lost and lacking in direction as she was. The deckchair irritated Grace – the ticking was scratchy – and the lackadaisical bee irritated her. Perhaps she could take the bee, grab it in the palm of her hand, encase it and squash it while it buzzed frantically and abruptly stung her. It would be easy to crush. She, Grace, could also crush, kill and cause death. Perhaps the violence of the bee’s panic would ignite the fire of feelings she knew she was holding deep inside her.
Grace twisted, edging her hand near the resting bee. She could just cup her hand over it … but the bee would sting her and she might jump and yelp and cry and rage, might ultimately erupt with everything pent up within her. She would issue such an almighty scream that she – and Narberth – would explode ferociously into an ever-expanding nothingness. She doubted that Narberth, even the world itself, could contain the rage and pain and the shame that she felt sitting here in the deckchair in the back garden. The honeybee, still resting on the beech frame, buzzed obliviously. She watched it do a quiet two-step on the wood.
But perhaps, Grace thought, Wilfred loved her really. And it was all a mistake. At that thought, her heart soared and it seemed as if the sun suddenly burst out from behind the clouds and illuminated the day. But Wilfred had meant it. He had repeated it. He said he didn’t want to marry her not once, but twice, maybe three times when hearing it just once made her feel hope itself was lost. She closed her eyes while her shame attacked her and humiliation seeped out of her skin. Why didn’t Wilfred want to marry her? She needed to know. Although the why was no longer as burning a question as the one that now preoccupied her: was her monthly period late?
2
Mister Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals
The following morning Flora Myffanwy Edwards was in her bedroom bending down tucking in her bedsheet when she heard an ominous thud downstairs; there was a moment of silence before her mother’s voice rose up.
‘Decimus? Decimus!’ Then, ‘Flora! Come quick. Decimus!’
Alarmed by the anxiety in her mother’s voice, Flora stood up straight. She ran swiftly down both flights of stairs, one hand on the banister, the other on the wall to balance herself. In the hallway her mother was leaning over her father, who was slumped on the red hall rug, lying on his stomach.
‘He fell. He was talking, then he fell. He was right as rain, telling me about a carthorse he’d seen with a lame leg,’ her mother gabbled by way of explanation, ‘then he collapsed, just like that. Dihuna! Bryn. Dihuna! Wake up!’
Flora looked at her father lying prostrate. Her mind was suddenly extremely clear.
‘I’ll get a doctor.’ She stepped carefully around her father. She must sprint to the post office. No, she would cycle; it was quicker. She dashed round the back to the outhouse, jumped on her bicycle and set off. The rubber pedals were heavy at first, resisting her weight, but once she cycled up the incline it would be downhill, and then she would go much faster.
At the post office, she flung open the garden gate, crying out, ‘Mr Lewis – I need to use the telephone!’
The post-office master appeared from round the side of his house holding a cluster of India rubber bands. ‘What is it, Flora?’
‘It’s Father, he’s fallen.’
Mr Lewis, sensing Flora’s panic, immediately opened the red front door of the Stepaside post office, which was a one-roomed building tacked on the side of his cottage, and rushed to the wall telephone. He dialled one, nought, nought.
The telephone rang sonorously. Eventually a voice answered, ‘Operator speaking.’
‘Operator, it’s Bryn Lewis.’
‘Morning, Bryn, how are you then? I’ve heard they’ve put central heating in the post—’
‘Doctor Hedley. Immediately, please.’
‘Doctor Hedley’s not here, he’s gone to the British Empire Exhibition in London. There’s no doctor in Stepaside, you’ll have to get the doctor from Narberth.’
‘Narberth? But that’s almost seven miles away!’ exclaimed Flora, overhearing.
‘I’m connecting you right now.’ Flora heard a telephone bell reverberate feebly in the distance. She waited long seconds for someone on the other end to lift the receiver.
‘This is Narberth 102.’
‘We need a doctor. A doctor straight away,’ stated Mr Lewis. ‘At White Hook. On Cliff Road.’
Mrs Reece knew to write the address exactly.
‘Is that Kilgetty?’ she enquired.
‘No – further. Stepaside.’
A portentous voice came down the