The Old Devils

       After another tepid protest or two he was driven from the room. Gwen gave him a farewell twiddle of the fingers and stylized simper that made him feel quite sorry for Malcolm, but only in passing. In the hall cloakroom he rejected, as frequently before, that if the Thomases had a second car, which they or rather she could readily have afforded, then all this would never have arisen. _All __ this? A drop out of the ocean. And of course there would still be times like tonight, with her too pissed, or about to become too pissed, to drive. Well, at times like that, when she actually needed him, she could ring him or... What was he talking about? Let herself in for feeling tied down and pass up a giltedged chance of buggering him about at the same time? He must be joking. He must also have got this far almost as frequently before.

       Outside in the hall itself he nearly ran into Sophie wearing a turquoise-blue - scarf over her head, which was just unexpected enough to make him say, 'Off somewhere, are you?' Now he remembered, he had heard the 'telephone tinkle a minute or two before.

       'Yeah. Why?' Her normal intonation had never needed much sharpening in order to sound snappish.

       'Charlie'll be all right, I suppose?'

       'Why wouldn't he be?'

       'Well... ' Peter shifted his head about in a way intended to remind her that as an old friend he rather naturally knew something of her husband's nervous troubles.

       'Should be safe enough, shouldn't he, with three people in the house?'

       'Oh yes. Yes of course. '

       'If you're worried you can stay around yourself.'

       This time he moved his head in a different way, thinking perhaps she had been pulling his leg.

       'I like a bit of time off too, you know, now and then.' Before he could give his answer to that, if any, Sophie went back into the kitchen.

5

Gwen and Muriel looked up at the sound of the outside door shutting a second time.

       'Peter in a funny mood,' said Sophie.

       'You know I don't think drink agrees with him,' said Muriel. 'Never has.'

       'Decent of the old boy,' said Gwen, 'to stick up for Percy like that. And shows a great breadth of sympathy too.'

       'You'd think he'd realize there's others needs a break,' said Sophie, and went briskly on, 'I'm just off round to Rhiannon's for half an hour. Now you won't be rushing away yet awhile, will you? Stuff in the fridge if you want 'it,' she said further, though there was enough stuff on the table to keep both the other two chewing hard for a couple of hours. 'Stay if you like, mind, 'there's another bed in the - '

       Muriel interrupted to say she would get a minicab and Gwen interrupted her to say she would drive her, and the two fought over it briefly until Sophie had actually left, though they each managed to get in their thanks for the party and their sendings of love to Rhiannon. After assuring herself that they were indeed alone Gwen turned to Muriel with an intent frown.

       'What we were saying - a tin of a good brand with a spoonful of yogurt stirred in... '

       'And a spot of chopped parsley... '

       '... and they start asking you just which vegetables you've used, isn't there endive in this, can't I taste celeriac. And wanting to know _how__ you did it, surely you melted them in butter and so on. I just tell them, the old way, m'm, it's the only proper way.'

       Muriel laughed with more elation than might have been expected at a simple discussion of kitchen methods. 'Right, there's not much they can say to that. And of course when it comes to chicken or Scotch broth or whatever, well, what is it, it's cubes and booze, that's what it is, cubes and booze. A tin of oxtail soup and a cube and a tablespoon of whisky and that's it. Not only easier, incomparably easier. _Better__,' she said challengingly. 'Better all along the line.'

       'When I look back,' said Gwen, resting her chin on a hand that also had a lighted cigarette in it and squinting towards a recent wine-stain on the tablecloth, 'and think of all that carry-on with the wretched stock-pot, never let it leave the stove, in with every scrap of the joint and you'd have thought a chicken carcass was worth ten times the chicken itself and... Do you know, Muriel, would you believe it, time was when I'd go along to the butcher and get bones for the dog, no dog, straight into the bloody pot with the beef-gristle. And for what? What possessed us?'

       This time Muriel's response was affectionate as well as appreciative, or at least it sounded like it. In the usual run of things she and Gwen got on no better than all right even when she was not finding Gwen sly nor Gwen finding her loud or strange or both, but midnight could bring some display of amity. Part of this must have come from mere co-survival at the drinks table, as both had re1lected before now. But not all; not this time, at least.

       Gwen waited for a moment, then said more or less at random, 'After all, it's not as if anybody in the world's going to notice, let alone appreciate even the most obvious... '

       'Don't make me laugh.'

       'I mean they don't even _know__.'

       'Of course they don't _know__, love. You can only know if you want to know, and they don't want to know. They have other claims on their valuable attention, as I imagine you must have noticed before.'

       'I can't bear the way they - '

       'What, them bestir themselves to notice how life's lived in their own home, what makes the bloody world go round? Not them. Why should they? They've won.'

       By this stage there was little doubt that those now under discussion were not the same as those who asked Gwen just which vegetables she had used. Nevertheless whatever the two women most wanted to talk about had pretty clearly not yet been broached. Give it time, as they used to say in South Wales when an unlooked-for silence descended on the company. Gwen was the one who let it come, that being what you did if you were the one with the luck when everybody present had given it time.

       'Of course she still is very striking, I quite see that, I wouldn't call her beautiful, I never thought she was beautiful, but she is very striking.' She left the name out - not through any Cymric instinct of non-committal but because her thoughts were undeviatingly fixed on Rhiannon, as in fact they had been for some minutes past.

       Perhaps Muriel's were too: she joined in promptly enough. 'Oh, agreed, with the benefit of a small fortune laid out on facials and massages and health farms and I don't know what all. Plus never having to do a hand's turn in the home.'

       'Oh fair enough, but you don't get skin like that out of a tube. And that carriage, you're born with it or you're not. But as for-'

       'Not so much as heave a plate on to the bloody rack.'

       'It's when it comes to the what would you call it, the social side that I start, um, veering away from the consensus a bit. The conversational - '

       'Airs and graces at her age.'

       'I mean she's fine on the chit-chat level, nobody better for a good chinwag, oh, I'll give her that, it's just all rather run-of-the-mill. You know, humdrum. Of course, I'm not asking for a discussion of Wittgenstein over the coffee and gingernuts, nothing like that, but it's all very agreeable and chummy and then at the end you ask yourself what has she actually _said__. Nobody's demanding a coruscating shower of wit... '

       This speech had given Muriel time to do some catching-up. 'Always found her a bit of a bore, quite frankly.'

       'Well, I don't think I'd... '

       'Look, wasn't she... didn't you... weren't you... '

       'Wasn't I what, pet?'

       'You know, at the... place along the road, the... _you__ know, the poly is it?'