The old devils: a novel (42 page)

'No question. No question whatever.'

'Of course he never seriously meant we should take all our gear away. Temper, that was. He as good as admitted it when I went round the next morning. Perhaps I told you.'

Addressing Peter, but obviously reproaching Garth for the omission as well, Tudor said, 'I thought it was a lovely service and the young people looked absolutely radiant and I hope they'll be very happy.'

'Oh yes. Oh yes.' Garth intimated that between him and Peter that side of things was taken for granted. 'Yes, old Tarc really respected poor Alun. I reckon everybody did. Mind you, there’s not a man who's ever walked this earth who didn't give those around him something to put up with. But taking him for all in all he was the best of fellows really, wasn't he?'

Somebody has to say it, thought Peter. 'Yes, I suppose he was.' The words drew a look of puzzled incredulity from Tudor.

'Actually,' Garth went on, 'actually not everybody did respect him if the truth were told. Remember that article in the
Western Mail,
that so-called appreciation? Nasty. Curmudgeonly is what I'd call it. Thoroughly curmudgeonly. Oh, and did you see that reference in a
Times
review, was it, the other day? Oh yes - wait a minute.' His hand moved towards his breast pocket but stopped before it got there. 'No, I've filed it. Er

... he could be called a follower of Brydan if that were not taken to imply a certain degree of strength and vital ... something. Very nasty. I'll get it copied and send it you.'

Tudor said with some determination, 'William and Rosemary going away for a bit, are they?'

Though ready and willing with a reply Peter never gave it, being instantly hiked off to be photographed. He hoped Tudor thought he was getting his money's-worth out of having dumped his family.

There was a line-up in the sunshine with backs to the church wall. Peter had been for sidling into his place at the end next to Muriel, but embraces were called for, not of course with the unsmiling brother, who unsmilingly nodded and that was that, nor with Muriel. She smiled, though, but not for long, which was just as well. He was not going to start digging all that over. There was one thing to be said at any rate: neither he nor anyone else could have done anything about it, probably ever. Who had used almost those very words to him not so long ago, and about what or whom?

For some minutes three or four photographers, one a woman or girl, all showing in their clothing and hair structure what some might have seen as an unhealthy disrespect for stuff like weddings, huddled the six principals together with no result, spread them apart again, brought some forward, waved others away with sudden backhand sweeps. Nor was it lost on Peter that advances in science meant they took ten times as many photographs as would once have been found necessary and shaped up to take twice that number. It was easier for them like that, he inferred, more fun too, licitly buggering a set of strangers about. Quite understandable. Do it himself if he had the chance.

Eventually the consensus emerged that it would be unnecessary or perhaps futile to prolong the photographic session, which faded away without anything being said on either side. Soon afterwards removal to the Weaver house was set going, a matter of a couple of hundred yards on foot. As if the manoeuvre had been organized beforehand Muriel drifted across, thrust one arm through William's and the other round Rosemary's waist and seemed to swing them both through a semicircle towards the gate. With an advance six or more abreast pretty well ruled out, Peter found himself in a second rank between Alun's brother, said on their very brief first meeting the previous night to be called Duncan, and his suddenly manifest wife, who had glasses and a hat with the best of them and very red lips and abnormally long teeth thrown in.

On the far side of the gateway Rhiannon was with an aunt or cousin or so and Peter was stuck, irremovably as it turned out, with these in-laws of hers. He had always thought of himself as a cool head in a situation like that, not for the life of him to be driven into speaking first. Nevertheless after four minutes of total silence, the last three of them spent standing in a row at no particular point on the pavement, there he was asking the wife whether she and, er, Duncan proposed staying over until the following day or whether, on the other hand, they would be returning to London that same evening.

She turned to face him hungrily. 'Oh, we've got to get back, no two ways about it,' she said in an accent from somewhere not very nice in England. 'I tell you, it took all of everybody's time getting him to come away for just the one night.'

'Business responsibilities, I suppose.' Peter dimly remembered something about a finance company or building society.

'You're joking. They're a thing of the past, they are, it's getting on for four years now,'

she said with gloomy relish. 'No, it's just he won't be moved if he can help it. What he's doing now, Mr Thomas, he's giving them a chance to get settled where we're going, you see, so he can just sneak in there without any of them saying anything to him.'

'Quite,' said Peter, turning his eyes but not his head towards Duncan, who was making rhythmical puffing noises and rocking to and fro where he stood.

'Or so he thinks to himself. He doesn't like being spoken to because people expect him to say things back. That's why he doesn't look very friendly. I tell him he wants to wear a hearing-aid, everybody knows better than try and talk to a person wearing one of them, but he won't. Just draw attention, he says.' She turned back her gold-inwoven cuff. 'Christ, that's long enough to get your grandmother and Mrs Brown settled.'

Facing her husband now, she said in a tremendously loud voice with a lot of facial activity, out of sight from Peter but audible enough in her speech, 'We'd better get moving, Dad. They'll be wondering where we've got to. Come on, old boy. There.'

She did plenty of pointing into the middle distance while she was saying this. Duncan nodded and got moving. The three of them crossed the road to the corner of the lane that led to their destination.

'I don't know why I still shout at him like that. Just habit. The nerves have gone, you see, both sides, so whatever you do he'll never hear anything. Virus, I think they said. Oh yes. Rhiannon did tell you, did she?' Duncan's wife mispronounced the name without any suggestion that it was unfamiliar to her. 'I mean she did mention it.'

Like enough, indeed. 'Yes,' said Peter.

'There's not a fat lot he can get up to if you follow me. He can't face learning the lip-reading and that sign language, everyone does it different, he says, no rhyme nor reason to it. There's the subtitles though, on TV. He likes his food all right, as you can see from his ... ' She paused for the first time but went on firmly, 'You know I feel a pig dragging him all this way and running him into all these people he doesn't know, but I'd go potty if I didn't get a break once in a while.'

'Of course you must,' he made himself say. 'That's quite reasonable and normal.'

At Rhiannon's front gate they halted again, Duncan prompted by his wife's hand on his shoulder. She said, 'Take my advice, Mr Thomas, and don't go deaf. Well, it's been nice talking to you. He's a lovely boy, that William. Now you go off and enjoy yourself. We'll be along in a minute.' Duncan gave a not quite unsmiling nod of farewell and thanks for not having said anything to him.

Inside the house the first person Peter saw was Gwen, her head at an offensive angle as she listened to whatever some tall, dignified old ninny in an injudicious green suit might have been trying to tell her; a cousin of Malcolm's, perhaps. It was easy to imagine her frowning and leering interestedly over the account of the conversation with Duncan's wife she was never going to be given. Peter looked round for Charlie, failed to spot him and made for the bar, a trestle table with a really seriously snowy white tablecloth spread over it and loaded with bottles, an astonishingly high proportion of which seemed to hold soft drinks; not all of them, however. The ruddy-faced girlish youngster from the cocktail bar at the Glendower was doling out the stuff, with great efficiency as it proved. Another class of youngster sat round-shouldered on a folding metal chair against the wall. His face was not at all ruddy and his collar was undone. Good going for the time of day, thought Peter. His only slightly delayed arrival had in fact given time for a large part of the crowd to get settled here or there, dozens of them in the garden all exclaiming at the warmth of the day and knocking back their drinks at a speed that, if maintained, would quite quickly stretch them out in the herbaceous border. He observed the scene from the step outside the french window and very soon picked up Muriel's rear view by her stooped head and clumping gait. With a couple of William's presumed friends, who stood not less than thirteen foot tall between them, she was strolling along the edge of the lawn and, just as he noticed her, she half turned to run a superior eye over what was growing - nothing very much, perhaps - in the nearby bed. She let her gaze linger, making quite sure things were as bad as they had looked at first glance, then snatched it apologetically away, both in a style he felt sure he would have recognized with an inward yell of loathing at ten times the range. Seeing it, seeing it unseen, catching the old bitch out even on such a puny scale, was as good as a stiff one. He was turning away to refill his glass, which in the last minute had mysteriously emptied itself, when he caught sight of Rhiannon not far off, nearer than Muriel had been.

She was one of a group of a dozen women and some men apparently in a single noisy conversation, glances switching from one speaker to another, all briskly absorbed. Sophie was among them, Sian too, and a couple more he knew by sight, but who were the others? Well, for God's sake, who do you think they are, you bloody old fool-
friends of hers,
see, he notified himself carefully. What else would they be? But why should it need realizing? Because he had forgotten, if he had ever begun to understand, how small a part people played in others' lives and how little they knew about them, even if they saw them every day. Between Alun's death and this morning he had thought many times, several times anyway, about Rhiannon and her life, about how she managed for company with Sophie, Sian, Gwen, Dorothy, Muriel for Christ's sake - none of them exactly her type, he had thought since much longer ago and no doubt with more besides, her daughters, London friends. What he was looking at gave him some idea. Not much even now. He would have said he had forgotten about love too, but just for the moment he would have had to admit there had been a few weeks once when somebody else had' played a very large part in his life and he had known a great deal about her, until the rest of the world came swimming back. He had to wait a minute or two at the bar, where Victor now presided, while a wave of refills was dealt with. In the interval he saw a man with a moustache nudge a man with a wholly different moustache and pass the word about himself, a word that must have left out the information that he was the sort of old buffer you could just go up to and say hallo to like that and, you know, that would be fine. Before it came to his turn, Victor reached over someone's shoulder and passed him a major Scotch and water with a flourish that said any possible Alun-related bygones were indeed bygones, and oh by the way don't forget that little message to Rhiannon. The unruddy youngster had departed but he was soon accosted by a different one in the shape of the bridegroom.

'Dad, where have you been hiding?’

‘Out in the open. Too big to be seen.’

‘Come on, come and meet the blokes.'

The blokes were not far away, about five strides from the drink, in fact, and Peter felt he did pretty well with them, considering. He was touched and impressed by the unobtrusive production William put into this event, letting him feel he was meeting all or most of .them while nursing him through with a couple of talkative reliables. Mter a time William said to him, with no fear of being overheard in the ambient uproar,

'She's a marvellous girl, you know. Or do you know? She says she's hardly seen anything of you over these weeks, I mean before today.'

'Yes, well, there sort of hasn't been a hell of a lot of, er ... '

'No. Anyway she is. I expect you've heard it said that it's absolutely marvellous when somebody's very difficult to get to know and to get on with at first, and then when you do get to know them it's somehow much better than, well, if it hadn't been like that. Eh?'

'Yes. I mean I have heard it said.'

'So have I, and I suppose it might be right, but I must say personally it sounds pretty fair balls to me. Anyway, the point is that's exactly how it wasn't with Rosemary and me. Absolutely no snags or problems of any kind at any stage right from the start. My God, I've just realized it was love at first sight. Doesn't that sound ridiculous?'

'No,' said Peter.

There was a short pause while William took a considered sip of champagne instead of alluding to his parents' marriage, then or now. 'Anyway, she's a marvellous girl. You'd better find her quick if you're going to. We're nipping off right after the speeches. Don't want to get caught up with all these drunken bastards.'

'No, you certainly don't want to do that.'

'I think I might be a bit pissed myself actually. Look, we'll see you as soon as we get back. Really we will. I'm sorry I haven't done anything about it before when I said I was going to, just before I first met Rosemary, do you remember?'

'Oh, was that that day?'

'That was rather the point I'm afraid, meeting Rosemary I mean. It sort of drove everything else out.'

'Yes, I know the feeling. Well, I expect you're-'

'How are you, Dad? I've hardly seen you all this time.'

'I'm all right. I'm better. Those pains I mentioned seem to have, well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.'

'I gather you were there then, well, when he went off.’

‘Yes. It's an awful thing to say in away, but I absolutely sailed through that bit.'

'Must have been a shock at the time, though. Pretty horrible.'