The old devils: a novel (18 page)

'Of course I see it was no use arguing. You know, Charlie, I think I must be a bit tight. Probably hurt more if I wasn't, there is that. No thanks, I can manage.'

'Fine bloody pub-crawl we've had, haven't we?'

'Sorry.'

'Not your fault. I suppose Alun made good use of the time. Some of it, anyway.'

Their way out took them through the— bar where they had spent most of their short time on the premises.

'I could tell what sort they were the moment they came in.’

'Men that age, you'd think they'd have learnt how to behave by this time.'

Four-Peter

1

Peter's getting-up procedures were less taxing to the spirit than Charlie's or Malcolm's but they were no less rigid. They bad stopped being what you hurried heedlessly through before you did anything of interest and had turned into a major event of his day, with him very much on his own, which was right for an oldster's day. Among such events it was by far the most strenuous performance. The section that really took it out ofhim was the actual donning of clothes, refined as this had been over the years, and its heaviest item was the opener, putting his socks on. At one time this had come after instead of before putting his underpants on, but he had noticed that that way round he kept tearing them with his toenails.

Those toenails had in themselves become a disproportion in his life. They tore the pants because they were sharp and jagged, and they had got like that because they had grown too long and broken off, and he had let them grow because these days cutting them was no joke at all. He could not do it in the house because there was no means of trapping the fragments and Muriel would be bound to come across a couple, especially with her bare feet, and that was obviously to be avoided. After experimenting with a camp-stool in the garage and falling off it a good deal he had settled on a garden seat under the rather fine flowering cherry. This restricted him to the warmer months, the wearing of an overcoat being of course ruled out by the degree of bending involved. But at least he .could let the parings fly free, and fly they bloody well did, especially the ones that came crunching off his big toes, which were massive enough and moved fast enough to have brought down a sparrow on the wing, though so far this had not occurred.

The socks went on in the bathroom with the aid of a particular low table, height being critical. Heel on table, sock completely on as far as heel, toes on table, sock round heel and up. Quite recently he had at last found the kind of socks he wanted, short with no elastic round the top. They did his swollen ankles good, not by making them swell less but by not constricting them, and so leaving them looking less repulsive and frightening when he undressed at night. Pants on in the bedroom, heel and toe like the socks but at floor level, spot of talc round the scrotum, then trousers two mornings out of every three or so. On the third or so morning he would find chocolate, cream, jam or some combination of these from his bedtime snack smeared over the pair in use, and would have to return to the bathroom, specifically to its mirror for guidance in fixing the braces on the front of the fresh trousers, an area which needless to say had been well out of his direct view these many years. There was nothing non-standard about the remainder of his dressing routine except perhaps for the use of the long shoehorn, a rare and much-prized facility he had once mislaid for a whole miserable week, filling the gap as best he might with a silver-plated Georgian serving-spoon from Muriel's kitchen, where it had naturally had to be returned after each application. He had worn the same pair of featureless slipper-types for years now, hoping to die or become bedridden before they fell to pieces and forced him to go to one of these do-the-whole-thing-yourself shoe-shops which he understood were all they had these days.

The part of the course that involved the bathroom hand-basin was less demanding only than the first. The foam went on to his face in two ticks, the sweeps of his razor were bold and swift and he hardly did more with his toothbrush than spread paste over his gums. But even so some bending and stretching and arm-raising was unavoidable, enough to see to it that by the time he was as ready to face the world as he would ever be he was breathing fairly hard and pouring with sweat, especially from his scalp. At one period he had tried to reduce this effect by leaving large parts of himself undried after his bath, but after several weeks of nonstop cold symptoms had surmised a connection and desisted. He went downstairs carrying the sleeveless pullover he would draw carefully over his head when he had cooled off. Where was Muriel? - this particular morning as every other morning a question to get settled right at the start. Not in her bedroom: its door had stood open and she was an early bird anyway. Not out in the car: he would have heard it. In the garden? Likely enough at the moment, with no rain falling: as she often said, a great deal needed doing in the third of an acre with only Mr Mayhew, who had once worked in the manufacture of metal boxes, coming in to do some of the rough on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At times like this, Peter recalled the brief period when he had magnanimously volunteered now and then to lend a hand himself, and on every occasion had been told off to shift as it might have been five hundred gallon-sized flowerpots from one end of the estate to the other. It was almost as if Muriel would sooner have been able to complain of not being helped than be helped. Well, well, there was no fathoming some people.

Yes, there she was on her knees near the far hedge, getting a place ready to put something into the ground or even actually putting it in. He could not see which from the dining-room windows nor would he have cared at any distance, having disliked gardens ever since having been 'expected to amuse himself in one otherwise than by pulling up the plants. It was one of his earliest memories (he must have been about four) and his parents' garden had admittedly been much smaller than this, but the lesson had stuck, indeed he had been elaborating it off and on ever since. Gardens, he had long ago perceived, were all about power, from overawing you with their magnificence (sneering at your penury) to rebuking your indolence, mean-mindedness, barbarity, etc. Houses were pretty bad too and in the same way, but there was mitigation there, with so many people having to live in them. The house he lived in himself, this house, had immeasurably more than that to be said about it. Nowadays there were only two people in it constantly, not more than half a dozen had ever come to stay at once and a maximum of twenty or so might turn up for a party, but almost that number could have found beds and a couple of hundred somewhere to sit. In the dining-room, for instance, the twenty mentioned would have had space to breakfast simultaneously while as many more waited their turn on chairs round the walls. These were smothered with pictures, every single one of which Peter thought was absolutely terrible. Either it was not a picture of anything on earth or else it was nothing like what it was supposed to be a picture of. Over the years he had got as used to them as he could, considering new ones were constantly appearing. Muriel would go up to London and the day after her return the two blokes made of purple plasticine would have been replaced by an arrangement of wavy lines and blobs. A new rug or coffee-table might well have turned up at the same time. And there was nothing he could do about any of it, for as many guessed and very nearly as many had been told, Muriel had money, and the house and most of what was in it were hers. He still wondered occasionally how much difference it would have made if things had been the other way round.

His breakfast stood on a tray at the end of the dining-table, prepared and put there by Mrs Havard, who came in every weekday morning. As always it was half a grapefruit, cereal, toast and coffee in thermos flask. He went to work on the grapefruit with the serrated knife, separating the wedges and swearing once or twice as he encountered awkward partitions between them. Digging them out to eat was no walkover either. Some clung tenaciously to their compartments after being to all appearance cut free, others came only half-way out, still joined on by a band of pith. He dealt with such cases by lifting the whole works into the air by the segment and waggling the main body of the fruit in circles until the bond parted and it crashed back on to or near its plate. How different from the accommodating spoonfuls of memory, emerging first go as perfect geometrical segments. The buggers were fighting back, he muttered to himself. Like everything else these days.

The struggle with the grapefruit, though troublesome, had not been really severe, and soon after it was settled he felt he had lost enough heat to make it all right for him to wear his pullover, which was draped over the back of the chair next to him. He muffed reaching for it and the thing slid eagerly to the floor. At the same time he caught a movement through the window and saw Muriel approaching the house. Hurriedly, he bent over in his chair, failed to make contact, got to his feet, crouched down, grabbed the pullover, put it on, sat down again, took three deep breaths. Then a pain, the pain, started up in the left side of his chest.

Try and time them, Dewi had said in a tone faintly suggesting that that would be as good a way as any of occupying himself. Peter uncovered his watch and kept his eyes fixed on it, hoping Muriel would not come into the room. Usually she did not at this stage, indeed he was given his breakfasts in here to be kept out of the way of something or other, but now and then she did, and when she did it was not always with the intention or effect of cheering him up. Describing the pain to Dewi he had mentioned a gripping, squeezing quality and Dewi had said that was characteristic, which was a great relief. He had said too that if things took a turn for the worse he was willing to consider prescribing some pills, adding in a similar spirit that while they would relieve the pain they would not improve his physical state in the smallest degree.

When the pain or series of pains began, a couple of years before, Dewi had asked him about possible sources of stress in his life. Stress? Yes, you know - tension, anxiety, irritation. He had said Muriel was not the easiest of women to get along with and Dewi had not quite managed not to grin, because of course from what the world saw he, Peter, was the difficult one. Well, difficult he might be, difficult he admitted, but not on Muriel's exalted level, surely to God. As to anxiety now, that was good. Fear was the true word for it, simple fear of her tongue, which nothing he had ever thought of would explain away, and specifically an ultimate fear that one day she would carry out her periodic threat to sell the house, which was inevitably in her name, and go back to Yorkshire on her own, leaving him to find a couple of rooms in Emanuel or somewhere.

He acknowledged that there was not much dignity about any of this, but again it was hard to see a remedy.

After four minutes and twelve seconds the pain left off.

Even before opening his diary he knew it continued the down~ trend since Christmas, if that counted for anything. Better ring Dewi later, though, he thought, trying to drive other thoughts away. Well, tomorrow, then.

He had brought himself to start on the cereal, which by his preference was of a resolutely unauthentic type, penurious in things like natural fibre, when he heard the telephone ring in the hall and stop after a few seconds and then Muriel's voice, a wordless mumble from where he sat. After only a few more seconds this too stopped and her heavy footfalls approached the door but stopped just short of it. Peter took a further couple of deep breaths. He had not told her about his chest pains and what Dewi had said about them, because for one thing he doubted whether the news would cut much ice with her, in fact ... Another thought to leave unexamined. But when she had evidently changed her mind for the second time and come into the room he almost smiled. At the sight of her it was hard to believe that this not very large figure with the jaunty manner, son of hemispherical haircut 'and (at the moment) green plastic knee-pads for gardening could make anyone afraid, except perhaps of being mildly bored. Although they were meeting for the first time that day she did not come over, let alone come over to kiss him. They had not touched each other for nearly ten years.

'William,' she announced, meaning their son, their only child, who by no intention of either had turned up in 1955. 'Oh ... right.' He gripped the arms of his chair.

'No no, don't bestir yourself,' said Muriel, raising a hand; 'the connection is terminated. Just a tip-off that he'll be collecting some lunch here and might see his way afterwards to shifting a clod or two if the monsoon hasn't broken by then.'

'Oh, great. But it's not Saturday. Or Sunday. How -'

'It's his day off. Estate agents stay open all the time but individual employees have days off. Which has a bearing on the matter in hand in that the said William Thomas is employed by an estate agent.'

Peter nodded wordlessly. The facts had just dropped out of his sight for an instant, but long enough for her to get in.

'I suppose it's easy for people who don't have days on to forget that other people have days off,' she said with an air of illumination. 'I take it you'll be putting your nose in at the Bible later?'

'Yes, I think so, but I'll be -'

'I think so too. He, young William that is, declared his intention of arriving about one so if you roll in pissed at three you won't see a lot of him.'

'Okay, fine.'

'I wonder if you'd mind calling in at that garden centre place off Hatchery Road and picking up some vegetation for me. It's all ordered and ready. Would you mind doing that?'

'No, that's easy.'

'Because do say if you would mind.' Muriel looked gravely at him.

'No, I don't mind a bit. No problem.'

She looked at him a while longer, then, apparently satisfied, flashed a smile (in the sense that it went on and off fast) and clumped out.

He exhaled slowly. There, that had been all right; the smile had been quite well worth having. It was all how she was feeling at any given moment, he told himself, with some conviction for once. She was not too bad really.