Father of the Bride (18 page)

They slid like eels through the melee.

He decided to go to the marquee and investigate. As he started for the door he tripped over a dog which, he noted, was being followed by another dog. To the best of his knowledge he had never seen either animal before. However, even if they had been his two favorite canines this did not seem a proper place for dogs.

A lovely young creature approached.

“Mr
. Banks,” she cried. “What a darling,
darling
wedding. Kay looked too,
too
beautiful. You should be so
proud
, Mr. Banks. And Buckley’s just
divine
. We are all crazy for him. And Mrs. Banks looked too, too—”

“Where the hell are all the dogs coming from?” interrupted Mr. Banks. He had just noted a brown and tan number entering the room through the legs grouped in the French door. It was apparently in search of some friend. “Is this a Bide-a-Wee Home or a wedding?” He wondered if the Buckingham Caterers were beginning to pour his champagne into the neighborhood crossbreeds.

His unknown companion gave a silvery laugh. “Oh, Mr. Banks, that’s
cute
. The place does seem to be getting filled up with pooches, doesn’t it.”

“Listen,” said Mr. Banks. “Do me a favor. Get hold of Tommy or Ben, if they haven’t left town, and tell them that part of an usher’s job is to throw out livestock.”

“Oh, I will, Mr. Banks. I will. That’s darling.” She gave him a look that might have meant anything—but didn’t—and disappeared into the crowd. He made another start for the marquee, but the impromptu reunion in the French door had grown to such proportions that he gave it up for the moment and pushed his way about the room at random.

Later he could remember a roar of voices—and people making faces at him—and making faces back at people—but it was a scene which would remain forever out of focus in his memory. Eventually he felt a tug at his sleeve. Kay and Buckley were standing behind him, Kay holding her crumpled train over her arm and grinning.

“Hi, Pops. We’re going to get ready now. Don’t you want to see me hurl my bridal bouquet?”

He followed them to the front hall while the wedding guests whooped noisily after. Kay and Buckley were already looking down from the landing.

Mr. Banks was astonished to discover an entirely new expression on Kay’s face. Vanished the ethereal look she had worn as they started down the aisle. Now her ordinarily placid features radiated a self-confident, roguish gaiety that he had never seen before.

For twenty-four years Kay had been as satisfactory a daughter as any man could desire. His only complaint, if one could use so strong a word, was that she was too repressed, too shy—not a scared rabbit exactly, but lacking that bold grasp of the realities which he admired in women.

He had thought of her thus handicapped, leaving the cloisters and facing the world, in all the intimacy of married life and with a man whom she scarcely knew. Until this moment it had seemed to Mr. Banks that convention forced a transition that was brutal in its suddenness and completeness—a transition floodlighted by a glare of publicity which convention also demanded. From Mr. Banks’ point of view it was enough to make the boldest maiden hesitate.

Yet here was Kay, who only a few days before had been telling him that she didn’t have the nerve to go through with it, standing beside Buckley on the landing, looking over the faces below her with all the happy, relaxed assurance of a hunting dog which has just retrieved a bird.

His eye rested balefully for a moment on Buckley. Ordinarily a shy fellow in crowds, he now had a look of smug possessiveness that sent an unexpected wave of irritation down Mr. Banks’ spine.

The maid of honor was jockeying for position under the landing. Kay was waiting for her with the bridal bouquet poised. Small chance for the eager virgins clamoring with outstretched arms, their faces expressing in half-light what glowed so brightly and unashamed in Kay’s. It struck Mr. Banks that the accepted belief that men married women was a colossal hoax—they were merely married
by
women.

There was a shrill yelping as the bridal bouquet came sailing over the rail and fell, with its usual precision, into the outstretched arms of the maid of honor. Then Kay and Buckley disappeared around the corner of the stairs followed by the bridal party.

The crowd began to spread out again and Mr. Massoula’s walking dispensaries, apparently refreshed by the pause, went into action with renewed enthusiasm. Again Mr. Banks was struck by the need for taking inventory and he turned once more toward the marquee. Ralph Dixon collared him at the French door. He was a lawyer who took two things in life seriously. One was Ralph Dixon, the other the law.

“Hello, Banks,” he said.

Mr. Banks wished Ralph Dixon wouldn’t call him “Banks.” He considered himself equally successful as a lawyer and they were the same age. He realized that the English all addressed one another this way, but he wasn’t English and when addressed as “Banks” he always felt like a stage butler.

He should, of course, have said, “Hello, Dixon.” Instead he said, “Hi, Ralph.”

“Nice wedding,” said Mr. Dixon and apparently considered that he had thereby paid his tribute to the amenities. “Got a minute?”

“Well, the fact is—” began Mr. Banks with a sinking heart.

“It’s about that Shatton matter,” said Mr. Dixon. “I don’t like to be on the other side of the fence from you, Banks, and I think in this case you’re all wet. Now just take the facts.”

Mr. Dixon then took the facts and laid them out in orderly rows for Mr. Banks’ appraisal. A waiter appeared with champagne and as Mr. Banks drank it he suddenly realized that he did not have the slightest idea what Ralph Dixon was talking about. Perhaps this stuff was getting him. He decided to hold his glass quietly and not touch it for a few minutes.

It was all the same to Mr. Dixon, however, whether Mr. Banks understood him or not. He was marshaling his facts and he would have marshaled them with equal gusto if Mr. Banks had been stretched out insensible on a window seat.

“Heidee-ho, heidee-ho. This
is
a party.” A pastyfaced gentleman with jowls like a bloodhound injected himself into the summation. It was Uncle Peter, who had come all the way from Sioux City and was obviously not going back empty. Although Mr. Banks had always privately considered Uncle Peter an old bum, at the moment he was delighted to see him.

“Peter,” he said. “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Mr. Dixon. Ralph, this is Peter Quackenbush—he’s related to my wife,” he explained parenthetically.

Mr. Dixon glared silently at Uncle Peter and gave evidence of being about to move away. This would have been merely a transference of evils for Mr. Banks. Danger made him alert. Within the bat of an eye he had disappeared through the French door.

Judging by the crowd in the living room he had expected to find the marquee half empty. On the contrary, it was also jammed with people. The temperature was midway between that of a Turkish bath and a greenhouse.

Mrs. Banks had hired a push-and-pull man to circulate among the guests. Mr. Banks discovered him standing unnoted by one of the tent poles, dressed in his interpretation of a Neapolitan costume, obviously bursting his lungs and his instrument in the public weal. The din in the tent was so great, however, that he might have been squeezing a blacksmith’s bellows and gargling his throat. Mr. Banks wondered why, from an economic viewpoint if no other, his wife had considered it necessary to pay someone to add to a confusion which was contributed gratis.

In spite of the Buckingham boys, who were getting rid of Mr. Banks’ champagne just as eagerly here as in the house, there was a crowd of eager customers in front of the bar table. He shouldered his way in and tried to get the attention of one of the sweating men behind it. They were engrossed in snatching bottles from huge tubs of icewater, uncorking them and dividing their contents between massed glasses and the tablecloth.

A strange man next to Mr. Banks watched them with the tense concentration of a bird dog. “Lousy service,” he said finally to Mr. Banks in what was obviously meant as a friendly opening.

“Terrible,” agreed Mr. Banks.

“About on a par with the champagne,” said the stranger.

The barman looked at him coldly.

“I thought the champagne was pretty good,” said Mr. Banks defensively. “For American champagne, of course.”

“Bilge,” said the genial stranger. “Sparkling bilge. I regard all champagne as bilge, but some comes from a lower part of the hold than others. This comes from just over the keel.” The young man took two dripping glasses and backed away.

Mr. Banks beckoned to one of the barmen.

“How is the champagne holding out?” he asked.

The barman looked at him coldly. “O.K., O.K.,” he said. “Don’t worry, mister. You’ll get plenty.” Mr. Banks found himself blushing, then he remembered the old Chinese proverb and decided to relax and have a look at the garden. It would be interesting to find out if it were also filled with people.

His progress through the tent was slow. Near the entrance he spotted Miss Bellamy talking to a group from the office. She detached herself and came toward him balancing a glass of champagne without too great success. He had never seen Miss Bellamy dressed like this before and it rather startled him. He didn’t know just what to say, but she was obviously quite at ease.

“Boss, we certainly put on a wonderful wedding. Yes, sir. If I do say so, it was beautiful. I want to drink a toast. I want to drink a couple of toasts. First, to the bride. Say, you were swell coming down the aisle. No one would ever have known you were scared.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Banks. Somehow or other this was not the self-effacing Miss Bellamy he had left at the office yesterday afternoon. They drank solemnly.

“And now I want to drink to the best boss in the world. Yes, sir, the finest boss in the world.” She had certainly never looked at him quite like that before.

“And I’ll drink to the finest secretary,” said Mr. Banks, embarrassed.

“Oh, you’re just saying that,” said Miss Bellamy, her large brown eyes searching his face intently. “You’re just making that up, I know you are. Got a cigarette?” As he lit her cigarette he wondered if the world could ever again be forced back into its comfortable old normalcy.

“You got to watch this stuff,” said Miss Bellamy, gazing thoughtfully into her glass. “You got to watch it every minute. If you don’t—it’ll get you. No question about it. Want to know something?” She leaned toward Mr. Banks’ ear. “That Miss Didrickson’s plastered. She’s the new one with the dyed hair. Come on over. The bunch will want to see you. She’s a silly ass, though. I didn’t like her from the start. She was saying—”

A young man in a cutaway approached. “Mrs. Banks is looking for you, sir. She sounds as if she wants to see you right away.”

Relieved to have some objective, Mr. Banks began to fight his way back to the house. He had almost made the exit from the marquee when an enormous woman blocked his way. She was accompanied by a gangling young girl with a mouthful of braces.

“Oh, Mr. Banks, it was such a heavenly wedding. I want you to meet my daughter Betsy. This is Kay’s father, dear.” Betsy tittered as if she found the idea grotesque. “Humphrey couldn’t come.” Mr. Banks cast vainly about in his mind for anyone by the name of Humphrey. “He wanted me to tell you how sorry he was. You were
so
nice to ask us. I said to Humphrey, ‘That was
so
nice of the Bankses to include us. And to the reception too.’ I brought Betsy. I didn’t think you’d mind. She adores Kay so and she’s been so excited about the wedding. Haven’t you, dear?”

Betsy’s excitement seemed to have died down since the ceremony. At the moment she looked like a captured German prisoner brought to headquarters for questioning. “Kay looked perfectly beautiful,” continued the large woman. “Simply ravishing. And the bridesmaids’ dresses—Well, my dear, they were out of another world. I think the whole thing—”

A second young man in a cutaway approached. “Mrs. Banks is sort of tearing her hair out, sir. She said for me to tell you that Kay and Buckley are getting ready to go and where are you.”

Mr. Banks made a mumbling noise and forced a passage between the stout woman and Betsy. Mrs. Banks pushed toward him through the crowded room. “Stanley Banks, where have you been? I’m almost crazy. I suppose you’ve been in that tent telling stories. Now come. Kay and Buckley will be coming down any minute.”

Again there was a dense crowd in the front of the house. Mr. Massoula’s henchmen moved through it bearing salad bowls filled with confetti. At least they were distributing something inexpensive for the moment. People were self-consciously grabbing handfuls, most of which they immediately let slip through their fingers to the floor. Everyone was watching the stairs tensely as if they expected a couple of whippets to come streaking down and out the door before they could get rid of the balls of damp paper in their clenched fists.

This was the scene that Mr. Banks had visualized so often during the last twenty-five years; the moment when his first-born would come running down a broad staircase on the arm of a muscle-bound stranger, to disappear from his life forever—at least in the role of his little daughter.