Candlenight, page 7
"It's a bit late now, though, isn't it?" Bethan said. "And I'm not Miss Sion any more, remember?"
They were alone in the yard. It was a gloomy afternoon now. Overcast. A reminder of how rapidly the days were shortening. Locking the school door. Bethan had heard a child's shoes tripping across the yard towards her and wondered if it would be Sali.
"See me after school, please," she'd finally written in the exercise book, but Sali had gone off with the others half an hour ago. Now she was back, alone. An indication that she didn't want her friends to know she was seeing the teacher.
"But Miss Sion, your husband is dead."
Bethan breathed in sharply, as if stabbed. Children could be vicious.
"Mrs. McQueen, if you don't mind. I won't tell you again. We don't go back to our old names just because—" Bethan had a thought. "Who told you to start calling me
Miss Sion again?'
Sali Dafis looked at her feet and said nothing.
"Never mind," Bethan said. "I think I can guess. Look, why don't we talk to each other tomorrow. We don't want your nain wondering where you are." Or the old hag will put a curse on me, she thought, then decided that wasn't funny.
Sali looked up at Bethan very solemnly and seemed about to say something.
"Well?"
"Mrs. McQueen." said Sali innocently, "would you like to see a dead body?"
Bethan put the key in her bag and snapped it shut. "All right, we'd better have our talk right now. You wait there while I put my things in the car, then we'll go for a walk."
She was definitely not in the mood for this.
They followed the river from the rear of the school towards the oak woods, most of which were coppiced by Meirion, the forester whose father had done it before him. It was like entering a huge, entimbered medieval cathedral. Awesome in the right light, but dim and heavy now, the trees immense and gnarled, prickly bushes in the shade of some of them. The river entered the woods and then went off on its own. away from the path.
"So whose was the dead body—the one you thought I might like to see?"
Bethan knew very well that nobody had died in the village recently, except for the antiquarian at the Tafarn and Mrs. Tegwyn Jones, Ty Canol, over a week before that.
"Don't know." Sali said.
"Why would you think I might even want to see this . . . this dead body?"
"Don't know." Sali said.
They were approaching the thick wooden gate draped with creepers that said on it one word.
Rheithordy.
The rectory. It was the only house in the wood. Well, not quite in the wood: the house itself was in a green clearing, but the encroaching oaks had claimed most of its garden, heavyweight sentinels around it. The rectory was itself hugely timber-framed, and Bethan found it all a bit ominous, as if the beams in the house's skeleton had only been
borrowed from the wood.
Hurrying the child past the gate, because the rector also tended to give her the creeps. Bethan said, "'You know what a dead body is, don't you Sali?"
She saw the child nod without looking up. This was not going to be easy. Why did she feel, uncomfortably, that the big trees were listening to her with more attention than Sali?
"Do you really know what a dead body is? It's nothing to do with the person who used to be in the body. That is why we bury them—because they are no use to anyone anymore. What people are is nothing to do with their bodies. The really important part is something that just uses the body to get around in. And when it's too old or badly damaged, we discard it, throw it away."
Bethan felt inadequate to the task of explaining to an eight-year-old the things that few adults claimed to understand. This was no time to be trite or patronising.
"When someone brings an old car or a Land Rover into your dad's garage, he ... he mends it. If he can. And if it's just too old and tired out, then he has to send the car to
the scrapyard. And the driver gets a new one. That's what happens to our bodies when we've used them up—we get rid of them and then we get a new body—a heavenly body."
This is pathetic, Bethan thought.
"I know that," Sali said scornfully, kicking at the dirt. "My nain can see people in their heavenly bodies."
Bethan stopped walking.
"Sometimes." Sali said, walking on then turning round on the path, "she asks me if I can see people in their heavenly bodies."
Dear God.
"But I can't," Sali said. "Well, I don't think I can. Nain says that is because my mam was English. She says the English haven't got the gift."
Lucky them, thought Bethan. They were following the path deep into the wood. It would soon be strewn with acorns. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and nature rambles and autumn leaves to press. Once, autumn had excited Bethan—the scent of burning leaves, logs gathered for the fire, newly made toast. Someone to eat it with. She thought, that's right, burst into tears in front of the child.
Instead she sat down on a big tree stump and pulled Sali towards her, gripping the girl's arms. "Sali, look at me."
Sali gazed into Bethan's face. Disturbingly, she was reminded of the way Buddug had looked at her that morning. Condescending.
"Sali, some . . . some people don't want to let the dead go. Do you remember last year . . . my husband died."
The child stood stiffly between Bethan's hands. She did not seem interested.
"I was very sad." Bethan said. "I didn't want him to be dead. I used to think about him all the time. I still—"
"He was only English." Sali said
"I—what did you say?"
Sali pulled quickly away and ran off.
"Sali! Come here!"
The child had vanished, as if the woods had absorbed her. Alone now in this sombre place Bethan thought, I've blown it. We're on different sides of some invisible barrier. She's
gone to Buddug and Mrs. Bronwen Dafis.
"Sali, come back now, we have to go home."
The child had disappeared.
"Sali, where are you?"
The wood was heavy with age and stillness. No birds fluttered in the undergrowth. Overhead the branches formed a great canopy of darkest green, no breath of Autumn yet among the foliage.
"Sali! This instant!"
Bethan had risen to her feet, feeling cold now in her white cotton dress. She stepped off the path and a bramble ensnared her shoe, pulling it off.
"Damn you. Sali—"
She tore her shoe away from the spiny tendril, scratching her hand, drawing blood. What was she bothering about? The kid probably knew every inch of these woods, and there were no marauding paedophiles in Y Groes.
"I'm going home now, Sali. If you want to stay here all night, that's up to you."
What if she'd fallen somewhere? Pushing on through the bushes. Bethan suddenly became aware of the sound of rushing water
What if she'd fallen in the river?
"Sali! Shout if you can hear me!"
She saw where some of the undergrowth had recently been flattened, and she moved towards it. Overhead, the sky had darkened and mingled with the interwoven leaves. There was a harsh spattering of rain. She could hear it but couldn't feel it yet.
"Shout, Sali!"
She prised her way through the bushes towards the sound of water and felt her dress tear at the hem.
"Damn you. Sali, if you're—"
A blackberry had been squashed against her hip and she looked down and saw bubbles of juice like dark blood. Then she slipped and fell down the river bank, rolling over and over.
The crows had taken his eyes.
That was the first thing she saw.
She was winded by the fall and lay on her back, a few yards from the water. Pain rippled up her left leg: ankle twisted.
A muddy boot swung gently about a yard above her head. She must have caught it as she rolled past. The boot made a sort of click as it swung against the other boot.
Bethan retched.
"I said, didn't I. Miss Sion?"
Sali Dafis was standing at the edge of the river looking proudly up at where he hung, nylon climber's rope under his chin, knotted around the branch, his tongue out, black now.
Chapter XIII
Pontmeurig was eight miles from Y Groes, on the other side of the Nearly Mountains. A slow, messy drive, especially for a hearse.
It was an untidy town, mottled grey and brown, something that had rolled down from the hills in the Middle Ages and was still rolling, new housing estates and factories spilling over the old boundaries on either side of the river.
Still puzzled by the attitude of Aled Gruffydd, Dai Death drove the corpse into town past the cattle mart and the new car park and past what was left of the medieval castle, looming grey in the dusk. Sometime in the early fifteenth century the castle had been burned down by Owain Glyndwr, it was said, in retribution for something, and had never been rebuilt because nobody could remember why the hell they'd ever needed a castle in Pontmeurig anyway.
In a street squashed behind the ruins, almost opposite one of the town's three chapels, was an offensive new fast-food take-away. The Welsh Pizza House, owned, of course, by English people. Next to it was a small yard with a sign that said: V. W. Williams and Sons, Funeral Directors. Dai was parking the hearse under the sign when the police car drew up alongside and a constable wound down his window.
"You've done it again, Dai. He's not yours yet, he's ours."
"Oh, bloody hell." said Dai. "I'm sorry, Paul. Automatic pilot I'm on today. You back into the entry and I'll turn around."
"Daft bugger, Williams," he told himself, switching his lights on, then putting the hearse into reverse. Understandable, though: it had been a year since the Dyfed-Powys police had last used him as a meat wagon.
He pulled out into the main street and drove past the police station to the cottage hospital at the bottom of the town. The forecourt wasn't very big and was packed with cars, because it was visiting time, so he had to park on the pavement outside. He got out, hoping the police would find him a space. He didn't like having a fibreglass shell seen in public; people would think he specialised in cheap coffins.
A thirtyish couple walked past in identical outsize lumberjack shirts and baggy corduroy trousers with turn-ups. The man had a baby strapped into a sort of sling around his chest. "Pity, really.'" he was saying. "Super view. I thought." The voice carried across the quiet street.
"Look at that." Guto Evans said, walking up behind them on his way to the Drovers. "The Ethnic Look. Designer working clothes. And of course they have to pretend they can't afford a bloody pram. Evening, Dai."
"What do they call those things?" Dai asked him.
"Something Red Indian."
"Papoose." said Guto in disgust. "The day you show me a Welshman with a papoose around his neck is the day I emigrate to Patagonia" He peered into the back of the hearse. "Who have you got in there?" His black beard split into a wide, carnivorous grin. "Burnham-Lloyd himself is it?"
Dai did not find this funny. He'd had a vague hope that he, the local man, would have been chosen to handle the Burnham-Lloyd funeral, but the more he thought about it the less likely it seemed.
"Let me tell you something, Guto." he said. "Even if, through some insane aberration, they were to make you the candidate, I don't even think your mother would vote for you. It's a hiker."
"What is?"
"Him. In the back. They found him in the woods by Y Groes."
"English?"
"Probably."
"Second one in just a few days. Bloody hell, Dai, might as well be working for the council, the times they send for you to cart away the rubbish."
"Anybody can tell, Guto, that you are a natural politician. That sense of fair play, of diplomacy, the way you choose your words so as not to cause offence." Dai opened up the tailgate of the hearse so fast that Guto jumped back. "How would you like to help me carry him in?"
"Me? Carry a coffin? An Englishman's coffin?"
"Don't like the thought of death, do you, Guto?"
"Get lost," said Guto.
Dai nodded knowingly. Most people were made instantly uncomfortable by the arrival of himself and his hearse. Except for those in professions touching on the death business—doctors, nurses, solicitors, monumental masons.
And the police.
By the time Dai had arrived the body had been cut down and lay on the river bank in the manner of a determined sunbather, vainly stretching out his head to catch what remained of the light.
Then Dai saw the rope still dangling from the branch and realised what this was all about.
"Oh dear," he had said to Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones, and the policeman nodded.
"I've never understood why they come out here to do it," Gwyn Arthur said, taking out his pipe. "Three or four a year, I reckon. If it's not here it's the Elan Valley. If it's not a rope over a tree it's a rubber pipe from the exhaust."
Dai did not mention that it was his personal ambition to die here too in case the Chief Inspector got the wrong idea.
"Well, they come here for holidays. Happy memories, isn't it. Want to go out where they were happiest."
"Bottle of pills and a photo album would save us all a lot of mess," said Gwyn Arthur.
The corpse looked to be in his mid-forties and quite a seasoned hiker, judging by his clothing and well-worn boots.
"Who found him?"
"What's her name—the teacher. Pretty girl."
"Bethan? Oh God."
"Well, one of the kids it was originally. Anyway, Dai, we want to have a little poke around the woods, just to make sure he was alone. Then you can cart him up to the hospital mortuary. Why don't you go and bang on the Tafarn door and get Aled to give you a pint. If you leave your casket on the bank, by there, my boys will have filled it up for you by the time you get back."
Dai made his way back to the hearse. He'd managed to squeeze it into a bit of a clearing by the roadside so it wasn't very far to carry the coffin down to the river—not as far, anyway, as it would seem to the coppers carrying it back.
It was less than a quarter of a mile to the village, so he walked, feeling the air—so much lighter, somehow, than the air in Pontmeurig. He strolled across the bridge to Tafarn y Groes. It was just gone six. Aled rarely opened before seven-fifteen. Dai rapped briskly on the pub door. Forgetting, until the pain stung his knuckles, what a solid oak door this was.
For a long time there was no response.
Dai was about to knock again when the door opened slowly and unwillingly, and in the gap he saw Aled's worried face. His white hair was uncombed: he had a hunted look about him.
"Coffee. Aled?"
"What?"
"Coffee. I won't ask you for a pint, but I wouldn't mind a coffee."
"What are you doing here?"
Dai was thrown by this. All right, he was early and some landlords could be expected to be inhospitable. But not Aled. Aled was flexible.
"Something wrong, is there?"
"No . . . Well. Gwenllian's not so good. Bad throat. Awake half last night. Got a bit behind, we have."
"Oh. I'm sorry. In that case I won't bother you."
"No. no," Aled said, opening the door wider. "Come in. I want to talk to you."
Aled made him coffee in the bar. There was no sign of Gwenllian. But then, in Dai's experience, there rarely was; she kept to herself to the kitchen and served infrequently in the bar.
"Another body then." Dai said.
"What?" Aled dropped a saucer.
"A body. Up by the woods. Hiker. Strung himself up, poor bugger."
"Oh." Aled was staring at the broken saucer as if someone else had dropped it. He began to pick up the pieces.
Dai drank his coffee in silence, burning his mouth in his haste to be away. There was clearly something wrong here, more than a bad throat.
Aled said, a bit hoarsely, "How did you get on with Dr. Ingley?"
"The Prof? Shipped back to—where was it now? Basingstoke."
"Gone?"
"Gone," said Dai.
"Where did you keep him?"
There was an odd question.
"How do you mean?"
"Where did you put the body?"
"Well, chapel of rest,"
"No ... no problems?"
What the hell did that mean?
"I was asked to embalm him. Usual thing. Why do you ask?"
"No reason," Aled said. Though it was not quite dark yet, he moved to the switches on the wall and put all the lights on.
Blinking in the sudden glare, Dai thought at first he must be seeing things when he noticed how badly the landlord's hand was shaking.
Part Three
SICE
Chapter XIV
"I know what you're thinking," Giles said.
They were driving inland on roads that became narrower, through countryside that got bleaker. Camouflage country, Berry thought. Weathered farmhouses were hunched into the hillsides; tough, cynical-looking sheep grazed mean fields the colour of worn khaki. And then the forestry began, rank upon regimented rank of uniform conifers, a drab army of occupation.
"But you're wrong." Giles was trying vainly to stretch his legs. Claire had taken the BMW to Norwich while her own car was being serviced, so they'd come in Berry's little old Sprite, lanky Giles wedged awkwardly with his knees around his chin because of the bags and stuff behind his seat.
They were passing a derelict lead mine in a valley, broken grey walls and tin-roofed shacks. A thin river seeped along the valley bottom, tired as a drain.
"Just you wait," Giles promised.
Berry's first time in Wales. They'd driven in from the South-East, which he found pretty much like England, except more of it was rural. Wherever they stopped for a meal or cigarettes everybody seemed to speak English too, in quite intelligible accents.
Then they'd hit the west coast, checking into a hotel in Aberystwyth where quite a lot of the people around them were speaking a language Berry didn't understand. It sounded European, but it had a lilting quality, and the speech of people in the street was flecked with English phrases. They were only a couple hundred miles from London. Weird.
