Dear Lumpy by Louise Mortimer Read Free Book Online

caterers who seem efficient.
    XX RFM
    My father’s ideas for the wedding are not always the same as my own. He wants to opt for a short service including a couple of rousing hymns, followed by a reception at Newbury racecourse where meat paste sandwiches and a glass of Co-op sparkling wine would be served. Not forgetting his motto that a good speech is a short one.
    Budds Farm
    11 May
    Dearest L,
    I hope you are fully recovered after what was doubtless a fatiguing week-end. There certainly seems to have been plenty of incident! Your mother arrived back with a strange man who stayed the night. I wonder who he was. I gather your mother had the best of three falls with Mrs Carew and I strongly suspect that both were well and truly sloshed. Mrs Carew does not seem to fancy you very much but I hope you will not be required to see a lot of her in the future. It is very wet and cold here and Pongo has got the shivers. I hope arrangements for the wedding are going well. We must keep your mother and Mrs C. well apart at the reception. Can it be true that the best man is going to wear a kilt? I don’t take weddings all that seriously but I don’t want him to come in fancy dress and mob the whole thing up completely. I trust Henry is behaving himself and has not destroyed many more of his employers’ cars.
    Best love,
    D
    We had agreed to have an engagement party in Devon, even though we had in fact married secretly a year ago. My father very sensibly did not attend and was happy to avoid what turned out to be an interfamilial debacle with fists and fur flying.
    Budds Farm
    22 May
    My Dearest L,
    The news of your marriage naturally comes as a considerable shock to me. I accept the situation that you have both created and will make the best of it but my acceptance does not mean that no wounds have been inflicted. It is hurtful that you chose to go and get married – one of the most important occasions in your life – without wishing your parents, who love you deeply, to be present, and without even having the grace to inform them. It was in particular a cruel thing to do to your mother and you surely realised the pain it would cause her. Having got married, you maintained a deception for nearly eighteen months. It is not agreeable for me to realise that Henry has constantly been a guest in my house while at the same time deceiving me in cold blooded fashion in respect of my daughter. Such conduct inevitably sows the seeds of mistrust for the future. As for the ‘wedding’, most of those who attend the reception will know you have made asses of your parents just as Henry has made asses of his, and inevitably we shall all feel a bit foolish. It is your mother and I who have to do all the explaining to relations and close friends who can hardly be expected to applaud your conduct. I can understand your desire to be married: what I cannot condone is the prolonged deception that followed. I do not know how Henry’s family will take it. They have every reason to be angry and you can hardly expect them to take a more affectionate view of yourself. If there are repercussions from Devonshire, you have only yourselves to blame.
    I hope if possible never to refer to this distasteful matter again. I wish you every possible happiness in your married life which, through your own folly has got off to a thoroughly unsatisfactory start.
    Your loving father,
    RM
    On the whole I like to think I was well behaved when I was young (at least, compared to Lupin). However, at the age of nineteen I secretly married my boyfriend Henry at Fulham Registry Office. HHH was sworn to secrecy and astonishingly, despite his habitual indiscretion when under the influence, my parents never found out.
    A year later, shortly before what was to be our proper wedding we had to tell them the truth. Both my parents were extremely shocked and upset. It would be an understatement to say my father was not HHH’s greatest fan from the beginning of the relationship. When the