Candlenight

Chapter XXX

By mid-November the weather had turned nasty.

There had been much heavy rain, with three Red Two flood alerts for the River Meurig in as many weeks. And it was suddenly much colder. On the tops of the Nearly Mountains the rain fell as wintry showers, leaving premature patches of stiff snow behind the crags.

In its bowl of snow-encrusted hills, the village of Y Groes was, as usual, preserved from the worst of it. A blue hole, they called it. Bethan thought scientists might explain this in terms of changes in atmospheric pressure brought about by the geophysical features of the surrounding landscape. But the truth was she didn't know, so there was little she could say when Buddug told the children that Y Groes was especially favoured by the heavens because it had preserved the old traditions more faithfully than anywhere else in Wales.

"If you pay attention," Buddug said, wagging a fat forefinger, "you will see how clouds shrink away from the tower of our church. As if they are afraid."

Crazy old bat, Bethan thought, leaning moodily on the piano, as Buddug lectured the assembly, two dozen scrubbed, rapt faces.

Later, as she drove home in the sepia dusk, she glanced towards the church tower and noted with some annoyance that the timbered belfry was hard against an almost perfect cloudless circle.

That day the Conservative Party had moved the writ for the Glanmeurig by-election, naming the day as December 15th — unusually late in the year. A week ago, the prospective Conservative candidate, Simon Gallier, a local auctioneer and valuer, protégé of Burnham-Lloyd and well in with the fanners, had officially been adopted by his constituency party in the suitably dignified setting of the Plas Meurig Hotel. The other parties were not far behind — except for Plaid Cymru which, as usual, took its time selecting a candidate, with predictable implications for Guto Evans's nervous system.

"Quite honestly," he lied that night. "I don't bloody care anymore. If they go for the soft option and choose Wil James, they won't be the party I joined all those years ago, so it won't matter anyway."

Guto was slumped in the shabby lounge of the Drovers' Arms with Bethan and two other friends, Dai Death, the funeral director, and Idwal Roberts — the "independent" Mayor of Pontmeurig.

In Pont it was raining hard again.

Although the public bar was half full, the less-dedicated drinkers had been deterred by the weather and Guto's table was the only one occupied in the lounge. Because of the shortage of custom the lounge bar itself remained closed, its shutters down. This meant they had to fetch their own drinks from the public bar, but it also meant nobody could eavesdrop on what they were saying. Which was fortunate because the little gathering had turned into an impromptu training session for Guto's final interview by the Party's selection panel.

It was not going well.

Bethan thought this was not altogether surprising in view of the publication that morning in Wales's daily newspaper, the Western Mail, of the story Guto had been dreading.

It was brief but slotted significantly into the front page. It said police had confirmed having interviewed Guto Evans, a shortlisted contender for the Plaid Cymru candidacy in the forthcoming Glanmeurig by-election, following an incident in a public bar a few weeks ago, during which a 26-year-old merchant banker had been slightly hurt. The injured man, who came from Surrey, had just bought a farmhouse on the outskirts of Pontmeurig at auction when the incident occurred at the Drovers' Arms in the town centre. He had been treated at Pontmeurig Cottage Hospital for minor facial injuries. However, police said they had no evidence of an offence being committed and charges were unlikely. Mr. Evans had been unavailable for comment last night.

"It could have been worse." Bethan said.

Her companions clearly disagreed. Plaid's riskier option for the Glanmeurig candidacy was miserably mopping beer froth from his beard with a frayed tartan handkerchief. The Mayor, a solid man with crinkly grey hair, sucked morosely on an empty pipe. Dai Death just stared sorrowfully into space in his best graveside manner.

They looked as dismal as the lounge, which was lit by naked bulbs in tarnished brass wall-brackets and smelled of beer and mothballs.

Bethan said. "I accept that over-confidence is not to be recommended, but I can't help feeling…"

She sighed and gave up.

"Warning him weeks ago, I was," said Dai Death. "The day of the activist is over, see. Public displays of anger, all this oratory and rhetoric — forget it. man. Plausible on the telly is what it takes now."

"Oratory and rhetoric have rather more to commend them." Idwal Roberts said heavily, "than physical violence. But I follow your reasoning. Give him another question. Bethan."

Bethan looked at Guto. who shrugged and nodded gloomily.

"All right." Bethan said, straightening her skirt and adjusting her glasses lo consult the clipboard on her knee. "So. Mr. Evans, there's been a lot of debate about the upsurge of terrorism in Wales, with the burning of English-owned property and a wave of anti-English feeling. Where do you stand on this controversial issue?"

Guto cleared his throat. "Well, er… I, of course, abhor all terrorism, while recognising that the present economic situation, the price of housing, the shortage of low-cost homes for local people, the mass immigration — all this, sadly, is an invitation to those for whom democracy seems such a painfully slow way of bringing about change. But nonetheless, we— Ah, I am tying myself up in knots trying to avoid saying that while I might deplore their methods I applaud their aims — ask me an easier one. I'll be all right on the night."

"Hmmm," Bethan looked doubtful. "All right, then. So why, if you abhor all terrorism, did you—?"

She stopped when she saw Idwal Roberts pursing his lips and shaking his head.

"That reporter fellow." Idwal whispered, "has just walked past the door."

Giles Freeman had only really called in at the Drovers' to use the lavatory. He'd spent four days at the paper and was on his way home, still wearing his dark suit, still looking and feeling very London. Far too London for the Drovers' Arms, but he really did need a slash.

Feeling better though, the nearer he got to Y Groes — in spite of the weather, the rain coming at the windscreen so hard it was like being permanently stuck in a high-powered car wash.

Feeling better the further he got from London. Feeling especially good because he would not now have to return until after the by-election. When his fortnight's holiday had ended and still no date had been fixed, he'd had no alternative but to spend four days a week in London. And, in these conditions, the journey had been more gruelling than he could have imagined.

On each of the three weekends, he'd started out happily for home. But each time the drive seemed to get longer— perhaps because he was getting used to the scenery, an element of the routine setting in. And when he arrived back in Y Groes the effects of the journey would hit him like an avalanche and he'd feel utterly exhausted, waking up the following morning with a ghastly headache. A couple of days at the cottage — most of them spent recovering in bed — and he'd had to make his way back to the Islington flat and another week on the paper.

"Giles, you look bloody awful." his boss, the political editor had told him bluntly last week. "Commuting's one thing — I mean we all commute, up to a point — but commuting a couple of hundred miles each way is bloody lunacy, if you ask me."

"Don't worry about me," Giles had said. "It's just there's a lot of extra pressure, what with moving stuff out there and everything."

"You're nuts." said the political editor.

"It'll be OK." Giles insisted. "Soon get used to it.

But he knew he wouldn't. He knew he was trying to marry two totally incompatible lifestyles.

The headaches, he realised now, had been the result of years of grinding tension: smoking, drinking, late nights, junk food, driving like a bat out of hell — his system had adjusted itself over the years to that kind of lifestyle. And now it had reacted perversely to intensive bursts of fresh air, relaxation and healthy eating.

Withdrawal symptoms. A sort of Cold Turkey.

This had become clear over the past few days, after Giles had been ordered to return to London and plunge back into the urban cesspit. His system had reverted to the old routine, the familiar self-destruct mechanism clicking back into place, the body throwing up the usual smokescreen telling him it didn't mind being abused, quite liked it really and look, here's the proof: no headaches while you're down in the Smoke, drinking, slugging it out with the traffic, pressurising politicians who've been barely on nodding terms with the truth for years.

One good thing, though — the Welsh. Every night in the Islington flat, with no distractions — for the first time he was glad to have the kind of London neighbours who wouldn't notice if you were dead until the smell began to offend them — Giles would sit down and spend at least ninety minutes with his Welsh textbook and his cassette tapes.

And, though he said it himself, it was coming on a treat.

"Noswaith dda" he said affably to the young man next to him at the urinal in the Drovers' gents.

Feeling friendly, feeling good about the language again. Glad to be using it.

He'd been left badly shaken by several nights of humiliation in the judge's study, the last one ending with an almost unbearable headache. But now the grammar was making sense again. Bethan was a great girl, but perhaps he was more suited to working on his own than having lessons.

"Mae hi'n bwrw glaw," he observed to the youth in the adjacent stall, nodding at the rain dripping down the crevices of the bubbled window above their heads.

"Yeah," said the youth. He smirked, zipped up his fly and turned away.

Incomer, Giles thought disparagingly.

The youth went out, glancing over his shoulder at Giles.

Giles washed his hands and stared at his face in the mirror above the basin. He looked pale but determined.

Already his new life in Y Groes had shown him the things which were really important. Shown him, above all, that London and the paper were no longer for him — unless he could convince them that they needed a full-time staff reporter in Wales. After all, the Telegraph had one now.

Failing that, he and Claire would flog the Islington flat for serious money and then set up some sort of news and features agency in Wales, supplying national papers, radio, television, the international media. He had the contacts. All he had to do now was make sure this election generated enough excitement to convince enough editors that Wales was a country they needed to keep a much closer eye on in the future.

Giles and Claire would be that eye. Claire Rhys. He liked the way she'd changed her name for professional purposes. Added a certain credibility. One in the eye for Elinor too. He only wished he could call himself Giles Rhys.

He decided to go into the public bar for one drink before tackling the Nearly Mountains. Unfair to use the place merely as a urinal.

Guto said sharply. "Is it that bastard from Cardiff?" He was halfway out of his chair, face darkening.

"That's right," said Dai Death sarcastically. "That's just the way to handle it. You get up and clobber him in public. He's probably got a photographer with him. you could hit him too. Would you like me to hold your jacket?"

Idwal Roberts said. "Sit down, you silly bugger. It's not him, anyway, it's the other fellow, the English one."

Bethan said. "Giles Freeman?"

She hadn't seen Giles for nearly a week. If he was back from London, she wanted to talk to him.

About Claire, of course.

Claire was still wandering around with her camera as the days shortened and the hills grew misty. Bethan thought she must have photographed everything worth photographing at least five times. Before she realised that Claire was just drifting about with the camera around her neck — but not taking pictures at all any more.

Then there was no camera, but Claire was still to be seen roaming the village, wandering in the fields, by the river, among the graves in the churchyard.

As if searching for something.

"Is there something you've lost?" Bethan had asked the other day, taking some of the children into the woods to gather autumn leaves for pressing, and finding Claire moving silently among the trees.

"Only my heritage." Claire had just smiled, wryly but distantly, and moved on. Bethan noticed she wore no make-up; her hair was in disarray and its colour was streaked, dark roots showing. She seemed careless of her clothes too, wearing Giles's waxed jacket, conspicuously too big and gone brittle through need of rewaxing.

"Did you ever find that oak tree?" Bethan had asked her on another occasion.

"Oh that," said Claire. "I made a mistake. You were quite right"

And explained no further.

Bethan asked her. "Does Giles never go with you on your walks?"

"Giles?" As if she had to think for a moment who Giles was. "Giles is in London." Her eyes were somewhere else.

"He's having great fun," she said vaguely.

"She is a very nice girl," Buddug said surprisingly as they saw Claire one afternoon, flitting like a pale moth past the school gate.

"You've had much to do with her?"

"Oh, yes indeed. She's our nearest neighbour."

"I suppose she must be." Bethan had forgotten the judge's cottage was on the edge of the seventy-or-so acres owned by Buddug and her husband, Morgan.

"She's had her eggs from us. And sometimes a chicken." Buddug killed her own chickens and occasionally pigs.

"I can't say much about him," Buddug said.

"Giles? I like him."

"Well, you would, wouldn't you?" Buddug had turned away and scrubbed at the blackboard, smiling to herself.

Something had happened, Bethan thought. In a few short weeks Claire had changed from a smart, attractive, professional person to someone who was either moody or dreamy or preoccupied with things that made no sense. There was no longer that aura of "away" about her, that breath of urban sophistication which Bethan had so welcomed.

Bethan stared hard at Buddug's back, a great wedge between the desk and the blackboard. Buddug. Mrs. Bronwen Dafis. The Reverend Elias ap Siencyn.

And now Claire.

A chasm was opening between Claire and Giles, with his boyish enthusiasm for all things Welsh and his determination to be a part of The Culture. Bethan wondered if he could see it.

Chapter XXXI

"Hanner peint o gwrw" Giles told the barman, pointing at the appropriate beer-pump and climbing on to a barstool. "Os gwelwch yn dda."

He was pleased with his accent, the casual way he'd ordered the drink. Grammar was all well and good but if you wanted to make yourself understood you had to get into the local idiom, had to sound relaxed.

The barman set down the glass of beer and Giles handed over a five pound note. "Diolch yn fawr," Running the words together, as you would say thanks-very-much.

Convincing stuff.

The public bar was less than half full. Giles thought of another bar, in Aberystwyth, where everybody had stared at him, amused by his stumbling debut in the Welsh language. Nobody smiled this time. With those few slick phrases nobody, he felt, could be quite sure he wasn't a native.

The barman gave him his change.

"Diolch yn fawr iawn" Giles said in a louder voice, more confident now.

To his right, there was a sharp silence, somebody putting the brakes on a conversation. "What was that?" a man's voice said in the centre of the hush.

"Beg your pardon—?" Giles turned, thinking, damn, should have said that in Welsh, blown my cover now.

On the next stool sat the youth he'd spoken to in the gents. Not looking quite as youthful now. Around twenty-three, twenty-four, thick-set, face pitted, lower lip sticking out like a shelf, eyes deep-sunk under short sandy hair. He nodded towards the bar. "What you ordered."

"Well." Giles replied, holding up his glass to the light. "It should be a half of bitter."

The young man was not looking at Giles's glass, he was looking hard at Giles. He said. "Oh, that's what it was." Behind him was another young man on another bar stool. This one had prematurely-thinning black hair and a slit of a mouth, like a shaving cut.

"What I actually said to the barman here was hanner peint o gwrw," Giles explained. "I'm learning Welsh." He smiled sheepishly. "Got to practise."

Two mouths went into simultaneous sneers. The eyes were still fixed on Giles, who realised he'd got it wrong; this chap wasn't an incomer at all.

The man turned to his companion. "Learning Welsh, he is, this… gentleman" Turned back to Giles, unsmiling. "Go on then, say it again?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Go on—hanner…"

Giles said quickly, "Hanner peint o gwrw." Not liking the way these two were looking at him, almost smelling the sour hostility.

A blast of rain splattered a window behind his head.

"Didn't catch that." Slit-mouth. "Say it again."

"Hanner… oh. come on!"

"No, we want to learn, isn't it?" the other one said. He had a face like the cratered moon. "We want to speak our own language as good as you, see."

"I reckon that's all he can talk about, the beer."

"Oh no, talking to me in the lav, he was. He's an expert. He can do the weather too."

"Maybe he was takin' the piss, Gary "

"Fuck, I never thought of that." Heavily-feigned surprise. Still staring at Giles. 'Takin' the piss, is it?"

Giles said evenly. "I can assure you I was not taking the piss. If I'm trying to learn the language, I've got to use it. haven't I? Is there any other way? I mean, what am I supposed to do?"

Definitely uncomfortable now — bloody yobs — he glanced around to see if there was anybody he knew even slightly, some group he could join. Didn't recognise a soul. Apart from a handful of men around the dart board the customers were all sitting at tables. There were no more than fifteen people in the room. The barman was at the other end of the bar, watching the darts.

The silence set around Giles like cement. Clearly. Pontmeurig was just like any other town these days, full of nighttime aggro. All very sad. Disappointing.

"Well now, there's an answer to that," Crater-face said, all casual, elbow on the bar, hand propping his chin. "I can tell you what you ought to do, English. Ought to fuck off back where you came from, isn't it."

"Yes. all right, I will." Giles made himself take a longish drink. He'd finish his beer and get out. This was not convivial. What a country — layer upon layer of resentment.

"We'll come with you," Slit-mouth said.

"That won't be necessary." Giles muttered.

"Least we can do." Crater-face smiled with lurid menace. Show you the right road, see."

"Hate you to get lost." Slit-mouth said.

"Finish your drink, English." Crater-face said.

He had lowered his voice so as not be overheard by a stooping man with a bald head who was paying for a tray of drinks: three pints of bitter and a glass of dry white wine.

… Ah, no, well, that Freeman does not seem a bad chap." Idwal was saying as Dai laid the tray on the table. Compared with some of them."

The training session had been abandoned.

"That's because he turned you into an overnight superstar," said Guto. "Idwal Roberts, political pundit, social commentator, media personality…"

"He is actually OK," Bethan said, lifting her wine glass from the tray "Quite fair minded. Thank you, Dai."

She was sure Giles had learned about Guto and the pub incident. But he hadn't used it in his article — even though it would have underlined the point he was trying to make about Guto being the party hard-man.

"What I mean is," she said. "Giles is sympathetic. He can see what the incomers are doing to Wales and he doesn't want to be that kind of incomer. That is why he's so concerned about learning Welsh."

Dai Death said, "You're acquainted with this reporter from London then. Bethan?"

"Who do you think is teaching the bugger Welsh?" said Guto.

"He wants to learn Welsh for the election? There's enthusiasm."

"No, Dai," said Bethan. "He is thinking longer term. He has acquired a house in Y Groes."

A short but volcanic silence followed this disclosure.

"Y Groes!" Dai's voice rose to a squeak. He lurched in his seat, his bald head shining with hot indignation. "How the hell did he find a house there?"

Of course, Bethan realised. A sore point.

Amid muted rumblings from Guto about wealthy bloody incomers being able to find anything they wanted anywhere at a price, she briefly explained how Claire and Giles Freeman had gained admittance to Paradise.

Dai scowled.

"I've never been one to attack the incomers." he said. "Nothing personal, like. But the first house since I don't know when to come available in Y Groes… and it goes without a word, to a bloody Englishman. There is no justice."

"Englishwoman," Bethan said.

Idwal Roberts sniffed.

"I will tell you one thing." he said, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe. "You would not catch me living there. Godless place, that village, always has been."

Bethan, who had begun her teaching career as a member of ldwal's staff at Pontmeurig's Nantglas Primary School, had heard that since his retirement he had somewhat deepened his commitment to non-conformist religion.

"Godless," he said.

"Only on your terms, man." said Dai. still annoyed. "Just because there is no chapel anymore."

"No," Idwal waved his pipe in the air. "That's not—"

"Still a church there." Dai said. "Bloody good church."

Guto looked up innocently from his beer. "Still a chapel too. Had my car repaired there once."

"What?" Dai looked blank for a moment. "Oh, you mean Dilwyn Dafis's garage. I forgot that used to be a chapel.

"Aye, well, still a public service, isn't it? And plenty of room for the ramp, see, with that high ceiling."

"What I was meaning—" Idwal said.

"What is more," said Guto deadpan, "give Dilwyn Dafis a couple of quid on top, and you can have your bloody brake linings blessed."

"This is getting stupid." Giles said.

Light conversation, in both English and Welsh, went on around them, the thump of darts on the board, nobody appearing to notice anything amiss or picking up on the tension. Giles knew how it must look — as if the three of them were having a nice quiet chat about beer-prices or the prospects of the Meurig bursting its banks.

Slit-mouth made a narrow smile. "He thinks you're stupid, Gary."

Getting into the comedy routine. But Giles had had enough. You really did find them everywhere, didn't you, always looking for somebody whose night they could spoil. A few casual remarks in the toilet and he'd set himself up as tonight's target. Well that was it, he wasn't taking any more.

"Look," he said firmly. "I just came in here for a drink. I've moved into the area. I'm trying to fit in. I didn't mean to cause any offence, all right? What else can I say?"

He felt his voice quiver. Bastards.

They were both studying him now with their stone-hard, hostile eyes.

"Got a house, have you? How much you pay for that?"

"Oh. for Christ's sake, this is getting awfully tedious."

"Oh dear," Slit-mouth said, mimicking Giles's accent. Awfully tedious. Oh, my—"

Crater-face said to Giles, "See, I've got this mate lookin' for a house. Gettin' married, he is. And you know what… you won't believe this, but this boy, my mate, he's been lookin' all over town for fuckin' weeks and he can't find one anywhere. Not as he can afford. You know why…?"

Leaning forward now, beer-breath sour in Giles's face "Know why, English?"

Oh yes. Giles knew why all right. "Now look, if you really want to talk about this—"

"Cause they've all been bought by your kind, is why, you bastard."

Giles got an explicit close-up of the angry, pitied skin and the eyes, wells of malice.

"Kid on the way, see."

Giles fell bits of beery spit spatter his face.

"Goin' to be really in the shit, he is, can't get a fuckin' house for his woman."

Edging his stool closer to Giles, he whispered. "I hate cunts like you, think you can buy in wherever you like. Come on, English, finish your drink."

Giles put one foot on the floor. Get out. Get out fast.

"But you think you're all right isn't it?" Lower lip out and curling. "You think you're laughing, cause—" Eyes glittered and the hand shot forward as if reaching for cigarettes or something.

" — cause you're learnin—"

Then pulled casually back, toppling Giles's beer glass still half full, off the bar and into his lap.

" — Welsh."

"You bast—!"

Leaping up in outrage, beer soaking invisibly into his dark suit, Giles was drowned out by Crater-face crying,

"Aaaaw!"

And leaping from his stool too, knocking it over. Crash of the stool, splintering of glass on the linoleum.

"Aaaaw, I'm sorry! My fault entirely, clumsy bugger I am. See, go in the lav, quick, sponge it off before it stains. I'll get you another — I'm sorry, pal, I really am!"

Everybody in the bar looking up now, vacant grins from around the dartboard. Obvious to Giles that nobody realised they were setting him up.

"Excuse me," he said stiffly and made for the door that said bilingually TOILETS/TOILED.

" — accident," He heard behind him. "No sense of humour, the English.

Stumbled into the passage, but instead of going to the gents he dashed in the opposite direction. A door before him, ajar, LOUNGE on frosted glass, group of people huddled over a table. Giles saw them look up as if disturbed in some conspiracy — more hostility, Christ. Turned quickly away and saw, to his overwhelming relief that the passage was empty all the way to the front door. Going to have to get out of here quick before those two went into the gents and found he wasn't there. Giles glanced apprehensively behind, but they hadn't emerged.

Years since he'd been in such a panic. Memory-flash: hiding from older kids in a cloakroom at school. The famous wheedling lie: Come out, Freeman, we're not going to hurt you…

Giles charged along the corridor, not caring how much noise he made, knocking over an umbrella stand. He looked behind him one more time — thought he saw a pitted face — and then, with his right arm outstretched like a lance, he sent the swing door flying open and lurched into the street, into the hard, stinging rain, slanting golden needles in the streetlights.

He stood in the cold rain, cold beer in his crotch, telling himself, you're never — breathing hard—never going to get in that kind of situation again.

And thinking of the ancient wooden warmth of Tafarn y Groes, where he was known and welcomed, he turned and ran through the rain to his car, his shiny new Subaru four-wheel-drive, the thinking driver's answer to the Nearly Mountains on a cold, wet night.

They were waiting for him in the shiny wet car park, rainwater streaming down their ghastly, grinning faces.

"What I like… out this pub…" — words fractured by the wind—"… two doors."

Lower lip jutting like a waterspout.

Gargoyle.

Giles mentally measured the distance to the car. Fifteen yards. Might as well have been a mile. Not a hope of making it.

Through the blinding downpour, he sized up the opposition. They were both shorter than he was, but the crater-faced one had a rugby player's physique, wide chest, arms like double-barrelled sawn-off shotguns.

"Look, lads. " he said weakly, accepting beyond doubt that he was in deep trouble here. What could one say to people like this?

Rain coming down like nails. Giles was suddenly terribly frightened. And heartsick to think this should happen to him in the land he'd chosen for his own, for his unborn children.

He wanted to weep.

The dark one, Slit-mouth, hard water plastering down his sparse black hair, pouring like furious tears down his concrete face, said, "You're dead, you are, fuckin' Saxon git."

Giles folded in two as a big shoe went into his stomach and his hair was torn back and something that could only have been a fist but felt like a steel spike was driven into his left eye.

Chapter XXXII

In Y Groes, around midnight, the air was still.

All that night there would be violent rain in Pontmeurig. Over the Nearly Mountains there was sleet. The River Meurig was savagely swollen.

Y Groes, around midnight, was another world.

True, it had been stormy and the barometers still registered minimal pressure. But now the rain had stopped and the wind had died. The clouds slid back theatrically and there was a full moon over the church. Wherever you stood in Y Groes, the moon always seemed to be over the church, like a white candle flame.

Just before midnight, Claire came down the ribbon of lane from the church among a group of people. They included the rector, the Reverend Elias Ap Siencyn, Glyn Harri,

the amateur historian, Mrs. Bronwen Dafis, mother of Dilwyn and grandmother of Sali. And the Morgans— Buddug Morgan and big Morgan Morgan.

They walked down towards the river and Claire, seeing the moon on the thrashing water, became excited.

The river had been rising all day and something in Claire had been rising with it. She felt drawn to the water, but a gentle hand held her back.

"Dim nawr."

Not now.

Mrs. Bronwen Dafis explained that if she went down now she might not get back. It was too dangerous. Too dark.

But the moon…

Indeed, Mrs. Dafis said cryptically. The moon.

"Wel, pryd?" Claire said. When?

"Bore fori," the rector said quietly. Tomorrow morning.

He turned and walked away up the hill.

Tacitly dismissed, the group split up in silence. Glyn Harri followed at a respectful distance behind the spindly figure of the rector. Then went Buddug and Morgan. Mrs. Bronwen Dafis was the last, a tiny upright figure, alone. None of them looked back at Claire, who stood staring into the dark water.

The river was still gathering rage, although there was no wind or rain here. As if driven by the moon, it hurled itself at the stone buttresses of the bridge.

No lights now in the village, except for a lone streetlamp with a small yellow bulb under a pan-lid shade. The rector's long shape vanished beyond the light.

She was alone on the bridge, but unafraid. Inside her dwelt a great calm which stilled her thoughts and her emotions. She was content. She was here. Home.

At last.

Time passed. True darkness came, as a dense cloud formed around the moon and then a final fold of cloud came down over it like an eyelid. The air was still, but the water rushed and roared, filling the atmosphere with rhythmic sounds. Claire could hear the night now and feel its essence inside her.

Eventually, she began to walk away from the bridge and up the hill towards the church. Although she was moving further from the bridge, further from the water, the sounds were going with her, swirling around her and then separating, dying off, then wafting in. And mingled with the water noise was the sound of singing, uneven and hesitant. A frail organ wail, like cat cries, and the sonorous rhythm of measured footsteps.

An arm brushed against Claire and a hand touched her shoulder.

Misty people were drifting around her. She was carried among them up the hill.

And they sang. With uncertainty in their fractured, mournful voices, they sang, in Welsh and then in English,

Love is kind and suffers long

Love is meek and thinks no wrong

The amorphous crowd split in two and something long and narrow slid between the two lines and a darker mist closed around it.

As the singing fell away and the people dissolved into vapour, Claire felt a momentary heart-stab of pain. But a cushion of warm air settled around her and the pain became a soft and bearable memory. With no light to guide her, she turned into the track leading to her cottage.

Soon after, the rain returned. But there was no wind until daylight came.

Chapter XXXIII

It was probably the cold water that deadened the pain. He was lying in a puddle. Or perhaps it had been raining so hard that the entire car park was a great lake.

A blow. He heard rather than felt it.

Bastards. He cringed. How long would they go on hitting him and kicking him before he lost consciousness? He lay very still; perhaps he should pretend he was already unconscious. Perhaps that would stop them. no need for you to speak Welsh, man…

How friendly they were in Y Groes. How hospitable. makes you a novelty, like, isn't it…

A Rhys. He was a Rhys. Sort of. In spirit.

He was with them.

His head imploding as they kicked it. Far away though, now. He closed his eyes, wished he could keep them closed for ever, feeling nothing but the icy balm.

But they wrenched him to his feet again, flung him back against the wall. His stomach clenched, waiting for the pain. He felt the vomit rising again.

White figure swimming towards him.

From the picture. Pale figure from the photograph in its frame in the judge's study. Eisteddfod Genedlaethol White-robed, bardic, druidic.

It shimmered.

"No," he said weakly. "No. "

"Giles."

"No."

Bethan pushed back the hood of her white raincoat. "Giles, can you see me?"

"No," he said. "No. Get away from me."

"Got him, have you? Where's the other?"

"Don't… know. Keep still, you bugger. You bite me again, I'm going to break your nose. What should I do with this one?"

"What you should do is to get rid of him very discreetly before he sees your face. You have enough problems as it is."

"Big bloody help that is. Where am I going to put him?"

"Well, hell. I don't know — drag him over to the castle and throw him in the moat. Take him a good while to extricate himself, by which time we'll all be away."

Guto looked puzzled. There is no moat anymore."

Dai Death looked up into the plummeting night sky. "There will be by now," he said.

Giles stared at Bethan as if he didn't know whether to push her away or to hit her. As if he couldn't decide if it was really her. Or, if it was her, whose side she was on.

In the shelter of the eaves, he was propped into a corner like a broken scarecrow, fair hair spiked and bloody, his suit vomit-soaked, beer-soaked, puddle-soaked and torn in several places. But it was his eye Bethan was most worried about.

"Giles, can you see me now?"

"Yes. Yes, of course I can."

"Can you see me through both eyes?"

"I think so. I don't know. Christ, what happened to me?"

"You — you were mugged," Bethan said.

"Mugged?' Giles started to laugh and went into a coughing fit, vomit around his mouth, blood in his left eye.

"Is that what you call it?"

"We knew something must be wrong when we saw you racing past the door, knocking everything over."

"Where are the bastards now?"

"One got away. Guto has the other."

"Who?"

"A friend. Giles, you're going to get pneumonia. We have to get you to hospital."

Giles said. "Am I hurt?"

Bethan said. "Your eye. How does it feel?"

"Cold. A bit cold. My whole head, really. Cold, you know—"

"Idwal, stay with him. My car's over there. We'll get him to the hospital."

"No!" Giles straightened up and stumbled. "I've got to get back to Y Groes. My car—"

"Oh, Giles, how could you drive? Where is Claire?"

"At home. I suppose. I mean, she's not expecting me tonight. It was… When we heard the weather was going to be bad we decided I'd travel back on Friday — tomorrow. I–I couldn't wait. Left early. Thing is — I always phone her, you know, every night."

Bethan thought Giles looked as pathetic as seven-year-old Huw Morus had looked that morning after wetting himself in class.

"I'll ring her for you later." Bethan said. "We've got to get you to the hospital."

"Bethan. I'm OK. Really, I am."

"I'll bring the car. Idwal will stay with you. You remember Idwal Roberts whom you interviewed?"

"Hullo again, boy." said Idwal. 'Talk about politics, is it?"

Pontmeurig Cottage Hospital accepted patients from within a fifteen-mile radius. As with most local hospitals in Wales it did not have a permanent medical staff of its own but was run by the local family doctors. Anybody in need of complicated treatment or surgery was referred at once to the general hospitals in Aberystwyth or Carmarthen.

They took Giles into a small treatment room with whitewashed walls. A local doctor was summoned to look into his left eye, which was cleaned up by a nurse and then re-examined. Serious bruising. Permanent damage unlikely.

The doctor, a youngish man of perhaps Middle-Eastern origins, said to Bethan. "How did this happen?"

"Slipped in the car park," Giles replied quickly. "Running to the car through the rain. Fell into a puddle and hit my head on somebody's bumper."

"What about the vomit?"

"Turned me sick." Giles said. "Hell of a blow."

"I see. Were you there, Mrs. McQueen?"

"I came along afterwards."

"Did you. Look, Mr. Freeman. I think I'd like to keep you in overnight, OK?"

"Oh, come on — is that really necessary?"

"I don't know," said the doctor, who had an educated English accent. "But let's not take any chances."

"Well, can I get cleaned up?"

"I sincerely hope so. We're not going to admit you in that state, we have our standards, you know. Excuse me a minute."

"Just look at my clothes." Giles said in disgust when the doctor had gone out. "What am I going to do? I can't put these back on."

Bethan thought about this. "What we'll do, Giles — how does this sound? I'll ring Claire and tell her what happened. She can get a change of clothes ready for you and I'll drive over early tomorrow and bring them back."

Giles shook his head. "I can't ask you to do that. You'd have to leave at the crack of dawn to go over there and bring the stuff back and then get back in time for school. You can't go to that trouble. No way."

"How else are you going to get anything. Claire hasn't a car there yet, has she?"

"She hires one from Dilwyn when she needs to go somewhere."

"And I doubt if anything of Guto's would fit you."

"This Guto," Giles said slowly. "Guto Evans by any chance?"

"Shhhhh," said Bethan. "He was not involved, all right? You did not see him."

Giles tried to smile. "Thank him for me anyway. I'd have been half dead if he hadn't — hadn't been involved. Who were those guys, anyway, d'you know?"

Bethan said. "'Dai — that's Dai Williams who was with us — he thinks they work in the kitchens at the Plas Meurig. They are not local boys. I am thankful to say."

Sitting on the edge of the treatment table, looking down at his stockinged feet, Giles told Bethan how it had come about, how the whole thing had developed from one swift hanner peint o gwrw.

"I'm confused." he said. '"I thought if one was making the effort to learn Welsh… That's what you want, isn't it?"

Bethan gave a frustrated half-laugh. "Most likely those boys are not Welsh speakers anyway. Some Welsh people are very aggressively opposed to the language. It's not black and white, you must realise that by now."

"I'm getting better again, Bethan. With the language. I've done a lot of studying."

"Good. Listen, Giles—"

"I don't know what came over me before. Tired, I think. Headaches. But I'm much better now."

"Giles, can I ask you a question?"

"Ask away. What have I got to lose?"

"Everything," said Bethan. That is just it. You have everything to lose. You are a successful journalist with a— She hesitated. " — a good marriage. A good career, plenty of money, I suppose."

"Well, you know, enough to be going on with."

"So why do you want to be part of this mess?" she asked bluntly.

"Mess?" Giles moved along the plastic sheet lo detach his sodden trousers which were sticking to it. "I don't think it's a mess. Politically, it's very stimulating. I mean, in England most people just vote for whichever party they think is going to benefit them financially. To be in a place where the main issues are cultural and linguistic — national identity at stake… Hey, listen, I'll tell you one thing—" Giles grinned like an idiot, through his pain. "I bet I'm the first ever English guy to get his head kicked in for speaking Welsh in public."

"Oh, Giles." Bethan said. "It isn't fair, is it?"

How could she tell him that tonight's fracas was probably the least of his problems?

Her face must have become overcast, because he said,

"Look. Bethan — we should have a proper talk sometime, you know."

The doctor came back before she could fashion a reply.

"Mr. Freeman, we've prepared a bathroom for you. The nurse will help you. How does your head feel'.'"

"OK. Just cold. Quite cold "

Giles dropped to the floor and winced.

"Do you have pain anywhere else?"

"Nothing much."

"I think," the doctor said, "that you should go to Bronglais tomorrow—"

"No! No bloody way!"

" — if not tonight. We should have X-rays."

"For Christ's sake," Giles snapped. "It was only a fall. It doubtless looks much worse than it actually is."

"All right," the doctor said. "We'll talk about it tomorrow. Now come and get cleaned up. Would you excuse us, Mrs. McQueen?"

"Of course " Bethan went to the door and looked back at Giles. "I'll be back early in the morning."

"You've been wonderful." Giles said. "I think I'm in love with you, Bethan."

"Join the queue," the doctor said.

When Bethan got back to her flat over the bookshop, the phone was ringing. Guto. She told him how it had come about that Giles Freeman had been assaulted in the car park.

"Bastards." Guto said. "Ought to have handed that bugger over to the cops, but Dai said I could wave goodbye to the candidacy if I was linked to another assault, even as a witness. A minefield, it is, politics."

"You didn't harm that one, did you?"

"Well, the odd tweak, kind of thing. Nothing that will show. I quite enjoyed it, to be honest. Tell your English friend that when I am MP for Glanmeurig I shall recommend we erect a monument on the Drovers' car park to commemorate his historic stand on behalf of the language."

It was an ill wind, Bethan thought. Guto seemed to have cheered up considerably.

She switched on lights, plugged in the kettle and sat down to telephone Claire, wondering what the reaction would be.

Perhaps this would bring Claire down to earth again. Giles would need some looking after.

In Y Groes the phone rang five times. Then there was a bleep, a pause and Claire's recorded voice said,

"Y Groes dau, tri, naw. Dyma Claire Rhys..

The message, in near-perfect Welsh, said Claire Rhys was not available to come to the telephone but the caller could leave a message after the tone.

Bethan's own answering machine had a message in Welsh, followed by a translation. Thousands of answering machines in Welsh-speaking areas of Wales now carried messages in Welsh, almost invariably with a translation; nobody wanted to lose an important caller because he or she, like the majority of Welsh people, spoke only English.

Claire's message was given only in Welsh. Bethan hung up, troubled.

Three times a week now, she went to the judge's house for the Welsh lesson — with Claire alone, of late, because Giles had been in London. One to one. The oil lamp hanging from the beam in the judge's study surrounded by the judge's black books. Sombre yellow light. Deep, deep shadows.

And Claire, face gaunt in the oil-light, hair drawn tightly back, showing the dark roots.

A student so brilliant it was unnerving.

She dialled the number one last time.

" Y Groes dau, tri, tune. Dyma Claire Rhys…"

Not the kind of problem you could explain to an answering machine. She would get up very early and go to the judge's house.

Bethan put the phone down.

The rain and wind attacked her window.

Chapter XXXIV

Like some spurned, embittered lover, the wind-driven rain beat on Bethan's bedroom window all night. She got little sleep; every half-dream seemed to feature Giles's wet and bloodied image. Its screams were frenzied but inaudible, as if it were separated from her by thick glass — a windscreen or a television screen.

Before six o'clock, Bethan was up, making strong, black tea, peering out of the window and half expecting to find Pontmeurig's main street under two feet of water. Ironically the rain, having deprived her of sleep, had now stopped, there were no signs of flooding in the street, although the river must surely be dangerously high.

It looked cold too. Bethan put on her white raincoat, with long red scarf and a pink woolly hat which she pulled down over her ears as she stepped out into the street.

By six-thirty she was collecting the Peugeot from the car park under the castle's broken tower. She looked down, with some trepidation, into the ditch below the outer ramparts, as she might see a rigid, clawing hand emerging from the watery mud in which its owner had drowned. On the eve of the selection meeting, it would be just Guto's luck.

Before leaving she had telephoned the hospital, where the sister in charge reported that Giles had had quite a painful and restless night.

But yet, she thought, unlocking the car door, if Giles were writing a report of last night's incident he would deal seriously and sympathetically with the dilemma of the non-Welsh-speaking Welshman.

That English sense of fair play.

The town was quiet, cowed — as though people were deliberately lying low, apprehensive about getting up to find their gardens underwater or their chimney pots in pieces on the lawn. Driving over the Meurig Bridge in the steely-grey dawn, Bethan saw that it had indeed been a close thing. Trees sprouted from the water, where the river had claimed its first meadow.

Allowing for weather problems, storm debris on the road, it would take about twenty minutes to get to Y Groes. Bethan knew Claire rose early and guessed she might waiting for the light to see what pictures she could obtain storm damage. If she was still actually taking pictures. She'll probably want to come back with me to the hospital, Bethan thought. Another lost opportunity to talk to Giles.

Part of Bethan said it was not her problem, she should keep out. Another part said Giles was a decent man who needed saving from himself. Too many English people had given up their jobs and come to Wales with new-life dream, many of them to start smallholdings on poor-quality land from which they imagined they could he self-sufficient. She saw a parallel here with Giles, who seemed about abandon a highly paid post to spend his life ploughing the infertile place for news, in the naive belief that the public over the border cared as much about Wales as he did.

In Bethan's experience, the only immigrants who really could be said to have fitted in were those who came to take up existing, steady jobs. Like Robin, her husband, who had worked with the British Geological Survey team near Aberystwyth.

Bethan's eyes filled up.

Stop it! Her hands tightened on the wheel. The Nearly Mountains rose up before her, tented by cloud.

Bethan had experimented with a number of different methods of tackling these sudden rushes of grief. Anger, the least satisfactory, had usually proved, all the same, to be the most effective.

So she thought about Buddug.

Yesterday Huw Morus, aged seven, had wet himself in class. Bethan had led him into the teachers' toilet and washroom to get cleaned up.

Huw had been very distressed. Bethan had taken him back into her office, sat him on a chair by the electric fire and asked him if he was feeling unwell. Huw had started crying and said he wanted to go. Again.

Bethan had sent him back to the teachers' toilet and then said, "OK, we'll take you home."

"I am sure he'll be happy now," Buddug commented. "Now he's got what he wanted."

"It seems likely to me that he has some kind of bladder infection." Bethan said.

Buddug had sniffed dismissively. "Lazy. He is lazy."

Huw lived in the village where his father was a mechanic, the sole employee at Dilwyn Dafis's garage.

"Did you ask Mrs. Morgan if you could go to the toilet?" Bethan asked, as the boy trotted beside her past the Tafarn and the post office to a timber-framed terrace of cottages at the end of the street.

It emerged that Huw had asked Mrs. Morgan at about half past nine by the classroom clock and she had allowed him to go. Then he'd asked her again at about a quarter past ten and she'd told him he could wait until break. He'd barely made it in time.

At about twenty minutes past eleven Huw had again raised his hand and sought permission to go to the lavatory and Mrs. Morgan had shaken her head and told him he must not try it on with her again.

Ten minutes later Huw, by now frozen to the chair with his legs lightly crossed, had appealed again to the teacher. This time Mrs. Morgan had walked over and bent down and whispered in his ear.

Bethan questioned the seven-year-old boy in some detail, because she wanted to be sure about this.

It seemed Buddug had reminded Huw that the end of the yard, where the children's toilets were, was very close to the woods.

Which, as everyone knew, were guarded by the Gorsedd Ddu.

The dark bards.

And the Gorsedd Ddu would view Huw's repeated appearances as a mockery.

If they found him there again they might catch him and take him with them into the woods, and there would be no relief to be found there. Not for a stupid little boy who tried to deceive his teacher.

Bethan, coming down now out of the Nearly Mountains swung the wheel of the Peugeot to avoid a grey squirrel in the road. The squirrel shot into the forestry.

In Bethan's experience, small children were often terrified by their first sight of a gorsedd of bards, those poets and writers who had been honoured at eisteddfodau and walked in solemn procession wearing their long ceremonial robes and druidic headdresses. These archetypal figures, in the garb of ancient pagan priests, could seem quite awesome; sinister to little kids until they found out that under those white robes you would usually find genial grandfathers; figures who would occasionally dispense sweets like Sion Corn. the Welsh Father Christmas.

The Gorsedd Ddu, the black bards — there was a difference here. They were meant to be terrifying.

The lower slopes of the Nearly Mountains were sparsely wooded and Bethan had to slow down to find a path between branches torn off the trees in the night. She would not have been surprised to find the road blocked by an entire Sitka spruce, its roots ripped out of the shallow soil.

This never happened to the oak trees in the old woods.

The reason, Buddug would probably say, was not only that the soil was thick and deep and the area so sheltered. But that the oak woods were protected by the Gorsedd Ddu.

Most parents and infant-teachers, in fanciful mood, might tell children the woods were the home of, say, the Tylwyth Teg, the Welsh fairy folk. But that would not satisfy the streak of cruelty in Buddug. First she had refused to consider that the child, Huw Morus, might be ill, and then she had made wetting himself seem the safer option by invoking the insidiously horrifying image of the mythical assembly of black-robed bards who were said to convene to judge the traitors and the cowards.

Bethan decided there were certain aspects of the Welsh national heritage which she disliked intensely — and most of them were represented by Buddug, who would not be happy until children were sitting at their desks dressed stiffly in Welsh national costume, drawing pictures of corpse candles and sin-eaters consuming their lunches from the shrouded chests of dead people.

There was still a strong wind, but no trees had been blown down on the lower slopes of the Nearly Mountains, and Bethan arrived in Y Groes well before seven to find the last few lights glimmering in the collages, the village enfolded in the dark hills like antique jewellery In velvet, under a delicate oyster sky.

But the wind was high, the sky unbalanced, a sense of something wild beyond the horizon.

Bethan parked in the entrance to the school lane and set off across the bridge. Below it the swollen Meurig frothed and spat. "Big, tough river now, is it?" Bethan said. "You never had much to say for yourself in the summer."

She walked past the Tafarn and up the lane towards the church and then between the two sycamores to the judge's house.

The iron gate was open, but nobody was in sight. The wind perhaps? Bethan closed the gate behind her, walked up the path, knocked on the door.

She would tell Claire everything, including the probable reasons for the attack on Giles. Everything except the involvement of Guto who must, for the sake of his image, remain an anonymous hero.

Claire could pack a change of clothes and Bethan would take them — and Claire, if she wanted — to the hospital. There should be plenty time to get back to school before the first children arrived

The door opened.

"Oh Claire, I tried to ring you—" Bethan said, then stopped and drew back.

It was Buddug.

Chapter XXXV

Buddug did not seem surprised to see her. But then Buddug never seemed surprised.

She wore a high-necked, starched white blouse and — Bethan would swear — a smudge of make-up. As if she had arrived for an Occasion. She filled the doorway. Bethan could not see if Claire was in the room behind her.

"Where is Claire?" she said flatly.

Buddug stared impassively at her.

"Where is Claire?"

"Not here," Buddug said calmly.

"Out? So early?"

She'd been out last night too. The answering machine.

"And what are you doing here?" Bethan demanded. Her mind could not grasp this situation. Buddug in Claire's house. At little after seven in the morning. And formally attired. Looking quite grotesque — there was no other word for it.

"Are you alone here?"

Buddug did not reply. There was a silence in the room behind her but it was the kind of silence which implied presence, as if a still company was sitting there. Bethan found herself thinking of the drawing in Sali Dafis's exercise book, dark brown stick-people around a coffin on a table.

"Are you not going to answer me?" Her voice shook. "Where is Claire?"

Buddug did not move. The thought came to Bethan that this woman was big enough and strong enough to kill her, as simply as she killed chickens and turkeys, huge hands around her throat. A swift, dismissive jerk of the wrists.

"Look, I want to know. Where is Claire? What have you done with her?"

Buddug came alive then, bulging out of the doorway, the veins in her face suddenly lighting up like an electric circuit.

"What is it to you?" she shrieked. "Who said you could come here? Get out! Get back to your school, you stupid, meddling little bitch!"

Bethan went pale. "How d—!"

The front door leapt on its hinges, as if hit by a gale, and Bethan lurched back, clutching at the air, as the door crashed into its frame and shuddered there.

A sudden stiff breeze disturbed the giant sycamores and prodded her down the lane. There was a ball of cold in the pit of her stomach as she walked back towards the river.

What she felt for Buddug had gone beyond hatred to the place where nightmares are born.

"You are early, Bethan."

He was sitting on a wooden bench under the Tafarn sign, which was beginning to swing now in the gathering wind.

"You are also early, Aled." Bethan said, groping for composure. "For a landlord."

"Could not sleep, girl. The wind rising."

"The wind's nothing here, compared with Pontmeurig. Well, last night…"

"Ah, well, see, so little of the wind we get here that the merest flurry we notice. I do, anyway. Because the river is so close, see. The river goes mad."

Aled's hair was as white and stiff as the icy snow on the tops of the Nearly Mountains. Bethan had always found him a droll and placid man, easy to talk to, in Welsh or English.

She wondered if she could trust him.

"Do you…?" She hesitated.

He looked quizzically at her.

"Do you find things are changing, Aled?"

"Changing?"

"Here. In the village."

Aled looked away from Bethan, over the oak woods and back again. "Things changing? In Y Groes?" He smiled.

"Perhaps it's me. Perhaps I should not have come back."

"Why do you say that?"

"I don't know. Too many memories, perhaps." Although, of course, that was not it really.

"He was a nice boy, your man. A terrible shame, it was, that he… well."

Bethan asked him, "What do you think of Giles Freeman?"

"Nice fellow." Aled said. "Well meaning, you know."

"He was—" No, she could not tell him what had happened. Not even that Giles had fallen in the car park. Not until she'd told Claire.

"I think, Bethan," Aled said. "I think you have a decision to make."

"What kind of decision?"

"Well, as you said… about your future. Whether you stay here, perhaps move into one of the cottages."

"There are no cottages for sale."

"No, but… well, Tegwyn Jones's old place. It might be available. If you—"

"If I wanted to settle down here?"

" — to settle down, as you say. To become part of our community. It is… well, as you know, it is a rare and beautiful place."

"Yes."

"But it makes… demands, see."

"Does it make demands on you. Aled?" There was rarely much colour in his face. He was not an outdoor man, like Morgan, or even Dilwyn Dafis. All the same, he did not look well. Bethan had not seen him face to face for several weeks, and she felt a tiredness coming from him.

"Oh yes," he said. "It has made demands on me, Bethan. Would you excuse me. I have the bar to clean." He stood up.

"Nice to see you, as always."

Face it. Bethan told herself. No one here is going to help you.

Suddenly she wanted to dash back to the Peugeot, shut herself in, wind up all the windows, lock the door, put the radio on — loud, loud rock music — and race back over the Nearly Mountains to sanctuary and sanity.

I could do that, she thought hysterically. I could have a nervous breakdown. God knows, I'm halfway there. I could go to the doctor, get signed off. Nobody would be surprised. The Widow McQueen. Came back too soon.

Too soon.

Obviously she had come back too soon this morning. What was going on? What had she disturbed?

Did she really want to know?

Had to pull herself together. Her main task was to get clean clothing for Giles. If she couldn't get into the house, it would have to be Guto — he must have something that would not look entirely ludicrous on a man six inches taller and at least two stones lighter. Or she could even go to Probert's and buy some things.

She set off purposefully across the bridge lo her car.

But made the mistake of looking over the stone parapet.

To where, fifty yards downstream, a woman had her head in the water.

Bethan looked around for help but there was nobody on the main street at this hour. She ran across the bridge, crying out

"Aled! Aled!" at the closed door of the Tafarn, but the wind ripped the words away and there was no response as she scrambled down the bank to where the woman's head was being tossed this way and that by the thrashing river.

Halfway down, Bethan lost her footing. Her left shoe skated on a grass-slick, the wind seemed to flick her into the air and she was thrown, screaming, full length down the slimy, freezing river bank.

For a moment Bethan just lay there and sobbed with anguish and incomprehension. And that amply-justified sense of déjà vu which told her she would look up to find two large, muddy hiking boots swinging one against the other.

But the only thing in focus was the hard grey stone of the bridge support. All around her was just a wash of glacial green and white, the abstract colours spinning past her eyes, because this time her glasses had gone.

"Oh no. Oh no, please God…"

Trembling with cold and shock. Bethan put both hands in the sodden, slippery grass and pushed herself to her knees. Then she began to crawl awkwardly up the bank, groping at the grass on either side.

Stricken with the fear that if she slipped again her hands would find somebody's dead skin, the scaly contours of a drowned face. Or chewed-out eye sockets where the crows had…

Her hand touched something smooth and wet and she snatched it back in dread, before realising she'd found the glasses. Half retching with relief, she fumbled them on, rubbing the grass and mud from the lenses which were still, oh thank God, apparently intact.

On her knees now, pink woolly hat missing, hair ravaged by the wind, skirt torn almost up to the waist, Bethan looked around her and then down to the river no more than four feet below her.

The woman was naked from the waist up, bent into the river. Either her body was being thrown about by the wind or… Bethan, crouching, half sliding, edged her way to the water.

She reached the spitting river just as the woman's head came up, black and dripping, and her eyes were like chips of ice and she was Claire, and Bethan arched back in horror and bewilderment.

Above the frenzy of wind and water, Claire was making a noise as harsh and chill as the river itself. It seemed at first as if she was crying, with great jagged wails. Then Bethan realised, with shock, that Claire was laughing, which somehow was far, far worse.

"Claire…?"

Bethan felt a piercing of fear. Claire just went on laughing, rising up on the bank, breasts ice-blue, marbled with the cold.

"What's wrong? What's happening? What are you doing? For God's sake! Claire!"

Bethan pulled off her raincoat and went to wrap it around Claire, although she was really afraid to go near her. But Claire stood up and backed off. She was wearing only jeans and her red hiking boots.

"You are crazy," Bethan breathed.

Claire's small mouth was stretched wide with grotesque mirth. She ran her hands through her hair, wet and dark as a seal.

Bethan saw that almost all the blonde had gone, just a few jaundiced patches.

"Dychi ddim yn gweld?" Claire hissed. "Dychi ddim yn gweld?"

Can't you see?

The river writhed among the rocks.

Bethan, face damp with cold sweat and spray, didn't move. She was very scared now. wanting to clamber up the bank and get away, but afraid of somebody or the crazy wind pushing her back to the river, and the river was slurping at the rocks and the bridge support as if licking its lips for her.

She thought of Giles lying restlessly in his unwanted hospital bed, while his wife cavorted like some insane water-nymph.

Claire started to move back along the bank towards the stile that led into one of Morgan's fields. Black cloth, a shawl, hung from one of the posts of the stile and she pulled it off and wrapped it around her. A sheep track curved up through the field and ended near the judge's cottage.

When she reached the stile, Claire turned one last time towards Bethan, tearing at her once-blonde hair, screaming gleefully through the wind. "Dydwy ddim yn Sais! " I am not English!

And burst out laughing again, in raucous peels like church bells rung by madmen.

Chapter XXXVI

"Forget it," Giles said. "Just forget it, OK?"

"You're being very foolish, Mr. Freeman."

"Look, mate," Giles said, "it's my bloody head and if I don't want it bloody scanned, or whatever they do these days, I don't have to comply. So bring me the sodding papers or whatever I'm supposed to sign."

"All right, just supposing you have a brain haemorrhage."

Giles shrugged.

"I can't stop you," the doctor said. "I can only warn you. And all I can say is, if somebody had given me a kicking…"

"I fell."

"… If somebody had given me that kind of kicking, I'd want all the medical evidence I could get." Dr. Tahan, unshaven, was clearly suppressing rage. He'd been awoken by a nurse on the phone telling him Mr. Freeman was threatening to walk out in his underpants if they didn't bring his clothes immediately.

"Look…" Giles passed a hand over his eyes. "I'm very grateful for all you've done, but there's nothing wrong with me that sleep won't cure, and I'm not going to get any here. Bring me whatever I have to sign and my clothes. I want to go home."

"Come and see me tomorrow," the doctor said curtly. "If you want to." And walked out of the room.

Not you, Giles said to himself. I'll go and see Dr. Wyn in the village, if I have to. If I have to.

A nurse brought his clothes, put them down on the bed, did not speak to him. If you didn't want to play by their rules, Giles thought, they didn't want to know you. The clothes had been dried and straightened out, as far as was possible with all the torn bits, and the lining hanging out of his jacket. Giles held up the jacket and grinned savagely. He felt removed from all this. He felt he was standing a foot or so behind the action, watching himself hold up the jacket, controlling his own responses at arm's length, pulling strings to bring on the savage grin.

In truth he felt awful — physically and emotionally in a similar condition to his clothes.

But he was going home.

Guto was wearing a tie.

An unheard-of phenomenon.

"I borrowed it." he said. "From Dai."

"But it's one of his working ties." Bethan said.

"Looks all right though, doesn't it?'

"It's black."

"Reflects my new image. Sober. Caring."

"Take it off, Guto. I shall go and buy you another. Meanwhile, there is something you could do for me."

"No time — to get a new tie. I mean. I'm meeting Dafydd and Gwynfor in Lampeter at ten. Then we are all going over to Rhayader for the selection meeting."

"It's not until tonight, is it?"

"A lot to discuss before then. Hell of a lot."

They were alone in the house. Guto's mam having gone for the early bus to Aber. as she did every Friday. Bethan had driven over from Y Groes in a kind of trance, going deliberately far too fast so that she would have to concentrate hard on her driving to avoid disaster and would not be able to think about anything else.

"There are big green stains on your mac." Guto observed.

"So there are." said Bethan.

It was not yet eight o'clock. No more than half an hour since she'd scrambled up the river bank away from the madwoman who had almost been her friend.

"Guto. Giles might be coming out of hospital this morning. You know the state of his clothes. I was wondering if you had anything that might fit him."

"What about his own clothes? He's got more than that suit at home, hasn't he?"

"Yes, but… there are problems in bringing them across."

The central problem, she now realised, was that Giles would actually be going home — she had no illusions that the doctor might persuade him to be examined at Bronglais — and walking into a situation which he might have difficulty coping with even if he were fully fit. She simply did not know what to do for the best.

"I'll make some tea." Guto said. "You look as if you need it."

"No, you go." Bethan said. "You get off to Lampeter. It's your big day."

"Are you all right, Bethan?"

"Of course I am."

"Listen, go upstairs now. Second door on the left. Just inside the door there's a wardrobe. Some of my dad's old clothes you'll find in there. A big, tall man, he was, my dad. Well, compared with me he was. Take what you like. Bit old-fashioned, mind, but if it's only to get him home…"

Guto straightened his undertaker's tie in the gilt-framed mirror over a mantelpiece heavy with cumbersome Victorian pottery. From a chair he look his briefcase. His briefcase. A tie and a briefcase. On any other day but this Bethan would have found the spectacle richly amusing.

"I'm off" said Guto. "Just slam the door behind you when you've finished."

"Thank you. Guto…"

He looked back, mule appeal in his doggy eyes.

What the hell, Bethan thought, and went over and kissed him. On the cheek, of course.

"Good luck, Guto."

Guto snatched her by the arm and kissed her on the lips.

He'd trimmed his beard too.

"There," he said. "Now I feel lucky."

When he'd gone, Bethan went upstairs and found his late father's wardrobe. Guto's dad had been a miner in the Rhondda who had suffered badly with his chest. When Guto was twelve or thirteen the family had moved west for his father's health, taking over a small tobacconist's shop in Pontmeurig. Bethan remembered Bryn Evans as a man who coughed a lot and laughed a lot, spent each night in the Drovers' Arms until closing time but was never conspicuously drunk.

Inevitably, as she pulled open the mahogany doors, Bethan remembered going through Robin's wardrobe, packing up all his clothes, taking them to the Oxfam shop in Stryd-y-Castell. Easily the most heartbreaking task she'd ever performed. She remembered folding his beloved sheepskin-lined flying jacket, then changing her mind and taking it out of the cardboard box and stowing it in the bottom of her own wardrobe, where it still lay, and she—

Stop it, stop it, stop it!

On a shelf above the stiff, dark suits, she found a pair of light slacks and a thick, grey rollneck pullover. Could be worse.

With the clothes under her arm. she ran down the stairs and out the front door, shutting it firmly behind her. Five minutes past eight. Not much time. She wondered how Buddug would react if she didn't turn up for school by nine o'clock. And would Buddug herself be on time, or would she be otherwise engaged?

Bethan shuddered at the memory of Buddug. enormous in the doorway, made-up like a fat corpse.

She put the clothes on the back seat of the Peugeot and drove to the collage hospital. On impulse she went into the phone box in the hospital foyer and dialled Y Groes 239.

Last chance to speak sensibly lo Claire, otherwise she would have to tell Giles everything.

Tell him everything?

But what was she doing in the river, Bethan?

She was washing her hair. Giles.

I see.

In Y Groes the telephone rang out. Six times, seven times, eight.

Bethan hung up and left the box and walked across to the reception desk.

"Giles Freeman." she said to a woman who had been a couple of years ahead of her at secondary school in Aber.

"You'll be lucky." the receptionist said. "Do you want to speak to Dr. Tahan?'

"What do you mean?'

"I'll bleep him," said the receptionist. "He'll want to talk to you, I imagine."

Bethan went cold. "Is Giles all right?'

"No, he's not all right." the woman said smugly. Bethan could tell that, as she spoke, she was busy fabricating an interesting relationship between the schoolteacher and the Englishman. "Not for me to say, though, is it?'

The doctor was more forthcoming. He led Bethan to his office in the new wing and closed the door. "Delayed concussion, fractured skull, brain haemorrhage, you name it." he said. "It could be any, it could be none. But how are we to know? I don't particularly want to know precisely how he came by his injuries, but I do want him to be fully examined. Call it selfishness. Call it protecting my own back. I don't care."

"Hold on." Bethan said. "You are saying he's gone?'

"Your friend discharged himself half an hour ago. There was nothing I could say to stop him. We don't, unfortunately, have powers of arrest."

"Oh God," Bethan said.

"I don't know how much you are in a position to influence him. but if he blacks out and runs his car off the road…"

"All right." Bethan said, looking at her watch. Twenty past eight.

She ran down the hospital corridor and did not look at the receptionist on her way to the door.

Chapter XXXVII

Tired. Desperately, desperately tired.

He had thought the fresh air would revive him, but walking to the car park was like he imagined it would be for a deep sea diver staggering across the ocean bed, the air heavy on his shoulders, powerful currents pulling him this way and that. In reality the wind was not so strong anymore and the sky all rained-out.

Stepping from the kerb, Giles lost his balance and fell sideways across the bonnet of a parked car. People stared at him, as though he were some rare species of breakfast-time drunk.

When he got into his own car, the new Subaru, it felt strange, as if he hadn't driven it in years. When he pulled out of the car park below the ruined castle, his hands on the wheel seemed a long way away, as if he were driving from the back seat.

He steered stiffly across the Meurig bridge and on to the bypass. The Nearly Mountains were above him now, wispy grey clouds around the tops like smoke-rings.

Just hadn't realised what complete fatigue could be like. Except this was more than fatigue: his whole body aching, bloated, lumbering. His head feeling as though it were encased in some huge metal helmet, like the Man in the Iron Mask.

A truck blasted its horn behind him as he swung the car off the bypass and on to the mountain road, and he realised he'd forgotten to signal.

After three miles, Giles began to see double. Twin roads snaked into the hills, two wooden fences sealed off the forestry. He pulled into a lay-by. Switched off the engine, sat back, and the seat pulled him in and his eyelids crashed down.

He remembered Bethan then. How she was going to fetch him some clothes. He'd forgotten all about that. He must stop her, tell her he was going home. He sat up, hands scrabbling at the car phone. He would call home, tell Claire, get her to ring Bethan or something. Or something.

His fingers kept pushing all the wrong numbers. The car phone squeaked impatiently. He saw the message NO SERVICE printed out across the illuminated panel on the receiver. Giles groaned. He must have passed the point at which the Vodaphone signal faded out. Perhaps it would return. He must remember to try again. Must remember…

Really he felt like stumbling off into the forestry and curling up on the brown carpet of dead needles, knowing he would fall asleep there instantly. But he heaved his body into position on the seat, switched on the engine again and drove very, very slowly over the crest of the Nearly Mountains, where the snow snuggled into the crags and hollows. He could have stopped and walked out and gone to sleep in the snow, like Captain Oates. Just going out. May be some time.

He didn't have to analyse why it was so vital for him to get away from Pontmeurig and back to Y Groes. Couldn't have managed any heavy thinking in his state anyway. But he knew why it was. It came down to this: the first seriously unpleasant thing had happened to him in Pont, the thing that backed up everything they'd said, the hacks, at Winstone Thorpe's farewell session. While in Y Groes, everything disproved it. The warmth, the open friendliness, the generosity, the feeling that here were people who were confident enough of their heritage, their place in the world, not to suspect everyone with an English accent of trying to rip them off.

Something like that.

He glanced back at the phone. NO SERVICE it said still, NO SERVICE. Why should it just say NO SERVICE in English? Why not in Welsh, too? Dim… dim whatever the hell service was in Welsh.

Down now, into the forestry's gloom. Sitka spruce stamping in dispiriting symmetry down the hillside, stealing the land and the light. Giles clung to the wheel of the Subaru, wipers scraping at the spray thrown up as the car slogged through a roadside river left by the storm. The rhythm of the wipers wafted waves of sleep into his head. soon-be-home, soon-be-home, soon-be-home.

Only when his chin hit his chest did Giles awake to his peril, violently jerking himself upright, a bumper scraping he forestry fence as he swerved back into the middle of the road.

Breathing hard, he wiped the palm of his hand across the windscreen and smeared cool condensation into his hot, hurting eyes.

Presently, the sky brightened. He pulled down the sun visor then flung it up again, tears in his eyes, realising this was the brightness heralding home. He saw the church's two-tiered belfry, and he stepped the car his heart tugging weakly but triumphantly.

The church was a symbol for Giles of what this village was about. Not some grey chapel behind back-street railings, but a great, soaring tower stabbing the sky, announcing Y Groes. The cross, Y Groesfan. The crossing place.

He had never been to a service at this church, never been to any kind of service since his wedding, but he told himself he must go this Sunday. Renew his faith, give thanks to the village and to its people and to the Almighty for bringing him here.

Battered, beaten-up, bedraggled, Giles wrapped both arms around the steering wheel and wept. And looked up and saw, through his tears, two towers, two bridges, two roads. But he would make it now. Back home to sleep. Sleep until church on Sunday. Sunday. When was that? What day was it? Was it Sunday tomorrow?

The car rolled out of the forestry as if someone else were driving it. Giles's senses somewhere around the rear parcel shelf.

Across the bridge, up the hill, past the lych gate of the church, a couple of hundred yards then right, between the two great sycamores in full autumnal glory.

Oh God, thank you, thank you.

Giles almost fell out of the car, heedless of the pain, and breathed deeply of the soft air. The metal gate was open for him. They must have told Claire he was on his way. What he wanted most in the world was to fall into bed, holding her to him, and sleep. Sleep for ever.

"Claire… darling Claire…"

He realised he'd said that aloud as he staggered up the path. The judge's house — no his house surely, his house now — sat before him, grey stone under a milky sky. The front door also was open for him. He stumbled gratefully over the step. "Hello, darling, I tried to phone…"

There was no Claire waiting for him in the little stone-walled hallway.

Giles went into the living room. It was silent. No fire in the hearth, no cups on the table.

"Claire?"

He shouted out, "Claire!" His voice almost breaking into a wail of disappointment. She wasn't here.

But the gate open, the front door. Couldn't have gone far, surely.

Giles went back outside, looked around the garden, called out. "Claire!"

The wind brought only a sheep's bleat back to him from Morgan's field.

He returned to the house, upset and angry now, feeling deserted. And terribly, terribly tired. Too tired to think sensibly

"I'm going to bed." Giles said thickly. "Sod you, Claire. I'm going to bed."

He staggered through the passage to the bottom of the stairs, still clinging to the hope that he would meet Claire coming down, smiling with welcome and sympathy and a hot cup of coffee.

Three doors in the passage, the one to the judge's study hanging open. But no light leaked out of the gap into the already dim passage. Irritably he pulled the door closed, but it swung open again as he turned away.

Angrily he spun round and snapped it shut.

In the passage he stumbled over something that should not be there, could not lake in at first that this was the pink vinyl headboard, cheap and brash, from Garfield and Pugh in hostile Pontmeurig. What was the bloody headboard doing at the foot of the stairs?

"Claire? Claire!!" He began to climb the stairs. It was too bad. Just too bloody bad of her. Not even a fire lit.

Halfway up the stairs he looked back and saw that the door of the judge's study was hanging open again. He turned away from it and carried on to the upstairs landing.

He went into his office and looked around. Aghast.

His office had gone.

It was a bedroom.

His office was a bloody bedroom again!

Giles squeezed his aching eyes with trembling fingers. Illusion, fatigue, hallucination?

Let it be that. Please let it be that, God.

But when he opened his eyes. It was still a bedroom, and now he recognised the bed. Two green mattresses and a frame of light pine. It was the bed which had come into the house with the ghastly pink vinyl headboard.

"Claire!!" he screamed, his throat choking on the word. He began to cough.

He backed out of the room and threw open the door of their own bedroom, his and Claire's, knowing in an icy part of his stomach what he would find there. Whose bed, with its frowning headboard of carved oak.

"Thank God," Bethan said, seeing Giles's car parked in the track between the two sycamores.

She'd driven straight out of the forestry and into the village at close to sixty miles per hour, knowing that at this time there'd be no children in the road — they'd all be in school by now, wondering where their head teacher was.

At seven minutes to nine, the head teacher had been shattering a wing mirror on the parapet of the bridge as the little Peugeot whizzed across like a frightened squirrel.

All the way across the hills she'd been peering nervously over walls and hedges and fences, expecting to see a car on its side somewhere, or bits of wreckage.

Well thank God he'd made it. Thank God for that, at least.

For what it was worth.

Bethan thought, on reflection, that perhaps the best thing that could have happened would have been a minor crash, something to get Giles towed back to Pont, deposited safely in the hospital with a broken leg, something minor but incapacitating.

For a few seconds she debated going up to the house to ask if Giles was OK. But really it was none of her business. All right, a bruised and beaten man and an increasingly loopy woman. What could she do about that? She was a primary school teacher, not a psychotherapist or a marriage-guidance counsellor.

Besides it was almost nine o'clock.

Christ. She felt as if she'd put in two full days' work, and it was not yet nine o'clock.

Five minutes or so later, Buddug's hands froze above the piano keyboard as Bethan slid into the school hall.

She stood in the doorway in her white mac with the streaks of mud and the huge grass stains. The children, sitting in five short rows, all turned towards her, and Buddug's head swivelled round slowly, her lips drawn back into a smile of incandescent malevolence.

"Bore da" the children chorused. "Bore da, Miss Sion."

She sat down at her desk in the hall, still wearing her mac, too weary to say anything as Buddug's hands smashed into the opening chords of the hymn.

Buddug sang with shrill, ferocious zest, hammering the keys like a pub pianist. Energy rippled through the room as the children yelled out the words, gleefully discordant. Bethan sat in her soiled raincoat and stared at the wall, utterly defeated.

Giles came out of the bedroom and stood at the top of the stairs, swaying.

He could not believe the agony.

Like a flower it had opened out. Bursting free inside his skull like some huge multi-petalled chrysanthemum. And at the end of every petal, a poisoned barb prodding into each tiny fold of his brain, awakening every nerve to the dazzling white light of purest pain.

He could not even bear to scream.

Mercifully, perhaps, the pain had deadened his emotions. Except for one. Which was rage.

Rage gathered in his throat, choking him. Rage against her.

And against him.

Her dead grandfather.

He began to walk down the stairs, each soft step detonating a new explosion in his brain.

He walked across the hall, past the pink vinyl headboard, to where the door of the judge's study still hung ajar.

Giles went in.