In case you missed them:

Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three

It was a short and simple ceremony, but Bill wasn’t sure he would remember all of it. His hand shook slightly as he guided the ring onto Allie’s finger, but she seemed to be in control as she pushed his ring over his knuckle. 

As the registrar wound up, saying that they were now man and wife and that Bill could now kiss the bride, Kiki joined in with “Kiss the bride. Kiss the bird. God save the King!” at the top of her lungs before Jack could stop her. 

Bill paused, raised an eyebrow and said dryly, “You know, Kiki, old girl, I will certainly agree to God Save the King, and I certainly am going to kiss the bride, but I cannot be persuaded to kiss the bird!” 

The children giggled, even Jack who was bright red at Kiki’s interruption. There were a few laughs from the congregation. Bill looked at Allie and with a smile, added, “May I now kiss the bride?”

“Only as long as you keep to kissing the bride and not the bird,” teased Allie gently as he pulled her close for a kiss. Bill chuckled and gently kissed Allie as everyone else laughed at the exchange and clapped. 

Anatoly took over the photography from this point as Philip and Jack slipped out of the room to go and decorate the car with the tin cans and the signs they had made. The guests then began to make their way out of the registry office and down to the steps to shake confetti over Bill and Allie as they made their way to the car.

“I’ll get you two for this later,” Bill called warningly to Philip and Jack who were doubled over laughing at the look on his face. 

“Anatoly was in on it as well!” Jack called back as Bill shook a menacing fist, obviously trying to spread the blame around.

“Traitor!” Anatoly said, taking the camera from around his neck and, in Jack’s opinion, swinging it far too recklessly on its strap in retaliation. 

“Oi! Be careful with that!” Jack shouted as Anatoly pretended to almost drop his precious camera. 

“You’re in enough trouble as it is without destroying our wedding photos,” Bill reminded him, eyebrows raised. 

Anatoly smoothly handed the camera to Jack and then cuffed him on the ear while the boy’s hands were busy examining it for damage. 

“Shall we go before anyone else gets into trouble?” Allie asked, smothering a laugh. 

“Girls?” Bill looked at Dinah and Lucy-Ann, who although smiling at the boys’ antics, were keeping themselves apart from any of their nonsense. “There’s nothing you’d like to tell me, is there? No surprises lurking in the car or at the reception?”

“Of course not, Bill,” they chorused, the picture of innocence. He looked at them suspiciously and then shrugged. Bill knew that whatever the girls may have planned, it would be less embarrassing than the boys’ decorating of the car. He held the passenger door open for Allie before he got in himself, turned the key in the ignition, and waved to everyone as he drove off. 

Anatoly used Allie’s car to transport the children, Kiki and Allie’s aunt and uncle to the reception in the village hall, as she had insisted she was fine to drive herself and the girls to the registry office. Bill had paid a local catering company to set up and do the food and the wedding cake. It was worth the money so that Allie hadn’t had to make it all herself with her daily help. 

As they pulled up, Bill spotted the sign that the girls must have put up on the front of the hall. It was a nice sign, if not slightly embarrassing to have their union declared to everyone in the village. The sign read “Congratulations, Bill and Allie on your wedding!”.

Allie sighed and laughed, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised but at least it doesn’t make a noise!” 

Bill grunted and shook his head a little, and offered up the idea, “It’s the thought that counts?” 

Allie nodded and took his hand. “Indeed, and I think it just goes to show how fond they are of both of us that they want to show off that we have gotten married,” she said softly. “And they are just excited. Let them have their moment and don’t be so grumpy,” she teased. 

Bill lifted her hand to his lips and planted a kiss on the back of it. “You’re right of course,” he agreed. “I’m just not used to having things so out in the open. Come on then Allie, let’s go and make sure everything is how we want it before the hoards arrive!” 

The catering company had done a lovely job, and so there was little for them to do in the hall, but Allie went around checking everything nonetheless. They had only had a brief head start on the other guests, and soon everyone else was arriving. Most of the guests had walked the short distance over, but Anatoly took the car back to collect Bill’s older cousin and his wife.

“Is that everyone here?” Bill asked, doing a headcount after Anatoly’s passengers were inside, everyone having congratulated him and Allie again as they arrived.

“If there was anyone else they have missed their chance,” he said with a shrug.

Bill grinned. Including he and Allie there were 21 people and one bird in the hall. A small wedding by anyone’s standards but just the right number for them. Allie’s friends had come on their own – a girl’s night out they were calling it – and his colleagues had also come alone, so the numbers were fairly even for dancing later. 

In the meantime, the food was waiting. Bill cleared his throat noisily. “Thanks for coming, everyone. I know that at least some of you came mostly on the promise of food,” here he gave a raised eyebrow in the direction of his work colleagues, “so I declare the wedding breakfast open!”

“Hooray, I’m starved,” said Philip, heading straight for the plates at the end of the table before Aunt Polly caught his arm. 

“Let the bride and groom fill their plates first,” she scolded.

Despite the delay Philip still managed to be near the start of the queue. After piling his plate high with at least two of everything on offer he joined Jack, Dinah and Lucy-Ann at the end of one of the tables which formed three sides of an open square. Bill and Allie were in the middle of the top table but had said they weren’t going to fuss about seating arrangements, leaving it a free-for-all. 

After a minute Anatoly dropped into the chair beside him, but immediately turned towards Johns. Philip rolled his eyes. Once upon a time he and the others had been quite friendly with Anatoly but, especially if anyone else was around, they were apparently beneath him now. 

“Did Bill not eat this morning, or something?” he heard Anatoly ask his colleagues. “Only it is not breakfast-time, and this,” he indicated his plate of sandwiches and sausage rolls, “is not breakfast food.”

Johns and the other agents guffawed at the question.

“Not been to many weddings?” Johns asked, trying to keep a straight face.

“What?” Anatoly demanded. “What did I say?”

“It’s always a wedding breakfast,” Bentley explained. “Even if it’s at night. That’s just what they call it. Something to do with the bride and groom fasting before the wedding once upon a time, then breaking that fast with a meal after.”

Anatoly snorted. “People should just call things what they are.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Thompson asked with a grin. This wasn’t the first time they’d had to educate Anatoly in the English language, despite him having grown up in London.

Dinah and Lucy-Ann were talking as they ate, but the boys were listening into the conversation next to them, wondering if they could glean any information on Anatoly’s high and mighty airs and graces now he was working less and less with Bill. Kiki was on the table, taking the odd grape or piece of fruit from the children’s plates and flexing her crown occasionally when someone ate something she wanted. 

“Three blind mice,” she said conversationally.

“I thought she’d forgotten that one,” said Dinah. “I don’t think she’s said it since you had that mouse a few summers ago.”

To be continued…

In case you missed them:

Chapter one
Chapter two

Soon it was time for the groom and his best man to head over to the registry office. On Bill’s request, Anatoly had borrowed a slightly more posh service car to use as the wedding vehicle. It didn’t matter that they weren’t going very far for the reception. Bill wanted everything to be as near perfect as possible for Allie. 

Away from Bill’s prying eyes Anatoly knew that Jack and Philip had a “Just Married” sign for the back window, and tins cans on string to tie to the bumper for after the ceremony. Anatoly had caught them whispering about it during the brief wedding rehearsal the week before. “I heard nothing,” he had said as they spotted him. “What you two do to get into trouble is your own problem.” However he had been grinning as he spoke.

They arrived at the registry office and Bill had a cigarette pressed onto him by Anatoly before they went in, meaning they got to see some of the guests arriving. A few of Bill’s SIS colleagues appeared and shook his hand. Bill’s only relatives, a few distant cousins, turned up and so did some of Allie’s friends, escorted on foot from the nearby station by Jack and Philip. 

Aunt Polly then appeared and shook Bill’s hand warmly. “I always hoped things would work out for you both,” she said kindly before moving on to talk to Jack and Philip. Behind her, rather bemused by everything around him, was Uncle Jocelyn. His round-shouldered, wild-haired, bespectacled stare let everyone know that he wasn’t really with them, but rather miles away with whatever he was working on and his precious papers.

Polly waited for him to catch her up and then began steering him around people and into the right room by gentle pressure on his arm. 

“I’m surprised that Aunt Polly managed to pry Uncle Jocelyn out of his study for today,” Philip said to Jack after the couple had moved out of earshot.

“She wouldn’t have, I’m sure, if they had still been at Craggy Tops,” Jack replied.

“Long way to come, too,” Philip said thoughtfully. “I don’t think that they ever travelled so far back when they lived there. I can only imagine the look on Jo-Jo’s face if he’d had to drive them all that way in the rattly old car.”

They both paused for a moment, thinking about Jo-Jo, the servant, odd-job man, driver, and secret forger who had worked for Aunt Polly at Craggy Tops. It was all well and good to joke about Jo-Jo’s temper three years after his arrest, but they still remembered all too clearly the moment he had dropped his mask of foolishness and had revealed himself to be as cold and calculating as he was clever. Having broken up the forging gang during their first summer together, none of the four children liked to think of what Jo-Jo might do to them should they cross paths again. 

“They’re much better off now, aren’t they?” Jack said finally.

“Well, Uncle Jocelyn complains constantly about having had to leave Craggy Tops, but I think Aunt Polly has a much easier time of it now, especially with her poor health. She’s got hot and cold running water, and electricity for a start.”

Jack had only spent a few weeks at Craggy Tops before the undersea explosions set off by the desperate gang had ruptured the well on the mainland and ruined the house’s only water supply. But he remembered well having to fetch water in buckets, trimming the wicks on the paraffin lamps, collecting firewood and all the other jobs which were rather laborious given the primitive conditions found in such a desolate location. It hadn’t bothered the children much at the time, but he could imagine how draining it would have been for increasingly elderly Aunt Polly year after year. 

“And your uncle can still write his book from the new house,” he said.

Philip laughed. “He’s been writing that all his life, or so it seems. I don’t know if he’ll ever finish it.”

Jack coughed and Kiki imitated him, making people close to them laugh in bemusement and awe. Jack gave Kiki a little warning tap on the beak when she flapped her wings and puffed her throat. “Steady on, old thing. You need to behave today.”

“Steady on, old thing, behave! Behave! Steady, behave!” Kiki repeated, hopping from foot to foot on Jack’s shoulder.

“Exactly,” Jack said firmly. “Behave.”

Before long they were ushered inside as the registrar’s room, and the last guests found their seats as the clock moved closer to 10.30 and Allie’s scheduled arrival.

Bill and Anatoly went to the front of the room, nodding to the registrar, before Bill turned to Anatoly and asked, “You still have the rings don’t you?” 

Anatoly looked shocked. “You never gave them to me…” he started but at the look on Bill’s face, which had suddenly drained of all blood, he hastily laughed and pulled out the box from his pocket. “I did, however, remember to pick them up!” he finished off and grinned sheepishly. 

“Don’t you start,” Bill warned him as everyone in the room heard a car pull up outside. Bill slid one finger around his suddenly tight collar, glanced warningly at Anatoly to discourage him from any further tricks as the car doors slammed outside and footsteps could be heard heading towards the room they were in. 

There was a sudden, “God save the King!” squawk from Kiki in the hallway, which was hastily silenced by Jack who was waiting outside the doors to take pictures of Allie being walked down the aisle by Philip. 

The registrar cleared his throat and the pianist in the corner started the wedding march. Jack opened the door, and hurried up the aisle as Dinah and Lucy-Ann came through the doors ahead of Philip and Allie. 

The girls looked grand in their dresses with a simple bunch of flowers each, and their hair done nicely. Bill moved forward and kissed them each on the cheek as they got to the front of the room. He straightened up and looked back down the aisle as Jack hurried half way back and started snapping pictures. One of Allie’s friends from the village pulled him out of the way as Philip and Allie approached them so Bill could see Allie for the first time. 

Bill found that his breath caught in his chest as he laid eyes on Allie. She looked divine as she walked down the aisle in her light blue dress, Philip escorting her. She smiled shyly at Bill as she drew level with him. Bill smiled widely at them both and shook Philip’s hand before Allie and Bill both turned to the registrar. 

“All be seated,” he said. “We are gathered here today to witness the marriage of William Patrick Cunningham and Alison Elizabeth Mannering…”

To be continued.

Chapter one went up last week.

They had pulled together their wedding day in a few short weeks. Bill had a smart suit already and he had sent Allie into town to buy herself a new dress. Being a second wedding she had opted not to wear white but he hadn’t seen what she had picked yet.

The invites had been sent out, and the marriage licence had been obtained. The speed of things had been necessitated by the fact that the children were to return to school in September, and were absolutely refusing to miss the big day. Not that Bill or Allie would have dreamt of excluding them. Luckily the registry office had a morning slot the day before the children were due to leave for their boarding schools. 

The usually calm and cool Allie had become a little more flappable and was often heard saying things like before the wedding you must all make sure you are packed for school! and if you need anything new please tell me now so that I can go and order it!

Jack and Kiki had been severely reprimanded as the bird had been squawking Cold feet! Cold feet! Over and over and had also been caught pecking at the bag containing Allie’s new dress. 

Bill had some stern words of his own for Kiki when she had snuck into the room where he was trying to write his speech and muttering under his breath. She must have liked what she heard as she kept repeating What an ass! Such a poor Polly. What an ass!

Bill had jumped, banged his knee on the desktop, accidentally scored a line across his page, and shouted Bother you Kiki! Jack, come and get this bird RIGHT NOW!

Of course that had only led to Kiki cackling Bother you! Bless you! whenever she thought she would get away with it.

As this was Allie’s second wedding, and neither of them could be considered love’s young dream, they were keeping most things simple, much to everyone’s relief. One tradition they were sticking to was the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding.

“Is that just so you can avoid us in the morning?” Philip had asked cheekily when the plan was discussed.

“You, the chaos you will undoubtedly create, and particularly that wretched bird,” Bill had confirmed, giving Kiki a dark look. He hadn’t quite forgiven her for the What an ass debacle. Kiki had raised her crest slowly and said Cold feet in a mournful tone before adding a cough she had picked up from Uncle Geoffrey.

On the morning of the wedding Allie was being attended to by Dinah and Lucy-Ann who had both been rapturous in their delight over helping choose the dress, the flowers, the make-up and the hair. The boys meanwhile were only tasked with making themselves decent.

And Bill had Anatoly, his 20 year old surrogate nephew and best man, who didn’t particularly care for weddings (other than the free bar) even if he was pleased for him and Allie.

Anatoly was already dressed in a smart suit which complemented Bill’s when he arrived. Bill had insisted that Anatoly had his curly hair cut so that he would appear at least semi-presentable, so he was pleased to note that not only had Anatoly not managed to pick up a black eye or other obvious injuries right before the wedding, but he had also run a comb though his recently shorn curls.

“Not ready yet?” Anatoly asked, eyeing Bill’s attire, which consisted of his suit trousers and a vest.

“Top marks for observation,” Bill said with a laugh. “I’m just taking my time. No point in rushing when I don’t have to. I’ve shaved and -”

“Done your hair nicely?” Anatoly suggested, looking at Bill’s balding head from his slightly greater height; augmented by the fact he was the only one wearing shoes.

“Remind me why I didn’t choose Tim as my best man, out of gratitude for the Thamis rescue?” Bill shot back. He had invited Tim and a few of his other most trusted colleagues from his time in the SIS, but he was far closer to Anatoly whom he really saw as family despite there being no blood relationship at all. His relationship with Jack, Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann also went to prove that a family could be formed in many ways other than by blood.

When Anatoly just shrugged maddeningly and kept his face blank Bill gave up. “I’m going to finish getting dressed, you can pour the drinks in the meantime.”

Anatoly crossed to the drinks cabinet as Bill headed back upstairs. He was well acquainted with the contents of the cabinet so already knew exactly what he would find but he still spent a few moments lifting up the bottles to read the labels, occasionally pulling a face at some of Bill’s liquor choices. He settled on the vodka which Bill kept in for him. It wasn’t the finest stuff but it was an acceptable brand. He poured himself a generous measure (Bill was always complaining how quickly the bottle went down) and took it over to the window to sip as he looked outside.

He was just finishing it off when Bill came back downstairs, raising his eyebrows at the lack of a drink for him. Anatoly just shrugged again. “I did not know how long you would be. You like ice in your whisky and it might have melted.”

Bill fetched his own ice and poured his own drink. “As my best man you are supposed to do a little more than stand around drinking and insulting me.”

“I have to look after the rings,” Anatoly reminded him.

“You do, but only after I’ve given them to you,” Bill pointed out.

“Moral support.”

“Eh?”

Anatoly gave a long-suffering sigh that was a good imitation of the ones Bill so often gave him. “I am providing you with moral support.”

“Are you? I don’t feel particularly supported yet. Is your mere presence supposed to be helpful?”

“Are you anxious? Nervous? Panicking at all?” Anatoly asked him, grinning when Bill paused to consider. “Nyet. You are far too busy being annoyed with me to be getting your feet cold.”

Ignoring the incorrect phrasing – he suspected that Anatoly did it deliberately, at least most of the time, just because he thought it was funny – Bill had to acknowledge that Anatoly had a point. He wasn’t terribly anxious about getting married, but he did have his worries about making sure that the day went without a hitch and everyone had a good time. 

He didn’t anticipate too many threats to the smooth running of events. Jack and Kiki had been extremely well warned about Kiki’s behaviour and the bird was to be taken out at the first sign of trouble. If Jack had to miss parts of the festivities then so be it.

Micky wouldn’t be a problem as with Allie refusing to be responsible for a monkey during term time, he had recently been adopted by a local retired colonel from an Indian regiment who had long experience with exotic pets. The colonel had responded to an advert that Allie had placed in the newspaper, offering a monkey for sale, reasonable offers considered. The other people who had responded had all been circus and zoo owners, so when Micky had taken an obvious and immediate liking to the ruddy-faced colonel as he had regaled them all with the monkeys he had known in his lifetime, Philip and Allie had decided he was the best choice. When he agreed that Philip could visit Micky whenever he wanted during the holidays he had been told that he could have Micky for free, and they had shaken on the deal.

With the animal threats taken care of, there was not much else to worry about. But annoyingly Anatoly was right – his attitude was distracting Bill from repeatedly running over the day’s schedule, his vows and other details of the day.

To be continued.