The old devils: a novel (14 page)

'what's the state of feeling about our new piece of sculpture?'

'Oh Christ,' said Alun as if before he could stop himself. 'Er ... actually we haven't discussed it, have we? It's not what I'd call my field. Gwen, you're good on art.'

'That's sweet of you, Alun. Well, it hasn't got any holes in it. You can say that much for it.'

A short guessing-game followed and ended with the disclosure that the start-to-finish, all-in cost of having the sculpture there was £98,000.

'Makes you think, doesn't it?' said Alun. 'You could get a couple of torpedoes for that.'

'Oh, surely they're much more expensive,' said Malcolm. 'I was reading -'

'To hell with it - half a bloody torpedo, then. A quarter, I don't care.'

'It's the principle of the thing,' said Gwen.

'If you don't mind,' croaked the questioner, 'could we forget about torpedoes for the moment and get back to the sculpture? You, Mr ... " he turned to Charlie, 'you haven't said anything yet.'

'No, well ... I thought it wasn't at all figurative,' said Charlie rather complacently.

'Is that all? Has nobody anything more, er, more, er, more constructive to put forward?'

Nobody had.

'So nobody here shares my feeling that the Brydan monument is an exciting breakthrough for all of us in this town?'

Like everyone else, Charlie at once ruled out the possibility of any son of irony being intended. There was general silence, with eyes on the floor, until Gwen said in a voice not intended to carry far, 'If you're going to call that, or anything like that, exciting, what do you call the late-night horror movie? When it's slightly above average?' She frowned and smiled as never before.

Alun nodded weightily. 'Very good point,' he said.

'My colleagues and I had hoped for a little bit of encouragement. Here we are going all out, fighting to bring the best in modem art to the people, to whom after all it belongs and not to any fancy elite, and people like you, educated people, don't want to know. You don't, do you? You're happier with your cosy, musty Victoriana. Safe I suppose it makes you feel. Anything challenging you give a wide berth to. Well, I take leave to doubt whether your reaction is typical. Good day to you.'

The man of position jerked his head at his aides to signal a move in a way that recalled a boss in a different kind of film, returning from a few paces off long enough to add,

'You're entitled to your opinions, it goes without saying, but they're clearly based on ignorance, whereas the artist in question was selected and instructed by a panel of experts. Kindly take due note of that.'

When he was clear, Alun said with great emphasis, his voice shaking slightly, 'It's all right when little turds and turdettes, especially the latter, go on about exciting breakthroughs in advertisements and arts pages, well of course it isn't
all right
but we're used to it, we've got our defences against it. And it was all right when buggers like that were fighting to stop
Desire under the Elms
being put on at the Royal and going all out to get Joyce and Lawrence
and T. S
.
Eliot
off the shelves of the public library . You're too young to remember a bloody old fool and by the bye frightful shit called Bevan Hopkin who called the police in at a Renoir exhibition at the Trevor Knudsen - in 1953, not 1903. That's how he was supposed to behave. Imagine him in favour of anything challenging. Imagine him
knowing the word.
When Labour councillors in South Wales start blathering about taking modern art to the people everyone's in deep trouble. Come back, Bevan Hopkin, all, repeat all, is forgiven. Well,
Iesu Crist
and no mistake.'

'Grist,'
said Gwen.
'Iesu Grist.
With the soft mutation.’

‘Oh, bugger it. I'm going to give up. Had enough. Oh God here's another lot,' said Alun, turning to Charlie. 'We'd better be off soon.'

'I'm off now but I'll be back.'

Charlie just made it round the flank of the mayoral contingent and, picking up a fresh glass on the way, dodged into the lavatory. Here he waited for the two already present to leave, filled the glass at a basin, locked himself in a compartment and let go the ultimate coughing-fit that had been hanging about him for the last hour. Somebody else came in and used the urinal during it, groaning a lot as if in sympathy. He drank more water and took some deep breaths, feeling much weaker but clearer in the head, like a man in a book by John Buchan after an attack of fever. On departure he noticed that, as he put it later, the place reeked like an Alexandria knocking-shop. He walked up the corridor, on carpet very luxurious to the eye but somehow disagreeable underfoot, until he reached a row of telephones separated from the outside only by small roofs shaped like Romanesque arches.

Victor answered his ring and sounded pleased. 'How are you, Charles? How reads the latest bulletin?'

'One of the more magical days. Look, er, I'm afraid I shan't be able to manage the lunch idea. There's a pub-crawl thing in Harriston I said I'd go on I'd completely forgotten. Sorry.'

'Charlie, I'm afraid I've no idea what you're talking about. A lunch ... ?'

'You asked me to try to get some selected shits together and bring them -'

'Oh, that. Never mind, it was just a thought. Another time. How was Posturing Ponce?'

'Quite good, actually. Well, he was terrible at the unveiling thing, but came back stoutly later. There was a collector's-item Welsh-American queer there he brushed off in fine style.'

'Brushed him off? You mean he -'

'No, no. He invited Alun to go and stay with him in his bachelor quarters in Pennsylvania or Philadelphia or wherever it is.'

'I suppose there's no chance of him going? Because that really would be a turn-up for the book.' For a moment Victor's voice went falsetto with laughter. 'PP in Pennsylvania with one of that lot.' That lot stayed in the third person in dealings between the brothers. 'Too much to ask. Well-enjoy your pub-crawl. You'll be in later, will you?'

'Probably, but for once I'm not too sure when.'

‘Any time you like, Charles.'

When he got back to it the party seemed to have dwindled a good deal, or perhaps had merely spread out to the edges. At any rate the mayoral squad was on the point of leaving; the chap who had liked the sculpture was nowhere to be seen. An old man with a pink-and-white complexion - pink round the nose and eyes, white elsewhere - stood by the wall opening and shutting his jaws at a great rate. Large oval dishes of uncommonly horrible finger-snacks, a vivid green or orange in colour, lay her~ and there almost untouched, and quite right too, thought Charlie, also quite understandable now that everybody was either too fat or living off chaff and whey. The drink, on the other hand, had been very popular, so much so that at the moment there was no Scotch available and no one to serve it anyway. Charlie placed himself at the corner of the bar where he could grab the waitress on her return. Two others with empty glasses had taken up the same station, a fellow in his sixties with a small face that seemed the smaller for the elaborately strutted and cantilevered pair of spectacles on it, and a younger, dark-complexioned man of melancholy, thoughtful appearance, not unlike Garth, a common Welsh type not often noted for either quality. Both looked up at Charlie's arrival and nodded to him in a subdued but friendly way, seeming to know him, and quite likely they did know him, had at least seen him more than once in the way of business, at a function of this sort, in a club, in a bar. Round here you had a pretty good idea of who everybody was, which helped on some kinds of contact without doing anything for others.

Accordingly the two pursued their conversation while going out of their way not to exclude Charlie from it. 'You'll find the same everywhere,' the older man was saying,

'not just in our chosen field. Did you see about that ambassador bloke who brought home too much wine?'

'No I didn't see that, I must have missed it,' said the dark man, glancing at Charlie, and Charlie nodded to show he had missed it too.

'Well, you couldn't have a more perfect illustration of the point under discussion. When you retired, you see, from your last ambassadorial post you got a duty-free allowance, known as your cellar, a certain amount of wine you were allowed to bring back to England as a privilege.' The exact number of bottles was never fixed: it was left to your discretion, and everyone was happy. Until one fine day Sir This-and-that turns up with ten, twenty times what was reasonable. And that was it. As from the next day, no more allowance. No more cellar.'

'Ruined it for everyone. What appalling selfishness,’

‘Indeed. I hope I needn't ram home the moral. In other areas the custom has grown up over the years of people in certain positions being deemed to be entitled to certain privileges. Of-and this is the point - a modest and limited order. And everyone is happy, until ... '

'Until somebody goes beyond what is reasonable.’

‘Exactly. Human greed,' said the older man, staring into vacancy through his spectacles. 'Human greed. Well,' he went on with humorous impatience, 'where's this bloody Scotch we've heard so much about?'

'What's the use of sitting in the dispensary when there's nothing for a sore throat?'

'A bit thick, I call it,' said Charlie.

'Ah - wait a minute. Remedy in sight. About time too. Grateful for small mercies. The relief of Mafeking. I knew you loved me, darling.' The three of them said all this and much more, until the glasses were refilled and the water, soda and ice had gone round. Everyone was very relaxed.

'Thankfully,' said the older man - 'thankfully the picture is not uniformly bleak. I'm thinking of one bright spot in particular. Aneirin Pignatelli.' This set the dark man nodding with his eyes closed. 'You know who I'm talking about, of course?'

'Well, naturally,' said Charlie, himself nodding. He was nearly sure he had heard the name somewhere.

'And I take it most people are sufficiently aware of what happened to him.'

Charlie went on nodding.

'He showed himself to be a man of the highest integrity.

When he came out' - the pause here was not really necessary - 'he couldn't get into his front room for the Bowers.'

At this stage Charlie did show puzzlement, slightly, briefly, unintentionally. In an instant the last speaker turned his small face aside. 'From all the people he hadn't brought down with him,' said the other with a hint of vexation. Charlie hastened to say 'Yes yes' and make a silly-of-me gesture, but it was too late. The spell of something like intimacy was shattered. The interloper took himself off, though not before he had topped up his glass, with a couple of cold stares to speed him on his way.

Looking vaguely about, Charlie saw Alun and Gwen at the far end of the main room. As he came up behind Gwen he heard Alun say in his quick style, 'I try to get out of lecturing whenever I can these days. Would a reading do instead?'

'Oh, er, I should think so,' said Gwen, turning. 'I’ll let you know.'

'But don't worry, I'll be there. Charlie, time to be away, old boy.'

'Why aren't you going to the mayor's lunch?' asked Charlie. 'There must be one, surely.'

'Oh, there's a lunch, but I've got a date with my mates, haven't I? Where's Malcolm got to? And even if I hadn't I couldn't face another mayoral do. Had enough officialdom for one day. '

'You've got to remember he's an artist,' said Gwen. 'And, doubtless more plausibly in the eyes of some, the lunch won't be reported, the ceremony will. I'll see you up at the Picton, Charlie - I've got to dash off somewhere first. One of those things that won't keep.'

2

To Charlie waiting at the exit, it seemed to take about as long for Malcolm to get his car out of the multi-storey over the road from Tesco as it would to get the country out of the Common Market. But, having little real alternative, he turned up in the end and drove the two of them through the outskirts on a good old rainy Welsh afternoon. They passed the ruins of the castle and not long afterwards the ruins of the copper-smeltery. Here and there were conical knolls covered with grass and even supporting bushes or young trees, the overgrown spoilheaps of long-vanished collieries. The road led upwards beside the waters of the Iwerne and the walls of the valley began to rise, with bigger hills fuzzily in view further off. Then, just as some sort of countryside seemed about to come into sight, human habitations reappeared, shops, offices, pubs too, all quite as grimy as when the air was thick with coal-dust.

'Here we are,' said Malcolm, steering round a corner. 'Or are we? I can't see any -'

'What's the trouble?' asked Charlie, ducking and peering.

'It just says Streets where the Picton sign used to be.

Streets? What are they talking about?’

‘Let's have a look.'

Malcolm parked outside a lilac-painted boutique on a site Char1ie was nearly sure had once been occupied by a Marxist bookshop, only that would have been a bit too good to be true. Everywhere else was apparently selling either electronic equipment or large steakwiches and jacket potatoes with cheese-and-onion topping. A man's voice crying the
Evening Post
might have been from another world. As they walked the needful not-very-many yards, huddled up against the thin rain, Malcolm spoke to Charlie, who for the second time in less than two hours had the experience of being addressed with one-hundred-per-cent unintelligibility by someone who had been making perfect sense a moment before.

'I'm sorry, Malcolm, I must be going round the bend, I couldn't follow a single word of that. Could you try again?'

'My fault,' said Malcolm, blushing a good deal. 'It was supposed to be your friend CassiveUaunus Pugh asking about General Picton. I mean I didn't hear him but I assume he had an American accent. I'm afraid I can't have done it very well.'

'Pembrokeshire man, wasn't he, Picton?' asked Charlie kindly.

'Yes, well part of Dyfed as it is now.'

'Fuck the lot of them,' said Charlie in a considered way.

'Who? Fuck who?'

'The London bastards who changed all the Welsh counties about. Even my kind of Welshman resents that. And then gave them all these crappy ancient names.'