Candlenight

'Yeah, sure, air like bloody wine,' Giles groaned into the pillow. 'Air that gives you a bastard hangover.'

A few minutes later, he was slowly pulling his trousers on, the sight of the pink vinyl headboard making him feel queasy, when Claire returned from her bath, still naked, tiny drops of water falling from her hair onto her narrow shoulders. She seemed oblivious of her nakedness which for Claire, was unusual: to be nude, in daylight, when Giles was obviously feeling too lousy to be turned on.

'I may stop rinsing my hair,' said Claire, looking out of the window. 'What do you think?'

'I think I need a cup of strong tea,' Giles said.

'There's no point in being artificially anything around here.' Claire said.

Giles looked up, a pinball of agony whizzing from ear to ear with the movement.

'I like you blonde,' he said. 'I always have.'

Claire just went on gazing out of the window, across the village to the Nearly Mountains and the neutral sky.

In a bid to lose his headache, Giles took a couple of paracetamol tablets and went for a walk down to the village where autumn, it seemed, had yet to begin — even though tonight would see the end of British Summertime.

'Bore da,' he said, as cheerily as he could manage, to Glyn, the angular historian chap, doing his Saturday shopping with a basket over his arm.

'Good morning. Mr. Freeman,' said Glyn with a flash of his tombstone teeth.

'Wonderful weather.' Giles said, not failing to notice that Glyn, like everyone else he spoke to in the village, had addressed him in English. He'd never learn Welsh if people kept doing that.

'Well, yes.' said Glyn, as if warm weather in October was taken for granted here. Perhaps it was, thought Giles.

He walked across the river bridge, past the entrance to the school lane and on towards a place he'd never been before: the great wood which began on the edge of the village. Sooner than he expected he found himself in what seemed like an enormous wooden nave. He was reminded of the ruins of some old abbey. It was almost all oak trees, freely spaced as if in parkland. Oak trees bulging with health, with the space to spread out their muscular limbs, no decaying branches, no weaklings. Some of the oaks were clearly of immense age and had a massive, magisterial presence.

Giles wondered if this was what Claire had meant when she talked of 'my tree.' Had she come up here alone at dusk?

It occurred to him that he was standing inside a huge ancient monument. Most of these trees were centuries old, some perhaps older than the castles the English had built to subdue the people of Wales. And this was what most of the Welsh forests used to be like, from pre-medieval days to the early part of the twentieth century, until the now-ubiquitous conifers had been introduced — quick to grow, quick to harvest, uniform sizes. Drab and characterless, but easy money for comparatively little work.

This wood was awesomely beautiful. This was how it should be. Giles felt a sense of sublime discovery and an aching pride. He fell he'd penetrated at last to the ancient heart of Y Groes. Surely this was where it had all begun— the source of the timber-framing of the cottages, all those gigantic beams, the woody spirit of the place.

Giles felt, obscurely, that this place could take away his headache.

He wandered deeper among the trees, which were still carrying the weighty riches of late summer. The woods seemed to go on and on, and he realised it must form a great semi-circle around the village.

He came upon two great stumps, where trees had been felled. Between them, a young tree surged out of the black soil. The wood, obviously, was still being managed, still being worked as woodland had been in the old days Whereas, elsewhere in Wales, it sometimes seemed as if all that remained of the great oak woods were knotted arthritic copses used by farmers merely as shelter for their sheep devoid of new growth because the sheep ate the tiny saplings as soon as they showed.

No sheep in here. No people either, except for Giles.

He'd heard talk of foresters in Y Groes and assumed they were blokes who worked for the Forestry Commission in the giant conifer plantation along the Aberystwyth road.

Obviously they were in charge of maintaining this huge oak wood, selecting trees for unobtrusive felling, planting new ones so the appearance of the place would never change from century to century. He also knew there was a carpenter — a Mr. Vaughan — or Fon. as it was spelled in Welsh — who made traditional oak furniture. And Aled in the Tafarn had mentioned that a new house was to be built near the river for Morgan's eldest son and had laughed when Giles expressed the hope that it would not look out of place. 'When it is built,' Glyn had said, 'you will think it has always been there.'

God, Giles thought, the village is still growing out of this woodland just as it always has. An organic process. Morelli had been right when he said it was like the place had just grown up out of the ground.

Giles raised up his arms as if to absorb the soaring energy of the wood but felt only insignificant among the arboreal giants and decided to turn back. It was too much to take in all at once. Especially when he wasn't feeling awfully well, nerves in his head still jerking, like wires pulled this way and that by a powerful magnet.

He almost got lost on the way back, taking a path he was convinced was the right one until it led him to a pair of blackened gateposts where the oaks formed a sort of tunnel.

At the end was something big, like a huge crouching animal. A house. Somebody lived in the middle of the wood.

Well, what was so odd about that? Lots of people lived in woods.

Yes, but this wood was special. The village was down below; this was where the trees lived.

There was no gate but on the left-hand post it said, carved out of the wood.

Rheithordy.

Above the word, which Giles had never seen before, a rough cross had been hewn.

'Helo.'

Giles stopped, startled, as a small dark figure darted out from behind the gatepost.

'Hello.' Giles said. 'Who's that?'

It was a little girl — maybe eight or nine — and she was dressed mainly in black — black skirt, black jumper, black shoes. Even so, she seemed to fit into the backcloth, like some woodland sprite. 'Pwy y chi?' she demanded.

'Sorry,' said Giles. ''Fraid I don't speak Welsh. Yet.'

The child had mousy hair and a pale, solemn face. 'Are you English?'

Giles nodded, smiling ruefully. ''Fraid so.'

The child looked up at Giles out of large brown eyes. She said seriously, 'Have you come to hang yourself?'

'What?' Giles's eyes widened in amusement. 'Have I come to—?'

But she only turned away and ran back behind the gatepost.

Giles shook his head — which hurt — and strolled on. Soon the path widened and sloped down to the village. It was easy when you knew your way.

There was only one paracetamol left in the packet, but he took it anyway and sat down at the fat-legged dining table. They were going this morning to Pontmeurig, where Giles was to meet the chairman of The local Conservative Party to get a bit of background for a feature he was planning in the run-up to The Glanmeurig by- election. It wouldn't be long now before a date was set.

'And while we're in Pont.' he shouted to Claire, who was in the bedroom, changing out of her old, stained jeans into something more respectable, 'there're a few things we could be on the lookout for, if you're agreeable. I had a walk around the place last night, making a few notes on tape.'

'Super.' Claire said, appearing at the living room door, still wriggling into clean, white denims. 'Da iawn. How's your head?'

'Could be worse. Don't you want to hear the list?'

'Oh, I hate it when you put ideas on tape and we have to unscramble all this distorted cackle. Why can't you write it out?'

'All right. I mean o'r… o'r…'

'O'r gorau.' Claire said, zipping up her trousers as she went through lo the