The old devils: a novel (17 page)

Twenty years before, Charlie had passed a whole day from rising to retiring without a drink. Rising in fact had very nearly not taken place at all: he had believed absolutely, would have told anyone who asked, that death was on him. In that frame of mind he had nevertheless found himself playing a hard game in the crowd that afternoon at Wales v. France in Cardiff. In the evening Sophie and he, then recently married, had been giving a party - too late to cancel. Orange-juice in hand, he had watched fascinated as one by one, with unbelievable speed and totality, his contemporaries had crumpled into drunkenness, their faces and voices disintegrating between one sip and the next. From rather nearer the fray he saw it happen to Malcolm now as they emptied their drinks by the coruscating fruit-machine, saw his eyes swell in time with some event inside him. He took a sudden half-pace forward.

Charlie stayed at Malcolm's right hand for the two minute walk to the other waterside pub Alun had spotted earlier. The tide was out and a strong, not wholly pleasant smell came blowing off the saltings ahead of them, though there was nothing obvious for anybody to have done about that, nor about the rain that had come back into the air. As far as they could see there were only three or four parked cars about, unusually for any inhabited place in the kingdom. Someone, a middle-aged man, let himself in at a front door and disappeared, the only sign of life, apart from brand-new litter underfoot, at a time when the inhabitants might have been expected to be in full circulation. It seemed as quiet as it had been back there on the hill.

'What do they do here?' Malcolm asked quite distinctly as they crossed a side-road up which nothing moved, not even paper blown by the wind. 'Nowadays, I mean.'

'I don't know. Make lemonade or deodorant I dare say.’

‘Some of them must commute to town.'

'No idea.'

'Mind you the unemployment figures for the area are as high as anywhere else in GB, along with Merseyside and parts of north-eastern England.'

'M'm.'

'Well, it's a terrible thing, Charlie, you know. A really ... monstrous thing. I mean, imagine yourself stuck in a place like this with no prospects, no future, nothing going on. You can see for yourself. No ... no prospects.'

'Ah.'

'I'd like to know, just out of curiosity, whether Maggie Thatcher's ever been out here, Charlie.'

'I shouldn't think so for a moment, not if she's got any sense. Certainly not since she closed down the first colliery in 1910, I think it was.'

More of this sort of thing soon brought them to the door or doors of the Ship Inn, which by appearance might easily as well have admitted them to a public lecture-theatre or bit of local government. But inside it was not at all like any of that, a typical old-style country pub with electric organ, round tables of pitted copper, triple-decker sandwiches and tremendously badly designed and written local announcements. And also a great many people. This was where they all were. The considerable noise they were making lessened slightly at the entrance of ~e four visitors and some of those in view turned and had a look at them. This seemed natural enough at the sight of a group of obvious strangers in unconventional clothes like jackets and ties and including one or two - Peter, perhaps Charlie - worth a second glance anywhere.-The hum of normality was about restored— by the time they had moved to the further and less crowded end of the room and Charlie had waddled to the counter.

'Nothing for me,' said Malcolm when he was asked.

'Have a soft drink.'

'No I think I'll just go and sit down. You know.'

He sank into an armchair with tangerine loose covers that might have come out of a local auntie's front room, the generic source of most of the furnishings up this end, not least the parchment lampshades. In a moment he seemed to fall asleep. The other three nodded at each other, needing no words.

'That's nice,' said Alun. 'No question about him not driving now.'

'He's not the sort to try and insist,' said Charlie.

'No, but it's good to keep it civilized.'

Having unrestively waited rather longer than strict equity would have entailed, Charlie had his order taken by one of the fellows behind the bar, the one whose locks hung to his shoulders from either side of a bald pate. After unhurriedly assembling the required drinks he in due course uncourteously served them.

'Now we're all right for a bit,' said Charlie. 'More water? Well, how was Gwen?'

'Oh, Christ,' said Alun, and then, almost as differently as possible, 'Oh, Christ.' He stared malevolently at Charlie. 'You bugger.'

'Calm down, old bloke, it's all in the family, won't go any further. Not from me or Peter, that is. One of the reasons I've brought it up while I'm still stone cold sober is to warn you very seriously against letting the slightest suspicion enter Malcolm's head for a moment. He's -'

'Good Lord, what do you take me for?'

The grin lurking in this might not have irritated Charlie if it had not made him want to start grinning himself. 'Don't try and go devil-may-care on me. Listen: no sly quips or digs in the ribs or narrow shaves or delicious hints he couldn't possibly pick up and supposing he did what of it really, eh? He's not as, shall I say resilient as some of those we know.'

Alun betrayed little or none of the embarrassment he might have been expected to feel at this. 'No, of course, don't worry. It was her idea, not mine in the first place. She grabbed me in the Prince of Wales. As I was hoping you hadn't seen but knew you had.'

'But you went along with it. Yes, I saw. Anyway, how was it?'

With this Charlie glanced at Peter in the hope of spreading out the curiosity, making it a little more a matter of public concern, but he was looking here and there in his unfocused way, no bloody use at all.

'Oh, Christ,' said Alun, 'it was a ... I just scraped home if you know what I mean. She was great fun in the old days but she's, well, she's gone off rather. Is that enough for you?'

'Just right, thanks. What son of a state was she in when you left?'

'Bit on the subdued side.'

'M'm. I expect she'll liven up when she sees Malcolm, poor old bastard. You know, Alun, it might be a good thing all round if you took in the idea that we've rumbled you. We see through you, chum.'

'If you're talking about Laura ... '

'No, I am not talking about Laura. The diaconate has given you a clean bill of moral health there. More than you deserve. I mean in general. Can't you son of concentrate your attentions? Narrow them down a bit?'

'It's all this bloody temptation, you see. Growing in amplitude year by year. The percentage of women between my age-group and puberty, both ends inclusive, is unlikely to rise significantly higher.'

'The lower end doesn't seem to bother you unduly. You saw off that fan in the Glendower without any trouble. Any that I could see. And she was quite a - well, time was when I'd have been a horrible nuisance to her myself.'

'The lower end is largely hypothetical. Rather like the invisible cone that in theory extends upwards from the apex of your ordinary real God-fearing cone. The other way round in this case. More practically the young ones lack the essential security-conferring streak of gratitude to be found in the old ones. No problem resisting that temptation.'

Charlie gazed startled at his empty glass. 'Christ, what's gone wrong with this? Er, from the way you talked about it I didn't think Gwen sounded particularly grateful. I dare say you'll keep your mouth shut, but there's her too. Eh?'

'Yeah, I know.'

Vague Peter might be at times, preoccupied even, but shy on ~s shout never. He took Charlie's place at the counter and produced a pentagonal slice of plastic in which five one-pound coins were embedded: a children's toy, he would say, for children's money. Something between the used glasses and muscular dystrophy collecting box caught his eye and he bent to see better, fumbling for his spectacles. A moment later he gave a kind of snarling bellow, loud enough anyway to cause a nearby head or two to twist in his direction.

'Wouldn't you bloody know,'-he said not much less loudly.
'ASH yng
sodding
Nghymru. Diolch am .
.. What kind of madhouse . . .'

'Never mind, no one understands it,' said Charlie soothingly.

'Not content with trying to stop me smoking they have the bloody cheek to do it in buggering
Welsh.
It's enough to make you ... '

He flung out a hand, probably just in contemptuous dismissal, but his fingertips brushed the folded card and sent it fluttering to the floor. Before he could have started to face bending down to ground level the man with the divided hairdo intervened.

'Would you kindly pick that up, please.' He spoke not in any Welsh way but in the thick, unvarying tones of generic middle-north England.

Peter grew flustered, sweat gathering on his upper lip, but still he made no move and it was Alun, as one doubtless used to finding himself the only male in the company capable of bending, who put the notice back on the bar.

'If you want to smoke you'll have to go down the other end.'

'I don't want to bloody smoke,' said Peter, 'that's not the point. I just ... '

'And layoff the language if you don't mind.' The barman gave them an assessing stare one after the other. 'Welshmen,' he muttered finally and turned away. On later inquiry it emerged that Malcolm had not in fact been roused up by the mild disturbance and come to see' about it, but it looked very much like it at the time. His return to action certainly aroused more notice than his withdrawal had. When he reappeared he could not have been said to look fine any more, not too bad though, and his speech was all right too, at least as regards its utterance. But ten minutes' nap could have done nothing very reconstructive for him, and Charlie at once diagnosed a false dawn, being experienced in dawns of that kind if of no other. Yet Malcolm started off quite well - he was excited, admittedly, but for the moment in a contained way. 'I've remembered what I was trying to remember, it's all come back to me. That awful place in Harriston we were in, with the railings and the lamp-posts. I knew it reminded me of somewhere but I couldn't think where. Well, it was a pub in Chester we went to when we were staying with our son last year. Very similar. Same sort of idea.'

This was obviously no more than a minor shock to the others.

'Don't you see, I'm saying the place in Harriston was just the same as an
English
pub. That's what they're doing everywhere. Everywhere new here is the same as new things in England, whether it's the university or the restaurants or the supermarkets or what you buy there. What about this place we're in? Is there anything in here to tell you you're in Wales? At last they've found a way of destroying our country, not by poverty but by prosperity. I don't mind so much the decline and the decay, we've faced that before and we've always come through. No, what I abominate is the nauseous fruits of affluence. It's not the rubble I deplore, it's the vile crop that has sprung from it. It spells the end of .. .'

When he paused, less perhaps for breath than to concentrate on not falling over, Charlie said, 'Come and sit down and have a glass of dandelion-and-burdock.'

'I may be drunk but what I'm saying is very important.’

‘There's no point in getting worked up about it,' said Peter.

'Oh there isn't, isn't there? It'll be all right with you, when everything's gone and we're left with a language that nobody speaks and Brydan and a few choirs, and Wales is a place on the map and nothing else? That'll be okay, will it?'

'No,' said Peter.

'Well then ... '

'And if I'd talked in that strain you'd have told me I was bullshitting,' said Alun rather sourly.

'Well, you would have been, wouldn't you?' said Peter. 'You're not Malcolm.'

'Cheers.'

Afterwards Malcolm said he thought he had seen some people laughing at him. Again, he went on altogether as if he really had, granted some further temporary transformation of his character. 'You can laugh if you like,' he opened uncontroversially enough, not looking at anyone in particular. 'Pretty funny sight, a Welshman getting steamed up about Wales. Silly old bugger all in a tizzy about Wales going by the board. Specially funny of course to English people. Silly old Welsh bugger. But they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces before long. Because it's going to be their turn next. In fact it's already -'

That was all they gave him time for, not very much, not very offensive, not at all provocative, but it was enough for them to have fatally had a good look at him. Charlie had not taken in that anything much at all was happening till it was half over. Two or three or four men closed in on Malcolm, obscuring him from view. Voices were raised and some rapid movement seen. Malcolm went sideways over a table, an ordinary wooden one, and a glass or glasses dropped to the floor. The barman who had rebuked Peter threw up the flap of the counter with a crash and strolled forward advancing one shoulder at a time.

'Outside the lot of you,' he bawled. 'You too. Go on, you four. Out before I call the police.'

By now Charlie had reached Malcolm and found him bleeding from the nose. There was blood on his face and hand and jacket, not very much, but some.

'Let me clean him up, eh?'

'All right, but out straight after, see. The other two go now. That includes you, Fatso.'

There were no towels in the Gents, only a hot-air blower.

Charlie did what he could with their handkerchiefs. The bleeding had almost stopped.

'I didn't say anything very terrible, did I?' asked Malcolm.

'Not that I heard.'

'So what was it all about?'

'They were rather a rough lot and they reckoned we were misbehaving on their patch.'

Charlie decided against a satirical harangue on the demoralizing effects of unemployment and inadequate leisure facilities. 'And we knew you meant no harm but they didn't, or they could say they didn't.'

'A bit unfair, chucking us out like that. It was them, those local fellows.'

'Just as well perhaps.'