There were young people, smartly dressed, hanging out of the windows. Some of them were waving huge Croatian flags; all of them were shouting and laughing. I stood up and waved back and the noise from the cars increased. And then in one of the cars I saw a couple who quite obviously had just got married. He in a smart black suit, she in a voluminous white creation which almost filled the back of the car. Behind them came any number of bridesmaids crammed into a limo, all of them dressed in pink, and then two cars filled with children and their parents, who were desperately hanging on to their offspring to stop them from falling out of the open windows.
This carried on for a long time, and other people on the boats came out onto their balconies to see what was going on. Harriet, whose cabin was next to mine, waved at the parade.
‘Aren’t they fun? Must be a wedding, I’ve heard about this,’ she shouted over the noise. ‘Do they realise this road is a dead end? They will have to all come back again!’
She was right; about ten minutes later, the whole parade passed by again, going in the opposite direction. Some of the bridesmaids were then sitting, waving on the sills of the open car windows, their pink dresses billowing, and the whole street had practically come to a standstill, watching them pass. People on the pavements were waving back. Some were throwing flowers onto the road, dogs were barking and running alongside the cars, and a couple of young men let off confetti canons out of the car windows, and there was a shower of gold and silver in the air.
Harriet and I laughed at the excitement, the spectacle of a young couple starting out their married life with such a display of solidarity from their friends and families.
I certainly hadn’t felt like that the day I married Fred. I’d felt more like a walk-on in an event that he had designed. The place had been filled with his work contacts (‘good for business’) and a selection of his relations (‘we have to or they will be offended’) who had clustered together, working their way through the buffet like a ravening hoard, unwilling to speak to my family. His mother in maroon velvet sulking because she wasn’t the centre of attention, his father trying to find out the cost of the reception from the bar staff. Fred boisterous and slightly drunk, his best man a sallow chap called Glen, making a speech that was somehow dull and yet tasteless.
‘Isn’t this exciting? You’d never get away with that in Redditch,’ Harriet yelled.
‘They’d all be arrested,’ I shouted back.
Further along, Don had come out onto his balcony to see what was happening.
‘What the heck is all this racket about?’ he bellowed.
‘They’ve just got married,’ I shouted back. ‘I think they do this to ward off evil spirits.’
His expression said it all. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed. Someone should call the police.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a party pooper,’ I said, ‘it’s fun. And anyway, look over there.’
I pointed to where two young police officers were standing on the pavement, and they weren’t exactly waving, but they didn’t look as though they were going to do anything about the parade.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Don growled, and went back into his cabin, slamming the door behind him in a marked manner.
After the noise had died down, I went and had a shower, reasoning it was a good time to take advantage of the decent water pressure. And then, wrapped in my robe, I had a little nap. It had been a very successful day.
* * *
We all met up on the top deck an hour later to have a drink before dinner. The exuberant atmosphere of the wedding parade had obviously affected us all. Anna was in her new blue creation, the deep décolleté filled in with a sparkly necklace, Harriet in a twinkly top and black trousers. Evelyn and Marjorie looked similarly celebratory, and I wore my new yellow dress with the spaghetti straps and the matching wrap that I had bought in Nice. It felt like quite a party.
‘Here’s to that newly married couple, health and happiness to them,’ Evelyn said as we shared the bottle of champagne she had opened to start off the festivities. ‘Wasn’t that a splendid parade earlier on? So joyous.’
‘Did you really think so?’ Dawn said from behind her. ‘I was quite rattled and it’s brought on one of my heads. I took two aspirin to get over it.’
‘Perhaps you should have gone into the cupboard under the stairs?’ Marjorie said.
Dawn flounced off with her nose in the air, greatly offended.
‘Oh dear, now you’ve upset her,’ Evelyn said.
‘I don’t much care,’ Marjorie said. ‘She’s a human maelstrom, sucking the joy out of everything. My sympathies lie with Craig, even if he is a bit of an oaf.’
‘He can’t play bridge either,’ Evelyn said, ‘he never took any notice of Don’s discards. Jack made mincemeat out of him.’
‘Ah, Jack,’ Anna said smoothly, ‘did I see you two holding hands like the Start-Rite kids earlier on?’
‘You might,’ I said, sipping at my champagne.
Harriet sighed. ‘How lovely. And one might say romantic.’
‘Might one indeed,’ I said, trying to look mysterious.
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man,’ Evelyn said, looking over my shoulder.
