The Old Devils

       'Hold the door a minute, Malcolm,' said Garth - 'Peter's on his way now.'

       'Oh, right.'

       'You remember Percy, don't you, Malcolm?'

       Of course he did immediately: Percy Morgan, builder, husband to Dorothy, to be seen from time to time dragging her out to the car after the end of a party, encountered less often, not for about a year indeed, up at the Bible. Garth's occasional usefulness with this sort of reminder was to be set to his credit, against his rather more fluent and famous senility-imputing introductions of Charlie to Alun, Alun to Malcolm, Malcolm to Tarc Jones, etc.

       After a short interval marked by awkward standing-about in the hall Peter toiled up the garden path, groaning and muttering as he came, and the party moved into the sitting-room. The Feetwarmers sounded very loud in here - they had started on 'Wild Man Blues' by now - and Malcolm reduced them somewhat before offering drinks, wondering as he did so how far his just-over-half-bottle of Johnnie Walker would go among four - five, rather, which raised a point.

       'Alun's coming, is he?' he asked Peter.

       'Is he, I've no idea. I say, do you mind turning down that noise?'

       'I thought you used to like that old New Orleans stuff Jelly Roll Morton, George - '

       'If I ever did I don't now. If you don't mind.'

       Percy Morgan looked up from turning over some of the records when Malcolm approached.

       'Have you any Basie or Ellington? Or conceivably Gil Evans? Thanks.' The thanks were for an offered glass of whisky and water. 'I can see it's no use asking for Coltrane or Kirk or anybody like that.'

       'Not a damn bit of use, boy,' said Malcolm with slight hostile relish. 'And my Basies stop in 1939 and my Ellingtons about 1934. And no, no Gil Evans - I seem to recall a baritone man of that or a similar name playing with somebody like Don Redman, though you obviously don't mean him.'

       He reached out to lower the volume as requested, but Percy Morgan held up a demurring hand and indicated that he should attend closely to the music. A clarinet solo was in progress. 'You wouldn't call that melodic invention, would you, seriously?' asked Percy at the end of the chorus.

       'No. I wouldn't call it anything in particular. Except perhaps bloody marvellous.'

       'He was just running up and down the arpeggio of the common chord with a few passing-notes thrown in.' Not a vestige of complaint or dissatisfaction coloured Percy's tone. He seemed perfectly resigned, seeing it as quite out of the question that the performance could ever have been different.

       'Was he now.' This time Malcolm did manage to turn down the sound. 'No doubt he was, I don't deny it.'

       'Oh, don't turn it down, Malcolm,' said Garth in real protest. 'I love these old Dixieland hits, they really swing, don't they?' He mimed a bit of simplified drumming, hissing rhythmically through his teeth. 'Which lot is this?' Malcolm passed him the sleeve. 'Oh yes. Papa... Oh yes. Have you got any, any Glenn Miller-discs?'

       'I'm afraid not.'

       'Any Artie Shaws?'

       'No.'

       Malcolm was as close as he usually came to being angry at the way his quiet drink and unburdening chat with an old friend had been turned, without anywhere near as much as a by-your-leave, into a jazz discussion group. Not that he would in the least have minded the right son of attention being paid to his records: a respectful, if possible attentive, silence broken only by a personnel inquiry or so and one or two - not over-frequent - appreciative cries of 'Yeah!' He realized he had been half hoping for this son of outcome ever since the three had arrived and longer than that in the case of Alun. Yes, and where the hell was Alun?

       He was on the doorstep a couple of minutes later with Charlie at his side, crying out in loosely intelligible greeting and apology, pressing on his host an unopened bottle of Black Label - like old times, except then it would have been a flagon of John Upjohn Jones nut-brown.

       'I hope you don't mind me bringing these boys along,' said Alun. 'Only Tarc was calling stop-tap and they all seemed to feel like another.'

       'I see. No, that's all right. Of course.'

       Charlie crossed the threshold with real dignity. 'Or even him sending them on ahead. Known as the advance-guard or covering-patty tactic.'

       'I'm sorry,' said Malcolm, 'I don't-'

       'Ah, the old righteous sound!' cried Alun, hurrying over to the Playbox. 'Surely I know this one, don't I? Wasn't there a Louis version with, with Johnny Dodds? On the back of, was it "Skip the Gutter"?'

       'It was "Ory's Creole Trombone" actually.'

       '_Thats__ right - on the old Parlophone 78, correct?'

       'Correct,' said Malcolm, beginning to smile.

       Alun set about vivaciously looking through the pile of records. Percy Morgan glanced briefly and without hope at the rubric of every third or fourth one he came to. Malcolm went off for more glasses. Charlie turned to Peter and nodded to him in a pleased way, as though the two had not met for some weeks.

       'Cheer up,' said Charlie. 'Cheer up and enjoy the music.'

       'I'm afraid the effort of cheering up sufficiently to enjoy this music would be beyond me.'

       'What's wrong with this music more than any other?'

       'Not much, I suppose. When I look back, you know, music's like chess or foreign coins or what, folk tales. Something that only interested me when practically everything else interested me as well.'          , 'I wouldn't have gone to the Bible in the first place if the Glendower hadn't been shut.'

       'While they fit the new stove. You said.'

       'Where are these bloody drinks?' Charlie gave a searching look round. 'And where's bloody Garth? I thought he was meant to be here.'

       'He was and is. As you came in he was going up the stairs, in all probability on his way to the lavatory.'

       'Hey, there's one very good thing about Garth,' said Charlie, including in this announcement Percy, who had finally given up on the records, and repeating it for Malcolm's benefit as he approached with the promised drinks. 'Mark me closely. Whenever you see, er... What?" He frowned and looked from face to face. 'Oh, whenever you see _Garth__ you get the most wonderful feeling of security. You can relax. You know, m'm? - you _know__ you're not going to suddenly run into Angharad. No chance of it. You can relax. Eh? And a very much more minor benefit of seeing _Angharad__... is knowing you're not going to suddenly run into _Garth__. Well.'

       Peter had looked away sharply at this, but the other two at least showed they understood the reference, namely to the frequent observation or supposed fact that the Pumphreys never both appeared at once. It gave rise to regular good-natured speculation about the homicidal-maniac uncle or two-headed son who needed attention of some sort at all times. Anyway Charlie was on well-trodden ground.

       'You know I was thinking about that pair the other day,' he went on. 'Now: if they were in a detective story there'd only be one of them. See what I mean? Only be one of them really. One of them would have knocked off the other 'years ago and now whichever one it was would be going round posing as the other. As well, I mean. Just some of the time. They're about the same height, aren't they?'