Country life
A world within a world
Leanda de Lisle
It never seems to rain at country wed- dings. Sitting in a ruined chapel last Satur- day, the congregation roasted under a furious sun. I fanned myself with a hymn sheet while around me farmers in wool morning coats furrowed their brows and stood firm. I could see their wives' translu- cent white arms turning pink, then scarlet, and gratefully adjusted my straw hat. What would our hosts have done if it had rained? I enquired later. After all, we've had noth- ing but rain for months. Apparently, the vicar had suggested that in such an event the wedding should be moved to after the reception. I tried to imagine the guests slightly dishevelled after hours of fun, sit- ting in the rain, admiring the flowers adorning the roofless stone walls. They'd have been been as happy as pigs in mud.
The bride left the chapel looking as cool as a pearl in the ocean bed while I mentally calculated the shortest route to the vast shady trees around the duck pond. Unfor- tunately, it soon - became clear that the other wedding guests were in no hurry to leave. I waited anxiously an inch from someone's back, while people paused to smile at each other and murmur a word or two. It must have been part of their deter- mination to face down their discomfort and, not for the first time, I wondered why I'm made of weaker stuff. Eventually I made it to the lawn where tiny little girls tumbled like drifting petals. 'Look at them. Sweet,' I said to Peter distractedly, as I staggered under cover. He pulled out a cigarette while I pulled off my hat. A white pony with his mane dressed in bows nodded in the dappled light, and I gave him a pat before looking around me. Our host told me that several people had come from Canada — 'where they don't have weddings' — but I didn't see anyone wearing a maple leaf and an astonished expression. Instead we found ourselves chatting to a neighbouring farmer while we stood in the queue to shake hands with bride and groom. Pig prices have crashed,' Peter told him gloomily. The supermarkets say they want happy pigs, but then they go and import cheap factory-farmed bacon from Europe. The man shook his head and retorted that farming is doing badly in all areas. 'Well,' I said chirpily, 'these things go in cycles, don't they?' But he would have none of that. 'It's never been as bad as this.' The scale of the disaster seemed to preclude deeper discussion and after the last kiss in the queue we headed off for a long drink.
It seems to be more and more difficult to know what you are going to be fed at wed- dings. We were once invited to a 12 o'clock wedding and wrongly guessed that this would mean a buffet lunch. By the time we left we were ghosts of our former selves, and so we now err on the side of caution. On this occasion it meant we had a second lunch in the middle of the afternoon. It was a fabulous spread, made all the more remarkable by the fact that the caterer (a farmer's wife, of course) was told that morning she had been given the wrong numbers and could she double everything. `She never panics,' I was told admiringly.
On my right sat the colonel of the groom's regiment, a man who said he remembered me from the distant past which is always pretty damn scary. But it was made infinitely worse by the discovery that he was at university with me. They say you know you're getting old when police- men start looking young, but it's not true. You know you are getting old when your contemporaries are colonels. I hoped that the colonel was perhaps the most brilliant soldier in the British army and had been promoted when extraordinarily young. He certainly didn't have a big white mous- tache. In fact, I thought he looked very handsome, but that could reflect the extent of my decrepitude.
By the time we emerged from the mar- quee it was 7.30 in the evening, and I felt as mellow as the soft evening air. Weddings are a world within a world. It seems appro- priate we have a different climate for them, and today it's grey again.
`I grew up around here — I'm known by every security camera for miles.'
Previous page
