Candlenight

gaining on him for years. The other parties haven't much support, so it's a two-horse race. Going to be a cracker. Gives me a chance to go in there as a reporter, meet the local people, discover all the key local issues. So when we move we won't be going in cold.'

Berry nodded. Maybe Giles wouldn't get along with the local people, would discover he was out of sympathy with the local issues. Well, maybe…

'What about you. Berry? Has it got Newsnet potential? I'll tell you — mass-immigration by English people is sure to be a major issue. And the one that could give the seat to Plaid. Absolutely fascinating.'

'What are we looking at here Giles? Beginnings of an Ulster situation?'

'Oh, good God no. They're just after devolution to begin with, power to run their own affairs. Then to become a free state within Europe. Not a huge step for Wales — or Scotland, for that matter. And in spite of the odd bits of terrorism, it's not a nation inflamed by anti-English passions, whatever Old — whatever people say.'

'Yeah,' Berry said non-commitally. Most Americans didn't even realise Wales was a separate country. If they mentioned it at all they talked about 'Wales, England.' like it was some district.

'We were going to drive out there this weekend,' Giles was saying. 'Make a few political contacts and have a little drool over our cottage at the same time. Won't be ours for a couple of months yet — legal red-tape — but it's a wonderful feeling, just standing in the lane gazing at it through the trees, making plans.'

Berry noticed the grey circles under Giles's eyes had shrunk and his freckles were aglow.

Look, you put the arm on young Giles.

'Only we can't go because Claire's saddled with this job for the Observer in East Anglia—'

'Too bad.' Berry said.

'Unless… Hey look. Berry, what are you doing next weekend?'

Playing with Miranda. 'Nothing fixed,' Berry said.

'Feel like taking a drive out there?'

'To Wales?' She'll kill me, he thought.

'You could get it on exes, surely? Bit of research?'

'Well, I—'

'And you could come and see our cottage, see Y Groes — and then you'd realise why we're so excited about it.

Persuade him to get the bloody place sold.

'Come on. Berry, WW be fun.'

Not meant to be there, the English.

'What do you say?'

Stop him. I mean it.

'Yeah, OK,' Berry said. 'Why not?'

Chapter XII

WALES

'Miss Sion!'

Bethan turned at the school door, the key in her hand.

'You decided you'd better come back then, did you Sali?'

She was small for her age, Sali Dafis, and looked more fragile than other members of her family. Her father, Dilwyn, and her nain had coal-black hair, but Sali's was wispy brown. A legacy from her mother, the secretary from Essex whom Dilwyn had met on holiday at Butlins, Pwllheli.

'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.'