The bride. She drifted down the aisle in a haze of mosquito netting, packaged in lace and flowers. Through it all, I could just see the points of a jaw. ‘. . .lovely,’ murmured my wife.

‘Can you tell?’

‘Alex,’ her eyes grazed my face. ‘Don’t start.’

But my son – the groom – must have wondered, marooned at the front, twisting to see what was coming to him. On the other side, her family stood shoulder to shoulder, the men in suits of buffed steel, the women stooped by pearls. It was the best church for its price.

‘Tim and Justine!’ said the priest, smiling like the owner of a loaded pistol. ‘Welcome to God’s house!’ A volley of laryngitis shook the pews. The couple shuffled forward, groping for each other.

‘Poor bastard,’ I hissed.

‘Alex, we’ve discussed all this before.’

‘Was I there?’

‘As much as you’re anywhere.’

I watched her mouth, so like a pink navel. ‘Marriage,’ announced the priest, ‘is an holy estate!’

My son stood staring down at his fly. His own suit seemed to be made of congealed muesli. Why had I never seen it before? Great wings of shoulder pads hovered by his ears, and his hair was slicked and scraped to one side as if someone had sat on his head and half-crushed it.

‘Tim! Why?!’ I’d asked him, a month before.

He’d grinned until his ears buckled. ‘Why what?’ I stared at the boy – a lapsed atheist as long as I’d known him ‘You mean, . . .?’

I nodded gravely.

‘You two,’ he said. ‘You got married.’

‘More or less.’

His lips dangled.

‘This marriage certificate, Tim, is just a piece of paper.’

‘So’s a twenty dollar bill, dad.’ And beneath his eyes lay dark valleys of compromise. Lines of least resistance. A neat parting split his hair, like an axe-blow to the skull.

‘Here in God’s house,’ the priest was saying, ‘we especially feel His presence. A living reality. His very flesh!’

‘Sponsorship commitments,’ I whispered.

‘. . .and He invites us now into Communion with Him.’

I shifted buttocks on the stiff seat. I could feel it coming – at most weddings you got one free. I’d sat through a few by now: the faithful crushing forward for their little ration of bread, cradling it away like the only food they’d get all day, all cringed and bent double.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Miriam, ‘don’t you dare embarrass me again.’

‘It’s a wedding, not a bloody religious service.’

‘It means something to people. They take it seriously.’

‘It’s only a wafer. All they’re doing is having a few nibbles after singing.’

‘Alex, leave it alone.’

‘Why not? All her family will take it.’

‘They believe in it.’

‘More fool them.’

Her brow came down like a roll of barbed wire.

‘Let us pray!’ suggested the priest. He held out his palms as if testing for rain, and the crowd dropped in a great wave to their knees. I sat and stared him out. ‘Oh, God!’ he said, pinching his lids against the pain.

‘Forgive us our shortcomings!’

Speak for yourself, I thought.

The air, already hot, was clogged with incense, despite the No Smoking signs. Clouds of it streamed from a boy in a lace table-cloth, swinging some sort of brass ashtray on a chain. I thought of fires in packed theatres, crowds suffocated, trampled in the panic. My eyes began watering. ‘They do a cleaner job at the Registry Office.’

‘Shh!’

I glanced around. Maybe a hundred people: one small fire and they’d be strangling each other to get out. I pulled at my collar, felt the reserve of sweat run through. Some fool had lit candles; the front door was half-shut. I fanned myself with the service booklet.

‘Oh Lord,’ crooned the priest, ‘. . .ever mindful of your blessed redemption,’ he said, ‘and with true contrition and sense of dust. . .’ It was some sort of code. I propped my nose between both palms and looked about. Along our pew, people hid their faces as if they were hearing shocking news, their heads dangled, shoulders hunched. ‘Gathered in Your house, Lord. . .’ Behind him, the Householder gazed down from a position of extreme discomfort. Someone, I felt, ought to do something – cut Him down, bring water, ring the police. Not leave Him up there for everyone to gawk at. Most religions kept their bloke out of harm’s way.

‘Whom God hath joined together,’ observed the priest, ‘let no man put asunder!’ His voice boomed like a challenge. People love a challenge. He drew with his finger in the air, stared into the ceiling. We smiled and nodded across the aisle. I nudged Miriam. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Don’t be so embarrassing.’

‘Me embarrassing!’

‘Shhh!’

‘They’re done now. What’s the point?’

I spotted the point – behind his big table, the priest was mixing ingredients. His arms waved about, though we could see up his sleeves. Sunlight stabbed down in a girder of smoky air, right past his head. People coughed softly in the resounding church, like the shuffling of paper money.

‘Here come the nibblies.’

‘Alex, leave it.’

‘Listen, since we’re here, we might as well.’

‘No!’

The priest edged downstaged. Across the aisle, they shambled out in funereal faces, hands protecting groins, women and children first, made a phalanx along the front. I shook Miriam’s arm. ‘Come on, be in it.’

‘Alex, sit!’

A tide of people rolled forward, in suits and hats and corsages, welling from the back pews. It was like sitting out the National Anthem – waiting to be dragged outside, stood against the vestry wall and shot. ‘Oh, shit’ I said, stamping to my feet. ‘What’s it matter?!’

Up close, the priest was sweating. Justice, I thought. He handed out one of the wafers. It was small – a thin coin of paper, not enough to feed a bird. I waited; maybe he’d spread something on it. He coughed. ‘The body of Christ.’

‘Thanks.’ I carried it back to my seat. Across the aisle, they squinted sideways.

‘Swallow it, idiot.’

‘I like the suspense.’

She raised her eyes and went into her Rapture of the Madonna face.

I stared at the fleck of paper. Nothing to it. Why such a fuss about a brick. It was dry, the sort of thing that sticks to your palate; or throat. It stuck. In a moment you can inhale and lodge it right down one lung. People do. I’ve seen them turning red, thrashing their arms and legs, scratching at their throats, beating on the floor among the pews like gutted fish in a boat.

‘What’s wrong?’

I pointed to my neck.

‘More play-acting?’

I hacked, gurgled.

‘Oh, yes?’ She took possession of my arm, and steered it down the aisle. ‘Sometimes I think you invent this hay fever.’ I cracked my knee on the last pew.

Outside, the sun crashed down like a sheet of steel.

‘Such a fuss,’ she rubbed my back.

‘How is he?’ asked Tim, and already he looked married: something damp about the eyes. ‘Did you enjoy the Service, mum?’

‘Beautiful, Timmy.’ They stared at the father of the groom, his face melting in the sun. ‘Alex?’

‘Dad?’

‘Alex!’

***