No sheep in here. No people either, except for Giles.
He'd heard talk of foresters in Y Groes and assumed they were blokes who worked for the Forestry Commission in the giant conifer plantation along the Aberystwyth road.
Obviously they were in charge of maintaining this huge oak wood, selecting trees for unobtrusive felling, planting new ones so the appearance of the place would never change from century to century. He also knew there was a carpenter — a Mr. Vaughan — or Fon. as it was spelled in Welsh — who made traditional oak furniture. And Aled in the Tafarn had mentioned that a new house was to be built near the river for Morgan's eldest son and had laughed when Giles expressed the hope that it would not look out of place. "When it is built," Glyn had said, "you will think it has always been there."
God, Giles thought, the village is still growing out of this woodland just as it always has. An organic process. Morelli had been right when he said it was like the place had just grown up out of the ground.
Giles raised up his arms as if to absorb the soaring energy of the wood but felt only insignificant among the arboreal giants and decided to turn back. It was too much to take in all at once. Especially when he wasn't feeling awfully well, nerves in his head still jerking, like wires pulled this way and that by a powerful magnet.
He almost got lost on the way back, taking a path he was convinced was the right one until it led him to a pair of blackened gateposts where the oaks formed a sort of tunnel.
At the end was something big, like a huge crouching animal. A house. Somebody lived in the middle of the wood.
Well, what was so odd about that? Lots of people lived in woods.
Yes, but this wood was special. The village was down below; this was where the trees lived.
There was no gate but on the left-hand post it said, carved out of the wood.
Rheithordy.
Above the word, which Giles had never seen before, a rough cross had been hewn.
"Helo."
Giles stopped, startled, as a small dark figure darted out from behind the gatepost.
"Hello." Giles said. "Who's that?"
It was a little girl — maybe eight or nine — and she was dressed mainly in black — black skirt, black jumper, black shoes. Even so, she seemed to fit into the backcloth, like some woodland sprite. "Pwy y chi?" she demanded.
"Sorry," said Giles. "'Fraid I don't speak Welsh. Yet."
The child had mousy hair and a pale, solemn face. "Are you English?"
Giles nodded, smiling ruefully. "'Fraid so."
The child looked up at Giles out of large brown eyes. She said seriously, "Have you come to hang yourself?"
"What?" Giles's eyes widened in amusement. "Have I come to—?"
But she only turned away and ran back behind the gatepost.
Giles shook his head — which hurt — and strolled on. Soon the path widened and sloped down to the village. It was easy when you knew your way.
There was only one paracetamol left in the packet, but he took it anyway and sat down at the fat-legged dining table. They were going this morning to Pontmeurig, where Giles was to meet the chairman of The local Conservative Party to get a bit of background for a feature he was planning in the run-up to The Glanmeurig by-election. It wouldn't be long now before a date was set.
"And while we're in Pont." he shouted to Claire, who was in the bedroom, changing out of her old, stained jeans into something more respectable, "there're a few things we could be on the lookout for, if you're agreeable. I had a walk around the place last night, making a few notes on tape."
"Super." Claire said, appearing at the living room door, still wriggling into clean, white denims. "Da iawn. How's your head?"
"Could be worse. Don't you want to hear the list?"
"Oh, I hate it when you put ideas on tape and we have to unscramble all this distorted cackle. Why can't you write it out?"
"All right. I mean o'r… o'r…"
"O'r gorau." Claire said, zipping up her trousers as she went through lo the kitchen.
While still in London they'd taken to peppering their conversations with a few Welsh phrases. Giles now tried to think of a suitable comment to make in Cymraeg but nothing came to him and his head still hurt. How long had they had these bloody paracetamol? Maybe they were losing their potency.
He found his pocket cassette recorder and ran the tape back to transcribe the aural memoranda into a notebook.
Concealed lighting for the hall, electrician, plumber…
"… and the pantry knocked out." his voice crackled back at him from the tiny speaker. "Discuss with Claire…if she can spare the time…"
Giles hurriedly lowered the volume, hoping she hadn't heard the last bit from the kitchen. He put his ear to the speaker in case he'd said anything else vaguely inflammatory, but there was nothing.
Nothing at all.
Hang on, where was the stuff he'd recorded in the study, something about wall-lights, right?
It had gone.
He must have wiped it by mistake.
Bugger.
And yet — turning up the volume as high as it would go — he could still hear the ambient sounds of the room, the hollow gasp of empty space, as if it was only his own voice which had been wiped off. Which was stupid; he must simply have left the thing running.
"Recorder batteries," he wrote in his notebook, at the head of the list. Better make sure of that before he started doing any actual interviews. Over the past few years Giles had relied increasingly on pocket tape-recorders; his shorthand was all to cock these days.
Not that the batteries seemed low, but there was an awful lot of tape hiss. ssssssssss, it went, sssssssssssssssssssss
Chapter XXVIII
Bethan had never been to Judge Rhys's house before. She'd been past it enough times — shepherding the children on nature rambles up in the hills, trying to spot the Red
Kite, Britain's rarest bird of prey, which nested there.
Occasionally, over the hedge, she'd seen the judge in his garden. Not actually gardening, of course. Other people did his gardening. Simply standing there, not moving but not really looking as if he was admiring the scenery either.
He used to be like that in church too, always in the same pew, two rows from the front, very still in the black suit, not visibly singing and not visibly praying.
Strange man.
Now there was only the house to stand there gazing towards the hills, its windows darkened. As she lifted up the metal gate and pushed it open, Bethan was trying to imagine what it would look like here when Claire had her children and there were toys all over the lawn and perhaps a swing.
She really could not see it.
A fine dusk was purpling into night as Bethan walked up the path. A light came on in a front window, and by the time she reached the front door, arms full of books and things as usual, it was open. A tall, fair-haired man was there in a sleeveless V-necked pullover over a checked shirt, looking, she thought, distinctly relieved when he saw her.
"Great. Hi. Giles Freeman. Bethan, right?" Standing back to usher her into the warm living room with the Welsh dresser and the inglenook and a muted glow from a reading lamp with a brown ceramic base. ''Super of you to do this for us, it really is."
"Super of you to want to do it." Bethan said. "Not many of you — your — people who move in from England—"