England and Other Stories Read Free Page A

opened up between Aaron and me. It was Patti’s doing, it was Aaron’s, it was mine. I don’t know. Once—we were having Sunday breakfast—I actually said to Patti, ‘I wonder if those women aren’t catching up with him.’ I might have said ‘the years’ instead. It was just a casual, private-joke thing, but it was a bit careless perhaps.
    Patti didn’t pick it up one way or the other. She said, ‘Mmm, I wonder too.’ She took a bite of toast. Then she said, ‘If you’re worried about him, give him a call, look him up.’ As if she was daring me.
    She was pregnant with Daryl, our first, around this time. She was crazy about marmalade! Maybe she was thinking: Well, if he’s hankering for a last boys’ night out, he better take his chance while he can. Now we have the two boys, Daryl and Warren, two growing boys. Lots of boys’ nights in.
    Anyhow, I never made the call. But one day, years later, I get a call, out of the blue, from Aaron. He sounds just like the old Aaron, but he also sounds a bit cagey. It turns out he’s called to tell me he’s going to get married. I wait a bit, in case I’m being wound up. Then I wait anyway, in case he has some joke to make about it. I wait for an ‘Okay, man, don’t laugh’. But the only joke is that he’s speaking in a sort of whisper, as if it’s top-secret information he can trust only with me.
    Then he says he’d like me—me and Patti of course—to come to the wedding. To make things clear, he says it’s going to be a ‘low-key’ thing, in a registry office, just the two of them. Except you need a witness. So would Patti and I like to be there, to witness?
    All the time, apart from swallowing back my surprise, I’m thinking: He didn’t have to tell me this—a witness could be anyone—but I get the feeling he thinks that by telling me and having me as his witness he won’t have to tell anyone else. I feel honoured and I also feel arm-twisted, but how could I not say yes? Even though, apparently, it means a trip to Birmingham. That’s where he is now. Guess what—teaching PE.
    I say, ‘Yes, of course.’ Before I’ve even spoken to Patti. I also feel like saying, ‘Don’t worry, Aaron, I won’t breathe a word.’
    I say, ‘So what’s her name then?’
    ‘It’s Wanda.’
    ‘Wanda,’ I say, trying to form a picture of a Wanda. I don’t say, ‘So, is she pregnant?’
    Fortunately, Patti more or less has the same thought as me: How can we not? Perhaps she’s really thinking: Must we? But she looks all keen and interested, she even makes a joke about it, a pretty good joke too. ‘Well, Wandas will never cease.’
    So we go through with it, this low-key, hush-hush event. We manage to park the boys with Patti’s parents. We’re even ready to book a hotel. But Aaron says, ‘Nah, man, stay with us, no problem.’ This needs a bit of thought. I don’t like to spell it out: this might be intruding on Aaron and Wanda’s wedding night. We aren’t at PE college any more.
    But I soon get the picture that, apart from the business at the registry office and a few drinks and a meal, nothing much out of the ordinary is going to happen. There’s not going to be a honeymoon. Aaron and Wanda have apparently been shacked up together for quite a while. There’d be a spare room in their flat for Patti and me. It’s just that they’ve both decided it’s time to get married.
    ‘Okay,’ I say, slightly wishing it would be easier to insist on paying for a hotel anyway. With the two boys, Patti and me have to watch the cash. But of course what I’m mostly thinking, and so’s Patti, is: What’s this Wanda like? And, given all the years that have passed: What’s Aaron like?
    Well, it may put me in a bad light, but I have to say Wanda was a disappointment. At least at first. A surprise and a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean she wasn’t perfectly—fine. But if all those years of what Aaron once got up to were supposed to be a