the right to a say in that area of Sophie's life.
St Dogmael's came up on the landward side, another of the town's deconsecrated churches. This one had been converted not into a pornographic cinema but, less inoffensively some might have thought, into an arts centre. The structure had been extensively restored in 1895, though parts of the clerestory were traceable to a fourteenth- century rebuilding by Henry de Courcy. These facts and many more were to be found in a pamphlet sold at the extensive bookstall and information office in the west porch. To one side of the porch entrance there had stood, longer than anyone could remember, a short, dingy stone pillar supporting a life-sized figure too badly battered and weathered to be recognizable even as a man, but always vaguely supposed to have portrayed the saint. Today the whole thing was covered with a great red cloth and seventy or eighty people, some hung with civic and other paraphernalia, were standing close by and producing a loud jabber of talk diversified with the sportive female shrieks prevalent in the locality.
Charlie had cut it fine. He stopped his car several yards short, paid the driver, a Chinese with an alarming Greenhill accent, and stole up to the edge of the crowd. A rather fat man of about fifty, with short white hair, a long doughy face and wide eyes, turned towards him.
'Good morning, sir,' he said loudly in a North American accent.
'Good morning,' said Charlie, and felt like 'running there and then. He had taken a turn for the better in the last half-hour, but it was nothing that could not be undone by any sudden bit of strain, such as this chap looked more than competent to provide.
'May I introduce myself? I am Llywelyn Caswallon Pugh.'
And at that accursed name the whole assembly fell silent.
At least that was how it appeared to Charlie for a dazed moment, like something out of the Mabinogion. Then he realized that the hushing agent must have been one or another of the central group of notables and others that, he now saw, included Alun. Throughout what followed, photographers were to be seen and heard near this group and a man wielding what must have been a sort of portable television camera was there too.
A series of semi-intelligible pronouncements began by way of a microphone and one or two loudspeakers. As it proceeded the man Pugh, who now struck Charlie as distinctly deranged, kept sending him purposeful glances, promising him more to come, more to be communicated than just what he was called. Across the way, near the shape under the cloth, a smartly dressed youth who had to be the mayor introduced the, or perhaps merely a, minister of state at the Welsh Office. This man, who seemed scarcely older, spoke some formula and jerked at the end of an ornamental rope or cord that Charlie had not noticed before. With wonderful smoothness the red cloth parted and fell to reveal, standing on a plinth of what looked like olive-green marble, a shape in glossy yellow metal that was about the height of a human being without looking much more like one than the beaten-up chunk of stone that had stood there before.
There was a silence that probably came less from horror than sheer bafflement, then a sudden rush of applause. The presumed sculptor, a little fellow covered in hair like an artist in a cartoon, appeared and was the centre of attention for a few seconds. Another youngster, who said he represented the Welsh Arts Council, started talking about money. It came on to rain, though not enough to bother a Welsh crowd. On a second glance, the object on the plinth did look a certain amount like a man, but the style ruled out anything in the way of portraiture, and Charlie felt he was probably not the only one to wonder whether some handy abstraction - the spirit of Wales, say - had pushed out the advertised subject. Those close enough, however, could see Brydan's name on the plate along with just his dates, 1913-1960.
Alun's turn came. He played it low-key, avoiding a display of emotion so long after the event, sticking to facts, facts like Brydan being the greatest Welsh poet that had ever lived and also the greatest poet in the English language to have lived in the present century, together with minor but no less certain facts like his utter dedication to his art, though leaving out other ones like his utter dedication to Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey and _Astounding Science Fiction__. Llywelyn Caswallon Pugh evidently thought he could afford to do without some of this. He stepped up the frequency of his glances at Charlie and slowly edged closer. He had a considerable power of instilling dread, in Charlie at least. When he spoke it was a little less loud than before.
'Excuse me, sir, but would that gentleman there be Mr Alun Weaver, CBE?'
'It would,' answered Charlie, panting slightly. 'That's him.'
'And would you yourself happen to be personally acquainted with him?'
'I would. I mean yes, I know him.'
'Might you be good enough to introduce me after this ceremony?'
He must be doing it on purpose, thought Charlie, and to no possible benign end. This really was the time to run, or at least walk briskly away - quicker, cleaner, kinder but he was not up to breaking through the thin but solid cordon of bodies that now stood between him and freedom. So he babbled some form of assent and tried to shut himself off from Pugh and everyone else for as long as possible, dreamily looking back on those distant mornings of mere headache and nausea.
Alun was beginning to take a winding-up tone. As he spoke he moved his gaze slowly from one extremity of his audience to the other so that no one should feel left out. 'Too much has sometimes been made,' he said, 'of the undeniable fact that Brydan knew no Welsh, was altogether ignorant of the language. This was a matter of the purest chance, a matter of fashion only. Parents in the South Wales of the era before World War I saw fit to bring up their children to speak nothing but English. But nobody who knows his work and who knows Wales and the Welsh language can be in any doubt that that land and that language live in that work. He had no literal, word-for- word understanding, but at a deep, instinctive, primal level he understood. He felt and he sensed something beyond words...'
When Alun had finished, someone else pronounced a few phrases of thanks or thanksgiving or anyway termination. All present relaxed and looked about, but at first none moved. Charlie was trapped physically and by obligation of a sort, but also by his own curiosity: he was going to be around when this transatlantic Welshman came up against Alun or... Well no, not perish, but know the reason why. This resolve flagged rather when Pugh turned towards him again and drew in air to say more to him. He had been mad not to drop in at the Glendower on the way to a horror like this. Would he never learn?
'May I know your name, sir?'
Charlie gave it and found himself throwing in his occupation like a fool.
'I am an official of the Cymric Companionship of the USA,' said Pugh.
At this point something terrible happened to Charlie's brain. Pugh went on speaking in just the same way as before, with no change of pace or inflection, but Charlie could no longer distinguish any words, only noises. His
