KoL8 – The Wedding 19.27

Chapter 8 – The Wedding
 
There was an atmosphere of excitement outside the church in the sleepy village. Bright silk flowers adorned the iron church gate and the great oak door pillars leading in to the church. Chicly dressed guests had already arrived and entered the church, chatting merrily all the way, some looking back in anticipation. Well-wishers from the village lined the gravel path outside and waited impatiently by the wall of the cemetery, hoping for the merest of glimpses of the happy bride as she arrived.
 
Bruno Weston was a well-known and well-loved man in Cobblington. The son of a local sheep farmer, he had spent all his life in the marshlands caring for his flocks, some said, as his children. Tall, still blonde at 59, well-built and tanned, he had been the apple in many a lady’s eye through the years. He had always seemed oblivious to anyone’s advances, causing great distress and much despair for those whose head’s he had turned.
 
Nonetheless, when Bruno fell, he fell hard. Aged 40, Joan had nagged him for months to take his sheep to the church fayre. Reluctantly and obviously under duress, Bruno had ceded to his sisters bullying until that Saturday afternoon, when he had found himself with four of his best sheep, entertaining a group of toddlers behind the rectory. 
 
From across the garden, across the paddock, he had seen what had seemed to him to be a vision of beauty; long slender legs in cream sandals, slim body clad in a cream twin set, beautiful blonde hair blowing in the breeze. Even from that distance, he had known.
 
He had watched her, parade from one stall to another, chatting to people who had made cakes, buying pots of jam, looking at the pumpkins that had been grown. He had no idea who she was but what he did know was that she was absolutely stunning and that he had to find a way of meeting her.
 
The afternoon had sped by, his heart pounding all the time, wondering how he could speak to her, what he could say?  At quarter to five, just before the raffle was to be drawn, he had finally seen his chance. He had grabbed one of the teenagers hanging around, asked him to watch the sheep and he’d rushed off heading across the lawn in the direction of his diva.
 
Just as he arrived, a large man, impressive in his stature and his speech, appeared from nowhere, taking the arm of Bruno’s goddess. “Darling, there you are,” it had said, turning the lady, “I have been positively looking for you all over. Where have you been?” And as the almighty tones of the well-educated, well-money, upper-classed and middle-aged dinosaur faded into the distance, so did the hopes of Bruno Weston who believed he had at last found his one and only love.
 
It had been another year before Bruno caught sight nor sound of Caroline Healey and even then it had been a fleeting glimpse as he drove past the local hotel which she had been entering with a group of friends. He had so wanted to go back and pretend that he was drinking at the bar, but as it was, he was dressed for work and in a hurry to meet a vet.
 
And then actually, he had bumped into her, quite by chance at a friends xmas party.  There she was when he walked in, looking as magnificent as ever, leaning against the mantle piece sipping champagne.
 
That had been 18 years ago, so the story went. 18 years that Bruno had been waiting for his love. Long the village had speculated that they were having an affair, the Caroline Healey was using Bruno for his body and her husband for his wealth. Long they had waited for Lord Healey to throw his wife from his home, and long they had been frustrated in their desire for ‘real’ gossip.
 
Today though, on this warm May morning, the whole of Cobblington had turned out to cheer Bruno on and above all, to catch a glimpse of what promised to be the event of the year.