Wales has no future, the poet R. S. Thomas had written. No present. Only a past.
A past guarded with vengeful fury.
Somewhere around her stomach, Bethan felt a sense of insidious foreboding. Berry Morelli, like Ingley, like Giles in his way, had become ensnared.
"Berry," she said. "Please. Turn round. Let's go to an expert. Go to the University. Find some help."
"No way," Berry' said. "Academics don't take one look at a little red notebook and say, wow, let's get over there. They take years. Go to committees. Seek funding to establish official research projects. Only time they move fast is when it's clear that, if they don't, all the evidence is gonna disappear. I guess that is the kind of action we have to precipitate."
"It won't let you, Berry."
"It? It won't let me? Jesus." The road widened out and he ground his foot and the accelerator into the floor.
"Listen," Bethan said. "How are we going to do this alone? Just two ordinary people. Two ordinary scared people."
"All my life," Berry said, "it seems like I've been a scared person. Neurotic, wimpish." Un-American, he thought. 'This is where it ends."
Or you end, Bethan thought.
Part Nine
CELTIC NIGHT
Chapter LXIII
When they made love that afternoon it was almost like a ceremony. This, in spite of the fact that it took place in the flat above Hampton's Bookshop, in Bethan's single bed, and to the banal cacophony of duelling speaker-vans, Tory and Labour, from the street.
A tender ritual, Berry thought. A parting ritual. But why should either of them be thinking like that?
They held each other and then he kissed her moist and beautiful eyelids as if for the last time.
"How about I go to Y Groes alone?" he said. "Nobody there knows me. It makes sense."
She surprised him. "All right," she said.
"OK." He got up, pulled his jeans and fisherman's sweater from a chair.
"We'll go separately," she said. "You go in your car. I'll go in mine — if it will start after two days in the car park in this weather."
'That's not what I meant."
"It's the best you'll get."
They dressed, went out to the kitchen. It was three-thirty. Soon the light would fade.
"Tea?" Bethan said.
"Let's go to that teashop by the bridge. I'll buy you a lovespoon."
She smiled. "I don't think I can look at another lovespoon after what you said about them. Hold on a minute, I'll be back."
She went back into the bedroom and he heard her opening the wardrobe. She returned in seconds and said, "It's snowing again. Try this for size."
It was a fleece-lined flying jacket of brown leather, as worn by fighter pilots in the Second World War.
"Robin's?"
"It's the only thing of his I kept. He'd always wanted one. I bought it for him the Christmas before he died. It cost me almost a week's wages."
Berry said. "I can't."
"Please…"
It was not a perfect fit, but it was close. Bethan adjusted the shoulders and arranged the huge, fleecy collar. "It's to say all the things I haven't felt safe in saying. Well, not in English anyway."
"You said them in Welsh?"
Bethan shrugged. "Maybe. Come on, let's go."
There was nobody else in the shop. They ordered a pot of tea, no milk. Sat down, but not in the window. Berry was still wearing Robin's flying jacket, which was kind of bulky and too warm in here, but he didn't feel he should take it off.
They looked at each other in silence for maybe half a minute, and then Berry said, getting down to business. "You see any point in confronting Claire? I met her a couple times, but I can't say I know her well enough to raise something like this."
"It might be worth talking to her," Bethan said. "There are things she ought to know by now. She's been brainwashed, of course."
Literally, Berry thought, remembering what she'd told him about Claire's head in the writhing Meurig.
"I would have to go alone," Bethan told him.
"Why?"
"Because I doubt she'd speak English to you."
"That far gone?"
"That far gone," Bethan said. "However, I should like to try someone else first. I have a feeling."
"Someone in the village?"
Bethan was nodding as the teashop door was flung open and a young woman stood there and gazed at them. She was frowning at first, but then a slow, delighted smirk spread over her finely sculpted features.
She wore a bright yellow coat and a very short skirt. Her hair was vividly red.
"Oh my God," she said, looking Berry up and down. "Bloody Biggles flies again."
Bethan thought she'd never seen anyone look so astonished — gobsmacked, Guto would have said — as Berry Morelli when the elegant red-haired girl walked over to their table and sat down.
"Ugh." Inspecting the contents of their cups and wrinkling her nose. "Not one black tea, but two black teas. If it wasn't so revolting it would be almost touching."
Berry said. "This, ah, this is Miranda. She's full of surprises. I guess this must be one of them."
"Isn't he wonderful when he's embarrassed?" Miranda said, holding out a hand tipped with alarming sea-green nails. "You must be Bethan. I've heard lots about you from Guto. Do stop squirming. Morelli."
"And I a little about you," Bethan said guardedly, shaking the hand.
"Now don't you worry your little Welsh head, darling," Miranda said. "I haven't come to take him away." She was the kind of woman, Bethan thought, who, if she did plan to take him away, would be entirely confident that this would pose no long-term problem.
"Pardon me for asking, Miranda," Berry said. "But what the fuck are you doing here?"
"Gosh," Miranda said. "I think he's regaining his composure. All the same, not the most gracious welcome for someone who's come to assure him he may not be bonkers after all."
"Coffee, Miranda?"
"No thank you, I can see the tin over the counter," Miranda wrinkled her nose again. "I'll come straight to the matter on which I've travelled hundreds of miles in appalling conditions. Have you by any chance heard of one Martin Coulson, former curate of this parish?"
"I didn't know that," Bethan said. "About the difficulty he had speaking Welsh."
"Like you were saying about Giles," Berry filled their cups from the pot: Miranda winced at the colour of the tea.
"Inside that village the language becomes a total mystery to the English, no matter how well they were picking it up before. Like a barrier goes up."
"It was very good of you to come and tell us," Bethan said. Thank you."
"How many coincidences can you take?" Berry shook his head. "Clinches it, far as I'm concerned."
"And what are you going to do about it?" Miranda demanded.
"The bottom line," Berry said. He lit a cigarette, watched her through the smoke, wondering where she'd go from here.
"I think it's all rather exciting," Miranda said, and they both looked at her, Berry with a rising dismay. He might have known she wouldn't have come all this way just to tell him about the death of an obscure country parson. She'd realised there was something intriguing going down and she wanted in.
"Listen, I realise it isn't my place to — But keep the hell out of this thing. Please." Realising even as he spoke that this was just about the last way to persuade Miranda to back off.
"He's right," Bethan told her seriously. "It's not exciting. Just very sad and unpleasant."
"Well, thanks for the warning." Miranda smiled sweetly at them both, abruptly picked up her bag and sailed towards the door. "I'll see you around, OK?"