"Bastards," Giles said vehemently, closing doors. "No sense of where they are. We — Ah, here's Claire."
She wore a grey skirt and a white blouse, looking like a schoolgirl, no make-up. She did not smile. "Bethan, hello. Coffee now? Or later?"
"Whichever suits you." Had there been a row, she wondered.
"How about during." Giles said. "I'll make it."
"I'd like to start, I think," Claire said. "We don't want to delay you. You'll want to get home to your husband."
"My husband is dead," Bethan said casually, standing in the middle of the floor looking for somewhere to put down the pile of books, pretending not to notice the familiar silence which always followed this disclosure.
"Oh," said Claire mildly, as Giles was saying, "I'm awfully sorry. We didn't know." The unspoken question was hanging around, so Bethan answered it.
"He died about a year ago. Leukaemia."
"That's really terrible." said Giles. "That really is a bastard of a thing."
"It was very quick. By the time it was diagnosed he was dying. Three weeks later, he—" Bethan made a mouth-smile. "Right. That is over with. I am at the stage where sympathy only depresses me. Look, I've brought you these little books. They're grown-up cartoons with all the bubbles in Welsh and a lot of the everyday kind of words you don't find in the more formal textbooks."
Giles moved to take the other stuff from her (why did people always rush to help as soon as they learned she was a widow?) so she could open a little paperback called "Welsh Is Fun." She showed him a drawing of a woman in her underwear. Little arrows pointed to things, giving the Welsh, with the English in brackets. Like bronglwm (bra) and bol(belly).
"I've also brought you some leaflets for Pont—have you heard of that?"
Giles shook his head.
"It's an organisation set up lo form links between native Welsh people and the, um, incomers. Pont means—"
"Bridge, right?" said Giles. "As in Pontmeurig. Rehabilitation, eh?"
"There we are," said Bethan, glancing towards the fat-legged dining table at which only two chairs were set. "That's a start. Now, where shall we sit?"
"Not in here." Claire said quickly.
Giles looked at her. She said. 'I've set up a table in the study."
"What's the use of going in there? There's no bloody electricity!"
"I filled the oil lamp. And lit the fire. Will you light the lamp, Giles? Please?" It was a command. Bethan thought.
"Oh. for Christ's sake… What's wrong with staying here?"
"It's more fitting," Claire said quietly.
"Goodness." Bethan said, looking at the rows of black books.
"Can you tell us what they are?" Giles was turning up the wick on the big oil lamp dangling from the middle beam. "Claire, is this really going to be bright enough?"
"If we put the table not quite underneath, it'll be fine."
She'd erected a green-topped card table and placed three stiff-backed chairs around it. A small coal fire burned rather meanly in the Victorian grate. Bethan also would rather have stayed in the living room. She would never have tolerated a classroom as stiff and cold as this. She crossed to the shelves.
"I don't recognise most of these." Taking books down at random. 'They're obviously very old and must be very valuable indeed. See…" She held out a page of text.
"This is in medieval Welsh. These must be some of the oldest books ever printed in Welsh — although copies, I expect, in most cases. There seems to be a lot of old poetry — Taliesyn, is this? And these three are quite early versions of The Mabinogion. I've never seen them before, although I'm no expert. Oh—"
"What've you found?" Giles wandered over, craning his neck.
"Nothing really, just a modern one amongst all the old stuff. It hasn't got its dustjacket so it looked like all the rest. It's ap Siencyn, one of his early books of poetry."
"What, you mean ap Siencyn, the vicar here?"
"The rector, yes. He used to be a poet." Bethan smiled.
"What I mean is, he used to publish his poetry. Many years ago."
"That's amazing," Giles said.
"Not really, there are poets everywhere in Wales and quite a few are ministers."
Giles nodded solemnly "Exactly. That's the whole point."
He folded his arms, rocking back on his heels in the middle of the room on the dragon rug. "What I mean is — We've become so smug and cynical in England because our cultural heritage is so safe. We've got the world's number one language, we've got Shakespeare and Jane Austen and all these literary giants planted in state in Westminster Abbey. But Welsh culture's about ordinary people. I mean, your writers and poets don't spend all their time poncing about at fancy publishers' parties and doing lecture tours of the States. They're working farmers and schoolteachers and — clergymen. And they'll never be remotely famous outside Wales because virtually nobody out there can understand a word they write. It takes real commitment to carry on in a situation like that, wouldn't you say?"
Bethan watched Giles's lean English face shining with an honest fervour in the unsteady lamplight. How could the issue of Wales be seized on with such vigour by people like Giles and Claire, who had not been brought up in the warmth of a Welsh community, not had bedtime stories read to them in Welsh, sung Welsh nursery rhymes or made their first terrifying public appearance performing a little recitation before a critical audience of neighbours at the local eisteddfod? Did they equate Wales with whales? Were the Welsh suddenly interesting because they looked like a threatened species?
Then Bethan glanced at Claire and drew in a sharp breath.
Claire, small face not mellow but stark in the lamplight, was looking up at Giles. And wearing a rigid expression of explicit contempt.
"You know," Giles was idling Bethan enthusiastically. "I wouldn't mind doing a feature sometime on old ap Siencyn. What's he like?"
"He's— You've met him. Claire, what did you think of him?"
Giles looked hurt. "Claire, you never mentioned meeting the rector."
"I—" Claire didn't look at him. "Our paths crossed while I was out taking pictures."
"She took his picture." Bethan said.
"I didn't see that," Giles said.
"It didn't come out." Claire snapped. "Can we make a start?"
Bethan thought. Her pictures never don't come out. Besides, I saw it.
"Well, I think I've seen his house." Giles said. "Upon the edge of the woods. Very impressive."
Bethan said. "Sometimes I take the kids up to the woods, but we go the other way. I don't like that part somehow."
Especially now, she thought, shuddering at the image, which came to her unbidden, of two leather hiking boots slowly swinging overhead.
"I thought it was magnificent." Giles said, freckles aglow in the lamplight. "You get the feeling that's where the whole village was born — you know, the timber for the cottages. I think it's fantastic the way they're managing it, renewing the trees and everything. I mean, who actually does that? Who are the foresters?"
Claire, face taut, severe in the oil-light, said, with quiet menace, "Ydy chi'n barod, Bethan?"
Giles fell silent, looked embarrassed.
"Yes," Bethan said, feeling sorry for him. Why did his innocent ardour seem to irritate his wife so? "Yes. I'm ready." When she'd agreed to teach them Welsh, she'd been looking forward to a chat over coffee with people who weren't a part of this stifling community. Not this formal, frigid atmosphere, this sense of… ritual, almost.
It's the house, she thought, It's the damned house. She opened one of her books on the card table. Aware, on the periphery of her vision, of the old, heavy desk and the Victorian Gothic chair across the room, beyond the dome of the lamplight. As if they were awaiting the arrival of the real teacher.