Candlenight (47 page)

   
This time she did look up into
the mirror. And in her sick clown's face she saw her father's eyes.

   
"Your fault." she
hissed. "All this. I hope your soul is rotting."

   
Her father's eyes did not
flicker.

   
She turned away, pulled back
the bolt and switched off the bathroom light, thankful for one thing: at least
they had not set foot in his house. Not that Claire had invited them. Not once.

   
When she returned to their
room, George was lying on his side, face to the wall. "Mmmmmmpf," he
said.

   
At home they had twin beds.
Next year, she decided, she would move into a separate room.

   
How far off morning?

   
The watch said 4:21.

   
But the light through the
curtains was brighter. It could not be long.

   
She stood by the window; her
hand moved to lift up the curtain . . . and pulled back. Suppose that bird was
there again?

   
Beyond the drawn curtains it
grew brighter still, blue-white like constant lightning.
   
"Ernrmph," George rolled
over.

Elinor forced herself lo pull buck the curtain a little, and she looked
down into the village street.
   
The street was blue with cold.

   
Radiantly blue. A mat of frost
the colour of a midsummer sky was rolling out over the river-bridge towards the
inn.

   
Along this chilly carpet a
figure moved.

   
He had a long overcoat of grey,
falling lo the frosted road, and a wide-brimmed hat which shadowed his downcast
face. He moved like a column of smoke, hands deep in the
folds of his coat.

   
She could not see his feet or
hear his footsteps, only a sharp, brittle sound, perhaps the frost itself. He
left long, shallow tracks behind him but, as she watched, the marks in
the frost healed over and the bright blue ground shone savagely cold and
mockingly untrodden.

   
The figure advanced towards the
door of the inn, and with each of his steps the temperature dropped around
Elinor, as if the radiators were shutting down in great shudders. Her body
began to quake, her teeth to chatter, and the fingers holding back the curtain
were numbed.

   
Reaching the door of the inn.
the visitor paused, the cold rising from him like steam, brought a hand out of
his pocket as if to knock.

   
It was not a hand but the
yellow, twisted, horny talon of a bird of prey.

   
"Shut up! Stop that
screaming, you stupid, bloody drunken bitch!"

   
Her body arched at the waist,
her neck extended as if she were trying to vomit.

   
"Are you totally insane,
woman? Shut up! Do you hear me, you bitch?"

   
On his feet now, between her
and the window, George grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down on the bed.
"Stop it!"

   
She looked up into her
husband's bulging, sleep-swollen eyes.

   
Hands clenched around her bony
shoulders, he lifted her from the bed then slammed her down again.
   
And again.

   
This time her skull crashed
sickeningly into the head-
board of Victorian mahogany.
   
George's eyes were opaque.

   
He smashed her down again,
lifted her up, smashed her down, a rhythmic motion, grunting "Stop
it."
   
Stop it.

   
Stop it.

   
Stop it.

THE RED BOOK OF INGLEY

Chapter LIII

They watched each other over the breakfast table, different people now.
She wore yesterday's black cowl-neck sweater and the big gold earrings; his
sweatshirt still identified him as an American werewolf in London. But they
were different people.

   
The Rhos Tafol's dining room overlooked
the estuary, shining cobalt in the chill morning, there were perhaps twenty
tables in the room, all stripped bare except for the
one where they sat, by the window.

   
December.

   
"We could just walk away
from it." Berry spread marmalade on dry toast. Bethan looked down into her
boiled egg. He loved the fall of her eyelids; it was what put him in mind of
the women in Renaissance paintings.

   
"Or not," Berry said.

   
They'd lain and talked about it
until the dawn streaked the Dyfi. She'd told him about Claire in the river
Meurig, washing away the English. And about Claire's photos; the tree that
vanished, whatever that meant.

   
He'd told her about old
Winstone—whatever
that
meant.

   
Also about Miranda. Who was
funny and diverting but belonged to the person he used to be before last night.

   
"So." Crunching
toast.

   
Bethan said, "When I came
back from Swansea to be head teacher—less than six months ago, I can't believe
it—I thought I was going to change everything. Let some light into the place.
It was pretty hard to do coming back."

   
"I don't know how you
could."

   
"The way I rationalised it,
it was going to be a kind of memorial to Robin. Modernising the school,
changing the outlook of the children. It was a mission. But—"

   
"—You didn't realise what
you were taking on."
   
"I was
very
determined. Nothing left to lose. Ready to fight centuries of
tradition. And Buddug."
   
"Buddug's this other teacher?"

   
"The name Buddug,"
Bethan said, stirring the tea in the pot lo make it blacker, "is Welsh for
Boudicca, or Boadicea."

   
"The hard-nosed broad who
took on the Romans," he remembered. "Drove this chariot with long
knives sticking out the wheels, relieving whole legions of their
genitalia."

   
"I had never thought of it
quite like that, but the way you depict it, it does seem horrifyingly
plausible, yes."

   
"She's like that, this
Buddug?"

   
"She's worse." Bethan
said.

   
"And what you're saying is
you think you might accomplish now what you couldn't when you came back from Swansea?"

   
"I am not alone this
time," Bethan said, and his heart took off.

"C'mon, honey," She turned over, coughed. "One more time
for Berry." She turned over again, caught.
   
"She is very old," Bethan
said.

   
"We don't discuss her age.
It upsets her. When I'm in London, this guy checks her over every few weeks.
You can still get the parts, if you know where to look."

   
He followed the estuary back
towards Machynlleth. "I like it here. I like feeling close to the sea. You
wouldn't care to stay another night, think about things some more?"

   
"I told you last night, I
should
like
to stay here a very long time."
She sighed. "Keep driving, Morelli."

   
"One point," Berry
said, pushing the Sprite into the town, towards the Gothic clock tower. "You're
a nationalist, right? Guto's a nationalist. This Buddug and all the people in Y
Groes, they're nationalists too."

   
"Why, then, did Guto go
down like the proverbial lead balloon?"
   
"Precisely."

   
"You have to live in Wales
a long time to work it out," Bethan said. "And just when you think
you've understood the way it is . . ."

   
She ran the fingers of both hands
through her hair, as if to untangle her thoughts.

   
"You see . . . There are
different kinds of Welsh nationalism. There is Plaid Cymru, which envisages a
self-governing Wales with its own economic structure—an independent, bilingual
state within the European Community. And there is another sort which you might
compare with the National Front, the Ku Klux Klan, yes?"

   
"Extreme right wing."

   
"Except they would not
think of themselves like that. They are protecting their heritage, they feel
the same things we all feel from time to time, but—" She sighed again.
"I'm afraid there are some people for whom being Welsh is more important
than being human."

   
"And - let me guess
here—this type of person sees Plaid as a half-baked outfit which no longer
represents the views of the real old Welsh nation, right?"

   
"Yes. Exactly.
Da iawn
."

   
"Huh?"

   
"Very good. In moments of
exultation, I revert to my first language."

   
"So that's what it was,"
Berry said, remembering moments of last night.

Driving south in worsening weather, Berry wondered why neither of them
had put a name to what they were up against. Six deaths. Accident, suicide and
natural causes. All
English people, no other connecting factor. They couldn't be talking murder.
Not as the law saw it

   
"Bethan," he said.
"Can we discuss what happened to Giles?"

   
Sparse sleet stung the screen.

   
"
Listen
to me now," she said, as if this had been building up
inside for some while. "There is one thing I haven't told you."

   
Above the whine of the wind in
the Sprite's soft top, she revealed to him the truth about Giles's
"fall" in the castle carpark in Pont. Why they'd kept quiet about it.

   
"Giles himself was particularly
anxious people should believe it was a fall. I think he was embarrassed. Does
that make sense to you?"

   
"I guess it does. Say the
two guys are arrested, there's a court case. And then everybody working with
Giles in London knows he got beat up on. In his beloved Wales. Yeah, I can buy
that. No way would he want that out, the poor sucker."

   
Bethan squeezed his hand on the
wheel. "I am so relieved. I was worried you would think we covered it up
to protect ourselves."

   
"Guto, yes. You, no. So
who were they, these guys?"

   
"Just yobs. Troublemakers.
Guto threw one in the castle ditch. I would know them again. We all
would."

   
"If it came out,"
Berry wondered, "is there any way we could use it to turn the heat on this
thing? This guy, Inspector Jones—"

   
"Gwyn Arthur."

   
"Yeah. Seemed
approachable."

   
"He is a nice man. But
Giles did not die as a result of the attack. What could Gwyn Arthur really do
now?"

   
"If only there'd been an
inquest . . ."

   
"But what would it reveal?
The medical evidence says he had an enormous tumour. What I would ask is, why
did he
develop
the tumour? Why did
Robin develop leukaemia?
Why did the hiker hang himself by the river? Why did the professor . . . ? It's
not something an inquest can go into, is it?"

   
"Paranoid delusions, Beth.
Bethan. Listen, this may seem a distinctly American way of looking at things,
and I apologise in advance, but is there anybody we could beat the truth out
of?"

   
"Not my style,"
Bethan said.

   
"Naw, me neither."

   
"I am glad to hear it.
But, look, there
are
still people we
can talk to. I know . . . Why don't you stop at the next phone box."

   
"We aren't gonna see any
dead people, are we?" Berry was uncomfortable. He hated these places.

   
"Don't be a wimp. They
cannot harm you."

   
He shuddered. "Bad enough
seeing those pictures of Giles."

   
"I know," Bethan said
quietly. "I was there when they were taken."