Asking for double trouble and toil
Laugh lines
By Amrita Dhingra

IT was of course all because of her that you got into the mess at all. Things are always happening because of Amanda, but once in a while, not too often just once in a while, you wish you had some idea about how to deal with things! Take the whole mess of Carrie Calloway, for example.

It all began quite simply. Things, it is your considered opinion, always begin simply. You had had enough of the tension wrought existence around the office and welcomed the prospect of escaping from it all for the weekend. Too much of Amanda, your doctor would agree (if you were to confide in him), was bad for you. So you packed a bag, flung it and yourself into the convertible and headed for your sister Fiona’s HQ in the country. Peace and quiet, that was all you wanted and that, you were pretty convinced, were all you’d get. Peaceful country air to soothe jangled nerves, smoothen ruffled feathers.

You arrived there in good time too. After as affectionate a greeting as you’re likely to get from a girl, who has always looked at your activities with the indulgence of one making much of the achievements of a child with water on the brain, you settle into your room. This sister of yours is married to an American millionaire by the name of Jameson, who beside being one of your chums is also a man who likes collecting currency. Not being partial to any special currency, he spreads his efforts pretty evenly around the world, producing cornflakes and what-not. As a result, when you speak of your sister’s house what you really mean is a sprawling 40-acre estate.

Its an hour to lunch and you figure the perfect R. and R. idea would be to have a snooze in the hammock. Accordingly you transport yourself to the lawn and settle into the said hammock. No sooner than you’re dropping off that the sound of sobbing breaks into the peaceful mist of slumber. Sound of heart-rending sobs. Now what?, says the weary, cynical part of you. Better get up and see, counsels the remaining half which has aspirations towards sainthood.

When you sit up rubbing your eyes, the sight that greets you is that of a feminine figure whose head is bowed by grief as she sits on the wicker chair a little way off from your location. In your efforts to reach her as quickly as possible with a view of offering her some serious consolation, because she seems like someone who could do with it, you forget the right way to get out of the hammock and tip over falling neatly to the ground. Thankful, a quick glance reveals, she hasn’t noticed and you make your way across to her side.

"What," you ask in a manner supposed to bring forth confidences, "is the matter?" You don’t know her from Eve but you are forever the epitome of all that is chivalrous.

"I.....I am sooooo......sad....,." she says looking up at you for a moment before bursting into tears once again. That one glance wins you over to her side immediately and you are quite prepared to slay a couple of dragons on her behalf.

"What is the matter? Tell me all about it." This time you offer her your handkerchief.

"I’ve just been watching that movie and........"

It is, you feel, the beginning of a beautiful friendship as you walk back to the house with Carrie hanging on to your arm. She had been seeking this movie and when the gangster’s moll died, well, her heart sort of ran over with emotion. It was your cue to pat her head and tell her everything was going to be all right. You can’t help feeling a bit smug. After Amanda, Carrie is like manna from heaven. A nice, soft, gentle girl in need of reassurance and succour. And who better to provide it than you?

You get a low down on her from Fiona that afternoon. She is the younger daughter of C.E. Calloway, owner of a chain of supermarkets that threads its way across North America. Jameson is trying to get him to sell Jameson’s cornflakes there in preference to any other brand. Which is why both father and daughter are in residence, enjoying Fiona’s hospitality.

The more you see of Carrie the more you like her. Quite apart from the fact that she would score a perfect ten at any beauty pageant, apart from the ash-blonde hair, you like her for being different from Amanda. If Amanda is tough as nails, here is a girl as soft as a feather. It was of course apparent from the start that you couldn’t go around discussing acquisition proposals with her, but who wanted to discuss acquisition proposals when you could be billing and cooing like a pair of turtle doves.

And you spent the whole evening doing just that. After meeting Pa Calloway, with whom you don’t get along so well, chiefly because he takes the view that anyone who is not a millionaire can’t really have much to say for himself, you decide that Carrie could really do with a friend. You dance the whole evening with her, and sometime after two, when the other guests are still dancing inside, under the influence of the mad moon you ask her if she’ll be your wife.

It is all very well to propose marriage to a girl when it is past two in the night and you are under the influence of the sauce, but a man must face the consequences of his actions when he wakes up just past ten in the morning. For a while all is well and you are bothered only very slightly by the throbbing of the temples. Then musing over what has past you recall the sequence of events of the previous night. The recollection causes you to sit up with a yell — Good Lord, you can’t believe, that you actually asked the girl to marry you! You throw the bedclothes off posthaste and rush downstairs to find Fiona.

"Fiona! Fiona where on earth are you?" You shout as you descend the stairs as rapidly nearly tripping over the cord of your dressing gown.

"What on earth is the matter? Why are you shouting in this demented manner?," demands Fiona, who is never harried and always seems to have an answer for everything.

"I’ll tell you what the matter is......." you clutch your head in despair, "I’m engaged".

"Who was so bravely foolish as to take you on?"

Uttering a stifled oath, you sink down onto the sofa.

"I did try and warn you, you know."

"You did nothing of the sort!,’ you snort. "Wait a minute — you know what’s going on?"

"Of course, Carrie is out by the lake composing a poem to you." You see the faintest hint of laughter on her face.

"What am I going to do?"

"Marry her."

"Well I can’t, I mean......" you trail off helplessly, broken in spirit.

You can’t marry her because well you sort of like your life the way it is, thank you very much. You can’t marry her because you really don’t think you could go through life... Wait a minute, you say to yourself, aren’t you working yourself into a tizzy over nothing at all? Go down by the lake meet her and then maybe you’ll be glad.

Leaving Fiona whistling cheerily you go up to dress and hurry downstairs in half an hour. You find Carrie by the lake and the sight of her bucks you up considerably. She still looks like a perfect ten. The cold light of day caused you to push the panic button too early, if a man must get hitched he ought to get hitched to a girl who looks like a perfect ten. She is far too absorbed in composing her lines to you to notice your approach.

"Hi!"

"Ooh !" she jumps half a foot into the air. Then seeing it’s you, she says coyly, "You frightened me!"

"Sorry about that. How are you doing this morning?"

"The heart abounds, there is glory glory everywhere." She gazes solemnly at you.

"What was that again?"

"Oh don’t act!" She sighs wistfully, completely ignoring the fact that her lines have got you confused, and proceeds to add, "You have such a poetic soul......It inspires me soooo much"

Far be it from you to shatter the ecstatic illusions of this girl but the fact is that this is the first you’ve heard about your poetic soul.

"I hope you will like the lines I’ve written for you," Carrie utters a giggle and then starts reciting.

All of which is nothing more than a passing nightmare to you. There was a lot about your being the man who could fight wars for Helen of Troy, Carrie having cast herself in the role, but for the most part it was overhead transmission. By the time the spell ended, your spirits were so low you could hear them sloshing about your ankles. It was a dreadful mistake and which, you were convinced, would cost you your life. Pulling your lips back in a facsimile of a smile and muttering words you hoped would be considered appropriate from an attentive fiance, you made your escape as soon as possible.

The fallout from this announcement of your betrothal, which you regarded as ten times more potent than a nuclear explosion, expanded into ever increasing portents of doom. Little as C.E. Calloway thought of you personally, he could see the opportunities you represented by being close to the Boss. He hoped, he hinted not too lightly after slapping you on the back and congratulating you, to get in touch with the old conglomerate over some deals. The whole idea being that with you woven into the tapestry and him as the worm in no time at all he would have made inroads into eating the fine thread through and through.

Jameson, on the other hand, felt that though you could have looked further and chosen better, having himself once been engaged to Carrie’s elder sister ,though unofficially, it was damn good for his business. A future father-in-law cannot turn down his son-in-law’s brother-in-law’s deal. Needless to say it hurt to have a chum of your college days seek and find a silver lining behind your cloud, you did not, however, hold it against him. And though Fiona, you thought, was moved to pity you she gave no outward sign of it, being as she was a firm believer in ‘as you sow so shall you reap’.

The whole atmosphere of the place seemed to leap out and bite you. It seemed to you that you couldn’t move a few metres around the place without a Calloway, father or daughter, you couldn’t decide who was worse, bumping into you. It was, of course, no fault of Carrie’s — you had done the proposing. But you couldn’t help chaffing and you couldn’t get rid of the urge to find a nice strong stick and beat yourself on the head with it, so you decided to make an early departure.

Making patently false excuses, which Fiona looked through right away, you edged your way into the convertible and roared down the drive. The nauseatingly affectionate goodbyes were more than you could bear. As you tore out of the gates and onto the metalled road you own personal cloud of gloom was sticking assiduously to the task of hanging about your head.

It may not be out of place to mention that it rained cats and dogs on the way home and that your sunroof refused to slide forward at all.

Film Review: 1998