Candlenight, page 27
A waitress appeared, glum girl of about seventeen. Bethan said, "Can I order you more coffee?"
Elinor grimaced.
"Just one pot of tea, then." Bethan told the girl, "Un te, plis." Pointed at Berry. "Dim laeth. "
Berry saw the woman flinch when Bethan spoke Welsh. She was in some state.
The hell with tact. He said. "I hear that Claire ... she has this amazing aptitude for the Welsh language."
Elinor said, tonelessly. "Has she?"
George Hardy looked at his watch, stood up, cigarette in hand. "Think I'd better pop round the comer lo the garage, see how they're getting on with it. Have to stand over these
chaps sometimes. Nice to meet you. Miss . . . er. Yes."
When he'd gone, squeezing his overcoated bulk past the racks of lovespoons, his wife just came apart.
She leaned across the table, seized Bethan's wrist. "Look, I don't know anything about you, but please will you help?"
"Of course." Bethan was startled. "If I can."
"I'm sorry. I don't usually behave like this. Bui I don't know anybody here, do you see?" Berry saw her eyes fill up. She let go of Bethan's wrist, pulled a paper napkin from a
wooden bowl. "Pen."
Berry handed her his.
"I want to give you my telephone number." She began to write erratically on the napkin, talking as fast and jerkily as her wrist was moving. "Want you to promise to ring me. If anything happens. You see Claire, don't you?'Of course you do. Teaching her . . . that language."
Bethan said, "I—" Berry's eyes said. Don't contradict her, let her talk.
"Something's happened to her. She's not the same."
"No." Bethan said.
"You can tell that, can't you? You've only known her a short time, but you can see it."
"Yes."
"I won't say—" Elinor put down the pen, folded the napkin; Bethan look it. "I won't say we were ever terribly close. Dreadful admission, but I have to be frank. Have to."
She looked defiantly from Bethan to Berry and back to Bethan.
"Often felt closer to Giles. He would tell me things she concealed. And now he's dead. And we weren't told. Weren't invited to the funeral, you know."
"That's awful." Bethan said.
"She said," Elinor pulled another napkin from the bowl, dabbed her eyes. "She says she wrote to us, but she couldn't invite us here. We had to decide. For ourselves." She blew
her nose, crumpled the napkin in her hand. "Never saw a letter. Read about it in the paper. Suppose she didn't tell us because . . . when my father died ... we were about to leave for a holiday and I didn't tell her. None of us went to his funeral. I didn't want her going, didn't want her anywhere near him again."
"Oh," said Bethan. "Of course. You're the judge's daughter.
"He was a bastard. I think that's the first time I've ever used that word."
"Why?" Berry asked gently. "Why was he a bastard?"
"You don't want to know all that. No time, anyway. George'll be back soon. With the car."
"You said you didn't want him near her again. I remember Giles telling me specifically that Claire never met her grandfather."
"She didn't remember meeting him. We were once foolish enough to bring her here. As a small child. He . . .went off with her. I thought . . . that he wasn't going to bring her back."
Bethan said, "Went off?"
"I don't know where they went."
"To the woods? To the church?''
"Does it matter? Please, all I want . . . Just ring me sometimes. Tell me how she is and if . . . You see, I think she might be expecting a baby. Perhaps that's why she's changed. I pray that's all it is."
"Not the best time to have a kid," Berry said. He felt very sorry for the woman. Obviously wasn't able to confide in her husband. Something not right when she had to pour it all
out to strangers in a cafe.
Elinor Hardy straightened up, threw the crumpled napkin in the ashtray with two of George's cigarette butts. "You must think me a very stupid, hysterical woman."
"No," Berry said. "All the people you could've told this to, we're the ones least likely to think that."
"I'll be better when I'm out of here. I know it's your country, but I don't like it here. Feel vulnerable."
. . . not meant to be here, the English . . .
"Car goes wrong and you're suddenly stranded. Strange language, different attitudes. Birds pecking at your window in the night."
Bethan's expression did not change at all, but Berry felt she was suddenly freezing up inside.
"Birds?" Casually. Hiding it.
"Pecking . . . tapping on the window. Kept waking me up in the night. Wasn't an owl. I saw it. Or I may have dreamt it. I don't know. I'm in a terrible state. I've got to get
out of here, it's gloomy. I'll go and find George. Look, you will ring me, won't you?"
"I'll ring you before the weekend." Bethan promised.
"Thank you. I don't even know your name."
"Bethan. Bethan McQueen. Mrs. Hardy, you are leaving today, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes," Elinor said. "Count on it."
When she'd gone. Bethan rose silently, paid the girl, collected her bag and her white raincoat from the table. She walked out of the cafe and along the street, Berry following. She didn't speak. They came to the bridge and Bethan crossed the road and walked back towards the town, on the castle side. The frost had melted now, but the sun had gone in.
When they reached the castle car park, Bethan said, "Your car or mine?"
Berry unlocked the Sprite. They got in. Berry started the engine. Not easy. Blue smoke enclouded the Sprite, which now had a cough worse than George Hardy's. Berry backed it round, pointed it at the road.
"Where we going?"
"Turn left," Bethan said. "Across the bridge. Keep going. You'll see a sign pointing over the Nearly Mountains to Y Groes."
"I know it."
"Pass it," Bethan said. "Keep straight on."
"But where are we going?"
"Christ knows," Bethan said. "Somewhere where nobody has ever thought they've seen the bird of death."
Chapter L
Every second farm they passed seemed to have a political poster pasted to a gate or a placard sticking out of a leafless hedgerow. Berry counted seven for Gallier (Con), three for
Evans (Plaid) and two each for Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
"Could be worse," he observed. "All over the world, farmers are notoriously conservative."
She didn't reply. She was sitting as upright as was possible in a bucket seat full of holes and patches.
At least the Sprite was responding, losing its bronchitis now they were into open country. He'd been getting a touch paranoid about that, having told Addison Walls his car had broken down and therefore been half-expecting it to do just that.
Superstition. Everywhere, superstition.
Five miles now into the hills north-west of Pontmeurig, and disillusion was setting in. At first he'd been stimulated by all that "your car or mine" stuff on the castle parking lot. Now the space between them was a good deal wider than the gap between the bucket seats, and he didn't know why.
She said suddenly,
"Death fascinates the Welsh."
The first time she'd spoken since they passed the sign to Y Groes.
"Corpses and coffins and funerals."
"Signs and portents," Berry said.
"You see these farms. Each one an island. Farmers never visit their neighbours. But when one of them dies, people will come from miles around to his funeral. All the roads to
the chapel lined with cars and Land-Rovers for half a mile in each direction. On the day of a big funeral, the traffic police send for reinforcements."
"Bethan, what is the bird of death?"
She didn't reply.
"Where are we headed?"
"Keep driving," she said.
After a few miles they came to a T-junction, Aberystwyth to the right, Machynlleth to the left.
"Make a right here?"
She pointed to the left. "Quickest way out of the constituency."
Sure enough, after a couple more miles there were no more political posters. The landscape became rougher and a lighter, more faded shade of green. Kind of like the Nearly
Mountains, snow on the high ground giving the crags a 3-D outline.
Presently, they drove down into a pleasant town, with a wide main street and a Gothic clock tower.
"This is the town that ought to have been the capital of Wales." she said. "Perhaps the earliest centre of Welsh civilisation."
We had the sociology, Berry thought, now we get the history lesson. What is this, a school outing?
"But that's not why we're here," she said.
"So why are we here?"
"Because at the top of this street is the best restaurant in this part of Wales," Bethan said. "Vegetarian meals a specialty. Park anywhere along here."
Berry grinned. A long, slow Italian grin.
"No. No! No! No!"
"I'm sorry. My wife is rather distraught."
"Nooooooo!"
"We lost our son-in-law, you see."
Elinor strode out then, straight through a patch of oil, ruining her sensible pigskin walking shoes.
"Is there no chance for later today?" George pleaded.
"What can I do." the mechanic said, "if they send me the wrong parts. Look, I will show you a copy of the order we dictated to them over the phone—"
"Never mind, I believe you," George said. "It's just bloody inconvenient."
"Quite an old Volvo, see."
"Volvos last for ever." said George, affronted.
Some minutes later he caught up with Elinor.
"It's really not my fault, you know."
"It's never your fault."
"Look, what we'll do—"
"I won't go back there. I'll sleep on a park bench first."
"Dammit, there isn't a park. Nor any benches. But what I was about to say . . . We've got a few hours. We'll have lunch at that Plas Moorig place and see if they can't find us a room. Any room. How about that? Please . . ."
Over lunch. Bethan said. I want not to think about it. Just for a while."
"OK. Fine."
'Tell me about you."
"Oh, shit."
Bethan started on her fresh salmon salad. "What is that stuff?"
"It's a vegetarian cannelloni."
"I know that, but what is it?"
"Well, it's got spinach and stuff inside." He sampled a segment. "It's OK."
"For Wales."
"No, it's real good. Jesus, you Celts are so touchy."
He'd taken off his jacket, revealing a green sweatshirt probably older than Guto's, if less torn. In black Gothic lettering across the chest it said, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
"You haven't told me about you," Bethan said. "You just said, 'Oh shit,' and then we were sidetracked by the food."
"OK. I'm from New York originally, but I was brought up and educated in seven different states on account of my dad kept moving to further his career until it wouldn't go any further and he decided it was time he became a power and influence in the land."
"What did he do? What was his job?"
"I just love it when people say that. I hate it when they say, hey, you related to Mario Morelli?"
"Who is Mario Morelli?"
"He's my dad, the bastard."
"I had gathered that."
"OK, Mario Morelli is maybe America's number one TV anchor man, known coast to coast. A household name, like that—what's that stuff you put down the John?"
"Harpic? Toilet Duck?"
"Yeah, he's a real toilet duck. Only the great American public doesn't want to know that on account of he has this mature elegance and charms the matrons with his dazzling Italian smile."
He told her about Mario Morelli's role in the Irangate cover-up. He told her how his conscience wouldn't let him hit on this information when it seemed they were going to get away with it.
"Like. I don't want to come over as this big idealist. But when your dad's a national hero and you know what kind of asshole he really is . . . OK, in the end, it made no difference. Most of it came out. And Mario Morelli came out of it as this caring patriot. He did it for his country, all this shit. Cue for selfish, radical un-American activist son to leave town. Or leave country in this case. So I came to England and I find England's suddenly become a place where it's cool to make a million overnight and they're looking up to America as this big, successful younger brother who got it right, for Chrissake. That's about it. My vegetarian cannelloni's getting cold."
He ate some cannelloni, then he said. "One thing I kinda like about Wales is that it's just about the most obscure country in Western Europe, now even Belgium has the EC, but it doesn't seem to look up to anybody."
"Wrong," Bethan said. "Wrong, wrong, wrong."
"Wrong, huh?"
"You've only been exposed to people like Guto, who are the most vocal but not typical. For most of this century Welsh people have been looking up to anybody prepared to notice they're even there. Especially the English."
"You're talking as a nationalist. It's an outdated concept.
"How else can we defend what is ours? The English wanted more water for Liverpool and Birmingham, so they came into Wales and flooded our valleys. Whole Welsh villages at the bottom of English reservoirs. And the humble Welsh people went to work for the English water boards and said how good they were and how well they looked their employees."
"Sure, yeah, but—"
"I know, that was years ago. But they are doing it again. Only this time they're flooding us with people and they're drowning our language and our culture."
Berry put his fork down. "You know," he said. "You're beautiful when you're defending your culture."
"Sir, with my hand on my heart, I can tell you that even if you were prepared to sleep standing up in the third floor broom-cupboard. I would not be able to accommodate you.
The proprietor of the Plas Meurig Hotel (two-star) was short, plump Englishman in a double-breasted fawn-coloured suit which matched the walls of the hotel lobby.
"I'm prepared to pay over the odds, if necessary," George said.
"Sir, I've turned away Conservative members of Parliament who are prepared to pay well over the odds. I've turned away a senior editor from Independent Television News with a chequebook as thick as the New Testament. I swear if I could get an extension block put up in five days I'd call in the builders now and apply for planning permission later. I could be making a fortune. But I am utterly full and there's nothing I can do about it."
"Well, where else would you recommend?'
"In this town, to be quite honest, there's nowhere I'd actually recommend. But I seriously don't believe there's anywhere you'd get in anyway."
"Let's not be stupid about this." George said to Elinor outside. "It's going to be a damn cold night. I think we should ring Claire."
At the top of the wide street, on the same side as the restaurant, was a very old building with flags protruding from its deep grey stonework.
Bethan said. "This is where Owain Glyndwr convened the first Welsh parliament in 1403. By that time he was in control of most of Wales—the nearest we ever came to ruling ourselves."
Inside, there was a tourist reception area with books about Vales and about Owain Glyndwr, including Guto's paperback.
"I bought one, you know," Berry said. "Still in the car."
"It's really very good," Bethan said. "You should make time to read it."
They saw a replica of Glyndwr's parliament table, pictures of the man himself, one of him sitting solemnly in state. The only real distinctive thing about him, Berry reckoned, was the fork in his beard, like somebody had tried to cleave his head apart from underneath.
"Hold on," he said, as they emerged onto the street. "I just realised who this guy is. He's Owen Glendower, from Shakespeare. Henry the Fourth Part One or Part Two, I can't
remember. The point being—"
"Part One. I think," Bethan said.
"The point being that Owen Glendower was a horse's ass, pompous, full of shit—"
"The point being." Bethan snapped, "that Shakespeare was biased. The real Owain was a fairly modest, cultured man who studied law in London, had many English friends and would never have gone to war with England if he hadn't been faced with a completely untenable—"
"OK, OK." Berry held up his hands. Few other people were in sight on the wide, cold street. Bethan was facing him on the pavement, small lips tight, fists clenched by her sides. This was not about the rights and wrongs of Welsh nationalism or whether Owain Glyndwr was full of shit.
Her fists unclenched. She looked small and alone and without hope.
"I think," she said slowly. "I think I am ready now to have my nervous breakdown."
Chapter LI
The Rhos Tafol Hotel was a white-painted former farmhouse about six miles west of Machynlleth. It overlooked the placid Dyfi estuary, beyond which mountains lay black, pink and gold in the last light of the last day in November.
The Rhos Tafol dated back to the seventeenth century and had a suite with a four-poster bed. OK, a reproduction four-poster. But four posts were four posts.
Tenderly, he kissed a small, pale left breast. "How would you feel," he said, "about another nervous breakdown?"
The sky over the inn was like bronze tinfoil, the cottages around it coloured ochre and sepia and clustered together like chocolates.
Yes, it was beautiful. She had to agree. It cast its spell.
And inside the beauty it was only a village, only houses with front doors and gardens and electric cookers and televisions. It could not harm her.
This was because, before leaving Pontmeurig in the Land-Rover, Elinor had taken two valium.
Claire steered them casually, one-handed, over the bridge. "You never know, having to come back here—it might be destiny."
Destiny, Elinor thought. Dessss-tinnny. Fated to see it like this, in what passed for sunset. To understand why they were all so attracted to it.
