“I suppose we ought to go in,” said Hilary, at last.  This was how the prospect of entering Water Langley appeared to her.

“Yes,” Andy said.  “Mum will be wondering where I am, your granny too.”

They drove into the village, past the turning for Chamberlain Drive, the shops in Langley Parade, Brook Lane which led to Caroline's house and the fresh white stucco of the Langley Angel gleaming in the bright sunshine.  (George painted his pub every spring).  Now they were in Church Square, facing the St Catherine's Church: the church notice board had been moved, Hilary noticed, several yards from where it used to be!  At the village school, small figures in white airtex shirts and navy shorts (like Hilary and Andy, many years ago) clambered over the climbing frame and the younger playgroup children were emerging from the village hall, mothers hovering by the entrance, among them the red anorak pushchair woman. 

Then they drew up outside the row of Suffolk Pink stuccoed terraced houses outside the lych gate which was Bottom Lane.  Meeting Mrs Rayner again, after almost three years, would be weird, this grandmother, who had been an integral part of her life for twenty-one years, the family member whom she had loved second only to her mother, now appearing in her front doorway, tanned and older.  Hilary had thought of her grandmother every day, but in her mind, in England, she had, without realising it, edited her picture and, now, here, was the original version. 

It wasn’t Mrs Rayner’s way to swamp Hilary in hugs and kisses. Instead, she busied herself with Hilary's bags and telling her that she would be sleeping in “Margaret's room”. 

“Neither of us will be able to carry your bag upstairs,” she said, “so we’d better unpack it downstairs.  And what about your washing?  You can put that straight in the machine.”

Empty-handed, they climbed upstairs together, in the tiny, old fashioned bedroom, where Hilary's mother had slept as a child, under a pink candlewick counterpane, squeezed under the sloping eaves.  As a child, Hilary had visited this room from time to time, delighting in it as something that was essentially “Mummy”.  She remembered how, over two years ago, overwhelmed by misery, she had stacked books in here, almost to the ceiling.  “Where are they?” she asked.  “Mum’s books?”

Mrs Rayner rolled her eyes.  “Mrs Armitage and I moved them into Barbara’s room yesterday.  It took us all afternoon.”

Within the hour, however, they both thawed.  After a late lunch of fish pie, Hilary grabbed her slight, wiry grandmother’s hands and exclaimed, “Andy's just asked me to marry him and I've said Yes!”  After that, they talked and talked for the rest of the day.

In the evening, Andy returned, with Constance, who was very excited, words and ideas tumbling forth like the Lang Brook after the spring rains.  They must book the church for 4 August absolutely immediately: Constance was sure there were other weddings at St Catherine's that day.  And what about the reception?  The White Hart at Langton was very good, or had they thought about The Green Man in Thornton Street?  All these places get very booked up.  Really, wasn’t 4 August a bit soon?

“Connie,” said Mrs Rayner, after they had gone, “had better get it into her head that, with weddings, the bride’s family’s in charge.  In fact, strictly speaking, the bridegroom’s family come at the invitation of the bride’s father.”

Hilary frowned.  “Who’s going to pay for all this?  The White Hart and the Green Man?”

“Frank.  Your dad.  Of course!  And where we go for the reception is up to us, not Connie Pullen!”

But Frank wasn’t her dad, was he?  She didn’t like the idea of asking Frank for money.  She had about £1000 in the building society.  How far would that go, if they kept things simple?  “Granny,” she asked, “would you make my wedding dress?  You made Mum’s, and Auntie Barbara’s.”

“Of course I'll make your wedding dress.  And Caroline’s bridesmaid’s dress.  Have you heard from Frank?”

“No.  He’s in Majorca still, isn't he?”

“Well, he ought to have rung you.  They do have telephones abroad!”

Hilary invited Caroline to be her bridesmaid when she spoke to her on the telephone.  She wouldn’t have dreamed of asking anyone else but she found it amusing that Mrs Rayner, and also Constance, were taking it as read. “Yesterday evening,” said Caroline, “when I was arguing with Andy in the hospital corridor, I told him to stop messing you around.  I told him to put up or shut up.  Clearly, he put up.”

Next weekend, after having been to Chenham to buy an engagement ring, Hilary and Andy agreed an action plan: he, being in London, would look for flats and Hilary, convalescing in Water Langley, would organise the wedding.  “You don’t want a big wedding, do you?” she asked him.

“No way!” he retorted.  “I just want to be married to you at the end of it.”

“We’re going to have a flat of our own!” she exclaimed.

“Oh yes!”  He sighed.  “It’ll be the first time I've lived in a proper home, not in student accommodation, since 1973.”

There were actually three other weddings booked at St Catherine's church on Saturday, 4 August, and Hilary and Mrs Rayner had to do quite a bit of arm-twisting to persuade the vicar, Jim Bailey, to agree to book them in for 3.45 in the afternoon.  “It’s quite a lot for me, three, four wedding services on one day,” he said.  “And, you do realise, don’t you, that we don’t currently have a proper organist?”

“That organist they got in after Margaret, that Hugh Fearnley,” Mrs Rayner told Hilary, “he’s disappeared.  Mrs Armitage read it in the paper that he was interfering with little boys at Merrills School.”

In church on Sunday, Helen Abbott, now about to finish at Oxford, was on the organ stool again and, after the service, she came over to speak to Hilary and Andy.  “Would you like to me to play for your wedding?”

“Yes, please!” said Hilary and Andy together.

At the suggestion of Mrs Rayner, former wool shop lady, Hilary rang the other three brides to split the cost of the church flowers.  For the reception, she booked the village hall, and George and Joan, from the Langley Angel, to do the catering.  Laura, from the library, who had got married last year, would lend Hilary her veil and headdress and, as the house in Bottom Lane was only yards away from the lych gate, and the village hall just across Church Square, they wouldn’t need wedding cars.  This way, thought Hilary, she would be able to pay for her wedding herself.

“Nonsense!” retorted Mrs Rayner.  “You two are setting up home!  You’re going to need every penny.  The bride’s father pays.  That’s the tradition.”

“But…”

“He hasn’t done much for you, your father.  I know Margaret, poor love, didn’t make a Will, but he sold that house in Chamberlain Drive and pocketed all the money.  It’s high time he got out his wallet.”

Another week passed.  “He should be home now,” said Mrs Rayner.  “You should ring him.”

Hilary didn’t want to. “Why do you think he’ll be back now?”

“People only go on holiday for a fortnight,” Mrs Rayner replied, with incontrovertible logic.

The following weekend, Hilary and Andy went to dinner with Granny and Grandad Newton.  They were just getting out the car outside Granny and Grandad Newton’s house on Chenham Road in Langton, when a car roared along the road, splashing puddle-water up Hilary's tights.  “That was my dad,” she exclaimed to Andy.

Andy frowned.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes.  I saw him inside the car.  And Dorrie too.”

After the meal, Granny Newton got out her own wedding album: Grandad Newton had looked magnificent on his wedding day, tall, upright, moustachioed, and she had worn a 1920s-style veil, fixed round the head like a helmet.  “I do so like things to be done properly,” Granny Newton murmured.  “Now, Andy, dear, your mother tells me that you intend to get married in a lounge suit.  This really will not do.  You must wear morning dress.  And so should the ushers.  You have to make an effort.”  She glared at Grandad Newton.  “Doesn’t he?”

Grandad Newton grunted.  “When you arrange my funeral, you can do things properly!  The men who’ll carry me into church in a wooden box will wear morning dress.  I rest my case!”

When Hilary returned home, Mrs Rayner said, “I've been talking to your dad on the phone.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.  Shame you were out.  He rang at about eight.”

About half an hour after he had splashed puddle water up her tights, thought Hilary.

“I've talked to him about the wedding and he’s sending you a cheque for £1500.”

“I don’t need that amount!” Hilary exclaimed.

“Don’t be like that, young Hilary!” Mrs Rayner retorted.  “You can't take this high and mighty attitude about money!  You’re not HMQ.  How about a “thank you” to me for talking to him?”

“Thank you, Granny,” Hilary replied, cross at herself for arguing with her beloved grandmother.  “I suppose I'll have to ring him back.”

“Well, he said he was going out this evening and he’s going away again tomorrow, to Devon.  Don’t know where people get the money from to go on all these holidays!” 

Hilary told her grandmother about Granny Newton’s wedding album and the helmet-like veil, which made her head look like a pudding basin.  Mrs Rayner smiled then got up from her chair and, when she returned, she was holding three leather-bound wedding albums.  “That’s your mum and dad’s wedding.  And that’s Barbara and Brian.” 

Hilary thumbed through the familiar photographs of her parents’ wedding: the newly-wedded couple outside the church; the awful group photograph at the end, baby Robert Newton squirming in Constance’s arms.  “Granny, do you think Mum and Dad were happy?”

Mrs Rayner started.  “What a question, Hil?”

“Mum wanted to marry Bill Macready.  Didn’t she?  And she married Dad immediately after it all went wrong.”

Mrs Rayner stiffened.  “Don’t get into all that, Hilary.  People… say silly things.”

“What silly things?”

“Margaret married Frank Bowles and that was that.  They stayed together, didn’t they, until she passed on, poor love.  She was involved in the church and the choir and he liked his football and his television.” 

“Mm.”  Hilary passed on through her aunt’s wedding photographs, then she turned to the next, older and dustier, album.  “What’s this?”

“Er…that’s my wedding,” replied Mrs Rayner.

“I've never seen this before!” 

“It was all a long time ago.”

Hilary turned over the front cover.  There was her grandmother, also wearing a 1920s helmet cum pudding-basin veil, over the gleaming straight dark hair which she had passed on to both her daughters.  The bridegroom, standing beside her, was a slight, skinny man, in a stiff collar and pinstripe suit.  “I've never seen a picture of my grandfather before!”

“Really?  You must’ve done!”

“No!”

“Well, he died in 1929.”

“But, Granny, you never told me he was blonde.  I get my blonde hair from him!”