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The sky was an irksome blue and the colourful bunting was an insult. As for the flower arrangements, they were poorly done and distasteful and as for the abundance of colour amongst the ties and the dresses, it was simply disrespectful. All that, before he had even started on the mockery of the multi-tiered cake, the flutes of champagne and scratching sounds of celebration. Everywhere he looked, people giving themselves up to abandon, letting their guard down in a manner that they would certainly regret later. Everywhere he turned, a display of garishness and careless joy.
He readjusted his tie, smoothed the dark grey of his suit jacket. He’d purchased it new for the occasion, but he’d justified it by choosing the one that claimed to be sturdy, conservative, and long lasting, while still having a lower price tag than his options because it was made from an old order of fabric. He could wear the suit for any formal occasion and he liked that, the comfort of something so versatile yet uniform. A shrill laugh and a louder guffaw forced him back into the moment and he had to clasp his fists to his side to stop himself from approaching the offenders and demanding they respect the solemnity of the situation.
Not today, Captain, he reminded himself, for after all, it was only in his mind that this was a funeral and not a celebration.
He had known the bride since their early school days, a time that no longer felt quite real.
Her name was Elizabeth but her family called her Billie. When they’d first met, she’d worn her hair in two spindly plaits tied with ribbons that came undone and her clothes had always held the faint tang of the cooked breakfasts from the café her mother ran, that her family lived above. Her handwriting was atrocious, but her answers were almost always right. She had joined the school late in the year, and while he had seen her join in with some of the playground games, she’d yet to settle into any one group. It wasn’t that the other children were outright cruel to her, nor did they tell her she couldn’t play, but they weren’t welcoming, weren’t willing to invite her home to tea or to continue a game after school.
She had been in his class three weeks when they first spoke. It was lunchtime, unexpectedly sunny after a drizzly morning and he was crouched in the corner of the school field, being careful not to get his knees dirty, as he watched the busyness of the ants as they travelled through the grass and over the mud. They were interesting creatures, more interesting than the other children who, even then, were both predictable and inscrutable at the same time. They didn’t like him; they thought him strange; he had no idea how he had managed to make them think so, but they did. They played rough games and shrieked and giggled, so he didn’t want to join in anyway. The ants and his books made for better companions.
He had been watching the progress of the insects so intently that lunchtime, he didn’t hear Billie’s approach. One moment, he was alone, and then a girl was crouched opposite him, looking down to see what he was seeing.
‘Ants!’ she declared after several drawn out seconds of silence, and then, ‘do you ever think how many, many miles it must feel like for an ant to walk just one big step of ours?
‘They’re workers,’ he’d replied. ‘They’re made to do that.’
‘Oh,’ Billie had kneeled then, woollen tights into the mud. ‘That’s sad. Ooh! I know! I’m going to build them a bridge across this big wet bit of mud, so they don’t have to go allll the way around. And then, I’m going to make them a boat, in case of a flood. Do you want to help?’
Too shocked to say no, too shocked to question the plausibility of building an ant boat, he had nodded and they’d got to work, collecting sticks, creating various walk ways across puddles and muddy dips. While Billie had run to-and-fro, gathering leaves and thick strands of grass, he’d taken charge of assembling the boat – not a particularly sophisticated thing, just sticks and leaves tied together – but when Billie saw it, she’d been suitably impressed. She took it from him and set it down into one of the bigger puddles.
‘All aboard,’ she’d called. ‘Your Captain will be address you shortly.’ She’d looked at him and he realised the Captain was him.
‘Find your seats,’ he said. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us.’
Billie had saluted him as the bell rang to summon them back to the classrooms.
He had known the groom since his late teenaged years, that rickety time of constant unease and youthful carelessness.
He wasn’t popular at the boys’ school by any means, but while his peers could be cruel, he had found a secret weapon within him, a powerful, multi-purpose key that served him well. He was, he’d discovered, rather good at sports and so now he’d shaken off the awkward clumsiness of childhood, running had come naturally, sprints and cross-country, moving his body, feet hitting the floor, air against his face, the brief time when he felt that the skin prickling sensation of something being amiss with him fell away, cobwebs cleared, heavy coat thrown off, and it was just him and the air and he was powerful. He’d won medals for the school and if there was a relay, the other lads wanted him on their team.
He played well at cricket and at rounders too. He was halfway decent at football, successful at hurdles, sufficiently tall enough to do well in the long jump. On the field, on the track, outside in the country, he was just another one of the boys. They clapped him on the back, shouted to him, cheered him on, made him Captain of the team. It was like diving down into the deep cool of a lake on a hot summer’s day, protected from that sensation of wrongness, from the way no one quite wanted to be his friend, from his mother’s illness, his father’s disappointment. He was good out there, one of the others out there, well-liked, well-regarded, often left in charge.
Russ Pemberton had been sitting somewhere in his periphery for the last few years, a handsome boy with dark hair and a face that always seemed clear and breezy, and it always surprised him that Russ never appeared on the field or the tracks. He was well liked, and it only seemed natural that he ought to have been out there. For a long time then, he spent his lunchtimes idly and presumably frittered away his hours outside of school, but then came that spring when things far greater than cricket matches were happening elsewhere, when the low mumblings of a distant thunderstorm were sounding just quietly enough that they could be ignored for a while longer. That spring, he had joined the ranks of cross-country runners, determined to improve his stamina.
‘You’re good at this,’ Russ had said after his second training session, flinging himself down on the grass where he was already stretching out his muscles, having finished some time ago. ‘Couldn’t give me some hints, could you? I’m thinking of going into the army – seems like they’re going to need me, but I’m not quite up to standard yet. What’s the secret, man?’
‘Practice,’ he’d said seriously, focusing on a tree in the distance, somewhere over Russ’s shoulder so that he couldn’t imagine what he’d look like in uniform. ‘At least five times a week.’
Russ had let out a low whistle, the kind of sound that usually scraped against the drums of his ears, but somehow seemed less grating when Russ did it. The sound suited him. ‘Would you mind me coming along with you a few times? Just while I get myself going?’
And so it began, he and Russ, running before lessons, running on early Sunday mornings, stopping now and then to look around them, at the duck pond, where the recently hatched coots shrieked and the ducklings bumbled, at the top of a hill where someone had thought to place a bench. They talked and it was – it was pleasant. It was the first time, he realised, that he’d had something close to a friend who wasn’t Billie, the closest he’d had to a friend who was a boy – no, a man.
Something strange had begun to open itself in his chest on those runs, as if that cloak of wrongness wasn’t something he had put on, wasn’t something anyone had given him to wear, but something that came from within, that he couldn’t fling off, but would grow and regrow every time he tried to hide it away. It made it difficult to look Russ in the eye, made it difficult to sit by his side. Russ didn’t appear to notice it, still clapped him on the back, nudged him in the arm, slung an arm round his shoulders, but it was hard. I’m almost looking forward to the summer, when it might just be too hot to run every day, he’d told Billie and she’d given him a strange, unconvinced look.
April became May, May became June, June gave way to July. Exams were sat, uniforms shed, bottles were stolen from parent’s stores. Somewhere, somewhere else, a wrong turn was taken and a man stepped out of a delicatessen with a pistol and there was no going back.
Their final run took place on a dewy July morning, and he’d paused at their hillside spot to look over the town and the fields. Russ had slowed a few metres away, good enough now that the rest wasn’t necessary anymore.
‘Come on, Captain Slow,’ he’d called. ‘There’s a plate of breakfast down in the café with my name on it and bloody starving!’
There was a war and he got through it, miraculously, with barely a scrape. He was one of the lucky ones, of course, and he knew it, felt it, itched with the guilt of it, when he saw the families without their sons, when he saw groups of pals missing several members. He knew it when Russ showed him his prosthetic leg and the bullet wound beneath his ribcage, knew it when George from across the road disappeared for three months and came back quieter but still haunted. He knew it and he said to himself, I am lucky and when anyone reminded him of it, he was sure to agree.
He was lucky and yet sometimes, he was certain he had left some vital part of himself behind in Belgium, the part that allowed him to make some semblance of sense of the day-to-day uncertainties, the part that allowed him to exist amongst the casual disorder of civilian life, the piece that kept him from dwelling too much on that deep sense of discomfort within him. But he was lucky. He was lucky to still be able to hear the morning bird song, to wake up and know he was safe in his own bed. He was lucky and yet – no, even now, he couldn’t put it into words.
He'd spent time with Billie; he’d spent time with Russ; he’d tried to imagine a life for himself, there, in his hometown. He saw Billie, he saw Russ, saw the two of them in the café, drinking coffee together as if they were old friends, or rather new friends, or rather, something more. Later, he would learn that they’d started talking at a dinner party he hadn’t gone to, started talking because Billie remembered seeing Russ with him, and Russ remembered seeing him with Billie, and then it had gone from there – a story to tell, to keep, to write down in sentimental words, the kind of story that could be recorded and cherished, the kind of story he would never be part of.
In that moment, he knew there would be no more dances with Billie, no more protecting her from unwelcome comments and advances, no more enjoying the music with someone he felt safe with. There would be no more slow walks with Russ to the duckpond, no more arms round his shoulders. There would be Billie and Russ and then him, a jagged edge, catching and pulling at the threads of their perfect life. He’d walked away from the café, a feeling of cold and cavernous nothing inside.
***
Now, here he was at the end. Now here he was, holding a loss that only he could see. Here he was, amongst the mocking bunting, the too bright colours, and the too loud celebrations. Here he was, knowing all that he couldn’t have, knowing all that he couldn’t be part of. He’d tried to smile for the photographer when Russ and Billie had pulled him in to the shot, but he was a greyness against the joy of the day. He would leave, he’d known it then, he would go back, back to uniform. Where else could he do?
This was an ending, he thought, as Russ and Billie cut into their wedding cake and turned towards their future. This was an ending, coffin lids shutting, crypts sealed off, souls passing on to a different realm. As the cake was handed out, he took his chance to slip away, stopping as he did to pluck a flower from one of the arrangements. It was a Sweet William and he tucked it into his jacket pocket, with the intention of pressing it later.
A century later, the halls of Button House were loud with the chatter of guests, bright with explosions of flowers, flamboyant with the sparkling decorations the couple had chosen. Of all the events that the Coopers hosted, weddings remained The Captain’s favourite – the precise timings, the importance of organisation, the schedule, the decorations, the personal touches, the busyness of the day, the joy, the music, the dancing. There was a time when he would have been irritated by all of it, but now – now it was comforting, exciting. Stressful too, of course, but in the best of ways.
The couple, Drew and Benji, would be wearing colour co-ordinating suits. Their two daughters were to be bridesmaids alongside Kitty. They’d opted for a tower of cupcakes instead of a traditional wedding cake, and Julian had been made to promise not to interfere with it, on danger of losing all smart phone privileges. There were fairy lights with rainbow bulbs around the rooms, and Robin had agreed to leave alone, on the condition that the giant chessboard was set up for him again. They’d chosen a vegetarian barbeque for the meal and Pat was fascinated by the industrial barbeque, albeit disappointed when they started cooking veggie bacon on it. Fanny had complained about everything, though The Captain had caught her smiling as the grooms arrived.
As they made their way down the aisle and all their guests stood, The Captain pressed a hand to his pocket, remembering the flower within. It was half crushed now, half disintegrated, but it didn’t matter. It was from an old story and here he was now, watching a new one begin. What could have been, perhaps, he thought, a half-smile pulling at his lips.