mournful solemnity of his tone and expression, which managed to save him from being picked up and thrown over the lofty privet hedge they were passing just then. 'It's a miraculous privilege. Not your own doing.'
'No, I do see.'
'Because let's face it, you are Brydan's artistic heir. Not in any obvious, reminiscent way, but... Surely at least you're conscious of being part of the same stock, sprung from the same root?'
'Well, there's obviously something inescapable in the blood of every Welshman that unites him... ' Alun tried not to panic as he heard his voice relentlessly modu1ating into the old practised tones. He let it die away.
Percy did not press him. 'Well, these things will be as they will be,' he said, steadfastly accepting the duty to move on now with the round of mundane affairs. 'See you in the pub later, then? Right.'
'Dry-ballocked bugger, that,' said Alun as he and Charlie watched Percy's tall white-haired figure hurrying down the hill to catch up with the women. 'I mean I assume he was taking the piss?'
'No idea.'
'For Christ's sake, Charlie, he must have been. Miraculous bloody privilege. He did it well, I grant you.'
'What about it? I've never seen enough of him to say, but there are plenty of people about who talk like that for real, or semi-real, as you may have observed. And not only in Wales, either.'
'What? It's probably something to do with being married to Dorothy. That must bring out any dormant piss-taking proclivity, don't you think?'
'I don't know.'
'And why's he so brown? I know he's a builder, but surely that doesn't have to mean he's on the site all the hours God sends. And it can't be Morocco because he'd have had to take Dorothy with him, and if she'd been there we'd have heard by now. Sun-lamp. But why?' Alun finished in chapel style, 'In God's name, my friends, why?'
Charlie shook his head with9ut replying. The group of four ahead of them had reached a shopping street, with Percy walking on the inside. That was so he could block Dorothy off if she tried to go into an off-licence. It was to forestall that that he had joined the group a minute earlier. If she made a dash across the road his superior physique and condition would, from so near, enable him to overhaul her. Something deterred Alun from putting this rationale to Charlie, who presently spoke up.
'Mind you, the last bit of what he said was a bit too close for comfort, intentionally or not.'
'Oh, but-'
'I don't know what you think of Brydan's stuff these days, and I dare say you don't yourself, and I'm sure you'd deny indignantly or even sadly that you were his successor, but it's his influence that makes that stuff of yours you showed me so awful. Well, I don't say you're not capable of making it awful without assistance from anyone, but you see what I mean.'
Now Alun said nothing.
'I didn't put it strongly enough in the pub, but if you want _Closing Time__ or _Coming Home__ or whatever it's called to be any good at all, you must scour Brydan right out of it, so that not a single word reminds me of him even vaguely. Whatever you think of him, you must write as if you hated and despised him without reserve. You said you wanted my honest opinion, well, now you've got all of it.'
Alun said nothing to that either, but by then he and Charlie had come up with the others, who had halted on the pavement, to gaze, none more intently than Percy, at a stationer's window. Actually it was that of a stationer in the extended sense, with not only writing materials and accessories visible there and in the shop behind but also framed photographs of local sights (including guess-who's cottage), mantelpiece ornaments including manufactured _objets trouves__, mugs, ashtrays, scarves and tea-cloths with generally Welsh or specifically Birdarthur matter printed on them.
'Well, what of it?' asked Alun when everyone else seemed speechless at the sight. 'Somebody want to buy something?'
'We thought perhaps you might,' said Dorothy, smiling artlessly at him.'
'Me? What, what the hell would I be buying at a little shithouse of a place like this?'
'Oh, all sorts of things.' She switched slightly to a humouring tone. 'What about a nice tea-towel to help you with all that washing-up you do?'
At a better time Alun would probably have recognized these remarks as attempts, tiresome no doubt but far from malicious, to egg him on, to bowl the local funny man an easy one, and he would probably have responded. But now he was silenced yet again, seeing Percy with an expectant look, Rhiannon's mind on a hot bath and putting her feet up, Sophie no more than ticking over, and Charlie of course there too. He made to walk on, but his way was barred.
'Or perhaps some typing paper. I noticed you'd been tip-tapping away.'
This found him his voice all right. 'You need a drink,' he very nearly snarled at Dorothy, adding just in time, 'we all do. Now for Christ's sake let's get moving. Come on, _move__.' Then he turned on Percy. 'And if you were thinking of asking me if I feel like dropping in at the cottage to commune with the shade of my poetical progenitor, my advice to you would be to relinquish the venture.'
There was some laughter at this, not much, but again just enough. Alun took a stealthy but far from nominal punch in the small of the back from Rhiannon for getting cross. Outside White's, Percy said he thought he would look round with the girls for a bit before joining the session.
'Having seen Dorothy safely on her homeward way,' said Alun after carrying the first two drinks over. 'Towards Dai's I mean.'
'Where there's enough booze to float a battleship,' said Charlie. 'A light cruiser anyway.'
'It wasn't my idea, you know, that cultural expedition.'
'Well, it's over now and no bones broken.'
