by Wendy Jones
‘Now listen to me, Wilfred Price. You’ll be in that register office at five minutes to two this Saturday. No doubt about it. You put right what you’ve done – quickly. Saturday.’ And with that Dr Reece picked up his doctor’s bag, turned and walked out, the door banging behind him.
7
What Was Known
‘Has anything happened recently that we should discuss?’ enquired Mrs Annie Evans, wiping the steam from her wire spectacles. The ladies of the Mothers’ Union Thursday Club were having their weekly meeting at the Staunton House Refreshment Rooms.
‘Before we start,’ stated Mrs Reece forcefully, ‘I’d like to say something. I have some news. I had a letter. Yes – it came today. Willie delivered it in the second post. Doctor Reece and I are delighted.’
‘My Willie does a good job with the post,’ Mrs Willie the Post told the two other ladies loyally.
Mrs Reece pursed her lips, before stating, ‘Madoc’s doing us proud. He says it’s like an oven in Port Said. The camp’s thermometer was at a hundred and thirteen degrees Fahrenheit. Can you believe it?’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Mrs Willie the Post. ‘Is it nice, that custard slice, Mrs Evans?’
‘Absolutely delicious,’ Mrs Annie Evans murmured. ‘I’ve eaten two now and I’m as full as an egg.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Willie the Post, ‘I won’t have one. I’m on a weight reduction diet. Look at me!’ She patted her stomach. ‘I put on a stone in a week at my mother’s in Carmarthen. Willie said I’m as fat as a wardrobe.’ She breathed in and sat up straighter.
‘Get away with you, you daft brush! You’re thin as a stick,’ Mrs Annie Evans replied, telling a blatant untruth.
‘Go on, then, I’ll have one,’ said Mrs Willie the Post. ‘You know, something happened the other day: Willie got a letter for Edith, Narberth. That’s all it said, Edith, Narberth. No address. He showed it to me. Couldn’t believe it. And he went to Edith Lewis in Wells Street and said, “Edith, is this for you?” And she said, “Yes, it is. It’s from my auntie in Merlins Bridge who’s lost her address book – and her marbles.” Then Edith Lewis said to Willie, “Oh, Willie, you’re the best postman in the world.” She was in seventh heaven to hear from her aged auntie.’
‘Madoc always addresses his envelopes properly. With commas – and full stops,’ stated Mrs Reece, adjusting the artificial wreath of forget-me-nots in her hat.
‘Oh, there’s posh,’ said Mrs Annie Evans.
‘And a stamp from Egypt.’
‘Oh! Get away!’ said Mrs Willie the Post. ‘Willie would have had a good look at that stamp; I’m surprised he didn’t show me.’
‘Madoc was saying he’s in charge of twenty-three soldiers. They have to take orders from him.’
‘Now there’s good,’ said Mrs Willie the Post.
‘Pass me that napkin, please,’ said Mrs Annie Evans, who wanted to wipe a dollop of custard from the lace on her blouse. ‘By damn, this custard tart is tasty.’
‘He makes sure they make their beds properly – you know, with hospital corners.’
‘Do they do hospital corners in the Army?’ asked Mrs Willie the Post. ‘I would have thought they did Army corners. By the way, I saw some lovely wallpaper in T. P. Hughes in Carmarthen. Oh, it was … it was …’ Mrs Willie the Post looked up at the ceiling with inexpressible delight. ‘Blossoms, like the spring. So beautiful the flowers were, you could almost smell them.’ She closed her eyes and sighed, adding, ‘I hear Wilfred Price’s taken it into his head to turn his parlour into a wallpaper shop, isn’t that right, Mrs Reece?’ she said, daring to mention Wilfred’s name.
‘Seems he could,’ Mrs Reece replied, snapping her handbag shut. ‘Madoc has his work cut out in Egypt, what with all those Egyptians.’
‘Oh, there are a lot of Egyptians in Egypt,’ said Mrs Willie the Post.
‘But if the Spanish Influenza comes again,’ remarked Mrs Annie Evans, ‘Wilfred Price will be rushed off his feet. He won’t be able to set up a wallpaper shop then because he’ll be too busy sawing wood for coffins.’
‘Mind, that’s where a wife is handy,’ said Mrs Willie the Post, smiling knowledgeably. ‘Grace can help sell the fancy wallpapers.’
‘Grace will be too busy with housewifery to be working in a shop,’ said Mrs Reece, sniffing.
Mrs Annie Evans, feeling brave, said, ‘There’s a beauteous comely veil in Embroidery Weekly: Grace will look pretty as a picture in it. White it is, with yellow daisies. She’ll look like Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon when she married Prince Albert last year.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Reece.
‘Oh, Mrs Reece, you must be proud – a son in the Army and a daughter about to marry an undertaker who might one day have a paint and wallpaper shop as well. And I heard Wilfred will be living with you, in your house. There’s good. There’s not enough room in 11 Market Street for Grace, and I know you’d never let her live in all that mess. Nice and clean in your house it is, Mrs Reece, and plenty of space,’ complimented Mrs Annie Evans, eating the last, crumbly mouthful of her custard slice. Then, unable to stop herself saying what everyone was thinking and no one dare mention, said, ‘Not long to the wedding. You don’t want to be waiting around and planning these things for ever.’
Mrs Reece pursed her lips.
‘Have another cream slice, Mrs Reece,’ encouraged Mrs Willie the Post quickly. There was an awkward pause in which no one could think of anything to say.
‘Well, I think the meeting of the Mothers’ Union Thursday Club can draw to a close,’ said Mrs Annie Evans, embarrassed by her comment. She put her dessert fork on her tea-plate, self-consciously adding, ‘We’ve got a good bit done today.’
Wilfred stood on Mrs Russell’s Haberdasher’s & Draper’s doorstep, cleaned his shoes on the mud-scraper, collapsed his umbrella and shook it before ringing the bell.
‘The plain white with the yellow fleck is most becoming and not overly ornamental,’ he could hear Mrs Russell advising a customer.
‘Wilfred. What a surprise!’ she exclaimed, swinging open the door. Wilfred came regularly to Mrs Russell’s Haberdasher’s for the purple tape which he glued over the tacks that held the material in place inside the coffin. Mrs Russell ordered the reels especially for him from a stockist in Neath. He bought five rolls at a time, each of 150 yards.
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you in,’ whispered Mrs Russell, peeping out from the shop door.
‘Why ever not, Mrs Russell?’ Wilfred asked, tying the strap on his umbrella. ‘I’ve come here to collect my tape order. You said it would arrive by the last week of April.’
‘I did indeed, Wilfred. And it’s here.’
‘Well then, surely I can come in and collect it, rather than waiting out here in this dreadful weather.’
‘No! You most certainly can’t.’ Mrs Russell was now standing on the step of her shop with her hand behind her holding firmly on to the brass door handle.
‘Mrs Russell, I have never in my born days been denied entry’ – these are big words, Wilfred thought ‘– into a haberdasher’s and draper’s. Whatever have I done? You sound adamant, Mrs Russell,’ he added. Adamant. Wilfred thought to himself proudly.
‘You have it on my word of honour that you do not want to come into this shop. A certain young lady and her mother are at this very moment in the back room selecting netting.’
Wilfred was perplexed. ‘You already have some customers, Mrs Russell, and that’s the reason you don’t want me to enter?’
‘Yes. Exactly,’ said Mrs Russell, somewhat amused.
‘But aren’t I your customer, too, and have been these last seven years?’
‘Indeed,’ she replied, smiling. ‘Wilfred, it’s not just any customer I have in the shop.’
Wilfred’s heart lurched. He understood. Grace and her mother were in the back room now, selecting material, material for … He suddenly had a dreadful sinking in his stomach and his insides flopped over. This was too definite, too conclusive. Preparat
ions were being made: buying, cutting, sewing, stitching. His proposal, that little question, was being turned into something concrete, something big.
‘Oh,’ he said gravely.
‘Custom prevails, Wilfred. You can’t see the dress or the veil now, can you? There would be a thing! Mustn’t be having you glimpsing the outfit. What would the Mothers’ Union say?’ Mrs Russell whispered conspiratorially.
‘No.’
‘Not yet. Not before the day.’
Wilfred put his empty teacup down on the chair. It was Wednesday morning, almost exactly four days since he was last with Flora. He was going back to the cottage in the cove. He’d cycle the seven miles on his bicycle and wheel it up the lane to the quiet, forgotten corner hidden from Narberth. Flora had been in the cottage on Saturday, as he’d thought she might be. Maybe, maybe, she would be there now. He was looking for Flora and perhaps something of her would linger there. He needed to feel her close. There was no one in the world he wanted to see as much. Wilfred splashed a couple of teacups of cold water on the hearth to put out the fire and left home.
On the way, near the cove, a bi-plane flew overhead, the quiet buzz of the engine high above Wilfred. The plane was moving east and into the huge expanse of the sky. Wilfred, craning his neck, watched it flip upside down, flying for a couple of seconds with the cockpit hanging down before righting itself. The pilot was playing; he was free, impossibly free, to do whatever he liked. Wilfred waved, stretching both hands up, like someone who was drowning and wanted to be rescued, signalling to the plane that was so very high above him. The aeroplane headed further into the distance, and when it was almost at the horizon and over Pendine Sands, it wheeled round in a great circle. That is a free man and that is what free men do, Wilfred thought enviously. They twist and turn and go where they will. Nothing holds them down, not even the earth. I would like to be out there with him, he thought.
When he arrived at the cottage the green door was closed, and as Wilfred pushed it open, he had a moment of almost pure hope that there inside would be Flora, exquisite Flora. She would be asleep on her cream blanket, the one she had brought last time, her brown eyes closed, her hair ruffled around her warm face, lying on her front, sleeping serenely. And he would lie next to her, pull some blankets out of the ether and over them, and take her beautiful, feminine body in his arms. There can surely, Wilfred thought, be nothing better in this whole wide world, nothing lovelier, than being held and holding close and warm the woman you love. No, there was nothing better.
But the cottage was dank, damp and, most disappointingly of all, empty. Flora wasn’t there. The cottage, Wilfred – everything – felt achingly desolate. It was hard for him to imagine he had felt such warmth and excitement in this dark, dilapidated house. He sat on the cold, earthen floor – the chair had woodworm and only had three legs – and put his head between his knees. He was a man condemned.
Grace scraped the honeycomb with a knife; she was always astonished by the perfect regularity of the hexagons on the honeycomb. She would filter it overnight through clean white muslin to remove the dead bees, and so there would be fresh honey for the wedding breakfast.
Her father – reliably – had spoken to Wilfred, and as far as she knew made Wilfred acquiesce – and now there was only one day before the appointment at the register office ceremony. She hadn’t heard from Wilfred, didn’t expect to judging from her father’s mood when he returned from the Prices’. Her father must also have used his status to force the register office to bring the wedding forward sooner than was legally allowed.
A bee landed on the netting over her temple. She brushed it away with her gloved hand. Obviously a white wedding dress was completely out of the question. Even cream was unthinkable. Her wailing and hysterical mother seemed to consider black the most appropriate colour. Or scarlet – though she had made Grace a simple veil. Grace no longer cared what she wore.
Through the kitchen window, she heard her mother slamming the mixing bowl on the table and beating the currants into the cake mixture with true fury.
‘Grace Amelia?’ her mother called angrily.
Grace was collecting the honey so it could be spread on the Bara brith along with pats of butter. Grace – if her mother would let her – would take the warm butter and press it into the intricately carved moulds, and then place rectangles of ice around them to harden the butter into solid yellow sheaves of gold. Then the wedding breakfast for her and Wilfred, her mother and father and Wilfred’s father would have cold butter on hot cake and there would be fresh honey from her hive. This is what she would bring to the wedding breakfast. And new life.
‘You’ll marry him,’ Mrs Prout had said. The key had turned in the Bible. Now she was marrying Wilfred, but she hadn’t imagined it would be like this.
‘Will you hurry up?’ her mother shouted. ‘I can’t be in here working all day on my own with you out there gallivanting around with a beehive. What on earth are you doing?’
‘Collecting honey.’
‘Well, hurry up! I don’t know what you want honey for, anyway.’
‘You heard your mother,’ her father said.
The bees were swarming above the hive – they could sense her agitation and were reflecting it back to her. Grace puffed the smoker. They knew. They had been around for millions of years, much longer than people; they must have seen everything before and knew there was nothing new under the sun. Bees were intelligent. What would it be like, Grace wondered, to be a satisfied queen bee, to sit eating royal jelly, the very best of foods, and to be adored by all the drones, not merely one drone, but every drone in their tight, boxed world. To be queen of a universe. Instead of what she was now – abandoned, an outcast despite the wedding. She felt like little more than a larva made of squishy, unformed mush, sealed in a small case.
‘You’ll be the death of me,’ her mother implored.
Grace touched her neck gently with her hand. Her skin was downy but the muscles beneath felt strong; she imagined the bones in her neck were strong too. Necks were beautiful things – fragile, supple and expressive. It was her neck and she nearly broke it, snapped it with a rope and the weight of her own body
Grace removed her beekeeping hat and veil. Saturday would be hard, practical and joyless. A dismal wedding with an unwanted bride and an unwilling groom. Wilfred had surely been coerced and rushed by her father because of the situation she was in. Her father was a quiet bully – probably all doctors were. But there would be cake, chilled butter and new honey afterwards. Grace knew it was a poor bargain, but she was alive within it.
‘The usual?’ the barber asked, tilting back the chair. He rubbed a mass of foam into Wilfred’s neck in vigorous circular motions, almost engulfing Wilfred’s face.
‘Wilfred! I was walking past and I saw you through the window,’ Jeffrey announced, coming in the shop. Wilfred moved his eyes to the side without moving his head – the barber had a cutthroat razor to his neck – and nodded in Jeffrey’s direction as much as he dared with the blade against his throat.
‘I’ll wait while you get seen to,’ Jeffrey stated and sat on the bench against the barbershop window. When, ten minutes later, the barber wiped the lather from Wilfred’s jaw, Jeffrey could see the devastation in his friend’s face.
‘Come on, Wilf, come for a walk with me,’ Jeffrey suggested when Wilfred stood up to have the shavings brushed from his jacket. ‘It’s my lunch-break.’ Jeffrey worked at Lloyd the butcher’s on the corner of Market Square and he had that pink raw look that butchers often had.
‘Let’s go up the Doggy Drang – it’s much quieter,’ he said, seeing how dark and troubled Wilfred looked.
As soon as they went up the Doggy Drang, Jeffrey said, ‘You’re marrying her, then.’ There was no use beating around the bush now.
Wilfred nodded, unable to speak.
‘I heard,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Unlucky, old chap. These things happen to the best of us.’
Wilfred looked at his shoes.
‘Don’t fret now,’ he soothed, as much at a loss as Wilfred to know how to deal with the emotion that was flooding Wilfred’s dark blue eyes. They walked up the back of the Conduit Stores and leaned on the wall of the pigpen belonging to Mrs Annie Evans.
‘And she’ll be kind to your da and that’s something. Say you’d met a girl at a dance from Carmarthen or Cardigan – from a long way away – what would you have done about your da? At least you’ll be near him and be able to look after him.’
‘Aye, there is that.’
‘You’s got to be careful when you do the business,’ Jeffrey added, philosophizing on the situation.
Wilfred looked at his hands.
‘We’ll still be able to go for a pint at the Rugby Club,’ Jeffrey offered. ‘Doctor Reece full of the wrath of God, is he?’
Wilfred smiled resignedly.
‘Don’t worry about that Mrs Reece – perhaps she’ll die soon!’ Jeffrey jested.
Wilfred sighed.
‘That will be one dry old stick you won’t be sorry to bury. Say something, Wilf. You’re normally so chatty.’
The pig grunted and waddled over to be near them. Wilfred watched its fat snout with delicate grey hairs sniff the air.
‘Be Wilfred Price and Son now, will it?’
Wilfred said nothing, noticed a dark cloud in the sky above.
‘Don’t fret.’ Jeffrey gave Wilfred a friendly thump on the arm, his own eyes moist. ‘Everything will be all right, it always is.’ The pig oinked greedily and snuffled the squelchy mud.
‘Stinks here!’ exclaimed Jeffrey, nodding at the pig. ‘Mind, he’ll smell lovely sliced up in a frying pan.’
‘Ever the butcher,’ Wilfred murmured, rousing himself.
I shouldn’t be wearing this suit, Wilfred thought, knotting his necktie in the mirror. This was the suit he wore for funerals; it wasn’t a wedding suit. But it is a funeral, he realized. It’s my funeral. I’m being buried alive.