The Old Devils

       When it was clear that all was well and nothing needed doing, Sophie said to Alun, 'We really must go back now to Charlie. He'll be wondering what the hell's kept us.' Alun looked at his watch. 'You know, now I come to think of it, by the time we get there it's hardly going to be worth it. Fifteen minutes, if that.'

       'What time do they shut round here?' asked Percy, who had not also asked how Alun and Sophie had come to be in earshot of the great fall. 'Country hours are different, aren't they? Earlier.'

       'Well, he'll be on his way back then.'

       'He doesn't like the dark,' said Sophie. 'And it's very dark, that last bit.'

       'If he gets into a tizzy he could ring up, couldn't he?' Alun had an air of cheerful puzzlement. 'I can't see what's so - '

       'He can't ring here, only the neighbour,' put in Rhiannon. In her towelling dressing-gown and knitted slippers, she had been present all along. 'He wouldn't have that number.'

       'It's only a few yards, for Christ's sake, and there are bound to be people - '

       Dorothy had heard everything too, and had evidently taken some of it in. 'I'll stroll back with you,' she said, topping up her glass and draining it. 'I could do with a breath of fresh air. It gets quite stuffy in here, doesn't it, in the hot weather.'

       'What about this neighbour?' asked Percy, after a longing glance at his book. 'If he really is a neighbour I could go there and ring the pub.'

       Rhiannon explained and he went out after Dorothy and Sophie.

       'I don't care for that fellow at all,' said Alun. 'Nasty piece of work, if you want my opinion. Malicious. Well, we had to get her out of the pub, you see, and then she wouldn't go in the car, kept saying she wanted to say good night to you, so we had to bring her along here. Then Sophie and I were just on our way to the pub when we heard the bang and saw your light go on, so we rushed back.'

       It sounded absolutely terrible, and he wondered in passing whether everything he had ever said when he had anything at all to hide had sounded like that. Remarking affably that he supposed another one might well not kill him, he poured himself an unwanted drink. He saw that Rhiannon, on the chair lately occupied by Dorothy, was fiddling in a preoccupied way with a small irrelevant object like a shampoo sachet.

       'What made you change your mind?' she asked. 'What about?'

       'Going back for Charlie.'

       'Oh, I just hadn't noticed the time before. Everything was a bit confused. Just popping up for a pee.'

       While he was up there he thought about the things he could not say, all manner of them, most of them true, most of them already known but still unsayable. There had been a case for simulating concern for Charlie and going along with Sophie and Dorothy, but that would have looked to Rhiannon like evading her. Oh bugger, he thought wearily, and a stupendous yawn almost clove his skull in two. He wiped his eyes on lavatory paper and went down.

       Although he knew well enough that inside those walls Rhiannon could hardly have blown her nose, let alone gone anywhere, without being heard all over the place, he was none the less disagreeably surprised to find her still sitting there. Then he thought of something and took himself to the chair he had sat on to do his typing.

       'Amazing Dorothy managed to follow that conversation when you think how much she'd had. In the restaurant alone she must have - '

       'Well, she'd have heard before about Charlie's troubles about being afraid of the dark and all that. Like most of his old friends must have done, including you.'

       'Why including me particularly?'

       'Because you're the only one that doesn't seem to care.

       Look at Percy off to telephone like that, no questions asked, and he hardly knows him compared with you.'

       'I honestly can't see what all the fuss is about. Good God, if he's scared of the dark it's bright street lighting all the way to where the cars are, and after that, well even then it's not _dark__, and it's what, two hundred yards. Less.'

       'Quite far enough if you're afraid. Remember how it was        when you were a kid.'   .

       'What? He's supposed to be a grown man. My observation tells me old Charlie makes a bloody good thing out of being scared of this and that. Gets himself picked up and shifted to and fro and generally feather-bedded wherever he happens to bloody be.'

       'He may do that too, I hadn't thought of it.' Rhiannon put the sachet in the waist pocket of her dressing-gown. 'Did you show him that stuff of yours?'

       'Yes, he thought it needed pretty hefty revision, which was much what I thought, you remember.'

       'Yes,' she said. 'Good. I'm going to make a cup of tea.'

       'Marvellous, I'd love some.'

       Alun grabbed his whisky, telling himself he needed it after all, and started to relax, but he had not had time to do much of that before he heard the sound of voices approaching outside. For a moment he thought they were those of strangers, but he soon recognized Sophie's, then Dorothy's, in a tone he had never heard either use before. There was a third voice, a high-pitched whining or wailing that varied in intensity. When Alun realized it must be Charlie's voice he could hear he sat up straight and felt quite frightened. Rhiannon hurried in from the kitchen, opened the front door and stood on the step. Alun got to his feet and waited.

       Charlie had turned a curious colour, that of a red-faced man gone very pale. His eyes were tightly screwed up and he was pressing hard with both hands on a grubby handkerchief that covered his mouth, in spite of which the wailing noise was quite loud at its loudest. Saying comforting things to him, Sophie and Dorothy got him into the armchair, and Rhiannon knelt down beside him and stroked his bald head. When he seemed comparatively settled, Sophie dashed upstairs and came down with a box of pills and gave him one. Alun stood about and tried to look generally ready for anything within reason. Dorothy, whose words of comfort far outdid the others' in range and inventiveness, was obviously having a whale of a time distinguishing herself in fields like responsibility, compassion, etc. So he said to himself. He also tried to consider fully the question of how much of this she would remember in the morning. But it was hard work driving off the thought that whatever Charlie might be going through, and however it had come about in detail, he, Alun, was to blame.

       Now and then Charlie took the handkerchief away from his mouth and got out a word or two in a brief squeal before stuffing it back again. Several times he said he was sorry, twice perhaps that he had thought he was all right or could make it, and once, 'Get Victor.' That came just as Percy reappeared to announce no success with his call to the pub. He had hardly had time to take in the scene before Sophie bundled him off again whence he had come with instructions to telephone the Glendower.

       Nothing surprising or of consequence happened after that for half an hour or so. Percy soon returned and said Victor was on his way. Charlie had two or three calmer and quieter spells but relapsed after each. Dorothy, sitting on the floor next to him, fell asleep or into a stupor, head down. Sophie told the others that when found he had been crouching by the corner of a wall at the edge of the part where the cars were, apparently unable to move. Rhiannon handed out cups of tea, not looking at Alun when she came round to him or at any other time. He just went on standing about.