The World is a Wedding (21 page)

‘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 and 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.'

Grace nodded, unable to speak, unable to trust her voice not to break if she opened her mouth. Her tears might leak from her the way her milk was leaking from her. She felt heat in her face, the heat of early motherhood, bloom across her cheeks and redden them. Her leg jigged involuntarily and she felt a slight shiver over her body with the strain of the night before, and the days before, the days that lay ahead. Her nerves had been stretched to breaking point. The woman sat looking at her and Grace was aware of how charged the air was.

‘We, um, gave it—him—milk,' Wilfred said clumsily. ‘Well, my wife gave him warm milk,' he added, ‘from a teaspoon.' His wife nodded and smiled. ‘I thought he might get hungry.'

‘He took the milk,' she agreed.

They sat in the kitchen, all three of them silent, and all unsure, all waiting for something to happen.

 

‘I know—come upstairs,' Wilfred suggested, and began stacking the three kitchen chairs to take with them. Flora and Grace followed him up to the little landing.

‘If I open the door to the linen closet we should have more space,' Wilfred said, pulling the door open and removing a pile of neatly folded pillowslips, quilts and blankets. He pushed a chair slightly into the closet.

‘There! That should do it,' he announced, sitting down. There was just enough space on the landing for the three of them: Flora and Grace perched on chairs, Grace holding the swaddled baby in her arms—its mouth open, lost in sleep––while Wilfred was almost in the airing cupboard.

‘At least no one can see us here,' Wilfred said. He noticed Flora glance at him and then at Grace, almost frightened.

‘Got to see the positive in things!' he continued, holding himself together. The kitchen had been too exposed with its small low window and the path leading to Water Street; anyone could have looked in and seen Grace.

There was a long pause of unspoken words. Wilfred looked at Grace and rubbed his jaw, trying to take in her presence. He had hidden Grace in the hearse on the drive from the station. She would not want to be seen in Narberth with her child. Wilfred understood that. She would be the talk of the town and the shame would be overwhelming for her. If he could, he would try to allow Grace her secrecy because it protected her dignity and kept her from whispers and stares. Sometimes secrecy was necessary. It was the only way a person could pretend to hold their head up high. That's why they were crammed into the landing. At some point she would be strong enough to face her family and her town. But not yet. She looked pale and vulnerable. And he understood that Grace wanted protection from her brother learning where she was. There was no knowing what Madoc might do.

‘How can we help you, Grace?' he asked. He didn't know what to suggest: maybe Grace knew what she wanted. Grace opened her mouth and closed it again.

‘Your mother and father are only round the corner. You can go to your mother and father and brother,' Flora said gently, wanting to help. ‘And I think your brother might be back on leave. They will be so pleased to see you, and the baby. He looks so much like your father.'

Wilfred looked at Flora. Grace said nothing.

‘What do you need?' Wilfred asked.

‘I think that I might be ill.'

‘Your father is a doctor, he will be able to help you,' Flora suggested encouragingly.

Wilfred had buried several women who had recently given birth, one of whom had said she had the influenza but then entered an irrevocable slope towards death. Giving birth was a treacherous and life-threatening journey and it often wasn't over once the baby was born. Wilfred knew that Dr. Reece wouldn't want his daughter sick, he wouldn't want his daughter to die; he knew now that no man would want that.