those present when the village man of God preached a sermon in Welsh. Which no doubt would have meant plenty to you... '
Here Muriel made an audacious pause, confident that she could gauge Dorothy's coming-round time to a nicety, and resumed on the dot, '... but, as far as he was concerned, the fellow might just as well have been rabbiting on in Apache. But one thing he did notice, did my chum. The fellow, the Welsh fellow, kept using a word that sounded like the English word truth. As in veracity, honesty and such. There'd be a flood of bongo-bongo chatter, and then, suddenly, truth, and then more monkey language. Apparently, when he asked afterwards, apparently it was, it had been, the English word he'd used. Why not use a Welsh word, he asked him. Well, he said,' and Muriel's accent shifted again to the Gulf of Guinea, 'there isn't a Welsh word with the same connotations and the _force__ of the English word. And if that isn't funny enough for you, he said, there is a Welsh word _truth__, same word, spelt the same anyhow, and it means falsehood. Mumbo-jumbo. As you well know. Talk about coming out in the open. I've often meant to check that in a Welsh-English dictionary. After all there must be such things. Just a matter of knowing where to look.'
Sophie had come into the room in time to hear the last part of this. The sight of her went down remarkably well with Muriel, who liked holding the floor as much as anyone living but preferred a more normal audience, one that could safely be allowed a turn now and again. It would have been good if Dorothy had been listening too, especially to the yam just recounted, but then she had heard it, had had sound-waves bearing it strike her ear- drum, a couple of dozen times before, so there was a chance of its entering her mind by some route or other, perhaps by-passing the conscious part of it. As it was, talking to Dorothy, or rather in her presence, was a bit too close for comfort to being that type in the story who found himself shut up in a prison cell somewhere nasty with a mad murderous Arab for company, not a lot in the way of company because you very soon found that the only way of keeping him quiet was by staring him in the eye: take too long about blinking, let alone nod off, and you were for it. Muriel lit a cigarette in one continuous operation rather than as when addressing Dorothy - piecemeal, like somebody driving a car at the same time.
'Any luck with Percy?'
'Still no reply - it's not like him. I had Gwen on just before, phoning from that Eyetie joint in Hatchery Road. '
'Oh, Mario's, I know. What had she got to say for herself?'
'Fed up she was, according to her,' said Sophie, who had actually been prepared to pass on this information unprompted. 'Malcolm given her a big row.'
'No, really? That doesn't sound the gallant Malcolm's style at all. I can't imagine him giving any size of row to a cocklestall proprietor.'
After a short pause, Sophie said, 'Well, you know. She asked if she could come up, so - '
'And how did you respond?'
'I thought why not, more the merrier.' Sophie glanced at Dorothy. 'Right?'
'Oh, every time. I couldn't agree more.'
'Maybe she'll have something to tell us about the great day trip.' Malcolm's excursion with Rhiannon had been speculated about earlier.
'Very possibly. I must say our Rhiannon has been _going it a bit__ recently. She can hardly have recovered from her piss-up with my old man.'
This time Sophie paused a little longer. 'I always think, the way you feel about the Welsh, Muriel, it must be fantastic, you and Peter seeing absolutely eye to eye on a thing like that.'
'I must go,' said Muriel. 'Well actually not as much as you might think. It's perfectly possible to go a long way with somebody on some point or other and then suddenly find you and the other chap are literally rolling over and over on the bloody _floor__ about it. Easiest thing in the world.' She picked up a nearly full bottle of Corvo Bianco with a slight clunk against an unopened tin of laver-bread (from Devon), got a no-thanks from Sophie and poured unstintingly for herself. 'But of course it doesn't go very deep with me. More a matter of being a little bit naughty among friends.' This, driven home at need with a where's-your-sense-of-humour gibe, was her standard retort to any Welsh person who might take exception to being categorized as a liar, cheat, dullard, bully, hypocrite, sneak, snob, layabout, toady, violator of siblings and anything else that might strike her fancy. 'Yes, I'm a long way from getting my official invitation to join the Peter Thomas Anti-Welsh Brotherhood, and not only on grounds of sex, which I dare say the chairman's prepared to waive these days. No, it'll take a - '
'Oh, and there's another way you don't qualify, Muriel,' said Sophie with a bright smile. 'Only Welsh people can join. Born Welsh. Peter must have told you, surely. I remember him going into it one time after Christmas dinner at Dorothy's. Very particular he was on the point. Two non-Welsh grandparents was too many, he said.'
After the sound of her name had triggered her dinosaurian reflexes, Dorothy lifted her head for the second time in ten minutes. The talk between Sophie and Muriel, animated to begin with, had lost its impetus and that too might have percolated through her nervous system. Behind the black-framed lenses her eyes steadied and focused. With majestic deliberation she drew in her breath. The other two struggled wildly to think of something to get in ahead with, but it was like trying to start a motor-bike in the path of a charging elephant.
'Of course you know in New Zealand they celebrate Christmas just the same as here,' she said, showing a notable sense of continuity. 'Roast turkey and plum pudding and mince pies in the middle of the antipodean winter.' She pronounced the penultimate word correctly and clearly, as she did every other, as she invariably did while she could speak at all. 'I mean summer. Imagine roast turkey and stuffing and hot mince pies in July.
Howard and Angela have got some friends in Wanangui, that's in what they call North Island... '
'I think I'll try Percy again,' said Sophie.
3
'I'd just like an explanation,' said Malcolm. 'Just the merest hint of an explanation. That's all.'
'You're the feeblest creature God ever put breath into,' said Aloo. 'Why any woman should have spent thirty-three minutes married to you, let alone thirty-three years, defies comprehension. You've no idea in the world of what pleases a woman: in other words' - he seemed to be choosing these with care - 'you're not only hopeless as an organizer of life in general, you're a crashingly boring companion into the bargain and needless to say, er, perennially deficient in the bedroom. Correct?'
'That about sums me up. Oh, I'm also cut off.'
'Cut off?'
'Cut off from real people in my own little 'pathetic fantasy world of dilettante Welshness, medievalism and
