The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  Alun set out to describe the supposed purpose of their call, but as soon as he mentioned eating in Treville or any such place Laura would hear no more.

  Her eyes flashed fire as in the nick of time she put a stop to this dangerous, degenerate project. 'Quite out of the question,' she affirmed in her startling deep husky voice. 'I never heard such nonsense in my life. Thank God you mentioned it to me, that's all I can say.'

  'We were only thinking of a snack,' said Malcolm. '_Snack__,' said Laura, thereby banishing the topic. 'So let's be practical. Now - bearing time and trouble in mind the answer's obvious. Sandwiches for 'four is nothing to me, right?' Right, said Charlie to himself, and another fragment of recall checked in: Laura Makins, cold-lunch counter at the Three Feathers in Kinver Hill. 'No problem, gentlemen. Round again, Alun, and I'll see to it.'

  'We can't let you do that,' said Malcolm, looking about for support.

  'Don't you tell me what you can and can't let me do, young man.' For the first time she allowed humour to soften her pronouncements. 'I don't often get the chance to show off my talents. For making sandwiches, that is,' she explained, mischievously waving her beringed forefinger. 'Ah, here we are, darling - come along then.'

  A small white-haired old man moved slowly but steadily over to the group, smiling and looking from face to face. He wore a burgundy-coloured silk dressing-gown with small white dots and a similarly patterned scarf high on one side of the neck, where it covered most of a reddened swelling. Alun and Laura between them told him who everybody was, and he shook hands and spoke in a thin voice. She handed him the weak whisky and water she had started preparing at first sight of him. He raised the glass and again glanced round the circle.

  'I'm not off it, you see,' he said.

  'Well, you've got this one here to keep you up to the mark, Billy,' said Alun. 'I bet she keeps it coming at you.'

  'No, I'm not off it.'

  'What do you think of the England bowling prospects this season?' asked Malcolm. 'Not much real quality there, is there?'

  Billy chuckled and winked and nodded. 'Made an honest woman of her, I have.'

  'About time too,' said Laura. 'I thought it was about time.'

  She settled him now in a low leather chair with wooden arms and a Thai-silk back-cover in squares of red, green and buff. Close by was a small circular table on which stood a box of tissues, a box of mints, a silver pencil and a bowl of daffodils with their stalks cut short. The others moved round.

  Laura said clearly but not loudly, 'Alun's only just come back to live down here. He was telling me he's seen a lot of changes.'

  Alun described some of the changes, with accompaniment from Charlie and Malcolm. Pauses were inserted for possible contributions from Billy but he confined himself to a monosyllable or two, though as far as anyone there could judge he followed the drift of what was said. After a few minutes Laura shifted them all out to the kitchen, placing Billy at the far end of the long scrubbed table and Alun and Malcolm on either side of him. Alun was put on to opening and pouring wine. With speed and skill Laura prepared sandwiches - cheese and onion, tongue and pickle - for all except Billy, who very cheerfully ate baked beans and a couple of digestive biscuits and drank another weak whisky. The sandwiches were quite tasty and moist enough to arouse Charlie's professional respect and even to induce him to eat most of two of them. Soon they were all gone. Laura offered coffee and then at once disallowed it.

  'You won't have time if you're to have a drink in Treville.'

  'To hell with that,' said Alun. 'We'd all love some coffee - wouldn't we, boys?'

  'Not now, darling. Some of us get a bit tired.'

  'Oh. Right.'

  They said good-bye to Billy there in the kitchen. When it came to Charlie's turn it struck him that at no time had he seen in him the Billy Moger he used to know. Laura went out to the car with them.

  'Bless you for coming, all of you,' she said. 'Hope it wasn't too much of a shock.'

  'Oh for Christ's sake,' said Alun.

  'No really, it was sweet of you. He'll be cheered up for days now. He'll go over it a hundred times. Well, I'll go over it with him. You could, er... if you see any of his old mates you could tell them it's not too bad - you know. I think some of them stay away because they're afraid it's worse than it is. Good luck in Treville. I must say I don't fancy your chances anywhere there.'

  By common consent they kept quiet well beyond the point where even the most preternatural powers of hearing, or the most sophisticated technology, could possibly have carried their words to Laura.

  Charlie opened. 'So it's established that you didn't know what we were in for,' he said.

  'I hope so.' Alun again turned to face rearwards, though less jauntily than before. 'Surely you could tell that straight away. Even I couldn't have carried off pretending I didn't if I did. No, she just said drop in when you're passing, we'd love to see you.'

  'And what did you say?'

  'I said we might make a trip this way today and if we did we might pop in for a drink. I didn't expect her to be expecting us.'

  'I wondered about that,' said Malcolm. 'She could have had all that stuff just by her - tongue, cheese, onion. Not that it wasn't delicious and very good of her to do it.'

  'Everything bar the bread,' said Charlie. 'Two large loaves. She got that in on the off-chance. Not negligible, I agree. And it's quite possible she primps herself up like that every day.'

  'Poor little bugger,' said Peter.

  'Yes, no harm in sparing a thought for him.'

  'Indeed, but I was thinking of his wife. How many times she must have told herself of course nobody would come. How disappointed she'd have been if nobody had. For half an hour out of twenty-four times God knows what. All right, she smartened the place up a bit for our benefit. In the remote contingency that we came, that is. Not daring to tell him why. But no mere smartening-up could have done that, what we saw. That's years of work, every day.'

  'Are you feeling all right, Peter?' asked Charlie. 'Shut up, Charlie,' said Alun.

  'Sorry. Well, there seems to be plenty to be said about her. Not a lot about old Billy.'

  Nobody was ready to contest this view there and then. 'One consolation, though,' Charlie went on. 'We haven't got Garth with us to say what is appropriate to such an occasion.'

  He got quite a good laugh out of that. Other thoughts he kept to himself, for instance that Laura had known her Alun in not saying anything to him on the telephone about her husband's condition. And likewise, if Alun had plotted everything and known everything in advance he could not have contrived a better position for himself: not only full conversance with the situation there but a huge fund of goodwill and a positive duty to return to the scene. Carte bloody blanche at zero cost. Billy must be dead keen for you to have an afternoon off once in away, love. Oh well, there it was.

  A few pieces of traffic turned up as they in fact reached the outskirts of Treville. As the car ducked down the last little hill before the village, the motto FREE WALES was briefly to be seen daubed on a brick wall in faded and dingy whitewash. An ironic cheer went up.

  'Now would that be - ' began Malcolm in his frightening American accent before Alun shushed him.

  'Belt up, you stupid bugger. What's the matter with you? You hardly set eyes on that clown and everything you see reminds you of him. Forget him.'

  'Remember what happened the last time you invoked him,' said Charlie.

  'Dismiss Cadwallader _Twll-Din__ Pugh from your mind.'

  'Hey, I've thought of the thing to say to him about that slogan there. Show me a Welsh nationalist and I'll show you a cunt.'

  'He wouldn't say thank you for showing him a cunt,' said Alun reasonably.

  'That's my point, you bloody fool.'

  'Oh Christ, it's the drink. Fuddling my mental processes. '

  'It's certainly fuddling mine,' said Malcolm, wrenching at the wheel. 'Sorry.'

  'And mine, thank God,' said Peter.

  Despite
everything said just now and earlier, expectation mounted as the time of arrival drew near. They passed traces of the railway station and of some of the eleven worked-out pits in the area, reached the shore and turned along it. Here until quite lately cockles and the edible seaweed laver-bread had been harvested. In the village itself rusty galvanized-iron roofs and shop-fronts that needed painting were noticeable. The first pub they went into had in it a half-size snooker-table, a TV set showing a children's programme with the sound turned down and only two people, the barmaid and her boy-friend, who while talking to her fed himself continuously from a dispenser apparently called a Peanut Colonel. There was a move to withdraw at once, but Charlie remarked that there was no guarantee of getting a drink elsewhere. Nobody was sure about local licensing hours.

  Twenty years before, Charlie had passed a whole day from rising to retiring without a drink. Rising in fact had very nearly not taken place at all: he had believed absolutely, would have told anyone who asked, that death was on him. In that frame of mind he had nevertheless found himself playing a hard game in the crowd that afternoon at Wales v. France in Cardiff. In the evening Sophie and he, then recently married, had been giving a party - too late to cancel. Orange-juice in hand, he had watched fascinated as one by one, with unbelievable speed and totality, his contemporaries had crumpled into drunkenness, their faces and voices disintegrating between one sip and the next. From rather nearer the fray he saw it happen to Malcolm now as they emptied their drinks by the coruscating fruit-machine, saw his eyes swell in time with some event inside him. He took a sudden half-pace forward.

  Charlie stayed at Malcolm's right hand for the two minute walk to the other waterside pub Alun had spotted earlier. The tide was out and a strong, not wholly pleasant smell came blowing off the saltings ahead of them, though there was nothing obvious for anybody to have done about that, nor about the rain that had come back into the air. As far as they could see there were only three or four parked cars about, unusually for any inhabited place in the kingdom. Someone, a middle-aged man, let himself in at a front door and disappeared, the only sign of life, apart from brand-new litter underfoot, at a time when the inhabitants might have been expected to be in full circulation. It seemed as quiet as it had been back there on the hill.

  'What do they do here?' Malcolm asked quite distinctly as they crossed a side-road up which nothing moved, not even paper blown by the wind. 'Nowadays, I mean.'

  'I don't know. Make lemonade or deodorant I dare say.'

  'Some of them must commute to town.'

  'No idea.'

  'Mind you the unemployment figures for the area are as high as anywhere else in GB, along with Merseyside and parts of north-eastern England.'

  'M'm.'

  'Well, it's a terrible thing, Charlie, you know. A really... monstrous thing. I mean, imagine yourself stuck in a place like this with no prospects, no future, nothing going on. You can see for yourself. No... no prospects.'

  'Ah.'

  'I'd like to know, just out of curiosity, whether Maggie Thatcher's ever been out here, Charlie.'

  'I shouldn't think so for a moment, not if she's got any sense. Certainly not since she closed down the first colliery in 1910, I think it was.'

  More of this sort of thing soon brought them to the door or doors of the Ship Inn, which by appearance might easily as well have admitted them to a public lecture-theatre or bit of local government. But inside it was not at all like any of that, a typical old-style country pub with electric organ, round tables of pitted copper, triple-decker sandwiches and tremendously badly designed and written local announcements. And also a great many people. This was where they all were.

  The considerable noise they were making lessened slightly at the entrance of ~e four visitors and some of those in view turned and had a look at them. This seemed natural enough at the sight of a group of obvious strangers in unconventional clothes like jackets and ties and including one or two - Peter, perhaps Charlie - worth a second glance anywhere.- The hum of normality was about restored· by the time they had moved to the further and less crowded end of the room and Charlie had waddled to the counter.

  'Nothing for me,' said Malcolm when he was asked.

  'Have a soft drink.'

  'No I think I'll just go and sit down. You know.'

  He sank into an armchair with tangerine loose covers that might have come out of a local auntie's front room, the generic source of most of the furnishings up this end, not least the parchment lampshades. In a moment he seemed to fall asleep. The other three nodded at each other, needing no words.

  'That's nice,' said Alun. 'No question about him not driving now.'

  'He's not the sort to try and insist,' said Charlie.

  'No, but it's good to keep it civilized.'

  Having unrestively waited rather longer than strict equity would have entailed, Charlie had his order taken by one of the fellows behind the bar, the one whose locks hung to his shoulders from either side of a bald pate. After unhurriedly assembling the required drinks he in due course uncourteously served them.

  'Now we're all right for a bit,' said Charlie. 'More water? Well, how was Gwen?'

  'Oh, Christ,' said Alun, and then, almost as differently as possible, 'Oh, Christ.' He stared malevolently at Charlie. 'You bugger.'

  'Calm down, old bloke, it's all in the family, won't go any further. Not from me or Peter, that is. One of the reasons I've brought it up while I'm still stone cold sober is to warn you very seriously against letting the slightest suspicion enter Malcolm's head for a moment. He's - '

  'Good Lord, what do you take me for?'

  The grin lurking in this might not have irritated Charlie if it had not made him want to start grinning himself. 'Don't try and go devil-may-care on me. Listen: no sly quips or digs in the ribs or narrow shaves or delicious hints he couldn't possibly pick up and supposing he did what of it really, eh? He's not as, shall I say resilient as some of those we know.'

  Alun betrayed little or none of the embarrassment he might have been expected to feel at this. 'No, of course, don't worry. It was her idea, not mine in the first place. She grabbed me in the Prince of Wales. As I was hoping you hadn't seen but knew you had.'

  'But you went along with it. Yes, I saw. Anyway, how was it?'

  With this Charlie glanced at Peter in the hope of spreading out the curiosity, making it a little more a matter of public concern, but he was looking here and there in his unfocused way, no bloody use at all.

  'Oh, Christ,' said Alun, 'it was a... I just scraped home if you know what I mean. She was great fun in the old days but she's, well, she's gone off rather. Is that enough for you?'

  'Just right, thanks. What son of a state was she in when you left?'

  'Bit on the subdued side.'

  'M'm. I expect she'll liven up when she sees Malcolm, poor old bastard. You know, Alun, it might be a good thing all round if you took in the idea that we've rumbled you. We see through you, chum.'

  'If you're talking about Laura... '

  'No, I am not talking about Laura. The diaconate has given you a clean bill of moral health there. More than you deserve. I mean in general. Can't you son of concentrate your attentions? Narrow them down a bit?'

  'It's all this bloody temptation, you see. Growing in amplitude year by year. The percentage of women between my age-group and puberty, both ends inclusive, is unlikely to rise significantly higher.'

  'The lower end doesn't seem to bother you unduly. You saw off that fan in the Glendower without any trouble. Any that I could see. And she was quite a - well, time was when I'd have been a horrible nuisance to her myself.'

  'The lower end is largely hypothetical. Rather like the invisible cone that in theory extends upwards from the apex of your ordinary real God-fearing cone. The other way round in this case. More practically the young ones lack the essential security-conferring streak of gratitude to be found in the old ones. No problem resisting that temptation.'

  Charlie gazed startle
d at his empty glass. 'Christ, what's gone wrong with this? Er, from the way you talked about it I didn't think Gwen sounded particularly grateful. I dare say you'll keep your mouth shut, but there's her too. Eh?'

  'Yeah, I know.'

  Vague Peter might be at times, preoccupied even, but shy on ~s shout never. He took Charlie's place at the counter and produced a pentagonal slice of plastic in which five one-pound coins were embedded: a children's toy, he would say, for children's money. Something between the used glasses and muscular dystrophy collecting box caught his eye and he bent to see better, fumbling for his spectacles. A moment later he gave a kind of snarling bellow, loud enough anyway to cause a nearby head or two to twist in his direction.

  'Wouldn't you bloody know,'- he said not much less loudly. '_ASH yng__ sodding _Nghymru. Diolch am__... What kind of madhouse...'

  'Never mind, no one understands it,' said Charlie soothingly.

  'Not content with trying to stop me smoking they have the bloody cheek to do it in buggering _Welsh__. It's enough to make you... '

  He flung out a hand, probably just in contemptuous dismissal, but his fingertips brushed the folded card and sent it fluttering to the floor. Before he could have started to face bending down to ground level the man with the divided hairdo intervened.

  'Would you kindly pick that up, please.' He spoke not in any Welsh way but in the thick, unvarying tones of generic middle-north England.

  Peter grew flustered, sweat gathering on his upper lip, but still he made no move and it was Alun, as one doubtless used to finding himself the only male in the company capable of bending, who put the notice back on the bar.

  'If you want to smoke you'll have to go down the other end.'

  'I don't want to bloody smoke,' said Peter, 'that's not the point. I just... '

  'And layoff the language if you don't mind.' The barman gave them an assessing stare one after the other. 'Welshmen,' he muttered finally and turned away.