Yes Yes More More by Anna Wood

Author:Anna Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short stories;Carol Ann Duffy;Sweet Home;Young Skins;Salt Slow;Sally Rooney;Rachel Cusk;Alice Munro;Ali Smith;Female friendship
Publisher: The Indigo Press
Published: 2021-03-22T11:15:42+00:00

‌Half a Point for a Good Guess

My friend Inga got married in a wood a few miles outside Reykjavik, not because she wanted a cool wedding abroad but because she is Icelandic. Leo and Cathy and I flew over together from London. When the pilot spoke over the tannoy, Leo said, “Wow, it’s Inga flying the plane!” Inga’s was the only Icelandic voice we knew, and there we were surrounded by people who sounded like her. We had seen Inga only once or twice since we left college, since she moved back home. I had come to the wedding to demonstrate that we are still friends, that friends are for life, and because I wanted to dance and sing at an Icelandic wedding and see the midnight sun.

The hotel was swanky and right in the centre. We had a room each – grown-ups – and a swig each of vodka from Cathy’s minibar before we set off to the wedding. Then we got lost on the way to the ceremony and the taxi driver was no help. Cathy had the address carefully copied down onto a scrap of paper but he just looked at it blankly. He called his cab office while Leo sat watching in the front seat with a calm-under-pressure face on and Cathy and I sat in the back, applying lipstick and exchanging comedy-panic gurns.

“Okay,” said the driver, and we set off again. Neat, empty roads with a few neat, bright houses. Green grass and black rocks and blue sky. I love weddings. But then we stopped again, pulled into a layby, and the driver was back on his radio.

“Can you call a bride ten minutes before she’s due to get married?” I said. “She could give us directions.” We didn’t know anyone else who’d be at the wedding.

“It’s a quandary,” said Leo. “A modern dilemma. Maybe a text is okay.”

“No!” said Cathy. “We’ll find it!”

The driver was nodding and grunting into the radio, and then we were off. We pulled up outside a little wooden church, but Inga wasn’t having a church wedding. “She’s not a god sort of a person,” Leo told the driver. I nipped out just in case and had a look, put my head round the door, in the middle of the ceremony. The guests looked around with polite confusion, as if an errant hen had just clucked into their wedding. I smiled at the bride – not Inga – then dashed back to the car.

“Drive!” I said, all giddy. “Drive!” As if I’d just robbed a bank. We headed up the hill and there it was, like a big municipal scout hut, a one-storey wooden building, white, with a long porch. A ruddy man in a shiny sky-blue suit grinned as we got out of the taxi all frantic and faffy, confused by the krona and annoying the driver.

“I speak English!” boomed the ruddy man, a man born to host. He was wearing a purple cravat. He reminded me of the Simon Callow character in Four Weddings And A Funeral, but about twenty years younger and Icelandic.

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