The Impossible Fortune

Joyce

It’s been a while since I wrote, I know that. I’m ever so sorry.

You must have been wondering where I’d got to? Run away to the Bahamas with a police dog handler perhaps? That is actually a dream I had the other night. Then I woke up because Alan was barking at a squirrel he’d seen out of the window.

It’s just that I’ve been so busy with the wedding, I haven’t had time to think. It’s been a whirlwind.

There was the florist, there was the cake – how can a cake be that expensive? It’s just eggs and sugar and a bit of marge, isn’t it? I know it’s decorated, but still. Then there was the dress, that was quite a fun bit, we all had a Buck’s Fizz. I even went to a nail bar – I’d seen nail bars, of course, but I’d always been too shy to go in. They were very nice, and perhaps I’ll go again if somebody else gets married.

Tomorrow is the day. A Thursday wedding? I know. What is it with us and Thursdays?

It’s not every day your only child gets married, is it? Some people around here, they have grandchildren getting married, but not Joanna, she took her time, and I think that was probably for the best. Whatever I might have said to the contrary over the years. To think this time last year she was still with the football chairman?

Before Paul.

Joanna and Paul met online. People – well, Ron – often tell me I should do online dating, but I worry that everyone would just be after my credit card details. Ibrahim told me I must never tell people Alan’s name in the park because they can use the information to steal your password. I said that I don’t use Alan’s name in any of my passwords, but he was insistent. So if people ask me Alan’s name I say he’s called Joyce. And if they then ask me my name, I bid them a polite goodbye.

I mentioned the florist and the cake and the dress and so on, but I didn’t mention that Joanna and I have rowed about all of them, and plenty of other things besides. For example, there are to be no hymns, just ‘Backstreet Boys’. It got to the point where I had to say, ‘If you don’t want me to help, just tell me,’ and Joanna said, ‘I don’t want you to help, Mum,’ and that set me off crying, and then that set Joanna off crying, and she said of course she wanted me to help, and I said I know I interfere, I know, and poor Ibrahim walked into the middle of this whole scene, and then backed slowly out of the room. I’ve said it before, Ibrahim is no fool, except when it comes to dogs and passwords.

Joanna and I have different ideas about weddings, that’s to be expected. If we have different ideas about gluten, we’re going to have different ideas about most things. There’s my way of doing things (honed over a long and happy lifetime) and then there’s Joanna’s way of doing things. What Ron calls ‘the London way’.

The very first row was about forty-five seconds after she and Paul told me they were getting married. I was thrilled. I mean, it was fairly soon after they’d met, and you hear all sorts of stories on Netflix, don’t you, but I was thrilled nonetheless. Paul is lovely, not at all like the people Joanna usually dates, who seem to be, largely, millionaires or Americans. Now I have nothing against either millionaires or Americans, far from it, look at George Clooney, for example, but variety is the spice of life, and Paul is a professor at a university (only Middlesex, but even so). And being a professor is a job for life in the way that being a football chairman or a millionaire isn’t.

So, the first row.

I’d given Joanna a hug, and I’d given Paul a hug, and I asked Joanna if it was going to be a big wedding, and she said absolutely not, no, she wanted a small, intimate wedding, and I said, I can’t remember the words precisely, but something like, ‘Oh, that’s a shame, but never mind,’ something very neutral, you know me, and she said, ‘What’s a shame?’ She said that very politely, because Paul was there, but I could tell that trouble was brewing, so I thought, well, I’ll just defuse this, and I said, ‘Oh, don’t listen to me, I just thought, as an older bride, there might be lots of people who would want to come,’ and she said, again, keeping her cool, ‘An older bride?’ and I thought, you’ve done it now, Joyce, and I said, ‘No, not older, it’s just a lot of people, if they get married at your time of life, it’s a second wedding, after a divorce,’ and, again, I could tell that hadn’t helped. Paul said something at this point, but neither of us was listening because we knew we were at a very delicate stage in our argument. Joanna smiled (not with her eyes though, that’s how you can tell, isn’t it?) and said a small wedding suited her, and it was her wedding, so that’s what was going to happen. I saw her point, but you know me, my head was full of bridesmaids, and handsome ushers, and bouquets, and dancing. Something like Bridgerton, if you’ve seen it. I could see a big crowd of happy friends, all wiping away tears and complimenting my hat. I could see Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim with me. I’d be on the front row; they could sit behind. They could lean forward and tell me how beautiful I looked. This was all going around my head, when I said, ‘I’m sure you know best. You always do, don’t you?’ At this point Joanna asked Paul to go and make us all a cup of tea.

Written down like this, I do see I might have handled it differently.

Joanna came in very close and told me she wasn’t going to lose her temper, because Paul had never seen her really lose her temper, and she thought it was probably best to get eighteen months or so into the actual marriage before he saw her in full flight (it wasn’t the time, but I wanted to say she was absolutely right about this. By the time Gerry first saw me really unleash, we were living in a three-bed in Haywards Heath, and I was pregnant, so it was far too late for him to get cold feet). Then she said she was having a small wedding, with no fuss but a lot of love, and I said, and I’m aware I shouldn’t have said anything at all, that a big wedding isn’t a fuss, and that perhaps she wasn’t thinking straight, and Paul walked back in and asked where the milk was, and we both said, ‘Fridge,’ without taking our eyes off each other.