The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  ‘Thank you, Wilfred. Mr. Jacobs would have wanted that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wilfred agreed, out of politeness rather than conviction. ‘Don’t fret, Mrs. Jacobs,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s nothing we can’t handle and nothing I haven’t seen before.’

  Mrs. Emlyn Jacobs nodded, then said, ‘Congratulations on your recent wedding, Wilfred.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs. Emlyn Jacobs.’

  The Reverend Waldo William MA (Oxon.), stood in the pulpit, raised his hands upwards and proclaimed, ‘Every morning I wake and thank the Lord I’m Welsh!’

  The reverend was very patriotic, Wilfred thought to himself, for a man who was born in Birmingham.

  ‘But Jacob,’ bellowed the reverend, slamming his palms on the huge Bible in front of him, ‘was a Hebrew who fought, wrestled and boxed with the Angel of the Lord and . . .’

  ‘Do excuse me, Mr. Price, if you don’t mind. There we are then, thank you very much.’ Mrs. Cadwallader from the Mozart Bakery was arriving late. Wilfred watched Mrs. Cadwallader squeeze her curvaceous figure past him and Flora in order to reach her usual place on the pew, her maroon alligator handbag swinging from her arm as if it were a separate entity. She edged past two elderly ladies, the Misses Evans, poor, courteous and religious, whose fragile bones were clothed with translucent skin, and sat down next to Mrs. Prout, the charmer, who was the great-granddaughter of Brangwen Prout, the last woman in Pembrokeshire to be hanged, rumour had it, for witchcraft.

  ‘The Scripture reading this morning is taken from the Book of . . .’

  The ululations of the sermon and the verses of the Bible washed over Wilfred and he rested in the ancient words, bored and reassured at the same time. Absentmindedly, he read the Scripture painted in dove grey above the organ: COMPEL THEM TO COME SO MY HOUSE MAY BE FILLED and wondered if people who went to chapel accepted death better than Atheists. He didn’t know. There was an Atheist in Carmarthen, Mr. Auden had told him. There was a vegetarian in Carmarthen, too.

  ‘“Two hundred female goats and twenty male goats . . .”’ the reverend read.

  Wilfred liked a long sermon—it was a crackerjack of a time to have a good think. He settled back on the uncomfortable pew. If the rigor mortis didn’t leave Mr. Jacobs’s body by this evening, he would collect him from his house, past midnight, and keep him in the workshop until the rigor mortis had left him, which should only take a couple more hours. He’d ask his da and Jeffrey to help.

  Wilfred glanced at his wife: she wasn’t translucent, thank goodness, like the Misses Evans. Her abundant brown hair was almost tidy beneath her hat and she sat with the distracted air of one who accepted Chapel yet knew there was a greater understanding of Narberth and its people. The beauty in her shone out. And she had a lovely bloom to her face.

  ‘“Two hundred ewes, and twenty rams . . .”’

  He was going to be a father. It hit him with a jolt. He swallowed hard.

  ‘“Thirty milch camels and their colts . . .”’

  Fathers, even more than undertakers, needed to know a lot. What was it Mr. Auden said? ‘Everything is interesting. And you will need what is in books.’ He thrummed his fingers on his thigh.

  ‘“Forty cows, and ten bulls . . .”’

  He had been reading the A section of his red dictionary. Why did he stop? He had stopped when he got married. If only he had continued reading the dictionary! He would have been in the B section now. When he spoke to his son, he would have been able to educate him in all manner of B words to add to the A words he used. Words such as abundant, adamantine, alphabetise, auf Wiedersehen, even exotic words like avocado. He hung his head. How could he talk to his son about important matters when he didn’t know the words for things? He had compromised his own son’s intelligence and education, as well as his prospects, by being so lackadaisical as to give up on reading the dictionary.

  ‘“Twenty female donkeys and ten he-donkeys . . .”’ The reverend patted his temples with a folded handkerchief.

  Should he start reading the dictionary again at the B section? Yes, he must. Indeed, ‘baby’ was a B word. But there were so many other things he knew very little about. Shakespeare—he hadn’t even read Hamlet. Philosophy. He knew nothing of philosophy. What was right, what was wrong? That was philosophy and he should certainly know about that, now he was going to be a father. He ran his hand through his hair. Could he read a philosophy book and be a father at the same time?

  ‘“And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day”.’ The Reverend Waldo Williams raised his fists and closed his eyes.

  I know, thought Wilfred with inspiration. I will read a book about philosophy, and if—when—I come across a word I don’t know, I will immediately look up that very word in my red dictionary, and that way I will gain knowledge not only in philosophy but also in the King’s English. And with that he gained some peace, knowing he would be more prepared for the immense role of fatherhood that awaited him.

  ‘“And he said, Let me go, for the day breaks”,’ the reverend pleaded.

  But children cost money! Wilfred’s chest tightened. What did a baby need? Many things: he was certain of it. Terry-towelling nappies, shoes, nightgowns, vests. And bonnets. Blankets, a coat, gloves—yes, perhaps they even needed gloves. He took a breath and suddenly found it hard to inhale. A baby needed socks. And socks cost money. Everything a baby needed cost money. A sponge to wash its face. A soft hairbrush to tidy its hair. If it had hair. Wilfred’s chest tightened to tightness it had never before reached. And a high chair. And a perambulator.

  ‘“The sun rose upon him, and he limped upon his thigh”,’ the Reverend Waldo Williams whispered in a swoon of religious compassion.

  The hessian bag of money he kept hidden in an empty coffin in his workshop was half-empty. He had given the other half of his savings to Grace; to keep her safe, to tide her over. It had been a lot of money, many years of savings. Had it been the best thing to do? Wilfred hung his head. Now he needed that money. He must provide for Flora—she was his wife now.

  ‘“Do not eat of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh”.’

  People would always die in Narberth, but a lot of people would have to die every month to pay for the expenses involved in having a baby. A cot! And new shoes, because children’s feet grow all the time. And food, because boys have hollow legs. A wave of panic came over him. He had grown up in poverty; his child would not do the same.

  ‘“Therefore to this day . . .”’

  Right, he’d been considering it for a while. This was the moment. He would turn the front room into a paint and wallpaper shop. If the people of Narberth weren’t going to drop dead in droves, if they were going to stay alive, then they would have to decorate their withdrawing rooms and wallpaper their bedrooms and paint their hallways because Wilfred Price was going to have a son.

  ‘We have been reading from the Book of Genesis,’ the reverend announced, lifting his palms to the ceiling with untrammelled joy. Had they? Wilfred hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Now let us pray,’ the reverend shouted, his eyes glassy with tears.

  Flora Myffanwy leaned up in bed and looked at Wilfred. This large solid man, flat on his back, with his clipped black hair and closed eyes, snoring for Christendom, was her husband. He was released and relaxed. She watched as he rolled onto his side, flailing his arm out so that it lay across her, like a lion’s limb, muscular and hairy and full of latent power: it was an undeniable weight.

  This was marriage, she thought. This man here, now, forever, for the rest of her life and, if you believed the Bible, also for eternity. Flora lay back and Wilfred lifted his leg, and pinned down her legs.

  She loved Wilfred, she knew that, but she was now a wife. When she was Flora Edwards, she had what felt like wings. Before she was married, when she had bicycled to Wiseman’s Bridge to meet Wilfred in the
cottage at the cove, she had not waited; instead, she had buckled her sandals and left the house in her own time. This morning when they left for the Tabernacle Chapel she had stood while Wilfred combed his hair in the hall mirror.

  ‘Wallet?’ he’d said. ‘It’s not on the dresser.’ It had taken five minutes to find it—it had been under an egg box. Then Wilfred remembered that he had to tell his da something, while Flora had stood, handbag clasped in both hands, moving from one foot to the other, her stole quivering with her breath.

  ‘Right, dear!’ Wilfred had said, as they were about to leave. ‘Just one more thing . . .’

  To go alone was to go in your own time; to go with someone else was to wait, Flora Myffanwy thought. Those days of buckling her sandals and walking out of the door when she was ready had passed. That was how the unmarried lived. The married waited.

  When she was engaged to Albert, she had felt unencumbered. She used to fly then—at least, she felt like she was flying. Now she felt heavier than she could ever imagine being—immeasurably heavy, rooted by marriage and the beginnings of motherhood.

  Wilfred shifted and his breath flowed warmly over her. Was this something else women went through—this rootedness to the earth that came with expecting a baby? Flora didn’t fully understand it, but she was beginning to experience it. She was quietly delighted she was expecting.

  She lay back and fell asleep and dreamed a dream which was vivid and stayed with her in the morning when she awoke. It was of a stone angel floating over the cove, with a lightness and freedom Flora no longer felt she had. It was gigantic, many times larger than herself: the image of a woman who had the strength of a man or the strength of a lion. She was standing suspended in the air. Her wings were glorious, ascending like a stairway of feathers, higher and higher—and then she strode forth in the air, across the cove: a goddess, Aphrodite without a head. She was magnificent, pure in purpose, the creamy white drapes folding delicately on her hips and back and over her smooth, enormous limbs and torso. She was only feet and torso and wings—all else was lost. Her head had cracked and fallen away. She was full of purpose, striding forward through the empty air and the pure blue sky, with élan in her winds, élan in the surging of her legs across the silent cove.

  4.

  ‘I’M CERTAIN EVERYTHING

  IS VERY PROPER IN HEAVEN’

  Good morning, Mrs. Annie Evans,’ said Wilfred, striding into the Conduit Stores on Monday morning and looking around. He, too, would shortly be a shopkeeper. And he hoped his paint and wallpaper shop would have as many customers as the Conduit Stores.

  ‘Morning, Wilfred. By damn, there’s bad about Emlyn Jacobs.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Your da will be digging the grave, won’t he? I don’t know what we’ll do in Narberth without Emlyn Jacobs cooking—I mean doing—the books! Doing the books.’ The shopkeeper busied herself under the counter for a moment, before asking, ‘What can I do for you, Wilfred?’

  ‘Bunch of flowers please, Mrs. Evans.’

  ‘Flowers, Wilfred? Well, I never! And you a married man. You do know how to behave. By damn, your da has brought you up well.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Evans.’ Wilfred had not bought flowers before but knew that a gentleman bought flowers for a lady, and his wife was a lady. And they had reason to celebrate.

  ‘Here you are buying flowers for your wife, of all people. And you being married two months and everything now.’

  But Wilfred had been married before, and was uncomfortably reminded of it. He remembered struggling with his forced marriage to Grace Reece, and how he could see no escape because she was expecting, and everyone—her father most notably—assumed the baby was Wilfred’s because they’d been engaged briefly.

  He looked at the jars of honey on the shelf and felt a pang of guilt: even though he had given Grace money when she fled Narberth, he had nevertheless left his marriage to her with a hard mind and an overriding desire for Flora. As much as he hadn’t wanted Grace, he had wanted Flora. He had been the undertaker at Flora’s father’s funeral. The moment he saw Flora, as she stepped quietly out of the house, beautiful as a Pharaoh’s daughter, then into the motor car—her head dipped, her face veiled, beads hanging loosely from her neck—it was decided: the way was made plain and the life of his heart formed. It had been done, never to be undone. He could barely believe that he was now married to this woman, the only woman he would, could, ever have. That she was his wife. Life had lavished on him a richness, a bounty of goodness such as he could barely comprehend.

  ‘I’ll have the pink carnations, please,’ he said.

  ‘You can never go wrong with carnations. Tell me, Wilfred, did Mr. Emlyn Jacobs die in the toilet?’

  ‘He died at rest in the hands of the Lord.’

  ‘That’s no answer, Wilfred. And was that Mr. Emlyn Jacobs that Cuthbert Jones saw you and your da and Jeffrey carrying down Water Lane by the Salutation Inn on Saturday, gone midnight?’

  ‘Hello-hello!’ called Mrs. Willie the Post, bustling into the Conduit Stores. ‘Wilfred—there you are. I’s just thinking about Mr. Emlyn Jacobs.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You’s learn a new thing every day.’ She took out a shopping list. ‘Now then,’ she said briskly, looking up at the shelves of packaged goods, ‘a jar of honey from the Reeces’ hive, please, Mrs. Evans. And some Symington’s Lemonade Crystals.’ She straightened her hat. ‘Dear me to goodness, there’s a thing, going to meet your Maker like that: very unprepared, your clothing all about you. That’s the kind of to-do you hear of happening to the old Welsh of Carmarthen, but never in Narberth.’

  ‘I expect you have some time between dying to arrange yourself,’ Mrs. Annie Evans suggested, ‘before crossing the shining river and meeting Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. Don’t you think so, Wilfred?’

  ‘I’m certain everything is very proper in Heaven,’ replied Wilfred, who was unsure of the finer points of what happened to the souls of the recently deceased. Although he did often wonder if the dead climbed the ladder to Heaven cradling a piece of paper with the names of the people who had mattered to them in life. ‘Here,’ one might say to St. Peter, ‘these I have loved.’

  ‘Best not speak ill of the dead,’ continued Mrs. Willie the Post. ‘A tin of marrowfat peas, please. And a tin of Mock Turtle Soup—no, make that a tin of Thick Kidney Soup. Shame there is he didn’t visit Mrs. Prout; she could have charmed him with her magic eye.’

  ‘Can you cure a heart attack with a charm?’ asked Mrs. Annie Evans.

  ‘She cured John Jeremiah of liverandheartgrow. His liver and heart were stuck fast together. Packet of Lively Polly soap powder, please, while you’re up there. And Mrs. Emlyn Jacobs told me that she is giving the deceased’s false teeth to his brother because he needs a new pair. Is that right, Wilfred?’

  Wilfred nodded.

  ‘There’s kind. May his soul rest in peace,’ commented Mrs. Willie the Post, batting away a big bluebottle. ‘Very warm weather still for the time of year. Hot as abroad.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Wilfred anxiously, thinking of Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, who was sitting in the heat under the glass roof of the workshop.

  Wilfred looked at the tarpaulin-covered lump stood in the middle of his workshop. Under the tarpaulin was Mr. Emlyn Jacobs, sitting on a chair—the same one on which Wilfred had carried him across Market Square. It was an ornate Chippendale-style chair that had been French-polished and looked rather like a throne. Its crimson velvet cushion might become slightly stained, but there was little Wilfred could do about that. Mr. Emlyn Jacobs had to sit somewhere until the rigor mortis left him. Indeed, he’d been sitting in Wilfred’s workshop, like a deposed king, with a tarpaulin over him, for three days. Wilfred had put a vice and several heavy tins of varnish around the circumference of the material to hold it firmly in place and to keep the flies off. ‘Only one fly,’ Mr. Auden used to warn ominously. ‘That’s all it t
akes.’

  ‘Now then,’ announced Wilfred, ‘are you comfortable there, Emlyn? I’m sorry about having to cover you up, but what with my wife and visitors coming past the workshop, I’m sure you can understand.’ The air was beginning to smell a bit sweet. Wilfred put his hand briefly on the tarpaulin covering Mr. Jacobs’s forearm. Stiff as a board.

  ‘Come on, Emlyn,’ he said exasperatedly, ‘there’s a good chap! You’ve got to settle yourself a bit. No good you sitting here stuffed up like a month of Sundays. Once you’re dead, you have to lie down. I can’t bury you on a chair. Nice chair, mind. Mahogany. Not less than two hundred years old, I expect.’

  Mr. Emlyn Jacobs had his arm out as if he were resting on an invisible shelf; indeed, he had been leaning on the dado rail of the indoor water closet when he had popped his clogs. Rigor mortis had crept through his corpse and frozen him in death in the position of his last moments on earth. And that was all very well and good. Rigor mortis was terrific, the canary’s tusks. Wilfred liked to see his customers rigid and was relieved when it came over them, tightening first their heads, then necks, hardening their spines and fingers, finally stiffening their whole bodies for a couple of days.

  ‘There was a to-do, Emlyn, getting you out of the house. Now, I’ll call round and tell your wife later that you’re not quite ready for a viewing yet.’ Wilfred nodded at the rightness of his own comment and opened a tin of Lady Brand Varnish to begin varnishing Mr. Jacobs’s coffin.

  Rigor mortis was the sign of death in a way nothing else was. Not breathing was no good. All manner of folk could stop breathing—lie stock-still and turn white as a ghost—and it didn’t mean they were dead, especially if they’d had a stroke or drowned. An undertaker could poke them and prick them, hold a mirror-glass to their lips to see if it misted, then listen with an ear-horn for a heartbeat and be certain that the person had kicked the bucket, only to later hear a cough, moan or fidget from inside the coffin, and—for those left behind—it was a miracle beyond miracles. Bit unsettling for the undertaker, mind. There was the deceased, who everyone thought had gone to the sphere of celestial rewards, suddenly waking and talking—and only sleeping all along. No, it was hard to know if death had come without rigor mortis.