The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  When Muriel did let up, plainly not out of any shortage of material, Gwen looked encouraging and prepared to pay close attention. Whatever was to follow she would pass on to Rhiannon at the first opportunity, not only on intrinsic grounds but also to offset earlier treacheries. Besides, any informed account of relations between Muriel and Peter, long suspected of being bad enough to be interesting, would win no small kudos among the other wives.

  Even at prevailing speeds of thought Gwen was quite ready when Muriel went on, in no less of a rush than before and just where she had left off, 'Because they never had time to get used to it, to adjust. . It's supposed to come naturally and I expect it does for a very great many, it must do, but not for all. But it's no use saying anything because they don't notice, and then when they do notice they think it's just a female acting up or asserting herself or getting back at them for something else in the way everybody knows they do. So then it's either a huge set to or hoping it'll be better next time, and funnily enough it always seems to turn out the same way, isn't that striking? And _then__... it gets to be too late, very natural that, just like when you're talking to someone and you don't know their name, and you hang on because you're hoping they're going to say it or you'll remember, and then before you know where you are it's too late to ask them. Well, when you've got that far it's no time at all to when it's really too late.

  'Some people seem to manage quite okay to keep up with their old buddies after not seeing them for twenty years. Sian was telling me she's still in touch with a mate of hers who went to Toronto I couldn't tell you when but a hell of a long time ago.'

  Gwen still said nothing. Very reluctantly, and feeling fed up as well, she saw that she would not after all be able to tell Rhiannon what Muriel had let out, could at most drop a hint or two along with a plea of amnesia. That amnesia might easily turn out to be genuine enough, and even the hint or two might stretch her morning self too far. It could be that Muriel had been half rationally counting on something like that, trying out an unusual form of self-revelation, one that popped back into the box overnight. Certainly her last couple of sentences had been just the sort of thing you expected to hear on coming round from a fit of extreme apathy in the small hours. No harm in passing that on.

  'Would you very kindly telephone for a minicab on my behalf?' said Muriel after a minute of complete silence. She spoke with rather better control than before from much further out. 'The number can be found in my handbag which is somewhere.'

  More of the same, thought Gwen, picking up the handbag from within reach. But she made up her mind to be less bothered in future when Muriel seemed to her strange or loud, if she could remember the reason, of course.

  6

  'Was it baby Babs whose hideous crabs distressed Father Muldoon?

  Oh no, it wasn't baby Babs, it was Mrs Rosenbloom... ' Alun sang quietly not out of any ordinary precaution, for he was alone at the wheel of his car, but to avoid giving way to anything in the nature of vulgar triumph. On leaving Malcolm's in a mood of heavily qualified satisfaction he had happened to find himself passing, or as good as passing, the house of an old friend. Until the party at the Golf Club they had not met for something like twenty years, met even then hardly long enough for him to tell her she was obviously in terrific fettle and how sorry he had been to hear about Griff. In his day Griff had been a successful and venturesome doctor, unstinting with the early pep pills, master of a sizeable red-brick villa on the Beaufoy road. Alun had just had time to ask where she was living now - same place actually, good old Griff, trust him to see her right. Alun had notified himself, more or less as he turned into that road, that if a light happened to be showing there at this hour then he would pull in for a moment and give a toot, or perhaps better a quick ring, just on the off-chance. And there had been a light and the chance had come up.

  To take a fresh step in that general direction so soon after nearly coming a cropper over a previous one, while not yet out of that danger in fact, might have seemed foolhardy to some. It certainly did to Alun, or had until the moment he was invited in for a couple of minutes. After that, and especially now he was driving away, it felt more like having successfully gone up in his own light aeroplane immediately after a bit of a spill. That of course made it no less foolhardy in the undertaking. No, well there it was.

  At the age of twenty-six or so, having noticed that he was obviously not a particle more grown-up or less reckless than he had been at thirteen, he had been greatly relieved to come across a newspaper article by some fashionable psychologist saying that adolescence among human males could be a drawn-out process, lasting in some respects and cases until the age of twenty-five or even thirty. This assurance had given him intermittent hope and comfort of a sort until about ten years later, when it had come back to him in a moment of what had been, even for him, an outstanding act of goatish irresponsibility. Thereafter he had clung to the consolation that there was nothing he could do about it.

  The house in Holland when he approached it had a light on in the sitting-room, a departure from his expectation that brought mild vexation cross-hatched with foreboding. The vexation went along the lines of here he was, having taken all this trouble to leave people to themselves, give them plenty of time to get themselves off to bed, faced now with God-knew-what hold-up before he could get himself off there after a hard day. The foreboding was less straightforward.

  For Rhiannon to be still up and on her own much after eleven, never mind getting on for one o'clock in the morning, was unheard-of, imaginable only in bombshell situations, good news it might be, bad much more likely. Short of that, she would most probably have Rosemary with her, back from her evening out (or somewhere) with William Thomas, who seemed to have been around since first light or thereabouts. It was no trouble at all for Alun to picture the bloody girl looking up alertly this very moment at the sound of his engine, getting into position next to her mother as president of a two-woman court of inquiry into his recent activities and overall behaviour. Or it would be Rosemary on her own, no more alluring an option. Whereas other possibilities hardly bore thinking about: Gwen with an expanded edition of her grievances? Malcolm with a more accurate one of his? The police he ruled out unless a mistake had been made. An incident in Harriston in 1950 involving a woman probationary sergeant and a patrol van might well have seriously displeased them at the time, but at this date could surely be passed over as grounds for a midnight descent on a non-black.

  These speculations and others went through Alun's head while he was still driving up to the house. When he got closer he saw there was a car parked outside it, one he was nearly sure he had seen not far away not long before. That was the best he could do: he knew well enough that car recognition was an important proficiency for one who led his sort of life after hours, but he bad been neglecting it, was still dangerously unschooled in local detail. Moving on foot to the front door he let his neck go rubbery and his eyes uninquiring, getting ready to lurch into action as a drunk. Then he sort of remembered it was Rhiannon he would be hoping to fool and went ordinary again, in so far as he now could. After it was too late he started trying to think of a topic to take the initiative with.

  When he walked springily into the sitting-room he was faced with Rhiannon in towelling dressing-gown over nightie and Sophie in day clothes; no Rosemary. Neither of the two present smiled very positively or spoke. Without thought, intent only on action, he moved over and kissed each of them in turn, then, as his brain began ticking over once more, he stepped back and gave Sophie a sequence of cheerful interrogative nods.

  She responded at once. 'I had Dorothy, I was saying to Rhiannon, and then I had Muriel, she's probably still there. Really one of her nights. Bad as I've ever known her, she was. Cruel. You don't see her like it, you know, Rhi. Gwen dropped in and I left Muriel putting her through it. Just nipped out,' she ended, with a girls-together half-wink at her chum.

  'I don't blame you,' said Alun warmly. Good old Soaph, he thought with more ge
nuine warmth - never any need to worry there from the word go. Not really bright as you usually thought of it, but bright as a button when it came to anything that bore on the old ins and outs: the throwaway mention of Gwen was a typical touch. With a quick switch he added, 'Rosemary gone to bed, has she?'

  'Just this moment,' said Rhiannon. 'I wonder you didn't bump into William as you drove up.'

  'Oh, he just dropped her off like that, did he?'

  'Well, yes.'

  'I see.'

  At no point could Alun have said what he meant by his last question. But whatever it might have been intended to convey - surprise, resignation, outrage, boredom, disappointment, fatherly concern, heartfelt co-masculine approval- he of all people had no business to be asking it in front of these two, or perhaps anywhere on earth. This dawned on him a bit at a time while he stood there taking in the information. Then he suddenly said, 'You know if by any chance this ridiculous weather carries on, we could probably do worse than go down to Birdarthur for a couple of days. Old Dai the Books still keeps up his place on the cliff there. Sophie, you've stayed in that cottage, haven't you?'

  'Oh, I'm included in this, am I?'

  'Why not, there's two decent bedrooms and Charlie can leave Victor at the tiller for a spell. Not next week because I'm filming then. Dai's only ever there at weekends, he was telling me. I didn't manage to get him at the shop today... '

  It would have been miraculous if he had, not having gone within a league of the place, tried it by telephone or even admitted Dai the Books to his thoughts more than a few seconds before pronouncing the name, though the facts were as stated. Anyway, with his talents for persuasion, which had less to do with direct pressure than with making something sound fun for long enough, he soon had Sophie's assent to the Birdarthur project with Charlie's thereby taken for granted. Rhiannon's had been taken for granted from the start.

  'Well, I'm off,' said Alun finally. 'Don't break the party up on my account, now.'

  'You needn't think you're going to get away like that, _was__,' said Rhiannon.

  Into Thy hands, O Lord, thought Alun to himself.

  Although he often said where he was going, or might have been going, he never said where he had been, nor did Rhiannon ever ask until... unless...

  'You take that creature out, outside, and then settle her down in her basket in the kitchen. And mind you wait and make sure before you let her back in.'

  Enfeebled by the exertions of her day, Nelly had responded to Alun's arrival with no more than a couple of paltry thumps of her tail and a lunatic gleam out of the very corners of her eyes. Now, hearing herself referred to, she made a slovenly attempt to sit up and did a thorough squeaking yawn that would have been quite impressive in an animal of any size. He took her away as bidden, but in a style that emphasized his decency in doing so, his detachment from the whole concern. It was not that he disliked the puppy, rather the contrary: he just could not afford to let it be thought that he could be roped in any old time to minister to her needs. Why, next thing he knew he would be rushing back from Griff's or somewhere to give the bloody hound her tea!

  7

  When the door had shut behind Alun there were two releases of breath of which neither quite amounted to a sigh of relief. Sophie lowered herself to the floor, twisted her head about till it rested comfortably against the arm of the chair behind her and said she must be going. Rhiannon suggested more coffee, adding that it would only take a minute, and rearranged her legs under her on the sofa. They sat in a more or less habitable corner of the room with bare boards and half-decorated walls hardly out of reach.

  Sophie had probably missed the coffee proposal altogether. 'You ought to get out more, you know, Rhi,' she said.

  'Oh no. It's so lovely not having to after years of not wanting to and having to. '

  'It'd be easier if you learnt to drive.'

  'Not you too,' said Rhiannon, bouncing upright. 'I can drive as well as anybody if I haven't actually forgotten how. I drove a dry-cleaner's van for eighteen months in London when we were hard up. It's not I can't drive, it's I don't drive. There being no car except the one with Alun in it. Can't afford a second car, he says, at least he'd say if I brought it up again ever. He does all the shopping I can't do round the corner and if I want to go anywhere there's a minicab. Much cheaper than running another car ourselves. And no parking problem. He'd say that too. You try him.'

  'Funny, he's never been one to pinch the pennies. I mean... ' Sophie looked about her, but there was little evidence of lavishness except perhaps the only picture so far on display, a large Cydd Tomas over the fireplace, dated 1981 under the artist's signature and yet attractive enough - it very likely showed Dragon's Head from the sea - to be almost worth its place on that ground alone.

  'Sure, no trouble there,' said Rhiannon, 'but it's nothing to do with that, the point is with him having the car nobody ever knows where he is, and me not having a car, everybody knows where I am, only that's not nearly so interesting. Take tonight, now.'

  'M'm. Any idea where he'd been?'

  'Not the faintest, have you?'

  'I only hope it was somebody sensible.'

  'Oh, me too.' Rhiannon paused before going on. 'How was Gwen really?'

  'Oh. Coming round, I reckon. Still a bit shirty but going to be okay as long as he doesn't make any waves for a bit.'

  'If only he had the sense to keep it in the family, sort of.'

  'I know,' said Sophie, 'I couldn't agree with you more.

  Especially now he's down here. It's not like London down here.'

  'Absolutely. It's silly of him in another way too. It lands up there are things we can't talk about, him and me. I don't mean important things, I mean unimportant things, but they're still quite important when you add them together. Who was there and how they seemed and what was said... At least it makes it harder.'

  'M'm. Is he all right, Rhi, do you think?'

  'All right?' repeated Rhiannon in alarm. 'How do you mean?'

  'No, nothing, he just seems to have got a bit wild. You'd think he'd know by now not to take up with Gwen all of a sudden like that and then expect to get away with treating her like... '

  'Take up with Gwen _again__ all of a sudden like that, but it doesn't really make any - '

  'Oh, I didn't realize they were - '

  'Oh yes. Funny, I never thought he was very keen. In fact I wonder a bit who took up with who, either time. Of course it was more all right for her then, not being exactly the only pebble on the beach. She had other things in her life then.'

  'Like Malcolm,' said Sophie. 'Yeah.'

  That was all for the moment. Sophie sat with her arms round her knees, shapely sleek dark head towards the thick shaggy rug as if she was following a train of thought, not a thing she often gave any sign of doing. Rhiannon lit a cigarette, holding the flame as usual a couple of millimetres inwards from the tip. She had wondered a little at the time what had brought Sophie along to her so late, nearly too late to find her up. Something to do with Alun, it had soon emerged; saying she hoped he was settling down all right after the move from London, not saying what she could well have been thinking now, that she also hoped his recent goings-on did not mean she had lost her special bit of hold on him, however lumpy that bit might have looked to the outside world. For various reasons Rhiannon too hoped as much, but felt that here in Wales that was not the sort of thing you could really say. So with no particular intention she asked how Charlie was, rather less inquisitively than when she had asked after Gwen.

  'That bugger knocks it back like a fool,' said Sophie without looking up.

  'Yes, I thought... '

  'I never realized how much he drank till the night he came home sober. A revelation, it was. '

  'Not even nice at the time, I don't suppose.'

  'What had happened that day I'll never know. Anyway it was a hell of a night after that. He made me sit up with him till he was asleep which wasn't till after two, and then it couldn't have been
much after four he was cootched tight up to me, stiff as a board and breathing in and out, in and out as if he was doing it for a bet. And he wouldn't say what it was, what the matter was. I went on and on asking him but he wouldn't say. Next day he was paralytic by six, Victor said.'

  'If he's going to make you sit up and all that, he really ought to "say.'

  'He's never said, except being alone makes it worse and the dark isn't good. I've given up trying to get him to try and say what it is. All he's ever said is it's nothing to do with anything and it doesn't mean anything. I'm fed up. He ought to say _something__. I mean about _something__. It gets depressing when a bloke never says anything. There's not as much difference as you might think between him pissed as a lizard and him passed out. Not when he's with me there's not. I quite like him, old Charlie, or I used to, and I miss him, sort of. '

  Rhiannon took her time about finishing her cigarette. 'Sounds as if the two of you could do with a nice break.

  You will come to Birdarthur, won't you? You and I can have a proper gas. Alun'd like you to be there too. He's always complaining he never seems to see enough of you.'