Candlenight, page 5
"He's a decent chap, compared to most of us," Winstone said. "But naive. Innocent. Throw everything away if somebody doesn't stop him. You see—as an American you may not understand this, but the thing is, Giles made the big time too soon. What's he now, thirty-three, thirty-four? My day, you were lucky if you'd made it to the Nationals at all by that age. So now Giles is looking around and he's thinking, where on earth do I go from here? What's there left to do? Sort of premature mid-life crisis, everything comes younger these days. And of course he can see all the editors getting alarmingly younger too. One day his copy's being handled by some chap who only shaves twice a week. Or worse still," Winstone got unsteadily to his feet and reached for his raincoat, "not shaving at all, if you see what I mean."
"Women." Berry said.
Winstone scowled. "So he's looking for a new adventure, But he thinks—fatal this—he thinks he's looking for his soul."
"In Wales?"
"Insanity." Winstone paused in the doorway, took a last look around the almost deserted bar. His face was pale, his jowls like tallow dripping down a candle. "The boy was right. I talk too much nonsense. So now nobody believes my stories anymore."
"Winstone, Giles was smashed."
The old journalist smiled wistfully and walked out into the street, where the night was warm but rain was falling. "You know, old boy," he said after a moment, turning and looking around him in apparent confusion. "I must say I feel rather odd."
"It's gonna pass, Winstone, believe me, it's gonna pass, You just got to find a new . . . Hey—"
Winstone gripped the lamp-post which Giles had hugged in his drunken excitement. "Do you know what, old boy?" he said conversationally. "I'm think I'm having another stroke."
Winstone Thorpe quietly slid down to his knees on the wet pavement, as if offering a final prayer to the old gods of what used to be Fleet Street.
"Shit," Berry breathed. He stared down at Winstone in horror. The old man smiled.
Berry dashed back and stuck his head round the pub door. "Somebody call an ambulance! Listen, I'm not kidding. It's ole Winstone!"
He rushed back to the old man. "Hey, come on, let's get you back inside, OK?"
But, as he bent down, Winstone toppled—almost nonchalantly, it seemed—on to his face. As if his prayer had been answered.
Chapter VIII
"Dead?" Giles said. "But that's wonderful."
Claire passed him his coffee. "Oh, Giles, let's not get—"
"I know, I know, I'm sorry, it's the beer. Bit pissed. But it is rather wonderful, isn't it? Not for the old boy, of course, but we've all got to go sometime and, bloody hell, he couldn't have chosen a better time for us, could he?"
"You can't say that yet," Claire said. 'They might not even let you do it."
She'd been waiting up for him with the news, that mischievous little tilt to her small mouth; she knew something he didn't. It was as near as Claire ever came to expressing excitement.
Giles had both hands around his coffee cup, squeezing it.
"Let them try and stop me," he said. "Just let the bastards try. Did it say on the news what his majority was?"
"I don't think so. They may have. It was still dawning on me, the significance of it, you know."
"Right then." Giles sprang to his feet. "Let's find out."
"Will you get anybody? It's nearly one o'clock."
"No problem." He was already stabbing out the night desk number on the cordless phone. Standing, for luck, under the framed blow-up of Claire's first photograph of the cottage, the one taken from between the two sycamores at the entrance to the lane. They'd taken down a Michael Renwick screenprint to make space for it on the crowded buttermilk wall above the rebuilt fireplace.
"Peter, that you? Oh, sorry, look is Peter there? It's Giles Freeman. Yes, I'll wait."
There were blow-ups of five of Claire's photographs on the walls. None of the award-winning Belfast stuff, nothing heavy. Just the atmosphere pics: the old woman collecting driftwood on the shore, the shadowed stillness of a cathedral close at dusk, that kind of thing. The picture of the cottage was the only one that hadn't appeared in a paper or a magazine. Giles loved it. He was still amazed by Claire's ability to move at once to the right angle, to link into a scene.
"Peter. Listen, sorry to bother you. but I've just heard about Burnham-Lloyd, the MP for Glanmeurig. Was there time for you to run it in the final?" Giles sniffed. "Well I think you should have. Peter. I really do, even if it is only Wales." He and Claire exchanged meaningful glances.
"Anyway, listen Peter, what was his majority?"
Giles waited. Claire perched on the edge of the sofa and cupped her small face in her slender hands, short, fair hair tufting through the fingers. She wore a cream silk dressing gown and wooden sandals. Giles, re-energized by the news, eyed her lustfully.
"Bloody hell." he said. 'That's not bad. That's not at all bad. Thank you, Peter, thank you very much indeed."
He cleared the line and made a whooshing sound.
"Narrow?" Claire asked.
Giles said, very slowly and precisely, "Eight hundred and seventy-one." His freckles were aglow again. He tossed the phone almost to the ceiling and caught it. "Eight hundred
and seventy fucking one! It's marginal, Claire! Plaid's been slowly gaining on him for years! Oh God, I really do feel something's working for us."
"I suppose," Claire said thoughtfully, "I feel a bit scared now. It's all coming at once. Propelling us into something. Out of our control." She was still feeling upset, actually, by
her mother's reaction. She'd phoned her while Giles was out, to explain about the inheritance, tonight being the first opportunity since her parents had returned from their cruise.
Giles was hungrily pacing the carpet "What I'll suggest is a bit of a recce. Zoom up there this weekend. Take the air. Talk to people."
"I can't. I've got that thing for the Observer in Norwich." Claire was glad to put it off. She'd been frightened by her own emotional response when they'd first gone to look at the cottage. The feeling that somehow she was meant to live there. Now she wanted to slow things down, give them time to think. Giles, however, had to be firing on all cylinders or
none at all.
"Well, all right, next weekend." he said impatiently. "You see, what we have to do is build this up as a really significant mid-term by-election, knock up a couple of prelim pieces, hype it up a bit. We can have the cottage as our base, save them hotel bills and stuff. And while we're there ... I mean, with the run-up and everything, we're talking well over three weeks for a by-election campaign. So we can do all the groundwork, either for persuading them they really need a full-time staffer in Wales or setting up some decent freelance outlets. I would have sounded people out tonight, but they were all being so bloody snide and superior."
Slow down, slow down, Claire yelled inside her head. But Giles in overdrive was not open to reasonable argument. She wanted to tell him about her mother, but in his present state of drink-enhanced euphoria he wouldn't take it in. And even when stone cold sober, hearing what she'd had to say—the bitch—would only harden his determination.
As expected, her mother had been stiff and resentful, so Claire herself had gone on the attack. "Mother, why didn't you tell me he was dead? Why did I have to find out from the solicitor?"
Elinor made an impatient noise. "Because . . . Oh, look, we only found out the day we left. I mean, really, what was I supposed to do, put it in a postcard from Greece? Weather fine, old Rhys dead?"
Old Rhys. Claire's grandfather.
"Mum — I can't believe this—he was your father."
A distant snort.
"I know, I know," Claire snapped. "But that doesn't alter anything, does it?"
"It clearly altered things for him, if he's left his awful hovel to you. He only ever saw you once. I wonder what he did with his money."
"It seems." Claire said icily, "that he left most of it to the Church."
There'd been a silence, then Elinor gave her a short, false cackle. "Oh dear, do excuse me. It's simply that the idea of God and my father discovering each other in that ghastly Welsh backwater is rather too much to take at this hour of the night."
Claire had expected bitterness, had been ready for some of this. But nothing as unpleasant as . . .
"What happened to his whores. I wonder. Perhaps he was predeceased. Do you think he died alone and unloved? I do hope so."
This is awful. Claire thought. She knew her mother did not need the money. But she must, all the same, have hoped for some token in the will, a sign that Thomas Rhys even remembered once having a wife and a daughter ... as well as a grandchild.
"Did you—tell me the truth now. Claire—did you ever go to visit him, you and Giles?"
"Of course not! I mean . . ." There had, it was true, often been times when Claire had felt powerfully drawn to seek out the mysterious Judge Rhys. That tug of curiosity edged with an undefined sense of guilt and longing, whenever she'd come across a picture of Welsh mountains on some holiday brochure. And then there'd been that electric moment when she'd first seen the village—a mere three months ago. but it fell to Claire as if she'd known it all her life in some unexplored part of her soul.
"Then why?" Elinor's voice was flat and hard. "Apart from a desire to spit on your grandmother and me. Why? Can you explain it?"
"No," Claire said in a small voice. "Mother, look, I—I know you must be terribly hurt—"
"Don't patronise me, Claire. I'm extremely glad the old swine's gone, I didn't want a penny of his money and I shall be thankful when you've sold that damn house for as much as you can get."
"Sell it?"
"Well you're hardly going to live in it are you?" her mother had said.
"I've been thinking," Giles was saying. "Perhaps we should make contact with a few of the local tradesmen — plumbers, carpenters. Book them in advance. Sometimes guys like that
can be jolly hard to find in rural areas, and they need lots of notice. Then we're going to need an automatic washing machine and all that. We shall have to work pretty fast."
"Yes, but Giles . . . what if the by-election goes ahead before probate's complete. There's no way round that, you know. We can't let workmen into a house that isn't ours yet."
Claire somehow felt she had to create as many obstacles as she could to counteract the awesome pull of the village. To make sure that it was the right thing to do. that it really
was meant.
"Won't happen." Giles said confidently. "No way there'll be a by-election until all the party conferences are safely over. We're talking November at least."
Claire realised then that this by-election could be quite a good thing after all. It would give them a trial period to see if life in Wales really suited them. Trying to get the cottage
into some kind of shape and cover an election campaign at the same time would be quite a testing experience. And if they realised they were making a big mistake they could always come back here and either sell the place or keep it as a holiday home—and feel grateful they hadn't burned their boats.
"I'll tell you one thing, though," Giles said, leaning against the remoulded plaster of the fireplace. "Those bastards tonight, my so-called colleagues. It's made me realise how badly I want to get out of all this. It's a phoney life, a facade, just a garish backcloth we think we can perform against. Not real at all. I mean, I can't get on with those guys any more. Even Winstone - Christ, I thought he was a friend." He shook his head with his mouth tight. Then he loosened up and flashed Claire a grin. "What have you got on under there?" He tossed the phone into an armchair, threw off his jacket and plunged at the sofa.
Claire let him pull the dressing gown off her shoulders and suddenly quivered.
Nothing to do with Giles. Something her mother had said was replaying itself. She hadn't realised at the time, hadn't seen the significance. . . left his awful hovel to you. He only ever saw you once . . .
When? Claire didn't remember ever seeing her grandfather. She'd always understood there'd been no contact whatsoever since the day. two years before she was born, when Judge Thomas Rhys had gravely announced that he would be returning to the place of his birth, but his family would not be accompanying him. So when?
Excitement and dread combined to make Claire shiver.
Giles moaned, lips tracking down her bare shoulder. "Darling . . ." he breathed.
Chapter IX
Look," Miranda said. "I just don't see it. Why don't you come back to bed?"
The sun had emerged, and Miranda looked rosy and warm and inviting.
"I didn't expect you would." Berry said, standing by the window, turning to look into the street three storeys down.
"What counts is how I see it." He gazed out towards the Thames. This building did not itself overlook the Thames but you could see some other buildings which did.
"Well it certainly isn't my idea of a dying wish or a last request or whatever," Miranda said. "To make a last request you have to know you're dying. And from what you say. he
didn't."
At the hospital, the tired-eyed young doctor on night-duty, jeans under the white coat, had said it looked like a small stroke followed by a second, massive stroke. Happened like an earthquake, or maybe an earthquake in reverse, a mild foreshock and then the big one. Bip. bam! Good a way to go as any, better than most. And he'd had a minor one before, had he? Say no more. Later, the cops had gone through the motions, because of the way it happened.
"I'm gonna call Giles," Berry said. "Maybe we can organise lunch."
. . . Look, you put the arm on young Giles. Persuade him to get the bloody place sold. Soon as he can.
"You were going to have lunch with me, remember, if you were in town." Miranda pulled the duvet over her breasts and went into a pout.
Shit, how was he supposed to get this across?
"See, it's just . . . when I first came over here I didn't know England from a hole in the ocean and ole Winstone, he kind of initiated me."
"Is England so complicated?"
"Minefield." Berry said. He'd taken the job with the agency, American Newsnet, without thinking, in his haste to get out. Mario Morelli's son guilty of unAmerican behaviour.
"The English National Press, they were a club I didn't know how to join." he said. "I walked in this bar one night and sat down and all these guys stared at me like I'd thrown up on the table. After a while one leaned over and said out of the corner of his mouth, "You do know you're sitting in Winstone's chair.'"
"I think I've seen that film," Miranda said.
"So I apologised to Winstone."
"As you would."
"And he became the first one of them I really talked to, you know? I asked him a whole bunch of those questions I didn't dare ask anyone else. By closing time he'd explained how Parliament worked and all those British niceties. Why it isn't done to talk to the Queen without she talks to you first, or label a guy a killer after he's charged and like that. No big deal, but he saved my ass a few times, while certain people stood around waiting for me to fall on it. He was always there, anything I needed to know. He drank like prohibition was starting tomorrow, but it didn't matter to him that I didn't join him."
"So long as you paid for his I shouldn't imagine it would bother him in the slightest," said Miranda. "You're endearingly naive sometimes, Morelli."
"The only other guy ever spared the time to help me along was Giles," said Berry.
Stop him. I mean it.
"Morelli," Miranda said. "You're overreacting. If Freeman is loopy enough to want to throw up his career to go and live in wildest Wales it's his decision. None of your business. And if you think old-what's-his-name is going to come back and haunt you, you must be even simpler than most of your race. Now come back to bed. I warn you - last chance."
We're really not meant to be there, you know, the English.
"How much of a generalisation is it, that stuff about rugby and the Bible?"
"Wales? Who cares? It's still an awfully long way from Harrods."
"You're a big help. Miranda."
"Oh, you are a pain, Morelli. Look. I haven't been very often. It's got lovely mountains and nice beaches here and there. And in the south there used to be a lot of coal mines,
and Cardiff's fairly civilised these days but terribly bland . . .But, from what you say, your friend is off to one of the primitive bits, about which I'm really not qualified to comment. You know me and the primitive. Admittedly, there are times for being primitive . .
Miranda put on her most lascivious smile which, Berry had to admit, was pretty damn lascivious.
"Yeah, OK," he said. "Maybe I'll call Giles later."
Chapter X
WALES
It was the third headline on the BBC Radio Wales news at 8 a.m.
". . . and Sir Maurice Burnham-Lloyd, Conservative MP for Glanmeurig for more than thirty years, is dead."
Guto Evans felt unexpectedly nervous. He lay in bed and waited for the full report. By the time it came on, he'd convinced himself that he definitely wasn't going to get the Plaid nomination. Dai Death had been right: no chance.
The whole report lasted just over one minute. After a summary of the high points of Burnham-Lloyd's career (Guto wondered how they'd managed to pad it out to twenty seconds) there was a short clip of the Secretary of State for Wales speaking over the telephone to the studio.
". . . but most of all." crackled the Secretary of State, "Maurice was a constituency man, a farmer among farmers. He was always deeply concerned that people in London and in Brussels should be aware of exactly how their policies would affect a sheep farmer in the heart of Glanmeurig."
Guto groaned, snapped off the radio and pushed back the covers. "Mam!" he shouted, hearing the clatter of a pan from downstairs. "Mam, no breakfast for me. I've got to go out right away. OK?"
