The Wedding by Graham Hadfield

826 words

‘Don’t mention the Mafia,’ whispered Laura as they entered the Corleone Cafe in
Kingston. They had to laugh as inside all the walls were plastered with scenes
from the Godfather. And that’s when Ralph first saw him, Simon Corleone. They
both fancied him, after all they were identical twins apart from a few anatomical
bits, but unfortunately Simon turned out not to be gay. Simon was wearing a suit
and seemed incongruous in such a place but then Simon, the smooth ex public
schoolboy, had a talent for fitting in in any company. He’d smiled when they’d
mentioned the Mafia. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ he said, ‘my father is not capo
dei capi, he’s a businessman and I am a boring banker. He even gave me an
English name.’

And that’s when it started, the romance between Simon and Laura.
Ralph had returned to his regiment in the army. ‘It will make a man of him,’ his
father had said. His father never thought things through. If he had he would not
have picked a profession where Ralph was surrounded by men, and he might have
picked a regiment other than the Guards. Of course his father had been a Colonel
in the Guards but Ralph had reached the lofty heights of Corporal before being
busted down to the ranks again. ‘You can’t rinse it out,’ his father had said.
‘However hard you try to be a bad soldier you come from a family with five
generations of military service, its in your DNA.’ Ralph enjoyed the camp stuff
with the bearskins and of course the male company, it was all the soldiering that
got him down.

This leave was a bit of welcome relief, thought Ralph. He was standing in a
beautiful church in the Sicilian Hills watching the ceremony unfolding in front of
him. Ralph knew from the very beginning that Laura and Simon would eventually
get married and he couldn’t think of a more beautiful setting for the nuptials to
take place. He’d offered to be best man, unconventional but then they were an
unconventional family. He was the only representative of his family there, they
were going to have another ceremony back in England in a week’s time for his
relatives. The priest was droning on in a language Ralph didn’t understand and he
was feeling drowsy and struggling to keep his eyes open.

It was then that it happened. There was the sound of metal hitting stone.
Something had been thrown through one of the open windows of the church and
landed just in front of the altar. If it had been a real hand grenade the front of
the congregation including the priest, Simon and Laura would have been killed
instantly but fortunately it was a stun grenade. But Ralph’s military training told
him that a stun grenade was usually the prelude to something more sinister. It
was then that he heard the sound of small arms fire. The church was about to be
stormed by armed intruders.

Ralph was very fit. He hated the regular trips he made to the gym but it was
essential if he wanted people to swipe right on Grindr. All those yomps on
Dartmoor had done him no harm either. He started to sprint down the centre of
the church. Laura was standing dazed not far from the altar. Ralph knew he had
to get her behind a wooden pew. As he bundled her to the floor he noticed that
Simon and other male members of the family seemed to have acquired guns from
somewhere and were starting to fire at the perimeter of the church.

Ralph’s brain was racing ahead. He could assume that the people attacking the
church had come with greater firepower than those in the church, Why had the
attackers not used a hand grenade? Perhaps the attackers wanted to see the faces
of their victims as they killed them. The thought made him grimace.

Ralph realised he needed a weapon. There was no other option but to take one
off one of Simon’s relatives, who all seemed to be blazing away at shadows
entering the church. Ralph didn’t have time to ask, he grabbed a weapon out of
the closest person’s hand and then hit him in the solar plexus to avoid any
unnecessary argument. After being poked in the ribs with the gun the man
produced a magazine of bullets that went with it. Once Ralph had the gun he
ducked down behind the pew beside his sister.

He remembered the words of his sergeant major who seemed to grasp his
sexuality the moment he saw him. ‘Don’t f***ing waste your bullets, you bunch
of fairies. They belong to the Queen and they cost a bleeding load of money.’
Ralph smiled to himself. He didn’t need to fire at people at a distance. They
would soon be coming a lot closer.