The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  She put her knitting down on the kitchen table for a moment. For these first months of her marriage, through the late summer, autumn and now winter, Flora had sat quietly like a guest, not knowing where her place was in this house she lived in. Nor had she made the kitchen her own. The house in Market Street felt unfamiliar compared to White Hook, the house she’d grown up in and still thought of as home. She felt like a visitor here, and wondered if this house would ever feel like her home.

  She counted how many rows of the dishcloth she had knitted and untied a knot in the string. Flora thought how Wilfred and his da went out of their way to make her comfortable, brewing her cups of hot tea in the one china teacup with its chipped blue rim, and bringing her the dilapidated cushion if she sat in the armchair. She wondered if they wore more clothes around the house these days than they were used to—they weren’t ones to stand on ceremony with each other—especially in the morning, thinking they must wear trousers, shirt and tie to eat breakfast in, a habit that showed signs of being new and strange to them. And every Sunday evening, after tea, Wilfred would say: ‘My da has gone for a walk to Canesten Wood and won’t be back for three hours, and I will be in the workshop and will not be coming inside the house until past eight o’clock, if you would like to take a bath in front of the hearth. You can have the water first. I know the importance of balneological habits.’ And so Flora had bathed quickly and surreptitiously, washing her hair swiftly, rinsing it in tea to give it shine, then stepping nimbly out of the zinc bath and wrapping herself in the unbleached linen towel she had brought from home, not because she was ashamed or shy—she wasn’t—but because Wilfred and his da wouldn’t have known what to say or do if they had walked in and encroached on her privacy. They lived in the house, the three of them, but they didn’t yet know how to live together.

  Wilfred stood in the Mozart Bakery waiting to be served, savouring the warmth and the fresh smell of bread. He gazed at the lumps of dough on the shelf behind the counter, like a row of bald, unmarked heads waiting to expand. Wilfred had always been captivated by the Mozart Bakery, especially when he was a boy and had often missed having a mother, and when the bakery had seemed to him like the land of milk and honey.

  This morning, customers were crowding around the counter waiting for loaves, hot from the oven. And there was a glass shelf laden with rock cakes, lardy cakes, Chester cakes and custard slices. And pastel-coloured cream cakes, some with glacé cherries on the top, for very special occasions. His wedding had been a very special occasion though they hadn’t celebrated with cream cakes. Instead they had had a block of boiled fruitcake that his Auntie Blodwen had insisted on cooking, though each slice lay in one’s stomach like a brick.

  Thoughts of wedding cake unexpectedly reminded him of Grace. He hoped she was well and wondered where she was. She must have caught the train to Swansea, but not Cardiff, that was too far away and almost outside Wales. He hoped she was eating well and in good health. He had spotted that dreadful brother of hers, Madoc, in the Post Office the other day, back on leave.

  ‘Morning, Wilfred,’ said Mrs. Willie the Post.

  ‘Morning,’ Wilfred replied, lifting his hat.

  ‘I’ve come for an iced bun,’ Mrs. Willie the Post confided in a whisper. ‘I’ve been on forty-five diets and none of them have worked.’

  ‘After you, Mrs. Probert,’ Wilfred offered, seeing Mrs. Probert and letting her stand in front of him in the queue.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mrs. Probert replied in barely a whisper, keeping her head down, looking at the slate floor. She’s a bag of nerves, Wilfred thought to himself. He noticed the dark arc around her eye, the bleary puffiness underneath it, and the scabs of dead black blood.

  ‘I walked into the table,’ Mrs. Probert mumbled.

  ‘Oh! There’s nasty,’ replied Wilfred. ‘Have you seen Nurse Henton?’

  ‘No, it’s—’

  ‘What can I do for you, Mrs. Probert?’ Mrs. Cadwallader the baker called musically from behind the counter.

  ‘Small cob loaf, please.’

  Mrs. Cadwallader had appeared not to notice Mrs. Probert’s eye; she diplomatically served her in the usual matter-of-fact way. Mrs. Cadwallader was a capable woman: she pounded the dough and sliced the bread with strength and confidence, all the while singing arias from operas. She was unlike Mrs. Probert, who was slight, trembling, delicate, almost like a fragile bird whose bones could shatter. But women were like that. Wilfred had thought about this: men were like vegetables—big, strong, usually green—and by green he meant they were all the same colour, all quite similar. There wasn’t much difference between men. But women were like fruit and came in all different and surprising sizes and shapes: soft fragrant strawberries, dark velvety figs, squishy little blackberries, or strong round apples. Some were juicy plums, others big bright oranges. Flora was like a beautiful ripe peach. The most delicious and . . . Wilfred struggled for words . . . the most beautifulest peach in Narberth, the First Prize-winner of the fruit and vegetable competition in the Bethesda Chapel summer fête. Now, Mrs. Cadwallader was like a conference pear—full and curvaceous. But with men, if one was like a potato, his brother would be like a turnip and the other brother like a swede. There wasn’t much difference.

  ‘What are you having, Wilfred?’ Mrs. Cadwallader asked.

  ‘Vegetable pastie, please.’

  ‘There’s busy you are knitting, dear,’ said Wilfred, coming into the kitchen, followed by his da, and putting a greaseproof paper bag on the table. ‘I’ve bought a pastie for a bite to eat. But come outside first and look at this cloud.’ Flora followed Wilfred out into the cold backyard, where he pointed to the sky: ‘That cloud looks like Jesus,’ Wilfred stated. ‘That one there, with the beard.’

  ‘That one there?’ Flora asked, looking at the jumble of clouds above them.

  ‘No, that one there. Don’t you think it looks like him, with a beard and a long white cloak?’

  ‘It looks a little like a table.’

  ‘And there was I, thinking it looked like Jesus . . . Come inside, my dear,’ Wilfred said after a moment. ‘I don’t want you catching cold.’

  ‘I think . . .’ broached Flora Myffanwy, sitting back down in the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ said Wilfred eagerly.

  ‘I would like to do all the baking here, instead of buying bread and pasties at the bakery.’

  Wilfred da’s looked down diplomatically at his shoes: there were obstacles to overcome.

  ‘Certainly, dear,’ said Wilfred, wondering how on earth anyone could bake properly in their scullery but that was the thing he liked best about Flora Myffanwy: she was always saying unexpected things.

  ‘I thought,’ continued Flora in her quiet, dignified way, ‘that I might clean the kitchen first.’

  Wilfred and his da looked at her, astonished. The kitchen was as black as balls. Wilfred couldn’t imagine it properly clean, yet Flora seemed willing—and even more importantly, able––to bring order and cleanliness to 11, Market Street. This lovely elegant lady whom he was so proud to call his wife was of her own volition offering to clear the somewhat chaotic kitchen. What had he done to deserve this? He thought with guilt of Grace, who had tried so hard to please him when she was his wife. Grace, for whom he had cared so little. A fragment of memory came to him of how she touched him one night and how he had almost—almost—consummated the marriage.

  ‘I could buy you an apron!’ blurted Wilfred in an expression of gratitude to Flora as well as relief that he had not had conjugal relations with Grace, had been spared to have the life he now had. ‘And a dustpan and brush.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Flora said gently.

  ‘The dustpan and brush we have is not adequate,’ Wilfred stated. ‘On the admittedly rare occasions when I’ve used it, it’s shed bristles and I have made more mess than I’ve tidied.’ Wilfred smiled, then remembered that the dustpan ha
d been brought to the house by his mother on her marriage, which was why it had not been replaced in the twenty-nine years since her death. His da could no more part with her rusted dustpan and brush with its straggle of bristles than he could part with his memories of her.

  ‘Although we won’t replace it,’ said Wilfred quickly out of consideration for his da’s feelings. ‘We will buy a second dustpan and brush as well, so we have two. Is there anything else you need, dear? If there is, go straight to Mrs. Annie Evans at the Conduit Stores and put it on the tab. Do you need . . .?’ But he was unable to think of cleaning tools his wife might require. ‘The things that a housewife might need, you must get, dear. I know! How about a Whirlwind Suction Sweeper?’ he suggested, not caring that the cost of such a modern machine was the same price as two funerals, eager to do anything that would help Flora make this house her home.

  ‘I’ll make a start soon,’ said Flora in her clear way.

  ‘You start whenever you want, dear, and it will be more than I deserve to have a clean scullery, but don’t exert yourself now, not at all. You have to lie down the very moment you feel tired. You are not to be straining yourself. Nor to be lifting tins of paint or serving customers in the paint and wallpaper shop. Nothing is more important than you resting.’

  Flora smiled. No, Wilfred thought, nothing was more important than Flora Myffanwy resting.

  ‘Now Da, let me share this hot pastie with—that’s the doorbell! Could be a customer—touch wood.’

  Wilfred jumped up and walked purposefully through the hall and into the front room, which had been changed, with high hopes, into a somewhat sparse but proudly arranged paint and wallpaper shop.

  ‘Mrs. Newton-Lewis, good day to you.’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis had the cleanest doorstep in Narberth and subscribed to French magazines about house decoration. And Wilfred knew for a fact that she liked paisley wallpaper.

  ‘There’s tidy you’ve made the front room. What did you do with your mother’s best furniture?’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis asked.

  ‘It’s in the back room.’

  ‘There’s crowded it must be.’ Wilfred’s da had also pointed this out.

  ‘Well, Wilfred, let me see . . .’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis looked around the almost-bare shop with purpose. Mrs. Estella Newton-Lewis was his first customer in five days: many curious people had bustled through in the last few months, but so far he had only sold the odd pot of paint. There was a poverty creeping throughout Pembrokeshire. He had heard that the miners at Stepaside were paid so meagrely these days, they had to scavenge for coal in the cliffs to heat their cottages. As yet, no one had bought very much but, as Mr. Auden had taught him, life was one quarter enjoyable and three quarters difficult. Perhaps a paint and wallpaper business worked on similar proportions.

  ‘I’d like my withdrawing room wallpapered,’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis declared. This was very encouraging. She browsed through the enormous Arthur Sanderson & Sons wallpaper book which the travelling wallpaper salesman had given Wilfred.

  ‘I want to decorate the walls and the ceiling,’ she continued. ‘Can you do that for me?’ Wilfred didn’t have a clue how to wallpaper a ceiling; surely the wallpaper just fell off?

  ‘Certainly, Mrs. Newton-Lewis,’ he replied hopefully. Wallpaper was always peeling off walls, never mind ceilings. Perhaps there was some way he could nail it on.

  ‘I knew as much,’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis declared. ‘I said to Mrs. Annie Evans, “That Wilfred Price has no end of skills up his sleeve: undertaker,” I said, “decorator.” I said, “I’ll buy my wallpaper here in Narberth instead of going to Ocky White’s in Haverfordwest and Wilfred will be able to do the decorating as well”.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs. Newton-Lewis.’ When Wilfred opened the shop he’d put up a shelf for paint on the back wall, built a counter and bought a till. He’d expected he might occasionally be asked to paint the odd door or wall, but he hadn’t thought of himself as a decorator.

  ‘You’ll need to somehow move my antique Welsh dresser to paper behind it. And I’d like it done by the day after tomorrow as my two sisters are coming from Llanddewi Velfrey. Can you finish it by then?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Wilfred, praying that no one would die in the next few days.

  ‘I considered having a paisley in a fuchsia and yellow, but I have changed my mind. I am thinking of the Tulip and Willow by William Morris.’ She turned a large page in the wallpaper book. ‘Or perhaps the Cornucopia?’

  ‘We have plenty of rolls in stock of this one in bice-blue and biliverdin,’ said Wilfred, unsure if he’d used his new B words correctly, and showing Mrs. Newton-Lewis a large sunflower print with a blue background.

  ‘There’s lovely. There’s posh. Yes, I’ll take it. Yes.’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis smoothed the matte wallpaper appreciatively. ‘I expect you learned to decorate when you were an apprentice.’

  Wilfred had learned nothing of the sort during his four-year apprenticeship with Mr. Ogmore Auden of O. Auden, Wheelwrights & Cabinet Makers of Whitland.

  ‘Are you thinking of painting the skirting-boards?’ he asked, by way of a diversion.

  ‘Thank you for reminding me. I like a clean, fresh skirting-board. I was thinking of a Van Dyke Brown. And how many rolls of wallpaper will I need, Wilfred?’

  ‘I’ll work that out for you, Mrs. Newton-Lewis.’

  ‘I would say ten.’

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ said Wilfred with no basis at all for agreement.

  ‘Do you gloss-paint front doors? If you do, I can tell the ladies in Narberth Lest We Forget Society, while we are knitting for those poor soldiers so afflicted by the War.’ Mrs. Newton-Lewis knew everyone, saw everything and told everybody. ‘And I expect you lime-wash the outside of houses as well. Do you do that, Wilfred?’

  ‘These things are possible,’ replied Wilfred non-committally.

  ‘I know Mrs. Roberts wants the whole house decorated.’

  Mrs. Roberts lived in the big house at the top of the High Street. Wilfred swallowed.

  ‘I’ll tell her at chapel all about your book of wallpapers, and that you know how to decorate properly. I suggested to her to paint the outside russet or a cinnabar, so I expect you’ll have to dye the lime-wash with rowan berries.’

  He was an undertaker, not a painter. Honey hell—he was radical wrong if he thought he knew how to decorate! Mind, Wilfred thought to himself, it was work and it was money and would help replace his savings. And he didn’t want to be a lazy Herbert. There could be no vanity to it—he was going to be a father and he must provide for his family.

  So he replied: ‘You tell the lovely ladies of the Narberth Lest We Forget Society, Mrs. Newton-Lewis, and I’ll be glad for the work.’

  Several weeks later, Flora walked down the frost-bitten lane past St. Andrew’s Church, where the blackberries grew in a tangle, searching for a view of the valley to photograph. She wanted to take photographs of the hills around Narberth before the baby was born, while she still had time on her hands, and because today she wanted to take her mind from what was worrying her. She would have liked some company. Wilfred was always ready to talk to her, and he showed her so much affection that Flora wondered if sometimes he held back from fear that he would overwhelm her with his ardour—but today he was visiting a miner in Providence Hill who claimed he’d seen the Grim Reaper and wanted to arrange his funeral.

  Flora spotted a woman ahead walking nervously, almost scared to put her feet on the frozen earth. They met at the stile and the woman waited, offering a chapped white hand as Flora climbed carefully over. As the woman looked up at her, their eyes met. Flora saw—or rather the woman showed her, with a look almost of defiance—her cheek and eye, witness to the violence and force that had created the bruised colours.

  The two women walked alongside the drystone wall, stepping over hummocks of frosted grass. The field was dotted with Welsh Black cows.


  ‘You’re Wilfred Price’s wife, aren’t you?’ the woman said.

  Flora nodded.

  ‘I’m Phyllis Probert.’

  Wilfred had mentioned Mr. Probert to Flora and she knew he worked in the Dragon Inn. Flora wanted to reach out to this woman, to make a friend in Narberth, but didn’t quite know how. She was aware that the other women in Narberth treated her with some distance and a little suspicion. She wasn’t from Narberth or even Templeton, she was from Pleasant Valley in Stepaside and from a different family with different ancestors, and they knew instinctively that she wasn’t one of them. She had married their much-respected undertaker who would have been a catch among the Narberth ladies, with his good looks, integrity and his warm, friendly jokes. He had a good business and he didn’t drink. And he didn’t hit her. Wilfred had once been, no doubt, the pinnacle of many women’s romantic dreams in Narberth—all of them, she imagined, dashed when she emerged, as if out of nowhere, as his wife.

  The two women followed the path towards the next field.

  ‘Is it due around the spring?’ Mrs. Probert asked. ‘That’s when Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon is having her baby.’

  ‘Yes.’ Flora wrapped her scarf around her neck. ‘Sometimes that feels a long way away, and sometimes it feels soon,’ she admitted, hinting at what was on her mind and beginning to concern her. Flora had talked very little about the baby to anyone except Wilfred. And every time she mentioned the baby to him, he immediately talked about the paint and wallpaper shop. The wind blew and Flora brushed her hair from her face.

  ‘It’s your first, isn’t it?’ the woman said to Flora. ‘That’s why you’re scared.’

  Flora noticed that the woman’s other eye was stretched with very fine lines and seemed to move slowly, almost tiredly. The woman said something, almost shy to reveal an aspect of herself in return.