'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.
He finished his breakfast and went along to the sitting-room, where by now Mrs Havard had been and gone. As usual she had moved every object that could fairly be moved, from matchboxes to sofas, as evidence of her assiduity. When he had as usual shifted everything back where it belonged he settled down with a technical journal and put in a spell of pretending to keep up with his branch of chemical engineering until it was time to he going along to the Bible.
2
Most of those whose marriages have turned out less than well, say, might have been considered to have their ideas of how or why but not to know much about when. According to himself Peter was an exception. If challenged he could have named at least the month and year in which he and Muriel had been making love one night and roughly half-way through in his estimation, what would have been half-way through, rather, she had asked him how much longer he was going to be. He had got out of bed, collected his clothes, dressed in the bathroom and driven over to the Norrises'. He and Charlie had sat up most of the night with a bottle of Scotch while Charlie went on telling him he had not been criminally selfish all his married life and it was not his fault if Muriel disliked it or was indifferent to it. But he had perhaps not managed to take those ideas on board, not quite, then or since.
Anyway, since that night things had accountably never been the same between the Thomases. What it had become inexact to call their lovemaking dwindled in both frequency and duration. After a few years of this it had dawned on Peter that, however strongly Muriel might have disliked it or however deeply indifferent to it she might have been, she expected him to go on going through the motions of providing it in token of still wanting it, and of course not so much it as her. A further decline set in, quite soon followed by the inception of the random verbal punch-ups, and that had been that, rubbed in by separate rooms, no hugs, no endearments. Even perfect love, he used to say to himself, was probably cast out by fear. With all this it was some consolation, though not much, to notice that not even the most colourful punch-ups had anything sexual in them, like references to lovers or what would have been jolliest of the lot, doubts cast on William's paternity, an enormous and surely significant omission.
Peter played back bits of this to himself while he made his way home from the Bible in the middle of a small spinney; he actually managed a new thought on the subject in general. Part of men's earlier average age at death than women's, perhaps a substantial part, might be traceable to wives driving husbands to coronaries single-handed by steadily winding them up with anxiety and rage. Put it to Dewi. But never mind Dewi for now. He focused on the Bible session just over: old Tudor Whittingham, old Owen Thomas, old Vaughan Mowbray and old Arnold Spurling, not to speak of old Garth Pumphrey, who had as good as chaired an impromptu Brains Trust on false teeth, giving unasked a full account of the events leading up to the final installation of his own current set - Peter's mouth tingled at the memory and he clapped a hand over it. But no Charlie, no Alun, no Malcolm. Boding ill, somehow, the last one.
William's smart Audi was thoughtfully parked so as not to block the way to the garage. The time was 1.23, specially selected so as not to do more than brush the fringe of lateness while still allowing mother and son some minutes alone together at the outset. He found them standing by the sitting-room window looking out at the garden and talking about something called mulch or mulching, or rather Muriel was talking about it and went on doing so till a little while after Peter had joined the party. She also remained arm in arm with William throughout, so that on the whole, any kind of Peter/William embrace seemed excluded. William had done what he could in the meantime with waves and cheerful grimaces.
In the end Peter touched his son on the shoulder. 'Hallo, Willie boy, how's it going?'
'Darling, you must have a drink,' Muriel insisted to William. 'Now what would you like?'
'Hallo Dad, fine thanks. Have you got a beer?'
'Sure. What about you, love?'
'Oh, er, anything for me. I don't care. '
'Oh, but you must have a preference. Gin and tonic? Vodka?'
'Is there any dry sherry?'
'I'm afraid not.' Peter never drank sherry himself and he could not remember the last time Muriel had asked for it.
'Oh, well don't bother then.'
'That's no way to talk,' said Peter in his best jocose style. 'Nothing's too much trouble around here. What about a spot of-'
'Is there any wine open?'
'No, but I can easily - '
'Oh, oh, never mind.'
'Come on, Mum, have a glass of wine,' said William. 'If you're going to take that tone,' said his mother, 'what is there for me to do but give in gracefully?'
And of course when Peter got back to the sitting-room with the drinks they were no longer there, they had gone out into the garden. They could have gone out and in half a dozen times while he was looking for something to take down to the basement to open the new case of Muscadet with, and carrying on from there. When he reached them they were strolling, still or again arm in arm, down along the left-hand edge of the lawn with William on the inside, so that to be next to him he would either have to haul the pair of them a good yard to their right or walk on the flower-bed. Neither seemed advisable in the circumstances and he positioned himself instead on Muriel's other side. At the foot of the garden they did not make an about-turn but a right wheel, and stayed in the same relative positions till they were back in the house. It was much the same at lunch: Muriel at the corner of the table, William beside her, Peter at the end on a diagonal from him. They were just sitting down when the telephone rang in the hall and Peter went to answer it.
At his grunt a woman's voice said, 'Is that you, Peter?' He nearly dropped the handset. He had no breath. 'Mr Peter Thomas?'
'Yes. It's me.'
'Rhiannon here, Peter. Just to ask, are you coming to our party tonight at the Golf Club? Your old haunt. I sent you an invitation.'
'I hadn't really thought. I'm sorry.'
'Do come. It's our house-warming, only the house still isn't properly ready yet so we're having it at the Golf Club. Six-thirty onwards. We'd love you and Muriel to come.'
'I'm afraid we can't. I'm sorry.'
'Can you really not come?'
He wanted to lie but could not, nor, he found, did he know how to say what he felt. 'I just don't think it would be a good idea.' .
'Peter, listen. You can't keep out of my way for ever, love. It's incredible we haven't run into each other already by this time. And you think: it'll be much better not out of the blue and with lots of people there, won't it? I can't remember if you've met our daughter Rosemary. She's down from Oxford. Please come.'
'All right. I mean thank you, yes I will. I don't know about Muriel.'
'You turn up anyway then. See you later.'
Peter went on sitting for a moment longer on the pseudo-Chippendale chair by the telephone on to which he had dropped at the first sound of Rhiannon's voice. From there he could see the bottle of Famous Grouse on the kitchen dresser and hesitated. Then he dragged himself to his feet, hurried back to the dining-room and said before he could think better of it, interrupting Muriel to do so, 'That was Rhiannon Weaver inviting us to a party tonight at the Golf Club. Six-thirty.'
'What a merry thought,' said Muriel. 'Just my cup of tea. Two hundred assorted Welsh people standing up talking at the tops of their voices. Right up my street. You go.'
'Yes, I think I will.'
'I wouldn't wan
t to spoil the reunion of two old flames.'
'Six-thirty at the Golf Club did you say, Dad? I've got to be off anyhow about then and it's right on my way, the Club. I suppose there will be females present. Not aged a hundred and fifty I mean.'
'Their daughter for one,' said Peter.
'Great. I can go instead of you, Mum. I can take Dad down and he can get a mini cab back. One more drunken-driving conviction evaded.'
'You must be pretty hard up for a bit of skirt if you think Holland Golf Club is likely country,' said Muriel.
'Pretty hard up for a bit of a lot of things is what you quite soon become out at Capel Mererid,' said William. 'Not boredom, though. No supply shortfalls there.'
Shortly before six-thirty Peter settled himself in the passenger-seat of the Audi. He felt what he had not felt for many years, the sensation of one about to sit an exam. William, serious, dark and already thinning at the temples, wearing a rather ugly tie his father had lent him, got behind the wheel. Peter was fond of him, at least liked him better than anybody else he knew, but was shy when alone with him because he found it hard to think of things to say to him that were not likely to bore him. This mattered much less than it would have done if he had been alone with him at all often or for long at a time. Anyway, he need not have worried on this occasion.
William set the car in motion. 'Seat-belt, Dad.'
'Sorry.'
'I can see you'd like to get out of it if you could. You know you're enormously fat, do you? Fatter than ever? No-joke fat? Well of course you do, you could hardly not. The booze I suppose mostly, is it? I'm not saying I blame you, mind.' , 'That and the eats. Don't let what I ate for lunch fool you. I'm very good during the day, marvellous during the day, a lettuce-leaf here and half a sardine there, and then I'm sitting on my arse with the telly finished and I start stuffing myself. Cakes mostly. Profiteroles. Brandy-snaps. Anything with cream or jam or chocolate. Also cake, Genoa cake, Dundee cake with almonds. Seed cake with a glass of Malmsey. Like some Victorian female only this is one o'clock in the morning.'
'You can't be hungry, not then. Not really.'
'Well, it's partly giving up smoking. Four years now but then I still feel, you know, is this all there is for tonight?
So you start eating. But it's also partly, partly I don't know what to call it. Scared as much as anything I mean. I hope that doesn't sound too much like piling on the agony.' When William said nothing Peter went on. 'Well, there's quite a good selection of things to be scared of when you get to my age, as you may well be able to imagine.'
'And not only then,' said William. 'Yes, I was reading the other day where the fellow said, Welshman too by God, he said carbohydrates, which is what we're talking about, they're tranquillizing, just mildly. Well, that clears that up. But are you all right, Dad? You mustn't mind me saying this, but when I first saw you today I didn't think you were looking very well. Nothing wrong, is there? Silly not to tell me if there is.'
Peter told him straight away, sticking to physical facts, making not even the most indirect allusion to Muriel. When he had finished he felt a little better, but not much because of finding he was forced to listen to his own words as if he had been William, and they had sounded rather daunting like that. They drove in silence for a couple of minutes. Then William said, 'Mum still goes on those trips of hers to London, does she?'
'Oh yes, like mad. Every couple of months or so. In fact she's about due for one now.'
'Right, well when she goes, give me a ring and I'll pop down and we could have lunch or whatever you like. Just give me a ring. When Mum's in London.'
'Fine.'.
'Or you could come up to me if you felt like it. Never been, have you? Not that there's much to see. There's this pad I share with one of the blokes at work. Miner's cottage it was, quite nice really, with a bit of garden at the back. And I'll tell you something about that garden. We've been there two years all but a few weeks and it hasn't had a fork in it the whole of that time. Don't you think that's interesting?'
Rhiannon was the first person Peter saw at the Golf Club when he went in by the side entrance from the car park and entered the large old-fashioned hall where non-members were entertained. She was standing in its opposite corner but seemed to have caught sight of him even before he saw her. At once she smiled with what looked like pure pleasure, pure affection, though how that could have been he had no idea, and hurried over towards him. He realized he had been afraid of not recognizing her after so many years, but when she came in range of his glasses (supposed to be for reading only but kept on most of the time out of inertia) he saw her face had not changed at all- well, a few lines, a fullness under the chin, nothing really, of course her hair was probably a bit touched up. The eyes were the same. Surely she was not going to kiss him but she was, she did.
'This is William,' he said almost without knowing it. 'My son.' He realized something else, that William had not said a word about her, or about Alun either, when he had had the chance. He must know, know something anyway.
'Hallo, William. Rosemary's round the place somewhere.'
The voice was the same too, but he had noticed that already, on the telephone. He said something back and she asked about Muriel. The three talked for some minutes, had drinks, were joined by Rosemary. Peter took in very little: he was too busy looking furtively at Rhiannon and listening to her talking rather than following what she said. Now and then he tried and failed to explain to himself what he hoped to achieve (or perhaps avoid) while present. No sooner was the question sharpened for him by William steering Rosemary away than Alun came up and hailed him with his normal supernormal display of warmth. He was looking disagreeably fit, and well turned out: hair snowier than ever, new pearl-grey suit in some unfamiliar, doubtless fashionable cloth, pink carnation in buttonhole. The effect was in part that of an upper-second-rate actor, one of the sort you wondered about a bit too, which had to be accidental. But it was fair to say that the comic side of this was almost endearing, Peter considered, nearer to it at least than anything he was likely to come up with himself.
'You have the good fortune,' said Alun with all his vivacity, 'or as some would no doubt call it, the misfortune to find me in a state of euphoria. One based moreover not on artificial stimulants but on sober fact. Two facts. Today I received a commission for seven half-hour television programmes, tittle to be agreed but something about Wales, what else, all right Peter, and more important, incomparably more important, I wrote a poem, well, got to the end of the first draft. It's been a long time. I don't know whether it's any good but the point is writing it, getting it written, finding you can still do it. Marvellous bloody feeling. Like finding you can still, er... '
He fell silent abruptly and with seeming finality, blinking at the floor. After a number of seconds he flung up his head in triumph. 'Sing in the choir, sing in the choir. You thought you'd, er... ' Another pause followed, but a much shorter one than before. 'Forgotten the harmony, forgotten how the part went, but you've still got it, it's still there. Very much the... Ah, here we are, there you are, you old devils, you.'
He turned with rekindled enthusiasm to Charlie and Sophie, to Garth, to Sian Smith and Dorothy Morgan, not abating it even for Dorothy; euphoria had been the word all right. When the cries and embraces of meeting were over Dorothy led Rhiannon away in the direction of a grim-faced female who looked like a retired bouncer in drag and shorty silver wig. Somebody's mother, Peter guessed; it had always to be remembered that there were still quite a lot of people about who had mothers.
Garth, quite natty in his usual tweeds, was eulogizing Alun's suit. 'Oh, lovely bit of garment you've got there, boy. Beautiful. Must have cost you a packet.' He reached out and turned a lapel over. 'Of course, I suppose having to look right for all your television 'appearances, this son of thing comes off tax, does it?'
'I shouldn't be surprised. My accountant sees to all that.
Anyway, what - '
'Do you know how long I've had this s
uit I'm wearing now?' Garth asked them all in a grim, challenging way. 'Thirty-seven years. You see, I've had a bit of sense, I've taken care of myself. Not like some, eh? Well, you're not as bad as these two, Alun, agreed, but you have let yourself go just a wee bit, come on, admit it now. Under here' - he tapped his chin - 'and here and - '
'I can't do anything about your terrible mind, Garth,' said Alun, grinning harder than before, 'I can't help your inability to notice anything that doesn't directly involve your pathetic self,' he continued, starting to shake with mirth, 'but when you start vaunting your supposed moral superiority, you bloody little cowshed mountebank,' and here he started laughing as he spoke, 'then at least I can tell you to shut your blathering trap before I slam your doubtless irreproachable dentures down your fucking throat.'
By now he and Garth had their arms round each other's shoulders, both of them bent in the middle and red in the face, roaring fit to bust, two old mates who had seen things so much in the same light for so long that they could be carried helplessly away together to a region of feeling no outsider could penetrate or understand. Charlie looked on with an unsettled smile, Peter without expression.
Alun was the first to come round. 'Well,' he said, breathing noisily and sniffing, 'that'll show the little bugger, what? Ah. Ah!' And he dashed off across the room to greet old Owen Thomas and his wife who had just come in the front entrance, near which there also stood a photographer.
'Oh dear, dear,' said Garth, 'there was a performance and no mistake. That boy's got a tongue to him, hasn't he? It's a treat to hear him use the language. God alive, I can't think when I last laughed like that.'
'How's Angharad?' asked Charlie.
'Oh, well enough, thank you, Charlie. Er, well enough.'
'I couldn't follow the bit about the cowshed,' said Peter when Garth had moved away.
'He's a vet, or was, at Capel Mererid. Sheep rather than cows, but you get the general gist. I thought everybody knew that. He doesn't give you a fair chance to forget it.'
The Old Devils Page 15