Luis inhaled the air of his ancestor’s farm.
‘We would wake with the sun, breakfast on the roof oron the terrace. Afterwards, we might harvest the almonds to make butter which we can spread on the bread you would bake in our oven. We would press our olives, which we can use to roast the vegetables we grow on the slopes. We would still work, as we saw fit. Me as a lawyer. In the small towns. You as a nurse. We would invite our friends and family to stay with us when they needed to escape. Your parents. My mother. All these buildings will be repaired and restored and full of people we love. In the evenings we would sit around the fire and listen to their stories.’
Though captivated by the vision, Danny noted, ‘I will always be an outsider here.’
Luis shook his head.
‘Up here, there are no outsiders.’
Standing up on the ledge, excited by the scale of the change, Danny pointed out, ‘Luis, we don’t even own the land.’
But Luis was ready for the question.
‘The farm is held in a family trust. If I restore it and live here, the title passes to me and my spouse. My grandfather was a cautious man. Only after a meaningful amount of time living here would it become ours.’
Danny picked at the words.
‘How long is a meaningful amount of time?’
A faint smile appeared across Luis’s lips.
‘Twenty years.’
Your presence is requested at
The Marriage
of
Luis Lagana & Daniel Smith
On
20th July 2013
At Three in the Afternoon
Dinner and Dancing to Follow
Please Note the Change of Venue
Bude Guest House
Cornwall
England
Chapter Forty-FiveThe Marriage Act
Danny couldn’t believe it. Three days before the wedding Parliament passed a gay marriage law. He had completed his last shift at St Thomas’ Hospital, packed up the apartment and should have been getting ready to travel to Bude but all he could do was watch the news – preoccupied with the coverage as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 received Royal Assent. The same-sex part had been tucked away in a gut-punch of a parenthesis, implying the institution of marriage was the important part and if a few gays wanted to pay homage to the institution, so be it. Pacing in front of the television, heckling the pundits like a football fan, Danny watched as broadcasters reported the public polls – fifty-five per cent for, forty-five per cent against, described as a ‘slim majority’ and requiring ‘great courage’ from politicians.Despite fierce opposition England and Wales became the sixteenth countries in the world to legalize gay marriage. As Danny scrambled to figure out if they would be able to call their upcoming wedding a wedding and their marriage a marriage, he realized the implementation of the law would be too late for their ceremony. Gay weddings would not be permitted until the following spring. Digital ‘Save the Date’ fliers released by campaigners popped across the internet – ‘First Gay Marriages: 29 March 2014’. Almost a year away. Danny and Luis’s civil ceremony would be caught in the legislative gap – out-of-date the moment they said their vows.
That night Danny and Luis watched the ten o’clock news seated on the floor of their recently sold apartment, their home for so many years, now standing almost empty. A few sentimental pieces had been shipped to Spain, Luis’s beloved reading chair, his antique lamp, their books, but much had been sold or given away, not suited to a farm on an Andalusian hill. Luis and Danny intended to redecorate when they arrived, slowly, over many months – gradually finding furniture and crockery from markets and artisans in the area. Starting anew. Before the bulletin had even finished, wedding guests began ringing Danny and Luis to congratulate them, convinced that the passing of the Bill meant they would be attending one of the first gay marriages in the country. How amazing, they said, to be part of history. Some hoped there might be television cameras tocapture the event, disappointed to discover they would be among some of the final guests attending a ‘civil partnership ceremony’, the antiquated term as dry as a mouthful of crackers. Danny consoled them that they planned to convert the civil partnership to marriage as soon as they arrived in Spain. Funny, really, because critics of the law had called gay marriage a ‘phoney currency’, and here they were converting it at the border, in a country where gay marriages had been legal tender for eight years. Asked why they chose to marry in England, rather than Spain, Danny replied that they had found the perfect venue in England. And they weren’t about to change their plans based on the whims of a government. Whatever the paperwork called it, they would call it a wedding. Luis and Danny were getting married on Saturday, the law could catch up.
Chapter Forty-SixStitching
On the night before the wedding Luis and Danny were in the attic suite of the Bude Guest House inspecting their wedding suits which had been tailored in Cádiz. The tailors were an elderly husband-and-wife team who had designed Cristina’s clothes for over forty years and, when asked if they would make suits for a gay marriage, simply said, ‘Y por qué no?’
Since Luis and Danny had missed the Savile Row deadline they had their measurements taken in Cádiz instead. Luis had suggested that the suits be made from linen woven in Cambrai using northern French flax famed for its softness. One of the suits was lavender while the other was juniper-green – the colours of the flax plant and flower from which they were made. On the green suit the stitchingwas lavender. On the lavender suit the stitching was green. They would wear them with white cotton shirts. No ties, no belts – nothing to cinch, nothing to hide. Luis would wear the lavender. Danny would wear the green.
