she was dying to send flowers and Nat was equally determined to send Ed a bottle of champagne. Florence said the Imperial as Mr and Mrs Shannon and Prue reported that she sounded focused, and was putting on a good turn as nervous bride-to-be for the benefit of Percy’s listeners. Prue sent her flowers. I sent my bottle, each of us ordering online, trusting to the vigilance of Percy’s team.
The second time Prue called Florence was to ask whether she could be of any help with organizing the knees-up at the pub after the wedding as her partnership’s chambers were just down the road. Florence said she’d booked a big private room, it was okay but smelt of piss. Prue promised to take a look at it, although they agreed it was too late to change. Percy, are you listening there below?
Using Prue’s laptop and credit card in preference to my own, we examined flights to various European destinations and noted that in the high holiday season Club Class on regular airlines was still largely available. Shaded by the apple tree, we ran through every last detail of our operational plan one more time. Had I neglected some vital move? Was it conceivable that after a lifetime devoted to stealth I was about to fall at the last fence? Prue said not. She had reviewed our dispositions and found no fault with them. So why don’t I, instead of fretting uselessly, give Ed a ring and see if he has time for lunch? And with no further encouragement needed, that is what I do in my role of best man, just twenty-four hours before Ed is due to exchange vows with Florence.
I call Ed.
He is thrilled. What a great idea, Nat! Brilliant! He only gets an hour, but maybe he can stretch it. How about the Dog & Goat saloon bar, be there sharp at one?
The Dog & Goat it is, I say. See you there. Thirteen hundred hours sharp.
*
A dense cluster of civil service suits is packed into the saloon bar of the Dog & Goat that day, not surprisingly since it lies five hundred imperial yards from Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Treasury. And a good few of the suits are around Ed’s age, so it somehow doesn’t seem right to me, as he wades towards me through the scrum on the eve of his wedding day, that hardly a head turns to acknowledge him.
There is no Stammtisch available, but Ed uses his height and elbows to good effect and soon liberates a couple of bar stools from the mêlée. And somehow I fight my way to the front line and buy us a couple of pints of draught lager, not frosted but near enough, and a couple of ploughman’s lunches with Cheddar and pickled onions and crisp bread, handed along the bar in a fireman’s chain.
With these essentials we succeed in improvising a watcher’s corner of sorts for ourselves, and bellow at each other above the din. I only hope that Percy’s people are managing to get an ear in, because everything Ed says is balm to my frayed nerves:
‘She’s gone completely and totally off the wall, Nat! Flo has! Invited all her posh mates to the pub afterwards! Kids and all! And booked us a bloody great hotel in Torquay with a swimming pool and massage parlour! Know what?’
‘What?’
‘We’re skint, Nat! Clean broke! It’s all gone on builders! Yeah! We’ll have to do the washing-up on the morning after our wedding night!’
Suddenly it’s time for him to go back to whatever dark Whitehall hole they’ve put him in. The bar empties as if on command and we’re standing in the relative quiet of the pavement with only Whitehall traffic thundering by.
‘I was going to have a bachelor night,’ Ed says awkwardly. ‘You and me kind of thing. Flo put the kibosh on it, says it’s all male bullshit.’
‘Florence is right.’
‘I took the ring off her,’ he says. ‘Told her I’d give it her back when she’s my wife.’
‘Good idea.’
‘I’m keeping it on me so I don’t forget.’
‘You don’t want me to look after it till tomorrow?’
‘Not really. Great badminton, Nat. Best ever.’
‘And a whole lot more when you come back from Torquay.’
‘Be great. Yeah. See you tomorrow then.’
On Whitehall’s pavements you don’t embrace, though I suspect it’s in his mind. Instead he makes do with a double handshake, grabbing my right hand in both of his and pumping it up and down.
*
Somehow the hours