings. “I’d be very happy to help out if – ”
“Not necessary, Mother. Honestly. We don’t have a problem with it. A lot of our contemporaries pay for their own weddings. It’s different if you marry straight out of university, when you have no money at all…”
“Not to mention a huge student loan these days,” Gaby added.
“Right. In those circumstances you expect the parents to stump up, but Gaby and I are…well, both healthily established in our careers, so it makes sense for us to foot the bills.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s fine,” said Carole, again with more conviction than she felt.
“And,” her son continued, “on the ‘he who pays the piper’ principle, that will also mean we can conduct the wedding in exactly the way we think fit.”
He pronounced this with an almost wolfish satisfaction, which again set alarm bells ringing for Carole. Surely they weren’t going to go for some ‘alternative’ style of wedding? Not exchanges of vows they had written specially for the occasion, or readings from The Road Less Travelled or Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, or crowning each other with garlands of wild flowers? None of that sounded terribly likely from the Stephen she knew, but Carole was coming to realize increasingly how little of her son she did know.
“And what,” she asked tentatively, “do you ‘think fit’?”
“Oh, nothing outrageous,” he replied, to her considerable relief. “Traditional, white church job, that’s what we’re after.” Seeing his fiancée’s wry grimace, he went on. “No, Gaby, if we’re going to do it, we’ll do it properly. A big number. Invite everyone we know.”
The girl looked almost pleadingly at Carole. “A large part of me would just like to dash off to a registry office and get the deed done on the quiet.”
“No way. It’s not as if we’re ashamed of each other.”
“Of course not.”
“Then let’s let everyone know about it. I think the most important bit of the wedding service is that ‘before this congregation’ bit – though no doubtthey’ve screwed that up too in the Modern English version of the service.”
Carole wasn’t enough of an expert on the liturgy to pass comment. Gaby still looked dubious. Though she worked in the flamboyant world of a theatrical agency, there was a reclusive quality about the girl, an unwillingness to be put into any kind of limelight. And that tendency seemed to strengthen as the reality of the wedding approached. She jutted out her lower lip. “I don’t know. I think the playwright Ian Hay probably got it right when he described marriage as ‘a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention’.”
Stephen chuckled. “It’ll be all right, love. I want to show you off. I want everyone to know that I’m marrying the most wonderful woman in the world.”
Carole lowered her eyes in embarrassment. This seemed a rather effusive statement from a member of the Seddon family. The thought seemed to cause further disquiet to Gaby too.
But it enabled Stephen to move on to what was clearly another bone of contention for the engaged couple. “Which is why, Gaby, I think we really have got to put the announcement in the paper.”
“I honestly don’t think that’s necessary, Steve.” Carole had never heard her son called ‘Steve’ by anyone but Gaby; even his school friends had stuck to the rather sedate ‘Stephen’.
“We’ve told all our friends,” Gaby went on. “Everyone who needs to know already knows.”
“But somehow the engagement doesn’t really seem proper unless there’s been an announcement in The Times and the Telegraph”
Carole sympathized completely with her son’s response. There was a right way of doing these things. “I agree. Really, Gaby, you’ll be amazed by the reaction you get to an official engagement announcement. People you knew as a child, school friends, people you’ve completely forgotten about – they’ll all write and congratulate you.”
Gaby grimaced without enthusiasm. “I’m not sure that I want that. People coming out of the woodwork…” The idea troubled her for a moment, then she moved on in a lighter vein. “Anyway, from what friends of mine have told me, newspaper announcements also mean your parents get inundated with flyers from wedding caterers, wedding video companies, wedding insurance brokers…I can do without all that.”
“I still think we should do it,” said Stephen, with a dogged truculence that Carole remembered well from his childhood.
“All right, we’ll talk about it again. Not now.”
Gaby spoke with a surprising firmness, which had the instant effect of making Stephen change the subject.
“Incidentally, Mother, have you talked to Dad?”
After another little internal wince, Carole replied, “Well, I spoke to him soon after you announced your engagement.”
“But not since then?”
“No.”
“You said you were going to.”
The reproach in Stephen’s voice put Carole instantly on the defensive. “Yes, but I didn’t say when.”
“No, but you must.”
“I will.”
“It’s very important that you and Dad are relaxed with each other at the wedding.”
“I can assure you,” said Carole with some asperity, “that your father and I will be as relaxed as it is possible for us to be. But neither of us is about to pretend that the divorce didn’t happen.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just thinking, the more contact you’ve had before the event, the easier it will be for you.”
“That, Stephen, is a matter of opinion.”
“But you will try.”
“Of course I’ll try!” Carole was surprised at how close she had been to putting a ‘bloody’ in her reply.
“I spoke to him a couple of days ago, and said that you’d be ringing him soon.”
“And I’m sure I will. But I’ll do it without prompting from you, Stephen.”
“OK, fine.”
The spectre of David loomed closer in Carole’s consciousness, and it was a troubling presence. There was a lot about the whole wedding business that troubled her. Not that her son was marrying Gaby Martin – that seemed a piece of unqualified good news – but the attendant details that this basic fact gave rise to. A reconciliation – at whatever level – with David was the most worrying of these. And now it had been joined by the fact that the wedding was to take place on Carole’s home patch. She knew she should be pleased and flattered by the news, but all it had done was to raise her anxiety. In spite of her mental strictures about Gaby’s mother’s response to the idea of organizing a wedding, Carole didn’t want to find herself forced into too much responsibility for the event.