Home life
Labour of love
Alice Thomas Ellis
People have started getting married again. We all did it at one time but then it seemed to go out of fashion. Now my. acquaintance is divided fairly evenly be- tween those who are desperate to get married and those who are equally desper- ate to get divorced. I have myself been in love for ages with Captain Brown in Cranford. He reminds me of our next-door neighbour who unfroze the pipes for us with a hairdrier. Another neighbour remarked that now I would know what to do next time and I said yes, go screaming round to Robin. 'I am very fond of handsome, helpful men. That may sound self-evident but I know a lot of women who actually prefer fat ugly little bastards.
It is impossible for the dispassionate observer to understand what people see in each other. Sometimes I have sniffed unreservedly at weddings but just as often I have stared at the backs of the bridal couple standing before the altar and won- dered what on earth they were doing there. I think it was Kingsley Amis who was struck by much the same thought on seeing some ladies waiting outside a nursery school. How did they get to be mummies? Love is not merely blind but mentally afflicted and I suppose we should all be grateful; though when I think of the tears that have, over the years, soaked into my shoulder from people of all sexual persua- sions wailing for a lost love, who was in my view a perfect horror, I begin to wonder again.
It is no use reminding the abandoned one that the beloved was a monster. This only leads to fresh tears and cries of 'I know, but I loved him/her so!' Nor is it any use to insist that men have died and worms have eaten them but not for love. The newly bereft cannot believe it. Frequently, of course, while everyone is still creeping round with comforting mugs of Ovaltine and speaking in hushed tones the sorrow- ing one comes bouncing in with a brand new monster and this is, regrettably, less gratifying than irritating.
Still, a wedding is always a good excuse to buy new clothes. Janet and I have noticed over the years that the upper classes go to weddings in clothes that are already hang- ing in their wardrobes and even the men need no recourse to Moss Bros. She and I, daughters of the people, shoot off down the West End or start poring over pattern books. We get a lot of simple fun in church trying to work out who's who from their apparel. Last time, the totally inexplicable lady in the crimplene dress, the fur stole and the pudding bowl hat turned out to be the vicar's wife. We were very relieved to discover this since otherwise we would still be speculating. Then the wedding present always poses a problem. There are some people who have, as it were, a gift for presents. Beryl Bainbridge has a genius for them. I have not. My imagination runs out at socks for men, soap for ladies, rattles for babies and toasters for weddings. Some- times if I do think of something nice I have an unworthy and cynical urge to specify on the accompanying note that when the divorce occurs my present is to go with the party of whom I am most fond. It is maddening to think of the faithless mon- ster gloating over one's stilton dish.
Queen Victoria didn't like weddings, considering that they had an indelicate flavour. I think she was right. I always get prickly heat listening to the speeches veer- ing uneasily between pious hopes that Bob and Bets will spend many years together in Christian wedlock, and jests about night- ies. All a bit misplaced these days anyway, since the happy couple have usually been shacked up together for ever and have only decided on marriage to confound the tax man: One thing I have noticed is that, contrary to popular belief, the bride is usually in a terrible twitter and much more nervous than the groom. (I have also been forced to concede, again flying in the face of popular opinion, that on the whole men make less fuss when ill than women., Someone I know disbelieves in the germ theory of disease, resolutely refuses to admit that he could be anything so epicene as ill, and as a consequence, seldom is.) A final word on love. Someone has sprayed a message on a sheet of metal on a bridge which reads, 'Bruce loves Ruby', ,and underneath someone else, presumably Bruce, has written, 'Oh no he doesn't'.
Previous page
