Chapter 13

The morning of the wedding dawned. I was scared, excited, a little horny, and incredibly nervous. I had spent the previous night wearing Sandra’s knickers. It was possible that I would not see them again after today, despite what Mrs Clarke had told me. I started to get dressed for the wedding just before eleven. I carefully showered, shaved, brushed my teeth and all that sort of thing. I put on the knickers I had chosen, then sat on the bed, unmoving, just staring at my suit. I was still like that when the doorbell went.

I looked at the clock. It was almost midday. I had no idea how long I had just sat there. I think Bondy was supposed to be coming to collect me or something. I quickly put the suit trousers on and went down to open the door. I was slightly startled to see not only Bondy, but Mrs Walmsley as well.

“Monica has agreed to be my final concubine,” Bondy told me with a shark-like grin. I looked at Mrs Walmsley and realised they had probably been bonking like bunnies until relatively recently. From a combination of Mrs Crisp’s videos and the twins’ videos, I was pretty certain I knew what ‘well fucked’ looked like. It looked like the pair in front of me.

I smiled. “Good for the both of you.”

“We’ve come to get you dressed,” Mrs Walmsley announced. “You’ve no father, so mother of the bride and best man will have to do.” She grinned impishly at me.

“I’m just getting dressed now,” I demurred.

“You’re a bit slow. We need to be leaving for the registry office in about twenty minutes. Thirty at the absolute latest. Sandra’s already on her way with her father, and ideally you should be there before her. You need to be there a good forty-five minutes early. Come on.”

Although Mrs Walmsley actually saw the knickers I was wearing, she didn’t seem to notice anything odd. As I dressed, I slipped Sandra’s knickers into one pocket, another pair of Mum’s into another, a pair of Jo’s into a third, and a pair whose provenance was unknown into a fourth. A couple more, one from Mrs Crisp went into inside pockets. All were backup in case I wasn’t able to take the small case through.

When I was as finished as I thought I could be, Bondy and Mrs Walmsley looked at me critically. “My shoes are downstairs,” I said.

Bondy left the room, saying he would get them.

“I think you should have a little handkerchief showing on your breast pocket,” Mrs Walmsley said. “Do you have any?”

“Um. No. Sorry. I don’t.” Then I had a very wicked thought. “Does it have to be white?”

“No. Why?”

“Could it be pale pink?”

“Pale pink? Absolutely. But if it’s not a hanky?”

Gingerly I pulled Sandra’s knickers from my pocket. I felt myself blushing slightly as I explained. “Sandra gave them to me as a joke a few weeks ago.” Mrs Walmsley frowned at me but said nothing. “Nothing happened between us,” I said hurriedly. “It was the day we got engaged. After I gave her the ring she said she wanted to give me a present. I said a kiss, but she said that wasn’t a present. Then after we got to your place she went to the loo and came back and gave me those.”

Mrs Walmsley just looked at me steadily for a few moments. She shook her head slowly. I don’t think she was too impressed, but I also don’t think she was actually cross. She took her daughter’s knickers and carefully folded them into my top pocket so that just a tiny triangle of pale pink showed. There was no sign that they might be anything other than the hanky they appeared to be.

She stood back and looked at me critically. “Turn around,” Mrs Walmsley told me after a long moment of critical inspection.

I did so and there was a rustling behind me.

“Okay,” she said a few moments later.

I turned to see that she was folding another, white, hanky ... no! They were her own knickers. She’d just taken them off. She gave me a hint of a smile and a wink.

“Come on.”

I picked up the bag I was to take, and surreptitiously slipped another pair, I had no idea which ones, into the pocket that had originally had Sandra’s knickers in. I was carrying seven about my person and wearing one. Plus my bag had another forty or so in.

Bondy was just coming up the stairs with my shoes, but was waved back down again. Mrs Walmsley tucked the folded knickers into Bondy’s top pocket. “Handkerchief,” she told him. “It’s folded carefully. Don’t take it out. At least not yet.”

He just nodded, oblivious, and I hid a smile as I put my shoes on. I would con him into taking them out after the ceremony.

“All set?” Mrs Walmsley asked me.

I nodded.

“Good. Then let’s go. I still want to see my daughter before the wedding.”

I put my small case into the back of the car and we headed off to Watford and the registry office. As we got closer, I felt I could hardly breathe. Everything was happening so fast and I could feel myself starting to panic, my breath coming in little gasps.

Mrs Walmsley smiled and took my hand and just held it. It sort of helped, but right at that moment I wished it was my parents that were with me. I wanted a hug off my mum. I wanted my dad to be sat next to me telling some of his awful jokes.

I can honestly say I don’t remember much about the first part. I was taken into a small office for a brief interview with the registrar, who basically was just checking that I was legally allowed to marry, that I wasn’t being forced to marry, and that I was in fact the person who was supposed to be being married.

She showed me some paperwork, and gave me a quick explanation of some of the things that would be said during the ceremony.

“I’ll point out that this place is registered to hold weddings, and I’ll introduce myself and my assistant,” I was told.

“What do you mean registered?” I asked. “Isn’t this the Registry Office?”

She chuckled. “Actually it’s the register office, not ‘registry office’. And if you really want to be pedantic, it’s also not spelled with capital letters.”

“Oh, sorry.”

She shook her head, still smiling. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone calls it the registry office so it’s become a sort of de-facto, unofficial name. Except in legal documents. To answer your question though, you can’t get married just any old where. You can, sort of, in Scotland, but not in England and Wales. Here, for a marriage to be legal, it has to be held in a place licensed to hold weddings, and those licences are neither easy nor cheap to get. The licence for this place is specific to two rooms, and two rooms only, and only lasts for five years.”

“And if they weren’t it would be an illegal marriage?”

“No,” she said slowly. “An illegal marriage would be one where one or both parties are not allowed to marry, yet where they try and do it ‘legally’. So a father and daughter. A fifteen-year-old or someone who is already married, for example. If the place wasn’t licensed, there would be nothing wrong with the ceremony necessarily, it just wouldn’t be recognised in law.”

“Ah.”

She frowned slightly, her mouth tightening. “It’s how some people get around the bigamy laws. They have a wedding, but one party doesn’t realise that, because it’s not taken place in a legally recognised location, the marriage itself is also not recognised.”

“So one person thinks they are married, but in fact they’re not?”

“Yep! Got it in one.”

A really silly idea popped into my head. Would there be time to ‘marry’ Mrs Clarke as well. In a non-legal, ceremony. Maybe, just maybe, if I’d had the time, and I’d known about this before, I could have suggested it, but it was far too late now. It was a silly idea and I immediately pushed it out of my mind.

We finished off the brief interview after which I was shown into the main room, where many of the guests were already waiting. Bondy and I hung around, chatting casually. I have absolutely no idea what about; more than once Bondy had to ask a question a second time, or tell me something he’d already told me. He was actually amused by it, for which I was thankful. I suppose he could have been annoyed.

“I should be really angry with you,” he told me at one point, a small, wry, smile on his face. “And in a sense I suppose I am a bit upset.”

I looked surprised.

“Oh? Why?” I frowned,

“Mrs Clarke?”

“What about her?”

“You told me she was a sponsor. I found out this morning she’s actually a concubine and promised to someone else.”

“Oh. I genuinely thought she would be a sponsor,” I told him.

“But you’ve known for a little while now that that wasn’t true.”

“Well, yes.”

He gave me an arch look. “I know she’s coming with you, and I know why. I guess I’m okay with that now, but even so I’m a little, well upset I suppose.”

“But you’re not angry with me?”

He sighed. “No. You’re just one lucky ... bar-steward!”

I smiled slightly at his evasion of the ‘bastard’ epithet. “I really did think she’d be a sponsor. It was weeks later that I found out.”

He nodded.

“You’ve got Mrs Walmsley though,” I continued. “And it looks like you and she have already um, well, you know.”

He smiled. “Yeah. We have. She’s not the prettiest woman, but she’s a real sex-bomb.” He looked at me speculatively. “You and Sandra?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

He just nodded. “Mrs Clarke?”

I shook my head. “She wouldn’t allow it. Said it would be bad for discipline and stuff.”

Bondy looked a little surprised, even a little bit relieved. “Mmm.”

“How long have you and Mrs Walmsley been ... well...”

Bondy blushed. “Over two weeks. Nearly three.”

“And how long... ?”

He gave an embarrassed smile. “Almost since the start. When you were out with Sandra last Saturday I was with her. She ... let’s just say I staggered home.”

I gave a soft laugh. “Holy wow. But what about Mr Walmsley?”