Candlenight

'She's young. I suppose if she stays out here, there'll be lots of chaps… that is, I mean…'

'Stays?' Elinor's body went as rigid as the stark towers of the lead mine. 'Stays here? Are you quite mad?'

Guto was in deep shit.

Berry had seen it coming, a whole dump-truck load. Guto underneath, apparently oblivious of the danger.

The man steering the dump truck, one sure finger on the wheel, was F. C. W. 'Bill' Sykes. Political Editor of the Daily Telegraph, one of fourteen reporters and two TV crews, ranged in a three- quarter circle around the candidate.

Television lights were belching hot glare into the makeshift gladiatorial arena in the shabby lounge of the Drovers' Arms.

They were mob-handed now, no longer the inoffensive affable guys in the public bar last night. Notebooks and pocket cassette machines next to the cups at their elbows.

No alcohol, just hard caffeine. They meant business.

Berry Morelli had covered one British by-election before and knew they were basically all the same: every morning, for about a fortnight, each of the political parties would hold a Press conference with the candidate and some heavy back-up from Westminster — a minister or a shadow-minister or, on perhaps one occasion, the party leader. In Plaid Cymru's case, Berry guessed, the leader would show up pretty often, on account of the party had only three MPs to pull out.

They must be saving the big guns for later. Guto was doing his first conference solo, accompanied by only one minder — Plaid's General Secretary, a diffident guy in tinted glasses. This afternoon they'd be out on the streets, canvassing, pressing the flesh, as they put it. And then, each night there'd be public meetings to address.

Hard grind.

And this morning, the baptism of fire.

It started with a question about an act of vandalism perpetrated by the Welsh Language Society against a leading high-street building society which had been unwise enough to refuse a mortgage application in Welsh.

'Ah, well,' Guto explained, 'they are youngsters with a mission and sometimes they get carried away.'

'Usually by the police.' Ray Wheeler said from the table nearest Guto's. There was laughter.

'All right then, old boy,' rumbled Bill Sykes. 'While we're on the subject of brushes with the law…'

He was unfolding a cutting from Wales's national news- paper, the Western Mail.

'Let's get this one out of the way, eh?' Sykes said kindly. 'Clear the air. This business of you being questioned by the constabulary about minor injuries inflicted on some poor chap from London who'd had the temerity to buy himself a farmhouse near here. Small incident in a pub, I believe.'

'This pub, Bill,' Charlie Firth said. 'May even have been this very room. This is where they hold the auctions, isn't it?'

'Was it really?' said Sykes. as if he didn't know.

'Anyway, let's polish it off now, shall we? Then we can all have a nice peaceful campaign. What exactly happened. Mr. Evans?'

The room fell into a hush.

What the hell was this? Mr. Clean? Mr. Bloody Spotless?

Berry caught Guto's eye and raised an eyebrow.

Guto appeared unconcerned.

'Well, you know,' he said to the silent, expectant Press, 'I feel a bit offended. I cannot understand why you boys are concentrating on this one little incident. Here I am, the party hard-man, scarcely a night goes by without I don't beat up an Englishman…'

The head of the General Secretary of Plaid Cymru swivelled through ninety degrees. Berry couldn't see his eyes behind the timed glasses but he was pretty sure that here was one worried man.

'… and you pick on the one occasion when I am standing by that very bar across the hall, minding my pint of Carlsberg. and suddenly I am at the centre of a most regrettable kerfuffle for the sole reason that I happen to be in the path of a gentleman who falls off his stool.'

There was a hoot of derision from the floor.

He's on a tightrope here, Berry thought. These guys catch him out in a lie, he's finished. He was surprised to find himself caring, just slightly, that Guto's campaign should not come to an ignominiously premature conclusion. Even if the guy was staging the bed-and-breakfast scam of the century.

'Then why did the police find it necessary to question you?' demanded Gary Willis. Berry could see one of the TV cameramen going in tight on Guto's face. He could see Shirley Gillies urgently adjusting the level on her tape- recorder.

'I think perhaps.' said Guto, glancing across the room, maybe not so sure of himself now, 'that you should direct that question at my good friend. Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones. Not for me to answer on his behalf, is it?'

Playing for time, Berry thought. But these guys have all the time in the world.

'Come now,' said a rat-faced reporter Berry didn't recognise. 'Let's not evade the issue. The inference is that you feel so strongly about English people buying up all the best property in these parts that you're liable to lose your temper when faced with a blatant example of…'

'I think…' Guto's voice was raised.

'I think perhaps you should give the question rather more serious consideration before you answer, Mr. Evans,' said Bill Sykes with magisterial menace.

'Come on, Guto,' Charles Firth said. 'Let's have the truth.'

He's had it, Berry thought sadly. They're gonna rip him apart.

Guto raised a hand to quell the murmurs. 'I think we can resolve this very minor issue…'

'Not minor for you,' somebody said.

'… if I introduce you to a friend of mine.'

At the back of the room, a metal-framed chair fell with a bang as a man got to his feet. 'Terribly sorry,'' they heard, a kind of Chelsea purr. 'I do seem to have a knack of knocking furniture over in this place.'

Everybody turned, including the TV cameramen. Everybody except for Berry, who was standing at the back of the room next to the guy who'd deliberately knocked his chair over.

And was therefore the only one to see Guto expelling a mouthful of air in manifest relief before his beard split in delight.

You bastard, Berry said under his breath. You smart son of a bitch.

'I was bloody worried for a minute or two, though,' Guto confessed to him outside. 'Couldn't see a thing for those flaming lights. I thought, Christ, what if he's not there? What if he was pissing up my leg all the time?' The reporters had shuffled off to the Plas Meurig for the next two party Press conferences. They were almost in carnival mood. Berry had watched amazed as Bill Sykes had shaken Guto by the hand and Ray Wheeler had patted him on the shoulder. Suddenly they love the guy. Berry thought.

He turned it all around.

The merchant banker from London — the guy who'd bought the farm and a bruised nose — had raised a hand to Guto, politely rebuffed the exhortations from the Press to elaborate further on the story and slid into the Mercedes waiting on a double yellow line outside the Drovers'.

'I confess,' said Guto. 'that I am developing a certain respect for the English. He came up to me, you know, after the Western Mail ran that piece. No hard feelings, old chap, all this, buys me a drink. Well, both a bit pissed, we were, see, when it happened, and he knew the damage it could do. So he says, look, boy, I'll come along and make a public statement if you like.'

'What can I say, Evans? You blew them away.'

Guto grinned evilly, 'I did, though, didn't I?' He glanced around to make sure the reporters were out of sight, then he leapt up and punched the air. 'Oh boy, thank you English! Thank you, God!'

'You asshole ' Berry said. 'You…'

He fell silent. Around the corner came a hearse driven by a man with a bald head who nodded at Guto as he