Our Kind of Cruelty(28)
Her dress was made of very old lace, draped over a fitted, shimmering gown which flowed around her body like water. It glistened as she moved, revealing and yet hiding her perfect body in tantalising fashion. It was scooped out at the back, revealing her spine and the muscles which held her together, her pale brown flesh a reminder of all the times I had held her. Her hair flowed in loose ringlets, fixed in places by small white flowers. She radiated, purely and simply, and my heart reached out to her as she passed, screaming and weeping in my chest.
I barely heard the service as my blood was rushing through my ears. I stood and sat at the right times and sang the hymns, although I couldn’t tell you what they were now. I listened to V’s best friend Alice and Angus’s brother read extracts about love from books I didn’t recognise. And I tried to avoid looking at V and Angus standing side by side, the quick smiles they gave each other, or the note of joy in his voice when he said, ‘I do.’
The air felt thin and my vision was starting to become pitted, almost as if I was losing sight of something. It had also become unbearably hot in the little chapel and I doubted there was enough air for the number of people there. Finally V and Angus went to sign the register and the people next to me began to chat in a low murmur. I rolled the wedding service sheet into a cylinder, my hands tight against the card. And for the first time, maybe ever, I felt a rising anger for V. This had been a stupid idea of hers; it went above and beyond what had been needed. This was a binding contract; it was going to take pain and time to extricate herself from it and I still wasn’t even clear what she expected of me. I looked then at her forehead as she sat in the seat just vacated by Angus, as she steadily signed her name, and I wondered again what was going on beneath her skin, inside her skull.
If I had been standing close enough I think I might have taken the heavy golden cross from the altar and smashed it against her head, in order to delve about in the red mess of her brain to try and understand what she meant by it all.
It was a relief to emerge into the bright sunlight and stand back a bit while everyone shouted and cheered and threw their confetti high into the sky, like colourful acid rain. The air was filled with excited chatter and noise and children ran between the gravestones. But I felt tired and weak and could feel a pain building between my shoulder blades, a reminder of the punishing run I’d done that morning.
A woman had set a tripod up in front of the doors and people were being summonsed and posed, until only V and Angus were left. He drew her towards him, his arm encircling her waist, and she raised her head upwards to meet him and they kissed, slowly, like they had done in the kitchen the night I’d watched from the shadows. I readied myself for movement, waiting for her hand to reach for her bird, but as I had the thought I realised she wasn’t wearing any jewellery round her neck, nothing at all. Only small pearls on her lobes. My breathing quickened as I tried to work out this new sign, but for the moment nothing came to me.
We followed the path which led to the field at the bottom of Steeple House and went through the gate into the garden, which had been magically transformed into a land of wonder. A huge white marquee stood on the lawn, bedecked with flowers and garlands, shading lots of round tables on which glass sparkled and shimmered. A long table greeted us, loaded with popping bottles of champagne and fizzing glasses. I was handed one as I walked by and sipped straight at it, even though my head already felt addled and my stomach was as empty as a cave.
Emptiness is such a familiar yet terrifying sensation for me, scorched on to my physical memory so deep it drags me backwards through time to when it wasn’t in my power to feed myself. A time when I had no money to buy myself even a loaf of bread. A time when I was always alone, even when my mother was with me. A time in which I couldn’t make myself lovable and I didn’t know how to love. A time when it had seemed as if I was never going to fill the deep, all-encompassing void in my soul.
Luckily at the reception there were lots of young girls dressed in black and white holding laden trays of food. Except the food on offer was all one bite and I knew I couldn’t take a handful like I wanted to. I drifted to the edge of the party, pretending to admire Suzi’s flower beds, really wishing I could snip the heads off the flowers one by one, leaving them dead or dying in the border.
Everyone else had splintered off into groups and the noise they were all making was too loud and close. I circled the outside of the party, looking for V, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. It was possible, I supposed, that she and Angus were continuing their argument elsewhere. Or maybe she had broken down and admitted everything to him; maybe seeing me during the ceremony had been too much. I took another glass of champagne as a tray passed me, even though the bubbles were hurtling themselves around my empty stomach, pressing the void higher and higher, squeezing my heart and blocking my throat.
A queue was forming in front of the marquee, so I went to join it, standing between people who were still chatting, as if everyone had so much to say. It took me a minute to realise that V and Angus were standing just by the entrance to the marquee, smiling and shaking hands, kissing cheeks and sometimes exclaiming and hugging. I wiped my palms against my trousers, but they slicked again immediately. I was five people away from them and the line was inching ever closer.
The short, fat woman in front of me kissed Angus dramatically and then held V’s face in both her hands and kissed her lips, exclaiming as she did so at her beauty. Angus turned to me, his cheeks high with colour and his mouth already smiling. He reached out and shook my hand with a tight grip. ‘Hello, thanks for coming. Sorry, you are?’ Up close his skin was lined and he was definitely older than us, my early forties estimation had been correct.