Read Constable Evans 03: Evanly Choirs Online
Authors: Rhys Bowen
Constable Evans 03: Evanly Choirs
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Contents
For my Thursday hiking friends, who are also my fashion advisors, culinary experts, travel companions, and, above all, therapists. What would I do without you?
And again with heartfelt thanks to John, Clare, Jane, and Tom for their critiques and great suggestions.
The Eisteddfod
The
eisteddfod
is a Welsh tradition, going back to the Middle Ages, when every court had its bard. The competition for the honor of being chaired or crowned bard is still the focal point of all
eisteddfodau.
The contest begins with a dramatic procession of bardic contenders in flowing white and green robes, preceded by flower girls and heralded by trumpets. The bards then present their poems, written to a strict traditional form.
The
eisteddfod
is also a music festival with harp, dance, and vocal competitions, including the famous Côr Meibion, the Welsh male voice choirs that are still part of life in many villages.
Peripheral to the main competitions are displays of Welsh crafts and enjoyment of Welsh food and drink.
Eisteddfodau
range from the huge National Eisteddfod, held alternately in North and South Wales, to small regional and local festivals, keeping culture and tradition alive in every corner of Wales.
Glossary of Welsh Words
annwyl gyfeillion
—dear friends (pronounced
annoo-eel ge-fy-chleon
)
bach
—small. Used as term of endearment (
ch
pronounced as in the Scottish
loch
)
bore da
—Good day or Hello. (pronounced
booray dah
)
Côr Meibion
—literally choir of sons. Male voice choir (pronounced
cor meye-beeon
)
diolch am hynny!
—Thank goodness for that! (pronounced
deeolh am hinny
)
diolch yn fawr
—Thank you very much. (pronounced
dee-olh n vower
)
eisteddfod
—Welsh cultural gathering (pronounced
eye-steth-vod
) (plural:
eisteddfodau,
pronounced
eye-steth-fod-ee
)
iachyd da
—Cheers. (pronounced
yachy dah
)
Llanfair
—fictitious village in North Wales (pronounced
Chlan-veyer
)
noswaith dda
—Good evening. (pronounced
nos-weye-th thah
)
plisman
—policeman (pronounced
pleesman
)
y Parch
—the minister (
y
is pronounced here like the unaccented ending to
butter, parch
pronounced
parh
like Scottish
loch
)
ydych chi’n siarad Cymraeg?
—Do you speak Welsh? (pronounced
idich-een sharad cumr-eye-g?
)
Chapter 1
The girl chewed on her lip as she drove up the pass. She wasn’t a very experienced driver—only a complete idiot or a masochist would own a car in the middle of London or Milan—and the rental car felt enormous on the narrow Welsh mountain roads. All the way up from the coast she was conscious of the rock wall on one side of her, the sheer drop to the valley floor on the other. Once she had met a bus, taking up the whole road as it negotiated a hairpin bend and once a sheep had jumped out in front of her, causing her heart to do its own leap against her chest wall.
She was tense enough without the hazards of an unfamiliar road.
What am I doing here?
It had seemed so simple when she landed at London airport and rented the car. He would be happy to see her and everything would be just fine. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Clouds covered the peaks above, parting every now and then to give tantalizing glimpses of rocky cliffs, down which bright ribbons of water were cascading, and high green pastures dotted with white sheep. Through the open car window she could hear the sound of running water and the distant bleating of sheep. The air smelled green and fresh. It was a completely unfamiliar landscape to someone raised in a genteel London suburb and she looked about her with awe. What could possibly have made him want to come here?
Just when the road looked as if it were about to be swallowed into the clouds, a village came into sight. She slowed the car to a crawl and drove up the only street. It was a simple little place, two rows of whitewashed stone cottages, a couple of shops, a petrol pump, and a friendly looking white pub with a
RED DRAGON
sign swinging in the wind. She stopped the car and opened her map. Surely this couldn’t be the right place. She read the signs on a row of shops.
R. EVANS, DAIRY PRODUCTS, G. EVANS, CIGYDD
, with the word
Butcher
in parentheses in tiny letters, and
T. HARRIS, GENERAL STORE
, and in small letters after that,
SUBPOSTOFFICE, LLANFAIR
.
So this was the place. She knew that Llanfair was a common enough name, the same as St. Mary’s was always cropping up in English villages. She had picked out a dozen or more Llanfair-somethings when she had checked the map of Wales. But only one Llanfair nestled close to the top of the pass beside Mount Snowdon. This had to be it.
The girl shook her head in disbelief. This wasn’t his sort of place at all. She couldn’t imagine him in one of these little cottages. He was definitely a five-star kind of person—Nice, Portofino, Beverly Hills—those were the kind of places she’d expect to find him. Maybe the newspaper had got it wrong. They often did, didn’t they?
She drove on up the street, past the village school, now deserted for the summer holidays, and came to two chapels, facing each other squarely across the narrow road. They were almost mirror images of each other—squat gray stone buildings with the minimum of adornment and high, thin windows. The one on her left had a billboard outside its front door, announcing it to be
CHAPEL BETHEL, REV. PARRY DAVIES
. Its neighbor was
CHAPEL BEULAH, REV. POWELL-JONES
.
They must do a lot of praying here,
the girl thought with amusement. The village scarcely looked big enough to fill one chapel. There were biblical texts pasted on the billboards. Chapel Bethel’s text read: “To him that has, more will be given,” while Chapel Beulah’s proclaimed: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” This made her smile. She realized that smiling was something she hadn’t done a lot of recently. Her face felt stiff and strange as it stretched into this unfamiliar shape.
The chapels were almost the last buildings in the village and she stopped the car again. There was only a plain stone cottage beside Chapel Bethel, but she now saw that a much larger house was set back in spacious grounds behind Chapel Beulah. It was black and white with gables and lots of Victorian gingerbread trim. The girl looked at it doubtfully then her gaze swept on, up the pass to where the road met the clouds. A large ornate building was perched on the hillside, a kind of overgrown Swiss chalet, complete with carved balconies and geraniums in window boxes. It was so completely unexpected, materializing from the clouds on an austere Welsh hillside, that she wondered for a moment if she was seeing things. A Walt Disney fantasyland came to mind. The tastefully lettered wooden sign beside the road said
WELCOME. EVEREST INN. THE MOUNTAINEERS RETREAT. RESTAURANT, HEALTH CLUB. SPA ON PREMISES
.
Its parking lot was full of luxury cars. Now this was more his kind of place, although he wouldn’t have liked the phony chalet touch. But she had definitely understood that he was renting a house, not staying in a hotel. So it had to be the black-and-white Victorian behind the chapel.
She switched off the engine and got out, conscious of the silence. At least it wasn’t exactly silent up there. She could hear the sigh of wind through grasses and the subtle murmur of a brook over stones. Sheep were still calling to each other somewhere up in the clouds, but there were no familiar noises: no rumble of traffic, tooting of horns, or blaring of sirens that punctuated life in the big city. She felt very far away from home.
Taking a deep breath and smoothing down her crumpled black skirt, she opened the gate and walked down the gravel driveway to the front door. It was opened by a tall, gaunt woman in an unbecoming pea green cardigan and tweed skirt. The woman ran her eyes over the European cut of her clothes and the alarming jet black bob that overpowered the pale elfin face and wide blue eyes.
Dyed hair.
The woman made a mental note and sniffed to show her disapproval.
“Yes? Can I help you?” The voice was polished with barely a trace of a Welsh lilt.
The girl stared at her in disbelief. “I’m—uh—not sure,” she stammered. “I’m not sure if I’ve come to the right place.” Her London-suburban flat vowels hadn’t completely been eradicated by an expensive education.
The woman folded her arms across the pea green cardigan. “If you’re looking for bed and breakfast, we do not take in trippers,” she said, “and if you want to see my husband…” she paused as she noticed a reaction in the girl’s face, “I’m afraid he’s very busy at the moment. He’s working on next Sunday’s sermon.”
“Sermon?” The girl realized she was beginning to sound like a parrot.
“He takes his preaching very seriously,” the woman went on. “He gives his sermons in Welsh and English, you know. Quite a feat of oratory, even though that Parry Davies person across the street thinks that he somehow owns the title of bard around here.”
The girl continued to stare, mouth open and uncomprehending. It could have been Martian or Chinese coming out of the woman’s mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to back away. “I must have made a mistake. I was looking for a friend, but he’s obviously not here. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“I could go and see if my husband can spare you a minute,” the woman said, relenting. “He wouldn’t like me to send anyone away who came seeking his help. He takes his Christian duties very seriously.”
“Your husband is the minister?” the girl asked.
“Of course he’s the minister. Who did you think he was? The Reverend Powell-Jones. I am Mrs. Powell-Jones. Maybe I could help you? I am known around here for my tact and counseling skills…”
Without warning the girl started to laugh. “The Reverend Powell-Jones? This is your house? I’m sorry. I really have made a mistake. I have to be going.”
She fled down the laurel-lined front path, anxious to get back to the sanctuary of the car. As the girl put her hand on the gate a young man stepped out from between the bushes and barred her way.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
She tossed her head defiantly. “It’s a free country. I can go where I want.”