Fallen

Tonight I am his light {1912}

The wedding 1912
John quit school not long after the incident. It was common for boys in Small heath to leave before final year to enter into the workplace. Eve missed him, but she soon made other friends somehow without John by her side she'd become more approachable.

And that brings us to Martha. she'd caught John's eye, as Eve walked her back home after school passing the barns on their way because Martha liked to watch the horses and Eve enjoyed the company. It got lonesome just her parents and infant brother at home and John preferred to piss around than actually talking.

John rarely visited the stables, but that day he just so happened to join Tommy and Freddie. "Fate" he had called it in his vows. Martha walked past and his heart stopped for a brief second. He took the time to thank Eve, because without her there to introduce them he would had never had the courage. Especially not with Tommy and Freddie there to take the piss out of him. It was a good speech, but maybe Eve was bias. She had been the one to stay up all night to help John write it. John spoke and she helped fill the gaps he didn't quite have the words for, she'd even stole a line from Dickens "Family need not be defined merely as those with whom we share blood, but as those for whom we would give our blood."

Huddled up in that room was the last chance she had to tell him how she felt, but Eve was a coward. Even she hadn't been a coward, she wasn't foolish enough to think he felt the same. The way he spoke about Martha could only be described as the purest form of love. So she said nothing and continued to translate his common tongue into soppy poetic mush that would make his fiancée gush.

The vows ignored the part of the part of the story where Eve hesitated to introduce them. How she had stalked off to greet Freddie and tommy, two men she wasn't particularly close too just to avoid hearing John flirt. After three minutes of dry conversation about horses she'd turn round, and told the older boy's she was leaving. Then built up a tiny bit of courage and asked John to walk Martha home in her place. John claimed it was that conversation as he walked Martha home that made him fall. Eve wrote on the paper, it were her looks that hooked me but her words that reeled me in. It's her love that makes me whole.

"Take out the 'makes me whole bit' it sounds muggy." John told Eve whilst she read the vows aloud for his approval.

"John I'm keeping it in, and you're gonna say it out loud in that church, because it's how you feel. Remember I've been 3rd wheeling for three years now, I've seen it." She'd spent those three years watching him fall in love, Martha had changed him in a way Eve never could.

In the end he didn't say it. Martha hadn't given him the chance, before crashing her lips into him half way through the vows. Arthur screamed from his seat in the pews about waiting " till your told to kiss." Martha flushed bright red and went on to say her own vows with a shakey voice.

Red,white and rowdy men an utterly British wedding.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The reception was at the Garrison. There was no where else it could of been. Polly had wanted in the fields the guests barefoot, mud in between their toes a gyspy wedding she had called it. Thankfully Martha's parents wouldn't allow it. So the Garrison it was.

The pub was each of their lively hood. Polly had her sherries, the boys their pints and though Eve didn't usually drink she'd always join them each Sunday night.

If it wasn't for Sunday's in this pub, her friendship with John would've been swept aside long ago. It's not as if they'd had a lot of time for each other, these days and now there'd be no time at all. The wedding had sealed the end.