The Old Devils

       Peter looked rather shaken. After a moment's hesitation he advanced into the room with a real reluctance that he tried, late on and not very convincingly, to hide in a comic pretence of reluctance. He and Muriel waved to each other and it was the same or similar with him and Gwen, him and Dorothy, him and a couple of others. Flapping his hand at the smoke-filled air, he said in a bantering tone, 'So this is what all you busy housewives get up to while your men-folk are slacking and boozing their heads off in the pub.'

       It was not very good, though surely better than nothing, and he had done his best to sound pleasant, and he had sounded quite pleasant, at any rate for him, but nobody seemed to hear much and nobody came over, not even Dorothy, until Sophie brought him a gin and tonic, offering to fetch ice which he forbade. He and she chatted about something, very likely more than one thing, for however long it was before Muriel collected him and took him off. If his shaken look had departed it was in place again by this time.

       Of all the guests only Dorothy remained. She would not move before another piece of standard procedure fetched Percy over from Pedwarsaint to shift her, probably, though not certainly, by the power of words. There was no standard procedure for that.

5

'Good party at the good old Bible, I trust,' said Muriel. 'Who was there?'

       Peter told her.

       'You wonder why on earth you go, especially when you've got there and find it's exactly like it always is, and then you realize that's why you went. I suppose once upon a time we did things for a change. Malcolm full of the news about the Weavers, was he?'

       'Well yes, he was rather.'

       'What was your reaction?'

       'It came as no surprise. Alun's always threatened to return to his Welsh roots, as perhaps you remember.'

       'Perhaps I do, but that doesn't mean I want to remember.'

       'Nor me. How was the do at Sophie's?'

       'Much as usual, as I was saying. Quite enjoyable, that is, and many thanks.' With no perceptible pause and almost no change of tone, Muriel went on, 'Certainly not the assemblage of fools, bores and madwomen you made it crystal clear you took it for, losing no time in doing so let it be said. You emptied that drawing-room in sixty seconds flat. Congratulations. Super. Your best yet.'

       Peter, behind the wheel as they drove towards Cwmgwyrdd, thought as many times before of a film he had seen about half a century earlier. In it, a sadistic sergeant broke the spirit of a soldier in a military prison by beating him up at systematically random intervals, from more than a day down to a quarter of an hour, so that the victim never knew when the next attack was coming, never felt safe. Life with Muriel, it seemed to Peter, had over the last seven or eight years turned into a decreasingly bearable version of that. There were times, it was true, and this was one of them, when you could be morally certain a drubbing was on the way, not from anything she said or did but because you had spotted something disagreeable to her, either in itself or in its associations, drifting to the surface over the past few minutes or so; that was enough for her. For some strange reason, though, this kind of early warning did little to soften the eventual impact. He actually felt the sweat break out now on his forehead.

       'Could I ask you to hold it for a bit, until we're home? If you don't I might drive into something. I'm not threatening to, I just might.'

       'You might well, I agree with you, any time, with your belly forcing you back into that dangerously distant and also incidentally ludicrous posture.' Muriel's style made it sound as if she had spent weeks thinking of nothing else. 'I don't think you can have appreciated quite how unattractive an object you are. I'm not _just__ talking about physically though I certainly _am__ talking about physically for a start. You emanate hopelessness and resentment and boredom and death. No wonder everybody shrank away from you.'

       Again familiarly, this had an uncomfortable quasi-sense about it. If Peter had really wanted peace at this point, however limited, he might have done well to leave it there or to beg for mercy. Instead he found himself showing what defiance he could. 'I just happened to come in at the end. They'd started leaving before I arrived.'

       'You sent them on their way unrejoicing. Which incidentally you're in process of doing to me. I'm not sure how much longer I can stand you.'

       'The past is past. Nothing but a waste of time wishing it had been different. '

       'Who's said anything about the past?'

       'You have. Of course you have. Your great theme, isn't it?'

       That one failed to go off. Muriel just talked on at a slightly enhanced rate about what supposed friends of his had said to her about him and harmless things like that. He concentrated as fixedly as he could on driving. If he could have been reasonably sure of killing them both outright he would have been inclined to swerve into the path of an oncoming bus or builder's lorry, but as it was he took them safely past the War Memorial, through Irish Town, across the River Iwerne and into what had once been the mining village of Cwmgwyrdd, now a semi-smart outer suburb. Every so often he tried to make himself believe something he knew to be true, that Muriel would not go on like this for ever and that after a few minutes she would go back to being rather mechanically affable until next time, but he stayed unbelieving.

       They were home, getting out of the car in the built-on garage of their quite decent Thirties villa on the pricier seaward side. When Peter had locked up, Muriel gave him a glance of studied neutrality, the signal for some kind of change of direction. He was glad he had followed his instinct and left the vegetables (out of old Vaughan Mowbray's patch that morning) unmentioned in the car. To flaunt them now might have led to requests to come out and say what he had against the way he was normally fed, and further.

       On the front doorstep she said to him, 'You know, I don't think that news about the Weavers is good news for anyone.'

       After all these years they really understood each other very well. Her saying that in an ordinary tone meant that hostilities were suspended and more, that that subject was now free, cleared for bringing up at any later stage without penalty. Further yet, as might not have been instantly clear to anyone but him, it constituted an apology, or the nearest she was ever going to get to one.

       These thoughts occupied him while he went and got a couple of cold fish-fingers out of the refrigerator for his lunch, so that he failed to consider whether he agreed with the content of what she had said or not. Muriel pulled on her wellies and tramped off into the garden. She never ate lunch.

Two - Rhiannon, Alun

1

A train, a particular train, the 15.15 out of Paddington on an afternoon some weeks after Peter Thomas had decided to leave the potatoes and leeks in his car, emerged from the Severn Tunnel into Wales. The area had once been called Monmouthshire but because of a decision taken in London was now called Gwent, after an ancient Welsh kingdom or whatever it was that might have formerly existed there or thereabouts. Anyway, it was Wales all right, as Rhiannon Weaver reckoned she could have told by the look of it through the carriage window. There was no obvious giveaway, like road-signs in two languages or c1osed-down factories, but something was there, an extra greenness in the grass, a softness in the light, something that was very like England and yet not England at all, more a matter of feeling than seeing but not just feeling, something run-down and sad but simpler and freer than England all the same. Ten minutes to Newport, another hour in the train after that and ten or fifteen minutes more by road.