The old devils: a novel (16 page)

'Come on, for Christ's sake,' called Alun rather irritably. 'We haven't got all night.'

'Indeed we haven't,' said Charlie, the last back to the car, though not possibly by much. As advertised, the breath of air had cleared his head. 'Look; I was in some
son
of torpor or stupor when I let you bring us down this way. You won't find anything in Treville - it's all packed up round there.'

'The pubs'll still be going. '

'And with luck they'll be as nice as the one we've just come from.'

'Let's get going anyhow. No, they won't be trendy there, it's not that sort of place.'

'What are you talking about?' said Charlie as they moved off. 'Everywhere's trendy now unless it's actually starving.’

‘I know what he's getting at,' said Peter. 'He means they're more authentic. More Welsh, God help us.'

'More suitable for his television series. Shit, I believe you're right.'

'Where do you want me to go?' asked Malcolm.

'About half a mile along there's our last chance to turn off over to the west side. That must be a better bet, surely. ‘

‘What do you expect to find open there at this time of year?' Alun sounded pained and resentful, as if at ingratitude.

'I don't know, you're the researcher,' said Charlie. 'Hey, I tell you what we could do,'

said Alun in an immediately livelier tone that would have revived Charlie's suspicions had they had time to abate: 'we could drop in on old Billy Moger just a bit further on. He'd know all that.'

'I haven't seen him for years. Vanished from sight when he moved out, pretty well. Are you sure he's still living there?'

'Well, he was last week when I rang.'

'Was he now?' Some female connected with Moger drifted up in Charlie's memory, not wife, or if wife then second wife, more likely long-standing lady-friend, but anyway also to do with Alun in the long-ago. 'That's good to hear.'

'I was going through my old address-book.'

'I understand.' Laura something, that was the name. 'Shall I take this right turn or not?' asked Malcolm. Charlie was fully expecting to be swept into the outskirts of Treville, but after no more than a few hundred yards the car pulled up in front of a bungalow built almost at the roadside. It would hardly have been anyone of Billy Moger's era who had required or accepted an original structure on the lines of a cottage in a whimsical book for children, but perhaps he or someone in between had ripped out the old-time twisty windows and goblin's front door and filled the apertures with steel and pine, and in the same spirit had put sensible housing-estate chimneys there instead of whatever funny-hat arrangements had cheered up the roof before.

'Nasty place he's got here,' said Charlie when Alun had gone to ring the bell.

'Who is this Moger?' asked Peter.

'For years he had that sports shop in Cambridge Street next to the off-licence. Jolly handy, that. Nice little chap. Played a bit for Glamorgan before the war. You remember him.'

'After, too,' said Malcolm. 'Left-arm over the wicket. Used to bring them back from the off.'

'Right, we're summoned,' said Charlie. 'That didn't take long.'

His squint at the garden at the side of the bungalow showed him a. walled space landscaped like the small-mammal enclosure at some opulent zoo, including the dry bed of an artificial watercourse. But there were no animals in it and little in the way of vegetation either. On the threshold he was met by a strong but not obnoxious perfume, woody and spicy rather than sweet. He and the others got an outstandingly warm welcome from Laura, fully recognizable to him on sight, a small thin woman in a close-fitting black velvet suit, with piled blonde hair and a more than average allowance of jewellery round neck and wrists. Alun really performed the introductions.

Like a lot of people in Wales, though not only in Wales, Charlie had had a much more extensive education in horrible rooms and houses than in attractive or even so-so ones. So he was not much good on detail when, girded for the worst after what he had seen outside, he came across nothing of the interior loathsome to his practised eye, though others perhaps would have drawn the line at the well-stocked bar that filled one end of the living-room. He did notice flowers all over the place, numerous, varied, fresh, bloody marvellous in fact and, as another department of expertise told him, quite expensive in total, like other visible features. Yes, memory added now that at one period Billy had done very well, even too well for squeamish tastes, out of supplying sports equipment to local schools and other educational institutions, including the gaol. Well, that was how he had got his start.

Where was Billy? ,Laura rejoined them to say that he would be out in a minute. Charlie had missed her departure, having concentrated on the bar, where at her request Alun had started to deal out drinks. Separate from the others, Peter stood and glanced round with what seemed to Charlie an expectantly censorious air, on the watch for vulgarity, affectation, shoddiness, lingering over a suspect watercolour, moving disappointedly on. Malcolm evidently approved of what he saw, or what he had taken in, was enjoying the party. He still looked fine, though his normal gravity of demeanour had begun to show signs of coming apart, like the descended knot of his tie.

Alun set out to describe the supposed purpose of their call, but as soon as he mentioned eating in Treville or any such place Laura would hear no more. Her eyes flashed fire as in the nick of time she put a stop to this dangerous, degenerate project. 'Quite out of the question,' she affirmed in her startling deep husky voice. 'I never heard such nonsense in my life. Thank God you mentioned it to me, that's all I can say.'

'We were only thinking of a snack,' said Malcolm.
'Snack,'
said Laura, thereby banishing the topic. 'So let's be practical. Now - bearing time and trouble in mind the answer's obvious. Sandwiches for 'four is nothing to me, right?' Right, said Charlie to himself, and another fragment of recall checked in: Laura Makins, cold-lunch counter at the Three Feathers in Kinver Hill. 'No problem, gentlemen. Round again, Alun, and I'll see to it.'

'We can't let you do that,' said Malcolm, looking about for support.

'Don't you tell me what you can and can't let me do, young man.' For the first time she allowed humour to soften her pronouncements. 'I don't often get the chance to show off my talents. For making sandwiches, that is,' she explained, mischievously waving her beringed forefinger. 'Ah, here we are, darling - come along then.'

A small white-haired old man moved slowly but steadily over to the group, smiling and looking from face to face. He wore a burgundy-coloured silk dressing-gown with small white dots and a similarly patterned scarf high on one side of the neck, where it covered most of a reddened swelling. Alun and Laura between them told him who everybody was, and he shook hands and spoke in a thin voice. She handed him the weak whisky and water she had started preparing at first sight of him. He raised the glass and again glanced round the circle.

'I'm not off it, you see,' he said.

'Well, you've got this one here to keep you up to the mark, Billy,' said Alun. 'I bet she keeps it coming at you.'

'No, I'm not off it.'

'What do you think of the England bowling prospects this season?' asked Malcolm.

'Not much real quality there, is there?'

Billy chuckled and winked and nodded. 'Made an honest woman of her, I have.'

'About time too,' said Laura. 'I thought it was about time.'

She settled him now in a low leather chair with wooden arms and a Thai-silk back-cover in squares of red, green and buff. Close by was a small circular table on which stood a box of tissues, a box of mints, a silver pencil and a bowl of daffodils with their stalks cut short. The others moved round.

Laura said clearly but not loudly, 'Alun's only just come back to live down here. He was telling me he's seen a lot of changes.'

Alun described some of the changes, with accompaniment from Charlie and Malcolm. Pauses were inserted for possible contributions from Billy but he confined himself to a monosyllable or two, though as far as anyone there could judge he followed the drift of what was said. After a few minutes Laura shifted them all out to the kitchen, placing Billy at the far end of the long scrubbed table and Alun and Malcolm on either side of him. Alun was put on to opening and pouring wine. With speed and skill Laura prepared sandwiches - cheese and onion, tongue and pickle - for all except Billy, who very cheerfully ate baked beans and a couple of digestive biscuits and drank another weak whisky. The sandwiches were quite tasty and moist enough to arouse Charlie's professional respect and even to induce him to eat most of two of them. Soon they were all gone. Laura offered coffee and then at once disallowed it.

'You won't have time if you're to have a drink in Treville.'

'To hell with that,' said Alun. 'We'd all love some coffee - wouldn't we, boys?'

'Not now, darling. Some of us get a bit tired.'

'Oh. Right.'

They said good-bye to Billy there in the kitchen. When it came to Charlie's turn it struck him that at no time had he seen in him the Billy Moger he used to know. Laura went out to the car with them.

'Bless you for coming, all of you,' she said. 'Hope it wasn't too much of a shock.'

'Oh for Christ's sake,' said Alun.

'No really, it was sweet of you. He'll be cheered up for days now. He'll go over it a hundred times. Well, I'll go over it with him. You could, er ... if you see any of his old mates you could tell them it's not too bad - you know. I think some of them stay away because they're afraid it's worse than it is. Good luck in Treville. I must say I don't fancy your chances anywhere there.'

By common consent they kept quiet well beyond the point where even the most preternatural powers of hearing, or the most sophisticated technology, could possibly have carried their words to Laura.

Charlie opened. 'So it's established that you didn't know what we were in for,' he said.

'I hope so.' Alun again turned to face rearwards, though less jauntily than before.

'Surely you could tell that straight away. Even I couldn't have carried off pretending I didn't if I did. No, she just said drop in when you're passing, we'd love to see you.'

'And what did you say?'

'I said we might make a trip this way today and if we did we might pop in for a drink. I didn't expect her to be expecting us.'

'I wondered about that,' said Malcolm. 'She could have had all that stuff just by her - tongue, cheese, onion. Not that it wasn't delicious and very good of her to do it.’

‘Everything bar the bread,' said Charlie. 'Two large loaves. She got that in on the off-chance. Not negligible, I agree. And it's quite possible she primps herself up like that every day.'

'Poor little bugger,' said Peter.

'Yes, no harm in sparing a thought for him.'

'Indeed, but I was thinking of his wife. How many times she must have told herself of course nobody would come. How disappointed she'd have been if nobody had. For half an hour out of twenty-four times God knows what. All right, she smartened the place up a bit for our benefit. In the remote contingency that we came, that is. Not daring to tell him why. But no mere smartening-up could have done that, what we saw. That's years of work, every day.'

'Are you feeling all right, Peter?' asked Charlie. 'Shut up, Charlie,' said Alun.

'Sorry. Well, there seems to be plenty to be said about her. Not a lot about old Billy.'

Nobody was ready to contest this view there and then. 'One consolation, though,'

Charlie went on. 'We haven't got Garth with us to say what is appropriate to such an occasion.'

He got quite a good laugh out of that. Other thoughts he kept to himself, for instance that Laura had known her Alun in not saying anything to him on the telephone about her husband's condition. And likewise, if Alun had plotted everything and known everything in advance he could not have contrived a better position for himself: not only full conversance with the situation there but a huge fund of goodwill and a positive duty to return to the scene. Carte bloody blanche at zero cost. Billy must be dead keen for you to have an afternoon off once in away, love. Oh well, there it was. A few pieces of traffic turned up as they in fact reached the outskirts of Treville. As the car ducked down the last little hill before the village, the motto FREE WALES

was briefly to be seen daubed on a brick wall in faded and dingy whitewash. An ironic cheer went up.

'Now would that be -' began Malcolm in his frightening American accent before Alun shushed him.

'Belt up, you stupid bugger. What's the matter with you? You hardly set eyes on that clown and everything you see reminds you of him. Forget him.'

'Remember what happened the last time you invoked him,' said Charlie.

'Dismiss Cadwallader
Twll-Din
Pugh from your mind.’

‘Hey, I've thought of the thing to say to him about that slogan there. Show me a Welsh nationalist and I'll show you a cunt.'

'He wouldn't say thank you for showing him a cunt,' said Alun reasonably.

'That's my point, you bloody fool.'

'Oh Christ, it's the drink. Fuddling my mental processes. '

'It's certainly fuddling mine,' said Malcolm, wrenching at the wheel. 'Sorry.'

'And mine, thank God,' said Peter.

Despite everything said just now and earlier, expectation mounted as the time of arrival drew near. They passed traces of the railway station and of some of the eleven worked-out pits in the area, reached the shore and turned along it. Here until quite lately cockles and the edible seaweed laver-bread had been harvested. In the village itself rusty galvanized-iron roofs and shop-fronts that needed painting were noticeable. The first pub they went into had in it a half-size snooker-table, a TV set showing a children's programme with the sound turned down and only two people, the barmaid and her boy-friend, who while talking to her fed himself continuously from a dispenser apparently called a Peanut Colonel. There was a move to withdraw at once, but Charlie remarked that there was no guarantee of getting a drink elsewhere. Nobody was sure about local licensing hours.