A bird flew past the window, creating a quick shadow. Dr Reece picked up his prescription notepad and moved it purposefully to the centre of his desk. Wilfred could see he had been dismissed because of his perceived ignorance and stupidity, and that the doctor was about to resume his paperwork.
‘I won’t prove it to you, Doctor Reece, nor to the magistrate at the courthouse.’ Dr Reece looked at him as if he was dull. Wilfred continued: ‘Grace will admit it.’
The grandfather clock ticked. In a couple of minutes it would chime quarter past three. Almost time for afternoon surgery. Wilfred looked at Dr Reece but Dr Reece looked away. Feigning disinterest, he picked up his pen again, unclipped the lid and held the nib above the notepad. He is going to write something, Wilfred thought, but the pen stayed poised above the paper for one, two, three, four ticks of the clock, and Wilfred realized that Reece didn’t know what to write or what to say.
Dinner that evening was the first occasion the four of them had eaten together since the wedding. Oddly, Mrs Reece wasn’t slamming the crockery down on the table. Grace had often wondered why the dinner-plates had not smashed, so vehemently in the past week had her mother slapped them on the table, splotting the gravy over the table linen, then wailing at the mess it had made, not once conceding that she had caused the splodges, not admitting her own culpability.
Bone china, Grace thought, looking at her dinner-plate, breaks less often than the bones it is made of, which was good, as her mother’s tight, hard grasp would have shattered weaker plates.
Grace knew Wilfred was at the dinner-table not because he wanted to stay married: Wilfred still wanted what he had wanted for several months – his freedom from her. Wilfred was here this evening as he thought her mother and her father couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything to her while he, her husband, her protector of sorts, was sitting at the dinner-table. Wilfred was different now. He’d changed. He’d become stronger in the way he spoke and in how he held himself. Wilfred had even sat next to Grace. On the other side of Wilfred there was the empty chair for Madoc, her brother. The chair was waiting for when he next came back on leave from the Welsh Guards.
With her husband here, Grace hoped her parents wouldn’t proselytize, that there would be no rage – no sharp words from her mother. Grace knew Wilfred was buying her time, sitting with her while her parents, dumbstruck, reeled through the first and worst of their shock. By the time Wilfred had gone, when he was no longer sitting here eating chicken, boiled potatoes and mashed swede, her parents would – she hoped – be slightly calmer. He was protecting her from them. That is what husbands do, Grace realized, even unwilling husbands.
‘Please could you pass the salt,’ Wilfred said, ‘salt for the meat.’ Neither Dr Reece nor his wife moved, Mrs Reece pretending not to hear, Dr Reece sitting stone still, like the statue of a biblical king. Grace reached across her father.
‘Excuse me,’ she said faintly, and picked up the small, three-legged saltcellar.
‘Thank you,’ said Wilfred, shaking the salt liberally on the chicken pieces. ‘Very nice dinner, Mrs Reece.’ Grace thought that Wilfred didn’t eat proper meals very often; that he and his da probably didn’t know how to cook.
Wilfred was the only one around the table able to eat. Grace felt nauseous, as she did continually. Her mother, who was even thinner, even sharper these last few weeks, was pretending to starve herself in protest at the injustice meted out to her through her daughter. Her place setting was empty. And her father? He looked too lost to eat. Her father wasn’t used to losing or being told he was wrong, but Grace supposed he knew enough not to fight against a man strengthened by the power of the truth. It would be futile. Wilfred, though, ate his dinner like a man offered a reprieve. He put the last potato on to his fork with his knife, pushed it around in the gravy and put it into his mouth. A lesser man, Grace thought, could be triumphant now because he had been wronged, but Wilfred seemed humble, just hungry.
‘Thank you, Mrs Reece. That was very nice,’ he said. Grace saw that Wilfred was grateful for the meal and that he had an