The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  'Quite impressive in its way,' said Charlie. 'I hadn't seen it before.'

  'Quite impressive. Sometimes she moves under her own steam without waiting to be counted out. No doubt depending on how she feels.'

  'Yes, I suppose it must boil down to that in the end.'

  'I think I'm going to bed,' said Charlie to Sophie, who had come back into the room.

  'You do that, love. Are you all right?'

  'Absolutely fine. Yes, really.'

  'I won't be too long. Sian's up there.'

  'I'll be fine.' Charlie kissed his wife on the cheek and turned back for a moment to Peter with a distant sparkle. 'Be seeing you. Bit pissed now.'

  He had hardly gone, and Peter had hardly had time to start wondering how to handle whatever it was he had to handle, before Muriel entered the kitchen, closely followed by Gwen, whom Peter had barely set eyes on since arriving. Both carried empty glasses and the way each moved brought out for the moment a striking physical resemblance: rather short in the leg and moving slowly and softly, shoulders bowed but head well up and forward, rather pointed nose questing for the wine-bottle. None of those immediately on view had any wine in it. Without verbal or other comment Sophie produced a full one, a litre flask of Emerald Riesling, from a carton next to her sentry-box-sized refrigerator. Sharing the work, Murie1 twisted the _in-situ__ cork off the corkscrew in no-nonsense fashion, her head enveloped in cigarette-smoke. Gwen attacked the foil round the neck of the new bottle with a fruit-knife. Neither spoke until liquor was pouring.

  'Exit our Dorothy,' said Muriel. 'Not before time let it be added.'

  'The sound of the front door shutting was music in our ears,' said Gwen.

  Muriel settled herself in her previous place. 'Young Percy didn't exactly fall over himself coming to the bloody rescue, did he?'

  'He probably felt like an hour off,' said Peter, who was still rather impressed with Percy's smooth, resolute action and, even more, envious of his air of seclusion in some adamantine sphere of his own. 'That seems very reasonable to me.'

  The three women looked at him in silence, Sophie only for an instant while she made for the door, Gwen, seated, rather longer. Muriel's look came over the top of her glass and lasted till she had put it down on the table. Then she said, 'Well, Pete lad, now's your chance for a small break yourself. My friend Gwen and I are just about to settle down for a nice cosy little sisterly chat which I don't honestly see you contributing much to, so you could take off right away, couldn't you? No point in sticking around, eh?' She smiled, or drew back the corners of her mouth and raised her eyebrows.

  He had been expecting to be asked to hang on while his wife had one more drink and then to have to hang on while she had one more after that. Under this arrangement he would have been open later on to a charge of having spoilt the drink(s) in question by a display of impatience - this no matter how hard and continuously he might have beamed at everyone in sight - with another in reserve about having dragged her away while she was enjoying herself. She was not an inveterate boozer but when she was on it there was a routine for that too. He was accordingly ill prepared for being ordered out of Sophie's house. 'Oh... that's all right,' he said. 'I can easily - '

  'No, no, I wouldn't keep you up, old boy.' Muriel gave I a waggish laugh. 'You look as if you could do with an early night. Granted it's not that early, but every little helps.'

  After another tepid protest or two he was driven from the room. Gwen gave him a farewell twiddle of the fingers and stylized simper that made him feel quite sorry for Malcolm, but only in passing. In the hall cloakroom he rejected, as frequently before, that if the Thomases had a second car, which they or rather she could readily have afforded, then all this would never have arisen. _All __ this? A drop out of the ocean. And of course there would still be times like tonight, with her too pissed, or about to become too pissed, to drive. Well, at times like that, when she actually needed him, she could ring him or... What was he talking about? Let herself in for feeling tied down and pass up a giltedged chance of buggering him about at the same time? He must be joking. He must also have got this far almost as frequently before.

  Outside in the hall itself he nearly ran into Sophie wearing a turquoise-blue - scarf over her head, which was just unexpected enough to make him say, 'Off somewhere, are you?' Now he remembered, he had heard the 'telephone tinkle a minute or two before.

  'Yeah. Why?' Her normal intonation had never needed much sharpening in order to sound snappish.

  'Charlie'll be all right, I suppose?'

  'Why wouldn't he be?'

  'Well... ' Peter shifted his head about in a way intended to remind her that as an old friend he rather naturally knew something of her husband's nervous troubles.

  'Should be safe enough, shouldn't he, with three people in the house?'

  'Oh yes. Yes of course. '

  'If you're worried you can stay around yourself.'

  This time he moved his head in a different way, thinking perhaps she had been pulling his leg.

  'I like a bit of time off too, you know, now and then.' Before he could give his answer to that, if any, Sophie went back into the kitchen.

  5

  Gwen and Muriel looked up at the sound of the outside door shutting a second time.

  'Peter in a funny mood,' said Sophie.

  'You know I don't think drink agrees with him,' said Muriel. 'Never has.'

  'Decent of the old boy,' said Gwen, 'to stick up for Percy like that. And shows a great breadth of sympathy too.'

  'You'd think he'd realize there's others needs a break,' said Sophie, and went briskly on, 'I'm just off round to Rhiannon's for half an hour. Now you won't be rushing away yet awhile, will you? Stuff in the fridge if you want 'it,' she said further, though there was enough stuff on the table to keep both the other two chewing hard for a couple of hours. 'Stay if you like, mind, 'there's another bed in the - '

  Muriel interrupted to say she would get a minicab and Gwen interrupted her to say she would drive her, and the two fought over it briefly until Sophie had actually left, though they each managed to get in their thanks for the party and their sendings of love to Rhiannon. After assuring herself that they were indeed alone Gwen turned to Muriel with an intent frown.

  'What we were saying - a tin of a good brand with a spoonful of yogurt stirred in... '

  'And a spot of chopped parsley... '

  '... and they start asking you just which vegetables you've used, isn't there endive in this, can't I taste celeriac. And wanting to know _how__ you did it, surely you melted them in butter and so on. I just tell them, the old way, m'm, it's the only proper way.'

  Muriel laughed with more elation than might have been expected at a simple discussion of kitchen methods. 'Right, there's not much they can say to that. And of course when it comes to chicken or Scotch broth or whatever, well, what is it, it's cubes and booze, that's what it is, cubes and booze. A tin of oxtail soup and a cube and a tablespoon of whisky and that's it. Not only easier, incomparably easier. _Better__,' she said challengingly. 'Better all along the line.'

  'When I look back,' said Gwen, resting her chin on a hand that also had a lighted cigarette in it and squinting towards a recent wine-stain on the tablecloth, 'and think of all that carry-on with the wretched stock-pot, never let it leave the stove, in with every scrap of the joint and you'd have thought a chicken carcass was worth ten times the chicken itself and... Do you know, Muriel, would you believe it, time was when I'd go along to the butcher and get bones for the dog, no dog, straight into the bloody pot with the beef-gristle. And for what? What possessed us?'

  This time Muriel's response was affectionate as well as appreciative, or at least it sounded like it. In the usual run of things she and Gwen got on no better than all right even when she was not finding Gwen sly nor Gwen finding her loud or strange or both, but midnight could bring some display of amity. Part of this must have come from mere co-survival at the drinks table, as both had re1lected before now. B
ut not all; not this time, at least.

  Gwen waited for a moment, then said more or less at random, 'After all, it's not as if anybody in the world's going to notice, let alone appreciate even the most obvious... '

  'Don't make me laugh.'

  'I mean they don't even _know__.'

  'Of course they don't _know__, love. You can only know if you want to know, and they don't want to know. They have other claims on their valuable attention, as I imagine you must have noticed before.'

  'I can't bear the way they - '

  'What, them bestir themselves to notice how life's lived in their own home, what makes the bloody world go round? Not them. Why should they? They've won.'

  By this stage there was little doubt that those now under discussion were not the same as those who asked Gwen just which vegetables she had used. Nevertheless whatever the two women most wanted to talk about had pretty clearly not yet been broached. Give it time, as they used to say in South Wales when an unlooked-for silence descended on the company. Gwen was the one who let it come, that being what you did if you were the one with the luck when everybody present had given it time.

  'Of course she still is very striking, I quite see that, I wouldn't call her beautiful, I never thought she was beautiful, but she is very striking.' She left the name out - not through any Cymric instinct of non-committal but because her thoughts were undeviatingly fixed on Rhiannon, as in fact they had been for some minutes past.

  Perhaps Muriel's were too: she joined in promptly enough. 'Oh, agreed, with the benefit of a small fortune laid out on facials and massages and health farms and I don't know what all. Plus never having to do a hand's turn in the home.'

  'Oh fair enough, but you don't get skin like that out of a tube. And that carriage, you're born with it or you're not. But as for-'

  'Not so much as heave a plate on to the bloody rack.'

  'It's when it comes to the what would you call it, the social side that I start, um, veering away from the consensus a bit. The conversational - '

  'Airs and graces at her age.'

  'I mean she's fine on the chit-chat level, nobody better for a good chinwag, oh, I'll give her that, it's just all rather run-of-the-mill. You know, humdrum. Of course, I'm not asking for a discussion of Wittgenstein over the coffee and gingernuts, nothing like that, but it's all very agreeable and chummy and then at the end you ask yourself what has she actually _said__. Nobody's demanding a coruscating shower of wit... '

  This speech had given Muriel time to do some catching-up. 'Always found her a bit of a bore, quite frankly.'

  'Well, I don't think I'd... '

  'Look, wasn't she... didn't you... weren't you... '

  'Wasn't I what, pet?'

  'You know, at the... place along the road, the... _you__ know, the poly is it?'

  'The university,' said Gwen a little stuffily.

  'Yeah, that's right, well weren't you there together about a hundred years ago, you and her?'

  'As a matter of fact we were, yes, way back as you say.' Gwen tried to remember what sort of place Muriel had been at. Surely if it had been another university or any other proper seat of learning then Muriel would have impressed it upon her many times over. So it must have been a teachers' training college or some other lowly institution where they had envy dinned into them. She realized she felt pretty vague on the whole topic. 'If the matter is of the smallest interest.'

  'Sorry, I was just wondering what sort of showing she made as a student, you know, from the academic point of view.'

  '_Oh__.' In the interval, not long but extended by a couple of soft interpolated belches from Muriel, it had returned to Gwen's mind that the place in question had been a school of art named after one of the industrial towns in the North of England and presumably responsible, to some degree anyway, for Muriel's taste in pictures as seen in her house. This made Gwen feel comfortable enough to go on, 'Well, actually now you come to mention it, er, it is quite interesting. She went to all her lectures, well that's sensible if you're not too sure of your own capacity to shine, as it were, and did all her essays, good girl, and would probably have ended up with a pass degree which was all she was going for, "if she hadn't... '

  'Right. What was she, what was she studying?'

  'She was reading - ' said Gwen with some weight on the word, then carried on all offhand, '- biology main with botany subsidiary or the other way round, I can't remember. Some English in her first year I think.'

  'Not a very distinguished career do I gather?'

  'She was a conscientious student but she didn't seem to take any interest in her subjects the rest of the time. Did her work and that was that, then off out. No shortage of offers as you can imagine. She, er, she never took much part in the swapping of ideas, midnight discussion side of university life.'

  Muriel made a backhand gesture putting off consideration of that side of life indefinitely. 'Popular enough with her teachers I dare say.'

  'Well: if you mean by that there was any - '

  'No no, nothing improper, I'm not suggesting that at all. A girl doesn't have to go anywhere near that far to make herself agreeable to her pastors and masters. Winning ways'll do it.'

  'Well,' said Gwen again, and stopped. She wanted quite strongly to oppose what was being insinuated without much idea of why, except that the vertical furrows along Muriel's top lip struck her all of a sudden as most unattractive. They had shown up extra clear in the last half-minute, which was just about when Gwen had found she was no longer being borne along by the thrill of disloyalty. She had talked and drunk herself off the heights of her revolt, though that was not at all the same thing as saying she wanted to go home. And it was miles and miles away from saying she was beginning to grow reconciled to what had taken place, what had almost failed to take place, between herself and Alun. It had been _all her fault__ - for not having learnt her lesson years before, for being drunk too early in the day to be allowed for, for chancing her arm with a contemptible sod like that. In the past she had never quite made up her mind whether Alun was on balance to be despised or to be regarded as some sort of engaging rogue. Well, if nothing else, the events of the early afternoon of the day in question, that of the unveiling at St Dogmael's, had settled that one for good and all. But no point in going over it again now, if ever.

  Evidently it had been the right moment for Muriel too to take a break. Sitting hunched over the table, she was making patterns with a matchstick in the loose ash that half filled the roomy blue-glass ashtray in front of her and hissing quietly through her teeth, perhaps in search of a new topic, if so in vain, as soon appeared.

  'It doesn't make any odds whether you're bright or stupid or anywhere in between,' she said. 'They don't care what you think, what you say, or what you're like at all.'

  'They don't even notice.' Gwen reckoned she ought to be able to hold her own here.

  'You thought so at first, mind you. At least I know I did. Tell us what you think, love - no go on, I really want to hear. And then when you did tell 'em, well it was quite a long time before I started noticing the glaze in their eyes. They were being good about you talking. You can say what you please because it doesn't matter what you say. It's like, I was reading about one of these Russian satellite places, was it Hungary, anyway wherever it was, what you say's neither here nor there just so long as you don't set about bloody _doing__ anything, it might have been Poland. And then they wonder when you start screaming and chucking things at them. Hey, that's like, dead funny isn't it, I never thought of it like that before, but it's like when somebody like a dissident or a minority finds they can't get anywhere through the legal ch8nnels so they go round blowing up power-stations. Of course I don't hold with people actually literally doing that, but by Christ I promise you I know how they feel.'

  'And then they're never angry back. _You__ get angry but _they__ don't on purpose, so as to show how silly and childish you are and how mature and marvellous they are. Objective too.'

  'It's all r
ight for them to be fed up first, don't forget, like when you're late or they're late. You might be cross when they're late when what they've been up to _matters__, see? When you've not batted an eyelid.'

  'And they go off to the club as if they don't love it.' Gwen had started to enjoy herself. 'As if we _don't know.'__

  'Why we bother to talk to them passes my comprehension.'

  'Ever. I often wonder.'

  'They're all shits,' said Muriel. 'And the ones who pretend not to be are the worst of the lot.'

  'I suppose so. Sometimes I think we're a bit hard on them.'

  'Serve the buggers right, I say.'

  It was very quiet in Sophie's kitchen. Even in the 1980s South Wales still kept industrial hours: early to work if any, early home, early in the pub, early to bed. The tendency gave sitting up an extra relish. Muriel poured wine with a mention of one for the road, and Gwen accepted some with a cautionary hand lifted, as at every previous pouring. Then, as if struck by sudden inspiration, Muriel snatched up a cigarette and lit it.

  'This may not be a very edifying way of carrying on,' she said judicially and with a demonstrative jerk of the hand, 'but it's a long sight more fun than anything my poor old female parent had a chance of getting up to in her declining years. No cars or parties or telly then. In those days you had your chair and your stick and your cat and that was it.'

  'Oh come off it, Muriel,' said Gwen, sharply enough to make Muriel twitch a little. 'I met your mother a couple of times, and one of the times I remember she was waiting for somebody to come and pick her up and drive her somewhere to play bridge. And I'm not at all sure she hadn't got a gin and tonic in her hand while she waited. Stick and cat indeed.'

  Apart from the twitch, soon suppressed, Muriel showed not the smallest discomfort or sign of regrouping at this contradiction. 'All right, she was lucky. Thousands weren't. I'm thinking of the days pre-war now, you understand. A different world in all sorts of ways. Altogether different attitudes.' Muriel was talking faster and with more concentration than before, like somebody determined to get through a number of remarks already in mind, more than one perhaps long in mind. 'About marriage for instance. Now we're supposed to think that that generation never discussed anything like that. Well that's probably right enough and they didn't _discuss__ it, go into the bloody business in every mortal detail- but you see you can discuss a thing till you're black in the face and end up knowing less about it than when you started. Understanding it less, less well. My mother,' said Murie1 forcefully and quickening up further - 'my mother used to talk about the unpleasant· side of marriage. No she didn't, she didn't talk about it, she referred to it, that was how she referred to it when she did. Now just you try and imagine the kind of roasting you'd get if you called it that these days. From everybody. But I wonder how many women would disagree with you in their heart of hearts.'