GOLDEN WEDDING - James C Bernthal

"Happy anniversary, darling"

A lovely sentiment, and one which Jeff couldn’t help but feel would have meant a lot more if he’d known of any happy anniversary. All he was aware of was a fifty-golden-year-strong loveless marriage. Well, that wasn’t really fair: it was a semi-loveless marriage.

It was daily ritual time again. Jeff was treated to a nice gummy kiss from his blind spouse while he made mental note of the last rites. "Dining with Sir James tonight, dear," he murmured, regretting it straight away.

"Excellent!" Doris was gleeful. Like a child introduced to an Ice-cream Sundae a decade before it goes anorexic. "I shall don my special dress."

That was exactly what Jeff had been afraid of. The gaudy polyester crimson monstrosity from TESCO’s reject pile (from the days when Doris had worked there in the ‘80s) was falling apart at the seams, and hardly becoming apparel for the bride of the seventy-fifth in line to a European principality.

In his turn, of course, Jeff had faced many scandals, usually involving women, with the most personal details carefully censored from the public. If he hadn’t been expected to marry a Bavarian princess at the time, maybe they would not have been. As it was, the ever witless Rt. Hon. Jeffrey Dalrymple-Le Joux had agreed that marriage was essential to distil ugly press, and quickly attached himself to the first screaming female admirer he could find, or so it had felt. The Grand Duke of Bavaria had not been amused.

Surely, who she actually was should have been enough to secure an annulment? It wasn’t so much the fact that he’d married beneath himself that upset Jeff. It was the fact that he’d married so far beneath himself.

And such social misfortune was never more rampant than when Doris took it into her head to wear the special dress to visit the acting leader of the British Pride Party. Indeed, the odds were very much in Sir James’s favour, with a view to his becoming the next Prime Minister.

That would make Jeff the Lord Chancellor. What he needed first, ideally, was a legal education, but it didn’t really matter. In composing the national anthem, God Bless England (and Other British Dominions), he knew that he had more than proven his worthiness.

The anthem’s tune had some to him quite suddenly one day in 1994 when he was tinkling on the piano. The words playing around in his head at the time were "God Strike Doris", but t he next morning at Church it had suddenly occurred to him while the vicar was droning that "God Bless England" would work just as well. He’d presented the idea, a box of Quality Streets and £3,000,000 to the prime minister at the time and the anthem had been changed effectively overnight.

When the clock struck eight, Jeff swigged from his hip-flask, which was full or Ribena (he couldn’t take alcohol after the incident), hooked his arm through his wife’s and led her outside, where a Limousine was waiting for them.

"Wait a minute, darling," said Doris at the door looking down at her legs, her head-scarf shrouding most of her face (extremely ironically, considering what was running through Jeff’s mind at that point in time). "I need my razor. We can’t have the next Prime Minster subjected to a lady’s hair!"

Odd, really, since she was wearing thick tights.

The poor Rt. Hon. Jeffrey was often embarrassed. More than once visitors had noted two decidedly masculine razors in the bathroom and wondered what he could have got up to with them. He didn’t understand really why Doris couldn’t have some sort of plastic surgery to get the perfect body. Most titled peoples wives do nowadays, he reasoned.

Doris was back and climbing into the vehicle. Driven by Holwisap the chauffeur, the couple arrived at Sir James’s residence - a converted Tudor palace. Sir James greeted them and other guests in person. A crowd of the most important people in the country, including His Royal Highness the Prince Peter, Duke of Cardiff, Earl of St. Chardonnay, had gathered to wish Jeff and Doris every success on the anniversary of their fifty golden years.

Once the dinner was finished and the drinks were being served, Sir James observed that it was starting to rain. Not used to such animosity on the part of the English weather, several guests left, completely disregarding social etiquette in an attempt tog et home. The Duke of Cardiff, who, emerging from the lavatory, discovered that he had not been the first to leave the party, looked narrowly down at his host, as if to say Oh, for the days when we could assassinate the likes of you…!

Aloud, though, he said: "My dear Sir James, that was a most salubrious meal."

Judging by the facial expressions, it was obvious to Jeff that neither man knew what the word "salubrious" meant. He glanced casually out of the window, and then looked not so casually again.

"The rain is very heavy, sir."

OF the six people in the room, four turned around: Sir James, HRH the Duke, the Hon. Freddie Warburton-Stanley and Tredwell the butler. Only Doris didn’t react, which was probably because it was unlikely that she would be addressed as "sir".

"I was addressing His Royal Highness, of course," Jeff deliberated.

"But the comment could have been aimed at anyone, couldn’t it?" replied the seventeenth grandson of Queen Penelope with a painful smile, which offended Jeff. He could at least have donned his real smile. The official grin had by no means been necessary.

Sir James, the unassuming middle-aged MP who was conspicuous for having a (now deceased) wife but no mistress, was generous in invitation. "I have ample space here to keep up the three of you fgor the night. I don’t much fancy your chances of venturing out in that rain."

Jeff, Doris and Prince Peter agreed.

"I want the room with the lace curtains!" Doris cried with delight.

"Darling," said Jeff, in tones one might have taken for sarcasm had one not known better. "I think that the best room should go to the only member opf the British Royal Family present, don’t you?"

"Well, I…"

"Besides, my dear, shouldn’t we occupy the same room? Double bed an all that, what."

Doris muttered: "Silly me."

But the Hon. Freddie Warburton had already claimed the only spare room with a double bed.

"Oh dear,2" Sir James declared. "The other four are all being decorated. You can’t sleep in there. You shall have to have what used to be the throne room. The last monarch to sit on the throne in there was Charles II, but he abandoned this palace a fortnight after the restoration, as you know. It’s where I keep all the precious artefacts that were in here when we brought it, but which serve no particular purpose. It’s more a storage room. There’s still plenty of space and an old bed, though. And a deep freezer with a couple of ice creams in if you fancy a midnight snack."

"That’s fine, Sir James."

After the Duke of Cardiff had retired to his room, the golden couple followed suit and, tapping his briefcase, Jeff marvelled at it all. Even the weather was on his side.


Doris, who was admiring the freezer, deliberately refrained from the mindless humming to which Jeff was usually treated at home. "Present location and all that, you know." Her husband delved into it, removed a box of outdated Magnum ice creams and licked his lips.

"I’m dying for some real food, aren’t you, darling?"

"I certainly am!" said Doris, any flaws in her voice resulting from her concern over spilling some of the ice cream on her special dress. It hadn’t warranted a wash in two and a half decades!

It seemed that the couple would have to wait for their ice creams. The box was so frozen that it had stuck sealed and was not undo-able. Jeff said he would go and get some scissors. So he went and got some scissors.

***

Jeff had needed to get away from the claustrophobic atmosphere that always seemed rife around Doris. He returned about ten minutes later, the scissors in his hands, and noticed that the room was empty. Just sticking out of the freezer were two high-heeled feet.

"Boris!" he cried, loudly, not caring if he woke or confused anyone. "What’s happened?"

He opened the deep freezer cautiously. There was a smile on the dead face and a tiny dart, no bigger than a sewing needle, firmly implanted in the neck. Jeff instantly recognised this as a Masonic pin and realised that his wife had been murdered. He was not unduly upset, more unduly bewildered.

Well, he reasoned, at least it saved him the job. But his murder had taken years of planning, planning that could only have transpired from the mind of one who was securely in the line of succession to a European throne, unlike this one, which although committed by a man of influence (it had to have been Sir James, the Hon. Freddie or His Royal Highness the Duke, as the rain prohibited anyone else from entering the house, and the butler was hardly likely to be a Freemason), was singularly lacking in inspiration. His plan was ironical. He had waited for years for it to become ironical - years of suffering under a doting significant other who he could do nothing about short of crime. He had even started to melt the smallest gold artefacts (there was quite a bit of bubbling molten gold by now, which he knew Sir James wouldn’t miss).

He had to have his murder!

Well, he could, couldn’t he? Actually, it worked out better this way; the hardest job had been done. All he needed to do now was to cover the inanimate corpse in molten god and after a limited degree of air-drying, but it back in the freezer. That way, he’d get a couple of hours of sleep too! There’s a first time for everything, he mused, nihilistically.

Doris would remain. Boris had died long ago and returned only intermittently. When he’;d married Doris in 1956, Jeff had had no idea about the truth, he’d just assumed that she was an incessantly ugly woman who was saving intimacy for the honeymoon. It had certainly been a honeymoon unlike any other…

But no one could ever know the shocking, shaming truth. The evidence would remain hidden forever in art.

***

The thing about gold - and one of the reasons he’d chosen this anniversary rather than the silver, when planning the event back in 1958 - is that it melts very quickly and solidifies very quickly. That was hugely convenient, as Jeff only had one night and time was getting on.

He added the final touches, filling in gaps that the gold had not reached originally with plastercine and gold paint he’d secured for the occasion. He stood back and admired the finished thing. Life like accuracy. He knew what visitors would say when they went round his house and saw it: "What a talented sculptor! That must have cost a fortune! And to think, it was presented the very day after poor Doris was kidnapped…" Of course all that had been prepared for. Jeff had written out the anonymous blackmail letters to himself one idle Sunday in the nineties, and the final unfortunate commu nication: "In spite of all your precautions, your wife died this afternoon. Her mutilated body is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean." What a pity.

As well as being quick to melt and quick to dry, gold is very heavy. Carrying the statue of what had been his doting partner for fifty years up the richly carpeted staircase, Jeff considered in self-pity the heavy burden Doris/Boris was in life and in death.

There was one thing he had to work out, though. Who was the killer? Not that it mattered very much, of course. Jeff was out of breath now, as he considered raising the question over breakfast. But that would never do, he’d give himself away. All the same, he would like to know.

One of life’s mysteries, it seemed. He dragged the dead body into the Hon. Freddie’s room, attached a scrawled note and hid it underneath the bed, carefully placing it so that the room’s occupant would trip over it first thing in the morning. Freddie’s forgetfulness was just as important as gold in this case.

***

The following morning, right on cue, Freddie discovered the beautiful but weighty statue of Doris, that fine figure of womanhood. He read the attached label, "To Jeffrey and Doris, happy anniversary, love John and Mary", ripped it up and fixed on a new one: "Jeff and Doris, happy anniversary from Freddie Warburton-Stanley." Obviously, John and Mary (whoever they were) had left the party prematurely because of the rain, forgetting to give the couple their present. Just as well, as Freddie had known in the back of his mind that there was something he’d forgotten to bring to the party.


***

"Isn’t it lovely?" Sir James was admiring the statue. It rather put his gift of vintage champagne and diamond earrings for the lady to shame. "You are lucky, Jeffrey."

"I am," said Jeff. "Where is Doris?"

Prince Peter, Duke of Cambrisdge, cleared his throat importantly. "You’re wife and I spoke last night and she told me she would be leaving in the very small hours of this morning. No doubt you were still asleep at that time."

"Indubitably," said Jeff, calmly, not knowing where this was going. "I slept like a bear last night. She does this all the time. I hope she’s alright in that rain. No doubt she’ll be back soon." And he tapped the first deleterious ransom note, which was securely inside his breast pocket.

HRH continued. "She is a very attractive lady." Too attractive, he mused, and that was why… but he did not regret his actions. Whenever this happened, whenever he felt attracted to women who turned out to be a man, they had to be eliminated. He was a direct descendent of Queen Penelope, after all. Social position, awareness, responsibility - oh, what a frightful bore.

"She looks a little windswept," said Freddie, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to have commissioned the design.

"Like an angel," Jeff concluded. "Thank you so much, Freddie. Now, dear Doris has been immortalised. She can watch over me even when she’s out of the house."

"And you thought I’d forgotten…!"

"I can think of no better wedding present on this golden occasion."

THE END

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