“Everything?” Gordon had been surprised. Had she not noticed the lovely old Belfast sink? Had she not appreciated the ancient meat safe, half recessed into the wall? Janice had been adamant, though, and in due course men came round to take everything out.
“An awful pity,” said one of the men. “This good stuff. This lovely old sink.”
Gordon had looked away, ashamed. I’ve married beneath me, he suddenly thought. It was an odd thought, the sort of thought that people now would never admit to thinking. And yet there were occasions on which people married beneath them – not in social terms – but in terms of intelligence or sensitivity. Why deny that such unions took place?
And this dispiriting judgment was later to be confirmed, when Janice dropped a hint about a present for her forthcoming birthday. Had he heard correctly? Had she really said: “I’d love something like that picture of the people dancing on the beach. You know the one I mean?”
5. Almost a Perfect Summer Night
Elspeth Harmony’s parents were both dead and so there had been nobody to object to Gordon’s offer to pay for everything connected with the wedding, down to the last canapé. Of course the custom that the bride’s parents should pay for the reception had changed, although it was still sometimes defended by the fathers of grooms. It was common enough now for the couple themselves to pay, thereby relieving the parents of all costs, and Matthew would certainly have been in a position to afford anything (he had, after all, four million pounds; rather more, in fact, as the market had been kind to him). But Gordon had been insistent and Matthew had not argued.
The rental of the marquees, of which there were two, was expensive enough in itself, costing over two thousand pounds – and that was before anybody had so much as sat down at the tables at which they were to be served the menu that Janice had arranged with the caterers.