CHAPTER 69
The wedding carried on in as traditional a way as can be imagined, despite it taking place in a glorified tent on a golf course. We had the speeches, and the toasts, and Des and his minions delivered a meal of surprising originality and variety. He had set up a line of barbecues for those who needed the full Aussie, but had stationed a couple of his kitchen staff in strategic positions to ensure food was cooked, and I noticed we had no chicken or pork. Sensible man.

We posed in various numbers and combinations for photos formal, and tried to ensure we weren’t caught doing anything too outrageous by photos, and video, casual. There were the essential ‘first dance’, cake cutting and so on, but given the day’s heat, many people simply settled into groups large or small, after expressing their best wishes in the direction of Maz and me. Bets and her man were deep in conversation with the Butts, while her offspring were doing their best not to disturb/molest/etc the couple of quokkas which were eying god knew what. I was under the impression they were herbivores, and in true Aussie style our meal was well beyond omnivory.

Maz and I settled down with a ‘sharing plate’ of sea food, courtesy of Murdo, and I introduced her properly to Neil, who finally seemed to be emerging from the slapping he had received from jet lag. He was straight to the point, as ever, which made much more sense following his confession.

“I see you were right about the beer, Mike. I could murder a good ale. Maz, lovely to meet you properly. Kids have asked a couple of times about you, so I said I’d bring pictures home. I have a list that Enfys and Alys devised between them”

He laughed out loud all of a sudden.

“They’ve even drawn pictures in case I forget what the names refer to. I must show you the echidna picture Alys gave me”

Maz squeezed my hand, I assume as a hint she was going to do a little digging.

“You’re the man looking after Alys?”

He shot me a quick look, but Maz defused the possible misunderstanding.

“Mike and I do our best not to keep secrets from each other. And the Butts know about her, so how could I not? I’m sorry if I have overstepped, but please believe I have nothing but concern for her wellbeing. How is she doing?”

Neil took a mouthful of beer before he spoke, then grinned at me wryly.

“A trick Maddy taught me, that. We spoke a lot about filters and stuff, and she came up with an idea from radio phone-in programmes, where they add a delay between things being said and them being broadcast, just in case they get someone sweary or nasty. Before I speak, I do something to delay it, even better if it’s like drinking or eating, as it literally stops me talking”

I patted Neil on the arm, now free of his suit jacket.

“You don’t need to, mate”

“Ah Mike, sharing is right and proper. Hiya, Maz. As I sort of told this one last night, I am a bit sort of special needs in a couple of ways. Sort of somewhere between a common or garden trainspotter and Asperger’s”

Maz looked a little lost, so I just said to her, “Trainspotters. Like twitchers, but they collect train engine numbers”

Neil was grinning again.

“Yup! They even publish books listing them so that they can tick them off. Believe it or not, they also do carriage number lists. What’s a twitcher?”

Maz smiled at him.

“People who treat birdwatching birds as list ticking”

Neil was nodding before she had finished speaking.

“I see what you mean. With me, it’s detail. Maddy and I were in business together, photography”

Maz asked if it was a specialist service, but before my stare got too sharp she was blushing.

“Mike, love, you KNOW I don’t mean them; they just pop out… oh, stop it! Maddy?”

Neil winced.

“My late partner”

“Oh, I am so sorry, Neil!”

“It’s all right. It’s just, well, sometimes it’s hard not to fall back into old patterns, disappear into the Nerdiverse again, without her to press the pause button. She… Look, Maz: you know when a mother just says her child’s name, with a sort of hint of threat, when they’re being a little on the edge of the naughty step?”

“I do”

“Well, Maddy had a way of saying my name to pause me, if I was getting a bit overwhelmed, or if she saw I was about to really act on some sudden impulse, but it was always with love”

“Neil, please don’t feel you need to tell us stuff that’s still raw, painful”

He looked at her silently for a few seconds, before smiling and taking another sip from his stubby.

“That was actually a bit funny. I thought of something, paused, then realised it was absolutely spot on. Maz, losing her will always be painful. I know about Mike’s loss, but both of us are still here, and we have a duty to help our lost ones live on, somehow. Going to sound really pretentious, this, but I don’t care. Maddy had a way of looking at the world, which was part of her photography as well as of her soul. She helped me see the world her way, sort of, and so I try and act in ways she would have approved of. Might not make much sense when I say it like that, but I know what I mean, and that works”

Maz looked at me, eyebrows raised, and mouthed ‘Told about Alan’. I shook my head, and her mouth twisted a little before turning back to Neil.

“My beloved here has told you about Carolyn, so I will simply say that my first husband was also a photographer/ I will simply say ‘Boxing Day Tsunami’ and leave it there. This is, well, a day for love, and that should be all-encompassing. Oh, and I got what you meant, and absolutely agree. Tell us about your photography, Neil, yours and Maddy’s, if you want”

He put down his bottle, eyes on something distant, then smiled.

“She was an artist, Maz, very much a sculptor in light. And that was her term, not mine, because I don’t do clever words. We both love monochrome work, but she also did colour, and much more in the way of living things than I do. She taught me about that. I could never have done today without her… training? Education. Better word. And I’ve just surprised myself by coming up with a better one: illumination. She let a lot of light into my world. Brought a lot of her own. When…”

Once again, he drifted away, but obviously into memory rather than some fugue state of whatever it’s called. Another smile, which transformed his face.

“Do you both know the Angel of the North?”

Maz shook her head, so I explained.

“Massive Gormley sculpture near Newcastle---”

Neil interrupted, “Gateshead”, then laughingly apologised.

“I still do that, even after her. Mike’s correct. A massive iron sculpture of a standing man, but his outstretched arms are aeroplane wings. As wide as an airliner’s, and the whole thing is rusty, deliberately so. It was early on in our… It was in the very first days of me and her as being together, and we were on my Kwak Thou. Parked up with three hard cases full of kit, and I was using a mini tripod and a macro lens and…”

He reached out for his bottle, drained it, and grinned.

“You don’t need a kit list. Anyway, macro lens is one for taking extreme close-ups. I wanted some of the corrosion patterns, like the way rust can form scales, as well as the seepage marks on the plinth. I also did some of my usual shoot-straight up photos. The rust ones in colour, the vertical stuff in black and white. Maddy loved the foreshortened stuff as well; in fact, that was probably the first time we ever spoke, at an exhibition she was giving. Anyway… there am I concentrating on stained concrete, and she’s watching a family. Kid’s birthday party, and I hear her shutter sound five times, tack-tack-tack-tack-tack. She liked to fire off shots like that, just to be sure. Where… Yes. The little girl had a huge helium balloon, one of those foil things, shaped like a unicorn, ‘Happy sixth birthday’ or similar written on it, and she’s lost hold of the string. Balloon’s flown straight past the Angel, and one of Maddy’s shots caught it just right, so that it looks like the Angel’s caught it.

“Now, that’s amazing, but Maddy being Maddy, she’s also done the same trick with the family, caught them staring, mouths open, little girl pointing. I would never have thought of that, and I certainly wouldn’t have done what she did afterwards, which was to introduce herself to the family, explain what she did for a living and ask permission to use their images. She sent them proofs once we’d done the dark room bit, and it became one of our top sellers. Maddy said it was our tennis girl”

Once again, Maz looked lost, so I murmured, “Picture of girl in a tennis dress, seen from behind, scratching her bare bum”

Maz snorted.

“Oh, I do know THAT one! All the, I don’t know what to call the shops, they all stocked it”

Neil was nodding.

“Yup. Major source of income for us, that. Maddy did exhibitions every so often, and there was always a mix of other snappers, confused or interested members of the public, and buyers for shops like Mankind and Athena. ‘Angel and Unicorn’ brought in a steady return”

He smiled, but it was so full of sadness. I could have wept.

“Pass me another bottle, Mike, please? Anyway, Maddy and me. Both damaged goods. I have explained about myself, but I am not going into the details there. Maddy was… Maddy had been abused. Shit early life, but she was a true romantic, a believer in True Romance, some day my Prince will come, all of that glittery rainbow stuff. She was also, well, if this is a bit too much information, sorry, but she had healthy physical appetites”

He spent a while on his fresh bottle, Maz, as patient as ever, squeezing my hand.

“She did her best to chase her own unicorn, Maz. Each time, she would end up suffering sometimes physically. Then we met. Each of us, well, broken toys. We clicked, things happened. Good things. We set up a partnership, and we were real partners. She and I… when the law changed, we got married. It was like our first time in a pub together”

He went away into a memory, before smiling at me as he returned.

“Nothing special. Just, we had been telling our stories, getting it all out, and I asked if I could hold her, and she just said she was about to ask me the same thing. When we proposed, it was just about the same. I had booked us a posh table in a restaurant, planning to do the big ask, and she decided that it would make a suitable time for her to ask me. Our thoughts were sort of joined at the hip, so we did the ring thing, and found a date in the Registry office, and it seemed there were bloody unicorns and rainbows, and I was hers, and she was mine. That’s why… Well”

Maz reached across to take his hand, which warmed me, although it was exactly the sort of thing I loved her for.

“Neil, if you don’t want to answer, I will understand, but I don’t want to make assumptions. What you said about changing laws: was Maddy like Alys?”

He just nodded, and my wife left her seat to wrap her arms around him.

“Then my beloved husband and I can be sure she is in the safest pair of hands possible. Now, let’s all dry our eyes, as that’s more than enough for the day. Where are you taking our bike?”