Claire flung out a big smile, and Bethan thought she was going to hug her. "That's absolutely marvellous. Bethan. I mean, we'll pay whatever you think is—"
"Don't worry about that. I'll enjoy it. I think."
Bethan had caught a breath of something from this woman, something she realised she missed, a sense of the cosmopolitan, a sense of away.
Bethan closed the school door behind her and looked around her nervously, half expecting to find another child inviting her to inspect a dead body. She shivered, although it was a pleasant evening, still warmish, still no sign of the leaves fraying on the trees. In Pontmeurig many already were brown and shrivelled.
The arrival of Claire Freeman and her husband had, she thought, opened up the place, making a small but meaningful crack in its archaic structure. All villages needed new life, even one as self-contained as Y Groes. Especially one like Y Groes.
Learning the language was good — and something that few of the incomers to Pontmeurig bothered to attempt. But she found herself hoping (Guto would be horrified) that the Freemans wouldn't try too hard to fit in.
As she drove the Peugeot out of the school lane towards the bridge, she saw Claire Freeman standing in the middle of the village street gazing out at the river. Nobody else was on the street. Claire looked abstracted, a wisp of blonde hair fallen forward between her eyes.
Bethan paused for a second before turning the wheel towards the Pontmeurig road, and Claire saw her and began to run towards the car, waving urgently.
She wound down her window.
Claire, flushed and panting, leaning against the car, said, "Bethan, I think I must be going mad. I can't seem to find my tree."
"Your tree?"
"It's a huge oak tree. Very old. It's… I'm sure it was in that field. You see, I took some pictures of it, but they weren't there, with the others."
"Perhaps they didn't come out."
"My pictures," said Claire, "never don't come out — I'm sorry, I didn't mean — but they don't. I've been through the negatives and the tree pictures aren't there either. And now the tree's gone too. I'm sorry, this must sound ever so stupid."
"Well, perhaps—" Bethan was going to say perhaps somebody chopped it down, but that made no sense either and she wasn't aware of there ever having been a tree down there anyway.
"The tractor!" Claire exclaimed. "Look, see that yellow tractor… that was there when I took the picture, standing next to the tree. The tree was there!"
"Well, that explains it." said Bethan. "Somebody has moved the tractor and confused you. Your tree is probably farther up the bank."
"No—" Claire's brow was creased and her mouth tight. "No, I don't think so."
There is more to this than photos. Bethan thought.
"I'm sorry." Claire said, pulling herself away from the car "It's professional pride, I suppose. You always know exactly what you've shot, and there are a few things on that film I don't — Look. I'm delaying you again, you're probably right, the tree's somewhere upstream and it doesn't matter anyway, does it?" Claire tried a weak smile. "Perhaps my brain really is starting to atrophy," she said.
Bethan didn't think so.
Chapter XV
Giles was setting up his word processor in his new office, plugging the printer into the monitor and standing back to admire.
It was all just too bloody perfect.
Well, all right, almost too perfect. His one disappointment had been not being able to organise his office in the old man's study. He'd pictured himself in the Gothic chair behind that monster of an oak desk, surrounded by all those heavy books in a language which he couldn't as yet understand — although that was only a matter of time.
Last night, after returning from the pub, Giles had unpacked his word processor and was struggling into the judge's study with the monitor in his arms, fumbling for the light switch, when he found there wasn't one.
There was no electric light in there!
Not only that, there were no bloody power points either.
"Bit of a primitive, your granddad, was he?" he'd said in some irritation.
Claire's reply had been, "Oh, didn't you know about that?" Which could have meant anything. Giles had resolved to contact an electrician. He really wanted that room.
Meanwhile he'd decided to adopt the smallest of the three bedrooms for his office, and he had to admit there were compensations.
Not least the view, through a gap in the trees (an intentional gap, surely) and down over the rooftops of the village towards the Pontmeurig road. The church was just out of sight, seemingly behind the cottage at this point, but he could sense its presence, somehow.
There was another window to the side and it was against this one that Giles had pushed his desk, which was actually their old stripped-pine dining table from the flat in Islington, one of the comparatively few items of furniture they'd brought with them. Claire had insisted they should eat at her grandfather's dining table, which was a terrible fifties-style thing with fat legs. Giles himself would have chopped it up for kindling; he hated its lugubrious lack of style.
Through the side window he could look out from his desk on to an acre of their own land sloping down towards the river. The neighbouring farmer apparently had some sort of grazing right, and the field was full of fat sheep. Giles was thrilled. He could gaze on all this and the enclosing hills with one eye while keeping the other, so to speak, on the VDU. He was, he felt, in the vanguard of journalism: living in this superb rural location, yet in full and immediate contact with London. Or he would be once he'd installed a fax machine.
He didn't think he'd ever felt so happy or so secure. For the first time in years the job was not the most compelling thing in his life. And he knew that if he did have to quit the paper and go freelance like Claire — a freelance specialising, of course, in honest features about the real Wales— they'd be cushioned for the forseeable future by the no doubt astonishing amount of money they'd get for the flat in Islington.
Giles was feeling so buoyant he told the computer how happy he was, typing it out on the keyboard in Welsh: R'wyn hapus.
He examined the sentence on the screen. It wasn't right, was it? It didn't look right at all. He hadn't had much chance to work on his Welsh since moving to Y Groes. Awkward bastard of a language; back in London he'd been sure he was going to have it cracked in no time at all.
Still, no doubt it would start to improve again now Claire was arranging a teacher for them. "Well, all right then, why don't you have a word with Bethan at the school," Aled in the pub had said finally, when he'd emphasised how determined they were to learn the language. "She used to teach a lot of English kids in Pont. Must be good at it"
"Right," Giles had said. Tremendous. Thanks." Getting somewhere now.
"I'll go and see her," Claire had said that morning, when Giles got up with another headache. Then I'll drive over to Aberystwyth and get my film processed and get some food and things. You take an aspirin and sort out your office."
The headache had completely vanished now, the office was in order, everything was fine. He rather wished he'd gone with Claire. He'd been wondering which of the teachers this Bethan was, what she looked like — just hoping she didn't turn out to be that female-wrestler type he'd seen stumping down the lane to the school. He understood she was called Mrs. Morgan and was in fact their neighbour, wife of the farmer who raised sheep in their field. Mrs. B. Morgan. Bethan Morgan? He did hope not.