You Had Me At Hello. Mhairi McFarlane
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which could be a hello, but I don’t query it lest I be blamed for opening hostilities.
‘Did you get the tax disc?’ he asks.
‘Oh shit, I forgot.’
Rhys whips round, knife dangling in his hand. It was a crime of passion, your honour. He hated tardiness when it came to DVLA paperwork.
‘I reminded you yesterday! It’s a day out now.’
‘Sorry, I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘You’re not the one who has to drive the car illegally.’
I’m also not the one who forgot to go last weekend, according to the reminder in his handwriting on the calendar. I don’t mention this. Objection: argumentative.
‘They tow them to the scrap yard, you know, even if they’re parked on the pavement. Zero tolerance. Don’t blame me when they crush it down to Noddy size and you’ve got to get buses.’ I have an image of myself in a blue nightcap with a bell on the end of it.
‘Tomorrow morning. Don’t worry.’
He turns back and continues hacking at a pepper that may or may not have my face on it. I remember that I have a sweetener and duck out to retrieve the bottle of red from the dripping Threshers bag.
I pour two thumping glasses and say: ‘Cheers, Big Ears.’
‘Big Ears?’
‘Noddy. Never mind. How was your day?’
‘Same old.’
Rhys works in graphic design for a marketing company. He hates it. He hates talking about it even more. He quite likes lurid tales from the front line of reporting on Manchester Crown Court trials, however.
‘Well today a man responded to the verdict of life sentence without parole with the immortal words: “This wrong-ass shit be whack.”’
‘Haha. And was it?’
‘Wrong-ass? No. He did kill a bunch of people.’
‘Can you put “wrong-ass shit” in the Manchester Evening News?’
‘Only with asterisks. I definitely had to euphemise the things his family were saying as “emotional shouts and cries from the public gallery”. The only word about the judge that wasn’t swearing was “old”.’
Chuckling, Rhys carries his glass to the front room. I follow him.
‘I did some reception research about the music today,’ I say, sitting down. ‘Mum’s been on to me fretting that Margaret Drummond at cake club’s nephew had a DJ in a baseball cap who played “lewd and cacophonous things about humps and cracks” before the flower girls’ and page boys’ bedtimes.’
‘Sounds great. Can she get his number? Maybe lose the cap though.’
‘I thought we could have a live singer. There’s someone at work who hired this Elvis impersonator, Macclesfield Elvis. He sounds brilliant.’
Rhys’s face darkens. ‘I don’t want some cheesy old fat fucker in Brylcreem singing “Love Me Tender”. We’re getting married at Manchester Town Hall, not the Little McWedding Chapel in Vegas.’
I swallow this, even though it doesn’t go down easy. Forgive me for trying to make it fun.
‘Oh. OK. I thought it might be a laugh, you know, get everyone going. What were you thinking?’
He shrugs.
‘Dunno.’
His truculence, and a pointed look, tells me I might be missing something.
‘Unless … you want to play?’
He pretends to consider this.
‘Yeah, ’spose we could. I’ll ask the lads.’
Rhys’s band. Call them sub-Oasis and he’ll kill you. There are a lot of parkas and squabbles though. The thing we both know and never say is that he hoped his previous group, back in Sheffield, would take off, while this is a thirty-something hobby. I’ve always accepted sharing Rhys with his music. I just didn’t expect to have to on my wedding day.
‘You could do the first half an hour, maybe, and then the DJ can start after that.’
Rhys makes a face.
‘I’m not getting everyone to rehearse and set up and then play for that long.’
‘All right, longer then, but it’s our wedding, not a gig.’
I feel the storm clouds brewing and rolling, a thunderclap surely on its way. I know his temper, this type of argument, like the back of my hand.
‘I don’t want a DJ either,’ he adds.
‘Why not?’
‘They’re always naff.’
‘You want to do all the music?’
‘We’ll do iPod compilations, Spotify, whatever. Put them on shuffle.’
‘OK.’
I should let this go, try when he’s in a better mood, but I don’t.
‘We’ll have The Beatles and Abba and stuff for the older generation on there, though? They’re not going to get it if it’s all fuck-you-I-won’t-do-what-you-tell-me and blaring amps.’
‘“Dancing Queen”? No bloody way. Even if your cousin Alan wants to mince around to it.’ He purses his lips and makes a ‘flapping hands at nipple level’ Orville the Duck gesture that could be considered gratuitously provocative.
‘Why do you have to behave as if this is such a hassle?’
‘I thought you wanted to get married on our terms, in our way. We agreed.’
‘Yes, our terms. Not your terms,’ I say. ‘I want you to have a chance to talk to our friends and family. It’s a party, for everyone.’
My eyes drifted to my engagement ring. Why were we getting married, again? A few months ago, we were tipsy on ouzo digestifs in a Greek restaurant, celebrating Rhys getting a decent bonus at work. It came up as one of the big things we could spend it on. We liked the idea of a bash, agreed it was probably ‘time’. There was no proposal, just Rhys topping up my glass and saying ‘Fuck it, why not, eh?’ and winking at me.
It felt so secure, and right, and obvious a decision in that steamy, noisy dining room, that night. Watching the belly dancer dragging pensioners up to gyrate alongside her, laughing till our bellies hurt. I loved Rhys, and I suppose in my agreement was an acceptance of: well, who else am I going to marry? Yes, we lived with a grumbling undercurrent of dissatisfaction. But like the toad-speckles of mouldy damp in the far corner of the bathroom, it was going to be a lot of upheaval to fix, and we never quite got round to it.
Though we’d waited long enough, I’d never really doubted we would formalise things. While Rhys still had the untamed hair and wore the eternal student uniform of grubby band t-shirts, distressed denim and All Stars, underneath it all, I knew he wanted the piece of paper before the kids. We called both sets of parents when we got home, ostensibly to share our joy, maybe also so we couldn’t go back on it when we’d sobered up. Not moonlight and sonatas but, as Rhys would say, life isn’t.
Now I picture this day, supposedly the happiest day of our lives, full of compromises and swallowed irritation and Rhys being clubby and standoffish with his band mates, the way he was when I first met him, when being in his gang had been all my undeveloped heart muscle desired.
‘For how long is the band going to be the third person in this relationship? Are you going to be out at rehearsals when I’m home with a screaming baby?’
Rhys pulls the wine glass from his lips.
‘Where’s that come from? What, I’ve got to be