Matt Rudd - William Walker’s First Year of Marriage - A Horror Story

To Harriet

Title Page Matt Rudd William Walker’s First Year of Marriage A Horror Story

Dedication Dedication Dedication May June July August September October November December January February March April Read On Acknowledgments Copyright About the Publisher To Harriet

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February

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April

Read On

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle,and not a bed of roses.’

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

Virginibus Puerisque (1881)

I never had a threesome.

I never had an orgy.

I never slept with anyone from Sweden. Or Norway.

I never slept with a Scandinavian full stop.

I never slept with anyone with tattoos or pink hair or non-facial piercings or a career in pornography.

I never slept with Mrs Robinson.

I never slept with any married woman, and no, last night doesn’t count because she was married to me.

Yesterday, I married Isabel, the girl of my dreams. Fantastic. I am married. Superb. I am a husband. Brilliant. I’ll never sleep with another woman again so long as we both shall live.

‘Hello, husband. I think I’m going to be sick.’ These were the first words she said when she woke. Isabel. My beautiful wife.

‘Morning, Mrs Walker.’

Despite the hangover, she starts trampolining around the four-poster, singing ‘I’ve go-ot married yes-t’day morning’ to the tune of ‘I’m getting married in the morning’, which doesn’t fit. She sings like someone being stabbed in a shower: all commitment, no tonal control. This is not because she’s singing and fighting back the urge to vomit. This is how she normally sings. It is one of her many endearing qualities.

‘Mrs Walker. I like that. So much better than Miss Brackett.’

‘This is why you married me? For my surname?’

‘Yes, that’s it. Couldn’t go another year as a Brackett.’

‘Well, now you’re a Walker. Any second thoughts?’

‘Yes. I wish I hadn’t drunk so much.’

‘No, about being, well, married.’

Until this morning, I’ve never had any second thoughts—well, not officially. Not so as to cause alarm. But from the moment I asked the woman I love to marry me, I’ve been expecting her to look dazed for a minute or two, blink a few times as if risen suddenly from a twelve-month coma, then look at me, look at the engagement ring and start screaming, ‘Marry you?! Are you mad?’ She could, I’m sure, even if I’m being objective, have had the pick of the field. A girl who looks even more beautiful in jeans and T-shirt than make-up and cocktail dress, an effortlessly glamorous head-turner, the sort of girl, honestly, you’d be quite chuffed to go on a date with. And I’ve got her to agree to spend the rest of her life with me. It’s ridiculous.

‘No, darling. No second thoughts. Even if you did knock the vicar out on my wedding day.’

If you ask Johnson, the world’s most pessimistic usher, he’ll tell you the wedding was a disaster. This is because he sees a friend getting married in the same way everyone else might see a friend being sent to prison. For life. He hasn’t enjoyed his decade of matrimonial bliss.

If you ask me, the wedding had gone pretty well. Compared to what I’d imagined. It had taken several Bishop’s Nipples the night before to convince the vicar I was not the infidel even though I only went to church once a year. After that, he’d been an absolute angel, until he’d fallen down the steps of his own church and come a cropper on the pew. I and a large part of the congregation had thought for several seconds that he had actually killed himself, but a glass of holy water brought him back from the brink. When he regained consciousness, he claimed I pushed him. I don’t think I did…I may have brushed past him as I helped Isabel and her dress turn, ready for the you-may-kiss-the-bride-and-get-out-of-here bit. Nothing he could do by then: we were already married.

And, despite Johnson’s grave warnings beforehand and rolling eyes during, everything else went okay.

My tailored suit (posted from Hong Kong because do you know how much tailored tails cost in London?) had, miraculously, fitted. The Corsa (89,452 miles) had started. And Isabel, despite her ‘best friend’ Alex and his ridiculous equine chauffeur service, had got to the church on time.

I had been forbidden to look her in the eye ‘emotionally’ or ‘with significance’ at any stage during the service for fear of opening her floodgates. ‘I don’t want to do an Alison,’ she had explained quite reasonably. Who could forget Alison’s wedding? It had taken hours, maybe days, for her to sob, squeak and warble her way through the vows. By the time she reached ‘till…sob…death…sob, sob, sob…do us…sniff…part’, we all thought she was going to illustrate her point by collapsing on the spot. RIP Alison who died at her wedding from dehydration.

Despite the threats, I had felt an overwhelming urge to burst into tears myself from the moment Isabel rounded the corner and began the walk. Quite hard not to, what with all your friends and family going ‘ooohh’ and ‘ahhh’, and seeing the dress for the first time. An amazing Sixties number, not at all like the explosion in a meringue factory you get normally. Then there’s the mysterious veil and the accompanying trumpet voluntary and your mum already blubbing away in her purple hat. Is this really not too much for any man to cope with? Did whoever invented weddings not add all this extra stuff to make it absolutely inevitable that the poor sap waiting up at the altar would weep deep tears of joy/run a thousand miles/pass out on the spot?

Isabel did what she always does when she’s trying not to cry: she laughed, hysterically. She walked the entire length of the church laughing and blinking back tears, her dress and variable bridesmaids flowing behind her. Only in the last few feet did her eyes meet mine. She smiled; I smiled back with as little significance as I could muster—a sort of thin-lipped, cold-eyed, non-bothered smirk, the kind you’d throw a kid on a bike when he calls you a fecker. She burst into tears anyway.

Still, I passed the four tests…

1 The vows. Don’t shout them, don’t whimper them, don’t faint during them. Easy.

2 The speech. Thank everyone—but mainly in-laws, look happy, declare love for new wife and make bridesmaids cry. Had to follow Isabel’s father, who did ten minutes on the traumas of her breech birth and made two members of the audience physically sick. Did fine, though, compared to Andy. I’d chosen him as best man over Johnson because he worked in the diplomatic corps and I’d remembered those Ferrero Rocher ads. As Isabel pointed out, he wasn’t actually an ambassador but doesn’t everyone in the diplomatic corps have tact? No, nerves destroyed his judgement and he never recovered from his choice of opener (‘What’s the difference between a bridegroom and a cucumber?’). His attempt to regain momentum involved raising all three topics he’d specifically been told not to (my scatological university tragedy, the vastly differing weights of the bridesmaids and my Hyde Park Corner fling with a floozy). It wasn’t pretty.