She wouldn’t give me away, refused point blank, fixed me up instead with my father’s brother; a man I had not seen since I was thirteen years old. I thought we might meet the day before, at least, but he turned up on the morning, fresh from the airport, and when everyone went off in the first car, we were left in the front room looking at each other, while the driver idled outside.
It was the strangest moment of a very strange day. I stood trembling at the window, in my pewter silk Alberta Ferretti with a mad Philip Treacy yoke (you might even call it a fascinator) stuck to the side of my head, and every time I made to move, this guy checked his fat watch and said:
‘Make them wait. You’re the bride.’
Finally, at some mysteriously ordained moment, he crossed the living room carpet, took me by the shoulders, and said, ‘You know who it is you remind me of? My own mother. You have her lovely eyes.’
Then he offered me an old-fashioned arm and conducted me out to the car.
Was that the creepiest bit? Taking the slow march down the aisle on the arm of this old geezer, who hadn’t expressed an emotion, by the look of him, since 1965? I don’t know. The local church, which does a good line in cherry blossom, also has a very peculiar crucifix suspended over the altar. A huge thing, made of wood. The figure of Christ, which isn’t especially gory, hangs not just on the front, but also on the back of it – this for the people who end up on the other side of the altar. And it distracted me throughout the ceremony, the way it used to distract me as a child, this double Jesus, back to back with His own reflection.