shin. 'Yes, I'm afraid he's gone.'
After a few moments Peter asked where the telephone was and on being directed went out into the hall, closely followed by Malcolm. Charlie helped Garth get Alun into a more or less natural position lying on the sofa. By now he seemed quite unmistakably dead.
After less than a minute Peter came back into the room. 'On their way,' he said. 'Malcolm's trying to find Rhiannon. Well now. Well indeed.' He stood uncertainly by the door.
'Have a drink.' Garth sat and continued to sit on the arm of the sofa beside Alun. 'And Charlie. On the house. There's an irony for you ~ you like. Go on, help yourselves.'
'What was it? Any ideas on what it was?' Charlie looked over at Alun's body from where he had instinctively moved to, the furthest possible corner of the sideboard. 'Was. Christ.'
'Heart. Or stroke. Perhaps not heart because he didn't seem to be in any particular pain as far as I could see. Of course it was only those few seconds. But they don't usually go off just like that, not with heart, not as a rule.'
Charlie missed Alun's being able to say, I suppose you mean sheep and bloody bullocks don't. Not as a rule. His glass was empty and he poured himself a treble, or another treble.
'Do you know if he'd had any funny turns recently?' asked Garth. 'Or headaches or... '
There had been something a couple of weeks back, but Charlie could not call it to mind. He shook his head. Malcolm came in and said he had not been able to find Rhiannon or learn where she was. If the others agreed he proposed to travel down to the hospital in the ambulance and go on trying to reach her from there. Before they could even think of any other option the ambulance arrived. Its crew declined to pronounce Alun dead but they would not say he was alive either. With almost too much speed they had him on to a stretcher, out of the house and away. Malcolm had said good night briefly and hurried after them.
'To think not ten minutes ago he was standing there as alive as you and me,' said Garth. 'A breath of fresh air is quenched for ever.'
Charlie responded. He wanted very much to get Peter away and to leave himself, but as things were they could hardly go stalking out just yet. Peter, he guessed, felt this too. So they hung on, keeping to the same spot by the sideboard as before.
'Good little drinker he was,' said Garth. 'You can say that without fear of contradiction. Good little pourer too.'
'He what?'
'He kept pouring. Drinks. He was always one who was calling for more drinks. Very characteristic almost his last words were ordering up more drinks. He'd have liked that.'
Whereas absolutely his last words were pissing on you for asking for money for drinks in, according to you, your own house, which he'd probably have liked even more, thought Charlie. Then he relented a little: Garth had just refilled the glasses without question. But, again, it would have taken some strength of character to ask who was going to cough up now Alun had defaulted. 'Do you think whatever it was could have been brought on by that row with Tare?'
'No.' Garth fingered his chin. 'No, I don't. No, that sort of thing only happens in films. No, he had it coming. In fact that's the one great comfort of the whole sad tale. There wasn't a damn thing he or anyone else could have done about it. Not a thing.'
'Oh, fabulous,' said Peter, breaking a long silence. 'Well, that certainly softens the blow and no mistake. Blessing in disguise, really, looked at in that light.' He paused to allow the mantle of solemnity to become resettled, no doubt hoping to be excused from making any definitive pr0nouncement in farewell. 'We'll be off, then,' he said weightily. 'If that's all right with you. Thank you for the drinks.'
Garth gave a sonorous sigh and clasped both Peter's hands in his own. With sudden awful clarity Charlie foresaw he was going to call upon them to salute the passing of a great Welshman. But before another word was said there was a low sound from outside the room, hardly a sound, more like a tremor. Whatever it was Garth turned his head, dropped Peter's hands and compared his watch with the wall-c1ock, an instrument unnoticed until now, disquieting in appearance but only to a minor degree, about right for the billiard-room or butler's pantry in Castle Dracula. The three waited as if for an explosion until the door opened and Angharad was to be seen.
What with one thing and another Charlie found it really hard not to give a shudder or a groan of dread and despair at the sight of her. She wore unnameable dark garments high at the neck and long in the cuff, topped by a waterproof of some sort which she very slowly unbuttoned, took off and draped over one arm as events proceeded. Her general aspect reminded Charlie, after a moment's utter blankness, of the photographs he had been looking at not long before, perhaps even an individual one. By the look of her eyes and mouth she had aged perceptibly since last seen. At no time did she send the least glance in his or Peter's direction.
'You're back early, love,' said Garth, smiling at her. Angharad said crisply in her out-of-keeping voice, that of a woman half her age or less, 'There was no point in hanging about - it was quite obvious she didn't know me. IT you remember, it's been coming on for some time. I told her clearly and repeatedly who I was, kept saying my name, going on I was her daughter, and she heard me but she didn't take it in. No idea in the world. So I came away. That woman, Mrs Jeffreys is it, she was seeing to her perfectly well, and I wanted to watch that Great- Gardens-of-England programme, which you really do need colour for and she's only got black and white. Not that I could have concentrated on it properly anyway.' She too looked at the time and added, 'I did telephone, but the line was engaged.'
'Yes, well... '
'So we're having a party, are we?'
'Not exactly.' No relish or any other tinge of ill will could be heard in Garth's tone. 'Alun Weaver fell down dead just about where you're standing now, it would have been, well when you rang you'd have run into Peter dialling 999. And... there we are.'
'Ah.' She acknowledged the objection and continued, 'More like a wake, then.'
'Sort of.'
Charlie wished Malcolm had been present to list some of the ways in which what had just been taking place could not fairly be said to have constituted a wake. He watched Angharad while, the removal of her outer piece of clothing now accomplished, she stood between him and the door pulling her cuffs down over the backs of
