The old devils: a novel (41 page)

And interfering with the body after death more than cursorily to pay him out for being pleased at something that displeased her. 'Yes, I probably have been a bit full of beans seeing William looking so happy.'

'It's not just that. It started before that. It was in full swing by Christmas.'

'Was it really? I can't think of anything to explain it,' he said without trying to at all. If Muriel could think of something she kept it bottled up. They drove in silence over the old bridge, repaired now, past the rootless smelt-houses, through St Advent, past Victoria Station, up the Strand, past the Trevor Knudsen Fine Arts Museum, Marks & Spencer, the Glendower, the Royal Foundation of Wales, the cricket and rugby ground and the university and round by the hospital towards Holland.

'Peter,' said Muriel when they were a couple of minutes from the church: 'I'm selling the house.'

'What?'

'This time I mean it. Now William's settled, that's my last reason or excuse gone for banging on any longer round here. Yes, it's back to Middlesbrough for me, and if you care to come along too there'll be a bed for you at the end of the road. Now it could so be, sooner than shift to sunny Yorkshire or Cleveland or whatever it's called these days you'd prefer to go it alone here, under your own steam as it were. Well, I dare say that can be arranged. Entirely up to you.'

So much for the parade of cosy domesticity. Muriel had spoken with all her usual matter-of-factness, even perhaps a little more. It occurred to Peter that the presence of William and his best man-as first arranged would have made no real difference; she would have seen to it that he got the lot, or enough, some time or other before entering the church. This was now just round the corner and the early guests were on their way to it. He caught sight of old Owen Thomas and his family getting out of their car.

'There's no more to say,' she began again. 'These people may be good, they may be bad, and I'll not say I'm not fond of one or two of them, but they're not
my
people, and I mean to do something about that while I've still time. So I'm checking out. The house goes on the market first thing Monday morning. And that's that. Okay?

Understood? No appeals, no conditions, no stays of execution, no compromises, no practical alternatives. Final. Now I may be completely wrong again and you've been bursting to get shut of the place since whenever, but if I'm not wrong I'll give you one piece of advice. Start getting used to the idea right away. If I were you I'd go left here and park in the Holland Court car-park.'

'Go and .. .'

'Nobody uses it much this time of day.'

So it turned out, but Muriel had barely had time to take up groom's-mother station at Peter's side before they were fairly among old Tudor Whittingham and his wife and son and daughter and son-m-law and two grandchildren and married sister and niece whom he hoped it was all right for him to have brought along only they were staying with them. There was more, much more, all the way to the church and on the broad asphalted walk surrounding it. Some, like Percy and Dorothy, Malcolm and Gwen, old Vaughan Mowbray and his arthritic lady-friend, a few dimly remembered figures from university, industry, Golf Club, various youngsters identifiably or presumably connected with William, came and went; others, like Garth, Sian Smith, Arnold and toffee-nose Eirwen Spurling and two quite independent funereally-dressed couples, unknown, silent and demoralizing, came and stayed around. No family of either parent were to be seen. Muriel's of course were all in England, and evidently staying there; Peter had two brothers living, but these days he hardly knew as much as where. Grimly, with an air of putting down any nonsense about celebration, an attendant removed the two of them and escorted them inside - at the last moment Peter spotted Rhiannon coming in at the churchyard gate and waved, but was not sure if she saw. The small delay provoked the man into an impatient jerk of the head, a bit of a risk in view of the glossy pudding-basin wig he wore on it. His general bearing suggested that he thought he had come to a funeral. If he did he was not deviating all that far from the spirit of a good slice of the congregation, who stared pessimistically at the groom's parents as they passed, on full alert for hiccup or tell-tale stumble. They reached the front pew without offence, though, shuffling in beside Charlie and Sophie. As far as he could remember, Peter had never been in here before. Enough sun came through the unstained parts of the stained glass to make the place look bright and very clean, like new, in fact. The light-coloured woodwork seemed familiar, personal to him in some way, and presently he realized that it reminded him of the kind of furniture, said to have been Scandinavian in inspiration, that had been fashionable when he and Muriel got married.

Having reached him by a side route, thoughts of that time and what had followed it, up to and including today, proved impossible to drive off. They were not so much thoughts as a confusion of memories and feelings. The memories were powerful but misty and spread over, with Angharad and Rhiannon in them as well as Muriel and a mass of all-but-forgotten faces and places he could not have named. Of his feelings the two foremost ones were remorse and self-pity. Well as he knew them both, he had never learnt how to deal with them, and he stood and sat in his place now vainly trying to see past them to his son's marriage ceremony, which he had been looking forward to a dozen times a day since first hearing it was to come about, and which he had determined to take in and value minute by minute. Instead, what was happening in front of him took the short cut and went straight into the past to blend in with everything else. As usual in these last years.

He went through most of the service in a state similar in important respects to boredom. At the same time, screened off as he was from the centre of the picture he still managed to catch on to details at the edges. So he heard the congregation singing

- no choir, naturally, because somebody was on holiday or had just thought of something better to do and found it puny, thickened by men singing the air, some of them an octave low half the time, the whole performance to be defended only as far as it showed any English present how wrong they would have been to expect anything out of the ordinary from singing Welshmen in the flesh as opposed to on television. Or so he might have said if he could have been bothered. Charlie stood out quite a bit from the mess, in tune and probably accurate with the bass in the hymns and making a good shot in the psalm - much more testing. Peter found he could remember him years ago sneaking off to practices with some secular choir in Harriston or Emanuel, promising to be back by half-nine at latest to sink propitiatory pints. He noticed that the ceremony was performed by two or more clerics and that they wore embroidered vestments of some white material, not cotton. Parts of the service were chanted. Peter had started to welcome these touches of High as likely to affront some parts of the congregation when he saw that a subordinate figure he had mistaken for an effeminate boy was actually a female, a young woman, not a bad-looking one either. Oh
Christ.
He had come to think that almost the whole point of Wales these days was that you were going to be spared that kind of thing, for the time being at least. He was overcome by a great weariness, a longing to be done with everything, but in a couple of moments that too passed. Then right at the end, when William and his bride were supposedly being blessed, he found Muriel's hand groping for his and made out a tear-track on her averted cheek. He put this down as all part of the performance, but it was impossible not to grasp her hand, and to be on the safe side he at once ran up a we1l-dis~ look in case she should turn her head, though this soon turned out not to be needed.

2

The organ sounded out with Mendelssohn: there in the loft was one man (or of course woman now, bugger it) who had not taken the day off. As he passed down the aisle William glanced towards his parents. Without seeming to do anything at all with any part of his face he conveyed unmistakably to Peter a cheerfully hangdog confession of surrender but of surrender none the less; Peter wondered suddenly what he thought his mother thought of his marriage and his wife. Rhiannon gave a smile, too friendly to be called impersonal and yet still not personal. It was time to move. Those still in their pews stared at Peter as before, with no hint of having been appeased by what had taken place in the meantime.

'Well, I reckon we done the young couple very tasteful,' said Charlie. 'I don't know about you, I wouldn't presume to presume, but I could do with a' drink.'

These words, or the manner in which they were spoken, made Peter look at him for a moment. He said, 'Yes, me too.'

Charlie grinned briefly. 'Bad as that, eh? It's these bloody new sleeping-pills of Dewi's. Finest thing out, he says, no systemic effects, you know, like actually getting the system off to sleep. Well, we'll get it off tonight all right. Look, if you want to slip away later we could have a couple down at the Glendower. I'll be there in any case. Just one stipulation. Don't bring Garth. On this happy day ... this day of typically Welsh family feeling and good fellowship ... our thoughts naturally turn ... to stringing up Garth Pumphrey, FRCVS, outside the Bible. Jesus, there he is.'

'Somebody's got to say all those things.'

'Oh no they haven't. Well wait a minute, perhaps they have. There's an awful lot of filling-in to be done in life, isn't there?'

'Anyway he has one great virtue, young Garth, as you pointed out some time ago. When he's around you know for a certainty you're not going to run into Angharad.’

‘When did I say that? I hope at least I said it lightly. I'm sorry, Peter.'

'Nonsense, you were quite right. You spoke better than you knew. And never more applicable than today.'

'I suppose so.' Charlie looked seriously at his feet as they halted in the porch. 'She'd have been nothing but a ... ' He started on another word and stopped.

'Skeleton at the feast, yes. Oh dear. Once again, very well put. You know, it's a funny thing ... ‘

‘What is? I think I can -'

'Just, ever since that evening at Garth's I've had the-’

‘I'll see you down at the house. But ... '

They were being borne onwards and outwards into the sunshine among hurrying or resisting bodies and there was not going to be much more of this conversation. Sophie and Dorothy were near, Sophie not looking at anyone, silent, possibly tearful, Dorothy clutching a leather handbag that might have held a baby's cricket-bat and pads and wearing something of which it could be said with certainty only that it was lime-green and that she had made it herself. Charlie backed Peter into a minor angle of the stonework and gave a muted yelp as his ankle hit a boot-scraper.

'Er ... there's something it would be good if you'd say to Rhiannon if you get a chance to talk to her alone.’

‘Yes?' said Peter, pretty sure he knew what it was, his mind still on the events at Garth's.

'You know Victor and I are doing the reception, well for one reason and another we want to charge her the full rate on paper, so to speak, but she'll get a rebate in the post next month which she needn't acknowledge, okay?'

'Oh, marvellous,' said Peter, laughing a good deal at the imaginative poverty of his guess. 'Absolutely spiffing.'

'I mean Victor, we thought it might come better from you. If you would.'

'I'll make a point of it.'

'Cheers. See you there.' Charlie reached for a passing lapel and was gone. Alone for a space, Peter had time to look without much engrossment at the dozens of people hanging about on the well-kept lawn and paths, searching for one another with heads raised or drifting uncertainly away, William standing with friends of his, Rosemary with friends of hers, younger couples being pulled this way and that by children, older couples consisting usually of a more or less apathetic old boy and vigilant, questing old girl with glasses and hat yes, hat, nothing to do with the wedding as like as not, just part of the uniform - solitaries wondering what on earth had possessed them to come, Rhiannon in grey with whit~ collar and cuffs along by the gate next to Alun's very fat and unsmiling brother who had come down from London to give the bride away, and hemmed in by Breconshire aunts and cousins and such, but at the moment speaking hesitantly into a microphone held out by a squat man in a white raincoat while a photographer circled round her - all this, as far as it went, Peter contemplated, until a well-known voice was heard.

'Tell us now, when's the baby coming then?' Although Garth's voice was quite well known in some quarters he sounded at the moment more like a Welsh comedian than usual.

'There isn't one, I mean not yet as far as I know,' said Peter, wishing he could drop easily into character like Charlie and the others.

'Awh! Reely! Well, there's posh for you.'

'There's
swank,'
corrected Tudor Whittingham at Garth's side. Tudor had somehow managed to shed his followers for the time being and kept looking round to make sure they stayed shed. His amazing lack of surplus flesh allowed full visibility to the spare, narrow frame that had stood him in such good stead as a squash player in the remote past. Its narrowness was extended upwards to his skull, which all generations had pronounced inadequate for an adequate amount of brain without compression of some sort. He had been Tudor Totem-Bonce in the form above Peter at the Grammar.

'Posh or swank, same difference,' said Garth. Then his manner changed abruptly and he went on to Peter at reduced volume, 'Tare was saying last night he hoped you'd come in today for a bit if you had the time. You haven't been in much since poor Alun went, have you?' He rolled a mournful bardic eye at Peter.

'No. No, I suppose I haven't.'

'No, well we miss you there, Peter. I know Tare does particularly. He feels rotten about that evening still, throwing us all out neck and crop. It's not that he feels responsible at all for ... what happened later; I think I've talked him out of that. It's more that it grieves him that he and Alun parted for the last time on such bad terms. Was that your impression, Tudor?'