Victor and Sophie were talking in-low tones, but they broke off now and looked up at him expectantly. Between them Charlie sat sprawled and apparently asleep.
'Is it all right to come in?' asked Alun.
Neither spoke in reply, but Victor nodded.
'He seems quite peaceful now, doesn't he?' Alun went nearer Charlie but still not very near. 'What have you what have you done for him?'
'Largactil it's called,' said Victor in his clear tones and staring rather at Alun with his clear eyes. 'A powerful tranquillizer. Injected intramuscularly.'
'Really.'
'Yes really. Yes, you can learn how in two minutes.
Charlie and I arranged that I should keep the stuff by me. He was afraid if he had it he'd start trying to inject himself when he was pissed. Very sensible of him.'
Alun had just enough wit not to ask why Sophie had not been deputed to keep the stuff by her. 'What was the matter with him?'
'He's not mad, if that's what you were wondering. An attack of depersonalization. Panic brought on by being cut off from the possibility of immediate help and then self-renewing, as it were. Very frightening, I imagine. Well, we haven't got to imagine, have we?'
'Will he be all right now?'
At this point Victor suddenly stood up. 'Yes. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to know?'
'I feel responsible.'
'Yes,' said Victor warmly. 'M'm. You had heard about Charlie's dislike of being alone after dark and so forth.'
'Are you asking me? Not in detail, no.' Poofter, thought Alun shakily to himself. Ginger-beer. Brown-hatter. 'I mean I hadn't heard in detail.' Taxi-driver.
'But a bit, from what... ' Victor's jerk of the head did no more than allude to Sophie. Nothing in his glance touched on her connection with Alun.
Finding himself expected to go on, Alun said, 'Yes, I'd heard enough. Enough to have a good idea I might fuck him up by leaving him to come back here on his own in the dark. I wanted to do that because I was angry with him for saying that something I'd written was no good, just copied from Brydan. Who does he think he is, I thought. I wanted to pay him out for... '
He stopped because neither of the others gave any sign of paying attention.
Victor turned his head and said with exaggerated suavity, 'Oh, yes, well, of course, absolutely, I do very much appreciate that. Now I suggest we get things moving.'
The first thing he or anyone else got moving was Dorothy and Percy, cordially and shortly thanked for their help and sent on their way, an unaccustomed mode of departure for them as some might have thought. Then Victor told Sophie she was to drive the Norris car while he travelled in the back with Charlie - who all this while had sat perfectly quiescent in the armchair - and would later arrange for the collection of his own car. Finally, at the front door, with Rhiannon now present, he said, rather less smoothly than earlier, 'Mr Weaver - we met, if you remember, at the restaurant owned by my brother and myself. I'm afraid I wasn't able to give you a very nice meal on that occasion, and I had been so much hoping to give you a better one. Well, I'm afraid various problems like supply and staff, and as you may have heard our new stove has had teething troubles - all that has rather got in the way. In fact I shouldn't advise you to venture into the place at all until further notice. We just can't offer you what you're used to in London. I'm sure you understand. _Nos da__.'
'It's the worst thing I've ever done,' said Alun a minute later. 'No need to tell me it doesn't make any difference but I'd like you to believe I realize it.'
'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Rhiannon. 'Do you mind sleeping in the spare room now it's free? That bed in the front's rather narrow and I want to get a good night's rest.'
After another minute he walked over to the table where his typewriter and papers still were, idiotically trying to do so in no particular way at all, took _Coming Home__ out of its envelope and held it up to be tom in half, thumbs tip to tip, elbows lifted. Then he thought it could look good to make a present of a couple of pages of it to the next little non-paying bastard to write in for a contribution to a student magazine or an item to be auctioned for charity or something - anyway, you never knew. Having spared his own work he could see no overriding case for going ahead with his next project, the destruction of the Dai/Brydan photograph, which after all would not have been the original. Nor did he as intended finally push his copy of the Complete Poems in among the books on the shelves where he would never have to see it again. He would quite likely need it for reference the very next time he wrote a piece or prepared a talk or whatever you bloody well like that involved the master. He could always stop doing that, of course. But of course he never could.
Eight - Charlie
'It boils down to this as far as I'm concerned,' said Garth. 'Pink gin. Thank you, Arnold: - Oh yes: is a man for Wales or is he not? Simple as that.'
'With all respect, Garth, I'm afraid it isn't as simple as that,' said Malcolm. 'A man can be for Wales in such a way as subtly to denigrate the country, and that's what I'm sorry to say and rather surprised to have to say I thought Alun was doing. He - '
'Excuse me interrupting,' said a thickset man with a heavy moustache and the Turkish or even Assyrian facial appearance to be seen in some Welshmen, in fact a quantity surveyor from Newcastle Emlyn and old Arnold Spurling's guest. 'Didn't you use to be the English teacher at St Elizabeth Grammar? Years ago?'
'No,' said Malcolm rather curtly, as if he had been taken for a schoolmaster once too often. 'Not at any time.'
'Sorry if I've made a mistake,' said the guest, not sounding or looking at all satisfied that he had.
Malcolm went on with a touch of gameness, 'To write a newspaper article about the Eisteddfod in a humorous and entertaining style is one thing. To portray those taking part as figures of fun is quite another. In my submission.'
