The Witness at the Wedding

Eight

Carole Seddon had long since stopped pretending that she hadn’t got prejudices. Prejudices were unavoidable for a woman in her fifties, brought up in the middle of the English middle-class, and one of her biggest was geographical. Almost as big as the divide amongst Londoners between ‘north of the river’ and ‘south of the river’ was Carole’s attitude, from ‘south of London’, towards places and people ‘north of London’. She had been brought up and lived her working life in the outer suburbs south of the metropolis, and her ambitions had always been directed towards the English Channel. Living in Fethering, therefore, seemed entirely right and appropriate. And, though ‘some very nice people’ came from and lived in the North of England, they were always bound to be ‘rather different’ from people from the South.

In this geographical hierarchy, Essex occupied a unique position. Proximity to London might be thought to make it a special case, but not to Carole’s way of thinking. Though she would never admit it if asked, her image of the county was a lifelong compilation of media stereotypes. She imagined it to be full of semi-retired East End gangsters, larcenous travellers, overpaid uncouth footballers and their wives, who, like most of the other female denizens, were blondes of voracious sexuality and minimal perception. She thought the only bathroom styles available in the county were onyx and gold, the only garden accessories were windmills and wishing wells, the only newspaper read was the Sun, and no vowel was ever properly pronounced. And Epping Forest existed only as a place to put murder victims in shallow graves.

There was not the slightest danger of reality softening the outline of any of these images, because Carole Seddon had never been to Essex.

But as her immaculate Renault approached the outskirts of Harlow, she saw nothing to change her ingrained perception. The fact that she had driven through the Dartford Tunnel to reach her destination served only to emphasize her feeling of being in an alien land.

Maybe when the ‘new town’ had first been created – the construction started in 1947 – Harlow had had some glamour. Maybe its tightly contained centre, its cement colonnades of shops, had then been state of the art, and the envy of more traditional towns. But, in common with many other examples of post-war building, Harlow had not aged well. Though some developments of that period survived to find a renaissance as ‘retro-chic’, the hopes of that ever happening to Harlow were so small as to be beneath statistical significance.

Perhaps the hotel Carole had chosen to stay in afterthe engagement party reflected her determination not to find any glamour in Essex. Outside the immediate environs of Harlow itself, there was more comfortable accommodation on offer, and she couldn’t pretend to be unaware of the fact, because Stephen and Gaby had booked into a very luxurious hotel converted from an Elizabethan mansion. But Carole had opted for a room in the identikit glassy rectangle of an international chain.

She felt a grim satisfaction as she drove into the car park, from which cement walkways led to the cement monolith itself. The hotel was one you could imagine someone checking into when contemplating suicide; if they hadn’t arrived with suicidal thoughts, they would certainly have them by the time they left.

She looked forward to returning to Fethering as soon as possible the next morning. Carole Seddon didn’t like being off home base. There was no practical difficulty about being away – Jude was going to feed and walk Gulliver – but Carole didn’t like sleeping anywhere other than her own bed at High Tor.

She had no idea where her ex-husband was staying. When Carole had last spoken to Stephen, his father had not yet booked anywhere. Characteristically, David had been late in committing himself to a decision. Equally characteristically, he hadn’t phoned her back, as promised. Carole had contemplated ringing him again before their inevitable meeting at the engagement party, but she had put it off, comforting herself with the argument that it really was his turn to ring her.

Yet somehow she wasn’t surprised, as she walked through the anonymous automatic doors of the hotel, to see a man standing at the anonymous reception, giving his details to the anonymous blue-suited girl behind the counter.

“Yes, the name is…erm…Seddon. David Seddon. I have a single room booked for just the one night.”

“Of course, Mr Seddon,” said the receptionist in perfect received pronunciation, confounding at least one of Carole’s preconceptions.

He hadn’t seen her yet. Carole cleared her throat as she took up a position behind him. He didn’t react. “Excuse me…” she began.

“Won’t be a moment, madam,” said the beautifully spoken girl. “Just dealing with this gentleman.”

Still David didn’t turn. He would always studiedly avoid confrontation or potential unpleasantness.

“Yes, but this gentleman was actually my husband,” Carole found herself saying.

He did turn at that. They stood awkwardly facing each other. Compounding the discomfort, the receptionist asked innocently, “Oh, so will you be wanting a double room then?”

“No,” said David.

“No,” said Carole, with equal promptness, and then added tartly, “I said ‘was’. He’s my ex-husband.”

“Ah.” The girl’s eyes moved discreetly down to her computer keyboard.

Carole tried to think how many years had passed since she and David had seen each other. At least five, probably longer. What she was now confronted with was a middle-aged man slightly below her own height, the dominant feature of whose face was a pair of black heavy-rimmed glasses. His hair, the crown of which had been brown when they last met, was now uniformly white, and he’d had it cut short and spiky, which gave a slightly raffish air, totally at odds with his nondescript beige suit. David Seddon looked what he was, a minor civil servant in retirement.

But Carole had enough detachment to know that, as he looked at her, the same thought was probably crossing his mind. She felt she looked drab and ordinary, an increasingly neurotic middle-aged woman; a minor civil servant in retirement.

Neither of them could think what to say, but the receptionist prevented total silence. “There’s your key, Mr Seddon. Do you want any help with your bags?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you. Just got this little wheelie one.”

“Splendid. Well, I hope you enjoy your stay, Mr Seddon. And now…Mrs Seddon, is it?”

“Yes. Carole Seddon.”

David hovered. To go straight to his room without saying anything would have been downright rude, but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to the circumstances.

“Maybe,” Carole suggested, to ease the awkwardness, “we could meet for a cup of tea – or a drink – you know, once we’ve got settled into our rooms?”

“Yes…erm…good idea. I’m sure they must have a bar here somewhere.”

“The Avalon Bar, just to the left of the lifts,” the receptionist supplied helpfully.

“Thank you so much. Well, look, Carole, I’ll see you in…erm…half an hour, say?”

“That sounds fine, David.”

“And if you need to…erm…contact me – ” he fingered his keycard nervously “ – I’m in room number six one three.”

“Would it help if I were to see if I can put you in a room near Mr Seddon, Mrs Seddon?”

“No, it wouldn’t, thank you very much,” replied Carole, with perhaps a little too much vigour. After all, the girl had only been trying to help.

And yet, after David had gone up in the lift, while the girl was taking down her details, Carole found herself reacting strangely to his words. There had been a time in their marriage when arriving at a new hotel had had a definite aphrodisiac effect on them. The thought of anything like that now was of course ridiculous, and yet Carole found the memory both disturbing and faintly titillating.

The Avalon Bar was a good place for the person contemplating suicide to have that final, nerve-bracing drink. There was nothing in there to make him change his mind. Its decor, pastel and anodyne, was reminiscent of an inadequately endowed private hospital. The only atmosphere was provided by ambient music, in which standards by the Beatles, Abba and Stevie Wonder were filleted and garnished with swooping strings.

It was about half past five when Carole arrived in the bar. David was not yet there – no surprise. He had always been a strange mixture of meticulous planner and erratic timekeeper. Carole felt a seething within her, familiar from the many other bars and restaurants in which she had sat waiting for her husband.

At that time there wasn’t much business in the Avalon Bar. Three over-large and over-loud businessmen had just emerged from a day’s conference and were downing lagers. A young mother’s sour face tried to blackmail her husband into hurrying down his pint so that she could get their grizzling toddler to bed. A man who shouldn’t have been with a younger woman tried to look as if they had all the time in the world to finish their drinks before rushing off to the room he’d booked.

The anonymous blue-suited young man behind the bar took Carole’s order. She didn’t feel like tea or coffee, resisted the lure of the white wine she really wanted because she was pacing herself for the engagement party, and so ended up with a mineral water. Even that failed to sparkle much in the Avalon Bar.

David came in after she had been sitting for about five minutes. As ever, just late enough to be infuriating. She had rather hoped he might have brought something to change into for the party, but no, he was still in the beige suit, to which he had added an inappropriately bright, flowered tie. Carole was shocked how immediately and instinctively critical thoughts came to her mind in David’s presence, but then that attitude had had a long time to build up. They’d shared the mounting resentment of the years when their marriage was supposedly ‘all right’, then the petulant spats of the divorcing process. Since that time Carole had only avoided feelings of irritation by keeping an iron control over her thoughts and never letting them stray towards her ex-husband. She shouldn’t have been surprised that seeing him again opened up the floodgates of annoyance.

And, trying to be fair – not an activity that came naturally to her – she was in no position to carp at David’s sartorial shortcomings. She was wearing her inevitable Marks and Spencer’s ‘little black dress’ and, though she had deliberately bought something unfashionable in the hope that it would never go out of fashion, she knew the garment was showing its age. Carole felt a sudden access of gloom at the image of the two of them – a lacklustre middle-aged couple. The balloon of superiority over the Martins, which had been inflating slowly in her mind, was punctured. She and David looked at least as drab as Howard and Marie.

Still, the evening had to be got through. And the protocol of politeness had to be observed. “Can I get you a drink, David?”

“Erm…” He looked at his watch. “I’m not sure that I’ve got time. When exactly does the party start?”

“Six thirty. But we don’t want to arrive on the dot.” How many times before had she said that in the course of their marriage? Neither of them had instinctive social skills; both had got nervous before parties and needed to gear themselves up beforehand in different, and mutually irritating, ways.

“Erm…well…” David was still assessing the feasibility of a drink. “The fact is, I should be ordering a taxi.”

“Didn’t you come by car?”

“No, I came on the train and got a cab from the station.”

“Ah.”

“Why? Did you come by car?”

Carole knew what reply this should have cued, but she resisted the answer. The Renault was her haven of security. Alone within its shell, she could arrive at the party venue – another hotel – park some way away, and then go through the process of make-up-tweaking, deep breathing and general psyching-up that she needed before she faced company. Even more important, with the car parked outside, she would have her escape route. If the party got too boring, or too confrontational – if she got too exasperated by the presence of David – she always had the option of slipping away early. With him relying on a lift back to their hotel, her freedom was curtailed.

But, even as she had these thoughts, she knew her position was hopeless. She would have to bite the bullet.

“Yes. So you don’t need to get a taxi, David. I can give you a lift.”

“Oh, thank you, Carole. That’s…erm…very kind.”

He had another look at his watch. His ex-wife felt another tug of familiar vexation. How could someone who was always so aware of time be persistently late for everything?

“We don’t need to go yet. You’ve got time for a drink.”

“Yes, and of course, if you’re driving, I don’t have to worry about it.”

“You wouldn’t have had to worry if you’d got a taxi,” Carole pointed out.

“No, I suppose not.” Suddenly – and unexpectedly – decisive, he announced, “I’m going to have a large Scotch. Think I’ll need a bit of a stiffener for the evening ahead.”

For Carole, this was most unusual. During their marriage, David had never drunk spirits. While he was at the bar ordering, she wondered whether, in his second single life, he had turned to drink. Men, she recalled reading somewhere, were much worse at coping with divorce than women. Had David gone to pieces since they parted? Did he have a whisky bottle permanently on the go?

While these seemed unlikely conjectures, they did remind Carole how little she knew of her husband’s current domestic circumstances. She had a phone number she deliberately couldn’t remember, and indeed an address, but not one she had ever visited.

“So you have met the Martins, haven’t you?” she asked, once David was ensconced beside her with his uncharacteristic Scotch.

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

Carole probed, “And what did you think?”

“Well, they’re…erm…They seem a very pleasant – a very quiet couple.”

“And Gaby’s brother?”

“No.”

“Or the uncle they keep talking about. Uncle Robert, is it?”

“Yes, but I haven’t met him either.”

To Carole’s disappointment, David seemed content to let the conversation about the Martins end there. But she should have remembered from their marriage that David rarely volunteered his opinions of people. If she’d wanted to find out what he thought, she had always had to dig.

“I got the impression,” she began, “when I had lunch with them and Gaby, that Marie seemed rather…frightened of something.”

“Life,” said David ponderously, “is a rather frightening business.”

Carole tried again. “And don’t you think it’s odd that Stephen and Gaby haven’t put any announcement about the wedding in the paper?”

He shrugged. “I would have thought that was up to them.”

“Yes, but – ” Carole persisted – “it seemed to me that it’s Gaby and her mother who’re anti the announcement.”

“So?”

“So – why are they?”

The second shrug was more irritating than the first. “Who knows? I don’t think it’s a very big deal. Some people like to announce their forthcoming marriages in the papers, and some…erm…don’t.”

Carole wasn’t getting anywhere with David. Indeed, when she came to think about it, she’d never got anywhere with David. It was amazing that their marriage had lasted as long as it did. Even more amazing, in fact, that they’d ever got married in the first place.

David looked at his watch again. “I really think perhaps we should…erm…be getting along.”

This time she couldn’t argue. She picked up her Burberry raincoat. “Yes, we must go and face the…”

‘Martins’ was the word she used, but her tone said ‘music’.