Dr Gabriel UguruWhat you are about to read was a true story but told not strictly in the manner it happened. To protect the identity of the parties concerned, the original names of people in the story are replaced, but the names of places remain the same.
Shotgun Wedding!
I accompanied one of my friends recently to visit his father at the hospital. The father, Jeff Colbert, was about 75 years old and is suffering from COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), a condition he attributed to his earlier days in the ‘60s and ‘70s working in the pits digging for coals. My friend and I were really having a good conversation with his father, Jeff, so much so that we failed to notice the time.
We were supposed to meet our mates at the pub that evening. As we tucked Jeff in his hospital bed and fluffed his pillows, ready to take our leave, he said to me, “Son, why the hurry to toon [town], is there a moos [mouse] in the hoos[house]? Sit doon [down] and I shall tell you a story.” [Son, why the hurry to town, is there any trouble? Sit down and I shall tell you a story].
My friend laughed and from the way he laughed and the twinkle in his father’s eyes, I knew beforehand that it would be a good story albeit a well–rehearsed one. Yours truly always like a good story. So, I said to myself, to hell with the pub, Bacchus can wait. We sat down again, and Jeff started his story. You probably would have guessed that given Jeff’s medical condition and his thick Geordie (Tyneside) accent, at times it was difficult to understand him, but I managed quite all right.
“Have you ever been to Scotland, son?” he asked me.
“Yes, I studied and worked in Scotland before settling in England,” I told him.
“Do you know any places in the Scottish Highlands?”
I rattled off some few names.
“What about the Fife regions?”
Again, I rattled off some few names: St Andrews, Dunfermline, Dundee, etc.
“Son, you really know your Scotland, but I bet you haven’t heard this story I am about to tell you.”
He adjusted his oxygen mask, before launching into his story:
Mr Jeff Colbert was married to four different women at some point in his life and had countless encounters with others, which according to him could be as high as a hundred.
He fathered officially seventeen children but unofficially, your guess is as good as mine. Mr Jeff Colbert’s father, Colbert senior, was born and bred in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
He served as a lance corporal in the British army, and during the Second World War, he was captured by the Japanese at Burma (modern day Myanmar) and served the rest of the war as a prisoner-of-war (POW) in a prison camp in Burma where he worked as a slave labourer like almost all the other POWs, building railway lines which linked Burma to Thailand.
The Japanese were not known for their gentility towards their POWs during the war, and Lance Corporal Colbert learned this lesson the hard way when a Japanese guard nearly clubbed him to death for stealing a small loaf of bread from the kitchen.
It took him a month to recover from the beating but again he did sustain other serious life-threatening injuries during the time he worked at the famous Bridge on the River Kwai.
Shotgun Wedding!
Lance Corporal Colbert was released at the end of the war and died five years later from injuries sustained at the time he was the guest of the Imperial Japanese Army. But he managed to father seven children between the prewar years and the time shortly before his death.
Jeff was the oldest of the children and because of the absence of a father-figure in his life, his upbringing was chaotic so that he quit school at thirteen and drifted from one menial job to the other.
At seventeen, he found himself in Scotland working in the docks, spraying ships with lead paints against corrosion. Inexplicably according to Jeff still in his seventeen, he found himself living in some obscure village in the Fife regions (remember Macbeth? Shakespeare based his Macbeth play in Scotland, and Macduff who eventually vanquished the tyrannical Macbeth, was the Thane of Fife [Thane = Chief of a clan]). That was when the fun started.
Shotgun Wedding!
At the village in the Fife regions, he was working for a landowner with a big house perched atop a little hill. His job was to manually pump water from the well to the house.
The landowner, Mr McAllister, had a large family with five grownup and strapping boys, and a girl.
The girl, Miss Veronica, was the darling of the family and a source of sorrow. She was loved and protected by the family because she was the only girl in the family, but a source of sorrow because she was frankly speaking, not the best job God ever did when he made women, she was pig ugly, and to add to that she had a high libido and was rather free with her favours, consequently was regarded as the village’s bike.
Shotgun Wedding!
There was only one inevitable outcome for Veronica given her amorous lifestyle, she soon fell pregnant aged eighteen, and did not know who was responsible.
It was then that Jeff made his introduction into the family by way of a water boy in charge of the pumps. Young Jeff was handsome with a good physique and fancied himself a lady’s man, an English Casanova.
In fact, at age thirteen he was caught in bed with a married woman and had to escape through the window from the irate husband who was wielding a machete! But despite his self–assurance in female issues, he was not exactly Einstein, and to sweeten the plot, he had no known relative living in the village.
McAllister and family welcomed young Jeff into their home as a Godsend to the vexed problem of finding a groom for Veronica before the pregnancy becomes public knowledge.
Young Jeff was given a little room next to the stable and it took him only two days to get his bearing on how things stood in the family before he started entertaining Veronica.
The family pretended ignorance until a week to the day young Jeff came into the family when they confronted him about his amorous activities. They claimed that because he had defiled their only daughter, to protect her honour, he was duty–bound to marry her.
Young Jeff did not bargain to get married at such a young age in his life.
According to his calculations, he still had at least twenty years of freedom left to sample the female flesh before he would consider settling down with a woman if ever he would.
All he wanted to do with Veronica was to milk the cow and not buy it! He reasoned with the family this line of sunny thought, but Mr McAllister calmly placed his double-barrelled gun on the table before him, muzzles pointing squarely on seated young Jeff and told the latter in no uncertain terms to either go by tomorrow to the family tailor and get measured for a wedding outfit or step into the bush with him for a chat.
Young Jeff knew when he was licked and went to the family tailor the next day where he was kitted out with a wedding suit.
The wedding was scheduled for the next two months after young Jeff’s conference with the family. The family invited their friends and family members to the wedding while young Jeff had none to invite. On the day of the wedding, young Jeff had a bath, dressed up and had a sumptuous breakfast with the rest of the family.
Something that had never happened before, and to which young Jeff took to be a sign of good things to come. But he was sufficiently knowledgeable to hazard a guess that he was not being put out for fattening but to pasture.
Shotgun Wedding!
He drew inference from prisoners on death rows who were treated like royalties shortly before they were executed.
After breakfast and after answering the call of nature for the umpteenth time that morning, a sign of nerves, he walked down to the church like a condemned man with two of Mr McAllister’s sons at either side of him to make sure he did not take it upon his head to run away.
Meanwhile, Veronica who was kitted out in all her wedding finery was driven down to church in a car bedecked with ribbons and balloons.
The wedding preliminaries went swimmingly well until the vicar came to the part where vows are normally exchanged. He asked young Jeff, “Do you, Jeff Colbert, take Veronica McAllister to be your lawfully wedded wife, to behold and to cherish till death do you part?”
Young Jeff scratched his head thoughtfully, and asked the vicar, “Would you marry her?”
There was an uproar among the congregation, and Mr McAllister tightened his grip on his gun which he took with him to church. The vicar told young Jeff, “I am not the one getting married to her, but you are.”
Shotgun Wedding!
But young Jeff shook his head, “No vicar, you are.”
The vicar suspended proceedings while he quietly lectured young Jeff on the rules of weddings. “When you take a girl to the altar, you are the groom, and she is the bride.
The groom is there to seek the blessings of God for his union with his bride. The vicar is merely a messenger of God conducting the wedding and not somebody seeking for a bride!”
Young Jeff nodded meekly, and the vicar resumed proceedings.
“Do you, Jeff Colbert, take Veronica McAllister to be your lawfully wedded wife, to behold and to cherish till death do you part?” the vicar asked young Jeff for the second time.
Young Jeff again scratched his head, and replied, “Sir, are you sure you wouldn’t want to marry her instead of me?”
“Yes, I am sure, son,” replied the vicar, amused. “Remember what I told you? You are the groom, and the groom is supposed to marry the bride, not the vicar.”
“But sir, I don’t want to marry her, I think you should marry her!”
The congregation was in uproar again. Somebody sniggered and there were a couple of whistles from the congregation. The McAllister family members were starting to get up from their seats and to close in on young Jeff.
Shotgun Wedding!
The vicar who intuitively knew the situation young Jeff was in, instead of shutting down the barn door to prevent the horse from escaping, decided to talk directly to the horse. He quietened the congregation and asked the bride’s family to return to their seats while he motioned young Jeff to step aside with him for another tête-à-tête during which young Jeff confirmed what the vicar already guessed at. “Son,” the vicar whispered to young Jeff, “your only chance is to make a run for it.”
Young Jeff immediately bolted through the side door of the altar and before anybody realised what was going on, he was some meters ahead, galloping to the train station.
The family gave chase with Mr McAllister every now and then stopping to take potshots at young Jeff as he galloped away. Young Jeff made it to the train station in time for the 12:15 train to Newcastle upon Tyne through Edinburgh.
The train was just about to move off the station after the conductor had blown his final whistle when young Jeff, huffing and puffing, jumped into one of the carriages, the eldest of Mr McAllister’s son who was also the fittest of the lot narrowly missing catching young Jeff’s coat tail.
Young Jeff made it to Newcastle upon Tyne and related the story to his mother. The Colbert family over dinner later that day had quite a good laugh about young Jeff’s adventure, and the story up unto this day is the main theme of conversation when the family entertains guests at dinner. But ever since then, Jeff Colbert has never set foot in Scotland.
Merry Christmas, dear readers.
P/S: Story taken from “Jokes and Short Stories To Brighten Your Day” by Dr Gabriel Chukwu Uguru; Inpress later by 2023.
Shotgun Wedding!
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