The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  ‘It isn’t,’ Grace said, after a moment, hope rising in her.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Grace. Think of yourself. Think how your sister would feel if something happened to you. Do you have a sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then think of your mother. And your father. Or your brother.’

  Grace didn’t reply.

  Lady Lytton still held the powder puff, now crushed in her fingers. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ she said suddenly. ‘How foolish of me.’

  ‘Am I dismissed?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No!’ Lady Lytton inhaled, self-consciously trying to gather herself, and, Grace thought, if she hadn’t been so well brought up she might have raised her voice. Some kohl was smudged along Lady Lytton’s cheek when she had dabbed her eyes. She turned back to the mirror and began patting the marks with a ball of cotton wool, then she wiped the cotton wool across her cheekbones, smoothing her skin. When she had finished, she took a sip of tea, then half-turned.

  ‘You may leave the bed unmade. Here is my name card, with my address. You are dismissed,’ she ordered, unfastening the strap of her gold wristwatch and holding it out for Grace to take. ‘Thank you, Grace. That will be all.’

  Grace left the Ballantyre Suite, hurriedly pushing the gold watch inside her brassière, where the metal clasp dug into her hard breasts. Lady Lytton was the third person to give her money—Wilfred immediately after their divorce, her father as she left Narberth, and now Lady Lytton. She needed money, but what she wanted most of all, she thought with exhaustion, was a home, a refuge, someone and somewhere to support her, rather than having to survive on her own. Of what use was a gold watch to her? What would she do with it?

  She ran her hand over her breast; the watch made an odd metal lump so she shoved it down further and it disappeared into her contours, then she rushed down the corridor looking at the crystal doorknobs, searching for a MAID CLEANING sign. When Grace found the sign, she knocked on the door and Hilda came out and looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘What did she want?’ Hilda demanded.

  ‘To finish tidying the beds.’

  ‘And she wanted you to do that on your own? Is there something wrong with me, then?’

  ‘No.’ Grace could see that Hilda’s sense of importance as the more senior chambermaid had been dented.

  ‘Right. Start cleaning. You make the beds. Let’s see if you’ve still got a problem with hospital corners.’ Even though she was aggrieved, Hilda talked: only now her talk expressed her hurt. ‘I can do beds as good as any of them,’ she boasted. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked Grace chippily. ‘Lost your tongue?’

  ‘No,’ Grace mumbled, aware of the bullying tone that Hilda had adopted. But Hilda was right: she had lost her tongue. She’d lost her tongue the moment she had been forced by her brother and hadn’t found it since. He had silenced her. She talked when she had to, replied when questioned, said what needed to be said as briefly as possible, but that was all. Her tongue lay heavy and useless in her mouth; like something she owned but no longer used. She had lost her tongue and got a child.

  ‘You ought to talk more. It’s boring for me. You’re not the only one in the room. It’s warm in here, isn’t it?’ Hilda said, parodying conversation and goading Grace to speak.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, I give up with you,’ Hilda said, throwing the starched sheet over the mattress, then flinging the feather pillows onto the bed.

  Grace knew now to move away from people who were gathering themselves up to be violent in one way or another.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Grace said, ‘I’m going to lie down in the dormitory. I’m feeling unwell.’

  ‘Well! That’s a cheek,’ exclaimed Hilda, working herself up into a steam and clearly with much more to say, but Grace had put her duster on the trolley and was walking away.

  ‘You could lose your job for this!’ Hilda called after her.

  Relieved to be back in the dormitory and away from Hilda, Grace picked up a postcard that was waiting for her on her bed. She knew who it was from. It was a picture of Chelsea Barracks. She turned it over and glanced at it. No, Grace didn’t want to meet Madoc for a cup of tea. She ripped the postcard into tiny pieces, then stood up heavily from the dormitory bed, put her hands on her waist and arched her lower back, which was aching. She pushed her stomach out—she couldn’t help herself—dropped her head back and sighed.

  ‘Grace Rice! How dare you leave all the work to me and come up here?’ Then Hilda’s mouth fell open in shock. ‘Are you . . .?’ She stood, speechless, her cap hanging loosely in her hand. ‘Are you having a baby?’ Hilda asked. ‘You’re having a baby! You’ve been hiding it.’ She gasped ‘Mr. Sharp will kill you.’

  Grace looked at Hilda.

  ‘Mr. Sharp! The butler.’

  ‘Oh,’ Grace replied, utterly unperturbed.

  ‘Don’t you care what Mr. Sharp will say?’

  Grace regarded this girl in front of her who was so gauche and without understanding, whose whole life was this great cruise liner of a hotel that sailed serenely, coddling and entertaining its wealthy passengers and its employees from the storms and turbulence of their times.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Grace said.

  ‘I do. You’re having a baby. And you’re not married. You’ll lose your job.’

  Grace, comprehending, dragged her suitcase from under the bed, then opened and emptied the two drawers in her bedside cabinet, pushing her scant and shabby belongings into her case. She opened the zip pouch inside the suitcase lining. There was her money, wrapped up in the envelope her father had given her—it was all she had that belonged to him. And a family photograph, but she hadn’t looked at it since she left Narberth. She quickly packed her case, clipped the clasps and glanced at the stark dormitory and barred window. It wasn’t much: it wasn’t a home but, she reasoned, it was a roof.

  ‘Where are you going to go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Hilda replied. ‘Here, you’ve forgotten your stockings.’ She passed them to her. ‘You’ve sinned,’ she stated, as if the thought had just struck her. ‘It says in the Book of Hebrews “for fornicators and adulterer, God will;—”’

  ‘Have I?’ Grace interrupted. She was finding words, but with a sudden sense that the feelings she had held down for so long were being unloosened and could surge up inside her.

  Hilda flicked her plait over her shoulder. ‘Tell me about him,’ she nudged Grace. ‘What’s he like? What was it like?’

  Grace didn’t answer. For a brief moment, the hierarchy between them, where Hilda was the senior chambermaid and Grace the meek and silent one, fell away. Grace knew something about life that Hilda didn’t.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ There was a pause. ‘I expect I’ll find out one day. When I’m married.’ Hilda looked at Grace’s rounded stomach with awe. ‘Let me help you,’ she said.

  Grace held back some noise or sound, a primal wail breaking within her in response to Hilda’s unexpected warmth.

  Hilda yanked open and checked inside the drawers and got down on all fours to look under the bed to make sure that Grace had all her possessions.

  ‘Is that your hair clip?’

  Grace shook her head.

  Hilda glanced at the door. ‘You must go before the other maids come back. If Mr. Sharp finds you . . . Do you want to go back home to Wales?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know where to go?’

  Grace reached for her coat, her hands shaking as she did up the buttons. She should have thought about the future, but she had been living from moment to moment, almost asleep.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ Hilda stated. ‘Do you know the kitchen backstairs, behind the ballroom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Quic
kly, I’ll show you.’ Hilda grabbed Grace’s suitcase and darted to the door. She looked both ways down the empty, windowless corridor. ‘There’s no one here. Come on.’ They hurried unceremoniously along the corridor, then down echoing staircase after staircase, their feet clattering loudly on the hard floor.

  ‘Don’t fall,’ Hilda told Grace.

  Grace held onto the cold, black handrail, her throat dry with exertion, trying to catch her breath.

  ‘No wonder you were always such a slowcoach,’ Hilda said, glancing back at Grace and waiting a moment for her to catch up.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a big black door.

  ‘It’s locked,’ Hilda said. ‘We need the key—I’ll ask Jack. He might know how to get one.’

  Grace stood shivering with fear in the shadows while Hilda charged up the stairs to the kitchen. She had money, she should find lodgings, she must find lodgings, she must cope, she told herself. She hung onto the suitcase in her hand. At least Madoc wouldn’t find her now. Hilda soon returned, trailed by a skinny boy with dirty blond hair.

  ‘Open the door, Jack,’ she told him impatiently. ‘Open it, then.’

  The boy put the key in the lock and held the door open for Grace, staring at her open-mouthed.

  ‘Sorry I wasn’t always kind,’ Hilda said. She put her hand to her neck and pulled out a small gold cross on a chain. ‘I would give you this, only my godfather gave it to me at my christening and he’d have kittens if I wasn’t wearing it.’ She rummaged in her apron pocket and brought out an expensive comb. ‘Take this. I found it, but you can have it. It’s for you.’ She dropped the tortoiseshell comb into the pocket of Grace’s coat. ‘You can comb your hair with it.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back to the kitchen,’ Jack said nervously—he looked frightened. ‘I’ll be in trouble with Cook if she sees I’ve taken the key.’

  So Grace turned and left the Ritz.

  10.

  THE DOG WITH THE WAGGIEST TAIL

  IN NARBERTH, 1926

  Letter from the Tenby Gas Company, Wilfred. That will be the bill,’ said Willie the Post, poking his head round the workshop door. Wilfred was measuring a plank of elm with a ruler. He jotted down its length. ‘Hear you’s reading Hamlet,’ Willie the Post commented. ‘We did that at school. What is it he says? “Shall I do myself in or not, I don’t know”.’

  ‘I’m reading this.’ Wilfred put down his ruler amidst the jumble of tools on his workbench and held up The Last Days of Socrates.

  ‘Who’s that by?’

  ‘Plato.’

  ‘Never heard of him. Oh—who’s dead?’ asked Willie, indicating the half-finished coffin resting on A-frames.

  ‘No one yet. It’s a spare,’ said Wilfred, resting the elm plank against the wall.

  ‘Now seeing you’s an important man around Narberth,’ Willie began, ‘and I’s don’t like to ask, but will you judge the dog competition at the Winter Carnival? We don’t want any old bugger judging it, see.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the mayor?’

  ‘He can’t see a hole through a ladder.’

  ‘But Willie—’

  ‘Say yes or I’ll be the arse of the world with the Winter Carnival Committee. You’s only have to give the rosette to the winner. No one’s going to mind.’

  ‘Mr. Gerard Henry might set that ruddy Alsatian on me if I don’t let him win,’ Wilfred retorted, putting his pencil behind his ear.

  ‘Well, you’s better let him win, then. We were thinking that you’d give a very proper air to the dog competition. We can’t have some farmer from Carmarthen judging, who’d laugh if his arse was on fire. And the Reverend Waldo Williams is on a pilgrimage to St. David’s to atone for his sins.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose so,’ Wilfred said resignedly, folding up the ruler and dropping it in the bib pocket of his dungarees.

  ‘This Saturday, two o’clock at the Queen’s Hall, wearing your best suit. No one will argue with you when you’re dressed as an undertaker—they’d be scared you’d bury them as punishment.’ Willie put the gas bill on the spare coffin. ‘And how’s your wife, now, these days since she lost . . .’ He looked down at his Post Office regulation shoes.

  ‘Well enough,’ Wilfred replied, hearing how tinny his answer sounded, even to himself.

  Wilfred came into the kitchen and dropped the Narberth & Whitland Observer on the kitchen table.

  ‘Raining today. Is the type of rain that gets you wet,’ he remarked to Flora Myffanwy, who was cleaning the floor. Every day Flora woke, cleaned one thing after another, then slept early, exhausted. And then she rose the following morning and cleaned again. Number 11, Market Street was reaching hitherto unheard-of heights of cleanliness. The kitchen table, which had had a greasiness that made one’s hand stick to it slightly, was now bleached wood, the grooves in the tabletop empty of detritus. The kitchen window, with its smears, splatters and fingerprints, was crystal clear, and the blue teacup squeaked in his fingers when he held it.

  ‘Flora,’ he said to his wife, who was on the floor of the kitchen, a butter-knife in her hand, frantically bevelling the grime out of the gap between the floor and the wall. Wilfred watched his wife clean the flagstones while biting, in her grief-stricken anguish with herself, on the pad of her thumb. Flora hadn’t talked about the baby. Wilfred knew enough to know that when someone didn’t speak about something, it was because it hurt them deeply. She was in shock—he’d seen that look in the faces of the bereaved standing at gravesides, and recognised it for the otherworldly state that it was.

  ‘Flora?’ he asked, as if he was asking the universe, as if he was looking for her in the spaces between the planets in which she was lost and floating. She hung her head.

  ‘It is clean now, dear.’

  Flora rested on her knees and put her hands on her lap. Her complexion was pale and she was skin and bone. And the floor was scrubbed so you could eat your dinner off it. Wilfred thought if dirt was something in the wrong place, then cleaning was putting things in the right place. But Flora looked at him as if she thought the whole world would never be clean, would never be bright and new again, and so she must keep on scrubbing and digging and bevelling into every nook and cranny of their small wattle and daub house until the end of her days.

  ‘You’ll be surprised to hear this,’ Wilfred announced jovially, coming into the kitchen at dinner time after a long morning in the workshop. ‘I’m judging the dog competition at the Winter Carnival. Willie the Post asked me earlier, and I said yes. It’s important to help people if they ask, isn’t it? What’s this, dear, on the lettuce?’ Wilfred sat down and looked at his lunch plate.

  ‘Heinz Salad Cream. It’s new,’ Flora Myffanwy replied.

  ‘Very nice it is and all. I don’t think we’ve had this before, have we, Da?’

  ‘No,’ said his da, looking at the frilly lettuce with a serving of salad cream sitting primly next to it.

  ‘We used to have so many fried breakfasts; I’m surprised I don’t look like slices of black pudding. It’s wonderful to eat something new, isn’t it, Da, like lettuce?’

  ‘Yes,’ his da agreed.

  Wilfred sat back, his knife and fork in his hand and beamed. ‘We’ve never eaten so well, have we, Da? Been reading that book, The Last Days of Socrates,’ he continued, wanting to break Flora’s subdued silence, trying to make more conversation but unable to think of anything else to say. ‘Very difficult, indeed. I’ve only read nine pages. Can’t understand a word of it. That chap Socrates and his questions—enough to drive a saint mad. I bet they were relieved when he died.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, son. I’m very proud of you for giving it a go.’

  ‘Thank you, Da,’ said Wilfred, soothed by the affection in his da’s voice. ‘I don’t think I’m going to read as far as the chapter where they bury him. It would confound a brighter man than me. But never
mind. I’m a very happy undertaker from Narberth,’ he said awkwardly, and beamed at his wife, attempting to show her how happy he was. ‘Even old Napoleon never felt so good!’ He would be happy so Flora could be happy too: happy enough to stop cleaning. Perhaps even take photographs again.

  Wilfred squished the lettuce on his fork, but it kept jumping back off. This lettuce had a life of its own.

  ‘Remarkably good lettuce. The cat’s meow. The tastiest vegetable I’ve ever had. Isn’t it delicious, Da?’

  ‘Delicious.’

  ‘If there’s better food in Heaven, I’m in a hurry to get there.’ Wilfred put a small mouthful of green leaf in his mouth. ‘And you do know how to cook peas.’ Wilfred smiled at his da, who was carefully lifting up his fork with a triangle of lettuce balanced precariously on it.

  ‘I’m full to bursting—we’re eating for the winter to come.’

  ‘More salad cream?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Most definitely,’ Wilfred replied, and Flora handed him the dish with the salad cream in it—Wilfred thought it might be called a salad boat. That was one of the things he loved most about Flora: she brought to his life such dignified and extraordinary things as a salad boat. And he was sure it was because he was married that he’d been asked to judge the dog competition. He couldn’t imagine an unmarried undertaker being asked to take part in such an important civic event.

  Out of the corner of his eye Wilfred watched his da discreetly struggling to cut a lettuce leaf, his liver-spotted hands trembling. A rim of long hairs grew from his ears—his barbate ears. And there was a deep cleft in the back of his neck from holding up his head all these decades. Wisps of hair on his crown, fine and gentle, like his thoughts, surrounded his head. Perhaps his da had been grieving without Wilfred noticing and had emerged even more kind and thoughtful than before, because he soothed them both with his gentle courtesy.

  More than everything is family, Wilfred thought to himself. Some people had large families. Death had kept his family small. And they seemed so fragile, the three of them, in their feelings and in their bodies, gathered at the table scrubbed clean because of pain, the humble jar of salad cream sitting between them, an offering of hope for a better life, a small gesture to buoy their fragility.