'I think he can handle her. No, I meant it means she must have some idea of what she's like. She stayed sober all day because she wanted to be in a good state to meet me, her old friend. Means she must know she normally gets into bad states. Mustn't she?'
'She mayor may not know but she obviously doesn't bloody care or she wouldn't get into them.'
'I don't suppose she can help it much, it's a bit late for that.'
'If she can help it once she can help it again.' Alun worked his way through an intensive spell of sniffing, throat-clearing and grunting. When he had finished he said, 'Old Gwen hadn't been exactly short-changing herself either, had she?'
'No. Far from it. She didn't use to do that. She's a bit different all round, I thought.'
'Well, speaking from the old lofty pinnacle, I imagine decades of piss-artistry can't help leaving their mark on the character. Christ Almighty, what son of lot have we got ourselves into? Well, should be fun. Of a kind, at least. One thing about you, sweetheart, you're never going to be any trouble that way. Or any other way. It's a marvellous thing. To know that.'
After a minute or two he pulled his arms back and turned away over on to his side of the bed. That was not what he did every night.
3
A few days later Cambria Television made arrangements to record an interview with Alun at the Weavers' rented house in Pedwarsaint, the suburbanized former fishing village in or near which they hoped to settle down. From the vanished quay the smacks had gone out in numbers for the oysters in the bend stretching over to Courcey Island on the east side, and sold their product from Bristol to Barnstaple until overfishing and industrial pollution wiped out the beds before the Great War. A marina stood there now, completed only the previous year, the resort of owners of medium-grade casinos or smallish chains of coin-op laundrettes from Birmingham and points north who came in at the weekends down the _MS-M4__ or, increasingly, by air taxi to the strip at Swanset on Courcey. And of course, where not so long ago it had been hake and chips, bottled cockles, pork pies and pints of Troeth bitter, these days it was cannelloni, paella, stifado, cans of Foster's, bottles of Rioja and - of course - large Courvoisiers and long panatellas, just like everywhere else.
Barring perhaps the oyster details for their elegiac potential, none of this would have been worth a second thought to Alun, certainly not today. He was charged up by the television presence, more by the simple expectation of appearing in front of its cameras than by having pulled off any sort of coup in securing a spot, even the lead spot, on _The Week in Wales__. Necessary, though. Perhaps on reconsideration not insignificant after all. He had done England, got out of it what there was for him to get out of it; he could never have hoped to be omnipresent there. In Wales he could, or was going to have a bloody good try.
The house belonged to a remarkably opulent official in a local housing department, at present holidaying with his wife in the Caribbean, a man whose future acquaintance could not, given reasonable luck, be a bad thing. Nor could being filmed in as sumptuous drawing-room, as far as the _hoi polloi__ went, at least. Any lefty sticklers who might find a bit too much silver, glass and teak on display there would be placated, when the future-plans question came, by talk of a swift removal to a modest place of one's own and a single half-amused glance about. At this stage he had not yet fully worked out minor finesses like that, but he was a great believer in thinking as far as possible round any subject beforehand.
Now he set out to ingratiate himself with the crew, but circumspectly, not in the style which had been good enough for Emrys on the train. He sensed that a little went a long way with this sort of youngster, especially a little of anything that could be described, however unjustly, as Welsh flannel, Taff bullshit, etc. Having done what he could in this out-of-the-way mode he turned his attention to the interviewer, a fair young man in a wine-coloured jacket who had nothing discoverably Welsh about him and who let it be known, with enviable speed and clarity, that this morning's task was no more than the sort of thing he was prepared to go through with while waiting briefly for a proper job a long way away. In other circumstances Alun would have sorted him out in five seconds flat, but as it was he concentrated on pretending not to have noticed and on not trying to make the young shit like him - that had to come naturally or not at all.
The interview went well enough. Alun soon saw the fellow had no particular approach, was in the manner of such fellows merely concerned to establish his superiority to the overall run of the play. So the angle to go for had to be knowing a lot, seeing a lot, caring a lot but only in unpredictable ways, or ways that could be passed off as unpredictable. It was not an occasion for pulling out the stops, but near the end, after magnanimously letting pass a touch of ignorance about the Attlee governments' policies for industry in South Wales, Alun took the chance of getting into his stride rather.
'It's all too easy for an exile come home to stay where he lands up, to cultivate his garden and never look over the hedge, to become something of a vegetable himself. That won't do for me, I'm afraid. I'll be going out, out in search of Wales, looking at things, looking at people. A small private voyage of discovery. I'm sure I'll find plenty of changes, for the worse, for the better, but there are some places where change can never reach... '
He went on to list, rather fancifully, perhaps, a few of that kind. In the normal way he forgot everything he had said in a broadcast as soon as it was finished, and good riddance - remembering might interfere with spontaneity next time. But now for once some of it stuck. Cultivating his garden he could dismiss right off, as anyone might who· was as keen as he on what you could get up to indoors. In search of Wales, on the other hand, sounded distinctly good, might become _In Search of Wales__ one day; it was a pity that old Brynford had done those programmes so recently. Meanwhile, the pursuit of a nebulous project of this sort would be just the thing for getting him out of untimely invitations and the like, and also covering any sudden disappearances he might feel impelled to make.
When Rhiannon came into the drawing-room after the TV lot had gone, she found him full of enthusiasm for his new scheme, full of ideas too: trips to Courcey Island, to Carmarthen, to Merthyr Dafydd, to Brecon; visits to metal works at Port Holder and Caerhays; rounds of the pubs in Harriston, in Cwmgwyrdd, in Bargemants Row; a pilgrimage and a piss-up in Birdarthur, where Brydan had settled after his last trip to America. As he talked, she moved here and there round the room in an unsettling-way. 'What are you doing? he broke off to ask.
'Nothing. I'm listening. I was just making sure everything is all right.'
'What? How do you mean all right?'
'Just nothing's been broken or anything like that.'
'Don't fuss' he said, but not sharply. 'You tip-toe round this place as if you're afraid to chip a bloody saucer. These blokes are very professional, you couldn't tell they'd been here if you didn't know.'
'All right, but I am afraid to chip a bloody saucer, and so should you be. People get attached to their things. Anyway, how did it go?'
'Uh? _Oh.'__ He tossed his head, indicating that the presumably meant interview was nothing, no trouble, of no significance, already forgotten but satisfactory. 'I was thinking, I thought I might look in at the Glendower for lunch, you know, toe in the water kind of thing. See if it's any good. Why don't you... '
'There's this cleaner turning up, and then Rosemary's train gets in at 2.40,' said Rhiannon, naming their younger, unmarried daughter. Rosemary was taking a long weekend off from St John's College, Oxford, where she was reading law, to come and help her mother look at houses round about. 'Be a bit of a rush.'