Candlenight (31 page)

   
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?'