William Walkers First Year of Marriage (4 page)

‘Can I help you?’ Alex, all smiles.

‘No, just looking for the loo,’ I replied, dropping the sheet. ‘Didn’t know you had copies of the wedding photos.’

‘They’re my own. They’re not ready for you to look at yet. The loo is where it’s been all afternoon.’

Isabel isn’t talking to me on the way home, despite my immense efforts at being nice all day, and despite me revealing the shock news that her ‘best friend’ has a chopped-up pile of photos from our wedding in his spare room.

Apparently, I was moody and I am ridiculous to even suggest that Alex might have spent the last few weeks chopping up the wedding photos of the girl he loves and the man he despises.

So unfair.

Two blocks down from our flat, a new one of those yellow incident boards had been put up. We get a lot of them round our way, but this one was different.

Incident. Saturday 4 June. A man and his dog were stabbed. Did you see anything? If so, please call.

I can’t believe they stabbed the dog. What had the dog done?

‘Let’s just get an agent or two around to value the place. We don’t have to move or anything but it would be nice to know what sort of move we could make if we decided we wanted to…move, that is.’

‘OKAY, I suppose it would be nice to have a little garden. And if we don’t go too far, I quite like the idea of commuting.’

‘Excellent, darling…Hello, I’d like to arrange an evaluation…Tomorrow? That’s rather sudden…No, no, that would be lovely.’

Good night’s sleep ruined by a horrible nightmare. I was having a drink outside a pub with my childhood pet dog Fluffy, miraculously reincarnated twice as large and twice as fluffy, with the ability to drink beer. Across the road, a woman screams as a terrifying bloke with a baseball cap and face tattoos grapples with her handbag. Fluffy barks, the terrifying bloke stops mugging the woman and turns to confront us. He’s laughing maniacally and being all sarcastic about how fluffy Fluffy is.

As he advances, a huge knife glinting in his hand, I reach for my pocket penknife. For what seems like ages, I can’t get it open. When I do, it’s only the nail file. He’s getting closer and closer as I find the corkscrew, then the letter-opener, then the tiny little nail scissors.

As the terrifying bloke raises his knife, which is now a very efficient giant pink razor, above his head, I am cornered with nothing but the hole punch. Like a fluffy blur, Fluffy is there, flying through the air like Lassie. Except Lassie wouldn’t have been razored clean in two. The last thing I see is a look of total astonishment on Fluffy’s fluffy little face. Then I wake up clutching one end of a pillow.

Three estate agents come round to do flat valuation. Needed a shower afterwards. However much I scrubbed, I still felt dirty.

‘Mr Walker. Hi, Arthur Arthurs from Arthurs’ Arseholes.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Arthur Arthurs from Arthurs & Sons. For the valuation. Pleasure. May I? Lovely, lovely hallway. Mmm, yes, oh, lovely carpets. Neutral. Perfect.’

‘This is the only bedroom.’

‘Oh gorgeous, the space, the light, the scope, the movement.’ He’s a stamp collector who’s discovered a penny black, an art collector who’s tripped over a Rembrandt in the attic, the first archaeologist at Sutton bloody Hoo.

‘Look at this kitchen, will you? Just look at it. Look at this well-appointed, well-equipped, well-planned little minx of a kitchen.’

It’s a tiny kitchen in a tiny flat on the wrong side of Finsbury Park that he may have to sell at the height of a property-market crash but he’s excited.

‘Oh yes, the walls. Oh yes, the marble surfaces. Oh yes, the hood, the hood, the hood. Mmmm, lovely. The toilet! Aarrrrhhhh. Ooooooh. Bidet. Smooth. Simple. Soft. You cheeky bidet. You halogen lighting. You naughty, naughty power shower.’

He was the least repellent of the three. And suggested the highest selling price.

This was always going to be a difficult day: both sets of parents coming up for an afternoon stroll, then wedding photos, then dinner. Seemed so simple—we have nice, non-problematic, hang-up-free parents. No messy divorces, no excessive corporal punishment, no strange method-parenting guaranteed to instil some deeply hidden psychological bomb set to go off any time in early adulthood. But then you have to consider the conflicting requirements: it’s like doing the catering at an allergy-sufferers’ convention.

My mum: South African interior designer, impatient; loves short walks, dogs, home improvements; hates cats, overcooked vegetables, old art-house movies from Japan.

Her mum: Polish doctor, impatient; likes cats, home improvements, cleanliness; hates dogs, undercooked vegetables and walking anywhere that isn’t strictly necessary. ‘I escaped through the Iron Curtain, my darlinks, with only forty zloty, some silver spoons and my university certificate hidden in my tights. I walked through Europe to be here. I have done enough walking.’

My dad: English; traditional; slowing down a bit. Likes not saying very much, except when he tells a story, which can take hours. Leaves rest of liking and hating of cats, dogs, vegetables and home improvements to Mum.

Her dad: ditto, but more so; doesn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. In fact doesn’t really suffer anyone or anything. Especially short walks. Short walks are stuff and nonsense. In his day, he walked 100 miles just to buy the milk.

Even before the lunch began, I knew it would be difficult. Isabel in big mood because her razor is blunt and her legs, consequently,
look like streaky bacon. I obviously know nothing, which only makes her more grumpy. Then, the family arrives.

‘I will stay here. I don’t want to go for a walk,’ says her mum.

‘A short walk never killed anyone. It is a short walk, isn’t it?’ says mine.

‘Come on, let’s get on with it,’ say the dads in unison.

We all leave the flat, and set a course for Hampstead Heath.

‘Are these plantains?’ Three hundred yards in, my dad, like a moth to an ultraviolet insect zapper, has been drawn to a Caribbean vegetable store on the Holloway Road.

‘I think so, Dad. Leave them.’

‘Excuse me, young man, how long does one cook plantains?’

We wait outside a wig shop for ten minutes while Dad gets the lowdown on plantains from the Rastafarian vegetable stallholder. During the delay, her mum keeps breaking for the flat, mine looks at the wigs. Her dad tuts at people with shirts hanging out. Sheepdogs have an easier job.

‘What is that man doing? He’s almost naked.’ We have inadvertently wandered into the heath’s nudge-nudge, wink-wink meeting place for lonely hearts. Her dad has stopped and is pointing at a man in a red G-string reading the
Guardian
.

‘He’s reading the
Guardian
, Dad. Don’t worry about it.’

‘There’s another one. Reading the
Guardian
,’ says my dad.

‘Lot of
Guardian
-readers round here,’ says her dad. He’s a
Times
man.

‘Why are they all sitting in this field, separately?’ says mine. ‘It’s suspicious to say the least.’

‘In knickers.’

‘G-strings, I believe they’re called.’

‘Please, let’s go,’ Isabel and I say together.

‘Are these men after a bit of nookie, with strangers?’ asks her dad, loudly. Just because he’s hard of hearing, he thinks everyone else is.

‘Like that MP, you mean?’ asks mine.

‘Yes, it’s what they call dogging, isn’t it?’ says hers.

‘No, I think dogging is when you watch other people having sex in cars,’ says mine.

‘Kinky stuff they’re into these days, don’t you think? Mind you, we weren’t much better back in the Sixties, were we, darling?’

‘Now is not the time to talk about our era of free love, darlink. I have a blister,’ says her mum.

Isabel is looking like you’d expect her to look after finding out her parents really swung in the Swinging Sixties.

‘This is turning into a long walk,’ says my mum.

‘You look wonderful. I look dreadful,’ says her mum to my mum.

‘You look wonderful. I look dreadful,’ says my mum to her mum.

‘Not put them in an album yet, William?’ enquires her dad. ‘Just going to have them out in any order like that, are you?’

‘That Alex made for a rather dashing horseman, wouldn’t you say?’ says my mum. ‘Look at him looking splendid in his tails.’

‘Yes, tailored especially on Savile Row,’ says her mum. ‘And hasn’t he got a lovely voice? That song he sang for you both was so beautiful.’

‘Red snapper? Not in our day. Sounds like a fancy fish. Cod, hake, John Dory—whatever happened to them?’

‘Yes, good honest fish, they were.’

‘Halibut.’

‘Tuna.’

Then her mum changes the subject to sphincters. Her colleague had a patient in the other day with a bleeding bottom. His wife had attempted to pleasure him with her Prada stiletto but the point had been worn down into something too sharp for the sphincter wall to tolerate.

Why does she tell us these things? Why is it always when we’re eating? What is it with doctors, anal adventures and clinical storytelling?

My dad changes the subject.

‘Are you still working for that charity?’

‘Yes, she is. And they’re still not paying her properly,’ says her dad, because children are never allowed to answer for themselves. ‘I keep telling her, just because they’re saving the whole of Africa doesn’t mean they can’t pay you a living wage.’

Isabel regresses into a teenager: short-tempered, impatient, tutting, crossing arms aggressively. I do the same when they move on to my time at
Cat World
, even though it’s in the past and I shouldn’t care.

Minutes before they are all strangled, they all head off together, making jokes about getting stabbed on the way to the Tube and going off to the fish ‘n’ chip shop for a nice bit of marlin.

‘I’ve changed my mind. We should move,’ says Isabel as we stand exhausted in the doorway. ‘The rent boys and plantain-sellers of north London shouldn’t have to put up with our parents.’

Alex has delivered a handmade wedding album he claims to have been working on night and day for the last six weeks. The accompanying note said he was sorry I had slightly spoilt the surprise while ‘looking for the toilet in my study’ but that he hoped this handcrafted work would be a lasting memento of what he was sure would prove to be a long and happy marriage.

‘Ahhh,’ goes Isabel, thumbing through the infinitely detailed photo montages. Yes, he’s made mosaics of our faces, thousands of intricate combinations of heads and hands and more heads, all touching and overlapping and linking up.

‘It’s incredible. Like a beautiful stained-glass window,’ opines Isabel.

‘It looks like a Hieronymus Bosch version of Hell. Hasn’t the guy got anything better to do?’ opine I.

Isabel looks genuinely upset. She says I really should stop being so difficult about Alex. He clearly wants us to be happy. He’s gone out of his way to make our wedding special. It’s important that I don’t stop her having friends. I have to promise to behave like a grown-up. So I do, with my fingers crossed behind my back.

Alex is not a psycho. Alex is not a psycho. Alex is not a psycho. If I say it enough times, I might believe it.

Isabel, home late and glowing, has found a new yoga class in Holborn. Says she received new energy from the ground or something. Astrid, the yoga teacher, uses crystals to help centre her pupils. Argument ensues when I look sceptical.

A banker and his girlfriend came to look at the flat today. We hid up the road, behind the
Man and His Dog Were Knifed
incident board. Someone has graffitied ‘A cat person?’ underneath the can-you-help? bit. Arthur Arsehole calls afterwards to say they loved it, loved the space, the light, the angles, the dynamic, the touch. But they wanted a garden.

It’s been a long week. I get home late from work, am grumpy, am hot and bothered, am looking forward to a nice bath.

‘Don’t have a bath, have a shower.’

Here we go again.

It is only because Isabel is hugging me when she says this that there is no immediate bloodshed.

I consider a bath with a whisky after a long week at work to be one of man’s inalienable rights—a period of quiet reflection, contemplation and the making of amusing bubble-bath hats. But I considered sugar in goat’s-milk-free tea with a similar reverence until only a few days ago and look what happened to that.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a waste of water.’

‘I want a bath though.’

‘One bath is the same as four showers.’

‘I’m having a bath.’

But as I sat in the bath, trying to enjoy my inalienable right, I knew its days were numbered. From the speed-date to the wedding, Isabel had never attempted to change me: it’s one of the reasons I love her. But now we’re married, we both sense a change.
She is my wife, she has the power, she just doesn’t know quite how much power yet. Like a young Jedi knight, she will learn.

What a brilliant day: went to what may be the worst wedding ever. Jess, horrible property developer, marrying poor Tony—creative, sensitive, artistic, in-touch-with-his-feminine-side Tony. In short, he’s gay, she knows it, but she wants kids and he’s the best she can find. And he just needs a wife so he can pretend he’s straight forever. It was the wedding you always dream about, one that unravels before your very eyes.

They had written their own vows. Tony said, ‘With my arms, I will cradle you.’ Jess said, ‘With my arms, I will encircle you.’

For what has to be a virtually sexless marriage, they really were laying it on a bit thick.

Best man composed and performed an electric piano piece for their exit. Almost entirely atonal, it was quite upsetting and made three babies cry. Brilliant. 3/10.

Some sort of mutton offcut, cooked for 10,000 years in the hellish furnaces of Gomorrah. Served on a bed of what might have been risotto but was in actual fact mashed potato. Isabel has Banker Man on her right, all pink shirt and big hair. I have Acronym Man on my left. He’s in IT, setting up his own ISP, depending on the FAP of the NRT in QPE, or something. 1/10.