The World is a Wedding (24 page)

‘My dear, you are a healthy young woman whose nerves are strained. I can think of no other explanation. Although it does happen—and it is peculiar to the female sex and the hysterical—that there are those women who can believe they are pregnant or indeed suffer the symptoms of pregnancy although they're medically unproven to be pregnant. It is rightly called a phantom pregnancy. As if the woman is pregnant with a ghost. Do you understand my meaning?' Dr. Reece stood with his back against the surgery wall that was wallpapered a confident peacock blue.

Flora had hoped it would be simple to describe Grace's symptoms, receive advice and expert opinion and, most importantly, a prescription for some medicine. Wilfred had had the idea early this morning that she should visit Dr. Reece as a way to get a prescription for the correct medicine for Grace. She watched the doctor slowly pacing his surgery. She didn't know who the child's father was, but she saw the strong resemblance to Grace's child in the eyes and the shape of the brow.

Dr. Reece glanced at Flora quizzically and sceptically. She could see him thinking, perhaps putting two and two together.

‘Dr. Reece, if I was unwell, what medicine would you recommend?'

‘I recommend none at all, Mrs. Price. You are a nervous, perhaps neurotic woman.'

‘Yes, but if I was, you would recommend perhaps that I . . .' Flora held out the sentence for him to finish it. She attempted to look hopeful and expectant so as to encourage the doctor to say the name of a medicine, any medicine that might help Grace, his own daughter.

‘Well, had you had an infection, I would prescribe
Ovedoxs
three times a day, although it's rarely efficacious, and complete bed rest and very skilled medical supervision. Infections can be extremely serious, most notably in postpartum women—that is, women who have recently given birth, Mrs. Price.'

‘
Ovedoxs
?' Flora repeated the name.

‘Yes, but I don't recommend those things to you. Grief can disturb the mind, Mrs. Price, and make us think what is not there is there, if you comprehend my meaning.' He sighed. ‘You are to go home and put your feet up, smoke—modern science is showing that smoking cigarettes is beneficial for health—do your housewifely chores and care for your husband. And in the fullness of time you will have another child; children invariably come to a young and healthy married couple. Because an unfortunate experience happened to you once doesn't mean it will happen again.'

Flora could feel the thin cover of her pretence slipping and tears rise in her eyes. The grandmother clock on the mantelpiece chimed half past three. Dr. Reece looked pointedly at the imposing clock to signify the appointment was over.

‘Now, Mrs. Price, if you will excuse me. If there is any situation of medical concern, I trust you will not hesitate to telephone me immediately,' he said sternly. He sat back down in his chair. ‘It won't be necessary to charge you for the consultation.'

‘Thank you, Dr. Reece.'

 

When Wilfred arrived that same morning at the Owens' farm on Providence Hill, he was expecting Mr. Owen to be heavy, but when he saw how much weight the man had lost in the days since he'd turned yellow—and he was truly yellow—he knew he would be able to lift him in the coffin easily.

‘I have a clean bedsheet here,' Mrs. Owen said. ‘I ironed and starched it four days ago in preparation. It's for a winding sheet.'

‘Very well done, Mrs. Owen.' Only two weeks ago, Wilfred had seen Mr. Owen in the Salutation Inn, leaning on the piano, drinking stout. He was right as rain and certainly not this extraordinary colour. It had been a quick death.

One of Mr. Owen's sons came forward. He had a stunned look as if he'd been slapped in the face by a plank. Wilfred could have cradled Mr. Owen alone and lifted him into the coffin, but didn't want to do anything ungainly with the corpse in front of the next-of-kin, so it was best if the sons helped.

‘You take the feet.' Wilfred guided and put the young man's hands under the wasted body. ‘That's right,' he encouraged, although Mr. Owen's arms flopped against the side of the coffin with a bang. One son gasped.

‘My sons are shocked,' Mrs. Owen said simply. She stepped forward and arranged the winding sheet. Then the pine coffin with the body in it was placed on the parlour table.

‘We have visitors coming this afternoon,' she explained.

‘Of course. I'll leave the lid there,' said Wilfred, propping it up next to three lucky horseshoes tacked to a beam.

‘The Reverend Waldo Williams said the funeral would be this coming Thursday. Is there anything I need to do with the body?'

‘Keep the room well ventilated and the lid on at night and when you haven't got visitors. Anything untoward or leakages, then do telephone my office immediately.' Wilfred didn't have an office: he had the Bakelite telephone screwed to the wall by the front door, he wrote invoices on the kitchen table, and did his thinking—well, everywhere—but ‘office' sounded formal, and formality was what one wanted from an undertaker. ‘Good day to you, Mrs. Owen. And my sincerest condolences.'

As Wilfred stooped to leave the parlour, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the family arranged as if in a photograph, in what Flora would call a ‘still life'—with Mrs. Owen standing beside the coffin, her sons side-by-side at its foot and the father laid out, still, and at peace.

Wilfred got into his hearse, touched the walnut veneer fondly and put the key in the ignition. Mrs. Owen, particularly, had the wisdom and the years to accept death, to take it in her stride without adding drama to it. But Wilfred couldn't help feeling a new sadness, one that he'd had since his own baby had died, an understanding that as he buried one person it was as if, in some intangible way, he were burying his child. He had been an undertaker for almost nine years, and it wasn't until now that he understood what a funeral was.

He sighed. All those
B
words—
baccivorous
,
bice-blue
and
biliverdin
,
bilateral
,
bimanous
,
Baconian
,
bathykolpian
—for nothing. How could their baby be born dead? It was as if birth and death were stuck together, when they should be separated: birth at the beginning of life, death at the end, and seventy years in between. ‘And the days of our years are threescore years and ten,' the Bible said. That was the time allotted to man.

Then he thought about Grace and wondered if Flora had got a prescription from Dr. Reece this morning. Wilfred turned the key and started the engine of the hearse. At least he could be kind to Grace now, make amends for his unkindness to her; at least he could lift that weight from his mind. As long as he didn't have to bury her.

 

‘This is it,' Flora said.

Grace was lying in the bed in Wilfred's father's room.

‘It says “To be taken three times a day”.' Flora unscrewed the small jar of medicine and spooned the pink powder into a glass of water. ‘He didn't say what it did; only that this is what he would prescribe. I bought it in the apothecary.'

‘Thank you,' said Grace, drinking the powdered water.

‘And you need bed rest.'

There was a knock at the door downstairs. Grace and Flora Myffanwy looked up and waited. There was a knock again.

‘Wilfred has gone to collect a body,' Flora Myffanwy said. ‘I had better go and see who it is. It might be a customer for the wallpaper shop.' She looked at the baby, who was fast asleep in the bed. ‘I won't be long.'

Grace heard Flora call hello and her feet running lightly down the stairs, heard a woman's voice say something. Grace tried hard to listen but didn't recognise the softly spoken voice. She wondered if the woman downstairs would know her; she surely would. Grace huddled very carefully under the blankets, not daring to disturb the baby, who was sleeping with his curled hands either side of his head.

Her father. Flora had seen her father this morning. Grace remembered the last time she had seen him. It was at Narberth station. He had given her an envelope and she had opened it on the train.
Write
, it said, that's all. She hadn't written. She had wanted to but didn't know what to say. If she couldn't speak the truth then she couldn't say anything, and felt condemned to silence. Only truth would loosen her tongue.

Grace pulled the blanket up. Her hip bones ached, her head ached and she was continually hot then cold. Her mouth was dry and so she drank some water, but as soon as she took a sip, one mouthful was too much. She pulled the blankets over her head and buried herself under them. She moved restlessly onto her side and wrapped herself round the limp body of her small child, his chest moving up and down rapidly. Even her eyelids ached. Something was raging through her body, wracking her with heat, then making her shiver. Her teeth ached and her hair felt thin and flat to the touch. She needed to see a doctor. She needed her family; she needed to see her father. She knew he would be alarmed if he knew how sick she was, and he was rarely alarmed. She needed medicine. Sitting up clumsily in bed, she drank some more of the powedered water then lay down and fell into a fetid, drugged and disturbed sleep.

 

‘Mrs. Probert!' Flora said with surprise, opening the door.

‘Is it an awkward moment? You said if I ever wanted to visit . . .' Mrs. Probert asked hesitantly. ‘I know it was months ago now.'

‘No, not at all,' said Flora with feeling, but with some anxiety. ‘There's lovely to see you again.' Mrs. Probert had a fresh bruise on her face.

‘Please sit down. Would you like to take a cup of tea?' asked Flora, topping up the teapot with boiling water from the copper kettle. She hoped that the baby wouldn't cry, or that Mrs. Probert wouldn't hear it. And if the baby cried, Flora thought, she would say nothing and smile.

‘I made a pot of tea just now; it should still be hot.' Flora placed the teapot, which was round and friendly in shape, on the clean tablecloth. Her mother had given her the tea set for their wedding present. She upended the teapot and the leaves span outwards in a steaming circle of boiling water.

‘Would you like some milk? Oh . . . would you mind if we had black tea, as I have hardly any milk,' she said, remembering the milk was for Grace and the baby. ‘Perhaps you would like sugar in your tea?'

Mrs. Probert nodded gratefully.

Flora opened the door so that the bustle from the street outside might mask any sounds from inside.

‘Your kitchen is very clean,' Mrs. Probert remarked, looking around, spotting the ball of dough resting in a bowl on the kitchen table. ‘Don't let me interrupt you with your baking. Or shall I help you?' So the two women stood side by side making and patting Welsh cakes, placing them on the bakestone, turning them when they were golden, and filling the kitchen with the warm aroma of butter, allspice and nutmeg.

‘Thank you for coming to warn me, on the day of the tug-of-war,' Mrs. Probert began. Flora looked at the woman's battered face. Wilfred had told her that Mr. Probert had played violin in chapel when he was young. He seemed so angry and brutish, Flora couldn't imagine him having the sensitivity to play music.

‘I walked around Narberth today,' Mrs. Probert continued, with some hope in her voice.

‘Are you getting stronger?' Flora asked, remembering why Mrs. Probert was walking around the town. She noticed that the woman's fingernails were bitten down to the quick.

Mrs. Probert nodded. ‘I have a plan. I walk around Narberth every day, and when I am in the house and Mr. Probert is out, I wear the lipstick you gave me. I want to stay strong for the future and I want to feel like a woman, even if only a little.' She patted a stray sultana into the Welsh-cake mixture.

‘I'm so sorry for giving you my lipstick and the trouble it caused you,' Flora said.

‘No, sorry I am. I only hope Wilfred can forgive Mr. Probert. I heard he gave Wilfred a bloodied nose and made a terrible mess of the new shop.'

‘It was all easily tidied,' Flora replied. She put some more uncooked Welsh cakes on the bakestone. There was a spark and a refinement to Mrs. Probert; Flora could see it, even though her clothes were old and she was so thin and worn.

‘And you have had troubles of your own,' Mrs. Probert added.

Flora paused, not knowing how to talk about what had happened to her.

‘Would you like to help yourself to a Welsh cake?' she asked, still unable to talk about the experience she'd had. ‘They will be ready to eat in a minute or two.' There was a cough from upstairs.

‘Is Wilfred here? Mrs. Probert asked, surprised. ‘Am I disturbing you?'

‘Not at all, only doing the things that need to be done,' said Flora, putting some freshly-baked Welsh cakes from the cooling-rack onto a cake-plate.

‘May I tell you something? Between you, me and the doorpost?' Mrs. Probert asked.

‘Of course.'

‘Could you shut the door?' Flora went and pulled the back door to and sat at the table with Mrs. Probert.

‘Mr. Probert gets very angry, and into blind rages,' she began. ‘And when he's drunk too much beer at the Dragon Inn he gets terrible headaches and sits with his head in his hands, crying. Dr. Reece says he drinks too much.'

Flora nodded, listening. She heard a sound from upstairs that she pretended not to notice.

‘He does drink too much,' Mrs. Probert added. ‘Dr. Reece is right.' She pushed a lank strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Dr. Reece says he should stop.'

Flora didn't see how Mrs. Probert could have a better life if Mr. Probert didn't stop drinking.

‘So if I am strong and feel like a woman, I could marry again,' she said unexpectedly.

Was Mr. Probert seeing another woman and Mrs. Probert was going to divorce him for adultery?