The Old Devils

       'Marvellously happy occasion,' he told him.

       'Oh, I should just about think it is, boy.' Percy was perhaps a little startled to hear· this from Peter about anything. 'Seems very nice, your new daughter-in-law. I've seen a bit of her, you know, with her mother. No nonsense about her, oh no by George. Never took to the father, I tell you frankly. Never much cared, myself, for people who laid it on thick about the Welsh heritage and all that. I don't know whether you agree with me, Peter, but as I see it that kind of thing is, well it can be a trifle embarrassing, you know, if it's overdone.'

       'Oh absolutely, I was saying just now - '

       'I'll stay for the speeches, of course, and then I think I'll be cutting along. It certainly takes you back, this lot, eh?'

       'You mean the - '

       'Well, queueing up for a piss. Takes you back to nights out after rugger. Takes me back, anyway. She went off it in a week fiat after one chat with Dewi.'

       There had been so little apparent pause between this remark and the previous one that Peter wondered whether he might have passed out on his feet for a few seconds. 'Oh yes,' he said, doing his best to smile encouragingly.

       'Liver,' said Percy. 'Another couple of months the way she was going and - ' he passed the edge of his hand across his throat and gave a loud palatal exhalation. 'Of course, her being off it, I'm glad for her, but it leaves me a bit up in the air. I used to be the bloke with this impossible wife who was bloody magnificent about her, that was what I did, so what do I do now she's possible again all of a sudden?'

       'Yes, I can see that. I think I'll try upstairs.'

       Upstairs Peter found waiting Sian Smith, Duncan Weaver and another man he was nearly sure he was supposed to know, had even perhaps invited. It seemed to him reasonable, and also enterprising, to go up a further flight to the top floor. Here a passage ran the width of the building, at the far end of which he was just in time to glimpse a half-naked white-haired female with a garment or two over her arm dashing across and out of sight. A door shut and a bolt clicked. After a moment another door opened and the face of old Vaughan Mowbray peered out and turned in his direction, and after another moment, occupied by mutual astonishment, drew back again. On the whole Peter felt he might as well go back to the floor below.

       He found the situation there unchanged, except that Sian had moved over to the landing window and was leaning across the sill, presumably in quest of fresh air. He presumed otherwise when he was near enough to pick up the noises she was making. Duncan Weaver also had his eyes on her, more casually though; with his deafness he had no call to shift from the fresh-air presumption. Simultaneously the second fart of Peter's day rang out - from Duncan it had to be, unless the other man's start, glare and forceful rattling at the door-handle were the work of a consummate actor. Peter contemplated briefly the strangeness of a world without sound.

       There was still a queue near the kitchen, though with different people in it, but now he came to think of it there was a little cloak-room place by the front door which he had not yet tried. In mid-transit he was again perfectly placed to catch old Arnold Spurting and the best man quite turbulently hustling the Levantine-moustached Tony Bainbridge along the hall and out of the house. Before the fellow was lost to view Peter saw him mouthing curses and shaking his fist in an old-fashioned way.

       The speeches came and went. Drinking continued until suddenly there was nothing to put in your glass, not even wine. Victor was having the whole lot collected, stowed in cartons, carried out to a small off-white van. One moment Peter was in a group, the next alone with Rosemary - Rosemary Thomas, as she now was and as he addressed her a couple of times.

       'I gather you're going to be seeing something of my mother,' she said. Her ears had fuller lobes than Rhiannon's.

       'Am I? I mean of course I am, but how do you know?'

       'She told me.' Rosemary looked him in the eye and said not altogether seriously, but quite seriously enough, 'Now you behave yourself, right?'

       'What? How do you mean?'

       'I mean don't misbehave.'

       'What? How could I do that?'

       'Any pal of Alun's could find a way. On today's showing - no problem. No, I mean severely misbehave. Like let her down. If you do, William and I will kill you, okay? Oh Peter, I don't think you've met Catriona Semple, also reading law at Oxford. Catriona, this is my father-in-law.'

Ten - Malcolm

'How's she getting on up there?'

       Gwen turned one of the neatly written pages. 'Oh, having a whale of a time, it appears. Dinner-parties every night, house never empty, weekends in the country. Country? What country?'

       'It's quite a big place, actually, the size of here. She must still know a great many people locally, some of them pretty well off I shouldn't be surprised, even in these days of industrial havoc.'

       'Muriel never kept up with them much as far as I heard.

       Anyway, there she is. The theatre, what's she talking about? In Middlesbrough? It can't be the theatre as _civilized folk__ think of it. Racing? Is there a course somewhere in that region?'

       'Sorry, no idea,' said Malcolm, smiling and spreading his hands. 'Not my department.'

       'No, I realize that, no, I just thought you might happen to know. Whippet-racing perhaps she means.'

       'Well, it's good to hear that she seems to be doing reasonably well.'

       'It says something for her pride that she exerts herself to give that impression.'

       'I'm afraid I'm not quite with you.'

       'If you want my opinion, she's protesting too much.

       Life's not turning out to be much fun, how could it in a hole like that, but she's buggered if she's going to let anyone think she's made a mistake. Very roughly.'

       'Maybe, I suppose.' Malcolm tried to sound about half convinced. 'What does she say about Peter?'

       'Nothing very much. She's surer than ever she was right to make the break when she did, exactly what she said before, er, oh and if you see Peter tell the lazy sod to drop her a line. Underplaying it there, you see.'

       'She must miss him a lot in spite of everything.'

       'It's not him she misses, for Christ's sake, it's having a husband as a social seal of quality. And then, well, she doesn't like him not being there in another way, because he still belongs to her really. Some women don't like parting with anything on their inventory even when they've no further use for same.'

       'You're amazing, the way you see things. I'd never have been able to penetrate that far into her motives.' He missed the sharp look these remarks drew from Gwen and went tentatively on, 'But you don't visualize her coming back.'

       She gave a restrained sigh and said, 'Peter's more likely to go there than she is to admit she was wrong in letters nine feet high, and that's it. Mind if I take first knock in the bathroom?'

       'You go ahead.'

       Left alone, Malcolm poured a last cup of tea and lit his daily cigarette. Putting aside the _Western Mail__ for later he noticed a section headed 'Welsh News', a mere quarter of a page or less, and that in the daily newspaper of the capital of the Principality. That, he considered, was coming out into the open with a vengeance. But it was hard to go on feeling indignant for very long, especially after having just spent a good ten minutes reading about a police scandal in South London and not much less on the prospects for England's cricketers on their Australian tour.