by Wendy Jones
Wilfred considered speaking. He looked at Dr Reece sitting at the head of the table, with his power and his title, who had immediately assumed it was Wilfred and judged him harshly. Yet Wilfred knew that somewhere inside that formal façade there was a man who watched over the people of Narberth, who rubbed his hands together to warm them before placing them on the tissue-thin skin of elderly people with arthritic joints, who cared that the people of their small town were rosy-cheeked and sturdy, were born alive, lived robustly and died without too much pain. A man who drove as fast as he could, but also carefully, to patients who were sick at night in nearby farms. A good man, with Madoc for a son.
The dishes clacked as Mrs Reece scoured them in a fever. Wilfred looked at Mrs Reece, deliberating what he would say. She had an empty life of housewifery with nothing to peg herself on but her husband’s position and her son’s rank. But now there was the agony of her daughter’s fall. Madoc. Five letters: Madoc – that’s all he need say. Suddenly he understood Grace’s trust and courage in telling him the raw, skinless truth. And Grace’s dignity in not telling anyone else.
Madoc. The name was on the tip of his tongue. No. And he walked out of the door.
If Grace had been surprised that Wilfred had stayed for dinner, she was even more astonished later that evening when she heard the stiff latch on the attic door lift and realized it was Wilfred coming in. He had not come back the other night and there was no need for him to pretend – he could go home to his father’s again tonight, to his kind da who loved him so much and to whom Wilfred was the world. Grace, in not speaking the whole truth, had deprived Wilfred’s da of his son and of his son’s happiness. Grace winced at her cruelty, more cruelty again. It went on and on; intentionally, unintentionally, it didn’t matter. The end was the same: broken people left in pieces, lives fractured, love bludgeoned.
She saw Wilfred undressing out of the corner of her eye. Wilfred’s father would be pleased – over the moon – to have his son back with him, though Grace doubted he would say anything but instead would keep his counsel, as wise people often did. And even if Wilfred did one day marry, he would be wounded from this failed marriage. He deserves a wife, Grace thought, who loves him and does not use him for her own ends.
She glanced at him as he undid his cufflinks. It occurred to Grace that she didn’t know much about Wilfred, not really, despite being married to him. She knew he liked trifle with whipped cream. That he had liked her yellow dress. Perhaps he liked yellow dresses. Perhaps he liked yellow. She knew that at night he put his socks in his shoes, one in each, but Grace suspected all men did that with their socks at nighttime, in the bedroom, ready for the morning. Grace didn’t know much that was personal or intimate about Wilfred: he had told her nothing, she hadn’t asked anything.
Though she felt as though she was married to a stranger, it would also be true that once their marriage was annulled – when the court had ratified it – she would always have once been married to Wilfred. He would always be her first, probably only, husband. Even in twenty years’ time, in 1944, which was unimaginably distant in the future, when this all might possibly – possibly – not be the end of the world any more, it would still be true that she, Grace Amelia Reece of 32 High Street, Narberth, had once been married to Wilfred Aubrey Price, undertaker.
So she felt calm and kindly, resigned even, when Wilfred, her once and soon not to be husband got into their marriage bed – the bed that had once belonged to her brother. And when Wilfred moved into the centre of their bed, that no man’s land where neither of them had dared to lie for the whole of their married life, Grace let Wilfred take her in his arms and hold her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
It was the middle of the night. Wilfred was asleep, but Grace hadn’t slept. Over the long hours of the night, her resignation had turned to anxiety and her anxiety into appalling anguish.
Eventually she said, ‘Wilfred … Wilfred, can I ask?’
He stirred. Soon they were both lying on their backs in the dusky half-light of the room, looking at the ceiling, the eaves, the beam and sickly brown wallpaper. She hated this bedroom, Madoc’s old room, with his boxes of Snakes and Ladders and Tiddlywinks on the shelf and his suit hanging loosely, like the clothes of a ghost, in the wardrobe. She hated this room in which her life had happened.
‘I am afraid, Wilfred. If you stay, I will be a good wife to you. A kind wife, and I won’t be like my mother, and we could have a child together. Children.’ Her voice sounded needy and her words were fast. ‘I would be kind and good and I would follow our wedding vows and I would be kind always.’ She was trying to strike a bargain, like she sold honey in Narberth, to sell him herself and her life as if it were honey in a jar to offer, something that he might want.
‘And we could live with your father, I’d be happy to live with your father, and I would look after him and clean and keep the house tidy, and … and if you show me how, I can help you laying out the bodies and getting them ready and …’ Her words were gabbled, her eyes wide, her heart beating. ‘And I would take care of the baby and it would be no trouble and it wouldn’t get in the way, Wilfred … and … and I will pay my way by selling honey. And I could even train to be a teacher at the school because I always like reading. And you wouldn’t need to visit my mother, or see any of my family, ever. And I would like you, Wilfred. And I wouldn’t carry on with other men. And we could say to my father that it doesn’t need to be … annulled.’
She put her hand between his legs. He gathered and tightened almost immediately. She sat up, took off her white nightdress and put her hand back where it had been. She heard Wilfred swallow and moved next to him.
‘We would be happy, not like my mother and father, but like your ma and da.’ She slightly tightened her grip. She had never touched that place on a man before, never even seen it, only glimpsed it once, a part of it, but she wouldn’t think of that. She took Wilfred’s hand and placed it between her legs. Wilfred moved on to his side and faced her and put his hand on her flank. Only once, Grace thought, and the marriage couldn’t be annulled. Grace knew that doing this only once with a man could change the world.
An hour or so ago she had crept out of bed and put red lip-stain on her lips, had rubbed it on surreptitiously after combing her hair, even dabbed her wrists with Chanel N° 5, the new French perfume she’d bought for her wedding, before half-undoing her nightdress.
She shifted closer to Wilfred, till her breasts were brushing against the hair on his chest and she felt the muscles in his arms tighten. She pushed aside the flies in his pyjamas, making room for her hand to move. She thought that maybe she should move her hand. She didn’t know what to do, but Wilfred was responding to her tentative gestures. He put his hand on one breast, then quickly across to the other one.
‘Oh,’ he said, as if he was sinking into himself.
He pushed into her and she turned to lie on her back. Wilfred, lying over her, pulled up his pyjama jacket, freeing his stomach, and then he reached down and tried to undo the knot in the cord but he couldn’t do it with one hand. He rolled on to his back. Grace noticed the intensity and heat in his face while he tugged at the knot. She had seen once before that look of utter focus, that unconsciousness of everything around him when a man was gripped by the tautness in his body. Men had one vulnerability, Grace thought, watching – that soft, squidgy place, softer than a woman’s breast, as honest as a woman’s stomach, and stronger in its effect than anything else in the world. Wilfred was still trying to get the knot undone and becoming frustrated, pulling at the cord. It was loose. He yanked down his pyjamas trousers, started to drag his top over his head but it wouldn’t go, pulled it down again, undid the top button and with both hands, lifted it over his head. Then he lay on top of Grace and she felt the weight of him over her.
Wilfred used his left leg to push open her legs. He brushed her hair from her face, put his arms under her and held her tightly. Grace bent her knees and lifted up her legs. How d
id she know how to do this, she wondered.
She thought she could do this without it hurting. She had licked her fingers earlier and dragged her fingers between her legs to moisten herself. And if it hurt she would bite her lips, she would close her eyes, she would think of the bees in their hive, think of each precise step of their dances. If it hurt or rubbed harshly she would think of her bees.
This was easier than with … she wouldn’t think about it. She felt a blunt nub along her upper thigh, pushing blindly into her. Wilfred pressed his forehead into her forehead and took his weight on to his arms, hunching his shoulders. That hard-soft nub kept pushing into the flesh at the very top of her leg, searching blindly for what it wanted. Grace could feel it moving nearer and nearer to where it wanted to go, where it needed to be for the marriage to be consummated. Only an inch … less than an inch, and the way forward would be smooth and easy. Oh …
‘No! No …’ Wilfred climbed off Grace, threw himself back on to the bed, legs apart, arms above his head. His face was covered in sweat. Grace saw the dark hair on his chest and stomach and his thick, muscular legs spread out on the sheet.
‘No, Grace. I want it – God help me, I want it. But I won’t want it in the morning, when I’m spent and empty.’
Grace looked at him. His body still wanted it: here, now, regardless, with her. That’s what men’s bodies wanted. Bodies didn’t care about consequences.
‘You are … you are lovely,’ he continued, breathing deeply and wiping the sweat from his brow, ‘and I was sweet on you in your yellow dress. Wanted to know, Grace, how you got out of it. Imagined you taking off your dress at the picnic, imagined where the buttons were. Wanted you there, on that blanket, naked, wanted to be inside you.’ He breathed out audibly. ‘But it was only for a moment. And that was the moment I proposed.’ He rubbed his chest back and forth with his hand.
‘I wanted to love you, but it was only for a moment, not a lifetime.’ He brushed his hair from his face and brought the sides of his pyjama trousers together, covering himself. ‘Grace, you are beautiful, you are good. And your brother has ruined your life.’ He was lying spread-eagled in the middle of the bed; Grace was on her side at the edge, her hands across her breasts, her feet pulled up.
‘I could take Madoc and I could hold him against a wall and I could … I could break his body, Grace, for what he’s done to you.’
The room fell silent. The air was muggy with the sweat and smell of their bodies. They lay there, abandoned. Grace looked at the brown wallpaper. Eventually she spoke.
‘Is there someone else?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
12
The Notes
It had been so simple. Grace had stood there in her gabardine macintosh, despite the weather being too close for a coat of any description, because she felt protected and hidden in it. Wilfred once again had his sombre suit on. It was his funeral suit, his wedding suit and now his annulment suit. It was a suit for every occasion.
Grace and Wilfred were standing facing the magistrate who was wearing a wiry grey wig. Grace wanted to sit, her feet ached, but it wasn’t allowed. The magistrate had enquired if the marriage was consummated. It was so intimate a question in so formal a setting. Wilfred said it wasn’t. The magistrate asked Grace the same question. She shook her head.
‘Speak,’ he commanded.
‘No,’ she said. Grace thought back to Wilfred, naked, his white skin highlighted by the black hair on his body, lying in Madoc’s bed, wrestling with himself. She had tried.
So there was just one more question left unanswered. Grace wondered if the magistrate would ask it. Why was the marriage unconsummated? And then there was the fact of her almost obvious pregnancy, which she hoped her coat hid.
‘Is there a reason why this marriage is not consummated?’ the magistrate asked. Grace watched the dust floating in the air; sunlight was coming through the windows. Outside she could hear the bustle of market day. She trusted Wilfred would speak first.
‘It was not possible to consummate the marriage,’ Wilfred said to the bar in front of him; he was unable to look the magistrate in the eyes.
‘And Mrs Price …’ the magistrate began. ‘Why do you say the marriage is not consummated?’
Grace had decided that she would say – if questioned – exactly what Wilfred had said.
‘It was not possible to consummate it,’ she repeated.
‘And the child you are carrying? Is that your husband’s?’
Grace watched the dust move slowly and elegantly in the air. The courthouse was dirty, though she knew it was cleaned regularly. Mrs John Morgan from Water Street swept and polished it every Tuesday, but she imagined the room would always be airless, dusty and dark. The dust was like the shame of the accused – it was always present and could never be washed away.
‘Mrs Price, is the child your husband’s child? Answer the question.’
‘No.’ She heard her father’s feet shuffle in the gallery behind her; it had to be her father’s feet, he was the only other person in the courthouse.
Once she had said it, Grace knew she must leave Narberth – leave now. There could be no going back. Her tan leather suitcase was open and empty and waiting for her in the attic. She hadn’t said to anyone that she was leaving, hadn’t told her parents, but it was a tacit agreement; it was understood that there could be no place for her now in this small, very tightly bound, ancient corner of the world.
Knickers, stockings, suspender belt, brassière. She ran quickly through a list of undergarments. She grabbed a brassière and some knickers from a drawer. Her stockings were drying on the clothes airer hanging from the kitchen ceiling. She wouldn’t go and get them – her mother was in the kitchen and she didn’t want to see her. She had the stockings she was wearing. One pair would do, she’d wash and dry them each night. A skirt? Two skirts? Three skirts? How many skirts would she need? She unhooked a couple of skirts from the back of the door where they were kept. Grace folded them quickly and not very neatly, then put them in the suitcase. Really she should use tissue paper. She looked at the clock. There wasn’t time to put tissue between the folds of her skirts.
Two blouses. One jumper. No, two jumpers. The round-necked one she’d knitted for herself. Her white nightdress. Her spare shoes. She lifted up the clothes and put the shoes underneath them at the bottom of the case. That was everything. No, of course not. Handkerchiefs, toothbrush, hairbrush. And why was she taking these clothes? Soon they wouldn’t even fit her. But she’d need clothes. Her purse, her savings book. What else? She wanted to take something from her life, this life. Her yellow dress. She pulled it from the hanger and pressed her face to it and felt as if she was holding herself. Her yellow dress had held all her hopes in it though now the silk was infused with the aroma of mothballs. Grace folded it, put it in the suitcase on top of her white nightie, and smoothed it flat. She would leave the navy scarf from her nana. That was all. That was enough. There was nothing else to take. Apart from the small framed photo on her dressing-table of her mother and father.
Suddenly tired, Grace sat on the bed, bewildered, facing the brown wall. She had stayed inside the house since she had been married to Wilfred, only venturing into the garden because she was too ashamed to step out and meet people, be greeted, congratulated, spoken to and talked about. She knew she was talked about – talked about almightily – but she didn’t want to walk around town to see it, to know it and to have her shame proved to her. She had left 32 High Street for her wedding, for the annulment, and now she would leave the house to leave. She had not asked her parents for advice or her father for direction. She didn’t know where she would go or who would have her – if, indeed, anyone would have her.
There was the train out of Narberth at eleven minutes past two. It went to Carmarthen. At Carmarthen she could change and go to Swansea. At Swansea there was a train to Liverpool and also a train to London. Liverpool, she knew, had homes for fallen girls, for all the Irish women wh
o were also escaping their lives. Then there was London, about which she knew almost nothing. Maybe London would accept a Welsh girl who was divorced, pregnant and alone. She could rent a room, she could work as a waitress and she could pretend to be married and wear her wedding ring, or pretend to be widowed. She didn’t know. The train journey, if she went to London, took eleven hours and that would be long enough to concoct a story and to plan a life.
Grace knew that her mother and father would allow her to go downstairs and out of the front door, and that her mother’s love, in particular, was not strong enough for her to beg her daughter to stay, whatever the circumstances. Her mother would let her go. She would ask for no forwarding address, she would ask for no telegram. She would simply let her go. From her father, Grace was hoping for more.
When Wilfred strode into the attic, Grace was kneeling on the floor trying to force shut her tan leather suitcase. He saw her suitcase – it looked too small, as if it could hardly contain all Grace would need for a new life somewhere else. He looked at her softly, kindly, and felt like a man defeated. Wilfred had what he wanted – his freedom from her – but he didn’t want his own way at the cost of breaking Grace, just as he imagined Grace had not wanted their marriage at the cost of breaking him. He held his hand open, palm up in a gesture of renunciation.
Wilfred knew she was going, not for a few months to return soft and warm and forgiven with a small child, but that she was leaving and would perhaps never return because Narberth wouldn’t find a place for a woman like Grace. Narberth was full of people who would only include a woman who became a mother in the Christian way and, God knew, Grace wasn’t having a child in an acceptable way.
