The Old Devils

       'Are you feeling all right, Peter?' asked Charlie. 'Shut up, Charlie,' said Alun.

       'Sorry. Well, there seems to be plenty to be said about her. Not a lot about old Billy.'

       Nobody was ready to contest this view there and then. 'One consolation, though,' Charlie went on. 'We haven't got Garth with us to say what is appropriate to such an occasion.'

       He got quite a good laugh out of that. Other thoughts he kept to himself, for instance that Laura had known her Alun in not saying anything to him on the telephone about her husband's condition. And likewise, if Alun had plotted everything and known everything in advance he could not have contrived a better position for himself: not only full conversance with the situation there but a huge fund of goodwill and a positive duty to return to the scene. Carte bloody blanche at zero cost. Billy must be dead keen for you to have an afternoon off once in away, love. Oh well, there it was.

       A few pieces of traffic turned up as they in fact reached the outskirts of Treville. As the car ducked down the last little hill before the village, the motto FREE WALES was briefly to be seen daubed on a brick wall in faded and dingy whitewash. An ironic cheer went up.

       'Now would that be - ' began Malcolm in his frightening American accent before Alun shushed him.

       'Belt up, you stupid bugger. What's the matter with you? You hardly set eyes on that clown and everything you see reminds you of him. Forget him.'

       'Remember what happened the last time you invoked him,' said Charlie.

       'Dismiss Cadwallader _Twll-Din__ Pugh from your mind.'

       'Hey, I've thought of the thing to say to him about that slogan there. Show me a Welsh nationalist and I'll show you a cunt.'

       'He wouldn't say thank you for showing him a cunt,' said Alun reasonably.

       'That's my point, you bloody fool.'

       'Oh Christ, it's the drink. Fuddling my mental processes. '

       'It's certainly fuddling mine,' said Malcolm, wrenching at the wheel. 'Sorry.'

       'And mine, thank God,' said Peter.

       Despite everything said just now and earlier, expectation mounted as the time of arrival drew near. They passed traces of the railway station and of some of the eleven worked-out pits in the area, reached the shore and turned along it. Here until quite lately cockles and the edible seaweed laver-bread had been harvested. In the village itself rusty galvanized-iron roofs and shop-fronts that needed painting were noticeable. The first pub they went into had in it a half-size snooker-table, a TV set showing a children's programme with the sound turned down and only two people, the barmaid and her boy-friend, who while talking to her fed himself continuously from a dispenser apparently called a Peanut Colonel. There was a move to withdraw at once, but Charlie remarked that there was no guarantee of getting a drink elsewhere. Nobody was sure about local licensing hours.

       Twenty years before, Charlie had passed a whole day from rising to retiring without a drink. Rising in fact had very nearly not taken place at alclass="underline" he had believed absolutely, would have told anyone who asked, that death was on him. In that frame of mind he had nevertheless found himself playing a hard game in the crowd that afternoon at Wales v. France in Cardiff. In the evening Sophie and he, then recently married, had been giving a party - too late to cancel. Orange-juice in hand, he had watched fascinated as one by one, with unbelievable speed and totality, his contemporaries had crumpled into drunkenness, their faces and voices disintegrating between one sip and the next. From rather nearer the fray he saw it happen to Malcolm now as they emptied their drinks by the coruscating fruit-machine, saw his eyes swell in time with some event inside him. He took a sudden half-pace forward.

       Charlie stayed at Malcolm's right hand for the two minute walk to the other waterside pub Alun had spotted earlier. The tide was out and a strong, not wholly pleasant smell came blowing off the saltings ahead of them, though there was nothing obvious for anybody to have done about that, nor about the rain that had come back into the air. As far as they could see there were only three or four parked cars about, unusually for any inhabited place in the kingdom. Someone, a middle-aged man, let himself in at a front door and disappeared, the only sign of life, apart from brand-new litter underfoot, at a time when the inhabitants might have been expected to be in full circulation. It seemed as quiet as it had been back there on the hill.

       'What do they do here?' Malcolm asked quite distinctly as they crossed a side-road up which nothing moved, not even paper blown by the wind. 'Nowadays, I mean.'

       'I don't know. Make lemonade or deodorant I dare say.'

       'Some of them must commute to town.'

       'No idea.'

       'Mind you the unemployment figures for the area are as high as anywhere else in GB, along with Merseyside and parts of north-eastern England.'

       'M'm.'

       'Well, it's a terrible thing, Charlie, you know. A really... monstrous thing. I mean, imagine yourself stuck in a place like this with no prospects, no future, nothing going on. You can see for yourself. No... no prospects.'

       'Ah.'

       'I'd like to know, just out of curiosity, whether Maggie Thatcher's ever been out here, Charlie.'

       'I shouldn't think so for a moment, not if she's got any sense. Certainly not since she closed down the first colliery in 1910, I think it was.'

       More of this sort of thing soon brought them to the door or doors of the Ship Inn, which by appearance might easily as well have admitted them to a public lecture-theatre or bit of local government. But inside it was not at all like any of that, a typical old-style country pub with electric organ, round tables of pitted copper, triple-decker sandwiches and tremendously badly designed and written local announcements. And also a great many people. This was where they all were.

       The considerable noise they were making lessened slightly at the entrance of ~e four visitors and some of those in view turned and had a look at them. This seemed natural enough at the sight of a group of obvious strangers in unconventional clothes like jackets and ties and including one or two - Peter, perhaps Charlie - worth a second glance anywhere.- The hum of normality was about restored· by the time they had moved to the further and less crowded end of the room and Charlie had waddled to the counter.

       'Nothing for me,' said Malcolm when he was asked.

       'Have a soft drink.'

       'No I think I'll just go and sit down. You know.'

       He sank into an armchair with tangerine loose covers that might have come out of a local auntie's front room, the generic source of most of the furnishings up this end, not least the parchment lampshades. In a moment he seemed to fall asleep. The other three nodded at each other, needing no words.

       'That's nice,' said Alun. 'No question about him not driving now.'

       'He's not the sort to try and insist,' said Charlie.

       'No, but it's good to keep it civilized.'

       Having unrestively waited rather longer than strict equity would have entailed, Charlie had his order taken by one of the fellows behind the bar, the one whose locks hung to his shoulders from either side of a bald pate. After unhurriedly assembling the required drinks he in due course uncourteously served them.

       'Now we're all right for a bit,' said Charlie. 'More water? Well, how was Gwen?'

       'Oh, Christ,' said Alun, and then, almost as differently as possible, 'Oh, Christ.' He stared malevolently at Charlie. 'You bugger.'