along in the pub, sitting behind an empty glass for long periods like ten minutes on end. If he went on like this he could just find himself still on his feet quite far into the night. Alun felt it might be done for his benefit and was touched.
Tea was brought in, with anchovy toast and Welsh cakes featured but not Sophie's biscuits, which she and Rhiannon had presumably wolfed in the kitchen. The meal was eaten, finished, cleared away and then nightmarishly reanimated when Dorothy arrived with Percy and brought out scones from a paper bag, strawberry jam, Devonshire cream and chocolate eclairs. After greeting all four in POW - reunion style she could likewise be seen to be well in arrears of her usual state at five on a weekday afternoon. This meant that she would also likewise stay around longer than usual, but on the other band she would presumably take longer to become unbearable, and might always fall down dead before that stage was reached.
Not many people unacquainted with Wales or the Welsh would have found it the easiest thing in the world to reconcile Dorothy as she would be later with Dorothy as she behaved now, when the tea-things were removed for the second time and a bottle of white Rioja was brought from the kitchen. Far from clear at first, it seemed, about what was in the wind, she watched with a slight frown while Rhiannon took out the cork and poured three glasses.
After some thought she picked up the bottle in a gingerly, furtive way and, head craned forward, read the label from beginning to end through her black-bounded spectacles. Then, carefully following the movements of the other two women, she· lifted her glass, drank, and looked interested and rather tickled: so this was wine.
Alun watched all this in some professional distaste. He knew he overdid that side of life a bit himself, but in his case it was just high spirits, buggering about, derived from an only child's self-entertainment, whereas old Dot was seriously trying to create an effect. Well, hardly that, perhaps, at her time of life, in front of this mob; though the present carry-on would have had to be descended from the beginning of her career of piss-artistry, when she could still pretend she got sloshed out of not knowing about alcohol. Sort of a ritualized version.
'Let's go and pay our respects at Brydan's tomb,' said Sophie.
'It was more of a grave when I last saw it,' said Charlie. 'Of course they may have shifted him to a mausoleum since then. Or a cromlech, on account of him being Celtic and all.'
'Grave is fine with me,' said Alun.
Percy turned to Dorothy. 'Would you like to go, darling?'
'Lovly idea. It must be twenty years since I was last there. When I've finished this.'
'I think they shut the churchyard at six,' said Rhiannon. The way she said it dispelled any lingering doubts about the unspontaneity of Sophie's suggestion. Alun would have loved to know whether the idea had come from her or Rhiannon in the first place- quite liked to, anyway. Whichever it was, Dorothy was hooked, about to be irresistibly sundered from the wine-bottle not only for the period of the respect-paying but later too. There were the shops that would be staying open late or late enough, shops no doubt marked down earlier as ones she could not in conscience pass by. (The chaps would be safely in the pub for that part.) With luck and further good generalship she might not be recoupled with the bottle for getting on for two hours. But after that...
As the company rose to leave there was talk of how they might as well be getting along if they were going, only a few minutes' walk and such while a couple of sets of facial signals were exchanged. Charlie wanted to know if Alun had anything to do with this obnoxious plan and Alun tried to indicate not. At his side, Percy watched Dorothy stoutly knocking back her drink in one so as not to keep the, stage waiting. Sophie and Rhiannon left theirs. Rhiannon's glance at Alun admitted complicity and also managed to plead that it would have been no good trying to keep the wine away from Dorothy in the first place. Granted, and indeed he could just imagine her wonderment at happening upon the bottle in the refrigerator or, if things had gone that far, the gauche impetuosity with which she would have pressed upon her hostess the funny wine-bottle-shaped gift parcel she had nearly forgotten having shoved into her luggage at the last minute.
Defying local odds, the summer sun shone brightly up the gentle slope of the churchyard, which at this time of the year proved to stay open till seven, a pleasant spot with carefully tended brilliant green turf between the graves. That of Brydan lay towards the end of a row of newish ones in the south-east corner. It was no different in arrangement from any of its neighbours: a stone, a grassy mound enclosed in a stone border, some fresh flowers in glass vases. The inscription was severely factual except for a single appropriate line from the writings. The nearby ground had been only a little marked by intruding feet, as if word had gone about that there was not much to be seen up in the churchyard.
The party stood apart from one another in silence, almost as if trying to show respect. Only Dorothy looked recognizably like someone standing by a grave in a film. At least Alun hoped so, feeling Charlie's eyes on him as he bowed his head and tried dutifully to think of Brydan, whom he had run into on several occasions and once spent most of an evening with. He had several times compared the poet's character to an onion: you successively peeled away layers of it, with frightful shit and quite decent old bloke alternating, until you got to the heart. The trouble was he could not at this stage remember, and certainly not decide off the cuff, which of the two you ended up with. There was something of the same difficulty with the works: talented charlatanry, or deeply flawed works of genius? Or perhaps they were just beside the point.
Imperiously giving a lead, Dorothy swung away and led off down towards the gate with Rhiannon and Sophie in attendance. To one side stood the low mound called Brydan's Knoll, formerly and less tastefully called Brydan's _twmp__ or tump, though never much called any such thing outside print. The poet was half-heartedly feigned to have spent untold hours squatting on it and gazing over the town and the bay, well worth while perhaps if there had been nowhere else to see them from. Some support for the feigning was given by a passage in one of the late poems, and now the erstwhile _twmp__ was sure of its place in the indexes of learned works as well as in guide-books.
Percy gave the spot a friendly wag of the hand. 'Rather agreeable up here, isn't it?'
'Somebody's fought the good fight,' said Alun, and went on quickly, 'not letting them turn the whole thing into a tourist attraction. Full marks to that man.'
'Oh yes of course, I remember now, you were at school with Brydan, weren't you?'
'Well, there must be a thousand people who could-'
'Ah, but the personal link is there. It must give you a feeling of special intimacy when you read the poems. Adding, I mean, to your sense of kinship, being a poet yourself. Something to be profoundly grateful for. Aren't you aware, perhaps keenly aware, of a peculiar insight into the man's mind? Into his soul?'
'I don't know, I suppose so,' said Alun, resolutely not looking at Charlie on Percy's other side and far from being inclined to look at Percy.
'Oh, for God's sake, Alun, don't speak self-deprecatingly about a thing like that.' Percy intensified the
