Candlenight

Slit-mouth made a narrow smile. 'He thinks you're stupid, Gary.'

Getting into the comedy routine. But Giles had had enough. You really did find them everywhere, didn't you, always looking for somebody whose night they could spoil. A few casual remarks in the toilet and he'd set himself up as tonight's target. Well that was it, he wasn't taking any more.

'Look,' he said firmly. 'I just came in here for a drink. I've moved into the area. I'm trying to fit in. I didn't mean to cause any offence, all right? What else can I say?'

He felt his voice quiver. Bastards.

They were both studying him now with their stone-hard, hostile eyes.

'Got a house, have you? How much you pay for that?'

'Oh. for Christ's sake, this is getting awfully tedious.'

'Oh dear,' Slit-mouth said, mimicking Giles's accent. Awfully tedious. Oh, my —'

Crater-face said to Giles, 'See, I've got this mate lookin' for a house. Gettin' married, he is. And you know what… you won't believe this, but this boy, my mate, he's been lookin' all over town for fuckin' weeks and he can't find one anywhere. Not as he can afford. You know why…?'

Leaning forward now, beer-breath sour in Giles's face 'Know why, English?'

Oh yes. Giles knew why all right. 'Now look, if you really want to talk about this—'

'Cause they've all been bought by your kind, is why, you bastard.'

Giles got an explicit close-up of the angry, pitied skin and the eyes, wells of malice.

'Kid on the way, see.'

Giles fell bits of beery spit spatter his face.

'Goin' to be really in the shit, he is, can't get a fuckin' house for his woman.'

Edging his stool closer to Giles, he whispered. 'I hate cunts like you, think you can buy in wherever you like. Come on, English, finish your drink.'

Giles put one foot on the floor. Get out. Get out fast.

'But you think you're all right isn't it?' Lower lip out and curling. 'You think you're laughing, cause—' Eyes glittered and the hand shot forward as if reaching for cigarettes or something.

' — cause you're learnin—'

Then pulled casually back, toppling Giles's beer glass still half full, off the bar and into his lap.

' — Welsh.'

'You bast—!'

Leaping up in outrage, beer soaking invisibly into his dark suit, Giles was drowned out by Crater-face crying,

'Aaaaw!'

And leaping from his stool too, knocking it over. Crash of the stool, splintering of glass on the linoleum.

'Aaaaw, I'm sorry! My fault entirely, clumsy bugger I am. See, go in the lav, quick, sponge it off before it stains. I'll get you another — I'm sorry, pal, I really am!'

Everybody in the bar looking up now, vacant grins from around the dartboard. Obvious to Giles that nobody realised they were setting him up.

'Excuse me,' he said stiffly and made for the door that said bilingually TOILETS/TOILED.

' — accident,' He heard behind him. 'No sense of humour, the English.

Stumbled into the passage, but instead of going to the gents he dashed in the opposite direction. A door before him, ajar, LOUNGE on frosted glass, group of people huddled over a table. Giles saw them look up as if disturbed in some conspiracy — more hostility, Christ. Turned quickly away and saw, to his overwhelming relief that the passage was empty all the way to the front door. Going to have to get out of here quick before those two went into the gents and found he wasn't there. Giles glanced apprehensively behind, but they hadn't emerged.

Years since he'd been in such a panic. Memory-flash: hiding from older kids in a cloakroom at school. The famous wheedling lie: Come out, Freeman, we're not going to hurt you…

Giles charged along the corridor, not caring how much noise he made, knocking over an umbrella stand. He looked behind him one more time — thought he saw a pitted face — and then, with his right arm outstretched like a lance, he sent the swing door flying open and lurched into the street, into the hard, stinging rain, slanting golden needles in the streetlights.

He stood in the cold rain, cold beer in his crotch, telling himself, you're never — breathing hard— never going to get in that kind of situation again.

And thinking of the ancient wooden warmth of Tafarn y Groes, where he was known and welcomed, he turned and ran through the rain to his car, his shiny new Subaru four-wheel-drive, the thinking driver's answer to the Nearly Mountains on a cold, wet night.

They were waiting for him in the shiny wet car park, rainwater streaming down their ghastly, grinning faces.

'What I like… out this pub…' — words fractured by the wind—'… two doors.'

Lower lip jutting like a waterspout.

Gargoyle.

Giles mentally measured the distance to the car. Fifteen yards. Might as well have been a mile. Not a hope of making it.

Through the blinding downpour, he sized up the opposition. They were both shorter than he was, but the crater-faced one had a rugby player's physique, wide chest, arms like double-barrelled sawn-off shotguns.

'Look, lads. ' he said weakly, accepting beyond doubt that he was in deep trouble here. What could one say to people like this?

Rain coming down like nails. Giles was suddenly terribly frightened. And heartsick to think this should happen to him in the land he'd chosen for his own, for his unborn children.

He wanted to weep.

The dark one, Slit-mouth, hard water plastering down his sparse black hair, pouring like furious tears down his concrete face, said, 'You're dead, you are, fuckin' Saxon git.'

Giles folded in two as a big shoe went into his stomach and his hair was torn back and something that could only have been a fist but felt like a steel spike was driven into his left eye.

Chapter XXXII

In Y Groes, around midnight, the air was still.

All that night there would be violent rain in Pontmeurig. Over the Nearly Mountains there was sleet. The River Meurig was savagely swollen.

Y Groes, around midnight, was another world.

True, it had been stormy and the barometers still registered minimal pressure. But now the rain had stopped and the wind had died. The clouds slid back theatrically and there was a full moon over the church. Wherever you stood in Y Groes, the moon always seemed to be over the church, like a white candle flame.

Just before midnight, Claire came down the ribbon of lane from the church among a group of people. They included the rector, the Reverend Elias Ap Siencyn, Glyn Harri,

the amateur historian, Mrs. Bronwen Dafis, mother of Dilwyn and grandmother of Sali. And the Morgans— Buddug Morgan and big Morgan Morgan.

They walked down towards the river and Claire, seeing the moon on the thrashing water, became excited.

The river had been rising all day and something in Claire had been rising with it. She felt drawn to the water, but a gentle hand held her back.

'Dim nawr.'

Not now.

Mrs. Bronwen Dafis explained that if she went down now she might not get back. It was too dangerous. Too dark.