Candlenight, page 3
An engine grumbled at him from behind. In his wing mirror he saw a tractor that couldn't get past, it being a narrow road and the farmer not wanting to sound his horn because he could see a coffin in the back of Dai's hearse - how was he to know it was empty?
"All right, man. I'm off."
Dai tossed his cigarette out of the window, raised an apologetic hand and put the hearse in gear. Normally he might have let out the clutch sharpish like, and shot off in a spurt—bouncing the pale utility coffin into the air, giving the bugger on the tractor one hell of a shock. But he didn't like to do that now.
Not here.
For Dai's greatest aspiration, even closer to his heart than the thought of wearing the plastic crown at the Glanmeurig Eisteddfod, was to get himself a cottage in this village and retire one day to paradise.
He was on his own today, his brother Harri still in Bronglais Hospital with his back. So he had to ask the landlord to give him a hand with the customer.
"Police sent you. is it?" said Aled Gruffydd.
Dai nodded. "Said could they have him stored until they find his relatives down in England." He lifted up the tailgate of the hearse and pulled out the lightweight fibreglass coffin with one hand. "Well, see. I don't mind jobs like this, even on a Sunday. Sooner or later some bugger pays the bill." He smiled slyly. "English prices, isn't it?"
The bedroom was almost directly over the bar. It had a very low ceiling and wasn't really big enough for three men even if one would be forever still.
"Above and beyond, this is, Dai." Aled grunted as they laid the body on a plastic sheet next to the coffin. It was going to be a tight fit. "Not what I'd call a small man, the Professor. Also, seemed to smell a good deal better, I remember, when he was alive."
"Obviously went off in a bit of a sweat." Dai observed.
The customer was somewhere between late middle-age and elderly. There was a touch of froth, which nobody had bothered to wipe away, at the side of his mouth.
"Professor, you say?" Dai said conversationally, trying not to react to the expression on the face of the customer. He was reminded of the time he'd removed a body from a dentist's chair, a man, who - mortally afraid of dentists all his life - had expired at the very moment of extraction.
"Well, of sorts." Aled was small, but wiry and strong enough to take the corpse's weight at the shoulders. "Big Morgan, it was, first started calling him that. Retired teacher, I suppose, or a college lecturer. Some sort of historian. Always walking around making notes, looking at things, never at people, you know the kind. Oh. Christ, I forgot they did that. Pass me that cloth, will you, Dai."
"Sorry, Aled. Should have thought." In this part of the world most people still knew the basics of it. They had not grown up with funeral parlours; laying out their relatives was something most of them had had to learn, like changing a wheel. Not only was it uneconomical to pay somebody like Dai to prepare a corpse, it was also still considered in many homes—and particularly, he'd found, in Y Groes—to be less than polite to the deceased.
"Can you do anything about that?" Aled asked, nodding at the face. "Or does he have to go to his maker looking as though somebody was amputating his leg without the anaesthetic?"
Dai made a professional appraisal of the customer's blue and twisted features, working out how they might be rearranged. "Easy," he said loftily. "Piece of piss. What was it anyway?"
"Well, heart. Angina, something of that order. Dr. Wyn said he was not surprised at all. Been coming here for months, see. Had his pills through Dr. Wyn regular."
"Why was that?"
"Well, convenient, I suppose."
"No, no. I mean why did he come here? The fishing?"
"No, I was telling you. Historian or something. Into old churches."
"Not old houses?" In Dai's experience, most of the English people who persistently returned to this area were looking to buy a piece of it, some little stone cottage with an inglenook and a view of the mountains. "Buggers go crazy over places like this."
"Do they now?" Aled said. "Well, well."
"Name your price, man, place like this. Name your bloody price."
Aled made no reply. Dai looked for an expression in the landlord's compact face, but none was apparent. All the same, he decided this was as good an opening as any, and he said carefully, "You know ... I was only thinking myself, well, I wouldn't mind retiring to Y Groes, me and the wife. Nowhere quite like it, see, for the peace and quiet. Casual like. In passing. Not sounding as serious as he really was. "But hell, man, I don't suppose I could afford it any more, even with selling the business, the way things are going, the prices."
"Where do you want him?" Aled asked, as if he hadn't heard any of this. "In that thing, is it?"
"In the shell."
"The what?"
"Shell. What we call it. Utility job, see. Just to get him to the warehouse, and then the relatives choose something more tasteful." Dai tapped the side of the light-coloured coffin to show how cheap and flimsy it was, then returned hopefully, to his theme. "What's the answer, though? What is the answer? Local boy wants a home of his own, priced out of the market before he starts. Got to go, isn't it? No option. Winds up in bloody Birmingham or somewhere and all the rich buggers who couldn't tell a Welsh mountain ewe from a Beulah speckle-faced if you drew 'em a diagram are moving in and building bloody squash courts. Well, of course, I have nothing against the English, as a race . . . Right, now, you get the other side and we'll . . . Ah, lovely job."
Both men stood back. Dai Death mopped his bald head with a handkerchief. "So, tell me, purely out of interest, like . . . How much are they fetching?"
"Beulah speckle-faced?"
"Houses, man! What would it cost for me to get a place here? How much did the last one go for?"
"I can't remember. It was a long time ago."
"Oh, come on now!" Dai was getting a bit exasperated. What Aled was supposed to say was, well, Dai, funny you should bring that up because there's this very interesting little place I know of, not on the market yet, but if they thought you were keen—you being a local boy, a Welsh- speaker and a respected professional man — I'm sure a nice quick deal could be arranged, no fuss, no estate agents.
"That it?" Aled demanded. "Finished, have we?"
"I can't credit that at all," Dai said. "Bloody hell, in Pont, I'm not kidding, the estate agents' signs have been going up faster than the TV aerials when we got the first transmitter."
"So they tell me." said Aled.
"But not here."
"No." A note of finality. "Not here."
Dai was baffled and felt slighted. What, he wondered, had happened to Tegwyn Jones's place now his wife was also dead? Every village always had a couple of houses ready for the market, especially now, when the English would pay a small fortune for something you wouldn't keep chickens in. And what about—now here was a point — what about the judge's house?
"Having the lid on, are we. Dai?"
"I'll deal with that. Tricky, this sort. Professional use only." Dai straightened up, gathering what was left of his dignity. They only ever called him out here for the foreigners, like that chap Martin, the curate. And poor Bethan's man.
He sniffed. For Judge Rhys there'd been a coffin custom-made by Dewi Fon, the carpenter, gravestone by Myrddin Jones, the sculptor. He went out to the landing and returned with a rectangular strip of fibreglass. which he slotted into place, concealing the dreadful face of the Professor. Wondering gloomily who would be doing this job in ten years' time when he and Harri had retired. Harri being a bachelor and Dai's son away at university to study engineering. No doubt the business would get taken over by one of these national chains with colour brochures of coffins and off-the-peg shrouds. Well, bollocks to that.
"So what happened," he asked bluntly, "to the judge's house?"
"Well done, Dai," said Aled. ignoring the question.
"Look, come and have a drink before we take him down."
He towed the coffin away from the bedroom door so they could get out. "There, see . . . getting soft, I am, helping you with your bloody corpse then offering you a drink." He
smiled. "Stiff one, is it?"
"Very funny." said Dai Death. "I'll have a pint and I'll pay you for it."
"Good God. Epidemic of something fatal, is there, in Pontmeurig, that you're so wealthy?"
"The judge's house." Dai reminded him, annoyed now and showing it. "Just tell me what happened to the fucking judge's house?"
Driving away, customer in the back. Dai took careful note. And, yes, it was true enough. Not a For Sale sign anywhere in the village He shook his head in disbelief, afflicted by the usual aching longing as he took in the mellow stone and timber-framed dwellings, the crooked stone steps and walled gardens, the soft fields and the stately oaks, the wooded amphitheatre of hills sloping to the Nearly Mountains. Even the bloody Nearly Mountains, wind-blasted and conifer-choked . . . even they looked impressive when viewed from Y Groes.
He looked back towards the lane which led to the judge's house. It would have been perfect. Not too big, not too small, nicely screened. But a lost cause. Christ, he'd never even heard of the old chap having a grand-daughter. Recluse who never left the village, never even went into Pontmeurig.
Maybe—he brightened momentarily—maybe she'd want to sell. But then—his spirits sagging again—what would she do but advertise it in the London papers?
It was, he thought, only a matter of time. They were bound to discover this place, the English. Some young stockbroker-type would cruise out here in his Porsche and spot a derelict bam, ripe for conversion, and make the farmer an offer he'd be a fool to refuse. And another farmer would hear about it and he'd sell two of his buildings. Then some poor widow would be staggered at how much she could get for her cottage. And, in no time at all, there'd be a little colony of English, enough to hold a bridge party with After Eight mints.
Dai gave Y Groes a final rueful glance before turning into the forestry.
And in time, he thought, the little clutch of eggs will turn rotten in the nest.
Part Two
NOT MEANT TO BE THERE
Chapter V
ENGLAND
Lying back, red hair all over the pillow and the cane headboard, Miranda applied the
Zippo to the end of her cigarette and said, "So how was it for you, Miranda?"
Berry Morelli said, "Huh?" the sweat on his back was merely damp now, and chilly. It was an hour before dawn, the bedroom half-lit from the street.
In a dreamy voice, Miranda replied," Well, since you ask, Miranda, not too wonderful. I can say, with some degree of confidence, that I have definitely had better. I suppose, as rapes go, it was not without consideration . . ."
"Rape?" Berry Morelli sat up. "You said rape?"
"Well, if it was meant to be love-making," Miranda said, "it was distressingly short on the customary endearments. In fact, now that I think about it, it was entirely silent, bar the odd sharp intake of breath."
"Hey, listen I . . ." Berry leaned over her and helped himself to one of her cigarettes from the bedside table.
". . .And then I began to detect in the rapist a. . .sort of underlying absence of joy, would that describe it? One's first experience of pre-coital tristesse. Or perhaps it was simply lack of interest, which would be considerably less tolerable." Miranda turned onto her side to face him, looking pale and fragile - which she wasn't - in the hazy streetlight from the uncurtained window.
"OK," she said. "What's eating you, Morelli?"
Berry hauled the black hair out of his eyes. The hair was still wet. From the rain, not the sweat. "Listen, I'm sorry."
"Oh, please. . . not the apology. I expect I enjoyed it more than you anyway." She covered up a breast and stared into space, smoking.
This Miranda. You could never figure out if she was deeply wounded or what. Berry rolled out of bed and into his bathrobe. "You want some tea? He was fully into tea now, no coffee these days. Very British.
"No sugar," Miranda said. "No, wait . . . make that two sugars. I suspect, God help me, that the night is yet young."
"I'll fetch a tray. Black?"
"Morelli, we haven't all got the zeal of the converted."
"OK." While Berry's hands moved things around in the tiny kitchen, his head was still walking the streets. There'd been cabs around the hospital but he'd needed to walk. Death did that to you, he thought. You had to keep moving, proving to yourself you still could.
A bad night, in the end.
And he'd lost a friend.
He couldn't afford to lose a friend in this country. It only left one, if you didn't include Miranda. Which he didn't, yet.
"Biscuits, too, Morelli," she called imperiously from the bedroom. Miranda, whom he'd often find in his bed but whom he hesitated to call his regular girlfriend. Who'd gone home with him the first time because, she explained, she liked the sound of his name, the way you liked the sound of Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. There were dukes in Miranda's family and her aunt had once been a temporary lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne. Berry liked the sound of Miranda's name too, the way you liked the sound of cucumber sandwiches and Glyndebourne.
"Morelli!"
"What?"
"Biscuits."
"Yeah, I heard."
"The chocolate ginger things from Sainsbury's. OK?"
"Right."
Earlier tonight Miranda's good mood had blown like a light bulb after she'd produced tickets for Peter Gabriel and he'd told her he wouldn't be able to make the gig on account of it was Old Winstone's farewell binge. Old Winstone, his friend.
She hadn't believed him. "What's he doing having it on a Sunday night?"
"All about Monday morning. If he gets smashed, he doesn't wake up till way past the time he normally goes to work. Thus avoiding the initial trauma of his first day of retirement."
"You think I'm awfully stupid don't you, Morelli?" Miranda had said.
"Listen, I'm . . ."
"Sorry. Yes."
Berry put on the light as he carried the tea tray into the bedroom. "I didn't figure on you being here when I got in."
"I suppose that explains it." Miranda said. "You thought you were shagging someone else."
"You never came back before. Not the same night. Not after a fight. How'd you get in anyway?"
"I'm frightfully unpredictable," she said, sitting up, breasts wobbling at him and somehow making the trayful of cups jiggle in his hands. "It's part of my appeal." She giggled, a sound like Chinese bells, signifying things were OK again, for the time being. "And I'm not going to tell you how I got in, because I'm also terribly clever and rather mysterious."
Mysterious, she wasn't. In spite of everything, he grinned, wishing he could say she was his girlfriend. Why was he so goddamn insecure? He set the tea tray down on the bed and Miranda reached across to pour. "Too strong as usual, Morelli. You're an awfully selfish bastard."
He flinched a little. It was what his old man had said, leading to Berry's decision to leave the States. You're a goddamn selfish bastard. You don't have to agree with a fucking thing I stand for, but when you screw things up for me to further your own pissant career, that's indefensible, boy.
"Listen, I guess what happened was I used you," he confessed to Miranda, "to reinforce my hold on life. How's that sound?"
"Pretentious."
"It was kind of a heavy night."
"You're not pissed, though, are you?"
"No. I . . . Jesus, this guy—a friend—he just died on me."
"To be quite honest I thought somebody was dying on me" Miranda said. "Don't do it again. Wake me up first. I might've missed it."
"Yeah. I'm . . " Shit, he seemed to spend half his time apologising to people. Maybe he should apologise for apologising too much. He felt he could still hear the ambulance siren, the efficient clunk of the rear doors after they'd loaded the stretcher. The finality of it. He'd known then that it was final.
"Oh for God's sake, Morelli . . ." Miranda drowned her cigarette end in the dregs of her tea, a small rebellion against her refined upbringing. "Tell mummy all about it. Who died on you? You don't mean really died? As in, you know . . . turning up one's toes?"
Berry drank his tea, not quite knowing where to start. He detected mild amusement in Miranda's green eyes. How could it be really serious if he'd strolled in afterwards and screwed her, however perfunctory that had been?
"I ever tell you about this guy I know, Giles Freeman?"
"The political reporter? I met him. if you remember, that time at Verity's. Very dashing and sporty, but terribly earnest. Quiet little wife, a bit hamsterish."
Berry admired the way Miranda took in the essence of people she'd met only in passing. Ought to have been a much better actress than she was—maybe she just found it hard to let her own outrageous personality be submerged by lesser ones.
"You're saying Giles Freeman is dead?"
"Huh? No, shit. Giles is fine. That is . . ." He put the empty cup on the tea-tray and set it down on the carpet. And then he asked her, because this really was the bottom line. "You ever get to Wales?"
"Wales?" Miranda patted around the duvet for her cigarettes. "What's Wales got to do with it?"
"You ever go there?"
"Morelli." she said, "do I look like the kind of person who has Welsh connections? Like someone who reads the Bible all the time, plays rugby and eats seaweed?"
Berry thought about this. "Maybe not." he conceded. He found her cigarettes in a fold of the duvet, lit two and passed her one. "Folks do that in Wales? They eat seaweed?"
"So it is said. They make some kind of bread from it. I went there once, but it was depressing. It rained."
Miranda. If she visited the Taj Mahal during a monsoon it would forever be depressing.
"But this is Britain, right?" Berry said. "This is Wales, England? Same island. What I mean . . . Welsh folks live in England. English folks live in Wales."
"If they're desperate enough. Or they've been offered some terribly lucrative job out there, and there can't be many of those. Why do you ask?"
