by Wendy Jones
She was aware that Wilfred had got into bed but he hadn’t curled into a tight ball at the very edge of the mattress as he had every night previously. Instead he was supine, his legs slightly spread. He was unexpectedly taking up his half of the mattress. Grace stayed on her side, her back to him, surreptitiously pulling the white quilt higher until it reached the curve of her earlobe. Wilfred was definitely going to say something. He might want to speak to her but Grace now knew something of what men were like. Men had strength, for better or for worse; men had a power and there were times when they weren’t afraid to use it. And Grace felt that soon, in the next few moments or minutes, Wilfred was going to use that strength.
On the count of three, I’ll speak. One, two, three, Wilfred counted in his head. After three. One, two, three. But still he said nothing. One, two, three. Four. Five … The air in the bedroom was charged. He sensed Grace knew he was going to speak. There had been an eternity of silence between them: it was time to speak.
‘Grace!’ His voice boomed against the profound quiet of the night. Had he shouted? Maybe Dr and Mrs Reece had heard him. No, he had spoken firmly, certainly, but no one except Grace would have heard. Now he had spoken once he would have to say more.
‘Grace.’ She didn’t reply. Perhaps she wasn’t awake. Perhaps he had finally said something only for her to be fast asleep, after all that. But then Grace’s foot moved slightly and he knew she was alert and listening.
‘There is something I want to say.’ He didn’t mean to sound like that, like an undertaker. This time his voice was quieter. He definitely didn’t want Dr Reece and Mrs Reece to hear, particularly not Dr Reece.
‘There are matters which it is important that we discuss.’ Wilfred paused. Grace was tight and didn’t move.
‘I am sorry I sound so formal … like an undertaker. I don’t know how to say what I need to say. Or ask the question I want to ask.’ There was a pause. ‘But I am sorry, Grace.’
Grace knew instinctively from the way Wilfred had said, ‘I am sorry,’ that he wasn’t only apologizing for his inarticulacy. He was apologizing for something larger, for how he’d been, possibly even apologizing to her for her life. He was saying that he was sorry for her, for how her life was now. Tears sprang quickly from Grace’s eyes and on to the pillowcase.
There was silence again but it was of a different nature from the earlier, suffocating wordlessness that had lain between them. These last weeks had been chokingly full of Wilfred’s unspoken, angry words. This new quietness, though, was peaceable; she could sense the beginnings of a calm within it and even the intimations of an answer, though she had no understanding of what that answer could be.
It was her turn to speak. Wilfred had broken his deep silence, now she must break hers. The silence between them was melting, like the white ice on a frozen river breaking up, cracking violently, then floating downstream to a warmer sea. Yes, she would speak.
‘Madoc,’ she whispered.
11
The Willow Pattern
Wilfred hammered the nails into the wood with fury. The plank would break if he kept hammering like this. Flam! Flam! Flam! He threw his claw hammer down on the iron nail with huge force, then dragged his forearm roughly across his brow to wipe off the perspiration with his sleeve. Fat circles of dark sweat bloomed from his armpits. He took off his shirt. The cedar would fracture, shatter. Then the side of the coffin would widen and break. And he would have to replace the whole damn panel again.
I don’t care, he thought. I don’t care if this bloody coffin splits. I don’t care if this bloody coffin breaks its ruddy sides. He had never hit a nail in wood with so much force. Mr Auden would turn in his grave. ‘Wood, Wilfred. Treat it with love,’ he had cautioned. ‘An undertaker caresses the wood in his hands. A hundred years the growing, an hour in the felling, a week in the shaping and an eternity with the deceased.’ But right now Wilfred needed to bang and thump, and this wood here would have to take it.
Madoc! he thought. Madoc with his ruddy Army uniform and his marvellous West Wales Board Higher School Certificate and his bloody Sergeant stripes. And those bloody fancy-dress costumes he wore at Narberth carnival. Bloody, bloody Army. Madoc? Madoc! Never in all his born days …
It had not occurred to Wilfred during those turbulent, wakeful nights as he went through one after another of the players in the Rugby Football Club and eventually every young man in Narberth, that it might be Grace’s brother. It simply had not occurred to him. This was Narberth! This was 1924. They weren’t Stone Age people. Or cannibals! Sweat from his temples ran into his eyes. He hammered another nail into the corner. The timber creaked, complained and threatened to burst.
Last night when Grace had whispered Madoc’s name, Wilfred, in that first split second, decided she was lying – but there was something in the plain and broken way in which Grace had spoken her brother’s name that told Wilfred she was speaking the truth.
‘Hell of a noise in there,’ his da called from the back door. ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’
‘Nothing, Da.’
‘Well, it doesn’t sound like nothing to me.’
‘Making a coffin.’
‘Are you killing someone to go in it as well?’
Wilfred held the hammer in both hands, pausing. He took another nail from the box. He rammed it into the wood.
After Grace had told him, he had lain awake perturbed, desperate to understand, while Grace had slept in a way that appeared almost serene, as if released from an overwhelming burden she had been carrying, and relief had given her respite. She slept, but Wilfred was utterly awake; his mind charged and clouded with incomprehension. What would the Revd Waldo Williams say? Dr Reece? Mrs Reece? He imagined telling Flora. He tried to lie still, but couldn’t. It was too big, the truth of it too enormous to understand or envisage. All night he felt fevered, the skin on his face burned, the bones in his head ratcheted tighter and his legs moved restlessly between the sheets. Madoc. It was all he could think about and he was unable to rest with the truth of it – and he knew it to be true.
Madoc.
‘Doctor Reece?’ Wilfred called. He knocked on the panelled door to his father-in-law’s surgery. There was no answer.
‘Doctor Reece,’ Wilfred stated with more resolve. There was still no reply, but this did not deter him. The man might be a doctor of medicine, he might be older than him, he might even be his father-in-law, but Wilfred would not be intimidated. Wilfred would not be bullied, not this time. That was over now. Unbidden, he opened the door and stepped into the room.
Dr Reece didn’t look up. Instead he put the lid on his fountain pen with a snap, replaced the Mont Blanc on his ledger and took his blotter between his hands. Relations between the two men had been exceedingly strained since the early summer when Dr Reece had come round to 11 Market Street and waited a whole warm, sunny afternoon for Wilfred to return home. Since then there had been no small talk – no talking of any kind. Until now.
As hard as it was to imagine, seeing the doctor’s aged face, Wilfred knew that Dr Reece had once been a young man who had all the thoughts that all young men have, and that he would have been sweet on Mrs Reece, when she was younger and fleshier. But Grace’s father had assumed that Wilfred had had these same feelings towards his daughter and had acted on those thoughts, made them a reality, with the resultant consequences. That, outside the strictures of marriage, was unforgivable.
Wilfred coughed, but Dr Reece ignored him. This man is a doctor, Wilfred said to himself, looking around the dark front room that was the surgery. He must know far more about the birds and the bees. He must have studied such things in books at university. Indeed, Wilfred thought, Dr Reece would know more about the matter than anyone else in Narberth – theoretically, of course. This man here, his arms folded like a shield in front of his chest, sitting at his large, heavy desk, so certain that Wilfred had nothing worthwhile to say, knew more about intercourse than any of the other three hundred or so peo
ple in Narberth. But he didn’t know about his son. He doesn’t know that, Wilfred thought.
‘Doctor Reece, I want an annulment.’
His father-in-law looked up at him with his piercing eyes and snorted. He smoothed his hair slowly and moved his stethoscope to the corner of his desk.
‘From Grace,’ Wilfred continued. He was no longer cowed by Dr Reece’s silence. Nor would he be daunted if the doctor spoke as if Wilfred had said a ridiculous thing.
‘Of the marriage.’
Dr Reece glanced briefly at Wilfred.
‘Because the marriage was not consummated.’
It was awkward indeed, to talk about this thing with a man, even a medical man, about his daughter. Awkward? Impolite? Would those be the right words to describe it, Wilfred wondered. No, not really: this was beyond impolite, beyond normal conversation.
‘And how will you prove the marriage is unconsummated?’ the doctor asked, emphasizing the word ‘prove’. He was a scientist; he wanted proof. Wilfred looked back at him, held his eyes steadily. Wilfred knew that Dr Reece expected to win, was used to winning. Grace’s father was certain of his power and practised in the art of bullying.
‘I shan’t,’ Wilfred admitted. He looked down at the floor. A bird flew past the window, creating a quick shadow. Dr Reece picked up his prescription notepad and moved it purposefully to the centre of his desk. Wilfred could see he had been dismissed because of his perceived ignorance and stupidity, and that the doctor was about to resume his paperwork.
‘I won’t prove it to you, Doctor Reece, nor to the magistrate at the courthouse.’ Dr Reece looked at him as if he was dull. Wilfred continued: ‘Grace will admit it.’
The grandfather clock ticked. In a couple of minutes it would chime quarter past three. Almost time for afternoon surgery. Wilfred looked at Dr Reece but Dr Reece looked away. Feigning disinterest, he picked up his pen again, unclipped the lid and held the nib above the notepad. He is going to write something, Wilfred thought, but the pen stayed poised above the paper for one, two, three, four ticks of the clock, and Wilfred realized that Reece didn’t know what to write or what to say.
Dinner that evening was the first occasion the four of them had eaten together since the wedding. Oddly, Mrs Reece wasn’t slamming the crockery down on the table. Grace had often wondered why the dinner-plates had not smashed, so vehemently in the past week had her mother slapped them on the table, splotting the gravy over the table linen, then wailing at the mess it had made, not once conceding that she had caused the splodges, not admitting her own culpability.
Bone china, Grace thought, looking at her dinner-plate, breaks less often than the bones it is made of, which was good, as her mother’s tight, hard grasp would have shattered weaker plates.
Grace knew Wilfred was at the dinner-table not because he wanted to stay married: Wilfred still wanted what he had wanted for several months – his freedom from her. Wilfred was here this evening as he thought her mother and her father couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything to her while he, her husband, her protector of sorts, was sitting at the dinner-table. Wilfred was different now. He’d changed. He’d become stronger in the way he spoke and in how he held himself. Wilfred had even sat next to Grace. On the other side of Wilfred there was the empty chair for Madoc, her brother. The chair was waiting for when he next came back on leave from the Welsh Guards.
With her husband here, Grace hoped her parents wouldn’t proselytize, that there would be no rage – no sharp words from her mother. Grace knew Wilfred was buying her time, sitting with her while her parents, dumbstruck, reeled through the first and worst of their shock. By the time Wilfred had gone, when he was no longer sitting here eating chicken, boiled potatoes and mashed swede, her parents would – she hoped – be slightly calmer. He was protecting her from them. That is what husbands do, Grace realized, even unwilling husbands.
‘Please could you pass the salt,’ Wilfred said, ‘salt for the meat.’ Neither Dr Reece nor his wife moved, Mrs Reece pretending not to hear, Dr Reece sitting stone still, like the statue of a biblical king. Grace reached across her father.
‘Excuse me,’ she said faintly, and picked up the small, three-legged saltcellar.
‘Thank you,’ said Wilfred, shaking the salt liberally on the chicken pieces. ‘Very nice dinner, Mrs Reece.’ Grace thought that Wilfred didn’t eat proper meals very often; that he and his da probably didn’t know how to cook.
Wilfred was the only one around the table able to eat. Grace felt nauseous, as she did continually. Her mother, who was even thinner, even sharper these last few weeks, was pretending to starve herself in protest at the injustice meted out to her through her daughter. Her place setting was empty. And her father? He looked too lost to eat. Her father wasn’t used to losing or being told he was wrong, but Grace supposed he knew enough not to fight against a man strengthened by the power of the truth. It would be futile. Wilfred, though, ate his dinner like a man offered a reprieve. He put the last potato on to his fork with his knife, pushed it around in the gravy and put it into his mouth. A lesser man, Grace thought, could be triumphant now because he had been wronged, but Wilfred seemed humble, just hungry.
‘Thank you, Mrs Reece. That was very nice,’ he said. Grace saw that Wilfred was grateful for the meal and that he had an appetite again. Her mother would have begrudged him the food and its cost. Mrs Reece nodded, unable to lower herself to speak to him. Grace got up to leave the table.
‘Right,’ said Wilfred. ‘If you’ll excuse me …’ That had been the first dinner she had ever eaten with Wilfred. No doubt it would be their last supper, thought Grace. Wilfred stood up and put his crumpled napkin on the table.
‘I’m off to see my da,’ he announced.
His heart has been with his da all along, Grace thought, watching him.
‘Sit down,’ Dr Reece commanded. Wilfred saw the ropey cords of the man’s neck leap out and twitch. ‘You’re staying here.’
Wilfred instinctively tensed and clenched his fists. Dr Reece was his father-in-law. He was a doctor, he was powerful – it was true. Wilfred knew that it often depended on Dr Reece whether someone ended up dead and in his workshop or not. That was power. But Wilfred was different now. He had met Flora Myffanwy and he had become, to his own mind, through recent experiences and something newly forged within him, something he couldn’t articulate but that he could best describe as ‘a purveyor of superior funerals’. He was rooted in the world, felt his place in it. In his mind’s eye he imagined his feet growing roots that surged into the earth, forming a net of tendrils spreading deep and wide into the Narberth soil, holding him here, holding him upright. Wilfred did not sit down.
Dr Reece’s face turned a deeper shade of puce. He put his large hands on the table as if to rise to his feet. Grace averted her eyes and stepped back. Grace’s mother snatched the china tureen from the table.
‘I am your father-in-law. You will do what I say.’ But Dr Reece’s words sounded papery and lightweight as if they could dally and float on the breeze.
Wilfred straightened his back. He had his da, his work, his friends at the Rugby Club, the people he knew in Narberth. And there was Flora Myffanwy. He was supported by the strength of those he loved. They would all have something to say – probably not all of them to his face – but they would buffer and hold him. So Dr Reece could bellow in fury – and Wilfred in his health and strength, his youth and most of all, in his rootedness, would not succumb or snap. Wilfred pulled back his shoulders.
‘Yes, Doctor Reece, you have been my father-in-law.’ He met Grace’s eyes. ‘But I am my own man.’
Dr Reece leaned right back in his chair and was rendered speechless, seemingly as much by the strength that resonated from Wilfred’s body as by his words. Wilfred felt himself to be like a tree with inner rings of new growth that were hidden deep inside, but nevertheless present and holding up a strapping trunk easily and naturally.
‘Do as I say.’
‘No.’ It wa
s the straining of Dr Reece’s neck, Wilfred thought. No one with any power ever had to strain their neck.
Mrs Reece was frantically scouring the draining board with steel wool. She repeatedly dabbed her eyes in a fury of self-pity and contempt. Well, Wilfred thought, she could dab her eyes and she could cry. The drama and self-righteousness would feed her for years. She would have an occupation now in her small life.
‘Wilfred Price,’ Mrs Reece interrupted shrilly, ‘what would your mother say?’
Wilfred was thrown: his mother, so absent from his whole life – he hadn’t thought what she would say and hadn’t known her at all to even be able to have a sense of her response.
‘My mother,’ Wilfred replied, once he had centred himself, ‘is dead.’ And I bet Grace wishes her mother was dead too, he added to himself.
‘You would have killed your mother with this. And your father broke his back working to look after you.’
Broke his back? Had his da broken his back for him? An image of his da came to him: his da was stooped, it was true. He didn’t want his da to break his back for him.
‘Yes, see? I am right – I can tell by your face,’ said Mrs Reece, with a look that, to Wilfred, seemed like one of utter hatred.
‘Worked like a slave for you.’ She put the corner of the hanky to her eye.
Then it occurred to Wilfred that he could say, ‘It is your son who has caused all this. I know what Madoc did to Grace.’ And watch all the veneer of respectability, pretence and snobbery crack and fall away like carefully applied, generations-old varnish. It wasn’t me; it was your son. I would like to inform you … how would he say it? How did you inform people of the most devastating and unacceptable fact that they would ever hear?
