The World is a Wedding (12 page)

 

They drove in silence down the hill past the cottage in the cove where they had first met. Flora remembered how she had tidied and cleaned the derelict house, putting a vase of flowers on the chair with three legs, and waiting in anticipation for Wilfred to arrive on Saturday afternoons.

In the distance the mumbling waves made white curves along the bay and the air was full of the freshness of the sea.

‘Right, my dear,' declared Wilfred, pulling over on the road. ‘Let me give you a driving lesson. You'll only need the one. I know you told me you wanted to learn to drive, and you won't be able to bicycle to your mother's for much longer.'

Flora wanted to drive, although she realised she had come to like her place in the motor car, in the front, next to Wilfred; it was rather like her place in his life—going forward together. But she liked to be independent, too.

Wilfred stepped out of the hearse and opened the passenger door for Flora.

‘Come and sit in the driver's seat. Is there enough space between you and the steering wheel?'

‘Yes,' said Flora, smoothing her coat over her rounded stomach, glad to have something to do and focus on.

‘There's no need for you to look anxious, dear. Being bimanous makes driving much easier. The controls are the accelerator, brakes, clutch, or A. B. C., as I like to think of it. It is alphabetised. The engine's ticking so press your foot down on the accelerator pedal and, that's right, move away from the hedgerow—well done, my dear,' encouraged Wilfred, one hand guiding the steering wheel. ‘The whole point of driving is not to hit anything,' he stated. ‘Mr. Auden told me that and it seems true enough.'

‘How do I change gear?' Flora asked, looking down at the gear-stick.

‘Don't worry about that, I'll do it for you.'

The car edged forward then began to pick up speed. Driving was easier than Flora expected and she liked the feeling of power and speed she sensed the motor car could give her.

‘Well done. The hearse is nifty,' Wilfred explained as Flora drove carefully along the road, ‘not that it ever needs to be, of course. But in the unlikely event of my being late for a funeral,' he continued, ‘the Super Ford hearse is capable of speeds of thirty miles per hour—a great pace. Of course, I have never gone thirty miles per hour. Fifteen for when there is a body in the back, twenty miles per hour without a corpse. But did you know the Packard Eight Coupé automobile goes at almost aircraft speed in the open? I read it in an advertisement in
The Light Car and Cyclecar Magazine
.'

Flora felt a sense of exhilaration as the car gathered momentum: she liked driving and was taking to it immediately. It was like cycling, only freer.

‘Now, let's do a spot of reversing,' Wilfred suggested. ‘Then you can pass your driving test. Police Constable Jones will watch you drive forward and backwards six yards so he knows you're safe on the roads and will give you a driving licence.'

Flora reversed backwards confidently, looking over her shoulder.

‘Wonderful! The eel's eyebrows,' Wilfred remarked. ‘I'll ask Constable Jones to watch you drive tomorrow'—Wilfred bibbed the horn—‘then the world will be your oyster!'

 

After the driving lesson, Flora, under Wilfred's instructions, parked the car and they clambered down the smooth brown boulders into the cove. He surveyed the cove and was exact in his search.

‘I'm looking for a rock that is at the right slant.' He took a large step across the gap between two boulders, looked down, and hummed. Then he remembered his wife standing behind him.

‘Oh, my dear.' He walked back and offered his hand. ‘This rock is the ideal angle.' He unbuckled the Welsh blanket from its leather holder, spread it out and lay down, despite the cold.

‘This is the life, dear. I'm just watching those bilateral seagulls,' he announced, keen to use his new
B
word. After a moment, he sat up again. ‘I think I'll put my bathers on,' he said, picking up a small towel. Then followed what he felt was an enormously inelegant palaver involving the small towel, trousers and eventually a sleeveless woollen one-piece his Auntie Blodwen had knitted for him.

‘I'll be over there, having a swim.'

Flora smiled, wrapped the red blanket around her and then took out her Box Brownie camera, the ball bearings in the shutter rattling.

‘I'll take care,' he reassured her, remembering how, before they were married, he'd taken Flora out at low tide to see the petrified forest and how she had nearly drowned when the tide had come in unexpectedly.

Wilfred jumped athletically from the rocks onto the hard sand, running confidently—and self-consciously—towards the murmuring sea. If he was going to brave the water, he'd better look comfortable about it. It would be cold. He could still go back and sit on the rock. But he didn't want to appear so lily-livered that Flora might think he couldn't fart in a colander. He turned to see the figure of Flora on the rocks. He waved. His wife would want an athlete, a man in fine fettle, fit as a fiddle, a man who could master the elements. He sprinted towards the sea in the hope that, at such a distance, Flora wouldn't notice the slight wobble of his stomach.

Wilfred bounded over a band of razor shells and seaweed that crushed and prickled against his feet, then through the shallowest waves. Honey hell, it was cold! White spray frothed up about him and he breathed in sharply. A wave lolled and slapped his chest. It was astonishingly cold. There were no words in the
A
and
B
section of the dictionary to describe it.

He glanced back to see if Flora was watching. She was. She was taking a photograph. He dived into the sea and swam a brisk breaststroke in the direction of Laugharne, many miles away. He bobbed over the waves as they came towards him like rolling hills of water, then he broke into a crawl and very much hoped Flora was watching him now. It was important to prove oneself to be a man of vigour and energy—and to be noticed as such by one's own wife. He flipped into a backstroke. Perhaps he was reminding his wife of that chap, Johnny Weissmuller, who'd won three Gold Medals in the Olympic Games in Paris last year.

Well, he thought, as he cut the water with the fingers of his right hand in an elegant over-arm motion, Flora Myffanwy must
surely
be impressed by this. The water was agonisingly cold and there was no one else in the sea, only a few Jack-the-lads at the sea's edge, skimming stones. And Wilfred needed her to be impressed, especially as he struggled so much during the intimate moments of their marriage to keep his thoughts on the prime minister, something that deeply dented his sense of himself as a man. True it was that his wife was beautiful, and such womanliness would test even the willpower of a prophet. But Wilfred had to do better on a Saturday night: it wasn't good enough to spend the whole time thinking about Stanley Baldwin. Good grief! He probably thought about Stanley Baldwin more than the most ardent Conservative supporter. What with him picturing the prime minister, and Flora lying there calmly, as was her wont—perhaps a little more calmly and more disengaged than he would like, a spot of rugged swimming in the wild Welsh winter sea—indeed, the sea that had almost killed them on that fateful day before they were married—was bound to be impressive.

He was married to Flora, but he wanted to be more to her than he was. He wanted to take away the sadness that pulled at her—the grief for her father was what he knew it to be—the longing in her eyes for a fuller, more promising world. Wilfred began swimming towards the shore. He must be within himself more of a man for this woman—his wife—in order to be worthy of her.

Once back on the rock, dressed, shivering and chilled to the bone, he ate a thick piece of cold omelette that Flora had made at home and waited while she photographed some scallop shells she had found and arranged on the sand. He hoped it was the time for her to say what she always said on a Saturday morning.

‘Shall you tell me to tell you something?' Wilfred prompted Flora, waiting for her gentle invitation. He knew what to expect now, and this week, for the first time, he had thought about it in the workshop while sawing through beechwood and throwing golden dust into the air that rose as if it were full of yeast. He could explain how he had been wondering if he had been dead for thousands of years before he was born, or talk about when Mrs. Christabel Pankhurst had spoken in Narberth High Street. Should he say more about his marriage to Grace? They had spoken about it only once and there were things he should perhaps reveal to her that were weighing on his mind, but he didn't want to spoil their outing. Instead he would tell her the story of when he was a schoolboy and a travelling harpist who had won the Eisteddfod played Johann Sebastian Bach in Market Square and—

‘Can I tell you something?' Flora asked. ‘Shall I be the one to tell you something?'

‘Oh. Yes, my dear. Certainly.'

‘Something is wrong.' Flora said unexpectedly, and as quietly as if she was praying. Wilfred looked at her. She had that unbridled look in her brown eyes. Her eyes saw deeply and clearly and there was no lie in her. This is what made Wilfred love her and made him almost—despite her being his wife—frightened by her. So much truth held enormous power. Sometimes he looked at her and felt like a puppy looking at a cathedral.

‘My dear?'

‘I feel as if I'm dying.'

‘But you can't be dying, dear. You are only twenty-eight. And you're expecting. You look the picture of health.' Wilfred put his hand to her cheek. ‘Red cheeks, shiny brown hair: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed you are, Flora, my dear. No, no, no. Now, there's nothing for you to worry about. You're in the pink. And the wind has given you a colour today.' Wilfred put his hand to his collar and moved his tie knot from left to right, and a fear colder than the sea rippled up inside him. ‘No, dear. I know what the dying look like from those who come to see me in their last days to pay their funeral bill in advance, and you don't look like one of them.'

M
alcolm,' announced Wilfred.

‘Malcolm?' asked Flora.

‘Yes, dear. I was thinking of Malcolm. For a name.' He helped Flora onto her bicycle so that she could cycle to visit her mother. ‘One more quick lesson in the hearse,' he added, ‘and then you'll be able to motor to your mother's.'

‘What made you think of Malcolm?'

‘Well, it's such a modern name, so very dynamic. It reminds me of all these newfangled things like the bread-toaster machine, Wembley Stadium, vitamin pills, even televisual transmissions. I could imagine a boy called Malcolm making his own motor car from a kit, or a wireless,' Wilfred put his hands on his hips, ‘or even his own aeroplane, like Bill Frost, the fly-boy from Saundersfoot. Malcolm is a name for a man living in modern times, one born in 1926, don't you think, dear?' He lifted Flora's bag for her, slipped a folded pound note into it for her mother and put the bag in the basket on the handlebars.

‘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.