Candlenight

towards the ceiling. Berry got along OK with Giles, who was less clannish than the others.

'Point is,' Winstone said. 'Locals treated us as if we were lepers. Here we are, sitting in this grim, freezing so-called guest house like the lost bloody patrol — Sunday, so all the pubs are closed, can you imagine that — and all we can hear is the rain and the natives jabbering away at each other in Welsh, which is just about the world's most incomprehensible bloody language. We try to quiz the landlady: Are you sure you didn't know them, Mrs. Davies, they only lived two hundred yards away, surely you heard the shots, didn't you?' Everybody in Wales is called Jones or Davies, terrible interbreeding. 'Will you take your tea now?' she says. 'It's nearly time for the chapel.' Then she waddles out on us. And she'd been to chapel twice that day already!

'And we're there for hours and bloody hours, Freddie Payne of the Express, Jack Beddall of the Sketch, and me, knocking on the doors of these broken-down farmhouses, trying to drag a statement out of Chief-lnspector-bloody-Davies-no-relation. Trying to cultivate the local reporter who didn't even drink, even when it wasn't Sunday. Getting absolutely nowhere. Dreadful times, old boy.'

Giles Freeman sighed. 'Look, that's…'

A restraining hand went up. Nobody deflected old Winstone Thorpe from his punchline.

'So, what I did in the end. I went over to the local chapel and picked a name off a bloody gravestone. Emrys Lloyd — never forget it. And I wandered back to the pub and button-holed one of these local shepherd-types. 'Look here, I suspect this is a long-shot, old boy, but I don't suppose you knew this great-uncle of mine. Emrys Lloyd, his name. Told he used to live in this neck of the woods…''

He paused while everybody laughed, except Giles. 'Told 'em my name was Ivor Lloyd and I'd been born in Wales but moved out at an early age, always regretted I'd never learned the good old language, all this bullshit… Well, dammit, you couldn't stop the sods talking after that. Gave me everything I wanted. No longer one of the enemy, you see. I could be trusted. They even felt sorry for me because I was a bloody exile in England, can you believe that?'

'No,' said Giles Freeman loudly, something catching fire behind his freckles. 'It's utter bollocks. You made it up. You've always made things up, you old bastard.'

Winstone Thorpe looked hurt. 'Not a bit of it, old boy, that was precisely what happened. And the thing is —'

'Utter balls.' Giles said contemptuously. He glared across the table at Winstone. 'You're just a boring old con-man.'

And that, Berry perceived, was the point at which the other guys decided that Giles, irrespective of the amount of booze he'd put away, had overstepped the mark and should be dealt with for pissing on a national monument.

Giles didn't notice the guys exchanging glances. 'You know why the Welsh are suspicious of the English?' he demanded, slapping the table, making waves in all the glasses.

'Actually.' said Shirley Gillies, one of the BBC's political reporters, 'I once—'

'Just hang on a minute, Shirley. Listen. I'll tell you why. Because we're so… bloody… smug. We think we're the greatest bloody race on earth. We think we're great by tradition. And the idea of people here in Britain, in our island who don't want to speak English… we think that's a joke. Because ours is the language of Shakespeare and Keats and Barbara bloody Cartland…'

'Actually.' Shirley Gillies repeated, as if Giles was some stray drunk who didn't really belong in their comer. 'I had rather a similar experience of being frozen out in Wales. Only I wasn't as clever as you. Winstone. I rather left with egg on my face.'

And this mention of egg reminded Charlie Firth, of the Mail, of the time he and his wife had gone into this Welsh snack bar for a meal just as it was about to close. The waitresses had muttered to each other — in Welsh, of course — and eventually served Charlie and Mrs. Firth a couple of scrambled eggs which had left them both with seriously upset stomachs. 'Had to stop off at about seven public lavs on the way hack.' Charlie said. 'Like, you expect it in Spain, but…'

'Poisoned.' said Max Canavan, of the Sun. 'They poisoned you on account of you was English, yeh?'

Voices had risen, everybody grinning, suddenly having fun thinking up horror stories about Wales. Or more likely, Berry figured, making them up as a communal putdown for Giles. Other hacks in the bar, not part of Winstone's farewell pissup, were gathering around, sensing that electric change in the atmosphere, noses almost visibly twitching. The pack instinct was always strong among British national journalists. Guys from papers which were bitter rivals hung out together like a street gang.

'Oh dear me. look.' Old Winstone said. 'I didn't want to start—'

'Always been like that,' said Brian McAllister of the Press Association. 'I remember once I was in Colwyn flamin' Bay… Anybody ever been to Colwyn Bay?'

'Called in once, but it was closed.' Charlie Firth said.

'Bloody Welsh,' one of the newcomers said. 'Frogs, Krauts, Eyeties — I can get along with all of 'em. but the bloody Welsh…'

'Right.' Giles was on his feet, swaying. freckles ablaze. 'I've fucking had enough of this.' He was very angry and began to extricate himself from the table. 'Bigoted, racist bastards…'

'No, mate, they're the racists,' Ray Wheeler of the Mirror said gleefully. 'The Welsh. Ever since we beat the brown stuff out of 'em back in, when was it, I dunno, Edward the First and all that.'

'Piss off' Giles snarled, and slammed his glass down so hard that it cracked in two places. Giles being Giles, he paid for it on his way out.

Berry hesitated a moment, then followed him.

Chapter VII

Giles had been pacing the pavement under a mild summer drizzle. As Berry came up behind him he swung round murderously. Berry swiftly put a lamp-post between them.

'Who the hell's that?' Giles said.

Berry stepped out from behind the post.

'Oh,' Giles said. 'You.'

'Yeah.'

'If it was that fucking Firth I was going to—'

'Sure.'

Giles grinned, white teeth flashing in the headlight of a Bentley whispering somebody home. 'Bit pissed. Those bastards.' He pushed fingers through his heavy fair hair. 'Feel a bit of a prat now, actually. Shouldn't have let them wind me up. Shouldn't have gone for old Winstone like that. Not like me. Am I very pissed?'

Berry looked him up and down. 'Smashed outta your skull,' he said.

Giles laughed. 'You're probably quite a decent guy, Berry, for an American. You didn't say anything bad Wales.'

'That's because I never went there, Giles. It most likely is the armpit of Britain.'

'Bastard.'

'Sure.'

The pub door opened and Giles swung round again in case it was somebody he felt he ought to hit. Ted Wareham, of the Independent, came out grasping a bottle of Scotch and didn't notice them.

'So you're leaving us, Giles,' Berry said.

Giles said, rather wearily, 'I don't know. Don't know what to do. For a while I've been looking around thinking it's time I moved on. Where do you go? It's a trap.'

'Trap?'

'The money for one thing,' Giles said. 'We moan sometimes, but, bloody hell, where else can you collect on this scale in our job? Plus, it's an addictive sort of life. Policing the Great and Good, or whatever it is we do. But the