There were no towels in the Gents, only a hot-air blower.
Charlie did what he could with their handkerchiefs. The bleeding had almost stopped.
'I didn't say anything very terrible, did I?' asked Malcolm.
'Not that I heard.'
'So what was it all about?'
'They were rather a rough lot and they reckoned we were misbehaving on their patch.' Charlie decided against a satirical harangue on the demoralizing effects of unemployment and inadequate leisure facilities. 'And we knew you meant no harm but they didn't, or they could say they didn't.'
'A bit unfair, chucking us out like that. It was them, those local fellows.'
'Just as well perhaps.'
'Of course I see it was no use arguing. You know, Charlie, I think I must be a bit tight. Probably hurt more if I wasn't, there is that. No thanks, I can manage.'
'Fine bloody pub-crawl we've had, haven't we?'
'Sorry.'
'Not your fault. I suppose Alun made good use of the time. Some of it, anyway.'
Their way out took them through the· bar where they had spent most of their short time on the premises.
'I could tell what sort they were the moment they came in.'
'Men that age, you'd think they'd have learnt how to behave by this time.'
Four - Peter
1
Peter's getting-up procedures were less taxing to the spirit than Charlie's or Malcolm's but they were no less rigid. They bad stopped being what you hurried heedlessly through before you did anything of interest and had turned into a major event of his day, with him very much on his own, which was right for an oldster's day. Among such events it was by far the most strenuous performance. The section that really took it out ofhim was the actual donning of clothes, refined as this had been over the years, and its heaviest item was the opener, putting his socks on. At one time this had come after instead of before putting his underpants on, but he had noticed that that way round he kept tearing them with his toenails.
Those toenails had in themselves become a disproportion in his life. They tore the pants because they were sharp and jagged, and they had got like that because they had grown too long and broken off, and he had let them grow because these days cutting them was no joke at all. He could not do it in the house because there was no means of trapping the fragments and Muriel would be bound to come across a couple, especially with her bare feet, and that was obviously to be avoided. After experimenting with a camp-stool in the garage and falling off it a good deal he had settled on a garden seat under the rather fine flowering cherry. This restricted him to the warmer months, the wearing of an overcoat being of course ruled out by the degree of bending involved. But at least he. could let the parings fly free, and fly they bloody well did, especially the ones that came crunching off his big toes, which were massive enough and moved fast enough to have brought down a sparrow on the wing, though so far this had not occurred.
The socks went on in the bathroom with the aid of a particular low table, height being critical. Heel on table, sock completely on as far as heel, toes on table, sock round heel and up. Quite recently he had at last found the kind of socks he wanted, short with no elastic round the top. They did his swollen ankles good, not by making them swell less but by not constricting them, and so leaving them looking less repulsive and frightening when he undressed at night. Pants on in the bedroom, heel and toe like the socks but at floor level, spot of talc round the scrotum, then trousers two mornings out of every three or so. On the third or so morning he would find chocolate, cream, jam or some combination of these from his bedtime snack smeared over the pair in use, and would have to return to the bathroom, specifically to its mirror for guidance in fixing the braces on the front of the fresh trousers, an area which needless to say had been well out of his direct view these many years.
There was nothing non-standard about the remainder of his dressing routine except perhaps for the use of the long shoehorn, a rare and much-prized facility he had once mislaid for a whole miserable week, filling the gap as best he might with a silver-plated Georgian serving-spoon from Muriel's kitchen, where it had naturally had to be returned after each application. He had worn the same pair of featureless slipper-types for years now, hoping to die or become bedridden before they fell to pieces and forced him to go to one of these do-the-whole-thing-yourself shoe-shops which he understood were all they had these days.
The part of the course that involved the bathroom hand-basin was less demanding only than the first. The foam went on to his face in two ticks, the sweeps of his razor were bold and swift and he hardly did more with his toothbrush than spread paste over his gums. But even so some bending and stretching and arm-raising was unavoidable, enough to see to it that by the time he was as ready to face the world as he would ever be he was breathing fairly hard and pouring with sweat, especially from his scalp. At one period he had tried to reduce this effect by leaving large parts of himself undried after his bath, but after several weeks of nonstop cold symptoms had surmised a connection and desisted. He went downstairs carrying the sleeveless pullover he would draw carefully over his head when he had cooled off.
Where was Muriel? - this particular morning as every other morning a question to get settled right at the start. Not in her bedroom: its door had stood open and she was an early bird anyway. Not out in the car: he would have heard it. In the garden? Likely enough at the moment, with no rain falling: as she often said, a great deal needed doing in the third of an acre with only Mr Mayhew, who had once worked in the manufacture of metal boxes, coming in to do some of the rough on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At times like this, Peter recalled the brief period when he had magnanimously volunteered now and then to lend a hand himself, and on every occasion had been told off to shift as it might have been five hundred gallon-sized flowerpots from one end of the estate to the other. It was almost as if Muriel would sooner have been able to complain of not being helped than be helped. Well, well, there was no fathoming some people.
Yes, there she was on her knees near the far hedge, getting a place ready to put something into the ground or even actually putting it in. He could not see which from the dining-room windows nor would he have cared at any distance, having disliked gardens ever since having been 'expected to amuse himself in one otherwise than by pulling up the plants. It was one of his earliest memories (he must have been about four) and his parents' garden had admittedly been much smaller than this, but the lesson had stuck, indeed he had been elaborating it off and on ever since. Gardens, he had long ago perceived, were all about power, from overawing you with their magnificence (sneering at your penury) to rebuking your indolence, mean-mindedness, barbarity, etc. Houses were pretty bad too and in the same way, but there was mitigation there, with so many people having to live in them.
The house he lived in himself, this house, had immeasurably more than that to be said about it. Nowadays
