Candlenight (42 page)

   
"It all seemed so
perfect," Bethan said. "Robin was like Giles—overwhelmed by the
setting and the countryside and the beauty of the village itself. The extra
driving seemed a small price to pay."

   
"How long were you there,
before—?"
   
Her eyelids dropped. "Under a
year."
   
"Listen, you don't have to—"

   
"There is very little to
say. He complained increasingly of feeling tired. Put it down to the travelling
and the stress. The stress, he— The survey team were being told to investigate Mid-Wales
to find areas where the rocks were suitable for burying nuclear waste. Robin,
of course, was fiercely anti-nuclear. He considered resigning. But then we
would have been forced to leave the area—nothing else round here for a
geologist. Then, worst of all, he found two prime nuclear-dumping sites in the
Nearly Mountains, five miles from Y Groes. can you imagine that?"

   
"Awkward."

   
"So be was tired and under
terrible stress and he flew into a rage if I suggested he should see a doctor.
And then—
"

   
The kettle puffed and shrilled.
Bethan got up. Berry followed her into the tiny kitchen.

   
"And then he
did
see a doctor," she said dully.
"And of course it was too late." She poured boiling water into a brown
teapot. "Far too late."

   
Bethan pushed the fingers of
both hands through her black hair. "We had not quite two weeks," she
said.

   
"Jesus," Berry said
softly.

   
"My neighbour at the lime.
Mrs. Bronwen Dafis, told me one day—being helpful, very nice, very understanding—that
Robin would be dead before the weekend."

   
"She was medically
qualified, huh?"

   
"It emerged that she had
followed a corpse candle from the church to our door."
   
"Followed a
what
?"

   
"In rural Wales."
Bethan said. "There are many signs and portents signifying death. The
corpse candle is said to be a tiny light which floats a few feet above the
ground. Identifying the house of a person who will soon die. Or perhaps someone
will see his own corpse candle, trailing behind him along the lane."

   
"People believe
that?"

   
"That is the very least of
what some people believe. There is something, also unique to Wales. I imagine,
called the
teuli
or
toili
. The phantom funeral. A funeral
procession may be seen carrying a coffin or pushing the coffin on a bier or a
cart. Perhaps you are in some lonely place at night or twilight, and the
cortege passes right through you."

   
"Legends. Folklore.
Country bullshit, right?"

   
"Of course." Bethan
poured two teas. "Strong enough?"

   
"Fine. These stories . . .
must scare the crap out of kids."

   
"Except," Bethan
said, "in Y Groes."

   
"Why'd I have a feeling
you were gonna say that?"

   
They carried the mugs back into
the living room. Bethan put on the electric fire. They sat, one on each arm of
the peacock sofa.

   
"All this furniture from
the cottage?"

   
Bethan nodded and told him how,
heartbroken, she'd at first put the furniture in store and taken a job, any
job, in Swansea—in spite of the entreaties of her neighbours, several of whom
had seriously urged her not to leave.

   
"Obviously, they wanted me
to stay because I was a Welsh speaker and they needed younger blood. The young people
leave this area in their hundreds, to find work. And because, well, that is
what young people do, they leave their roots behind. So you have many villages
which are full of old people. And immigrants."

   
"Ah."

   
"But not Y Groes. It is perhaps
the only village in Wales where everyone is Welsh. And Welsh speaking."

   
"Everyone? What about the
Welsh people who bring their wives and husbands who happen not to be Welsh—?"

   
It hit him.

   
"Aw, hey, come on . .
."
   
Bethan shrugged.

Half asleep. Elinor thought at first, as anyone would, that it must be
the wind.

   
And then she heard the
unmistakable heat of wings.
   
The bed shifted as she sat up.
   
"What was that? What
was
it?"
   
George grunted.

   
"Did you hear it? George,
did you
hear
it?"

   
A clear, cold night outside. A
quarter moon in the top-left square of the deep-set window.

   
Elinor shivered in her cotton
nightdress.

   
"I was asleep."
George complained. "For God's sake. I was
asleep
"

   
"It's stopped,"
Elinor said. "It was a bird, I think."

   
"Owl, probably."

   
"Owls don't peck at
windows."

   
"I wouldn't know. I'm not
an ornithologist" George wrenched at the blankets, turned over.

   
"Stopped now." Elinor
spoke faintly and sank back on the pillow.

   
"Go to sleep." George
mumbled. "We'll be away from here tomorrow, God willing."

   
Eyes wide open, she wondered
how much influence God might exert in a place like this. She was no more a theologian
than George was an ornithologist. But she was a woman and he was a depressingly
unresponsive man. There were things that he would never begin to understand.

   
She lay on her back looking up
at the beamed ceiling, only white bars visible, found by the sparse moonlight.

   
"George," she said
after a while, unmoving in the bed.

   
"What?"

   
And came out with it at last.
"I think she's pregnant."

   
George turned over towards her.
"What on earth makes you say that?"

   
"Oh, you probably wouldn't
understand, but I can feel it about her somehow—the way she moves, her
colouring, her skin tone. Not much more than a month perhaps, but it's
there."

   
"Oh dear. That
would
be difficult, especially in a
place like this. How would she support a child? She's a freelance. No maternity
leave for a freelance."

   
"I'm probably wrong,"
Elinor said, sorry now that she'd blurted out what was on her mind. She'd
always had cause to regret confiding her deeper feelings to bluff, shallow,
well-meaning George.

   
"Hope you are,"
George said. "Although I'd quite like to be a grandad one day. Completes
the picture."

   
Within minutes he was snoring.
Always make the best of things, that was George. Elinor turned on to her side
and after a while began to drift unhappily towards the blurred frontier of
sleep.

   
Was pulled back by that hideous
noise again.

   
The measured, sharp laps on the
windowpane, The convulsion of wings.

   
Rolling over in her lonely
terror, she saw the shadow of the nightbird against the moon-tinted glass.

   
In a flat, cold silence, as if
the sound of the world had been switched off, it brandished its dark wings at
her, a spasm of black foreboding.

   
And vanished.

   
She turned to face the wall.
And did not sleep again, nor look at the window, until morning came in a sickly
pink mist.

Chapter XLVIII

Berry came down lo breakfast and heard voices from the sitting room next
door.

   
"Bethan has been here
since seven," explained Mrs. Evans, setting down his three kinds of toast.
"Been following the Tory campaign, she has. Well, I never realised this
electioneering was so complicated."

   
Ten minutes later, as she
carried his plates away, he heard her open the sitting room door. "I'm
taking your tea and coffee into the dining room. It's not friendly to leave Mr.
Morelli on his own."

   
Guto's reply was unintelligible
but audibly grumpy. He shambled in a couple of minutes later wearing a torn
sweatshirt with something in Welsh printed on the front and a lot of
exclamation marks "Morning, Morelli," he said without enthusiasm.

   
"Bad night?"

   
"Don't even fucking
ask." said Guto, reversing a dining chair and sitting down with his legs
astride the seat and his chin on his hands over the backrest.

   
Bethan followed him in,
contrastingly elegant in black, with the big gold earrings, "Guto has
decided his meeting in Y Groes was not a success," she said carefully.

   
Mrs. Evans returned with
matching tea and coffee pots in some ornate kind of china, put the coffee pot
on the table in front of Guto. "I've told you about sitting like that,
you'll ruin that chair."

   
"Oh, Mam, not this
morning, for Chr—Not this morning, please."

   
Mrs. Evans put down the teapot.
"
Two
black tea drinkers?"
She said. "There's coincidence. Strong or weak?"

   
"I like mine strong
ish
," Bethan said. "I am
afraid
he
likes it so it corrodes the
spoon."

   
Guto threw her a penetrating
look which said. And how the hell do you know that?

   
"Berry was at the
Conservative meeting last night." Bethan said quickly, pouring tea.
"They served tea afterwards," she lied. "He was complaining about
the Tory tea. how weak it was. This is lovely. Mrs. Evans."

   
Guto's look said, Oh. Berry,
now, is it?

   
"Anything else you want,"
Mrs. Evans said, scurrying off, "I'll be in the kitchen."

   
"Yes, yes, thank you, Mam,"
Guto said irritably.

   
"So what went wrong?"
Berry lit a cigarette.

   
"I truly cannot fathom it.
Morelli." Guto said. "You know Y Groes, you've been there?"

   
Berry nodded.

   
"Not a soul in that
village does not speak Welsh, am I right, Bethan?"

   
"You're right," she
said. "And you are remembering that when Gwynfor won his by-election to
become the first Plaid MP, back then, it was said he had one hundred per cent support
in the Welsh-speaking communities of Carmarthenshire—in Llanybydder and Rhydeymerau."

   
"Right," Guto said
bitterly. "Of all the places, this was the one I was the least worried
about. Didn't even think about what I was going to say in advance. I'd march
into the school hall to universal cheers. Hard man of the nationalists, hero of
the hour."

   
He rocked backwards and
forwards on the dining chair. "You know how many were there? Nineteen.
Nineteen fucking people!"

   
Berry reckoned Simon Gallier
must have pulled nearly four hundred. OK. Guto's meeting was in a village, but,
shit . . .

   
"Another notable chapter
in the annals of apathy, it was," Guto said. "And worse still—get
this—most of the nineteen were from farms and hamlets a few miles away. I should
say there were fewer than five actual residents of Y Groes. And they were the
people who knew me, come out of politeness—Aled from the pub, Dilwyn Dafis,
Dewi Fon. What is it we learn from this, eh? What do we fucking
learn
here?"

   
"Maybe the meeting wasn't
publicised enough? " Berry said.

   
"Bollocks. Nothing happens
in these villages that everybody doesn't know about. Apathy, it is. Typical of
this area. Makes you sick."

   
He looked despondently at the
floor. Bethan looked at Berry. The look indicated she could maybe explain this,
and apathy was not the word she would use.

   
"Look, I have to go,"
Bethan said.

   
"And I have to change, for
my Press conference," Guto said. "Jesus, what if the hacks have heard
about it?"