would that have made him think she was making herself cheap?'
'Not unless he was a shit - he'd have been delighted.
After he'd got over his surprise. But then I suppose if she started going round - '
'_That's__ right. You can't make yourself cheap just with one person. Still, mustn't take it too seriously. As well as awful bits there were funny bits too, weren't there?' But apparently no funny bits came to mind for the moment. She lit a cigarette and when she went on it was at a reduced speed. 'So I'm glad that whatever Rosemary gets up to or might be going to get up to she's not going to not make herself cheap. It took too much out of people, that way of carrying on. Made them concentrate on the wrong things. And it was easy enough to go off the track without that. And what I saw was only half of it. The chaps' half must have been much worse.'
'We behaved much worse,' said Peter. 'On average.'
'A lot of it, some of it anyway wasn't your fault. I know you think you treated me tremendously badly, love, but you didn't, not really.' For the first time he got a look straight from those grey eyes and now he did catch his breath. 'It's more it sounds bad before you go into what actually happened, which was just we had an affair, not a very long one, though it would have been longer if I'd thought to do different, and you started to be attracted by someone else and we broke up. And it was after that, don't forget, I found I had a bun in the oven, and you took care of things, and _after__ that... You were in love with someone else. I couldn't have expected you to walk out of it and come back to me, how could I at that stage?'
'I wish I had.'
'That's another matter. I'm sorry, I know we seem to have got on to this rather fast, but it could be ages before we're on our own again when I've had four glasses of plonk. And these days you never know how much time you've got. I wanted to tell you this before anyone starts dying. Just, it was lovely.'
He put out his hand across the table and she took it. 'Yes, it was.'
'So you'd better try and realize that some of the other bits aren't quite as bad as you thought.'
Not much later they were standing in the street outside the Glendower, he with his arm around her waist, she leaning her head on his shoulder. In the minicab, which waited near by now to take him on home, they had held hands all the way but barely spoken.
After about a minute she said, 'Would you like to come in for a drink?'
'No, I'd better be getting back. Unless it would make it easier?'
'No, don't worry about that. Look, I hope you don't think anything I've been saying was to do with anything that happened at the party. Or anything else.'
'No, no trouble there, love. I didn't take in everything about you during our thing together, not as much as I should have done, but I did get that far. So no, I don't think that.'
'Good. There's no reason why we shouldn't go out to dinner, you know.'
'I'll be in touch.'
'Rosemary goes back on Thursday. After that.'
She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and went. He hung about a little longer, walking to and fro on the pavement with his head turned down and his hands clasped behind his back, not seeing what his eyes were trained on. Then he straightened up and went over to the car and got in the back.
'Cwmgwyrdd now, is it?' asked the driver, an oldster wearing what looked like his grandson's recent cast- offs. 'What part do you want?'
'I'll tell you when we get nearer.'
'Well, it makes a difference to how I go, see, with them shutting the old bridge over the - '
'Just take me there, will you, by any reasonable route.' The man's head, white and unshorn, slewed intolerably round. 'Are you feeling all right, sir?'
'I'll live. Now kindly do as you're told.'
'_Duw, duw__, sorry I spoke. Not from round here, are you?'
'No, I'm from... from... '
'If you ask me, all the proper Welshmen are leaving Wales.'
'I say, are they really? Well, that's splendid news, by George. Over and out.'
But then when they drove up and the house was in darkness he remembered that Muriel was in Cowbridge, dining and staying the night with English friends she had told him he obviously had no time for, so he was free for over twelve hours.
Five - Rhiannon
1
The next morning Rhiannon and Rosemary sat at breakfast in the new house; Alun had only a moment before driven off for West Wales, there to see over a location for something or other. Through most of the carpetless, curtainless ground floor step-ladders stood, their summits linked by heavy old planks, in the midst of opened drums of paint and other applications, silently awaiting the return of the contracted decorators from wherever they had been these last weeks. It was possible to sit in part of the sitting-room, though it helped if you were quite tired out before you started, and to cook and eat in the kitchen. Here the poppies-on-white cotton curtains were up but, for instance, a couple of boxes of plates and saucers had yet to have their contents deployed on the dresser shelves. Nelly, the new black Labrador puppy, lay stretched out in her basket, idly chewing the side of it from time to time in preference to her purple plastic bone.
'Didn't I give you that mug?' asked Rosemary.
'When you were a tiny thing. It's really quite a nice piece of china.'
The vessel referred to was of a rounded many-sided shape that widened at the top, with gilt round the rim and on the built-up handle, apple-blossom portrayed on the sides and 'Mother' in florid cursive lettering. At the moment it held some tea made from lemon-flavoured powder and a slice of real lemon floating on top. Also before Rhiannon were a plate that had an orange and a banana on it and a bowl of tinned pineapple pieces.
