Altar Ego (37 page)

I vaulted the fence into the pocket-handkerchief park, darted across the well-mown billiard baize and, dodging tombstones, skidded down the path pumiced by generations of parishioners. Inside the vestry, Simon was pinning the obligatory carnation to Julian’s grey, swallow-tailed coat.

‘What on earth …’ the Best Man began.

Before he could launch into another of his hypocritical castigations, I kneed him in the groin. ‘You
need
physical pain to cauterize the emotional pain. Remember the Sioux Indians? It’s symbolic,’ I explained, propelling him into the graveyard at a reluctant gallop. The oak door slapped shut and I turned the giant key clockwise in the lock.

Julian swept his buttery hair back from his broad forehead, revealing the first flecks of grey. ‘Rebecca! … Whatever happened to the sanctity of divorce?’

I put my hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t speak to me until you’re ready to listen …!’ I said illogically. ‘I came to tell you that I’ve realized that, well,
every
marriage is a mixed marriage. Two foreign cultures. In every couple, there’s one who roots through the mixed nuts and steals all the cashews … One drives too fast and one drives too slow … One likes the window open … One likes it closed. You see!’ I enthused evangelically. ‘Every couple is incompatible!’

‘Excuse me.’ He prised my fingers from his lips. ‘But it’s only
you
who’s incompatible, Rebecca.’

‘Another good reason why we should have children,’ I said, with a tentative smile. ‘Kids keep their parents way too busy to fight with each other.’

‘Children?’ Julian reeled backwards. ‘Why are you here exactly?’ I stepped closer to him. He inched away. I approached. He inched. Soon we were gyring round each other, clouds of dust rising out of the oriental carpet.

‘I’m here to tell you that wedding vows are misleading. It’s not illness, infidelity or lack of money that
breaks
marriages up. It’s cellulite, clipping toenails in bed, interrupting each other’s anecdotes. Or worse! Correcting anecdotes. Vicars should forget about sickness and health, and say “in irritating, snorty laughing noises” and in “thickening thighs” I now pronounce you man and wife.’

A reluctant smirk tugged at Julian’s lips. ‘Yes. Till Gastroenteritis us do part.’

‘And relative reunions.’

‘Absolutely. Especially
your
relatives.’

‘There should also be a Snoring Clause in all wedding contracts. And a Forgetting-Your-Birthday-Clause.’

‘And an “I Will Not Discuss The Size Of My Husband’s Genitals With My Girlfriends” clause …’

‘We do not
just
discuss your anatomy … We also talk about your emotional shortcomings, balding angst, nocturnal intestinal activity, revolting personal hygiene habits, pet names you have for your penis, mother complexes, gym-shoe odour, loo-reading material and the taste of your ejaculatory fluid.’

‘Oh, well, that’s a comfort,’ Julian said sarcastically, throwing his eyes up to the ceiling.

‘But, Jules … I’m cured. My PMT – Pre-Monogamy Tension – well, it’s gone. For ever.’

He stopped circling. ‘It’s too late, Becky. I mean, there’s Annie to consider …’

‘You don’t love her! She’s Rebound Woman, that’s all! And Annie doesn’t want
you
. You’re the Duke of
Wrong
. You have a real life, Julian. Something Anouska knows nothing about. Real life, to Annie, is just something to do between shopping hours. Her father’s about to be indicted and Darius has spent all her money. Don’t stand between Anouska and what she’s always wanted – a man she can really bank on.’

‘Oh this is typical!’ Julian tugged violently at his buff-coloured waistcoat. ‘Why did you have to wait until
now
? You really are the most selfish, arrogant, childish, megalomaniacal, irresponsible, irrational …’

‘So you
do
still care!’

‘Rebecca,’ he sighed, exasperatedly. He placed his hands on my waist, ready to launch into a lecture. But the touch was urgent; sensual, not censorious.

I looked at where his long, pale fingers pressed into my body. ‘In your learned opinion, would you agree that you are flirting?’

‘I am not.’ Julian jammed his hands back into his pocket. ‘
You
are.’

‘You touched me, like this …’ I mirrored his movement, sliding my hands along the warm raspberry lining of his jacket.

‘I didn’t do it like
that
. I did it like
this
.’ He demonstrated, drawing me closer to him. ‘And that’s definitely not flirting.
This
would be flirting.’ He brushed my neck with his lips. A pulse of sexual excitement surged through me.

‘
That’s
not flirting.’ I pressed my mouth hard against his and tickled his tonsils with my tongue. ‘Now
that’s
what
I call flirting,’ I announced, as we surfaced, breathless, minutes later.

There was a yammering on the side door. ‘Julian? Julian!’ It was the unmistakably plump vowels of his mother; the sort of voice which made your scalp crawl. ‘Rebecca Steele! I know you’re in there. Leave this church immediately. Who do you think you are? …
Zsa Zsa Gabor
?’

Julian and I looked at each other. The absurdity of the remark startled a laugh out of both of us – unstoppered laughter, a vortex of guffaws which left us panting.

‘Do you want to go get a coffee?’ I asked him, once we’d curbed our convulsions. There were more people thumping and pounding on the vestry door now. It added a strange syncopated rhythm to the organ music pumping away in the church beyond. The bride was no doubt out there in her father’s limousine, circling maniacally.

‘
Coffee?
’

‘Yes, it’s made from beans, grown in Brazil … We need to go somewhere and talk,’ I urged. ‘No strings attached … except marriage and babies.’

He drummed his fingers on his silk top hat. ‘My God, Rebecca! In the “Just Cause”, “Does Anyone Know Any Reason These Two Should Not Marry”
everyone we know
will put their hands up!’

‘But, the thing is, Jules, I love you. There’s never been anyone else for me. It just took me a while to
realize
it.’ I flung open the creaky window. Light poured in. I swung my legs over the sill. Below lay the canal, bordered by wintry flower beds. ‘Just think of it Jules; love, marriage … a surrogate mother to carry our child …’

‘I’m over you,’ Julian protested, all the time inching closer to the window. ‘I’m out of your jurisdiction …’

I stretched my hand towards him. ‘I don’t mind you saving the world. But promise me for our honeymoon that we’ll go somewhere where there are no death rows, no dissidents … Just a place where I can be draped attractively around a pina colada.’

‘I’m a lawyer!’ Julian’s beaded brow furrowed. ‘I can’t elope out of a window on my own wedding day! It’s undignified.’

‘Julian, if you don’t jump out of this window, I’m leaving you.’

‘Hey,’ he rallied, ‘it’s my turn to leave
you
… Remember? … Pity you don’t have any other friends I could leave you for!’

‘And then, when we get back, well … it’s time I cancelled that audition for catwalk model.’

Julian blinked in astonishment. ‘You’re going to get a real job?’

I nodded, ‘Maybe even finish art school.’

‘Rebecca Steele, I think you’re finally Growing Up.’

I held my breath as he gave into the dizzying impulse and levered his legs over the window sill. ‘And I think
you’re
finally Growing Down.’

The chaos inside the church crescendoed.

We squinted out at the dazzling day. It seemed to have started without us. Despite it being a December afternoon, the sky was a deep, still blue – the storm completely past. I laced a finger through his button-hole.

‘I don’t deserve you, I know. But hell. I don’t deserve cystitis either. And I’ve got that as well.’ I kissed his lovely mouth. ‘Jules, before we jump, there is one thing we must vow to each other. We must vow never again to put the other on a pedestal. Promise?’

‘Absolutely.’ He slipped his hand down the inside of my air-hostess blouse. ‘… It’s so hard to make love on a pedestal.’

And then, to the strains of ‘Why are we waiting?’ – Oh God, it was that Humerous Organist again – we joined hands. And jumped.

About the Author

Kathy Lette first achieved
succès de scandale
as a teenager with the novel
Puberty Blues
, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series. After several years as a newspaper columnist and television sitcom writer in America and Australia, she wrote ten international bestsellers including
Mad Cows
(which was made into a film starring Joanna Lumley and Anna Friel),
How to Kill Your Husband and Other Handy Household Hints
(recently staged by the Victorian Opera, Australia), and
To Love, Honour and Betray
. Her novels have been published in fourteen languages around the world. Kathy appears regularly as a guest on the BBC and Sky News. She is also an ambassador for Women and Children First, Plan International and the White Ribbon Alliance. In 2004 she was the London Savoy Hotel’s Writer in Residence. In 2010 she received an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University.

Kathy lives in London with her husband and two children. Visit her website at
www.kathylette.com
and on Twitter
@KathyLette
.

Also by Kathy Lette

The Boy Who Fell to Earth

Men: A User’s Guide

To Love, Honour and Betray (Till Divorce Us Do Part)

How to Kill Your Husband (and Other Handy Household Hints)

Dead Sexy

Nip ‘n’ Tuck

Puberty Blues

Altar Ego

Foetal Attraction

Girls’ Night Out

Mad Cows

The Llama Parlour

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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ALTAR EGO
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781409043157
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552775922

First publication in Great Britain
in 1998 by QPD, by arrangement with Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd
Black Swan edition published 2012

Copyright © Kathy Lette 1998

Kathy Lette has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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