Free The old devils: a novel by Kingsley Amis Page B

perhaps trying to remember whether she had told Rhiannon the one about the whisky. If so, the effort was successful, because she went on, ' ... and Charlie of course ... '
    'I haven't seen Charlie for -'
    'No use expecting much sense out of him after about six o'clock at night. He's got this restaurant in Broad Street now. Co-owner of it with his brother. I don't know whether you remember Victor. Not my type at all. Absolutely not my cup of tea. He's you know.'
    'What, you mean .... '
    'You know,' said Gwen, nodding slowly. 'Well, we're not supposed to mind them these days but I can't help it. I came to them late, sort of. For a long time I didn't know there was any such thing. And there wasn't really then, not in Wales. When I first heard about them they were in places like Paris and London. You know, Oscar Wilde. You can say a lot against the chapel but at least it kept them down. And I reckon everybody being poor helped. They couldn't dress up or anything.'
    Rhiannon remembered Gwen talking in that style in her room in Brook Hall, about chaps among other things, saying what she probably really thought but being jokey too so as to stay in the clear about something. According to Dorothy, who had always been a great one for psychology, it showed a basic insecurity. Whatever it showed it was quite fun to listen to but it did tend to slow down the conversation, as now in fact. Gwen seemed to have dried up though she showed no sign of being insecure about that. 'This queer brother of Charlie's,' said Rhiannon.
    'Victor, yes. He runs the restaurant with his, with a friend of his. Nothing for Charlie to do but chat to the customers and knock back the Scotch and tell himself he's working. Not conducive to health. Eventually he nods off at the table or in the bar and Victor sends him home in a taxi.'
    'Not much of a life for Sophie.'
    'Oh, I don't think she minds too much. She has got this shop - just a sort of boutique,'
    said Gwen in response to Rhiannon's quick look and hurried disappointingly on. 'The thing is, Charlie's got nothing else to do and he can afford it. It's quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I ... We used to laugh at Malcolm's dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programmes in the Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of. Drink didn't agree with him, poor old Taffy. Some of us have got a lot to be thankful for.'
    Watching Gwen refill her glass and also send a minor stream down its outside, Rhiannon wondered what, if anything, she told herself she was doing. Did she just not know what she was really doing? As any wife of Alun's would have had to be, Rhiannon was almost as used to people getting drunk as she was to them having a drink, but she had learnt too that there was a stage beyond that. It was a little discouraging to find, a couple of hours after arriving to live among them, that everybody round the place seemed to be getting there regularly if they were not funny in some way. Or (Muriel) had a touch of both.
    Gwen was turning serious and inquisitive all over again.
    She said, 'How did you actually react to the idea of settling down in these pans?' This had not got to be another bit of maundering; it was a trick of Gwen's to keep coming back to a point until her curiosity was either satisfied or else knocked firmly on the head - a very minor improvement on the maundering option if you asked Rhiannon.
    'Thrilled,' she said rather loudly.
    'You don't mind my asking? I suppose the two of you discussed it pretty thoroughly before you took the decision.'
    'Not really, no. Over in a moment.'
    'Oh yes. Which of you in fact got the idea first?'
    'We found we'd both been thinking about it for some time.'
    'But who was the first to mention it? Was it you? Just