‘All the doors in the house wide open, and no fire, and the curtain flying out of the bedroom window, and him sitting in his study.’
‘You went in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
The Jones salvo came unexpectedly. ‘Because he’s a man, Mrs Gandell, because he’s Welsh, because he’s a man of God, because he’s mad, because he’s lost, because he’s afraid, because he wants to, because he’s really fallen for the quiet, secret bitch upstairs.’
‘Jones,’ exclaimed Mrs Gandell, ‘Jones.’
‘Even the cat would have been sorry for him.’
‘Poor Mr Thomas,’ she said.
‘I told him about the man from Melin,’ Jones said, and so quietly that Mrs Gandell sat up in her chair, saying, ‘What’s that, Jones?’
‘I told him about the man from Melin.’
‘The man from Melin?’
‘Just like the man from Penuel,’ replied Jones, and then cautiously, ‘Well, nearly.’
‘What on earth are you talking about, Jones?’ and she grabbed him, pulled him across the table. ‘Have you been drinking again?’
‘Smell?’
She smelt, pushed him away again. ‘Well?’
‘He had middle years, and they sat heavy on him, just like Mr Thomas, but she was different .…’
‘The what?’
‘The girl. Fifteen and a half she was. Big difference in years, Mrs Gandell, just think of that. Bigger sin. Know what they did?’
‘Who? What?’
‘They locked him in his own chapel, and flung his sheepdog in after him, drew barbed wire all round it, nailed the door, and the leading crusader shouted through the window, “Pray, murderer”. And the one that was fifteen was up in the mountains. Her father lashed the sin, Mrs Gandell.’
Mrs Gandell covered her face. ‘How awful,’ she said.
‘Some things are. He prayed in the dark, and the sheepdog howled Amen.’
‘How dreadful, Jones,’ said Mrs Gandell, and her hands came slowly down and rested on the table. ‘Is that true?’
‘Have I ever lied to you, Mrs Gandell?’ He flung it at her, an ultimatum. ‘Well, have I?’
She did not answer him. The cigarette burned her fingers, and she flung it away, and lit another one. ‘How sad, Jones,’ she said.
‘Some things are. You could actually see it inside him, like a kind of crab, writhing.’
‘That’s enough, Jones.’
He leaned across the table, and said slowly, with a clipped utterance, ‘I told Mr Thomas to get up, to shake himself. I told him to rush away and take her. Have her. Be done with it.’
‘That’s enough,’ shouted Mrs Gandell, ‘and I mean enough.’
But it wasn’t, not for Jones, and, putting a hand over her hand, said, ‘They say that the man from Melin was so tense that when he fell on her, he nearly pulled a nail from the cross.’
‘You told Thomas that?’ she said.
As though the whole world was standing in the dining-room, Jones’s voice faded to a whisper, and suddenly she put a hand over his mouth. ‘That’s enough.’
‘I told him to leave his collar off, Mrs Gandell. It’s another dimension.’
‘Disgusting.’
She got up and walked quickly out of the room.
‘But real, Mrs Gandell, real,’ Jones said, and followed her out, and up the stairs. He closed the bedroom door, and Mrs Gandell went and stood at the window for a moment, and then sat down. It was at this moment that Jones noticed the open book lying on the bedside table. He clapped hands to his head. ‘Oh no,’ he thought, ‘not again,’ seeing what he called the Dumas bible. ‘Another bloody chapter.’ Dumas was merciless to Jones, but Mrs Gandell enjoyed him. She watched him place a tentative finger on the open book.
‘You can read to me till supper time, Jones,’ she said.
‘Very well,’ said Jones, and wished the Musketeers direct to hell.
10
When Miss Vaughan came swinging through the door in her red two piece, bag tight under one arm, and her red raincoat over the other, Mair knew it was Wednesday. She leaned over to Nancy, saying ‘Silly old bitch,’ just as Mr Blair himself was through the door.
