The Wedding Tree

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The Wedding Tree
scribblemoose
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I was absolutely fine, until I saw the dress.

Things had gone so well: I\'d slept the night before, which I hadn\'t anticipated at all; my disparate relatives were behaving themselves abominably well; my nerves were of the energising, butterfly-kind, and there had, as yet, been no disasters. The flowers waited patiently in the fridge, white, velvet soft roses and carnations. My mother\'s familiar home was full of light, with bright female laughter drifting on the air. The bathroom held a fog of clashing perfumes and bubblebath smells, feminine paraphernalia was distributed gaily throughout the house, a handbag here, an abandoned cardigan there, a little clutch of rings in the dish by the kitchen sink, removed for the task of washing up and shamefully forgotten. The females had been gathering here for two days now, and my father had long since retreated to his shed.

It felt good, all that female company, my mother and her friends twittering like teenagers, every one of them happy for me, telling me how handsome Fred is, and how charming, and how clever I was for catching him. I drifted through the morning before my wedding on a haze of smug satisfaction that I had brought this happy state of affairs to pass.

Until I saw the dress.

There was no build up, no sense of drama. It wasn\'t even as if I was about to put it on. I had been looking for a set of holiday photos that I\'d brought to show relatives hungry for news and evidence of lives they weren\'t part of. I burst into my old room, looking for the carefully edited set of pictures, selected to give no hint of the drunkeness and debauchery which had been the reality of that week in Ibiza, and then, all of a sudden, there it was. Amid all the old posters and books of my childhood and adolescence, stark ivory against the pale blue of the wall, was my wedding dress.

It looked beautiful. Magical. Stylish, even.

I stared at it with round, startled eyes, astonished.

It had absolutely nothing to do with me at all.

I slumped on the bed, my heart thudding in my chest, and knew, absolutely, certainly, for definite, that this wasn\'t going to happen. I wasn\'t going to wear that dress. I wasn\'t going to walk down an aisle, with Fred waiting patiently for me at the end. I wasn\'t going to make promises that my track record to date suggested I would probably never keep. It was a fantasy, an impossible, silly fantasy, and this was where it stopped.

I supposed I should have been worrying about what Fred would say, but at that moment, Fred didn\'t seem real either. None of it did.

I\'m not sure how long I sat there, but it can\'t have been long, because no-one had missed me, apparently, when Darrell put her head round the door.

\"I\'m here,\" she said, chirpily. \"Sorry I was late. New speed humps down Waltham Avenue.\"

I leapt up and pulled her into the room, as if frightened someone might see her and snatch her away from me.

\"Thank fuck you\'re here,\" I said. \"Listen. You have to help me get out of this.\"

The merest flicker of surprise crossed her face before she laughed.

\"You daft bugger,\" she said. \"Come on. Let\'s go down the bottom of the garden. There\'s too many aunts around here, and I don\'t know about you, but I need a fag.\"

\"Okay,\" I said. \"We can plan my escape from there.\"

She gave me an odd little look, and took my hand.

My parent\'s garden is a strange blend of immaculate borders, perfect lawn and a three odd areas known as the \'nature gardens\', as if grass, roses and hebes had nothing to do with nature at all. The nature gardens are, of course, my favourite. Each had its own theme: water, wood and jungle. The water area consisted of an ancient pond, home to a variety of frogs, fish and insects, surrounded by a jumble of rocks and lilies. The jungle was my father\'s ongoing attempt at permaculture, a ragtaggle mix of planting that was supposed to grow in harmony together and provide food that could be plucked and eaten on the spot. Which, to be fair, it was, albeit more often by birds and small mammals than human beings.

The wood area is the best of all: an acre of trees, each one planted and nurtured by my father over the years. They\'d managed to buy part of the old horses\' field at the bottom of the garden not long after we moved here, and it had become a chaotic arboretum, a collection of trees chosen not as specimens of their breed, but as markers of my family\'s life. Every significant event in our lives, however small, was celebrated by a family outing to the bottom of the garden with sapling in hand. I remembered many cold November mornings, stamping about in wellingtons as my father wielded his spade to erect another monument to our achievements.

And so, along with a tree to commemorate my birth - a little oak, a mere quarter-century old, rustling with new leaves - there were other trees that I could call my own: my first day at school tree, my eleven-plus tree, my graduation tree, my first-proper-job tree. Darrell had once wryly bemoaned the absence of a \'first fuck\' tree, and I had to sheepishly tell her that there was one, a little cherry tree, just behind the apple. I hadn\'t exactly told Dad why I wanted it, but then, he never asked. Dad was good like that.

I had kept expecting the Wedding Tree to arrive, but it never had. Perhaps Dad had known, all along, that I wouldn\'t go through with it.

Darrell and I flopped ourselves down on the bench under my brother\'s coming-out tree (a eucalyptus which grew with remarkable vigour), and I retrieved cigarettes and lighter from my jeans pocket, while Darrell rummaged in her bag, eventually producing a hip flask.

\"Vodka,\" she said. \"Thought you might get nervous.\"

\"Thanks.\" I lit two cigarettes and passed her one, taking the flask in return. \"I should probably tell someone,\" I said, calmly. \"That it\'s not going to happen, I mean.\"

\"Don\'t worry,\" said Darrell. \"There\'s plenty of time.\"

I took a swig of vodka, and a long drag on my cigarette. \"It\'s a beautiful day,\" I observed.

\"Mmm,\" she said. \"Lovely.\"

We sat in silence for a while, listening to the birds, the rustle of wind through summer leaves.

\"So.\" she said, eventually. \"Tell me why don\'t you want to marry Fred.\"

I flicked ash from my cigarette with a sigh. \"None of it\'s. . . real,\" I said. \"Not the church, or the reception, or the dress. It\'s all a. . . I don\'t know. It\'s someone else. It\'s not me.\" I didn\'t think it was the right time to mention that I didn\'t think Fred was real, either. \"It isn\'t going to happen to me.\"

\"Oh,\" she said. \"Rightiho. Only, I was looking forward to being a bridesmaid, you know.\"

\"I know,\" I said. \"I\'m sorry.\"

\"\'s okay.\"

\"Really, I am. Sorry.\"

\"You could tell me a story, to cheer me up,\" she said, a twinkle in her eye. \"Tell me a story about young love.\"

\"Oh, Darrell, I\'m not sure I feel up to. . .\"

\"Go on, don\'t be a spoilsport. And no sex. I want something pure, and genuine, something that\'ll make me cry, seeing as how I\'ll be missing out on the crying at the wedding and all. Look, I\'ll start you off. We\'ll have two characters - lets call them Henry and. . . Henrietta. Hush, don\'t look at me like that, you\'re the writer. I\'m just trying to help out here. Now. They met at a club one night, and had wild bunny sex shortly afterwards. We\'re not doing the wild bunny sex now, though. We\'re going to do the bit where they fall in love. Tell me how they fell in love.\"

\"No wild bunny sex?\"

\"Not this time. You can do that as an add on another time. I feel unusually pure today.\"

I snorted disbelief: Darrell was wearing a tiny denim mini skirt that showed off most of her eternally long, polished legs; a tiny vest top that revealed a tantalising glimpse of lacy bra, and had a hip flask of vodka in one hand, fag in the other. She looked anything but pure.

I felt a sudden surge of affection, and knew that of all the people in the world, this was the one who understood me best. Even better than the non-existent Fred. However this odd mirage of a wedding day had come to be, Darrell, better than anyone, could help me make it disappear.

\"Once upon a time,\" I started, \"there was a girl called Harriet.\"

\"That\'s good,\" said Darrel, leaning back into the bench and taking a swig of vodka. \"I like a traditional beginning.\"

\"Who met a very nice young man called Harry. She wasn\'t looking for love, because she\'d decided a long time ago that love never ended well, and she was happier without it. But he worked his way into her heart and before she knew where she was, she loved him after all.\"

\"And?\"

I shrugged. \"That\'s it,\" I said. \"Sorry. It\'s not much of a story, is it?\"

\"No,\" said Darrell. \"But that\'s because it\'s only just started.\"

I felt a rush of tears on their way; I was sused sed they hadn\'t made it before now, but then nothing seemed to be happening quite right, since I\'d seen the dress. \"I\'m sorry,\" I said. \"I\'m crap. I\'m not going to get married and now I can\'t even make up stories any more.\"

Darrell put her arm around me, and pulled me close, so close I could smell her skin; not the bright fragrance of Impulse or whatever she\'d doused herself in, but her real scent, soft like roses. I kissed her neck, and I could taste her, an echo of a night that had bound us together just as surely as I\'d expected it to drive us apart.

\"Why did you used to want to marry Fred?\" she asked me, quietly, stroking my hair.

\"I don\'t know,\" I said. \"I can\'t remember.\"

\"Try harder,\" she suggested.

\"Well . . . he\'s funny, and lovely, and hung like a horse, obviously.\" She laughed, and my heart warmed at the sound of it. \"We\'re a team,\" I said. \"He makes me feel like me, only better.\"

\"And now? Why don\'t you want him any more?\"

\"I. . . it\'s not that I don\'t want him,\" I said. \"He doesn\'t come into it, really. It\'s the marriage thing. I mean, I\'m an independent woman. I have a career, and friends, and my own mind. Why do I need a husband? I\'ve never wanted a fairytale wedding with dresses and cake and wedding favours. I never wanted to be a wife. It\'s not me. Not me at all. I don\'t think it\'s much Fred, either,\" I decided. \"It\'s all religion and legality and being together forever, and I can\'t imagine it ever being true. I don\'t want to be that person, who wears dresses and has her photograph taken and has the first dance at the reception. I want to be me.\"

\"Fen, you are you, sweetheart. Getting married won\'t change that. It\'s just like fancy dress, is all.\"

I looked up at her in horror. \"I hate fancy dress,\" I said. \"You remember last Halloween? The whole gorilla experience?\"

\"Oh,\" Darrell\'s brow furrowed at the memory. \"Fuck, yeah. Sorry. Forgot about that. The whole banana thing wasn\'t your fault, you know.\"

I shuddered. \"No,\" I said. \"But still. . .\"

\"Acting, then.\" She tucked my head back into her neck, dropped a little kiss on my forehead. \"If not fancy dress, think of it as acting.\"

\"It\'s not going to happen,\" I said, firmly. \"I\'m not a girl who wears dresses and marries strange men. I\'m a girl who lives in jeans and t-shirts and loves Fred and Darrell and likes sitting in cafes writing smutty stories. If I marry Fred I\'ll turn into some horrible, shrew like creature that makes dinners and only writes childrens\' books, and worries about Fred having affairs, and I\'ll probably have an affair myself with some football player, and break Fred\'s heart, and. . .\"

\"Babe,\" Darrel interrupted, \"you\'re talking bollocks. Nothing\'s going to change between you and Fred when you get married, for the simple reason,\" she put a finger to my lips to silence my protest; \"you\'ve been married since the first night you met. You have something I can\'t even understand. Living apart while you were in the States couldn\'t break it. Shit, living together couldn\'t break it. Fen, trust me. A silly bit of paper and an odd kind of party isn\'t going to change either of you one bit.\"

I held her tighter, suddenly realising that she didn\'t believe me. She was still part of that other world, after all, the world that thought I was going to get married.

\"I tell you what,\" she said, gently. \"I\'ll do you a deal. And this is just for the sake of your mother, and father, and the posse of scary aunts in there, mind. Why don\'t you pretend to be Fenicia Lincoln-Abbott, just for today. Wear the dress, and go and do the church thing, and live through the reception so I can get pissed and hopefully laid. And tomorrow, if, after your night of astounding passion in the honeymoon suite of the Astor, you can honestly ring me and tell me things have changed, I\'ll help you get a divorce, and you can go back to being Fen Lincoln and Fred Abbott, and everything will be alright.\"

It sounded reasonable, I had to admit. It seemed a little thing to ask, the way she put it. But still. . .

\"I\'m frightened, Darrell,\" I whispered.

She hugged me closer still, dropping the vodka carefully to the ground and wrapping both her slender arms about me. She kissed my hair.

\"I know you are, babe. But there\'s no need. I\'ll be there. I promise, from now for as long as you need me, I won\'t leave your side. We\'ll do this together.\"

I took a deep breath. \"Really?\"

\"Of course. That\'s what bridesmaids are for. Well, that and copping off with the best man, obviously. Or I noticed Fred has a couple of yummy cousins. . .\"

I giggled. \"You\'re such a slut.\"

\"Half as much as you.\"

\"And really? You\'ll be there all the time?\"

\"Right up until you disappear up the stairs in Fred\'s arms. I don\'t think threesomes are conventional for wedding nights.\"

We both burst into a sputter of giggles then. Darrell demanded another cigarette, and the world started to slip back to focus; it didn\'t seem any more real, but at least I had a guide.

\"We\'ll just have this fag,\" said Darrell, \"then we\'ll go get ready.\"

I took a happy drag on my cigarette, and let her take control.

* * * * * * *

We caused somewhat of a stir, on our return, when Darrell dismissed the hairdresser and beautician who was supposed to transform me into a vision of loveliness. Darread aad a somewhat heated conversation with one of the aunts, but then it all seemed okay; the beauty expert set to work on my mother instead, while the clutch of relatives clucked about wedding nerves, and Darrell and I locked ourselves in my room to get ready. Darrell put our loudest Friday night going out music on the stereo, and did my hair and make up, and insisted I did hers, and got the giggles when I handed her my hairbrush, remembering the night in the tent, and marshmallows.

Before I realised it, I was almost ready. There was just the dress.

Darrell eyed it critically.

\"It\'s sad,\" she remarked, \"that you get to wear the best pulling dress there is, the one time you\'re guaranteed to have pulled already.\"

Then she was lifting it over my head; it flowed down my body like water, clinging in some of my better places, and I felt beautiful.

Which was alien, and disturbing, but Darrell held my hand and told me to breathe, and I sued ied it.

We arrived at the church, still breathing, a stage-managed ten minutes late. I hadn\'t wanted to be late at all, but everyone told me I had to be. I hate being late.

My father told me I was beautiful, confirming my dreadful suspicion that this really wasn\'t me at all, except he went on to point out that my breath smelt of fags and vodka, and gave me an extra strong mint.

I smiled gratefully, and started up the aisle, Darrell\'s presence warm and comforting behind me.

I saw a man waiting at the end, before he saw me. He looked nervous, pensive, although he hid it behind a smile. Then he turned and our eyes met down the long corridor lined with faces I can\'t remember, and his face was full of relief. Not pride, or amazement at my suddenly-revealed beauty. Just relief, and the love that had been there all along.

I slipped my arm out of my father\'s, and ran into Fred, threw my arms around his neck, and told him I loved him.

And then, it was real.

* * * * * * *

The rest of the day was lovely, I think. People always tell me it was, and I know I was happy. The following afternoon Fred and I, my parents and my brother trooped dutifully to the end of the garden, and dug a hole, and planted a little silver birch tree. It turned out that Mum and Dad had endured an almighty row, because she wanted us to plant it on the day itself. But Dad had argued that marriage isn\'t about a single day, and it was worth celebrating on it\'s own, just the family, without all the fuss. It was the first time I thought of Fred as family, and it was a good feeling.

Darrell rang that night, to see if I wanted a divorce.

I told her, on the whole, that I thought I\'d give it a little longer.

\"So, do you feel different?\" she asked. There was giggling; I guessed she\'d struck lucky with the cousin she picked up a the reception.

I looked around the flat I\'d shared with Fred for a year: my writing desk, the battered sofa, a puddle of cats curled up on the pile of clothes I was supposed to be packing for our honeymoon. The gentle song of Fred swearing at the video recorder in the background.

\"Not a bit,\" I said, contentedly. \"Not a single bit.\"

Notes: This is for Caz, and Jane, and Cherie, and Lannie. Wishing you every happiness for the future. ^_^