Candlenight, page 26
"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 strongish," 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?"
"Any of them there?" Berry asked.
"No. And with only twenty-one people in the bloody room, I can be sure of that, at least. But they'll have heard, see. Word travels fast. I tell you, if it goes on like this, I'm finished, man."
"It won't, Guto." Bethan said. "Believe me. It is not like other places, that village. I know this. And you have over a week, yet" She squeezed his arm.
Berry thought. He's worried about this getting out and he just told the entire story to a reporter
He didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted that neither Guto nor Bethan seemed to consider him a real journalist.
When Guto, reluctantly be-suited, had left for the Drovers', Berry wedged himself into the telephone alcove of Mrs. Evans's china-choked sitting room and called American Newsnet, collect.
"I was beginning to think," Addison Walls said, "that the telephone system had not yet been extended to Wales." He sounded like he had a cold.
"It got here at the weekend," Berry said. "Just nobody could figure out how to connect the wires. So, how much you want me to file?"
"I don't want you to file a thing." Addison Walls said. "I read every damn word printed about that by-election and, as I predicted, it's full shit and of purely domestic interest. So what I'm lookin' for is you back here by tonight, yeah?"
"Ah, I don't think I can do that." Berry said. There was a long pause during which Berry could hear Addison trying to breathe.
"I hear you correctly? I said I needed you back here by tonight, and you said—"
"I said I didn't think I could make it. Like, you know, my car broke down."
"You drive a pile of crap, Morelli, whadda you expect?
So take a train. If there's no trains, take a bus. Fuck it, grab a cab, but get your ass back here by tonight. OK?"
"Addison, listen," Berry said. "How about I take a couple days vacation—"
"Nearly December, Morelli. You took all your vacation."
"OK, I'll take some of next year's."
"Morelli, Goddamn it—" He heard Addison Walls blow his nose. "Listen, we're up to the eyes here. Paul went sick, I can't see the top a my desk for fuckin' influenza remedies that don't fuckin' work. You know what, Morelli, you've become a real weird guy. So, listen, you don't show up tomorrow, I am not gonna be all that worried. Give me an opportunity to test out my new shredder on your contract."
"Addison, hey, come on . . . Just two days is all I'm asking."
"You getting the general direction of my thinking. Morelli?"
"Yeah," Berry felt some perverse kind of euphoria filling up his head. "Yeah. I think I'm finally piecing things together."
"Good," Addison Walls said, and he hung up.
The sun was out, pale but definitely out, and the street sparkled after an overnight frost. Berry could see the broken denture of the castle walls, a sign pointing to the Welsh Pizza House—lousy name, lousy pizzas. Feeling suddenly very strange, very different, he began to walk up the street. Saw Guto's mom coming back from the shop with a teeming basket over her arm and a headscarf over her perm. Felt a crazy kind of affection for Guto's mom.
Guto too. He'd make the right kind of MP. Always be in trouble, always say the wrong things to the wrong people. Berry liked that.
But how much of a chance did Guto really have? Why didn't Y Groes want him? Heart of the Welsh-speaking heartland.
He could get back to London in four, five hours. He could spend most of today here and still get back to London by tonight. Maybe come back next weekend, see how things were going.
Sure. No problem.
At the top of the street, past Hampton's Bookshop but before you got to the bridge, there was a teashop which also sold Welsh crafts. Mainly lovespoons, which were made of
wood and were intricately carved and came in a variety of sizes. Berry wondered what they had to do with love. Maybe he'd ask Bethan, who ought, by now, to be waiting in there. An arrangement they'd made last night.
They'd talked until eleven-thirty, then Berry had said he ought to go because Guto would be home and Mrs. Evans would want to get to bed. He hadn't wanted to go. Christ, no.
As he approached the teashop, he could see her sitting in the window, black hair tumbling into a black cowl-neck woollen sweater.
She'd told him last night how she'd done this dumb thing, gone to the education department and suggested they close down the village school. How she felt the school had been corrupting generations of kids. She'd found it hard to explain why she thought this. Said he'd need to meet the other teacher to understand.
Berry had told her about breaking into the judge's house that day with Giles. He'd told her about the study, the deep, dark atmosphere of hate.
"Yes." she'd said. "Yes."
He hadn't told her about the room whispering, sice . . .sice . . . because he wasn't even sure that had happened.
The education department had told Bethan to take two or three weeks off. They figured she had to be nuts, trying to get her own school shut down, maybe heading for a
breakdown.
I think a nervous breakdown would be quite a relief.
He walked across the road to the teashop. She had her back to him, talking to someone maybe. He caught a flash of gold earring as she tossed her hair back. No way could this woman be insane, but then, who was he to judge?
Chapter XLIX
Inside the teashop it was very dim, all the furniture stained as dark as the lovespoons on the walls. Which was why, from outside, you could only see the person sitting in the window. Why he hadn't seen the other two people at Bethan's table.
It was the older couple who'd been at Giles's funeral. The guy with white hair, yellow at the front, and deep lines down both cheeks. The woman thin-faced, harsh hair rinsed an uneasy auburn, looking like copper wire.
"Berry, this is Claire's mother and father."
"Oh." Somehow, he'd thought they must have been relations of Giles, rather than Claire. "Hi," he said, pulling out a chair.
Bethan introduced him as a friend and colleague of Giles's, down here for the election. "Mr. and Mrs. Hardy had to spend the night at the Tafarn at Y Groes. They are having problems with their car."
"But we're getting it back this morning," George Hardy said. "That's why we're here. Claire dropped us off."
Berry turned to the woman. He'd heard her muttering "Thank God," when her husband talked about getting the car back.
"You don't like it here?"
"Not really our son of place. I'm afraid," Elinor Hardy said, tight-voiced.
"Not being snobbish or anything," George assured Bethan. "Good God, no. Wonderful place for a quiet summer holiday. Just that at this time of year it seems a little cold and remote and it's not quite what we're used to. Certainly never had to wait two days before to get what seemed quite a simple problem with the cam belt seen to."
"We didn't get much sleep, I'm afraid," Elinor said. The skin under her eyes was blue, Berry saw, and it wasn't cosmetic. She was fingering her coffee cup nervously. He wondered why Claire had put them in a teashop and just left them.
"Bloody bed kept creaking," George said. "Had to get down on my hands and knees and mess about with a loose floorboard underneath to stop it. Good God, I'd forgotten— Elinor, why didn't you remind me?"
From an inside pocket of his overcoat he pulled a slim, red, hard-backed notebook. "Found it under the damned floorboard. Meant to give it to the manager chap this morning."
"Unlikely to have been his anyway," Elinor said.
"Suppose not. Must belong to somebody, though, and he'd be belter placed than us to find out who, obviously."
Bethan said. "You found it under the floorboard in the bedroom? Can I see?"
George passed her the book. "Keep it, if it's of any interest. Odd little hand-drawn maps of the village, that sort of thing. Probably mean more to you than me."
'Thank you." Bethan made no attempt to look at the notebook, slipping it into her bag.
"If you find any treasure, send us a few bob, won't you." Ignoring his wife's withering glance. George laughed and coughed and pulled out his cigarettes. "Don't mind, do you? Only things that seem to stop me coughing these days."
