Unexplained Laughter Read online

  Lydia thought that this statement lacked joy.

  Obviously Betty thought the same. ‘How lovely to live here permanently,’ she observed brightly. ‘Such a wonderful spot for children.’

  ‘I haven’t any children,’ said Elizabeth.

  Betty rallied. ‘Oh, you will have,’ she promised. ‘I know you will.’

  How do you know, wondered Lydia, her thoughts taking on an indelicate hue.

  Elizabeth said nothing, and Lydia judged it her turn to speak.

  ‘Do you know if Ty Fach is haunted?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh Lydia,’ said Betty.

  ‘I think these old places always have ghosts,’ said Elizabeth as though she were talking of woodworm.

  The girl is depressed, thought Lydia. Most people grew animated at the mention of the supernatural, whether they believed in it or not. She felt that a whole phalanx of gibbering wraiths could rise from beneath the flagstones and Elizabeth would indifferently offer them sherry. There was something funny here, and Lydia suspected that it was not the sort of funniness that she would enjoy.

  Outside, the bad dog recommenced barking rather savagely as a car drew up in the yard. Elizabeth waited for a moment as though for someone else to open the door and then rose and went to do so herself.

  ‘What do you think?’ whispered Betty, leaning forward towards Lydia and indicating the room.

  ‘What about?’ asked Lydia in normal tones. Whispering about people when they had left the room was one of the naughty things she didn’t do.

  ‘Sssh,’ went Betty, sitting back as Elizabeth returned with another guest.

  ‘Wyn,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He’s our doctor.’

  ‘How do you do,’ said everyone.

  Lydia was finding it increasingly difficult to place Elizabeth. Her own grandfather had regarded doctors as tradespeople and would not have dreamed of asking one to dinner, but most people below the rank of bank manager treated doctors with awe and respect, calling them ‘Doctor’ all the time. Elizabeth didn’t. She behaved as though she was rather bored with this one, as though she knew him very well and yet had little use for the knowledge. Had he made a pass at her, wondered Lydia?

  She was wearing her scarlet silk. Its message ran like this: ‘This is my best frock. If you lay a finger on me, you little squirt, you’ll crease it, and if you do I’ll kill you.’ The doctor had misread the message and clearly imagined she was wearing it to entice. He was looking at her as though she were for sale.

  ‘Where’s Angharad?’ he asked. ‘She usually lets me in these days.’

  ‘She’ll be in her room,’ said Elizabeth, ‘or wandering round the hills. I’ve tried and tried to bring her out, but she’s slipping back.’ She sounded discouraged.

  ‘You did wonders with her,’ said the doctor. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Who’s Angharad?’ asked Betty, to Lydia’s surprise and regret. It was so obviously a tactless question.

  ‘She’s Hywel’s sister,’ said Elizabeth. ‘She’s not normal.’ There was something spiteful in her words, something bitter and punitive. Quickly, but too late, she added, ‘Poor child.’

  The doctor said something incomprehensible about Angharad’s medical condition, and Betty praised a corner cupboard of Welsh oak which stood adjacent to the window.

  ‘Where’s old Hywel, then?’ asked the doctor. ‘Running round after his sheep?’

  ‘He’ll be in soon,’ said Elizabeth, sounding uncon -vinced. She added with more assurance that Beuno would also soon return from his walk to the waterfall, and then wondered aloud where the Molesworths were, because in a minute they would be late.

  ‘Quite a party,’ remarked the doctor as the barking began again in the yard.

  ‘That’ll be them,’ said Elizabeth, going out.

  A middle-aged couple entered the sitting-room, and Elizabeth could be heard in the hall bidding someone go and change.

  ‘Hullo there,’ said the doctor, greeting them as old acquaintances and introducing them to Lydia and Betty.

  After a brief, appalled glance at Lydia, Mrs Molesworth (Lil) sat down on a corner of the sofa and asked the doctor a question about the imminent agricultural show designed to exclude Lydia from the conversation, to reveal her close knowledge of this event and therefore to illustrate her important position in the local community. This was because Lydia’s red frock bore another message, which went: ‘This red frock is more chic and expensive than anything which you possess, and it makes you look a provincial old trollop in your mock Chanel suit.’ Mr Molesworth (Sid) was also intimidated by Lydia and allied himself with his wife’s question.

  ‘Lil and Sid were my parents’ oldest friends,’ explained Elizabeth, standing and pouring sherry.

  ‘Both her parents died a couple of years back,’ said Mrs Molesworth in an aside to Betty. ‘Very sad.’

  ‘Oh, that is sad,’ said Betty.

  Elizabeth looked consciously unmoved, as though someone had paid her a compliment which, in modesty, she must affect not to have heard.

  ‘They were such nice people,’ said Mrs Molesworth. ‘We do miss them. He’d only just retired, and they’d built a beautiful bungalow.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ enquired Betty, contriving to look at once serious, since the subject had been death, and also interested in the Molesworths’ continuing existence. This is very difficult to do, and unless the practitioner is careful she ends up resembling the Prime Minister feigning com passion in the face of some disaster. Lydia found her irritating.

  ‘In the house behind the garage,’ said Mrs Molesworth, looking faintly surprised, as might the Queen on being posed that question. ‘We run the garage, you know. And the gift shop.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Betty nervously. Lydia had been eloquent about the house behind the garage.

  ‘We had it built to our own specifications,’ said Mrs Molesworth. ‘We always promised ourselves we’d do that one day – have everything just the way we wanted it.’ Her voice had the overtones of gentility which only Northerners seem able to achieve.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ asked Betty with an eye on Lydia.

  ‘We came from the North,’ said Mrs Molesworth, making herself sound like a Viking horde. ‘We used to holiday here and we always promised ourselves we’d live here one day.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Betty inadequately.

  Lydia was twirling her sherry glass and peering into it thoughtfully.

  Betty attempted to steer the subject clear of building. ‘Don’t you find it awfully cold in winter?’

  ‘Oh, we have under-floor central heating,’ said Mrs Molesworth complacently. ‘Even in the kitchen. We’ve got a white Italian marble floor in the kitchen. I don’t like open fires. They make such a lot of work.’

  ‘Yes, don’t they,’ agreed Betty desperately.

  Lydia, still twirling her glass, was lying back in her chair and regarding her unblinkingly.

  Don’t say a word, implored Betty silently, gazing back at her.

  This is going to be a very wonderful evening, thought Lydia, polishing off her sherry. But in the end it was all right because of Beuno.

  ‘Well, thank God for Beuno,’ said Lydia as they drove home in the dark. ‘I thought for a moment there I was going to get hysterical and start yelling knickers. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything quite so refined as Lil. Unless it was Sid. I don’t think I ever met a refined man before. It’s a very peculiar sensation. Then I nearly fell over when Hywel walked in because I met him on the mountain and he gave me the eye.’

  ‘He didn’t seem too delighted to see you,’ said Betty.

  ‘No, he didn’t, did he,’ said Lydia thoughtfully.

  ‘I liked Beuno,’ said Betty.

  ‘So did I,’ said Lydia, surprised. When Beuno had come in the tension had eased. ‘Without Beuno,’ she observed, ‘that evening would have been impossible. Hywel was glaring mad at having to put a suit on. Lil and Sid hated me like rat poison . . .
’

  ‘That was your own fault,’ interrupted Betty. ‘You were so rude to them. When she said they’d just been to see their son in Rhodesia and you said “Kenya for officers, Rhodesia for other ranks” it was awfully rude.’

  ‘I should have said Zimbabwe,’ said Lydia. ‘That would’ve made them even madder. Weren’t they horrible?’

  ‘Oh Lydia,’ said Betty, ‘they were just perfectly nice, ordinary people.’

  Lydia shuddered. Betty had embarrassed her exceedingly because, seeing that the Molesworths were dismayed and repelled by Lydia’s uncompromisingly exotic appearance, she had explained that Lydia was a most brilliant journalist. She had gone on and on about it until Lydia’s face had ached from grinning in appreciation of Betty’s praise and frowning in polite dismissal of her wilder flights. The Molesworths had been impressed, but as they never read the various journals for which Lydia worked they were little the wiser. Lil had said, ‘I always think it must be so nice to be able to write.’ And Sid had said, ‘If I had the time I could write down some of the things I’ve seen that you wouldn’t believe.’

  Lydia could still feel her hands sweating.

  ‘And I don’t see,’ continued Betty, ‘why you had to say Elizabeth was going up and down like a whore’s drawers when she was only moving things off the table.’

  ‘She did an awful lot of it,’ said Lydia. ‘She was making me hysterical. I was getting giddy. Up, down like a . . .’

  ‘And there was no need,’ said Betty, gathering momentum, ‘to tell that poor woman what orchid means.’

  Lydia, who was still too drunk to feel repentance, slid lower in the driver’s seat, limp with remembered mirth. Orchis is Greek for testicle, which is what the roots look like, and Lydia had told the company so, because Mrs Molesworth, gazing fondly and favourably on her husband, had divulged that he had bought her orchids on the recent occasion of their wedding anniversary.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Lydia, sitting up, ‘it was Beuno who went on about the golden emerods.’

  ‘That was your fault too,’ said Betty. ‘If you hadn’t started talking about God and graven images the subject would never have occurred to him.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lydia, ‘but it was funny. They couldn’t really disapprove of him, though they longed to, because he’s studying for the ministry.’

  ‘I liked the doctor,’ said Betty after a while, getting on to firmer ground. ‘He was a friendly little man.’

  ‘He’s got a nasty dirty little mind,’ said Lydia, ‘like a puddle in a pig sty.’

  ‘Oh Lydia,’ said Betty, exasperatedly.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Lydia. ‘He wasn’t too bad, but he kept copying the way I said “country” in a very meaningful fashion and it got on my nerves. He says he wants me to meet some of his friends. Can you imagine why?’

  ‘Perhaps he thinks you’d get on,’ said Betty sar castically, ‘– have a lot in common.’

  ‘So likely,’ said Lydia.

  ‘Hywel was rather quiet,’ said Betty.

  ‘He hated us all being in his house,’ said Lydia, ‘but he put up with it quite prettily in the end. Did you see his face when he first came into the room? He looked as though we were a bunch of minks in his chicken coop.’

  ‘A lot of men are like that,’ observed Betty. ‘They work hard all day. Then they just want to put their feet up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lydia, but she thought there was more to it than that. Hywel’s expression of blank black hostility had included her. He had wanted none of them in his house. Not even Elizabeth, she thought, remembering his look when his wife had greeted him, calmly ignoring his mood. She was playing with fire, in Lydia’s opinion. Men didn’t like having their moods ignored. There were two shotguns in the hall of the farmhouse. ‘Ouch,’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Betty.

  ‘I was thinking how very unpleasant it must be to be shot.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Betty reasonably.

  ‘It would make horrible great holes in you,’ explained Lydia, ‘and I imagine it would hurt like hell.’

  ‘I mean, why were you thinking about it,’ said Betty.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lydia vaguely, ‘dark passions, frustrated desires, people just being annoying. I often thought if I’d been married to Finn and I’d had a gun handy, I’d’ve widowed myself more than once.’ It was the first time she had thought of Finn all evening.

  ‘You ought to forget Finn,’ advised Betty.

  ‘I just did,’ said Lydia.

  Betty ignored this, because it was too simple and it detracted from her role of comforter. ‘You must get on with your life, and think about work, and not waste all your time in regrets.’

  Lydia parked the car in the overgrown lay-by. ‘Do I give that impression?’ she asked, switching off the ignition and wondering at the stupidity of people.

  ‘You do a bit,’ said Betty with a note of true concern, and quite taking the wind out of Lydia’s sails, who wondered whether it was true that she had been seriously wounded and was repressing her hurt to the detriment of her psyche. It could be nasty, that. People were always saying so. Anxiously she probed the wound. Did she agonizingly miss the faithless Finn who had deserted her for a cross-eyed creature? Did she contain a lake of unshed, festering tears? She waited for realisation, for pain to smite her. It didn’t. It was just bloody irritating.

  ‘I’m over Finn,’ Lydia announced, getting out of the car. ‘I was upset for a while, but I don’t seem to care any more. I expect I’m just very facile. I shall spend the rest of the hols seducing Hywel or racing round the valleys after Beuno.’

  Betty, who was also getting out of the car, paused. ‘You mustn’t,’ she said flatly.

  Lydia blinked at her through the misty light of the headlamps. ‘Why not?’ she enquired, expecting a dissertation on the nature of people who interfered with the marriage bond.

  ‘Because he’s studying for the priesthood,’ said Betty.

  Oho, thought Lydia. Oho.

  She was smiling all over her face as they crossed the stream, Betty nimbly discovering the stepping-stones and Lydia getting her feet wet. Lydia felt with her left hand for the keyhole, while with her right she attempted to insert the key, and then stood still. ‘Do you hear it?’ she asked. Her fingers had begun to tingle as though with pins and needles. It was her usual response to shock. Near misses with the car, odd noises in the night always caused her fingers to feel like this.

  ‘What?’ asked Betty.

  Lydia got the door open without answering. She had lit the candles before she spoke again. She closed the door.

  ‘What is it?’ Betty looked puzzled in the candlelight. ‘What’s the matter?’

  “There’s someone laughing out there,’ said Lydia.

  They stared at each other in silence, their roles reversed: Lydia fearful and Betty courageous.

  ‘Let me listen,’ said Betty decisively. ‘I’m going to open the door and listen.’

  She didn’t open the door too widely and she didn’t go outside, but she listened assiduously. ‘I think I can hear something,’ she said after a while. ‘It’s coming from the left.’

  ‘It’s coming from the right,’ said Lydia, ‘and I can hear it as clear as a bell.’

  I listened to them. I stood by the open window and the dogs licked my hands as I listened.

  They said, ‘Elizabeth, you are wonderful to look after her the way you do’, and ‘Elizabeth, you are wonderful to cook as you do’, and ‘Elizabeth, what would Hywel have done without you?’ and ‘Elizabeth, what a difference you have made to the house’, and ‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth’.

  Once I heard Hywel laugh. And Beuno talked and talked, and one by one they all laughed. But when all the people had gone no one laughed, and after a while no one spoke any more.

  She had put the doll she gave me on my bed. It has yellow hair, and its eyes open and shut, and it is dead.

  ‘I ate too much last night,’ said Betty at
what would have been breakfast if they’d made any. ‘I shall just have a cup of camomile tea.’

  Lydia made coffee and pushed the door wide open. The sun shone warm and the air was now very pure: a calm reflective day, not given to laughter.

  ‘You didn’t eat much,’ said Betty.

  ‘No,’ agreed Lydia. Her imagination had suggested to her that dinner in a Welsh farmhouse might comprise mutton redolent of wild herbs, or native lobster winged from the coast by landrover. It had conjured up visions of arcane Celtic stews bubbling mysteriously in metal vessels, and bitter rowan-beer strengthened by the bodies of songbirds. But Elizabeth read women’s magazines and had offered them quiche and Coronation Chicken and melon balls in wine glasses. The men had drunk canned beer and the women sweet wine. Lydia had once read a women’s-magazine-type romance in book-form and her mind had felt then as her stomach felt now – ever so slightly destroyed. Women’s magazines had a lot to answer for, thought Lydia, with their embroidered jumpers, their mackerel and mandarin oranges, their stories of the nurse who gets the surgeon, the typist who gets the boss, contrasting so starkly with the bewildered anguish manifested by their love-ruined readers on the letters page.

  There was a grey squirrel nipping up and down a hazel tree near the stream. It was neat and elegant, like all wild animals, with an air of aristocratic insouciance and good breeding. The silly sheep, the witless pheasants, the dumb cows bred by man for his own purposes had lost all joy and definition, needing to be doused, medicated, imprisoned and fed until, poor bourgeois, they were ready to be killed. Beuno came walking into Lydia’s meditation. He was like the squirrel with his bright clear skin, his healthy curls and gleaming eyes: not at all a sullen, greedy, domestic beast, destined for an ignominious end.

  He came at eleven o’clock, which seemed to Lydia a reasonable hour, an indication of natural good manners. Betty looked pleased to see him. Lydia found it impos sible to imagine a mate for Beuno. Like the squirrel, he should marry only someone of precisely the same blood lines as himself. Anything else would be grotesquely unsuitable.