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| Emma Tennant |
Tying the knot after 33 years
Emma Tennant
Sunday 20 April 2008
W
hen my partner, Tim Owens, and I walked into Chelsea town hall last Monday and asked where we should go to pay the banns of marriage for our wedding at noon, we had been living together for 33 years.
We had seen old friends of the 70s marry and emigrate or marry and settle down in the UK – or, in many cases, divorce and choose a single life rather than risk another disastrous marriage.
For us, as for hundreds and thousands of couples in Britain, to be half of a partnership was more desirable than the old-fashioned institution of marriage. We applauded when life was made simpler for us - the stigma of illegitimacy, still lingering in the mid-70s, gradually faded away.
Hospitals, rather than insisting on a next of kin rule which frequently resulted in heartbreaking separations at a time of illness and grief, allowed for partners.
In financial terms, the rise of buy to let meant capital gains tax was frequently avoided by putting the property under the separate names of the partners in the title deeds.
For women, the use of Ms, rather than Miss or Mrs - ridiculed at first but then becoming the most accepted form of address - produced a sense of independence that led to a lot more heads going through the glass ceiling.
So why is it, when there has been a fall of 4% in people marrying between November 2006 and March 2008, that, despite these figures, a large number of people who would be more likely to meet at a memorial service than a wedding breakfast are marrying?
Is there a late blossoming of romance? Are we aware, we who have lived together contentedly for decades, that a sizeable proportion of those who exchange cohabitation for espousal, split up and go off in opposite directions?
And why is it that they do? Does marriage still signify something important, mythic in its insistence on following the ancient laws of the tribe?
What causes the sudden influx of old people at registry offices all over the country? If it's not a desire to meet God as a respectably married couple, then it must be tax.
Gordon Brown, a happily married man himself, is responsible for the inheritance tax which, at 40% after the limit of £300,000 has been passed, affects all those whose houses have enjoyed a huge rise in value in the past decade.
It's a new phenomenon that a levy designed for the very rich now squeezes an incalculable number of people.
A large proportion of those victims of the British government's policy, taxpayers and homeowners, are senior citizens who took advantage of the new permissive atmosphere of the 1960s and settled down together to enjoy life without the trouble and strife - only to find that an unpleasant no-nup lies in store for their heirs if they decide not to wed.
When we went for our first interview at Chelsea town hall, we didn't know that the UK is alone in insisting that this punitive tax can only be avoided if two partners marry - unless, as it happens, they happen to be of the same sex, in which case they are able to demand a civil partnership ceremony that declares them as good as man and wife and thus immune to the tax.
It's heterosexuals who are forced to surrender their freedom in order to save their children the necessity of paying the tax at their death.
In France, and in a number of US states, the equivalent of a civil partnership is granted to heterosexuals. So the government's attitude is reminiscent, in its grim Victorian dictates, of the worst discrimination against what used to be known as living in sin.
The interview room of Chelsea town hall is presided over by Andrew Kenyon, a charming - and necessarily tactful - official who must enter our ages (I am 70 and my partner is 59) and then discover whether we are free to go ahead and enter the married state.
Tim is asked to leave the room so I can go first: this is to ensure, apparently, that I am not marrying "under duress" and applies to all women seeking to embrace the conjugal state.
Before I have time to explain that, if either of us is under duress it is Tim, he has moved on, tapping into the computer my reply to his question about my past marital status. Have I been married before? Yes I have - three times – but, fortunately, Kenyon only wants proof that the last union was dissolved and I have brought my decree absolute as requested.
I am told we must wait 16 days, the duration of the banns, which will be posted in the inner hall for all to see. Then it is my future husband's turn, and I leave the office and go to collect our ceremony pack at reception.
It's when we're known to be under way for what a mischievous friend calls the Big Day that it's possible to see how strong the myth of marriage actually remains. Even if, like many of the other applicants for entry to the blessed state, we are old, we are surely deserving of some respect in these matters?
"No," we say, wearily, when asked if it's "only for tax reasons" that we are doing it - we're perfectly happy to do it either way. But the fairytales have gone in too deep to be relegated to a basket labelled "the past" by now.
Are we just marrying for money - or rather, for the children (I have three in all) not to suffer old Brown's penalty for years of adultery, or fornication, or whatever they call it at the manse?
"Oh, do tell me you're doing it for love," gushes another hopeful. "How romantic," insists a married woman who has been known for years for her serial infidelity. "Are you going to wear a hat?"
By the time I've worked out that, from first phone call to the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea's registrars to the actual wedding date has taken a biblical 40 days (and we've certainly been in the wilderness all that time), I'm aware that impending marriage does something very strange to you indeed.
I have become more scatty and absent-minded than usual, and am told it's down to "pre-wedding nerves", as is the quiet, rational partner I no longer recognise.
It's clear that we're undergoing a public ordeal, and everyone has been expecting us to react to looming matrimony either with hysteria or with commendable calm.
As is often the case, nerves take over - and if I'm asked one more time which name I shall use when married, there will be unpleasant consequences.
It seems I am now a bride, then I will be a married woman, and I begin to remember how good it was to have dodged all the marriage labels - as many thousands of us must feel.
For, however simplified the coming ceremony, it is still annihilating, and it's not going to be easy to return to just being me.
We're sitting on two Louis Something chairs in front of the registrar's desk, on which a shamefully ornate basket of roses and lilies (ordered by myself, I confess) looms over us both and almost succeeds in darkening the small room.
Our witnesses, a couple who must have been married for over 50 years, and seem none the worse for it, are waiting to be called in when our mini-interview is over and we've chosen which form of contract (I was going to say service) we want to use.
Debbie, flame-haired and kind-natured is helpful without being intrusive, and for this I'm grateful. I ask her whether she is the chief registrar, but Debbie is not the superintendent, who is named Beba, and who sweeps in, our witnesses behind her.
Beba appears to be from eastern Europe, and I wonder what she makes of the growing number of late marryers she must come across daily here. Both Tim and I are questioned gently: did our fathers die after they'd retired or before? - a question that still baffles us.
Then we explain that we want to have ceremony C - the one where "you" is substituted for "thou" and "thee", which appear in ceremonies A and B, and Beba gives a great burst of laughter. C is for people who don't speak much English, she explains.
So off we go. It's over in just under two minutes, and I can see from my ex-partner's face that he is as shocked by the whole business as I am. Tim struggles with the heavy floral basket and we make out way down the stairs into the street.
It's only when we're at Essenza for our wedding lunch that the full reality sinks in. And somehow, with the delicious food and wine on the tables and children and friends all around, it doesn't seem too bad at all.
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