A Wedding To Remember

Surely nothing would spoil this special day.

- C.L. PATTISON

It was a glorious day, unseasonably warm for the first week of October.

Above Ivy's head, the sky was a canopy of cornflower blue. In her pretty cottage garden, bees stumbled, halfdrunk, from flower to flower.

She'd been hard at work all morning: pruning the rose bushes, deadheading the busy lizzies, trimming the gently undulating box hedge. The garden was her favourite place to be, come rain or shine, and she had tended it faithfully for almost forty years.

As she dug a weed from the lawn with her daisy grubber, the peace was shattered by a loud clanging. It was a sound Ivy knew well: the bells of St Wilfred's tolling on the other side of the village.

A broad smile broke across her face.

At this time on a Saturday, it could only mean one thing.

Tossing the grubber aside, she got up from her kneeler, arthritic joints complaining. She made her way towards the small wooden gate that gave onto the lane, pausing briefly to beckon to the slightly scruffy border terrier lying in the shade of an ancient crab apple.

"Come on, Lionel," she told him. "You and I have a wedding to go to."

By the time Ivy reached the church, But the She stood in the vestibule for a few moments, scanning the rows of pews.

It was an upper-class crowd-the women slim and glossy-haired, with elaborate headgear and lots of jewellery.

The men were standing tall and upright, exuding the kind of confidence that only an expensive education can bring.

Ivy picked Lionel up and tucked him under her arm. As she made her way up the aisle, she couldn't help noticing the heads swivelling in her direction and the nostrils flaring in disapproval.

Keeping her gaze fixed firmly ahead, she slid into an empty seat at the end of a pew and set Lionel on the floor. The elderly terrier flopped gratefully onto the cool flagstones and rested his chin on his mistress's sandalled foot.