Salt by Jeremy Page

oars. She looks shyly at the concentrated face of her husband and they share a brief, conspiratorial grin. He stops rowing.
    â€˜We did it,’ he says.
    â€˜Did we miss it?’ she replies, the whole event already behind her down the river.
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    Back at the house the guests are waiting under eighty feet of red, white and blue bunting George has stretched across the yard. Lil’ loves the colours against the clouds above, but still can’t think all this is for her. She’s never even met most of them before. After tying her rosebud half-apron, already faded, over her wedding dress, she passes round drumsticks and potato salad sprinkled with dill and gherkins. Occasionally she looks for her own mother, but knows she won’t come. She approaches the two Langore brothers with a food tray.
    â€˜What’s there?’ George is asking his brother, noticeably drunk now.
    â€˜Nothing much, just a bunch of outbuildings. Used as a storm shelter for cows.’ Kipper’s bought a smokehouse, George tells his wife. It’s clear by the way he shifts his weight and the way Kipper keeps still that George is feeling uneasy. His brother does that to him.
    â€˜Not a smokehouse, not yet. But will be,’ Kipper tells her. ‘Between Blakeney and Cley.’
    She hasn’t been this close to him for a couple of years. She still can’t work out his face and how it can change so entirely from one thing to another.
    â€˜What will you smoke?’ she asks, the occasion making her too polite.
    Kipper grins back. ‘Bloaters, eel, salmon, cure some hock too.’
    George is drinking too frequently from his glass.
    â€˜I’ll bring some next time,’ Kipper says. ‘Shrimp loves bloater pâté.’
    George moves away, pretending to laugh, and when Lil’ doesn’t follow him, he turns back. He points to a wooden box by his brother’s feet.
    â€˜Now?’ Kipper says.
    â€˜Why not,’ George replies.
    Kipper opens the box to reveal five long tubes on sticks. Some of the guests have already heard about him - that he’s coming from the marshes of North Norfolk with fireworks that he makes in a shed. He holds them in his hand like a bunch of carrots and George sees how tall he walks with them, deciding where to place them, and how the others naturally fall into a neat shape around him, giving him distance. He’s taken charge of the moment, as he always did. He pushes the fireworks into the soft soil and tells people to step back, even though they’re safe enough already.
    They fizz into the sky with a reedy crack of thunder, and immediately the clouds answer back with the real thing. The first thick drops of rain fall in the yard, doors slam in the house with the gust of wind, and then the deluge begins.
    As the guests run for their cars, the wedding couple are left together in the shadows of the house, the plates and streamers scattered around the living room like they’ve been ransacked. From here they watch rain like stair-rods pounding the earth and clattering the tiles of the outbuildings. A deafening roar all round them, making the house feel unearthly and silent. The sharp smell of the wet earth. Hurrying, George dashes into the yard to secure a gate which is banging on its hinges and in an instant he’s drenched, and when he comes back in Lil’ dries his hair with the kitchen towel.
    â€˜I’m soaked,’ he says.
    â€˜Like a fish.’
    â€˜I’d best get out of these clothes, Mrs Langore.’
    And when he’s gone she looks at the puddles of water he’s left on the tiles.
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    He goes upstairs, pauses at the doorway to the spare room where Lil’ has now made quite a little space for herself, he smiles at the wedding invite she’s kept on her bedside table, and then continues down the corridor to the bedroom with its wild geometric designs on the wallpaper and the ragged curtains against the window.