Chapter 19: The Reception

“How come Martha is invited to the wedding and the reception?” the bride inquired of her husband, “and what is the real quarrel between you. How did it start?”

“It started because I wouldn’t tell her my baptismal name, and expected her to call me Mr. Ransome, as most of the community do. My chief argument with her is that she then tried to make me look mean and foolish in public. She failed, of course, most spectacularly in the most blatant case, the famous episode of the five pence piece. Tell me, Mrs. Ransome, do you know how much I actually gave to the fund for the roof?”

“No,” said Jennifer after a moment’s hesitation, still not quite believing that she was now Mrs. Ransome, “There are rumours of course, anything from a hundred thousand to a million pounds or more. The roof didn’t cost a million did it? Daddy said that it would have cost several tens of thousands just to patch it, let alone replace it, but he said it was probably just a few hundreds of thousands, nowhere near a million.”

“In the immortal words of a bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, ‘You don’t need to worry your pretty little head about that’. I think that particular bard’s name was Fred. But to return to the uninvited guest, I think we should refer to her as ‘The Unmentionable One’. And the guard, sorry, waiter on the door was told about her, and she will be the only one who is allowed in without an invitation and without any fuss.”

“But why?”

“I won’t descend to her level. She would love to be able to say that she was kept out of her own church, but she wasn’t, and I won’t let her say she was chucked out of our reception, so a place is set for her and she decides whether to use it or not. She is at the end of the top table and she will be escorted there by one of my sons. She is sitting next to the Bishop, who will invite her to say grace. Everyone knows we have had a falling out, but I’m not going to prolong it. After all I won the top prize.”

“The top prize? What do you mean?” she asked mystified.

“You, silly.”

A few minutes later the top table guests were assembling in a small side room and Martha was asked by the Bishop and a personable young man to go with them. Expecting to be asked to leave, she was amazed to be told, “You are sitting between me and this young man,” by the Bishop, “I don’t suppose you know Alan Ransome, David’s elder son, Reverend Martha Strong, our Vicar.”

Shocked that she was not being ejected from the reception Martha said, “Pleased to meet you. Do I really have a seat for the meal?”

“Of course,” said Alan, “We are on the top table. Where else do you think the Bishop and clergy would sit?”

All Martha could think was, The bastard. He makes it impossible for me to leave without being in the wrong. I thought I would be excluded, but no, Mr. Moneybags makes it look as though I have accepted this wedding as normal, when I know he is an absolute swine and Jennifer is not really interested in men. She was even more horrified when the Bishop ‘invited’ her to say grace before the meal.

During the dancing and conversations after the meal, Martha had still not managed to tear herself away from the festivities, and found herself dancing in turn with both of David’s sons who seemed not to know that she hated their father, or that she believed he had almost wrecked her career and had actually ruined her love life. She contemplated telling, at least the older one, that it was her life partner whom David had stolen to be his bride, but thought better of it. That would, in any case, have been irrelevant as Jennifer had already told them that she had been the Vicar’s lesbian sexual partner, totally against church law and practise.