'No idea.'
'1949. That's when I last took a sleeping pill .1949. Morning, Malcolm. Another early bird.'
'Morning, Garth. Morning, Charlie. Now what can I get you?'
The two had nearly full glasses and declined, but the offer was standard arrivals' etiquette. Malcolm went and got himself a half of Troeth bitter at the hatch in the corridor,' the nearest place. During his absence, Garth Pumphrey let Charlie Norris know more about the benefits of exercise and the dispensability of sleeping pills. Charlie followed Garth's talk with only half his attention, if that, but he found it comforting. He knew that nothing Garth said would surprise him, and as he felt at the moment, which was very much how he felt every morning of his life at this hour, even a pleasant surprise, whatever that might be, would have been better postponed. He flinched a little when Malcolm reappeared more abruptly than he had bargained for.
'Ah, here we are,' said Garth cordially, holding out an arm by way of showing Malcolm to the chair at his side. 'There. I've been treating young Charlie to a highly authoritative lecture on the subject of health, physical and mental. My number one rule is never sit over a meal. Breakfast least of all. '
It was amazing, thought Malcolm to himself, how invariably and completely he forgot Garth when looking forward to or otherwise weighing up a visit to the Bible. Forgetting things like that was probably one of Nature's ways of seeing to it that life carried on. Like the maternal instinct.
'Of course, you know Angharad says I'm turning into a real old health bore - a notorious pitfall of age, she says.' In the ensuing silence Garth took a good pull at his drink, which looked like a rather heavy vin rosé but was really gin and Angostura. Then he shaped up to Malcolm in a businesslike way. 'You were quite a performer in days gone by, Malcolm, weren't you? Sorry, with the old racquet. Oh, I was saying earlier, I remember the way you used to bash that ball. Give it a devil of a pasting, you would. That serve of yours. Famous. Deservedly so.'
'Many years ago now, Garth.'
'Not so many as the world goes in our time. November 1971, that's when the old place finally closed its doors.' Garth referred to the Dinedor Squash Racquets Club, of which all three had been members since youth. 'The end of an era. You know you and I had a game in the last week very nearly. I took a proper clobbering as usual. You were really seeing them that evening. Then we had a drink after with poor Roger Andrews. Do you remember?'
'Yes,' said Malcolm, though he had forgotten that part, and Charlie nodded to show that he was still in the conversation.
'He seemed so full of life that time. And then what could it have been, six weeks after we started coming in here, eight at the outside, off he goes. Like that. Sitting just where you are now, Charlie.'
Malcolm remembered that part all right. So did Charlie.
Roger Andrews had been nothing out of the way, a building contractor of no more than average corruption, not even much of a good fellow, but his fatal collapse in the so-called saloon lounge of the Bible had had a durable effect, confirming the tendency of a group of ex-members of the defunct squash club to drop in regularly midday and in the early evening. Over the years the room had become a kind of relic or descendant of that club, its walls hung with inherited photographs of forgotten champions, teams, presentations, dinners, its tables bearing a couple of ugly old ashtrays that had escaped being sold or stolen when the effects of the DSRC were disposed of. The habitués had even acquired something of a prescriptive right to keep out intruders. The landlord of the Bible made no objection, in fact it suited him well enough to have up to a dozen or so comparatively well-behaved drinkers perpetually occupying the least convenient and agreeable corner of his premises. From time to time the old boys complained among themselves about the discomfort, but there they were, the dump was almost next door to the Club building, which was what had drawn them there in the first place, and in winter the genial host actually let them have the benefit of a small electric fire at no extra charge.
After a moment of reverie or premeditation Garth Pumphrey again turned his face on Malcolm, a dark serious lined face with a hint of subdued passion, an actor's face some might have called it. 'What exercise do you take these days, Malcolm?' he asked.
'Just about zero, I'm afraid.'
'Just about zero? A fellow of your physique. A natural athlete like you. Dear, dear.'
'Ex-natural athlete. I'm not going to start going on cross-country runs at my age.'
'I should hope not indeed, it's altogether too late for that.' Garth whistled breathily to himself and moved his hand crabwise along the table' in front of him. Then he said, 'Do you find you fancy your food all right? I hope you don't mind me asking, we're all old friends here.'
Charlie thought a distinction could be drawn between Garth's boasting about his own insides if he had to and his involvement with others', but he was not the man to put it into words. His second large Scotch and dry ginger was beginning to get to him and already he could turn his head without thinking it over first. Soon it might cease to be one of those days that made you sorry to be alive.
'No, that's all right, Garth,' Malcolm was saying gamely. 'No, my-trouble's all the other way. Keeping myself down to size.'
'Good, good.' Garth's small figure was huddled up in the cracked rexine chair, turned away from Charlie. He smiled and nodded. 'And, er... ' His eyebrows were raised.
In a flash Malcolm knew or as good as knew that the next second Garth was going to ask him about his bowel movements. He felt he would do, must do, anything at all to prevent that, and mentioned what he had not even considered mentioning, not there, not yet, not until he had hugged it to himself as long as he could. 'Alun and Rhiannon are moving down here in a couple of months,' he said quickly. 'Coming back to Wales to live.'
That did the trick. It took quite some time for Garth's incredulity to be mollified, likewise his craving for information. When that was done he explained that, what with being stuck out at Cape1 Mererid and so on, he had not known the couple in early years, but had met Alun many times on trips to these parts and anyway, he finished strongly, 'the bloke is a national figure, let's face it.'
'You face it,' said Charlie, who had reasons of his own to feel less than overjoyed at Malcolm's news. 'I realize he's on television quite a lot, though we don't usually get it in Wales, and when anyone wants a colourful kind of stage- Taffy view on this and that then of course they go to him. With a bit of eloquent sob-stuff thrown in at Christmas or when it's dogs or the poor. He's the up-market media Welshman. Fine. I can take him in that role, just about. But as for Alun Weaver the writer, especially the poet... I'm sorry.'
'Well, I'm no literary critic,' announced Garth. 'I'm just going by the general acclaim. I'm told they think highly of him in America. But we've got a writer here now.'
'Oh, no,' said Malcolm, embarrassed. 'Not in that sense.
Well, what can I say? It's true that a lot of his work falls under Brydan's shadow, but I see nothing very shameful in that. And there's more than that in it. I'm not saying he didn't get quite a bit from Brydan, but they were also both drawing on a common stock to rather different effect. Something like that.'
Charlie said with a bland look, 'Everything you say may well be true - it cuts no ice with me. Brydan, Alun, you can stick the lot. Take it away. Forget it.'