Candlenight

Chapter XIX

Four or five times Berry had picked up the phone, intending to call Giles, each time pulling back. In his head, he'd almost had it figured out. "See Giles, I've always been sensitive to atmospheres and I just had the feeling there was something badly wrong in there. Humour me, OK? Have a priest take a look." Every time he heard himself saying that, he chickened out. A priest! Had he really been about to say that?

From the Newsnet office, the day after they'd got back from Wales, Berry had called Giles's paper and asked if he was around. "It's Gary Willis here," a guy said. "Giles has taken some leave. Gone to move some of his stuff out to this place he's got in Wales."

"When's he gonna be back?"

"I don't know, mate, and Roger's not here at the moment. But it can't be more than a week or two."

Berry stood at his apartment window, looking out at the block from which you could see the Thames. He clenched his fists.

All the way home from Aberystwyth, he and Giles had discussed their respective careers in journalism, the differences between the British and American media and even the rift between Berry and his dad and what had caused it, the ethics of the job, all this stuff.

Everything, it seemed, except the cottage in Y Groes, Giles's future there, Berry's feelings about the place. It was clear that Giles, having brought Berry to see the house without getting the expected result—"Gee, Giles, this is just amazing, you're a lucky guy, I can't tell you how jealous I am" — had been studiously avoiding the issue.

While Berry… Well, what was his excuse?

You asshole, Morelli. he told himself. You blew it again. All ways, you blew it.

This was three days ago. It was now Wednesday night. It was well into October. It was dark. He had nobody to talk to.

Miranda had landed a part in a TV commercial for perfume. Although the perfume was made in Wolverhampton, they were making the commercial in Paris. She'd left a message on his answering machine to say she might be back by the end of the week if she didn't run into any vaguely interesting Frenchmen looking for a little fun.

Berry sat down and tried to watch a re-run of an episode of Cheers. Even that didn't lift him out of his private gloom. When it was over, he switched off and lay down on his bed. missing Miranda, haunted by the same crazy question. Am I psychic or just neurotic?

"The kid's neurotic," Mario Morelli had said. It was the first time he was conscious of hearing the word. He'd been — what? Nine, ten? The year he went to summer camp and was so unhappy they sent him home, scared — he heard his dad telling his mom — that he was going to walk off on his own and drown himself. After that, Mario took no chances; he wasn't having a son of his bringing down scandal on the family.

His career. Really, he was afraid of what it would do to his career.

In subsequent years they reluctantly took him with them on vacation, which was how he first saw London. He'd been happy then, although he knew things between his parents were not good. He'd pretended he was there alone, pretended it was his town. Felt the history of the place; imagined he was part of it, not part of his dad's vacation, which seemed to be full of inefficient service and lousy Limey food.

How long after that was The Gypsy?

Whenever, that was the year the vacation coincided with his mom being in hospital having this Ladies' Surgery — he never did find out whether it was a hysterectomy or new tits — and his dad had to take custody of the kid.

Berry had spent this dismal fortnight down in Florida, where Mario — already a high-profile newsman with NBC — had borrowed a beach house from a friend. Come to think of it, this friend had been a senator, the bastard already getting too close to politicians for a guy who was supposed to be ruthlessly impartial.

Anyhow, that had been the summer of The Gypsy. He didn't know if she was a gypsy, but that was how he always thought of her. He didn't know, either, if she was a phoney. Just always hoped she was. Better to be a basic neurotic than what she said.

He remembered the nights spent holding the pillow around his head to muffle the sound of Mario humping Carmine, his mistress, in the next room. One night he didn't go back to the beach house, just walked until dawn, a night of spinning pinball and hard coloured lights and cheap music.

And The Gypsy.

She was this mid-European lady, with a sign over her door covered with coloured moons and stars. He couldn't imagine now how the hell he'd found the courage to walk in there with his five dollars.

She'd said. "You not a happy boy, you mixed up." He thought she was about to use the word neurotic, like his old man. But she went on, "It affect you more on account of you sensitive, right? Have eyes inside, yes?" Berry staring at her blankly. "One day something happen to you. Wow! Crash! Boom! And then you know what you got."

Crazy. The lights, the hot music, and The Gypsy. Sometimes — occasionally in the years before The Gypsy and increasingly afterwards — he'd gotten feelings about things or places. Small things, stupid things. Feelings that said: don't get closer to this, back off. And The Gypsy's words would come back to him, and he'd laugh. Try to laugh, anyhow.

She'd been called Rose-something, weren't they all? She'd taken his money, but afterwards given it back to him. "You and me, we in same shit. You find out. Good luck, huh."

Most likely, she was neurotic too.

The thing that really got to him was old Winstone. Put the arm on young Giles, stop him, not meant to be there, all that crap. The sequence of events leading up to him standing in a dark, cold room permeated by hatred.

Or maybe simply a perfectly ordinary room with a certifiable neurotic standing in it.

On Friday night Miranda called Berry from her mother's house in Chelsea to say she was home.

"Did you get my message?" she asked him.

"Did you get a Frenchman?"

"They all tried too hard." Miranda said. '"I wanted one who really didn't want to know, but they all tried too hard. I'm afraid Paris has become rather tedious."

"As tedious as Wales?"

"Do me a favour. How did you get on. anyway?"

She seemed to have forgotten about telling him not to bother coming back.

"Oh, you know, OK." Berry said. "Interesting place, good scenery. Crazy language."

"And you spelled it out for him? As stipulated in the dying wish of old what's-his-name?"

"It was complicated."

"Complicated. I see. What you're saying is you didn't sort it out. You didn't, did you? You really didn't tell him. You spent the whole weekend poncing around with a lot of Celtic sheep-shaggers and you didn't say a word."

"That isn't quite fair. Miranda. What happened…Listen, can I see you?"

She hung up on him.

Angrily. Berry broke the line and tried to call her back.

Then he changed his mind and called Giles at home. This was it. The end. He'd lay the whole thing on him, the whole Winstone bit, the bad vibes in the judge's study, everything.

Giles's phone rang five times and then there was a beep.

"This is the London home of Claire and Giles Freeman. We 're not here, so you can either leave a message after the tone or ring us on Y Groes 239."

Beep.

Berry put the phone down.

Y Groes 239.

"Shit," he said, dismayed.

Giles had complained it would be months before all the legal stuff was complete, what did they call it, probate.

"They're living in that goddamn house," Berry said aloud. "They moved in."

He'd blown it. He'd let everybody down again. Giles, Winstone. Even Miranda.

You're a waste of time, boy. You know that?

Mario Morelli's words, of course.

You got no guts is the problem.

CHAPTER XX

One of the first things they did was to go into Pontmeurig and choose a bed.

Nothing else. Not yet, anyway. Any changes, they had agreed, should be dictated by the cottage itself. They felt that after they'd spent a few weeks there they would know instinctively which items of new furniture the judge's house might consider permissible.

But a new bed was essential. There was only one in the place, an obvious antique with an impressive headboard of dark oak which was possibly Claire's grandfather's deathbed. Hardly be seemly for the pair of them to spend their first night in Y Groes squashed into that.

So they ordered the new bed from Garfield and Pugh's furniture store in Stryd y Castell, Pontmeurig. It wasn't the kind of bed they would have bought under normal circumstances— it had a headboard of shiny pink vinyl — but there were only three to choose from and Giles was adamant that they should support local traders.

"We can soon pick up a new headboard somewhere." he whispered to Claire. "I mean, it'd look pretty bad if we walked out now without buying one."

Young Mr. Pugh. son of one of the partners, was standing no more than four feet away with a contemptuous smile on his pale, plump face. He had obviously heard every word and was not bothering to conceal the fact.

"I cannot see us having anything that would suit you," Mr. Pugh had told them bluntly. "No brass bedsteads here. No pine. Nothing — how can I put it — nothing cottagey. Have you tried Aberystwyth or Lampeter?"

"We'd rather shop locally," Giles had replied stiffly. "Now we're living here." He was furious. This youth was treating him like one of the mindless incomers who wanted to turn Wales into an English colony. He imagined a headline in the local paper.

SNOOTY LONDONERS SNUB LOCAL BEDS

"We'll have this one," Giles said. "Nice cheerful headboard."

Mr. Pugh shrugged. "We can't deliver until Monday."

"That'll be fine." Giles said, wondering where the hell they were going to sleep over the weekend.

"Blaen-y-cwm, is it?" Mr. Pugh asked.

"What?"

"Mrs. Harris's old place. Where you're living?"

"No," Giles said. "We've taken over my wife's grandfather's house at Y Groes. Judge Rhys."

"Oh, I see." said Mr. Pugh. with a little more interest. "Siarad Cymraeg?"

"I'm afraid not." Giles said. "But we hope to learn."

"They don't speak much English in Y Groes." Mr. Pugh said with a smirk.

"Good," said Giles.

When they left the shop. Claire said. "Not very friendly, are they? He didn't particularly want to sell us that bed."

"He's probably sick to death of posh English people buying things and then seeing something better and cancelling their order."

"They weren't very friendly in the Drovers' Arms either."

"They were OK. They didn't all start speaking Welsh or anything when we walked in."

"Oh yes, most of them were speaking English," said Claire. "But not to us."

"For God's sake—" Giles snapped. "Give them a chance, can't you?"

Claire's small face was solemn, and Giles's mood softened. He knew she was looking for reasons not to stay here. Not because she didn't want to, but because she did want to very badly.

"Look," Giles said. "We can't expect them to rush out and welcome us with open arms. We're just another English couple in love with a dream. They've seen us before. That's what they think."

Claire smiled. "I doubt if anyone has seen you before Giles." she said.

Giles ignored this. "We've got to persuade them we're not the usual kind of pompous self-satisfied shits who come in and throw money about until they get bored and move to Provence or somewhere the weather's better." He put an arm around Claire. "Come on. let's go home."

He loved the sound of that. Home.

Y Groes was home now.

Giles had taken a fortnight's leave to coincide with the move, which had become possible far sooner than they imagined. It turned out that the usual six months' probate period did not apply in the case of property bequeathed to a close relative.

Suddenly the judge's house was theirs. The weather was still warm, the travelling was easy. There'd never be a better time, Giles had maintained, freckles aglow, hustling Claire.

So they'd done it.

As they were retaining their London flat — for the time being, at least — and the cottage was already furnished, there wasn't a great deal to bring, and the removal firm had used its smallest van.

Now, as they drove back from Pontmeurig with groceries and things in the boot of the BMW, Giles was once again aware of the difference in atmosphere as they came out of the Nearly Mountains.

It wasn't simply the transition from the bleak forestry to the broadleaved haven of the village. It was the striking difference between Y Groes and Pontmeurig — a town Giles had never actually visited before today.

He tried to explain it to Claire. "A definite air of depression. I don't mean the people. The shops weren't exactly overstocked. And there was quite a lot of, you know, not exactly dereliction, but peeling paintwork, that sort of thing."

"Not a prosperous town." Claire conceded.

"Dying on its feet, if you ask me. All right, there were a couple of shiny new shop fronts — the bookshop and that awful pizza joint. But you get the feeling they won't be there this time next year — or they'll be replaced by other experiments in the area of retailing."

"Not enough money." Claire said. "Because there aren't enough people. I bet… I bet all the incomers get their provisions from the supermarkets in Aberystwyth. They're used to travelling a fair distance on shopping trips back in England — big discount furniture places and hypermarkets."

"Well we won't be doing that." Giles said firmly, turning into the track between the two sycamores. "I don't care what it costs or how many different shops we have to go to. These people deserve our trade."

They found the gate already open and two women by the front step. Oh God, Giles thought. What have we done wrong? If there were neighbours outside the flat in Islington, they'd usually come to complain.

He remembered what young Mr. Pugh had said about Y Groes. "Bore da" he said uncertainly, then realised it was no use wishing them good morning at three-thirty in the afternoon. He tried again.

"Er… Prynhawn da."

The first of the ladies came forward, smiling, hand outstretched. "Oh, Mr. Freeman, good afternoon." she said. "We are terribly sorry to trouble you, but the telephone people arrived to reconnect your line and could not get in. I am Mrs. Huws, from the Post Office, this is Mrs. Hywels."

Mrs. Huws and Mrs. Hywels both shook hands with Giles and with Claire. "Pleased to meet you. Miss Rhys."

"Oh gosh." Giles said. "I mean, there was no need for you to come all the way up here just to—"

"Well, they could hardly ring to tell you they had been to connect your telephone." said Mrs. Hywels.

"We are delighted to help in any way we can," said Mrs. Huws. "Moving house is such a trial. You must be exhausted."

"What you must do," said Mrs. Hywels. "is to tell Mair when it is convenient for the telephone people to come to you, and she will ring them."

"Good God, no." Giles was glowing with pleasure at their kindness. "There's a phone box in the village. I'll ring them. We can't put you to that kind of trouble."

"Now, Mr. Freeman." said Mrs. Huws severely. "We are a very close village. When you come to live amongst us, you are part of our community whether you like it or not, isn't it. Now is there anything you need for tonight. Tea? Sugar? Bread?"

"Thank you." Giles said. "But we're fine. We've got everything. Everything we could wish for."

The small dark eyes of the women were darting about like bluebottles, over Giles and Claire and the BMW beyond the gate.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Claire asked. "Before you go?"

The ladies said they would not put her to such trouble but when Mr. and Mrs. Freeman had settled in they would be pleased to accept their hospitality.

"Super," said Claire.

Walking the ladies to the gate, holding it open for them, Giles asked how well they'd known Claire's grandfather.

They told him the judge was a very quiet and dignified man, who never came out, even in the height of summer, without a jacket and a tie and a watch and chain. Claire, they said, would have been proud to know him. And he, they were sure, would have been very proud of his granddaughter.

"Er, we… We don't know an awful lot about the judge." Giles admitted. "That is, his death… The solicitor, Mr. Davies, implied it had been fairly sudden. Quick, I mean."

"And without pain, wasn't it, Eirlys." Mrs. Huws said.

"Very weak, he was though, at the end. Weak in body, mind, not in spirit. And he was over ninety. Dr. Wyn wanted to send him to the hospital in Pont, but he refused. He knew he was going, see. and would not leave Y Groesfan."

"In case his spirit could not find its way back." Mrs. Hywels said. Giles smiled, acknowledging that no spirit in its right mind would want to leave Y Groes.

"Don't forget now." Mair Huws said. "If you find you have run out of anything, come to the shop and knock on the door if we are closed."

"Great." said Giles. "Er, diolch yn fawr."

"Goodbye then Mr. Freeman. "And welcome to Y Groesfan."

Giles went back to the house, his gratitude brimming over. Life in Y Groes was already turning out exactly as he'd hoped it would.

That night they built a big log fire in the inglenook (Giles, with a howl of delight, had uncovered what looked like a year's supply of cut, dry logs in a shed) and spread two sleeping bags on the living room floor.

Claire, ever efficient, had brought them just in case. The house really was remarkably clean, and Giles was surprised how generally trauma-free the move had been. They hadn't had a single row — although Claire was the sort of quietly-efficient professional person it was hard to pick fights with anyway.

Giles did get rather angry with himself as he discovered he had no natural ability when it came to making log fires and had to keep getting up in the night to feed the thing. At this rate what looked like a year's supply of logs would probably last about six weeks. Altogether Giles reckoned he got about three hours' sleep, and he awoke next morning with a slight headache.

Of course, the ache began to fade as soon as he looked out of the window and saw the hills freshly speckled with early sun. He pulled on his trousers and went barefoot through the primitive kitchen to fill the kettle with spring water which came, apparently, from their own private supply and in as much quantity as if it were from the mains. He cupped his hands under the tap and tasted it — probably better than the stuff they bought in bottles from Sainsbury's — and rubbed the rest into his eyes, rinsing away the remains of his headache.

He went back into the living room and stared down at Claire, still sleeping, curled foetally in her yellow sleeping bag. He didn't think he'd ever seen her looking so relaxed. so untroubled. Even her hair — short, blonde, business-like — mustn't have it flying over the lens, ruining a shot — seemed to have loosened up and was fanned out over the edge of the sleeping bag and onto the hearthrug below.

She really did, he thought, look reborn.

Giles felt his lungs expand with something he identified as joy. It felt quite strange and moving.

"This, my darling," he said softly, a little chokily, "is where it really begins."

Claire slept on.

Chapter XXI

On Sunday evening, Giles decided to make his first visit to his new local, Tafarn y Groesfan. Claire watched him walk out of sight down the hill before setting off alone to chase the spirit of the place in the only way she knew how: by taking pictures of things.

She walked out of the front garden gate and did not look back. She wanted to photograph the cottage last of all. That was the natural sequence. She didn't want to take its picture until she'd made other connections… out there.

Feeling as if she were descending into a dream, Claire walked into the last burst of brilliance from the setting sun.

It forced her to look downwards, denying her a view of the church, denying her a picture too, because from this side the tower would be hard against the light and it was too bright yet to make any dramatic use of that.

There was nobody on the main street. Dark blinds were down in the windows of the post office—Swyddfa 'r Post, it said above the door, without a translation. Claire took a picture of the post office, with herself reflected in the dark window, a slender, crop-haired woman, face semi-concealed behind the battered Nikon. This was a picture to prove that she really was here, an image in the window along with two terraced cottages and a black cat. Part of the scene.

She photographed interlocking beams in the end wall of the general store, pushing out like bones under a taut white skin.

Then she became aware of a very distinguished old oak tree, standing at the bottom of the street, above the river bridge. She filled the frame with the stern expressions on its trunk, and then took another shot on wide angle, to get in a heavy tractor looking flimsy and transient in its shade.

Claire could almost feel the ancient male arrogance of the tree, its roots flexing in the earth.

That made her wonder about her own roots, how deep they were here.

She'd phoned her mother to explain that they would spending a few days at the cottage. Not yet telling her however, that they actually intended to make it the permanent home — although Giles had thought they should.

Indeed, he seemed to be looking forward to it. "Christ. I'd love to see the old bag's face, when she finds out." he kept saying. Giles, who had never got on with his mother-in-law was taking full advantage of her being out of favour with Claire as well.

"You're doing what?" Elinor had said.

"It seems only right, mother. He did leave it to me. Did you really think I could sell it without a second thought?"

"You can't sleep there. It'll be damp."

"Why should it be? It hasn't been empty long. I gather he hadn't been in hospital for more than a few days when he died."

"And dirty."

"We'll clean it."

Elinor was breathing very hard.

"Mother…"

"What?" Elinor snapped.

"You said my grandfather had only seen me once."

"When did I say that?"

"When I rang you two weeks ago."

"Well. I–I've told you about that, surely."

"No."

"I must have."

"You haven't."

"Well. I don't want to talk about it now."

"Oh mother, please — this is ridiculous."

"You don't know what that man was like, Claire."

"I expect I'll find out this weekend then. I shall ask people in the village about him. I'll find out from them when I saw him. Somebody must know—"

"No!"

"What?"

"Listen… We went to see him just once, your father and I," her mother said, "when you were a very small child, three or four. I've told you before, I'm sure, but I don't suppose you were very interested at the time. Anyway, we thought he ought to see his granddaughter. Just once, for the sake of—"

Appearances. Claire thought.

" — the family. Old times. I don't know why we went really."

Because you wanted a good snoop, Claire thought.

"But — My God, we soon wished we hadn't. It was the most embarrassing day I can ever remember. He seemed to have nothing to say to us. A stranger, a strange man to me — my own father. Just some old, some old…Welshman. Who didn't even look the same, somehow.

His… housekeeper prepared this very basic lunch of ham salad, I remember. She also did most of the talking. And then after lunch he said, let's go for a walk, something like that. And your father got to his feet and the old devil waved at him to sit down. Not you, he said. The child and I will go. I was speechless."

"And what happened?" asked Claire.

A silence.

"You went," her mother said coldly.

"Really?" Claire had been expecting to hear how she'd burst into tears and clung to her mother's skirt, demanding to go home. She was thrilled. "I really went with him?"

Elinor didn't reply this time. She obviously regarded it as an act of almost unbelievable treachery.

Claire said, "You never told me that before. I know you never told me."

"Why should I? It's hardly been a fond memory."

"Mother—"Claire thought, that feeling… the feeling that it was meant… I was simply remembering…

"What happened," she said, "when I went for this walk with my grandfather? I mean, where did we go?"

"Claire, it's thirty years ago. and it's not something—"

"Oh, come on. Mother, you must remember. You remember everything else that happened."

She heard Elinor drawing in a long, thin breath. "All I remember is that you were both gone for what seemed like an awfully long time and I ran out of things to say to the frightful woman, the so-called housekeeper, and your father got increasingly embarrassed, so we went outside to look for you. George was getting rather worried because it was hardly a big place and yet we couldn't see you anywhere.

And then the old swine came up the lane from the church. He was holding your hand and we could hear him — well, I was disgusted. I snatched you away at once."

"Good God, Mother, what on earth—?"

"I put you in the car and I made your father drive us away from there. We didn't bother to say goodbye. We'd been insulted enough."

"But what was he doing? Did he say something to you? To me?"

"And we swore never to go back there again, ever. And we never did."

"But what—?"

"I don't know!" her mother had almost screamed. "He was talking to you in Welsh, for God's sake!"

The old oak tree stood there, as if it were absorbing her thoughts and her emotions and considering what to do about her.

Claire looked up the lane towards the church and pictured a distinguished gentleman in a black suit walking slowly down it, a little girl clinging to his hand.

But, of course, this was all imagination because Claire had no idea what her grandfather had looked like. She'd never seen a single photograph of him. Her mother wouldn't have one in the house.

Chapter XXII

Walking towards Tafarn y Groesfan Giles fell undeniably nervous. For some reason, he started to think about Charlie Firth, of the Mail, and the allegedly poisoned eggs. All that absolute nonsense.

But, bloody hell — if, in parts of Wales, there was a lingering suspicion of the English, was it not amply justified by people like Charlie Firth and the others? If the locals were suspicious of him, better to find out now. Show his face, let them get used to it.

It was the last week of British Summertime. The evening sun was losing strength, although it was still remarkably warm, as Giles approached the huge oaken door which hung ajar, giving direct access to the bar. As it swung open, the heads of three men inside slowly pivoted, as if they were part of the same mechanism, and three gazes came to rest on Giles.

He blinked timidly.

The bar was so small and — well, woody, that it was almost like being inside an ancient, hollow tree. Beams everywhere, far thicker than the ones in the cottage. It was lit only by the dying sun, so it was dark. But dark in a rich and burnished way, rather than dim like, say, the judge's study.

It was palpably old. The phrase "as old as the hills" — a cliché too hackneyed for Giles ever to use in an article— suddenly resounded in his head, making dramatic sense.

All the richness came from the age of the building, for it was very plain inside. No brass work, no awful reproduction warming pans.

In a most an publike silence Giles approached the bar. From beneath a beam the shape and colour of a giant Mars bar, a face peered out.

The landlord, if indeed it was he, was a small man with white hair and a Lloyd George moustache. Aled Gruffydd, it had said over the door. What Giles had presumed was the familiar line about Aled Gruffydd being allowed to sell liquor pursuant to sub-section whatever of the Licensing Act had been given only in Welsh.

Either side of the bar a man stood sentinel-like. Giles tentatively flashed each of them a smile and recognised one immediately, having almost run out of petrol on the way here in his determination to fill up locally, at this wonderfully old-fashioned grey stone garage. It had tall, thin pumps, no self-service and a small, rickety sign outside which said Dilwyn Dafis and something in Welsh involving the word modur, which he'd taken to mean motor.

This was Dilwyn Dafis. He was in his thirties, wore an oily cap and had a spectacular beer belly. The second customer was a contrastingly cadaverous chap with large, white protruding teeth and thick glasses which were trained now on Giles, like powerful binoculars.

Giles had to bend his head because the great beam over the bar was bowed so low. Too low for an Englishman's comfort. All three of them stared at him.

Should he try greeting them in Welsh? Nos da? No, that was good night, said when you were leaving. Nos…nos… noswaith da? Was that it? Was that good evening? Bloody hell, he ought to know something as simple as that, he'd learned a whole collection of greetings weeks ago. Noswaith da. It was close but it wasn't quite there.

The three men went on staring at him in silence. Giles began to sweat. Come on. come on, say something, for God's sake.

"Er… evening," he said lamely. "Pint of bitter, please."

The landlord nodded and reached for a pint glass.

"And please." Giles added earnestly, flattening his hair as if trying to make himself shorter and thus less English. "Absolutely no need to speak English just because I'm here."

Christ! What a bloody stupid, patronising thing to say. Especially as nobody, as yet, had spoken at all. He wanted to go out and never, ever come in again.

Still nobody spoke, but the white-haired barman gave him an amused and quizzical look, into which Giles read withering contempt.

"I mean—" he floundered, feeling his face reddening. All those years a journalist and he was going red! But this wasn't an assignment, this was the first faltering step into his future. "If I want to know what's going on around here. I'll just, er, just have to learn your language, won't I?"

Christ, worse and worse…

Dilwyn Dafis, the garage man. chuckled quietly.

Aled the landlord stepped back to pull the pint. The pump gurgled and spat.

It was the thin man with the sticking-out teeth who finally spoke. He said, "Well… there's a fine thing."

What the hell did that mean? For the first time. Giles came close to wishing he were back in London.

Aled Gruffydd topped up Giles's pint, leaned across the bar with it. "Nobody expects that, man."

"I'm sorry…?"

"I said nobody expects you to learn Welsh. Right Glyn?"

"Good God, no." said the thin man.

"No indeed," said Dilwyn Dafis, shaking his head and his oily cap.

Giles inspected the three faces, found no hint of sarcasm in any of them and was nonplussed. "That's very generous of you." he said. "But I want to learn Welsh. I believe it's the least one can do when one comes to live in a Welsh-speaking community." How pompous it sounded, how horribly, unforgivably, tight-arsed English.

Aled Gruffydd said, "Why? What is it you think is going to happen if you don't?"

"Waste of time for you. man." Dilwyn Dafis said. "We speak it because we grew up speaking it, the Welsh. No great thing, here. Just the way it is, see."

"Have a seat." said Glyn. A faded tweed suit hung limply from his angular frame. "Tell us about yourself. We won't bite you."

Giles sat down rather shakily on a wooden bar stool. The whole atmosphere had changed. He'd walked into silence and stares, and now they were making him welcome and telling him there was absolutely no need to learn Welsh — in a village where little else ever seemed to be spoken. He was confused.

"Where is your wife?" Aled Gruffydd said.

"Oh, she's, out. Taking a few pictures."

"Photos, is it?"

"That's what she does. She's a photographer."

"Well, well," said Aled.

Giles had the feeling Gruffydd knew this already. A feeling there was very little he could tell them about himself that they didn't already know. But he explained about his wife's inheritance and they nodded and said "well, well" and "good God" a few times as if it was the first they'd heard about it. They were unbelievably affable. And this made it more important for them to know he and Claire were not just going to be holiday-home-owners, that this was now their principal residence and they were going to preserve its character; there'd be no phoney suburban bits and pieces, no patio doors, no plastic-framed double-glazing, no carriage lamps…

"Good house, that is, mind." thin Glyn said. "Been in that family for… what is the word in English? Generations."

"You mean the Rhys family?"

"Generations." said Glyn. "Many generations, the Rhyses."

Bloody hell, he'd never thought of that — that he and Claire were actually maintaining a family chain of ownership going back possibly centuries. They really didn't know anything, did they?

"Gosh," Giles said. "I suppose — I mean, is that why Judge Rhys came back? Because somebody left him the house?"

"Well," said Glyn. "I suppose that was one of The reasons. From England, he came, as you know, having spent most of his life there."

This was actually marvellous. This gave them a solid, copper-bottomed basis for residency. This gave them a right to be here.

"What is that other word?" said Glyn. "Continuity. We believe in that, see, in Y Groesfan. Continuity."

Giles understood now. When he first came in they weren't quite sure who he was. Now they knew he was the husband of a Rhys. Knew he belonged. He settled back on his wooden stool and began to look around. What a superb old place it was. He remembered Berry Morelli telling him on their way back to London how the buildings in Y Groes had struck him as having grown out of the landscape as part of some natural process. This pub was like that, its oaken interior so crude and yet so perfect. He felt privileged to be here. And proud too, now.

He bought them all drinks.

They told him about the village.

They told him it had about two hundred and fifty people, if you included the outlying farms. It had two shops, the general store and the post office. One garage, one school, one church.

They told him the original name of the village was Y Groesfan — the crossing. But when non-conformism had taken Wales in the nineteenth century a chapel had been built and the name shortened to Y Groes — the cross — because it seemed more holy. When Giles said he hadn't noticed a chapel, Dilwyn Dafis smiled. Glyn, who apparently was something of an historian, said non-conformism had been a passing phase here, although nobody had bothered to change the name back.

Giles wondered briefly why the old name should have referred to a "crossing place" when the village was in fact a dead-end and apparently always had been. And would, he hoped, be the end of his own search for a spiritual home. He also wondered — very nervously — how these chaps would react to that. He realized there was only one way to find out.

"I suppose." he said, as steadily as he could manage, "that you must he pretty sick about all these English people moving in."

"What English is that?" Aled said. He took a cloth from a shelf below the bar and began to polish glasses.

"Well, you know… I mean, we were in Pontmeurig this morning and at least half the people we met, half the shopkeepers for instance, were incomers. I just hadn't realised it was that bad. I mean, it must irritate you. surely."

"Ah, well. see. that is Pontmeurig." said Dilwyn Dafis.

"Pont is different." said Glyn. "They are always moaning about the English in Pont. But we don't moan about them here, do we boys? No cause to."

Aled Gruffydd shook his head. Glyn drained his beer glass and Giles seized the opportunity to buy everyone another drink. He was dying to ask all kinds of questions but settled on just one more as the glasses were passed over and the three Welshmen said "Cheers" rather than Iechyd Da! out of deference to their English companion. They really were remarkably accommodating. Indeed if everyone was as gently hospitable as these chaps and Mrs. Huws and Mrs. Hywels it was really no wonder the country was being overrun by the English.

But they hadn't been like this in Pontmeurig. Only in Y Groes. A special place.

"So, what." Giles asked, "is the actual percentage of incomers in Y Groes? I mean, you know, roughly."

Dilwyn Dafis looked puzzled. "How's that, like?"

"What he means." Aled said, "is how many English compared to Welsh."

"In this villager?"

"Right," said Giles.

"What English?" said Dilwyn.

"You mean—?" The truth hit Giles like a brick. "You mean that the entire immigrant population of Y Groes is—"

Glyn smiled, his large front teeth standing out like a marble cemetery in the moonlight.

" — us?" said Giles.

"Well, there we are," said Dilwyn Dafis, raising his glass to Giles and smiling slowly, "Makes you a bit of a novelty, like, isn't it?"

Chapter XXIII

Claire climbed into the riverside field by a convenient stile to photograph a lone sheep, somebody's initials SE scrawled across its back in lurid crimson, like a splash of fresh blood.

The sheep was lying apart from the rest of the flock, benign head lifted, gazing beyond the field to the village street.

Through the lens, Claire followed the sheep's gaze but saw only a litter bin attached to a low wall with grass growing out of the top. She took a picture, the sheep dark in the foreground.

The river was beautiful. It splashed and fizzed amiably over the rocks, calling out so strongly to Claire that she just had to scramble down the bank, camera bouncing around on its leather strap, until her feet slipped into the soft, cool water. One shoe floated off and she had to rescue it. Then, on impulse, she put the blue shoe back in the river and took a photograph of the clear water swirling gently around it, in the background the river-washed stonework of a bridge support.

The river, the bridge, her shoe — part of the scene.

She should have come to see him. If she'd known about him wanting to take her, just her, for that walk, down the lane to the village, past the church; if she'd known that, she would have come. She imagined him talking to her softly, musically, in Welsh — how beautiful. If she'd been told about that, she would have come. No doubt her mother had thought of that. Bitch. Until that phone call Claire had assumed she'd never met her grandfather, never been to Y Groes in her life. No wonder the village called out to her to come back.

Bitch.

Y Groes — always "some ghastly God-forsaken place in the middle of nowhere" or "some damp, dreary hellhole." If only she'd known…

It was her own fault. Such a placid child, people always said. Incurious about everything until her teens, when she began to take photographs and the world opened out like a huge flower. And then always too busy: leaving home, catching up on everything she'd missed, carving out a career in what then was still seen as a man's world. And forgetting for years at a time that she had a grandfather on her mother's side, an estranged counterpart to good old Reg with his garden and his golf.

And here, unknown to her — all this.

Bitch.

Sitting on the river bank, in the lengthening shadow of the bridge, strange, conflicting emotions crowded in on Claire and she wept silently. Not soul-wrenching, God-cursing tears, as often wept by Bethan, whom she did not as yet know, but quiet tears of regret.

Another shadow fell across her and she looked up, a tall figure blocking the dying sun.

It's him.

Claire's heart leapt in fear. Fear and — and longing.

The voice was soft and high and sibilant, like the wind in a cornfield.

"I'm afraid I don't know your name. So I shall just call you Miss Rhys. How are you. Miss Rhys?"

Chapter XIV

Three-fifteen. Home time.

Bethan was bustling about the school hall attending to children's major crises: the four-year-old boy whose shoelace had come undone, the girl of six with a broken nail.

"Try not to get it wet or it will come off," she said, adjusting the Band-Aid round the child's finger then turning to help a small boy who'd buttoned his coat all wrong.

A handful of mothers were waiting for the smallest children. They watched her with indulgent smiles, none of them rushing to help her. Perhaps they thought this was the kind of therapy she needed to cure her of widowhood.

The mothers took their kids and left, leaving Bethan with just three small pupils waiting to be collected and a strange woman standing hesitantly in the doorway, clutching one of those slim, garish packages in which prints and negatives are returned from processing.

"Mrs. Freeman," Bethan remembered. "You rang this morning. You wanted to see me."

"Hello," the woman said. She looked down at the photo envelope. "I usually do my own or take them to someone I know in London," she said half-apologetically. "I've been to one of those fast-print places in Aberystwyth. Just, you know, wanted… to see how they'd turned out."

She seemed embarrassed. Bethan couldn't think why. She smiled at the woman. "Come in," she said. "Try not to fall over Angharad, she thinks she's a sheepdog."

Buddug had left early, to Bethan's relief. In the emptying school hall, where an electric kettle was coming gently to the boil on the teacher's table, Bethan looked at the woman and the woman looked at Bethan. They were around the same age, one dark, one blonde, one Welsh, the other… well, very English. Bethan thought, but who could really say?

"I'm still rather feeling my way in the village," the blonde one said. She was dressed like a very urban explorer, in fashionably-baggy green trousers and red hiking boots. "I don't know quite how I should behave."

Good heavens, Bethan thought, they aren't usually like that, the English, when they move into Pontmeurig, joining this and organising that and introducing themselves everywhere and even buying people drinks, sometimes.

"Don't be silly," she said, pouring boiling water into a chunky earthenware pot. "Sit down. Have a cup of tea."

"Thank you," the judge's granddaughter said, lowering herself, quite gracefully under the circumstances into a tiny chair designed for a seven-year-old. "That's kind of you, Miss Sion."

"Mrs. McQueen."

"Oh. I'm terribly sorry, I was told—"

"Bethan. Call me Bethan."

"Oh. Yes. Thank you. I'm Claire Freeman, but everyone seems to know that." She laughed. "Although they all seem to call me Miss Rhys — the women in the post office and Mr. ap Siencyn, the rector. My grandfather, you see, he was—"

"I know," Bethan said. "I'm afraid I never really met him. A bit before my time. He was staying in his house most of the time, when I was here. He used to study a lot, people said. In the village. I believe, he was very much… well, revered."

This had the desired effect of pleasing Claire Freeman, who told Bethan how wonderful it had been to discover in the cottage and in the village this whole new aspect of her ancestry, long hidden, like the family treasure.

"But you said you didn't really know him," Claire said. "So you can't have been here all that long yourself."

Pouring tea into a yellow mug, Bethan told her she'd been here nearly a year, then left, then come back. No she hadn't been here all that long, when you added it up.

"But it's different for you." Claire said, "and that's what I've come about. I suppose." She'd opened the envelope and was flicking through the photographs without looking at them, still rather ill at ease, the child, Angharad, scampering around her feet.

"Milk?" said Bethan.

"Just a little."

"Sugar?"

Claire passed. "Dim siwgwr. Is that right?"

"Yes," said Bethan. smiling a little, passing her the mug of tea. "But only if you're trying to lose weight. Can I see?"

"I haven't really looked at them yet. They won't be very good. They're just snaps."

Bethan pushed back her hair and adjusted her glasses. She opened the envelope and saw clear water swirling around a bright blue shoe. It was a startling picture. She drew it out and below it saw the judge's cottage, twilit. Then she saw the village street looking very still, with deep shadows: various close-ups of the timber-framed houses — including the tiny terraced cottage where she and Robin had lived, with the setting sun floating in its upstairs front window.

Then a solitary sheep, a view of the darkening hills, of the rigidly-upright figure of the rector standing in the grass above the river, of Mair Huws outside her shop, of the church tower braced against the dying light and photographed from a steep angle that made it look as if it was falling towards you.

She felt something at once in the photograph. This woman had plucked ripened images of Y Groes out of the air like apples from a tree, and caught the glow.

"They're wonderful" Bethan said. 'They're like something out of a magazine. No, that's inadequate, that cheapens them."

"Oh dear." said Claire. "I was hoping they'd be like holiday snaps. I can't seem to take snaps anymore."

She looked so seriously disappointed that Bethan had to laugh, quite liking her now. Out of the window she saw two mothers appear at the gate, and excused herself and rounded up the remaining three children—"Dewch yma, Angharad, wuff wuff'—gently pushing them out of the door into the playground, waving to the mothers.

When she returned, Claire was thumbing rapidly through the photographs, looking puzzled.

"Anything wrong?"

"No. I — a couple seem to be missing, that's all. My own fault. I should have waited to have them done in London. That is—"

She looked embarrassed again, as if expecting Bethan to say. Oh, so our Welsh film processing isn't good enough for you. is it, Mrs. Posh Londoner?

"Well," said Bethan. "they are a bit slapdash, some of these quick-processing outfits."

Claire looked grateful. "What I've come about — I— somebody in the pub told Giles, my husband, that you were rather brilliant at teaching English children to speak Welsh, and so we wondered—"

Bethan explained that it wasn't a question of being brilliant; English children, the younger the better, picked up Welsh surprisingly quickly. By the age of seven or eight, if they attended a Welsh-medium school, they were often quite fluent. Claire said they had no children yet. but when they did have a baby she would like it to be raised in a bilingual home, and so—"It's funny really, some people in the pub told Giles there was no need to learn Welsh in Y Groes."

Bethan raised an eyebrow. "They told him that?"

"I think it was because we seem to be the only English people in the village. I think they were just being kind, probably."

"Probably," said Bethan, thinking how odd this was.

"We'd fit in, of course, with your arrangements." Claire said.

Bethan thought about it.

"I've never done it before, taught adults."

"Is it so different?"

"I don't know," Bethan said.

"They say the brain starts to atrophy or something, when you pass thirty. Isn't that what they say?"

"Well," said Bethan, pouring herself a mug of strong black tea, coming to a decision, "let's prove them wrong, I could come to your house after school for a short lime, how would that be?"

"That would be super. I mean, Giles will have to go back to London during the week, but I'll be staying here, and could bring him up to date at weekends on everything I've learned."

Bethan said slowly. "I'm… often free at the weekends too." All too free, she thought. "The thing to do is to work on it every day if you can, even if it's only for twenty minutes. I'm sure we could do that most days. And perhaps at weekends we could have a revision session, with your husband."

Claire flung out a big smile, and Bethan thought she was going to hug her. "That's absolutely marvellous. Bethan. I mean, we'll pay whatever you think is—"

"Don't worry about that. I'll enjoy it. I think."

Bethan had caught a breath of something from this woman, something she realised she missed, a sense of the cosmopolitan, a sense of away.

Bethan closed the school door behind her and looked around her nervously, half expecting to find another child inviting her to inspect a dead body. She shivered, although it was a pleasant evening, still warmish, still no sign of the leaves fraying on the trees. In Pontmeurig many already were brown and shrivelled.

The arrival of Claire Freeman and her husband had, she thought, opened up the place, making a small but meaningful crack in its archaic structure. All villages needed new life, even one as self-contained as Y Groes. Especially one like Y Groes.

Learning the language was good — and something that few of the incomers to Pontmeurig bothered to attempt. But she found herself hoping (Guto would be horrified) that the Freemans wouldn't try too hard to fit in.

As she drove the Peugeot out of the school lane towards the bridge, she saw Claire Freeman standing in the middle of the village street gazing out at the river. Nobody else was on the street. Claire looked abstracted, a wisp of blonde hair fallen forward between her eyes.

Bethan paused for a second before turning the wheel towards the Pontmeurig road, and Claire saw her and began to run towards the car, waving urgently.

She wound down her window.

Claire, flushed and panting, leaning against the car, said, "Bethan, I think I must be going mad. I can't seem to find my tree."

"Your tree?"

"It's a huge oak tree. Very old. It's… I'm sure it was in that field. You see, I took some pictures of it, but they weren't there, with the others."

"Perhaps they didn't come out."

"My pictures," said Claire, "never don't come out — I'm sorry, I didn't mean — but they don't. I've been through the negatives and the tree pictures aren't there either. And now the tree's gone too. I'm sorry, this must sound ever so stupid."

"Well, perhaps—" Bethan was going to say perhaps somebody chopped it down, but that made no sense either and she wasn't aware of there ever having been a tree down there anyway.

"The tractor!" Claire exclaimed. "Look, see that yellow tractor… that was there when I took the picture, standing next to the tree. The tree was there!"

"Well, that explains it." said Bethan. "Somebody has moved the tractor and confused you. Your tree is probably farther up the bank."

"No—" Claire's brow was creased and her mouth tight. "No, I don't think so."

There is more to this than photos. Bethan thought.

"I'm sorry." Claire said, pulling herself away from the car "It's professional pride, I suppose. You always know exactly what you've shot, and there are a few things on that film I don't — Look. I'm delaying you again, you're probably right, the tree's somewhere upstream and it doesn't matter anyway, does it?" Claire tried a weak smile. "Perhaps my brain really is starting to atrophy," she said.

Bethan didn't think so.

Chapter XV

Giles was setting up his word processor in his new office, plugging the printer into the monitor and standing back to admire.

It was all just too bloody perfect.

Well, all right, almost too perfect. His one disappointment had been not being able to organise his office in the old man's study. He'd pictured himself in the Gothic chair behind that monster of an oak desk, surrounded by all those heavy books in a language which he couldn't as yet understand — although that was only a matter of time.

Last night, after returning from the pub, Giles had unpacked his word processor and was struggling into the judge's study with the monitor in his arms, fumbling for the light switch, when he found there wasn't one.

There was no electric light in there!

Not only that, there were no bloody power points either.

"Bit of a primitive, your granddad, was he?" he'd said in some irritation.

Claire's reply had been, "Oh, didn't you know about that?" Which could have meant anything. Giles had resolved to contact an electrician. He really wanted that room.

Meanwhile he'd decided to adopt the smallest of the three bedrooms for his office, and he had to admit there were compensations.

Not least the view, through a gap in the trees (an intentional gap, surely) and down over the rooftops of the village towards the Pontmeurig road. The church was just out of sight, seemingly behind the cottage at this point, but he could sense its presence, somehow.

There was another window to the side and it was against this one that Giles had pushed his desk, which was actually their old stripped-pine dining table from the flat in Islington, one of the comparatively few items of furniture they'd brought with them. Claire had insisted they should eat at her grandfather's dining table, which was a terrible fifties-style thing with fat legs. Giles himself would have chopped it up for kindling; he hated its lugubrious lack of style.

Through the side window he could look out from his desk on to an acre of their own land sloping down towards the river. The neighbouring farmer apparently had some sort of grazing right, and the field was full of fat sheep. Giles was thrilled. He could gaze on all this and the enclosing hills with one eye while keeping the other, so to speak, on the VDU. He was, he felt, in the vanguard of journalism: living in this superb rural location, yet in full and immediate contact with London. Or he would be once he'd installed a fax machine.

He didn't think he'd ever felt so happy or so secure. For the first time in years the job was not the most compelling thing in his life. And he knew that if he did have to quit the paper and go freelance like Claire — a freelance specialising, of course, in honest features about the real Wales— they'd be cushioned for the forseeable future by the no doubt astonishing amount of money they'd get for the flat in Islington.

Giles was feeling so buoyant he told the computer how happy he was, typing it out on the keyboard in Welsh: R'wyn hapus.

He examined the sentence on the screen. It wasn't right, was it? It didn't look right at all. He hadn't had much chance to work on his Welsh since moving to Y Groes. Awkward bastard of a language; back in London he'd been sure he was going to have it cracked in no time at all.

Still, no doubt it would start to improve again now Claire was arranging a teacher for them. "Well, all right then, why don't you have a word with Bethan at the school," Aled in the pub had said finally, when he'd emphasised how determined they were to learn the language. "She used to teach a lot of English kids in Pont. Must be good at it"

"Right," Giles had said. Tremendous. Thanks." Getting somewhere now.

"I'll go and see her," Claire had said that morning, when Giles got up with another headache. Then I'll drive over to Aberystwyth and get my film processed and get some food and things. You take an aspirin and sort out your office."

The headache had completely vanished now, the office was in order, everything was fine. He rather wished he'd gone with Claire. He'd been wondering which of the teachers this Bethan was, what she looked like — just hoping she didn't turn out to be that female-wrestler type he'd seen stumping down the lane to the school. He understood she was called Mrs. Morgan and was in fact their neighbour, wife of the farmer who raised sheep in their field. Mrs. B. Morgan. Bethan Morgan? He did hope not.

Giles leapt up in alarm when, down in the living room, the phone rang for the first time since the Telecom blokes had reconnected it. He charged downstairs, thinking he'd get them back to scatter a few extensions around when he and Claire had worked out which rooms they were using. At present the only phone was on a deep window ledge in the living room.

"Hullo, yes. This is, er, hang on — Y Groes two three nine."

"Giles? Is that you. Giles?"

"Certainly is."

"Giles, this is Elinor. Could I speak to Claire?"

Oh hell. He should have known it was all too good to last.

"Sorry, Elinor. Claire's out with her camera. I'm not sure when she'll be back. Might be staying out late to photograph badgers or something."

"Don't be ridiculous, Giles. Now tell me what on earth you're doing there. Why is there a message on your answering machine referring people to this number? What's going on?"

Giles smiled indulgently into the phone. "Going on? Nothing's going on. That's the whole beauty of this place, nothing ever goes on."

"Giles—" The voice of his mother-in-law had acquired a warning weight. "Am I to expect any sense at all out of you? Or should I call back when my daughter's in? Look—"

Being reasonable again, the old Mrs. Nice and Mrs. Nasty routine, Giles thought. "I'm aware that hovel may not be in a fit condition to sell, but surely you could afford to pay someone to do something with it. You didn't have to go there yourselves."

"It's already in good enough condition for us, old darling," said Giles. "Well, virtually. I mean, it needs a few minor alterations, mainly of a cosmetic nature. Anyway, look. I may as well tell you. Expect Claire's been too busy to fill you in about our plans, but the current situation is that we're actually living here now."

The silence lasted nearly half a minute, it seemed to Giles. Why did she always have to phone when Claire was out? He'd have to suffer it all twice now — the heavy threats over the phone from Elinor and then, when he'd told her about the conversation, half an hour or so of Claire pacing around saying what an old cow her mother was.

"Elinor, you still there?"

"In… in that house?" She was sounding very far away. "His house?"

"No. Elinor. Our house."

"Oh, Giles." Unexpectedly her voice had turned itself down low, with apparent anxiety rather than anger. "What about your work, both of you?"

"No problem." said Giles, enjoying talking about this bit, as he always did. He explained how fate had intervened in the form of the Glanmeurig by-election, how he was taking a fortnight's holiday by the end of which, with any luck, they'd be into the campaign. Could be weeks before he'd have to return to London, give or take the odd day, and then, afterwards—"And then you'll sell it, that's what you're saying, when this election is over. Because—"

Giles mentally battered his forehead with an exasperated hand.

"Good God, no, you're not getting this at all. are you? We'll still have our base here. I'll travel lo London during the week. Claire will work directly from here — good as anywhere — and then we've got a few long-term plans to make sure that Wales remains our home. I mean for good. Forever. Got it now?"

There came a stage with Elinor when only brutality would work. He heard her breathe in sharply and then force herself to calm down and reason with him.

"Giles, listen — before this nonsense goes any further—"

"Oh. bloody hell, it isn't…"

" — I–I can talk to you. can't I? I've always thought I could — most of the time." She drew a long breath.

Christ, Giles thought, get me out of this. "Now, I assume this is some insane idea of Claire's… You have to talk her out of it, do you understand? I can't do it, never could once she'd made up her mind about something — now that's an admission, isn't it, from a mother? Giles, please. I'm relying on you, and one day you'll thank me for this—"

"I'll do it now, in case we don't see you for a while. Thanks, Elinor. Now if you don't mind—"

"Giles, don't you dare hang up on me! Listen—" The old girl was racing along breathlessly now. "You could probably get rid of it — the house — quite quickly, if you put your mind to it. I'm sure, if you really want to live in the country, you could get quite a nice property in… in Berkshire or somewhere, for the money. Isn't there some land to sell?"

"Strewth." Giles said. "We don't want to live in bloody Berkshire. I mean, don't worry, we'll still come to see you at Christmas, it's not exactly the other side of the world."

Christ, how could somebody as balanced as Claire have a mother like this? She reflected all the worst aspects of Home Counties womanhood — smugness, snobbery, inability to conceive of civilised society anywhere north of—"Giles, this is not funny. You must fetch Claire home at once."

He felt a warning ripple behind his forehead. "Home? Home? Listen, Elinor, if you want the truth" — the headache was coming back, bloody woman—"If you really want the truth, I've never fell more at home in my entire bloody life. OK, sure, we all know you and the old man were not exactly close but — well, it's not as if he's still there, is it?"

"Isn't it?" his mother-in-law said, sounding suddenly strained and old and tired.

Then she hung up on him.

"All fixed," Claire said. "Starting tomorrow evening."

"What's she like?"

"Very pleasant."

"I mean, is she young or… not so young?"

"I suppose," said Claire, "that depends on what you mean by young."

Getting a bit cryptic these days, Claire. Must be exposure to the Welsh.

"What's she called. I mean, what's her last name?"

"Something English. McQueen — or is that Scottish?"

Although, obviously, she isn't. Anyway, she's going to pop round after school as many nights as she can manage. We didn't get round to agreeing a fee, but I'm sure it'll be reasonable."

"Doesn't matter," Giles said. "Where else would you get Welsh lessons in your own home? But, look, we've got lots to talk about, so why don't I light a fire? Brought some more logs in. Marvellous logs, you know, these, dry as bone."

Going dark earlier these nights. Colder too. Giles thought, glad Claire was back; it was good to stride around the place during the day but he could never go too long without a spot of company. He was dismayed when Claire said. "I have to go out again."

"Go out? Where?"

"I've got some more pictures to take." A wry little twitch of the mouth. "I'm photographing my way into the community, aren't I?"

"Christ, haven't you got enough pictures yet?"

Claire didn't reply. She began to load a film into her newest Nikon as if leaving for a major assignment in the jungles of Nicaragua. It had been like this all day, as though he didn't really exist. She'd just announced what she was going to do and then done it.

Giles said plaintively. "I was waiting to light the fire, have a discussion about, you know, the future. I mean we've hardly had much chance to talk, the past few days. Also, your m—" No, he wasn't going to go into all that Elinor business. Not now.

"We can talk later," Claire said. "I have to catch what's left of the light, OK?"

"Bugger all left, if you ask me. Why not leave it till tomorrow?"

"Also," Claire mumbled, snapping the camera shut. "I have to find my tree."

"I see. And which tree is that?"

"Just a tree I shot last night, and then it went missing."

"I see," said Giles, gritting his teeth. "Now look, Claire, I really do think—"

But Claire had shouldered her camera and was off before he could even tell her about the call from her mother.

Fuck her, thought Giles, and then realised he hadn't done that for quite a while either.

Chapter XXVI

Through the living-room window, Giles watched Claire approach the iron gate. The trees seemed to close around her, and it was as though she were passing quietly into some other dimension. Claire opened the gate without effort and went through, and the landscape appeared to absorb her on the other side. She fitted. She blended with the scene. It welcomed her.

Croeso.

As if she's lived here all her life, Giles thought.

The illusion frightened him. He thought, has she ever really blended with me like that? For the first time since they'd come to live in Y Groes he felt heartsick and alone. And vaguely jealous of the village, which was ridiculous.

He was becoming aware of how differently they regarded this move, this new life. It had been, for him, the big adventure, the great expedition into the unknown, a terrific challenge. It had filled him with energy just thinking about the future. Now he felt his wife was not tuned to quite the same wavelength.

With her it was not elation. It was less of a fun thing. Here they were, just of the two of them in a totally strange place and, far from getting closer, confiding more in each other there was a hazy space between them. Well, not so much between them as around Claire, who had always been so practical and clear-sighted. Now she was altering in unpredictable ways. Like tonight, doing what she'd never done, in his experience, before: going out to take pictures, not in a professional way, but just snapping things, looking for some special sodding tree, for God's sake! This, especially, had got to Giles because only rarely could Claire be persuaded to get out her camera for holiday photos and family occasions. He remembered once suggesting she might knock off a few pics at the christening of his cousin's new baby and she'd gone very huffy indeed, asking him how he'd feel about being asked to write features for the local parish magazine.

Giles sat down at the bloody awful fat-legged dining table and looked into the fireplace which he'd laid with paper and kindling and three small logs and didn't feel like lighting any more.

He ought to try to understand her instead of feeling sorry for himself. She was obviously preoccupied, something here she was struggling to come to terms with. A responsibility to her surroundings that she'd never felt before? Because of her grandfather, yes? Filling in for a missing generation, her mother, who had spurned everything the old man wanted out of life? And what had he wanted out of life except for a bit of peace and quiet, back among his compatriots?

For the old man perhaps, this had represented peace and quiet, but for English people it was a lot more demanding, Giles thought, only now realising how clean-cut their life in London had been. That was the simple life, when you thought about it, for people with their background. He was a hack. Claire took pictures for money. Professionals. The flat in Islington had been like a station waiting room where they'd passed the time until trains took them in different directions. Maybe he only knew Claire as a kind of intimate colleague.

Stuff this! Giles stood up angrily and reached on the deepset window sill for a box of kitchen matches. He struck two at once and flung them at the fireplace, watched the paper flare, listened to the kindling crackle. Life. Energy.

Early days. Give it time. Be positive. Be practical.

In the diminishing light, he moved purposefully around the house, thinking about the improvements they could make without spoiling its character. He took with him the slimline pocket cassette-recorder he used sometimes for interviews.

The living room — well, that was more or less OK.

Beams, inglenook fireplace — great. A wood-burning stove might be useful in the inglenook, more energy-efficient. It would save a lot of work too; amazing how many logs you got through on an open fire, and most of the heat went up the chimney anyway.

Giles went out into the hall, trying to remember where he'd seen a shop specialising in woodstoves.

"Was it Aberystwyth?" he said into the slim, leather-covered cassette machine. "Check in Yellow Pages."

The hall, too, was basically all right. Bit dark, and you had to walk permanently stooped or risk collecting a pair of black eyes from the low-slung beams.

"Hall," he said. "Perhaps some diffused lighting under the beams."

He came back through the living room to the kitchen. This, of course, would need the mast attention. In Giles's view only the solid-fuel Aga-type stove was worth keeping. It hummed and belched a bit, but he liked that. Also, it took both coal and wood.

"OK." Giles said into the recorder. "New sink, for starters. Fitted units, maybe the wall between the kitchen and the pantry knocked out. Discuss with Claire… if she can spare the time."

Right. OK…

The study.

"Now. we shall have to be a bit careful here." Giles told the machine.

After all, one wrong decision and they could easily ruin what was undoubtedly the most interesting room in the house. Again, he found himself groping for the light switch before remembering.

"Unbelievable," he said. "How the hell did the old boy manage without any power in here?"

Wrong there, Giles, he thought. There's certainly power in here. Shelves full of it. But how did he read without a light?

He almost bumped his head on the answer, a big oil lamp of tarnished brass Claire had found in the pantry. It was now hanging from the central beam — she must have done that this morning. He tapped the lamp and gave it a swing, trying to find out if there was oil in it. It didn't sound as if there was. The lamp just rattled. It needed polishing up, too.

"OK, memo: buy paraffin. Also chase up that electrician."

It was darker in here than anywhere else in the house, and yet the room was facing west. Must be all the books, no light reflected from the walls. He wondered if the books were valuable. He wondered how he was going to make space in here for his own books when he brought them up from London. OK, they'd look a bit odd, glossy paperbacks among the stark black spines of Judge Rhys's library. But if it eventually was going to be his office, the judge would just have to move over a bit.

It was chilly in here too. Giles wondered if they could run a radiator from the kitchen stove; it wouldn't be far to bring a pipe. First things first though: let there be some bloody light.

"Suggestion," he said to the tape. "What about removing some of the shelving in the middle of the two side walls and installing some wall-lights? Have to be tasteful ones of course. Convert a couple of antique oil lamps or something."

He glanced up at the framed eisteddfod photograph, full of dignified, white-clad bards and shivered pleasurably, remembering how this room seemed to have spooked Berry Morelli. Great. That picture was definitely going to stay. He wondered which of the bards, if any, was his grandfather-in-law.

The picture seemed dusty and unclear in the dim light and he look a tissue from a hip pocket of his jeans and rubbed at the pale faces of the bards, thinking perhaps he might catch an image of Claire in one of them. Peering at the picture, he felt a dull throb behind his eyes. Bloody headache again. The strain of trying to make out details in semi-darkness.

He backed off. rubbing at his eyes. The room was all shadows now and the only light seemed to be coming out of the picture, out of the white robes of the bards, who appeared to be walking slowly towards him in solemn procession, as if they were about to drift out of the picture and into the room to stand around Giles like a chalk circle and then to melt into the blotchy air.

Back in the picture, meanwhile, the bards had turned black.

"Aspirin," Giles mumbled. He left the study and closed the door behind him and gave it a push to make sure it really was shut.

Where was she?

Giles looked out of the window and it was utterly black, he couldn't even see the lights of the village. How could she take pictures in this? He was pretty sure she hadn't taken a flash unit with her. He looked at his watch and saw it was nearly eight o'clock — she'd been back by seven last night.

He felt a pang of anxiety, unable to shake the ludicrous image of Claire being absorbed by the trees or the village or the night or some numinous combination of all three. And then thought: of course, somebody must have asked her in for a cup of tea, that's what's happened. A bit bloody silly worrying about her being out after dark in Y Groes when she'd survived the streets of Belfast and photographed call-girls on the corners and junkies in the darkened doorways of the nastier crevices of London.

All the same he went out to the porch to wait for her and found the night wasn't as dark as it had seemed from inside.

There was a moon, three parts full, and the tallest village roofs were silvered between the two big sycamores. Giles moved out onto the dampening lawn and the church tower slid into view, the lip of its spire appearing to spear the moon, so that it looked like a big black candle with a small white flame.

Giles's heart thumped as a shadow detached itself from the base of the tower and came towards him. as if a piece of the stonework had come alive. But it turned out to be Claire herself, camera hanging limply from the strap curled around a wrist.

"Bloody hell." Giles said. "I didn't know you were going to be so long. I mean, all right, muggings are decidedly uncommon in this area, but all the same—"

"Darling." Claire said briskly. "Go back inside, will you, and put all the lights on for me. All the lights."

"People will think we're extravagant." Giles protested— half-heartedly, though, because he was so pleased to have her back. "I mean, not a good image to have around here."

"Oh. Giles—"

"All right, all right—" Giles switched on everything, even the light on the little landing upstairs, thinking: we'll change some of these old parchment shades when we get time, they're more than a touch dreary. All the upstairs windows were open and he could hear Claire darting about, aperture wide open, shutter speed down. Thock…thock… thock. A great tenderness overcame him, and when she came in he kissed her under the oak beams of the living room, next to the inglenook where they'd have log fires all through the winter. His headache had receded and with his arms around Claire's slim functional body he felt much better.

"Sweetheart, where precisely have you been? Your hair feels all tangled."

Claire laughed and Giles heard a new boldness in that laugh, all the London tightness gone. Earthy too.

He joined in the laughter.

"You're really happy, aren't you?" he said.

Claire pulled away from him and went to stand by the window.

"Yes," she said. "I'm very happy."

Giles said. "Did you find your tree?"

"Yes." said Claire. "I found my tree."

And then, without a word, switching lights off on the way, she led him up to bed… where they made love for the first time since their arrival, the first time in the new bed. And it was really not how Giles had imagined it would be in this pastoral setting. Nothing languid and dreamy about it at all; it was really pretty ferocious stuff, the old fingernails-down-the-back routine, quiet Claire on the initiative, hungry. Nothing distant now.

Giles told himself it had been very exciting.

Chapter XXVII

He was exhausted and slept like the dead and woke late next morning. Woke with another headache and this one was a bastard. Eyes tightly shut, he ground his head into the pillow. It was as if somebody were slicing his skull down the middle with a chainsaw.

"Change of air," Claire diagnosed. "You're just not used to it yet."

She swung both legs simultaneously out of bed and walked naked to the door.

"Yeah, sure, air like bloody wine," Giles groaned into the pillow. "Air that gives you a bastard hangover."

A few minutes later, he was slowly pulling his trousers on, the sight of the pink vinyl headboard making him feel queasy, when Claire returned from her bath, still naked, tiny drops of water falling from her hair onto her narrow shoulders. She seemed oblivious of her nakedness which for Claire, was unusual: to be nude, in daylight, when Giles was obviously feeling too lousy to be turned on.

"I may stop rinsing my hair," said Claire, looking out of the window. "What do you think?"

"I think I need a cup of strong tea," Giles said.

"There's no point in being artificially anything around here." Claire said.

Giles looked up, a pinball of agony whizzing from ear to ear with the movement.

"I like you blonde," he said. "I always have."

Claire just went on gazing out of the window, across the village to the Nearly Mountains and the neutral sky.

In a bid to lose his headache, Giles took a couple of paracetamol tablets and went for a walk down to the village where autumn, it seemed, had yet to begin — even though tonight would see the end of British Summertime.

"Bore da," he said, as cheerily as he could manage, to Glyn, the angular historian chap, doing his Saturday shopping with a basket over his arm.

"Good morning. Mr. Freeman," said Glyn with a flash of his tombstone teeth.

"Wonderful weather." Giles said, not failing to notice that Glyn, like everyone else he spoke to in the village, had addressed him in English. He'd never learn Welsh if people kept doing that.

"Well, yes." said Glyn, as if warm weather in October was taken for granted here. Perhaps it was, thought Giles.

He walked across the river bridge, past the entrance to the school lane and on towards a place he'd never been before: the great wood which began on the edge of the village. Sooner than he expected he found himself in what seemed like an enormous wooden nave. He was reminded of the ruins of some old abbey. It was almost all oak trees, freely spaced as if in parkland. Oak trees bulging with health, with the space to spread out their muscular limbs, no decaying branches, no weaklings. Some of the oaks were clearly of immense age and had a massive, magisterial presence.

Giles wondered if this was what Claire had meant when she talked of "my tree." Had she come up here alone at dusk?

It occurred to him that he was standing inside a huge ancient monument. Most of these trees were centuries old, some perhaps older than the castles the English had built to subdue the people of Wales. And this was what most of the Welsh forests used to be like, from pre-medieval days to the early part of the twentieth century, until the now-ubiquitous conifers had been introduced — quick to grow, quick to harvest, uniform sizes. Drab and characterless, but easy money for comparatively little work.

This wood was awesomely beautiful. This was how it should be. Giles felt a sense of sublime discovery and an aching pride. He fell he'd penetrated at last to the ancient heart of Y Groes. Surely this was where it had all begun— the source of the timber-framing of the cottages, all those gigantic beams, the woody spirit of the place.

Giles felt, obscurely, that this place could take away his headache.

He wandered deeper among the trees, which were still carrying the weighty riches of late summer. The woods seemed to go on and on, and he realised it must form a great semi-circle around the village.

He came upon two great stumps, where trees had been felled. Between them, a young tree surged out of the black soil. The wood, obviously, was still being managed, still being worked as woodland had been in the old days Whereas, elsewhere in Wales, it sometimes seemed as if all that remained of the great oak woods were knotted arthritic copses used by farmers merely as shelter for their sheep devoid of new growth because the sheep ate the tiny saplings as soon as they showed.

No sheep in here. No people either, except for Giles.

He'd heard talk of foresters in Y Groes and assumed they were blokes who worked for the Forestry Commission in the giant conifer plantation along the Aberystwyth road.

Obviously they were in charge of maintaining this huge oak wood, selecting trees for unobtrusive felling, planting new ones so the appearance of the place would never change from century to century. He also knew there was a carpenter — a Mr. Vaughan — or Fon. as it was spelled in Welsh — who made traditional oak furniture. And Aled in the Tafarn had mentioned that a new house was to be built near the river for Morgan's eldest son and had laughed when Giles expressed the hope that it would not look out of place. "When it is built," Glyn had said, "you will think it has always been there."

God, Giles thought, the village is still growing out of this woodland just as it always has. An organic process. Morelli had been right when he said it was like the place had just grown up out of the ground.

Giles raised up his arms as if to absorb the soaring energy of the wood but felt only insignificant among the arboreal giants and decided to turn back. It was too much to take in all at once. Especially when he wasn't feeling awfully well, nerves in his head still jerking, like wires pulled this way and that by a powerful magnet.

He almost got lost on the way back, taking a path he was convinced was the right one until it led him to a pair of blackened gateposts where the oaks formed a sort of tunnel.

At the end was something big, like a huge crouching animal. A house. Somebody lived in the middle of the wood.

Well, what was so odd about that? Lots of people lived in woods.

Yes, but this wood was special. The village was down below; this was where the trees lived.

There was no gate but on the left-hand post it said, carved out of the wood.

Rheithordy.

Above the word, which Giles had never seen before, a rough cross had been hewn.

"Helo."

Giles stopped, startled, as a small dark figure darted out from behind the gatepost.

"Hello." Giles said. "Who's that?"

It was a little girl — maybe eight or nine — and she was dressed mainly in black — black skirt, black jumper, black shoes. Even so, she seemed to fit into the backcloth, like some woodland sprite. "Pwy y chi?" she demanded.

"Sorry," said Giles. "'Fraid I don't speak Welsh. Yet."

The child had mousy hair and a pale, solemn face. "Are you English?"

Giles nodded, smiling ruefully. "'Fraid so."

The child looked up at Giles out of large brown eyes. She said seriously, "Have you come to hang yourself?"

"What?" Giles's eyes widened in amusement. "Have I come to—?"

But she only turned away and ran back behind the gatepost.

Giles shook his head — which hurt — and strolled on. Soon the path widened and sloped down to the village. It was easy when you knew your way.

There was only one paracetamol left in the packet, but he took it anyway and sat down at the fat-legged dining table. They were going this morning to Pontmeurig, where Giles was to meet the chairman of The local Conservative Party to get a bit of background for a feature he was planning in the run-up to The Glanmeurig by-election. It wouldn't be long now before a date was set.

"And while we're in Pont." he shouted to Claire, who was in the bedroom, changing out of her old, stained jeans into something more respectable, "there're a few things we could be on the lookout for, if you're agreeable. I had a walk around the place last night, making a few notes on tape."

"Super." Claire said, appearing at the living room door, still wriggling into clean, white denims. "Da iawn. How's your head?"

"Could be worse. Don't you want to hear the list?"

"Oh, I hate it when you put ideas on tape and we have to unscramble all this distorted cackle. Why can't you write it out?"

"All right. I mean o'r… o'r…"

"O'r gorau." Claire said, zipping up her trousers as she went through lo the kitchen.

While still in London they'd taken to peppering their conversations with a few Welsh phrases. Giles now tried to think of a suitable comment to make in Cymraeg but nothing came to him and his head still hurt. How long had they had these bloody paracetamol? Maybe they were losing their potency.

He found his pocket cassette recorder and ran the tape back to transcribe the aural memoranda into a notebook.

Concealed lighting for the hall, electrician, plumber…

"… and the pantry knocked out." his voice crackled back at him from the tiny speaker. "Discuss with Claire…if she can spare the time…"

Giles hurriedly lowered the volume, hoping she hadn't heard the last bit from the kitchen. He put his ear to the speaker in case he'd said anything else vaguely inflammatory, but there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Hang on, where was the stuff he'd recorded in the study, something about wall-lights, right?

It had gone.

He must have wiped it by mistake.

Bugger.

And yet — turning up the volume as high as it would go — he could still hear the ambient sounds of the room, the hollow gasp of empty space, as if it was only his own voice which had been wiped off. Which was stupid; he must simply have left the thing running.

"Recorder batteries," he wrote in his notebook, at the head of the list. Better make sure of that before he started doing any actual interviews. Over the past few years Giles had relied increasingly on pocket tape-recorders; his shorthand was all to cock these days.

Not that the batteries seemed low, but there was an awful lot of tape hiss. ssssssssss, it went, sssssssssssssssssssss

Chapter XXVIII

Bethan had never been to Judge Rhys's house before. She'd been past it enough times — shepherding the children on nature rambles up in the hills, trying to spot the Red

Kite, Britain's rarest bird of prey, which nested there.

Occasionally, over the hedge, she'd seen the judge in his garden. Not actually gardening, of course. Other people did his gardening. Simply standing there, not moving but not really looking as if he was admiring the scenery either.

He used to be like that in church too, always in the same pew, two rows from the front, very still in the black suit, not visibly singing and not visibly praying.

Strange man.

Now there was only the house to stand there gazing towards the hills, its windows darkened. As she lifted up the metal gate and pushed it open, Bethan was trying to imagine what it would look like here when Claire had her children and there were toys all over the lawn and perhaps a swing.

She really could not see it.

A fine dusk was purpling into night as Bethan walked up the path. A light came on in a front window, and by the time she reached the front door, arms full of books and things as usual, it was open. A tall, fair-haired man was there in a sleeveless V-necked pullover over a checked shirt, looking, she thought, distinctly relieved when he saw her.

"Great. Hi. Giles Freeman. Bethan, right?" Standing back to usher her into the warm living room with the Welsh dresser and the inglenook and a muted glow from a reading lamp with a brown ceramic base. ''Super of you to do this for us, it really is."

"Super of you to want to do it." Bethan said. "Not many of you — your — people who move in from England—"

"Bastards," Giles said vehemently, closing doors. "No sense of where they are. We — Ah, here's Claire."

She wore a grey skirt and a white blouse, looking like a schoolgirl, no make-up. She did not smile. "Bethan, hello. Coffee now? Or later?"

"Whichever suits you." Had there been a row, she wondered.

"How about during." Giles said. "I'll make it."

"I'd like to start, I think," Claire said. "We don't want to delay you. You'll want to get home to your husband."

"My husband is dead," Bethan said casually, standing in the middle of the floor looking for somewhere to put down the pile of books, pretending not to notice the familiar silence which always followed this disclosure.

"Oh," said Claire mildly, as Giles was saying, "I'm awfully sorry. We didn't know." The unspoken question was hanging around, so Bethan answered it.

"He died about a year ago. Leukaemia."

"That's really terrible." said Giles. "That really is a bastard of a thing."

"It was very quick. By the time it was diagnosed he was dying. Three weeks later, he—" Bethan made a mouth-smile. "Right. That is over with. I am at the stage where sympathy only depresses me. Look, I've brought you these little books. They're grown-up cartoons with all the bubbles in Welsh and a lot of the everyday kind of words you don't find in the more formal textbooks."

Giles moved to take the other stuff from her (why did people always rush to help as soon as they learned she was a widow?) so she could open a little paperback called "Welsh Is Fun." She showed him a drawing of a woman in her underwear. Little arrows pointed to things, giving the Welsh, with the English in brackets. Like bronglwm (bra) and bol(belly).

"I've also brought you some leaflets for Pont—have you heard of that?"

Giles shook his head.

"It's an organisation set up lo form links between native Welsh people and the, um, incomers. Pont means—"

"Bridge, right?" said Giles. "As in Pontmeurig. Rehabilitation, eh?"

"There we are," said Bethan, glancing towards the fat-legged dining table at which only two chairs were set. "That's a start. Now, where shall we sit?"

"Not in here." Claire said quickly.

Giles looked at her. She said. 'I've set up a table in the study."

"What's the use of going in there? There's no bloody electricity!"

"I filled the oil lamp. And lit the fire. Will you light the lamp, Giles? Please?" It was a command. Bethan thought.

"Oh. for Christ's sake… What's wrong with staying here?"

"It's more fitting," Claire said quietly.

"Goodness." Bethan said, looking at the rows of black books.

"Can you tell us what they are?" Giles was turning up the wick on the big oil lamp dangling from the middle beam. "Claire, is this really going to be bright enough?"

"If we put the table not quite underneath, it'll be fine."

She'd erected a green-topped card table and placed three stiff-backed chairs around it. A small coal fire burned rather meanly in the Victorian grate. Bethan also would rather have stayed in the living room. She would never have tolerated a classroom as stiff and cold as this. She crossed to the shelves.

"I don't recognise most of these." Taking books down at random. 'They're obviously very old and must be very valuable indeed. See…" She held out a page of text.

"This is in medieval Welsh. These must be some of the oldest books ever printed in Welsh — although copies, I expect, in most cases. There seems to be a lot of old poetry — Taliesyn, is this? And these three are quite early versions of The Mabinogion. I've never seen them before, although I'm no expert. Oh—"

"What've you found?" Giles wandered over, craning his neck.

"Nothing really, just a modern one amongst all the old stuff. It hasn't got its dustjacket so it looked like all the rest. It's ap Siencyn, one of his early books of poetry."

"What, you mean ap Siencyn, the vicar here?"

"The rector, yes. He used to be a poet." Bethan smiled.

"What I mean is, he used to publish his poetry. Many years ago."

"That's amazing," Giles said.

"Not really, there are poets everywhere in Wales and quite a few are ministers."

Giles nodded solemnly "Exactly. That's the whole point."

He folded his arms, rocking back on his heels in the middle of the room on the dragon rug. "What I mean is — We've become so smug and cynical in England because our cultural heritage is so safe. We've got the world's number one language, we've got Shakespeare and Jane Austen and all these literary giants planted in state in Westminster Abbey. But Welsh culture's about ordinary people. I mean, your writers and poets don't spend all their time poncing about at fancy publishers' parties and doing lecture tours of the States. They're working farmers and schoolteachers and — clergymen. And they'll never be remotely famous outside Wales because virtually nobody out there can understand a word they write. It takes real commitment to carry on in a situation like that, wouldn't you say?"

Bethan watched Giles's lean English face shining with an honest fervour in the unsteady lamplight. How could the issue of Wales be seized on with such vigour by people like Giles and Claire, who had not been brought up in the warmth of a Welsh community, not had bedtime stories read to them in Welsh, sung Welsh nursery rhymes or made their first terrifying public appearance performing a little recitation before a critical audience of neighbours at the local eisteddfod? Did they equate Wales with whales? Were the Welsh suddenly interesting because they looked like a threatened species?

Then Bethan glanced at Claire and drew in a sharp breath.

Claire, small face not mellow but stark in the lamplight, was looking up at Giles. And wearing a rigid expression of explicit contempt.

"You know," Giles was idling Bethan enthusiastically. "I wouldn't mind doing a feature sometime on old ap Siencyn. What's he like?"

"He's— You've met him. Claire, what did you think of him?"

Giles looked hurt. "Claire, you never mentioned meeting the rector."

"I—" Claire didn't look at him. "Our paths crossed while I was out taking pictures."

"She took his picture." Bethan said.

"I didn't see that," Giles said.

"It didn't come out." Claire snapped. "Can we make a start?"

Bethan thought. Her pictures never don't come out. Besides, I saw it.

"Well, I think I've seen his house." Giles said. "Upon the edge of the woods. Very impressive."

Bethan said. "Sometimes I take the kids up to the woods, but we go the other way. I don't like that part somehow."

Especially now, she thought, shuddering at the image, which came to her unbidden, of two leather hiking boots slowly swinging overhead.

"I thought it was magnificent." Giles said, freckles aglow in the lamplight. "You get the feeling that's where the whole village was born — you know, the timber for the cottages. I think it's fantastic the way they're managing it, renewing the trees and everything. I mean, who actually does that? Who are the foresters?"

Claire, face taut, severe in the oil-light, said, with quiet menace, "Ydy chi'n barod, Bethan?"

Giles fell silent, looked embarrassed.

"Yes," Bethan said, feeling sorry for him. Why did his innocent ardour seem to irritate his wife so? "Yes. I'm ready." When she'd agreed to teach them Welsh, she'd been looking forward to a chat over coffee with people who weren't a part of this stifling community. Not this formal, frigid atmosphere, this sense of… ritual, almost.

It's the house, she thought, It's the damned house. She opened one of her books on the card table. Aware, on the periphery of her vision, of the old, heavy desk and the Victorian Gothic chair across the room, beyond the dome of the lamplight. As if they were awaiting the arrival of the real teacher.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Bethan left.

There was no moon. It was very dark.

"Where's your car?" Giles asked.

"I left it at the school, it's only three minutes walk."

"It's pitch black. I'll come with you, bring a torch."

"Thank you. but I used to live in this village, there's no—"

"There is." Giles said firmly, grabbing his green waxed jacket from behind the door, switching his heavyweight policeman's torch on and off to make sure it was working.

"Well, thank you." Bethan said. Oh god, she thought. I don't really want to be alone with Giles now. I don't need this.

Following the torchbeam. they walked down the hill and over the bridge, the river hissing below them. There was an anguished silence between them until they reached the entrance to the school lane.

"Christ," Giles said.

"Look—" Bethan put a reassuring hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, all right?"

"Huh—" Giles twisted away like a petulant schoolboy then immediately turned back, apologetic. He expelled a sigh, full of hopelessness, and rubbed his eyes.

"You will soon get the hang of it."

It was too dark to see his face.

"But you don't understand." Giles said desperately. "I thought I was getting the hang of it. I've been working at it for weeks. Before we even came. I used to spend all my lunch hours swotting. I mean, you know — I really thought I was getting pretty good. It's just so bloody embarrassing."

"Don't worry." Bethan said. "Everybody has days like that. When they're beginning. A few weeks really isn't very long, you know."

"All right then, what about Claire? I mean, she hasn't spent anywhere near as much time on it as me."

"Look," Bethan said, as they reached the Peugeot. "The very worst thing you can do is worry."

"But I couldn't put together even the simplest sentences! I mean things I know!" Bethan heard Giles punching the palm of his hand in bitter frustration. The violent movement seemed to hurt him more than he'd intended because he gave a small moan of pain.

"Mr. Freeman, are you sure you're all right?"

"Giles. Please. I hate being Freeman, so bloody English. Yes I'm fine. Well, I've got a headache, but that's nothing unusual. I'm sorry. I'm being ridiculous."

"I know it means a lot to you." Bethan said gently. She felt terribly sorry for him. He wanted so badly to be a part of this culture. It had been awful watching him agonisingly entangled in the alien grammar, tongue frozen around words he just could not say, getting stuck on the same ones again and again, stammering in his confusion. Sometimes — his hands gripping the edge of the table until the knuckles were white as bone — it seemed almost as if his facial muscles had been driven into paralysis by the complexity of the language.

"Look," Bethan said. "Get a good night's sleep. Don't think about it. Don't look at any books. I'll see you again tomorrow. Maybe… Look, maybe it's something I am doing wrong. I'm so used to teaching children."

"But what about Claire?' he cried. "I mean, for God's sake, how do you explain that?"

Chapter XXIX

Berry Morelli had not long been in the office when his boss threw a newspaper at him.

"For your private information," Addison Walls said.

Newsnet's London bureau chief was a small, neat, precise man with steel-rimmed glasses, a thin bow tie that was always straight and an unassuming brown toupee. It was Berry's unvoiced theory that Addison possessed a normal head of hair but shaved it off periodically on account of a toupee was tidier.

"Your buddy, I think," Addison said and went back to his examination of the Yorkshire Post. He was a very thorough man, arriving at work each day somewhere between 8:00 and 8:03 a.m. and completing a shrewd perusal of every British national newspaper and five major provincial morning papers by 9:15 when his staff got in.

The staff consisted of a secretary, a research assistant and three reporters including Berry Morelli. Although there would usually be orders for the major stories of the day, Newsnet specialised in features dealing with peripheral issues of American interest which the big agencies had no time to mess with. Occasionally, compiling his morning inventory of the British press, Addison Walls would suddenly zap an item with his thick black marker pen and announce, "This is a Newsnet story."

Berry noticed the item flung at him had not been zapped, although the paper had been neatly folded around an inside-page feature starkly headlined,

THE ANGRY HILLS

Above the text was a photograph of a ruined castle which resembled the lower plate of a set of dentures, two walls standing up like teeth. The view was framed by the walls of more recent buildings; a for sale sign hung crookedly from one.

Underneath the picture, it said, Giles Freeman, of our political staff, reports on what's shaping up to be a dramatic by-election battle in wildest Wales.

Berry smiled and sat down and lit a cigarette. So Giles had pulled it off. They'd let him cover the Pontmeurig by-election. Filing his stuff, no doubt, from his own cottage, probably over the phone from the judge's study. Two weeks had passed since Berry had fled that place. Two weeks in which to consider the possibility that he'd been overreacting. Him and old Winstone both.

He started to read the feature, thinking Giles would be sure to hype up the issue to persuade his editor that this election was worthy of intensive on-the-spot coverage.

It was not the usual political backgrounder. Giles had gone folksy.

Idwal Roberts smiled knowingly as he laid out his leather tobacco pouch on the bar of the Drovers' Arms.

This." he said, "is going to be a bit of an eye-opener for a London boy. I imagine you've reported a fair few by-elections, but I can tell you — you won't have seen one like this.

"Oh. I know they've had them in South Wales and the Borders in recent years. But this time you're in the real Wales. A foreign country, see."

Idwal Roberts, a retired headmaster, is the Mayor of Pontmeurig, a little market town at the southern end of the range of rugged hills called in Welsh something long and complicated which translates roughly as "the Nearly Mountains."

This is the principal town in the constituency of Glanmeurig, which recently lost its long-serving Conservative MP, Sir Maurice Burnham-Lloyd and is now preparing for its first ever by-election. Local people will tell you that the last time anything really exciting happened in Pontmeurig was in the fifteenth century when the Welsh nationalist leader Owain Glyndwr (or Owen Glendower, as they call him east of Offa's Dyke) set fire to the castle.

The gaunt remains of this castle still frown over the cattle market and the new car-park. The fortress was actually built by the Welsh but subsequently commandeered by the English king Edward I. One story tells how the wealthy baron in charge of the castle offered to support Glyndwr's rebellion, but Owain set light to the place anyway on the grounds that you could never trust the word of an Englishman.

The Mayor of Pontmeurig (an "independent" like most councillors hereabouts) reckons opinions have not changed a great deal in the intervening years.

Giles went on to outline the problem of comparatively wealthy English people moving into the area, pricing many houses beyond the range of locals, often buying shops and pubs and post offices and conducting their business in English where once Welsh had been the language of the streets.

"What say we take a look at this?" Berry said casually, and Addison Walls gave him a wry smile that said no way.

"They may be a big deal over here, but you think back, son, and tell me how many British by-elections you saw reported in the New York Times.

"It's been known." said Berry.

"It's been known if the Government's on the brink."

"I just thought, maybe this language angle."

"Forget it. You compare this situation with Ulster, it's chickenshit."

"Yeah," Berry said.

Housing and immigration are going to be key issue; in this election." Roberts says. "People are getting very angry, seeing their sons and daughters having to leave the area because they can't afford a house anymore."

One local estate agent admits that more than sixty per cent of the houses he's sold this year have gone to English people moving to rural Wales in search what they see as a "healthier" lifestyle.

"There is going to be acrimony." says Idwal Roberts. "Sparks will fly. You can count on that, my friend."

"You can sure count on it with Giles around." Berry muttered. The article went on to discuss the two leading contenders — the Conservative Party and the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. The Conservatives had chosen their man. a local auctioneer called Simon Gallier. But Plaid, as Giles explained, had a crucial decision to make.

If Plaid want to play safe, they'll go for Wil James, a mild-mannered Baptist minister from Cardigan. He's well liked, but party strategists are wondering if he really has what it takes to slug it out with a man used to the cut-and-thrust of the livestock sales.

If Plaid want to live dangerously, however, they'll take a chance on Guto Evans, a 44-year-old part-time college lecturer, author and one-time bass-guitarist in a Welsh language rock and roll band.

Evans is a man not known for keeping his opinions to himself — especially on the subject of mass-immigration by well-off English people.

"Ah, yes," says the Mayor of Pontmeurig, relighting his pipe. "Guto Evans. Now that really would be interesting."

And he gives what could only be described as a sinister chuckle.

It's now felt the election is unlikely to take place before December because of…

'Addison. I can't help wondering if this isn't gonna get heavy." Berry said.

"Anybody dies," said Addison, "you can go out there."

"Thanks."

"Meantime, listen up, I got something here the West Coast papers could be clamouring for by tonight so I figure we got no time to waste."

"Right, I…" Something had caught Berry's eye. It was the picture byline.

It was placed unobtrusively in the top right hand corner of the photo of the castle and the "for sale" sign. Tiny lettering, as was normal in Giles's paper, especially when they used a freelance photographer.

It said

Picture by Claire Rhys.

"Now that's weird," Berry said. "That is real weird."

"What?" said Addison Walls.

"Sorry." Berry said. "You go ahead, I'm listening."

Maybe it wasn't that weird. People often changed their names for professional purposes. Women reverted to their premarital names. Claire, of course, had never been called Rhys, but maybe she thought a Welsh name like that would attract more work within Wales. Also, when people moved to a different country they altered their names so as not to sound unpronounceably foreign. A lot of Poles did that.

But English people called Freeman?

No, he was right first time.

It was weird.