Candlenight

lifestyle. And now it had reacted perversely to intensive bursts of fresh air, relaxation and healthy eating.

Withdrawal symptoms. A sort of Cold Turkey.

This had become clear over the past few days, after Giles had been ordered to return to London and plunge back into the urban cesspit. His system had reverted to the old routine, the familiar self-destruct mechanism clicking back into place, the body throwing up the usual smokescreen telling him it didn't mind being abused, quite liked it really and look, here's the proof: no headaches while you're down in the Smoke, drinking, slugging it out with the traffic, pressurising politicians who've been barely on nodding terms with the truth for years.

One good thing, though — the Welsh. Every night in the Islington flat, with no distractions — for the first time he was glad to have the kind of London neighbours who wouldn't notice if you were dead until the smell began to offend them — Giles would sit down and spend at least ninety minutes with his Welsh textbook and his cassette tapes.

And, though he said it himself, it was coming on a treat.

'Noswaith dda' he said affably to the young man next to him at the urinal in the Drovers' gents.

Feeling friendly, feeling good about the language again. Glad to be using it.

He'd been left badly shaken by several nights of humiliation in the judge's study, the last one ending with an almost unbearable headache. But now the grammar was making sense again. Bethan was a great girl, but perhaps he was more suited to working on his own than having lessons.

'Mae hi'n bwrw glaw,' he observed to the youth in the adjacent stall, nodding at the rain dripping down the crevices of the bubbled window above their heads.

'Yeah,' said the youth. He smirked, zipped up his fly and turned away.

Incomer, Giles thought disparagingly.

The youth went out, glancing over his shoulder at Giles.

Giles washed his hands and stared at his face in the mirror above the basin. He looked pale but determined.

Already his new life in Y Groes had shown him the things which were really important. Shown him, above all, that London and the paper were no longer for him — unless he could convince them that they needed a full-time staff reporter in Wales. After all, the Telegraph had one now.

Failing that, he and Claire would flog the Islington flat for serious money and then set up some sort of news and features agency in Wales, supplying national papers, radio, television, the international media. He had the contacts. All he had to do now was make sure this election generated enough excitement to convince enough editors that Wales was a country they needed to keep a much closer eye on in the future.

Giles and Claire would be that eye. Claire Rhys. He liked the way she'd changed her name for professional purposes. Added a certain credibility. One in the eye for Elinor too. He only wished he could call himself Giles Rhys.

He decided to go into the public bar for one drink before tackling the Nearly Mountains. Unfair to use the place merely as a urinal.

Guto said sharply. 'Is it that bastard from Cardiff?' He was halfway out of his chair, face darkening.

'That's right,' said Dai Death sarcastically. 'That's just the way to handle it. You get up and clobber him in public. He's probably got a photographer with him. you could hit him too. Would you like me to hold your jacket?'

Idwal Roberts said. 'Sit down, you silly bugger. It's not him, anyway, it's the other fellow, the English one.'

Bethan said. 'Giles Freeman?'

She hadn't seen Giles for nearly a week. If he was back from London, she wanted to talk to him.

About Claire, of course.

Claire was still wandering around with her camera as the days shortened and the hills grew misty. Bethan thought she must have photographed everything worth photographing at least five times. Before she realised that Claire was just drifting about with the camera around her neck — but not taking pictures at all any more.

Then there was no camera, but Claire was still to be seen roaming the village, wandering in the fields, by the river, among the graves in the churchyard.

As if searching for something.

'Is there something you've lost?' Bethan had asked the other day, taking some of the children into the woods to gather autumn leaves for pressing, and finding Claire moving silently among the trees.

'Only my heritage.' Claire had just smiled, wryly but distantly, and moved on. Bethan noticed she wore no make-up; her hair was in disarray and its colour was streaked, dark roots showing. She seemed careless of her clothes too, wearing Giles's waxed jacket, conspicuously too big and gone brittle through need of rewaxing.

'Did you ever find that oak tree?' Bethan had asked her on another occasion.

'Oh that,' said Claire. 'I made a mistake. You were quite right'

And explained no further.

Bethan asked her. 'Does Giles never go with you on your walks?'

'Giles?' As if she had to think for a moment who Giles was. 'Giles is in London.' Her eyes were somewhere else.

'He's having great fun,' she said vaguely.

'She is a very nice girl,' Buddug said surprisingly as they saw Claire one afternoon, flitting like a pale moth past the school gate.

'You've had much to do with her?'

'Oh, yes indeed. She's our nearest neighbour.'

'I suppose she must be.' Bethan had forgotten the judge's cottage was on the edge of the seventy-or-so acres owned by Buddug and her husband, Morgan.

'She's had her eggs from us. And sometimes a chicken.' Buddug killed her own chickens and occasionally pigs.

'I can't say much about him,' Buddug said.

'Giles? I like him.'

'Well, you would, wouldn't you?' Buddug had turned away and scrubbed at the blackboard, smiling to herself.

Something had happened, Bethan thought. In a few short weeks Claire had changed from a smart, attractive, professional person to someone who was either moody or dreamy or preoccupied with things that made no sense. There was no longer that aura of 'away' about her, that breath of urban sophistication which Bethan had so welcomed.

Bethan stared hard at Buddug's back, a great wedge between the desk and the blackboard. Buddug. Mrs. Bronwen Dafis. The Reverend Elias ap Siencyn.

And now Claire.

A chasm was opening between Claire and Giles, with his boyish enthusiasm for all things Welsh and his determination to be a part of The Culture. Bethan wondered if he could see it.

Chapter XXXI

'Hanner peint o gwrw' Giles told the barman, pointing at the appropriate beer- pump and climbing on to a barstool. 'Os gwelwch yn dda.'

He was pleased with his accent, the casual way he'd ordered the drink. Grammar was all well and good but if you wanted to make yourself understood you had to get into the local idiom, had to sound relaxed.

The barman set down the glass of beer and Giles handed over a five pound note. 'Diolch yn fawr,' Running the words together, as you would say thanks-very-much.

Convincing stuff.

The public bar was less than half full. Giles thought of another bar, in Aberystwyth, where everybody had stared at him, amused by his stumbling debut in the Welsh language. Nobody smiled this time. With those few slick