He dashed across the road in full athletic style, marring the effect hardly at all by holding a newspaper over his head. The three left in the tunnel turned morosely to one another.
'Got to watch him, you know.'
'What's he lined up for us?'
'I'm not quite clear. There was something said about a trip to Courcey.'
'Bit late for that, isn't it? Most of the way back and out again.'
'Not half-past one yet.'
'Do I look all right?' This was Malcolm.
'Yes, you look fine,' said the other two. 'Why, don't you feel all right?'
'Yes; I feel fine. I just wondered if I look all right. Looked all right.'
'No, you look fine.'
'Christ, here he is already.'
Making washout signals as he came, Alun hurried back and joined them in the tunnel. 'Bloody awful. You can't even get - I'll hold it for now. We'd better be moving. I don't think we'll find anywhere bearable round here, so let's head for Courcey right away. There's all sorts of tourist spots there now. Where's your car, Malcolm?'
'Haven't you got yours?'
'Came by minicab. More fun if we all go together.'
It was certainly more crowded than it might have been, but really quite pleasant in the warm damp and the half dark. Charlie was comfortable enough in the back, with Peter's bulk next to his seeing to it that, although Malcolm's car was not particularly small, staying unbudged on corners was no problem. As number one, Alun had naturally secured the front passenger seat, and he was soon twisted most of the way round in it to push on with conversation.
'Nightmare place back there, you know. Like a seaside boarding house hung with fairy lights and log-cabin music playing. Completely empty, of course, in fact no sign anybody had been there ever. A nice-enough female appeared and what could I have, well, I could have a cooked dinner, that's beef dinner or lamb dinner with cheese after, or I could have chicken salad, but you gets the Indian chutney-stand with that if you wants it, and pickled onions. And cheese after.'
'As served in Chittagong,' said Charlie.
'Couldn't I have a curry? No, sorry, it's only English till the evening. The Indian, he don't come on till six. She didn't like telling me, poor little thing. I rather cantankerously pointed out that it said Indian-Continental cuisine outside, which she agreed was the case. And then... _then__... I asked her who owned the joint, and oh, she looked bloody uncomfortable. And what do you think? Arabs own it. '
There was a united cry of rage and disgust, given extra punch by the effect of the bump in the road that shook the car at that moment.
'I mean my God,' said Alun, glaring seriously. 'Arabs owning airlines, Arabs owning half London you can sort of... But Arabs owning the Bengal Tiger Bistro in a clapped-out industrial village on the edge of a mouldering, rotting former manufacturing centre and coal port in a God-forsaken province, it makes you, well I don't know what it does, it makes you sweat. Or something.'
'It's not only the province's fault,' said Malcolm. 'Perhaps not even chiefly.'
'Nobody said it was, boy, nobody said it was.'
Silence fell in the car. Malcolm drove it perhaps a trifle faster than his habit but safely enough, and they ran into little traffic. For some minutes Charlie dozed. When he woke up it was to hear Alun singing to himself in the front.
'Was it little Nell whose nasty smell diffused general gloom?
Oh no, it wasn't little Nell... '
Anyone in a position to compare Alun's style of rendering these phrases with his effort on leaving Sophie's might well have noticed a falling off, a downturn in force and conviction. Charlie hardly took them in. It seemed to be shaping into one of his good days. The rain had stopped, or just as likely they had moved out of it as they approached sea level, and there was watery sunlight. Courcey came up on a signpost. Everything was peaceful and safe.
Before people stopped bothering about such things at all, Courcey Island was widely considered to have received its name from the Norman family of de Courcy who had been lords of nearby Locharne. Various authorities had seen that name as actually a corruption of Corsey, from Welsh _COTS__, 'bog, fen' and Old English _ey__, 'island', or possibly from an eponym _Kori__ with _ey__, or again had derived it from English _causeway__ or _causey__ or from the Welsh borrowing of the latter, _cawsai__ or _cawsi__. In the manner of authorities anywhere they had never reached agreement, though it remained true that a substantial causeway, last rebuilt in the 1880s, carried traffic the thousand yards or so between mainland and island on a fine broad road. It had only been about half as broad until 1965, in which year Courcey's three goods-and-passenger railway stations had been closed and the single track taken up.
Parts of this had once been known to Charlie, and more than those were no doubt still fresh in Malcolm's mind.
How he would have enjoyed imparting them to such as Pugh, and how lucky it was for everybody else that it was not happening. What might it not have done to Peter, fast asleep as he was and from time to time giving what sounded like a grunt of brutish consternation.
Once on the island and through Holmwood, the famous grove of ancient oaks once quite mistakenly thought to have druidic associations, Malcolm took the road to the left. East Courcey was always said to be the Welsh half of the island and its place-names suggested as much, including one or two anglicized ones like Treville, where they were making for. The western side had been English or largely English since Henry 11 planted settlers there in the 1160s. The former port of Birdarthur and nearly all the beaches of the island, overflowing with visitors
