The Windermere Witness

What a day for a wedding! Sheets of rain sluiced across the windscreen, giving the wipers a harder task than they were equal to. The road ran with water, so it resembled the lake that lay a few yards to the right. The turning into the hotel was ahead, somewhere, on a pimple of land jutting into the lake. On a bright day, it would be a stunning venue for a wedding; the photos spectacular. Today it would be madness for a bride to venture outside in silk and lace and expensively wrought hair. The many thousands of pounds that must have been spent on the event would do nothing to mitigate the disappointment, if Simmy was any judge. There would be huge umbrellas on standby, of course, and other tricks with which to defy the weather, but rain on this scale would defeat every attempt to save the day.

Behind her, the back of the van was filled with scent and colour, conveying all the layers of meaning that went along with flowers. She was confident that her work would
meet all expectations. She had laboured over it for a week, selecting and matching for colour, shape and size. The scheme was a rosy peach (‘Definitely not peachy rose,’ said the bride with a grin, when she and her mother had come to talk it over) with scatterings of rust and tangerine to echo the autumnal colours outside. Colours that were muted to grey by the rain, as it had turned out.

The hotel’s facade was a pale yellowy-cream on a good day. There was a confident elegance to it, despite the lack of symmetry. The older part boasted a columned entrance that Simmy suspected might be a loggia, officially. She had been profoundly impressed by the whole edifice, on a previous visit two months before. The chief element in its reputation, however, lay in the setting. The lake itself was the real star, and the various architects who had created the Hall had had the good sense to realise that. All the ostentation lay indoors, where no expense had been spared in grand ornamentation.

She parked the van as close as she could get to the humbler entrance where deliveries were customarily made. A team of hotel staff was on hand to assist, and within the hour, the centrepieces, swags and two monumental arrangements had been set into position. During that hour, Simmy lost herself in the creative process, immersed in colour and form that were intended to enhance the romantic significance of the event. She gave brisk instructions to the people detailed to work with her, their tasks restricted to pinning and tying, fetching and carrying. The florist herself attended to everything else. Everything fell perfectly into place, exactly as she had envisaged. Clusters of red berries to suggest fruitfulness; luscious blooms for sensuality;
some dried seed heads for permanence – she loved the understated implications that few, if any, wedding guests would consciously grasp, and yet subliminally they might appreciate.

‘Just the bouquets and buttonholes now,’ she told her helpers. ‘Where do they want them?’

The bride’s mother was telephoned, and Simmy was asked to take the flowers to the suite upstairs. In the lift she balanced the large box on one hand and thought briefly about weddings. Just as births and funerals conjured a kaleidoscope of personal memories and associations, a wedding always called up comparisons with others one had experienced. In her case, it was her own, nine years earlier.

She was on the third floor before she could get far in her rueful reminiscences. Room 301 was awaiting her, the door already open. Inside was a flurry of female activity, half-naked girls with hair in rollers, a heavy atmosphere of near hysteria. ‘Flowers,’ she said, superfluously, looking for a familiar face. She saw herself reflected in a gold-bordered full-length mirror – a misfitting figure amongst all the froth of silk and lace, dressed in a blue sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was untidy, her hands not entirely clean. She had given no thought to her own appearance, which made her a complete alien in this room where appearance was everything.

‘Oh! Let’s see!’ And there was Miss Bridget Baxter, soon to be Mrs Bridget Harrison-West, fumbling at the lid of the box in her eagerness.

Simmy carefully set it down on a marble table beneath the window and lifted the lid. ‘I hope they’re what you wanted,’ she said.

The bride met her eyes with a direct blue gaze that would instantly endear her to the greatest misanthrope alive. ‘They’re fabulous!’ she said. ‘Look, everybody! Aren’t these gorgeous!’

‘Keep them cool, if you can,’ Simmy advised. ‘Probably the bathroom would be best.’

The enormous room swirled with bridesmaids and long dresses hanging on a wheeled rail. There were two big sofas, on one of which sat a young girl, intently fiddling with her fingers and apparently muttering to herself. It could only be the smallest bridesmaid, traditionally referred to as the ‘flower girl’, and as such, Simmy felt herself justified in making an approach. She sat down on the edge of the chintzy sofa.

‘There’s a special bouquet for you to carry,’ she said. ‘Do you want to see it?’

The child shrugged, but flashed a quick smile that seemed friendly enough. ‘If you like,’ she said.

‘This is all a bit …
daunting
, isn’t it?’ Simmy sympathised, with a glance around the room.

‘“Daunting”?’ the little girl repeated with a puzzled frown.

‘Overwhelming. Stressful.’

‘It’s a wedding. This is what they’re like. I went to one before.’

‘Did you? Were you a bridesmaid then, as well?’

‘No. They were all grown-ups that time. Thank you for the flowers.’

Simmy felt subtly dismissed, by a child who was probably accustomed to being attended to by people paid to do it. She smiled briefly, understanding that there was no further role for her.

There was a smell of lavender soap and warm ironing. Ms Eleanor Baxter, mother of the bride, was nowhere to be seen. Simmy was not sorry to miss her. When choosing the flowers, she had been a disconcerting mixture of autocratic boredom and penetrating exigency. The flowers had to be right, because this was a wedding, but weddings were actually a tedious necessity that she very much wished she didn’t have to bother with: that had been the general message that Simmy picked up.

‘Look at that rain!’ cried one of the girls, standing by the window. ‘The lake will overflow if it goes on like this, and we’ll all be washed away.’

‘It’s a disaster,’ said Bridget cheerfully. ‘I knew this would happen.’

‘But last weekend was so
lovely
!’ moaned the girl. ‘Warm and sunny, and lovely. How can it change so quickly?’

‘That’s England for you,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s all Peter’s fault, of course. He wouldn’t miss his sailing, even to get married.’ Everyone within earshot laughed, causing Simmy to suspect that the reality was something rather different.

She made her departure, with a murmured good-luck wish. Not that it was needed. Miss Baxter, spinster of the parish of Windermere, was so comprehensively blessed that a rainy wedding day would hardly dent her faith in her husband, or in the world. Although the florist had been given no special confidences, she did happen to be acquainted with the bride’s hairdresser, who had. ‘She loves him, Sim. They’ve known each other for years, and he always said he’d marry her the moment she was old enough.’

‘Don’t you find it the weeniest bit creepy?’

‘Why? Because he’s twenty-five years old than her? No, not at all. It’s lovely that he’s waited all this time for her. It’s like a fairy tale.’ Julie was a romantic creature, and Sim saw no cause to undermine her illusions. Besides, from the glimpses she had gained of Bridget, it seemed she would wholeheartedly agree with her hairdresser.

The wedding was scheduled for eleven, which left an hour and a half for Julie to work her magic. ‘She wants the whole works, with tendrils and pearls,’ she’d gloated. ‘I can’t tell you how much she’s paying me. It’s embarrassing.’

Simmy had felt no envy. The proceeds from the wedding flowers would keep her in business for some time, and do her reputation no harm at all. There was every chance that the hotel would recommend her more often, now she had been selected for the Wedding of the Year. The pictures in the gossip columns would cement her position, with any luck.

Outside, the van was about to be joined by others. Two vehicles were making a stately approach down the lesser driveway, and Simmy realised they would want her out of the way. She would do best to leave by the main entrance. As she drew level with the loggia, she saw that a knot of men had gathered, under huge umbrellas. Somebody amongst them was smoking. They looked like a clump of bullrushes growing beside the lake, their seed heads exploding in black arcs, silhouetted against the water behind them. They were laughing together as if the weather meant nothing to them. Too soon for wedding guests, surely? Family and close friends would be staying at the hotel; others would arrive in relays – some for the ceremony, some for the wedding breakfast, and another batch for the obligatory evening
disco. Getting married at eleven meant a marathon fifteen hours or more, these days, albeit with lengthy interludes during which nothing happened. Simmy remembered it well.

The jocular group eyed her van as she drove slowly past them. One individual detached himself and flapped a hand to stop her. She opened the window on the passenger side and heard one of the others call out in puzzlement – ‘Hey, Markie, what’re you doing?’

‘You’re the florist,’ he said, with a glance at the stencilled logo on the side of the van before peering in through the window. ‘You live in my house, in Troutbeck.’

She stared uncomprehendingly at him. ‘Pardon?’

‘I was born there. We moved away three years ago. The new man didn’t stay long, then.’

‘Mr Huggins? He lost his job, apparently, and had to go to Newcastle to find another one.’

The boy shrugged. ‘It’s a nice house. I hope you’re happy there?’

‘It’s lovely,’ she said.

He smiled, and changed the subject. ‘Did you bring the buttonholes?’

‘I did,’ she nodded. ‘Why?’

He was very young, perhaps not even eighteen. Simmy suspected she was more than twice his age – not that this detail seemed to deter him from flirting with her. ‘I hope mine’s the nicest one,’ he grinned.

‘You’re not the best man, are you? It’s my guess you’ll be one of the ushers.’

‘The
most important
usher,’ he corrected her. ‘I’m the bride’s brother.’

Aha!
thought Simmy, remembering the gossip she’d heard about the family. The coincidence of the Troutbeck house gave her a sense of fellowship with him, and she tilted her head teasingly.

‘Well, I’m sorry to tell you the buttonholes are all the same. Won’t you get wet, standing about out here?’

‘We’re waiting for my pa. He’ll need an escort to give him the courage to go in. We can’t just let him turn up without a welcoming committee. He’s due at any minute.’

‘I see.’
Pa
, she concluded, was father of the bride, the very much divorced one-time husband of Eleanor, Bridget’s mother. George Baxter had been married twice since leaving Eleanor, and was assumed to be not finished yet. And that made the effervescent Markie, even if he was brother of the bride, deserving of no special treatment where buttonholes were concerned. ‘Is that the groom?’ She peered through the rain at a moderately handsome figure with broad shoulders and full lips.

‘Peter – yes. He’s a good bloke. Known him all my life.’

‘So I gather,’ she said recklessly.

‘Talk of the town, right?’

‘Wedding of the year,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve heard the whole story.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ he corrected her, with a sudden change of expression. ‘You haven’t heard a word that’s true, I can promise you.’ The word
dread
flashed through Simmy’s mind, only to be dismissed as far too dramatic. Even so, the boy plainly wasn’t looking forward to the arrival of his pa.

‘Stressful business, weddings,’ she offered.

‘Too right,’ he agreed. ‘I’m never going to forgive Briddy for this.’

‘Well …’ she put both hands on the steering wheel, ‘I should get out of the way. My part is finished.’

He seemed reluctant to let her go, glancing back at the cluster of men. Only one of them was watching him – a tall man in his early forties, with brutally short hair and a green waterproof jacket. His egg-shaped head looked all wrong without a decent covering of hair. ‘That’s Glenn,’ whispered Markie. ‘Peter’s best friend.’

‘The best man,’ Simmy nodded. ‘Is he worrying about his speech?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice. He was drinking till four this morning, apparently, but you’d never guess. I was legless by midnight. The other chap is Pablo. He’s Spanish.’

‘And under the loggia?’ She had only just noticed another man, sitting in a wheelchair out of the rain. Once glimpsed, she could not take her eyes off him. He was also watching Mark with lowered brows.

‘Oh, that’s Felix. Peter’s cousin.’

‘Really? I don’t think he was in the stories I heard about you all.’

‘He ought to have been. Broke his back falling off Castle Crag, a year ago. Dreadful business. But he’s being totally heroic about it. They all say so. Peter wanted him for the best man, obviously, but he flatly refused. He’s getting married in the summer himself.’

Simmy dragged her attention away from the damaged man and smiled a vague acknowledgement of Markie’s innate politeness in keeping her abreast of the personnel. ‘Shame about the rain,’ she said. ‘It’s not slacking off at all, is it?’

‘It’ll stop at eleven-fifteen, that’s official. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Really?’

‘Yup. Glenn’s got a hotline to the Met Office, or something.’

She revved the engine. ‘Have fun, then,’ she said and drove away.

The two-mile drive to her shop involved negotiating crowds of disconsolate visitors in Bowness. Despite Saturday being ‘changeover day’ for self-catering as well as most of the guest houses, there were plenty of exceptions to this rule. They came in caravans; they stayed in hotels costing anything between £50 and £250 per night; they thronged the B&Bs, such as the one her mother ran in a quiet backstreet in Windermere. The lake cruisers still plied up and down from Lakeside to Ambleside, doing even better business than usual, in the rain. Stuck in a traffic hold-up close to the jetty, Simmy watched a large ship approach. Even after nine months, she still found them incongruous on a freshwater lake, albeit ten miles long. Like an overlarge toy in a bath, it struck her as wasted when it should be taking people across the open waters of the Adriatic. But there was seldom any difficulty in filling the hundreds of places aboard, and nobody else appeared to share her slight sense of absurdity.