"Thank God," Bethan said, seeing Giles's car parked in the track between the two sycamores.
She'd driven straight out of the forestry and into the village at close to sixty miles per hour, knowing that at this time there'd be no children in the road — they'd all be in school by now, wondering where their head teacher was.
At seven minutes to nine, the head teacher had been shattering a wing mirror on the parapet of the bridge as the little Peugeot whizzed across like a frightened squirrel.
All the way across the hills she'd been peering nervously over walls and hedges and fences, expecting to see a car on its side somewhere, or bits of wreckage.
Well thank God he'd made it. Thank God for that, at least.
For what it was worth.
Bethan thought, on reflection, that perhaps the best thing that could have happened would have been a minor crash, something to get Giles towed back to Pont, deposited safely in the hospital with a broken leg, something minor but incapacitating.
For a few seconds she debated going up to the house to ask if Giles was OK. But really it was none of her business. All right, a bruised and beaten man and an increasingly loopy woman. What could she do about that? She was a primary school teacher, not a psychotherapist or a marriage-guidance counsellor.
Besides it was almost nine o'clock.
Christ. She felt as if she'd put in two full days' work, and it was not yet nine o'clock.
Five minutes or so later, Buddug's hands froze above the piano keyboard as Bethan slid into the school hall.
She stood in the doorway in her white mac with the streaks of mud and the huge grass stains. The children, sitting in five short rows, all turned towards her, and Buddug's head swivelled round slowly, her lips drawn back into a smile of incandescent malevolence.
"Bore da" the children chorused. "Bore da, Miss Sion."
She sat down at her desk in the hall, still wearing her mac, too weary to say anything as Buddug's hands smashed into the opening chords of the hymn.
Buddug sang with shrill, ferocious zest, hammering the keys like a pub pianist. Energy rippled through the room as the children yelled out the words, gleefully discordant. Bethan sat in her soiled raincoat and stared at the wall, utterly defeated.
Giles came out of the bedroom and stood at the top of the stairs, swaying.
He could not believe the agony.
Like a flower it had opened out. Bursting free inside his skull like some huge multi-petalled chrysanthemum. And at the end of every petal, a poisoned barb prodding into each tiny fold of his brain, awakening every nerve to the dazzling white light of purest pain.
He could not even bear to scream.
Mercifully, perhaps, the pain had deadened his emotions. Except for one. Which was rage.
Rage gathered in his throat, choking him. Rage against her.
And against him.
Her dead grandfather.
He began to walk down the stairs, each soft step detonating a new explosion in his brain.
He walked across the hall, past the pink vinyl headboard, to where the door of the judge's study still hung ajar.
Giles went in.
Part Six
BLACK TEA
Chapter XXXVIII
NO RACISM HERE — WE'RE BRITISH by Gary Willis, political staff.
Candidates in the Glanmeurig by-election have denied it's going to turn into a bitter Welsh-versus-English clash.
Launching his campaign yesterday, Conservative Simon Gallier said. I might have been born in England, but I've spent all my working life in Wales. I believe I stand for the quality of independence which has won worldwide respect for the Welsh nation."
And his Labour opponent. Wayne Davies said. "The main issue here is the threat to the rural economy and the urgent need for new jobs."
It was a quiet start to a campaign expected to produce electoral fireworks. Everyone here is now waiting for the Welsh Nationalist candidate to show his hand…
"You really write that. Gary?" asked Ray Wheeler, of the Mirror, grinning through Guinness froth.
"Do me a favour," Gary Willis said. Twenty-six years old the only reporter in the pack with a degree in economics and political science. "Do I strike you as being that inane?"
"You'll get used to it, son," Charlie Firth said, lighting a thin cigar.
"But what's the point in sending us out here if they've made up their minds what the issues are? Or in this ease, what the issues are not."
"Don't be so naive, mate." Ray Wheeler said. "You really think your rag's going to give any credence to people who figure Great Britain needs fragmenting? Take my advice, send 'em the stuff and try to avoid reading what the buggers do with it."
"And console yourself with one thought," Charlie Firth produced an acrid cough. "However hard it is for you to take, it would have been a bloody sight harder for poor old Giles."
"That," said Ray. "is very true. Does this dump do sandwiches?"
"If it's egg sandwiches," Charlie said, "count me out. The Welsh aren't poisoning me a second time."
English was the dominant language tonight in the public bar of the Drovers' Arms, where all five rooms had been taken by representatives of the British national Press. Accommodation, reporters were learning, was not plentiful in this area. Max Canavan, of the Sun, had been left with an attic, while Peter Warren, of the Independent, couldn't find anywhere in town and would be forced to commute each day from a hotel on the seafront at Aberystwyth.
"Bloody BBC," said Ray Wheeler.
"What have we done now?" Shirley Gillies demanded.
"Only block-booked the best hotel in town."
"Advance-planning," Shirley smiled sweetly. "I shall think of you guys when I'm sitting down to dinner at the Plas Meurig in approximately an hour's time. Still, it's awfully, you know, homey here, isn't it."
"Piss off, Shirley," said Charlie Firth.
"The Plas Meurig," Gary Willis said, "is where the Tories'll be having their daily Press conferences, yeh?"
"And the Liberals," Shirley said. "It's a big place. They're at opposite ends. I'm not sure where Labour are, but at least you won't have to get up too early to cover the Plaid pressers, will you?"
They've got bloody great green signs all over the door of the other bar," Ray Wheeler said. "Listen, are we going to tackle the bugger about this assault stuff tomorrow?"
"Assault stuff," Shirley leaned forward. "Do tell."
"Come on, Shirley." Ray said. "Everybody knows about that."
"The merchant banker he filled in." Charlie bunched a fist. "Think you can buy up all our farms and get away with it, do you' you English swine? Take that."
Charlie pretended to hit Gary Willis.
"Oh, that" Shirley said. "Is it actually true?'
"What's that matter to these buggers?" Gary said.
"Watch it. Willis." Ray held Charlie's beer glass over Gary's head and tilted it threateningly.
Just then a customer put down his glass of lager, detached himself from a small group of companions and leaned across the reporters' table in a conspiratorial fashion, like a trader in dirty postcards.
"Not met him yet then, this nationalist maniac?"
Charlie and Ray favoured this native with their open, friendly, reporters' smiles. They couldn't see him very well because the public bar had bad lighting, as distinct from soft lighting.
"Do you know him, then?" Shirley Gillies asked.
"Surprisingly distinguished-looking, he is. Not you know, tremendously tail. But powerfully-built. What the Welsh consider a fine figure of a man."