The World is a Wedding by Wendy Jones Page A

difference.
    â€˜What are you having, Wilfred?’ Mrs. Cadwallader asked.
    â€˜Vegetable pastie, please.’
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    â€˜There’s busy you are knitting, dear,’ said Wilfred, coming into the kitchen, followed by his da, and putting a greaseproof paper bag on the table. ‘I’ve bought a pastie for a bite to eat. But come outside first and look at this cloud.’ Flora followed Wilfred out into the cold backyard, where he pointed to the sky: ‘That cloud looks like Jesus,’ Wilfred stated. ‘That one there, with the beard.’
    â€˜That one there?’ Flora asked, looking at the jumble of clouds above them.
    â€˜No, that one there. Don’t you think it looks like him, with a beard and a long white cloak?’
    â€˜It looks a little like a table.’
    â€˜And there was I, thinking it looked like Jesus . . . Come inside, my dear,’ Wilfred said after a moment. ‘I don’t want you catching cold.’
    â€˜I think . . .’ broached Flora Myffanwy, sitting back down in the kitchen.
    â€˜Yes, dear?’ said Wilfred eagerly.
    â€˜I would like to do all the baking here, instead of buying bread and pasties at the bakery.’
    Wilfred da’s looked down diplomatically at his shoes: there were obstacles to overcome.
    â€˜Certainly, dear,’ said Wilfred, wondering how on earth anyone could bake properly in their scullery but that was the thing he liked best about Flora Myffanwy: she was always saying unexpected things.
    â€˜I thought,’ continued Flora in her quiet, dignified way, ‘that I might clean the kitchen first.’
    Wilfred and his da looked at her, astonished. The kitchen was as black as balls. Wilfred couldn’t imagine it properly clean, yet Flora seemed willing—and even more importantly, able––to bring order and cleanliness to 11, Market Street. This lovely elegant lady whom he was so proud to call his wife was of her own volition offering to clear the somewhat chaotic kitchen. What had he done to deserve this? He thought with guilt of Grace, who had tried so hard to please him when she was his wife. Grace, for whom he had cared so little. A fragment of memory came to him of how she touched him one night and how he had almost—
almost—
consummated the marriage.
    â€˜I could buy you an apron!’ blurted Wilfred in an expression of gratitude to Flora as well as relief that he had not had conjugal relations with Grace, had been spared to have the life he now had. ‘And a dustpan and brush.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ Flora said gently.
    â€˜The dustpan and brush we have is not adequate,’ Wilfred stated. ‘On the admittedly rare occasions when I’ve used it, it’s shed bristles and I have made more mess than I’ve tidied.’ Wilfred smiled, then remembered that the dustpan had been brought to the house by his mother on her marriage, which was why it had not been replaced in the twenty-nine years since her death. His da could no more part with her rusted dustpan and brush with its straggle of bristles than he could part with his memories of her.
    â€˜Although we won’t replace it,’ said Wilfred quickly out of consideration for his da’s feelings. ‘We will buy a second dustpan and brush as well, so we have two. Is there anything else you need, dear? If there is, go straight to Mrs. Annie Evans at the Conduit Stores and put it on the tab. Do you need . . .?’ But he was unable to think of cleaning tools his wife might require. ‘The things that a housewife might need, you must get, dear. I know! How about a Whirlwind Suction Sweeper?’ he suggested, not caring that the cost of such a modern machine was the same price as two funerals, eager to do anything that would help Flora make this house her home.
    â€˜I’ll make a start soon,’ said Flora in her clear way.
    â€˜You start whenever you want, dear, and it