The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  Wilfred watched the dogs walk in obedient circles. Then the thought occurred to him again. Maybe he was being punished. Had this loss happened to him because he had done something wrong: not been good enough, not prayed hard enough, not read the Bible and disobeyed God without even noticing? Perhaps he should have stayed married to Grace, obeyed his holy vows, not had a pint in the Conduit while Grace went alone, abandoned, onto a train and to goodness knows where. Maybe he should have thought more about Grace and less about his overwhelming love for Flora Myffanwy.

  He realised that his guilt over his carelessness towards Grace had become a very heavy weight on his mind, one which he couldn’t ignore, couldn’t move aside or bury away, a guilt that sat rigidly in the centre of his thoughts, rotting and leaking shame. He wanted, as it were, to bury his guilt in a nice coffin, lower it into the ground and leave it be. But now it was too late: Grace had gone and his guilt had stayed.

  Wilfred nodded absentmindedly at a dog-owner walking past with a Corgi. Yes, maybe he was being punished. He had had his chance to be good, to love and honour Grace and her child, to sacrifice himself to care for an honest, kind woman with a burden. He could have helped her, stayed with her, at least tried to love her, instead of lying in their marriage bed hating her. But he hadn’t, he had wanted his own way and the wife he yearned for, Flora Myffanwy. He sighed. And though he had had his heart’s desire in marrying Flora, he thought that perhaps she hadn’t truly opened up her heart to him. So he couldn’t make love, not really, to Flora, and he felt so ashamed of himself. No, he thought, with a sinking, shrinking feeling, he had not been a good man; he had not lived a good life. And now, he thought to himself, God had punished him.

  ‘And the owner of The Dog with the Waggiest Tail in Narberth is . . .’ There was a dramatic pause while the judges whispered gravely to each other and the Master of Ceremonies waited on them for confirmation. The tension crescendoed. Finally the judges nodded solemnly in agreement.

  ‘And the winner of The Dog with the Waggiest Tail in Narberth, Winter Carnival, 1926 is . . . Bonzo and Mr. Gerard Henry!’

  Mr. Gerard Henry didn’t smile but closed his eyes in proud acknowledgement of his achievement, then strode up to Wilfred to be presented with the modest silver-plated cup he so richly deserved.

  ‘Well done, Mr. Henry.’

  ‘Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Price,’ Mr. Henry replied portentously, bending down and slapping his Alsatian hard on the chest. He pumped Wilfred’s hand, his jacket straining over the bulk of his biceps.

  Wouldn’t like to have a dog like that in the house, Wilfred thought to himself, trying to focus on the goings-on around him. Not with that tail knocking over the ornaments and smashing into things all the time.

  ‘Wonderful,’ the Master of Ceremonies declared. ‘A round of applause, please. Mr. Henry and Bonzo, ladies and gentlemen! And our commiserations to all you other owners. Give them a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen.’

  Wilfred watched the little boy’s shoulders slump as he led away his eager Scottie dog, its tail still swishing happily, unaware of its deficiencies. The child padded over to his mother, looking as if he might cry.

  ‘Some very waggy tails there, ladies and gentlemen,’ consoled the Master of Ceremonies, trying to soothe the bruised feelings of the losers. Wilfred sighed; it all seemed so pointless. Very nice to have a dog with a waggy tail, but what did it mean? What was it all for?

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for The Bonniest Baby, The Beautifulest Baby in Narberth, 1926.’ A line of nervous- and defensive-looking mothers came forward, carrying babies, many with large bows in their hair—some, Wilfred thought to himself, almost engulfed in fat. A dog yelped. Wilfred was suddenly surrounded by babies, gurgling and crying. There was the chink of tea saucers and teaspoons jingling and men teasing each other mercilessly.

  ‘Don’t let him walk away. Get the silly bugger!’ he heard a dog-owner urge.

  ‘Wilfred, word in your ear, please,’ motioned Handel Evans. ‘I, myself, in my own opinion, if you ask me, think the Jack Russell should have won. It had the waggiest tail. No doubt about it.’

  ‘Wilfred Price, what are you doing here?’ A man grabbed his hand and patted his upper arm. ‘Looking for someone to bury?’

  ‘Wilfred, I’s want you now for a photograph with Mr. Gerard Henry and Bonzo,’ commandeered Mr. Arthur Squibs of Squibs Studios in Tenby. ‘Stand right next to Bonzo, Wilfred.’ Mr. Squibs covered his head with the camera’s dark cloth. ‘Can you get that dog to keep its ruddy tail still? Get that damn dog to stand still!’ Mr. Squibs shouted, his voice muffled by the cloth. ‘Smile, Wilfred. You’re not at a funeral now. One, two . . . three!’ The flash popped, fizzed then smoked. Wilfred saw two white blobs dancing in front of his eyes.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself, dear?’ he asked Flora.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, but the vein bisecting her forehead was standing out and pulsating, and Wilfred knew from the last few weeks that that’s what happened when Flora was trying to hold back the tears.

  ‘Even so, we’d better be going. Let me help you with your coat, my dear.’ He put his hand in the curve of her back. ‘Yes, oh yes, off home now, enough excitement for one day,’ he said to the people who jostled and greeted him. ‘Didn’t know Narberth had such dogs in it. Oh yes, they’re the caterpillar’s whiskers. Wonderful, wonderful, the elephant’s eyebrow,’ he commented as he guided Flora to the door, to their empty home devoid of dogs. Their pristine, empty, dog-less, childless home.

  11.

  SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT IN A SHOEBOX

  Grace looked around the Conway Hall and searched the faces in the packed gallery. She had not been to a meeting here for a couple of months, but had stayed in her dirty, lonely room in the Caledonian Lodging House, where Madoc wouldn’t find her, not working, only reading, eating, sleeping—and waiting. She had tried to decide what to do, was thinking of a plan, and was intending to get a cardboard box but found it hard to think clearly about the time ahead. Her sense of the future was getting smaller and smaller. When she first came to London she had thought in terms of weeks, now it was reduced to a few days at a time.

  The straight-backed women surrounding her in the meeting were listening intently to the speaker. The air was hot and stuffy and the hall was even fuller than last time. If there was a fire, few people would be able to get out, what with the wall-to-wall chairs, although some of the women looked like they might be willing to sacrifice themselves for the Cause, so ardently were they listening and nodding. She took the gold watch from her pocket and glanced at it; the second hand had stopped. It needed rewinding. Grace fidgeted on the chair: her corset was digging into her very uncomfortably and she kept her coat on and loose around her. She knew she would need a place to give birth very soon and had a vague idea of walking to the Princess of Wales Hospital, then leaving the baby, perhaps in the cardboard box, outside a convent, but if she tried to make her ideas anything more than vague, her mind slipped away and refused to think. Then today she had woken up and felt stirred and disturbed. Today she was frightened to be alone, and needed people.

  Grace focused her mind on the meeting. There was more fervour in this meeting than the last one: a sense of conspiracy and dedication to things not yet realised that could change their lives. The Suffragettes were rapt and attentive to the articulate woman addressing them, as if she held the dream for all of them. Grace fiddled with the watch in her pocket, barely listening to the speaker.

  ‘We are a small band but we are strong and we claim our voice,’ the lady asserted in an almost masculine manner, like a modern Boudicca. ‘The battle we fought so ardently before the War is not yet over: we must continue to fight, until women have an equal voice in Parliament.’

  Grace was searching for Lady Lytton but was distracted by the oratory of a clear female voice. She tried to recall, before these meetings, when she had he
ard a woman address other women at an event, but didn’t think she ever had. Women usually spoke after men had spoken, and then only to agree or to be interrupted.

  ‘Mrs. Pankhurst, ladies.’

  The audience burst into a standing ovation, causing the bunting in the hall to flutter energetically. The clapping continued and Mrs. Pankhurst stood in front of the women, as if acknowledging that the applause wasn’t for her and that she was subordinate to the Cause. Eventually the clapping subsided and conversations broke out, and in the hubbub after the meeting, Grace saw Lady Lytton, her auburn hair catching the light.

  ‘Lady Lytton,’ she called. Lady Lytton, a sketchbook under her arm, was talking intimately with another woman. She turned gracefully and looked at Grace.

  ‘I won’t interrupt you,’ Grace began. ‘Your gift. I want to give it back to you.’ The words fell from her and something of her truth, her core, emerged. Grace pulled an unmarked envelope from her pocket and passed it to Lady Lytton, who simply glanced at it.

  ‘I can’t sell it,’ Grace whispered as women thronged by, ‘and I can’t keep it; I would be taken for a thief. It belongs to you; it has your name engraved on the back. It is of no use to me.’

  Lady Lytton considered her, as if studying her for a portrait. She rested her hand on Grace’s worn serge coat and said quietly, if sadly, ‘You are foolish if you reject friendship.’ She pressed the watch back into Grace’s hand. ‘Take care of yourself, Grace.’ Lady Lytton pulled her silver mink stole over her shoulder, turned her head and then moved away towards the door.

  Grace walked out of the Conway Hall, across Theobalds Road and through the dark streets towards King’s Cross and the Caledonian Road. Her back was aching; her body felt tight and the rhythm of walking eased the stiffness in her hips. Grace felt stung; Lady Lytton’s words had hit home. Hilda, Lady Lytton, Wilfred in his own way, had all offered their friendship and she had dismissed their care and generosity, too numb and too lost as she was in her own pain. Even her father had given her money and asked—perhaps he had been imploring—that she write. But she had rejected them all.

  As she walked slowly in the direction of her lodgings, she thought about the sharp new aspect she saw in herself: how she had pushed everyone away in what she hoped were the darkest, most uncertain moments of her life. Something dreadful had happened to her and she had been paralysed and unreachable, yet the world had still turned around her, offering her some kindness and succour. And she hadn’t seen it. She looked at the gold watch clenched in her hand. You are foolish if you reject friendship, Lady Lytton had said. She was right and the words echoed powerfully in Grace’s mind.

  She trudged down a street that narrowed and turned sharply to the left. Unexpectedly, there was a pack of lupine-looking men leaning around a dirty fire in an oil drum. Some of the men were dodging here and there, moving away then prowling back into the huddle, making comments, their heads to one side. One man in a smart—almost exceptionally smart—three-piece suit stood at a distance from the group. Two women were leaning against a ragged brick wall. The tart, mannered gesture with which they crossed their ankles gave them away. The women stopped their conversation abruptly and stared at Grace, their ringed fingers now removed from their pockets, like gold claws. The men stopped their conversations too, aware of the tension that had come over the women, aware of the direction in which they were looking. Grace didn’t belong here. It was yet another place in which she didn’t fit but had stumbled into.

  She went to turn back but the man in the suit called out, ‘You, girl. Woman.’ He flung his arm wide and towards her.

  Grace pulled her coat around her, the brightness of the smoking, carbon-speckled flames blinding her.

  ‘You’re a pretty innocent to be walking through here. With them, are you?’ The man nodded in the direction of the two women. The men laughed.

  ‘Not by the look of her,’ one of them sneered. Grace felt humiliated.

  ‘What have you got in your hand?’ Grace reluctantly opened her hand, the diamonds of the gold watch glittering in the firelight.

  He looked at her closely, this time taking her seriously, and walked towards her. ‘Where did you get that? You in service?’

  Grace fell back upon the silence and secrecy that had enfolded her these last months, and said nothing.

  ‘Give it here.’ The man dangled the watch by the end of the strap as if it was a tiny, rare, just-caught fish shimmering in the light and wiggling for its life. He held it high above the fire, glanced at Grace fleetingly, then dropped it.

  ‘Ah!’ Grace exclaimed, reeling forward. But she was too stout, too many yards away. The man caught the watch a fraction after he dropped it, putting his hand in the flame for a split second, smiling with a triumphant serenity at his trickery and showmanship.

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered,’ he said, walking towards Grace. ‘The white gold would only have melted eventually into a golden ball in the bottom of the can when the fire died. The diamonds would have been untouched.’ He smiled and the flames lit up his oily skin. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mabel,’ Grace mumbled.

  ‘And I’m Jack Robinson,’ he replied, looking around at the men for their rookie laughter. They laughed.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ he stated, holding the gold watch out to Grace. ‘Keep your Cartier Baignoire, or give it back to Lady Penelope Lytton.’ The man threw the wristwatch up and caught it with one hand. He wound the diamond crown on the watch and the black hands turned. ‘I live without trace. I work without trace,’ he said. Grace felt her heart thumping so hard that her bones vibrated with its rhythm.

  ‘Come back and see me again,’ he raised his eyebrows teasingly, ‘if you’ve got something to sell.’ He handed back the now-ticking watch.

  Grace held the watch tightly in her hand, turned and left, stumbling through one street after another towards a foggy light in the distance.

  Grace ran as fast as she could, though running was hard and slow, and kept checking behind her but no one was following. The group wasn’t interested in her, only themselves and the two women who had been hostile and wanted her to leave, but still Grace felt anxious and afraid.

  She paused and noticed a vivid light ahead that seemed like a curly light bulb spelling out a word that she hadn’t seen before. It said Beigels. She trudged up to the window of the bakery, panting, her stomach tight and hard, wanting to find safety, sit down and rest. The baker’s was bright with warmth coming from it. Grace stood by the window for reassurance and the woman inside smiled and beckoned her in. Grace obeyed.

  Inside, Grace stood at the very high counter, and felt like a child. She dropped the watch back in her pocket.

  ‘When’s it due?’ the woman asked directly.

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ Grace admitted. She had not seen a doctor; her father would be disapproving.

  ‘Very soon, by the looks of you.’

  Grace nodded, her hands trembling. The woman retied her headscarf.

  ‘You look lost.’ She slit a hollowed bread roll with a very long knife, spread it with butter in a slip-slap motion and put on floppy slices of meat, then mustard and replaced the top, all with split-second timing and deftness of hand. ‘Here, you’re pale. Eat this.’

  Grace lifted her coat slightly, rolled down her stocking and took a note from her stocking hem.

  ‘It’s on the house,’ the woman said, dismissing the note. ‘Keep it. You’re going to need it.’

  Grace took the bread and nodded silently.

  ‘Stay if you want. We are open all day and all night,’ the woman stated.

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yes. Those are neon lights and they are always burning. We bake through the night. There is always hunger, and people who want to buy bread.’

  Through an arch beyond the counter Grace could see three men kneading huge balls of dough. She fe
lt her stomach cramp. She closed her eyes and felt something inside her open up.

  ‘Sit down. Make yourself at home.’ The woman indicated the many benches at the front of the bakery—all of them empty. Grace moved along a small, warm bench, easing herself in and resting her feet.

  ‘You on your own?’ the woman asked.

  Grace nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes—I am on my own.’ She sighed.

  The woman held another beigel on its side and within a moment it was in two halves. She placed the two halves up on the counter, their pale insides exposed.

  ‘No one?’

  ‘No one I can think of.’

  ‘Like my grandmother. She came to London in 1850 alone, but she knew how to bake, then she married and had children.’

  Grace took a bite of the bread, her teeth cutting, her body rising to meet the food, welcoming it into her body.

  The woman took a handful of eggs and put them in a pan of boiling water.

  ‘She walked from Poland,’ she said. ‘Took her three months. She was an orphan, her country was overrun by the Cossacks and her home was burned down.’

  Grace put her hand across her eyes, still listening to the woman.

  ‘People’s lives were harder then,’ the woman stated, turning back to the pan of rattling eggs. She put another huge pan of water on the hob and began lifting trays of eggs to boil from under the counter. Grace sat at the bench, waves of tension coming and going over her, while the woman worked.

  Grace looked at the half-eaten beigel on the plate in front of her. Instantaneously, she remembered Wilfred eating dinner in her parents’ house many months ago now, and him saying to her father, ‘Please could you pass the salt? Salt for the meat.’ She recalled the phrase, the power of it, how strong Wilfred had seemed as—because—he was released from their marriage, free to embark on a new life. And how friendless she felt without him. She had often wondered what had happened to him—he’d told her he was in love with another woman—and what he’d done.