Unexplained Laughter Page 6

  ‘Oooh, no I mustn’t,’ said Lydia, who longed for one. ‘I’ve got such a silly head. Spirits make it go round and round. Tee, hee, hee.’

  I have broken Elizabeth’s doll. I threw it on the cobble-stones and Elizabeth cried. I cannot speak. If I could speak, they would say I am mad. Because I cannot speak, they say I am mad. Elizabeth said to Hywel it was her doll when she was a little girl and she had loved it, and Hywel said, ‘More fool you.’ And she dried her eyes.

  Beuno buried the doll under a rowan tree. She cried to Bueno that it had been her doll when she was a little girl and she had loved it, and he took the spade, and dug a hole, and buried it.

  I thought I would dig it up again, and put it in her bed, all covered with mould, so that she would know it was dead, but after a while she stopped crying, so I left it there. I hid among the rocks and Hywel came looking for me. He couldn’t find me. I waited until the shadows filled the valley before I went home.

  Beuno said ‘Oh Angharad’ when I went upstairs, but no one else said anything.

  ‘He wheeled me in as the star turn,’ said Lydia indignantly when she got back. ‘He didn’t give a toss for my – ears. He just wanted to use me as a sort of social-aid-cum-aphrodisiac. I do detest social climbers. They leave muddy boot-marks on your shoulders, and you get glimpses of quite their least attractive aspects. So I sat there thinking about life, and when I listened again he was talking about orgasms.’ She paused, squinting reflectively. ‘Could he’ve been? Yes, he was, because, after that, he started going on about nights of love. I do seem to have the most extraordinary effect on people. Or do you suppose he does it all the time?’

  ‘I don’t think he does it at all,’ said Betty. ‘I think it’s your imagination again.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that sort of thing,’ protested Lydia. ‘What I just told you is straight reportage. I think I’ve even left out the worst bits. Blocked them. I’m beginning to think this valley is a sort of extended nut-house.’

  ‘It’s you who keep hearing things,’ Betty reminded her.

  ‘It’s probably one of them,’ said Lydia, ‘– one of the lunatics giggling away in the night.’

  Both women wished that this had not been said.

  Betty went over and locked the door, and Lydia looked out of the window at the shadows that were gathering under the trees. ‘They don’t like us, you know,’ she told Betty.

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Betty. ‘What about Elizabeth’s dinner party? If they didn’t like us they wouldn’t’ve asked us, would they?’

  ‘It wasn’t them,’ said Lydia. ‘Elizabeth asked us, and she isn’t one of them. If it wasn’t for her we’d never have set foot in Farmhouse Grim. They don’t like outsiders.’

  ‘What about Beuno?’ asked Betty. ‘He likes us.’

  ‘It’s his Christian duty to do so,’ said Lydia. ‘Beuno likes everyone a little and no one in particular. He’s a true religious.’

  ‘I have come to the conclusion,’ said Betty, who had also been thinking, ‘that the reason Beuno doesn’t marry is the same as the reason Elizabeth won’t have children. They’re afraid of heredity. It’s Angharad. I saw her today. Poor little girl.’ She looked faintly stunned, as people do who have observed the misshapen: there is no Schadenfreude to ease the witnessing of deformity.

  Lydia shivered and knelt to light the fire. The flames were pure, but then she remembered the ash in the morning. She thought of water, which was pure, and then remembered the crud on the bed of the stream. She thought that everything was composed of heat and corruption and water – that we live off death and water – and she resented her own blinding mortality. ‘I know God originally intended me for an angel,’ she said crossly, brushing wood shavings from her knees. ‘I wonder what dreadful thing I did to end up as a human being?’

  ‘I’m never sure you are a human being,’ said Betty repressively. ‘You’re very peculiar.’

  ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ said Lydia. ‘I saw the Molesworths outside their house. I’d rather be a rat than a Molesworth. I’d rather live in Farmhouse Grim than Château Molesworth. I’d rather be a rat and his wife than be April or a doctor.’

  ‘April?’ said Betty. ‘The Molesworths’ daughter is called April. It must’ve been her.’

  ‘Oh help,’ said Lydia. ‘What a good thing I went all quiet. I could’ve said something frightful.’

  ‘As if you cared,’ said Betty.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Lydia. ‘I do know where to draw the line.’

  The day of the Agricultural Fair approached and passions rose in the village. In the shop Lydia heard rumours of men who sat up all night amongst their carrots, a shotgun across their knees for fear of jealous rivals who would come under cover of darkness to pour paraquat on the feathery fronds; of women who stood all night in their kitchens baking, baking in the quest for the one, the perfect, cake or loaf. In the hills men and women were combing and washing and polishing chosen animals to a Vogue-like perfection of appearance, winners determined to hold their titles, aspirants determined to displace them.

  ‘Oo-er,’ said Lydia. ‘They alarm me. I begin to get some idea of what the Roman games must’ve been like.’

  ‘All villages are the same,’ said Betty. She had acquired a copy of the rules of the various competitions and was reading it. ‘There’s a section here for the most prettily arranged salad. Shall I try?’

  ‘You wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance,’ said Lydia. ‘It’s all rigged beforehand.’ She had now grown quite used to Betty who had, on the whole, been very patient with her; and, once accepted, it was restful having someone around to do the cooking and the washing-up. She had so far relented towards Betty that she did not wish to see her disappointed. ‘We’ll just go along as onlookers,’ she said, ‘and cheer whenever it seems appropriate. Then they won’t be cross with us for interfering in their primitive rituals.’

  ‘Do you want to go to it?’ asked Betty, looking up in surprise. ‘I’d have thought you’d be bored.’

  ‘Nothing would persuade me to miss it,’ said Lydia. ‘I always go to tribal events, wherever I am.’

  For some reason this made her think of Finn, and she stood still for a moment, again waiting cautiously for any twinges of anguish, any signs of unhealed wounds. There were none. She didn’t even wish he’d break a leg. She didn’t care if he broke a leg or not. She looked across the stream, through the leaves at the distant field; at the nettles and the meadow-sweet and the wild roses; down at the camomile daisies crushed under her feet.

  ‘Very, very pretty,’ she approved, aloud. She was cured. Oh, the relief.

  ‘You’re looking much better recently,’ said Betty, observing this show of gladness. ‘Have you quite stopped hearing things?’

  ‘Not so much as a titter,’ Lydia answered her, breathing deeply. Now she could get on with life, concern herself with the large airy matters like God and death and the problem of suffering; forget, for a while, the goblin things – sex and money and regular meals.

  Beuno was standing in the stream with his back to them, not doing anything.

  ‘What’s Beuno doing?’ asked Betty, mop in hand, sweating slightly from the exertion of housework, Martha to the life.

  ‘He isn’t doing anything,’ said Lydia. ‘He’s just standing in the stream.’

  ‘I wonder if he’d run me to the shop,’ said Betty. She had asked Elizabeth and Dr Wyn to come in for a drink that evening. She had wanted to ask the Molesworths too, but Lydia wouldn’t let her. ‘There are some people,’ Lydia had said, ‘who, as it were, belong in my house, and there are some that I can tolerate. And then there are those than whom I would rather have mice, and into this latter category fall the Molesworths.’ She had not spoken so elaborately for some time, and Betty knew the warning signs; so, whereas with anyone else she would have appealed to their better nature, in this case she held her tongue.

  ‘I’m going to make some cheese straws,’ she s
aid, ‘and maybe fry some onion rings. I’d get some sausages, but I don’t know what’s in them.’

  ‘Pure pig,’ said Lydia. ‘That’s pig lips, pig toenails, pig . . .’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Betty.

  Beuno said, ‘There’s a funeral in the church tomorrow.’

  ‘Someone must have died,’ said Lydia. She had wakened in the night with the fear of death upon her and was presently inclined to a harsh and flippant approach to the subject.

  ‘That is usually the case when a funeral is planned,’ said Beuno.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia, ‘a funeral would feel pointless without a body. I like funerals. They’re so much more satis factorily final and distinguished than weddings; and christenings always fill me with great unease and pessi mism and I don’t like sugared almonds.’

  ‘I think weddings are the worst,’ said Beuno. ‘There’s always someone with their fingers crossed. I think it’s usually the mother of the groom. What will I do when I have to officiate at one? I shall have to have a long talk with the Lord beforehand.’

  ‘And the bride and groom,’ said Lydia. ‘You’ll have to invite them into the vicarage and try and dissuade them, and then when they’re stubborn you’ll have to elaborate on the Christian concept of matrimony.’

  ‘The Lord will provide,’ said Beuno. ‘Did I tell you how people die in this valley?’ he asked.

  ‘Do they have a special mode?’ asked Lydia.

  ‘They put clean nightdresses on, and they straighten their bed, and then they lie down with their hands crossed on their chest. I see it like this. The Angel of Death looks in and he says: “You’ve got five minutes to get your clean nightdress on, and arrange your effects, and put the cat out, and tear up that compromising letter, and then I’ll be back for you.” And instead of arguing about it – they do.’

  ‘I wonder if I would?’ mused Lydia. ‘Or would I start screaming that I’d left a soufflé in the oven, or forgotten to get the coat back from the cleaners, or I was too young to die . . .’

  ‘Die?’ asked Dr Wyn with professional interest, manoeuvring himself and April over the stepping-stones.

  ‘Hi,’ said Lydia. ‘Go on up to the cottage while I get my shoes on.’ She whispered to Beuno that they must both be very boring now, very staid, because she utterly refused to amuse Dr Wyn. She thought that it was odd that she should be so certain of Beuno’s allegiance with her against one of his countrymen, but she had no doubts of him. ‘I didn’t know April was coming,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we asked her.’

  ‘He’ll drag her round everywhere for a time,’ said Beuno, ‘and then he’ll get sick of her, or find some other girl who takes his fancy. He’s been doing it for years. You may not have noticed, but there’s an awful lot of bachelors in the valley. Their mothers tell them no one is good enough for them. It happens in rural communities.’

  Lydia watched Betty ushering the guests into the cottage. ‘If you see me drinking too much,’ she said to Beuno, ‘you must tie up my throat like a cormorant, or I shall start speaking wildly.’

  ‘Wyn disapproves of me,’ said Beuno. ‘He thinks the ministry is an affectation and a waste of time, and on the other hand he thinks priests should be very good, and he doesn’t think I am because he’s known me for so long, so he’s annoyed with me. He’ll probably take no notice of you because he’ll be trying to upset me.’

  ‘It sounds like another wonderful evening,’ said Lydia. ‘I wonder where Elizabeth is.’

  ‘She’s been looking after Angharad,’ said Beuno. ‘It always takes her some time to get ready. She’ll be along later.’ He spoke noncommittally, and Lydia understood that there were things of which Beuno would not yet speak to her. She didn’t mind. There was no point in being curious about hopeless situations.

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Dr Wyn was saying, as they entered the kitchen. ‘Won’t we, darling?’

  ‘Yes,’ said April, making it increasingly apparent that she was a girl of very few words.

  ‘She’s doing a flower arrangement for the competition. What is it this year, darling? Three dahlias, a book-end and a brass ornament?’

  Lydia imagined this to be a joke and was surprised when April concurred. She glanced at her for signs of irony and saw none.

  ‘Her mum always wins the malt-loaf section,’ claimed the doctor with vicarious pride.

  Lydia thought moodily that she couldn’t hope to be as boring as Dr Wyn if she tried all night. Nevertheless she made an attempt. ‘How many sections are there?’ she enquired.

  This was a mistake, because the doctor told her.

  By the time Elizabeth arrived Lydia was prepared to welcome her, since any additional flavour must add something to the evening, which was like Betty’s meatless stock into which she kept putting more and more dried herbs and burned onion in an effort to make it taste of something. It was the sort of evening on which Lydia would normally get drunk and move into a world of her own, highlighted by strange insights, hectically and artificially tuppence-coloured. Grimly, she quaffed lemon squash.

  Elizabeth told Betty that Wyn had been to school with Hywel, and Betty told Elizabeth that she had heard that the Welsh standard of education was very high.

  Sip, went Lydia at her lemon squash.

  Betty deplored the cuts in the education budget and Beuno lit a cigarette.

  ‘Smoking?’ queried the doctor. ‘Giving us all pneumoconiosis?’ He fixed Lydia with a meaning glance. ‘Guess where I’m going this weekend,’ he invited her. Sensibly he did not wait for a reply, since the possibilities were clearly endless. ‘London,’ he told her, staring at her with an air of triumph.

  Well, I don’t care, thought Lydia; I hope it stays fine for you. She was puzzled by the doctor’s manner. He spoke as children speak. I’ve got something you haven’t got was his meaning.

  Elizabeth got up suddenly, walked to the window and looked out. After a moment she sat down again. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ asked Betty.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Elizabeth, ‘thank you.’ For no apparent reason she uttered a little laugh.

  ‘I live in London,’ ventured Lydia.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said the doctor, still staring at her. So that wasn’t it.

  ‘I’m here on holiday,’ Lydia explained further.

  ‘I know,’ said the doctor.

  Lydia sipped her squash, thinking. Her original conclusion was correct. The doctor was telling her that he was off to have a good time where Lydia lived, imagining that this would induce envy in her. She stared thoughtfully into her lemon squash. The trouble with people like Dr Wyn was that there was really no answer to the jaw-dropping remarks they made. She could hardly observe aloud that the subject of his weekend was very boring.

  ‘You’ll find it pretty tedious at the moment,’ she said. ‘There’s absolutely no one there but tourists swarming all over the place.’ Another component of the doctor’s teasing was, she suspected, an acute resentment of her supposedly exalted position in the world of journalism. ‘It’s hell just at present. Like a bottle you expect to have whisky in and it turns out to be full of a specimen for the doctor.’ She beamed at him over the rim of her glass.

  ‘You know you get bored here too, Lydia,’ Betty reminded her.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ conceded Lydia, ‘but then I dash off somewhere else to see something different.’ She wondered whether the doctor imagined that because she was here without a man she hadn’t got one. She shrank from his crudity and his playground teasing. There was something clumsily sadistic in teasing: signs of an almost homicidal inadequacy and despair. Lydia wondered whether he was impotent. His insistence on sexual matters could not be merely attributable to his calling, since not all doctors carried on like that. Perhaps it was caused by the com -plicated influences of the valley where the men seemed so often to remain unmarried, sometimes perhaps because, as Beuno held, their mothers said there was no one good enough for them, sometimes because there si
mply wasn’t anyone. And there was the residue of a chapel-rooted misogyny quite usual in remote rural communities. It was dispiriting and chilling, and the teasing was its outward and visible form. These men jeered and poked sticks through the bars at creatures they secretly, at once, feared and desired.

  Elizabeth stood up again. ‘I must go back to Angharad,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t go,’ said the doctor, lying back in his chair and smiling at her lazily.

  Lydia was furious. How dare he dissuade her guests from leaving. He was as bad as Betty. Am I so negligible, she asked herself indignantly, that everyone feels this compul -sion to speak for me?

  ‘Of course she must go,’ she said, ‘if she’s worried about Angharad.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I must go,’ and she went.

  The doctor’s smile broadened.

  Lydia felt oppressed and vaguely threatened.

  ‘There’s no one of any consequence in London at the moment,’ she told him, ‘but you won’t be able to move for the millions of nobodies going to look at the Tower.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll find something to do,’ he said with an air of practised lewdness.

  April, who until now had been just sitting there, at this point, to give her her due, showed symptoms of unease. ‘Oh, Wyn,’ she said.

  Lydia felt briefly sorry for her and attempted to engage her in conversation, but it was no good. She turned to Beuno and spoke of lighter matters until darkness descended.

  ‘I thought that was a very pleasant evening,’ said Betty. ‘Beuno helped me with the washing-up after you went to bed.’

  ‘I don’t like Dr Wyn,’ said Lydia. ‘I increasingly don’t like him.’

  ‘He’s a good doctor,’ said Betty. ‘They all say he’s very good. Elizabeth says he’s wonderful with Angharad. He’ll go and see her any time of the day or night. Elizabeth only has to phone him.’

  ‘He still gives me the creeps,’ said Lydia.

  ‘He’s only teasing,’ said Betty. ‘I don’t know where we should be without people like him.’

  But Lydia, remembering the look on his face, thanked Heaven that she was not a child under his interested regard. ‘I think he’s a disappointed man,’ she said. ‘He’s getting on and he hasn’t got far. Stuck in his village forever.’