'But don't worry, I'll be there. Charlie, time to be away, old boy.'
'Why aren't you going to the mayor's lunch?' asked Charlie. 'There must be one, surely.'
'Oh, there's a lunch, but I've got a date with my mates, haven't I? Where's Malcolm got to? And even if I hadn't I couldn't face another mayoral do. Had enough officialdom for one day. '
'You've got to remember he's an artist,' said Gwen. 'And, doubtless more plausibly in the eyes of some, the lunch won't be reported, the ceremony will. I'll see you up at the Picton, Charlie - I've got to dash off somewhere first. One of those things that won't keep.'
2
To Charlie waiting at the exit, it seemed to take about as long for Malcolm to get his car out of the multi-storey over the road from Tesco as it would to get the country out of the Common Market. But, having little real alternative, he turned up in the end and drove the two of them through the outskirts on a good old rainy Welsh afternoon. They passed the ruins of the castle and not long afterwards the ruins of the copper-smeltery. Here and there were conical knolls covered with grass and even supporting bushes or young trees, the overgrown spoilheaps of long- vanished collieries. The road led upwards beside the waters of the Iwerne and the walls of the valley began to rise, with bigger hills fuzzily in view further off. Then, just as some sort of countryside seemed about to come into sight, human habitations reappeared, shops, offices, pubs too, all quite as grimy as when the air was thick with coal- dust.
'Here we are,' said Malcolm, steering round a corner. 'Or are we? I can't see any - '
'What's the trouble?' asked Charlie, ducking and peering.
'It just says Streets where the Picton sign used to be.
Streets? What are they talking about?'
'Let's have a look.'
Malcolm parked outside a lilac-painted boutique on a site Char1ie was nearly sure had once been occupied by a Marxist bookshop, only that would have been a bit too good to be true. Everywhere else was apparently selling either electronic equipment or large steakwiches and jacket potatoes with cheese-and-onion topping. A man's voice crying the _Evening Post__ might have been from another world.
As they walked the needful not-very-many yards, huddled up against the thin rain, Malcolm spoke to Charlie, who for the second time in less than two hours had the experience of being addressed with one-hundred- per-cent unintelligibility by someone who had been making perfect sense a moment before.
'I'm sorry, Malcolm, I must be going round the bend, I couldn't follow a single word of that. Could you try again?'
'My fault,' said Malcolm, blushing a good deal. 'It was supposed to be your friend CassiveUaunus Pugh asking about General Picton. I mean I didn't hear him but I assume he had an American accent. I'm afraid I can't have done it very well.'
'Pembrokeshire man, wasn't he, Picton?' asked Charlie kindly.
'Yes, well part of Dyfed as it is now.'
'Fuck the lot of them,' said Charlie in a considered way.
'Who? Fuck who?'
'The London bastards who changed all the Welsh counties about. Even my kind of Welshman resents that. And then gave them all these crappy ancient names.'
'It was done in the interests of efficiency.' Malcolm was nothing if not fair-minded.
'That's where you're wrong. It was done in the interests of my bum.'
They plunged from the rain into the dark, echoing tunnel or underpassage that led to a side entrance, sometimes in the past scattered with boozers' muck, immaculate now and with its old cobblestones tom up and replaced by concrete. Indoors the continuing gloom was relieved by what looked like, and indeed proved on closer inspection to be, old-fashioned lamp-posts. More light, treated so as rather to resemble daylight, came from or through the glass ceiling. The walls were got up as shop-fronts, brick-pillared gateways, a park with railings, plastic shrubs and a white planking pavilion. The vast shape of Peter Thomas could be made out towards the back, sitting on a green-and-white-striped canvas chair near a stone-and-wrought-iron well-head. As the arrivals closed in on him the stuff they walked on changed from tiles to gravel.
'The affluent society,' said Peter. 'In the bad old days only very rich people could hope to enjoy surroundings like these. Now they're within the reach of all.'
Charlie went to the polygonal bar in the middle of the concourse and called for service.
'Be there now,' called a voice from out of sight, so not everything had changed.
When drinks had been dealt out Malcolm said, looking about him, 'Well, they've certainly transformed this place.'
'You can't even see where anything was,' said Charlie.
'Can you remember where the bar in the back room was? Where the door into it was?'
'I suppose everywhere's like it now except for a few backwaters like the Bible,' said Malcolm. His expression grew serious and withdrawn. 'It reminds me very strongly of somewhere I went a little while ago. Now where the hell was it?'
Peter had started to breathe heavily. 'Everywhere is not like it. I came up on the bus in a leisurely fashion and stopped on the way at the old Pendle Inn '- remember? It's all metal now, would you believe it? Walls, floor, tables, chairs, bar, the whole thing. Bare metal. Matt, not shiny. Including the fast-food device. Naked metal. Except for a dozen or so television screens for the rock videos. I freely grant you may think the differences between that and this can't be considered substantial.'
This was a long speech for Peter, but Malcolm answered up readily enough. 'I expect it appeals to the young people. Same as here.' It was true that as far as could be made out through the murk most of the others present were under thirty or so. Some were under ten and ran about crashing into pieces of furniture.
An expression of ineffable loathing swept over Peter's face but he offered no remark.
