25 Usually me.
Chapter SevenSadie
If this was a movie, there would be some kind of smash cut between Jonah looking me in the eye and sayingall right, Shaw, let’s get married, and our wedding. A montage of us getting dressed, jumping in a car, and then suddenly he’d be sliding a ring onto my finger and someone – probably an Elvis impersonator – would be sayingyou may now kiss the bride.
But it wasn’t a movie, so what actually happened was that we spent the next twenty minutes quietly researching what you had to do to get legally married in Australia. ‘Basically, we need to fill in this form, sign it in the presence of an authorised witness, and get a celebrant to lodge it,’ Jonah said, showing me his screen. We were both sitting on his bed now, cross-legged, leaning against the wall, computers in our laps. ‘Then, once it’s lodged, we can get married in a month.’
‘Amonth?’ That would mean us getting married at the beginning of February, only a few days before I – we, if we pulled this off – started at Lyons. ‘What do they have to do, call the banns?’
‘There’s a provision for cutting it short, but I don’t think we qualify.’ He ran a hand over his beard. ‘I guess it’s to make sure people really think things through.’
Jonah tipped his head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling before turning to look at me. ‘This is probably a good thing. If we got married likethat,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘and then the uni was like, “sorry, no partner hire for you”, then you’d be stuck with an entire husband you didn’t want.’
‘Then we’d go to Plan B.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I kill you, inherit all the money your parents are going to leave you, and start a new life as a wealthy widow who solves murders on trains.’
Jonah chuckled. I could feel his breath, hot against the side of my face.
Then he sighed. ‘We don’t know if this is evenpossible, Shaw. Your contract says that they’ll consider partner hire, not that it’s a guarantee.’
‘I’ll email HR at the uni and set up a meeting so we can figure it out. But if getting married really is a month-long process, then we need to get the ball rolling. If we need a celebrant to lodge the form, let’s find a celebrant.’ I opened up a new tab. ‘Any preferences?’
‘Not really.’
He turned his head back to the ceiling. ‘You know, for the better part of the last millennium, you could get married simply by declaring that you were married. You didn’t even need any witnesses. You could just say, “you’re my husband”, “you’re my wife” and boom, married.’
‘I know,’ I said absently, scrolling through celebrant listings. ‘I was at your talk in the seminar series about it.’
I’d been interested, too – almost against my will. He’d been using speech act theory to talk about the marriage ceremony and the problems it presented when depicting weddings on the Renaissance stage. Phrases likeI take you to be my lawfully wedded wifewerethe kind of speech acts that changed reality – you said it and then you were married – which made it tricky for actors to say them to each other, even though everyone involved was male and it was four hundred years before the legalisation of gay marriage.
Although getting married wasn’t quite as simple as just saying the words.Marriage in England in the early modern period came down to two things, Jonah had said, gesturing at his PowerPoint.A verbal contract which began the marriage, and a physical union which consummated it.
One of the downsides of being a redhead is how obvious it is when you blush. At the memory of his lips curving around the wordconsummated,I felt the flush start somewhere near my belly button, creeping up towards my face.
‘Is that celebrant’s website seriously Going-to-Gretna-Green-dot-com?’ Jonah was looking at my screen. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I do have preferences. I want that one.’
I glanced at him, surprised.
‘If we’re going to go through with a plan this absurd,’ he clarified, ‘then we might as well have the thing solemnised by someone with a sense of humour.’
The celebrant had a Calendly on their website, so I made us an appointment for the following afternoon. ‘We should fill in the Notice of Intended Marriage form now, so we can hit the ground running.’
‘Okay.’ Jonah tabbed back over to it. ‘We’ll need an authorised witness to our signatures – a justice of the peace, a lawyer, a doctor, someone like that. The celebrant can probably do it, unless you want your sister—’
‘No.’
He looked at me again.
‘I don’t want to tell Chess. Not yet.’
There was a long pause before he spoke again. ‘This is none of my business, but if you’re really going to be my wife, Sadie…’
The wordsmy wifecoming out of Jonah Fisher’s mouth made me feel a lot of things, none of which I intended to interrogate.
‘…can I ask why?’
