Candlenight (26 page)

   
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."