Candlenight

answering machines in Welsh-speaking areas of Wales now carried messages in Welsh, almost invariably with a translation; nobody wanted to lose an important caller because he or she, like the majority of Welsh people, spoke only English.

Claire's message was given only in Welsh. Bethan hung up, troubled.

Three times a week now, she went to the judge's house for the Welsh lesson — with Claire alone, of late, because Giles had been in London. One to one. The oil lamp hanging from the beam in the judge's study surrounded by the judge's black books. Sombre yellow light. Deep, deep shadows.

And Claire, face gaunt in the oil-light, hair drawn tightly back, showing the dark roots.

A student so brilliant it was unnerving.

She dialled the number one last time.

' Y Groes dau, tri, tune. Dyma Claire Rhys…'

Not the kind of problem you could explain to an answering machine. She would get up very early and go to the judge's house.

Bethan put the phone down.

The rain and wind attacked her window.

Chapter XXXIV

Like some spurned, embittered lover, the wind-driven rain beat on Bethan's bedroom window all night. She got little sleep; every half-dream seemed to feature Giles's wet and bloodied image. Its screams were frenzied but inaudible, as if it were separated from her by thick glass — a windscreen or a television screen.

Before six o'clock, Bethan was up, making strong, black tea, peering out of the window and half expecting to find Pontmeurig's main street under two feet of water. Ironically the rain, having deprived her of sleep, had now stopped, there were no signs of flooding in the street, although the river must surely be dangerously high.

It looked cold too. Bethan put on her white raincoat, with long red scarf and a pink woolly hat which she pulled down over her ears as she stepped out into the street.

By six-thirty she was collecting the Peugeot from the car park under the castle's broken tower. She looked down, with some trepidation, into the ditch below the outer ramparts, as she might see a rigid, clawing hand emerging from the watery mud in which its owner had drowned. On the eve of the selection meeting, it would be just Guto's luck.

Before leaving she had telephoned the hospital, where the sister in charge reported that Giles had had quite a painful and restless night.

But yet, she thought, unlocking the car door, if Giles were writing a report of last night's incident he would deal seriously and sympathetically with the dilemma of the non-Welsh-speaking Welshman.

That English sense of fair play.

The town was quiet, cowed — as though people were deliberately lying low, apprehensive about getting up to find their gardens underwater or their chimney pots in pieces on the lawn. Driving over the Meurig Bridge in the steely-grey dawn, Bethan saw that it had indeed been a close thing. Trees sprouted from the water, where the river had claimed its first meadow.

Allowing for weather problems, storm debris on the road, it would take about twenty minutes to get to Y Groes. Bethan knew Claire rose early and guessed she might waiting for the light to see what pictures she could obtain storm damage. If she was still actually taking pictures. She'll probably want to come back with me to the hospital, Bethan thought. Another lost opportunity to talk to Giles.

Part of Bethan said it was not her problem, she should keep out. Another part said Giles was a decent man who needed saving from himself. Too many English people had given up their jobs and come to Wales with new-life dream, many of them to start smallholdings on poor-quality land from which they imagined they could he self- sufficient. She saw a parallel here with Giles, who seemed about abandon a highly paid post to spend his life ploughing the infertile place for news, in the naive belief that the public over the border cared as much about Wales as he did.

In Bethan's experience, the only immigrants who really could be said to have fitted in were those who came to take up existing, steady jobs. Like Robin, her husband, who had worked with the British Geological Survey team near Aberystwyth.

Bethan's eyes filled up.

Stop it! Her hands tightened on the wheel. The Nearly Mountains rose up before her, tented by cloud.

Bethan had experimented with a number of different methods of tackling these sudden rushes of grief. Anger, the least satisfactory, had usually proved, all the same, to be the most effective.

So she thought about Buddug.

Yesterday Huw Morus, aged seven, had wet himself in class. Bethan had led him into the teachers' toilet and washroom to get cleaned up.

Huw had been very distressed. Bethan had taken him back into her office, sat him on a chair by the electric fire and asked him if he was feeling unwell. Huw had started crying and said he wanted to go. Again.

Bethan had sent him back to the teachers' toilet and then said, 'OK, we'll take you home.'

'I am sure he'll be happy now,' Buddug commented. 'Now he's got what he wanted.'

'It seems likely to me that he has some kind of bladder infection.' Bethan said.

Buddug had sniffed dismissively. 'Lazy. He is lazy.'

Huw lived in the village where his father was a mechanic, the sole employee at Dilwyn Dafis's garage.

'Did you ask Mrs. Morgan if you could go to the toilet?' Bethan asked, as the boy trotted beside her past the Tafarn and the post office to a timber-framed terrace of cottages at the end of the street.

It emerged that Huw had asked Mrs. Morgan at about half past nine by the classroom clock and she had allowed him to go. Then he'd asked her again at about a quarter past ten and she'd told him he could wait until break. He'd barely made it in time.

At about twenty minutes past eleven Huw had again raised his hand and sought permission to go to the lavatory and Mrs. Morgan had shaken her head and told him he must not try it on with her again.

Ten minutes later Huw, by now frozen to the chair with his legs lightly crossed, had appealed again to the teacher. This time Mrs. Morgan had walked over and bent down and whispered in his ear.

Bethan questioned the seven-year-old boy in some detail, because she wanted to be sure about this.

It seemed Buddug had reminded Huw that the end of the yard, where the children's toilets were, was very close to the woods.

Which, as everyone knew, were guarded by the Gorsedd Ddu.

The dark bards.

And the Gorsedd Ddu would view Huw's repeated appearances as a mockery.

If they found him there again they might catch him and take him with them into the woods, and there would be no relief to be found there. Not for a stupid little boy who tried to deceive his teacher.

Bethan, coming down now out of the Nearly Mountains swung the wheel of the Peugeot to avoid a grey squirrel in the road. The squirrel shot into the forestry.

In Bethan's experience, small children were often terrified by their first sight of a gorsedd of bards, those poets and writers who had been honoured at eisteddfodau and walked in solemn procession wearing their long ceremonial robes and druidic headdresses. These archetypal figures, in the garb of ancient pagan priests, could seem quite awesome; sinister to little kids until they found out that under those white robes you would usually find genial grandfathers; figures who would occasionally dispense sweets like Sion Corn. the Welsh Father Christmas.

The Gorsedd Ddu, the black bards — there was a difference here. They were meant to be terrifying.

The lower slopes of the Nearly Mountains were sparsely wooded and Bethan had to slow down to find a path between branches torn off the trees in the night. She would not have been surprised to find the road blocked by an