The Old Devils

       'That's all right, dear. All forgotten.'

       'Well... It wasn't very seemly, I'm afraid. Turning nasty in my drink. Alun about?'

       'No, he's away all day today.'

       'I'll talk to him again. It really was a fantastic party. I'll ring you later.'

       'Good-bye, love.'

       'There's lucky you've got a fine day for your excursion now. Young Malcolm's on pins. Cheers.'

       Rosemary, who after some hesitation had stayed in earshot, gave her mother what could not but be an inquiring look and got a kind of mock-doleful one back.

       'She got cross about something Dad said about Wales.'

       'Oh I _see__. Golly, what a terrific help. Must have cost her a bomb to come clean like that.'

       'Well it is quite, a help I mean. One of us had to work out a way of us going on being friends.'

       'Had to? She's not nice enough to be a friend of yours. '

       'She's not so bad. When it's been long enough that sort of thing stops mattering.'

       'You let her down too lightly.'

       'It's much too late to start letting people like Gwen down heavily. Let's go outside. Malcolm's obviously on his way.' Rhiannon picked up her shoulder-bag. As they moved Rosemary put an arm round her waist.

       'Don't you mind about, well, any of it?'

       'What are you talking about, of course I bloody well mind. But that's all I do, I stop myself doing any more than that. Like brooding or going back or joining things up, no point in it. As long as I don't _know__. And this isn't knowing.'

       'Mum, I wish you'd let me - '

       'Let's not say any more about it now.'

       The garden in front of the house was not large but it had the bright green grass often to be found in this part of the world and a few flowers in half-overgrown beds, including an unexpected treat in the shape of a large clump of Canterbury bells. Nelly crashed into the side of it, then doubled back up the path effortlessly surmounting the obstacle presented by each three-inch-deep step. A good view stretched almost due south, over woods and shadowed lawns down over an unseen cliff to a wide stretch of sand shining wetly in the sun and, about as far out at the moment as it ever went hereabouts, the sea with half a dozen small boats sailing. Some cloud was drifting near the horizon but not much and none of it dark. There was nothing ugly or dull anywhere.

       'You are looking forward to this do, aren't you, Mum?'

       'Oh yes. Well... yes.'

       'What's the not-so-good part?'

       'Well, he's... He's a very sweet chap without a nasty or unkind thought in his head but he's a bit wrapped up in himself. He's liable to say things when he hasn't thought how they'll affect other people, just because he wants to say them. Just sort of blurts them out.'

       'Such as he's never loved anybody but you in all his life?'

       'Sort of thing, yeah.'

       'Well if it's no worse I don't think you have much to worry about. Surely you can manage that. Yon must have had plenty of practice.'

       'Oh, come on, dear.'

       Rosemary looked at her mother for a moment before she spoke again. 'Of course, I suppose he might embarrass you about Gwen and so on.'

       'No, he understands about not doing things like that, and besides he won't think anything happened.'

       'How do you mean, Mum?'

       'She'll have made him believe her version.'

       '_Made__ him?'

       'Yes, nothing to it with him if she sticks to it, and she will.'

       'Well, I dare say you'd know.'

       Turning to address the dog, who watched her with an air of stark terror, Rhiannon said, 'You're not coming today. I'm sorry, but you're not.'

       'Oh my God,' said Rosemary. 'You don't seriously imagine she can understand you, I hope.'

       'It wouldn't do to be too sure of that. Probably not now, but she'll understand everything like that by the time she's grown up, and there's no knowing when they start. All part of the training.'

       'Well, she's your dog... Is this him now?'

       'I think... Yes.'

       'Mum, if you're going to go out looking as nice as you do now I'm afraid you'll just have to grit your teeth and face up to him saying he loves you. Now... '

       Mother and daughter proceeded to stand to. Without waiting for orders Rosemary went and dragged the puppy out from the laurel bush she had bolted under and held her in her arms. Rhiannon turned and put her hair right by her reflection in a sitting-room· window, then nearly snapped off the half-open yellow rose she had had her eye on all along but had left on the plant as long as possible. Finally the two moved a little apart from each other so as not to look too lined-up and organized.

       When he had got out of his very shiny bright-blue car and at a second attempt shut its driver's door, Malcolm revealed himself to be wearing a hacking jacket in dark red, green and fawn checks that were too large by an incredibly small amount, cavalry-twill trousers he must have been uncommonly fond of, a pale green I'm-going-out-for-the-day-with-my-old-girl-friend cravat or ascot and, thank goodness, a plain shirt and ordinary brown lace-up shoes. Seen closer to, he proved to have an ample shaving-cut on his cheek, about like a boil on the end of his nose to him and not worth a second glance to anybody else. He carried a florist's plastic-wrapped bouquet of a good forty-quid's-worth of red roses and pink carnations which he handed over to Rhiannon fast and at arm's length.

       'Lovely to see you,' he muttered, obviously discarding on the spot an earlier draft, and called 'Hallo' with unmeant abruptness to Rosemary, whom he had met more than once before but never for long, and had not bargained on seeing now. Then he took in the puppy and loosened up a little. 'Ah, now here's a splendid fellow and no mistake.'

       'Hallo, Malcolm,' said Rosemary, 'female fellow actually,' and went on with exemplary stuff about how he would not have said that if he had been on the spot just earlier, the awful chewing, etc. Rhiannon fixed the yellow rose in his button-hole and passed the bouquet to Rosemary, who had set Nelly down on the grass as now to be considered defused.

       'Put them in that pretty Wedgwood jug - they'll look marvellous in there - and find somewhere in the cool for them.' Rhiannon was too shy herself to embark on a full-treatment head-on thank you. 'We'll decide on a proper place when I get back. That won't be before five at the earliest - I've got one or two things to see to in town first.' The last bit was said looking over her daughter's shoulder.

2

Immediately· upon getting into the car beside Malcolm, Rhiannon noticed a peaked cap in nearly the same pattern as his jacket folded up on the shelf in front of him. All she could do about that was hope he had already tried this and thought better of it, rather than that he was keeping it by him to spring on her later. Anyway she sighed comfortably, or tried to. There was a faint pleasant smell hanging about and the whole interior told of hours of tidying and cleaning. In a way she hardly understood, it was like something she remembered from years ago: she had complimented Malcolm on his clear neat handwriting and he had thanked her and said, well, he reckoned however boring or no-good what he wrote might be, at least whoever it was would be spared the extra chore of deciphering it. Like a lecturer's duty to be audible, he had said.

       The first few minutes passed easily enough with chat about Rosemary, then Alun briefly, then Gwen no more briefly - Rhiannon's idea, that, to rub in that the subject was ordinary. The next few went even more easily with taking notice of the approaches to Courcey and after some delay the island itself. She had been along here quite recently with some of the crowd for a Sunday-lunchtime drink at the King Arthur just off the causeway, a brief or single drink as it had turned out, because the one huge bar had been full of fat young left-wing activists from a weekend school ordering things like blue curacao with passion-fruit juice. But they were soon past there now and on to where she had not been for at least ten years, probably a good deal more.