crazy. How can I know that? I just have to go find out. I got no choice. Not now.'
Miranda had looked about as sad as she was capable of looking. Berry had made her take his key in case she needed a nice central place to sleep, throw wild parties.
'Oh God.' Maybe a spark of her old self. 'I've got the awful feeling I once played this scene in a World War One spoof at the Edinburgh fringe. Go away. Go and play with your ghosts, Morelli. Your
Walking back now into this one-horse town in search of some place to sleep. Solitary like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western. Except Clint was tough, needed no friends and no reassurance. Also Clint knew he was not neurotic.
Berry Morelli stared savagely down the underlit street. It was just about the last place anybody could imagine being part of Britain. Sunk so far into its own private gloom that when people moaned about the place, they moaned in a language nobody outside even wanted to understand. Some deep irony there. He wondered what it would be like for whoever won this election, sitting up there in the Mother of Parliaments, representing
Berry chuckled cynically to himself. As the evening advanced, the town could almost be said to be filling up with people. A Land-Rover disgorged four men and a woman into the main street. Two kids on motor bikes cruised down the street, circled the castle car park and then cruised back. Night life in Pontmeurig. A black-haired woman in a white mac glanced at Berry as she walked past. She had an oval face and heavy eyelids and she looked no more happy than he might have expected, given the surroundings. He wondered if she was a hooker, but decided not.
Chapter XXXIX
She poured another cup of tea, having a sour, perverse kind of competition with herself to see how strong she could make it, and how strong she could drink it.
Outside the window it was not Saturday night in Pontmeurig, but it looked like Saturday night. That is, there were more than half a dozen people on the streets, the town having come alive in the hour after nine o'clock.
They weren't all here for the by-election. The sudden excitement had brought out local people, hoping perhaps to catch sight of some half-famous politician, here to campaign for Simon Gallier or Wayne Davies. Tomorrow night, two of Plaid Cymru's MPs would be here to support Guto. Big deal, she thought.
Knowing that really she ought to be throwing herself into this campaign, knocking on doors, scattering leaflets. Support your local boy and your local party, you know it makes sense.
Her hands tightened on the window ledge. Street light was washing in the pits and craters of a face beneath the lamp.
Bethan drank some dark tea, which was horrible and burned her mouth. It seemed as if every time she looked out of her window she saw one or both of the boys who'd attacked Giles. Shambling out of the Drovers' or into the tobacconist's that Guto's parents used to own. Grinning at each other. Arrogant, like crows.
Or perhaps it wasn't them at all. She didn't trust her own perceptions any more.
This morning she had been lo County Hall in Carmarthen to see an assistant in the office of the Director of Education. She had asked for Roy Phillips, who was nice and had helped her in the past and who could he relied upon at least to give her a sympathetic hearing. But Roy had taken early retirement, she'd been told. They'd sent her a chisel-faced young man with rimless glasses, like a junior officer in the gestapo, and she hadn't known where to begin.
Eventually, Bethan had made herself say it, and the junior officer had leaned back in his leather swivel chair and blinked.
'Mrs. McQueen… I hardly know how to react. Have you discussed this with the parents?'
'No. They would, naturally, object strongly. Parents always do.'
He was looking urbane and half-amused. They were speaking Welsh.
'I confess, this is the first time such a proposition has ever been put to me by a head teacher. I find it rather extraordinary.'
'The circumstances are fairly unique. The village is very enclosed. Too self… self-absorbed. I've been convinced for some time that the children need exposure to a wider culture. All I am asking is that it should go on the next list. That the possibility should be debated at county level.'
'You are aware that this was mooted some years ago, when we were particularly short of money.' He had probably still been at university at the time, Bethan thought. 'And there was an enormous row. If you remember, the committee decided that this was a good school with a terrific record… And, of course, there was the question of transportation in winter.'
'I remember, but…'
'And now, with the roll approaching a reasonably healthy level for a rural area, the prospect of fifty pupils in a year or two, you come here — one of our, ah, brightest head teachers — to say you think your school should be closed down.'
'Yes.' Bethan had stuck out her jaw, determined. 'I don't think it's educationally viable. I used to believe in small schools. I no longer consider them valid. Not this one anyway.'
'Extraordinary,' he said. 'You would be putting yourself out of a job.'
'Yes.'
'I think you should put all this in writing. Mrs. McQueen.'
Oh God, Bethan thought. What am I doing here? He thinks I'm off my head.
The education official was peering at her over his glasses in the manner of a far older and more experienced man.
Bethan hated him already.
'I'm wondering,' he said, 'if there isn't something more to all this. How do you get on with the other teacher? Mrs. Morgan, isn't it?'
'I am sorry to have troubled you.' Bethan said tightly, in English. 'You are right. Perhaps I'll put this in writing to the Director.'
'It would be best.'
She'd left then, her dignity in shreds. She hadn't gone back to the school. Could not face Buddug — who, she felt, would know exactly where she had been and why.
Bethan had gone straight home — just over an hour's drive — where she'd thrown her coat on the settee, put the kettle on and was plugging in the electric fire when the phone rang. It was a welfare adviser in the education department, a woman she knew slightly. They had wasted no time.
'We think you should take two or three weeks off.'
'Oh?'
'You've obviously had a very stressful time lately. Finding that body. And the man who… Why don't you go and see your doctor? Gel him to give you something to help you relax. Some of us thought you went back to work rather too soon after your husband died.'
'What about the school?'
'Don't worry about that, We've spoken to Mrs. Morgan, and offered her a relief teacher. But she says that can manage very well on her own.'
The phone shook in Bethan's hand.
They had rung Buddug. Well, of course they had. They must have rung her within minutes of Bethan leaving Carmarthen. She could almost hear the shrill babble over the phone… ''Oh, the poor girl… yes, very, very sad, I have tried to help her, but it has all been getting on top of her… No, indeed. I don't think she is good for the children in this slate, not at all… Perhaps a different post somewhere would be the answer…'
Bethan had flung her coat back on and walked around and around the town in the dark, feeling like a ghost condemned to an endless circuit. Well, she had to do it. She had to try. Now there was nothing left to try. She'd returned to the flat over the bookshop and made strong tea, her final bitter refuge.
Standing in the window now, watching the town filling up with strangers. New life out there.
