'Hang on a minute. Stay there.'
He watched her hurrying back up the lawn to where Rosemary and another young woman still stood near the windows. After a moment he realized this must appear inquisitive of him and quickly turned his head away. The movement brought his eyes to a triangle of grass the sun had missed and left apparently still damp with dew. Beyond it, in the sunlight, a dishevelled brownish butterfly was clinging to the boundary fence and stirring feebly. Much further off, woodland flecked with thin greenery ran from one side to the other and out of sight.
When Rhiannon came back she said, staring over Peter's shoulder and speaking in a monotone, 'Thank you for telling me that. Don't mind if we don't say any more now. Can't really talk about him properly yet. But it was nice of you to tell me.'
She waited again and it dawned on him that he had almost no idea of how to start or where he wanted to get to. 'You are staying on here, aren't you, are you? Or are you... '
'Yes, for a bit anyway. I'll probably have to find somewhere smaller in the end. Round here, though. Rosemary and William'll be moving to London, but I don't - '
'Really? When? He hasn't said anything about it to me.'
'Perhaps he doesn't know yet. In the autumn. It's for the Bar, you see, for Rosemary.' Rhiannon's expression appealed to Peter not to question her about the Bar.
'Of course. But wouldn't it make sense for you to move there too? You've lived there for so many years.'
'Not now I'm back here. Now I'm here again I want to stay. You probably think that sounds silly - I've heard you go on about the awful - '
'It may sound silly but it isn't. You can't explain it.'
'Not to anybody who isn't Welsh you can't, or even talk about it.'
'Not to the Welsh either. Not to them, of all people.
Wales is a subject that can't be talked about. Unless you're making a collection of dishonesty and self- deception and sentimental bullshit. That's all you ever hear.'
She said hopefully, 'But it makes sense when you think about it, to yourself. It's all right then.'
'Yes it is. Indeed it is, but only then.'
'M'm. So you think it's quite sensible' on the whole to hang on. You would if you were me.'
He hesitated. She was looking at him in another special way of hers, affectionate, attentive, troubled, the way she had looked at him just before he told her that final abject lie, that there was nothing wrong between them and she was still the only one for him. Over her shoulder now he saw Rosemary, no doubt under orders, step out and head off the nearer approach of one of the hatted females from indoors, stacked lunch-plate at chest level. In sudden agitation he asked himself how long it would take a particular hatless female to miss him and Rhiannon from the party and scurry to find and fuck up. He said in something of a rush, 'Well, that's really what I wanted to talk to you about. Muriel says William getting married means she can leave Wales as she's always wanted, or does now, I don't know, and go back to Yorkshire. When she said that, she hadn't heard he was off to London either or she'd certainly have mentioned it. Well, I'll have to go too, to Yorkshire. I don't want to, I don't want to leave any more than you do, I've lived here all my life. And it's more than that, as you say. But I just can't think of anything else to do. The house and everything else all belong to her and I haven't got a bean. A pension that would keep me in cornflakes.
It doesn't sound very high-minded, I know, but it's a bit of a struggle being high-minded when you're hard up and pushing seventy.'
'But you wouldn't be able to stand it,' she said in open dismay.
'I'll have to. It's not sort of uniformly appalling. Some of the time we struggle along more or· less all right. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. '
'Oh, really? Funny, I've never known anything to be that. It's just a thing people say.'
'To sound decent. Yes.' .
Rhiannon shook her head impatiently to recall herself to the point. 'She'll change her mind. It's a big step at her age.'
'No she won't. Not after saying it the way she did, with dates and things. I know her. Take it from me, there's nothing for it.' He said with great emphasis and finality, 'I hate everything about it, but I'll have to go.'
'But you can't. I mean I thought we were going to start seeing each other again. You'd said you'd ring me up but you never did.'
'I did mean to but when it came to it I couldn't face it. Me, not you.'
'But I thought by about now you might be thinking it would be all right to. With the children getting married and everything. To each other, I mean. I was so hoping you would.'
'After everything I've done? After the way I treated you?'
'Yes. It was losing you I minded. The other didn't matter really, not after a bit. Didn't I tell you that time, we'd been to the Golf Club party? You can't have been listening. God alive, perhaps I didn't really say it. Anyway, I meant to tell you you'll always be... I can't say it now either.
It used to be so easy. Now, it's like talking about Wales.'
Slowly, to give her time to back off if she felt like it, and furtively, so that Rosemary and the others should not see, Peter reached out his hand. Rhiannon gripped it. Furtively again, he looked at her and saw that she was trying to look at him. Yes, she had changed: not the direct confident glance now.
'Let me try. Though you might well not think so,' he said with care, 'and there was certainly a time when I forgot it myself, I've always loved you and I do to this day. I'm sorry it sounds ridiculous because I'm so fat and horrible, and not at all nice or even any fun, but I mean it. I only wish it was worth more.'
