A Summer Bird-Cage Read Online Free PDF Page B

favourite people, a would-be and probably will-be artist called Tony, but he was half-behind a pillar. The soles of Stephen’s shoes looked very clean and new, side by side, as he knelt down at the altar. I had difficulty in turning over the pages of my hymnbook with gloves on, yet felt too conspicuous to start ripping them off. I got landed with all the lilies at the ring bit: they kept me very busy till the end of the service, when Loulou reclaimed them to walk down the aisle, a married woman, to a rather obscure piece of music which I fancy wasn’t the Wedding March, though I’m not certain. I heaved a sigh of relief as I tripped after, thinking ‘Now for the champagne.’
    When we emerged into the open air the best man, who had accompanied me, said, ‘Well, Christ, that’s that, what a farce.’
    I didn’t ask him to elucidate, and I didn’t find out what he had meant for months. I assumed it was just a general comment on the church and the top-hattery. The best man, in fact, terrified me even more than Stephen himself did, as he had in addition to a certain degree of fame a rather rude and handsome face and manner. He was an actor, an almost well-known one, in fact to anyone who is slightly more of a theatregoer than me he would probably qualify as being very well-known. I at first assumed that Stephen had chosen him as best man for prestige value, but afterwards discovered that they really had been close friends Apart from other reasons. They had been up at Cambridge together, and John had been in some ghastly-sounding play of Stephen’s all about a truck driver, which had had a very short run at the Lyric, Hammersmith, thereby bringing both to their first public notice. He is called John Connell. I suppose success held them both together: they are just about as unlike as two people can be. Stephen is thin, prematurely ageing, and I think I have made myself clear about my opinion of his sexual qualifications, whereas John is a heavy and rather fancies himself in jeans, open-necked shirts, and coal-heaver’s jackets with leather patches on the back. It’s all a big game because he went to Winchester: his histrionic tendencies only bloomed at Cambridge after long repression, where I gather he was the King of the ADC. He is a megalomaniac, like most actors, but I now think that he is so through real excess of energy and not through sheer blinkered ambition. Once he said to a director who told him not to overact: ‘How can you overact life?’ I like that. It’s much coarser than Stephen: a much thicker ideal.
    I suppose all they did share was vanity: John thought himself a superman, and Stephen thought himself a super-intellect, and they ministered to each other in mutual admiration. It was odd to see them there side by side in church, so entirely different: I wish now that I had known the whole story then, I feel Louise cheated me out of an interesting
frisson
or two.
    As we embarked for the reception I heard Louise say to John, ‘And for God’s sake have a few drinks, remember you’ve got to take enough for two.’

3
The Reception
    I HAD A hard time at the reception to begin with, trying to remember the names of business friends of my father, and being gay with the local gentry. I felt it my duty to deal with them before I had more than two glasses of champagne, so I concentrated on eating stuffed prunes, prawns, smoked salmon and suchlike. I met the Halifax parents, who confirmed Louise’s assertion that it wasn’t a pseudonym: they were very upper, but not a bit like an ancient family. I didn’t think they could be an ancient family. I had to keep finding plausible reasons to explain why there wasn’t a display of wedding presents. The real reason was that Louise had refused on grounds of ostentatious vulgarity—with reason, I think—but I couldn’t say that to the kindly and charming inquiries of beneficent ladies anxious to see once more the silver cream jugs they so painfully chose. I felt