The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  ‘Wouldn’t you like something Welsh, like Ieuan or Aubrey?’ Flora suggested, putting her foot on the pedal. ‘Or we could call him Wilfred.’

  ‘After me? Another Wilfred Price?’

  ‘Or perhaps Malcolm Wilfred Price.’

  ‘You can choose,’ Wilfred offered. ‘That is only right.’

  ‘Wilfred,’ Flora Myffanwy said, about to set off on her bicycle, ‘we will decide together.’

  As he watched Flora bicycle away, making an effort to pedal, Grace came to his mind. He understood now, from watching Flora, that Grace had been more vulnerable than he had comprehended. Where had she gone? Was she well? He turned, unable to answer the questions that weighed more heavily on his conscience, and went into his workshop. He had work to do. He must make a pillow for Mr. Carr from Cold Blow this afternoon.

  Wilfred sat down on a stool in his workshop and unwrapped from a starched tea towel the pastie Flora had made for him. He put his ankle on his knee and bit through the crust arcing around his pastie and into the mush of vegetables and potato paste. By damn, it was tasty. That was the thing he liked best about Flora, she was wonderful at making vegetable pasties.

  Wilfred looked across at Mr. Carr, who was lying in his coffin, waiting.

  ‘Just finish my pastie, Mr. Carr, and I’ll be with you now in a minute.’

  Mr. Carr’s family was upset at his death, but not particularly so. There was nothing like a funeral for revealing how loved someone was. When he was an apprentice he’d helped Mr. Auden bury a man who worked in the Tax Office in Carmarthen. ‘He will not be missed,’ Mr. Auden had said.

  ‘Right, Mr. Carr, I’ll start making a pillow for you,’ Wilfred announced, setting to work. ‘A pillow will make you look a bit less red and drain that blood from your face. I always use shredded newspaper in a white cotton slip for the pillow. It’s cheap as chips.’

  He found some scissors amidst the tools on the workbench and picked up some old copies of Narberth News. Wilfred knew that when the deceased had been cherished, the days between a death and a funeral were a time of shock. And busyness. Visitors calling in on the bereaved, conversations demanded, sometimes even needing to make a telephone call, death notices to send, the black crêpe clothes to be washed and pressed, the drapes to be drawn, the furniture to be covered.

  Wilfred stuffed some shredded newspaper into the pillowslip, then brushed some dust and paper from his thighs. People in shock said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ Wilfred frequently heard his customers telling him, ‘I can’t believe it for the life of me.’ That’s what they said. ‘Only yesterday he was sitting there, right as rain, talking away, reading the Narberth & Whitland Observer and today he’s . . .’ and then came one of those gentle words the shocked used in their grief to describe death: ‘asleep’, ‘with the good Lord’, or ‘in greener pastures’. Sometimes they said, ‘The bugger was in a bad way, but we didn’t think it would come to this.’ Even if the person had been at death’s door, rattling away for weeks, the bereaved were still shocked. No one, it seemed, believed in the mortality of their loved ones, not even when their loved ones were dead. So shock was useful. Shock stopped the bereaved from understanding that the deceased had not actually fallen asleep, as a lot of them liked to believe—if only it were that simple—but was dead. Otherwise, Wilfred would be rushed off his feet. Say a farmer died, his wife might pop her clogs the moment she heard, then the son would do something silly, and the daughter would have a heart attack. That would be three more funerals. And so it would go on. While shock was a dreadful stress on the kidneys, and could make people do peculiar things and even lose their mind, it was because of shock that Wilfred wasn’t overrun with work. People had a lot to be thankful for to shock: it gave the bereaved a week or so of grace. And there was no one who died in Narberth who hadn’t been buried by people in shock.

  ‘Made a nice pillow for Mr. Carr,’ Wilfred announced, coming into the kitchen from the workshop late that night. ‘He’s more comfortable now.’

  ‘That Stanley Baldwin—no use to man nor beast,’ replied Wilfred’s da, folding the Daily Graphic in half and dropping it on the table with a flat plop. ‘What’s he ever done for anyone? That’s what I’d like to know. Tell me, Wilfred, what’s that Stanley Baldwin done for anyone?’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Wilfred, picking up the paper and putting it to the side.

  ‘It says there—look!’ said his da, pointing at the headline. MINERS’ WAGE DEADLOCK. His da sighed with resignation and lifted his hands as if dealing with a madman. ‘If you can tell me one thing that Mr. Stanley Baldwin has done for this country, I’ll eat my hat,’ and with that his da stood up, confident in his own judgement.

  ‘What are you reading, Wilfred?’ his da then asked, putting on his greatcoat and tying some twill round his waist.

  Wilfred crossed his legs and sighed. ‘Very important book, like.’

  ‘Not that ruddy dictionary,’ his da protested. ‘Where’s my spade . . .?’ he looked around, unable to find it.

  ‘Flora has taken it out of the sink and put it inside the workshop.’

  ‘The workshop?’ repeated Wilfred’s da, puzzled. ‘I’m digging down by James James’s grave tonight. The soil is soft there.’

  ‘Like James James,’ said Wilfred, looking out of the window at the starless sky and thinking about going to bed. ‘Dark it is, tonight. Back before dawn, Da?’

  ‘Ai, back at four.’

  ‘Keep your kidneys warm, now,’ said Wilfred, in an inversion of their father and son relationship: something that was happening more these days. His da was not old, Wilfred thought to himself, was not infirm, was not . . . something Wilfred didn’t want to put into words yet. ‘Keep your greatcoat on. And done up,’ he added redundantly.

  Suddenly there was a sharp bang on the front door.

  ‘Price! Where are you?’ There was a kick as the front door burst open. ‘You dirty bugger. Price!’

  Wilfred glanced at his da, who was holding onto the back of a chair, his eyes wide with alarm.

  ‘Price. Come here.’ There was the sound of heavy boots on the hall flagstones, the hobnails in the boot-soles catching against the stones. ‘Pr-ice!’ the voice bellowed. There was a thump on the front-room door, then the boom of a hip and shoulder forced against the wood.

  Where was Flora Myffanwy? Wilfred thought in a flash. Upstairs. She had gone to bed earlier on. His father was next to him, transfixed, unbelieving. There was another boom as the door was pushed and buckled, then the panicky sound of paint tins responding.

  ‘Get back, Da. Who is it?’ Wilfred called, walking towards the hall. He went through the door to the paint and wallpaper shop and a man lunged at him. The two men spun in a clinch across the shop into the back wall, hitting a framed tapestry. It slipped to the side of the nail, hung for a moment and then the glass fell out and smashed.

  The man grabbed Wilfred’s shoulders and slammed him against the wall. Wilfred’s head hit the bricks with force though he held his neck taut. The man lifted his fist over his head to strike Wilfred, spitting and swearing beerily with the effort of his anger. Wilfred dodged, charged into him, tried to wrestle him to the floor. But the man—it was Probert from the Dragon Inn—was beefier than Wilfred, and nastier, and stood his ground so that instead, they hit the paint shelf. Tins fell heavily and there was the pop of a lid coming off.

  Wilfred needed something for a weapon but could only see paintbrushes. He glimpsed his da hiding at the door: a frail, frightened older gentleman who was small next to this flaming, snorting man who had burst so violently into the peace of his family home. Wilfred saw red. He grabbed the man’s overalls, shoved him backwards then forwards, leaned down and brought the man’s face down onto the crown of his head. Probert stumbled back heavily towards the shop window, blood spluttering from his nostrils. Pots of miniature roses Flora had placed in the windowsill toppled over,
the earth spilling on the floor.

  The man let out a guttural bellow and charged towards Wilfred. He struck his palm under Wilfred’s chin; Wilfred’s head whip-lashed back with a snap. Probert clamped his whole hand over Wilfred’s face, his stubby fingers dragging down Wilfred’s eyelids. With all the might Wilfred could muster he punched him hard and fast in the stomach. Umph—the air pumped out of Probert with a deep, almost animal sound. Wilfred took his fist back past his hip and slammed it into the man’s stomach again. The man was winded for a long moment, air seeming neither to enter nor leave him. He collapsed to his knees. Wilfred looked down dizzily at the man who was doubled over at his feet, gasping for air and coughing.

  The man rubbed his eyes. ‘You gave my wife lipstick, Wilfred Price,’ he panted. ‘You made a whore of her.’ He spat. ‘Now she’s too proud to take a beating silent. You deal with the dead. Leave the living alone.’

  Lipstick? Wilfred didn’t understand. He looked down at the man and felt contempt. He wanted to kick him. The bully, he thought. Then he remembered.

  ‘My wife, Probert. It was my wife who gave your poor wife a lipstick because that’s what she deserves—some friendship and some kindness. God knows she gets scant enough kindness from you. Now get out of my house. Go on. And don’t come back here again.’

  ‘I’m going. But you’ll be sorry.’ Probert stood up, swaying from side to side, his hands on his thighs, his head down.

  ‘It’s good to see you bowed, Probert,’ Wilfred said. Probert shuffled out of the door, holding his hand to the architrave to balance himself—the same door he had so recently been rageful enough to try and break through. Probert stumbled up the road in the dark, stiff-legged and panting audibly.

  Wilfred put his arm around his da’s shoulder and his da patted him on the back. ‘Well done, son.’

  ‘I thought of you and Flora and I thought of his poor scrap of a wife and I knew I was going to have him,’ Wilfred said, more confident in the telling than he had felt in the moment. He was shocked at the speed of the intrusion, and the violence of the attack. He noticed that some buttons on his shirt were ripped and a line of thick blood was running from his nose. The soles of his shoes were covered in paint.

  ‘You punched him good and hard; I didn’t know you had it in you.’

  ‘Oh, I had it in me, Da.’ Wilfred put his hands on his hips and felt the power and strength in his body. He wiped some blood from his nose. ‘I’m like a bloodnosed beetle,’ he added, attempting a joke.

  ‘I thought he was going to bite you. Ach-y-fi. He’s as stubborn as a pig of iron,’ his da stated.

  ‘There’s not much I’d put past that man,’ Wilfred said, ‘not if he hits a woman.’

  Wilfred walked through to the paint and wallpaper shop and looked around. A tin of Rudman’s Old Gold had fallen open and spilled. There were golden footsteps all over the floorboards so that the floor looked like a follow-the-footsteps diagram for a frantic foxtrot or a quickstep. The shelf was broken, the round table lay on its side, and the Arthur Sanderson & Sons catalogue had a gold footprint over the words Purveyors of Wallpapers and Paints to King George V. Many things in his shop had fallen apart, were split, cracked and broken. He picked up the table and set it on its feet, then righted the tin of open paint.

  On the wall, the tapestry his mother had made before he was born was hanging askew with a jaggedy crack in the remaining glass. He took it from the nail: Yy Arglwydd yw fy mugail. Blessed Are the Pure in Heart. He must put some new glass in the frame to protect his mother’s careful handiwork from wear and tear.

  Probert had broken in like a dark angel and wrestled so suddenly and violently with him, it was like a dream. Wilfred had never fought before, although he had once hit a boy at school who had pointed out, honestly but unnecessarily, that he didn’t have a mam. ‘Wilfred Price got no mam,’ the boy chanted. Wilfred, unexpectedly, had punched him squarely in the stomach, winding him, and the boy had never said it again. At the time Wilfred had surprised himself with his response, but it was not surprising to him now. It was an intolerable burden for a small child to live without a mother, and he felt her absence bitterly. Everyone should have a mother, Wilfred thought. Everyone should have someone who only sees their innocence.

  Wilfred picked up a dented paint tin and read the label:

  To beautify unsightly walls.

  To cover soiled wallpapers.

  Wilfred sighed. His shop had had few customers. He had wallpapered Mrs. Newton-Lewis’s drawing-room and earned a small amount of money, but not nearly enough to replace his savings, the cost of the paint and wallpaper, and to provide for a child in the way a good father should.

  The two china dogs Flora had put above the fireplace were still intact. She had bought them to photograph alongside some flowers for a still life—and because she liked them. Only a married man would be in possession of china dog ornaments, he thought to himself. He straightened the dogs and moved them closer together.

  On the floor, there were splashes of blood, dark red like thick wine. He wasn’t sure whose blood it was. He fetched the new dishcloth that Flora had knitted and began wiping up the stain with circular movements until it was washed away.

  Wilfred limped back to the kitchen, his hipbone hurting from wrestling with Probert, and held the dishcloth under the cold water, which ran red as cochineal, then a diluted pink. He wrung out the cloth tightly. It was quiet now. His da, in his constant, calm way, must have gone to the graveyard to dig throughout the night, still caring for the dead and their final resting-place, regardless. Wilfred turned off the running tap and decided that he would start again with the shop. Like his da, he would persevere, and persevere intelligently.

  Wilfred thought he should go to bed and leave the mess in the shop. It was late. He gazed out at the starless sky. Unto each day let only that evil be done. Mr. Auden had always said that at the end of a difficult day. Wilfred decided that he would get up at the crack of dawn and tidy. A good sleep would do wonders. He locked the back door with the key, something he had not done before. Seeing his da earlier almost hiding behind the door, he was struck again, how his father was at the edge of ageing. And why had Flora said to him when they were at the cove, ‘I feel as if I am dying’? Wilfred experienced a coldness in his throat and his stomach. Flora wasn’t one for drama or effect. She wasn’t one to have tantrums and hysterics. She was calm; sometimes almost distant in her serenity, like a queen he couldn’t reach.

  Realising his da would be returning in the early morning, Wilfred unlocked the back door and went to bed. He curled around Flora Myffanwy, held her warm body and, comforted and reassured by her presence, explained the noise she had heard and had been hiding from upstairs. They lay on their sides facing each other while he told her about Probert, and the state of the shop.

  ‘I gave Mrs. Probert my lipstick,’ Flora told him, ‘because I thought it might help her feel more feminine.’ Wilfred stroked her mass of brown hair, which fell in bright, curving coils that shone in the candlelight. He had seen people gaze at Flora, thinking about her beauty rather than listening to her gentle voice or her soft way of phrasing words. And there was an ancientness to her that made her mysterious. Wilfred didn’t understand her ancientness. He just recognised it; and knew he was made from a commoner cloth.

  ‘Come here.’ He liked saying that. It was what he said at night—he liked to say the same thing to her, to create a rhythm and ways of being, their ways of being. She was his wife and she was alive. He held her tightly as she fell asleep and wrapped his leg around her so that no one could take her, so that death couldn’t take her.

  Flora Myffanwy was in a hospital bed in a dimmed room.

  ‘You are having the baby,’ a nurse said, all bristle and bustle.

  ‘But it’s too early.’ Then the baby was born. ‘That was so easy,’ she said jubilantly to the nurse, but the nurse had left. She didn’t kn
ow birth was so simple. The child had slipped from her painlessly; there had been no wrestling of two bodies, seams splitting, fighting to separate.

  Then in front of her was a child, straight-backed like herself, with the same deep brown eyes. The child’s hair was plaited in two plaits to her shoulders. She wore a dark brown dress with three small flowers embroidered on her flat chest. She was standing at the foot of Flora Myffanwy’s bed. At the head of Flora’s bed there was an open door from which the light came. The child looked at her. She had the simplicity of a child and the power of dignity.

  Flora knew that the child was showing herself to her; that she was letting Flora see her. The child was unafraid and unattached. This was to be the only time in Flora Myffanwy’s life that she would see her daughter. Her daughter was here now and would not come again.

  ‘My name is Martha,’ the child said. And then she was gone.

  Flora woke abruptly, immediately awake. She got out of bed. ‘Oh!’ There was a thick red glut of blood on her inner thigh and her palms were slick with it now. She didn’t know what to do with her bloodied hand. She stood with her legs apart, her hand held upwards in the air. It was a brilliant day. The sky through the bedroom window was a vivid blue and she could see the granite corner of the courthouse in exact definition against the absolutely blue, unmarked sky.

  At the washstand she washed herself and within a moment the pool of water was red, as if swirled with red paint. A blood-bath, she thought to herself. It got redder each time she dipped her hand in the water. She didn’t know what to do. She was alone in the bedroom and aware of her aloneness. Should she shout for Wilfred? Should she lie down, should she hold on, breathe in? Never let go? There is a lot of blood, was the only thing she could think.

  ‘Wilfred?’ she whispered into the empty room. ‘Wilfred?’