The old devils: a novel (43 page)

'It was a rather raw occasion all round.'

William extended his arm with military smartness to present his glass to the circling champagne-bottle. 'Well, at least I shan't have him to deal with.'

'He didn't need a lot of dealing with. Not if you weren't married to him.'

'Well, yeah. Frightful shit, wasn't he? I hardly knew him, of course.'

'I suppose so. The longer I go on the harder it gets to say that about anybody. Himmler, well certainly. Eichmann, that type of chap. Of course he did leave a certain amount to be desired in the way of friendship, Alun, I mean. Bloody Welshman, you see.'

'You really are okay, then? There's really nothing wrong?' asked William., looking hard at his father.

Peter returned the look. 'Nothing whatever, I promise you. Now you're quite right, I'd better track down your wife while there's still time. Have a word before you go finally.'

'Last time I saw her she was in the garden with my mother-in-law. Jesus Christ.'

By now they had moved to the dining-room, where there was an extensive spread of cold ham, veal-and-ham pie, English-style sausages and Continental-style sausage. Also on view were bowls of unadventurous salad and, more to the purpose, an array of pickled onions in three colours, pickled walnuts, pickled gherkins in two sizes, pickled beetroot, four kinds of chutney, three kinds of mustard, six kinds of bottled sauce, in other words a meal plumb in the middle of the genuine Welsh tradition, remarkably complete too barring only the omission of tinned fruit. Banks of sandwiches and uncountable cheeses stood in reserve and most flat surfaces within normal reach carried at least one opened bottle of Victor's special-price red or ditto white. Either or both of these would go down a treat after a few quick glasses of champagne and four or five large gin and tonics and in company with salami, mustard pickle, garlic bread, corona-sized spring onions and watercress. Victor himself stood at the head of the table dealing out plates and cutlery and trying to awaken some sense of order in the talkative rout that had started shambling up to be fed. After pushing past and through them Peter made his way as indicated to the garden. The general drift towards food had reached back as far as here and the last few figures were slowly converging on the french window. Rosemary was one, but he sent her no more than a glance of apology before almost clutching Rhiannon at her side.

'Can I talk to you privately? I've got a message for you.'

'Nothing awful, is it?'

'No, not in the least. I just want to talk to you for a couple of minutes.'

When they had moved thirty or forty yards away from the house she turned and faced him, smiling but still uneasy.

'Charlie asked me to tell you he and Victor are charging the full price for today but you'll get a refund they don't want you to acknowledge.'

She waited a moment and then said, 'Oh. What's that in aid of?’

'I can't imagine. Something to do with the office, probably. Some fiddle or other. I've no idea.'

'Oh. That's not all, is it?'

'No, it isn't, there's another message. This one's from Alun. No, it's all right - not awful at all, I promise you.' When she just stood very still he went on, 'Immediately before he died, in those few seconds, he said something, only a couple of words, but quite clearly. He said, "Little thing". Charlie must have heard too but I doubt whether he understood, but I feel I did. Alun was thinking of you, he was speaking to you.'

Peter wanted to take her hand, but lacked confidence to do so. 'He was sending you his love before he died.'

'Might have been,' said Rhiannon. 'Perhaps he was. He used to call me ... ' Her mouth and chin moved in a way that recalled her youthful self to him more sharply and unexpectedly than anything he had yet seen. Then her eyes steadied on him. 'That's still not all, is it?'

'It's all I've got about him, but if you wouldn't mind just…’

'Hang on a minute. Stay there.'

He watched her hurrying back up the lawn to where Rosemary and another young woman still stood near the windows. After a moment he realized this must appear inquisitive of him and quickly turned his head away. The movement brought his eyes to a triangle of grass the sun had missed and left apparently still damp with dew. Beyond it, in the sunlight, a dishevelled brownish butterfly was clinging to the boundary fence and stirring feebly. Much further off, woodland flecked with thin greenery ran from one side to the other and out of sight.

When Rhiannon came back she said, staring over Peter's shoulder and speaking in a monotone, 'Thank you for telling me that. Don't mind if we don't say any more now. Can't really talk about him properly yet. But it was nice of you to tell me.'

She waited again and it dawned on him that he had almost no idea of how to start or where he wanted to get to. 'You are staying on here, aren't you, are you? Or are you ...

‘

'Yes, for a bit anyway. I'll probably have to find somewhere smaller in the end. Round here, though. Rosemary and William'll be moving to London, but I don't -’

‘Really? When? He hasn't said anything about it to me.’

‘Perhaps he doesn't know yet. In the autumn. It's for the Bar, you see, for Rosemary.'

Rhiannon's expression appealed to Peter not to question her about the Bar.

'Of course. But wouldn't it make sense for you to move there too? You've lived there for so many years.'

'Not now I'm back here. Now I'm here again I want to stay. You probably think that sounds silly - I've heard you go on about the awful -'

'It may sound silly but it isn't. You can't explain it.’

‘Not to anybody who isn't Welsh you can't, or even talk about it.'

'Not to the Welsh either. Not to them, of all people.

Wales is a subject that can't be talked about. Unless you're making a collection of dishonesty and self-deception and sentimental bullshit. That's all you ever hear.'

She said hopefully, 'But it makes sense when you think about it, to yourself. It's all right then.'

'Yes it is. Indeed it is, but only then.'

'M'm. So you think it's quite sensible' on the whole to hang on. You would if you were me.'

He hesitated. She was looking at him in another special way of hers, affectionate, attentive, troubled, the way she had looked at him just before he told her that final abject lie, that there was nothing wrong between them and she was still the only one for him. Over her shoulder now he saw Rosemary, no doubt under orders, step out and head off the nearer approach of one of the hatted females from indoors, stacked lunch-plate at chest level. In sudden agitation he asked himself how long it would take a particular hatless female to miss him and Rhiannon from the party and scurry to find and fuck up. He said in something of a rush, 'Well, that's really what I wanted to talk to you about. Muriel says William getting married means she can leave Wales as she's always wanted, or does now, I don't know, and go back to Yorkshire. When she said that, she hadn't heard he was off to London either or she'd certainly have mentioned it. Well, I'll have to go too, to Yorkshire. I don't want to, I don't want to leave any more than you do, I've lived here all my life. And it's more than that, as you say. But I just can't think of anything else to do. The house and everything else all belong to her and I haven't got a bean. A pension that would keep me in cornflakes. It doesn't sound very high-minded, I know, but it's a bit of a struggle being high-minded when you're hard up and pushing seventy.'

'But you wouldn't be able to stand it,' she said in open dismay.

'I'll have to. It's not sort of uniformly appalling. Some of the time we struggle along more or— less all right. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. '

'Oh, really? Funny, I've never known anything to be that. It's just a thing people say.'

'To sound decent. Yes.'

.

Rhiannon shook her head impatiently to recall herself to the point. 'She'll change her mind. It's a big step at her age.'

'No she won't. Not after saying it the way she did, with dates and things. I know her. Take it from me, there's nothing for it.' He said with great emphasis and finality, 'I hate everything about it, but I'll have to go.'

'But you can't. I mean I thought we were going to start seeing each other again. You'd said you'd ring me up but you never did.'

'I did mean to but when it came to it I couldn't face it. Me, not you.'

'But I thought by about now you might be thinking it would be all right to. With the children getting married and everything. To each other, I mean. I was so hoping you would.'

'After everything I've done? After the way I treated you?'

'Yes. It was losing you I minded. The other didn't matter really, not after a bit. Didn't I tell you that time, we'd been to the Golf Club party? You can't have been listening. God alive, perhaps I didn't really say it. Anyway, I meant to tell you you'll always be ... I can't say it now either.

It used to be so easy. Now, it's like talking about Wales.'

Slowly, to give her time to back off if she felt like it, and furtively, so that Rosemary and the others should not see, Peter reached out his hand. Rhiannon gripped it. Furtively again, he looked at her and saw that she was trying to look at him. Yes, she had changed: not the direct confident glance now.

'Let me try. Though you might well not think so,' he said with care, 'and there was certainly a time when I forgot it myself, I've always loved you and I do to this day. I'm sorry it sounds ridiculous because I'm so fat and horrible, and not at all nice or even any fun, but I mean it. I only wish it was worth more.'

'Ring me up. This time.' With her back half turned she said, 'I'm sorry, but I can't talk any more now.'

'I've got so much to tell you.'

He again watched her retreating, moving hardly any faster than earlier, certainly not running. One of her distinctions from other females had always been that she only ran to catch buses and such, not to let the world know about her wild free spirit or alternatively the coruscating wave of emotion that for the moment enfolded her. At her approach Rosemary released a foolish-looking black dog whose collar she had been holding. It jumped up at her in an ungainly fashion, half fell over itself on landing and followed her into the house.

Peter did the same at a greater distance, feeling very much drunker than he had ever felt in his life before, or something. By the time he got to the food most of it had been swept away, the main body of it at least, but back-ups were still in place. He found the sandwiches excellent, especially the cheese-and-pickle and the egg-and-tomato, more especially still with plenty of Vin Rouge de Pays to help them past his teeth, and he silently undertook never again to underrate Victor, as he was conscious of having done in days gone by. But he commented aloud on the merit of the sandwiches.

'First-rate Sandwiches these,' he said. 'Especially the egg-and-pickle. '

'Don't seem to have come to those yet myself,' said Garth.

Peter had started on Dundee cake and Founders Reserve port when the word came that the speeches would begin in five minutes. Instantly, as intended, all those with elderly bladders, or as many as were capable of responding, made for the toilets. Others went or were there too. From among a small crowd round the one outside the kitchen Peter identified Percy Morgan.

'Marvellously happy occasion,' he told him.

'Oh, I should just about think it is, boy.' Percy was perhaps a little startled to hear— this from Peter about anything. 'Seems very nice, your new daughter-in-law. I've seen a bit of her, you know, with her mother. No nonsense about her, oh no by George. Never took to the father, I tell you frankly. Never much cared, myself, for people who laid it on thick about the Welsh heritage and all that. I don't know whether you agree with me, Peter, but as I see it that kind of thing is, well it can be a trifle embarrassing, you know, if it's overdone.'

'Oh absolutely, I was saying just now -'

'I'll stay for the speeches, of course, and then I think I'll be cutting along. It certainly takes you back, this lot, eh?’

‘You mean the -'

'Well, queueing up for a piss. Takes you back to nights out after rugger. Takes me back, anyway. She went off it in a week fiat after one chat with Dewi.'

There had been so little apparent pause between this remark and the previous one that Peter wondered whether he might have passed out on his feet for a few seconds.

'Oh yes,' he said, doing his best to smile encouragingly.

'Liver,' said Percy. 'Another couple of months the way she was going and -' he passed the edge of his hand across his throat and gave a loud palatal exhalation. 'Of course, her being off it, I'm glad for her, but it leaves me a bit up in the air. I used to be the bloke with this impossible wife who was bloody magnificent about her, that was what I did, so what do I do now she's possible again all of a sudden?'

'Yes, I can see that. I think I'll try upstairs.'

Upstairs Peter found waiting Sian Smith, Duncan Weaver and another man he was nearly sure he was supposed to know, had even perhaps invited. It seemed to him reasonable, and also enterprising, to go up a further flight to the top floor. Here a passage ran the width of the building, at the far end of which he was just in time to glimpse a half-naked white-haired female with a garment or two over her arm dashing across and out of sight. A door shut and a bolt clicked. After a moment another door opened and the face of old Vaughan Mowbray peered out and turned in his direction, and after another moment, occupied by mutual astonishment, drew back again. On the whole Peter felt he might as well go back to the floor below. He found the situation there unchanged, except that Sian had moved over to the landing window and was leaning across the sill, presumably in quest of fresh air. He presumed otherwise when he was near enough to pick up the noises she was making. Duncan Weaver also had his eyes on her, more casually though; with his deafness he had no call to shift from the fresh-air presumption. Simultaneously the second fart of Peter's day rang out - from Duncan it had to be, unless the other man's start, glare and forceful rattling at the door-handle were the work of a consummate actor. Peter contemplated briefly the strangeness of a world without sound. There was still a queue near the kitchen, though with different people in it, but now he came to think of it there was a little cloak-room place by the front door which he had not yet tried. In mid-transit he was again perfectly placed to catch old Arnold Spurting and the best man quite turbulently hustling the Levantine-moustached Tony Bainbridge along the hall and out of the house. Before the fellow was lost to view Peter saw him mouthing curses and shaking his fist in an old-fashioned way. The speeches came and went. Drinking continued until suddenly there was nothing to put in your glass, not even wine. Victor was having the whole lot collected, stowed in cartons, carried out to a small off-white van. One moment Peter was in a group, the next alone with Rosemary - Rosemary Thomas, as she now was and as he addressed her a couple of times.