The old devils: a novel (8 page)

With a small start Rhiannon noticed that the bottle of white wine on the table in front of her was not the same as the one they had started on quite a short time earlier. This had a green instead of a blue-and-white label and was also about half empty already. The excitement of getting here and of a sudden feeling, dim and out of nowhere but still real, that things had not stopped happening to her after all, that there were unknown possibilities lined up, had carried her away. Had she drunk two glasses?

Three? Well, more than was sensible in the time. It would not do to start following in Dorothy's footsteps, if they were at all as Gwen had described a little while back and was now going on about again.

'Absolute hell. Sophie had to tell her there was no more wine and Charlie put on an act of trying to persuade her to have whisky. Of course if she had ... '

If anyone was following in Dorothy's footsteps, thought Rhianno~ to herself, it might be Gwen. A bottle's-worth of wine had gone down that throat since the start of the session and there was no one around to say how much had before that. The mini-story about Dorothy and the whisky had been touched on already that evening. It seemed quite a distance from the shandy-sipping Gwen of Brook Hall days. But the rest of her was unchanged: a little bit nosy, a little bit catty, but sensible, shrewd, down-to-earth, now as then the one to see through the shams and the wishful thinking. She was absolutely as before when, mixing hesitancy with cheek, she said,

'Haven't really had a chance to ask you this before, old thing, but, er, how do you feel about coming back to live round here?'

Rhiannon would have liked to hear Alun answering that. 'I've always thought I would in the end,' she said tamely. 'Nearly all the Welsh people I've talked to in London say the same thing.' And anyway here I bloody am, she felt like adding.

'But they don't actually come, most of them, do they?

Too settled where they are, I dare say. Mind you, I always thought you and Alun were pretty firmly fixed there in Highgate. Especially you yourself, Rhi. You really cut yourself off from down here, didn't you, in the last few years anyway. Not like Alun. He's kept up with, oh, a lot of people here and there.'

'No, well I'm sorry, but you know, you keep leaving it and then all of a sudden you find it's too late, anyway without a lot of explanation.'

'Of course, and then your mother dying, you haven't got her to come down for. You'll soon pick up the threads again.'

There was a silence that was pretty clearly an interval before more of the same from Gwen's side. Rhiannon let it go on; she never minded silences. On this occasion she partly filled in with the thought that one of the reasons for not accompanying Alun on his Welsh trips, the one that had always seemed to come to mind first, was to give him a free hand in keeping up with certain people, people like that doctor's wife by Beaufoy and the woman with the extraordinary hairdo who had been second-in-command at the mental home. He had been a model husband for days, weeks afterwards when he got back. But Rhiannon was not going to tell Gwen any of that, nor that she hoped Alun would set about finding some people to keep up with out at Capel Mererid or further, once he was settled down here. Gwen looked at her in an understanding, caring sort of way. 'But you did,
you
did really want to come? I mean you weren't talked into it however nicely?'

'No,' said Rhiannon, trying not to sound too flat or final. 'No qualms? I know you've got some painful memories of the old days.' Gwen had turned quite sad now, as though some of it had happened to her as well. 'Aren't you afraid at all of stirring them up?'

However much wine might or might not have gone down it seemed kind of early to get on to such matters, but they had been bound to arise some time. 'A bit. But it's all a long time ago, what went on then. That's if it's the thing with Peter you're talking about. Do you know, I never think of it.'

'Oh really. You can't forget it though, can you?'

'No, but you can stop feeling bad about it, I mean I have. No point.'

'No point, no, but women have an awful way of feeling things there's no point in them feeling.'

'I know what you mean all right. I suppose I've just been lucky.' Again, Rhiannon wanted to say something like there were times when one person could. get away with murder as far as another person was concerned, and even after the times had changed completely, for good, that part stayed the same, but she had never told anybody that. She said, wanting to know though not necessarily from Gwen, 'How is Peter? Do you see him much?'

'Not a lot, no. Malcolm runs into him at the pub occasionally. He's fine as far as I can gather, for his age you know. Run to fat rather. And, well, I get the impression he's not very pleased with life.'

'I suppose he's retired now.'

'According to Malcolm he hasn't a good word to say for anyone or anything.'

'He's not the only one. Muriel's around, I suppose?'

At this name the two caught each other's eye and as if by pre-arrangement made remarkably similar frowning, blinking, whistling faces. On instinct they drew closer together in their chairs.

'Oh yes,' said Gwen. 'Yes, she's around. There's a strange one as they say.'

'Well, I hardly know her. I can't really say I know her.'

'I can never tell what she's thinking. There she is going on as nice as pie and I've no idea what's in her head at all. I realize I've no idea what's going through her mind.'

'She gives you that look, sort of measuring, summing you up. Actually I haven't seen her for God knows how long.'

'She may love us all but somehow I doubt it.'

'It's not exactly cold, is it, because in a way she's very friendly. It doesn't go with her voice.'

'I wonder how those two get on. They're funny together.

Like two people at work who've got to hit it off while they're there but you can bet they never go near each other outside. Like in front of the servants.'

'What?' Rhiannon wondered if she was falling asleep. 'Does Malcolm hear anything, I mean from his mates?'

'Don't know. Sometimes I catch an awful look on Peter's face when he doesn't think anybody's watching. Afflicted. Stricken.'

'Oh, I know that stricken look from the old days. I used to tell him he was only ... '

When no more followed, Gwen said, 'Christ, she doesn't half put it away, young Muriel. Not regularly, not every day, just occasionally, but then - wow! It doesn't show on her but whenever I happen to catch sight of her glass it's either full or empty. Not that she's anything special, mind. There's Dorothy ... ' Gwen paused, perhaps trying to remember whether she had told Rhiannon the one about the whisky. If so, the effort was successful, because she went on, ' ... and Charlie of course ... '

'I haven't seen Charlie for -'

'No use expecting much sense out of him after about six o'clock at night. He's got this restaurant in Broad Street now. Co-owner of it with his brother. I don't know whether you remember Victor. Not my type at all. Absolutely not my cup of tea. He's you know.'

'What, you mean .... '

'You know,' said Gwen, nodding slowly. 'Well, we're not supposed to mind them these days but I can't help it. I came to them late, sort of. For a long time I didn't know there was any such thing. And there wasn't really then, not in Wales. When I first heard about them they were in places like Paris and London. You know, Oscar Wilde. You can say a lot against the chapel but at least it kept them down. And I reckon everybody being poor helped. They couldn't dress up or anything.'

Rhiannon remembered Gwen talking in that style in her room in Brook Hall, about chaps among other things, saying what she probably really thought but being jokey too so as to stay in the clear about something. According to Dorothy, who had always been a great one for psychology, it showed a basic insecurity. Whatever it showed it was quite fun to listen to but it did tend to slow down the conversation, as now in fact. Gwen seemed to have dried up though she showed no sign of being insecure about that. 'This queer brother of Charlie's,' said Rhiannon.

'Victor,
yes. He runs the restaurant with his, with a friend of his. Nothing for Charlie to do but chat to the customers and knock back the Scotch and tell himself he's working. Not conducive to health. Eventually he nods off at the table or in the bar and Victor sends him home in a taxi.'

'Not much of a life for Sophie.'

'Oh, I don't think she minds too much. She has got this shop - just a sort of boutique,'

said Gwen in response to Rhiannon's quick look and hurried disappointingly on. 'The thing is, Charlie's got nothing else to do and he can afford it. It's quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I ... We used to laugh at Malcolm's dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programmes in the
Radio Times
in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of. Drink didn't agree with him, poor old Taffy. Some of us have got a lot to be thankful for.'

Watching Gwen refill her glass and also send a minor stream down its outside, Rhiannon wondered what, if anything, she told herself she was doing. Did she just not know what she was really doing? As any wife of Alun's would have had to be, Rhiannon was almost as used to people getting drunk as she was to them having a drink, but she had learnt too that there was a stage beyond that. It was a little discouraging to find, a couple of hours after arriving to live among them, that everybody round the place seemed to be getting there regularly if they were not funny in some way. Or (Muriel) had a touch of both.

Gwen was turning serious and inquisitive all over again.

She said, 'How did you actually react to the idea of settling down in these pans?' This had not got to be another bit of maundering; it was a trick of Gwen's to keep coming back to a point until her curiosity was either satisfied or else knocked firmly on the head - a very minor improvement on the maundering option if you asked Rhiannon.

'Thrilled,' she said rather loudly.

'You don't mind my asking? I suppose the two of you discussed it pretty thoroughly before you took the decision.'

'Not really, no. Over in a moment.'

'Oh yes. Which of you in fact got the idea first?'

'We found we'd both been thinking about it for some time.'

'But who was the first to mention it? Was it you? Just interested. '

'No, it was Alun. He came out with it one morning at breakfast. '

'And you fell in with it straight away.'

'Yes. I seemed to have my mind already made up. I don't really know why.'

'Oh. I expect you had a lot of friends in Highgate.' Rhiannon nodded from the waist upwards. 'Yes, I was quite firmly fixed there. Look, old thing, if you're trying to get me to say Alun was the one who wanted to come and he managed to browbeat me into it then you're wasting your time. He was keener than I was to start with but I was keen enough. Not that that would have made any difference in the end to whether we came or not.'

'Have you always done what he wanted?'

'Yes, of course I have, in anything like that. He earns the money.'

'You let that man walk all over you, Rhi. I told you he would.'

'Did you? Well, this is one time he hasn't.'

At this Gwen seemed to give up. She scrumpled bits of cigarette-wrapping and stowed them in vacant parts of her ashtray and carefully blew some ash off the table-top. With a quirky smile she said, 'How is Alun?'

That sounded really nice for about half a second, like an easy exam question: anything you feel like saying on the subject will do. Rhiannon half wanted to answer with a run-down on Alun's medical check-up last month, featuring the part where the doctor had told him, rather coldly, apparently, that his liver as well as his hean and lungs was in excellent condition. But she felt she had to be a little more forthcoming than that. She saw that Gwen had switched to a smile with raised eyebrows. What a lot of expressions she knew.

'He's just the same as ever,' said Rhiannon. 'Always jolly and lively except when I don't want him to be. That's the chief thing about him as far as I'm concerned.'

This went down less than well. Gwen got up quickly and toddled to the litter-bin behind Rhiannon. There, having let the empty bottle rustle and thump down inside, she was to be heard knocking out the ashtray on the edge of the bin. Silence followed while she presumably regrouped. When she spoke it was clear from the acoustics that her back was turned. Rhiannon shifted uneasily on her chair.

'You know, Malcolm was absolutely knocked sideways when your letter came. We'd heard talk but nothing definite. Knocked him completely sideways.'

'Not with horror, I hope.'

'Of course not with horror. With delight. With joy.' A loud smacking pop indicated what Gwen had been up to while out of sight. 'But something else as well, Rhi, you know that.'

Gwen came into view again with the new bottle and the emptied but still dirty ashtray and rather flung herself down in her seat at the table.

'You were his first love,' she said matter-of-factly.

'That's nice to hear. He's one of the sweetest men I've ever met.' Rhiannon meant what she said, and could not understand why she so much disliked speaking the words. 'He never talks about it,' said Gwen, looking at her watch. 'Never says what happened.'

'Gwen, really, there's nothing to talk about.
Nothing
happened.'

Rhiannon felt what was almost admiration for her friend and at the same time wanted to hit her a certain amount for the way she accepted the message without any nonsense about believing it or even somehow not believing it. She finished nodding her head and sat for a time fiddling with her glass, which she had refilled, and moving her eyebrows about, as much as to say that here came the punch. At the instant she drew in her breath to deliver it the door-bell rang, a peremptory, office-type sound. When a moment later Rhiannon heard Dorothy's voice she sniggered to herself. Then Dorothy came in, embraced Rhiannon at length, apologized for being early, asked to hear all her news and listened, or at least stayed quiet and watching, while she told some of it. This startling behaviour intrigued Rhiannon and obviously disconcerted Gwen, who twice at least seemed on the point of breaking in to protest that the whole thing was a put-up job, meant to bring her into disrepute, most unsporting and certain to wear itself out soon. On the last point at any rate she would have scored, for Dorothy sent her first glass of wine down in a little over ten minutes and her second in a little under, and not before Alun, Malcolm and Percy got back from the Bible, but well before the end of the evening, she started telling them all, and then telling just Gwen, about a tribe in probably New Guinea she had been reading about who built houses in trees that they never occupied and had perhaps at some distant era intended for the spirits of their ancestors to live in, but perhaps not, and other things like that. When the time came, however, she went off quite meekly, taking less than a quarter of an hour to move from just inside the front door to just far enough outside it. More than once in that time she had invited Gwen and Rhiannon to coffee at her house the following morning.