Giles went out into the hall, trying to remember where he'd seen a shop specialising in woodstoves.
'Was it Aberystwyth?' he said into the slim, leather-covered cassette machine. 'Check in Yellow Pages.'
The hall, too, was basically all right. Bit dark, and you had to walk permanently stooped or risk collecting a pair of black eyes from the low-slung beams.
'Hall,' he said. 'Perhaps some diffused lighting under the beams.'
He came back through the living room to the kitchen. This, of course, would need the mast attention. In Giles's view only the solid-fuel Aga-type stove was worth keeping. It hummed and belched a bit, but he liked that. Also, it took both coal and wood.
'OK.' Giles said into the recorder. 'New sink, for starters. Fitted units, maybe the wall between the kitchen and the pantry knocked out. Discuss with Claire… if she can spare the time.'
Right. OK…
The study.
'Now. we shall have to be a bit careful here.' Giles told the machine.
After all, one wrong decision and they could easily ruin what was undoubtedly the most interesting room in the house. Again, he found himself groping for the light switch before remembering.
'Unbelievable,' he said. 'How the hell did the old boy manage without any power in here?'
Wrong there, Giles, he thought. There's certainly power in here. Shelves full of it. But how did he read without a light?
He almost bumped his head on the answer, a big oil lamp of tarnished brass Claire had found in the pantry. It was now hanging from the central beam — she must have done that this morning. He tapped the lamp and gave it a swing, trying to find out if there was oil in it. It didn't sound as if there was. The lamp just rattled. It needed polishing up, too.
'OK, memo: buy paraffin. Also chase up that electrician.'
It was darker in here than anywhere else in the house, and yet the room was facing west. Must be all the books, no light reflected from the walls. He wondered if the books were valuable. He wondered how he was going to make space in here for his own books when he brought them up from London. OK, they'd look a bit odd, glossy paperbacks among the stark black spines of Judge Rhys's library. But if it eventually was going to be his office, the judge would just have to move over a bit.
It was chilly in here too. Giles wondered if they could run a radiator from the kitchen stove; it wouldn't be far to bring a pipe. First things first though: let there be some bloody light.
'Suggestion,' he said to the tape. 'What about removing some of the shelving in the middle of the two side walls and installing some wall-lights? Have to be tasteful ones of course. Convert a couple of antique oil lamps or something.'
He glanced up at the framed eisteddfod photograph, full of dignified, white-clad bards and shivered pleasurably, remembering how this room seemed to have spooked Berry Morelli. Great. That picture was definitely going to stay. He wondered which of the bards, if any, was his grandfather-in-law.
The picture seemed dusty and unclear in the dim light and he look a tissue from a hip pocket of his jeans and rubbed at the pale faces of the bards, thinking perhaps he might catch an image of Claire in one of them. Peering at the picture, he felt a dull throb behind his eyes. Bloody headache again. The strain of trying to make out details in semi-darkness.
He backed off. rubbing at his eyes. The room was all shadows now and the only light seemed to be coming out of the picture, out of the white robes of the bards, who appeared to be walking slowly towards him in solemn procession, as if they were about to drift out of the picture and into the room to stand around Giles like a chalk circle and then to melt into the blotchy air.
Back in the picture, meanwhile, the bards had turned black.
'Aspirin,' Giles mumbled. He left the study and closed the door behind him and gave it a push to make sure it really was shut.
Where was she?
Giles looked out of the window and it was utterly black, he couldn't even see the lights of the village. How could she take pictures in this? He was pretty sure she hadn't taken a flash unit with her. He looked at his watch and saw it was nearly eight o'clock — she'd been back by seven last night.
He felt a pang of anxiety, unable to shake the ludicrous image of Claire being absorbed by the trees or the village or the night or some numinous combination of all three. And then thought: of course, somebody must have asked her in for a cup of tea, that's what's happened. A bit bloody silly worrying about her being out after dark in Y Groes when she'd survived the streets of Belfast and photographed call-girls on the corners and junkies in the darkened doorways of the nastier crevices of London.
All the same he went out to the porch to wait for her and found the night wasn't as dark as it had seemed from inside.
There was a moon, three parts full, and the tallest village roofs were silvered between the two big sycamores. Giles moved out onto the dampening lawn and the church tower slid into view, the lip of its spire appearing to spear the moon, so that it looked like a big black candle with a small white flame.
Giles's heart thumped as a shadow detached itself from the base of the tower and came towards him. as if a piece of the stonework had come alive. But it turned out to be Claire herself, camera hanging limply from the strap curled around a wrist.
'Bloody hell.' Giles said. 'I didn't know you were going to be so long. I mean, all right, muggings are decidedly uncommon in this area, but all the same—'
'Darling.' Claire said briskly. 'Go back inside, will you, and put all the lights on for me. All the lights.'
'People will think we're extravagant.' Giles protested— half-heartedly, though, because he was so pleased to have her back. 'I mean, not a good image to have around here.'
'Oh. Giles—'
'All right, all right—' Giles switched on everything, even the light on the little landing upstairs, thinking: we'll change some of these old parchment shades when we get time, they're more than a touch dreary. All the upstairs windows were open and he could hear Claire darting about, aperture wide open, shutter speed down. Thock… thock… thock. A great tenderness overcame him, and when she came in he kissed her under the oak beams of the living room, next to the inglenook where they'd have log fires all through the winter. His headache had receded and with his arms around Claire's slim functional body he felt much better.
'Sweetheart, where precisely have you been? Your hair feels all tangled.'
Claire laughed and Giles heard a new boldness in that laugh, all the London tightness gone. Earthy too.
He joined in the laughter.
'You're really happy, aren't you?' he said.
Claire pulled away from him and went to stand by the window.
'Yes,' she said. 'I'm very happy.'
Giles said. 'Did you find your tree?'
'Yes.' said Claire. 'I found my tree.'
And then, without a word, switching lights off on the way, she led him up to bed… where they made love for the first time since their arrival, the first time in the new bed. And it was really not how Giles had imagined it would be in this pastoral setting. Nothing languid and dreamy about it at all; it was really pretty ferocious stuff, the old fingernails-down-the-back routine, quiet Claire on the initiative, hungry. Nothing distant now.
Giles told himself it had been very exciting.
Chapter XXVII
He was exhausted and slept like the dead and woke late next morning. Woke with another headache and this one was a bastard. Eyes tightly shut, he ground his head into the pillow. It was as if somebody were slicing his skull down the middle with a chainsaw.
'Change of air,' Claire diagnosed. 'You're just not used to it yet.'
She swung both legs simultaneously out of bed and walked naked to the door.
