Candlenight (41 page)

   
Gallier made a tough, rousing
speech, full of commitment to Wales and the language, a few Welsh phrases
scattered strategically around. When he threw these in. there were odd noises
of appreciation. English immigrants. Berry thought. Token Welsh wouldn't cut
much ice with the locals.

   
His perception surprised him.
He must be getting the measure of this strange, mixed society.

   
The Secretary of State for
Trade and Industry was indeed, even by comparison with Gallier, extremely
predictable. Almost as boring as the questions people asked afterwards. Jerry
suspected most of the questioners were plants. These guys were preaching to the
converted. No opposition here—except, he thought, amused, for Bethan sitting
somewhere back there discreetly absorbing it all for Guto's benefit. Mata Hari.

   
"One of Johnny's belter
efforts. I thought," grunted Sykes as the minister sat down for the last
time.

   
"Oh, Berry," a voice
breathed in his ear.

   
As Gallier's applause died. Berry
turned to find Shirley Gillies contemplating him, a bijou smile dimpling her plump,
downy features. She said, "You must be getting really fed up, stuck in the
Drovers' all night." She dipped her eyelashes. "I was wondering . . .
why don't you wander back to the Plas Meurig for a couple of drinks before
turning in?"

   
The implication was clear.

   
He couldn't believe it: she was
genuinely turned on by all this shit. Wow. Was there a name for a person who
was erotically stimulated by the cut and thrust—with the emphasis on thrust—of
party politics?

   
"Thing is, ah, I arranged
to see someone later." he said, trying to sound regretful. 'Thanks,
though, Shirley."

   
"Oh, right, OK." said
Shirley. "Just a thought"

   
It was going to be somebody's
lucky night. Maybe even Bill Sykes's, depending how legless the alternatives
were around midnight.

   
As they stood up, the hall
clearing, people talking in bunches. Berry said to Sykes, "When you said
Winstone wouldn't come back to Wales, you meant because of the bad
time he had covering mat story in the sixties, the murder of the two
farmers?"

   
"Ha!" Bill Sykes
snapped a rubber band around his notebook. "Winstone never covered that
story. He wasn't even born then. Indeed, that's the whole point."

   
"Huh?"

   
"Now
there's
a mystery for you, old boy. Remind me to tell you about it
sometime, eh?" Bill began to rub his knees. "Not good for the joints,
these damn chairs."

   
"Hey, come on. Bill,
t—"

   
Tell me now, he'd been about to
say, but there was a hand on his shoulder again and this time, to his
relief—relief and a frisson of something more interesting—the hand belonged to
Bethan.

   
She was wearing her white raincoat,
Guto's beautiful spy.

   
"Can we be seen
talking?" Berry said out of the corner of his mouth. "Or should I leave
a message in the dead-letter drop?"

   
"Actually, this is probably
the one place we are safe," Bethan said, 'if Guto sees us together one of us
will need to seek asylum in England."

   
"Right. Ah . . ."
Good a time as any. "I was gonna ask. Guto—Guto and you ... ?"

   
"He thinks I need to be
protected," Bethan said.
   
"By him."

   
"Of course. He thinks
living alone is not good for me. He thinks I am in danger of having a nervous
breakdown."
   
"What do you think?"

   
"I think a nervous
breakdown would be quite a relief,"
Bethan said softly. "Come on, let's go."

It was George who made the discovery, just as they were getting ready
for bed.

   
"That's it!" he
announced, sitting on a comer of the bed. flinging down a sock. "I'm going
to find out what's causing it."

   
He's drunk too much, Elinor
thought. "It's only a loose floorboard," she said.
   
"Getting on my nerves."

   
Elinor had more to worry about
than a creak. It had been a most unsatisfactory evening.

   
She'd been almost hopeful at
the start—-Claire turning up at the inn at around seven, joining them for
dinner. Roast lamb, of course. All the Welsh seemed to be able to cook
was lamb. George enjoyed it.

   
There'd been nobody else dining
at the inn, theirs the only table with a cloth. The little white-haired
licensee had served
them
himself, reasonably
courteously. An opportune
time, Elinor had judged, to raise the issue of what was to happen now.

   
"Why don't you come and
stay with us for a while, give yourself time to think things out?"
   
Claire had told her nothing needed to
be thought out and then said, "We'll never agree about this, Mother, you
must surely have realised that."

   
George had said, "Let the
girl get over it in her own way." And Elinor had found herself wondering
if, for Claire, there was really anything to get over. It was clear their
marriage
had not been as well founded as she'd imagined.

   
"I shall come and visit
you, of course," Claire said. "Sometimes."

   
"I should hope so."
her father said in his jocular way, his second cigarette burning away in an
ashtray by his elbow.

   
"Knowing how much you
would dislike coming to my grandfather's house."

   
Elinor had felt something
coiling and uncoiling in her stomach.
Tell
me I've got it wrong
.
Tel! me you
aren't going to stay here . . .

   
"Let's just enjoy our
meal, shall we?" Claire had said.

   
Later, in the bar, everyone had
greeted Claire in Welsh, switching to English when they saw she was not alone: She'd
introduced them to her "friends," a thin man with horrible teeth and
a couple, he bearded and hefty, she red-faced with little beady eyes and an
awful gappy Welsh smile. All were appallingly friendly to Elinor and George, who
was persuaded to play darts and allowed to win.

   
Not
Elinor's sort of evening.

   
"Hey, look at this—"
George had the floorboard up.
   
"Put the bloody thing back, for
God's sake. George—"
   
"No, look—" He appeared
ludicrously unattractive, sprawled on the floor, hair awry, white belly
slopping out of his underpants, arm down a hole in the floor.

   
"Some kind of book, I
think. Hang on . . . Here it comes."

   
George brought it into the light.
"Probably a valuable first edition or something. Oh . . ."

   
The light from the centre of the
ceiling fell on an ordinary stiff-backed notebook from W.H. Smith.

   
"Can't win
'em
all," said George. He stamped on the floorboard, "Least I've
stopped the damn squeak."

   
"What is it?" Elinor
said, in bed now. wearing a long- sleeved pale-blue nightdress.

   
George opened the book.
"Sir Robert
Meredydd
,"
he read. "Thirteen forty-nine to fourteen twenty-one. Can't be his
notebook, anyway, it's written in Biro. Couple of diagrams, rough sort of plan,
pages of unintelligible scrawl. Doesn't look very interesting. Why do you
suppose it was under the floorboard?"

   
"I don't know. And I don't
care."

   
"Probably a bloody treasure
map." George laughed and tossed the book on to his bedside table.
"Remind me to give it to that chap Griffiths in the morning."

   
"I wish it was morning
now," Elinor said.

   
"I don't. I'm bloody
tired."

   
"You're drunk."

   
"What, on three pints and
a Scotch?"
   
"There's an awful tension in
here. In the air. Can't you feel it?"

   
"Only the tension in my bladder."
George said coarsely, pulling on his overcoat. "Excuse me."

   
As he slumped off to the
bathroom across the landing— nothing en-suite in this place—Elinor pulled the
quilt around her shoulders and picked up the notebook to take her
mind off how much she hated this room. The book was not particularly dusty,
obviously hadn't been down there long.

   
It fell open at the reference
to Sir Robert Meredydd and Elinor saw that the date 1421 had been underlined
twice and an exclamation mark added.

   
She looked at the diagrams. One
appeared to be a rough map of the village with a circle marking the church,
shading denoting woodland and a dotted line going off the page and
marked "trackway."

   
Half the book was empty. The
last note said something like "Check Mornington."

   
Elinor put the book back on the
table, on George's side.

   
She'd hated those people in the
bar tonight. Most of all she'd hated the way they and Claire had exchanged
greetings in Welsh. Claire seeming quite at home with the language.

   
Elinor hated the sound of
Welsh. Nasty, whining, guttural. If they could all speak English, why
didn't
they?

   
Her father had never once
spoken Welsh to them at home. Yet had turned his back on them, returned to the
so-called land of his fathers—and then, apparently, had spoken little
else.

   
There was something rancid in
the air.

   
When George returned they would
have to put out the light, and the room would be lit from the window, which had
no curtains and was divided into eight square panes. And the room would be one
with the silent village and the night.

Chapter XLVII

Shadows clung to the alleyway along the side of the Memorial Hall. It
was lit only by a tin-shaded yellow bulb on the corner of the building. Berry
walked close to Bethan. He liked walking close to Bethan, though he wasn't too
sure who was protecting whom.
   
Neurotic chemistry.

   
They came out on the parking
lot below the castle. Any place else, Berry thought, they'd have had
floodlights around a ruined castle this big. Made a feature of it. In Pontmeurig
they seemed to treat their medieval monument like some shabby industrial relic,
hiding it with modern buildings, parking cars and trucks as close as they could
get to its ramparts.

   
Plenty cars here tonight, as
many as in the daytime.

   
"Business has never been
so good," Bethan said, as they crossed the road to Hampton's Bookshop. "The
licensees are hoping that whoever wins the by-election will die very soon so
they can have another one."

   
"Where's Guto's meeting
tonight?"

   
"Y Groes," Bethan
said quickly and pulled her keys from her bag.

   
"What time's he get
back?"

   
"Alun's driving, so he'll
have a few drinks afterwards. Half-eleven, twelve."

   
"Gives us a couple of
hours to talk before he comes looking for your report."

   
"He won't tonight. Close
the door behind you."

   
Bethan led the way upstairs, flicking
lights on. In the flat she switched on a single reading lamp with an orange
shade, went to plug in the kettle. "How long you lived here?" Berry said.

   
"Only a few months. After
Robin died, I went to work in a school in Swansea, but then they offered me the
head teacher's job in Y Groes '

   
"Hold on," Berry
said. "I thought you were at Y Groes before."

   
"Yes, but not working there."
Bethan came through from the kitchen in jeans and sweater, coat over her arm.
She threw it in an armchair, sat on an arm of the sofa. "I'll start
at the beginning, shall I?"

   
"OK"

   
She told him she'd been born in
Aberystwyth, where her parents still lived. Went to college in Swansea, came
back to teach at the primary school in Pontmeurig then at a bigger school in
Aber. Met Robin McQueen, a geologist from Durham, working at the British
Geological Survey Centre just south of the town. When they married they'd been delighted
to be able to rent a terraced cottage in Y Groes, even though it would be a fifty-mile
round trip to work each day for both of them.