since arriving. Both carried empty glasses and the way each moved brought out for the moment a striking physical resemblance: rather short in the leg and moving slowly and softly, shoulders bowed but head well up and forward, rather pointed nose questing for the wine-bottle. None of those immediately on view had any wine in it. Without verbal or other comment Sophie produced a full one, a litre flask of Emerald Riesling, from a carton next to her sentry-box-sized refrigerator. Sharing the work, Murie1 twisted the _in-situ__ cork off the corkscrew in no-nonsense fashion, her head enveloped in cigarette-smoke. Gwen attacked the foil round the neck of the new bottle with a fruit-knife. Neither spoke until liquor was pouring.
'Exit our Dorothy,' said Muriel. 'Not before time let it be added.'
'The sound of the front door shutting was music in our ears,' said Gwen.
Muriel settled herself in her previous place. 'Young Percy didn't exactly fall over himself coming to the bloody rescue, did he?'
'He probably felt like an hour off,' said Peter, who was still rather impressed with Percy's smooth, resolute action and, even more, envious of his air of seclusion in some adamantine sphere of his own. 'That seems very reasonable to me.'
The three women looked at him in silence, Sophie only for an instant while she made for the door, Gwen, seated, rather longer. Muriel's look came over the top of her glass and lasted till she had put it down on the table. Then she said, 'Well, Pete lad, now's your chance for a small break yourself. My friend Gwen and I are just about to settle down for a nice cosy little sisterly chat which I don't honestly see you contributing much to, so you could take off right away, couldn't you? No point in sticking around, eh?' She smiled, or drew back the corners of her mouth and raised her eyebrows.
He had been expecting to be asked to hang on while his wife had one more drink and then to have to hang on while she had one more after that. Under this arrangement he would have been open later on to a charge of having spoilt the drink(s) in question by a display of impatience - this no matter how hard and continuously he might have beamed at everyone in sight - with another in reserve about having dragged her away while she was enjoying herself. She was not an inveterate boozer but when she was on it there was a routine for that too. He was accordingly ill prepared for being ordered out of Sophie's house. 'Oh... that's all right,' he said. 'I can easily - '
'No, no, I wouldn't keep you up, old boy.' Muriel gave I a waggish laugh. 'You look as if you could do with an early night. Granted it's not that early, but every little helps.'
After another tepid protest or two he was driven from the room. Gwen gave him a farewell twiddle of the fingers and stylized simper that made him feel quite sorry for Malcolm, but only in passing. In the hall cloakroom he rejected, as frequently before, that if the Thomases had a second car, which they or rather she could readily have afforded, then all this would never have arisen. _All __ this? A drop out of the ocean. And of course there would still be times like tonight, with her too pissed, or about to become too pissed, to drive. Well, at times like that, when she actually needed him, she could ring him or... What was he talking about? Let herself in for feeling tied down and pass up a giltedged chance of buggering him about at the same time? He must be joking. He must also have got this far almost as frequently before.
Outside in the hall itself he nearly ran into Sophie wearing a turquoise-blue - scarf over her head, which was just unexpected enough to make him say, 'Off somewhere, are you?' Now he remembered, he had heard the 'telephone tinkle a minute or two before.
'Yeah. Why?' Her normal intonation had never needed much sharpening in order to sound snappish.
'Charlie'll be all right, I suppose?'
'Why wouldn't he be?'
'Well... ' Peter shifted his head about in a way intended to remind her that as an old friend he rather naturally knew something of her husband's nervous troubles.
'Should be safe enough, shouldn't he, with three people in the house?'
'Oh yes. Yes of course. '
'If you're worried you can stay around yourself.'
This time he moved his head in a different way, thinking perhaps she had been pulling his leg.
'I like a bit of time off too, you know, now and then.' Before he could give his answer to that, if any, Sophie went back into the kitchen.
5
Gwen and Muriel looked up at the sound of the outside door shutting a second time.
'Peter in a funny mood,' said Sophie.
'You know I don't think drink agrees with him,' said Muriel. 'Never has.'
'Decent of the old boy,' said Gwen, 'to stick up for Percy like that. And shows a great breadth of sympathy too.'
'You'd think he'd realize there's others needs a break,' said Sophie, and went briskly on, 'I'm just off round to Rhiannon's for half an hour. Now you won't be rushing away yet awhile, will you? Stuff in the fridge if you want 'it,' she said further, though there was enough stuff on the table to keep both the other two chewing hard for a couple of hours. 'Stay if you like, mind, 'there's another bed in the - '
Muriel interrupted to say she would get a minicab and Gwen interrupted her to say she would drive her, and the two fought over it briefly until Sophie had actually left, though they each managed to get in their thanks for the party and their sendings of love to Rhiannon. After assuring herself that they were indeed alone Gwen turned to Muriel with an intent frown.
'What we were saying - a tin of a good brand with a spoonful of yogurt stirred in... '
'And a spot of chopped parsley... '
'... and they start asking you just which vegetables you've used, isn't there endive in this, can't I taste celeriac. And wanting to know _how__ you did it, surely you melted them in butter and so on. I just tell them, the old way, m'm, it's the only proper way.'
Muriel laughed with more elation than might have been expected at a simple discussion of kitchen methods. 'Right, there's not much they can say to that. And of course when it comes to chicken or Scotch broth or whatever, well, what is it, it's cubes and booze, that's what it is, cubes and booze. A tin of oxtail soup and a cube and a tablespoon of whisky and that's it. Not only easier, incomparably easier. _Better__,' she said challengingly.
