The World is a Wedding (7 page)

‘That'll be a nice day out for you young people,' Wilfred's da commented.

‘Yes, Da. The weather looks clement.' Wilfred still didn't know how to talk naturally now that Flora was here. Usually on a Saturday he would have slouched at the table reading
The Undertaker's Journal
and eating a hunk of soda bread without a plate. It wasn't unheard of for Wilfred, on a sunny morning, to have his breakfast naked while doing a jigsaw of the Empire. That was unthinkable now. Life was different; Wilfred was married.

‘And tomorrow I shall begin turning the front room into a paint and wallpaper shop,' he announced. His da and Flora looked at him in amazement. Last time he'd mentioned it to his da, his da had pointed out—correctly—that it was only seven years ago that he'd built the workshop in the yard, and that it was near-impossible to wallpaper the wattle and daub walls of Narberth houses. But this time Wilfred's mind was set.

‘Right then, let's go,' he said quickly, before either of them could speak.

 

Wilfred drove down the hill beyond Templeton, the hearse purring like a sleek black panther. The land was deep in peace and they were the first ones to motor through the day; as if the day was still a secret to the people sleeping in the cottages they passed.

‘We're steaming along nicely,' said Wilfred, turning to Flora, who was holding her straw hat with one hand and the dashboard with the other. Flora laughed as her hat almost blew away and Wilfred smiled because she was happy. His wife was happy. She said yes, Wilfred thought to himself with a rush of joy. She said yes to me, Wilfred Price. I am the husband of Flora Myffanwy, and Flora Myffanwy is my wife. And I vowed to worship her. Because if ever there was a woman to worship it was Flora. Flora Myffanwy Price.

He accelerated with verve through the autumnal lanes towards the sea, the fresh air blustering through the hearse windows, and if his hair hadn't been oiled it would have moved in the wind. It was a good day—a splendid day—and Wilfred in his optimism and joy could only imagine days of happiness amounting to years of joy for both of them. Please God, let us live, he thought, closing his eyes tightly, for years and years. Let us keep on living now that we have found each other. Especially now. He stopped praying—it was important to keep one's eyes open while driving. He had read in
The Undertaker's Journal
that there were fourteen fatal automobile accidents every day. One wouldn't want an automobile accident, especially not one caused by praying for a long life. He opened his eyes, his heartfelt prayer having, he hoped, ascended to the heavens where it would be heard. He looked at his wife and wanted to tell her all this.

‘Mind the door doesn't fling open,' he said as an attempt to explain. ‘It's a magnificent day,' he added, ‘to go for a spin in the hearse to the seaside. And the weather is very clement.'

‘Yes,' said Flora.

‘It is particularly temperate weather for autumn.'

‘Yes,' Flora concurred.

‘It is very clement indeed,' Wilfred repeated.

‘Yes, it's clement,' she acquiesced.

Wilfred was reminded of the spring when he met Flora on Saturday afternoons in the empty cottage by the cove; when her presence had almost overwhelmed him, and the reality of her and her beauty left him floundering so that he didn't know what to say. There were pauses then, like these pauses now. Wilfred turned and smiled at Flora and she smiled back. He reached out his hand and put it over hers. Both of their hands were warm.

‘Wilfred,' Flora Myffanwy said, straightening her pearls, which had twizzled around in the breeze.

‘Yes, dear?'

‘Might it be possible not to call it a hearse?'

‘But it is a hearse,' Wilfred announced pragmatically. ‘It's a Super Ford hearse. I bought it from Mr. Ogmore Auden, my apprentice-master. It is most definitely a hearse.'

‘Yes,' agreed Flora, ‘though it sounds so much nicer if we say we're going for a drive in a motor car.'

‘I see what you mean,' said Wilfred, understanding. He glanced at his wife's fresh skin and the pink lipstick on her lips, then down at his own strong thighs, and his feet covering the pedals. ‘We don't look dead,' he replied.

‘No.'

‘And I certainly don't feel dead—no disrespect to the deceased. Indeed, these days I feel very much alive.' He winked at Flora, who smiled shyly. Wilfred felt emboldened by her response. ‘Right then—so it is. On every Saturday morning of our married life, Mr. Wilfred Price will take his wife, Mrs. Flora Myffanwy Price, for an outing in the
motor car
.' He undid the belt on his jacket then slapped his knee. ‘I know!' he said thinking out loud. ‘Let me take you to Fecci's Ice Cream Parlour.'

‘And Wilfred?'

‘Yes, dear?'

‘I would like to learn to drive.'

 

Flora dipped her long silver spoon into the spiral of cream. It was the first time she had eaten a Knickerbocker Glory. She looked around her. The walls of Fecci's Ice Cream Parlour were decorated with hand-tinted photographs of ice cream concoctions which customers could order: Knickerbocker Glory, Black Cherry Supreme, Banana Boat, Banana Split, Peach Melba, Strawberry Melba and Fair Lady.

‘That's a Cadbury's Flake,' remarked Wilfred, who had ordered a Banana Boat decorated with a stick of rippled chocolate. ‘Sometimes I eat them after a funeral, but if I'm not careful, they crumble all over the place. I get chocolate splotches on my morning suit and have to wipe them off with the dishcloth.'

‘The dishcloth?'

‘Is that not right?'

‘I should think so,' said Flora diplomatically, picturing the slimy grey cloth slumped on the wooden draining-board. She ate the glacé cherry balancing on the tip of the cream and noticed her wedding ring on her finger. Flora remembered the delicate engagement ring Albert had given her. She thought back to Alfred, who had been killed in the war seven years ago, and her father, who had died in the spring. She had met and married Wilfred, perhaps too quickly—perhaps because he was devoted to her, perhaps because she had wanted to lay aside her mourning and live again. Flora looked into the glass at the whirls of fruit and strawberry syrup mixed together in no particular order. Sometimes she wondered if she had married Wilfred because she was so very shocked by the sudden death of her father.

‘It's cold enough to make my teeth chop,' Wilfred commented, putting a chunk of vanilla ice cream in his mouth then a moment later pressing his hand across his forehead and closing his eyes. ‘The ice cream's touched my brain,' he groaned.

I have married Wilfred, Flora Myffanwy thought to herself, watching him take his jacket off and place it over the back of the chair. I said yes when he proposed in the cottage by the cove, a plate of blackberries between us. I would have married Albert, had he lived, would have been a farmer's wife in Pleasant Valley. And I would be carrying a different child. Instead I am an undertaker's wife in a town. I have chosen my husband and I have chosen a life, she thought to herself. She could never have imagined the life she had now.

‘I was thinking that for our first wedding anniversary next year we could share a Black Cherry Surprise,' Wilfred suggested, loosening his tie, ‘seeing that we are baccivorous.'

She watched Wilfred lean back and rub his chest contentedly. Wilfred had been married before, to Grace. The marriage had been brief, lasting only weeks. It had been—Wilfred told her—unconsummated and she believed him. Certainly the Narberth courthouse had believed him. Although this surprised Flora in that Wilfred was eager to consummate their marriage—unable to hold back. Flora would rather not have been Wilfred's second wife; some would consider it deeply shameful that he was divorced, and she would have preferred to have been his first wife, although in a way, she was.

‘You could have taken a photograph of the Knickerbocker Glory, my dear,' Wilfred commented, eating his last slice of banana.

‘Yes,' she agreed.

She would like to take a photograph of the statuesque glass, the small helter-skelter of ice cream with the orange paper parasol sticking out of the top at a jaunty angle. Her camera felt like the only thread of constancy in her changed life: and the photographs she took of trees, shells and the jugs of flowers she arranged and snapped. Her Box Brownie was the way she framed the world and showed the world what she saw. She would like to work as a photographer, but she was a woman: it was almost impossible.

‘That Banana Boat was most satisfying,' Wilfred declared.

‘Wilfred . . .' Flora asked.

‘Yes, dear?' he replied, putting his spoon down.

‘Now that we're married, is it still the same?'

‘No,' said Wilfred. ‘It's not the same, it's completely different.' He straightened his tie, adding, ‘And now there is something special to look forward to.'

‘It's only that,' she ate some cream sprinkled with hundreds and thousands
 
and thought back to their wedding day—her posy of lilies and ivy, the daub of lipstick on her lips, ‘it's as if we don't know how to be together, now we are married.'

‘We are very polite,' Wilfred agreed. ‘Do you think that we will always be this polite to each other, Mrs. Price?'

Flora laughed. ‘I don't think so at all, Mr. Price.' She watched as Wilfred picked up his long spoon, scooped up some Knickerbocker Glory and offered it to her. Their eyes met.

‘It is funny, isn't it?' she said. ‘We are married and we don't know how to talk to each other.' They had been more at ease together before their wedding. It seemed that marriage, living in the same house, along with the news that she was expecting, had made them shy with each other. Her life was intimately woven with a man she knew so little about.

‘Have you had an ice cream before?' she asked.

‘Once. My Auntie Blodwen bought me a tub for my sixth birthday from the ice-cream tricycle at Cold Blow. I was sick in the charabanc on the way home.'

There was so much, Flora realised, that they didn't know about each other, years when they hadn't known the other even existed, years which had been filled with other people and experiences. Wilfred was twenty-nine and Flora twenty-seven; between them they had fifty-six years of life to tell each other about.

‘We could go on drives,' she suggested, ‘and walks on Saturday mornings and tell each other about ourselves, so that I know you and you know me.'

Wilfred considered her suggestion solemnly, then nodded in agreement. He summoned the waitress, who handed him the bill. He looked at it calmly, pulled a note from his pocket, placed it in the leather wallet that the bill came in and looked at Flora.

‘Thank you,' she said.

‘My pleasure, dear. Shall we go?' he said, adding, ‘It's your turn to tell me something now.'

 

‘I am reading, dear,' Wilfred announced to Flora Myffanwy. He rested back in the armchair in their small bedroom; it was the end of a very enjoyable day in Tenby but he didn't like to waste a moment. ‘Preparing for fatherhood.'

Flora was sitting up in bed in her nightdress, smocking a baby's gown. Wilfred would rather be in bed with his beautiful wife, his
bathykolpian
wife, but he did not want to let Flora Myffanwy or their son down by his ignorance of philosophy.

‘It's
The Last Days of Socrates
. I've borrowed it from the Narberth Mechanics' Institute Library.'

‘What's it about?'

‘Chap called Socrates. He dies. It's very learned,' said Wilfred, hoping his wife was impressed. ‘I thought I had better know about right and wrong and things like that, you know . . . now that I'm going to be a father.'

‘I see,' said Flora, smiling and threading a needle with green silk. Her smile had a lot of woman in it.

‘I imagine it might have a bit about the funeral trade, which would be of particular relevance to me.'

‘Indeed,' replied Flora.

‘And I will endeavour to read it before the spring, but right now I'm feeling somewhat tired and I think I may put the book down.' He was, after all, in a bedroom and not a library. And with that thought he put the book next to his red dictionary on the chest-of-drawers and got into bed with his wife.

 

Stanley Baldwin. Stanley Baldwin. Stanley. Baldwin! It was imperative that Wilfred think about Stanley Baldwin. He screwed up his eyes and tried to see a picture of the leader of the Conservative Party, and Prime Minster of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Stan. Ley. Bald. Win.

Wilfred was hot and covered in sweat. He shifted his weight to the other arm and lay very still. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. As a bachelor he had spent so long, far too long, thinking about this—and now, in the very moment when he was almost doing it, he had to force himself to think about something else entirely. Stanley Baldwin flashed into his mind—his upright stance, his neat centre parting, his purposeful demeanour.

He rolled onto his side and pulled Flora to him. On his wedding night he had thought about the Royal Family and the fusty old Queen, but even with the image of the late Queen Victoria he had fallen apart and let go. And it had all been over in a moment or two, perhaps less. He was disappointed with himself. He had yearned for this occasion since the moment he had first set eyes on Flora Myffanwy. And had waited months, when waiting hours had felt like a long time. Even seconds felt like a long time when confronted with the physicality of Flora Myffanwy. Now he had a new frustration—this time with himself.

He reached down, put his hand on Flora's nightdress and began to pull it up. On the second Saturday night of his married life he had tried thinking of cricket, but had found it too
abstract—
that was an
A
word from the dictionary—and so cricket had also failed him in the performance of the duties of his married life. It was hard to think of something specific about cricket, and this had made his mind wander from the task at hand, so to speak, and that had been that.