By Eve Newstead
/ Fiction /
What they don’t tell you is that wedding season lasts years. If Maeve had known, she would have taken precautions to have less friends. Granted she’s only been bridesmaid three times. But she’s been on eleven hens and two stags and spent money that might be saved for her own future on that of couples far richer than herself. This stings particularly when she detests one out of the two of them. This time the bride and groom are at least both likeable and from her friendship group—two birds with one brick.
She arrives late and slots into the back row. From the front, her friends mouth obscenities at her. It’s me, of course I’m late, she mouths back, with the same valor she uses to declare she no longer wears a bra or pays for all of her bananas at self-checkouts.
She sees Gabriel by the alter, best man again, with his hands clasped together. The groomsmen are in navy kilts because Will’s dad is in some loose way Scottish and Will chose his wedding day to pay homage. Gabriel’s hair is longer and swept back in speckled waves which, with the tartan, gives an appearance of strength, perhaps even nobility. She wonders if he noticed her come in.
The music starts and everyone fidgets into silence. With luck, Fran and Will have opted for a skeleton ceremony. Speed is an advantage of contemporary weddings. The barn doors swing open—barn because weddings now are not done in churches and hotels, but barns and breweries; the multifunctional space allows for ceremony, dinner, and dance to be held in one room without fuss. Money spent on stuffiness is no more. Now thousands of pounds are spent on chunks of wood, twine, and unkempt hunks of leaves functioning as various doodads that when put after the word ‘wedding’ have an aggrandized importance and tripled price tag.
When Fran enters there’re mandatory gasps. Will is crying. Gabriel slips him a tissue. Maeve watches Fran float towards the altar and thinks about the answer to twenty-four down in the online crossword she started in the taxi. Huge quantity in four. Lots. Tons. Glut.
The itch to get her phone out requires her to sit on her hands. She screws up her face and looks to her crying-laughing friends exchanging rings. In four. Wads? The woman next to her pulls out a tissue for herself—incongruous behavior in a back row seat. The newlyweds are kissing, his hand on the bare of her back above the virgin lace trim of her dress. Maeve hears Gabriel woop from the front row. More woops follow. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered…’ starts. She smooths down her dress and stands.
Slew. That fits. Huge quantity in four is slew. She grins as the newlyweds pass hand in hand and the cheers rise and ricochet off the barn rafters.
* * *
After the speeches, before the food, Maeve sinks the end of her champagne. Her table is talking about the cost of living. Everyone agrees socially, politically, economically… morally, so it is difficult to engage. Instead, she observes a toddler in wedding fineries take cutlery from the table and throw it onto the floor. Her chubby, delighted fingers manage a fork and two knives without her parents noticing. Then, an unimpressed table member points it out. The mother takes the toddler’s hand in hers. Maeve watches the toddler turn from white to pink to red. The bubbly chatter around the barn is then cut with a scream armed by Mother Nature with the ability to inflict pain. It comes out in sharp bursts with the same effect on the guests’ bones as an axe slamming into a window, each blow pushing cracks into new places. People are pretending the screaming isn’t happening. Even at her table of friends. Maeve thinks this funny. She exchanges amused eyes with her best friend, Sophie, across the table. Everyone else is continuing with champagne sipping and amiable chatter about the price of fresh veg. But their traps are clenched. This toddler screaming says to her something about the ridiculousness of dress up. She is wearing a silk skirt covered with poppies and has matching ribbons in her pigtails. Her mother has spent the best part of the day keeping her clean and from crying—the two frequently at odds. The toddler managed to stay quiet throughout the speeches. Actually, she squealed with laughter at an apt moment during Gabriel’s speech, much to everyone’s delight. It was at this moment Maeve first caught Gabriel’s eye; in the pause he took.
But now the toddler is screaming because she can’t throw forks onto the floor. And no doubt she will still shit herself under those poppies. As it goes, you can’t polish a shit but you can wrap it in satin. Maeve opens the wine, looks down at the mermaid’s tail of her own dress. Inside she screams too.
* * *
Part three is always the best of the day and Fran and Will have a Ceilidh. Three men with varying balding patterns step straight from the Highlands onto the makeshift stage at this Cotswold’s acreage. There’s a rush to the dance floor but Maeve holds back. Even though she loves the chatter, the smiling, the party (in fact feeds off it), it is exhausting—a similar effect as from gorging.
After a few moments observing fondly, her drunken heart buzzing, Gabriel finds her. She kills her glass. He smells like whiskey and the garlic sauce from the food ‘truck’ kebab. From afar his kilt was disarming, but up close to his pale hairy legs she is reminded of the stickiness of his skin when they were pressed up against her own.
He asks how she is and she says, drunk. The entire room is clammy; walls perspiring.
How was my speech? he says.
Even the baby laughed, she replies.
He grins his crooked, white, quite beautiful grin.
I also saw the baby laughing at a napkin earlier, she adds.
His smile compresses into suggestion now at the familiarity of her ribbing.
The last time they were together it had been dark as they sneaked upstairs, into the second home of that groom’s parents, which gave the family a total bedroom count of thirteen for four. The room Gabriel had been allocated was storage for barely worn clothes and never-read books. She was in a nearby hotel, and this saved taxi fare. They didn’t bother with the light—had seen it all before—and the darkness heightened everything: his excited breath, her giddy tummy, and that sticky skin. They stumbled over boxes and removed each other’s clothes.
Want a dancing partner? he says now.
When he holds out his hand she stares at it for a moment, watching it pulse, before taking it. She lets herself be led to the ruckus. Sweaty bodies swing at them like dodgeballs. They force a space in the mass. Onstage, the conductor yells exceptionally Scottish instructions. To the right, 2, 3, 4. Turn. And circle. People step on Maeve’s toes. Find your partner.
Ow. She hops clear of a stiletto. Gabriel takes her hands. She tries again, counting, bobbing her head until she finally joins the rhythm; when it happens, it is like being swept down river. Confused delight spreads to her face.
And swing.
Gabriel loops his arm through hers and they leap together. In that bedroom full of other people’s unwanted things, they had reached for each other with the same merriment. The first time was sex. The second, hours later, was something else. She was woken to find the dawn salting the dark by a crushing weight on her, at first undefinable. Then he thrust. And with the acuteness of a needle puncture, she recognized the sharp edge of his forearm pressed down on her back, pushing the wind from her body like you do to a blow-up mattress, until she felt as lifeless, as useless. And when he was finished and she managed to pull herself up, her insides were so raw that they screeched.
* * *
Aaand other way. SWING.
The wine she necked when she saw him approaching shoots to her throat then sinks back down leaving sourness. They skip in the opposite direction, almost taking out Soph, who as usual is dressed to draw pursed lips onto the faces of the elders—all tattoos, cleavage, and hair dye. As they pass, Sophie squeezes Maeve’s arse. Maeve can feel the wideness of her smile, her mouth drying, her breath flapping its wings in her throat.
Back, 2,3,4.
This turn, Gabriel looks into her face. But his eyes are only as deep as the party. They reflect the fairy lights hung from the barn beams. The accordionist’s elbows. The flailing limbs of guests. Surely, he can see in hers much more. Hers are layered with the moments before and the months before that. The black expanse since she last saw him. They are laden with the weight of his body on her body. With the weight of every man on every woman.
She tries to make space for her breath to flutter again without it catching in her throat. She is being dramatic.
Join hands in a circle.
He lets go of her just like that. She scrambles for a place beside an auntie-looking type, with a fascinator clinging to her scalp.
In, 2, 3, 4.
Gabriel is opposite, between her friend Iona and the groom’s sister. Whatever he is saying as he hops forward, leaves Iona laughing behind. Maeve suddenly hates Iona. In fact, never really liked her. Iona sees her looking and winks. It is no secret that Maeve and Gabriel sleep together.
Partner up.
Sophie comes out of nowhere and grabs hold of her. They fling through the Gay Gordons. Maeve makes a point not to look for Gabriel. She grips onto Soph’s arm, closing her eyes and floating on the room’s energy as one might float on a vat of champagne.
* * *
She talks her way through the rest of the night. But only later, once the hours of beautifying have been undone swing by swing—so guests are now without shoes, ties, jackets, lipstick or updos—does she see Fran and Will. She is at the bar, squiffy from finishing the free wine and ignoring the food. With them is Gabriel.
They thank her for coming; compliment her beauty.
You’ve definitely lost weight, Fran says. You look amazing.
No, you look amazing.
They are both lying. Fran has on a meadow palette of makeup she’d never normally wear, and a too-tight dress which forces her to arch in order to conceal her molehill tummy. As for Maeve, she has visibly gained weight; the time lag between weddings spent eating in order to fill things—silences, sleepless nights, the holes that keep forming across her body. There are new folds at her armpits and a padding across her jaw.
The three of them watch her receive a large Pinot and a tequila.
Three more, Will says to the barman.
Maeve necks hers without waiting, sucking on the lime as Fran says, We knew you’d bring the party.
Four, Will says.
We noticed that big box on the gift table, Fran whispers. And I said that’s got to be Maeve. What is it?
You’ll have to wait and see, Maeve says.
Wedding gifts are no longer inventoried and practical or even material objects. Nor in fact do they qualify as gifts. Maeve knows because she dictionaried ‘gift’ to confirm—1) A thing given willingly to someone without payment, 2) Something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation. Willingly or voluntarily could no longer be said to apply. Nor could without compensation, since wedding guests are well aware of the hundred pound a head price of their meal, well-reminded of the generous six bottles atop each table, and well-encouraged to marvel at the costly ornamental finish to their table settings. In return there is a wordy suggestion for kind offers of an unquantified but expected amount for the honeyfund or new conservatory. By wedding five Maeve had found that going to the miscellaneous area of John Lewis and spinning until her finger landed on something over fifty quid was way more fun. The best gift she ever received was a pair of roller skates. Unwanted and impractical but absolute magic.
The barman lines up the tequilas and they each sprinkle salt onto their hands.
Cheers to the happy couple.
The second tequila doesn’t want to go down. It fights with her throat as a rat does when forced down a snake’s body. She writhes and swallows with a shove.
Well, Will says, wincing, It could be you two next.
Fran slaps her new husband’s chest. Maeve feels Gabriel’s hand rest upon the skin of her shoulder, the bones beneath splinter. When their smiles thin to nothing, she realizes she is wearing an improper expression. She drags out a smile.
Because all I want in life is a husband, she says.
They laugh, Fran a little too heartily.
Gabriel shakes her shoulders and says, Imagine trying to tie this one down.
When he takes his hands away, her bones fracture entirely. But then he asks her to dance again.
A slower song dribbles in and Gabriel hugs both arms to her back. Black memories thrust at the sides of her skull. He can sense something; loosens his hold, so she wraps her hands around his neck. She is most glad for her drunkenness now—it sets a film between her eyes and his.
How will we see each other when the weddings stop? he says.
We’ll wait for the funerals to start, she says. I hear they’re funner anyway.
See, he says. I knew you’d never agree to a date.
He spins her expecting her feet to know what to do, but they don’t. What are the rules again, to this game they play?
* * *
Near midnight, there is a commotion. Two uncles, with matching paunches, who have spent all day making a point of avoiding one another, have now drunk so much they feel there is nothing more correct to do than air decades of grievances under the autumnal wreath arch. There’s a lot of don’t point your finger at me mate going on which is excellent entertainment.
Maeve stands elbow to elbow with Soph, watching. A hangover is starting to cloak her spirit, like a sheet being tossed over a spinning disco ball. Fran’s mum is trying to suppress the disturbance. From her waddle, it’s clear her outfit has grown intolerable.
Think Dianne’s shit her pants? Soph says.
Possibly, Maeve says. I saw her cane two espresso martinis earlier.
Kebab, garlic sauce, fruit cake and espresso, Soph says, laughing.
What could go wrong?
An auntie finds the commotion. She is also struggling to stand upright. She steps in between the men but they carry on over her head as though she isn’t there.
What’re you hoping for?
A swill, Soph says. Maybe a beard pull. Uncle Albert’s there is very pullable. I might pull it myself. Sprinkle a little salt onto another saccharine occasion.
Maeve laughs and sets her half full wine down on the gift table next to them.
What’s in your box? Soph says.
An ice cream maker. Yours?
How dare you not save such excellence for my birthday, Soph says. Mine’s a book. ‘Mating in Captivity.’ How to unlock your erotic intelligence after marriage.
You’re an arsehole.
I know, Soph says, linking arms with her. What’s wrong?
Maeve makes a what-do-you-mean face.
Is it because Gabriel went home with Iona?
Maeve looks about the room in order to disprove this information. The people have thinned enough that it doesn’t take long to see that isn’t possible. The jacket Gabriel hung over the chair by the photobooth when he asked Maeve to dance is gone too. Anger, jealousy, and guilt wrestle for the space between her lungs. She reaches for the wine but then lets her hand hang empty. She opens her mouth to say we need to call Iona but no sound comes. Her pulse thumps across her tongue.
What would it be like to say it? For everyone to know. Whatever it was. The words she had found online didn’t fit right. If it had been those things then why had the thought of taking off his kilt made her wet earlier? Why did she hate Iona for ending the night in his hotel room? And everyone knows this. She can’t hide the way she vibrates when he looks at her. They wouldn’t be able to conceive of him doing it.
Then, she doesn’t have to tell everyone. Just Soph. They could make up some excuse to get Iona away.
The uncles have been separated. She watches Soph watch them be dragged away, a delighted twinkle in her smile. What would it be like for even just Soph to know? More than a commotion. More than a sprinkling of salt. But, rather, a shattering of the polished glass that encases this wedding season, this life.
She kisses her friend and collects her coat. When the taxi pulls away, she feels the crunch of gravel under its tires through to her ribs. The driver determines there’ll be no small talk which suits her fine. She pulls out her phone and opens the crossword, its timer now past ten hours. Twenty-four down is slew. She offers herself a smile in the rearview mirror. They speed down the motorway with all four windows open, so the air streams in on the backs of white streaks of light from the lampposts and the moon feels close enough to step out onto. It had suddenly mattered so much that slew fit and it does. Nothing requires change. She can just carry on with the rest of it all.