William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story. Matt Rudd
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‘I want a bath though.’
‘One bath is the same as four showers.’
‘I’m having a bath.’
But as I sat in the bath, trying to enjoy my inalienable right, I knew its days were numbered. From the speed-date to the wedding, Isabel had never attempted to change me: it’s one of the reasons I love her. But now we’re married, we both sense a change. She is my wife, she has the power, she just doesn’t know quite how much power yet. Like a young Jedi knight, she will learn.
Saturday 18 June
What a brilliant day: went to what may be the worst wedding ever. Jess, horrible property developer, marrying poor Tony—creative, sensitive, artistic, in-touch-with-his-feminine-side Tony. In short, he’s gay, she knows it, but she wants kids and he’s the best she can find. And he just needs a wife so he can pretend he’s straight forever. It was the wedding you always dream about, one that unravels before your very eyes.
The service
They had written their own vows. Tony said, ‘With my arms, I will cradle you.’ Jess said, ‘With my arms, I will encircle you.’
For what has to be a virtually sexless marriage, they really were laying it on a bit thick.
Best man composed and performed an electric piano piece for their exit. Almost entirely atonal, it was quite upsetting and made three babies cry. Brilliant. 3/10.
The meal
Some sort of mutton offcut, cooked for 10,000 years in the hellish furnaces of Gomorrah. Served on a bed of what might have been risotto but was in actual fact mashed potato. Isabel has Banker Man on her right, all pink shirt and big hair. I have Acronym Man on my left. He’s in IT, setting up his own ISP, depending on the FAP of the NRT in QPE, or something. 1/10.
The speeches
Father-of-the-bride walked out on mother-of-the-bride six months ago for glamorous and youthful secretary. Mother mutters and scoffs through all fatherly marital advice. Father finishes with ‘…and in short, Tony, I would advise you to ignore all my advice. I married her, after all, which shows how little I know. So please, can you all be upstanding…?’ Chaos and stormings-out from then on. Brilliant. 1/10.
The first dance
They just clung to each other, revolving slowly like chickens on a supermarket rotisserie to the tune of bloody ‘Angels’ by bloody Robbie Williams. Nasty. 4/10. TOTAL 9/40. A new last place, but for all the right reasons.
Sunday 19 June
Phoned Johnson about the inalienable rights thing. He says men lose all inalienable rights such as having a hot bath on a Friday the moment they say ‘I do.’ That’s the unwritten law, it’s just that women are too smart to point it out explicitly in case men notice and rebel. So they sneak in all the restrictions over the first year of marriage. Before you know it, you’re a house-trained husband, unable to recall whether the things you do, such as having a cold shower on a Friday, are your own idea or part of the new regime.
I suggest that I quite like having someone caring enough to challenge my inalienable rights. Goat’s milk is, after all, better for you than cow’s milk.
It won’t stop at goat’s milk, warns Johnson.
Went to bed with the papers, a cup of tea (goat’s milk, no sugar) and my wife at 10 p.m. Used to go clubbing on a Sunday. Well, once or twice. Now, I’m only a few notches off slippers at seven. Very happy.
Until I had another nightmare.
Isabel and I have somehow agreed to go to Saskia’s wedding reception (we weren’t invited to the service). Only we’ve been seated on different tables. I’m on the top table, in between Saskia, who is wearing nothing but stockings and suspenders, and her groom. Isabel is crammed onto a small table at the back with seven octogenarians: she’s the only one without an ear trumpet or a Zimmer frame. I try to move her cutlery onto our table, but the food starts to arrive: everywhere I step, I block whole squads of waitresses with their huge platters of lobster and inexplicable jelly towers.
The chaos is unimaginable; they fall over like dominoes and it’s all my fault. I just stand in the middle holding a knife, a fork and Isabel’s place name. The head chef, who is Gordon Ramsay, effs and blinds his way out of the kitchen, and starts bludgeoning me with one of the ruined crustaceans. Isabel is being held down by the octogenarians and only Saskia, standing dominatrix-style over everything, can help.
I wake up to find Isabel looking straight at me, an expression of utter disbelief on her face. Someone is shouting ‘Saskia, Saskia, Saskia’ and it only takes a few bleary seconds to realise that it’s me.
Monday 20 June
In the cold light of day, it wasn’t an easy dream to explain.
‘No, darling, I wasn’t shouting Saskia, Saskia, Saskia in a sexual way. I wanted Saskia to save you, darling, from the octogenarians that were pinning you down.’
Even without mentioning the stockings and suspenders, it sounded like a sex dream, only an incredibly perverted one involving ear trumpets. By the time we both left for work, I think I’d succeeded in convincing Isabel that I wasn’t still obsessed with Saskia; unfortunately, I think I’d made her believe I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown instead.
How Saskia destroyed my last-but-one relationship
The relationship was in terminal decline anyway. It was that last three-year one, the one where you know it’s your final practice run before you meet the woman you’re going to marry. It’s as much about timing as anything. You’re slightly too young to propose like you have to when you’re in your late twenties, slightly too old to walk away easily like you could when you were younger, so you just carry on going out aimlessly, waiting for something dreadful to happen.
Saskia was the dreadful thing that happened. I was at a party; she was also at the party; Elizabeth wasn’t because she was at another party with other friends doing other things. And it’s not every day that the sexiest girl at a party asks me if I’d like to go somewhere—pause for double meaning to become lip-quiveringly obvious—quieter. I knew the right and honourable answer was no, but Elizabeth and I were in the doldrums. We were sick of each other. And Saskia was beautiful. So I said something cool but contradictory like, ‘Sure, this place is dead anyway,’ and before I could catch my breath we were having sex in Hyde Park.
It was a seedy, torrid affair, and one conducted largely outdoors because we had nowhere indoors to go. My flat was usually out of the question because of Elizabeth. Saskia’s flat was always out of the question because it was owned by a forty-year-old stockbroker she had been having an affair with but who, in an effort to avoid hefty alimony, was now trying to rebuild his marriage. I thought this was all incredibly exciting but entirely unsustainable. Apart from all the obvious reasons why being a philandering, cheating, good-for-nothing two-timer is inadvisable, there’s the sheer stress of it all. Lying and cheating is exhausting. Besides, Saskia and I had nothing in common and we both knew it. A month after we met, I told her we had to stop meeting in public parks like this; she said fine, kissed me goodbye and went to live in New York. But not before she phoned Elizabeth and told her I was a cheating bastard.
I suppose I should have been grateful. I was too pathetic to be honest and tell Elizabeth it was over. Saskia saved me the trouble. Without Saskia, I might never have met Isabel. In many ways, Isabel should be grateful.
Tuesday 21 June
Another flat viewing but the husband said he wouldn’t feel happy letting