Chapter 3
Gah . . . It was boiling in here.
Sunlight streamed through the high, stained-glass windows, painting the pews and their occupants in vibrant rainbow colours.
Like a really stuffy Pride parade, populated with middle-aged tosspots.
Had to be at least two hundred of them, crammed into the chapel, listening to the fat old git up front droning on and on about the benefits and blessings of marriage.
No way he was a day under seventy-five. Bet he hadn’t seen his willy for at least two decades, and if he did there wouldn’t be enough Viagra in the world to make it sit up and beg.
Roberta wriggled in her seat, trying to work those damned pants out of her crack by the power of friction alone, because apparently it was bad manners to dig at your bumhole in church.
As if an all-seeing God didn’t already know you had half a pair of Brazilian pants wedged where the sun seldom shone.
The bride was growing on her though, standing up there with that magnificent boobage all blue and gold in the stained light. Beaming. ‘I do!’
The lucky sod she was marrying had the floppy-brown hair of a public schoolboy, broad shoulders, upright bearing – as if someone had jammed a flagpole up his rear-end – and, shockingly enough, actually looked good in the full kilt get-up.
Even if he was wearing one of those oh-so-slapable, ain’t-I-the-greatest? smiles.
‘Excellent, excellent.’ The minister raised his liver-spotted hands to the congregation. ‘And will you, Adriana and Douglas’s family and friends, love and support them in their union?’
The whole lot of them belted it out as one: ‘We will.’
Saps.
Roberta puffed out her cheeks and rolled her eyes. Kept her voice quiet as a mouse’s fart, ‘Whatever happened to the “speak now or forever hold your piece” bit?’
But Susan wasn’t taking her on – sitting there sniffling into a hankie, as if this pair of twazzocks were Romeo and Juliet.
‘“Aye, I’m here to sweep the bride off her feet and into a bathtub full of Nutella and seedless raspberry jam!”’
‘Then,’ Fat-Boy gave them all a flash of his dentures, ‘by the power vested in me by the Lord our God, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife!’
A cheer went up from the congregation.
Roberta leaned in for another go. ‘Course, it makes your bits all sticky, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.’
‘Will you shut up!’
‘You may now kiss the bride.’
Another cheer, as Adriana and Douglas tried to extract each other’s wisdom teeth using nothing but their tongues.
Randy sods.
God, other people’s weddings were boring.
Different when it was your own wedding, when you knew everyone and they were all there to shower you with presents and nonstop adulation, but other people’s?
Strangers droning on and on about wasn’t it a lovely day, and I can’t believe the weather held off for them, and weren’t the bridesmaids to die for?
Numpties.
Let’s face it: making poor innocent people sit through other buggers’ weddings was probably against the Geneva Conventions. Bet you could end up in the Hague for that. Especially if you made them wear arse-crack-cheese-wire pants too.
The queue shuffled forward another couple of lengths.
Up at the front, a pair of ancient morons in matching tweed peered at the seating board, trying to recognise their own names.
How long did it take to work out what table you were sitting on?
All going to be dead of old age by the time they got there.
Finally the Tweedies sodded off, and it was Roberta and Susan’s turn.
The hotel had mounted a large corkboard on an easel, and decorated it around the outside with blue rosettes – each one with a year printed on it in gold: ‘2017’, ‘2015’, ‘2010’, ‘1992’, ‘1987’, ‘1983’ . . . No pattern to it at all, but that was weddings for you, wasn’t it?
Nineteen big round tables on the accompanying diagram, a rectangular one along the top, and a bunch of names down either side. But whoever printed it out needed a new toner cartridge or something, because the letters were all teeny and indecipherable.
Roberta gave the seating plan a good squint, but it didn’t help. ‘Where are we sitting?’
‘Oh, put your glasses on, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I don’t need glasses. It’s no’ my fault they always print these things in the tiniest font imaginable.’
A sigh, then Susan had a frown at the board. ‘You know your problem? You . . .’ Her eyes went wide, her mouth clicked shut, then she turned an ingratiating smile on the next couple in line. ‘Please excuse us, we’ll just be a minute.’ She grabbed Roberta’s arm and hustled her away into the corner.
‘What? I never did anything!’
A hard, icy whisper: ‘Now, you listen to me, Roberta Alexander Steel, you will behave yourself in there tonight, do you understand me?’
‘Aye, aye.’
‘No, not “aye, aye,” you swear to me on . . . on Stalin and Mr Rumpole’s lives that you will not say or do anything that will embarrass me.’
Roberta pulled her chin in. ‘Jesus, is there—’
Getting even closer and steelier. ‘No matter what happens, you are on your utmost best behaviour.’ A poke. ‘Utmost!’
OK, this was weird, even for Susan. Intense. And . . . weird.
But hey-ho. Roberta was nothing if not sensitive and flexible.
She nodded. ‘All right, I swear. I’ll no’ do nothing embarrassing.’ Pausing for a second to dig those horrible Brazilian pants out of her undercarriage.
‘Good. Thank you.’ Susan smoothed down Roberta’s lapels. ‘Come on then.’ Took her arm and swept them both into the ballroom.
Very swanky. Well, if your idea of swanky was a large oak-panelled room lined with enough stuffed animals to start a very creepy zoo.
There was even a bear in the corner, standing at full stretch, paws and claws out for the lads.
More twee oil paintings, medieval weapons, and a big carved coat of arms. All the tables arranged around the outside of a wooden dance floor.
And, if that wasn’t swanky enough, a string quartet perched on a podium off to one side, played what sounded like ABBA covers as the assembled idiots meandered to their allotted seats.
Every table but one was decked out in blue. Blue table runners, blue streamers, blue balloons bobbing bluely above blue-themed floral centrepieces. Each with its table name on a sign mounted in the middle, surrounded by bottles of wine and party poppers.
The odd one out was decked in red, for some reason, banished to the opposite corner, by the door marked ‘TOILETS’.
Susan led the way across to one of the blue tables near the front, where a couple of oldies were already sitting and shaking hands with one another.
Roberta squinted up at the sign – nice big letters, which was a help. Gold on a blue background, like the rosettes. Now, what did it say . . .? Ah, yes: ‘MICHAEL HESELTINE’.
Really?
Wait: why would anyone call a table ‘Michael Heseltine’?
Didn’t make any sense.
She fumbled her glasses from her jacket pocket and stuck them on. Turned to look around the room. Mouth falling open in disbelief. ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding!’
The next table over was, ‘NIGEL LAWSON’. ‘JOHN MAJOR’ squatted next to that, then ‘NORMAN LAMONT’, on and on the horror went: ‘GEOFFREY HOWE’, ‘KENNETH CLARKE’, ‘NORMAN TEBBIT’, ‘DOUGLAS HURD’ . . .
The only table not named after a member of Margaret Bloody Thatcher’s cabinet was the one draped in red: ‘TERRIBLE TROTSKYITES’.
Roberta pulled off her glasses and stared at Susan. ‘You . . . It’s . . . We . . .’ Mouth working like a drowning goldfish.
‘Now, Robbie, you promised!’
‘It’s . . . We’re . . .’
An older gent in a morning suit appeared from the other side of the table, bringing a matronly woman with him, the pair of them wearing far too much jewellery for people in their mid-sixties.
He grabbed Susan for a kiss on the cheek.
‘Susan, darling, don’t you scrub up well?
I mean, it’s not like you’re a bag lady in the office, but—’
‘Honestly!’ The woman elbowed him. ‘Feet out of your mouth, Morty, while you’ve still got socks on.’
Roberta gawped up at ‘MICHAEL HESELTINE’ again. ‘How could . . . It’s . . .’
‘Ha. Quite right, Agatha. Foot removal it is! Sorry, Susan. Senior partner having a senior moment, there.’
Susan beamed at the pair of them. ‘Mortimer, Agatha, wasn’t it a lovely ceremony?’
Michael Heseltine? ‘I can’t . . .’
The Agatha woman gave Susan a mwah-mwah. ‘Oh, I was bawling my eyes out the whole way through. Love a good wedding, me.’ She turned a Steradent smile on Roberta. ‘Agatha Beresford. You must be the famous police hero we’ve heard so much about!’ She moved in for another mwah-mwah.
But Roberta finally got her gob working again: ‘It’s a Tory wedding! It’s all Tories! Everywhere!’ Spinning around, staring out at the bastards. ‘All of them!’
‘Ha, ha . . .’ Susan simpered at Agatha and Mortimer. ‘Robbie’s such a card, isn’t she? If you could excuse us for just a second . . .’ She grabbed Roberta’s arm again and dragged her off to the middle of the dance floor. ‘You promised!’
What had that got to do with anything?
‘You took me to a Tory wedding! It’s wall-to-wall Tories in here! Tories!’
‘You promised on Mr Rumpole’s life! And Stalin’s!’
Roberta turned, pointing at the solitary table flying the red flag. ‘Why can’t we sit with the Terrible Trotskyists?’
That scrawny wee PC was standing beside it.
He’d changed out of his police clobber and into a cheap-and-shiny-looking Prince Charlie kilt outfit that he must’ve hired from someone who hated him.
And thought he was three sizes larger. PC Scrawny McCrapKilt pulled out a chair so his boot-faced girlfriend could sit with their fellow non-Tories.
Susan – traitor, quisling, betrayer – adopted a soothing voice. ‘It’s only for a couple of hours.’
‘But I don’t want to sit on Michael Heseltine!’
And the soothing tone vanished, replaced by one made of frozen reinforced concrete: ‘You will sit on Michael Heseltine and like it!’