‘Kiss the bride?’ questioned the groom.
‘Yes, you may kiss the bride,’ repeated the vicar.
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Why wouldn’t you want to do that?’
‘Don’t see the point. I’ve kissed her a zillion times already. What’s so special about now?’
‘Because it’s symbolic of Almighty God granting you licence to engage in physical union. It’s traditional.’
‘But suppose she doesn’t want to be kissed?’ queried the groom, warming to the occasion and the knowledge of an audience to his rear.
‘Of course she wants to be kissed.’
‘Why’
‘Because she is now your wife.’
‘Oh, I see. Now she’s my wife she’s supposed to want whatever I want to give her?’
‘Within reason, yes. We’re not talking about bad thing like cruelty or abuse here, we’re talking about love.’
‘What’s love got to do with it?’
‘Why, kissing is an expression of love.’
‘Oh, come off it. People kiss for all sorts of reasons. It’s generally an act of affection, but love has to be a whole lot more than that if it’s to have any validity.’
‘That may well be,’ replied the vicar, putting his nose in the air for the first time, wholly possessed of the illusion that he had gained the high moral ground from which there could be no question of losing the argument, ‘but what you must understand, young man, is that the purest form of love is the only quality which sanctions any form of physical union. God decrees it, and so God permits it.’
‘Oh right,’ replied the groom, suppressing a snigger so as not to embarrass the young woman standing next to him. ‘Seems to me it’s more about libido than love, but let’s turn this argument around the other way. Why do you not say to the bride “You may now kiss the groom?” Why does God only give permission to the male half of the double act?’
The vicar’s mouth remained closed, but made a brief movement not dissimilar to that of a cow’s when chewing the cud. His nose dropped to its more familiar position, and then he said:
‘That’s far too complex a matter to be discussed here. The service needs to be wound up so that the day might continue as planned. Are you going to kiss the bride or not?’
‘Well, you’re right there, vicar. I suppose we’d better get on with using up all that money that’s been spent on cars, and caterers, and photographers, and licences, and poncy clothes, and bands that play music nobody wants to listen to because they can’t hear themselves think, and all the rest of the hangers on. You do realise that it could probably have provided a rare good meal for every homeless person in the country?’
He turned to the young woman standing next to him and asked:
‘Do you want me to kiss you?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘as long as you have no objection to me kissing you back. There’s something kind of… well… cute about it. It seals the bargain, as it were; puts a nice full stop at the bottom of the agreement.’
And so the bride and groom kissed, and the organ began its traditional dirge, and everybody was happy at last. The groom’s mother stopped squirming in her seat, and the bride’s mother – who was a lawyer by profession – lost what mild sense of discomfort she had been feeling and realised that the whole thing had been rather interesting after all.
Soon the radiant May sun shone benevolently on the assembled collection of couple, family and guests, the men languishing in the delusion that they were as smart as smart can be, and a whole monstrous regiment of women looking absurd in even more monstrous hats, all applauding and throwing bits of paper around for somebody else to pick up later. And a good day was had by all.
(And this whole episode arose entirely out of my having looked at a photograph which had been languishing in my inbox for four years, two months and ten days. Amen.)
No comments:
Post a Comment