Candlenight (20 page)

   
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—"