Ray Charles
HALLELUJAH, I LOVE HER SO
A strange thing happens when a couple elopes.
In many ways, their wedding and their honeymoon become a singular entity.
At least, that’s how David and I saw it.
While we were in Las Vegas we thought we should really be in Las Vegas, which resultantly meant two things: We both came home having vowed never to drink again – a promise that didn’t last as long as a week – and we came home decidedly richer than we were when we left, thanks to a big win on a card game that we didn’t entirely understand.
Neither of us really needed anything extravagant, though.
Independently, we both already had everything we needed, and when our respective belongings came to be shared belongings, we soon found that if anything we had too much – of everything.
So like responsible adults – off the back of an impulsive trip to Las Vegas to get married – we put our unexpected windfall into a bank account and – less like responsible adults – we soon forgot about the money entirely.
It wasn’t until we were nearing our wedding anniversary – a date that we seldom remembered and celebrated even less often – that David had a bright idea.
(Having finished a draft of his Great British Novel, he was full of “good ideas” these days just itching for somewhere to go…)
While our friends were always keen to parade their love in a series of annual celebrations, held specifically to remind everyone that yes, they were still married, and no, they hadn’t yet answered the heady calls of divorce proceedings, there were many people who didn’t even know when David and I had gotten married, exactly – touchy though that particular subject became, in light of…
well, everything. Nevertheless, two months before our wedding anniversary David’s good idea was to sit me down and say, ‘Patti, how about a party?’ And despite myself, I agreed with the man.
This year, more than any other year, it felt as though there was something for us both to celebrate.
So David and I, husband and wife, visited venues, met with caterers, and did everything we possibly could to make this as wedding-y a celebration as we could manage – as though our official reception was rolling around, albeit a few years too late.
David even got himself fitted with a new suit – and nearly died of shock when I did the same.
‘You’re wearing a suit to our wedding celebration?’
‘Yes, David.’ I neatened up the collar of my shirt. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘No, I just thought…’ His sentence died out and he started to laugh instead. David crossed the small space between us in the dressing rooms of the tailors and he pulled me into a tight squeeze. ‘Patti, I love that in all these years of marriage, you’ve never stopped surprising me.’
‘Oh, don’t be so sentimental.’ I pushed him away playfully but then added, ‘You’ve never stopped surprising me either.’
He started to hum along to himself as he stripped out of his wedding clothes – ‘Oh, I love her so…’ – and climbed back into the corduroy trousers and jumper he’d been wearing when we arrived. ‘Get yourself dressed, woman,’ he said. ‘I want to take my wife for lunch.’
‘We’re at the caterers again this afternoon,’ I reminded him, and he shrugged.
‘A light lunch, then. It’s like stretching before exercise.’
* * *
We’d booked hall space in a hotel that was, conveniently, stumbling distance from home.
When we’d pencilled in the date with them, we’d requested the silver and gold decorations package and now, stepping into the room, it appeared that no expense had been spared when it came to those decorations.
I wasn’t altogether sure whether David and I were celebrating our marriage or welcoming foreign dignitaries into the country for the first time.
It was clear that everyone had taken our “dress to impress” code seriously, too, because one by one the guests filtered in adding sparkle, crisp shirts, and bow ties to the space.
‘Patti, good grief, you wear a suit better than David!’ Janet announced when she saw me; though David was buzzed from the pitcher of cocktails we’d had between us at home while we were getting ready, which meant he didn’t dignify her with a response.
‘And this place looks bloody fantastic,’ she said, taking a good look around the room.
‘Why don’t you celebrate your wedding more often? ’
‘Because we can’t afford to,’ I joked.
Janet slapped my arm. ‘Patti, don’t be absurd. You can’t afford not to.’
Soon there came Ella and Nora – also dressed to match, though in floor-length red gowns – followed by Gerald, who David and I both noticed was there alone, sans wife.
We were rude enough to comment on it when we were left alone for a quiet minute, but not quite rude to have asked Gerald whether the inevitable had finally happened – that would likely come later.
There was a growing queue of people after those familiar faces, too: Mary and Kris with a K; Keith, without a boyfriend, which was practically unheard of; Christopher and Ethan; Olivia; and Beatrice.
No sooner had I been to refill our glasses and then appeared Sophie, Gwen, and Bill!
‘You came!’ I announced, two-gins loud, when I saw him.
‘Oh, Miss Patti, I wouldn’t miss it. You two’ – he cupped my face and David’s shoulder in each hand – ‘you two are a wonder.’
‘Does Bill know?’ David asked from the side of his mouth when Bill was out of earshot.
‘No, I don’t believe Bill does. Frankie!
’ I turned to greet the next guest and, while it was and had been a joy, I realised that I was dangerously close to feeling like the grieving family member at a funeral, shaking hands with everyone who’d been kind enough to turn up.
‘Must we stay at the entryway the entire time we’re here?
I want to work the room.’ I shimmied my shoulders as I spoke. ‘I need to show off my threads.’
‘Work the room? Show off your threads?’
‘You’re the one who asked Alexa to teach me slang, David!’
‘Well remind me to ask her not to when we get home!’
While David was distracted by yet another guest, I did my eventual sweep of the room – though I wasn’t sure whether there was something specific I should be doing to show off my threads, exactly.
But I still walked with an air of confidence that I couldn’t remember feeling before.
Whether it was the suit, the booze, or the entirely altered outlook on life – as though I’d had some sort of midlife crisis, condensed into the space of just a few months – I wasn’t altogether sure.
Either way, though, I found it was easier to carry myself around this party than it had been at others.
Maybe that’s because David and I know how to throw a party, I told myself.
Or maybe it was because something had changed…
* * *
We were a posh finger buffet and another three rounds of drinks in when the dance floor became busy.
There were such ambitious shapes being thrown around on the floor that it crossed my mind someone might throw their back out before the night was over.
But everyone steadied to a gentle pause when the DJ kicked in on the speakers.
‘Ladies, gents, humans, can we please clear the dance floor for a minute?’
David and I locked eyes across a plate of salmon and cucumber sandwiches.
We knew what was coming, and there was a low simmer of laughter teasing at both of us because of it.
We’d never had a first dance, not really.
Unless you count a drunken and very clumsy waltz around the foyer of a casino while we waited for our chips to be cashed up, while a very drunken David tried to convince me that he could hear ‘Isn’t She Lovely?
’ by Stevie Wonder playing somewhere, even though all I could hear was the sound of coins rattling and people cheering or cursing dependent on their luck.
So when we’d made plans for how the evening might look tonight – when food would be served; when we’d politely ask people to bugger off home, that sort of thing – we’d factored in one of the many things that had been missing from our first wedding.
‘Will the bride and groom join us on the floor for their first dance together, please?’ the DJ continued, the hyper chords of something already stirring in the background.
‘What did you choose?’ I asked David as he caught my hand and led me to the dance floor, where our many and drunken friends were gathered in small clusters around the space. ‘Is it terribly embarrassing? Will I love it?’
He laughed. ‘It’s a surprise, Patti.’ He twirled me away from him so we were arm’s lengths apart, and then we slowly, slowly drifted to our respective sides of the dance floor – where Sheila and Eudora we were waiting for us.
‘Tonight they’ll be joined by their new partners…’ the DJ added, speaking over the increasing sounds of Ray Charles’ ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’, and I thought David perhaps couldn’t have picked a better first dance track if he’d tried.
Sheila was wearing a cut-at-the-knee white dress that cinched at her waist and flared out at her hips, with a mesh underskirt that kicked the dress out until it looked like a sophisticated tutu – which was a description I could never see myself using for anything, but of course, she made it work.
From the opposite side of the floor, I saw that Eudora was wearing a cream skirt-suit, and I wondered whether they’d orchestrated it between the two of them to wear white, or near-white, to mine and David’s fake reception.
It seemed like the sort of joke they might play on us.
But from the uncomfortably wide grin on David’s face, I wagered that he cared as much as I did – which is to say, not much at all.
The song continued to unfold and for the first minute it was just us four, as it had been on so many occasions in the flat, drinking gin and dancing clumsily and driving Fred and Lucy insane with the cheer.
Now, I pulled Sheila close to me and inhaled the deep scent of her.
She never wore perfume, she was only ever herself, and there was something comforting in that curve of neck where my face had been pressed, on so many nights half-asleep and mumbling conversations with her.
She hadn’t moved in, of course, and neither had Eudora.
But somehow, mine and David’s lives had unfolded to make space for them both – literally, and metaphorically.
In six months, I’d come to wonder how David and I had ever managed on our own.
As we shared our dance, the four of us together, I was suddenly overcome with a swell of gratitude that we weren’t – alone, that is.
Life had been fine, but there was something bold and brazen on the other side of fine that I’d become quite fond of, too.
So right then, square on the mouth and in front of a room full of people, I kissed her, my Sheila, while my David started to beckon our many friends to join us in our dance.
For the rest of the song, the rest of the evening, in fact, we danced and laughed and drank, as though our aching heads wouldn’t make us all regret it in the morning.
But for that night, it was delicious to be a teenager again – or at the very least, someone in their twenties perhaps.
And in many ways David and I were teenagers now, in the throes of young love.
It had just taken us until our forties to find it…
The End