'You have the good fortune,' said Alun with all his vivacity, 'or as some would no doubt call it, the misfortune to find me in a state of euphoria. One based moreover not on artificial stimulants but on sober fact. Two facts. Today I received a commission for seven half-hour television programmes, tittle to be agreed but something about Wales, what else, all right Peter, and more important, incomparably more important, I wrote a poem, well, got to the end of the first draft. It's been a long time. I don't know whether it's any good but the point is writing it, getting it written, finding you can still do it. Marvellous bloody feeling. Like finding you can still, er ... '

He fell silent abruptly and with seeming finality, blinking at the floor. After a number of seconds he flung up his head in triumph. 'Sing in the choir, sing in the choir. You thought you'd, er ... ' Another pause followed, but a much shorter one than before.

'Forgotten the harmony, forgotten how the part went, but you've still got it, it's still there. Very much the ... Ah, here we are, there you are, you old devils, you.'

He turned with rekindled enthusiasm to Charlie and Sophie, to Garth, to Sian Smith and Dorothy Morgan, not abating it even for Dorothy; euphoria had been the word all right. When the cries and embraces of meeting were over Dorothy led Rhiannon away in the direction of a grim-faced female who looked like a retired bouncer in drag and shorty silver wig. Somebody's mother, Peter guessed; it had always to be remembered that there were still quite a lot of people about who had mothers. Garth, quite natty in his usual tweeds, was eulogizing Alun's suit. 'Oh, lovely bit of garment you've got there, boy. Beautiful. Must have cost you a packet.' He reached out and turned a lapel over. 'Of course, I suppose having to look right for all your television 'appearances, this son of thing comes off tax, does it?'

'I shouldn't be surprised. My accountant sees to all that.

Anyway, what -'

'Do you know how long I've had this suit I'm wearing now?' Garth asked them all in a grim, challenging way. 'Thirty-seven years. You see, I've had a bit of sense, I've taken care of myself. Not like some, eh? Well, you're not as bad as these two, Alun, agreed, but you have let yourself go just a wee bit, come on, admit it now. Under here' - he tapped his chin - 'and here and -'

'I can't do anything about your terrible mind, Garth,' said Alun, grinning harder than before, 'I can't help your inability to notice anything that doesn't directly involve your pathetic self,' he continued, starting to shake with mirth, 'but when you start vaunting your supposed moral superiority, you bloody little cowshed mountebank,' and here he started laughing as he spoke, 'then at least I can tell you to shut your blathering trap before I slam your doubtless irreproachable dentures down your fucking throat.'

By now he and Garth had their arms round each other's shoulders, both of them bent in the middle and red in the face, roaring fit to bust, two old mates who had seen things so much in the same light for so long that they could be carried helplessly away together to a region of feeling no outsider could penetrate or understand. Charlie looked on with an unsettled smile, Peter without expression.

Alun was the first to come round. 'Well,' he said, breathing noisily and sniffing, 'that'll show the little bugger, what? Ah. Ah!' And he dashed off across the room to greet old Owen Thomas and his wife who had just come in the front entrance, near which there also stood a photographer.

'Oh dear, dear,' said Garth, 'there was a performance and no mistake. That boy's got a tongue to him, hasn't he? It's a treat to hear him use the language. God alive, I can't think when I last laughed like that.'

'How's Angharad?' asked Charlie.

'Oh, well enough, thank you, Charlie. Er, well enough.'

'I couldn't follow the bit about the cowshed,' said Peter when Garth had moved away.

'He's a vet, or was, at Capel Mererid. Sheep rather than cows, but you get the general gist. I thought everybody knew that. He doesn't give you a fair chance to forget it.'

'I knew. Well, after all, the mind's got to start going some time.'

'Not very nice, that just now, was it?' said Charlie. 'In fact not at all nice. It's odd, that was exactly what you've always wanted to say to him, you hoped somebody would one day and then when they do it's nothing like the treat you'd been banking on. Bloody ... bloody little cowshed mountebank was it? M'm. There's trenchant, eh?'.

'You think Garth got it?'

'No. If he told Angharad about it she would, but he probably hasn't told her anything for twenty years. No, if he'd got it, that would mean what he said to us about a treat and the rest of it would have had to be ironical and also played just right, and okay, perhaps you can never be absolutely sure a Welshman's not being ironical, not even that one, but playing something even approximately just right - Garth Pumphrey? No. What gets up my nose is Alun thinking he's got away with it. Like ... '

'Or not caring if he has or not.'

'Correct. I don't think he'd have gone quite as far as that in the old days. Anyway, who cares? Let's get another drink.'

'Why not, it might be our last.'

'Cheers.'

3.

Recalling his youthful self in this one respect, though not at all in any other, Peter spent some time trying without success to get Rhiannon on her own. Indeed even this much recall was faint: in those days he might well have brought matters to a head before very long by muttering a blunt directive to move elsewhere or, if it came to it, by seizing an arm and pulling fairly gently. Tonight he followed Rhiannon round tamely and, for the look of the thing, only some of the time. Dorothy Morgan appeared, stayed, went, reappeared, and while she was present, and talking, in other words present, the best-case scenario, like Rhiannon and himself spontaneously taking to their heels, would have been no good because she would beyond question have come tearing after them. And when it was not Dorothy it was Percy and Dorothy, then Sophie and Sian again, then Alun briefly again, then old Tudor Whittingham and his wife and old Vaughan Mowbray's lady-friend. Well, Peter kept telling himself, she was the hostess. When he saw Gwen approaching he gave up. She would have rumbled him in a moment and let him know about it in one taking-her-time look. - Glass in hand, hardly drunk at all, he stood or walked here and there a few paces at a time. The heavy furniture, dark panelled walls, faded Turkey carpet in a style once seen all over the place but now disappeared everywhere else, or so he thought, persuaded him that nothing here had changed. The hefty flat-fronted gas-fire at the back of the room presumably concealed an open hearth, but if so it had been concealing it as far back as he could remember, whenever that might have been. He worked on it while he went out to the Gents. Though smartened up a little, this too seemed much the same, even to the fetching-up noises coming from one of the cubicles. Everybody had been in their twenties then; well, round about thirty. Now, from round about seventy, all those years of maturity or the prime of life or whatever you called it looked like an interval between two bouts of vomiting. Approximately. Not his genre, more Charlie's.

He went back into the hall trying to recall being in it when he had been round about thirty. It was likely, it was as good as certain that on at least one such occasion, drinking with a mate in the corner there, where you always went if it was unoccupied, or waiting for his father in the bar itself, he had thought of Rhiannon, felt excited about her, looked forward impatiently to seeing her. No doubt, but it had all gone, as finally as his childhood. His eagle two at the sixteenth in 1948 was still with him, though, and the champagne he had stood afterwards in the bar. How awful, he thought.

By this time he had reached the small dining-room that opened off the hall and was also open to non-members, though it was chiefly valued after sundown as a flaking-out facility for members. It was empty and in darkness now. He reached towards the light-switch, then left it and squeezed along the edge of the bare dinner-table to the window. Outside all colour had faded, but there was still a clear view of part of the course, including the pine-woods on one side and, furthest off, the nearly straight line of the cliff-top beyond which on bright days a shimmer was reflected from the sea. Whatever he might have made of this view in the past it looked only bare and desolate to him now, and he had hardly taken a good look at it before retracing his steps and turning the light on after all. His eyes moved half-attentively over the roll of members dead in the two wars: three Thomases in the second, one a cousin from Marlowe Neath, the others unknown to him. He realized he was waiting for Rhiannon to come and join him here. Well, if that sort of thing had ever happened in his life it was certainly not going to do so now. Time to be off. The throng in the hall had thinned out a little but not much. He bumped into one or two people on his way through, partly because of drink no doubt, his or theirs, more that he had still not really learnt to allow for his increased bulk after the historic escalation of 1984, when he had eliminated all controls at a stroke, bar a few quaint medieval relics like slimline tonic. But he got to the opposite end without knocking anybody down and went to the telephone. Yes, a mini cab would be along in five to ten minutes, or so said a girl's voice that sounded almost demented with satisfaction at this prospect.

While he telephoned he had been aware of some disturbance, of raised voices, on the far side of the solid door that separated him from the party. On his return to it he saw that whatever had happened was just over. There was Rhiannon with her daughter watchful at her side, Alun explaining something with a good deal of head-shaking and hand-spreading, William in attendance too. Malcolm and Dorothy Morgan had their arms round Gwen, who seemed to be in tears, and were accompanying her, perhaps forcing her slightly; towards the side entrance of the Club. Everybody else in the room was making no bones about watching and starting to chatter excitedly. Charlie turned to Peter and said, 'Quite a performance, eh? Pissed out of her mind, of course.'

'I was telephoning.'

'Your loss. It was all over in seconds but she got quite a lot in. Bloody this and fucking that, what would you, and selfish monster and windbag and hypocrite and broken-down Don Juan and phony Welshman. Nothing at all damaging.'

'The broken-down Don Juan part sounds a bit damaging in the circumstances.'

'Well not really, mixed in with all the other stuff. But the whole ... I mean it was clear enough from the general tone and situation that there was or had been something going on. As it were.'

'Clear to Malcolm, would you say?'

'I don't know. That's his choice, isn't it? I warned him, didn't I, Alun that is, that bloody awful time we went down to Treville. You'd have thought he'd have picked up enough experience by this time.'

'He'll have forgotten it,' said Peter. 'A broken date, do you think?'

Charlie dismissed the question. 'That fucking old fool is going to do some real damage before he's finished. Hell-bent on it.'

'Good thing Gwen didn't actually, you know, say.'

'Yes, admirable self-restraint, what? Admirable buggery.

She played it so she can say she didn't say anything any time she feels like it. It's called keeping your options open. Nay, stare not so. Peter, you don't mean you think when a woman loses control she loses control, do you?'

'It's not a settled view of mine, no.'

'Losing control is just another thing they do. Christ, here's another one that doesn't seem to have noticed much what's going on round him. Hey, I'd have given a few bob to be over there a moment ago, Alun saying he hadn't done what no one had said he'd done. Anyway, I think he can be trusted to carry off that part all right. I think I'm a bit pissed, too. You off?'

'I thought I'd just have a word first.'

Charlie glanced over at the Weavers and back at Peter. 'Good luck.'

As Peter joined the group Alun left it, still shaking his head slightly in bewilderment. Face to face with William again, Peter was fully aware for the first time of what his son had said to him in the car and what it meant. The rush of understanding erased from his mind anything he might have been going to say. The girl Rosemary glanced at him sharply, not sure whether he was to be tolerated or not. Rhiannon gave him a little nod and no more, as if acknowledging him at a funeral. He waited. It was all he could think of doing.

'I was just saying, Dad,' said William, 'that crabbed youth, has got to make allowances for the impetuous excesses of age,' - sterling stuff, thought Peter, and much better than anything he could have run up on his own account.

'Stupid old cow, you mean,' said Rosemary with plain indignation. 'I wouldn't mind so much if she didn't think she was being interesting.' She looked over her shoulder with no better-disposed an expression. By now Alun was nowhere to be seen.

'I noticed she'd been knocking it back quite a bit recently.' Rhiannon said this in her factual way, then turned brisk. 'Peter, love, I haven't talked to you at all. Let's go off somewhere and have a gas. Quick before Dorothy comes back.'

'I'm away in a minute, Dad,' called William. 'Be in touch now, right? I mean you with me.'

'Yes. Thanks, Willie.'

Rhiannon finished mouthing and signalling to her daughter from a 'couple of yards off and hurried Peter to the front door, wheeling nimbly round the mother-person he had classified earlier. It was obvious that the old creature was dying to grab her and stop her doing whatever she wanted to do, but she just failed to bring herself to bear in time. He had explained about the minicab and been assured that it would be safer to wait outside. Neither had a hat or coat. As they went down the front steps she took his arm. It was a fine night, overcast but dry and mild and gone altogether dark in the few minutes since he had stood at the dining-room window. There was plenty of light from the windows behind them, and the traffic was quite busy on the new multi-million-pound double-carriageway that curved round towards town.

'That was quick,' said Peter. 'Where are we going?'

'It wasn't awful leaving like that, was it? I had talked to everyone. It just seemed like such a good time to bugger off. I thought we could go and have a drink somewhere. Well, half a drink it had better be for me I've had three glasses of wine already. Have you got a nice place you go when you want to be quiet?'

'I wish I had. Everywhere's so noisy these days.'

'I thought there's that place in Hatchery Road, the Italian joint, Mario's is it?'

'Oh, out to dinner, are we?'

'No, love, Alun's got this table at the Glendower later.

I'll have to turn up to that, but we can have a gas before. You see, there's a little bar place at the back at whatever it's called where you haven't got to be going to eat. Er, Gwen knows them there. We'll talk about her and the rest of it another time. Actually it's not very nice really,' said Rhiannon, suddenly doubtful. 'I mean it's not very classy. Sort of cheap and cheerful, if you see what I mean.'

Peter saw what she meant almost before they entered Mario's, clearly a former shop converted some short while before at no great outlay of cash or imagination. The front part held a few rows of flimsy tables for four laid with very clean red-and-white check cloths and napkins and a central line of bottled sauces and mustards. Long sticks of bread or biscuit in red-striped transparent plastic lay on every side-plate. A plump, heavily moustached waiter in a tartan jacket was serving, vocally and with great sweeps of his arm, plates of rather British-looking meat and veg to a quartet of silent youngsters. Their wary, first-date look made Peter feel a good hundred and fifty. He saw that Rhiannon was watching him to gauge his reactions, so he smiled and nodded brightly.

There hastened forward another plump man with a moustache and a notable jacket, one resembling an abbreviated dressing-gown. He too cut the air a good deal, proclaiming himself generally to be the proprietor, and of an Italian restaurant too. His greeting to Rhiannon fell short of kissing her hand but not by much. If he was not Italian himself by blood, which in this part of South Wales and in the catering trade he might quite well have been, he was the next best thing, even perhaps one better: a Welshman putting it on all-out. Peter got something different from him, the graver reception appropriate to a senator or international operatic tenor. 'Mario' or very possibly Mario led them through a curtain of hanging strips of shiny vari-coloured stuff into the back-of-the-shop part of the premises. Here, in a kind of boarding-house interior, a couple of groups of soberly dressed middle-aged people were drinking reddish or yellowish liquors out of glasses with a band of sugar round the rim or chock-a-block with straws and stirrers. Rhiannon and Peter sat up at a walnut table with barley-sugar legs and found it most handy for their drinks when they came, white wine for her, slimline tonic for him: he wished he had done without his last one or two at the club.

'Not too awful, do you think?' whispered Rhiannon. 'You'll have to speak up if you want me to hear you - deafer by the day. No, it's fine, I could enjoy a drink in a coal-shed as long as there was no music.'

In fact for the first time in his life he felt he could have done with some to take the edge off the silence. It had been all right in the car, but there they had had the driver not to say anything much in front of. After three seconds Peter felt he was never going to speak again. Then he brainily remembered that, except of course for Muriel, mothers liked talking about children and approved of fathers who did too, so he started on William, which allowed him to work in a lot of the necessary crap about houses, neighbourhoods and such. Rhiannon came back along the same lines with bits of Rosemary. Then they got on to the party and she said in a special offhand voice, 'I reckon William quite took to Rosemary, didn't you? Stayed close, anyway.'

'I was impressed by her myself,'-said Peter. He meant it, in fact the sudden oblique reminder of the youthful Rhiannon had almost made him catch his breath, but he had to admit it came out sounding like hell. 'She struck me as, as ... '

'I told you she's going to be a barrister? Arguing in a law-court. She's always had a way with words. Like Alun, I suppose.' She gave him a cautious, measuring look she probably thought he missed. 'William got a girl, has he?'

'I don't really know. I think not at the moment. He has, you know, had girls.'

'Oh, and Rosemary's had boys. Well, I say had, had, I just assume.' I just assume.'

'That's all I can do with William, assume. He's perfectly normal and perfectly fit and he goes about with girls. He's also thirty. And there we are.'

'Yes, and he's sure of himself in a good way. I think that's enough really. To be going on with, I mean. From your point of view.'

'I suppose so.' He went on without thinking much, 'I'm pretty sure my old man had a much better idea of what I used to get up to than I have about my son.'

'I wonder. If he had I doubt if he was any better off in consequence, your dad. But you can't help comparing, I catch myself doing it all the time. And things are much better now. Infinitely better than they used to be.'

'You and Rosemary, you're pretty close, I expect, aren't you?' asked Peter. Now he sounded sickly as well as fatuous. To improve matters he added, 'People say it's easier for mothers and daughters.'

'No great confidences, just a few little remarks she's dropped from time to time.'

'That make you think that ... things have got better.'

'M'm. Yeah.'

That seemed to be that for the moment. Peter was not at all sure where this was leading but he could tell it was somewhere, if only from the look of slight tautness about the corners of Rhiannon's mouth that he had seen before. Then he noticed that she was goggling for his benefit at the nearest of their fellow-customers, who he was sure were too far off to hear them and not interested anyway. Oh Christ - Wales for ever, he thought: thirty years in London and further parts and when it came to certain certain subjects subjects you still kept mum when strangers were present, or visible, so as to be on the safe side now, see. He smiled; after a moment of mild astonishment she did the same. At this very juncture the Mario-figure came bustling up and brilliantly announced to the party in question, 'Your table is ready whenever you like,' making about thirty syllables of it. Just as obligingly they started to move at once. Rhiannon had evidently used those few moments to decide it was all right for her to go ahead. Not before the diners had well and truly departed, she began, 'What I meant about comparing, mostly anyway, what they don't seem to have now is all that awful routine you had to go through every time. I don't say they actually do any more of, you know, you still kept mum when strangers were present, or visible, so as to be on the safe side now, see. He smiled; after a moment of mild astonishment she did the same. At this very juncture the Mario-figure came bustling up and brilliantly announced to the party in question, 'Your table is ready whenever you like,' making about thirty syllables of it. Just as obligingly they started to move at once. Rhiannon had evidently used those few moments to decide it was all right for her to go ahead. Not before the diners had well and truly departed, she began, 'What I meant about comparing, mostly anyway, what they don't seem to have now is all that awful routine you had to go through every time. I don't say they actually do any more of, you know, it, it, or less of it, or it's any better or worse when they get there but at least they're spared that. Sometimes when I look back, for a moment I can't credit it. It was like following an instruction manual-well, that's what it or less of it, or it's any better or worse when they get there but at least they're spared that. Sometimes when I look back, for a moment I can't credit it. It was like following an instruction manual-well, that's what it was, was, for goodness' sake. Stage one, arm round; stage two, kissing; stage three, more kissing; stage four, hand up top, outside; stage five, same thing, inside; stage six, really rude, not there yet but on the horizon. At one stage per date, max. It's like what some tribe in Africa used to get up to to make it rain before they learnt better. Only this used to goon for months often. And usually never get there. Same for everyone and no exceptions. Or am I exaggerating, do you think?' for goodness' sake. Stage one, arm round; stage two, kissing; stage three, more kissing; stage four, hand up top, outside; stage five, same thing, inside; stage six, really rude, not there yet but on the horizon. At one stage per date, max. It's like what some tribe in Africa used to get up to to make it rain before they learnt better. Only this used to goon for months often. And usually never get there. Same for everyone and no exceptions. Or am I exaggerating, do you think?'

'No,' said Peter, who in the last half-minute had found out he had not forgotten everything after all. 'Not in the least. And there were terrible sorts of tips on how to get round the rules.'

'Oh, and we had ours on how not to let them get round the rules. Phew. Could it have been a class thing?'

'I don't know.'

'No, unless it was just the aristocracy did different, because there were plenty of girls from the valleys in Brook Hall - you remember, and they were just the same. A bit nastier about it they were, I used to think, some of them. More cynical. I am exaggerating because it wasn't as clear-cut as that, couldn't have been. But there wasn't much that didn't more or less fit in with it in the end. I remember thinking once or twice at first it might all be Welsh, because of the chapel and everything, but I soon found out it was English as well. In a big way. So then I thought, well if I thought about it at all I thought it must be British. Couldn't be French. Didn't know about the Irish. The last thing was, do you remember those books by an American chap called Oh-something? Charlie was very keen on him. And the Sahara came into it somehow.'

'O'Hara. And the book you mean is Appointment in Samarra. Appointment in Samarra. I used to have them all at one time. John O'Hara. Good God.' 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 . same . .. .. thing. thing. In In America.' 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. Cheap. I expect the chaps called it something too, didn't they, that whole system?' 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.' 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 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?' 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.