"Ah."
"But not Y Groes. It is perhaps the only village in Wales where everyone is Welsh. And Welsh speaking."
"Everyone? What about the Welsh people who bring their wives and husbands who happen not to be Welsh—?"
It hit him.
"Aw, hey, come on…"
Bethan shrugged.
Half asleep. Elinor thought at first, as anyone would, that it must be the wind.
And then she heard the unmistakable heat of wings.
The bed shifted as she sat up.
"What was that? What was it?"
George grunted.
"Did you hear it? George, did you hear it?"
A clear, cold night outside. A quarter moon in the top-left square of the deep-set window.
Elinor shivered in her cotton nightdress.
"I was asleep." George complained. "For God's sake. I was asleep"
"It's stopped," Elinor said. "It was a bird, I think."
"Owl, probably."
"Owls don't peck at windows."
"I wouldn't know. I'm not an ornithologist" George wrenched at the blankets, turned over.
"Stopped now." Elinor spoke faintly and sank back on the pillow.
"Go to sleep." George mumbled. "We'll be away from here tomorrow, God willing."
Eyes wide open, she wondered how much influence God might exert in a place like this. She was no more a theologian than George was an ornithologist. But she was a woman and he was a depressingly unresponsive man. There were things that he would never begin to understand.
She lay on her back looking up at the beamed ceiling, only white bars visible, found by the sparse moonlight.
"George," she said after a while, unmoving in the bed.
"What?"
And came out with it at last. "I think she's pregnant."
George turned over towards her. "What on earth makes you say that?"
"Oh, you probably wouldn't understand, but I can feel it about her somehow — the way she moves, her colouring, her skin tone. Not much more than a month perhaps, but it's there."
"Oh dear. That would be difficult, especially in a place like this. How would she support a child? She's a freelance. No maternity leave for a freelance."
"I'm probably wrong," Elinor said, sorry now that she'd blurted out what was on her mind. She'd always had cause to regret confiding her deeper feelings to bluff, shallow, well-meaning George.
"Hope you are," George said. "Although I'd quite like to be a grandad one day. Completes the picture."
Within minutes he was snoring. Always make the best of things, that was George. Elinor turned on to her side and after a while began to drift unhappily towards the blurred frontier of sleep.
Was pulled back by that hideous noise again.
The measured, sharp laps on the windowpane, The convulsion of wings.
Rolling over in her lonely terror, she saw the shadow of the nightbird against the moon-tinted glass.
In a flat, cold silence, as if the sound of the world had been switched off, it brandished its dark wings at her, a spasm of black foreboding.
And vanished.
She turned to face the wall. And did not sleep again, nor look at the window, until morning came in a sickly pink mist.
Chapter XLVIII
Berry came down lo breakfast and heard voices from the sitting room next door.
"Bethan has been here since seven," explained Mrs. Evans, setting down his three kinds of toast. "Been following the Tory campaign, she has. Well, I never realised this electioneering was so complicated."
Ten minutes later, as she carried his plates away, he heard her open the sitting room door. "I'm taking your tea and coffee into the dining room. It's not friendly to leave Mr. Morelli on his own."
Guto's reply was unintelligible but audibly grumpy. He shambled in a couple of minutes later wearing a torn sweatshirt with something in Welsh printed on the front and a lot of exclamation marks "Morning, Morelli," he said without enthusiasm.
"Bad night?"
"Don't even fucking ask." said Guto, reversing a dining chair and sitting down with his legs astride the seat and his chin on his hands over the backrest.
Bethan followed him in, contrastingly elegant in black, with the big gold earrings, "Guto has decided his meeting in Y Groes was not a success," she said carefully.
Mrs. Evans returned with matching tea and coffee pots in some ornate kind of china, put the coffee pot on the table in front of Guto. "I've told you about sitting like that, you'll ruin that chair."
"Oh, Mam, not this morning, for Chr — Not this morning, please."
Mrs. Evans put down the teapot. "Two black tea drinkers?" She said. "There's coincidence. Strong or weak?"
"I like mine strongish," Bethan said. "I am afraid he likes it so it corrodes the spoon."
Guto threw her a penetrating look which said. And how the hell do you know that?
"Berry was at the Conservative meeting last night." Bethan said quickly, pouring tea. "They served tea afterwards," she lied. "He was complaining about the Tory tea. how weak it was. This is lovely. Mrs. Evans."
Guto's look said, Oh. Berry, now, is it?
"Anything else you want," Mrs. Evans said, scurrying off, "I'll be in the kitchen."
"Yes, yes, thank you, Mam," Guto said irritably.
"So what went wrong?" Berry lit a cigarette.
"I truly cannot fathom it. Morelli." Guto said. "You know Y Groes, you've been there?"
Berry nodded.
"Not a soul in that village does not speak Welsh, am I right, Bethan?"
"You're right," she said. "And you are remembering that when Gwynfor won his by-election to become the first Plaid MP, back then, it was said he had one hundred per cent support in the Welsh-speaking communities of Carmarthenshire — in Llanybydder and Rhydeymerau."
"Right," Guto said bitterly. "Of all the places, this was the one I was the least worried about. Didn't even think about what I was going to say in advance. I'd march into the school hall to universal cheers. Hard man of the nationalists, hero of the hour."
He rocked backwards and forwards on the dining chair. "You know how many were there? Nineteen. Nineteen fucking people!"
Berry reckoned Simon Gallier must have pulled nearly four hundred. OK. Guto's meeting was in a village, but, shit…
"Another notable chapter in the annals of apathy, it was," Guto said. "And worse still — get this — most of the nineteen were from farms and hamlets a few miles away. I should say there were fewer than five actual residents of Y Groes. And they were the people who knew me, come out of politeness — Aled from the pub, Dilwyn Dafis, Dewi Fon. What is it we learn from this, eh? What do we fucking learn here?"
"Maybe the meeting wasn't publicised enough? " Berry said.
"Bollocks. Nothing happens in these villages that everybody doesn't know about. Apathy, it is. Typical of this area. Makes you sick."
He looked despondently at the floor. Bethan looked at Berry. The look indicated she could maybe explain this, and apathy was not the word she would use.
"Look, I have to go," Bethan said.
"And I have to change, for my Press conference," Guto said. "Jesus, what if the hacks have heard about it?"
"Any of them there?" Berry asked.
"No. And with only twenty-one people in the bloody room, I can be sure of that, at least. But they'll have heard, see. Word travels fast. I tell you, if it goes on like this, I'm finished, man."
"It won't, Guto." Bethan said. "Believe me. It is not like other places, that village. I know this. And you have over a week, yet" She squeezed his arm.
Berry thought. He's worried about this getting out and he just told the entire story to a reporter