The World is a Wedding

by Wendy Jones

  ‘Come here,’ he whispered to Flora Myffanwy as he got into bed. He moved over to her and put his arm around her now-thin body, closed his eyes and felt his own body relax around the contours of his wife. Then he heard something again. He opened his eyes. He could hear a sniffling sound—like a fox or a badger. But there wouldn’t be a badger in town: they were too shy a creature to come so boldly into Narberth, even in the darkest night. He would go and check one more time. It could be someone who was grieving, and he knew grief made people behave strangely.

  Wilfred opened the unlocked door.

  ‘Hello,’ he called cautiously. ‘Is someone there?’

  No one there. He was imagining things. He stepped out with bare feet, knocking a cardboard box on the doorstep. He bent down and picked it up with one hand and something, a weight inside, slid to one side with a small mewl.

  It was an animal in the box. Why on God’s earth was someone leaving a cat on the doorstep in the middle of the night? No accounting for folk, as his da said. Perhaps it was dying and they wanted Wilfred to bury it. He balanced the box in his arms and opened it. There, wrapped in a kerfuffle of blankets, was a baby, a wide-awake baby, its dark, moist eyes staring up at Wilfred. Wilfred blinked. He was seeing things. A baby was on the doorstep. It was . . . it was his baby! His and Flora Myffanwy’s baby! The thought flashed through his head in a split second. No, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t their baby, it was another baby. Why would anyone give him a baby in the middle of the night?

  The baby made a small sound, a whimper. It was alive. It didn’t need to be buried; it needed to be cared for. The baby looked at him unflinching, acceptingly, as if it was perfectly normal to be lying in a cardboard box on an undertaker’s doorstep in Narberth, in the middle of the night.

  He took the box inside and up to their bedroom.

  ‘Flora,’ he whispered. She didn’t move. The baby snuffled. Wilfred looked at the child: this unearthly creature with a wrinkly, raw face and flaking skin. This was a completely different sort of human being from him. It wasn’t an adult and it wasn’t a corpse, and so Wilfred was at a loss. The baby screwed up its eyes. Was it going to cry?

  ‘Flora!’ he whispered urgently. Flora stirred, brushing a mass of brown curls from her eyes. ‘Look!’ Flora looked at the cardboard box, puzzled, not understanding Wilfred’s urgency. ‘Look inside the box.’

  ‘Is it a delivery?’ she asked, half-awake.

  ‘No. Yes.’

  ‘Has the post been? That’s early. Is it for me?’

  ‘No . . .’ Wilfred said hesitatingly, whispering, ‘I don’t know who it’s for.’

  The lid of the cardboard box flopped forward. There was a sound from inside. Wilfred looked around, not knowing where to put the box down. It had occurred to him that perhaps he should take the baby out of the box, but he didn’t know how to pick up a baby, wasn’t sure how to hold it or lift it up. How did you pick up a baby? The questions raced through his head.

  ‘Here, Wilfred, put it on the bed,’ Flora suggested calmly, sitting up.

  ‘I’ll put the box on the bed, then?’ It came out as a question.

  ‘Yes, Wilfred,’ Flora said, smiling, humouring him. Wilfred placed the box on the quilt and there was the sound of the baby slipping and hitting the side of the box. Wilfred gasped, utterly horrified.

  ‘Is it a box of china?’ Flora asked.

  Wilfred was now in a state of panic. ‘No.’

  Flora looked in the box and caught her breath: ‘It’s a baby.’ The baby gazed up at them with dark, fresh eyes; absolutely perfect eyes. Wilfred was mesmerised by the tiny human being lying in the box.

  ‘Why has someone left a child with us?’ Flora asked.

  ‘We have a child,’ Wilfred heard himself saying. Yes, he thought, Flora and I have a child. All the grief and loss and shock of the past months disappeared as Wilfred’s world, the world itself, was righted. They had a child. All was well with the world. The earliest light began to filter through the curtains into the room—somewhere a million miles away the sun was shining. The Earth was spinning on its axis and slowly, inexorably, the day was coming as faint sunbeams stretched and gently reached out into the room.

  ‘No,’ Flora said. ‘This is not our child.’ She looked at Wilfred. ‘We must find its mother,’ she said.

  ‘But it has been abandoned!’ Wilfred was taken aback by the force with which he heard himself say the words. ‘Its mother doesn’t want it or why else would she have left it with us? On the doorstep? The child has come to us, Flora. To us.’ He looked around. No one could see them, no one could hear them, apart from the child in the cardboard box.

  ‘No, Wilfred, a mother would want her child.’

  Wilfred felt anger within him, something steel-like in his stomach, and he felt the strength in both his shoulders and his back as he spoke.

  ‘But she wasn’t looking after it. You don’t leave your baby on a doorstep in a cardboard box if you want it.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘You don’t.’ Wilfred heard himself contradict his wife. He had contradicted his wife. Flora looked at the counterpane. They had never had cross words before; they had never disagreed before. Wilfred had never before thought his wife was wrong. Wrong!

  ‘But she’s gone,’ he continued, ‘and we’ll never find her, and she’s left him here. With us. And she could have left him with anyone in Market Street, in Narberth . . . in Pembrokeshire! She could have put him on the steps of a . . .’ Wilfred tried to think of the places someone might leave their child . . . ‘a shop! Or—or a church!’ Wilfred urged, remembering the places he had heard that people left babies. ‘She didn’t leave him on the step of an undertaker’s by accident.’

  ‘The child wasn’t left with us by accident.’

  ‘No! She wanted us to have him. So she must not want it—him, her—the baby.’ Wilfred realised he didn’t know what sort of baby it was. Because it could be a girl. Or a boy. It definitely wasn’t an ‘it’. But that was beside the point. ‘So, it’s ours, then. That’s all decided.’

  Flora looked away. Somewhere in the depths of himself, Wilfred knew his grief was speaking, that his grief was being given voice.

  ‘We’ll tell everyone you’ve had the baby and it was all right.’ He heard the fantasies of grief come from him.

  The baby lifted a small, curled hand near his face. Flora and Wilfred watched as the baby tried to rub his eyes, yawned wholeheartedly and then appeared to fall asleep instantaneously.

  He was right. Yes! He was right. The child was meant for them. Their family was complete. And now he was a father.

  ‘Right . . . right.’ Wilfred began to concoct a plan. They’d tell his da when he came back from Auntie Blodwen’s that . . . the baby was—hadn’t—was upstairs and Flora would be down with the baby soon, and he would be in the workshop today. Varnishing as usual. And his da wouldn’t say anything. He would take it all as normal. His da accepted things, was dignified and kept his counsel. And they’d tell everyone else in Narberth that it had been a mistake and the baby hadn’t died. These thoughts rushed through Wilfred’s head in an instant.

  He saw that Flora had put her finger into the box and the baby was holding her finger in its hand while sleeping; it looked as if it was renouncing itself to sleep. The baby was happy.

  ‘The baby is happy with us,’ he said. ‘See, the baby is happy.’ He gazed, awestruck, at the tiny child.

  Flora thought for a moment. ‘This is Grace’s child,’ she said.

  Reality hit Wilfred. It felt cold. He closed his eyes for a moment. Yes, it could be Grace’s baby.

  ‘We must find her,’ Flora replied, ‘before she leaves Narberth.’

  ‘Perhaps she is at her parents’ house,’ Wilfred suggested.

  ‘Then she wouldn’t have left the baby with us.’

  Wilfred nodded. ‘I’
ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ll help her.’

  Grace put her foot onto the Carmarthen train. The patent leather of her shoe was scuffed, the shine scraped away and she could feel the ridged ledge of the train step through her worn sole. Would Wilfred care for the child? He had been kind to her. But he had also rejected and divorced her; he might reject the child. But the child would be safer to leave with Wilfred than with a stranger in London. He would see that the child went to a good home.

  Grace stood still, one shoe on the train, one shoe on the platform in Narberth, waiting for her foot to step into a carriage. Her body was perfectly balanced: her feet, her spine, her head, her shoulders, felt erect and in order, her poise perfect. She trusted that Wilfred would care for the child. The child would grow up in Narberth or nearby. He wouldn’t be lost to the world. The train hissed. She would get on the train now.

  ‘All aboard,’ the guard shouted.

  Grace looked at her shoelaces, frayed and knotted together. She stood still.

  ‘Miss. All aboard!’

  The driver blew his whistle. It was a certain sound. To Grace it meant only one thing—the endless forwardness of life.

  ‘Miss!’

  She saw the guard walking hurriedly towards her, along the carriages, eager to sort this out, restore order, to make the first train of the day depart from Narberth on the dot to arrive at Whitland the minute it was supposed to arrive. He lumbered towards her. She would get on the train now. Grace waited for her foot to lift her up and put her on the train. She waited for her body to rule and define her as it had done so expertly and inevitably while she was pregnant. Her body had shaped her life and she expected it to get her on the train and take her forward. And she would live like a dumb, empty ghost inside it, neither dead nor alive, merely functioning, merely residing in a body that decided her fate. But Grace saw her foot move backwards, step back on the platform.

  ‘Miss?’

  No, she wouldn’t leave. Grace looked down, her two feet neatly on the gravel, facing the train, but no longer on it. No, she would make sure Wilfred had found the cardboard box, see that Wilfred had taken the box from the doorstep. The guard stopped abruptly, turned and hurried back to his cabin, arms and legs swinging in exasperation. The whistle blew and the train lurched and hissed like a great mechanised snake, then slithered round the corner ever eastwards.

  Grace sat down on the wooden bench on the platform and swallowed hard, shaken that she had almost stepped onto the train and away. With each moment, the light grew stronger. Should she take the child back, the small, living human being she had left in a cardboard box on the doorstep of her ex-husband’s house, which was also the funeral parlour, at half past four on this cold morning? Could she walk through the now dawn-lit streets, be seen and pretend she was visiting Narberth? She had been born here—she was the doctor’s daughter and was part of Narberth; she could not visit, could only belong. Could she call at Wilfred’s front door and ask?

  She hugged her suitcase to herself. Did she want the child back? But she could have a fresh start, now that the child was finally separate from her. Where did someone go when they were lost? They went home. Her thoughts were muddled. She could still walk away. She could be like virgin snow again, never trodden on. Her body would regain its integrity and bear no marks, though it was aching as if it had been punched and kicked or had the influenza. She might return to London—it was an interesting place—perhaps become a Suffragette, learn jujutsu. Although she might have to go back into service. Or she could go abroad. She was free and alone. She felt like a balloon untethered, with no one, nothing, holding her string.

  Suddenly, Grace heard a motor car driving down Station Road. She hoped it was for one of the houses, but it approached nearer and she heard it stop at the dead end of Station Road. It would be someone for the train, whenever the next train was. Grace jumped up, grabbed her suitcase, ran to the end of the awning and hid behind its corner. She heard the door of the vehicle click shut, then footsteps come onto the platform. She didn’t want to be seen. Grace scrambled up the bank of earth beside the platform and hunched down, her suitcase behind her. She would hide in the foliage, wait until the train had come and gone, then at night . . . then . . . she had no plan. Her mind froze. She would—

  Someone was wandering around and going backwards and forwards. The footsteps stopped. Perhaps it was Madoc. No, Madoc was in London. At least, she thought he was in London. The stranger came nearer. A piece of bracken under her shoe snapped. She breathed shallowly and crouched, her head tucked down, her knees aching from being bent uncomfortably. There was silence. The silence suggested someone was listening, sensed she was there. This was foolish, hiding in bushes in case a stranger found her. But she would not be a stranger to anyone in Narberth.

  Moments passed.

  Her suitcase slipped slightly down the rise and stopped, then Grace watched in horror as it slid further down the bank, tumbled off the small wall onto the platform, landed on its corner, the clasps zinging open. Her paltry belongings were flung out onto the black tarmacadam, her nightdress falling softly amid the clatter.

  There was a silence after the clanging and hullabaloo. Grace closed her eyes. It was all over. Everything was falling apart. She put her head on her knees and waited.

  ‘Grace?’

  Wilfred opened the passenger door for Grace—he had moved the hearse right next to the station’s wrought-iron gate—and looked around.

  ‘Sit here on the floor,’ he whispered. ‘Stay crouching down.’ Grace climbed quickly over the driving seat, into the space next to it and knelt down. Wilfred unobtrusively passed her her case, the nightdress still sticking out, so hastily had Grace repacked it. Grace knelt right down, her feet squashed to the side. Wilfred pulled a black cloth from under the seat. ‘I’ll put this over you.’ He leaned into the hearse to make sure no one could see or hear him talking. ‘Here,’ he offered, placing the cloth over her head, then getting into the driving seat. He understood she wanted to remain hidden.

  Grace heard the engine judder and the floor beneath her vibrated roughly as Wilfred kept trying to start the engine. She could hear his tense breathing. The engine didn’t want to start. Wilfred tried again, and on the fifth attempt the engine clicked. She felt the hearse jump into life, reverberate and jerk forward. It turned at what she imagined was the top of Station Road and then a few minutes later turned again. She put out a covered hand to the side to steady herself as she was jigged around. It was humid beneath the cloth, dark and oppressive. The cloth was sumptuous, hung with bulbous tassels, and must be the material Wilfred used for covering coffins.

  The hearse slowed down.

  ‘You’re up with the larks,’ she heard someone call out.

  ‘Morning, Jeffrey,’ Wilfred replied. ‘Can’t stop.’

  ‘Whyever not?’ She heard Jeffrey’s surprised reply. ‘There’s strange you are. Leaving me to walk when you could have given me a ride in the hearse. Not that I’m dead yet.’ Jeffrey’s voice trailed away. What if he had seen the oddly-shaped lump on the floor of the hearse?

  ‘I’ll come round later,’ Wilfred called back.

  Later. There would be a later, Grace realised. And then the rest of the day opened up. The child. In Wilfred’s room, alone. They should hurry. Wilfred should drive faster. What if the child was crying on his own? But Wilfred slowed down. There was the clop of hooves on the road, and she heard the sharp crack of a whip on the side of a flank.

  ‘Who’s dead, Wilfred?’ a male voice asked.

  ‘Just running the engine,’ Wilfred replied. She felt the hearse glide downhill: they were in Sheep Street. Soon the automobile stopped and the engine was silenced. Wilfred stepped out, the motor still purring, and she heard a door-bolt jolted open. Wilfred then jumped back in the hearse and Grace felt him precisely manoeuvre it into a garage, taking care to edge it in slowly, inch by inch. He switched off the motor an
d there was a moment’s silence.

  ‘You can get out now, Grace.’

  Grace stood by the table, the lilac gladioli on the windowsill wobbling in the aftershock of the breeze from the door. It was odd to be back in Wilfred’s kitchen, which was much cleaner and tidier than she remembered, and to see the Narberth-ness of it. There was the smell of coal that permeated the air—the deep wet smell of West Wales—and the sunlight, moist and soft, was streaming though the window. She felt a strange relief to be back in the town where she belonged, where she had been born and had grown up: the place that had been her home before her life had been truncated.

  A woman came in carrying a baby. Grace stepped forward and took him from her. The baby opened his eyes and blinked, yawned lazily and curled into her, his light weight resting against her, unaware he had been left on a doorstep. Grace placed the blanket around the child’s spongy head and wisps of hair. She felt her milk drip down her front, over her stomach, and seep into the waistband of her skirt, two rivulets that were soaking her blouse and running downward in a thin, watery stream.

  ‘Can I introduce you?’

  Grace looked up. She had not seen the woman before; she must be from outside Narberth.

  ‘This is Flora Myffanwy,’ Wilfred said, ‘my wife.’ The woman smiled. She was beautiful, Grace saw, more beautiful than Grace would ever be, and she was married to Wilfred. Grace glanced at Wilfred. There was something proud in him when he said ‘my wife’, something unashamed and strong. He had said the words ‘my wife’, with certainty and meaning.

  ‘Wilfred has told me a little about you. Would you like to sit down?’ the woman offered. Grace sat down awkwardly, holding the child to her. ‘We have looked after him this morning for you,’ the woman said gently. ‘I hope we have cared for him well enough.’