Reef 2 - The Wedding

One bright Tuesday morning, Reef awoke to find all the hotel of a bustle. Clangs and clashes, calls and cries of ’oi, there!’ The hum of a vacuum cleaner, the fizz of the glass washer. Jeannie, the waitress cum barmaid, was carrying a vase of flowers bigger than herself, it seemed, through reception.  Reef followed her to see what was going on.  She went past the foot of the stairs, past the toilets, through the breakfast room and out into the back garden.  There, already, were nine or ten similar bouquets and Jeannie set her one down amongst them.  Mhairi MacNeacail was hauling out trestle tables with Dougie, all the while calling on Big Bob to come and lend a hand.

‘Bob, we’ve got a wedding starting in six hours!’ she cried up to their bedroom.  A moment later Bob’s head appeared at the window, the lower half of his face so slathered with shaving foam he looked like a Baked Alaska!

‘Calm yourself, Mhairi,’ he shouted down.  ‘I know we’ve a wedding on, so I need a shave, don’t I?!’  He disappeared from the window, shaking his head.  Everyone loved it when they had a wedding at the Ceilidh Place.  There would be crowds of folks dressed up to the nines – and even as far as the elevens in some people’s cases.  There would be dancing till the wee small hours.  There would be speeches and singing and all the adults would have a wee cry and a hug at some point.  Yes everyone loved a wedding, but Mhairi loved a wedding more than most.  You could see it in her gleaming eyes that she considered every bride and groom as if they were her own family.  Her bosom would swell, her sleeves would get rolled up past her elbows and she’d become the mother hen, the drill sergeant and the romantic teenager all rolled into one.

Just now she had Dougie and Jeannie jumping to and fro trying to do six things each at once.  Vicky on reception was handling the ‘phonecalls and the guestbook while wrapping bows on all the little wedding favour boxes.

Reef barked as big Bob came down the stairs, his overalls on and his face covered in little specks of tissue paper where he’d nicked himself on his razor.  He winked at Reef and they headed for the door.  ‘Vicky, if Mhairi comes asking where I’ve gotten too, tell her Reef insisted on a walk.’  And they left.  Poor Vicky was halfway through a ‘phonecall so couldn’t point out to Bob that Reef was more than capable of walking herself.

Bob and Reef turned right, heading towards the path by the burn.  ‘Woof!’ said Reef and Bob laughed.  ‘Aye,’ he said.  ‘Wedding days are like that.’  And the two went looking for trout.  Bob stayed on the banks, as he was only wearing trainers, but Reef went splashing this way and that searching for fish.  Bounding back out she presented Bob with what she had found – WATER!  ‘Aagh, shake yourself somewhere else!’ said Bob, shielding himself from the shower of droplets but they were both grinning as they set back off for home.

Now awake, Bob went off to the kitchens to help them bring in the deliveries. Prawn cocktails, venison steaks and tartes aux feuilles for eighty guests, this was going to need careful execution.  Mhairi had kitted herself and poor, long suffering Dougie out in frilly floral aprons and the two of them were polishing and dusting every inch, every nook, every pane and every banister.  Standing on the stairs, Dougie sneezed as he worked his feather duster through the landing railings above his head and Reef sneezed too as the dust sparkled cascading in the air.  She ran off to find Jeannie, who hadn’t been seen since earlier and so, Reef figured, must’ve been sent on a special task.

Reef found Jeannie upstairs in the lounge.  She was folding napkins and polishing cutlery for the feasting tables.  But while she worked, Reef saw Jeannie had a rim of redness around the eyes as if she had been crying.  Reef knew that Jeannie’s greatest wish in all the world was to have a wedding of her own but she couldn’t have a wedding without a husband.  Reef sat close to Jeannie’s leg and cuddled against her.  Jeannie screamed and darted away from her.

‘Reef!’ she exclaimed, ‘you’re soaking!  Go and sit in the bar by the fire.’  Reef slunk away, pleased to have taken Jeannie’s mind off her troubles for a while.  She ran downstairs to the bar and rolled around in front of the fire, much to the amusement of Jim and Barry, a couple of pensioners who were in for a ploughman’s lunch.  ‘Good girl, Reef,’ said Barry, scratching her behind the ears.  Reef barked and accepted a bit of ham that was offered.

At nine o’clock the feasting, the main part at least, was done and Reef was allowed back into the main room again.  Tables were being cleared and the guests were all bustled away either upstairs to the lounge or out for a walk as the Sun went down.  Reef snuffled all over the room, helping in her own way by eating fallen roast potatoes and keeping Mhairi’s feet cool with the draught of her wagging tail.  The band were bringing in their instruments and setting up on the wee stage at the side and the kitchen staff were singing a song about elephants as they scraped and soaked and soaped and rinsed and dried all the pots and the pans and the plates through in the kitchen.

Bob took the last of the folded tables out to the store shed and Mhairi’s eyes lit up.  ‘Dancing!’ she said.  Reef’s tail wagged even faster.

The guests started coming back in in twos and fours.  The younger children had been taken to bed and the older folks were ushered in to the best seats where they could natter and laugh and watch those with stronger legs hurl and birl and whirl around to the fiddle and drums.

The bride and groom came back into the room and toasted each other’s good health with a nip of the malt.  The people gathered round as the beaming groom held out his hand to his smiling bride and the red haired singer began a haunting solo song that told of love against the odds in the old tongue.  The bride stepped forwards and her husband held her close as a sweet fiddle joined the ballad.  The bride’s mother and the groom’s father took their places, as did the groom’s mother and the bride’s father, the best man and the head bridesmaid, the minister and the bride’s grandma.  And then, as the room began to pair up two by two, wee Jeannie entered the room, trying to get through with some water jugs.  Reef saw as Dougie, all dressed up in a kilt and Bonnie Prince Charlie jacket for his role as a waiter and looking consequently like some kind of prince, walked over to Jeanie, took the jugs from her and put them on the bar and, turning back with his face as serious as if it were his own wedding day, bowed slowly and gracefully to Jeannie and offered out his hands.

Reef barked joyously and caught Big Bob’s eye as Dougie and Jeannie joined the dance.  Bob beamed from behind the bar and caught his wife, Mhairi, round the waist and landed her a big kiss on the neck that made her squeal.  The drum picked up as the song became a reel and Jeannie and Dougie danced some more.  They deserved it.