Candlenight, page 25
"You see, I didn't know until I read about Giles's death that we were talking about Y Groes. Which, of course, is where Martin died so tragically a couple of years ago. Do
you know the case I'm referring to?"
"I don't think so, but—"
"Died in the church. Twenty-five years old. Dreadful. And then Jenkins refusing to have him in his churchyard. Caused quite a stir in church circles. So I thought I ought to pass this on to Berry Morelli, as he'd seemed rather anxious, a little unsure of what he ought to do."
"Oh. he always seems anxious . . ."
"It's probably of absolutely no relevance. Though I confess to being rather curious about where Giles Freeman was eventually buried."
"Well, I'm afraid I really can't help you there." Miranda said. "Look, I'll get Berry to ring you. shall I? What's the number?"
Canon Alex Peters gave her a number. "I'm at Woodstock, near Oxford. In retirement. Not much else to think about, you see. As I say, probably nothing, but if he should happen to ring you from Wales, pass on my number, would you?"
"Oh, I will," Miranda said. And then, just a tiny bit curious herself by now. "Look Mr., er—Canon—"
"Peters. Alex Peters."
"Of course, I wrote it down. Listen, I shall probably regret asking this, but why wouldn't they let this chap be buried in the churchyard?"
"Ah. well . . ."
"Yes?"
"Well, because he was English, my dear."
When she got back log the shower it was lukewarm.
Miranda shrieked in rage and frustration.
"God, Morelli," she rasped through her teeth, groping for his bathrobe and discovering he'd taken it with him.
"Wherever you are, I hope you're really suffering for this."
Chapter XLVI
WALES
Elinor said, "I hate this room."
She didn't hate any particular part of the room. She didn't hate the Victorian bed. She didn't hate the deeply recessed window, or the low-beamed ceiling. Or even its size— rather cramped, with that enormous wardrobe.
"I suppose," said George Hardy, with heavy resignation, "that I'm supposed to ask you why you hate the room."
Still wearing her funeral dress, Elinor sat on a corner of the bed, glazed gaze fixed on the window through which she could see, in the late-afternoon light, the rooftops of the cottages opposite the inn, the winter-browned oak woods on the edge of the village and the misting hills beyond.
She was wondering if all this—the car breaking down, having to come here—was fate's fumbling attempt to heal the cuts she and Claire had inflicted on each other.
Wasn't working, though, was it? Anyone could see the wounds had only widened.
"I don't know why I hate it," Elinor said.
George said. "I think I shall ask that fellow if I can use his phone, give the garage a ring in Pontmeurig." George pronounced it Pontmoorig. "Make sure the parts will be here tomorrow."
Elinor, distant, still staring out of the window, said, "Should have had it towed away. Back to England, if necessary. We could have taken a taxi."
George didn't bother to reply.
Elinor stood up and turned back the covers of the bed to see if the sheets were clean. Unfortunately, they had the look of being freshly-laundered. She sat down again, on the
edge of the bed.
As she sat down this time, the bed shifted and a floorboard creaked.
"Better ring the office too." George said. "Get them to stall any clients."
"We won't be here for ever, George."
"Can't count on anything these days." Tidy George unpacked two clean shins and hung them in the wardrobe.
"Good job you're so efficient." he said brightly. "Enough clothes here to last the week out."
Elinor was determined not to rise to this bait.
"Handling it awfully well, though, isn't she?" George said.
"What?"
"Claire. I was quite surprised."
And relieved no doubt, Elinor thought. He could never deal with women's tears. Blubbing, he called it once. Only once—she'd almost had his eyes out.
"No, she's a tough girl." George said admiringly. "What d'you think of her new hairstyle? Quite fetching. I thought. I'd almost forgotten what her natural colour looked like."
"George," Elinor dug her nails into the bedspread. "Go and make your phone calls."
The floorboard creaked again as she stood up.
That night must have been an encouraging one for Simon Gallier. Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Glanmeurig.
There weren't enough chairs in the Memorial Hall in Pont; groups of people were blocking the firedoors and clustered in the passageway to the lavatories.
Novelty value. Berry Morelli thought. It was obviously a real night out for many members of the audience. Most of the men wore suits and ties.
He was standing under the platform, searching the crowd for Bethan McQueen and failing to spot her. Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he turned expectantly.
"We're down here, mate." Ray Wheeler said. "One space left on the Press table"
"Oh. Sure, Thanks." Berry allowed himself to be steered to a chair between Shirley Gillies and Bill Sykes.
"Mind boggles, eh?" Sykes grated. "Bet old Johnny Gore's never pulled a bigger crowd since his wedding. Oh, sorry John, didn't see you there."
"Evening, Bill," said the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, leaning across the Press table and then whispering. "Afraid I'm going to be a trifle boring tonight. Don't want
to outshine the boy."
"Poor old Johnny," said Sykes, as the Minister hefted his considerable bulk up the three wooden steps to the platform. "Couldn't outshine a ten-watt bulb."
"I was wondering." Berry said, "what Ole Winstone would've made of all this. Think he'd've come?"
"Not a hope," said Bill Sykes. "You wouldn't have got Winstone back to Wales for a lorry load of Glenfiddich."
It struck Berry that you could get a hell of a lot of Glenfiddich on a lorry. More than enough to make a cynical old hack overcome his prejudices. He made a mental note to raise this with Sykes when the speeches were over.
There were a few cheers as Simon Gallier stepped onto the platform. He was built like a front-row rugby player, had prematurely greying hair and a shambling, untrimmed moustache like, Berry thought, a badly made yardbrush.
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.
"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?"
