The Old Devils

by Kingsley Amis

  For the first couple of hundred yards the slope was so extreme that right of way on that narrow twisting road went automatically to people driving up, and twice Malcolm had to pull into the side and stop. The second time, on a right-angle bend, brought Rhiannon a view of the half-mile or so of flat before the beach itself and then of most of the bay, the low curving arm to the south, the long almost straight stretch of sand and, on the far side, the tree-covered headland where the church was. The road took them to the foot of the escarpment and through the marshes, formerly salt, freshwater now for many years and grown over with reeds of a peculiar and beautiful pale orange-yellow. At the end they turned along the top of the shore, where shabby greenish plants were scattered, and drove finally into the extensive car-park, unseen from above, unexpected almost until reached, but a matter of course after that, full of familiar things like people eating and drinking and making a lot of noise while they walked about.

  Malcolm lost no time in. leading the way out of it and down crosswise towards the sea, to an empty part where the sand was strewn with unattractive seaweed and broken by patches of bare rock. By chance it was also just about the part where, one far-off night, Rhiannon and Dorothy had tried to catch flounders in the shallows, or rather not to hinder too much the two, possibly three, young men who were supposed to know how and, for all Rhiannon could remember, had succeeded. There had been nobody about then. There was nobody about now, not at least up this end towards the headland, nowhere to bathe, nowhere to sit or lie or throw a ball, nowhere for the kids to run to and fro. Not saying much, but keeping a close eye on her, Malcolm took them across a stretch of quite rugged rock on to the path that led up to the moss-stained wall of the churchyard-.

  On the far side of the gateway here no sound could be heard from the shore, just waves. They were on a narrow granite promontory less than a hundred yards long, with the sweep of Pwll Glin bay on their left as they faced out to sea and another bay on their right too small to have a name, more of a creek really, heaped with stones of various sizes and always empty - well, in the past Rhiannon had seen a couple of fishermen there, serious ones in oilskins and thigh-boots standing into the sea, but it would have been safe to say that nobody went there now for any reason.

  There was room on the promontory for not much more than the church itself, three or four lines of graves and dozens of mature trees, sycamores mostly, tall and flourishing even in the salt air and at this season deeply shading the ground underneath. Nobody came here either in a manner of speaking, but the two of them were here today, and somebody else had been here not long before to take a bit of care of the graves and make the place seem not quite desolate, though hardly a single stone remained in one piece or uneroded. But some names and dates could still be read easily enough, Welsh names, English names, none that she saw later than 1920. The church was very thoroughly shut up and impossible to see into from anywhere at ground level.

  'It's still a church,' said Malcolm, having let the matter rest for quite a long time. 'That's to say it hasn't been deconsecrated. '

  'But they can't still be using it.'

  'The last service was held here in 1959. Longer ago than half the people on that beach can remember.' He smiled and went on confidingly, 'I looked it up. Perhaps they think there might be something left here some day.'

  'Who? What son of thing do you mean?'

  'Well... I don't know,' he said in a gentle tone. 'At the moment it's too far for anybody to come, you see. Too far by car, that is. How many years would it be since it wasn't too far to come on foot, with that climb for most of them to face after? Eighty-four in congregation the nave held, according to what I read.'

  'Do you believe in it yourself, Malcolm?'

  'It's very hard to answer that. In a way I suppose I do.

  I certainly hate to see it all disappearing. I used to think things would go on round here as long as anywhere in the kingdom, but do you know I doubt if they have?'

  'Well, there's nothing to be done about it, that's for sure.' Rhiannon tried to sound gentle too. 'One thing, it's too far for vandals to come too, by the look of it.'

  'Yes. Small mercies. I like to come here occasionally. It helps me... no, it's impossible to say it without sounding pompous. Anyway, it's a wonderful spot. Peaceful. Solitary.'

  'A bit lonely, though. Windy too.'

  'I'm terribly sorry, Rhi, are you absolutely - '

  'No, no, I'm fine.' She looked about. 'It certainly has an atmosphere. '

  'You remember coming here before?' he asked eagerly.

  'Oh yes, of course.'

  She would have added 'lots of times' but he hurried on.

  'What about that terrible concrete hut, I think it was concrete, just where the road stopped? That's gone too now, of course. Ha, one's quite glad to see the back of some of what they pull down. It was the only place to eat, though.'

  'That's right, and the lady washed up so loudly you couldn't hear yourself speak, and kept the key of the lav in her apron.'

  'Do you remember having lunch there?'

  'Oh yes,' she said in the same spirit as a moment earlier. 'We took what we were given - sausages and chips and OK sauce.'

  'M'm. There was a hopeless cat there too, that when you stroked it, it looked at you as though you were barmy.'

  'I'd forgotten about that. You drank Mackeson stout, didn't you? It was your regular "tipple in those days.'

  'So it was. You never seem to see it now.'

  'And the two of us went for a stroll after.'

  She felt she probably should have spoken then but she could not think how to say it, just smiled and waited and crossed her fingers in her head. He stepped a pace back from her before he went on, still with insistence, 'When we got up here we found there'd been a storm a night or two before and there were leaves and bits of twigs and branches and stuff all over the place, and the sea was still very rough. And we went right up to the end there where it jutted out over the water just there, remember? - quite dangerous it was, I suppose, but we do these things in our youth, actually I think most of it's fallen away now. And I said, I know I'll never mean as much to you as you mean to me, anywhere near, and I'm not complaining, I said, but I want to tell you nobody will ever mean as much to me as you do, and I want you to remember that, I said. And you said you would, and I think perhaps you have, haven't you, Rhiannon?'

  If it had been too early a moment ago to contract out of his recalling of that day, it was obviously much too late now. Not sure that she could have spoken in any case, she nodded.

  'Wonderful. Oh, that is lovely.' The tautness departed from his manner. 'Well, an awful lot of things seem worth while after that, I can tell you. Thank you for remembering me, with so much else in your life.'

  He sent her a smile of simple affection and indicated they should move. As they began strolling down the slight incline towards the gate he put his arm chummily round her waist.

  'Yes, I'd got my pal Doug Johnson to lend me his car for the day. It was the first time I'd taken it out and I was a bit nervous, I hope it didn't show.'

  'I didn't notice anything,' she said.

  'We stopped for petrol and the surly bloke wouldn't change a fiver, remember?'

  'Oh yes of course.' With the heat off, Rhiannon would have agreed that she remembered General Tate's landing at Fishguard.

  'And we'd hardly gone ten yards after when that terrific cloudburst started and I had to stop because the windscreen-wiper wasn't working properly.'

  'That's right.'

  'Ah, now I think I can almost fix the date. The Australians were playing at Cardiff and in their - '

  He stopped walking and stared ahead of him. She knew something awful had happened. Her eyes skidded away to a horizontal stone gone almost black and read helplessly of Thomas Godfrey Pritchard who departed this life 17th June 1867 and was sorely missed. When she looked at Malcolm again he was still staring, but at her now.

  'Doug Johnson was away in France the whole of that
summer,' he said, 'doing his teaching prac. He certainly wasn't around to lend his car to me or anyone else. So that must have been a different day altogether.'

  'M'm.' She forced herself to go on looking at him.

  'We must have taken the bus down. You couldn't have remembered it like that, the way you said you did.'

  'No.'

  'You don't remember any of it, do you? Not having lunch or walking up to St Mary's or what I said or anything.'

  It was not to be got out of or away from. Coming on top of the little tensions of the day the unashamed intensity of his disappointment was too much for her. She hid her face, turned aside and started to cry.

  He forgot his own feelings at once. 'What is it? What's the matter?'

  'I'm so stupid, I'm so hopeless, no good to anybody, I just think of myself all the time, don't notice other people. It's not much to ask, remembering a lovely day out, but I can't even do that.' She had his arm round her now and was resting her forehead against his shoulder, though she still kept her hands over her eyes. 'Anybody who was any use would remember but I can't, but I wish I could, I wish I could.'

  'Don't say such ridiculous things. You don't expect me to take them seriously, do you? It's sweet of you to worry about it just slipping your mind like that, but I didn't remember it very well myself, did I, confusing those two times? Anyway you remember coming down here? To Pwll Glin?'

  'M'm.'

  'And perhaps me bringing you? You know, sort of vaguely?'

  'M'm.' Perhaps she did. 'Even this bit? Just... '

  Suddenly it went impossible to say yes, even to this bit. 'Not... ' She shook her head wretchedly. 'It's gone. Sorry.'

  'I can't have you apologizing to me, my dear Rhiannon.

  Honestly, now.' He gazed "Over the top of her head in the general direction of the land. 'Well, put it this way, the fact you minded so much about not remembering, that's worth as much to me as if you had remembered, very nearly.'

  That set things back a bit, but in the end it was only the clearing-up shower. She got to work with her tissues and comb and he wandered about making suitable points like the church being _probably__ twelfth century and having effigies of a member of the de Courcy family and his lady in the south wall of the chancel and a battlement round the top of the tower, exactly what she wanted to hear just then, no sarcasm. When he saw she was ready he gave the bay a final going-over.

  'It was all houses there once, before the sea came up,' he said. 'A whole village.'

  Rhiannon thought she had heard that the sea had once been over the marshes and then gone back, but that must have been another time. 'I suppose they can tell.'

  'At low tide twice a year when the water's calm you're supposed to be able to see down to what were streets. Houses even. I think another church.'

  'Do you still do your poetry?'

  'You remember that.' He smiled with pleasure. 'Indeed I do, yes. And I mean to go on. I'm lucky enough to have a few things to get off my chest still.'

  Before he could get on to what they were she found herself saying, with a sense of instant inspiration that amazed her, 'There used to be a lovely rose-garden with brick walls - and, you know, pergolas along the paths belonging to some grand house somewhere. You could look round it ID the afternoon. I don't know whether you still can.'

  'Let's see, would that be Mansel Hall? Over by Swanset?' No prizes for not rushing in this time. 'I'm not absolutely... '

  'No, I know where you mean - er, now, Bryn House, that's it. Bryn House, of course. Local stone with brick facing. Not far from here. Anyway, you'd like to go there, would you?'

  'M'm. Didn't we go there once before, one summer, not a very nice day?' The not very nice day had stuck in her mind all right, not actually raining but chilly and dark.

  'I think so,' he said, as he more or less had to. 'Yes, I'm sure we did. Come on, let's go and have a look. Might bring all sorts of stuff back, you never know.'

  'It may have just gone, the garden, like a lot of things.'

  'Let's go there anyway.'

  He spoke dreamily again, as if he felt that he or they had started on some semi-fated course, and glanced at her in a way that suggested the lip of the frying-pan was still not too far off. Well, she would have to let him say what he liked now. She reached out and took and squeezed his hand as they walked down to the churchyard gate and took it again on the far side, in comfort or apology or what she hoped would pass as understanding, or perhaps like one person letting another know that whatever it was they were facing they would face it together. He squeezed back but kept quiet after all until they were on their way inland through the marshes, and then for once in his life he talked about nothing in particular.

  Six - Malcolm, Muriel, Peter, Gwen, Alun, Rhiannon 1 'Bible and Crown Hotel, Tarquin Jones speaking.'

  It was characteristic of Tare to refer to his house in this way although, more likely because, the place was not and never had been a hotel in any bed-and-board sense, nor even called one by anybody until he came along. So much could be readily agreed but, as Charlie had once pointed out, or alleged, it was much less easy to say what characteristic of Tare's it was characteristic of. And that was very Welsh, Garth had added without running into opposition.

  At another time Malcolm would surely have been ready to consider such matters, especially the last, but not now. With strained clarity he gave his own name in full. 'Who?' - an unaspirated near-bellow with no fancy suggestion of actual failure to hear or recognize.

  After an even clearer repetition Malcolm asked if Mr Alun Weaver was on the premises and met immediate total silence, relieved fairly soon by distant female squeals of pretended shock or surprise and what sounded like a referee's whistle indiscriminately blown. Malcolm waited. He took a couple of deep breaths and told himself he was not feeling at all on edge. After some minutes Alun came on the line with the kind of featureless utterance to be expected from someone wary of unscheduled telephone-calls.

  Once more Malcolm introduced himself, going on to ask, 'Many in tonight?'

  'They've mostly gone now. I was more or less just off myself as a matter of fact. Don't often come here at this time, you know.'

  His tone held a question which Malcolm answered by saying, 'Rhiannon, er, mentioned where you were.'

  'Oh did she? Oh I see.' This time Alun spoke with all the artless acceptance of a man (perhaps Peter would have specified a Welshman) getting ready for a bit of fast footwork.

  'Look, Alun, I was wondering whether you might care to drop in for a nightcap on your way home. No great piss-up or anything, just _un bach__.'

  There was a faint sound of indrawn breath over the wire. 'Oh, well, now it's kind of you, boy, but it's getting late and I think if you don't mind... '

  'Actually I'm on my own tonight. Gwen's been in a funny sort of mood, I don't know what's got into her. Not like her to pop out on the spur of the moment. Well, I say popped, she told me don't wait up for her.' This was rounded off by a light laugh at feminine capriciousness.

  'Well now, that being so, the case is altered beyond all recognition. Of course I'll be delighted to alleviate your solitude. Taking off in about five minutes.'

  The simple prospect of company made Malcolm feel better for a moment. He picked up his glass of whisky and water, not a habitual feature of his evenings, and carried it into the sitting-room. This was so full of unmasculine stuff, like loose covers and plates not meant for eating off, and so narrow in proportion to its quite moderate length that some visitors had taken it for Gwen's own little nook where she might have held tea-parties, very exclusive ones, but in fact there was nowhere else to go or be outside the kitchen but Malcolm's study, and even he never went there except for some serious reason.

  Tonight a small masculine intrusion was noticeable in this Sitting-room, not in the obvious form of the gramophone or record-player itself, which was of course common in gender, but of actual records fetched earlier from their white-painted deal cabinet in the study. The mach
ine, called a Playbox, black with timid Chinesey edging in a sort of gold, now faded, had been pretty advanced for the mid 1960s. The records were from the same period or before, deleted reissues of micro-groove 'realizations' of even more firmly forgotten 78s made in the 19408 in a style said to have been current two or three decades longer ago still. M9St of the performers were grouped under names like Doe Pettit and his Original Storyville Jass Band, though individuals called Hunchback Mose and Clubfoot Red LeRoy were also to be seen, accompanied here and there by an unknown harmonica or unlisted jew's-harp.

  Malcolm had been meaning to play some of these to himself as a means of recapturing more of the past, going on, so to speak, from where he had left off with Rhiannon earlier that day. He had put the project aside when Gwen said her piece and flounced out of the house; now, it seemed possible again. Only possible: first he must visit the bathroom, or rather the WC, and check how matters stood in that department. They had not been too favourably disposed that morning, and once or twice he had had to fight quite hard not to let the thought of them overshadow the outing. His left ball had played up a bit as well, but he was learning to live with that.

  He set down his drink and went upstairs and 10 and behold it was all right. As he was finishing up he thought to himself that on this point at least he was two people really, a bloody old woman and worryguts and a marvellous ice-cold reasoning mechanism, and neither of them ever listened to the other. Actually a _real__ split personality, one fellow completely separate from the other, would have had a lot to be said for it: every so often each of them could get away from himself a hundred per cent, guaranteed.

  In the sitting-room again he at once switched the Playbox on and took out of its cover a recording attributed to Papa Boileau and his New Orleans Feetwarmers. They looked back at him from the sleeve photograph, a line of old men in dark suits and collars and ties, six, seven faces about as black as could be, sad and utterly private, no imaginable relation to those Malcolm was used to seeing on his television screen. He arranged the disc on the central spindle and in due time it plumped down on to the already rotating turntable where the pick-up arm, moving in a series of doddery jerks and overshoots, came and found its outermost groove. Through a roaring fuzz of needle-damage the sounds of 'Cakewalkin' Babies' emerged. Malcolm tumed up the volume.