'There isn't one, I mean not yet as far as I know,' said Peter, wishing he could drop easily into character like Charlie and the others.
'Awh! Reely! Well, there's posh for you.'
'There's _swank__,' corrected Tudor Whittingham at Garth's side. Tudor had somehow managed to shed his followers for the time being and kept looking round to make sure they stayed shed. His amazing lack of surplus flesh allowed full visibility to the spare, narrow frame that had stood him in such good stead as a squash player in the remote past. Its narrowness was extended upwards to his skull, which all generations had pronounced inadequate for an adequate amount of brain without compression of some sort. He had been Tudor Totem-Bonce in the form above Peter at the Grammar.
'Posh or swank, same difference,' said Garth. Then his manner changed abruptly and he went on to Peter at reduced volume, 'Tare was saying last night he hoped you'd come in today for a bit if you had the time. You haven't been in much since poor Alun went, have you?' He rolled a mournful bardic eye at Peter.
'No. No, I suppose I haven't.'
'No, well we miss you there, Peter. I know Tare does particularly. He feels rotten about that evening still, throwing us all out neck and crop. It's not that he feels responsible at all for... what happened later; I think I've talked him out of that. It's more that it grieves him that he and Alun parted for the last time on such bad terms. Was that your impression, Tudor?'
'No question. No question whatever.'
'Of course he never seriously meant we should take all our gear away. Temper, that was. He as good as admitted it when I went round the next morning. Perhaps I told you.'
Addressing Peter, but obviously reproaching Garth for the omission as well, Tudor said, 'I thought it was a lovely service and the young people looked absolutely radiant and I hope they'll be very happy.'
'Oh yes. Oh yes.' Garth intimated that between him and Peter that side of things was taken for granted. 'Yes, old Tarc really respected poor Alun. I reckon everybody did. Mind you, there's not a man who's ever walked this earth who didn't give those around him something to put up with. But taking him for all in all he was the best of fellows really, wasn't he?'
Somebody has to say it, thought Peter. 'Yes, I suppose he was.' The words drew a look of puzzled incredulity from Tudor.
'Actually,' Garth went on, 'actually not everybody did respect him if the truth were told. Remember that article in the _Western Mail__, that so-called appreciation? Nasty. Curmudgeonly is what I'd call it. Thoroughly curmudgeonly. Oh, and did you see that reference in a _Times__ review, was it, the other day? Oh yes - wait a minute.' His hand moved towards his breast pocket but stopped before it got there. 'No, I've filed it. Er... he could be called a follower of Brydan if that were not taken to imply a certain degree of strength and vital... something. Very nasty. I'll get it copied and send it you.'
Tudor said with some determination, 'William and Rosemary going away for a bit, are they?'
Though ready and willing with a reply Peter never gave it, being instantly hiked off to be photographed. He hoped Tudor thought he was getting his money's-worth out of having dumped his family.
There was a line-up in the sunshine with backs to the church wall. Peter had been for sidling into his place at the end next to Muriel, but embraces were called for, not of course with the unsmiling brother, who unsmilingly nodded and that was that, nor with Muriel. She smiled, though, but not for long, which was just as well. He was not going to start digging all that over. There was one thing to be said at any rate: neither he nor anyone else could have done anything about it, probably ever. Who had used almost those very words to him not so long ago, and about what or whom?
For some minutes three or four photographers, one a woman or girl, all showing in their clothing and hair structure what some might have seen as an unhealthy disrespect for stuff like weddings, huddled the six principals together with no result, spread them apart again, brought some forward, waved others away with sudden backhand sweeps. Nor was it lost on Peter that advances in science meant they took ten times as many photographs as would once have been found necessary and shaped up to take twice that number. It was easier for them like that, he inferred, more fun too, licitly buggering a set of strangers about. Quite understandable. Do it himself if he had the chance.
Eventually the consensus emerged that it would be unnecessary or perhaps futile to prolong the photographic session, which faded away without anything being said on either side. Soon afterwards removal to the Weaver house was set going, a matter of a couple of hundred yards on foot. As if the manoeuvre had been organized beforehand Muriel drifted across, thrust one arm through William's and the other round Rosemary's waist and seemed to swing them both through a semicircle towards the gate. With an advance six or more abreast pretty well ruled out, Peter found himself in a second rank between Alun's brother, said on their very brief first meeting the previous night to be called Duncan, and his suddenly manifest wife, who had glasses and a hat with the best of them and very red lips and abnormally long teeth thrown in.
On the far side of the gateway Rhiannon was with an aunt or cousin or so and Peter was stuck, irremovably as it turned out, with these in-laws of hers. He had always thought of himself as a cool head in a situation like that, not for the life of him to be driven into speaking first. Nevertheless after four minutes of total silence, the last three of them spent standing in a row at no particular point on the pavement, there he was asking the wife whether she and, er, Duncan proposed staying over until the following day or whether, on the other hand, they would be returning to London that same evening.
She turned to face him hungrily. 'Oh, we've got to get back, no two ways about it,' she said in an accent from somewhere not very nice in England. 'I tell you, it took all of everybody's time getting him to come away for just the one night.'
'Business responsibilities, I suppose.' Peter dimly remembered something about a finance company or building society.
'You're joking. They're a thing of the past, they are, it's getting on for four years now,' she said with gloomy relish. 'No, it's just he won't be moved if he can help it. What he's doing now, Mr Thomas, he's giving them a chance to get settled where we're going, you see, so he can just sneak in there without any of them saying anything to him.'
'Quite,' said Peter, turning his eyes but not his head towards Duncan, who was making rhythmical puffing noises and rocking to and fro where he stood.
