with the astounding news.
‘So you’re inviting Prue and me to your wedding, Ed,’ I confirm with appropriately solemn awe. ‘You and Florence. We’re extremely honoured, is all I can say. I know Prue will feel the same. She’s heard so much about you.’
I am still trying to come to terms with this momentous piece of news when he delivers the coup de grâce:
‘Yeah, well, I thought while you’re about it you could – well – sort of be my best man kind of thing, too. If that’s all right,’ he adds, giving way to his enormous grin, which like his newfound need to grab hold of me at every opportunity has become something of a fixture during this exchange.
Look away. Look down. Clear your head. Lift it. Smile spontaneous disbelief:
‘Well of course it’s more than all right, Ed. But surely you must have someone closer to your own age? An old schoolfriend? Someone from your university?’
He thinks about this, shrugs, shakes his head, grins sheepishly. ‘Not really,’ he says, by which time I’m at a loss to know the difference between what I feel and what I’m pretending to feel. I recover my forearm and we do another manly handshake, English-style.
‘And if it’s all right with Prue, we thought she could be the witness, because somebody’s got to be,’ he goes on relentlessly, as if my cup was not by now overflowing. ‘They’ve got one for hire at the Register Office if you’re pushed, but we reckoned Prue would be better at it. Only she’s a lawyer, isn’t she? She’ll make it all legal and shipshape.’
‘She will indeed, Ed. Just as long as she can get away from her work,’ I add cautiously.
‘Plus, if it’s all right by you I’ve booked the three of us at the Chinese at eight-thirty,’ he goes on, just when I think I’ve heard everything.
‘Tonight?’ I ask.
‘If that’s all right,’ he says, and peers myopically at the clock behind the bar which is ten minutes fast and reads eight-fifteen. ‘Just sorry Prue can’t make it,’ he adds thoughtfully. ‘Florence was really looking forward to meeting her. Still is. Yeah.’
As it happens, Prue has for once cancelled her appointments with pro bono clients and is sitting at home waiting for the outcome of this evening’s encounter. But for the time being I prefer to keep that knowledge to myself, because by now Operational Man is taking back control.
‘Florence is looking forward to meeting you too, Nat,’ he adds, lest my nose should be out of joint. ‘Properly. You being my best man and that. Plus all the games we’ve had.’
‘And I look forward to meeting her properly too,’ I say, and excuse myself while I pop into the men’s room.
On my way I spot a table of two women and two men talking energetically among themselves as I pass. If I am not mistaken, the taller of the two women was last seen pushing a pram on Ground Beta. Amid a hubbub of male voices from the changing-room shower area, I acquaint Prue with the good news in suitably sanitized tones and advise her of my immediate plan of action: to bring them up to the house as soon as we’ve finished our Chinese meal. Her voice does not alter. She wishes to know whether there is anything in particular that I require of her. I say I shall need a quarter of an hour in my den to make my promised phone call to Steff. She says yes of course, darling, she’ll hold the fort, and is there anything else? Nothing I can think of at this moment, I say. I have just taken my first irrevocable step in a plan that, if I am not mistaken, had its unacknowledged genesis in what Bryn would call my other head ever since I sat down with him, and probably before; since the seeds of sedition, according to our in-house shrinks, are sown a great deal earlier than the outward act that results from them.
This said, in my own memory of the short conversation with Prue that I have just described, I am objectivity itself. In Prue’s, I am on the verge of losing it. What is not in doubt is that, immediately upon hearing my voice, she recognized that we were in operational mode and that, although I am never allowed to say it, she remains a great loss to the Office.
*
The Golden Moon is delighted to have us. The Chinese owner-manager is a lifetime member