that if he wanted to be a man about town, a man about Narberth and a purveyor of superior funerals, then there was a call for him to have some learning.
Wilfred knew the words for undertaking, the unusual words: pall, formaldehyde, catafalque, moment of committal and veronica, he even knew columbarium, but he wanted a better vocabulary. Vocabulary – that was a big word. There were big words in the dictionary. The answer, Wilfred realized, with the suddenness of inspiration, was to buy a dictionary and read it.
First thing the next morning, Wilfred caught the train to St Clears and from there the number 29 bus to Laugharne and, in the damp cellar of Laugharne Books under the lopsided staircase amid a mountain of books, found, with no help at all from Mr Rudyard Sackville – miserable bugger – an old dictionary with red cloth covers and no dust jacket. Wilfred read the gilt lettering on the front cover: The Concise English Dictionary: Literary, Scientific and Technical with Pronouncing List of Proper Names: Foreign Words & Phrases: Key to Names in Mythology & Fiction and Other Valuable Appendices. Also a Supplement of Words of Recent Occurrence. By Dr Charles Annund. And he felt confident that, with such a title, the dictionary would surely include all the words he should ever need and all the words that could answer all the questions in the world. It might even help him be somewhat kinder and wiser with ladies. There were green mould spots all over the endpapers, it smelled as mildewy as Laugharne Books itself and the silk ribbon was broken, but no matter. Nor was it a new dictionary, but words were words. They never changed, did they? thought Wilfred.
‘I’ll take this dictionary, please,’ he said to the very fat Mr Rudyard Sackville who was wearing a food-stained waist-jacket and slumbered behind a desk tottering with books. ‘I came from Narberth specially to get it.’
‘Three shillings,’ Mr Rudyard Sackville stated, and sighed hopelessly.
Wilfred counted out his shillings one by one, then said, ‘Thank you.’
The bookseller nodded regretfully and slumped back in his chair with a deep fatigue.
‘It’s useful to have a dictionary,’ enjoined Wilfred.
‘Who’s to say?’ Mr Rudyard Sackville replied, then asked, sighing, ‘What’s it for?’
‘Well, actually, to tell the truth, I thought I might read it.’
‘What’s it all for?’ the man mumbled.
There are happier buggers in the graveyard, Wilfred thought to himself.
The inscription on the inside cover read Presented to Caradoc Griffiths for Sunday School Attendance, in the Year of the Lord, 1892. PWLLGWAELOD Chapel. Then underneath someone had written, presumably Caradoc Griffiths in a less Christian moment:
Black is the raven and black is the rook
But blackest is the person who stealeth this book.
Steal not this book for fear of life
For the owner carries a carving knife.
Wilfred – once he’d bought it, of course – went straight home and immediately put a bold line straight though Caradoc and Griffiths and wrote his own name in obsidian ink in his best cursive hand, Wilfred Price, then added, UNDERTAKER so that the red dictionary was officially his. He could start reading it from the beginning at the letter A … well, he would think how he would do it, but for now he only knew that he would start.
Wilfred was full of purpose; he had some business he needed to attend to. The sun was on his broad neck and he was cycling powerfully. He could have pushed the bike up the hill instead of pedalling because the road was very steep – all the hills near the sea in Pembrokeshire were steep and it was many miles. But, well, Wilfred told himself, if Flora is wearing a dress, a flimsy summer dress that goes in at the waist and out at the … and her arms are bare and her wild brown hair loose, then it would be all to the best if he was physically exhausted. Even if Flora’s clothes and dark hair were very becoming, he resolved that he would: Not. Be. Overcome. There were many very attractive ladies in Narberth – some real tomatoes! – but he couldn’t be proposing to them all. He had learned that now, and felt another pang of remorse towards Grace. He dearly hoped she was well and no longer hurt.
Wilfred cycled arduously upwards, past clusters of bluebells by the hedgerow, a profusion of them in a clear, strong lilac colour. ‘Come on, Wilfred, come on!’ he said to himself. Heck, he thought,