Unexplained Laughter Read online

  ‘It’s the sort of silly idea I get all the time,’ observed Lydia, ‘only this time it was you who got it.’

  ‘But who would’ve made the drawings?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Some discarded mistress?’ surmised Lydia. ‘Some cuckolded person?’

  Betty persisted, ‘No, but why would they go all that way to draw on a rock?’

  Lydia considered, ‘You mean, why not squirt rude messages on the petrol station?’

  ‘Not quite that,’ said Betty. ‘It just seems odd to do it where no one is likely to see it. It doesn’t seem like revenge.’

  No, thought Lydia, it didn’t. The drawings had had that oddly unimpassioned quality. None of the fetid rage of the sexually wronged.

  ‘What a mysterious valley this is,’ she said. ‘Unexplained laughter and filthy drawings in secret places. Perhaps Stan is walking abroad.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Oh, no one,’ said Lydia. ‘Perhaps the ancient fairies are looking after things round here.’

  The woman from Ty Fach has found the pictures that I made on the rock, and the little woman with her has looked at them. I lay in the bracken on the side of the hill and watched them. I did not think that anyone would ever see the pictures except the sheep and the swooping ravens. I thought that I would scratch out the pictures, but now that the woman has seen them they are not mine any more. They have moved from the rock into her eyes and into her head and so they are hers. There is little that is mine. No, no, no. The hills are mine, and the living streams and the wind that breathes in the valley and the tiny white flowers that only I know because only I lie so close to the earth that I can see them move. I lie so close to the earth that I am part of it and so it is mine. And once I remember – I very faintly remember – that I flew as the buzzards and the ravens fly and all the great sky was mine. I have been dead for a long time and by day I circle the huge air above the hills and by night I sleep in the quiet rock, as quiet as the rock, and the little worms mean consolation as they eat me.

  Lydia was tired of being good. She felt it didn’t altogether suit her. It made her feel a little dowdy, as though she had taken up residence in the suburbs of morality. Had she had it in her to be extraordinarily good she would have felt cosmopolitan, since, she considered, there was a definite elegance, a chic, in sanctity. Being a mere apprentice was boring and carried no cachet, and Lydia was dauntedly aware that she had a long way to go before she achieved the skills and ease of perfection. It was much, much easier to be mischievous, to be slightly bad; and while, of course, being very good was an infinity, an eternity, away from being very bad, being a bit bad was very similar to being a bit good and unfortunately offered more opportunities for fun.

  ‘Let’s have a picnic,’ she said, telling herself that next week she would make a real effort to work again at the practice of virtue.

  Betty was enthusiastic. ‘A real one,’ she cried. ‘An Edwardian one with tablecloths and lobster patties and champagne.’

  ‘I was thinking more in terms of sardine sandwiches and a flask of tea,’ said Lydia. ‘The village shop is short on lobster and I don’t see why I should pour Dom Perignon down people’s gullets.’ Nevertheless she spoke mildly. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘the Molesworths would turn up their noses at anything too fancy. They like sort of hotel tea.’

  Betty was astonished. ‘Do you mean to ask the Molesworths?’ she asked. ‘I thought you couldn’t stand them.’

  This threw Lydia into some perplexity. She was not so far gone in the sinful practice of dissimulation that she felt free to claim that she meant to ask them because she knew Betty would be pleased, and she could think of no other remotely credible reason for doing so.

  ‘I knew you’d like me to ask them,’ she said eventually, since there was nothing else for it. ‘I shan’t have to talk to them because we’ll be running round in the fresh air and there’s no very formal placement for picnics.’

  ‘I think it’s very nice of you,’ said Betty. ‘They’ll be awfully pleased.’

  It isn’t at all nice of me, thought Lydia, and they won’t be pleased, but they’ll come from curiosity and snobbery, since although they don’t approve of me they think I’m rather posh. ‘We will make it a nice picnic,’ she said, in the spirit of the penitent who intends to do the wicked thing she had first thought of but will also do something pleasant to make it slightly less reprehensible. Dimly she heard the bells of hell distantly pealing. ‘Let’s have egg sandwiches,’ she said hurriedly, ‘and cucumber and ham. And China tea and white wine, and you can make a cake. We’ll take the car to the foot of the mountain and walk from there.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Betty, sighing with innocent delight. ‘We’ll take fruit as well and I can make a quiche.’

  ‘You mustn’t do too much,’ said Lydia, misguidedly, as Betty took this for further evidence of her good -heartedness; ‘you haven’t been well.’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ claimed Betty. ‘It was just a touch of summer flu or something. Now, who exactly are we asking?’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ said Lydia, ‘and Beuno and the doctor and April and April’s Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Not Hywel?’ asked Betty.

  ‘We can ask him,’ said Lydia, ‘but he won’t come. Farmers don’t go on picnics. I somehow know they don’t. I can’t picture a farmer on a picnic. They used to have bread and cheese and a jug of cider under the hedgerow, but I don’t think they even do that any more. I think they jump in the jeep and go home for mince and dumplings and a mug of instant coffee.’

  I know now that I always knew that the woman would find the pictures. I knew when I saw her in the graveyard reading the writing. She likes to know. People who like to know make the earth smaller. I would like to see the earth grow and everything in the earth grow until it touched the skirts of heaven, and no one could be dead.

  ‘She’s a very interesting study,’ said Dr Wyn. ‘She is not without intelligence, but the harm that was done to her at birth is irreversible.’ He had called, ostensibly, to check on the state of Betty’s health but now had his feet under the table in no uncertain fashion.

  Lydia thought that the harm done to us all on being born was irreversible but held her tongue.

  Dr Wyn tilted his chair and leaned towards the dresser. Stretching out his arm he took Finn’s postcard in his fingertips and settled his chair back on to an even keel. He scrutinised the picture and then turned it over to study.the postmark, or possibly, thought Lydia, to read the message. ‘Greece, hmmm,’ he remarked.

  ‘Would you like some more tea?’ asked Betty in a hurry. She knocked over a cup in her haste to defuse this touchy situation.

  ‘Love some,’ said Dr Wyn, putting the postcard on the table. Lydia picked it up, wondering whether to clutch it possessively to her chest, her arms crossed over it like a person in an old melodrama.

  ‘His manners,’ she said indignantly, when he had reluctantly left, peering at his watch and bemoaning the urgency of surgery hours. ‘The way he makes himself at home.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean to be rude,’ explained Betty. ‘He wants to seem at ease and be friendly.’

  ‘He hasn’t got it right then,’ snapped Lydia. ‘He hasn’t got it right at all. He called me his old darling at one point. Ooh, I was cross.’

  Even Betty knew that this would be difficult to excuse. Nevertheless she had a go. ‘You can’t expect a lot of polish in a country GP,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t expect a lot of polish,’ protested Lydia. ‘I just expect not to be leered at and not to have my corre -spondence read. It isn’t a lot to ask.’

  Betty pressed on. ‘I know he only means to be friendly and appear relaxed.’

  Lydia regarded her keenly. ‘I can’t think why you’re so determined to defend him,’ she said in the tone of one on the verge of enlightenment.

  ‘I’m sorry for him,’ said Betty unexpectedly. ‘Some -times he looks like a poor little child outside a cake shop.’

  As this
was precisely the aspect of him which Lydia found most annoying the discussion lapsed.

  That evening Lydia called at Château Molesworth to proffer her picnic invitation. She wore a babyish frock with little pink flowers embroidered on it and the gentle charm which she used on people who might be frightened of her.

  April opened the door and was clearly both astonished and displeased to see her there.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Lydia without originality but with appealing warmth.

  As she expected, April accepted her invitation. Her expression softened when Lydia said that she would like her parents to come too, and again Lydia had misgivings. To quell them she said that April was looking very pretty in her yellow track suit. She was actually looking quite pretty, but Lydia didn’t think so. She thought that April looked as though she bought all her clothes from a catalogue. ‘That colour does suit you,’ she said. And it did quite, but bad Lydia didn’t know because she had made up her mind already and was blind to the simpler aspects of reality.

  What remained of her conscience ached a little as she drove home remembering that, if she cared to, she could make April love her, and that this was a dangerous, potentially harmful ability. Beuno who had a similar quality, she knew, did not misuse it. If she had still been in love with Finn, Lydia would not now be casting round for ways to entertain herself. Love was like water. Out of control it caused dreadful havoc, but when it ran smoothly and sweetly it not only modified life’s aridity but added a pleasing dimension to the view, while Lydia, at present, was using it only to make mud pies. She felt suddenly depressed, as though a darkness lay upon her. She was morose and silent when she got home.

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked Betty. ‘Did they say they wouldn’t come?’ She couldn’t remember ever seeing Lydia so cast down. ‘Were they rude to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Lydia, ‘they were delighted.’ She poured herself a drink and stood by the door watching the innocent evening settle on the graveyard.

  ‘Why are you so quiet?’ asked Betty after a while. ‘I hope you haven’t caught whatever it was I had.’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t having a picnic,’ said Lydia. ‘I wish I’d never thought of it. I wish Beuno would call.’ She wished she was a better person. That was what she really wished.

  ‘I expect he will,’ said Betty. If the presence of Beuno was all that would cheer up Lydia then Betty felt that he should be here. Lydia morose seemed a painfully unnatural phenomenon. Her misery blackened the evening and should be assuaged at all costs. ‘I’m going to light the candles,’ Betty said, ‘so do close the door or the moths will fly in.’

  ‘I’m waiting for the laughter,’ said Lydia. ‘If it comes tonight I shall track it down.’

  Beuno came first and then the laughter. As soon as Lydia saw him she realised that she could have her picnic without putting her wicked plan into operation. She merely had to change the venue slightly. She couldn’t think why she hadn’t thought of that before. It would make the whole exercise entirely pointless, but she didn’t care. She had been about to collude with Stan in the face of all her good resolutions, and there would have been yet another indelible stain on her spirit which, she suspected, were it available to her, she would not care to put unwashed in her underwear drawer. Perhaps that was what mothers meant when they insisted you should change your underwear daily for fear you should be run over. Lydia knew that, whereas her lingerie was impeccable, her spirit would not stand up well to close inspection in the event of an accident.

  Betty was so relieved to see Lydia in spirits again that she didn’t care at all that it was Beuno who had wrought the transformation. She was beginning to realise that whatever Lydia felt for Beuno was different in kind from what she had felt for Finn, and this had eased her incipient unhappiness, for while it is one thing not to win the beloved it is another to see him swept off by somebody else, and far, far worse.

  ‘Why is Dr Wyn such a pain in the back of the neck?’ asked Lydia.

  ‘Lydia,’ said Betty.

  ‘No, but he is,’ said Lydia. ‘He’s socially insecure and he presumes too much and he ate half my pheasant. Beuno doesn’t mind if I speak truthfully. Truth is his business. Tell me why the man is as he is.’

  ‘I will if you want me to,’ said Beuno.

  ‘I implore you to,’ said Lydia. ‘I wish to widen my already profound understanding of human nature. Why is he still here, so discontented in his native village?’

  ‘His mother wouldn’t let him leave,’ said Beuno. ‘She didn’t look like one of the village matriarchs – she was quite small – but she might have been quarried out of the local slate. She was determined he should qualify as a doctor and just as determined that he should practise here. She told him that he had to be successful and then she made it impossible for him. Some country GPs enjoy the life, I suppose, but he wanted to go.’

  ‘That’s a very good method of driving people mad,’ said Lydia. ‘Telling them to do something, then arranging matters so that they can’t.’

  ‘There was more to it than that,’ said Beuno after a while. ‘He had a brother like Angharad and his mother was determined that Wyn should help look after him. She was – not ashamed of him – but outraged that one of her children should be like that. We’re all related, you know, but Wyn’s mother thought herself superior. She was unhappy all her life.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked Betty. ‘Wyn’s mother and brother.’

  ‘Dead,’ said Beuno.

  ‘Then why doesn’t he hop it?’ demanded Lydia.

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Beuno. ‘If he went now he would see all his previous life here as a waste of time, and in a way he is wreaking vengeance on his mother by being embittered and something of a failure – saying, look what you’ve done to me.’

  ‘I once had a sort of vague idea that life in the country was innocent and uncomplicated,’ said Lydia. ‘I am familiar with the darker view which encompasses bestiality, incest, parricide, rustling, infanticide and the murderous rivalry within the Women’s Institute, but I had imagined that this view was the product of a warped approach to life and greatly exaggerated.’

  ‘Sometimes in a small community – and ours is very small – passions which in a wider context would be dissipated become distilled and reduced to poison. A trivial slight, a threat to self-esteem, which might cause you a moment’s irritation, here can give rise to resent -ments which may fester for centuries.’ Beuno smiled at her. ‘The only peace that you’ll find here lies in a kind of pagan solitude.’

  ‘Where’s God?’ asked Lydia, rather petulantly.

  ‘Here, of course,’ said Beuno. ‘But no more here than anywhere else. You’ll find him just as easily on Paddington Station if you happen to be looking.’

  ‘It’s all very depressing,’ said Lydia reverting to the topic of the doctor. ‘I always think of doctors as plumbers, but they don’t usually see themselves like that. They mostly think they’re marvellous and act lordly and gallop about being pillars of the community.’

  ‘Poor man,’ said Betty. ‘Supper’s ready.’

  ‘I’m frightfully hungry,’ said Lydia, making Betty feel useful. ‘What is for supper?’

  It was carrot soup and salad of course, but it wasn’t bad and they drank cider with it.

  ‘Perhaps we could have cider with our picnic,’ said Betty. ‘It’s cheaper than wine.’

  ‘I don’t like it as much,’ said Lydia, ‘but perhaps it would be more suitable. More rustic and in keeping with the occasion.’

  ‘Shall I make some sausage rolls?’ asked Betty.

  ‘You are very ambivalent about the sausage,’ Lydia accused her. ‘Do you love him or do you hate him? One minute you say trustfully that he contains only soya meal and the next you suspect him of harbouring chunks of minced-up nameless anatomy. You must make your position clear.’

  ‘I think a lot depends on the make,’ said Betty. ‘The known brands must have a certain proportion of meat in them, but I don’t kn
ow what sort. And the others could have almost anything, but I think it’s mostly cereal. I don’t think I will make sausage rolls. I’ll make some anchovy savouries instead.’

  ‘I think you’re wise,’ said Lydia. ‘Let us stay on the safe side. We want no repetition of the other evening.’

  ‘Oh ho,’ agreed Betty, shuddering. ‘I felt terrible.’

  ‘She was sick,’ explained Lydia to Beuno.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ said Beuno. ‘Wyn told me.’

  ‘What has he done with his Hippocratic oath?’ asked Lydia severely. ‘Whatever happened to confidentiality?’

  ‘He sees himself more as your friend than your doctor,’ explained Beuno.

  ‘Does he?’ said Lydia. She leaned her head on her hand and stirred her cider with a fingertip. They sat on in friendly silence until the laughter began, whereat Lydia’s glass shook beneath her hand.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Betty, startled.

  ‘Listen,’ said Lydia. ‘Listen.’

  ‘It’s the wind,’ said Betty after a while uncertainly.

  ‘There is no wind,’ said Lydia. Those branches still just visible in the encroaching night were motionless.

  ‘It’s laughter,’ said Beuno. He got up and opened the door. ‘But I can’t tell where it’s coming from.’

  Lydia was now no longer frightened. If Beuno could hear the laughter it could not, in her estimation, be bad; nor could she be mad. She stalked, stiff-legged like a wolf, into the darkling garden and like a wolf she sniffed the air.

  Betty followed, straining her ears. ‘Where is it?’ she fussed. ‘I can hardly hear a thing.’

  ‘It’s all over,’ said Lydia. ‘That’s what’s so odd. It comes from everywhere.’

  ‘I can hear something,’ conceded Betty, ‘but it does sound to me like wind or water.’

  Lydia sucked her finger and held it up. ‘No wind,’ she repeated after a moment.

  ‘There may be a wind further down the valley,’ said Betty. ‘You know how sheltered we are here.’

  ‘It’s someone laughing,’ said Lydia. ‘Roars of laughter.’