The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals

by Wendy Jones

  It was a quarter to two, the ceremony – or the execution as Wilfred wryly thought of it – was due to start in fifteen minutes.

  He pressed the knot to make both sides symmetrical but it was an uneven four-in-hand knot so he undid it and began again. All week he had been in an ever-deepening panic, unable to think clearly. He didn’t seem to be able to find the courage within himself to know what to say or do. He had wanted to talk to someone, perhaps to his da, but he and his da didn’t talk about these things. His da was married to his mam, and even though his mam had passed away, Wilfred knew his father had stayed faithful to her, forsaking all others, as it said in the wedding service. He couldn’t talk to Mr Ogmore Auden. Even if he drove over to Whitland to pay him a visit on the pretence of having a cup of tea, he still wouldn’t know how to broach the subject. Wilfred tried to remember if Mr Ogmore Auden had ever mentioned anything on this topic, apart from his advice about refraining from lewd thoughts around the deceased. His apprentice-master had avoided such crude conversations. And besides, the advice he most usually gave was about undertaking, and the last thing Wilfred wanted to do was bury Flora. But Mr Auden often said, and reinforced it through his own example, ‘An undertaker does the right thing.’ Jeffrey? Jeffrey would listen and try to understand, but Wilfred needed someone older and wiser. He could go for a drink at the Narberth Rugby Football Club and perhaps talk to someone there, but if Wilfred said anything to one of those boys, well … the members of the Narberth Rugby Football Club were not known for their social delicacy.

  He pulled on his jacket, smoothed the shoulders and began brushing the dark wool with a clothes brush. Surely a man couldn’t get married because his ex-fiancée was having a baby by someone else? And who was it? Grace lived a coddled life, she wouldn’t have that many chances to meet lads. Wilfred had realized, with a rush of indignation, that Grace had been seeing someone else – when they’d had that picnic in the garden! When he’d proposed. Seeing someone indeed! Seeing all of them, more like. While all along he, Wilfred, had thought she liked him, had worried – worried – about hurting her feelings by breaking off the engagement.

  He expertly combed his hair, slicked it with Brylcreem then brushed some lint from his collar. Over the previous six days it had become obvious to Wilfred that he was being trapped, that Grace had known all along she was expecting, that some rascal had left her in the lurch and Grace had hoped that Wilfred would marry her and get her out of her quandary. Which meant Grace would have had to have done it with Wilfred soon, before they were supposed to have got married, to cover her tracks. Wilfred’s head hurt from trying to understand so much duplicity.

  ‘Well, there’s a predicament.’ That’s what Mr Ogmore Auden would have said, had Wilfred been so coarse as to tell him the ins and outs of it all. And he would be right and all. It was a predicament.

  He started brushing the front of his trousers with his clothes brush. There was something he could do: he could say it wasn’t his, by damn, and not marry Grace. The relief at the thought. He could stand at the altar or whatever they had in register offices and shout, ‘It’s not mine! It’s not mine!’ But nobody would believe him. His ex- fiancée was having a baby – his ex- fiancée, Dr Reece’s daughter no less, was having a baby and Wilfred was saying it wasn’t his. Unless the baby was Oriental-looking, no one would believe him. And no one would ever again permit Wilfred to bury a member of their family; he would never put a body in the ground again. It would be too disgraceful for any family to use his funeral services. He’d have no trade and no money. He’d have to join the Foreign Legion – or something.

  Late last night, in utter desperation, sitting up in bed, his shoulders collapsed, he had turned to his red dictionary – had taken it from the top of his chest of drawers and opened it randomly to look for one word, a chance word among the thousands of precise, tight definitions. This was called, he had recently learned, ad aperturam libri. Perhaps one word, one profound definition, would give him the answer.

  He’d opened the book quickly, decisively. It was in the D section. But which word should he choose? He closed his eyes, placed his index finger tentatively on the page, then looked:

  Diamond.

  Diamond? Wilfred thought, puzzled.

  Diamond. (Noun) a hard gemstone. Made of carbon.

  Diamond? Ruddy dictionary, thought Wilfred. What help was that? Well, that would teach him to lose his commonsense.

  8

  The Wedding

  ‘Grace, a carnation.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ answered Grace.

  ‘Wilfred, a carnation,’ said Mrs Reece with barely concealed dislike. Wilfred accepted without thanks the delicate flower with its fluted petals. Her mother, in a spasm of last-minute enthusiasm, and finally stirred by the occasion of her daughter’s wedding, had cut carnations from the garden and she, Dr Reece and Grace were wearing white corsages. Wilfred had sternly accepted the carnation when Mrs Reece had given it to him and had pinned it to his lapel with what had looked like solemnity, but Grace wasn’t fooled. As she watched him pierce the flower stem and pin it into the heavy serge of his suit, she thought that perhaps he felt like that green stem, stabbed by something sharp and unnatural, until it died. And Wilfred was wearing what looked very much like his funeral director’s suit.

  ‘A corsage is a pleasant addition for the occasion, Mrs Reece,’ commented Dr Reece.

  Grace adjusted the shoulder of her dress. Her yellow dress – bright and optimistic, sunny even – had been deemed appropriate by her mother. Nor did her mother consider the occasion of Grace’s shotgun wedding a reason for a new dress, not under these circumstances; all she needed was a cheap, homemade veil. Her mother would have liked to have seen her married in a sackcloth and ashes and crawl penitently along the aisle on her knees. Only it wasn’t an aisle, it was an office in which she was getting married to Wilfred, with few guests, no gifts and no celebration because there was precious little to celebrate. And Wilfred was intimidating as he stood ramrod straight: it was clear that his will had brought him here and not his heart

  ‘If the guests could come through in half a moment,’ announced the office clerk cheerily, popping her head round the door of the register office.

  ‘Stand up properly,’ her mother hissed. Grace stood up and pulled her stomach in.

  Wilfred’s da patted his son’s arm. Grace, standing next to Wilfred in his top hat and tails, pondered on how upright they must look as a couple. We are not upright, she thought to herself, but it matters that we look as if we are.

  The clerk, Mrs Pritchard of Sheep Street, doing the job of master of ceremonies, announced, ‘Doctor and Mrs Reece, Mr Price Senior, please enter the register office now.’

  ‘All right, son?’ Wilfred’s da said as the guests moved forward.

  Wilfred and Grace were alone in the wood-panelled auditorium. Wilfred stood as if all the hope in the world had deserted him. A strange sound came from his stomach. Grace smiled apologetically but Wilfred looked thunderous. She unclipped her bracelet, dropping it in her bag; she felt overdressed as if she was making too much of the occasion by wearing it. Wilfred was perspiring and looked as if there was a violent struggle taking place within him, something unspoken and unformed fighting for consciousness and voice. She smoothed the pleats of her dress and noticed that the thin laces of Wilfred shoes were knotted very tightly.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ she said brightly. She wondered if she might vomit everywhere, all down his suit and splatter his shoes. She swallowed hard. From behind the door, some music played.

  ‘It’s hot for a suit,’ she said, feeling stupid the moment she said it.

  ‘The groom, please, in you come!’ said the registrar chirpily, popping her head round the door.

  The room, when she entered, was small, crowded with chairs and a table, but there was still an emptiness within it. Her father turned back and smiled formally to see her come in. Wilfred was standing by the table, waiting for Grace. Grace w
alked towards him with as little aplomb as possible, passing her parents, her father standing with his hands behind his back, like a sentinel of righteous living. Wilfred looked enraged in his top hat and tails, and like a Greek god with a hidden thunderbolt who wanted to destroy the world. Grace smiled appeasingly and breathed in.

  ‘Move in a little,’ the registrar told Grace, who stepped sideways lightly, almost skipping, her dress flaring as she moved. Wilfred looked down at his hands while Grace waited politely for the registrar to speak. She had her answers ready.

  ‘Do you take this man, Wilfred Aubrey Price …’ The registrar began reciting, finishing with ‘… until death us do part?’ Grace agreed, said yes; it was easy to promise, she liked Wilfred. This would do. Wilfred said his vows gruffly. Though she stood next to him she did not feel close to him: he had – she could tell – armoured himself with rage and hate and unwillingness.

  ‘You may kiss the bride!’ said the registrar with a levity. The clerk looked up, watching everything, her eyes glittering with excitement. Grace’s pearls clacked as she removed her veil. Wilfred kissed her dryly with a stern face, as one might kiss the dead, as if kissing her was against life and possibly dangerous to one’s health.

  ‘Just a few papers to sign and it’s all written in stone,’ said the clerk, and she lifted the needle of the gramophone arm and placed it on the disc. ‘Shall I play the gramophone music?’ she mouthed to Mrs Reece.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Mrs Reece, putting her hand to her diaphragm.

  To Grace the wedding ceremony felt like a stiff ballet, a slow dance without music, in which their fates were sealed. She gave Wilfred a relieved smile and breathed out. She was a married woman. It was done.

  ‘Mr Price, if you would like to come back to the house to join us, we have some refreshments,’ offered Dr Reece.

  ‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ Wilfred’s da replied, his voice catching with feeling.

  Grace smiled encouragingly at Wilfred, but doubted he would feel encouraged. She knew him to be hurt. Wilfred was like a stone monument who wouldn’t dance in this pas de deux, wouldn’t move but stood lifeless, like a prop. But at least some of it was all right now. And some violence, something dark she had once experienced, that she would never let herself think of again, would soon be glossed over, forgotten and ignored for ever. Relief flooded and opened her face.

  The wedding breakfast that afternoon was the first time in a week her mother hadn’t slammed the crockery on the table; propriety in front of guests wouldn’t let her, and the welcome confusion of tea and cake had conferred a certain decency on the day.

  During the wedding breakfast, Grace was complimented by Wilfred’s father on the quality of the honey.

  ‘Is this the honey from your bees? It’s very sweet, now. And rich.’ He was wearing what was clearly his best suit. ‘Do you have a lot of lavender in your garden?’ he asked. ‘Is that the reason why?’

  Grace replied that they had, that they were mature plants now.

  ‘Bees like lavender, can’t keep them off it. And lavender makes good honey,’ Wilfred’s da added, smiling and looking round at the others.

  Grace felt her face slightly flush with withheld tears. These were the first genuinely kind words she had heard all day. Wilfred, of course, had vowed to cherish her – worship her even – but his words had failed to move her. They were words without feeling – words he said but didn’t mean. Her mother, as well, had smiled and almost gushed since the marriage – she had even offered everyone a Meltis Duchess of York Assorted Chocolate. She was smiling because she was the mother of the bride and that was what social correctness expected. Grace knew she was privately enraged. The register office was not St Andrew’s Church. A yellow dress was not a bridal gown and she, her parents and Wilfred’s father did not constitute a wedding party. No, Grace knew that for her mother, it had all gone far, far too wrong.

  But Wilfred’s father – that quite watchful gravedigger – spoke gently. He had the humility of the broken. And he knew, surely, that his son was an unwilling groom. Whatever he knew, Grace thought to herself, he understood that she was hurting; he saw that and he reached out with kindness. It had been a small gesture but a powerful one to Grace after these recent loveless, hopeless months.

  Grace stood outside what was now their bedroom. She had chosen to wear her favourite white nightdress. It reached almost to her toes and the cotton was fluffy. She had had it several years now and imagined it would last almost her lifetime. And it was demure. She knocked on the door very lightly and waited. There was no answer from inside the room.

  She knocked on the door again then pushed it open and entered quickly. She stood by the door and wondered why Wilfred had married her earlier in the day. She knew why. He had been her fiancée – everyone in Narberth knew that. So everybody knew, or would know by now, he had to be the reason why she was in the condition she was in. If he hadn’t married her, had refused, he would have had absolutely nothing – they both knew that. No one would have used his funeral business again: to use the services of a man like that when there was a death in the family, people just wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be respectable. He would no longer be a man around town and that was what Wilfred wanted to be. He would be ruined. And the gossip would last for generations, definitely three, at least four. It would probably take five generations before people in Narberth no longer talked about Wilfred Price.

  Grace unclasped her pearl necklace and took off her dressing-gown, hung it on the hook behind the door and sat nervously on the bed. It had been a long day, too intense, and now this, her wedding bed, the honeymoon, such as it was. The first night. She smoothed her nightie down over her arms then lay down self-consciously and pulled the blankets over herself. This was the first time she had slept in the attic. Madoc’s room with its bigger bed had been allotted to them because her mother decreed it was more suitable than Grace’s childhood bedroom.

  Grace was now on the left side of the bed, Wilfred on the right, nearest the door. The blankets fell into the gap between them. It was very strange to be in bed with another person. Grace didn’t know what to do. She knew what was supposed to happen on a wedding night, but that was the wedding night of a wedding that the bride and groom had wanted to be at. This is what the first night is like, she thought, of a married person who doesn’t want to be married. Suddenly she saw the brown wallpaper but she quickly cut the memory from her mind.

  Grace lay awake. She knew Wilfred was awake too, both of them staring at the white ceiling. And out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wilfred wipe a tear from his face.

  Wilfred had never been in bed with a woman before. He had thought about it, imagined that it would be very cosy. Not only cosy; he had hoped it might be something more than that. Perhaps that is what a loved and wanted wife gave to a man: sanctuary from the harshness of being male – but this iron bed wasn’t a sanctuary. People who were sleeping in the desert in Arabia with a stone for a pillow were right now more comfortable than he was. And getting a better night’s sleep. The bed was an altercation of a wedding bed in an austere room. Did he have an acrimonious marriage? There were many A words that applied to his marriage.

  Wilfred lay stock-still. To take his mind off things he began thinking about his work. He was surprised when he began to tot up how many funerals he must have been to – at least a hundred – and in each and every one of them he had maintained what Mr Ogmore Auden had called ‘a composed and serious demeanour’. Even when he was only fourteen, when he began his apprenticeship and was very excited by his prospects, he’d still just about behaved in a sober manner around the departed.

  Sometimes it had been hard – what young man doesn’t want to fool around sometimes? Nevertheless he’d managed to stay solemn, even in 1922 when Narberth won the Rugby Cup, or when they’d done a funeral the day before Narberth carnival, even when the lisping vicar from Princes Gate gave the peroration and stroked the lectern with his hand the whole time; Wilfred had still ma
intained the proper demeanour, though he had been desperate to laugh. But today he had felt more desolate and more burdened than he had ever done in any funeral he had attended, and this, his own wedding day. His one and only wedding day. Wilfred’s heart was full of misery.

  That morning he had barely been able to get out of bed; his legs had felt like lead. He almost couldn’t be bothered to shave. He didn’t eat breakfast. But he’d been at the register office at five to two as Dr Reece had told him to be – commanded him to be, more like. Dr Reece was a bully, Wilfred thought. He had married Grace because her father was a horrible, hectoring, browbeating bully. If he hadn’t been so intimidating Wilfred might have been able to explain. Why didn’t people listen to one another? Wilfred thought hotly. Why didn’t they just listen! If people could explain themselves, then there could be understanding. But no, some people – quite a lot of people even, Wilfred thought – were bullies. They wanted other people to do what they wanted them to do, and if they had the power, like Dr Reece did, then sometimes they used that power, bossed people around and messed up their lives. It was appalling. It was audacious. It was an abomination. Wilfred struggled to find the words, big, powerful words that would express the big, powerful feelings he had now that he felt so small and powerless over his own life. Marry Grace! Marry Grace. He had. Now they were in bed together. What had Dr Reece said? ‘You’ve made your bed. Now you lie in it.’

  The kitchen was smoky and smelled of fried food. Wilfred had come home for breakfast every day of his married life so far, and today Wilfred’s father had cooked his son’s favourite meal: fried eggs and cockles, with bacon and sausages, and slices of fried potato they called Specials. Wilfred had loved Specials since he was a tiny boy and his Auntie Blodwen had taught his father how to cook them: ‘Peel the new tyatas, slice them into thick circles,’ Auntie Blodwen instructed, ‘then fry them in a lump of lard till they’re golden brown. That’ll put some fat on the boy. He’s got legs on him like a flamingo.’ His father eventually mastered the recipe and, ever since, Wilfred and his da had eaten Specials every Sunday morning, on their birthdays, after a night at the graveyard or whenever they needed strengthening.