How to be a Husband by Tim Dowling Read Free Book Online Page A

mother-in-law, that he already has champagne on ice downstairs, that he’s only messing with me. I briefly contemplate jumping.
    When I speak to my mother, I try to play down the whole business as a tiresome piece of administration, an elaborate exchange of paperwork which must be done at short notice. I don’t want to put anyone to any trouble just because I am obliged to jump through some bureaucratic hoops. Because my mother is a devout Catholic, I am hoping she won’t think a register office wedding counts, and therefore won’t feel she’s missing much. I suggest that after enduring whatever dry little ceremony constitutes the bare legal requirement for marriage in Britain, we will travel to the States, where she can arrange a blessing and throw an embarrassing party for us. There is a silence at the other end.
    â€œYou can do whatever you want,” she says. “But whatever it is, we’re coming over for it.”
    Within weeks of us setting a date—just three months hence—my mother has invited sufficient relatives to fill a minibus. In addition to our booking at Chelsea register office, my future mother-in-law has secured, on my mother’s behalf, an hour slot in a Catholic church in Wimbledon, and a friendly priest who has agreed to put us through the pre-Cana period of instruction that will allow us to be married in the eyes of God. To my surprise, my new fiancée agrees to all of this without protest. Perhaps she believes that if the marriage is going to stick it must be done to the satisfaction of all concerned. I don’t know; I’m not asking a lot of questions at this point. I think the fact that in many ways it’s no longer about what we want makes us both feel a little better.
    As we pull up outside the rectory for our first meeting with the priest, I realize I am far more anxious than she is. My stanceregarding God is akin to the author Peter Ackroyd’s position on ghosts. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he once wrote, “but I am frightened of them.” I am scared of the God I don’t believe in, and also of priests. I’m worried my double agnosticism—doubt, doubtfully held—will be transparent enough to get us disqualified. She has no such fear, and this also scares me. I look over at her as she turns off the headlights.
    â€œYou’re not going to suddenly say that Jesus is a pillock, or anything like that, are you?” I say.
    â€œI don’t think so,” she says.
    â€œAnd don’t say, ‘If it doesn’t work out, we can always get divorced.’”
    â€œWe can, though.”
    â€œI know. But he might not find your robust outlook as charming as I do.”
    â€œChrist.”
    â€œDon’t say ‘Christ,’” I say. “Not in there.”
    In fact Father Jim is welcoming, kind, and prone to reward a half hour’s earnest chat with an extremely strong gin and tonic. Our meetings with him are the only time we ever discuss topics including love, commitment, children, and, more generally, the future, with anyone. My wife-to-be, who has virtually no experience of religion and is therefore free to take from it what she wishes, finds it all rather bracing. For me, Catholicism remains an unfinished school assignment, a dropped subject. I sweat a lot during these meetings, but I am grateful that someone took the time to impress upon us the seriousness of the whole undertaking.
    He is not the only person we have meetings with, though.We have meetings about flowers, about venues, about food, booze, music, and printed invitations. I’d somehow imagined that our whirlwind engagement might relieve us of some of the stresses associated with a big wedding, but it just means we have to do the same stuff faster. We do have engagement photos taken—I look like a frightened potato in them—and our pending nuptials are announced in a national newspaper. It’s going to