Candlenight

Dilwyn Dafis, the garage man. chuckled quietly.

Aled the landlord stepped back to pull the pint. The pump gurgled and spat.

It was the thin man with the sticking-out teeth who finally spoke. He said, 'Well… there's a fine thing.'

What the hell did that mean? For the first time. Giles came close to wishing he were back in London.

Aled Gruffydd topped up Giles's pint, leaned across the bar with it. 'Nobody expects that, man.'

'I'm sorry…?'

'I said nobody expects you to learn Welsh. Right Glyn?'

'Good God, no.' said the thin man.

'No indeed,' said Dilwyn Dafis, shaking his head and his oily cap.

Giles inspected the three faces, found no hint of sarcasm in any of them and was nonplussed. 'That's very generous of you.' he said. 'But I want to learn Welsh. I believe it's the least one can do when one comes to live in a Welsh-speaking community.' How pompous it sounded, how horribly, unforgivably, tight-arsed English.

Aled Gruffydd said, 'Why? What is it you think is going to happen if you don't?'

'Waste of time for you. man.' Dilwyn Dafis said. 'We speak it because we grew up speaking it, the Welsh. No great thing, here. Just the way it is, see.'

'Have a seat.' said Glyn. A faded tweed suit hung limply from his angular frame. 'Tell us about yourself. We won't bite you.'

Giles sat down rather shakily on a wooden bar stool. The whole atmosphere had changed. He'd walked into silence and stares, and now they were making him welcome and telling him there was absolutely no need to learn Welsh — in a village where little else ever seemed to be spoken. He was confused.

'Where is your wife?' Aled Gruffydd said.

'Oh, she's, out. Taking a few pictures.'

'Photos, is it?'

'That's what she does. She's a photographer.'

'Well, well,' said Aled.

Giles had the feeling Gruffydd knew this already. A feeling there was very little he could tell them about himself that they didn't already know. But he explained about his wife's inheritance and they nodded and said 'well, well' and 'good God' a few times as if it was the first they'd heard about it. They were unbelievably affable. And this made it more important for them to know he and Claire were not just going to be holiday-home-owners, that this was now their principal residence and they were going to preserve its character; there'd be no phoney suburban bits and pieces, no patio doors, no plastic-framed double-glazing, no carriage lamps…

'Good house, that is, mind.' thin Glyn said. 'Been in that family for… what is the word in English? Generations.'

'You mean the Rhys family?'

'Generations.' said Glyn. 'Many generations, the Rhyses.'

Bloody hell, he'd never thought of that — that he and Claire were actually maintaining a family chain of ownership going back possibly centuries. They really didn't know anything, did they?

'Gosh,' Giles said. 'I suppose — I mean, is that why Judge Rhys came back? Because somebody left him the house?'

'Well,' said Glyn. 'I suppose that was one of The reasons. From England, he came, as you know, having spent most of his life there.'

This was actually marvellous. This gave them a solid, copper-bottomed basis for residency. This gave them a right to be here.

'What is that other word?' said Glyn. 'Continuity. We believe in that, see, in Y Groesfan. Continuity.'

Giles understood now. When he first came in they weren't quite sure who he was. Now they knew he was the husband of a Rhys. Knew he belonged. He settled back on his wooden stool and began to look around. What a superb old place it was. He remembered Berry Morelli telling him on their way back to London how the buildings in Y Groes had struck him as having grown out of the landscape as part of some natural process. This pub was like that, its oaken interior so crude and yet so perfect. He felt privileged to be here. And proud too, now.

He bought them all drinks.

They told him about the village.

They told him it had about two hundred and fifty people, if you included the outlying farms. It had two shops, the general store and the post office. One garage, one school, one church.

They told him the original name of the village was Y Groesfan — the crossing. But when non-conformism had taken Wales in the nineteenth century a chapel had been built and the name shortened to Y Groes — the cross — because it seemed more holy. When Giles said he hadn't noticed a chapel, Dilwyn Dafis smiled. Glyn, who apparently was something of an historian, said non-conformism had been a passing phase here, although nobody had bothered to change the name back.

Giles wondered briefly why the old name should have referred to a 'crossing place' when the village was in fact a dead-end and apparently always had been. And would, he hoped, be the end of his own search for a spiritual home. He also wondered — very nervously — how these chaps would react to that. He realized there was only one way to find out.

'I suppose.' he said, as steadily as he could manage, 'that you must he pretty sick about all these English people moving in.'

'What English is that?' Aled said. He took a cloth from a shelf below the bar and began to polish glasses.

'Well, you know… I mean, we were in Pontmeurig this morning and at least half the people we met, half the shopkeepers for instance, were incomers. I just hadn't realised it was that bad. I mean, it must irritate you. surely.'

'Ah, well. see. that is Pontmeurig.' said Dilwyn Dafis.

'Pont is different.' said Glyn. 'They are always moaning about the English in Pont. But we don't moan about them here, do we boys? No cause to.'

Aled Gruffydd shook his head. Glyn drained his beer glass and Giles seized the opportunity to buy everyone another drink. He was dying to ask all kinds of questions but settled on just one more as the glasses were passed over and the three Welshmen said 'Cheers' rather than Iechyd Da! out of deference to their English companion. They really were remarkably accommodating. Indeed if everyone was as gently hospitable as these chaps and Mrs. Huws and Mrs. Hywels it was really no wonder the country was being overrun by the English.

But they hadn't been like this in Pontmeurig. Only in Y Groes. A special place.

'So, what.' Giles asked, 'is the actual percentage of incomers in Y Groes? I mean, you know, roughly.'

Dilwyn Dafis looked puzzled. 'How's that, like?'

'What he means.' Aled said, 'is how many English compared to Welsh.'

'In this villager?'

'Right,' said Giles.

'What English?' said Dilwyn.

'You mean—?' The truth hit Giles like a brick. 'You mean that the entire immigrant population of Y Groes is —'

Glyn smiled, his large front teeth standing out like a marble cemetery in the moonlight.

' — us?' said Giles.

'Well, there we are,' said Dilwyn Dafis, raising his glass to Giles and smiling slowly, 'Makes you a bit of a novelty, like, isn't it?'

Chapter XXIII

Claire climbed into the riverside field by a convenient stile to photograph a lone sheep, somebody's initials SE