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

by Wendy Jones

  What can I give her? Wilfred asked himself. I must give her something to take for her journey. It was less than an hour until the Carmarthen train.

  ‘Wait! Wait here,’ he stated.

  Wilfred bounded down the attic stairs noisily, out of the Reeces’ front door, and ran straight along the High Street and Water Street then Market Street and into his house. Once in his bedroom, he shoved the iron bedstead aside with a screech, dropped down on to his knees, then used his penknife to lever up the unvarnished plank, the third from the back wall, the one with the gnarled knot of wood in it.

  There in a bag with a tie string was the other half of their life savings. He opened it and there was the earthy, greasy smell of money. He had saved assiduously and there was a considerable amount: he knew exactly how much was there. He must keep some in case business became slow or – God forbid – another undertaker set up in Narberth; some for the outlay for the wallpaper shop; and some in case his da became unwell. He must look after his da … He looked at the pile of notes in his hand … but he must also be generous. He took all the money, folded it in half, putting it in his jacket pocket, dropped the dusty floorboard back into place, yanked the bed back against the wall and ran through Narberth to Grace’s house.

  In the attic, Grace was still sitting on the side of the bed waiting for Wilfred: she stood when he came in.

  I’ll do this with no fuss, Wilfred thought. He put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out the roughly folded wad. Grace looked at the money without expression. She didn’t know how much was there – a lot, enough to start a new life. Wilfred held out the notes to Grace, gesturing for her to take it. She reached out timidly and accepted his parting gift. Then he pulled her to him and held her by the shoulders. He kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘God be with you, Grace,’ he said gently, and he walked out of the door.

  Wilfred strode down the bramble-lined lane, stretching his legs and hoping to clear his clouded head. He needed a drink. His mouth was dry as sandpaper: a pint of Oakhill Stout at the Conduit public house would do a treat.

  Wilfred set off down the lane feeling shocked. Grace was leaving. He shouldn’t have been surprised: what choice did she have? She had been pale this morning when Wilfred saw her sitting on the end of the bed, her hands underneath her, her legs swinging slightly. She still looked girlish. Wilfred could see in her smooth, gentle face that it wasn’t long ago that Grace was a girl. He recalled his only memory of Grace from his childhood when he had known her by sight but never played with her. Wilfred had been crouching while searching for catchypoles in the boggy water on the town moor when he noticed a lithe Grace turning cartwheel after cartwheel, one-handed as well as two-handed, her hands confidently slapping on the mud, her legs swinging over her head, spinning like the spokes of a wheel. On and on she had gone; standing up, twirling over, hand over hand across the grass. She was free then.

  He looked around him. Narberth was so vividly green in spring and summer, with the castle prominent on the hill, the keep jutting elegantly into the sky. Narberth was enchanting. Seven generations of his family came from this town and there was no reason to think the next seven generations wouldn’t also live and die here. But Narberth was not entirely the place he had thought it was. How many people over the years had stood alone and plaintive on the station platform leaving for they knew not where because the people of Narberth had banished them by making it impossible for them to stay?

  He swung open the five-bar gate by St Andrew’s and traipsed into the cow field. He and his family had stayed. Was it only those with well-ordered, fortunate lives who remained, while the unlucky and blighted were cut off and cast away like a rotting limb? But the memory of them stayed, always aching. Wilfred knew he was right to give Grace something like a hundred pounds – he didn’t know exactly how much he had taken from his savings – there hadn’t been time to count. For all he knew, Grace might purchase a mink fur coat and big diamonds. But that was unlikely; she seemed far too pained to be jubilant and celebratory.

  Wilfred headed across the field, stepping over the odd hummock of grass. Should he tell his da what he’d done with around half of their life savings? But his da wouldn’t ask, and if he found out he would understand; his da had spent too long with the dead to care overly much for money. Wilfred had been hoping to buy the portable wireless and take it to the cottage in the cove. That wouldn’t be possible now. He would have to gradually build up his savings again and that would take several years at least. Unless there was an epidemic. But Wilfred didn’t think there would ever be an epidemic again, what with medicine being so advanced and modern these days.

  Wilfred loosened his tie and stood for a moment. Soon everyone would know the marriage was annulled and there would be many unanswered questions. Who was the man? Where had she gone? Would she come back? But Wilfred no longer cared about the gossip; it wasn’t important any more. Gossip went on for ever. As Mr Auden said, ‘There is always a great deal of interest in a door behind which something is happening’ – but gossip belonged in the realms of a small and uncompassionate world, and Wilfred had seen that the world was larger and more multiple than could ever be described and explained by tittle-tattle.

  Wilfred arrived at the far gate, his shoes rimmed with squelchy mud, and began the short walk down Water Street. Grace would have to find lodgings, pay the rent and, once the baby was born, she’d have to work – perhaps sewing or washing. Anyway, he thought to himself, he would never need a portable wireless the way Grace would need the rent.

  Once he was inside the Conduit public house and resting on an upright chair in the parlour drinking a glass of stout, Wilfred was still thinking about Grace. When she was sitting on the edge of the bed this morning, Wilfred had seen the echo of that little girl she had once been. Her young face with her pregnancy was incongruous. Wilfred knew that if she went out of the house, people would notice her youth then her belly, and look at her surreptitiously out of the corner of their eye. He sipped his beer then placed the cool glass tankard on his leg. He’d given her the money; she’d taken it, her head down. She was broken – Wilfred saw it plainly as they parted, before he walked out of the door – and now she was abandoned. He didn’t doubt that the world would be harsh with her, and he hoped she would be able to endure the life awaiting her. She was innocent and she was suffering.

  ‘What you doing here, Wilfred?’

  ‘Hello, Da! I could ask the same of you.’

  ‘Oakhill Stout you got there, boy?’ his da asked, removing his hat and putting it on the chair.

  ‘Aye – anything’s better than the parsnip wine,’ Wilfred replied.

  His da sat down slowly on a rickety chair against the wall.

  ‘Pint of stout, Mrs Evans, please,’ he called. ‘Hell of a rush you were in earlier going up to your bedroom, Wilfred. You must have met yourself coming back. What was you up to?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much, nothing much,’ Wilfred replied in a low voice. He paused then he said, ‘She’s leaving, Da, just like that.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘No I don’t know. Because, well … I’s went to the courthouse and it …’ Wilfred wiped some froth from around his mouth.

  ‘Did it go as you wanted it to, son?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wilfred took a mouthful of beer.

  ‘There’s good, then.’

  ‘Yes, Da.’

  ‘Sad, mind. Nice girl. You can’t always be running away, Wilfred. Sometimes you’s have to stay, whatever happens.’ He drank some stout. ‘I’s stayed with your mam.’

  ‘But you loved my mam.’

  ‘Aye,’ he nodded gently, ‘but sometimes I didn’t always want to stay.’ His da was talking in that way again, revealing himself and his wisdom, speaking frankly as if Wilfred was not the child he had brought up, but another equal and separate adult with his own life.

  ‘You didn’t want to stay, Da?’

  ‘No. I was a young man once. I wanted
everything and wouldn’t tolerate anything.’ His da looked around the bare, plain room. ‘It never is the way you want it to be, Wilfred. It is always different, especially with women. Women are cleverer than men; they run circles around us, outwit us without us even noticing, but there’s nothing much in life for a man if he doesn’t have a wife. A man has to have someone to be for. A man without a wife is like a dishevelled and wandering beast who doesn’t know where to rest on the earth.’

  ‘Right, then, gentlemen – Welsh cakes,’ announced Mrs Annie Evans, breezing into the parlour. ‘Can’t have you starving to death on my premises, can I?’ she said, pushing her spectacles up her nose. ‘Eat up, now.’

  ‘They smell wonderful, Mrs Evans,’ said Wilfred.

  ‘Wilfred, you’s look like you’ve seen a ghost. Do you want me’s to heat some parsley pie on the range for you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wilfred. ‘I would appreciate that. That would be very kind.’

  Grace looked down at the pile of money in her hand. It was still warm from being in Wilfred’s pocket. She opened her suitcase with a click and put the money in the case’s cloth pocket. She shut the lid and looked at her wristwatch. She would wear her watch all the time from now on, she decided. She would no longer hear the grandfather clock in her father’s surgery chime every quarter of an hour, or the bell in the Narberth clock-tower. Yes, she would take her wristwatch with her; it would mark the time for her now.

  Her mother and father were waiting for her to come downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, cups of cold tea in front of them. Grace stood in the doorway for a moment or two, holding her suitcase in front of her with two hands. If ever there was a time for any of us to say something to each other, then this is it, Grace thought to herself. They knew now it wasn’t Wilfred. Her mother must assume that Grace, with a cheapness that was shocking, had gone easily and giggly with some cad in a dark alley after a dance and let him have his way with her. Her mother was too brittle to ask who it was, although the secret of who the scoundrel was who had done that with her equally sluttish daughter would shame and obsess Mrs Reece for the rest of her life. Her father wouldn’t ask because that would upset her mother, and her father’s first loyalty was to his wife. Grace knew their silence protected their sanity and their social standing.

  Her mother got up and started laying the table for lunch in a cold businesslike way, taking the Willow Pattern plates from the Welsh dresser where they were displayed. They were a broken family now, too broken. The secret between them was better unspoken: she doubted her mother – or even her father – could survive the truth. This would be her parting gift to them, whatever they thought of her, and she suspected they judged her very harshly; she would allow them their illusions about their son, allow them these lies about their family and their children, even if it meant that she, Grace, would be blamed, hated and outcast. She would leave kindly. She would allow them their innocence.

  Grace watched her mother sit down abruptly, and viciously pick at the hangnails of skin from her fingers and dab the blood away with her lips. If this was marriage and family life, Grace thought, she didn’t want it.

  Her parents were innocent in a town that pretended innocence and only allowed for innocence. Grace knew too much now to stay in the quiet and beautiful place in the west of Wales at the end of the world. She must go where other people who knew about a wider world lived, where there was a different commerce of knowledge. She put her hand to her pearl necklace and held it tightly.

  Her mother was ferociously biting the skin around her nails again, and Grace could see that if her mother felt any sympathy towards her, it was well hidden behind accusation and self-pity. Her mother had not even made her a tin of sandwiches or filled a glass bottle with water. Her father, though, might offer to drive her to the station. Grace knew that her parents would not, under any circumstances, want her to be seen leaving the house with her suitcase – because that would be talked about. It would be more discreet if her father drove her to the station. That way, while the whole of Narberth would know why Grace had left, no one would have actually seen her leave, and there would be slightly – but only slightly – less for them to talk about.

  Suddenly her mother stood up, her chair scraping sharply on the tiles, and in a flash of rage slapped Grace hard around the face. Grace’s head flew back, jolted, her breath caught in her throat. Her hands flailed outwards, the suitcase falling. All the blood raced into the centre of her body. Her mother collapsed back into her chair and started sobbing hysterically. Dazed, Grace picked up her suitcase, her hands shaking, and walked to the front door.

  ‘Grace,’ her father said soberly, following her, ‘the car.’ She turned and followed him and they went out of the back door to the Morris Minor, which was parked waiting in the lane.

  As they drove, Grace looked out of the window at the billowing verges and the tall trees in full leaf lining the road. It was raining clean, fresh rain – Welsh rain that made the grass so green and the trees so verdant. She wondered when she would see such greenness again.

  Her father wound down the window and put his arm out to indicate he was turning left. Grace looked at the public house, the school, the row of houses, all so familiar to her for the whole of her life, and was unable to believe she would see them again.

  When they turned into Station Road, Grace knew that her father would not wait with her for the train to come. She would have to stand on the platform on her own. She, and not her father, would lift her case on to the train. She put her hand on the silver door handle to let herself out of the car. It was cool and smooth in her hand. She had nothing and everything to say. But she had chosen nothing.

  All he need say, Grace realized, her eyes filling, all my father need say is, ‘Stay.’ That’s all. And my heart will break and I will stay. But in those few seconds while Grace’s hand rested on the door handle, with her small suitcase on her lap, her father stared straight ahead, looking, Grace thought, like a broken king. Eventually he took an airmail envelope – like the one he used to write to Madoc – from his raincoat pocket and held it out to her, not meeting her eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, Father,’ she said.

  The train bellowed and puffed languorously around the corner; Grace heard it before she saw it. It stopped with a powerful jolt. The train was a couple of feet above the platform so she pulled herself up on to the train and into an empty carriage. She sat next to the grimy window, facing backwards, hugging her suitcase. Then the train started up with a great hiss and chugged off. The small platform behind her was empty: there was no one to see her off.

  ‘Any tickets from Narberth?’ the conductor called jollily as he trundled down the corridor looking into the carriages. The train turned the corner and entered the cutting between the hills. I am leaving Narberth, Grace told herself. I – and my child – am leaving. She looked inside the envelope her father had given her. Money. He must have taken it from his safe box without her mother knowing. Her father was kinder than her mother, cared more, was capable of caring more, though he had not asked her to stay, had not loved her more than he chastized her. Instead he had let her go, vulnerable and alone and frightened, into a world that was bigger – but surely not harsher – than Narberth.

  Wherever I live, Grace thought, it will be better than it was in my own family.

  She noticed that in the envelope, behind several £5 notes, there was a piece of paper. The paper had been pulled roughly from a prescription notepad. It was folded but not precisely, as was her father’s usual way. She opened it; it was her father’s handwriting, not his normal careful cursive script – it was written hurriedly –nor was it in his customary Kandahar ink. It was done with a pencil, but a pencil pressed hard and firmly into the paper. On it there was written only one word. Write.

  13

  A for Avocado

  There was a loud clatter and the sound of something breaking. Flora and her mam looked at each other – Flora stopped mid-stitch. They went outside into
the dying light and there in the driveway was the cause – a broken roof tile, cracked unevenly down the middle.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said her mam, ‘where did that come from?’ They both looked up at the roof and saw the empty square where the tile had dislodged and fallen.

  ‘I didn’t know it was loose,’ Mrs Edwards said.

  ‘We’ll have to replace it as soon as we can.’ Flora walked forward and picked up the two parts of the tile, the dark green moss tumbling from it. The tile needed to be replaced otherwise the roof would leak. Flora stood there gazing at the tile in her hand. The same thought was occurring to both her and her mam. What were they going to do?

  ‘That’s above my bedroom, isn’t it?’ said Flora.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ agreed her mother. ‘At least it’s not raining right now.’

  Flora held the pieces of the tile in her hands. She slotted them together; it was a neat crack, the pieces fitted back together well.

  ‘We need a new tile,’ her mam stated.

  They stood there, a wood pigeon cooing, the light quickly fading to dusk. Neither of them knew the way forward. Possibly if they waited long enough, Flora’s father would stride out of the house, ask what was going on, what that almighty din was. He would see the tile, nod, pick it up, one leg lifting up as he bent down as was his characteristic way, say, ‘Well, well, well.’ He’d saunter to the outhouse then return in a minute or two carrying the ladder under his arm, trying to make it look as if he wasn’t struggling. Then a replacement tile would be nailed down and the roof sealed. Her father would be proud of himself, beaming with a sense of satisfaction from a job well done. He would talk about it over dinner. It would be the main topic of conversation. Flora and her mam waited. But her father wasn’t going to come. He was never going to walk out of the house again. He was never going to fix a roof tile again. Mrs Melbourne Edwards wiped her eyes modestly.