Elinor had liked Giles. He'd been strong in his opinions, forthright. Whereas George had always been so grey. She'd been sure that Giles would, after a few weeks, realise the impossibility of living in Wales and lead Claire back.
Lead. That was it. He'd always been a leader. That was what she'd liked about Giles, that staunchly English quality of leadership.
"I don't know where we're going to stay." George was saying. "You do realise there's a by-election on."
"We'll find somewhere," Elinor said, more briskly than she felt. "Just get us there."
"It's four miles," George said. "That's what the signpost said. But you know what they say about Welsh miles."
The aftershock had been the discovery that Giles's funeral was not to be in London. Elinor had learned this by telephoning his paper. She'd phoned the number in Y Groes about twenty times, of course, and got an answering machine. Claire's voice… in Welsh! She'd refused to leave a message after the tone. "Claire, I'm sorry, I refuse to leave a message." she'd said once, voice faltering, and hung up, regretful and feeling rather stupid.
At the paper, the political editor said he too was surprised that the funeral was being held in Wales, although with both Giles's parents being dead be supposed there was no special reason for it to be done in London. And with the by-election on, there'd at least be enough reporters out there to make a respectable showing.
Elinor had been glad, at least, to learn that Giles was not to be buried in the churchyard at Y Groes. Even the ceremony would not be held there.
And yet she did wonder why.
And still she had not spoken to Claire. Her daughter's reaction on their appearance at the funeral was something she could not even attempt to predict. She accepted that they had not parted on the best of terms, but for the girl to avoid her own mother at a time when a mother was needed the most…
George had taken a hopelessly circuitous route and they had turned into the road linking Aberystwyth and Pontmeurig, entering the grim valley of the disused lead mine.
Feeling at once sorrowful, offended and inadequate, Elinor experienced the pinprick of a small tear. Her daughter was a widow. A widow and childless.
"I suppose she'll marry again." George said suddenly, as if he'd picked up her thoughts. Which was something he never did, being far too insensitive.
"What do you mean?"
"She's young. I suppose if she stays out here, there'll be lots of chaps… that is, I mean…"
"Stays?" Elinor's body went as rigid as the stark towers of the lead mine. "Stays here? Are you quite mad?"
Guto was in deep shit.
Berry had seen it coming, a whole dump-truck load. Guto underneath, apparently oblivious of the danger.
The man steering the dump truck, one sure finger on the wheel, was F. C. W. "Bill" Sykes. Political Editor of the Daily Telegraph, one of fourteen reporters and two TV crews, ranged in a three-quarter circle around the candidate.
Television lights were belching hot glare into the makeshift gladiatorial arena in the shabby lounge of the Drovers' Arms.
They were mob-handed now, no longer the inoffensive affable guys in the public bar last night. Notebooks and pocket cassette machines next to the cups at their elbows.
No alcohol, just hard caffeine. They meant business.
Berry Morelli had covered one British by-election before and knew they were basically all the same: every morning, for about a fortnight, each of the political parties would hold a Press conference with the candidate and some heavy back-up from Westminster — a minister or a shadow-minister or, on perhaps one occasion, the party leader. In Plaid Cymru's case, Berry guessed, the leader would show up pretty often, on account of the party had only three MPs to pull out.
They must be saving the big guns for later. Guto was doing his first conference solo, accompanied by only one minder — Plaid's General Secretary, a diffident guy in tinted glasses. This afternoon they'd be out on the streets, canvassing, pressing the flesh, as they put it. And then, each night there'd be public meetings to address.
Hard grind.
And this morning, the baptism of fire.
It started with a question about an act of vandalism perpetrated by the Welsh Language Society against a leading high-street building society which had been unwise enough to refuse a mortgage application in Welsh.
"Ah, well," Guto explained, "they are youngsters with a mission and sometimes they get carried away."
"Usually by the police." Ray Wheeler said from the table nearest Guto's. There was laughter.
"All right then, old boy," rumbled Bill Sykes. "While we're on the subject of brushes with the law…"
He was unfolding a cutting from Wales's national news- paper, the Western Mail.
"Let's get this one out of the way, eh?" Sykes said kindly. "Clear the air. This business of you being questioned by the constabulary about minor injuries inflicted on some poor chap from London who'd had the temerity to buy himself a farmhouse near here. Small incident in a pub, I believe."
"This pub, Bill," Charlie Firth said. "May even have been this very room. This is where they hold the auctions, isn't it?"
"Was it really?" said Sykes. as if he didn't know.
"Anyway, let's polish it off now, shall we? Then we can all have a nice peaceful campaign. What exactly happened. Mr. Evans?"
The room fell into a hush.
What the hell was this? Mr. Clean? Mr. Bloody Spotless?
Berry caught Guto's eye and raised an eyebrow.
Guto appeared unconcerned.
"Well, you know," he said to the silent, expectant Press, "I feel a bit offended. I cannot understand why you boys are concentrating on this one little incident. Here I am, the party hard-man, scarcely a night goes by without I don't beat up an Englishman…"
The head of the General Secretary of Plaid Cymru swivelled through ninety degrees. Berry couldn't see his eyes behind the timed glasses but he was pretty sure that here was one worried man.
"… and you pick on the one occasion when I am standing by that very bar across the hall, minding my pint of Carlsberg. and suddenly I am at the centre of a most regrettable kerfuffle for the sole reason that I happen to be in the path of a gentleman who falls off his stool."
There was a hoot of derision from the floor.
He's on a tightrope here, Berry thought. These guys catch him out in a lie, he's finished. He was surprised to find himself caring, just slightly, that Guto's campaign should not come to an ignominiously premature conclusion. Even if the guy was staging the bed-and-breakfast scam of the century.
"Then why did the police find it necessary to question you?" demanded Gary Willis. Berry could see one of the TV cameramen going in tight on Guto's face. He could see Shirley Gillies urgently adjusting the level on her tape-recorder.
"I think perhaps." said Guto, glancing across the room, maybe not so sure of himself now, "that you should direct that question at my good friend. Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones. Not for me to answer on his behalf, is it?"
Playing for time, Berry thought. But these guys have all the time in the world.
"Come now," said a rat-faced reporter Berry didn't recognise. "Let's not evade the issue. The inference is that you feel so strongly about English people buying up all the best property in these parts that you're liable to lose your temper when faced with a blatant example of…"
"I think…" Guto's voice was raised.