The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  Malcolm peeled one of the diet leaflets off the floor at his side and looked through it. He wanted to be covered in some sense against the possibility that the subject of Rhiannon might come up again. Also diets interested him. His own eating and drinking practice was a conflation of several, often irreconcilable with each other. Thus the two halves of beer a day he reckoned he needed to help to keep him regular meant a cutback in calories elsewhere with the risk of a deficit in vital fibre. More generally, you never knew what one programme or another might come up with in the way of a new hankering-reducer or safe volume-limiter. And there was not such a hell of a lot to read anywhere these days.

  Soon enough Malcolm was pretty sure that what he had picked up was no good except to get him through the five minutes now in progress. After forbidding all alcohol except a small glass of dry white wine every year or so, it ran through a remarkably full and imaginative list of everything anybody had ever enjoyed eating and forbade the lot, though surely with some risk of infraction. Anyway, your own eyes were enough to tell you that if old Peter, now listening to something Charlie was telling him about the price of a house in Beaufoy, had ever observed these constraints he had forgotten them again after a couple of hours. Then why did he bother to read or at least buy diet literature? To feel virtuous by laying out nothing more than money. To make promises to himself like a man looking at travel brochures of exotic places. No, more a man reading about polar explorers living off snow, moss and boot-leather. About Red Indian tortures.

  Malcolm became quite dreamy. As in his boyhood he had deliberately used thoughts of school, of homework to obscure the prospect of a treat or a birthday before wallowing in delighted expectation, so now he let Peter's overweight problem be obliterated by memories of Rhiannon. The only trouble was that they were not as sharp in his mind as _Lettres de mon Moulin__ and the South Africans playing at Gloucester. His clergyman uncle had taken him.

  'Soft as lights, that fellow,' said Peter when Malcolm had been dropped at his front gate. 'Perfectly pleasant, I agree, but dead soft.'

  'Something like that, yes,' said Charlie.

  'I bet he fills in the month and year on all his cheque counterfoils. '

  'Yeah, and writes out the number of pence in words.'

  'And sends in box-tops to save three-fifty on a handcrafted presentation decanter.'

  'Oh really I think that's going a bit far. But I bet he watches documentaries on the telly.'

  'In Welsh.' Peter spoke with genuine rancour. 'And I swear he swings his arms when he walks.'

  'Do you know they have wrestling in Welsh now on that new channel? Same as in English oddly enough except the bugger counts _un__ - _dau__ - _tri__ etcetera. Then the idiots can go round saying the viewing figures for Welsh-language programmes have gone up. To four thousand and eleven.'

  'The commentary would have to be in Welsh too.'

  'Doubtless, doubtless. Did you gather that young Malcolm had, let's say, an attachment to Rhiannon in the long-ago?'

  'Something like that,' said Charlie again. 'He wasn't at all specific.'

  'I thought he sounded a bit as though he had been attached. But I rather wonder when.'

  'He gave a great lyrical spiel about her just before you came. Non-specific, as I said. That doesn't sound very nice, does it?'

  'M'm. Non-specificity could cut either way. Meaning he never laid a finger on her but would like us to think he did. Or meaning he did but for some reason doesn't want us to think he did so he goes on as if he didn't. You've got to remember he's a Welshman too.'

  'Christ, Peter, nobody would take you for one after that analysis. Anyway I don't think Malcolm's that sort of Welshman.'

  'Oh, is there another sort? Actually you know I had a... ' Peter's voice cut off so abruptly that it was hard to be sure he had said what he seemed to have said. He sat in a round-shouldered yet strained posture, arms out to their fullest extent to reach the wheel, legs and feet stretched too and still only just finding the pedals. After a moment Charlie got a quick half-glance from him where a steady look would have been more characteristic, and also feasible with the car drawing up at the Salt House lights. A growl of effort escaped him as he reached even further forward, squashing his paunch severely, and set the wipers going in the fine rain.

  'Hard to be sure, of course, that any given bloke hasn't done a touch of finger-laying in a specific case,' said Charlie reflectively. 'Even young Malcolm. I wouldn't put it past - '

  'You see, I was having an affair with her myself. You must have heard that, Charlie.'

  'Yes.'

  'And a bit more besides I shouldn't wonder. I didn't come out of it looking particularly well, I know. I didn't behave particularly well, either.'

  After a pause, Charlie said, 'I suppose we all - '

  'Not as badly perhaps as some people probably imagine but still not well. Not at all well. So one way and another it was something of a bolt from the bloody blue just now, hearing about her turning up again. Obviously I'll do my best to keep out of her way.'

  'Not very obviously after all these years, surely.'

  'No, no, there's an awful lot of stuff.... I'll tell you later. For the moment I'd just ask you to, you know, stand by. And there's more to it than steering clear of her. I mean there's him, you see.'

  'Yes, there is him.'

  'It's not the time now to go into that either. But I expect you can imagine how I feel. Part of it, at least.'

  'I can. And I'm quite sure you can imagine quite a bit of how I feel,' said Charlie, making it clear with tone and look that he in his turn was making mentionable what had been known but unmentioned.

  'Indeed.' Something not utterly unlike warmth entered Peter's manner. 'Does, er, does Sophie ever mention it or anything? I mean there was never very much in it, was there?'

  'Not as far as I know, and Alun wasn't exactly the only one, but then you only need one Alun if I make myself plain. And it was supposed to be all over before I came along, or rather what there was of it was, but there again... Well, there was an afternoon while he was down here on one of his trips five or six years ago when the shop rang up for Sophie and she couldn't be found, and then I heard quite by chance that no one knew where he was at the time either. Probably nothing, I agree. And anyway there was nothing _else__, which is the main point. Because it's not _it__ that matters so much, it's the bloody side-effects. Great man for side-effects, Alun. Of which a traumatically embarrassing poem would be a very mild example.'

  'I see that. By Christ I see it. The time he broke down at that service for Brydan - at St Illtyd's?'

  'Yeah, and the way he broke down. _"Gwae och, I__ am unworthy to pronounce his praise" and the rest of it.'

  'Welcome flash of realism,' said Peter.

  'Oh, do you think so? According to me nobody could have been more suitable.'

  'Well, yes, all right. When are they coming down, did you say?'

  'Not yet. Couple of months. Could you drop me at the G1endower?'

  'Sure. What shall I tell Sophie?' Peter's destination was the Norrises', where he would pick up his wife after the coffee-party.

  'Just you've dropped me at the Glendower. It won't come as much of a shock.'

  When they arrived Charlie asked Peter in for one, but Peter said he thought he had better push on, so Charlie went by himself into the Glendower, in full the Owen Glendower (no Owain Glyndwr crap thank you very much) Tavern and Grill. Being part-owner of this, Charlie was by himself only for a very short time, in fact he found a couple of fellows he knew from County Hall in the bar, which thoughtfully offered seventeen different kinds of Scotch whisky, and in just a few minutes he was at the top of his form.

  4

  Two empty 1½-litre bottles of Soave Superiore (DOC) stood on the glass-topped table next to a silver tray bearing ten or eleven used coffee-cups, some of them half full of finished-with coffee. The air in Sophie Norris's spacious drawing-room was misty with cigarette-smoke and loud with several conversations. True t
o Welsh punctuality, most of the ladies there had arrived at or slightly before the off at eleven and so not missed any part of what was going. The coffee and attendant biscuits, having conferred a kind of legitimacy on the session, had been made short work of, swallowed down by some like bread and butter before cake, scamped or skipped completely by others, and the real business was uncorked and poured after about twenty minutes. Obviously it was drunk at different speeds thereafter, though you could have guessed that a couple of those in the room had been at the Soave, or perhaps the Frascati, earlier and elsewhere. After all, it was only wine.

  Sophie herself was not one of the couple. Standing by the french window that gave a view of garden, golf links and, remotely, sea, she looked confident and comfortable, very much like the wife of a prosperous caterer recently semi-retired or more, and hardly at all like someone who in her time had been one of the surest things between Bridgend and Carmarthen town - quite a distinction. In tweed skirt and angora sweater her figure was still impressive, though her breasts no longer jutted out of her trunk like a pair of smallish thighs as they had once famously done. At the moment she and Gwen Cellan-Davies were talking about that day's star topic.

  'Quite a good-looking man, I suppose you'd have to admit,' said Gwen fair-mindedly. 'Or he was, anyway.'

  'Oh, not too bad if you like that rather flashy type.' Sophie spoke in the unreconstructed rather shrill tones of Harriston, well suited for expressionless utterances. 'Of course she's lovely.'

  'Mind you, he's a terrible old sham.'

  'Sorry?'

  'At school with Brydan my eye. Oh, they were both at the Grammar right enough, but three years between them. He can't have known him. Well if he did, it means Brydan was taking an interest in boys three years younger, and I've heard a lot of things about him but that never. You ask Muriel. She'll tell you Peter's the same age as Alun exactly, they were in the same form, and he doesn't remember Brydan at all from then.'

  'Yeah, well... '

  'And evidently according to Peter that "Alun" business is a lark. "Alan" it always was at school, Peter said, in the English way. That was before he went in for being a Welshman professionally.'

  Not many general topics appealed to Sophie, and the question of Wales or being Welsh stood high in her uninterests. 'Oh yes,' she said, quite dully enough to have checked anyone less tenacious than Gwen..

  'When he came back after the war he'd been out in the great world and discovered the advantages of Welshness.'

  'For Christ's sake tell me what they are, Gwen, and I can pass them on to my old man,' said Muriel Thomas in her breezy, booming voice as she moved closer. She held a freshly opened bottle of Soave, just a litre one this time, from which she refilled Gwen's glass. 'He seems to think it's about on a par with the brand of Cain.'

  'I really meant just to appeal to the Saxons, Muriel, you know, the way Brydan used to go on. But actually we were talking about Alun.'

  'Oh God, were you? I'm afraid here's one Saxon who's managed to resist the appeal of both Brydan and Alun. I'll say no more because I am, after all, a guest in your country.'

  'You're one of us, darling,' said Sophie.

  This was certainly true in the sense that, for all her often-proclaimed Englishness, Muriel conformed closely to a prevalent Welsh physical type with her dark hair and eyes and slender build, a fact often remarked on, at least in Wales. If it occurred to her now she gave no sign. Holding back whatever had been on the tip of her tongue, she said, 'My purpose in grabbing you chaps was not to discuss the great Alun but to recruit a rescue expedition for poor Angharad's benefit. La belle Dorothy hath her in thrall.'

  After a minute the trio began rather carefully to cross the room. The level of atmospheric pollution seemed if anything to have gone up slightly. Drinking rates among the company might have varied but there was a pretty uniform deep commitment to cigarettes, with the smoke from those actually being smoked well backed up by the three or four stubs left in ashtrays but not put out. Empty or forgotten packets and various bits of wrapping littered the rugs.

  On the rug in front of the lighted gas-fire, a large and elegant appliance with fully simulated coals, sat Dorothy Morgan, who had been on Sophie's doorstep at ten to eleven. At her side stood a half-ful! 40-oz. flask of California Pinot Chardonnay and a brimming blue-glass ashtray with the distinction of having two cigarette-ends burning away in it at the same time. She was indeed talking strenuously though not loudly to Angharad Pumphrey, who often had to lean down from her leather armchair to catch the words.

  Angharad was not deaf, or no worse than most of them; she was not drunk, not even drinking. What singled her out from those around her was her looks, which were those of a real old lady, though she was not the oldest in years. Part of it came from her clothes - no bright trouser-suits for her - and part her untouched or unretouched hair and the like, but there seemed nothing to be done about her collapsed mouth or the knobbly protrusions of jawbone on either side of her chin or the criss-crossed flabbiness round her eyes. There had been talk of a disfiguring illness at some time before she arrived in these parts from Capel Mererid and presumably after she married Garth, but nobody really knew or would tell.

  Dorothy Morgan was saying, 'But it's not just that, their whole outlook is different, their whole view of life.' Her neat short hair-cut and unadorned black-framed spectacles gave her a misleading air of intellectual strictness. 'You can tell from the structure of their language. Do you know Russian at all? Well, it's full of conjugations and inflections. For instance... '

  Meanwhile the arrivals were moving into position in businesslike style, Muriel on the arm of the chair, Gwen on a quilted needlework-box and Sophie squatting on the rug. As they did so they all said hello to Angharad and asked how she was and told her they were glad to see her and she said something to all of them back.

  During the last part of this Dorothy rose to her knees and, in a slightly louder voice than before, said, 'I was telling Angharad about Russian and how extraordinarily more complicated a language it is than Welsh, and of course English, which means... ' She spoke with an unvarying slight smile and her gaze fixed on some neutral point. '... not necessarily more sophisticated than we are, at least not all the time... ' It was not known when she slept, because nobody had ever been there to see her departing for bed or, when staying in the same house, come down to breakfast and failed to find her already at the table with a cigarette and most likely a glass of wine. '... very primitive because they drop the verb "to be" whenever they can. Like Red Indians.' She was said to have been found once telling the man who was laying the carpets about eohippus.

  Dorothy's heavy-duty mode took an appreciable time to come round from, so that when she paused for a second or two, as she did after the Red Indians, nobody had anything to say at first, until Sophie just scraped in on the last of the amber by asking to hear about the trip to Leningrad. Not again, surely? Yes, again, insisted Sophie, and very soon she was having the case for going by Aeroflot put to her with undiminished conviction.

  Under this covering fire Muriel, Gwen and Angharad were able to withdraw in good order. Standard Dorothy procedure said that when she got into that son of stride and someone had to sacrifice herself for the sake of the others, then whoever happened to be hostess stepped forward. The punishment seemed to even out pretty well except that on neutral ground, like Dorothy's own establishment, Sophie got landed oftener than her turn. The others would agree rather sheepishly among themselves that she somehow sounded as if she minded it less.

  There was no trace at the drinks table of the almost-full litre of Soave Muriel had left on it some minutes earlier. An untouched magnum of Orvieto, however, stood within reach and she set efficiently about opening that, cigarette in mouth, eyes screwed up.

  'We haven't seen you here for a long time, Angharad,' said Gwen.

  'No, you haven't, and I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't happened to have to take a clock in for repair at that place in Hatchery Road.' Angharad
's voice was not old, so much not so that public-utilities men and other strangers still occasionally tried to flirt with her over the telephone. 'I bumped into Sian Smith when she was more or less on her way here.'

  'Of course, it is quite a step from where you are.'

  'Yes, and it's not much fun when I get here, either, if this is anything like a fair sample.'

  'Sorry about old Dorothy. We're sort of used to her, you know. We could see you were stuck.'

  'I hope I never have the chance of getting used to her.

  What makes that woman think I want to hear her paltry little observations on Russia or Russian or Russians? Or anything else on God's earth?'

  No awareness, let alone appreciation, of having been unstuck showed itself in Angharad. On the contrary, her resentment of Dorothy's conduct seemed to grow when no one looked like offering to excuse it. Closely and with apparent curiosity she had watched Muriel expose and pull the cork of the Orvieto; now, all but incredulously, she followed every detail of its Pouring, her own nearly empty glass held austerely to one side. People tended to forget about Angharad in the same sort of spirit as they forgot about her husband, whom, by the way, no living person had ever seen in her company, any more than anyone had ever seen the inside of their house. They wondered about the Pumphreys' domestic and marital life quite as much at these coffee-parties as at the Bible.

  'Well, that's just how she is,' said Gwen, defending Dorothy rather late in the day and without much fervour. 'She's always been like it but she's got worse lately. Like everybody else.'

  'I mean it's not as if I were a great friend of hers,' said Angharad, accusingly now. 'I hardly know her. Hardly even spoken to her before.'