Dunster by John Mortimer Page B

mother. Some sort of nonsense like that.’
    â€˜I never thought of anything so permanent.’ I honestly hadn’t.
    â€˜You mean you don’t want to get married?’
    â€˜Of course I do.’
    And as we lay on the worn, much-used velvet cushions she said, ‘It wasn’t to be expected that you’d be such a terrific hit with Dad.’
    Before we left Oxford I had a letter from Dunster.
    Dear Progmire
    I bumped into Beth Blair the other day. I mean literally. She was crossing Banbury Road and I was coming back from a boring party on my bicycle. I managed to brake and it was only a minor sort of contact. I promised to pay for her tights. Anyway, she said she’d proposed marriage to you and you’d blushed a bit and said yes. She said that in the pub where I took her for a bit of a stiffener as she seemed rather shaken after contact with the bike. I told her that as your best friend over many years, in fact by my calculation, and discounting those insufferable actors you chose to associate with, your only friend, I had no doubt you would be asking me to be your best man. Now I have very little patience with the idea of dressing up in some sort of undertaker’s suit and taking part in the sanctified sale of young women into slavery, or at least hard, unpaid labour in the kitchen as well as in the maternity ward. All the same, I told Beth, to whom I felt I owed something after the collision, which may have been caused because I was greatly preoccupied with the murder of Allende as I pedalled along, that I would hire the rig-out and make sure the ring was in my waistcoat pocket, and generally give you the moral support which you’d need if you weren’t going to change your mind about thirty times on your way to the altar. She seemed absolutely chuffed when I agreed to do the necessary and said of course I could stay with her family and all I needed was a good deal of tolerance. It seems her father is a rather tricky piece of work so we ought to get on like a house on fire.
    Don’t bother to thank me, old man. The fact that you’ve actually made up your mind about something in your life simply has to be celebrated. See you in church.
    Everlastingly yours Dick Dunster
    â€˜Don’t bother to thank him? I’ll thank him to keep away from my wedding.’
    â€˜Don’t do that,’ Beth said. ‘He seemed so excited about it all.’
    â€˜I’m not getting married,’ I told her. ‘for the purpose of exciting Dunster.’
    â€˜He’s probably made all sorts of plans.’
    â€˜Of course he hasn’t. He never makes plans at all. He’ll miss the train and arrive late and he won’t have hired the suit.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose the suit really matters.’
    â€˜And he’ll probably quarrel with your father.’
    â€œThat might be interesting.’
    â€˜Look. I don’t want to stand up in church, vowing to love and honour you, or whatever it is, with the shadow of Dunster looming up behind me.’
    â€˜Then you decide it, darling.’ Beth smiled and kissed me. ‘You decide whatever man seems best for you.’
    I tried to draft a number of letters rejecting Dunster’s offer but they all sounded pompous. Dunster was right; years ago, when we were ink-stained schoolboys, we had taken each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, and there was nobody else I had known better or for so long. To ask Laertes or Benson, the gravedigger, to do the job would seem an insult to our long past. Anyway, Beth didn’t mind and to accept Dunster would probably be less trouble than turning him down.
    â€˜Nothing goes with Beth. No land, no cows. No diamond tiaras. You do realize that, don’t you, Mister Progmire?’
    â€˜Of course I do.’
    â€˜I can’t even give you much for a wedding present. There’s a rather good saddle I might spare you,