The Other Father of the Groom

Graham knew the suit needed altering before he put it on. It had been a good suit ten years earlier, when his waist and his expectations occupied less room. He stood before the mirror holding the jacket closed and wondered whether attending his son’s wedding should require this much negotiation with fabric.

His son, Leo, had sent a message that morning. There would be two spaces beside him while he dressed. One for Graham, one for Martin. He hoped that would be all right.

Graham replied, Of course. Then he put the phone face down and spent twenty minutes being angry with a button.

Martin was Leo’s stepfather. He had married Graham’s former wife when Leo was eight. Now Leo was thirty and marrying a woman called Erin who remembered everybody’s birthdays and had somehow persuaded two large families to assemble in the same country hotel.

Graham had not been an absent father. He took Leo alternate weekends, paid what he was supposed to pay and attended school events whenever work allowed. He had also spent years describing Martin as that bloke, which told a different story about the welcome his son received when he tried discussing the rest of his life.

His sister, Denise, listened to him explain the dressing-room arrangement while pinning the jacket.

“What did you expect?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Something less symbolic.”

“You’d prefer to be beside him alone.”

“I’m his father.”

“Yes. That’s established. Turn around.”

He turned. She marked the hem and said he needed a larger jacket, not the services of a miracle. She would go shopping with him if he promised not to call every garment ridiculous.

On the train to the wedding, Graham carried a new suit in a bag and his father’s cufflinks in a small box. He wanted Leo to wear them. He had not asked in advance because he imagined the moment of giving them as something uncomplicated and private.

The hotel room contained neither privacy nor simplicity. Leo stood in trousers and a vest, searching for a charging cable. His best man was on the telephone. Martin knelt beside an open bag, taking out a sewing kit.

“Hello, Graham,” he said, standing too quickly.

They shook hands. Martin wore a plain blue shirt and had already tied his tie. Graham thought he looked unnecessarily prepared. Then he disliked himself for thinking it.

Leo hugged him hard. “You came early.”

“The train behaved.”

“Excellent. Can you find a socket that works?”

Graham found one behind the bedside table. It was a useful task and therefore a relief. Martin sewed a loose button onto Leo’s waistcoat while Leo answered messages about the photographer. The three of them inhabited the room politely, like strangers waiting for a late appointment.

Graham took out the cufflinks. “I thought you might like these.”

Leo opened the box. “Grandad’s.”

“Yes.”

“They’re lovely.”

Then he looked at the shirt hanging beside the window. It had ordinary buttoned cuffs. Graham saw the problem before Leo explained it.

“I didn’t think,” Graham said.

“I can keep them for another occasion.”

Martin said nothing. Somehow his tact was worse than a suggestion. Graham put the box on the dressing table and said it didn’t matter, in a tone that informed everybody it mattered enormously.

The best man, Rob, ended his call. A bag containing several important things had been left at the house where the bride’s brother stayed overnight. Among them were the printed readings and Leo’s small gift for Erin. Somebody could collect it, but everyone who knew the route had another task.

Martin offered to drive. Graham said he could go instead. Leo looked between them with a weariness that made him suddenly resemble the boy who used to explain why he wanted to stay home on a weekend Graham had planned.

“Could you both go?” he asked. “One drives, one finds the house. Please.”

They went. Martin drove a tidy car that smelled faintly of mints. Graham held Leo’s phone with the address, refusing the absurd impulse to remark that he had navigated before phones existed. At the first junction they nearly missed the turn because each was waiting for the other to speak.

“Left,” Graham said.

“Thank you.”

The house was twenty minutes away. For the first ten they discussed traffic. For the next five they discussed nothing. Then Martin asked whether Graham remembered the little model railway Leo once built in his bedroom.

“Of course,” Graham said. “I bought the first set.”

“He told me. I broke a bridge trying to move it when we decorated.”

Graham turned towards him. “He never said.”

“He was furious with me for about a week.”

The admission pleased Graham in a small, ungenerous way. Then Martin added that he had found a replacement bridge, but it was the wrong scale. Leo made him keep it on his desk as a reminder to read boxes properly.

Graham laughed. Martin smiled without looking away from the road. For a moment they both knew the same child, and neither needed to own the memory.

The house was empty, as expected. The bride’s brother had left a key with the neighbour. Unfortunately, the neighbour thought the collection was tomorrow and had taken it to her daughter’s house. Martin called Rob. Graham looked through the front window, where the missing bag sat infuriatingly close on a chair.

“We’re not breaking in,” Martin said when he came over.

“I wasn’t suggesting it.”

“You have the look.”

Graham almost snapped. Instead he asked how far away the daughter lived. Fifteen minutes. They had enough time if nobody attempted a dramatic shortcut. They drove there, collected the key from a woman holding a half-peeled potato and returned to the house.

Inside, Graham checked the bag against Rob’s list. Martin carried it to the car. The task was simple, almost disappointingly so after the trouble of reaching it. On the way back, Graham noticed Martin’s hands tighten around the wheel.

“All right?”

“Yes. I just don’t want us to be late.”

“We won’t.”

Martin nodded. Then he said, “I know this isn’t easy.”

Graham looked out of the window. “The traffic?”

“If you’d prefer.”

The kindness irritated him until he realised Martin sounded nervous too. This was not an experienced intruder reassuring the rightful owner. It was another man who wanted to avoid hurting somebody they both loved.

“He calls you when things go wrong,” Graham said.

Martin took a breath. “Sometimes.”

“I hear about them afterwards.”

“You could ask him why.”

The answer was more direct than Graham expected. Martin added that he wasn’t telling Graham what to do. He simply didn’t think he could answer a question that belonged to Leo.

Graham remembered the last time Leo asked him for advice about money. He had spent twenty minutes explaining how easily the problem could have been avoided. Martin had apparently helped him make the immediate telephone call. Graham knew because Leo thanked him at dinner, then fell silent when he saw his father’s face.

“I make things harder than they need to be,” Graham said.

Martin did not deny it. After a moment he said, “So do I. Usually by trying to fix something before he’s finished telling me.”

They returned with eleven minutes to spare. Rob took the bag and exclaimed with such relief that the errand acquired a heroic scale neither man deserved. Leo stood in his shirt, hair finally arranged, looking younger than thirty.

“Thank you,” he said to both of them.

Graham put a hand on his shoulder. “Can I have a minute?”

Martin and Rob went into the corridor. Graham wanted to discuss twenty-two years and had perhaps ninety seconds. He chose the smallest true thing.

“I haven’t always made it easy for you to tell me about Martin,” he said. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to keep parts of your life separate to avoid upsetting me.”

Leo looked at the floor, then back at him. “No. I shouldn’t.”

Graham nodded. He did not ask whether everything was all right now. His son had a wedding to attend, not a father to reassure.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

They hugged. Then Leo asked him to check his collar, and Graham did, carefully smoothing a fold that was barely there.

Before opening the door, Leo asked whether Graham remembered the first long train journey they took together. He wanted the name of the town where they bought dreadful sandwiches. Graham supplied it, surprised by the question. Leo laughed and said he had been trying to remember because Erin loved that story. It was not reassurance arranged for Graham’s benefit. His son had carried a day of theirs into conversations Graham never heard. The discovery made him feel less as though every good memory required defending. He opened the door and called Martin and Rob back in.

The wedding took place beneath a high window with light falling across the floor. Graham sat beside Denise. Martin sat with Leo’s mother in the next row. During the vows Graham watched his son look at Erin and understood, with uncomfortable clarity, how little this day required a judgment about the men who had raised him.

At lunch he did not give a speech. Leo thanked several people, including both fathers, using the phrase without hesitation. Graham felt the old sting, then watched Martin lower his eyes because he was crying. The sting eased. Not vanished, but no longer the only thing he could feel.

Later the photographer gathered the family. Graham began moving aside after the first picture with Leo. Erin caught his sleeve.

“Stay. We want everyone.”

Everyone required several arrangements and a chair for an aunt. In one photograph Graham stood beside Martin with Leo between them, all three looking towards a camera none entirely trusted. In another, Erin stepped in and laughed because somebody’s tie was blowing sideways. Graham laughed too. It would turn out to be the better picture.

Before the dancing, Martin found him near the terrace. He handed over the cufflink box. Graham had left it on the dressing table.

“Leo said to tell you he wants them,” Martin said. “He didn’t want them lost in the room.”

Graham took the box. “Thank you.”

He almost added that they belonged in the family. The phrase reached his tongue and stopped there. Martin was in the family too. That was the point he had spent years making expensive for everyone else to say.

“Would you like a drink?” Graham asked.

“Yes.”

They stood together at the bar while a child nearby tried to persuade the bartender that orange juice and lemonade counted as a sophisticated cocktail. Graham asked how Martin’s work was going. Martin answered without caution. It was not friendship yet. It was a conversation neither man had to escape.

Three weeks later Leo sent the photographs. Graham chose the one with the crooked tie and had it printed. He put it beside a picture of Leo at six, holding the first model train. When his son called that Sunday, Graham asked about his week and waited through the answer without interrupting.