they were both pictured in the postcard.
‘No,’ the woman who answered the door said. She wiped dough off her hands on to her apron. ‘No one has gone to meet the Good Lord in Amroth.’ The woman was holding a battered spatula in her swollen hand and Wilfred could smell Welsh cakes; she would have heated up the family bake stone and be making cakes for the Sabbath.
‘No. I don’t know anything about that now,’ she said warily, pushing her thin grey hair behind her ears. She was uncomfortable, as if Wilfred was the Grim Reaper turning up unannounced and asking her to bring out her dead.
‘But I’m to pick up a body at the cottage in the cove. A message was sent,’ Wilfred replied.
‘The cottage? You mean the one at the top of the hill? That’s been empty these last – oh, six or seven years. You’ll not find anyone up there, by damn; they’re all long dead and gone. Buried already! Are you certain you’ve got the right address?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Wilfred replied. ‘I’d better get up there and see if I can find out what’s happening. Thank you for your help, mind.’
Wilfred knew the cottage the woman meant. It had run to rack and ruin and used to belong to a father and son who’d not come back from the Front. The mother had died a while back – probably of heartbreak, Wilfred thought. That was very common, to die of a broken heart – he saw it often in his work. The husband went first, quick as a flash, then the wife followed, sometimes a year to the day. Most often – Wilfred didn’t know why – it was two years later that the wife got sick and gave up the flesh.
Wilfred left the Super Ford at the roadside and walked up the hill and through the copse. It was a slippery, muddy path and he had to concentrate on balancing. The light was flickering through the new leaves. There were many bluebells, daffodils and yellow primroses. Butterflies flitted around the nettles. Someone had called to him, Wilfred realized as he trudged up the hill. The front door of the cottage was lime-washed green but the paint was now bubbled and flaked. He pushed the door open and there, sitting in the dusky light among the grass and moss and dandelions that were growing through the damp earth in the now ownerless and empty cottage, was Flora. Flora, whose father he’d buried this last month, whose mother had forbidden him to take tea with her. It was Flora who had called him. He was startled all over again by her beauty. She looked vulnerable sitting on the ground; it was her courage, Wilfred realized, in asking him here that was making her vulnerable.
Wilfred opened his mouth to say something then understood that this wasn’t a time for talking. Flora had initially met his eyes but was looking away now. How could a woman, Wilfred marvelled, be so demure and so desirable all at the same time? A man could never do that. And what should he do? It was slightly chilly so he took off his suit jacket and walked the few steps towards the blanket; Flora moved over to make space for him. Before sitting beside her, he placed his jacket gently over her shoulders. They sat for a moment while the door of the cottage rattled in the wind. Wilfred got up to secure it with a large stone that lay near the entrance – he could barely keep still because he was so excited. He sat down again.
He turned to Flora. Flora met his gaze and he gently put his hand to her hair and stroked it until the clip of her silver earring came undone and the earring fell on to the blanket by her leg. Wilfred picked it up carefully and put it in Flora’s hand. This is the first time I am touching her hand, he thought.
Wilfred positioned himself round and lay back, suggesting with the pull of his hands that Flora lie down with him. She lay down willingly. Now Wilfred was on his back and Flora was on her side, her head on his shoulder, and in his arms.
Wilfred traced the outline of her ear beneath her hair. Stroking her hair he was reminded of a poem he had learned at school by that Welsh priest, Manley Gerald Hopkins – was that his name? – no,