Candlenight

upstairs front window.

Then a solitary sheep, a view of the darkening hills, of the rigidly-upright figure of the rector standing in the grass above the river, of Mair Huws outside her shop, of the church tower braced against the dying light and photographed from a steep angle that made it look as if it was falling towards you.

She felt something at once in the photograph. This woman had plucked ripened images of Y Groes out of the air like apples from a tree, and caught the glow.

'They're wonderful' Bethan said. 'They're like something out of a magazine. No, that's inadequate, that cheapens them.'

'Oh dear.' said Claire. 'I was hoping they'd be like holiday snaps. I can't seem to take snaps anymore.'

She looked so seriously disappointed that Bethan had to laugh, quite liking her now. Out of the window she saw two mothers appear at the gate, and excused herself and rounded up the remaining three children —'Dewch yma, Angharad, wuff wuff'—gently pushing them out of the door into the playground, waving to the mothers.

When she returned, Claire was thumbing rapidly through the photographs, looking puzzled.

'Anything wrong?'

'No. I — a couple seem to be missing, that's all. My own fault. I should have waited to have them done in London. That is—'

She looked embarrassed again, as if expecting Bethan to say. Oh, so our Welsh film processing isn't good enough for you. is it, Mrs. Posh Londoner?

'Well,' said Bethan. 'they are a bit slapdash, some of these quick-processing outfits.'

Claire looked grateful. 'What I've come about — I— somebody in the pub told Giles, my husband, that you were rather brilliant at teaching English children to speak Welsh, and so we wondered—'

Bethan explained that it wasn't a question of being brilliant; English children, the younger the better, picked up Welsh surprisingly quickly. By the age of seven or eight, if they attended a Welsh-medium school, they were often quite fluent. Claire said they had no children yet. but when they did have a baby she would like it to be raised in a bilingual home, and so—'It's funny really, some people in the pub told Giles there was no need to learn Welsh in Y Groes.'

Bethan raised an eyebrow. 'They told him that?'

'I think it was because we seem to be the only English people in the village. I think they were just being kind, probably.'

'Probably,' said Bethan, thinking how odd this was.

'We'd fit in, of course, with your arrangements.' Claire said.

Bethan thought about it.

'I've never done it before, taught adults.'

'Is it so different?'

'I don't know,' Bethan said.

'They say the brain starts to atrophy or something, when you pass thirty. Isn't that what they say?'

'Well,' said Bethan, pouring herself a mug of strong black tea, coming to a decision, 'let's prove them wrong, I could come to your house after school for a short lime, how would that be?'

'That would be super. I mean, Giles will have to go back to London during the week, but I'll be staying here, and could bring him up to date at weekends on everything I've learned.'

Bethan said slowly. 'I'm… often free at the weekends too.' All too free, she thought. 'The thing to do is to work on it every day if you can, even if it's only for twenty minutes. I'm sure we could do that most days. And perhaps at weekends we could have a revision session, with your husband.'

Claire flung out a big smile, and Bethan thought she was going to hug her. 'That's absolutely marvellous. Bethan. I mean, we'll pay whatever you think is—'

'Don't worry about that. I'll enjoy it. I think.'

Bethan had caught a breath of something from this woman, something she realised she missed, a sense of the cosmopolitan, a sense of away.

Bethan closed the school door behind her and looked around her nervously, half expecting to find another child inviting her to inspect a dead body. She shivered, although it was a pleasant evening, still warmish, still no sign of the leaves fraying on the trees. In Pontmeurig many already were brown and shrivelled.

The arrival of Claire Freeman and her husband had, she thought, opened up the place, making a small but meaningful crack in its archaic structure. All villages needed new life, even one as self-contained as Y Groes. Especially one like Y Groes.

Learning the language was good — and something that few of the incomers to Pontmeurig bothered to attempt. But she found herself hoping (Guto would be horrified) that the Freemans wouldn't try too hard to fit in.

As she drove the Peugeot out of the school lane towards the bridge, she saw Claire Freeman standing in the middle of the village street gazing out at the river. Nobody else was on the street. Claire looked abstracted, a wisp of blonde hair fallen forward between her eyes.

Bethan paused for a second before turning the wheel towards the Pontmeurig road, and Claire saw her and began to run towards the car, waving urgently.

She wound down her window.

Claire, flushed and panting, leaning against the car, said, 'Bethan, I think I must be going mad. I can't seem to find my tree.'

'Your tree?'

'It's a huge oak tree. Very old. It's… I'm sure it was in that field. You see, I took some pictures of it, but they weren't there, with the others.'

'Perhaps they didn't come out.'

'My pictures,' said Claire, 'never don't come out — I'm sorry, I didn't mean — but they don't. I've been through the negatives and the tree pictures aren't there either. And now the tree's gone too. I'm sorry, this must sound ever so stupid.'

'Well, perhaps—' Bethan was going to say perhaps somebody chopped it down, but that made no sense either and she wasn't aware of there ever having been a tree down there anyway.

'The tractor!' Claire exclaimed. 'Look, see that yellow tractor… that was there when I took the picture, standing next to the tree. The tree was there!'

'Well, that explains it.' said Bethan. 'Somebody has moved the tractor and confused you. Your tree is probably farther up the bank.'

'No—' Claire's brow was creased and her mouth tight. 'No, I don't think so.'

There is more to this than photos. Bethan thought.

'I'm sorry.' Claire said, pulling herself away from the car 'It's professional pride, I suppose. You always know exactly what you've shot, and there are a few things on that film I don't — Look. I'm delaying you again, you're probably right, the tree's somewhere upstream and it doesn't matter anyway, does it?' Claire tried a weak smile. 'Perhaps my brain really is starting to atrophy,' she said.

Bethan didn't think so.

Chapter XV

Giles was setting up his word processor in his new office, plugging the printer into the monitor and standing back to admire.

It was all just too bloody perfect.

Well, all right, almost too perfect. His one disappointment had been not being able to organise his office in the old man's study. He'd pictured himself in the Gothic chair behind that monster of an oak desk, surrounded by all those heavy books in a language which he couldn't as yet understand — although that was only a matter of time.