‘Glad you do.’
‘Good.’
‘And you?’
Speaking very slowly, he said, ‘I shall be going out also.’
In an instant she was standing over him. ‘Again?’ she asked. And he dropped the cold stone. ‘Again.’
‘I’m surprised.’
There was a long pause, and then he said quietly, ‘Margiad, I will tell you something. I am sometimes sad.’
‘Then it will do you good.’
‘Sometimes, I say to myself, “Mervyn Thomas, your life is like fragments”.’
‘Then lock them together and you’ll be your own self again.’
‘Ah!’
‘Sense will come, Mervyn, though I hope it will not come too late.’
He leaned forward, put a hand on her knee. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please.’
‘Mari Richards saw you walking in the town yesterday.’
‘Those sharp eyes miss nothing, Margiad.’
‘You were even seen talking to that shrimp, Jones, from the Decent Hotel.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘What am I talking about? You know right well, Mervyn. Drunk again, they say, and you know what he is when he’s in his cups. That man would turn himself into a thousand and one nights and talk your head off. He’d put knots in one’s very soul. Imagine talking to such a person. You, of all people, Mervyn.’
‘There are some things that you do not understand, Margiad.’
‘Tut, tut! What nonsense,’ she replied, and, looking thoroughly disgusted, concluded, ‘and at your age.’
‘At my age,’ he said gravely, and relighted his pipe.
‘You’re a fool.’
‘Perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not, Margiad, but you are good to me, and I’m grateful.’
She made to rise, but didn’t, then flung the words at him. ‘Yes, you, and God on your tongue Sundays.’
On which he got up and went slowly across to the window, opened it, and put his head out. And the silence infuriated her.
‘It will do you no good,’ but he made no reply.
She too, got up. ‘I am talking to you, Mervyn Thomas, are you listening?’
It seemed an age before the reply came. ‘I am listening,’ he said, and pulled his head in, closed the window, and returned to his chair.
‘Sad it is to me, Mervyn, people coming to me, talking. A disgusting one, that Jones. Sat on his bottom in The Lion most evenings, where does he get the money? From her, of course, and you know right well whom I have in mind. Sleeps in her bed for his wages, a cringing, crawling shadow of a man. Yes, I am worried in my mind about you, Mervyn.’
‘He is after all, only a creature, Margiad, like you and I.’
‘Never stops laughing behind your back.’
‘What I think, I know, what I say, I mean’ he said.
‘It’s my life that is fragments, not yours.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I shall be going out at eight o’clock.’
‘I’m glad they’re laughing at you.’
‘And you are still my sister, and I say again, you are good to me.’
But again she was standing over him, and suddenly he thought, ‘How angry she is,’ and drew away from her.
‘You really are going out then?’
