In Guilty Night (38 page)

Listening to the quiet chatter of two reporters and the television cameraman who dogged his footsteps, McKenna rested for a moment, then walked on, barking a shin on the great stone anchor athwart the body of Josiah Clayton, through the small necropolis of leaning obelisks and lichen-stained monuments, and towards the old granite chapel at the top of the path, and the new grave in the lee of the cemetery wall. Standing beside the dark narrow hole in the earth, next to Elias ab Elis, he wondered if this elegant man might return under the shroud of night, and with bloody fingers and desperate strength, search for the truth beyond the hope of sure and certain resurrection.

At St Mihangel’s altar, his body dignified by wealth, and the
perfume of incense and flowers, Arwel received the last respects to the plaintive notes of a psalm. Looking on the boy whom he last saw in squalor, debased by Carol’s grief and the odours of soot and poverty, McKenna thought of another, whose skin was also perhaps as pale as alabaster from Penmon Quarry, said to have left the world in an aura of beauty, after a brief fright, a quick pain. But, he thought, turning away to let Owen Griffiths look for the first and last time on the dead boy, Death never kept such kind company.

The light of the dying day softened faces stony with grief and bitterness, and the wind abandoned the wild trees to tease Elis’s glossy hair, taunting McKenna’s senses with scents of cologne and flowers, newly turned earth and damp turf.

At the head of the grave, the parson swung the silver censer, his words coming to McKenna in wind-torn snatches, like a faulty broadcast.

‘I had no prescience,’ Elis whined, like the questing wind. ‘Yet even a horse senses the presence of death. Why didn’t I feel his terror? Why didn’t I know when he died?’

‘You wept when you knew,’ McKenna said.

‘Bitter tears! So much weeping and anguish! So much more than I ever spared for my own.’

‘You mourned the lost promise.’ McKenna started like an animal as the muffled bells in the tower began to peal. ‘Knowing the difference is no betrayal.’ Throbbing on the air, seven bells weaved a dancing dirge and the great tenor tolled time, their clappers wrapped in leather. ‘What’s your son’s name? I’ve never known.’ He raised his voice, and wanted to put his hands over his ears.

‘We called him Pryderi, but he’s an accident of nature, salvaged by money and skill and shortsighted ambition. We should have let him die.’ A bleak smile touched Elis’s lips. ‘In her heart, Rhiannon believes she was given the evil eye, by a crippled hag called Beti Gloff who cleaned for us. Rhiannon called her a witch.’

‘Beti’s simply a sad old woman, Mr Elis, but people see only her ugliness and usefulness.’

The group around the grave undulated, changing its contours, as the parson reached out, censer swinging from his left arm, fingers holding down the fluttering pages of the Book of Common Prayer, his right hand clasping the hands of Peggy Thomas, whose old black clothes lent her figure an archaic dignity. He touched Tom Thomas’s shaking arm, and made
tears flow from the man’s rheumy eyes past a nose painted red by the wind, then squeezed Carol’s thin fingers with his own.

Everyone watched her, McKenna thought. Had her own kind also come to know the extravagance of her mercilessness? He caught the eye of Mandy Minx, who stood behind Carol, sheltered by her grandmother’s arm. Mandy smiled at him across the wounded earth, displaying the teeth which heralded her own slow dissolution. Jack Tuttle smiled too, his feverish face swaddled by a thick scarf. Emma stared at the ground, holding her husband’s arm, while her daughters clung to each other, hair tangled about their faces, looking through McKenna to a bleak landscape of their own. He watched Mari lean forwards to brush earth from the heel of her shoes, then frown with displeasure because her fine leather glove was soiled instead. She moved restlessly, and Rhiannon caught her hand, pulling her close, as Mandy’s grandmother held her own kin.

‘They’ll shovel earth on him,’ Elis mourned. ‘They’ll put out his light for ever.’

‘Pridd
i
bridd,’
the parson intoned.
‘Llwch
i lwch.
Lludw
i
ludw.’

Earth and gravel rattled down on the coffin, tossed by Peggy Thomas. Carol gathered an armful of white roses, threw them in the air, and let them fall to earth like a shower of snowflakes, melting into darkness. The contours of the group shifted again, as people moved back to let the gravediggers finish what they began in the long darkness before the winter dawn. McKenna turned as a movement caught his eye, but instead of seeing the evil spirit of Doris Hogg, come to curse the quick and the dead, he saw Eifion Roberts, a darker shadow beneath the yew trees.

The gravediggers worked like demons, spades clanging dissonantly as the bells hunted each other up and down the scale. Watched in silence by the parson, whose Book of Common Prayer still fluttered its pages in the wind, sweat froze on their backs as night dragged long heavy shapes across earth and sky. Soil began to show above the lip of the grave, tamped down with spade backs before more was heaped upon it, until only a few black crumbs littered the trampled grass, and dappled flower petals here and there amid the bank of wreaths and crosses laid out along the wall.

Coaxing Arwel’s parents to her side, holding Mari close, Rhiannon walked carefully around the grave, the heels of her shoes spiking the ground, and nodded to her husband, before starting down the path, Elis stumbling in her wake with a last
despairing glance at McKenna. Mandy’s grandmother was the first to follow, others drifting behind, treading with care on the darkening path, pursued by the parson, who touched Carol’s hair as he went on his way, the wind pasting his cassock to his portly body. McKenna looked at the girl, luminous as the heaped blossoms in the gloaming, and wondered if this man of God also wished his shroud fashioned from that miraculous hair.

Picking up the wreath from which she had torn the white roses, Carol placed it precisely at the head of the grave, rubbing the small of her back as she stood upright. Her face was pinched with cold, her thin body disfigured by the weight of her child, and McKenna feared the browbeating wind and punishing bells might shatter her before his eyes.

She smiled gravely at him. ‘It’s a kind place, isn’t it?’ She leaned against the wall, hands deep in her coat pockets. ‘I shan’t mind leaving Arwel here. He won’t mind, either.’

‘I’m sorry about what I said to you on Sunday.’ McKenna moved to the lee of the wall, and lit a cigarette. The wind whipped away the smoke, and made the tip burn bright. ‘And I’m sorry you were dragged out of bed later on. I had to be sure you weren’t responsible for the fire.’

‘I’ve no quarrel with the kids at Blodwel.’

‘Ronald and Doris have gone on the run.’

‘They can’t hide. Not from Arwel.’

The cigarette burned away, consumed by wind. Carol touched his arm, smiling. ‘Wasn’t he beautiful? He didn’t need anybody’s money for that.’ Her hand rested on his sleeve, and the fingers began to pinch the cloth. ‘He was the light of my life, but in my heart, I knew he’d go away.’ The fingers stilled, but kept their hold. ‘We feel things like that, don’t we? Do you?’

‘I feel things I can’t explain or understand.’

Carol nodded, and the fingers fluttered. ‘He wasn’t like other kids, you know. When we played in the sunshine, his shadow had a light inside it. The teacher said it was a trick of the light you could see anywhere on a bright summer day, but I’d still rather believe God made him different.’ The fingers fretted at his sleeve, and she smiled again. ‘Am I going mad, d’you think? Or was I always mad?’

‘Perhaps madness is like being the one-eyed man in the realm of the blind,’ McKenna said gently. ‘And you’ve light of your own, under this black grief.’

‘Oh, I’m not like Arwel.’ She gestured to her swollen belly. ‘All the world knows I’m just flesh and blood.’

‘When’s the baby due?’

‘In May. It’s a lovely month, isn’t it?’ She pushed herself away from the wall and began to walk down the path, the last vestige of the light of day rosy on her face. ‘Arwel said babies are miracles, even the ones like Pryderi, and he pitied the Elises, because they’re too selfish to realize.’ She shivered. ‘Mam’s forgiven me for hitting her, but will God forgive me for trying to kill a miracle?’

‘He’ll understand.’ McKenna took her thin arm in his own. ‘Have you thought of a name yet? If it’s a boy, might you call him Arwel?’

‘Oh, no!’ Carol stopped. ‘There couldn’t be another Arwel for me. Dafydd would be nice, wouldn’t it? And Morfudd for a girl, because Dafydd ap Gwilym loved her all his life.’

‘He said she was baptized by May.’

‘I know.’ She smiled, luminous still. ‘Have you seen that big green poetry book? I gave it to Arwel for his thirteenth birthday, because he only had that kiddie’s book with the picture of the man with a harp.’ She grinned briefly. ‘He’d pinched it from school. You won’t tell, will you?’

‘I won’t tell.’ Loose gravel slipped under his shoes and clattered down the path. ‘Mrs Elis found the book at Bedd y Cor. Would you like to have it back?’

Carol nodded, then turned to look where her brother lay under six feet of cold earth, the white wreath glowing in velvety darkness. ‘I’ll come here often, and I’ll bring my baby.’ She leaned against him, taking short careful steps on the steep path. ‘D’you think Arwel might walk with us sometimes?’ She smiled again. ‘On a bright sunny day, there might be another shadow beside mine and my baby’s and it might have a heart of light. You can never know, can you?’

‘No,’ McKenna said. ‘You can never know.’

She stopped once more, but the grave was no longer in view, only the dark silhouettes of leaning obelisks and threshing yew trees in their sight. ‘I don’t pity the Elises,’ Carol said. ‘They can buy anything, so they think everything’s got a price.’ She walked on again, still leaning against him. ‘You think I’ve let her buy me and my baby, don’t you?’

‘To be honest, Carol, I don’t know what to think.’

‘I want my baby now I know there’s nothing to be ashamed of.’ Stopping again, she stood before him, a thin hand on each
of his arms, her fingers fretting at his sleeves. ‘Mam says Mrs Elis might’ve offered me money out of kindness, but nobody’s like that, are they? I think she’s trying to make up for Arwel.’

‘Why should she need to do that?’

‘They played with him, like they play with Mari. Mr Elis took Arwel on trips and played at horses with him like kids play with dolls and Teddy bears.’ Letting go of his arms, she walked towards the cemetery gates. ‘He didn’t do any of it for Arwel, you know. It was all for himself. He doesn’t deserve any pity, and she should be ashamed of herself for letting him be like that.’

A small group of sightseers waited outside the cemetery, heads bowed under the wrathful noise of the bells. McKenna held the door of a long black car while Carol climbed in, to sit beside her mother and father, then hurried to his own, fearing to see the church tower blown apart by the monstrous pressure within.

‘You look dead in your shoes.’ Owen Griffiths examined McKenna’s face. ‘What an awful day! And those bells! Rhiannon’s paid for a full peal of something called Grandsire Triples. The ringers’ll still be hard at it at teatime.’

‘A muffled peal is a tribute.’

‘Is it? My scalp wanted to crawl right off my skull.’ Griffiths riffled through the list of telephone messages. ‘Rhiannon said we’d be welcome at Bedd y Cor for the funeral meal, which was very magnanimous in the circumstances. She waited ages to speak to you. What were you and that crazy girl talking about for so long?’

‘Arwel mostly. Carol seems the only person able to rejoice that he lived.’ McKenna lit a cigarette. ‘What did Rhiannon want?’

‘She asked about the vehicles, so I said we’re investigating new material, and probably wouldn’t keep them much longer.’

‘Is that all?’

‘She’s resigned.’

‘To what?’

‘From the chair of social services committee and the council.’

‘She’s been expecting the sack since we questioned Elis.’

‘She’s done it off her own bat, because she noticed the stink of something very rotten in the borough, and wants to discuss her “shift of perspective” with you, because you’ll understand better. As you reckon folk know more than they think, she’s probably right.’

‘Nice to have one big gun firing on our behalf, isn’t it?’

‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ Griffiths chided. ‘You’ll feel more charitable after a good night’s sleep. I’ve sent your minions home, because they were up all last night and most of the night before. Jack wanted to come back, but he’s got a nastier cough than I ever heard on you, and he doesn’t touch the tobacco.’

‘It’s all the passive smoking he’s forced to do.’

‘It’s the bugs getting to him when he’s down. I’ve never known him so miserable.’ Doodling mindlessly on a sheet of headed notepaper, Griffiths added, ‘I told him to follow Denise’s example and take a holiday over Christmas.’

‘And I’ve told him the same, but I doubt he’ll take the advice.’

‘He’s fretting about those girls, isn’t he? Did you notice how strained they looked at the funeral? And they didn’t even know Arwel.’ Sighing, he tore up the paper and dropped the shreds into the waste bin. ‘You can’t get to grips with modern youth, can you? Can’t know what they’re thinking, or why, can’t know what they’ll do next. Has it occurred to you that Carol provoked the fire at Blodwel, never mind sending Ronnie and Doris off on their travels? How do we deal with that sort of power? And don’t say she won’t see it that way. She might not at the moment, but I’m sure she’ll be putting two and two together before long.’

‘She’ll see this collision of random events for what it is,’ McKenna said. ‘But that’s not to say the rest of the world won’t invest her with the power.’ He smiled. ‘According to Eifion, all perceptions depend on the judgement of the perceiver, not the perceived.’

‘He’s as barmy in his own way as she is.’ Griffiths frowned. ‘She alarms me, you know, because she’ll only answer to herself.’