by Wendy Jones
THE THOUGHTS AND HAPPENINGS OF WILFRED PRICE, PURVEYOR OF SUPERIOR FUNERALS
Wendy Jones
For Solly, whose enthusiasm for watching Thunderbirds DVDs made this book entirely possible.
And he saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was on fire, from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf.
The Mabinogion, eleventh-century Welsh epic
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1: The Yellow Dress
2: Mister Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals
3: The Red Dictionary
4: The Invitation
5: The Cove
6: Half in Leaf, Half on Fire
7: What Was Known
8: The Wedding
9: The Sea
10: Wallpaper’s All the Rage
11: The Willow Pattern
12: The Notes
13: A for Avocado
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
1
The Yellow Dress
Spring, 1924
It was because of a yellow dress. She was wearing a yellow dress and her arms were bare. It was slightly tart, the colour of lemon curd. He couldn’t remember seeing a dress in that shade before. It was pleated silk and sleeveless, with a low waistband and a square neck that was slightly too low, perhaps only by half an inch.
Wilfred wondered how she got the dress on. Maybe there were hooks and eyes hidden on the side, under her arm. Ladies’ dresses sometimes had those. Women hooked and encased themselves in their dresses but there was always a way out.
‘And there’s trifle,’ Grace said triumphantly, ‘with cream from the Clunderwen Dairy.’ Wilfred noticed the trifle was sealed with thick whipped cream, and the cream was scattered with flaked almonds. She laid the white bowl on the Welsh wool picnic blanket.
‘There are grass cuttings everywhere; my brother Madoc mowed the lawn this morning,’ she said, brushing splices of grass from her dress. ‘I asked him not to, but he would insist.’ She waved an inquisitive honeybee away from the bowl. ‘I do hope you like trifle, Wilfred. I made it earlier so there would be time for the jelly to set before the cream spoiled.’
She leaned forward to serve the dessert. The neckline of her dress was cut slightly too low, he noticed again. And he wanted to glance but knew better of it, knew how women always noticed those glances from men, no matter how subtle men tried to be. Men’s eyes were too slow. It was not only how she got into the dress that Wilfred wondered. He wondered, too, how Grace got out of it.
She laughed lightly and brushed her fair hair from her face.
‘Wilfred, are you listening to me? Would you like the trifle, or there’s some Bara brith in the house?’
‘Grace, will you marry me?’
Wilfred saw an animal panic flash over her but then she very quickly reined herself in. The bee buzzed while Grace served the dessert in the small bowls slightly sloppily, almost as if she was over-focusing on what she was doing, as if the trifle was something safe to think about. With a clink, she had put a silver dessert spoon into a trifle bowl. She gave him the trifle with both hands.
‘Here you are, Wilfred, darling – and yes, it would be delightful.’
He wasn’t able to meet her eyes – he’d been gazing at her waistband when he’d inadvertently proposed in a shame-faced way. It wasn’t that he had intended to get down on one knee – he hadn’t intended anything at all. What he had meant, if only he could have said it, was, ‘How do you get out of your dress?’
After the picnic, Grace went to her bedroom. She drew the curtains so the room was dusky. Wilfred had asked her to marry him! In the moments before he proposed, she had been bending forward, scooping some trifle into the gold-rimmed bowls. Then he asked, and she waited one shocked moment before replying.
‘I would be delighted,’ she had answered. Or perhaps she had said, ‘That would be delightful.’
Earlier in the day, her brother Madoc said to her as she was laying out the crockery, ‘You look splendid, Grace. Really quite dolled up. I should think that Wilfred Price will like your dress, too.’ But before the picnic Grace had had her trepidations. Would Wilfred like it? What did Wilfred like? She didn’t know. In fact, she didn’t really know him that well. She knew him vaguely from her childhood and recently they had met at a dance, taken tea and then gone for that walk last Sunday. Then Wilfred had suggested an afternoon picnic and she said perhaps they could eat in her garden, to save carrying the food.
But Wilfred had seemed distant during the picnic. She had been anxious – was it perhaps that he didn’t like her in her new dress? She had bought it especially from Mrs Russell’s Haberdasher’s & Draper’s. Mrs Russell said yellow was all the rage with Flapper girls in London, though surely a yellow dress was too fussy for a picnic in a garden in Pembrokeshire?
Grace lifted her arm, looking for the first hook and eye in the bound seams at the side of the dress and undid each of the fastenings. She pulled the delicate garment over her head then shook it out. Grace looked for an empty clothes hanger in her wardrobe, one with a knitted cover because the silk was fragile.
Wilfred had arrived on time for the picnic and greeted her politely but had not complimented her on her appearance and was so distracted that even when Grace offered him sandwiches, she had to ask him twice.
‘They’re egg and beetroot, Wilfred,’ she had encouraged. Grace had read in her Miss Modern magazine that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. But Wilfred had seemed almost saturnine until she’d suggested the trifle. Fancy being proposed to because she had offered a man trifle!
Grace opened the wardrobe, hung the dress on the brass rail then looked at her reflection in the tainted mirror on the inside of the walnut door, thinking, Imagine! I’m going to be married. A married woman.
Wilfred drove swiftly along the coastal road. He was shocked. What on God’s earth had he done? He’d left the picnic – said his goodbyes – gone to the garage, jumped in the hearse and started driving somewhere, anywhere, far away from that garden and Grace, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened, couldn’t focus on the road, barely even saw it. How had he come to ask her? He hadn’t meant to, hadn’t even wanted to. Yet he had: ‘Grace, will you marry me?’ He saw her in his mind’s eye sitting on the blanket, in a yellow dress, her feet to one side. He realized he hadn’t looked her in the eyes when he proposed.
Wilfred rammed his foot down hard on the accelerator and the engine roared. He yanked the visor down; he was driving into the sun. He shoved the gear into third with a crank and saw the quivering needle of the speedometer leap to the right.
He thought he would stop here, before Saundersfoot, get out, walk, think. Saundersfoot would be jam-packed with day-trippers taking the sea air. But this cove was quiet. He threw on the brake and jolted to an abrupt stop.
Once he was on the sand and had removed his shoes and socks, Wilfred, deaf to the screaming gulls, blind to the shifting clouds and light, strode briskly. He must clear his head. He must pull himself together. His apprentice-master, Mr Auden, had instructed him to get married, saying, ‘The moment you have a profitable funeral parlour you will need a wife. Don’t wait. No life without a wife, Wilfred.’ But Wilfred had made a mistake. But people made mistakes – made them all the time. He wiped the sweat from his temples. He must do something about it. Rectify it. Yes, just because a chap blundered once h
e shouldn’t have to pay for it for the rest of his life – good God, no! He’d act, tell the girl, say he didn’t want to get married, after all. By damn – he hardly knew her! She was nice, but then what girl wasn’t? He’d spoken out of turn. There we are then, it could happen to any man, but it didn’t need to mean anything. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Wilfred stepped over a rock pool, hardly noticing it. At work he saw time and time again how each person had to take every opportunity, to make the absolute most of things. And he certainly wouldn’t want to waste his life because he’d once made a mistake.
The solid ripples of wet sand were uneven under the soles of his feet and slightly unbalanced him as he walked. He ran his hands through his hair. He had desired Grace but, well … a man could want all manner of women; it didn’t follow he had to marry them, he thought, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. Wilfred felt himself strong in his decision, felt the solidity and the power in the muscles of his legs, felt his capacity to punch and hit out. He kicked a pebble. He would seize the day. He’d explain it to Grace straight away, that he’d made a mistake. She would understand; he felt certain. Yes, she would understand.
Wilfred stood on the imposing doorstep and tapped the brass doorknocker. He had lost all sense of time while pacing along the cove perturbed by his predicament, and it was now early evening. Grace’s mother, Mrs Reece, a bony woman with a sharp nose, unlatched the front door.
‘You must come in,’ she said formally. ‘You’ll be wanting to speak to Doctor Reece.’ Mrs Reece directed Wilfred into the hallway. Grace appeared at the top of the staircase, covered her mouth then rushed along the landing corridor and back into her bedroom. She was no longer wearing her yellow dress, Wilfred noticed.
‘Doctor Reece is sitting in his surgery.’ Mrs Reece said. She rapped on the door. ‘Doctor Reece, Wilfred Price is here. He is requesting an audience with you,’ she called shrilly through the closed door. Grace’s father appeared and held out an arm, indicating that Wilfred was to enter the front room where his patients visited him. It was a dark room with peacock-blue wallpaper and a couch to one side.
‘Wilfred? Have a seat. Take this chair.’
Wilfred waited as Grace’s tall father walked behind his desk and settled down heavily in a high-backed chair, Wilfred sitting down a second or two afterwards as good manners dictated. Dr Reece slowly moved his stethoscope off his blotting pad and placed it next to the table telephone.
‘Now, Wilfred,’ he began austerely, ‘you have come about Grace.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Wilfred, quickly pulling down the cuffs of his shirt.
‘To ask for her hand in marriage,’ Dr Reece stated. ‘She has informed us of your proposal today.’
There were several mute moments. Dr Reece picked up the blue glass paperweight on his desk and turned it in his large hands. Wilfred watched. This was his opportunity. He would say what he’d practised saying on the beach earlier. He waited a moment longer. The grandfather clock ticked and marked time. He would just wait until Dr Reece finished knocking the papers on the desk to straighten them. And replace the paperweight. And then he’d tell him. Wilfred knew that in these moments, many things were held in the balance. Dr Reece patted the paperweight. What Wilfred earnestly felt, and thought would be simple to say, was proving more complex. He still didn’t want to marry Grace, but the execution of his sentiments was more formidable than he had imagined.
Eventually Dr Reece looked up. ‘There are’, he boomed confidently, ‘one or two matters on which you will understand I require clarity. It is your own funeral business, is it not?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘May I be so bold as to ask the state of the business’s affairs?’
‘I get by, sir.’
‘You don’t go without? You earn sufficient living from the funeral trade?’
‘I do, sir.’ Then added, ‘Just about.’
‘No debts in the company? We wouldn’t want that, would we now, Wilfred? Perhaps from the purchase of the hearse?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It isn’t something one imagines one’s daughter marrying into, mind. But you say that it’s a solid business, which is important what with all this unemployment. And there will always be custom for an undertaker, mercifully less so now than during the Great War.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is it what you would call a family business?’
Wilfred nodded. He looked down at his shoes, scuffed by the sand, and took a deep breath, ready to speak.
‘So any children,’ Dr Reece continued, running his hand across his beard, ‘well … that’s getting ahead of ourselves. And you intend to do well by Grace?’
Wilfred hesitated. ‘Sir …’ He would speak out. ‘Sir, I …’ He moved forward in his chair and the waxed floorboards underneath him squeaked.
There was a knock at the door. Grace’s brother Madoc poked his head round. ‘I’m popping off to the picture palace in Tenby with Sidney to watch The Thief of Baghdad. See you later, Father. Evening, Wilfred. Oh, and I’ve mended the lock on the suitcase.’
‘All right, Madoc,’ replied Dr Reece, smiling leniently. ‘Forgive me, Wilfred,’ he continued, stroking his thick grey beard, ‘these are most personal inquiries and are liable to stir one to great feeling. Because Grace is delicate, Wilfred, and she will need your solicitousness and patience, now and in the years to come. We need not dwell on it, only to say you must give Mrs Reece and I your absolute word of honour that you will be an upright husband to our daughter, Grace.’
‘Yes,’ Wilfred said quietly.
Grace lifted the roof of the hive then broke the honey seal. Her hands moved clumsily as she pulled out the first frame. She was wearing her brother’s white apiary suit, and the gloves, certainly, were too large for her but Mother thought it highly imprudent to purchase a suit especially for Grace when Madoc’s just about did. Nurse bees were crawling over the honeycomb busy caring for the larvae, feeding them nectar and pollen. Grace cautiously turned the cedar frame over – there was more honey than she expected. She stroked the bees away before uncapping the wax-topped hexagons and watched a golden line of honey as thin as a silk thread, flow lethargically into the waiting bowl.
Grace liked how beekeeping required dexterity, holding the frame in one hand, scraping the honey off with a knife with the other. Slowness was needed, so as not to alarm the bees and make them swarm, as was patience. Slowness and patience were lovely qualities though she struggled to have them herself. She felt not much could go wrong in a world that was slow and patient.
She liked being in the garden and spent many spring mornings tending to the white peonies, irises and foxgloves and lightly trimming the old, woody lavender. The lavender was the most important plant: bees flocked to it. Tomorrow she would filter the pale spring honey through muslin then pour it into sterilised jamjars, labelling them: Lavender honey, Narberth, Spring 1924. She wasn’t sure why Mother told her to date the jars, as honey didn’t spoil: it would last an eternity, as far as anyone knew. The honey that was buried with Tutankhamun and had been unearthed two years ago was still fresh and edible. Later she would take the honey to Mrs Annie Evans at the Conduit Stores where it would be sold. She liked to keep herself busy, she didn’t want time to think.
The hum of the hive made a soft sound. The bees were calm and drowsy now: that was the effect of the smoke. They hovered lazily or flew slowly. She wondered, when they were married, if Wilfred would like to do beekeeping with her. It was now almost a week since she had last seen him, six days since he proposed to her. She wondered what he was doing and what he was thinking; whether everything was all right. The relief she had felt at his proposal was beginning to fray. She had expected him to send a postcard or even use his telephone asking her to meet, but there had been nothing. She could use her father’s surgery telephone to call him, however. She knew his number, had memorized it from his weekly advertisement in the Narberth & Whitland Observer:
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Telephone number for all inquiries:
Narberth 103.
But her mother would be appalled at the thought of Grace approaching Wilfred. ‘Too modern,’ she would admonish. Mrs Reece would consider telephoning a gentleman, even if he were one’s fiancé, extremely forward. And perhaps it was, thought Grace.
Nine days later, Grace still hadn’t heard from Wilfred. She stood on Mrs Prout’s doorstep, rang the brass doorbell and heard it trill sharply. Waiting on Mrs Prout’s doorstep, Grace realized there was nothing obviously strange about the house: it was like many houses in Narberth – symmetrical with lime-washed walls a foot thick – but it had an eeriness to it that she could feel even when walking past. And the vicar would dislike her coming here, she was certain, because he had preached against it at the end of October, the Sunday before Hallowe’en; the Revd Waldo Williams MA knew his congregation.
‘Necromancy is very wrong – evil. It is the work of the Devil, of Lucifer himself,’ he announced, and he had read a lengthy passage – twenty-two verses – from the Book of Deuteronomy. He laid his gnarled hand on the open page of the Bible and intoned magisterially the words of Moses to his flock, ‘“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire or that useth divination, or an observer of time, or an enchanter or a witch. Or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard or a necromancer”.’ Then the Revd Waldo Williams MA, his voice rising to so great a pitch that his throat was strained, proclaimed, ‘“FOR ALL THAT DO THESE ARE AN A-BOM-IN-ATION TOTHELORD”. Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy.’ Then, just before Handel Evans struck up on the organ, the Reverend added in a breathy whisper, ‘We should be like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the valley: they don’t worry. No, no.’ But the Revd Waldo Williams’s words wouldn’t stop Grace: she was fond of the Reverend but this was far more important than chapel. Grace had to know.