The Old Devils

       Seated at the far end of Sophie's kitchen-table, her husband looked at his watch. 'Two minutes, darling,' he called.

       'What happens in two minutes?' asked Peter next to him. 'I'm afire with curiosity.' Well, he was quite interested, and to tell the truth he felt awkward sitting there and saying nothing. He had not had to explain that his presence was part of a routine, the rest of which embraced going wherever he had last heard of Muriel in case she needed a lift home or elsewhere, this without prejudice to her right to leave at any time by taxi without informing him. Having to do that, and so perhaps saving him an hour's profitless drive, made her feel tied down. Tonight he was lucky, in the sense that she was still where she had gone earlier that day, though not visibly so at the moment.

       'You'll see, if you're still around then,' said Percy, helpfully answering his question.

       'It's more than likely. Finishing a chat with Gwen might take all night.'

       'What? Oh, is that what Muriel's doing?'

       'Isn't that what you gathered?'

       'I didn't gather anything, Peter, I was busy here, as I still am, but it won't be for much longer. Yes, compared with some I consider myself a pretty lucky fellow, having such an easy-to-cope-with wife.'

       Peter could think of nothing to say to that. He had been running into Percy for years and years without ever having had to notice anything in particular about him, and had left it a couple of seconds too late now to scan his face and posture for intimations of irony. Of course the fellow was a Welshman. While he was still considering the point without urgency the door slowly opened and Charlie came slowly in, staying near the threshold for a nimble exit if required.

       'I think I'm going to bed,' he announced. 'Okay,' said Peter when no one else spoke.

       Sophie, next to Dorothy and now as so often her official auditor, looked round. She said through or over some information about the financing of the New Zealander health service, 'Sian's in the little room.'

       'What's she doing there?' asked Charlie in the slightly contentious style he had fallen into at Malcolm's. 'Well, sleeping's what she went there for.'

       'Can't she do that at home?'

       'She's got nothing to go home for any more. You know.'

       'As long as nothing needs doing about her.'

       'Just leave her,' said Sophie.

       This exchange had caused Dorothy's discourse to falter severely, but the flow was soon reestablished. With a gallantly assumed smile Sophie turned back to her. Charlie wandered halfway down the room.

       'Alun in cracking form,' he said.

       Percy looked at him brightly and in silence. Peter grunted.

       'Rising to the occasion. Just the _sort__ of thing that brings out the best in him, convincing a chap like old Malcolm that any misgivings he may happen to have about his... personal life are quite without foundation. Tones him up. Mind you, I'd love to know what they actually said to each other, wouldn't you?'

       'I think you're jumping to conclusions,' said Peter, his eyes flickering towards Percy.

       'Maybe. A summons to the telephone followed by what about paying a call on old Malcolm, that notorious nightowl and reveller. M'm. I predict a catastrophe.'

       During these last words of Charlie's, Percy had again looked at his watch and now moved at a moderate pace to a position immediately behind and above his wife. 'They've even kept their own cuisine,' said Dorothy. 'A friend of Angela's cooked a Maori dish for us one evening. It had raw-'

       Still unhurriedly, Percy leaned forward, put his hands under her arms and hauled sharply upwards, using great but seemingly not excessive force. Dorothy shot to her feet as smartly as a nail responding to a claw-hammer.

       'Here we go, darling,' said Percy, pulling and pushing while Sophie at first stood by, then followed their joint progress. After a short interval Peter and Charlie heard him in the hall saying, 'Piece of cake.' Then the front door shut.

       'Quite impressive in its way,' said Charlie. 'I hadn't seen it before.'

       'Quite impressive. Sometimes she moves under her own steam without waiting to be counted out. No doubt depending on how she feels.'

       'Yes, I suppose it must boil down to that in the end.'

       'I think I'm going to bed,' said Charlie to Sophie, who had come back into the room.

       'You do that, love. Are you all right?'

       'Absolutely fine. Yes, really.'

       'I won't be too long. Sian's up there.'

       'I'll be fine.' Charlie kissed his wife on the cheek and turned back for a moment to Peter with a distant sparkle. 'Be seeing you. Bit pissed now.'

       He had hardly gone, and Peter had hardly had time to start wondering how to handle whatever it was he had to handle, before Muriel entered the kitchen, closely followed by Gwen, whom Peter had barely set eyes on since arriving. Both carried empty glasses and the way each moved brought out for the moment a striking physical resemblance: rather short in the leg and moving slowly and softly, shoulders bowed but head well up and forward, rather pointed nose questing for the wine-bottle. None of those immediately on view had any wine in it. Without verbal or other comment Sophie produced a full one, a litre flask of Emerald Riesling, from a carton next to her sentry-box-sized refrigerator. Sharing the work, Murie1 twisted the _in-situ__ cork off the corkscrew in no-nonsense fashion, her head enveloped in cigarette-smoke. Gwen attacked the foil round the neck of the new bottle with a fruit-knife. Neither spoke until liquor was pouring.

       'Exit our Dorothy,' said Muriel. 'Not before time let it be added.'

       'The sound of the front door shutting was music in our ears,' said Gwen.

       Muriel settled herself in her previous place. 'Young Percy didn't exactly fall over himself coming to the bloody rescue, did he?'

       'He probably felt like an hour off,' said Peter, who was still rather impressed with Percy's smooth, resolute action and, even more, envious of his air of seclusion in some adamantine sphere of his own. 'That seems very reasonable to me.'

       The three women looked at him in silence, Sophie only for an instant while she made for the door, Gwen, seated, rather longer. Muriel's look came over the top of her glass and lasted till she had put it down on the table. Then she said, 'Well, Pete lad, now's your chance for a small break yourself. My friend Gwen and I are just about to settle down for a nice cosy little sisterly chat which I don't honestly see you contributing much to, so you could take off right away, couldn't you? No point in sticking around, eh?' She smiled, or drew back the corners of her mouth and raised her eyebrows.

       He had been expecting to be asked to hang on while his wife had one more drink and then to have to hang on while she had one more after that. Under this arrangement he would have been open later on to a charge of having spoilt the drink(s) in question by a display of impatience - this no matter how hard and continuously he might have beamed at everyone in sight - with another in reserve about having dragged her away while she was enjoying herself. She was not an inveterate boozer but when she was on it there was a routine for that too. He was accordingly ill prepared for being ordered out of Sophie's house.  'Oh... that's all right,' he said. 'I can easily - '

       'No, no, I wouldn't keep you up, old boy.' Muriel gave I a waggish laugh. 'You look as if you could do with an early night. Granted it's not that early, but every little helps.'