The old devils: a novel by Kingsley Amis Page B

you're in process of doing to me. I'm not sure how much longer I can stand you.'
    'The past is past. Nothing but a waste of time wishing it had been different. '
    'Who's said anything about the past?'
    'You have. Of course you have. Your great theme, isn't it?'
    That one failed to go off. Muriel just talked on at a slightly enhanced rate about what supposed friends of his had said to her about him and harmless things like that. He concentrated as fixedly as he could on driving. If he could have been reasonably sure of killing them both outright he would have been inclined to swerve into the path of an oncoming bus or builder's lorry, but as it was he took them safely past the War Memorial, through Irish Town, across the River Iwerne and into what had once been the mining village of Cwmgwyrdd, now a semi-smart outer suburb. Every so often he tried to make himself believe something he knew to be true, that Muriel would not go on like this for ever and that after a few minutes she would go back to being rather mechanically affable until next time, but he stayed unbelieving. They were home, getting out of the car in the built-on garage of their quite decent Thirties villa on the pricier seaward side. When Peter had locked up, Muriel gave him a glance of studied neutrality, the signal for some kind of change of direction. He was glad he had followed his instinct and left the vegetables (out of old Vaughan Mowbray's patch that morning) unmentioned in the car. To flaunt them now might have led to requests to come out and say what he had against the way he was normally fed, and further.
    On the front doorstep she said to him, 'You know, I don't think that news about the Weavers is good news for anyone.'
    After all these years they really understood each other very well. Her saying that in an ordinary tone meant that hostilities were suspended and more, that that subject was now free, cleared for bringing up at any later stage without penalty. Further yet, as might not have been instantly clear to anyone but him, it constituted an apology, or the nearest she was ever going to get to one.
    These thoughts occupied him while he went and got a couple of cold fish-fingers out of the refrigerator for his lunch, so that he failed to consider whether he agreed with the content of what she had said or not. Muriel pulled on her wellies and tramped off into the garden. She never ate lunch.

    Two - Rhiannon, Alun

    1
    A train, a particular train, the 15.15 out of Paddington on an afternoon some weeks after Peter Thomas had decided to leave the potatoes and leeks in his car, emerged from the Severn Tunnel into Wales. The area had once been called Monmouthshire but because of a decision taken in London was now called Gwent, after an ancient Welsh kingdom or whatever it was that might have formerly existed there or thereabouts. Anyway, it was Wales all right, as Rhiannon Weaver reckoned she could have told by the look of it through the carriage window. There was no obvious giveaway, like road-signs in two languages or c1osed-down factories, but something was there, an extra greenness in the grass, a softness in the light, something that was very like England and yet not England at all, more a matter of feeling than seeing but not just feeling, something run-down and sad but simpler and freer than England all the same. Ten minutes to Newport, another hour in the train after that and ten or fifteen minutes more by road.
    This journey was the Weavers' final move and tonight would be their first night on Welsh soil as residents, though they were booked to stay with Gwen and Malcolm Cellan Davies that first night. Rhiannon had rather expected to make the trip by car, and so among other things to be saved a fair amount of packing, but had soon realized that, for somebody wanting to be noticed arriving, trains had the great virtue that they turned up at a fixed place at a fixed time. In one way it would have been better to fly down, but scheduled flights