Candlenight by Phil Rickman Page A

folk you
could wish to meet.
        Up the short street Berry could
see just two shops. Three women stood chatting outside one, shopping baskets on
their arms. One woman had a cloud of fluffy white hair and wore a white summer
dress with big red spots. Berry just knew they were speaking in Welsh.
Something about the way they used their hands.
        "Hey Giles—" He'd
been trying to work out what it was made Y Groes different from anywhere else,
even allowing for the absence of tacky modem storefronts among the old
buildings.
        He realised. "Giles, we're
the only car here!"
    "That's right. What do the villagers need cars for? Going to drive
fifty yards to pick up the groceries?"
        "What I'm saying is. village
this attractive—how come there're no tourists, 'cept us?"
        "Well, it's not on a
tourist route ." said Giles.
"Lots of attractive villages don't get hordes of visitors simply for that reason.
I mean, we're in the middle of some pretty rough countryside, the sort that tourists
just want to get through quick to get to somewhere else. I suppose they get a
few walking enthusiasts and people of that sort, but obviously not enough to be
worth catering for—as you can see, no souvenir shops, no cafes, no snack bars.
Don't even think the pub does overnight accommodation."
        "Shame."
        "Not for me," said Giles.
"I hate bloody tourists. Pull in here. We'll walk the rest of the
way."
        A track led between two outsize
sycamore trees. It was blocked after about twenty yards by a rusted metal farm gate.
        "OK to park here?"
        "Private road." said
Giles. " Our private road. Or it
will be."
        They got out and stood looking
down on the village in the vivid light of early evening. To the left of them
stood the church tower, like a monolith. The church was built on a big hump,
around which cottages fitted—or grew, as Berry liked to fantasise—in a semi-circle.
The church tower had a short pyramid for a spire with timbers around the
belfry. It seemed very old, older than the village. Older than the goddamn sky.
Berry thought, for some reason.
        "This is not typical, in Wales,
right? Like, big churches, stained glass and all?"
        "Chapels." Giles
said. 'That's what you have mainly in Wales. Ugly Victorian chapels, presided
over by hellfire preachers rather than Anglican vicars. Non-conformism —Baptist
and Methodists. Puritanism. Fundamentalism — all that just stormed through
Wales around the turn of the century. Trampling on history. And it didn't go
away. Bit like your Bible Belt. I suppose."
        "How come this place
escaped?"
        "I don't know." Giles
said. "But I'm bloody glad it did. There's supposed to have been a Victorian chapel here, but it's
obviously gone. One of those little mysteries. Y Groes is
full of them."
        A palpable silence lay over the
scene, like a spell. No dogs barked, no radios played. It was calm and mature
and the air was scented. The sycamores framed the view as if they'd been
arranged by some eighteenth-century landscape painter.
        "Nice." said Berry.
"Hey. pal. I apologise. OK? You were right."
        "Yes," said Giles.
    "This is some place."
    "Isn't it."
        They stood in silence for
almost two whole minutes. Birds sang. Butterflies danced up and down invisible staircases
of warm air.
        "You really gonna
commute?" he asked. "Can you do that?"
        "The way I see it,"
said Giles. "I'm working this four-day week, OK? So, let's say I'm working
Monday to Thursday. I get up really early and drive down Monday morning. On Thursday
night I drive back. That means I only have to spend three nights in
London."
        "Lot of travelling, ole
buddy."
        "I don't care. I just want
to spend as much time in this bloody glorious place as I can wangle."
        "Sounds good to me."
said Berry, wondering if it really did.
        He thought, could I go for
this, all this rural idyll stuff, four nights