Page 81 of Husband Material
There was, at least, the small mercy of the CRAPP crew getting our own table so we were able to ignore everyone else for most of the meal. It also allowed them to ignore us which, given we were still deep in the great mole-rat/belly-arse debate, was for the best.
The food, at least, was excellent and because these were the traditional kind of rich wankers as opposed to the trendy kind of rich wankers, there was at least a decent amount of it. But thereweren’ta great deal of vegan options, so Oliver had to content himself with stealing bits of people’s side salads, which at least suited those of us—like me and Rhys—who thought vegetables at an event like this were just a scam to keep you away from the good stuff.
Also to my taste was the father-of-the-bride speech. Because it was short and to the point: doing the family proud, pleasant childhood anecdote, happy to incorporate the vast wealth of the Twaddles into the Fortescue-Lettice estate—the last part admittedly more implied than stated outright. Alex’s speech, by contrast, was…not short or to much of a point at all.
“Well,” he said, rising slightly unsteadily to his feet, “if it isn’t dashed nice to see such a dashed lot of dashed fine people and… Gosh, I’m saying ‘dashed’ rather a dashed lot, aren’t I? Anyway, thank you, Daddy-in-law, for your marvellous, marvellous speech, and thank you, Daddy-and-Mummy-in-law, for raising such a smashing, smashing gal as Miffy—I mean, Clara. We call her Miffy you see, for short. Where was I…”
As alienating as I’d found the service, even I had to admit that there was something endearing about watching Alex bumble his way through his groom’s speech. Thankfully, he didn’t try to do any jokes, although given the audience, thesummusgag would probably have gone down like “Who’s on First.” After Alex was his brother Cornelius, who everybody called Connie, and hediddo jokes—or at least I assumed they were jokes because people laughed. But they were the kind of jokes that were only funny if you went to Eton or, in extreme cases, one specific polo match ten years ago.
If this had been a normal wedding, the speeches would have been followed by dancing of the school disco variety, music provided by a jobbing DJ with a bad haircut or—increasingly—by somebody’s Spotify playlist piped through a laptop. Since this wasnota normal wedding, there was no dancing, just mingling, and the music was both live and classical. Apparently, Oliver had been right about the string quartet, and in retrospect, I was glad they hadn’t watched me fuck. One of them had creepy eyebrows for a start.
As it turned out, an all-nighter followed by a long church service followed by a massive meal was an ideal recipe for unconsciousness. So when I felt myself leaning into Oliver like an amateur stripper who had overestimated their skill with a pole, I made a concerted effort to stiffen my lip, gird my loins, stand up, and be sociable. Reacting slower than he usually did—he was also dead on his feet—Oliver got up to join me and we made a round ofthe hall saying polite hellos to polite strangers who had no interest in us whatsoever.
As usual, Oliver was way better at this shit than I was, even managing to make a few sentences of small talk with some of the more accessible poshos before we moved on.
“I don’t know how you interact with these people,” I told him as we walked away from a short conversation with a Tory MP and her investment banker husband. “We have nothing in common with them.”
Oliver gave a tired shrug. He was doing that thing that people who were good in crowds did where he was really peppy and extroverted whenever somebody was looking and drooping to conserve energy the moment we got out of sight. “They’re just people, Lucien.”
I sagged in the shadow of a pillar to shelter from the crowd of aristocrats who I was kinda sorta slagging off. “I know. It’s…I don’t know. It almost feels like you prefer this sack of arseholes to the crowd at Miles’s wedding.”
“I’ll admit,” he said, massaging his temples, “I prefer being in a pleasant stately home at the wedding of an affable but harmless man I’ve met more than once to being in a tunnel full of loud music and cultural markers I’ve always found alienating. I don’t think that’s especially wrong of me.”
On one level, it wasn’t. On another—and maybe it was the not sleeping and the being soft-arrested and the rain and the field of liquid cowpats, but I was feeling a difficult mix of drained and antsy. “I’m not saying it’swrongof you,” I began, even though I was about to, a bit, “but those were kind of, y’know, my people?”
“Theyusedto be your people,” Oliver corrected, and I wasn’t sure I was in a mood to be corrected. “Your people are Bridge and Tom, Priya and the James Royce-Royces. And, well, and me.”
When he laid it out like that it felt really…really small all of asudden. Not because I didn’t love my friends—I obviously loved my friends—but because I’d always felt my friends represented, somehow, a connection to something larger? “I guess I just… It still kind of confuses me that you’re totally down with a ceremony that celebrates a God you don’t believe in, gender roles that went out of fashion in the 1950s, and a version of marriage you literally can’t be part of”—I took a deep breath; this was getting way more intense than I’d intended—“but you’re freaked out by a ceremony that celebrates your actual identity.”
“Lucien.” Like me, Oliver was standing slightly unsteadily, and like me he was hiding behind a pillar to stop what was now, undeniably, an argument spilling over the rest of the party like the world’s most disappointing balloon drop. “I’m not sure what you want from me here. We went to a wedding for somebody you hated, and you clearly wanted me to be harsh about it, so I was harsh about it. We’re now at a wedding for somebody you like, so I’m trying to help things go smoothly. And apparently that’s upsetting to you.”
Oh no, was this a me problem? This was probably a me problem. I mean, let’s be honest, most things were me problems.
Except, hang on. On this one occasion, maybe incorrectly because self-awareness was never exactly my best feature, I was pretty certain itwasn’ta me problem. Yes, if I was being fair—and who wanted to be fair in the middle of a fight—Oliver could play the taking-my-cue-from-you card for some bits of Miles’s wedding. But he knew how much I loved dunking on rich people, and if he was really that committed to having my back, he’d have totally joined in.
I took a deep breath. “What’s upsetting to me”—this seemed like a good time for I-statements—“is that you just seem like you’re naturally drawn to a lifestyle I feel alienated by and naturally alienated from a lifestyle I feel drawn to and…and that’s a crappy thing to realise when you’re about to marry somebody.”
“You’re overextrapolating.” Oliver wasn’t normally this blunt, but then he wasn’t normally this tired. “If I misinterpreted the situation, then I’m sorry, but I’ve only been trying to support you. These have beenyourfriends’ weddings after all.”
Fuck that.He wasn’t getting away with that. “Can you please drop the I’m-only-trying-to-please-you thing. Either you’re bullshitting me—”
“I’m not bullshitting you, Luci—”
“Either you’re bullshitting me,” I pressed on, “which is bad. Or you genuinely have no opinions of your own and are still doing that thing Ireally thought you’d stopped doingwhere you just try to perform whatever it is you think somebody else is expecting of you.”
“I’m not—”
It was no use. I’d gone full dam-break. “And now it seems like you’re going to want our wedding to be this mega-traditional bells-and-incense thing with no queer iconography because you’re so insecure in yourself that rainbows make you uncomfortable.”
I’d gone too far. I’d gonesignificantlytoo far. “I don’t believe,” said Oliver way too calmly, in a voice I’d never heard him use before, “that the fact I don’t feel personally represented by a set of symbols invented by a very specific group of Americans in the late 1970s and popularised as much by global capitalism as by activists makes meinsecure in myself.”
Part of me wanted to apologise because I’d obviously hurt him. But also, for all he was doing the I’m-a-lawyer-so-I-talk-good thing, I didn’t think I was entirely wrong. And unfortunately, as I knew from experience on both sides of the equation,I’m sorry but I’m rightnever went down well.
“I didn’t…” I tried.
“You did,” he replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I might take a short walk in the grounds.”
I made a confused noise because what could you say to something like that?No, staysounded either controlling or needy butfine, gosounded huffy as fuck. Besides, normally when we fought—which we didn’t that much—I was the one shutting it down or needing my space or, in extreme cases, hiding in a bathroom. And I hadn’t realised quite how rubbish it felt to be on the other end.
