Unexplained Laughter Read online

  ‘No, really,’ said Lydia.

  She had driven as far as she could and now stopped the car.

  The doctor drew up and parked beside her and every -one got out. Several people complimented her on the beauty of the surroundings, because it was her picnic and so for a while Wales was her dining room.

  ‘Where’s Beuno?’ asked Betty casually, and Lydia realised that she must have been silently asking that all the way from the farmhouse. She looked enquiringly at Elizabeth.

  ‘He said he’d meet us here,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He likes to walk.’

  April suddenly began to behave very badly. She draped herself round the doctor and adopted a childish air.

  He responded by calling her darling rather more often than was natural.

  Her parents looked on indulgently. ‘Lovely bit of weather,’ said her father, and her mother remarked that she always thought it so silly of them not to go out in the country more when they lived so near to it.

  ‘We’ve got to walk a bit now,’ said Lydia.

  ‘But it’s so pretty here,’ said April’s Mum.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Beuno?’ said Betty.

  Lydia said that ever since running-boards had gone from cars only very vulgar people ate their victuals in the vicinity of their vehicles.

  The extreme snobbery of this abstruse observation would have been rude had it been clear, for Lydia knew perfectly well that the Molesworths were the sort of people who picnicked in lay-bys, bringing little chairs and tables and using the car boot as a sort of sideboard.

  ‘We must all carry something,’ she said, ‘and make safari.’

  Betty noticed however that Lydia contrived to carry nothing but a bottle of cider which she had clearly earmarked for herself.

  Lydia led the way, conspicuous in red linen. She went in the opposite direction from the rock drawings, her planned destination when she had first conceived her scheme. How, she wondered bemusedly, could she have been so trivial recently as to wish to upset these unexceptionable people.

  Finn caught up with her and she stopped, turning round to gauge her following. ‘Wait for Elizabeth,’ she commanded him. ‘Walk with her.’

  Elizabeth was walking with Betty behind the doctor and April, who was clinging to his arm and, as it were, daintily tripping up. She probably imagined she was comporting herself in an attractively provocative and feminine fashion, thought Lydia, sneering and lengthen ing her stride.

  ‘She’s walking with Betty,’ said Finn.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lydia.

  ‘What?’ said Finn.

  ‘What do you mean “What?”’ said Lydia.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Finn.

  ‘You’re stupid,’ said Lydia. ‘She’s in love with that creepy doctor and he’s flashing that dreary April around to upset her. Can’t you see?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Finn, who was, like most heterosexual men, disarmingly simple-minded in these matters. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  Lydia was so annoyed at this that she couldn’t think where to begin but promised herself that Finn should suffer for his insolence.

  They had reached a stretch of mountain where the ground was comparatively parallel with the sky. ‘This will do,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear picnicking on a slope. All the buns go rolling away.’

  Beuno was sitting by a deep pool which the flatness of the ground had permitted the stream to form.

  ‘And here is lovely Beuno,’ said Lydia. ‘He is studying for the ministry. How clever he is to know where we should find him.’

  She looked sideways at Finn to see if he was sufficiently irritated by all this. He was. He banged down the rucksack and the basket he had been carrying and looked without liking at the unencumbered Beuno.

  There was fortunately no wind at all. The tablecloth needed no stones to hold it down and all the plastic bags waited for Betty to put them in the master plastic bag she had brought for the purpose. The sun shone with magisterial tranquillity and the few clouds kept their distance from it.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ said Mrs Molesworth when she had got her breath back. ‘April, make sure you sit on a blanket.’

  For a while there was no conversation and Lydia began to regret that she had put Finn in a bad mood, since usually he was prepared to entertain when she was not.

  ‘I’m glad they haven’t started planting conifers up here,’ she remarked at last, resignedly and in a monotonous tone.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the doctor, ‘they quite alter the ecology.’

  ‘They do offer job opportunities to the locals,’ said Mr Molesworth.

  ‘I think they’re rather pretty,’ said Mrs Molesworth. ‘All those little Christmas trees.’

  ‘They smell nice,’ said April unexpectedly, ‘like cough mixture.’ She giggled and snuggled closer to her lover.

  ‘The rain forests are being dreadfully depleted,’ said Betty.

  ‘Dutch elm disease is a terrible thing,’ said Mr Molesworth, coming round for a second time.

  ‘Something like 90,000 acres of trees per minute are being chopped down all over the world,’ contributed Lydia off the top of her head.

  They looked at her doubtfully.

  ‘How long does it take a conifer to grow to a size where it can be used?’ she asked hastily, since her last remark had threatened to take the discussion off course. ‘Come to think of it,’ she added with more interest, ‘what do they use them for? Pit props? Paper? All that poxy pine furniture people keep buying?’

  ‘They have a lot of purposes,’ said Mr Molesworth, who clearly didn’t know.

  But now Betty came to the rescue and began to unpack the sardine sandwiches.

  They are sitting by the eye of the stream where it looks up at the sun before it weeps down the mountainside. I am above them, so high I hear the small birds sing below me. So high that I cannot hear them speak. Elizabeth will not speak. If she spoke she would say, ‘Wyn, Wyn, Wyn . . .’

  ‘Come for a healthy walk then, lazybones,’ said the doctor, hauling April to her feet. Whereupon she said, ‘Eeeee –’ – in a high-pitched, slaughtered-pig-like way, thought Lydia, eyeing her dispassionately. April dipped her fingers into a paper cup of cider and flicked it at him before skipping away uphill.

  ‘Preserve us,’ said Lydia aloud, turning on to her side.

  Mrs Molesworth was paddling and her husband was poking at the stones because, he said, fossils were one of his hobbies.

  ‘You’ve certainly got an odd collection here,’ said Finn. ‘Who’s the poof?’

  ‘He’s not a poof,’ said Lydia carefully.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Finn, ‘I’ve been talking to Betty. She says he’s never going to get married.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ said Lydia, ‘and I’m not a poof. Anyway, if you’ve been talking to Betty you know who he is.’

  She was pleased with the way things were turning out. Betty would have spoken well and warmly of Beuno, and Finn was clearly jealous.

  ‘Ministry,’ continued Finn with contempt. ‘Celibate.’

  ‘He’s in love with God,’ said Lydia, rolling on to her back and staring at the sky. ‘I can’t tell you how boring people look once you’ve fallen in love with God.’

  ‘And what would you know about that?’ enquired Finn.

  Lydia was silent.

  ‘Come on,’ said Finn, beginning to get nasty. ‘What do you know about the love of God?’

  But Lydia had discovered, to her own surprise, that she found the matter too significant to quarrel about in a childish way. If she was going to quarrel about it at all she would have to do it seriously. ‘Betty wants to marry him,’ she said. ‘That’s why she was talking about marriage.’

  ‘You’re such a fantasist, Lydia,’ said Finn, predictably.

  This Lydia was prepared to quarrel about. ‘Do you mean that in your opinion Betty doesn’t want to get married?’ she asked. ‘Or do you mean she doesn’t want to marry Beuno? Be
cause I can assure you that you are entirely wrong on both counts.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Finn, and Lydia decided that even had he not gone off with the duck their relationship would have had no future.

  I can only see them, but I can see them all. Only Beuno knows I am here. Beuno has always known where I am. I have seen what they call love and heard them speak of it. What Beuno feels for me is not what they feel for each other. Perhaps it is love. I cannot tell. I can see him across the wide air looking at where I am and if he was closer he would look into my eyes. No one else looks into my eyes.

  ‘Hell,’ said Lydia, starting up. She had just noticed the direction that the doctor was taking, April jigging along beside him. ‘Gripes. Finn, make them come back.’

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ said Finn, his voice coloured by laziness and ill-temper.

  ‘Oh lawks,’ said Lydia agitatedly. ‘Hell and damnation.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Finn.

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Lydia, lying back on the grass and manifesting despair. ‘Oh well, who cares.’

  She had seen, in the distance, the doctor and April making unerringly for the cave-like depression which contained the rock drawings and would indeed offer a splendid location for a spot of slap-and-tickle. The same thought might have occurred to Mrs Molesworth, because she was heading after them.

  ‘Dear, oh bloody dear,’ said Lydia, sitting up in renewed dismay, but they had turned and were coming downhill. ‘It could’ve been worse,’ she said.

  Finn still had no idea what she was talking about and was not at all interested anyway.

  ‘Well, you certainly don’t care,’ said Lydia, irrationally annoyed. As well as being rather stupid, Finn now had grass in his hair and was looking rather stupid. One of the worst things about falling in love was falling out again, taking a long clear look at the erstwhile beloved and feeling a total lemon. It was a sensation Lydia cordially resented.

  ‘Had a nice walk?’ she asked coldly as the doctor came level.

  ‘Lovely,’ said April. ‘We saw some . . .’

  The doctor knocked over a bottle of cider and Lydia leapt too late to save it, as it shattered against a flat stone. He was in a terrible temper. He was white, and several of those muscles with which the human face is so richly endowed and which are seldom called into play in a civilised context were working at the sides of his nose, pulling at his upper lip.

  ‘Darling, you are snarling,’ whispered Lydia to the cider bottle.

  ‘You go too fast,’ complained Mrs Molesworth, panting to a halt.

  Lydia felt quite sorry for the doctor, who so clearly wanted to kick hell out of someone and could find no excuse. April clung to his jacket sleeve being winsome: very unwisely in Lydia’s opinion.

  ‘We’ll have to be starting back soon,’ she said mercifully.

  He saw me. He stepped back and looked up, and his eyes saw my eyes. I thought it is good that I am dead, and good that Hywel is standing on the mountainside to the north, and good that Beuno is sitting on the mountainside to the south, and good that the girl is there, laughing, because his face was the face of the fox in the trap and if we had been alone his face would have been the face of the fox in freedom alone with the hare on the mountainside.

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ said Lydia, ‘a dear little curly-headed girl, I used to keep bunnies, dear little furry bunnies, and when I shut them in for the night – that is when I remembered to shut them in for the night – I always used to wonder what they did when I wasn’t watching them. Sometimes they were eating their babies.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ said Betty in distress.

  ‘So that was how I knew they went on existing when I wasn’t watching them,’ said Lydia.

  ‘Are you wondering what will happen to the people of the valley when you go away?’ asked Beuno.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Lydia.

  ‘They will go on eating their babies,’ said Beuno. ‘But most of them will be here when you come back.’

  ‘What do they do when you’re not watching them?’ asked Lydia.

  ‘Much the same as what they do when you’re not watching them,’ he said. ‘But I’m one of them, so I know what they do, and even when I’m away the things that I do are the same as the things that I did and the same as the things that they’re doing.’

  Betty looked bewildered, so Lydia explained. ‘Ants,’ she said, ‘always behave in much the same way, so when an ant is absent he knows very deeply what the other ants are doing, while you and me are – say – grasshoppers, so when we’re not watching ants we don’t know what they’re doing.’

  Betty looked more bewildered. ‘I hope Elizabeth’s all right,’ she said, trying to bring some sense back to the evening.

  Elizabeth had trodden on the broken cider bottle and a fierce shard of glass had cut the side of her foot, causing a great deal of blood to flow and making Lydia feel ill. The strange thing was that the doctor had insisted on taking her back to the farmhouse, telling Mr Molesworth to drive home his wife and disgruntled daughter. ‘How will you get back for surgery?’ April had asked, her suspicion making this innocent question sound like an accusation, and Lydia had said, ‘I’ll take him,’ and April had hated her again.

  Now Lydia was waiting for him to walk down the lane from the farmhouse, and while she waited she half-expected to hear a shot, or a number of shots, depending on who had shot whom: one if it was him shooting in the cold rage of the threatened libertine, and several if it was her taking boss-eyed and vengeful shots at a faithless lover. On the other hand, reflected Lydia, considering the nature of his calling he could merely put some deleterious substance in the wound and watch the wretched woman slowly die, while she could poison the Welsh cake which she might offer him for tea.

  Finn was making a pot of coffee and wondering why Beuno didn’t go home. Lydia could see him willing this as he reluctantly got four mugs from the dresser, but Beuno was as untroubled as a cat in the presence of a cat hater.

  ‘I could never love a doctor,’ said Lydia, thinking aloud, ‘because one’s person would hold no mystery for him.’

  ‘Elizabeth will soon be better,’ said Beuno, and now Finn looked bewildered.

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Lydia, leaving her doubts unsaid.

  ‘Oh, yes, I think so,’ said Beuno.

  ‘She’s only got a cut foot,’ said Finn, driven by exasperation into contributing to this odd conversation with its gaping spaces of meaning.

  ‘Then Stan can return to the pit,’ said Lydia comfortably, ignoring Finn.

  ‘The holidays are over,’ said Betty suddenly. ‘Do you realise I must be back by the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ said Finn. ‘I have to get back too.’

  Lydia was shocked by this, but only slightly. Betty and Finn? Finn and Betty? Well, why not? Betty was an improvement on the duck.

  ‘Bless you, my children,’ she said smiling knowingly and thereby strangling at birth the infant possibility of a new love affair. She saw at once what she had done and on the whole was glad. She would not really have liked to see Betty wearing her old clothes nor, by the same token, arm in arm with her old love.

  She prattled as she drove the doctor back to his place of work because she was wondering what it must be like to dress the wounded foot of a discarded mistress and had forbidden herself to ask.

  ‘You’ll be going soon then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia, ‘but I’ll be back.’ She didn’t care if he thought of her as an outsider. Beuno didn’t.

  Yet as she returned she was overcome by a feeling of such desolation that Lydia, who never wept, thought that tears might gush from her eyes with so great a force that they would wash the windscreen. She didn’t know where she belonged.

  She said so to Beuno, who was waiting for her in the cow parsley by the lane. She leaned out of the car window and told him.

  ‘With God,’ said Beuno placidly, ‘that sense of homelessness
is a reminder of where you belong.’

  ‘Some would say it was a yearning to get back to the womb,’ said Lydia.

  ‘Some would say anything,’ said Beuno.

  ‘How fortunate it is,’ said Lydia, ‘in view of your proposed way of life, that you believe in God. How boring for you it would be if you didn’t.’ She heard undertones of jealousy in her remark and hastened to apologise. ‘I believe in God myself,’ she explained, ‘but on the whole this belief inconveniences rather than supports me. It makes me feel inadequate and toad-like when I would prefer to feel rather wonderful and extremely happy. I wonder what happened to the laughter.’

  ‘I exorcised it,’ said Beuno.

  Lydia was suddenly annoyed with him. ‘It was my laughter,’ she said. ‘You might’ve asked. Exorcising people’s laughter without asking them!’

  Beuno looked at her with the expression of someone watching a normally reasonable person behaving irrationally and waiting for him to return to his senses.

  Lydia read this look immediately because it was unmistakable: a look worn only by those in authority, since no one else has the right to wait in expectation of an instant change in demeanour on the part of another.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t my laughter at all. It was the valley’s laughter, so I suppose it was more yours than mine anyway.’

  ‘No,’ said Beuno, ‘it is possible that you brought it with you. I just didn’t think it advisable to let it persist. It’s the same instinct as that which causes me to turn off a dripping tap whoever it belongs to.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Lydia. ‘Like things out of place. The secret behind surrealism. It gives you a bit of a turn, but then you realise how essentially childish it is, and somehow dangerous.’

  ‘Children have a sense of order, of propriety, but haven’t yet understood quite where things should be. Like Angharad and the milk.’ He looked across the fields.

  Lydia had the impression that he was about to give her as a farewell present either a benediction or a confidence, and that which was most wilful and contrary in her nature rose to refuse it. ‘Got to dash now,’ she said in a light, social tone she had not previously used with Beuno. ‘See you next hols.’