'I hope I never have the chance of getting used to her.
What makes that woman think I want to hear her paltry little observations on Russia or Russian or Russians? Or anything else on God's earth?'
No awareness, let alone appreciation, of having been unstuck showed itself in Angharad. On the contrary, her resentment of Dorothy's conduct seemed to grow when no one looked like offering to excuse it. Closely and with apparent curiosity she had watched Muriel expose and pull the cork of the Orvieto; now, all but incredulously, she followed every detail of its Pouring, her own nearly empty glass held austerely to one side. People tended to forget about Angharad in the same sort of spirit as they forgot about her husband, whom, by the way, no living person had ever seen in her company, any more than anyone had ever seen the inside of their house. They wondered about the Pumphreys' domestic and marital life quite as much at these coffee-parties as at the Bible.
'Well, that's just how she is,' said Gwen, defending Dorothy rather late in the day and without much fervour. 'She's always been like it but she's got worse lately. Like everybody else.'
'I mean it's not as if I were a great friend of hers,' said Angharad, accusingly now. 'I hardly know her. Hardly even spoken to her before.'
'You were there, that's enough,' said Muriel.
'What sort of a husband does a woman like that have?' Muriel lit another cigarette and said, 'Very nice chap, old Percy Morgan. She doesn't do it to him. Not when we're about, anyway. They get on together like a house on fire.'
'He's a builder,' added Gwen. 'A _builder__.'
'Well, he builds things like town halls,' said Muriel. After studying Muriel's next inhalation of smoke, Angharad returned to her point. 'But she wouldn't let me get a word in, not a single word. Not even to tell her how riveting she was being.'
'You always get one person like that at this sort of jollification,' said Gwen.
Angharad raised her bushy eyebrows. 'Oh, so that's what it is. Quite frankly, if it stopped short at one person like that I wouldn't mind so much,' she said, graciously looking over Gwen's shoulder as she spoke. 'I don't mind telling you it'll be quite a time before I come this way again. This sort of jollification, as you call it, quite defeats me. I'd better make my farewells. Where's... where's Sophie?'
The other two watched Angharad take brief, undemonstrative leave of her hostess and, without a glance at Dorothy or anybody else, limp heavily from the room. 'That's what I call mellowing with age,' said Muriel, topping up the glasses. 'Oh, I'm that thrilled she didn't mind telling us what she told us.'
'I thought only beautiful people could behave like that.
Poor old thing, though. She's probably in pain.'
'I hope so. It didn't do us any good, sticking up for Dorothy.'
Gwen screwed up her face. 'Not a lot of that, though, was there, actually?'
'Now you mention it, no, there wasn't. It's not much of a defence of a burglar to say he's always been a burglar.'
'Perhaps we should have agreed with her about how terrible Dorothy is.'
'Then she'd have had it in for us for knowing her.
There's no pleasing some people, as you've probably noticed yourself.'
A general stir began. Glasses were drained, but not always left empty because there seemed to be a feeling that no opened wine should be allowed to remain undrunk, perhaps out of some old Cymric superstition. Things might have gone differently, or just further in the same direction, if Sophie had broached the 3-litre box of Selected Balkan Riesling on top of the drinks cabinet, whose contents of gin, whisky and other strong liquor were of course perfectly safe from any or all of the party. Two, three women went to say good-bye to Sophie, who was so relieved at being able to speak again that she refused to let them go, at any rate until after she had answered the door-bell. Sian Smith fell down on her way out but soon got up again and made it into the hall. When Sophie reappeared she had Peter Thomas with her. The sight of him standing alone on the doorstep had been enough to let her know that he had dropped Charlie at the Glendower. Without consulting him, still less offering him a glass of wine, she crossed to the drinks cabinet.
Peter looked rather shaken. After a moment's hesitation he advanced into the room with a real reluctance that he tried, late on and not very convincingly, to hide in a comic pretence of reluctance. He and Muriel waved to each other and it was the same or similar with him and Gwen, him and Dorothy, him and a couple of others. Flapping his hand at the smoke-filled air, he said in a bantering tone, 'So this is what all you busy housewives get up to while your men-folk are slacking and boozing their heads off in the pub.'
It was not very good, though surely better than nothing, and he had done his best to sound pleasant, and he had sounded quite pleasant, at any rate for him, but nobody seemed to hear much and nobody came over, not even Dorothy, until Sophie brought him a gin and tonic, offering to fetch ice which he forbade. He and she chatted about something, very likely more than one thing, for however long it was before Muriel collected him and took him off. If his shaken look had departed it was in place again by this time.
Of all the guests only Dorothy remained. She would not move before another piece of standard procedure fetched Percy over from Pedwarsaint to shift her, probably, though not certainly, by the power of words. There was no standard procedure for that.
5
'Good party at the good old Bible, I trust,' said Muriel. 'Who was there?'
Peter told her.
'You wonder why on earth you go, especially when you've got there and find it's exactly like it always is, and then you realize that's why you went. I suppose once upon a time we did things for a change. Malcolm full of the news about the Weavers, was he?'
'Well yes, he was rather.'
'What was your reaction?'
'It came as no surprise. Alun's always threatened to return to his Welsh roots, as perhaps you
