Eddie and Mrs Simpson

Eddie and Mrs Simpson

Everyone agreed that Eddie Braden was one of the nicest, most gentle
blokes around. He was also a terrible judge of character and we all
knew that when he fell in love it would be with someone who was wholly
unsuitable and who would end up breaking his heart.
"She's fantastic, Mike," he told me when we met up for a pint before
the Celtic game.
"How did you meet her?" I asked.
"I went round to fix a leak in her bathroom."
Eddie was the village handyman. There wasn't anything he couldn't fix.
He was an expert on plumbing, electrics, decorating and carpentry; you
name it he could do it. He could also fix all kinds of electrical and
mechanical equipment. The fact that my father still drove around in an
ochre Austin Allegro (much to my shame) was testament to Eddie's skills
as a mechanic.
"So tell me about her."
"Well," started Eddie. "She's a wee bit older than me."
"How much older?" I asked.
"Forty."
"Forty!" I exclaimed, spraying the table with McEwen's export. "That's
not a wee bit Eddie, that's twelve years older than you!"
"I know," he told me. "But she doesn't look her age."
I raised my eyebrows. I was still young enough to consider forty
positively ancient. Who was she, I wondered, Methuselah?
"Honest," he said, sensing my scepticism.
"Age shouldn't come into it," I lied. "Not if you really like someone."
I thought differently, however. I mean she was twelve years older. If
she'd been twelve years younger, well that would have been easier to
understand. Illegal mind, but easier to understand.
Eddie stood up and drained his pint.
"I'll see you later," he said. "I'm off to see Janice."
Janice. Oh my God, I thought. He's shagging The Merry Widow.

* * *

Kinraddie was a small village and as a consequence everyone knew
everyone else's business, whether you wanted to or not. Janice Simpson
was known as "The Merry Widow" on account of the lifestyle she had
lived since the death of her husband Neil, a farm labourer, in a tragic
accident involving a grain silo. It had taken the fire brigade six
hours to dig him out from underneath the barley. Some locals said that
for weeks afterwards they could smell his aftershave in their broth,
although this was just another example of sick humour, we all knew it
was a story since Neil Simpson had been the kind of person who only
went near a razor blade on special occasions. Others said that as a
notorious alcoholic, Neil couldn't actually wait for the barley to be
turned into whisky before trying to drink it. After a frighteningly
short mourning period, Janice started appearing at The Gordon Arms
where she wasn't slow to display her ample charms to all and sundry.
One night, after a particularly individual karaoke rendition of I Will
Survive, she proceeded to climb onto the bar and call all of the men in
the village " a shower of useless bastards with pricks the width and
firmness of overcooked spaghetti." This statement was greeted by one
wit in the bar who answered "you should know Janice you've shagged them
all!" Just when we all thought her behaviour couldn't get anymore
outrageous she then lifted her tight-fitting low-cut top to reveal
quite spectacularly firm breasts for a woman of her age. This was met
with warm applause, whistling and cheering by everyone in the bar
except, strangely enough, Eddie who admitted later that he had found
the whole thing "distasteful". That he should actually be seeing this
woman now was a huge surprise to all of us, but me in particular, who
had known Eddie since infant school. I knew his taste in women and
Janice Simpson wasn't it.

* * *

By the time the village school's spring fair came around they were
engaged.
"What's he thinking about?" asked my wife one day as we sat in the
kitchen drinking coffee. "How can he possibly marry such an old
slapper?"
My wife is twenty-four years old and went to school with Janice
Simpson's eldest boy. Wayne Simpson was well known around the village,
although his enforced absences at the request of Her Majesty were
beginning to make him something of a stranger to us. The fact that she
had her first child at the age of sixteen said a lot about her,
explained my wife. The fact that she had been pregnant at fifteen, I
thought to myself, said even more.
"He wants me to be his Best Man," I told her, wincing in anticipation
of her reply. In the end it was unwarranted.
"Fine," she said. "Just don't expect me to be there."
"Don't be like that," I told her.
"Don't be like what?" she asked me, standing up, hands on hips.
"So childish," I told her. "This is the biggest day in Eddie's life
we're talking about!"
"The biggest mistake you mean," she said walking out of the room and
shouting over her shoulder. "And one he can make without me being
there."
So that was that. I could be Best Man but my wife would not be
accompanying me to one of our best friend's wedding. I sat down at the
kitchen table. Could things get any worse, I wondered?

They could.

* * *

Over the next couple of months preparations for the wedding gathered
apace. It was well known that Eddie wasn't short of a bob or two, his
parents having died tragically in a car crash some years earlier and
leaving both him and his sister Carol well provided for. Now it seemed
as though the money was burning a hole in his pocket. Eddie, who had
always been careful with his money, was now spending cash as if it was
going out of fashion. Janice, it appeared, was to be treated to the
fairytale wedding she had been denied the first time around. Things
would be different this time, Eddie told me. Yes, I thought, the bride
won't be seven months pregnant when she walks up the aisle this
time.
"Janice is taking care of everything," he told me one day over a pint
in The Gordon Arms. "I just get the money out of the bank and let her
get on with it."
"Is that the best thing to do?" I asked him cautiously. All sorts of
ideas on what she could be spending the money on were running through
my mind - the Registrar dressed up as an Elvis impersonator,
horse-drawn carriages, dresses like meringues. The list was as endless
as it was tacky.
"Definitely," he said. "She knows exactly what she wants.
The first sign that things weren't quite as they seemed was when Eddie
received a telephone call from the car hire firm. The deposit cheque,
they told him, had not yet been received. When Eddie confronted Janice
she told him that she had written the cheque and posted it over a week
earlier. She even showed him the stub in the chequebook. With a haughty
sigh she wrote out another cheque and personally delivered the cheque
to the car hire firm in the brand new Suzuki jeep that Eddie had bought
her for her birthday. If Eddie had wanted to spare himself any further
embarrassment he would have done some further checking. As it happened,
he never bothered. Looking back now perhaps as his Best Man I should
have done some checking up on his behalf.

* * *

Eddie's stag night was something to remember. It had all the
traditional trappings - the stripper, the booze and ended with Eddie
being tied naked to the Mercat Cross in the Village Square with just a
balloon to spare his blushes. He was finally rescued the next morning
by the village policeman who untied him when he came on duty at six. By
all accounts, Janice's Hen Night was no less outrageous as she and her
friends paraded around the pubs of Aberdeen with an L-plate taped to
her back, selling kisses for loose change. In the end she raised enough
to pay for their taxis home. No mean feat in a city famed for its
canniness with money. Thankfully the Stag and Hen Nights had taken
place a couple of days before the wedding, otherwise the main players
would have missed the drama as a result of alcohol poisoning.

* * *

The day of the wedding dawned. I arrived at Eddie's just before midday
where the two of us dressed in our kilts. Sitting around in his living
room was just making him nervous so I suggested we go for a pint to The
Gordon Arms. The bar staff were glad to see us and treated us to a free
brandy. It seemed to do the trick and at half past one we decided to
make our way to the hotel where the wedding was taking place. As we
walked up the hill we saw Janice's jeep approaching us from the other
direction. Immediately I was gripped with a feeling that something was
wrong. As it sped past we both saw a strange woman in the driver's
seat.
"Must be a relative I haven't met yet," said Eddie looking at me. I
didn't share his belief. I had a bad feeling about this. We trudged the
rest of the way to the hotel in an uneasy silence. On arriving at the
hotel there was no sign of Janice. Her youngest daughter,
fourteen-year-old Chelsea who was to be her flower girl was already
there having spent the night at her seventeen-year-old boyfriend's
house. When she saw us coming she flicked away the cigarette she had
been smoking.
"Is my Ma no' we youse two?" she asked.
"No," I told her. "She's supposed to arrive with the man who's giving
her away." Since her dad was absent this was to be her Uncle George, a
notorious alcoholic known widely around the local area for his prowess
as a bare-knuckle boxer. By this time Eddie was beginning to look
concerned.
"Don't worry," I told him squeezing his shoulder and managing to sound
enthusiastic. "She'll be here." Chelsea left us and walked back to
where her boyfriend was standing. I watched as he handed her another
cigarette, and pulling a lighter from out of her small basket of
flowers, she lit it. Was there no beginning to the girl's class I asked
myself?
"Come on," I said, eager to put his mind at ease. "Let's phone
her."
"Okay," he agreed.
I pulled out my mobile phone and dialled Janice's home number. Within
seconds I had been connected. "It's ringing," I told him.
A few seconds passed. Then a few more and a few more. I ended the
call.
"She's probably on her way," I told him. Although on her way where was
what I was thinking.

* * *

By three o'clock it was obvious she wasn't turning up so I had to go
into the hotel and tell the guests that there wasn't going to be a
wedding. The Registrar was very nice about it but told us that he
couldn't stay as he had another wedding in a nearby village. We shook
hands with him and watched as he climbed into his car and drove off.
When the last of the guests had left we trudged our way back down the
hill to The Gordon Arms. As we approached the pub we saw Janice's jeep
parked outside. Before I could stop him, Eddie broke into a run. When I
caught up with him he was already inside, searching for his missing
bride. Instead he found the mystery woman who had been driving the car
when it had passed us earlier.
"Where's Janice?" he asked her.
"Who?" replied the stranger.
"Janice Simpson," he told her. "That's her car you're driving."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know anyone called Janice, and I think
you'll find that's my car. I bought it yesterday from a man and woman
in Aberdeen."
"What man and woman?" demanded Eddie. "I bought her that car for her
birthday!"
"Look, if you don't believe me I'll show you the registration document.
I haven't had time to post it off to the DVLA yet."
The woman reached inside her handbag and pulled out a folded document.
She handed it to Eddie and he read it in silence. Without another word
he handed it back to the woman. Then with a look that gave me a glimpse
inside his breaking heart he made his way outside. I apologised to the
woman for the misunderstanding and followed him out.
"She's gone," he told me.
"How much did you give her?" I asked.
"Thousands," he said.
"Not all of your money, surely?"
"No," he said. "But enough to make it hurt all the more."
I watched in silence as he walked away. I knew he needed time to be on
his own. I had known Eddie since childhood. I knew he wouldn't do
anything stupid. He knew he had already done that when he had allowed
Janice to make a fool out of him.

* * *

Over the next few days it all came out. A month earlier, on a visit to
relatives in Aberdeen which she had combined with her final dress
fitting, Janice had met a trawlerman named Davie Fawcett. He was the
type of man to whom she had always been attracted - a heavy drinker,
smoker and a man prone to sudden bouts of extreme violence. It had been
a match made in heaven. Realising that she had the opportunity to
reinvent herself she systematically defrauded Eddie by cancelling
cheques for the car hire, flowers and even the wedding reception. The
only thing she paid for was the wedding dress, figuring that she might
need that one day if Davie ever proposed to her. The day before her
wedding the two of them had sold her car to a woman from Stonehaven. It
was a pure fluke that she had decided to drive to Kinraddie for a bar
lunch that day, otherwise we would have been none the wiser. That was
the last anyone would ever see of Janice Simpson. Her and Davie
Fawcett, it later transpired, boarded a plane at Edinburgh airport
bound for Tenerife the next day. What became of them after that nobody
knows, although everyone from the village who goes to the Canary
Islands on holiday always has one eye on the lookout for them. All
told, the two of them got away with at least seventeen thousand pounds
of Eddie's money. Although Eddie told me later "he could afford it", I
knew he felt it had been both a harsh and expensive lesson to
learn.

* * *

I'm glad to say that the whole episode didn't put Eddie off women
completely. It took him a long time to get over his quite public
embarrassment but get over it he eventually did. Eighteen months later
he met a twenty-six year old called Anne who had moved to Kinraddie to
teach in the village primary school. They are to be married next April
and Eddie has asked me once again to be his Best Man. I've agreed and
even my wife is delighted. In fact, she is going to be one of the
bridesmaids since she has become good friends with Anne.

And this time, to everyone's relief, the bride's parents are paying for
the wedding.