annoyance. ‘If I’d have known I wouldn’t have bought it. I won’t give Wilfred Price house room from now on.’
Grace, in earnest hope, was wearing her yellow dress again, believing the sight and memory of her clothing would inspire and ignite Wilfred’s love and passion. Now she felt silly, pretending the lamb wasn’t raw, eating dinner in yellow silk, with each mouthful she ate emptying her plate until more of the Willow Pattern and another unhappy family were exposed.
‘You’ve had a long face on since we sat at the table, Grace Amelia; no wonder Wilfred doesn’t want you with a face like that.’
Grace cut into a piece of honey-glazed carrot. She thought of the queen bee in her hive with her hundred, hundred lovers – all unswervingly devoted to her for the one whole summer of their short lives. But she wasn’t a queen bee and Wilfred wasn’t a drone.
‘Grace Amelia, sit up properly. No man will ever look at you if you slouch like that.’
Perhaps Wilfred was held up by a sudden death, a body to collect, Grace thought, straightening her back.
‘Would you think Wilfred has gone to collect a body?’ her father asked, as if reading Grace’s mind. He too, must be searching for a simple, practical answer as to why Wilfred wasn’t here.
‘Who could that be, now?’
Grace suspected her father was going through the names of his older and frailer patients. But it was unlikely, Grace knew, that there would be death in Narberth that her father didn’t know about. Usually within minutes of someone dying people rushed to her father, rapping on the front door, calling out his name, even when it was obvious their loved one was dead, not ill. It was as if they hoped the doctor could do something, cure mortality the way he cured sickness.
‘I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,’ her mother stated.
Grace squashed the cold leeks against the silver fork. The sense of insecurity that had resided in her these last few weeks now grew bigger and quivered within her and she felt nauseous.
‘What will the explanation be, I wonder?’ her father said aloud. ‘What could it be?’
It was now late Thursday afternoon, lunch with her parents and without Wilfred was over, and the light was fading. Grace was watching Mrs Hilda Prout who, with a sense of ceremony, drew the heavy, tasselled drapes.
‘Not a soul must see,’ Mrs Prout mouthed, opening a portmanteau and taking from it an engraved box. Grace had heard rumours that Mrs Hilda Prout kept a crystal ball though no one Grace knew had ever actually seen it. Motes of dust leaped in the air as she opened the box and unwrapped a crimson scarf. Grace was surprised at how large the crystal ball was.
‘There were whispers you had a crystal ball,’ she remarked, crossing Mrs Prout’s palm with silver. Mrs Prout held the ball in both hands as if it were a divine entity.
‘I have had it since I was a small child – not that I used it then. My grandmother taught me to keep it hidden from human eyes and never gaze into it until I could endure a mystery. Until then, all one can see in a crystal ball is empty glass, fingerprints or nightmares …’
Mrs Hilda Prout put her face close to the ball, then closer still until her eyeball was against it. Grace winced squeamishly. Was Mrs Hilda Prout not right in the head? Many people came to visit her because she was a charmer and known in Narberth for curing warts by rubbing them with a live black snail while murmuring her rhyme,
Wart begone on this snail’s back,
Go and never more come back.
Not that there was anything at all unusual about being a charmer. But crystal balls? They were for gypsies, not Welsh women who read the Bible and attended the Bethesda Chapel. Somewhere a door banged. Grace felt uneasy.
‘I see you are now woman enough to keep a secret,’ Mrs Hilda Prout stated, staring Grace straight in the eye, and Grace very slightly flinched.
This afternoon in Mrs Prout’s darkened parlour with its wallpaper of trellis roses and the ornate Victorian furniture, Grace didn’t think about what the Revd Waldo Williams would say. Grace wanted answers, certainty, and her future known. And she wanted normality. Mrs Prout had said she would marry Wilfred, and she wanted to hear her say it again – reassure her in clear, certain, straightforward words that she was loved by Wilfred