He checks his watch again. Another five minutes have ticked by, and there’s no sign that anyone plans on starting soon. No priest; no groom; no Pachelbel’s Canon. Where the hell is everyone? he thinks. It makes sense that Alice isn’t here, given that she’s a bridesmaid. But what about his mother? What about Ollie’s mother? What about fucking Eloise?
He hears footsteps echoing in the north aisle of the nave and sees Donna scurrying past the string quartet. Nearly knocking over the cellist’s music stand, she stops to apologize, then keeps moving.
“What’s going on?” he whispers once she’s slid into the pew beside him. Peeling himself away from the pew, he feels his shirt cling to his back. “I’m melting in this goddamned suit.”
“I don’t know.” Donna’s cheeks are flushed, and Paul can see faint paths where sweat has streaked her makeup. “She’s just—she doesn’t want to do it.”
“Doesn’t want to do what?”
“This!” Donna juts her chin toward the altar and then dabs at her forehead with a handkerchief. “She says she doesn’t want to go through with it.” Then, in case Paul didn’t understand her: “She’s saying she doesn’t want to get married.”
“Does she know that people are literally fainting from the heat in here? An old lady collapsed on the floor. Ruined her goddamned fascinator and everything.”
“Ollie’s aunt is fine. I saw her outside drinking water. And please stop saying ‘goddamned’ in church.”
“Well, does Eloise know?”
“Of course she knows.” Donna folds the handkerchief and slips it into her purse. “But right now she’s got other things on her mind.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” he asks his mother.
Donna says, “Wait. I tried talking to her, and Alice is out there now. In the meantime, there’s nothing we can do but wait for her to make up her mind.” She adds, with less than perfect conviction, “It’s her decision, after all.”
Paul stares forward toward the stained-glass window on the east face of the abbey. He squints at the figures, at the light that gives them life: Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John, talking shop with a few saints. He wonders, briefly, what it would be like to be stuck in one of those windows; to perish each time the sun went down, only to be reborn into the exact same conversation the very next morning.
The quartet plays the final notes of the nocturne. This time, no one bothers to clap.
“Excuse me,” Paul says, standing. He buttons his morning coat.
Donna takes hold of his sleeve.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Before he leaves, he leans down and kisses her cheek.
*
The sun streams through the trees that frame the abbey’s perimeter, leaving shadows across the lawn. Paul blinks at the brightness and, feeling again that he might be sick, considers ducking back into the solemnity of the church. In the air hang traces of lavender and lilac, and as he breathes them in, he steadies himself and steps out onto the grass. He doesn’t immediately see Eloise, or Alice—in front of him is the small drive that circles up to the north end of town, and then beyond that Half Moon Street, with its cadre of squat pubs and shops. He walks a bit farther, down a set of ancient stairs and toward those same shops, past some invisible barrier where the distant murmurings of the Nocturne in E-Flat Major are suffocated by the general discord of the town, and that’s when, finally, he sees her.
Eloise sits on a bench behind a low stone wall, out of view of the church. She’s alone—Alice must have returned to wherever the bridesmaids are being held, circling in their holding pattern—and next to her lies a bouquet of lilies, their petals drooping down toward the sidewalk. Across the street from where she’s sitting there’s a pub with an outside patio, and Paul watches as people drink sweaty glasses of beer and light cigarettes and check their phones, oblivious to his sister’s presence. Looking down on her from where he’s standing, he notices that she’s watching them, too, and he wonders if she’s thinking the same thing he is: that it would be so easy to join them, to order a few drinks, to say fuck it and make friends with a new bunch of assholes who don’t know them and how awful they’ve managed to become.
He tilts his neck from side to side, feeling the joints crack and pull, and he walks the rest of the way to the bench.
“Hi,” he says, when he’s close enough for her to hear.
Startled, she turns and sees him.
“Oh, God.”
Unsure of how to respond, he sits down next to her, moving the bouquet to the ground.
“You must be loving this,” Eloise says.
Paul shakes his head. “I’m too hungover to be opportunistic.”
Across the street at the pub, an empty pint glass falls from a table and shatters into pieces.
A woman in khaki capris, a Westmoreland terrier tucked beneath her left arm, unlocks one of the souvenir shops. A place called Sherborne Mews.
“What are we doing out here, Eloise?” Paul says.
“I don’t know.”
“You’d better damned well know. It’s your wedding.”
“I don’t know if I can do this, Paul.”
A plane flies overhead, cutting a cloud in two.
“Oh, no,” he says. “No. You don’t get to rent out a church that was considered old when Henry the fucking Eighth was around. You don’t get to haul your whole family across the goddamned ocean. You don’t get to make our entire lives about your happiness just to say that you don’t know.”
She looks down. Her shoulders are bare, and in the sun her skin has begun to freckle.
Paul continues, “I mean, people are on the verge of death in that church, Eloise. Have you been in there? Have you felt how hot it is? Hell is cooler than that church is today.”
Her cheeks tremble, and he notices for the first time that she’s started to cry.
“Christ,” he says.
She dabs beneath each eye with the back of her index finger, and her nostrils flare.
A cab crawls down Half Moon Street and slows in front of them. Paul waves its driver on, and then watches as it turns around a low brick wall.
“I was so awful to you last night,” Eloise says.
Paul nods. “You were. But then, I also talked about getting fucked in front of your in-laws. We’re even. Eloise, come on. Let’s get this done.”
Paul moves to stand, but she stays seated, so he lowers himself back down again. The wool trousers press against the backs of his thighs in damp, warm patches.
“I told my dad to leave,” she says. “I said I didn’t want him here after what he did to you and Mom.”
“I pissed on him. If I’d pissed on me, I’d’ve slugged me, too.”
“You know that girl wasn’t even a guest? She was some cook from the catering company. He met her when he was waiting for the bathroom next to the kitchen.” She scratches a spot behind her ear. “I lied to Mom. She asked where he was today, and I told her he was running late.”
“I think that was a good call,” Paul says, and he genuinely means it. “Keep the body count low. Now, let’s go.”