Chapter Forty-Five The Marriage Act
That night Danny and Luis watched the ten o’clock news seated on the floor of their recently sold apartment, their home for so many years, now standing almost empty.
A few sentimental pieces had been shipped to Spain, Luis’s beloved reading chair, his antique lamp, their books, but much had been sold or given away, not suited to a farm on an Andalusian hill.
Luis and Danny intended to redecorate when they arrived, slowly, over many months – gradually finding furniture and crockery from markets and artisans in the area.
Starting anew. Before the bulletin had even finished, wedding guests began ringing Danny and Luis to congratulate them, convinced that the passing of the Bill meant they would be attending one of the first gay marriages in the country.
How amazing, they said, to be part of history.
Some hoped there might be television cameras to capture the event, disappointed to discover they would be among some of the final guests attending a ‘civil partnership ceremony’, the antiquated term as dry as a mouthful of crackers.
Danny consoled them that they planned to convert the civil partnership to marriage as soon as they arrived in Spain.
Funny, really, because critics of the law had called gay marriage a ‘phoney currency’, and here they were converting it at the border, in a country where gay marriages had been legal tender for eight years.
Asked why they chose to marry in England, rather than Spain, Danny replied that they had found the perfect venue in England.
And they weren’t about to change their plans based on the whims of a government.
Whatever the paperwork called it, they would call it a wedding.
Luis and Danny were getting married on Saturday, the law could catch up.