The World is a Wedding (10 page)

U
nder the gate, catch your sheep, bring it back, off jumps Jack
. Flora Myffanwy remembered the knitting rhyme she had learned at school. She spread the stitches along the needle and counted them. It was a dark winter's day; the sunlight came thinly through the kitchen window but the fire in the hearth was flickering. The light in the room was beautiful. Suddenly she remembered she was expecting: each day, throughout the day, she had bright moments of remembering she was expecting a baby, and, as the days went by, the life inside her grew more precious and defined to her.

She knitted a row of garter stitch and looked around the scullery, noticing the smudges on the window, the spanners on the shelf, the knickknacks in jam jars. It was clear to her that Wilfred and his da didn't know to cook, clean and keep house. It was said that cleanliness was next to Godliness, but Flora wasn't sure about that; she thought gentleness was next to Godliness, and cleanliness was next to respectability. Wilfred and his da had lived happily and warmly in their chaotic and perhaps none-too-clean kitchen, providing as much comfort as they could for themselves, and making their slightly wobbly wattle and daub house into a home. And, recently, also a paint and wallpaper shop.

She purled twenty stitches: the needles Wilfred had made her were beautifully crafted in white oak and exceptionally smooth. It was true to say that when she had married Wilfred in the summer and first came to live at 11, Market Street she had been taken aback by the snail trails on the walls and the unaired rooms that smelled like old leather. There were odd tools on the floor and a spade in the kitchen sink. Wilfred had tidied the house especially, to the very best of his ability, for her arrival. She smiled, remembering Wilfred as he had shown her around, bashfully acknowledging that his earnest attempts were woefully short of anything that could be called acceptable housekeeping. Flora knew Wilfred had needed a wife.

Flora unwound more of the ball of string she was knitting with and laid the loose string across her lap. If she had married Albert . . . In her mind's eye she saw Alfred run his hands through his hair and throw back his head, laughing. When the telegram came stating that Albert had died, Flora had been glad that they had made love, that they knew that of each other, and she had the memory of Albert experiencing that pleasure. She was still comforted by the thought they had loved fully together; and even if that intimacy had been so truncated, it remained their secret. When she was intimate with Wilfred she couldn't help feeling he seemed distracted, almost as if he was thinking about something else. But what else could he be thinking of?

She put her knitting down on the kitchen table for a moment. For these first months of her marriage, through the late summer, autumn and now winter, Flora had sat quietly like a guest, not knowing where her place was in this house she lived in. Nor had she made the kitchen her own. The house in Market Street felt unfamiliar compared to White Hook, the house she'd grown up in and still thought of as home. She felt like a visitor here, and wondered if this house would ever feel like her home.

She counted how many rows of the dishcloth she had knitted and untied a knot in the string. Flora thought how Wilfred and his da went out of their way to make her comfortable, brewing her cups of hot tea in the one china teacup with its chipped blue rim, and bringing her the dilapidated cushion if she sat in the armchair. She wondered if they wore more clothes around the house these days than they were used to—they weren't ones to stand on ceremony with each other—especially in the morning, thinking they must wear trousers, shirt and tie to eat breakfast in, a habit that showed signs of being new and strange to them. And every Sunday evening, after tea, Wilfred would say: ‘My da has gone for a walk to Canesten Wood and won't be back for three hours, and I will be in the workshop and will not be coming inside the house until past eight o'clock, if you would like to take a bath in front of the hearth. You can have the water first. I know the importance of balneological habits.' And so Flora had bathed quickly and surreptitiously, washing her hair swiftly, rinsing it in tea to give it shine, then stepping nimbly out of the zinc bath and wrapping herself in the unbleached linen towel she had brought from home, not because she was ashamed or shy—she wasn't—but because Wilfred and his da wouldn't have known what to say or do if they had walked in and encroached on her privacy. They lived in the house, the three of them, but they didn't yet know how to live together.

 

Wilfred stood in the Mozart Bakery waiting to be served, savouring the warmth and the fresh smell of bread. He gazed at the lumps of dough on the shelf behind the counter, like a row of bald, unmarked heads waiting to expand. Wilfred had always been captivated by the Mozart Bakery, especially when he was a boy and had often missed having a mother, and when the bakery had seemed to him like the land of milk and honey.

This morning, customers were crowding around the counter waiting for loaves, hot from the oven. And there was a glass shelf laden with rock cakes, lardy cakes, Chester cakes and custard slices. And pastel-coloured cream cakes, some with glacé cherries on the top, for very special occasions. His wedding had been a very special occasion though they hadn't celebrated with cream cakes. Instead they had had a block of boiled fruitcake that his Auntie Blodwen had insisted on cooking, though each slice lay in one's stomach like a brick.

Thoughts of wedding cake unexpectedly reminded him of Grace. He hoped she was well and wondered where she was. She must have caught the train to Swansea, but not Cardiff, that was too far away and almost outside Wales. He hoped she was eating well and in good health. He had spotted that dreadful brother of hers, Madoc, in the Post Office the other day, back on leave.

‘Morning, Wilfred,' said Mrs. Willie the Post.

‘Morning,' Wilfred replied, lifting his hat.

‘I've come for an iced bun,' Mrs. Willie the Post confided in a whisper. ‘I've been on forty-five diets and none of them have worked.'

‘After you, Mrs. Probert,' Wilfred offered, seeing Mrs. Probert and letting her stand in front of him in the queue.

‘Thank you,' Mrs. Probert replied in barely a whisper, keeping her head down, looking at the slate floor. She's a bag of nerves, Wilfred thought to himself. He noticed the dark arc around her eye, the bleary puffiness underneath it, and the scabs of dead black blood.

‘I walked into the table,' Mrs. Probert mumbled.

‘Oh! There's nasty,' replied Wilfred. ‘Have you seen Nurse Henton?'

‘No, it's—'

‘What can I do for you, Mrs. Probert?' Mrs. Cadwallader the baker called musically from behind the counter.

‘Small cob loaf, please.'

Mrs. Cadwallader had appeared not to notice Mrs. Probert's eye; she diplomatically served her in the usual matter-of-fact way. Mrs. Cadwallader was a capable woman: she pounded the dough and sliced the bread with strength and confidence, all the while singing arias from operas. She was unlike Mrs. Probert, who was slight, trembling, delicate, almost like a fragile bird whose bones could shatter. But women were like that. Wilfred had thought about this: men were like vegetables—big, strong, usually green—and by green he meant they were all the same colour, all quite similar. There wasn't much difference between men. But women were like fruit and came in all different and surprising sizes and shapes: soft fragrant strawberries, dark velvety figs, squishy little blackberries, or strong round apples. Some were juicy plums, others big bright oranges. Flora was like a beautiful ripe peach. The most delicious and . . . Wilfred struggled for words . . . the most beautifulest peach in Narberth, the First Prize-winner of the fruit and vegetable competition in the Bethesda Chapel summer fête
.
Now, Mrs. Cadwallader was like a conference pear—full and curvaceous. But with men, if one was like a potato, his brother would be like a turnip and the other brother like a swede. There wasn't much difference.

‘What are you having, Wilfred?' Mrs. Cadwallader asked.

‘Vegetable pastie, please.'

 

‘There's busy you are knitting, dear,' said Wilfred, coming into the kitchen, followed by his da, and putting a greaseproof paper bag on the table. ‘I've bought a pastie for a bite to eat. But come outside first and look at this cloud.' Flora followed Wilfred out into the cold backyard, where he pointed to the sky: ‘That cloud looks like Jesus,' Wilfred stated. ‘That one there, with the beard.'

‘That one there?' Flora asked, looking at the jumble of clouds above them.

‘No, that one there. Don't you think it looks like him, with a beard and a long white cloak?'

‘It looks a little like a table.'

‘And there was I, thinking it looked like Jesus . . . Come inside, my dear,' Wilfred said after a moment. ‘I don't want you catching cold.'

‘I think . . .' broached Flora Myffanwy, sitting back down in the kitchen.

‘Yes, dear?' said Wilfred eagerly.

‘I would like to do all the baking here, instead of buying bread and pasties at the bakery.'

Wilfred da's looked down diplomatically at his shoes: there were obstacles to overcome.

‘Certainly, dear,' said Wilfred, wondering how on earth anyone could bake properly in their scullery but that was the thing he liked best about Flora Myffanwy: she was always saying unexpected things.

‘I thought,' continued Flora in her quiet, dignified way, ‘that I might clean the kitchen first.'

Wilfred and his da looked at her, astonished. The kitchen was as black as balls. Wilfred couldn't imagine it properly clean, yet Flora seemed willing—and even more importantly, able––to bring order and cleanliness to 11, Market Street. This lovely elegant lady whom he was so proud to call his wife was of her own volition offering to clear the somewhat chaotic kitchen. What had he done to deserve this? He thought with guilt of Grace, who had tried so hard to please him when she was his wife. Grace, for whom he had cared so little. A fragment of memory came to him of how she touched him one night and how he had almost—
almost—
consummated the marriage.

‘I could buy you an apron!' blurted Wilfred in an expression of gratitude to Flora as well as relief that he had not had conjugal relations with Grace, had been spared to have the life he now had. ‘And a dustpan and brush.'

‘Thank you,' Flora said gently.

‘The dustpan and brush we have is not adequate,' Wilfred stated. ‘On the admittedly rare occasions when I've used it, it's shed bristles and I have made more mess than I've tidied.' Wilfred smiled, then remembered that the dustpan had been brought to the house by his mother on her marriage, which was why it had not been replaced in the twenty-nine years since her death. His da could no more part with her rusted dustpan and brush with its straggle of bristles than he could part with his memories of her.

‘Although we won't replace it,' said Wilfred quickly out of consideration for his da's feelings. ‘We will buy a second dustpan and brush as well, so we have two. Is there anything else you need, dear? If there is, go straight to Mrs. Annie Evans at the Conduit Stores and put it on the tab. Do you need . . .?' But he was unable to think of cleaning tools his wife might require. ‘The things that a housewife might need, you must get, dear. I know! How about a Whirlwind Suction Sweeper?' he suggested, not caring that the cost of such a modern machine was the same price as two funerals, eager to do anything that would help Flora make this house her home.

‘I'll make a start soon,' said Flora in her clear way.

‘You start whenever you want, dear, and it will be more than I deserve to have a clean scullery, but don't exert yourself now, not at all. You have to lie down the very moment you feel tired. You are not to be straining yourself. Nor to be lifting tins of paint or serving customers in the paint and wallpaper shop. Nothing is more important than you resting.'

Flora smiled. No, Wilfred thought, nothing was more important than Flora Myffanwy resting.

‘Now Da, let me share this hot pastie with—that's the doorbell! Could be a customer—touch wood.'

Wilfred jumped up and walked purposefully through the hall and into the front room, which had been changed, with high hopes, into a somewhat sparse but proudly arranged paint and wallpaper shop.

‘Mrs. Newton-Lewis, good day to you.' Mrs. Newton-Lewis had the cleanest doorstep in Narberth and subscribed to French magazines about house decoration. And Wilfred knew for a fact that she liked paisley wallpaper.

‘There's tidy you've made the front room. What did you do with your mother's best furniture?' Mrs. Newton-Lewis asked.

‘It's in the back room.'

‘There's crowded it must be.' Wilfred's da had also pointed this out.

‘Well, Wilfred, let me see . . .' Mrs. Newton-Lewis looked around the almost-bare shop with purpose. Mrs. Estella Newton-Lewis was his first customer in five days: many curious people had bustled through in the last few months, but so far he had only sold the odd pot of paint. There was a poverty creeping throughout Pembrokeshire. He had heard that the miners at Stepaside were paid so meagrely these days, they had to scavenge for coal in the cliffs to heat their cottages. As yet, no one had bought very much but, as Mr. Auden had taught him, life was one quarter enjoyable and three quarters difficult. Perhaps a paint and wallpaper business worked on similar proportions.

‘I'd like my withdrawing room wallpapered,' Mrs. Newton-Lewis declared. This was very encouraging. She browsed through the enormous Arthur Sanderson & Sons wallpaper book which the travelling wallpaper salesman had given Wilfred.