Chapter Twenty Nine The Wedding Breakfast
The wedding breakfast; I have never understood why a dinner is called a breakfast, but that’s tradition for you, took place in the great hall of Hartington Hall, with an overflow for the less important guests in a marquee attached on the side.
The room had been transformed. Where Elizabeth had envisioned white roses and silver candelabras, James had arranged fairy lights and bright silk butterflies.
Where she had planned a formal seating chart that separated guests by social standing and dietary requirements, he had created tables of eight with friends and family mixed together.
And where the Pemberton Quartet should have been providing tasteful Vivaldi, DJ Stardust was playing soft background tracks that somehow managed to be both modern and classy. It was perfect.
Elizabeth sat as far from the DJ as possible, which wasn’t far enough. Her smile was fixed. Her champagne was being refilled at alarming frequency.
The food, at least, was excellent, even if it wasn’t what she had ordered.
Instead of Jean-Francois’s immaculately planned eight-course tasting menu, the guests were presented with what James had promised: a cow’s worth of steak, perfectly cooked, accompanied by proper chips and all the trimmings.
Jean-Francois had initially refused to participate, stamping his foot and shouting: ‘I am a chef, not a barbarian’, but had eventually been persuaded that even steak could be elevated to art in the right hands.
He had succeeded, grudgingly. The steaks were magnificent.
I sat at the top table, positioned between Freddie; who was already on his fourth glass of wine and showing no signs of slowing, and Granny who was watching the room with the sharp attention of a hawk observing a field of mice.
James and Anastasia sat in the centre, incandescently happy, occasionally leaning together to whisper things that made them both smile.
Viktor was at a table nearby, playing the devoted brother, his smile never quite reaching his eyes. I watched him watching James. I watched Anastasia watching him watch James. And I wondered, not for the first time, exactly what was going on there.
???
The steaks arrived with a flourish, so no one had seen Viktor place the ketchup bottle; he was too professional for that. But at some point, a red plastic squeezy bottle appeared at James’s place setting, positioned innocently beside his knife.
Viktor had learned James’s habits. Everyone who had ever eaten with James knew his habits.
The man put ketchup on everything: steak, eggs, fish, once memorably on a rather expensive piece of sashimi that had made the chef weep.
It was his one culinary eccentricity and it drove Elizabeth absolutely mad.
The steak was placed in front of James. He picked up his knife. He reached for the ketchup.
‘James.’
Elizabeth’s voice cut across the table like a blade. The room went quiet. Even the DJ seemed to lower the music slightly, as if sensing danger.
‘What,’ Elizabeth said, in a voice that could have frozen the wine in the glasses, ‘do you think you are doing.’
James froze, hand about to grab the bottle. ‘Just... wanted a bit of ketchup. With the steak.’
‘We do NOT,’ Elizabeth said, rising slightly from her chair, ‘have ketchup at a wedding breakfast. It is common. It is vulgar. It is an insult to Jean-Francois, to this occasion and to civilisation itself.’
‘Mummy, it’s just ketchup...’
‘It is NOT just ketchup. It is a STATEMENT. Gerald.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Remove that object.’
Gerald, recognising the tone of voice that preceded genuine marital discord, rose immediately. He grabbed the ketchup bottle with the speed of a man defusing a bomb and handed it to a passing waiter.
‘Get rid of this, would you? Apparently it’s causing offence.’
The waiter took it to the kitchen, where Jean-Francois regarded it with magnificent contempt. He had heard the commotion. He had heard his name invoked. And now he was being presented with evidence that someone, at the wedding of his employer’s son, had attempted to put ketchup on his steak.
‘Ketchup,’ Jean-Francois said, holding the bottle between two fingers as if it were a dead rat. ‘At a wedding. With my steak.’
He dropped it into the bin with an expression of Gallic contempt so pure it should have been framed.
‘Barbarians,’ he muttered and went back to supervising the dessert. ‘This country. These people. Ketchup. Mon Dieu.’
???
At the top table, James was eating his steak without ketchup for what might have been the first time in his adult life.
‘You know what?’ he said, after a few bites. ‘This is actually incredible. I might have been wrong about the ketchup thing.’
‘Shocking revelation,’ Anastasia said, smiling.
‘I mean it. The steak is perfect. All those years of drowning Jean-Francois’s cooking in tomato sauce and I never knew what I was missing.’
‘Perhaps your mother was right about something after all.’
James leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Don’t ever tell her I said that. She’ll be insufferable. Anyway, I don’t even know where it came from, so I can’t see how I’m to blame’.
Anastasia grasped her wineglass so hard it nearly shattered. How could she have missed it? Poison was Viktor’s favourite method and there was an unaccounted bottle of ketchup right next to James, something he could not resist. James had been saved by his mother’s petty classist views.
She looked over at Viktor and behind his flinty eyes she could sense the anger.
He hid it well, but he was furious. So she raised her glass and smiled at him, he did not smile back.
She did not know what Viktor had planned next, but she was certain there would be something.
Men like him didn’t stop because of some hiccups.
They had contingencies, backups, plans within plans.
???
The speeches began after the main course, in the traditional order: Father of the Bride, Groom, Best Man.
The Father of the Bride role had fallen to Gerald by default, there being no actual father of the bride available and Viktor’s offer to speak having been politely but firmly declined by Anastasia. Gerald had prepared something. I had seen it. So, apparently, had Anastasia.
Gerald’s original speech had involved anecdotes about James’s childhood that were genuinely inappropriate, including the infamous ‘incident with the au pair’s knickers and the flag pole’, references to his own three marriages; ‘the third time is absolutely the charm, I can confirm’ and a toast that somehow became about oil futures and the declining value of the pound.
It was twelve pages long. Elizabeth had approved it, which told you everything you needed to know about Elizabeth’s judgement.
When Gerald stood up, however, he was holding a single piece of paper.
He looked at it. Looked at Anastasia. Looked back at the paper.
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘To James and Anastasia. May they be as happy as they deserve to be.’
He raised his glass. Sat down. The entire speech had taken just a few seconds.
Elizabeth stared at him. ‘Gerald. That was not the speech we discussed.’
‘Apparently not,’ Gerald agreed, looking both confused and relieved. ‘But it seemed to do the job.’
Anastasia caught my eye across the table and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. I understood, she had replaced Gerald’s speech with something less likely to cause international incident. It was, I reflected, exactly the kind of quiet, efficient intervention one might expect from her.
James stood for the Groom’s speech. He was nervous; you could see it in the way he kept adjusting his cufflinks, but when he spoke, his voice was steady.
‘Right. Well. I’m supposed to say something profound and touching and if you know me at all, you know that’s not really my strong suit. I’m much better at saying something stupid and embarrassing, which I’m sure will happen eventually, probably before dessert.’
A light ripple of polite laughter. James smiled, relaxed slightly.
‘Here’s what I know. I am not, by any reasonable measure, a catch.
I can’t cook. I can’t dance, as you will witness.
I once got lost in my own building and had to be rescued by the security guard, who was seventy-three and had a hip replacement.
I drive in ski boots. I put ketchup on things that should never have ketchup on them.
’ He glanced at Elizabeth. ‘Apparently.’
More laughter, mainly from the younger guests. Elizabeth’s expression suggested she did not find this as amusing as everyone else.
‘And somehow, despite all of that, the most extraordinary woman I have ever met looked at me and decided I was worth the risk. I still don’t understand it. I may never understand it. But I have the good sense not to question it.’
He looked at Anastasia. His voice softened.
‘She has opened my eyes, to this wonderful place we call home. On our first date, which was a disaster, I took her to a restaurant where the beef Wellington had no beef in it, just foam and philosophy. We ended up eating fish and chips on a bench by the Thames and she told me about arriving in England with nothing. About eating terrible fish and chips near Victoria Station and a seagull stealing her chips and how realising that the biggest threat she had to face here was a seagull. So I have to say a thank you to that thieving bird for getting her to stay in this country.’
He paused. The room was very quiet.
‘That’s who she is. Someone who crossed the world, started from nothing, built everything herself and found a way to laugh about the seagulls. I want to spend the rest of my life being the person who makes her laugh like that. I want to be worthy of someone that brave.’
He raised his glass.
‘To my wife. The bravest, cleverest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met. And definitely the most patient, because she’s put up with me for over six months now, which is frankly heroic.’
‘To Anastasia!’
The room echoed the toast. Anastasia’s eyes were bright. Granny, watching carefully, nodded once: the smallest acknowledgement that she had seen something real in that speech, something genuine.
Even Elizabeth looked slightly moved, though she’d die before admitting it.
My turn.
I stood, feeling the weight of the room’s attention.
The Best Man’s speech was supposed to be funny.
It was supposed to embarrass the groom gently, toast the bride warmly and leave everyone with the comfortable assurance that the couple was surrounded by people who loved them, as well as ticking off all the thankyous that no one else wanted to do in case they forgot some.
I had prepared something along those lines. Stories from university. The time James lost his two front teeth to a flying loo brush during a formal dinner. The ski-sea challenge that had ended with him standing in a puddle at Xavier’s bar. Safe, amusing anecdotes that would make everyone laugh.
But as I stood there, feeling the weight of everybody looking at me, the prepared words felt inadequate. But I had nothing else up my sleeve, so I cracked on.
‘I’ve known James since university,’ I began.
‘And in all that time, I’ve watched him do countless stupid things.
Really impressively stupid. Some of which I won’t describe, because there are elderly relatives present.
The time he got lost in his own building.
The time he tried to impress a girl by doing a backflip and landed on a waiter. ’
Laughter. James was grinning, shaking his head.
‘But here’s the thing about James. He’s also the most genuinely good person I’ve ever met.
Not clever; sorry mate, but good. Kind. The sort of person who sees the best in everyone, even when it isn’t there.
The sort of person who trusts easily, perhaps too easily, because it simply doesn’t occur to him that anyone would take advantage of that trust.’
I looked at Anastasia. Held her gaze.
‘And this time... I think he got it right.’
‘To James and Anastasia,’ I said, raising my glass. ‘May they have a long and happy marriage and may their lives together be as exciting as the lives they’ve lived apart.’