Candlenight (24 page)

   
Giles nodded solemnly
"Exactly. That's the whole point."
   
He folded his arms, rocking back on
his heels in the middle of the room on the dragon rug. "What I mean
is—We've become so smug and cynical in England because our cultural heritage is
so
safe
. We've got the world's number
one language, we've got Shakespeare and Jane Austen and all these literary
giants planted in state in Westminster Abbey. But Welsh culture's about
ordinary people. I mean, your writers and poets don't spend all their time
poncing about at fancy publishers' parties and doing lecture tours of the
States. They're working farmers and schoolteachers and—clergymen. And they'll
never be remotely famous outside Wales because virtually nobody out there can understand
a word they write. It takes real commitment to carry on in a situation like
that, wouldn't you say?"

   
Bethan watched Giles's lean
English face shining with an honest fervour in the unsteady lamplight. How
could the issue of Wales be seized on with such vigour by people like Giles and
Claire, who had not been brought up in the warmth of a Welsh community, not had
bedtime stories read to them in Welsh, sung Welsh nursery rhymes or made their first
terrifying public appearance performing a little recitation before a critical
audience of neighbours at the local eisteddfod? Did they equate Wales with
whales? Were the Welsh suddenly interesting because they looked like a threatened
species?

   
Then Bethan glanced at Claire
and drew in a sharp breath.
   
Claire, small face not mellow but
stark in the lamplight, was looking up at Giles. And wearing a rigid expression
of explicit contempt.

   
"You know," Giles was
idling Bethan enthusiastically. "I wouldn't mind doing a feature sometime
on old ap Siencyn. What's he like?"

   
"He's—
You've
met him. Claire, what did you
think of him?"

   
Giles looked hurt.
"Claire, you never mentioned meeting the rector."

   
"I—" Claire didn't
look at him. "Our paths crossed while I was out taking pictures."
   
"She took his picture."
Bethan said.
   
"I didn't see that," Giles
said.

   
"It didn't come out."
Claire snapped. "Can we make a start?"

   
Bethan thought. Her pictures
never
don't come out. Besides, I saw it.

   
"Well, I think I've seen
his house." Giles said. "Upon the edge of the woods. Very
impressive."

   
Bethan said. "Sometimes I
take the kids up to the woods, but we go the other way. I don't like that part
somehow."
   
Especially now, she thought,
shuddering at the image, which came to her unbidden, of two leather hiking
boots slowly swinging overhead.

   
"I thought it was
magnificent." Giles said, freckles aglow in the lamplight. "You get
the feeling that's where the whole village was born—you know, the timber for
the cottages. I
think it's fantastic the way they're managing it, renewing the trees and
everything. I mean, who actually does that? Who are the foresters?"

   
Claire, face taut, severe in
the oil-light, said, with quiet menace, "
Ydy chi'n barod
, Bethan?"

   
Giles fell silent, looked
embarrassed.

   
"Yes," Bethan said,
feeling sorry for him. Why did his innocent ardour seem to irritate his wife
so? "Yes. I'm ready." When she'd agreed to teach them Welsh, she'd
been looking forward to a chat over coffee with people who weren't a part of
this stifling community. Not this formal, frigid atmosphere, this sense of . .
. ritual, almost.

   
It's the house, she thought,
It's the damned house. She opened one of her books on the card table. Aware, on
the periphery of her vision, of the old, heavy desk and the Victorian Gothic
chair across the room, beyond the dome of the lamplight. As if they were
awaiting the arrival of the real teacher.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Bethan left.

   
There was no moon. It was very
dark.

   
"Where's your car?"
Giles asked.

   
"I left it at the school,
it's only three minutes walk."

   
"It's pitch black. I'll
come with you, bring a torch."

   
"Thank you. but I used to
live in this village, there's no—"

   
"There is." Giles
said firmly, grabbing his green waxed jacket from behind the door, switching
his heavyweight policeman's torch on and off to make sure it was working.

   
"Well, thank you."
Bethan said. Oh god, she thought. I don't really want to be alone with Giles
now. I don't need this.

   
Following the torchbeam. they
walked down the hill and over the bridge, the river hissing below them. There
was an anguished silence between them until they reached the
entrance to the school lane.

   
"Christ," Giles said.

   
"Look—" Bethan put a
reassuring hand on his arm.
   
"Don't worry, all right?"

   
"Huh—" Giles twisted
away like a petulant schoolboy then immediately turned back, apologetic. He
expelled a sigh, full of hopelessness, and rubbed his eyes.

   
"You will soon get the
hang of it."

   
It was too dark to see his
face.

   
"But you don't understand."
Giles said desperately. "I thought I
was
getting the hang of it. I've been working at it for weeks. Before we even came.
I used to spend all my lunch hours swotting. I mean, you know—I really thought I
was getting pretty good. It's just so bloody embarrassing."

   
"Don't worry." Bethan
said. "Everybody has days like that. When they're beginning. A few weeks
really isn't very long, you know."

   
"All right then, what
about Claire? I mean, she hasn't spent anywhere near as much time on it as
me."

   
"Look," Bethan said,
as they reached the Peugeot. "The very worst thing you can do is
worry."

   
"But I couldn't put together
even the simplest sentences! I mean things I know!" Bethan heard Giles
punching the palm of his hand in bitter frustration. The violent movement seemed
to hurt him more than he'd intended because he gave a small moan of pain.

   
"Mr. Freeman, are you sure
you're all right?"
   
"Giles. Please. I hate being
Freeman, so bloody English. Yes I'm fine. Well, I've got a headache, but that's
nothing unusual. I'm sorry. I'm being ridiculous."

   
"I know it means a lot to
you." Bethan said gently. She felt terribly sorry for him. He wanted so
badly to be a part of this culture. It had been awful watching him agonisingly entangled
in the alien grammar, tongue frozen around words he just could not say, getting
stuck on the same ones again and again, stammering in his confusion.
Sometimes—his hands gripping the edge of the table until the knuckles were white
as bone—it seemed almost as if his facial muscles had been driven into
paralysis by the complexity of the
language.

   
"Look," Bethan said.
"Get a good night's sleep. Don't think about it. Don't look at any books.
I'll see you again tomorrow. Maybe . . . Look, maybe it's something I am doing
wrong. I'm so used to teaching children."

   
"But what about
Claire
?' he cried. "I mean, for
God's sake, how do you explain that?"

Chapter XXIX

ENGLAND

Berry Morelli had not long been in the office when his boss threw a
newspaper at him.

   
"For your private
information," Addison Walls said.

   
Newsnet's London bureau chief
was a small, neat, precise man with steel-rimmed glasses, a thin bow tie that
was always straight and an unassuming brown toupee. It was Berry's unvoiced
theory that Addison possessed a normal head of hair but shaved it off
periodically on account of a toupee was tidier.

   
"Your buddy, I
think," Addison said and went back to his examination of the
Yorkshire Post
. He was a very thorough man,
arriving at work each day somewhere between 8:00
and 8:03 a.m. and completing a shrewd perusal of every British national
newspaper and five major provincial morning papers by 9:15 when his staff got
in.

   
The staff consisted of a secretary,
a research assistant and three reporters including Berry Morelli. Although
there would usually be orders for the major stories of the day, Newsnet
specialised in features dealing with peripheral issues of American interest which
the big agencies had no time to mess with. Occasionally, compiling his morning inventory
of the British press, Addison Walls would suddenly zap an item with his thick
black marker pen and announce, "This is a Newsnet story."

   
Berry noticed the item flung at
him had not been zapped, although the paper had been neatly folded around an inside-page
feature starkly headlined,

THE ANGRY HILLS

Above the text was a photograph of a ruined castle which resembled the
lower plate of a set of dentures, two walls standing up like teeth. The view
was framed by the walls of more recent buildings; a for sale sign hung
crookedly from one.

   
Underneath the picture, it
said,

         
Giles Freeman, of our political staff, reports on what's shaping up to
be a
                        
dramatic
by-election battle in wildest Wales.

Berry smiled and sat down and lit a cigarette. So Giles had pulled it
off. They'd let him cover the Pontmeurig by-election. Filing his stuff, no
doubt, from his own cottage, probably over the phone from the judge's study.
Two weeks had passed since Berry had fled that place. Two weeks in which to
consider the possibility that he'd been overreacting. Him and old Winstone
both.

   
He started to read the feature,
thinking Giles would be sure to hype up the issue to persuade his editor that
this election was worthy of intensive on-the-spot coverage.

   
It was not the usual political
backgrounder. Giles had gone folksy.

               
               
Idwal Roberts smiled knowingly as he laid out his leather tobacco
                         
pouch on the bar of
the Drovers' Arms.

                       
This."
he said, "is going to be a bit of an eye-opener for a London boy. I
               
imagine you've reported a fair
few by-elections, but I can tell you—you won't
                    
have
seen one like this.

                       
"Oh. I
know they've had them in South Wales and the Borders in recent
                
years. But this time you're in the
real Wales. A foreign country, see."

                       
Idwal
Roberts, a retired headmaster, is the Mayor of Pontmeurig, a little
              
market town
at the southern end of the range of rugged
hills called in Welsh
      
           
something long and
    
complicated which translates roughly as
"the Nearly
                                
Mountains."

                       
This is the
principal town in the constituency of Glanmeurig, which
                     
recently lost its long-serving Conservative MP,
Sir Maurice Burnham-Lloyd
                       
and
is now preparing for
its first ever by-election. Local people will tell you
                     
that the last time anything
really exciting happened in Pontmeurig was in the
               
fifteenth century when the Welsh nationalist leader
Owain Glyndwr (or Owen
            
Glendower,
as they call him east of Offa's Dyke) set fire to the castle.

                       
The gaunt
remains of this castle still frown over the cattle market and
                  
the new car-park. The
fortress was actually built by the Welsh but
                                        
subsequently
commandeered by the English king Edward I. One story tells how
              
the wealthy baron in charge of
the castle offered to support Glyndwr's
                                   
rebellion,
but Owain set light to the place anyway on the grounds that you
                        
could never trust the
word of an Englishman.