The Age Gap

***Contains a single reference to racial prejudice***

There was a great deal of talk when April and Simon got together, and more when aged just seventeen, she moved in with her forty-six-year-old lover and announced their plans to marry. ‘Whatever next?’ her friends would shake their heads and speculate but frequently descend into giggles when Belinda, who was easily the most vocal amongst them, would, in the midst of what had started out as (and ought to have remained) a concerned discussion regarding these new and outrageous developments, alter the entire tone of the conversation by dialing up the volume and annunciating in her best, well-practiced American accent, her favourite media-sparked phrase of the day, and one which everyone had to admit suited April almost as well as it did the temperamental young tennis star to whom it was most frequently attributed. ‘She’s what? You cannot be serious…’ But then, Belinda’s reaction had been much the same when, high-achiever that April was, she had upped and left school on a midweek whim the previous year and had taken to posing ‘stark-stare-naked, I kid you not’ before a life-drawing class at the local college.

Initially, and as expected of one who had so vehemently insisted on deseeding and peeling her daughter’s grapes until well beyond puberty (which, incidentally, she would have known nothing about had she not sourced the appropriate book from the library) April’s mother had been frantic. ‘That man’ as she called him – for she refused to poison her tongue by uttering Simon’s name - had ‘stolen her daughter’s youth’, and ‘might the devil strike her down dead’ if she ever set foot in his house. April, however, was still more than welcome at hers, and if she ever felt she couldn’t manage – for she’d packed in the modelling by then and the couple had to survive on Simon’s wage alone – her ever-conscientious mama had ‘plenty of food and cash to go round’ and was April quite sure she didn’t want her to cut up those grapes?

April had been living with Simon a year when her father lost his battle with cancer, but whether the mother’s unexpected change of heart towards her prospective son-in-law had anything to do with the sudden realization that she too had married an older man (although the age-gap in her case was less than half) or whether April’s long wear-me-down insistence that she was the one who had made all the running and (as if, Mum!) had neither been groomed nor coerced had finally scored the fact into her brain was a question which proved irrelevant. Fact was, Simon worked in the undertaker’s parlour and drove for them too, so would therefore be present at the funeral. Couldn’t not be on speaking terms then, and actually when you got to know him, he was rather a nice chap. Pleasant, level-headed, mature, and he obviously cared deeply for April, for every week without fail (and just like April’s father had done for nigh on twenty-five years) he handed over his entire pay without question. Packet unopened and not a single complaint, no expectation on his part about April finding a job. What a change from ‘that creep’ her daughter had been ‘mooning after’ just a couple of years before, the one she was sure she’d left school for. Art student, was he not? So ‘disrespectful’ towards her and ‘wet behind the ears’. No prospects either, let alone a wage, so best off out of it. Indeed, by the time the engagement became official with the purchase of a well over-budget diamond ring, the mother only had one reservation when it came to the couple tying the knot. Simon was a little dark-skinned. Was that a tan, or would her daughter end up giving birth to black babies? Not that she had anything against ‘those coloured chaps, mind’, but ‘people would talk.’

The wedding itself was a small affair; a registry office ceremony with the maximum twenty-five guests – young folk mainly, April’s cohort from school, plus a few she’d picked up along the way, two of whom she’d invited to stay in her and Simon’s back room and who (although subletting was strictly contrary to her fiancé’s tenant's agreement) were good about handing over what she charged them in rent. Belinda, who still maintained the view that her friend 'really could not be serious’ for she knew her too well, and in six months’ time she’d most likely be up in the divorce courts demanding half of all Simon’s worldly goods, sparse as they were, not only consented to be bridesmaid, but reveled in the role, and in the opportunity it presented her with to show off to all and sundry her handsome new computer programmer boyfriend. Then there was the meal at April’s mother’s followed by the evening do, the reception held (and rumoured to be at the bride’s insistence) right next door to the bar in which ‘Mister Wet-Behind-the-Ears’ drank, and whose name April’s mother still refused to speak for he’d ‘stolen away all of her daughter’s brains, and with them every one of her chances’.

***

And the bride wore black… The man at the back of the hall spat out the words. He could no more douse the bitter taste in his mouth than he could bring himself to raise a glass to ‘the happy couple’. The groom was an out and out fool. You'd think he’d come up on the football pools when that girl had first shown an interest, and no matter how many people had warned him, made jokes at his expense, or called him a cradle-snatching so-and-so, still he beamed with pride. Like the marriage had any hope of lasting. Like that flighty young thing in the black strapless dress even cared. He could see her now as they took to the floor for their wedding dance. She wasn’t looking at her husband, not at all, her eyes were everywhere but – why didn’t he notice? Invisible that’s what he was to her – as invisible as a man of fifty tended to be in a roomful of ‘life’s but a party’ twenty-year-olds - almost as invisible as he was at sixty-five.

‘Suits it though, doesn’t she…? The dress?’

The voice of the woman took him by surprise. Another elderly at the bash, and considerably older than he was. Late eighties perhaps, although given her floaty-white old-lady appearance, the smoky darkened hall, the flashing disco lights, and his less than perfect vision, it was hard to tell…

‘And you know she hated what she wore for the ceremony,’ the woman continued. ‘A powder-blue two piece and high-neck ruffle blouse at twenty, I ask you! What with that and her hair done all wrong just to match in with him and appear more grown-up. Made her look like Margaret Thatcher. Of course she had to change for the reception, tease that mane out a bit. She’s only young.’

‘Know her well, do you?’ In spite of his sour misgivings, the man had to ask. If there really were sides to be had in this fiasco, this game of ‘his’ and ‘hers’, this woman was obviously on the bride’s. Then again, at least here was someone he could converse with, and he needed that, lonely on the edge of the crowd as he was.

‘Oh yes, I know her. At least I used to. You must forgive me though, if you’re about to press me for details, my memory’s not what it was.’

‘You do know it won’t last, though?’

‘Oh, no question of that.’

‘I mean, just look at them – a joke, right? Anyone would think she’s dancing with her grandad. Him all puppy dog eyes and her just itching to pull away.’

‘You know why that is, though, don’t you?’

‘I’ve got a fair idea.’ He struggled to keep the edge from his voice.

‘Actually, I don’t think you do. It’s the song. Julie Rogers’ The Wedding, and she absolutely detests it. She wanted Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse.

The man gave a snort of a laugh. ‘I seem to remember he wanted Close to You by The Carpenters.’

‘And so the DJ decided.’ The woman smiled. ‘Oh well, song over, thank goodness for that. Ave bloody Maria indeed. What I wouldn't give for a Bloody Mary right now. No fun when you reach the stage that everything goes right through you, but I'm sure you'll know all about that.'

He ignored the jibe.

‘Not hanging around though, is she, our not-so blushing bride? Where’s she off to anyway? Leaving him on his own like that?’

‘Oh, he’s hardly on his own. I mean, he gets on well with her friends, doesn’t he? They might have found the set-up odd at first, been concerned for her welfare, but they soon came round to accept him. Belinda’s still a bit iffy, of course, but then she always did like the sound of her own voice. Didn’t like it when her friend found hers, and she always was a free spirit at heart, more than anyone ever realised – still is. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t care for your man there. Like I said, she’s still young, impulsive. Lots to go through, lots to learn.’

They stood for a while in silence as the music played on drowning out the chattering guests, the pair of them watching, the groom at the bar smoking and drinking and jocular enough, unconcerned, or so it seemed, by his bride’s extended absence. Blind, thought the man. Absolutely blind to what must be happening. April had picked this venue for a reason. She knew that the boy who she’d chased around all through her teens, and had invited to the wedding but had declined to come, would be in the bar next door, and just married or not, that’s where she’d have legged it to.

‘She’s gone to see him, hasn’t she?’ the onlooker finally asked. ‘Never mind a year down the line, she’s making a fool of her husband as we speak.’

‘Him?’ the woman enquired. ‘You mean her first love?’

‘Him? Well, of course, him.’

‘No, she’s not with him.’ The woman paused, avoiding his gaze. ‘Although, I do admit, that’s where she was heading… At first.’

‘So, you know where she’s gone then? What she’s up to? How’s that? See through walls, can you? Got the power to read people’s minds? I might not be the sharpest tool in the box, but I tell you, I’m not half as loop-de-loop as some might think. I know how obsessed she always was with that lad and that won’t change anytime soon. It’s going to split them up in no time. One word from that prick, one disgusting, insincere, drunken fumble, and she’ll be off, and everyone knows it but that poor deluded middle-aged sod that’s just put a ring on her finger. Even her mother’s aware of where her precious daughter’s love lies, for all she likes to pretend otherwise.’

‘True. But - and I reiterate - that’s not who she’s with. Not right now. Look over there, out by the main door.’

The man stepped back and swiveled his head around. ‘Belinda’s boyfriend?’

‘Yes, getting on well, don’t you think? Quite unlike the girl to speak to any man for such an extraordinary length of time, let alone one she’s only just met.’

‘But, but…’ The man continued to stare.

‘Oh, there’s nothing between them, not yet, and not for a long time, but there will be.’

‘And you know how?’

‘Oh, Simon, and here was me thinking you had it all figured out.’

It came as a shock when, for the first time that night, his lady companion addressed him by name, but it shouldn’t have, he really should have known that something like this would occur eventually and that April would join him soon. He’d died too long ago, that was all. Too many decades had passed and too much had taken place that he didn’t know about. And she had changed so much. He'd always thought it a shame and a little unfair that those on the other side of life could only ever view what they themselves had been part of whilst in it...

April and Belinda’s boyfriend, eh? Well, he supposed she’d be heading off to reunite with him now, cheating old ghost that he was, and that was perhaps as it should be. After all, he was, and always had been, more her type as well as more her age.