Then there was no camera, but Claire was still to be seen roaming the village, wandering in the fields, by the river, among the graves in the churchyard.
As if searching for something.
"Is there something you've lost?" Bethan had asked the other day, taking some of the children into the woods to gather autumn leaves for pressing, and finding Claire moving silently among the trees.
"Only my heritage." Claire had just smiled, wryly but distantly, and moved on. Bethan noticed she wore no make-up; her hair was in disarray and its colour was streaked, dark roots showing. She seemed careless of her clothes too, wearing Giles's waxed jacket, conspicuously too big and gone brittle through need of rewaxing.
"Did you ever find that oak tree?" Bethan had asked her on another occasion.
"Oh that," said Claire. "I made a mistake. You were quite right"
And explained no further.
Bethan asked her. "Does Giles never go with you on your walks?"
"Giles?" As if she had to think for a moment who Giles was. "Giles is in London." Her eyes were somewhere else.
"He's having great fun," she said vaguely.
"She is a very nice girl," Buddug said surprisingly as they saw Claire one afternoon, flitting like a pale moth past the school gate.
"You've had much to do with her?"
"Oh, yes indeed. She's our nearest neighbour."
"I suppose she must be." Bethan had forgotten the judge's cottage was on the edge of the seventy-or-so acres owned by Buddug and her husband, Morgan.
"She's had her eggs from us. And sometimes a chicken." Buddug killed her own chickens and occasionally pigs.
"I can't say much about him," Buddug said.
"Giles? I like him."
"Well, you would, wouldn't you?" Buddug had turned away and scrubbed at the blackboard, smiling to herself.
Something had happened, Bethan thought. In a few short weeks Claire had changed from a smart, attractive, professional person to someone who was either moody or dreamy or preoccupied with things that made no sense. There was no longer that aura of "away" about her, that breath of urban sophistication which Bethan had so welcomed.
Bethan stared hard at Buddug's back, a great wedge between the desk and the blackboard. Buddug. Mrs. Bronwen Dafis. The Reverend Elias ap Siencyn.
And now Claire.
A chasm was opening between Claire and Giles, with his boyish enthusiasm for all things Welsh and his determination to be a part of The Culture. Bethan wondered if he could see it.
Chapter XXXI
"Hanner peint o gwrw" Giles told the barman, pointing at the appropriate beer-pump and climbing on to a barstool. "Os gwelwch yn dda."
He was pleased with his accent, the casual way he'd ordered the drink. Grammar was all well and good but if you wanted to make yourself understood you had to get into the local idiom, had to sound relaxed.
The barman set down the glass of beer and Giles handed over a five pound note. "Diolch yn fawr," Running the words together, as you would say thanks-very-much.
Convincing stuff.
The public bar was less than half full. Giles thought of another bar, in Aberystwyth, where everybody had stared at him, amused by his stumbling debut in the Welsh language. Nobody smiled this time. With those few slick phrases nobody, he felt, could be quite sure he wasn't a native.
The barman gave him his change.
"Diolch yn fawr iawn" Giles said in a louder voice, more confident now.
To his right, there was a sharp silence, somebody putting the brakes on a conversation. "What was that?" a man's voice said in the centre of the hush.
"Beg your pardon—?" Giles turned, thinking, damn, should have said that in Welsh, blown my cover now.
On the next stool sat the youth he'd spoken to in the gents. Not looking quite as youthful now. Around twenty-three, twenty-four, thick-set, face pitted, lower lip sticking out like a shelf, eyes deep-sunk under short sandy hair. He nodded towards the bar. "What you ordered."
"Well." Giles replied, holding up his glass to the light. "It should be a half of bitter."
The young man was not looking at Giles's glass, he was looking hard at Giles. He said. "Oh, that's what it was." Behind him was another young man on another bar stool. This one had prematurely-thinning black hair and a slit of a mouth, like a shaving cut.
"What I actually said to the barman here was hanner peint o gwrw," Giles explained. "I'm learning Welsh." He smiled sheepishly. "Got to practise."
Two mouths went into simultaneous sneers. The eyes were still fixed on Giles, who realised he'd got it wrong; this chap wasn't an incomer at all.
The man turned to his companion. "Learning Welsh, he is, this… gentleman" Turned back to Giles, unsmiling. "Go on then, say it again?"
"What d'you mean?"
"Go on—hanner…"
Giles said quickly, "Hanner peint o gwrw." Not liking the way these two were looking at him, almost smelling the sour hostility.
A blast of rain splattered a window behind his head.
"Didn't catch that." Slit-mouth. "Say it again."
"Hanner… oh. come on!"
"No, we want to learn, isn't it?" the other one said. He had a face like the cratered moon. "We want to speak our own language as good as you, see."
"I reckon that's all he can talk about, the beer."
"Oh no, talking to me in the lav, he was. He's an expert. He can do the weather too."
"Maybe he was takin' the piss, Gary "
"Fuck, I never thought of that." Heavily-feigned surprise. Still staring at Giles. 'Takin' the piss, is it?"
Giles said evenly. "I can assure you I was not taking the piss. If I'm trying to learn the language, I've got to use it. haven't I? Is there any other way? I mean, what am I supposed to do?"
Definitely uncomfortable now — bloody yobs — he glanced around to see if there was anybody he knew even slightly, some group he could join. Didn't recognise a soul. Apart from a handful of men around the dart board the customers were all sitting at tables. There were no more than fifteen people in the room. The barman was at the other end of the bar, watching the darts.
The silence set around Giles like cement. Clearly. Pontmeurig was just like any other town these days, full of nighttime aggro. All very sad. Disappointing.
"Well now, there's an answer to that," Crater-face said, all casual, elbow on the bar, hand propping his chin. "I can tell you what you ought to do, English. Ought to fuck off back where you came from, isn't it."
"Yes. all right, I will." Giles made himself take a longish drink. He'd finish his beer and get out. This was not convivial. What a country — layer upon layer of resentment.
"We'll come with you," Slit-mouth said.
"That won't be necessary." Giles muttered.
"Least we can do." Crater-face smiled with lurid menace. Show you the right road, see."
"Hate you to get lost." Slit-mouth said.
"Finish your drink, English." Crater-face said.
He had lowered his voice so as not be overheard by a stooping man with a bald head who was paying for a tray of drinks: three pints of bitter and a glass of dry white wine.
… Ah, no, well, that Freeman does not seem a bad chap." Idwal was saying as Dai laid the tray on the table. Compared with some of them."
The training session had been abandoned.
"That's because he turned you into an overnight superstar," said Guto. "Idwal Roberts, political pundit, social commentator, media personality…"
"He is actually OK," Bethan said, lifting her wine glass from the tray "Quite fair minded. Thank you, Dai."