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

by Wendy Jones

  ‘Well, something will turn up,’ Flora said, though she didn’t know what. She didn’t feel able to climb the ladder up on to the roof and wouldn’t know how to nail the tile back. And anyway the tile was broken. It was dawning on her that the things her father had done they now had to do. They had to look after the house now and it hadn’t been mentioned yet but they would have to have money coming in. They had savings, but those wouldn’t last for ever. Perhaps they would sell the forge, or let the apprentice take it on. Flora and her mam would need more money. They were two women alone in the world without a man. They would need a man. To mend the roof tile. To bolt the door at nightfall. To sleep in the house at night. Even to open the lids on the jars when they stuck. Her father always huffed and strained theatrically until the jars popped open. Before, jammed jar lids had been a delight to her father so he could show his prowess. Now screw lids and jam-jars would be a problem. There would be things to do: in the autumn the guttering was cleared, in the winter the logs were chopped, and Flora wasn’t confident that she or her mam would be able to do them.

  Back inside, the tile lay on an old cloth on the dining-table, the two broken halves placed next to each other, a gap between them.

  ‘Well, there’s a cawl for dinner and it will be ready in a bit. It’s on the range,’ her mam said levelly.

  Flora was grateful for some normality, for some routine. She liked cawl and had grown up eating it. It warmed her and soothed her and was known.

  ‘And there’s water for a bath afterwards.’

  Of course, it was Sunday.

  Flora sat in the tin bath, wiping her back with a flannel. The fire in the hearth next to the bath was glowing and warm. She rubbed more coal-tar soap on the flannel and washed her arms, moving the flannel along her forearms and to her wrists.

  Her mother came into the sitting room and took a stool and sat down by the bath.

  ‘Can I talk with you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Mam.’ Flora pulled up her knees and rested her head on them.

  ‘The undertaker, Mr Wilfred Price, seems thoughtful and gentlemanly.’ Her mother looked down. ‘I was wrong to refuse you going for tea with him.’

  Flora swished around the water in the bath, listening.

  ‘Would you like to go to the Staunton House Refreshment Rooms in Narberth with him?’

  Flora looked at her bare feet.

  ‘He’s very handsome,’ her mam continued, pouring more water into the bath.

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Send him a postcard, tell him you’d like to meet and that your mother approves.’

  Flora Myffanwy searched for the bar of soap in the water.

  ‘Perhaps take some of your photographs to show him and tell him about yourself.’ Her mother warmed her hands on the fire. ‘He tried hard to make a good impression when he came here with the invoice. He is surely in want of a wife.’

  Flora smiled wistfully.

  ‘I was happily married for thirty years. I want that for you, too. He seems kind. Kindness is important,’ her mother added.

  ‘I think he is kind. But I don’t think he quite knows who he is yet.’

  ‘That may be as it is, but give him time and he surely will know.’

  ‘Yes …’ Flora Myffanwy replied, considering the wisdom of her mother’s words. ‘But he lives in a town.’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘And …’ but then Flora couldn’t think of anything else to add.

  Her mam pulled her shawl around her. ‘It would be a different love from the one you had with Albert.’ Flora washed her hands with the bar of soap, listening. ‘Do you think you could find it in yourself to love again?’ her mother asked gently.

  ‘I still feel raw, still think of Albert. I could hide away for ever …’

  Flora looked down at her suntanned arms. ‘Albert was very beautiful – it was as if he was golden.’

  ‘Yes,’ her mother said, not disagreeing. Flora hugged her knees.

  ‘But Albert has been dead six years now. You can’t marry a ghost.’

  ‘Feel as if I’ve been trying to.’

  Her mam bent and kissed her forehead, then, putting the towel on the rail near the fire to warm it for Flora, she left, saying, ‘You have to go on without him.’

  Should she marry, Flora wondered, washing the soap from her arms. It would help. There would be money and protection. There might one day be children, more family and other people to love. Women were expected to marry, even the plain and the ugly and the coarse, even Suffragettes. Women married men. And she had always wanted to get married, expected it would happen. Another life was unimaginable. But then another husband – one who wasn’t Albert – had been equally unimaginable. Though she had learned that just because something was unimaginable didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen. She began washing her stomach and her thighs, dunking the flannel in the water. She believed Wilfred and what he had told her. He was honest. She believed he had been forced into marriage. But the thought of him with another woman, even if he didn’t want or love that woman, still hurt.

  She bent over, filled the green wash jug with water and poured it over her hair, the water streaming down the thick, long strands and on to her legs. How could she love a man who was married?

  Flora poured a pearly disk of shampoo into the palm of her hand and rubbed it between her fingers then through her hair. She wiped her eyes with the flannel and looked at the broken tile on the kitchen table, broken like her family, with a crack where the light came in. She washed her hair and some water droplets splashed on to the fire and hissed. The coals flashed and gave more light. She filled the wash jug with water and poured it over her head so that long rivulets of soapy water fell from the waves of brown hair dangling down in front of her.

  So much had happened so quickly. There had been those quiet, empty years after Albert passed on when the world felt pointless and aimless. And then one day that spring there had been Wilfred, and it was as if in the silence of her life there had been a sound filling the quiet space around her, like a stringed instrument, like a violin being tuned before it was played.

  Maybe she could have married Wilfred, but Wilfred was already married. And she would never have an affair: she was too dignified for that. She slipped down in the bath, lay back and dunked her head down until her face was completely under the water.

  Wilfred, slightly woozy from the beer, brushed the dust from his bedside table. He hadn’t dusted his bedroom since, well, last year and now big dust balls were falling lightly to the floor. He knew he was supposed to dust every room in the house and polish the very few ornaments they had at least once a week, that’s what his Auntie Blodwen said – with emphasis – each time she visited. Last time she’d come, she’d pointedly wiped the kitchen chair with her handkerchief to get rid of a lump of dried mashed potato before sitting down.

  Wilfred took his red dictionary from the table. He’d read nearly all of the A section – adamantine, Andaman Islands, alloy, audacious, augment, auspicious, avaricious – until his brain was brimming with words beginning with A. He’d learned what an avocado was; he’d like to eat one of those.

  Wilfred flopped down on his single bed, stared up at the ceiling and watched the cobwebs in the corner flutter up and down in the summer breeze. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, crossed his ankles and laid the dictionary on his stomach. He could keep on reading in an abecedarian manner until he had read the whole of the dictionary: Mr Hughes at 22 Plain Dealings Road had read every word of the dictionary and it had taken him five years. But everyone had the utmost respect for Mr Hughes. Sometimes these days Wilfred marvelled at some of the words he heard himself use, and he wondered if anyone ever noticed that every time he said a big word of vocabulary it began with A? Nor had anyone said to him yet, as he half-expected them to, ‘Good God, Wilfred, man. What happened to you, then, swallowed the dictionary?’ but if they did he could reply, ‘Well, I’ve swallowed the A’s. That much is true.’

&nbs
p; Some of the A words were very unusual: axilary, that was a big word for armpit, and he liked aurora which was a sheen of light in the sky. And azure; that meant blue.

  If he used these words he would be able to say some clever things – all, of course, beginning with the letter A – and yet … He sat up, took the dictionary and flicked through its marble-edged pages. It was heavy because it had a lot of words in it, many words that a man around town – a purveyor of superior funerals – might need. He opened it randomly at F.

  Fiddle: a stringed instrument played with a bow, esp. a violin.

  Fidelity: faithful devotion, esp. in marriage.

  What was the final word, he wondered, turning to the last page.

  Zeno: a philosopher who had an unanswerable paradox.

  What use was that, Wilfred thought, if he were to read the whole of the dictionary and the very last entry was about some poor chap who had a problem that he didn’t know the answer to? He had bought this dictionary from Laugharne Books because he wanted answers! But he was no longer that innocent young man he had been at the beginning of the spring when he’d gone to Laugharne Books. There had been so many things this spring and summer that he’d wanted to say, and which his dictionary hadn’t been able to tell him. Wilfred had thought wrongly, very wrongly, that everything he needed to know would be inside that three-shilling, cloth-bound, bloody red dictionary from Laugharne Books. Bloody Laugharne Books! Bloody antiquarian bookshops! That’s what happened if you went to Carmarthenshire to do your shopping!

  He closed the book for the last time, smoothing the red covers, touching its bare blunted corners, and lost himself in his thoughts. Words went on for ever. And it was strange how the most important moments in life required one to speak, to say what one felt. What I need, he thought, is another kind of dictionary, one that tells me what to say when I don’t know what to say. Wilfred wondered what words such a dictionary would have. Phrases such as ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘Forgive me,’ – even that most difficult of phrases, ‘I was wrong.’ It wouldn’t be a very big dictionary, maybe even only one page with a list entitled, Difficult Things to Say. The words he really needed were the ones his heart spoke. ‘I don’t love you.’ ‘I made a mistake.’ ‘Please tell me the truth.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘I want you.’ The words he had needed were so simple, any child could speak them. They were simple words to write and spell. Big words, clever words – all those words beginning with A – were rather grand, too grand really and unnecessary. When would he ever need the word avocado in Narberth?

  Wilfred ran his hand through his hair. It was sufficient, more than enough, to speak plainly, to say what was in his heart. And that wasn’t about long words with lots of syllables. It was about simple words. And courage. It wasn’t the words he knew, it was the words he spoke that mattered. And it was about being honest.

  Awake in the depth of the night, Flora decided go outside, take some air. She pulled on her cotton dressing-gown, found her shoes and went and sat on the dewy lawn. There was clover and camomile among the roughly scythed grass, the moon was getting fuller and there were many stars. She felt doubt creeping over her, like a thick, damp blanket. With Albert there had been certainty. And also with Wilfred – until now. She was used to knowing herself with clarity: this is where she was from, this is whom she loved, and this is what she wanted. She didn’t like doubt, didn’t like the effort it took.

  She carefully picked a daisy, which was closed against the night, its petals folded tightly and protectively around its yellow centre. She ripped away one pink-tinged petal. He loves me, then another, he loves me not, then another, I love him, I love him not. She would let the daisy decide, trust the wisdom of the flower and the force of nature which pushed it out of the earth. Sometimes there was a way forward and sometimes there wasn’t. She didn’t know the way now. She would let nature tell her.

  ‘Flora?’ her mother called, lifting up a sash window and looking out. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just thinking about things.’

  ‘Come inside, cariad, it’s damp out there.’

  ‘I will now in a minute.’ Flora heard the swish of the window closing.

  Would she love Wilfred? Would he love her? And leave Grace? How? Why? One couldn’t force love. Love was like the plants that came out of the earth, like the flowers and the trees. It could be for a season, like the daisy, or it could last longer than a lifetime, like the trees, like the regal beech with the rope swing on which she, her mam and no doubt her grandmother, had played, lying on their tummies on the driftwood seat and kicking themselves backwards and forwards. The tree must have watched generations of her family live and grow and die.

  Flora put her hand on the grass. Love came out of the earth like a will-o’-the-wisp that danced away in the breeze, or, if it stayed, it grew roots and reached up to the sky and spread its leaves. One could attempt to garden, sow seed, bed cuttings and bend over the earth and call the plants to grow, but nature itself was the gardener.

  Flora would not push or force Wilfred, nor tempt him; Wilfred must come of his own accord and she would or would not accept him, although she could not imagine how his situation could change so that she could accept him. She would do nothing but wait and see what, if anything, could grow in such compromised ground.

  Wilfred was standing in front of the counter, deliberating in his head over the right words: the arrangement of an audience … It would be an auspicious occasion if one … and beginning to feel muddled. He could use a verse from a poem, but it was best to be careful with poetry. Flora might mistakenly think he had written the poem himself, or maybe she wouldn’t understand the lines because poetry was often so unclear. Goodness knows what poetry meant, half the time. That poem about every hair of the head being numbered sounded as if every single hair had a number on it, which didn’t make sense at all. The plain words of his own choosing would surely be better. He straightened his tie. Plain words, he told himself, then dictated aloud.

  ‘Saturday. Wilfred.’

  ‘Saturday, stop, Wilfred, stop,’ Willie the postmaster repeated.

  But Flora might not want to see him again. It was so difficult to form the question because he feared her answer. And if she said no? He blew his nose into his handkerchief with a great trumpet. Then Wilfred straightened his cuffs.

  Perhaps Saturday, Wilfred was a bit too plain, he thought, watching Willie type. It was very curt. And unromantic. Maybe this straight talking could go too far, he realized with a flush. Then again, it wasn’t so much what he said as whether Flora would understand, and he thought she would. Flora would know that he meant the cottage – their cottage – and that he wanted to meet her there. If he’d been really plain speaking, said exactly what he’d meant, he would have told the postmaster to type:

  Dearest comma Flora stop please meet me in our cottage comma the one I think of as ours comma in the cove comma this Saturday at one o’clock because I want to be with you stop, love comma, Wilfred, stop. Mind, that would have cost a bob or two. And he would have been most embarrassed saying all that to the postmaster – it was enough to make a chap blush.

  ‘That’ll be the standard price,’ Willie stated, adding, ‘do you’s want the addressee to receive it on a greetings telegram? A new style’s just come in; it’s got some fancy drawings of leaves on it and a gold border. Very nice it is and all.’

  ‘No, no,’ responded Wilfred. ‘A plain GPO telegram is sufficient.’

  Willie began looking in a drawer under the counter.

  ‘Yes. A plain telegram will do the job just as well – more ways of killing a cat than stuffing the bugger with cream,’ said Willie. ‘Nice and cosy in here, isn’t it? That’s the new central heating system for you. Worth the sixty pounds.’

  ‘Yes, central heating,’ Wilfred replied absentmindedly.

  ‘Busy day tomorrow,’ Willie added with a proud sigh. ‘I’m giving telephone instructions lessons in Narberth Intermediate School.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Wilfred
, still preoccupied. The important thing was that Flora understood the message. ‘A plain telegram will do nicely,’ he repeated.

  He hadn’t known what certainty was until he met Flora. He remembered back to when he was last with her. He had told her everything. It had been as if a dam within him had broken and a deluge released. Would Flora love him after all that truth: brutal, hopeless truth? Would she? Would she still love him? For Flora, hearing what he said must have been like walking barefoot on broken glass, each harsh fact like a new fragment of glass for her bare-soled foot to stand on. Each revelation would be cutting into her, hurting her, making her bleed somewhere inside, somewhere tender. And she had lost her camera in the sea. And she wouldn’t kiss him when they said goodbye. So Wilfred sent the telegram, clear that he had used the right words, but knowing that Flora probably wouldn’t come.

  On Saturday Wilfred entered the cottage at the cove with great trepidation. Flora wasn’t there. So he began waiting, dearly hoping she would come. His heart was racing, though each moment seemed an eternity. He knew he would wait all afternoon, all night, that within himself he would wait days, weeks, years, a lifetime – as long as it took for this woman to come to him.

  He had been waiting almost three hours, and was upstairs sitting on the floorboards, peering out through the moth-strewn window at the sea and the soaring gulls when he heard the door jolt open. He jumped up and walked straight across the landing to the top of the stairs, almost not daring to look. There was Flora in a cream linen dress, looking up at him, holding a wicker basket in her hand. Wilfred closed his eyes and felt himself reel with relief. She had come.

  He didn’t know what to say. He had thought about what he would say to her – if she came – thought about it in the barber’s, in Mrs Evans’s public house at the Conduit and all of the preceding days, yet no words – not the right words – had come to him.

  ‘Come,’ she said, turning and walking out of the door. Wilfred bounded down the stairs, took his hat from the three-legged chair and followed Flora, who was now heading down towards the sea. When they reached the cliff path Wilfred could see that the cove was empty. It was nearly always empty and he didn’t understand why, not really. No one, it seemed, apart from him and Flora – at first separately and now together – came here. The sea and the sky were still and beautiful, and there was the immense curve of Welsh wilderness and beauty. Wilfred was grateful that the day-trippers visited Saundersfoot instead to eat Sidoli ice cream or to Tenby to eat a Knickerbocker Glory at Fecci’s, and marvel at the orange lifeboat on top of its timber ramp. The world left the cove for Wilfred and Flora.