"Like, short and fat?" said Charlie.
"Stocky," corrected the customer. "A good beard on him, too, but tidy. Dresses casual, like, but not… not a slovenly man."
"Looks a bit like you, then?" Ray Wheeler said.
"Indeed." The man put out a hand. "Guto Evans, my name."
He took a deep breath and, with visible effort; added, "At your service."
A dark-haired man came in through the bottom door and quietly look a seat at the adjacent table, behind Shirley Gillies.
"Hullo, Berry," Shirley said.
"Hi," he said quietly.
"Where are you staying?"
"Dunno yet. I just got here. Where are you staying?"
"Plas Meurig." Shirley said smugly. "Beeb's taken about ten rooms, what with all the telly boys and the technicians. Charlie and Ray are awfully miffed." She lowered her voice. "That's Guto Evans, by the way, the Plaid Cymru candidate. Isn't he perfect?"
"You here on your own. then?" Ray Wheeler said to Guto. "No aides, agent, entourage?"
"My local, this is." Guto told him. "I tend not to require any political advice on which brand of lager to select. Can I get you boys a drink, or is the English Press immune to bribery?"
"Son," said Ray Wheeler, "you've obviously got a big future in politics. Mine's a brandy."
"Come and talk to us." Charlie said. "Tell us what this election is really about."
"Off the record, is it?" Guto said dubiously. "I've been warned about you boys."
"Oh, sure." Charlie said. "Don't you worry about a thing, Guto. We're all old hands at this game, except for Gary, and his paper ignores everything he writes anyway." Gary Willis looked very annoyed, and Charlie chuckled and offered Guto a cigar.
"Look, I have to walk back to the Plas Meurig," said Shirley Gillies, "or I won't get my dinner. I'll talk to you again, Guto. OK?"
"I'll walk with vou." Berry Morelli said. "Dark out there."
"Amazing, isn't it." Shirley said, plump body even plumper in an enormous pink padded ski-jacket. "I mean, it's just a village, really. A big, untidy village."
Seven p.m. The lights of Pontmeurig seemed vague and sparse, suffocating in a cold night mist. There was no moon, no stars.
"You were expecting neon?" said Berry.
Shirley shivered and wobbled. "I suppose not. Still…"
"Yeah, I know what you mean. That frontier-town feel."
They walked across the Meurig bridge. No lights were reflected in the river heaving sluggishly below.
"Berry, look. I was awfully sorry about Giles," Shirley mumbled. "We weren't very kind to him, were we?"
"Kind?"
"It's horribly ironic, though, isn't it, that we're all out here and he's… I mean, I was picturing him in that pub. He'd have been centre stage, holding forth, correcting our pronunciation of Welsh names. Absolutely in his element."
"Yeah."
"I mean, isn't it just so cruel?'
They walked down from the bridge and after a few yards there was a right turning, a sweeping drive and pillars supporting illuminated AA and RAC signs. In the middle distance, a floodlit façade, a colonial-style verandah. The Plas Meurig Hotel. Two-star.
"Thanks Berry. I don't think I would've enjoyed walking down here alone. Are you here for the duration?"
He shook his head. 'Two days."
"So where are you going to sleep tonight?"
"This an invitation, Shirley?" He was being polite.
"Gosh…" Shirley simpered. "I suppose it is rather a cold night to spend in one's car. But I think not, really. Not at the start of a campaign. I generally prefer to let the excitement build a little before I start to let myself go."
Shit. Berry thought sourly, heading back over the bridge. This was what they meant by election fever?
The thought of even attempting to spend a night in an Austin Healy Sprite made Berry quicken his pace. It hadn't occurred to him that accommodation might turn out a problem.
What he didn't want was to stay in the same establishment as Firth and Wheeler and those guys. He was here on a mission, and it didn't have anything to do with politics.
He speeded up, seeking to stride through his own sadness and guilt, but they were frozen around him in the mist. It had made big, deep razor-slits in his life, this thing. Might have cost him the only person who could still make him laugh.
"Well, really, it's no good, is it?" Miranda had said as he brought down the lid of his suitcase. For once, being low-voiced, low-key, absolutely and uncharacteristically serious. Sitting on a hard wooden chair well away from the bed.
"Honestly," she'd said. "I'm terribly, terribly sorry about your friend."
"But?"
"But I'm not sure I want to be associated with a really crazy person anymore."
So, there it was. The bottom line. The boy's neurotic.
"Listen, maybe you're right." Spreading his hands, appealing for some understanding. "Like, I can't say if I'm crazy. How can I know that? I just have to go find out. I got no choice. Not now."
Miranda had looked about as sad as she was capable of looking. Berry had made her take his key in case she needed a nice central place to sleep, throw wild parties.
"Oh God." Maybe a spark of her old self. "I've got the awful feeling I once played this scene in a World War One spoof at the Edinburgh fringe. Go away. Go and play with your ghosts, Morelli. Your Welsh ghosts."
Walking back now into this one-horse town in search of some place to sleep. Solitary like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western. Except Clint was tough, needed no friends and no reassurance. Also Clint knew he was not neurotic.
Berry Morelli stared savagely down the underlit street. It was just about the last place anybody could imagine being part of Britain. Sunk so far into its own private gloom that when people moaned about the place, they moaned in a language nobody outside even wanted to understand. Some deep irony there. He wondered what it would be like for whoever won this election, sitting up there in the Mother of Parliaments, representing this. Honourable Member for Shitheap, Wales.
Berry chuckled cynically to himself. As the evening advanced, the town could almost be said to be filling up with people. A Land-Rover disgorged four men and a woman into the main street. Two kids on motor bikes cruised down the street, circled the castle car park and then cruised back. Night life in Pontmeurig. A black-haired woman in a white mac glanced at Berry as she walked past. She had an oval face and heavy eyelids and she looked no more happy than he might have expected, given the surroundings. He wondered if she was a hooker, but decided not.
Chapter XXXIX
She poured another cup of tea, having a sour, perverse kind of competition with herself to see how strong she could make it, and how strong she could drink it.
Outside the window it was not Saturday night in Pontmeurig, but it looked like Saturday night. That is, there were more than half a dozen people on the streets, the town having come alive in the hour after nine o'clock.
They weren't all here for the by-election. The sudden excitement had brought out local people, hoping perhaps to catch sight of some half-famous politician, here to campaign for Simon Gallier or Wayne Davies. Tomorrow night, two of Plaid Cymru's MPs would be here to support Guto. Big deal, she thought.
Knowing that really she ought to be throwing herself into this campaign, knocking on doors, scattering leaflets. Support your local boy and your local party, you know it makes sense.
Her hands tightened on the window ledge. Street light was washing in the pits and craters of a face beneath the lamp.
Bethan drank some dark tea, which was horrible and burned her mouth. It seemed as if every time she looked out of her window she saw one or both of the boys who'd attacked Giles. Shambling out of the Drovers' or into the tobacconist's that Guto's parents used to own. Grinning at each other. Arrogant, like crows.