While he was up there he thought about the things he could not say, all manner of them, most of them true, most of them already known but still unsayable. There had been a case for simulating concern for Charlie and going along with Sophie and Dorothy, but that would have looked to Rhiannon like evading her. Oh bugger, he thought wearily, and a stupendous yawn almost clove his skull in two. He wiped his eyes on lavatory paper and went down.
Although he knew well enough that inside those walls Rhiannon could hardly have blown her nose, let alone gone anywhere, without being heard all over the place, he was none the less disagreeably surprised to find her still sitting there. Then he thought of something and took himself to the chair he had sat on to do his typing.
'Amazing Dorothy managed to follow that conversation when you think how much she'd had. In the restaurant alone she must have - '
'Well, she'd have heard before about Charlie's troubles about being afraid of the dark and all that. Like most of his old friends must have done, including you.'
'Why including me particularly?'
'Because you're the only one that doesn't seem to care.
Look at Percy off to telephone like that, no questions asked, and he hardly knows him compared with you.'
'I honestly can't see what all the fuss is about. Good God, if he's scared of the dark it's bright street lighting all the way to where the cars are, and after that, well even then it's not _dark__, and it's what, two hundred yards. Less.'
'Quite far enough if you're afraid. Remember how it was when you were a kid.' .
'What? He's supposed to be a grown man. My observation tells me old Charlie makes a bloody good thing out of being scared of this and that. Gets himself picked up and shifted to and fro and generally feather-bedded wherever he happens to bloody be.'
'He may do that too, I hadn't thought of it.' Rhiannon put the sachet in the waist pocket of her dressing- gown. 'Did you show him that stuff of yours?'
'Yes, he thought it needed pretty hefty revision, which was much what I thought, you remember.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Good. I'm going to make a cup of tea.'
'Marvellous, I'd love some.'
Alun grabbed his whisky, telling himself he needed it after all, and started to relax, but he had not had time to do much of that before he heard the sound of voices approaching outside. For a moment he thought they were those of strangers, but he soon recognized Sophie's, then Dorothy's, in a tone he had never heard either use before. There was a third voice, a high-pitched whining or wailing that varied in intensity. When Alun realized it must be Charlie's voice he could hear he sat up straight and felt quite frightened. Rhiannon hurried in from the kitchen, opened the front door and stood on the step. Alun got to his feet and waited.
Charlie had turned a curious colour, that of a red-faced man gone very pale. His eyes were tightly screwed up and he was pressing hard with both hands on a grubby handkerchief that covered his mouth, in spite of which the wailing noise was quite loud at its loudest. Saying comforting things to him, Sophie and Dorothy got him into the armchair, and Rhiannon knelt down beside him and stroked his bald head. When he seemed comparatively settled, Sophie dashed upstairs and came down with a box of pills and gave him one. Alun stood about and tried to look generally ready for anything within reason. Dorothy, whose words of comfort far outdid the others' in range and inventiveness, was obviously having a whale of a time distinguishing herself in fields like responsibility, compassion, etc. So he said to himself. He also tried to consider fully the question of how much of this she would remember in the morning. But it was hard work driving off the thought that whatever Charlie might be going through, and however it had come about in detail, he, Alun, was to blame.
Now and then Charlie took the handkerchief away from his mouth and got out a word or two in a brief squeal before stuffing it back again. Several times he said he was sorry, twice perhaps that he had thought he was all right or could make it, and once, 'Get Victor.' That came just as Percy reappeared to announce no success with his call to the pub. He had hardly had time to take in the scene before Sophie bundled him off again whence he had come with instructions to telephone the Glendower.
Nothing surprising or of consequence happened after that for half an hour or so. Percy soon returned and said Victor was on his way. Charlie had two or three calmer and quieter spells but relapsed after each. Dorothy, sitting on the floor next to him, fell asleep or into a stupor, head down. Sophie told the others that when found he had been crouching by the corner of a wall at the edge of the part where the cars were, apparently unable to move. Rhiannon handed out cups of tea, not looking at Alun when she came round to him or at any other time. He just went on standing about.
Finally Victor arrived. He was wearing a dark jacket and trousers and a ribbed black shirt with a polo neck and his face, closely shaven, was quite expressionless. Looking neither to left nor right he walked straight across the room and held Charlie tight in his arms for a minute or so. Then he straightened up and ordered everyone else but Sophie from the room, taking a leather or plastic case about the size of a spectacle-case out of his pocket as he did so and starting to open it.
In the kitchen, where the ejected party found themselves with notable speed, Percy suggested to Dorothy that they would only be in the way if they hung about now and should slip out by the back door. When she had taken in the proposal and vetoed it, he readily produced _Kiss the Blood Off My Hands__ and settled down with it directly under the ceiling light. Now Rhiannon did look at Alun, only once and for a moment and telling him only what he knew already, but it was enough to make him suddenly interrupt his breathing. He knew there was nothing he could ever say or do that would change her mind. She had gone straight on with piling the cups in the sink and now went quietly outside, leaving the door half open behind her, perhaps to invite him to follow, more likely just because she had always been rather inclined to leave doors open. Alun decided it would be best to follow her. There was still nothing useful he could say but sooner or later he would have to say something.
There was no breeze, and the air seemed to him to be of exactly the same temperature as that in the kitchen. The moon had come round a corner of. the hill and lit up those parts of the neighbouring ground that were not shadowed by small trees and straggling bushes, more or less everywhere Rhiannon might have been expected to be. He took a few indecisive steps up the garden path between huge clusters of weeds and rank grasses, half- way to a low fence beyond which the slope began to rise too steeply to be taken on without some serious reason. Nothing moved anywhere. He was trudging down the narrow strip at the side of the cottage when a larger wave than usual broke audibly down on the beach, and at the same time he noticed that Charlie's voice could no longer be heard, at least through the wall and then the front door. Alun stepped on to where he could see up and down Brydan's Walk: still nobody. After more hesitation he quietly lifted the latch and went in.
