‘IT’S HARD FOR MEN TO ADMIT THEY HAVE FAILED’
William Cash, 52
There are many challenging aspects to joining the Third Wives’ Club but not the least is actually finding a close enough friend to carry out the “hope-overexperience” best man duties. The one thing you cannot do, as I was firmly told by a fellow divorcee, the historian Andrew Roberts, is “recycle” your original best man. He knew somebody who did just that with disastrous results. “The best man used his old notes and then read out the name of the first wife – to the horror of all the guests.”
In some ways, marriage can get in the way of close male friendships. When my marriages have collapsed, engagements broken off or weddings postponed, I’ve tended to just pull the emotional drawbridge up and retreat to the country and vanish into books and walking the dog. Or eat alone in the Noor Jahan curry house in South Kensington, where the staff made me feel like “family”. It can be difficult for men to admit to each other they have “failed” in human relations.
But the times when I have allowed myself to be vulnerable with friends have often proved to be the most bonding.
One of the absolute low points of my life was in September 2002 when my marriage to Ilaria Bulgari was postponed at the last minute due to legal wrangling over a prenup. The problem was I had already booked the honeymoon, a walking holiday in Bavaria. As the wedding day loomed my best man, historic racing driver Charles Dean, took me out to the Noor Jahan to try to lift my glum spirits. “You’ve paid for the hotels and all you’re going to do is mope around and get depressed,” he said. “Why don’t we go on the honeymoon together?” And so off we went. We had been on dozens of holidays together – including driving across the States in a Mustang convertible – but we’d never had a real conversation that dug into our private emotions. I think seeing my raw pain as I wrote a teary postcard to Ilaria inspired him to open up. And, as we lay in our German bedroom together on the Friday night before the wedding that should have taken place, Charles began to open up unexpectedly about some serious emotional pain he was going through himself. I was surprised, and felt less wretched myself. I felt like he was my brother on that bizarre honeymoon.
Ultimately, I went on to marry again – twice. And, when it came to choosing my best men, I was lucky enough to have close friendships with William Dartmouth, stepbrother of the late Princess of Wales and Gus Hochschild, who I also first met at Oxford. Neither of them had children when I asked them to be my best man. Happily, we all now have children of our own, which means we tend to see less of each other. We have all moved on to different but probably more content chapters of our lives as members of the Old Dads’ Club.
My male friends may account for no more than 10 per cent of my Christmas card list. But I know all their addresses and postcodes by heart.
‘The best man read out the name of the first wife – to the horror of all the guests’