Weddings & Woodpigeons

Old Nan said you could save a lot of money where weddings were concerned if you didn’t have fanciful ideas leading to fancy items like chicken salads. There was plenty of free food to be had if you only took the trouble to look for it. For somebody who had rarely been known to cook and whose dietary highlights revolved around fish and chips on Fridays and whelks on Sundays she came out with some very strange comments concerning food. Flo, engaged to my cousin Leslie and at the time planning her wedding breakfast pretended she hadn’t heard.

Old Nan looked annoyed which was never a good sign and spoke louder. She said that chicken was very dear and a tomfool idea if ever she’d heard one and nobody had starved back in 1930 not if they could be bothered to get off their fat arses and go out over to Crayford Marshes or them Cliffe marshes out wide of Gravesend where there were rabbits and woodpigeons aplenty. Aunt Mag, who Flo had recently started addressing as `Mum’ in a slightly self-conscious way, said that it was never a good idea to go out with a gun when it was foggy though because that’s how next door’s Raymond had managed to get himself shot in the arm and very nearly killed. We all knew of course that he had come nowhere close to being killed but nobody was inclined to argue.

Flo was saying that it would be nice to have a fruit trifle made with proper sherry and perhaps some Libby’s or even ice cream and what did Mum think. But before my aunt could think anything at all, my grandmother had got to her feet and with the aid of a knitting needle pointed our forcibly that a fruit trifle was another tomfool idea because how could you make one big enough for fifty people. Flo snapped that it didn’t have to be one trifle because it could be three or even four. So she sat down again saying that Iced Fancies ordered from the self-same place as made the wedding cake had been good enough for young Margaret and Jack and were going to be good enough for young Harold too before That Cow Joan had thrown him over. There was a silence then because nobody liked talking about Joan and the jilting. My cousin Pat had told me that she certainly hoped Joan had thought long and hard before dumping Harold because after all she was twenty-eight and definitely well and truly On the Shelf. In fact it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say our Harold had probably been her Last Chance. In any case, she added, it wasn’t as if he was much of a Looker but then at twenty eight Joan could hardly afford to be too fussy. I didn’t altogether agree with her because to me Young Harold seemed definitely better looking than his recently betrothed brother and at least he didn’t have a stomach ulcer and still had all his own teeth if what he said was true.

Aunt Mag had been almost as distraught as her jilted first-born when That Cow Joan made her momentous decision to dump poor Harold three weeks before the wedding that had been booked at St Paulinus Church for more than six months. Old Nan said it was a Sign and the whole shebang had been doomed before it got off the ground and should always have been planned for St Mary of the Crays and she certainly hoped that the ring had been returned. She wouldn’t put it past that Fast Floozy to try to get away with it. But that could not have been further from the truth and the only getting away had been Joan getting away from Harold. According to my mother, there had been one helluva barney and the ring had apparently been thrown across the room, landing in the very-nearly-dumped groom’s plate of Saturday evening tripe and onions.

You could have knocked his doting mother down with a feather because Young Joan had never previously displayed such behaviour and she did wonder if it was all down to the time of the month – or even not the time of the month. At that thought she and my mother exchanged knowing glances. But when she had tried to intervene on Young Harold’s behalf she had been told to keep her pointy nose well out of it because it was between him and Joan and nothing to do with any of his interfering family. The Linyards were altogether too interfering as far as Joan was concerned, always meddling and snooping and wanting to know everything not to mention spreading other people’s private and personal business throughout the family so that in the end even the kiddies were aware of things they should never by rights be aware of.

Relaying all this to my mother the day that followed what they both agreed was a palaver if ever there was one, she could not emphasise enough what a shock it had all been and what a common, vulgar cow that Joan had turned out to be and her language had to be heard to be believed because things had been said that my aunt could never bring herself to repeat. To be fair she did bring herself to whisper them once my brother and I had removed ourselves to the scullery and my mother’s sharp intake of breath confirmed the extent of the profanity. Harold was well shot of that Joan of that there was no doubt.

Once she knew the ring had been returned, well retrieved really from the middle of her astonished grandson’s supper plate, Old Nan ventured to comment that it was a pity about the new wedding suit made to measure by a tailor in Dartford. That, of course, had been another one of that Joan’s tomfool ideas and a complete waste of money though it could probably be worn at his brother’s forthcoming nuptials. The pale lemon satin bridesmaid’s dresses with chiffon overskirts, also demanded by Joan and made by the woman in Horton Kirby, were another problem because chiffon might have been all very well for Joan but Flo had made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t prepared to accept pale lemon or chiffon under any circumstances. Her own bridesmaids were to be clad in pink with definitely not a trace of chiffon. The three dresses hung like pale ghosts in Aunt Mag’s wardrobe, swinging softly back and forth each time the door was opened. Whenever they were mentioned she said to just leave it and Flo would Come Round but Leslie the husband-to-be was not convinced. The dresses got mentioned frequently of course and with increasing anxiety by the two small cousins on our side of the family who had been destined to wear them. Little Susan even wondered if the four year old flower girl from Joan’s side would come to claim the smallest one with a view to perhaps wearing it to a Christening. She did not do so though.

It became clearer than ever after the dumping of Harold that his younger brother’s formerly more malleable fiancée was becoming less flexible as the date of her own wedding approached and was beginning to address his mother as Mum with more and more confidence. When my grandmother unwisely again brought up the subject of putting woodpigeons on the wedding breakfast menu Flo turned on her firmly and said hell would freeze over before any wedding guest of hers would be forced to eat a bloody pigeon so drop the subject once and for all. And rather surprisingly that is precisely what Old Nan did, after muttering a bit about never having been spoken to like that before in her life and what was wrong with pigeons and there were some, especially toffs, who’d pay a fortune to lay their hands on them. At which of course, Flo said well the toffs were more than welcome to them and then softened the retort by buying the next round of drinks because it was a Saturday evening and this conversation took place in The Jolly Farmers an hour or so before my mother decided we should catch the next 480 bus back to Northfleet.

My brother, lingering in the doorway with two cousins and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps said in his experience people often got woodpigeons muddled up with Stock Doves and he wasn’t sure if the latter were altogether as edible. My mother said to button his lip and that chicken salad had now been quite decided upon. We both knew she was firmly taking this stand because Flo was well within earshot, standing at the end of the bar with two pound notes in her hand and an attitude of largesse about her.

We had rapidly developed a new respect for the woman who was shortly to marry our cousin Leslie even though it would be some time before Old Nan Constant would entirely forgive her for her steadfast attitude with regard to chicken salad and trifles made with sherry. Flo had very recently taken to distributing packets of Smith’s Crisps to those family members too young to enter Licensed Premises and therefore congregating outside the pub which of course ensured her ongoing popularity with the young. Her insistence that her wedding was definitely to take place at the Holy Apostles Church in Swanley was a hurdle harder to manage by the family elders. As the day grew closer though even Aunt Mag now firmly established as Flo’s `Mum’ was beginning to accept the fact that as the girl grew up in Swanley it stood to reason that she would want to be married there and you had to allow for the other side of the family having some input into wedding arrangements. Predictably not everyone agreed with her and freshly married Margaret, now wed to Jack the owner of a smart red sports car, rather uncharacteristically commented that was the problem with the Constants and the Linyards. They really did not understand the meaning of co-operation and teamwork.

But in fact she was not completely correct because by the time the wedding day grew closer Flo had as predicted Come Round at least with regard to the pale lemon bridesmaids dresses and had even found someone in her Swanley family belonging to a second cousin who was small enough to be the flower girl. What’s more Young Harold did indeed wear the tailor made suit at the event and looked very dapper indeed although to be fair he was still shell shocked from the unexpected jilting and though a number of female relatives pressed him to provide a reason for what had actually happened he steadfastly refused to elucidate further.
In spite of her new-found flexibility Flo did not waver for a moment with regard to the wedding breakfast menu and was heard to say more than once after two or three Saturday evening Babychams that if anyone thought she was going to allow pigeons to be substituted for her proposed chicken salads they could think again and that Nan Constant could take a running jump and she would tell her so herself if need be. She did not do so of course and at the wedding everyone, including my grandmother complimented her on the excellent food. All in all it turned out to be a most successful event.

In particular the photographs were much better than average and definitely a step up from those taken at Margaret and Jack’s wedding. This, Margaret maintained, was only because Our Lady of Assumption on The Hill at Northfleet always seemed to be in shadow. It was, she thought, a church that was better suited to funerals than to weddings. Flo of course was delighted because in her photographs not only was nobody wearing plastic ear-rings which she abhorred but perhaps more importantly everyone was smiling. Everyone except Young Harold, who stood morosely in his smart suit with shoulders hunched and a cigarette between his lips looking for all the world like Marlon Brando except of course taller and without a motorbike. Because he and I did not exactly get on well together as cousins go, after two forbidden glasses of orange juice laced with gin I asked him if he was missing Joan and if he still loved her. He stared over my shoulder fixing his eyes on the doorway at the very end of what the Jolly Farmers at that time called The Function Room. He said that Joan had meant everything to him and then he added that I should Piss Off. So I did.

No-one was to know of course that within a very short space of time Jilted Harold would meet the love of his life, Sylvia who lived in Hemel Hempstead and, as Aunt Mag pointed out, differed from That Cow Joan in every way. When within a matter of months the two got married, Harold was able to once again wear the made to measure suit and Sylvia endeared herself to everyone by agreeing with both the Constants and the Linyards when they offered wedding advice. She was even heard to tell Old Nan that the idea of woodpigeons at the wedding breakfast sounded like a smashing idea. Flo told her she was making a rod for her own back by agreeing to the ideas of That Wicked Old Cow but Sylvia just laughed and when the great day dawned what was served was very similar to the menu that had been offered by Flo.

My brother, tucking into slices of white breast meat adorned with a single piece of lettuce said that although the idea of the woodpigeons had been interesting he was still unsure as to how easily they might be muddled up with Stock Doves. He was not at all convinced that the latter were edible. They might even be poisonous. He thought that Flo might very well agree with him.