Candlenight

pan from downstairs. 'Mam, no breakfast for me. I've got to go out right away. OK?'

Bethan. He had to see her before she left for school or he'd spend the day in a state of advanced paranoia. Being a widow seemed to have endowed Bethan with a certain aura of wisdom.

He found her making her way across the car park below the castle ruins. She was carrying her briefcase and a pile of exercise books to the little green Peugeot.

'What should I do then, Bethan?' Guto demanded without preamble.

'Now,' said Bethan thoughtfully, leaning into the car. 'Do you think I should put all these hooks into the boot or will they stay on the back seat without falling over?'

'Do I phone anybody or do I wait for them to contact me?' said Guto in agony. 'Don't want them to think I'm pushing, see.'

'I think what I shall do,' said Bethan. 'is put them on the back seat and prop them up behind the briefcase.'

'I've got to be well placed for it. I mean. I'm pretty well known locally.'

Bethan straightened up. She was wearing a black cardigan over a white cotton dress, and big gold earrings. Guto felt a pang of something not connected with politics.

'Well Guto.' she said. 'There you have identified the problem. You are exceedingly well known locally.'

They stared at each other across the roof of the little car.

'What are you getting at?'

'Well, who in this town has not heard you ranting on at length about the English and what we should do to keep them out? Ah, they say to strangers, you know who that is don't you? That is Guto Evans the famous extremist.'

'Well, good God, woman, they all agree with me.'

'Of course they don't, and neither does the party. Guto, the one thing you must never suggest these days is that Welsh Nationalist means anti-English.'

'I know that, but…'

'And a by-election! In-depth scrutiny by the media of all the candidates, especially ours. Muck-raking. Well, think about it — can Plaid credibly be represented by a man who once had a homing device attached to the underside of his van so the police could keep track of his movements?'

'Oh, now, that was a mistake. They thought I was—'

'But it will come out. So will the pub brawl—'

'I was never charged, for God's sake—'

'Only because all your friends lied through their teeth. Now Guto. I'm not saying that, in one respect, a man of your talents would not be the best hope in a by-election. But you have a lot of work to do. Have to change your image, Guto. People must get used to seeing you around in a smart suit and a tie. And er—' Bethan smothered a giggle ' — kissing babies.'

'Aaaargh.' growled Guto in disgust.

'English babies too.' Bethan slid into her car.

Guto watched her drive away, dragging a cloud of early-morning exhaust across the Pontmeurig bypass and on to the mountain road to Y Groes. Though still warm, it was the first grey morning in three weeks. There was rain in the air and mist on the hills.

'Damn it. Bethan.' Guto mumbled wistfully, shambling back into the town, past the castle destroyed by his hero, Owain Glyndwr. 'If I could have you, they could stuff the bloody nomination.'

Impossibly, as Bethan drove out of the forestry, the mist appeared to evaporate and the church tower of Y Groes shimmered in a shaft of gold. It's a blue hole, this place. Bethan thought, but she took no great pleasure in the thought these days.

The school was on the other side of the river in a little lane of its own. screened from the village by a row of elms which had somehow survived successive epidemics of Dutch Elm Disease when nearly all the others for miles around had succumbed.

Bethan liked to get to school at least ten minutes before the first of the children, but Guto had delayed her and there was a small group of them around the wooden gate, chattering in Welsh. They stopped when they saw Bethan and chorused dutifully, 'Bore da, Mrs. McQueen.'

'Bore da, blant,' said Bethan, shouldering the gate open, arms full of briefcase and books. The children followed her in, all good Welsh-speaking children from Welsh-speaking families, not a single English cuckoo. Which disappointed Bethan in a way, because she used to enjoy the challenge of taking a handful of children from London or Birmingham at the age of five and then sending them on to the secondary school completely fluent in Welsh, even starting to think in Welsh.

The school had been lucky to survive so long with only twenty-four pupils. Twice the education authority had attempted to close it down and transfer the children to Pontmeurig. But that would have meant an eight-mile journey for them along a mountain road that was often impassable in winter, and the local councillors had won the day.

Bethan waded into the school through a puddle of children, the smallest ones pulling at her skirt to attract her attention. She never discouraged them. The school had a warm family atmosphere.

'Bore da, Mrs. Morgan.' the children sang, as Buddug entered, the deputy head teacher or Bethan's entire staff, depending on how you saw it. Buddug, a big woman in her middle fifties, a farmer's wife with red cheeks full of broken veins, like a map of the London Underground, had taught at Y Groes for over thirty years and was regarded as the head of the school by everyone except the county education officials who'd appointed Bethan.

'Eisteddwch!' Buddug commanded, and the children squeezed into their seats and snatched a final few seconds of chatter as Buddug strode across to the piano for the morning hymn which was only changed once a week and was limited to the three tunes Buddug could play, except at Christmas when carols were sung unaccompanied.

'Buddug,' said Bethan in her ear, 'can you spare me a couple of minutes during playtime? Something is bothering me.'

Buddug beamed and nodded and crashed her stiffened fingers down on the keyboard like a butcher cleaving a side of beef.

'It's this,' said Bethan determinedly, and opened the child's exercise book to reveal the drawing of the corpse and the corpse candle over the grave.

'Yes, isn't it good?' said Buddug. She turned over the exercise book to read the name on the front. 'Sali Dafis. Her writing has improved enormously over the past few weeks, and look at the detail in those drawings!'

'I'm not objecting to the quality of it.' said Bethan. 'It's more the content. I asked them to pretend they were working for the papur bro and to write about something which had happened in the village.'

'Excellent,' said Buddug. 'And were any of the others as good as this one?' She stared insolently at Bethan out of dark brown eyes.

'Oh, Buddug, what are you trying to do to me?'

'I don't understand. What are you objecting to? What sort of ideas have you brought back from the city? Would you rather the children wrote about one-parent families and lesbians?' Buddug laughed shrilly.

Bethan snatched back the book and turned away, blinking back angry tears. Seeing, out of the window, the children in the playground, seeing a certain corruption in their eyes and their milk-teeth smiles.

'I accept,' she said carefully, still looking out of the window, her back to Buddug. 'that a child has to learn about death. I don't believe that being taken to view a neighbour in her coffin and being informed that her dying was foretold by the corpse candle is a particularly healthy way of going about it.'

She gathered her resolve and whirled back at Buddug, who was wearing an expression of mild incomprehension now, like a cow over a gate.

'I don't believe.' Bethan said furiously, 'that little children should see the woods not as the home of squirrels and somewhere to collect acorns but as the place where the Gorsedd Ddu hold their rituals. I don't believe that when they hear the thunder they should think it's the sound of Owain Glyndwr rolling