The old devils: a novel (24 page)

'But I mean you did enjoy it,' said Malcolm anxiously. 'Parts of it.'

'Oh yes. You noticed things like your hair and what horrible stuff sand is but you didn't really take it in. You were wondering how it was going and what would happen next and whether you could handle it. We weren't poised really, just trying not to give anything away. Of course, I don't suppose it was all plain sailing for the chaps,' she wound up thoughtfully.

'No.' He took a vigilant look at the now-empty road ahead. 'No, it certainly wasn't,' he added.

After waiting for a moment she started again. 'It wasn't only going on the beach, not being poised. It was a big one, the beach, but it didn't really touch dancing.' When she saw Malcolm smiling and blinking uncertainly she went on, 'You know, going to a dance. With a band and partners and quick-steps and all that. Sticking together was the thing. Dorothy used to get us on parade in Brook and make sure we'd all been to the lav before we started so there'd be no sneaking away later. Then you'd stand in a bunch waiting to be asked for a dance and wanting to bite your nails and hoping the bra-strap you should have pinned was still behind your dress-strap. I was, anyway. Didn't you worry about things like that?'

'Yes, I suppose I must have done.'

She thought to herself she might have another try later.

So far she had obviously not been going the right way about getting him to say he had gone through the same little agonies as she and all the others had, which might have helped him to see that it worked the other way round as well, that she in her way had been as embarrassed and incompetent as he in his. The idea was to show him that she was not the curious creature, something between Snow White and a wild animal, that he had seemed to take her for, but an actual friend of his, and by now quite an old one. Well, there was still a lot of time.

'Those days, you know,' he said now, with a hint of wisdom coming up. 'All I can say is I hope there were certain, shall I say mitigations.'

'Oh
yes
Malcolm, don't get the wrong idea. How awful, I was only-'

'Because this today, after all, we are, well, taking a stroll down
Memory Lane.'
He said this as if he thought he had just invented the expression, or at least was betting she had not come across it lately.

'That wasn't there before,' she said, so promptly that it took him a moment to see she meant something real, something in a field they were passing, a kind of cabin or pavilion with a factory-built look and talkative notices done in very aggressive lettering about things to eat in the basket or in the bag. There was a mass of tyre-tracks round it but nobody in range just then. Seen like that in the unexpected strong sunlight it seemed the son of place you were meant to admire without wanting to go there, like a piece of new housing project in Mexico.

'How vile,' said Malcolm with feeling. 'New to me too, I think. Just spring up behind your back. Same everywhere you go these days.'

That last phrase kept coming up in Rhiannon's hearing, often along with another one about it being a waste of breath. It seemed to hit them all sooner or later, even someone like honest old Ma1colm who never wondered where all the money was coming from. Once he got into this one the conversation would at least stay out of harm's way a bit longer. But nothing followed, and when he went on it was in anew, dreamy son of tone, not much of a good sign with him.

'They say people change over the years,' he began, and seemed set to end too for a while before hurrying on, 'and indeed it does often happen. You remember a fellow called Miles Garrod? Used to act a lot. Quite good he was. He played Marlow in
She
Stoops to Conquer
in the Arts Theatre. '

'Oh yes,' lied Rhiannon. When it was not going to make a difference she always did that except with Alun; it seemed fussy and cocky not to and you were going to get the rest of it anyway. This was a general policy of hers. People sometimes wondered gratefully how it was that she had never heard any stories before.

'Well, you wouldn't recognize him now, Rhi, that I guarantee. I bumped into him just a few months ago, at a wedding in Caerhays. Or rather I didn't bump into him, praise be, a fellow said there's old Miles Garrod, I said where, the fellow said there, and there he was, totally different. A different person. Not specially old-looking or unprepossessing. Just altogether different. A different individual.'

Having shown that one who was in charge he could have afforded to throw in something about what Miles Garrod was up to these days, but no. Returning to the dreamy tone and unmistakably starting paragraph 2, Malcolm said, 'But some people haven't changed, or only imperceptibly. You, Rhiannon Weaver, you haven't changed, not you. You're still the same person as the one I knew, well, let's call it
then,
shall we?'

'What nonsense, I've put on at least -'

'No, no, basically you're quite unchanged. The way you move, your glance, everything. The first sight of you that very first evening ... '

She let him run on, but stayed alert for any wandering off into dodgy territory. Sudden blurtings of the type mentioned to Rosemary could not be guarded against, only watched for.

' ... last glimpse of you eight years ago ... '

A bit longer than that, but he had put it down very firmly, and what of it anyway. Not far now, surely.

' ... never more than a few minutes at a time ... '

Well, there again she seemed to remember proper evenings, even a weekend visit or two, in fact, certainly one thorough enough to have included a couple of chats with Gwen about the forthcoming arrival of what had turned out to be Rosemary's elder sister in 1959, but if he preferred to see it like this, well, fine with her.

' ... I was seeing you for the first time since
then.
Ah, when I used to read about people feeling the years dropping away I thought it was just a phrase, just a fancy. But it's what
happened.'
He looked at her a little bit wildly but quite briefly out of the corner of his eye. 'And I'd known all along it would. Don't ask me how,' he told her, to be on the safe side.

STOGUMBER I PETERSTOW 2½
the signpost said, and Peterstow was where they were scheduled to have lunch. How many minutes did that mean? Five? One and a quarter? Rhiannon crossed the fingers of her left hand. It was awful to think the thought in this way, but hopeless not to: if things got no dicier than at present, then no problem. They had got as far as they had pretty fast, true, and unassisted by drink, but he might have been encouraged by not having had to meet her eye any of the time because of driving, and he had not actually
said
anything yet and it might all blow over. The car came to the crest in the road a hundred feet or so above Stogumber village and from the sea on their right, limitless now, to the dense greenery on their left nothing showed that time had gone by.

'I don't just mean of course you're unchanged on the outside,' said Malcolm, dashing what could never have been more than a faint hope. 'Anybody with half an eye can see that.' He paused and drew in his breath. 'I mean on the inside too. But then I don't think anybody changes there much, do you? On the inside?'

She tried to consider it. 'No, I shouldn't think so probably.'

'Now I know I've changed a lot on the outside. A decrepit old bloke is what I've become. No complaints but that's how it is.' He wagged his head from side to side as he sat behind the wheel.

'I'm not having that,' she said indignantly. 'Decrepit is the absolute opposite of what you are. You're in jolly good nick and fit-looking and you've kept your hair and everything. You could pass for, for a much younger man.'

It had never been Malcolm's way even to try to hide things like pleasure at compliments, and here was one department in which he had certainly not changed. Another was making it very easy for the other person to tell when a compliment was called for and roughly how it should go, and then still enjoying it when it came. 'Oh, honestly, Rhi,' he said now a couple of times, continuing quite soon, 'anyway, I'm still pretty much the same on the inside.'

Dumbly-dumbly-dumbly-dum on the inside, she thought to herself, waiting to hear how, dumbly-dumblydumbly-dum on the outside, but crossing her fingers again. But then when it came it was— fine, in the same style as before, covering rather more ground, not much though: incurable romantic - always tended to expect too much from life - rather envied practical man who just got on with things - triumph of hope over experience - incurable romantic - count your blessings - help us get through life - never really wanted to be one of the down-to-earth sort that just stuck to the job in hand - too old to change now, he maintained firmly. Matters took a slight turn for the worse after that with him saying how much he had been looking forward to today and how he still had his hopes for the future, but he stayed vague on that and quite soon stopped. The end of the beginning, with luck.

They were in and out of Stogumber itself in not much more time than it took to notice a jumble of flags, posters and stickers coloured lime-green, yellow, pinky-red and black and white. Then having turned up left along the further edge of the little valley they came to another signpost, one of a new sort in dark green with a picture of a wigwam on it and thin white print which was quite easy to read from close to. This lot said Peterstow 0.8 kin; and no doubt if you went the way it pointed you got there in the end.

Rhiannon had been hoping and expecting to recognize the village when they came to it, but she failed to do so. There was a raised stretch of grass with some lumps of grey-white stone here and there, and an old drinking-fountain sort of built into the side of the slope, the remains at least of such a thing with a place where a chained cup might once have been joined on. Next to it she made out four or five names carved on a tablet and realized she was looking at a local war memorial. Here and there were hefty cottages in a darker stone or in a dark brick behind low white gates, and on the far corner a larger building done with beams and tiles. A sign said it was the Powys Arms and also mentioned old-fashioned things like finest ales and ciders. Although there were other cars about, it was still possible to park near the front door. Malcolm did that, pulling on the hand-brake with a rasping flourish. 'Well,' he said, turning to Rhiannon and smiling at her with his eyes crinkled up - 'here we are.' He was behaving as' though he had given her a costly present which only he in his sensitivity could have chosen for her, and looked very sweet and sitting up and begging for a smart clip round the ear.

'Marvellous,' she said.

He got out of his seat and came round to open her door, moving quite fast but not as fast as she did to forestall him. These days she never liked people 'helping' her out of or off things unless she could do a crone imitation with it, and not much even then. He arrived a second after she had got both feet to the ground, but in the nick of time to alert her against leaving behind the shoulder-bag she was just picking up. As they strolled towards the pub he put his hand round her elbow in case she started to fall over or tried to walk into a wall. She could just about recall him using this instant this-one's-mine-you-see indicator once or twice when he had taken her out in the old days. Actually this time it came in useful for stopping her from going ahead and heading into the pub just like that.

He glanced at her again and said, 'Hasn't changed a lot, has it?'

'Doesn't seem to have done.'

'Apart from the rebricking along under the roof there and taking the lean-to part into the main structure and paving over where the old well was. Not to mention the wall round the car-park. And wasn't there a hut in that corner?'

Rhiannon had no answer to that. She nodded her head slowly and mumbled to herself.

'And obviously the tables. Still, it is very much as it was.

In essentials you might say.’

‘M'm.'

'The rubbish-bins aren't very pretty but at least they're practical. '

After a last satisfied look around he made to steer her through the doorway, but again she was too quick for him, thinking that it - being too quick for a man - was not something she was often called upon to be any more. Inside, she looked round with a show of interest. Whether it was very much as it had been she had no idea, but anyway it was not crowded yet and not noisy. The only thing she noticed was the little brass rails or railings round the tops of some of the tables, to keep you on your toes when you - no, rubbish, she told herself, off a ship, ten to one, a point Malcolm might well be just going to clear up for her. He kept quiet on that, though, saying only that of course .he had no idea whether the place was any good these days, a whopper if ever she had heard one.

The place, as regards food and drink, which he called victuals, was good enough, but with him there that counted as no more than a start. Of all the men she knew, he was right out in front the likeliest to be ignored at the bar, given a table the kitchen door banged into, brought his first course while later arrivals were drinking up their coffee, overcharged. However, he escaped without so much as a dab of butter on that cravat of his. By the end of lunch, sipping cautiously at a small glass of green Chartreuse, her treat drink, she felt quite relaxed. Parts of the action, like him finding a speck on a wineglass and waving it slowly to and fro to get it changed, or calling for a 'proper'

peppermill and keeping on the lookout till it came, were telling Rosemary material rather than good fun at the time, but the dialogue, or rather what he said, was unimprovable, boring almost to a fault. She forgot her misgivings as he took her through the histories of more people whose names meant nothing to her. They even got on to Wales, of all topics; well, friends in England had taken to going on a bit about England. When Malcolm said you got very unpopular for saying Wales was in a bad way, she thought at once of his nose and how he had had it bashed in the pub at Treville. It looked absolutely all right now, though of course no nearer his mouth than ever.

After finishing at last with Wales he said rightly that it was still early, called without too much urgency for more coffee and invited her to tell him about herself. So she told him a bit about Alun and the girls. She went carefully on them because of what Gwen had said, or rather not said when asked, about their own two boys now in their thirties. If Malcolm had something to get off his chest in that department he kept it to himself. Although he was paying her polite attention it became pretty clear after a few minutes that she was on some son of wrong tack.