A Novel

by Sean Pidgeon

  He parks in the centre of town, walks along East Street to a battered red telephone box near the market cross. The cool, dank interior is profusely decorated with graffiti, the slogans of Welsh nationalism, y ddraig goch ddyry gychwyn, the red dragon will show the way, stirring phrases and profanities scrawled on the walls and scratched into the glass. Some of the panes in the door have been smashed, spreading small bright shards across the concrete floor. When he picks up the receiver, expecting to hear only silence, there is a clear tone on the line. He takes out a crushed yellow message slip from his pocket, dials the number that is written there.

  It is an older woman who answers, a southern English accent faintly tinged with Welsh. She seems warm in a habitual way, cautious and protective. ‘I’m afraid Julia isn’t here, but she was expecting you to call. She asked me to tell you she’ll meet you at the Black Lion later on this evening. And not to worry about Caradoc Bowen, because she will already have spoken to him by then.’

  IN DECADES PAST, Julia and her mother would commandeer one of the hard wooden benches on the platform at Llandrindod station and sit with mugs of sweet milky tea in excited anticipation of some English relative: usually an uncle or aunt from London or, more rarely, her maternal grandparents from Sussex. It was thought to be a great adventure in those days for the saeson (as Dai would disparagingly refer to his distant, foreign in-laws) to take the train to Swansea, then up the Tywi valley to Llandovery and finally to Llandrindod Wells, the nearest stop to home since the old Rhayader station was closed down. They would all squeeze into the rusting blue van with her mother at the wheel, take the obligatory tour of the former spa town with its neatly kept squares and side streets lined with hotels now long past their Victorian prime, then happily bump home together the ten miles or so to Dyffryn Farm.

  It would have been unimaginable a week ago, waiting here on a damp, chilly Saturday afternoon for the arrival from Oxford of Professor Caradoc Bowen. The professor was unavailable when she made the call the previous afternoon to Jesus College, but his unsympathetic secretary, Mrs. Frayne, become suddenly more accommodating when Julia boldly introduced herself as the wife of one of his former students. She had heard about the professor’s visit, and would be glad to meet him at the station and drive him back to Rhayader. It was Hugh’s name that put the seal on the arrangement. Mr. Hugh Mortimer? Yes, of course I remember him—such a fine young man, and a great favourite of Professor Bowen’s. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see Hugh again. The secretary proceeded to share a wealth of gratuitous detail concerning Bowen’s itinerary, as well as her opinion as to his likely state of mind upon arrival. He hates to travel these days; he’ll not be in the best of moods, especially if he hasn’t eaten; don’t say anything to upset him, that’s my best advice. It seems to Julia now, pacing nervously to and fro beneath the elegant glass awning with its white-painted cast-iron columns and scrollwork pediments, that to have come here today is pure recklessness.

  The train arrives an excruciating ten minutes late, sliding into the station with a pungent smell of brakes. Julia stands off to one side, watches the passengers one by one as they step down on to the platform. Despite the fact that she has not seen Bowen for fourteen years, she is confident that he will be instantly recognisable. But she is caught off guard by a surprising rush of people, hulking teenage boys in muddied rugby kit, mothers with young children and shopping bags in hand, a few older people amongst the stragglers. She fixes on the most likely candidate, an elderly man with pure white hair and an air of erudition about him as he folds his newspaper and tucks it into his bag; then watches him settle a farmer’s flat cap on his head and take a swig from a flask in his pocket as he makes his way to the exit. He smiles and winks at her as he hobbles past.

  Some sixth sense makes her turn around, and she sees him then, standing by the door to the waiting room in a long black trench-coat and battered trilby with an old leather briefcase in his left hand and a long furled umbrella in his right. He looks oddly out of place, like a black-and-white actor in a colour film. Don’t say anything to upset him. This phrase turns itself into a mantra, silently repeated over and over as Julia walks towards him.

  ‘Professor Bowen? My name is Julia Llewellyn.’

  He looks at her for a long moment. It is not so much the face that she remembers, with its aquiline features and gaunt, hollow cheeks, but the old-fashioned round glasses, the hawk-like gaze focused on its prey. He surprises her now by taking off his hat and offering a dry, firm handshake. ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. ‘My secretary told me to expect you. I am glad to see you again after so many years.’

  Julia hardly knows what to say next. She tries to remember the last time she set eyes on him, perhaps at some Jesus College event. It was before she and Hugh were married, certainly, because Bowen declined their invitation to come to the wedding, and things went wrong not long after that. She forces a smile. ‘I wanted to speak to you, Professor. I hope you don’t mind.’

  He tilts his head to one side, a bristling white eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly. ‘Well, as you can see, I am entirely at your disposal, if you would kindly lead the way.’

  It is almost a surreal experience, reversing out of the parking space with Caradoc Bowen in the passenger seat. In spite of all that Julia knows about him—the long troubled history of his relationship with Hugh, his research on Owain Glyn Dŵr and Siôn Cent—he is almost a complete stranger to her. The image she has held in her mind, of the fiery Welsh nationalist, the eccentric scholar given to poetic and grandiloquent pronouncements, does not seem quite applicable to the elderly man who is now sitting next to her in the car, folding and refolding a large white handkerchief.

  ‘As a native of this part of Wales, perhaps you are a student of its history?’ Bowen’s question seems friendly enough, but ambiguous, making Julia wonder if he means somehow to test her.

  ‘Not so very much, I’m afraid.’

  The professor now clears his throat, as if at the beginning of a lecture. ‘The Romans were here very early on, of course. It was the Second Augustan Legion who built the fort at Castell Collen, just up there on the hill, in the difficult years after Caratacus’s rising against Aulus Plautius and then the Boudiccan revolt. As you may recall, there were great fears that the Britons would rise again in the west after Suetonius Paulinus left his carnage unfinished at Ynys Môn. As Tacitus put it, omne ignotum pro magnifico, whatever is unknown is held to be magnificent. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of the bold Venutius, such magnificence as there was had to wait many centuries to be revealed.’

  It occurs to Julia that Bowen is accustomed to a passive audience, that his purpose is less to inform than to impress with his depth of knowledge and rhetorical dexterity; especially so, in this case, because she is a woman. ‘I’m curious about the name Caradoc,’ she says. ‘I believe it is derived from an original Brythonic form that would have been close to Caratacos, which would in turn have latinised to Caratacus. So you are perhaps named for a hero of the early British resistance?’

  Slowly and deliberately, Bowen completes the polishing of his glasses. ‘I’m afraid I had forgotten that you are a scholar of our ancient language,’ he says. ‘Your supposition is quite correct, and yet my given name has perhaps played even a larger role than this in Celtic history and mythology. Historians have recorded one Caradoc ap Ynyr, a sixth-century king of Gwent who was named in remembrance of the earlier hero, Caratacus. The same Welsh monarch also became the model for Caradoc Vreichvras, Caradoc Strong-Arm, who was stolen by the French romancers to become an Arthurian knight. To me, this suggests both an extraordinary degree of porosity between history and mythology, and a remarkable continuity of tradition between the pre- and post-Roman Brythonic cultures. Do you not agree?’

  This last statement reminds Julia intensely of Donald; it is a line she might expect to read in his book. Her thoughts drift back to their last, inadequate conversation. She tries to imagine what he is thinking, how he will react when he s
ees her, how he will expect her to react. ‘I think you met a friend of mine recently,’ she says, ‘Donald Gladstone.’

  She senses Bowen looking at her with a renewed curiosity. ‘Yes indeed, and I have found him to be a most thoughtful and determined scholar, though I cannot say whether he will be successful in disentangling the real Arthur—if there is such a creature—from the many threads that bind him. We are due to meet again tomorrow morning in Rhayader, as you are perhaps aware, to pursue a rather different project.’

  Julia is tempted to ask the professor if she can join their expedition, but she stops herself short. What would she do, if he were to say no? By now, they are making their way out of the town, across the River Ithon and then west to intersect the Wye valley and the main road north to Rhayader. They drive on across a rolling upland terrain with lonely farmhouses glimpsed from time to time in the folds of the hills, Cerrigcroes, Gelligarn, Pistyll Gwyn. Caradoc Bowen holds his peace, breathing heavily and evenly as if he might have fallen asleep. When Julia glances across at him, she sees that he is staring intently out of the window at the passing landscape.

  Soon enough, the looming bulk of Dôl-y-Fan above and to the right marks their approaching convergence with the Wye valley. Even allowing for the rain, they will be in Rhayader within twenty minutes, and she has not yet come close to what she really wants to say to him.

  ‘I was hoping I could ask you something, Professor.’

  ‘Yes, of course, if it is in my power to answer.’ In her peripheral vision, Julia is aware of Bowen reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief, taking it out, putting it back again.

  She speaks too fast, anxious to say everything before she loses her nerve. ‘I have been trying to find out what really happened in Rhayader fourteen years ago, when there was an explosion at the Ellis engineering works. The official report said it was an accident, but the local rumour has always been that it was set off deliberately as part of the campaign against the Cwmhir dam. I believe you were in Rhayader around that time, and I’m wondering if you might know what really happened.’

  She tightens her grip on the wheel, keeps her eyes fixed on the road ahead; but Caradoc Bowen is almost eerily calm in his response. ‘May I ask, did you ever see the engineering plans for the dam?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘The blueprints and survey maps are still there in the British government archives, for anyone who is prepared to look hard enough. Were you to do so, you might notice that the flood waters would have extended farther than is commonly supposed, submerging not only the valley floor, Ty Faenor of course and the grave of Llywelyn the Great, but also, at the western end of the valley, the lower slopes of the hill called Moel Hywel.’

  ‘Including Dyffryn Farm?’ The words stick in Julia’s throat.

  ‘The Llewellyn family farm, amongst others, would have disappeared under the flood,’ Bowen says, as if reciting some dry historical detail. ‘The British planners were cautious at first in allowing the true scale of their plans to become known, having seen for themselves the damaging effects of the local resistance at Tryweryn. But there were some who were aware of it, including your father.’

  Julia feels a creeping nausea now. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Yes, I first met Dai many years ago, and I was very sorry to hear the news of his untimely death. We had a good deal in common, your father and I, though it may surprise you to hear it. He was in his time a mentor to the young firebrands of Plaid Cymru, as was I to the members of Tân y Ddraig. Together, we meant to find a way to stop the construction of the dam.’

  These words are left hanging in the air as Julia drives on past the entrance to Brynafon House and across the Tan House bridge to the southern edge of Rhayader, trying very hard to resist the logic of what Bowen has just told her. If his intention is to implicate her father as an accomplice in the crime that caused the death of Gwyn Edwards and the appalling injuries to Stephen Barnabas, it is more than can be believed. She speaks to him quietly now. ‘You still haven’t quite answered my question, Professor. I need to know what really happened at the engineering works, and whether my father was involved.’

  Bowen takes his glasses off, recommences the polishing process. ‘I will say only this. Dai Llewellyn was an honourable man and a true Welsh patriot, which of course you know better than any of us.’

  Julia feels a kind of hatred now for Caradoc Bowen and his seemingly limitless powers of manipulation. If she could, she would stop the car and push him out into the rain. Hugh’s role, at least, is now painfully clear to her. All along, he has told her as much of the truth as he could. He had no part in the violence, but he was forced to watch as Bowen conspired with her father. All his aloofness, his evasiveness on this question, this has been meant only to shield her from what he believed was the terrible secret of Dai’s role in the bombing plot. Or to protect her father: this is the thought that comes to her now with the force of certainty. Hugh has acted not so much to spare her own feelings as from his sense of allegiance to Dai Llewellyn.

  ‘Come and meet us tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, if you care to join our expedition,’ the professor says, just as they are passing by the old grey clock tower in the centre of Rhayader. ‘Perhaps in the end we may all find the answers we have been looking for.’

  Someone has opened the front door of the Black Lion pub, sending a pool of welcoming light into the mid-afternoon gloom. Julia recognises the familiar figure of Gareth Williams, the long-standing proprietor and an old friend of her father’s, who throws her a curious glance while he waits there respectfully for Caradoc Bowen to make his way inside through the pouring rain.

  As she drives slowly away in the direction of Dyffryn Farm, her anger at Bowen is tempered by a sadness that winds itself quietly around her like a shroud. It is a sadness for her father, whose memory she will treasure always, no matter what mistakes he may have made in his past; a sadness for Hugh and all his misguided loyalty; and a sadness for Donald Gladstone, for the chance not taken at Trevethey Mill.

  WALKING INTO THE darkened, smoke-filled interior of the Black Lion Inn after a long, solitary walk through the streets of Rhayader, Donald cannot fail to notice a distinct lull in the conversation, an indiscreet turning of heads, as his alien presence is registered by the locals. It is a discomfort that is familiar enough from his days at Bangor: he learned early on that there are places in Wales where an Englishman feels his nationality clinging to him like some terrible affliction. As he approaches the bar, two of the older men, pints in hand, show him the same baleful stare, then switch casually into Welsh to continue their conversation. The dark-haired barmaid, grave and self-contained, glances coolly in his direction before returning her attention to the row of unfilled glasses in front of her.

  He takes in his surroundings at a glance, the plain wooden benches and tables populated by a dozen or so Saturday evening patrons, the smoke-yellowed walls, a neglected dart board, a cigarette machine and flashing jukebox in the far corner. There is a narrow Victorian fireplace, unlit, with brass firedogs and cold ash in the grate. On the wall above is the room’s only unusual decoration, a varnished wooden frame displaying a row of skulls arranged face outwards in order of size: a shrew or mouse at the left-hand edge, then emaciated visages of squirrel, cat, dog, goat, cow, and finally the sweeping face-bones of a horse.

  Approaching him now is a small man of about sixty with lively brown eyes in a round face, his nose reddened by drink. ‘Dr. Gladstone, I presume? I am Gareth Williams, the owner of the Black Lion. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our modest establishment.’ His rapid sing-song voice recalls the mining towns of South Wales, Gwilym Morgan in How Green Was My Valley. As he speaks, the left-hand side of his face is lifted up in a curious lopsided smile. ‘I must say, you do look the part. A medical man, is it? I saw you examining my collection up there on the wall.’

  ‘I’m an archaeologist,’ Donald says. ‘Human bones are more in my line, though I do come across the other kind
s from time to time.’

  ‘Ah yes, homo sapiens—that’s where my collection has fallen sadly short.’ Williams laughs, an infectious, high-pitched sound. ‘Now then, will we pour you a drink, or just leave you standing here like a lonely English statue?’

  ‘A pint of bitter, thank you. Has Professor Bowen arrived yet, by the way?’ As Donald says this, he is aware of a new pair of eyes on him, a younger man at the far end of the bar.

  ‘Yes indeed, he came in late this afternoon. He said he was feeling unwell, went straight upstairs. I thought to myself, there’s a fine start to his visit.’ Again the shrill, almost feverish laugh. ‘Here’s your room key now, number four, top of the stairs, then at the end on the left. Olwen, let’s have a pint for Dr. Gladstone. On the house please, love.’

  With this, Gareth Williams sidles away, leaving Donald to wait as the solemn barmaid, unmollified by her boss’s familiarity, pulls him a pint of thin factory-brewed ale.

  ‘Your first time in Rhayader, is it?’ This comes from the man at the end of the bar. He is perhaps Donald’s age, leanly built, with short dark hair flecked prematurely with grey, features firmly set into lines of worry or introspection. His dark-blue farmer’s overalls are stained with mud.

  ‘I’ve driven through a couple of times before,’ Donald says, reluctant to commit himself to a conversation.

  ‘And I’ve been here my whole life.’ A handshake is offered, firm, measuring his grip in return. ‘Ralph Barnabas. This Professor Bowen you mentioned, would he be a friend of yours?’