There was something weird about Will’s speech just now. Something that felt strangely familiar, a sense of déjà vu. I can’t quite put my finger on it but while everyone around me cheered and clapped I was left with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
‘Here we go,’ I hear someone at the table whisper, ‘is everyone ready for the main event?’
Charlie’s not on my table. He’s on the top table, right there at Jules’s left elbow. It makes sense, I suppose: I’m not one of the wedding party after all, while Charlie is. But everywhere else husbands and wives seem to be seated next to one another. It occurs to me that I have barely seen Charlie since this morning, and then only outside at the drinks – which somehow made me feel more disconnected from him than if we hadn’t seen one another at all. In the space of a mere twenty-four hours, it feels as though a gulf has opened up between us.
The guests sitting near me have done a poll on how long the best man’s speech is going to last. Fifty quid for a bet, so I declined. They’ve also designated our table ‘the naughty table’. There’s a manic, intense feeling around it. They’re like children who have been cooped up for too long. Over the last hour or so they’ve knocked back at least a bottle and a half each. Peter Ramsay, who’s sitting on the other side of me – has been speaking so quickly that it’s starting to make me feel dizzy. This might have something to do with the crusting of white powder around one of his nostrils; it’s everything I can do not to lean over and dash it off with the corner of my napkin.
Charlie rises to his feet, resuming his MC role, taking the mic from Will. I find myself watching him carefully for any sign that he might have had too much to drink. Is his face drooping slightly in that tell-tale way? Is he a little unsteady on his feet?
‘And now,’ he says, but there’s a scream of feedback as people – especially the ushers, I notice – groan and jeer and cover their ears.
Charlie flushes. I cringe inwardly for him. He tries again: ‘And now … it’s time for the best man. Everyone give a big hand for Jonathan Briggs.’
‘Be kind, Johnno!’ Will shouts, hands cupped around his mouth. He gives a wry smile, a pantomime wince. Everyone laughs.
I always find the best man’s speech hard to watch. There’s so much expectation. There’s that tiny, hair-thin line between being too vanilla and causing offence. Better, surely, to stay on the PC side of it than to try and nail it completely. I get the impression Johnno’s not the sort to worry about offending anyone.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but he seems to be swaying slightly as he takes the mic from Charlie. Beside him, my husband looks sober as a judge. Then, as Johnno makes his way round to the front of the table, he trips and nearly falls. There’s lots of heckling and catcalling from my table companions. Next to me Peter Ramsay puts his fingers in his mouth and lets out a whistle that leaves my eardrums ringing.
By the time Johnno gets out in front of us all it’s pretty clear he’s drunk. He stands there silently for several seconds before he seems to remember where he is and what he’s meant to be doing. He taps the mic a few times and the sound booms around the tent.
‘Come on, Johnners!’ someone shouts. ‘We’re growing old waiting here!’ The guests around my table start drumming with their fists, stamping with their feet. ‘Speech, speech, speech! Speech, speech, speech!’ The hairs on my arms prickle. It’s a reminder of last night: that tribal rhythm, that sense of menace.
Johnno does a ‘calm down, calm down’ motion with his hand. He grins at us all. Then he turns and looks towards Will. He clears his throat, takes a deep breath.
‘We go a long way back, this fella and I. Shout out to all my Old Trevellyans!’ A cheer goes up, particularly from the ushers.
‘Anyway,’ Johnno says as the sound dies down, sweeping a hand to indicate Will. ‘Look at this guy. It would be easy to hate him, wouldn’t it?’ There’s a pause, a beat too long, maybe, before he picks up again. ‘He’s got everything: the looks, the charm, the career, the money’ – was that pointed? – ‘and …’ – he gestures to Jules – ‘the girl. So, actually, now I think about it … I suppose I do hate him. Anyone else with me?’
A ripple of laughter goes around the room; someone shouts: ‘hear hear!’
Johnno grins. There’s this wild, dangerous glitter in his eyes. ‘For those of you who don’t know, Will and I were at school together. But it
wasn’t any normal school. It was more like … oh, I don’t know … a prison camp crossed with The Lord of the Flies – thanks for giving us that one last night, Charlie boy! See, it wasn’t about getting the best grades you could. It was all about survival.’
I wonder if I imagined the emphasis on the last word, spoken as though it were a proper noun. I remember the game they told us about, at dinner last night. That was called Survival, wasn’t it?
‘And let me tell you,’ Johnno goes on. ‘We have got into our fair share of shit over the years. I’m talking about the Trevellyan’s days in particular. There were some dark times. There were some mental times.
Sometimes it felt like it was us versus the rest of the world.’ He looks over at Will. ‘Didn’t it?’
Will nods, smiles.
There’s something a bit strange about Johnno’s tone. There’s a dangerous edge, a sense that he could do or say anything and take it all completely off the rails. I look around the other tables, I wonder if the other guests are sensing it too. The room has certainly gone a little quiet, as though everyone is holding their breath.
‘That’s the thing about a best mate, isn’t it?’ Johnno says. ‘They’ve always got your back.’
I feel like I’m watching a glass teeter on the edge of a table, unable to do anything about it, waiting for it to shatter. I glance over at Jules and wince. Her mouth is set in a grim line. She looks as though she’s waiting for this to all be over.
‘And look at this.’ Johnno gestures to himself. ‘I’m a fat fucking slob in a too-tight suit. Oh,’ he turns to Will, ‘you know how I said I’d forgotten my suit? Yeah, there’s a little story behind that one.’ He swivels round to face us, the audience.
‘So. Here’s the truth – the honest truth. There was never any suit. Or
… there was a suit, then there wasn’t. See, at the beginning, I thought Will might get it for me. I don’t know much about these things, but I’m pretty sure that happens with bridesmaids’ dresses, doesn’t it?’
He looks enquiringly at us all. No one answers. There’s a hush in the marquee now – even Peter Ramsay next to me has stopped jiggling his leg up and down.
‘Doesn’t the bride buy them?’ Johnno asks us. ‘It’s the rule, isn’t it? You’re making someone wear the fucking thing. It’s not like it’s their choice. And old Will here especially wanted me to have a suit from Paul Smith, nothing less would do.’
He’s getting into the swing of things now. He’s striding back and forth in front of us like a comedian at an open mic night.
‘Anyway … so we’re standing in the shop and I see the label and I think to myself – bloody hell, he’s being generous. Eight hundred quid. It’s the sort of suit that gets you laid, right? But for eight hundred quid? Better to pay to get laid. Like, what use do I have in my life for an eight hundred quid suit? It’s not exactly like I’ve got some fancy do to attend every couple of weeks. Still, I thought. If that’s what he wants me to wear, who am I to argue?’
I glance towards Will. He’s smiling, but there’s a strained look to it. ‘But then,’ Johnno says, ‘there’s this awkward moment by the till,
when he sort of stands aside and lets me get on with it. I spend the whole time praying it goes through on my credit card. Total fucking miracle it did, to be perfectly honest. And he stands there, smiling the whole time. Like he’d really bought it for me. Like I should turn round and thank him.’
‘Shit’s just got real,’ Peter Ramsay whispers.
‘So, the next day, I returned the suit. Obviously I wasn’t going to tell Will all this. So you see I concocted this whole plan, way before I got here, that I’d pretend I’d left it at home. They couldn’t make me go all the way back to Blighty to get it, could they? And thank Christ I live in the middle of nowhere so that none of you lot could “kindly offer” to go and get it for me – as that would have landed me in hot water, ha ha!’
‘Is this meant to be funny?’ a woman across from me asks.
‘Eight hundred quid for a suit,’ Johnno says. ‘Eight hundred. Because it’s got some random bloke’s name stitched inside the jacket? I’d have had to sell a fucking kidney. I’d have had to sell this shit,’ he runs his hands down his body, lasciviously, to a few half-hearted catcalls, ‘on the street. And you know there’s only limited interest in fat hairy slobs in their mid-thirties.’ He gives a big, wild roar of a laugh.
Following suit – like they’ve been given their cue – some of the audience laugh with him. They’re laughs of relief, like the laughs of people who have been holding their breath.
‘I mean,’ Johnno says, not done. ‘He could have bought me the suit, couldn’t he? It’s not like he’s not loaded, is it? Mainly thanks to you, Jules love. But he’s a stingy bastard. I say that, of course, with all my love.’ He pretends to flutter his eyelashes at Will in a weird, camp parody.
Will’s not smiling any more. I can’t even bring myself to look at Jules’s expression. I feel like I shouldn’t watch; this is not all that
different to that horrible, dark compulsion you have to look at the scene of a car crash.
‘Anyway,’ Johnno says. ‘Whatever. He lent me his spare, no questions asked. That’s stand-up bloke behaviour, isn’t it? Though I have to warn you, mate’ – he stretches, and the jacket strains against the button holding it closed – ‘it may never be the same again.’ He turns to face all of us again. ‘But that’s the thing about a best mate, isn’t it? They’ve always got your back. He might be a tightwad. But I know he’s always been there for me.’
He puts a big hand on Will’s shoulder. Will looks as though he’s slightly buckling under the weight, as though Johnno might be putting some downward pressure on it. ‘And I know, I truly know, that he would never screw me over.’ He turns to Will, dips in close, as though he’s searching Will’s face. ‘Would you, mate?’
Will puts up a hand and wipes his face where it seems Johnno’s saliva has landed.
There’s a pause – an awkward, lengthening pause, during which it becomes clear that Johnno’s actually waiting for an answer. Finally, Will says: ‘No. I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t.’
‘Well that’s good,’ Johnno says. ‘That’s great! Because ha ha … the things we’ve been through together. The things I know about you, man. It wouldn’t be wise, would it? All that history we share together? You remember it, don’t you? All those years ago.’
He turns back to Will again. Will’s face has gone white.
‘What the fuck,’ someone on the table whispers, ‘is Johnno going on about? Is he on something?’
‘I know,’ I hear, in reply. ‘This is mental.’
‘And you know what?’ Johnno says. ‘I had a little chat with the ushers, earlier. We thought it might be nice to bring a bit of tradition to proceedings. For old times’ sake.’ He gestures to the room. ‘Chaps?’
As if on cue the ushers rise. They all move to surround Will, where he’s sitting.
Will shrugs, good-humouredly: ‘What can you do?’ Everyone laughs.
But I see that Will’s not smiling.
‘Seems only fair,’ Johnno says. ‘Tradition, and all that. Come on, mate, it’ll be fun!’
And between them they grab hold of Will. They’re all laughing and cheering – if they weren’t it would appear a whole lot more sinister.
Johnno has taken his tie off and he wraps it around Will’s eyes, tying it,
like a blindfold. Then they hoist him up on their shoulders and march off with him. Out of the marquee, into the growing darkness.
