Candlenight

'If I wanted to settle down here?'

' — to settle down, as you say. To become part of our community. It is… well, as you know, it is a rare and beautiful place.'

'Yes.'

'But it makes… demands, see.'

'Does it make demands on you. Aled?' There was rarely much colour in his face. He was not an outdoor man, like Morgan, or even Dilwyn Dafis. All the same, he did not look well. Bethan had not seen him face to face for several weeks, and she felt a tiredness coming from him.

'Oh yes,' he said. 'It has made demands on me, Bethan. Would you excuse me. I have the bar to clean.' He stood up.

'Nice to see you, as always.'

Face it. Bethan told herself. No one here is going to help you.

Suddenly she wanted to dash back to the Peugeot, shut herself in, wind up all the windows, lock the door, put the radio on — loud, loud rock music — and race back over the Nearly Mountains to sanctuary and sanity.

I could do that, she thought hysterically. I could have a nervous breakdown. God knows, I'm halfway there. I could go to the doctor, get signed off. Nobody would be surprised. The Widow McQueen. Came back too soon.

Too soon.

Obviously she had come back too soon this morning. What was going on? What had she disturbed?

Did she really want to know?

Had to pull herself together. Her main task was to get clean clothing for Giles. If she couldn't get into the house, it would have to be Guto — he must have something that would not look entirely ludicrous on a man six inches taller and at least two stones lighter. Or she could even go to Probert's and buy some things.

She set off purposefully across the bridge lo her car.

But made the mistake of looking over the stone parapet.

To where, fifty yards downstream, a woman had her head in the water.

Bethan looked around for help but there was nobody on the main street at this hour. She ran across the bridge, crying out

'Aled! Aled!' at the closed door of the Tafarn, but the wind ripped the words away and there was no response as she scrambled down the bank to where the woman's head was being tossed this way and that by the thrashing river.

Halfway down, Bethan lost her footing. Her left shoe skated on a grass-slick, the wind seemed to flick her into the air and she was thrown, screaming, full length down the slimy, freezing river bank.

For a moment Bethan just lay there and sobbed with anguish and incomprehension. And that amply-justified sense of deja vu which told her she would look up to find two large, muddy hiking boots swinging one against the other.

But the only thing in focus was the hard grey stone of the bridge support. All around her was just a wash of glacial green and white, the abstract colours spinning past her eyes, because this time her glasses had gone.

'Oh no. Oh no, please God…'

Trembling with cold and shock. Bethan put both hands in the sodden, slippery grass and pushed herself to her knees. Then she began to crawl awkwardly up the bank, groping at the grass on either side.

Stricken with the fear that if she slipped again her hands would find somebody's dead skin, the scaly contours of a drowned face. Or chewed-out eye sockets where the crows had…

Her hand touched something smooth and wet and she snatched it back in dread, before realising she'd found the glasses. Half retching with relief, she fumbled them on, rubbing the grass and mud from the lenses which were still, oh thank God, apparently intact.

On her knees now, pink woolly hat missing, hair ravaged by the wind, skirt torn almost up to the waist, Bethan looked around her and then down to the river no more than four feet below her.

The woman was naked from the waist up, bent into the river. Either her body was being thrown about by the wind or… Bethan, crouching, half sliding, edged her way to the water.

She reached the spitting river just as the woman's head came up, black and dripping, and her eyes were like chips of ice and she was Claire, and Bethan arched back in horror and bewilderment.

Above the frenzy of wind and water, Claire was making a noise as harsh and chill as the river itself. It seemed at first as if she was crying, with great jagged wails. Then Bethan realised, with shock, that Claire was laughing, which somehow was far, far worse.

'Claire…?'

Bethan felt a piercing of fear. Claire just went on laughing, rising up on the bank, breasts ice-blue, marbled with the cold.

'What's wrong? What's happening? What are you doing? For God's sake! Claire!'

Bethan pulled off her raincoat and went to wrap it around Claire, although she was really afraid to go near her. But Claire stood up and backed off. She was wearing only jeans and her red hiking boots.

'You are crazy,' Bethan breathed.

Claire's small mouth was stretched wide with grotesque mirth. She ran her hands through her hair, wet and dark as a seal.

Bethan saw that almost all the blonde had gone, just a few jaundiced patches.

'Dychi ddim yn gweld?' Claire hissed. 'Dychi ddim yn gweld?'

Can't you see?

The river writhed among the rocks.

Bethan, face damp with cold sweat and spray, didn't move. She was very scared now. wanting to clamber up the bank and get away, but afraid of somebody or the crazy wind pushing her back to the river, and the river was slurping at the rocks and the bridge support as if licking its lips for her.

She thought of Giles lying restlessly in his unwanted hospital bed, while his wife cavorted like some insane water-nymph.

Claire started to move back along the bank towards the stile that led into one of Morgan's fields. Black cloth, a shawl, hung from one of the posts of the stile and she pulled it off and wrapped it around her. A sheep track curved up through the field and ended near the judge's cottage.

When she reached the stile, Claire turned one last time towards Bethan, tearing at her once-blonde hair, screaming gleefully through the wind. 'Dydwy ddim yn Sais! ' I am not English!

And burst out laughing again, in raucous peels like church bells rung by madmen.

Chapter XXXVI

'Forget it,' Giles said. 'Just forget it, OK?'

'You're being very foolish, Mr. Freeman.'

'Look, mate,' Giles said, 'it's my bloody head and if I don't want it bloody scanned, or whatever they do these days, I don't have to comply. So bring me the sodding papers or whatever I'm supposed to sign.'

'All right, just supposing you have a brain haemorrhage.'

Giles shrugged.

'I can't stop you,' the doctor said. 'I can only warn you. And all I can say is, if somebody had given me a kicking…'

'I fell.'

'… If somebody had given me that kind of kicking, I'd want all the medical evidence I could get.' Dr. Tahan, unshaven, was clearly suppressing rage. He'd been awoken by a nurse on the phone telling him Mr. Freeman was threatening to walk out in his underpants if they didn't bring his clothes immediately.

'Look…' Giles passed a hand over his eyes. 'I'm very grateful for all you've done, but there's nothing wrong with me that sleep won't cure, and I'm not going to get any here. Bring me whatever I have to sign and my clothes.