8. Reception Frolics

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN THINGS (8)

The fish and chips were splendid and it was late afternoon by the time I’d bade the Professor goodbye and returned home. His strange and wonderful chair was beginning to have a profound effect on me as I used to to bring back details in memories that I;d thought must be ninety percent forgotten.

So back home that afternoon I had a great deal going on in my mind, enough to send me to lie down on my sofa with the television off as I tried to rebuild the past from the little bits I thought I’d had lurking inside my head. I mean, how could it possibly be that I’d forgotten that little bit of misbehaviour from a bridesmaid I’d not met before the reception and myself, actually in a corner of what was a small cloakroom? And how on Earth had we even dared to even think of doing it?

But I had forgotten. Completely, as if it had never been. Utterly, as if some mechanism had taken hold of a piece of my memory and locked it away where the sun never shines.

But worse was to come.

I don’t know enough about the human brain to pass judgements on what might be right or wrong and why a man can forget the unforgettable for half a century, but I’d forgotten a fat portion of life experience before I found myself sitting in Dingle’s chair and rediscovering it, and saw that far from being worthy of dismissal it was the most exciting time of my life thus far. I’d done ‘it’ with a bridesmaid in her bridesmaid gown! In a dark corner and with her in the driving seat the two of us had gone at each other both hammer and tongs, for a blind and very silly moment not at all bothered about being discovered by anyone.

Yet we had been discovered. We had been seen as the frantic beauty of human love-making took complete and utter control of us, but in Dingle’s chair a more moderate and less emotionally aroused me had been far more aware of what was going on. As a kind of glory swept over me, my mind’s eye had seen something and obviously forgotten it.

I’d seen the watcher. The face peering between a row of coats, the horrified eyes fixing us with a mixture of contempt and hatred as we went about a great deal of just about everything two people can go about intimately together. I’d seen Katie’s mother, the severe and very upright Mrs Bangles, eyes piercing behind a confused frown as she took in the glory and splendour of the two of us going about it as if there was going to be no tomorrow. I don’t know why we were behaving like that: as far as I knew I was sexually a virgin with not a single notch on my bed post, and so, most likely I thought, was Katie. Maybe it was the weak fruity cocktail we’d both sampled at the reception. Probably not, but I needed something to blame other than myself.

Because the memory had savagely recreated itself as I sat in the chair, and I’d been wrong.

There was a monumental explosion surging throughout my body at precisely the same moment as a voice, Katie's mother, screeched out for Heaven’s sake, Katie, what in the name of goodness do you think you’re doing?

And the girl had extricated herself from my grip, but almost certainly a moment too late as the aforementioned explosion surged overwhelmingly from me.

“I don’t think she noticed,” Katie whispered in my ears.

“This is not the sort of behaviour I expect from you, young lady!” hissed her mother.

“We weren’t doing anything mum … not what you thought, anyway...” Katie’s voice was stammering as she searched for an innocent explanation of what would never be seen as innocent even if we lived for a thousand years.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Bangles, I’d lost a cuff link...” That was me, improvising.

“I was just telling Roger here about Corfu, where you went on your honeymoon with that man before I was born...” That man? The thought that there just might be an interesting sub-plot to this bridesmaid crossed my mind.

“I think it fell on the floor, but I’ve got all tangled up in Katie’s dress...”

“I’ve never been so ashamed of anyone ever in all my life, and, young man, whoever you are, please straighten your trousers and let go of my daughter now!”

“I’m Roger...”

“And I’ll see you at home, Katie, where you can be sure you’ll receive a large piece of my mind!”

“I am old enough, mum… older than you were when you had me!”

“Here it is! I can put my shirt sleeve back together again!”

And I watched as a severe looking woman, Katie’s mother, Mrs Bangles, started to march her daughter off.

“Let go of me, mum! I’m not a child!” The girl pulled free, indignant to the last.

“Then why are you behaving like one?”

“Children don’t do that, mum, at least I never did when I was a child!”

“Wait till I tell your father...”

“What’s it got to do with him? He doesn’t live with us any more. He saw sense and found a pretty young woman who wouldn’t be complaining and nagging him all the time. He could see who you were years ago! He saw sense when I was a baby!”

“Now that’s cruel of you, Katie! Very, very cruel. I was young once, you know! And nothing’s as black and white as it seems.”

“You young, mother? That was before Noah took to sailing a zoo round the Med!”

Then Katie took me by her one free hand, I think I must have done what her mum had asked me to regarding my trousers, and the three of us in a kind of absurd row dragged each other in the direction of the main reception.

“Been having some fun, youth?” asked Perry, grinning at me as we swept past him like a string of furies.

“Really you should wait for your own honeymoon, brave boy,” added Amanda to me, clutching Perry as if terrified he might desert her.

“Stay with me!” hissed Mrs Bangles.

And the three of us, Katie, her mother and me, found ourselves outside the hall where the reception was still going on full blast, with the Beatles assuring the entire Universe that she loves you, so it can’t be bad…

“If I ever see you again I’ll have the police on you!” snapped Mrs Bangles to me while we were still emulating a chain of discrete bodies before becoming, thankfully, disentangled.

“It wasn’t anything, mum,” protested Katie, “I don’t know what you thought you were seeing, but it wasn’t anything … you know, wrong like you thought it was.”

“I know what you were doing, young lady! I’m not blind, you know! And you, you filthy piece of scum...” That was aimed at me, “clear off before I do something you’ll regret!”

And I had to go. Like a little boy lost, I saw myself almost staggering off with the prettiest girl in the Universe still being clutched by a harridan of the worst order.

“I’m sorry Mrs...” I stammered, though in truth I wasn’t.

Then my heart started sighing as they disappeared from sight, back into the reception, and I knew why. I’d done the dreaded it with a girl, and she’d been the prettiest creature in a floral frock I’d ever thought I’d be seen with.

I most assuredly was a man and my flesh worked like flesh should work. The memory, once lost, was razor sharp and I felt absurdly pleased.

© Peter Rogerson 15.06.20