Chapter XXVI
Through the living-room window, Giles watched Claire approach the iron gate. The trees seemed to close around her, and it was as though she were passing quietly into some other dimension. Claire opened the gate without effort and went through, and the landscape appeared to absorb her on the other side. She fitted. She blended with the scene. It welcomed her.
Croeso.
As if she's lived here all her life, Giles thought.
The illusion frightened him. He thought, has she ever really blended with me like that? For the first time since they'd come to live in Y Groes he felt heartsick and alone. And vaguely jealous of the village, which was ridiculous.
He was becoming aware of how differently they regarded this move, this new life. It had been, for him, the big adventure, the great expedition into the unknown, a terrific challenge. It had filled him with energy just thinking about the future. Now he felt his wife was not tuned to quite the same wavelength.
With her it was not elation. It was less of a fun thing. Here they were, just of the two of them in a totally strange place and, far from getting closer, confiding more in each other there was a hazy space between them. Well, not so much between them as around Claire, who had always been so practical and clear-sighted. Now she was altering in unpredictable ways. Like tonight, doing what she'd never done, in his experience, before: going out to take pictures, not in a professional way, but just snapping things, looking for some special sodding tree, for God's sake! This, especially, had got to Giles because only rarely could Claire be persuaded to get out her camera for holiday photos and family occasions. He remembered once suggesting she might knock off a few pics at the christening of his cousin's new baby and she'd gone very huffy indeed, asking him how he'd feel about being asked to write features for the local parish magazine.
Giles sat down at the bloody awful fat-legged dining table and looked into the fireplace which he'd laid with paper and kindling and three small logs and didn't feel like lighting any more.
He ought to try to understand her instead of feeling sorry for himself. She was obviously preoccupied, something here she was struggling to come to terms with. A responsibility to her surroundings that she'd never felt before? Because of her grandfather, yes? Filling in for a missing generation, her mother, who had spurned everything the old man wanted out of life? And what had he wanted out of life except for a bit of peace and quiet, back among his compatriots?
For the old man perhaps, this had represented peace and quiet, but for English people it was a lot more demanding, Giles thought, only now realising how clean-cut their life in London had been. That was the simple life, when you thought about it, for people with their background. He was a hack. Claire took pictures for money. Professionals. The flat in Islington had been like a station waiting room where they'd passed the time until trains took them in different directions. Maybe he only knew Claire as a kind of intimate colleague.
Stuff this! Giles stood up angrily and reached on the deepset window sill for a box of kitchen matches. He struck two at once and flung them at the fireplace, watched the paper flare, listened to the kindling crackle. Life. Energy.
Early days. Give it time. Be positive. Be practical.
In the diminishing light, he moved purposefully around the house, thinking about the improvements they could make without spoiling its character. He took with him the slimline pocket cassette-recorder he used sometimes for interviews.
The living room — well, that was more or less OK.
Beams, inglenook fireplace — great. A wood-burning stove might be useful in the inglenook, more energy-efficient. It would save a lot of work too; amazing how many logs you got through on an open fire, and most of the heat went up the chimney anyway.
Giles went out into the hall, trying to remember where he'd seen a shop specialising in woodstoves.
"Was it Aberystwyth?" he said into the slim, leather-covered cassette machine. "Check in Yellow Pages."
The hall, too, was basically all right. Bit dark, and you had to walk permanently stooped or risk collecting a pair of black eyes from the low-slung beams.
"Hall," he said. "Perhaps some diffused lighting under the beams."
He came back through the living room to the kitchen. This, of course, would need the mast attention. In Giles's view only the solid-fuel Aga-type stove was worth keeping. It hummed and belched a bit, but he liked that. Also, it took both coal and wood.
"OK." Giles said into the recorder. "New sink, for starters. Fitted units, maybe the wall between the kitchen and the pantry knocked out. Discuss with Claire… if she can spare the time."
Right. OK…
The study.
"Now. we shall have to be a bit careful here." Giles told the machine.
After all, one wrong decision and they could easily ruin what was undoubtedly the most interesting room in the house. Again, he found himself groping for the light switch before remembering.
"Unbelievable," he said. "How the hell did the old boy manage without any power in here?"
Wrong there, Giles, he thought. There's certainly power in here. Shelves full of it. But how did he read without a light?
He almost bumped his head on the answer, a big oil lamp of tarnished brass Claire had found in the pantry. It was now hanging from the central beam — she must have done that this morning. He tapped the lamp and gave it a swing, trying to find out if there was oil in it. It didn't sound as if there was. The lamp just rattled. It needed polishing up, too.
"OK, memo: buy paraffin. Also chase up that electrician."
It was darker in here than anywhere else in the house, and yet the room was facing west. Must be all the books, no light reflected from the walls. He wondered if the books were valuable. He wondered how he was going to make space in here for his own books when he brought them up from London. OK, they'd look a bit odd, glossy paperbacks among the stark black spines of Judge Rhys's library. But if it eventually was going to be his office, the judge would just have to move over a bit.
It was chilly in here too. Giles wondered if they could run a radiator from the kitchen stove; it wouldn't be far to bring a pipe. First things first though: let there be some bloody light.
"Suggestion," he said to the tape. "What about removing some of the shelving in the middle of the two side walls and installing some wall-lights? Have to be tasteful ones of course. Convert a couple of antique oil lamps or something."
He glanced up at the framed eisteddfod photograph, full of dignified, white-clad bards and shivered pleasurably, remembering how this room seemed to have spooked Berry Morelli. Great. That picture was definitely going to stay. He wondered which of the bards, if any, was his grandfather-in-law.
The picture seemed dusty and unclear in the dim light and he look a tissue from a hip pocket of his jeans and rubbed at the pale faces of the bards, thinking perhaps he might catch an image of Claire in one of them. Peering at the picture, he felt a dull throb behind his eyes. Bloody headache again. The strain of trying to make out details in semi-darkness.
He backed off. rubbing at his eyes. The room was all shadows now and the only light seemed to be coming out of the picture, out of the white robes of the bards, who appeared to be walking slowly towards him in solemn procession, as if they were about to drift out of the picture and into the room to stand around Giles like a chalk circle and then to melt into the blotchy air.
Back in the picture, meanwhile, the bards had turned black.
"Aspirin," Giles mumbled. He left the study and closed the door behind him and gave it a push to make sure it really was shut.