Ghost Wedding
County Down, 1920s: an artificial lake is under construction in the grounds of a Victorian manor house, the property of a self-made man who knows that whatever his wealth, he will never quite be accepted by the Ascendancy class, who see themselves as the natural owners of demesnes like his.
George Allenby, the young Belfast architect in charge of the project, is a survivor of the Somme. The churning mud in which his team of resentful but needy workmen toil, and later, the discovery of a tiny skeleton in the excavations, provoke vivid flashbacks of his wartime experiences. He also has to contend with the son of the house, too young for conscription, an entitled boor with a line in latter-day droit de seigneur in the shape of mill-girls brought to the manor house as servants.
With one of these George begins a relationship, but this novel is not a romance, and their differences in class and education wreak devastation. George and Cora’s story is told in parallel with that of present-day Alex and Ellie, who come to the hotel (as the manor house becomes) hopeful of a wedding venue, only to encounter a supercilious wedding planner who tells them there is no room at the inn unless they want Allenby’s boat house, then in the process of renovation; they take it, brushing off rumours of ghosts.
That wedding planner does not appear again, but he is the first of a series of vivid cameos that give this book its truly immersive quality. Others include the presences of which Alex is peculiarly aware of (and they of him), the long-gone occupants of condemned buildings, for though Alex is also an architect, his role is not to construct but to destroy, at his domineering father’s behest. This extraordinary novel will remain long in the memory, its characters always present, just out of sight.
