The Old Devils

       'Somebody's got to say all those things.'

       'Oh no they haven't. Well wait a minute, perhaps they have. There's an awful lot of filling-in to be done in life, isn't there?'

       'Anyway he has one great virtue, young Garth, as you pointed out some time ago. When he's around you know for a certainty you're not going to run into Angharad.'

       'When did I say that? I hope at least I said it lightly. I'm sorry, Peter.'

       'Nonsense, you were quite right. You spoke better than you knew. And never more applicable than today.'

       'I suppose so.' Charlie looked seriously at his feet as they halted in the porch. 'She'd have been nothing but a... ' He started on another word and stopped.

       'Skeleton at the feast, yes. Oh dear. Once again, very well put. You know, it's a funny thing... '

       'What is? I think I can - '

       'Just, ever since that evening at Garth's I've had the-'

       'I'll see you down at the house. But... '

       They were being borne onwards and outwards into the sunshine among hurrying or resisting bodies and there was not going to be much more of this conversation. Sophie and Dorothy were near, Sophie not looking at anyone, silent, possibly tearful, Dorothy clutching a leather handbag that might have held a baby's cricket-bat and pads and wearing something of which it could be said with certainty only that it was lime-green and that she had made it herself. Charlie backed Peter into a minor angle of the stonework and gave a muted yelp as his ankle hit a boot-scraper.

       'Er... there's something it would be good if you'd say to Rhiannon if you get a chance to talk to her alone.'

       'Yes?' said Peter, pretty sure he knew what it was, his mind still on the events at Garth's.

       'You know Victor and I are doing the reception, well for one reason and another we want to charge her the full rate on paper, so to speak, but she'll get a rebate in the post next month which she needn't acknowledge, okay?'

       'Oh, marvellous,' said Peter, laughing a good deal at the imaginative poverty of his guess. 'Absolutely spiffing.'

       'I mean Victor, we thought it might come better from you. If you would.'

       'I'll make a point of it.'

       'Cheers. See you there.' Charlie reached for a passing lapel and was gone.

       Alone for a space, Peter had time to look without much engrossment at the dozens of people hanging about on the well-kept lawn and paths, searching for one another with heads raised or drifting uncertainly away, William standing with friends of his, Rosemary with friends of hers, younger couples being pulled this way and that by children, older couples consisting usually of a more or less apathetic old boy and vigilant, questing old girl with glasses and hat yes, hat, nothing to do with the wedding as like as not, just part of the uniform - solitaries wondering what on earth had possessed them to come, Rhiannon in grey with whit~ collar and cuffs along by the gate next to Alun's very fat and unsmiling brother who had come down from London to give the bride away, and hemmed in by Breconshire aunts and cousins and such, but at the moment speaking hesitantly into a microphone held out by a squat man in a white raincoat while a photographer circled round her - all this, as far as it went, Peter contemplated, until a well-known voice was heard.

       'Tell us now, when's the baby coming then?' Although Garth's voice was quite well known in some quarters he sounded at the moment more like a Welsh comedian than usual.

       'There isn't one, I mean not yet as far as I know,' said Peter, wishing he could drop easily into character like Charlie and the others.

       'Awh! Reely! Well, there's posh for you.'

       'There's _swank__,' corrected Tudor Whittingham at Garth's side. Tudor had somehow managed to shed his followers for the time being and kept looking round to make sure they stayed shed. His amazing lack of surplus flesh allowed full visibility to the spare, narrow frame that had stood him in such good stead as a squash player in the remote past. Its narrowness was extended upwards to his skull, which all generations had pronounced inadequate for an adequate amount of brain without compression of some sort. He had been Tudor Totem-Bonce in the form above Peter at the Grammar.

       'Posh or swank, same difference,' said Garth. Then his manner changed abruptly and he went on to Peter at reduced volume, 'Tare was saying last night he hoped you'd come in today for a bit if you had the time. You haven't been in much since poor Alun went, have you?' He rolled a mournful bardic eye at Peter.

       'No. No, I suppose I haven't.'

       'No, well we miss you there, Peter. I know Tare does particularly. He feels rotten about that evening still, throwing us all out neck and crop. It's not that he feels responsible at all for... what happened later; I think I've talked him out of that. It's more that it grieves him that he and Alun parted for the last time on such bad terms. Was that your impression, Tudor?'

       'No question. No question whatever.'

       'Of course he never seriously meant we should take all our gear away. Temper, that was. He as good as admitted it when I went round the next morning. Perhaps I told you.'

       Addressing Peter, but obviously reproaching Garth for the omission as well, Tudor said, 'I thought it was a lovely service and the young people looked absolutely radiant and I hope they'll be very happy.'

       'Oh yes. Oh yes.' Garth intimated that between him and Peter that side of things was taken for granted. 'Yes, old Tarc really respected poor Alun. I reckon everybody did. Mind you, there's not a man who's ever walked this earth who didn't give those around him something to put up with. But taking him for all in all he was the best of fellows really, wasn't he?'

       Somebody has to say it, thought Peter. 'Yes, I suppose he was.' The words drew a look of puzzled incredulity from Tudor.

       'Actually,' Garth went on, 'actually not everybody did respect him if the truth were told. Remember that article in the _Western Mail__, that so-called appreciation? Nasty. Curmudgeonly is what I'd call it. Thoroughly curmudgeonly. Oh, and did you see that reference in a _Times__ review, was it, the other day? Oh yes - wait a minute.' His hand moved towards his breast pocket but stopped before it got there. 'No, I've filed it. Er... he could be called a follower of Brydan if that were not taken to imply a certain degree of strength and vital... something. Very nasty. I'll get it copied and send it you.'

       Tudor said with some determination, 'William and Rosemary going away for a bit, are they?'

       Though ready and willing with a reply Peter never gave it, being instantly hiked off to be photographed. He hoped Tudor thought he was getting his money's-worth out of having dumped his family.

       There was a line-up in the sunshine with backs to the church wall. Peter had been for sidling into his place at the end next to Muriel, but embraces were called for, not of course with the unsmiling brother, who unsmilingly nodded and that was that, nor with Muriel. She smiled, though, but not for long, which was just as well. He was not going to start digging all that over. There was one thing to be said at any rate: neither he nor anyone else could have done anything about it, probably ever. Who had used almost those very words to him not so long ago, and about what or whom?

       For some minutes three or four photographers, one a woman or girl, all showing in their clothing and hair structure what some might have seen as an unhealthy disrespect for stuff like weddings, huddled the six principals together with no result, spread them apart again, brought some forward, waved others away with sudden backhand sweeps. Nor was it lost on Peter that advances in science meant they took ten times as many photographs as would once have been found necessary and shaped up to take twice that number. It was easier for them like that, he inferred, more fun too, licitly buggering a set of strangers about. Quite understandable. Do it himself if he had the chance.