or getting back at them for something else in the way everybody knows they do. So then it's either a huge set to or hoping it'll be better next time, and funnily enough it always seems to turn out the same way, isn't that striking? And _then__... it gets to be too late, very natural that, just like when you're talking to someone and you don't know their name, and you hang on because you're hoping they're going to say it or you'll remember, and then before you know where you are it's too late to ask them. Well, when you've got that far it's no time at all to when it's really too late.
'Some people seem to manage quite okay to keep up with their old buddies after not seeing them for twenty years. Sian was telling me she's still in touch with a mate of hers who went to Toronto I couldn't tell you when but a hell of a long time ago.'
Gwen still said nothing. Very reluctantly, and feeling fed up as well, she saw that she would not after all be able to tell Rhiannon what Muriel had let out, could at most drop a hint or two along with a plea of amnesia. That amnesia might easily turn out to be genuine enough, and even the hint or two might stretch her morning self too far. It could be that Muriel had been half rationally counting on something like that, trying out an unusual form of self-revelation, one that popped back into the box overnight. Certainly her last couple of sentences had been just the sort of thing you expected to hear on coming round from a fit of extreme apathy in the small hours. No harm in passing that on.
'Would you very kindly telephone for a minicab on my behalf?' said Muriel after a minute of complete silence. She spoke with rather better control than before from much further out. 'The number can be found in my handbag which is somewhere.'
More of the same, thought Gwen, picking up the handbag from within reach. But she made up her mind to be less bothered in future when Muriel seemed to her strange or loud, if she could remember the reason, of course.
6
'Was it baby Babs whose hideous crabs distressed Father Muldoon?
Oh no, it wasn't baby Babs, it was Mrs Rosenbloom... ' Alun sang quietly not out of any ordinary precaution, for he was alone at the wheel of his car, but to avoid giving way to anything in the nature of vulgar triumph. On leaving Malcolm's in a mood of heavily qualified satisfaction he had happened to find himself passing, or as good as passing, the house of an old friend. Until the party at the Golf Club they had not met for something like twenty years, met even then hardly long enough for him to tell her she was obviously in terrific fettle and how sorry he had been to hear about Griff. In his day Griff had been a successful and venturesome doctor, unstinting with the early pep pills, master of a sizeable red-brick villa on the Beaufoy road. Alun had just had time to ask where she was living now - same place actually, good old Griff, trust him to see her right. Alun had notified himself, more or less as he turned into that road, that if a light happened to be showing there at this hour then he would pull in for a moment and give a toot, or perhaps better a quick ring, just on the off-chance. And there had been a light and the chance had come up.
To take a fresh step in that general direction so soon after nearly coming a cropper over a previous one, while not yet out of that danger in fact, might have seemed foolhardy to some. It certainly did to Alun, or had until the moment he was invited in for a couple of minutes. After that, and especially now he was driving away, it felt more like having successfully gone up in his own light aeroplane immediately after a bit of a spill. That of course made it no less foolhardy in the undertaking. No, well there it was.
At the age of twenty-six or so, having noticed that he was obviously not a particle more grown-up or less reckless than he had been at thirteen, he had been greatly relieved to come across a newspaper article by some fashionable psychologist saying that adolescence among human males could be a drawn-out process, lasting in some respects and cases until the age of twenty-five or even thirty. This assurance had given him intermittent hope and comfort of a sort until about ten years later, when it had come back to him in a moment of what had been, even for him, an outstanding act of goatish irresponsibility. Thereafter he had clung to the consolation that there was nothing he could do about it.
The house in Holland when he approached it had a light on in the sitting-room, a departure from his expectation that brought mild vexation cross-hatched with foreboding. The vexation went along the lines of here he was, having taken all this trouble to leave people to themselves, give them plenty of time to get themselves off to bed, faced now with God-knew-what hold-up before he could get himself off there after a hard day. The foreboding was less straightforward.
For Rhiannon to be still up and on her own much after eleven, never mind getting on for one o'clock in the morning, was unheard-of, imaginable only in bombshell situations, good news it might be, bad much more likely. Short of that, she would most probably have Rosemary with her, back from her evening out (or somewhere) with William Thomas, who seemed to have been around since first light or thereabouts. It was no trouble at all for Alun to picture the bloody girl looking up alertly this very moment at the sound of his engine, getting into position next to her mother as president of a two-woman court of inquiry into his recent activities and overall behaviour. Or it would be Rosemary on her own, no more alluring an option. Whereas other possibilities hardly bore thinking about: Gwen with an expanded edition of her grievances? Malcolm with a more accurate one of his? The police he ruled out unless a mistake had been made. An incident in Harriston in 1950 involving a woman probationary sergeant and a patrol van might well have seriously displeased them at the time, but at this date could surely be passed over as grounds for a midnight descent on a non-black.
These speculations and others went through Alun's head while he was still driving up to the house. When he got closer he saw there was a car parked outside it, one he was nearly sure he had seen not far away not long before. That was the best he could do: he knew well enough that car recognition was an important proficiency for one who led his sort of life after hours, but he bad been neglecting it, was still dangerously unschooled in local detail. Moving on foot to the front door he let his neck go rubbery and his eyes uninquiring, getting ready to lurch into action as a drunk. Then he sort of remembered it was Rhiannon he would be hoping to fool and went ordinary again, in so far as he now could. After it was too late he started trying to think of a topic to take the initiative with.
When he walked springily into the sitting-room he was faced with Rhiannon in towelling dressing-gown over nightie and Sophie in day clothes; no Rosemary. Neither of the two present smiled very positively or spoke. Without thought, intent only on action, he moved over and kissed each of them in turn, then, as his brain began ticking over once more, he stepped back and gave Sophie a sequence of cheerful interrogative nods.
She responded at once. 'I had Dorothy, I was saying to Rhiannon, and then I had Muriel, she's probably still there. Really one of her nights. Bad as I've ever known her, she was. Cruel. You don't see her like it, you know, Rhi. Gwen dropped in and I left Muriel putting her through it. Just nipped out,' she ended, with a girls-together half-wink at her chum.
'I don't blame you,' said Alun warmly. Good old Soaph, he thought with more genuine warmth - never any need to worry there from the word go. Not really bright as you usually thought of it, but bright as a button when it came to anything that bore on the old ins and outs: the throwaway mention of Gwen was a typical touch. With a quick switch he added, 'Rosemary gone to bed, has she?'
'Just this moment,' said Rhiannon. 'I wonder you didn't bump into William as you drove up.'
'Oh, he just dropped her off like that, did he?'
