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42
I never thought it would be in the back of a limousine. When someone owns a house that dwarfs Buckingham Palace, a large townhouse and the best part of two villages, you'd think it would at least happen in a proper room. It could have even been the romantic setting of the wood or our special hill but, no, it is the cramped confines of a Daimler passenger seat because it's the one place where Sarah thinks we won't be disturbed.
Mind, it's not every day a bloke gets a proposal of marriage.
"And now, young man, you're supposed to give me a ring."
"You did the proposing, so I reckon it should be you giving me one; anyway, it's not as if I had much prior warning. As it is, you had that kind of glint in your eye. I thought you were dragging me in here for... You know..."
"If I did drag you in here for that, I wouldn't know what to do. We aren't all as experienced as you."
"I've only been with two people." Even in the confines of a dimly-lit Daimler, I can see that Sarah is blushing. She leans her head on the leather seat back and looks down as she takes my fingers in her hands.
"Well, that's two more than me, then." This is followed by one of those scary moments where Sarah seems to know what I am thinking. "I have got close a couple of times but, as I said at the time, Nomad just got as far as wishing it and Charlotte, God bless her, died a virgin - something I thought I'd be ending up doing."
"So, when -"
"When we're married."
"I think we need to hurry this along a bit, then." She is still avoiding my gaze. "Sorry, that was a joke. Sarah, I think it's really beautiful and I'm flattered."
"Are you really flattered, or do you just think I'm some kind of freak? Think back to the night of the cinema and your comment that I looked like a 'staffroom virgin'." It takes me a while to recall the conversation.
"Oh, shit. You remember that? Sorry."
"Of course I remember it - and I'm also going to remember every act of kindness you perform, every little present, every little look of fondness and love. Why? Because they are all important. Why are they important? Because I'm a woman." Sarah puts her hands round my neck and snarls as she pretends to strangle me. "I'm also going to remember every forgotten anniversary and even every unguarded little comment." Sarah releases her 'grip', clutches my head and kisses me because she can see I am mortified. "Your face! That description of me? I wasn’t offended because it wasn't actually about me... And it was also very, very funny."
Once the garage door is open, there is enough light to look round the floor. Finding a piece of copper wire, I strip the plastic insulation off and twist it into a ring. Placing it on Sarah's finger, I kiss her. Instead of coming out with some kind of flip comment, she gazes at it and beams the most radiant smile before laughing and giving me a big, big snog.
It is later that afternoon that Sarah and I break off from our labours and go out of the front door for a walk. Magenta, oblivious to the Daimler's pivotal role before lunch, has rolled it out onto the drive and is giving it a good polish.
"Just getting her nice and gorgeous for your evening out, Your Ladyship!" Sarah smiles at Magenta and then turns to me, apologetic about the annual PHB dinner dance.
"Don't worry chum, this will be your first and last. PHB will, in a few months time, be nothing but another industrial building we pass on the way into town."
"Will it?"
"Sure, I'll miss bits of it but there are other parts I can probably do without, speaking of which, there is poor old Berkley: one can only imagine the look on the poor chap's face when I arrive on your arm." Sarah turns to me, searching my face for doubt. "You will be okay tonight, won't you?" I nod, but not entirely convincingly at which point my fiancé changes the subject. "Do you mind if people know?"
"Goodness, no… The opposite. Anyway, who can but guess when they see such a magnificent rock gracing that delicate finger of yours? I take it you're not going to wear it?"
"You don't understand - I'd swap this for a whole damn safe full of jewels." Swaggering up to Magenta, Sarah waggles her hand in exactly the same way the then Miss O'Hara waggled her diamond ring all those months ago and there is no sign of ridicule from the chauffeuse but simply a broad smile of joy. This is not because Magenta 'knows her place' and is being polite, it is because Lady Pinke-Burnleigh has performed some universal rite, has now suddenly found herself privy to a mystic semaphore known only between women.
The press are at the dinner dance and snap us even before we get out of the car. Sarah looks at me anxiously to make sure I can cope and, satisfied that I'm not going to do a runner, steps out of the Daimler to applause and fawning adulation, adulation that spills over to the tights designer cowering at her side. Unused to the attention, I want to rush screaming to the Gents but I stick by the lady in the gorgeous ball gown, the diamonds and, yes, a twist of copper electrical wire round her ring finger.
As we move around the room, I relax and grow a little less freaked by the constant attention and the non-stop queries about whether I want anything. Sarah is busy working the hotel ballroom and I watch her, mostly at her side but occasionally from the middle of little groups of people who have prised me from her and are pressing me with questions. At other times, she dutifully takes to the floor with chosen employees, having excused me all the dances except a slow smooch and a waltz, the latter saved from the brink of total disaster by a hurried lesson in her office a few hours before.
Feeling demob-happy and mischievous, Sarah spends part of the evening showing off the 'engagement ring' to dutiful coos of 'how gorgeous!' Slipping her imagination off the leash, she lets her explanations become more outlandish as she travels the room. The fibs range from the ring being a very exclusive yet ironic statement by Damien Hirst to it being an ancient and extremely rare betrothal band fashioned by pixies from finest rose gold, an enchanted gift for a once-mighty Saxon queen.
Sarah decides to give her speech half way through the evening before the staff get too drunk and the bolder ones start heckling. Asking me to retrieve a sheaf of gold envelopes from her personal assistant, Sarah calls me up on stage. I can see in her eyes that the banter with her staff has been a defence, a buffer to cushion the emotion of her announcement. Coughing nervously, she steps up to the microphone.
"Goodness, I don't think I've had enough to drink for what I'm about to say." The laughter in the room is guarded and the atmosphere suddenly edgy. I can see Sarah making a mental shift as she reads the room, deciding that here and now is not an appropriate platform for a retirement speech, so, shuffling uneasily, she throws a diamond-laden arm in my direction and asks for the first glitzy envelope. "This is my trusty assistant for the evening, but more about him later." Laughing nervously, she winks at me and rips open the seal to remove an equally tacky card.
"So, on with the awards!" The room is relieved - the beloved leader is only doing the usual ritual of 'Worst Tie Of The Year', 'Highest Heels' and other such hard-won accolades. Sarah receives the last envelope slowly, nodding to the space next to her and reaching her hand to me. As I step cautiously forward, I peer into the dark but all I can see is the glare of the lights and, next to me, minute beads of perspiration on Sarah's neck, each more sensuous and beautiful than the diamonds that vainly try to mimic them.
"Tonight, there is a booby prize... Me. This lovely man has, through no fault of his own, just happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time!" Opening the envelope, Sarah gives me the card. There, in the heaving, rowdy room full of drunken revellers, the brash lights and the loud white noise of applause, is the picture of Sarah and me on the bench in quiet solitude, all alone at the top of our hill. Sarah can see I am overwhelmed so she deflects attention from me by lifting her left hand and waving it in the air.
"I apologise for having a bit of fun this evening at your expense. When I proposed to this chap-" Cue titters. "Hey, I just didn't have another forty years to wait... I'm an impatient gal! Anyway, when I proposed it was in the garage and we needed some kind of ring so we scrabbled round on the floor and here it is. Your opinion may differ, but as far as I'm concerned it's the best ring in the room!" Turning away from the microphone, Sarah kisses me.
I do disappear to the Gents but not to escape, merely to relieve my bladder of all the drinks pressed upon me by jockeying PHB employees. Looking in the mirror, I spot that Berkley has followed me in. I turn to leave but he has blocked the door and there is no way of avoiding an awkward encounter with a man who is calling out that he wants to congratulate me but is actually failing to hide - despite the grimacing smile - that he wants to throttle me. I can see it is all too much for the drunk Head of Design. Helping him to the more stable mooring of a toilet seat, I freeze with horror as he vomits down the dinner jacket bought me by his idol, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh.
On seeing me exit the Gents minus my tuxedo, the men in the room hastily follow suit and put their jackets over the backs of chairs. Snuggling up to Sarah during the smoochy dance at the end of the evening, I explain about Berkley and the jacket. Sarah’s reaction isn't one of annoyance but a little sigh and a whisper in my ear.
"Poor chap. Oh my, I'd give anything to see what they’d all have done if you'd removed your trousers as well."
43
With Brendan helping out, the cover for Charlotte's urn takes mere days. Coming to the workshop to inspect the finished piece, Sarah is as taken aback by the metal crown as she was when she first saw the huge sculpture on the square. That, though, was a conglomerate lump - this is delicate, elegant yet stubbornly strong. While the steel flames in the square were obvious and laboured, this graceful iron coronet is subtle, sparing.
Having already created a lot of sculpture at college, Brendan is managing to act quite blasé about the whole thing but Robert hasn't been able to stop coming in and gazing at it since we all completed it. Not simply content with just looking at the sculpture, he goes up to the rusting metal framework, rubs it and closes his eyes as he breathes in the aroma. Not wishing Robert to suddenly feel silly by being the only one, Brendan and I follow suit while Sarah stares at us as if we are eccentric - and rather baffling - perverts. It’s then she realises that a tenderness is being shown to Robert and the view suddenly shifts a little for all of us. As a tear forms in Sarah’s eye, Brendan winks and smiles at her.
"Sniffing rusty old bits of metal? Oh, it's a guy thing." Nodding, he turns and addresses the slight man in the work-stained overalls. "Isn't that right, Robert?" Performing a caricature of a grimace, the young Irishman shrugs and points a digit towards Sarah. "Girls, huh... And what do they know about such sophisticated and grow-up stuff?" Sarah laughs into her tissue and Robert is amused too and, when he tilts his head back to guffaw at the roof of the workshop, I realise I am witnessing the first real laugh I can ever remember coming from his mouth.
Another piece of sculpture on a flatbed truck is making its way down the drive with Robert on board but this time he is quiet, contemplative... This time he is not hell-bent on a personal mission with an attitude and a camera crew but looking placidly out of the cab window at the narrow avenue of trees as the driver manages the delicate manoeuvre of not knocking the branches off with the crane. Stopping by the gate into the wood, the driver gets out, lights a cigarette and waits for Borrington, Brendan, Colin and myself to pull up close with a handcart.
Trundling the cart to the mausoleum, the four of us put two stout poles through the tracery of the metalwork and lift it over Charlotte's white alabaster urn fixed into the top of the large altar-like masonry that is her plinth. The iron structure is lowered into place so the lugs on the bottom fit into recesses cut into the huge sandstone block. Even Brendan has come to this most solemn occasion with a demeanour of quiet and dignity, but he still allows himself a smile and a faint nod of satisfaction as the metal fingers slide neatly and effortlessly into their allocated slots.
I happen to know that there are, under a thin modesty veil of soil, two more concrete foundations should other plinths be needed. They will be required, and it is indeed a sobering thought that one is reserved for me and the other for Sarah. That is what aristocrats like her do - they treat death as part of a grand development plan, not the awful, random thing that takes the mere mortals among us by surprise. Yes, Death is factored into the estate accounts along with rent income, roofing slates and new tyres for the Land Rover. Indeed, as soon as they take over a crumbling stack of stone in the country, it seems these people spend a little time making it into one's temporary mortal lodgings and a heck of a lot of time wondering what state it is going to be in when it passes on to others.
Standing at the mausoleum, Sarah waits, a prayer book in her hand. She doesn't want the lorry crunching its gears during this most sacred of moments, so we all stand still and stare at the crown on the stone until Borrington has returned from handing a few banknotes to the driver and the lumbering vehicle has brushed its way through the trees, its whine disappearing into the distance.
And Nicky is present in her band uniform. At a nod from her ladyship she coughs, pushes her chewing gum to the side of her mouth and raises a cornet to bright scarlet lipstick. But the sound is not cheeky or jaunty as when she plays excerpts from ‘Mama Mia!’ or ‘The Beatles' Greatest Hits’: no, the 'Last Post' filters through the treetops and, thus purified, soars straight to Heaven. The music is then so enveloping that it seems it cannot be for our ears alone and I imagine the clean smoothness wrapping itself round rough-barked trunks and gliding over snapping twigs and rustling leaves before disappearing into the earth to soothe those now departed.
Lowering the sparkling silver instrument to her side, Nicky stands to attention in our little line of random humanity as, dwarfed by the wooded canopy over our heads, Sarah reads a prayer.
Sarah puts her black coat sleeve through mine and we walk back to the gate, the two of us in front and the others following a little way behind. This is not a chance procession, it is the lady of the house and her future consort forced into their own little space like a reluctant Michael Jackson walking through a crowd but inside the isolation of a roped-off square. This is how it will be from now on, with intimate moments such as Colin's chuckling as he hands me the key and Nicky's delightful, random witterings becoming mere memories to be put in a drawer along with eating beans in my grotty armchair in front of the television.
I thought I'd seen him; a middle-aged man was in the distance taking photographs, the same man who took clandestine pictures of Charlotte and me when we used to frequent the derelict factory site. It is the same figure who climbed into the Daimler outside the little oak gate twenty minutes ago and got dropped off at the house - the man with a neat moustache and a tweed jacket who is now in Sarah's library and downloading his pictures onto a laptop.
"I hope her ladyship likes them. It's the first time I've ever been an official photographer and I'm not sure I like the stress!"
"Oh, she will." Watching the screen, I ask him to go back a slide. "That shape - is it a deer?" John Flanders stares at the image.
"Could be. I never saw one but it doesn't mean there wasn't one - I was too busy watching you guys to notice."
Magenta, having parked up the Daimler, is now in the kitchen with Troy and Mrs. Henderson putting canapes on salvers. One look from the cook is enough to keep me from crossing the threshold and I watch as Troy and Magenta, obviously made of sterner stuff, ignore her glowers during trips between the large silver trays and ancient, cream-enamelled ovens. Defiant, Troy pops a small pastry morsel into his mouth, pauses and grins at the Empress Of The Kitchen. He may be cocky in his manner, but he is not sufficiently cheeky to forget to call her 'Mrs. Henderson' rather than 'Janet'.
"So, Mrs. Henderson, do you think I'd be a good Gordon Ramsey?" The dour widow says nothing but one glance at the trays of snacks and another at the ceiling is enough to convey that, yes, if effing and blinding were all that were required to be a cook then Troy would probably cut the mustard: if, however, if his idea of working in a kitchen was simply to get stuff out of an oven and put it on a silver tray, then he had better not apply while she was in charge.
The dining room - once the last earthly rest of a beautiful sculptor - is, for the next hour or so, to play host to clinking wine glasses and hands raising tumblers, to be a place for a few to gather together and acknowledge that a young soul is, at last, safely at rest within the peaceful rustling of the woodland trees. The solemnity of this wood-panelled chamber is also to be the place in which friends will celebrate the imminent union of two people.
I go there, and Nicky is examining a flower arrangement with Valerie Flanders, the former Goth making final adjustments to the stems of white lilies before helping the occasional cornet player put coasters on the table. Moving through to the passage way, I meet Colin and Brendan carrying extra seats for the room. Seeing me, Brendan grins and nods towards an antique Chippendale chair.
"Here, you're not Idle Aristocracy yet!" Winking, he then leans towards me. "So what will you be when you're finally hitched - providing, that is, her ladyship has hopefully not discovered the real you until it's too late; is it to be 'Sir'? 'Viscount'? 'Intergalactic Emperor'?"
"I've absolutely no idea. I quite fancy the last one, though - imagine that on your business card. 'His Grand Supreme Eminency and Intergalactic Emperor Gadroth the Invincible... Has own van, no job too big or too small.'" Brendan looks at me, aghast.
"You really haven't a clue, have you?"
Reaching for the chair, I put it down at the table. Arranging the expanse of seating so it is precise (some things never change), it dawns on me how large, how public my life is going to be from now on, but somehow I’m not freaked by the idea (so, yes, some things do change).
Slipping away quietly, I do a circuit of the house and look into rooms, some of whose very existence has, even now, been beyond my knowledge. Gingerly pushing open their doors, I walk up to huge windows and gaze at now familiar vistas from new vantage points. Then, climbing banks of oak staircases, I reach a small door in a sloped, forgotten wall and step onto the roof to survey the vast tracts of land that are the precious setting for Burnleigh Hall. True, I am stunned by the beauty but it is not grandeur I am aware of. No, it is rather a gentleness, an intimacy. As I look down at the small black shape of Sarah sitting in solitude on her stone bench and then at the lichen-speckled stone balustrade beneath my hand, it is an intense sense of belonging that I feel most of all.
I am home.
44
I really should be getting to bed now: after all, Sarah gets quite tired at the moment and she went up hours ago.
Turning off the computer, I look around my office at the pictures on the wall. The one in the chapel is beautiful and I particularly like the way the white dress caught the coloured light through the stained glass window. The one next to it always makes me smile, too... Who else but her would suddenly have the idea of grabbing the groom's hand, jumping into a Mini and resting a little point-and-shoot camera on a tree stump to take a picture of the newly married couple - complete with wedding dress, veil and top hat and tails - while sitting on a bench at the top of a hill?
That camera was busy all weekend. We must have taken at least twenty pictures of us at breakfast in the flat the morning after, my new wife celebrating the loss of her innocence in a typically matter-of-fact way by cooking a massive fry-up. The best shot is the one in a frame over my drawing table, the one where she is laughing as she's sticking a sausage in my ear. It's like Google Earth - if you zoom in and eradicate the surroundings of the tiny flat, the ketchup smeared all over her face and the egg rubbed in my hair, you get to the crux, to the eyes of a man and a woman who have discovered something, to eyes that looked so different the morning after the wedding.
Closing the door, I walk through the other space in my studio (the 'mucky room') and turn off machines and power sockets. My latest project is a present for my mother's garden - a metre-high robot made from metal scrap. It is about the same height as the concrete bride and groom she made for us as a half-anniversary present,.Sarah fortunately saw the funny side of a huge cement nose reminiscent of a random outcrop of rock. I was expecting these matrimonial mutants to be tactfully spirited away to some distant vegetable patch, but Sarah requested they stand on either side of the main door, my mother nodding approvingly on her next visit as if a connoisseur gazing on exquisite antiquities of breathtaking beauty.
As I leave this modern space to enter the cosy, familiar cocoon of an oak-panelled passageway, I switch off more lights behind me and make my way to the stairs. Turning the handle slowly, I push our bedroom door open, undress in the dark of the bathroom and climb into bed.
"About bloody time." As Sarah snuggles up to my neck I feel a beatific smile, her face warm as she kisses my skin. It is a full moon tonight and its glow has found a crack in the curtain. As Sarah dozes off to sleep, my gaze pauses at the magnificent landscape of her bump before I kiss her and slowly close my eyes to the kingdom of Chinese pagodas, of beautiful pheasants, of vigilant knights tucked safe in their white marble castle of dreams.
The End
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