three men even if one would be forever still.
'Above and beyond, this is, Dai.' Aled grunted as they laid the body on a plastic sheet next to the coffin. It was going to be a tight fit. 'Not what I'd call a small man, the Professor. Also, seemed to smell a good deal better, I remember, when he was alive.'
'Obviously went off in a bit of a sweat.' Dai observed.
The customer was somewhere between late middle-age and elderly. There was a touch of froth, which nobody had bothered to wipe away, at the side of his mouth.
'Professor, you say?' Dai said conversationally, trying not to react to the expression on the face of the customer. He was reminded of the time he'd removed a body from a dentist's chair, a man, who — mortally afraid of dentists all his life — had expired at the very moment of extraction.
'Well, of sorts.' Aled was small, but wiry and strong enough to take the corpse's weight at the shoulders. 'Big Morgan, it was, first started calling him that. Retired teacher, I suppose, or a college lecturer. Some sort of historian. Always walking around making notes, looking at things, never at people, you know the kind. Oh. Christ, I forgot they did that. Pass me that cloth, will you, Dai.'
'Sorry, Aled. Should have thought.' In this part of the world most people still knew the basics of it. They had not grown up with funeral parlours; laying out their relatives was something most of them had had to learn, like changing a wheel. Not only was it uneconomical to pay somebody like Dai to prepare a corpse, it was also still considered in many homes — and particularly, he'd found, in Y Groes — to be less than polite to the deceased.
'Can you do anything about that?' Aled asked, nodding at the face. 'Or does he have to go to his maker looking as though somebody was amputating his leg without the anaesthetic?'
Dai made a professional appraisal of the customer's blue and twisted features, working out how they might be rearranged. 'Easy,' he said loftily. 'Piece of piss. What was it anyway?'
'Well, heart. Angina, something of that order. Dr. Wyn said he was not surprised at all. Been coming here for months, see. Had his pills through Dr. Wyn regular.'
'Why was that?'
'Well, convenient, I suppose.'
'No, no. I mean why did he come here? The fishing?'
'No, I was telling you. Historian or something. Into old churches.'
'Not old houses?' In Dai's experience, most of the English people who persistently returned to this area were looking to buy a piece of it, some little stone cottage with an inglenook and a view of the mountains. 'Buggers go crazy over places like this.'
'Do they now?' Aled said. 'Well, well.'
'Name your price, man, place like this. Name your bloody price.'
Aled made no reply. Dai looked for an expression in the landlord's compact face, but none was apparent. All the same, he decided this was as good an opening as any, and he said carefully, 'You know… I was only thinking myself, well, I wouldn't mind retiring to Y Groes, me and the wife. Nowhere quite like it, see, for the peace and quiet. Casual like. In passing. Not sounding as serious as he really was. 'But hell, man, I don't suppose I could afford it any more, even with selling the business, the way things are going, the prices.'
'Where do you want him?' Aled asked, as if he hadn't heard any of this. 'In that thing, is it?'
'In the shell.'
'The what?'
'Shell. What we call it. Utility job, see. Just to get him to the warehouse, and then the relatives choose something more tasteful.' Dai tapped the side of the light-coloured coffin to show how cheap and flimsy it was, then returned hopefully, to his theme. 'What's the answer, though? What is the answer? Local boy wants a home of his own, priced out of the market before he starts. Got to go, isn't it? No option. Winds up in bloody Birmingham or somewhere and all the rich buggers who couldn't tell a Welsh mountain ewe from a Beulah speckle-faced if you drew 'em a diagram are moving in and building bloody squash courts. Well, of course, I have nothing against the English, as a race… Right, now, you get the other side and we'll… Ah, lovely job.'
Both men stood back. Dai Death mopped his bald head with a handkerchief. 'So, tell me, purely out of interest, like… How much are they fetching?'
'Beulah speckle-faced?'
'Houses, man! What would it cost for me to get a place here? How much did the last one go for?'
'I can't remember. It was a long time ago.'
'Oh, come on now!' Dai was getting a bit exasperated. What Aled was supposed to say was, well, Dai, funny you should bring that up because there's this very interesting little place I know of, not on the market yet, but if they thought you were keen — you being a local boy, a Welsh- speaker and a respected professional man — I'm sure a nice quick deal could be arranged, no fuss, no estate agents.
'That it?' Aled demanded. 'Finished, have we?'
'I can't credit that at all,' Dai said. 'Bloody hell, in Pont, I'm not kidding, the estate agents' signs have been going up faster than the TV aerials when we got the first transmitter.'
'So they tell me.' said Aled.
'But not here.'
'No.' A note of finality. 'Not here.'
Dai was baffled and felt slighted. What, he wondered, had happened to Tegwyn Jones's place now his wife was also dead? Every village always had a couple of houses ready for the market, especially now, when the English would pay a small fortune for something you wouldn't keep chickens in. And what about — now here was a point — what about the judge's house?
'Having the lid on, are we. Dai?'
'I'll deal with that. Tricky, this sort. Professional use only.' Dai straightened up, gathering what was left of his dignity. They only ever called him out here for the foreigners, like that chap Martin, the curate. And poor Bethan's man.
He sniffed. For Judge Rhys there'd been a coffin custom-made by Dewi Fon, the carpenter, gravestone by Myrddin Jones, the sculptor. He went out to the landing and returned with a rectangular strip of fibreglass. which he slotted into place, concealing the dreadful face of the Professor. Wondering gloomily who would be doing this job in ten years' time when he and Harri had retired. Harri being a bachelor and Dai's son away at university to study engineering. No doubt the business would get taken over by one of these national chains with colour brochures of coffins and off-the-peg shrouds. Well, bollocks to that.
'So what happened,' he asked bluntly, 'to the judge's house?'
'Well done, Dai,' said Aled. ignoring the question.
'Look, come and have a drink before we take him down.'
He towed the coffin away from the bedroom door so they could get out. 'There, see… getting soft, I am, helping you with your bloody corpse then offering you a drink.' He smiled. 'Stiff one, is it?'
'Very funny.' said Dai Death. 'I'll have a pint and I'll pay you for it.'
'Good God. Epidemic of something fatal, is there, in Pontmeurig, that you're so wealthy?'
'The judge's house.' Dai reminded him, annoyed now and showing it. 'Just tell me what happened to the fucking judge's house?'
Driving away, customer in the back. Dai took careful note. And, yes, it was true enough. Not a For Sale sign anywhere in the village He shook his head in disbelief, afflicted by the usual aching longing as he took in the mellow stone and timber-framed dwellings, the crooked stone steps and walled gardens, the soft fields and the stately oaks, the wooded amphitheatre of hills sloping to the Nearly Mountains. Even the bloody Nearly Mountains, wind- blasted and conifer-choked… even they looked impressive when viewed from Y Groes.
He looked back towards the lane which led to the judge's house. It would have been perfect. Not too big, not too small, nicely screened. But a lost cause. Christ, he'd never even heard of the old chap having a grand-daughter. Recluse who never left the village, never even went into Pontmeurig.
Maybe — he brightened momentarily — maybe she'd want to sell. But then — his spirits sagging again — what would she do but advertise it in the London papers?
It was, he thought, only a matter of time. They were bound to discover this place, the English. Some young stockbroker-type would cruise out here in his Porsche and spot a derelict bam, ripe for conversion, and make the farmer an offer he'd be a fool to refuse. And another farmer would hear about it and he'd sell
