Candlenight, page 15
She really could not see it.
A fine dusk was purpling into night as Bethan walked up the path. A light came on in a front window, and by the time she reached the front door, arms full of books and things as
usual, it was open. A tall, fair-haired man was there in a sleeveless V-necked pullover over a checked shirt, looking, she thought, distinctly relieved when he saw her.
"Great. Hi. Giles Freeman. Bethan, right?" Standing back to usher her into the warm living room with the Welsh dresser and the inglenook and a muted glow from a reading lamp with a brown ceramic base. ''Super of you to do this for us, it really is."
"Super of you to want to do it." Bethan said. "Not many of you—your—people who move in from England—"
"Bastards," Giles said vehemently, closing doors. "No sense of where they are. We—Ah, here's Claire."
She wore a grey skirt and a white blouse, looking like a schoolgirl, no make-up. She did not smile. "Bethan, hello. Coffee now? Or later?"
"Whichever suits you." Had there been a row, she wondered.
"How about during." Giles said. "I'll make it."
"I'd like to start, I think," Claire said. "We don't want to delay you. You'll want to get home to your husband."
"My husband is dead," Bethan said casually, standing in the middle of the floor looking for somewhere to put down the pile of books, pretending not to notice the familiar silence which always followed this disclosure.
"Oh," said Claire mildly, as Giles was saying, "I'm awfully sorry. We didn't know." The unspoken question was hanging around, so Bethan answered it.
"He died about a year ago. Leukaemia."
"That's really terrible." said Giles. "That really is a bastard of a thing."
"It was very quick. By the time it was diagnosed he was dying. Three weeks later, he—" Bethan made a mouth-smile. "Right. That is over with. I am at the stage where sympathy only depresses me. Look, I've brought you these little books. They're grown-up cartoons with all the bubbles in Welsh and a lot of the everyday kind of words you don't find in the more formal textbooks."
Giles moved to take the other stuff from her (why did people always rush to help as soon as they learned she was a widow?) so she could open a little paperback called "Welsh Is Fun." She showed him a drawing of a woman in her underwear. Little arrows pointed to things, giving the Welsh, with the English in brackets. Like bronglwm (bra)
and bol(belly).
"I've also brought you some leaflets for Pont—have you heard of that?"
Giles shook his head.
"It's an organisation set up lo form links between native Welsh people and the, um, incomers. Pont means—"
"Bridge, right?" said Giles. "As in Pontmeurig. Rehabilitation, eh?"
"There we are," said Bethan, glancing towards the fat-legged dining table at which only two chairs were set. "That's a start. Now, where shall we sit?"
"Not in here." Claire said quickly.
Giles looked at her. She said. 'I've set up a table in the study."
"What's the use of going in there? There's no bloody electricity!"
"I filled the oil lamp. And lit the fire. Will you light the lamp, Giles? Please?" It was a command. Bethan thought.
"Oh. for Christ's sake . . . What's wrong with staying here?"
"It's more fitting," Claire said quietly.
"Goodness." Bethan said, looking at the rows of black books.
"Can you tell us what they are?" Giles was turning up the wick on the big oil lamp dangling from the middle beam. "Claire, is this really going to be bright enough?"
"If we put the table not quite underneath, it'll be fine."
She'd erected a green-topped card table and placed three stiff-backed chairs around it. A small coal fire burned rather meanly in the Victorian grate. Bethan also would rather have stayed in the living room. She would never have tolerated a classroom as stiff and cold as this. She crossed to the shelves.
"I don't recognise most of these." Taking books down at random. 'They're obviously very old and must be very valuable indeed. See . . ." She held out a page of text.
"This is in medieval Welsh. These must be some of the oldest books ever printed in Welsh—although copies, I expect, in most cases. There seems to be a lot of old poetry—Taliesyn, is this? And these three are quite early versions of The Mabinogion. I've never seen them before, although I'm no expert. Oh—"
"What've you found?" Giles wandered over, craning his neck.
"Nothing really, just a modern one amongst all the old stuff. It hasn't got its dustjacket so it looked like all the rest. It's ap Siencyn, one of his early books of poetry."
"What, you mean ap Siencyn, the vicar here?"
"The rector, yes. He used to be a poet." Bethan smiled.
"What I mean is, he used to publish his poetry. Many years ago."
"That's amazing," Giles said.
"Not really, there are poets everywhere in Wales and quite a few are ministers."
Giles nodded solemnly "Exactly. That's the whole point."
He folded his arms, rocking back on his heels in the middle of the room on the dragon rug. "What I mean is—We've become so smug and cynical in England because our cultural heritage is so safe. We've got the world's number one language, we've got Shakespeare and Jane Austen and all these literary giants planted in state in Westminster Abbey. But Welsh culture's about ordinary people. I mean, your writers and poets don't spend all their time poncing about at fancy publishers' parties and doing lecture tours of the States. They're working farmers and schoolteachers and—clergymen. And they'll never be remotely famous outside Wales because virtually nobody out there can understand a word they write. It takes real commitment to carry on in a situation like that, wouldn't you say?"
Bethan watched Giles's lean English face shining with an honest fervour in the unsteady lamplight. How could the issue of Wales be seized on with such vigour by people like Giles and Claire, who had not been brought up in the warmth of a Welsh community, not had bedtime stories read to them in Welsh, sung Welsh nursery rhymes or made their first terrifying public appearance performing a little recitation before a critical audience of neighbours at the local eisteddfod? Did they equate Wales with whales? Were the Welsh suddenly interesting because they looked like a threatened species?
Then Bethan glanced at Claire and drew in a sharp breath.
Claire, small face not mellow but stark in the lamplight, was looking up at Giles. And wearing a rigid expression of explicit contempt.
"You know," Giles was idling Bethan enthusiastically. "I wouldn't mind doing a feature sometime on old ap Siencyn. What's he like?"
"He's— You've met him. Claire, what did you think of him?"
Giles looked hurt. "Claire, you never mentioned meeting the rector."
"I—" Claire didn't look at him. "Our paths crossed while I was out taking pictures."
"She took his picture." Bethan said.
"I didn't see that," Giles said.
"It didn't come out." Claire snapped. "Can we make a start?"
Bethan thought. Her pictures never don't come out. Besides, I saw it.
"Well, I think I've seen his house." Giles said. "Upon the edge of the woods. Very impressive."
Bethan said. "Sometimes I take the kids up to the woods, but we go the other way. I don't like that part somehow."
Especially now, she thought, shuddering at the image, which came to her unbidden, of two leather hiking boots slowly swinging overhead.
"I thought it was magnificent." Giles said, freckles aglow in the lamplight. "You get the feeling that's where the whole village was born—you know, the timber for the cottages. I
think it's fantastic the way they're managing it, renewing the trees and everything. I mean, who actually does that? Who are the foresters?"
Claire, face taut, severe in the oil-light, said, with quiet menace, "Ydy chi'n barod, Bethan?"
Giles fell silent, looked embarrassed.
"Yes," Bethan said, feeling sorry for him. Why did his innocent ardour seem to irritate his wife so? "Yes. I'm ready." When she'd agreed to teach them Welsh, she'd been looking forward to a chat over coffee with people who weren't a part of this stifling community. Not this formal, frigid atmosphere, this sense of . . . ritual, almost.
It's the house, she thought, It's the damned house. She opened one of her books on the card table. Aware, on the periphery of her vision, of the old, heavy desk and the Victorian Gothic chair across the room, beyond the dome of the lamplight. As if they were awaiting the arrival of the real teacher.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Bethan left.
There was no moon. It was very dark.
"Where's your car?" Giles asked.
"I left it at the school, it's only three minutes walk."
"It's pitch black. I'll come with you, bring a torch."
"Thank you. but I used to live in this village, there's no—"
"There is." Giles said firmly, grabbing his green waxed jacket from behind the door, switching his heavyweight policeman's torch on and off to make sure it was working.
"Well, thank you." Bethan said. Oh god, she thought. I don't really want to be alone with Giles now. I don't need this.
Following the torchbeam. they walked down the hill and over the bridge, the river hissing below them. There was an anguished silence between them until they reached the
entrance to the school lane.
"Christ," Giles said.
"Look—" Bethan put a reassuring hand on his arm.
"Don't worry, all right?"
"Huh—" Giles twisted away like a petulant schoolboy then immediately turned back, apologetic. He expelled a sigh, full of hopelessness, and rubbed his eyes.
"You will soon get the hang of it."
It was too dark to see his face.
"But you don't understand." Giles said desperately. "I thought I was getting the hang of it. I've been working at it for weeks. Before we even came. I used to spend all my lunch hours swotting. I mean, you know—I really thought I was getting pretty good. It's just so bloody embarrassing."
"Don't worry." Bethan said. "Everybody has days like that. When they're beginning. A few weeks really isn't very long, you know."
"All right then, what about Claire? I mean, she hasn't spent anywhere near as much time on it as me."
"Look," Bethan said, as they reached the Peugeot. "The very worst thing you can do is worry."
"But I couldn't put together even the simplest sentences! I mean things I know!" Bethan heard Giles punching the palm of his hand in bitter frustration. The violent movement seemed to hurt him more than he'd intended because he gave a small moan of pain.
"Mr. Freeman, are you sure you're all right?"
"Giles. Please. I hate being Freeman, so bloody English. Yes I'm fine. Well, I've got a headache, but that's nothing unusual. I'm sorry. I'm being ridiculous."
"I know it means a lot to you." Bethan said gently. She felt terribly sorry for him. He wanted so badly to be a part of this culture. It had been awful watching him agonisingly entangled in the alien grammar, tongue frozen around words he just could not say, getting stuck on the same ones again and again, stammering in his confusion. Sometimes—his hands gripping the edge of the table until the knuckles were white as bone—it seemed almost as if his facial muscles had been driven into paralysis by the complexity of the
language.
"Look," Bethan said. "Get a good night's sleep. Don't think about it. Don't look at any books. I'll see you again tomorrow. Maybe . . . Look, maybe it's something I am doing wrong. I'm so used to teaching children."
"But what about Claire?' he cried. "I mean, for God's sake, how do you explain that?"
Chapter XXIX
ENGLAND
Berry Morelli had not long been in the office when his boss threw a newspaper at him.
"For your private information," Addison Walls said.
Newsnet's London bureau chief was a small, neat, precise man with steel-rimmed glasses, a thin bow tie that was always straight and an unassuming brown toupee. It was Berry's unvoiced theory that Addison possessed a normal head of hair but shaved it off periodically on account of a toupee was tidier.
"Your buddy, I think," Addison said and went back to his examination of the Yorkshire Post. He was a very thorough man, arriving at work each day somewhere between 8:00
and 8:03 a.m. and completing a shrewd perusal of every British national newspaper and five major provincial morning papers by 9:15 when his staff got in.
The staff consisted of a secretary, a research assistant and three reporters including Berry Morelli. Although there would usually be orders for the major stories of the day, Newsnet specialised in features dealing with peripheral issues of American interest which the big agencies had no time to mess with. Occasionally, compiling his morning inventory of the British press, Addison Walls would suddenly zap an item with his thick black marker pen and announce, "This is a Newsnet story."
Berry noticed the item flung at him had not been zapped, although the paper had been neatly folded around an inside-page feature starkly headlined,
THE ANGRY HILLS
Above the text was a photograph of a ruined castle which resembled the lower plate of a set of dentures, two walls standing up like teeth. The view was framed by the walls of more recent buildings; a for sale sign hung crookedly from one.
Underneath the picture, it said,
Giles Freeman, of our political staff, reports on what's shaping up to be a dramatic by-election battle in wildest Wales.
Berry smiled and sat down and lit a cigarette. So Giles had pulled it off. They'd let him cover the Pontmeurig by-election. Filing his stuff, no doubt, from his own cottage, probably over the phone from the judge's study. Two weeks had passed since Berry had fled that place. Two weeks in which to consider the possibility that he'd been overreacting. Him and old Winstone both.
He started to read the feature, thinking Giles would be sure to hype up the issue to persuade his editor that this election was worthy of intensive on-the-spot coverage.
It was not the usual political backgrounder. Giles had gone folksy.
Idwal Roberts smiled knowingly as he laid out his leather tobacco pouch on the bar of the Drovers' Arms.
This." he said, "is going to be a bit of an eye-opener for a London boy. I imagine you've reported a fair few by-elections, but I can tell you—you won't have seen one like this.
"Oh. I know they've had them in South Wales and the Borders in recent years. But this time you're in the real Wales. A foreign country, see."
Idwal Roberts, a retired headmaster, is the Mayor of Pontmeurig, a little market town at the southern end of the range of rugged hills called in Welsh something long and complicated which translates roughly as "the Nearly Mountains."
This is the principal town in the constituency of Glanmeurig, which recently lost its long-serving Conservative MP, Sir Maurice Burnham-Lloyd and is now preparing for its first ever by-election. Local people will tell you that the last time anything really exciting happened in Pontmeurig was in the fifteenth century when the Welsh nationalist leader Owain Glyndwr (or Owen Glendower, as they call him east of Offa's Dyke) set fire to the castle.
The gaunt remains of this castle still frown over the cattle market and the new car-park. The fortress was actually built by the Welsh but subsequently commandeered by the English king Edward I. One story tells how the wealthy baron in charge of the castle offered to support Glyndwr's rebellion, but Owain set light to the place anyway on the grounds that you could never trust the word of an Englishman.
The Mayor of Pontmeurig (an "independent" like most councillors hereabouts) reckons opinions have not changed a great deal in the intervening years.
Giles went on to outline the problem of comparatively wealthy English people moving into the area, pricing many houses beyond the range of locals, often buying shops and pubs and post offices and conducting their business in English where once Welsh had been the language of the streets.
"What say we take a look at this?" Berry said casually, and Addison Walls gave him a wry smile that said no way.
"They may be a big deal over here, but you think back, son, and tell me how many British by-elections you saw reported in the New York Times.
"It's been known." said Berry.
"It's been known if the Government's on the brink."
"I just thought, maybe this language angle."
"Forget it. You compare this situation with Ulster, it's chickenshit."
"Yeah," Berry said.
Housing and immigration are going to be key issue; in this election." Roberts says. "People are getting very angry, seeing their sons and daughters having to leave the area because they can't afford a house anymore."
One local estate agent admits that more than sixty per cent of the houses he's sold this year have gone to English people moving to rural Wales in search what they see as a "healthier" lifestyle.
"There is going to be acrimony." says Idwal Roberts. "Sparks will fly. You can count on that, my friend."
"You can sure count on it with Giles around." Berry muttered. The article went on to discuss the two leading contenders—the Conservative Party and the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. The Conservatives had chosen their man. a local auctioneer called Simon Gallier. But Plaid, as Giles explained, had a crucial decision to make.
If Plaid want to play safe, they'll go for Wil James, a mild-mannered Baptist minister from Cardigan. He's well liked, but party strategists are wondering if he really has what it takes to slug it out with a man used to the cut-and-thrust of the livestock sales.
If Plaid want to live dangerously, however, they'll take a chance on Guto Evans, a 44-year-old part-time college lecturer, author and one-time bass-guitarist in a Welsh language rock and roll band.
Evans is a man not known for keeping his opinions to himself—especially on the subject of mass-immigration by well-off English people.
"Ah, yes," says the Mayor of Pontmeurig, relighting his pipe. "Guto Evans. Now that really would be interesting."
