The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  'O'Hara. And the book you mean is _Appointment in Samarra__. I used to have them all at one time. John O'Hara. Good God.'

  'That's the chap, but I'm not sure it was that book.

  Anyway, I started reading whichever it was and I nearly jumped out of my skin, it was exactly the same. That side of life, I mean. And they were meant to be ordinary average people, not millionaires or actresses but not hillbillies either. There was this guy and the dame he fancied, and first time out nothing, he may have kissed her goodnight, I can't remember. Then second time out you were expecting it to be here we go, but it wasn't at all, it was so far and no further the whole way. It was a good deal quicker than it would have been here, but then it's a book, isn't it? But it was the _same__... _thing__. In _America__.'

  Peter still had little idea of what was expected of him, if anything. 'Could you call it the old Victorian ideas on their way out?' he suggested, trying not to feel like an exam-paper and failing soon enough. 'How did we ever agree to go along with it?'

  She nodded absently and squared up her cigarette-packet and matchbox alongside one of the ornamental grooves that ran the breadth of the table-top. 'Not making yourself cheap, that's what it was all in aid of. Anyway that's what it was called.'

  'A charade, in fact.'

  'In a way, yes, but it was not-a-charade as well. That was the whole trouble. One moment you said it very, well, cynically and then a second later you'd find you'd said it completely seriously. _Cheap__. I expect the chaps called it something too, didn't they, that whole system?'

  'Probably. I think they mostly took it as just part of existence, something you had to put up with, like getting up in the dark to get the bus to go to university. And it was a comfort to know that everybody else was in the same boat. Or you thought they were, which was just as good.'

  'Oh, we had that too. Tell me something now, Peter: say a chap's girl had said all right straight away, would that have made him think she was making herself cheap?'

  'Not unless he was a shit - he'd have been delighted.

  After he'd got over his surprise. But then I suppose if she started going round - '

  '_That's__ right. You can't make yourself cheap just with one person. Still, mustn't take it too seriously. As well as awful bits there were funny bits too, weren't there?' But apparently no funny bits came to mind for the moment. She lit a cigarette and when she went on it was at a reduced speed. 'So I'm glad that whatever Rosemary gets up to or might be going to get up to she's not going to not make herself cheap. It took too much out of people, that way of carrying on. Made them concentrate on the wrong things. And it was easy enough to go off the track without that. And what I saw was only half of it. The chaps' half must have been much worse.'

  'We behaved much worse,' said Peter. 'On average.'

  'A lot of it, some of it anyway wasn't your fault. I know you think you treated me tremendously badly, love, but you didn't, not really.' For the first time he got a look straight from those grey eyes and now he did catch his breath. 'It's more it sounds bad before you go into what actually happened, which was just we had an affair, not a very long one, though it would have been longer if I'd thought to do different, and you started to be attracted by someone else and we broke up. And it was after that, don't forget, I found I had a bun in the oven, and you took care of things, and _after__ that... You were in love with someone else. I couldn't have expected you to walk out of it and come back to me, how could I at that stage?'

  'I wish I had.'

  'That's another matter. I'm sorry, I know we seem to have got on to this rather fast, but it could be ages before we're on our own again when I've had four glasses of plonk. And these days you never know how much time you've got. I wanted to tell you this before anyone starts dying. Just, it was lovely.'

  He put out his hand across the table and she took it. 'Yes, it was.'

  'So you'd better try and realize that some of the other bits aren't quite as bad as you thought.'

  Not much later they were standing in the street outside the Glendower, he with his arm around her waist, she leaning her head on his shoulder. In the minicab, which waited near by now to take him on home, they had held hands all the way but barely spoken.

  After about a minute she said, 'Would you like to come in for a drink?'

  'No, I'd better be getting back. Unless it would make it easier?'

  'No, don't worry about that. Look, I hope you don't think anything I've been saying was to do with anything that happened at the party. Or anything else.'

  'No, no trouble there, love. I didn't take in everything about you during our thing together, not as much as I should have done, but I did get that far. So no, I don't think that.'

  'Good. There's no reason why we shouldn't go out to dinner, you know.'

  'I'll be in touch.'

  'Rosemary goes back on Thursday. After that.'

  She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and went. He hung about a little longer, walking to and fro on the pavement with his head turned down and his hands clasped behind his back, not seeing what his eyes were trained on. Then he straightened up and went over to the car and got in the back.

  'Cwmgwyrdd now, is it?' asked the driver, an oldster wearing what looked like his grandson's recent cast-offs. 'What part do you want?'

  'I'll tell you when we get nearer.'

  'Well, it makes a difference to how I go, see, with them shutting the old bridge over the - '

  'Just take me there, will you, by any reasonable route.' The man's head, white and unshorn, slewed intolerably round. 'Are you feeling all right, sir?'

  'I'll live. Now kindly do as you're told.'

  '_Duw, duw__, sorry I spoke. Not from round here, are you?'

  'No, I'm from... from... '

  'If you ask me, all the proper Welshmen are leaving Wales.'

  'I say, are they really? Well, that's splendid news, by George. Over and out.'

  But then when they drove up and the house was in darkness he remembered that Muriel was in Cowbridge, dining and staying the night with English friends she had told him he obviously had no time for, so he was free for over twelve hours.

  Five - Rhiannon

  1

  The next morning Rhiannon and Rosemary sat at breakfast in the new house; Alun had only a moment before driven off for West Wales, there to see over a location for something or other. Through most of the carpetless, curtainless ground floor step-ladders stood, their summits linked by heavy old planks, in the midst of opened drums of paint and other applications, silently awaiting the return of the contracted decorators from wherever they had been these last weeks. It was possible to sit in part of the sitting-room, though it helped if you were quite tired out before you started, and to cook and eat in the kitchen. Here the poppies-on-white cotton curtains were up but, for instance, a couple of boxes of plates and saucers had yet to have their contents deployed on the dresser shelves. Nelly, the new black Labrador puppy, lay stretched out in her basket, idly chewing the side of it from time to time in preference to her purple plastic bone.

  'Didn't I give you that mug?' asked Rosemary.

  'When you were a tiny thing. It's really quite a nice piece of china.'

  The vessel referred to was of a rounded many-sided shape that widened at the top, with gilt round the rim and on the built-up handle, apple-blossom portrayed on the sides and 'Mother' in florid cursive lettering. At the moment it held some tea made from lemon-flavoured powder and a slice of real lemon floating on top. Also before Rhiannon were a plate that had an orange and a banana on it and a bowl of tinned pineapple pieces.

  Rosemary ran her eye over these materials. 'Is that all your breakfast, just what I see in front of you? Wouldn't you like me to scramble you some eggs?'

  'Of course I would, but they're terribly bad for you, eggs. Full of that stuff, you know, gives you heart-attacks. Fatty stuff.'

  'And what you've got there is - supposed to be good for you, is that right?'

  'Yes. Oran
ges and bananas are full of potassium, which is very important for your liver.'

  'Who says so?'

  'Dorothy. She knows a lot about it. She's read all sorts of books on it. She sort of keeps up with it.'

  'You mean as if it were something like nuclear physics.

  Nothing to stop her, I suppose. Surely there can't be much potassium left in that,' said Rosemary, nodding at the bowl of pineapple.

  'It must be a bit all right, though. It's still fruit.'

  'Well yes, I quite see how you must feel your liver needs all the help it can get after a night on the tiles like you've just been on.'

  'I wasn't awful, was I?'

  'I've never known you awful. Good time had by all, I hope.'

  'Well, I had a nice chat with Peter. I think I told you, he's always felt bad about what happened years ago.'

  'As well he might,' said Rosemary, but gently.

  'No need to go into it all now. Anyway we cleared one or two things up between us.'

  'Good, now mind you get a proper lunch. Something cooked, not snacks.'

  'No, it'll be a proper lunch all right. You can always rely on old Malcolm to take care of a thing like that. Rather too much so, in fact.'

  'How do you mean, Mum?'

  'Oh nothing really. I say, talk about living it up. Drinks with one boy-friend last night and a lunch-party and tour with another one today. Dirty little stop-out.'

  Unseen, Rosemary smiled for a moment at her mother with no great amusement, even with some sadness, but said only, 'Go over my duties while you're gone.'

  'The main thing is that creature there, obviously. Take her out every two hours. And some men are ringing at eleven about an estimate for the roof.'

  'I'll get them to ring again later. What time will you be back?'

  'I don't know. Could you tell them - '

  'Tomorrow morning, then.'

  'The thing is, we've already accepted another lot's estimate which is lower, and these ones need to be told we don't want them. So could you tell them? You'd just be passing on a message.'

  'Whereas if they found they were talking to the Party who'd actually taken the decision not to have them they might fly into a rage. I see. Yes of course. Anything else?'

  'Not really. It doesn't seem much to keep you in half the day.'

  'Never mind, there's plenty round here that needs putting straight.'

  And that puppy to impress, to make sure of being remembered by on future visits, and very sensible too, thought Rhiannon, but revised her thought at the quiet speed with which. Rosemary left the room to answer the telephone.

  A tabloid newspaper lay open on the breakfast-table, folded back at the horoscope feature, which was quite good fun to read, not that there was anything at all in it, in astrology, whatever Dorothy might say. It was the style of this feature, the clear lay-out and central position of the television programmes, the young-marrieds strip and the twice-weekly political column by old Jimmy Gethin that years ago had given the paper the edge over its rivals as far as Rhiannon was concerned. She still took it even though poor old Jimmy's liver had packed up once for all in the meantime, whether for lack of potassium nobody had said. In fact he had been Alun's pal more than hers, and she had never read his column unless its first paragraph happened to catch her eye by promising an attack on one or other of the couple of far-left politicians whose activities she fitfully noticed. That was about as far as her interest in politics went, and she was not much better when it came to literature: she only paid attention when Alun's concerns came up and, to be quite honest, not very closely even then: At university, under Gwen's and Dorothy's guidance, she had done her best to put this right by reading or trying to read books on the two subjects and also on art, where some of the pictures had been nice, though not by any means all. But it had never taken, and at about the time she left there she had given up the attempt with relief and shame at the same time. The shame had lasted; it still troubled her to remember the time she had been taken out by a rather small chap doing German Honours, and at the end of the evening he had said wonderingly, 'But you're not interested in anything at all.' She had had no answer then or since; the things that did interest her were too small and spread-over to add up to a subject you could sit an exam in. And that was that, but it would never do to feel all right about it, ever.

  She heard Rosemary at the door, and guiltily stuffed back into the packet the cigarette she had started to take out. Pretending to be absorbed in the horoscopes she read that for Leo subjects (like herself) this would be a good day for clinching business deals provided they managed not to let rip with their famous roar.

  'That was William. You know, William Thomas.'

  'Oh yes,' said Rhiannon, trying to get the right amounts of interest and surprise in.

  'It's his day off apparently, so I asked him if he'd like to come over. I hope that's all right.'

  'Oh yes of course, good idea. That'll - ' She stopped herself from going on '- give you something to do with yourself and substituted '- be nice' rather feebly and only just in time.

  'More tea?'

  'No thank you dear. I think I'll go on up now.'

  'Give me a yell when you want me.'

  In the bathroom Rhiannon hung up her good roomy man's-fit towelling dressing-gown, originally a birthday present to Alun, but after a week or two he had gone back to his Paris one in chartreuse watered silk. Her slippers, knitted by Dorothy in red wool with a green R on each like the colours of the flag, were on the tight side, especially over the left instep, and it tended to be a relief to get them off. The nightdress rather played safe by being just white cotton with broderie-anglaise trimming.

  On the glass shelf beside the basin there sat a fresh plastic bottle of natural-herb shampoo with a cardboard thing round its neck. Six such things, she saw on reaching for her glasses, would if sent in get you an absolutely free hanging basket for indoor plants and greenery, so she carefully removed this one and stowed it away in the cabinet. These days almost any special offer found her wide open. Going in for them was at bit like betting on the Derby: you could lose for instance, like that set of chefs kitchen-knives (eight pork-pie seals and cheque for £8.55 incl. p&p) that had stayed sharp for about twenty minutes.

  She stepped into the shower, a glassed-in job featuring a massive control-dial calibrated and colour-coded like something on the bridge of a nuclear warship. Along with the central heating and parts of the kitchen it was understood to have been newly installed by the previous owner, a garage-proprietor who could not have had anything like his money's-worth out of it before driving his Volvo into a wall - dead of a coronary before he hit, they soothingly said. Rhiannon was still not really used to the shower and kept falling back on trial and error, though no longer seriously afraid of smothering herself with ice-water or saturated steam. The shampoo, which said it was mild enough for her to use it every day, went on, off, on again, staying on for the essential two minutes while she soaped herself, finally and thoroughly off before a burst of cold all over to tone up the skin.

  As she stood on the self-drying mat she got going with the bath-towel while gauging the intensity of the sunlight coming through the frosted pane. Arriving at a decision she carefully pat-dried her legs and while they were still damp spread make-up from a tube evenly over them, thus among other things covering up any unattractive veins. A drop of Sure here and there, a dab of talcum top and bottom and then on with the dressing-gown and slippers and across the landing with a call down to Rosemary on the way.

  Apart from a couple of bulging black sacks by the window and a frock and suit or so the bedroom was in order, centring on Rhiannon's wonderful old Victorian marble-stand dressing-table with the heavy oval freestanding mirror and a tall jug, itself painted with rose-buds, holding roses from the garden. Here she combed out her hair, telling herself as always how lucky she had been in this department, thick as ever, easy to manage, even now only needing a little touching up. She was still at it when Rosemary
came in.

  'What's that on your legs, Mum?'

  'Sheer Genius. I mean that's what it's called, I noticed particularly. Max Factor. I got it for my face but it turned out too dark. Honey Touch it says as well. I suppose that's a colour, is it?'

  'All right, but what's it doing on your legs?'

  'Well, it was that or stockings, and the weather's too nice for stockings, I thought.'

  'You realize they don't match your hands?'

  'Yes of course I do, but men don't think of things like that. Not as a rule.'

  Rosemary gave up the matter. During its discussion she had been sorting out the drier and now she began to wield it on her mother's hair, no great test of skill or devotion but pursued steadily enough. As she worked away with blower and comb she glanced round the room, taking particular notice of the female garments on display, but before she could say anything the door was barged aside and Nelly the puppy came running unskilfully in. She seemed not so much thankful at having found the two women as indulgently gratified by the joy and relief her arrival must bring them. After a quick circuit for form's sake she went straight under the bed, starting to growl furiously somewhere in the alto register.

  'I should have shut her in downstairs,' said Rosemary.

  'She's all right. She's got to learn her way round the house.'

  'Wouldn't it be better if she learnt that after she's trained?'

  'Well, it's all part of the training, learning not to go when she's up here.'

  Rosemary leaned over to see what the now emerged puppy was doing. 'You know she's got your slipper, do you?'

  'That's all right,' said· Rhiannon after checking that the Dorothy slippers were safely on her feet. 'She can have that one.'

  'You can't just let her chew away at anything she happens to fancy. That's no way to train her.'

  'It'll sort itself out.' Rhiannon considered telling her daughter that she might feel differently about such questions when she had had a couple of children of her own, but let it go. 'You can't watch them all the time. Right, that's fine, dear, thank you. I like it a little bit damp.'