Named of the Dragon (19 page)

XXIII

A hermit once was here,

Whose holy hand hath fashion’d on the rock

The war of Time against the soul of man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Gareth and Lynette"

If Bridget hadn't been a writer, I decided after lunch, she I could have made her living on the stage. Sitting quiet and pale in her chair at the table, one hand to her forehead, she'd nearly convinced
me
the migraine was real.

"No, it's all right," she said, with the sigh of a martyr, "you go and have fun. I'll stay here."

Christopher frowned. "We don't all have to go."

Bridget glanced at him between her fingers, looking— if it were possible—even more pained. "But I want you to, really. I don't want to spoil your day."

"I suspect," James said, rising to carry his plate and cup to the sink, "you've a more selfish reason for wanting us out of the house." Then, before she had time to react, he explained, to his brother, "She can't bear the noise, any noise, when her head hurts like this. So the last thing she needs is to have us thumping round the place. Right?" he asked Bridget.

She relaxed with a nod and a grateful expression, enough to convince Christopher, who pushed back his chair. "All right, then," he said, "I suppose I could stand one more trip to St. Govan's."

I felt a bit relieved, as well. I hadn't fancied facing Bridget if things hadn't gone her way—especially since I'd almost ruined her plans by returning so late from my walk. Another five minutes, and James would have been in his writing-room, lost to the world. Fortunately, it hadn't taken much effort to persuade him.

He had sat at the head of the scrubbed kitchen table, head tilted to one side, amused, as he'd finished his tea. "An agent who wants me
not
to write," he'd said. "How peculiar."

I'd smiled. "It rather defeats my own interests, I know, but it's such a lovely afternoon, and even writers need holidays, once in a while."

Christopher had drily said that writing, by its very nature, seemed one great long holiday, a comment that most certainly would have earned him a bruise on his arm had not Bridget been playing at having a headache. Eventually, I knew, she'd make him pay for that remark. Bridget had a long memory.

But happily, now, I appeared to be back in her good books, myself. And I knew I'd been forgiven when she offered me the last egg salad sandwich.

"You'll want to take your camera, Lyn," she said. "St. Govan's is your kind of place."

I remembered the name from my Pembrokeshire guidebook. "It's a chapel, or something, isn't it?"

"Mm. A little stone chapel set into the cliffs, with these bloody great rocks all around it. And limpets," she said, with a roll of her eyes. "You can't put a foot down without treading on limpets. You'll love it."

James rinsed off his dishes and turned from the sink. "Do you know, my love, I'll never understand how you can write the way you do about the fairies and the fields and things, and yet not like St. Govan's."

I knew how he felt. Bridget had such a gift for imagery,

for creating darkly tangled forests, flowered glens and magic places filled with beings of pure fancy, that it seemed unnatural, somehow, for her not to like ruins and castles and chapels built into a cliff.

She waved James's comment aside with an invalid's hand. "So I'm not keen on man-made constructions."

"Limpets weren't man-made, the last time I looked."

"Well, I don't have to love
all
of nature, surely," she said in defence, "and limpets are horrid."

"How can you not love a limpet?" James wanted to know, tongue-in-cheek. But he knew enough not to tease Bridget too long. She'd lost interest already, distracted by something she'd seen through the wide window over the sink.

"We've got company," she said, without enthusiasm.

From where I was sitting the window showed only a slice of the sheltered back garden, and the lone leaf dancing at the top of the viburnum. I couldn't see anyone there, but a knock at the door proved that Bridget had not been imagining things.

It was Owen's wife, Dilys, her face flushed from walking against the brisk wind. "You should all be outdoors," she said, after handing James the plate of warmly crumbling fresh mince pies that were, ostensibly, the reason for her visit. "It's a lovely afternoon, you know. You mustn't waste this sunshine."

James assured her we would not be wasting anything. "We were just making plans to go down to St. Govan's. Well, three of us, anyway. Bridget," he said, "has a bit of a headache. She thought she'd stay here."

"Nonsense," Dilys said roundly. "There's nothing like fresh air for curing a headache."

Bridget's smile was purposely wan. "Not
my
headaches. The only thing that makes them go away is a dark room and absolute quiet."

"It won't be very quiet here this afternoon," said Dilys. ' 'Not with my Owen up cleaning the gutters. If the sound of him banging around doing that doesn't drive you mad, then his singing most certainly will. Thinks he's Anthony Newley, old fool."

Bridget's sighs, I decided, were growing more heartfelt. Having Owen hanging round the house all afternoon had not been in her plans. He'd be bound to see her sneaking off to Gareth's. "I don't suppose you could convince him to postpone the gutter cleaning till tomorrow?''

Dilys didn't think it likely. "He was saying there's a rather nasty blockage, and that storm last night just made things worse. He'll want to get it fixed before the weather turns again. But never mind," she said, to Bridget, "you can come and spend the afternoon with me. I've got a spare bed in the back room, for the grandchildren, and I'm only doing baking, so there won't be any noise."

Bridget's expression was priceless. I glanced at her sideways and choked on my tea, and had to be thumped on the back twice by Christopher.

"Sorry," I gasped, "it went down the wrong way." But I needn't have bothered. Nobody was listening.

"There you are, darling," James said, to Bridget, "your problem is solved."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to be a bother..."

"Nonsense," Dilys said, again. That one word seemed to capture her whole view of life. "It's no bother at all."

I could see Bridget's wheels working, trying to find an escape route, when James, with a well-meaning smile, closed the door of the trap. "We can drop you off on our way," he said, "and pick you up again when we come home. Then you won't have to walk in the cold."

"Wonderful." The flatness of her voice was lost on everyone but me.

By the time we set off on our afternoon's outing a half hour later, Bridget looked rather convincingly ill. So much so, I thought, that she probably
did
have a headache. When we stopped outside Owen and Dilys's house in the village to let her out, she went like a prisoner making the walk to the gallows, head down in dejection.

"Poor thing," James said, putting the Merc into gear. "It must be murder having migraines."

Not trusting my voice to reply, I turned my head and watched the passing street. The stone wall in front of Gar-eth's pink cottage was ablaze with cotoneaster, bright red berries thickly sprayed against the grey. Upstairs, one of the casement windows stood open, and a cheerful curl of coal smoke drifted upwards from the chimney. He was in the house and waiting for her. Bridget, I felt sure, would find some way to keep the rendezvous, Dilys or no Dilys. Bridget, I'd learned, thrived on obstacles.

Christopher, shifting his legs in the backseat, remarked that an afternoon with Dilys was more likely to produce a headache than to cure one. "She simply will not stop talking. And if I hear one more word about her bloody son ..."

"Ah yes." James grinned. "Cardiff's answer to Louis Pasteur."

"It's a bit much for someone who spends his days sorting through vials of semen."

"You're such a snob," said James.

Christopher, having bitten his tongue all through Dilys's short visit, had no trouble biting it now. He raised his arms and linked his hands behind his head, attempting to get comfortable.

I turned, feeling guilty. "Are you sure you don't want to trade seats?"

"No, I'm fine. I've got plenty of room." More than he'd had yesterday, at any rate. I'd shifted my own seat a few notches forwards. "Besides," he said, "you ought to have the better view—I've seen this all a thousand times."

I wasn't sure a thousand times would be enough to tire me of the beauty of this landscape. We turned south this time, off the main Pembroke road, and kept to the coast, past a place where the red-tinged cliffs fell sharply away to a long sweeping crescent of pale sandy beach. The view was unexpected, and breathtaking.

James pulled the car over to let me have a proper look. "This is Freshwater West."

I looked with new eyes at the rough waves that had picked up the tiny black speck of a surfer and hurled him at the shore. So this, I thought, would be the place where Elen's husband died. Christopher, behind me, read my thoughts.

"Tony was probably up on those rocks, when it happened," he said, leaning forwards to point. "That's where he and Gareth always used to go."

There was no one there angling now, thankfully. That would have been too creepy. "Poor Elen." I bit my lip a moment. If either of the brothers was responsible for last night's crisis, they'd hardly admit it. But I couldn't help prodding. "Has anyone seen her this morning? I ought to have checked, to see how she was doing."

"She seemed fine," said Christopher. "No ill effects."

James glanced back over his shoulder as he started the car again. "When the devil were you over there?"

"Before breakfast. She's always up early. I thought I'd pop round and make sure she was all right."

Spotting an opening, I said, as casually as possible, "It's a pity there isn't a door, you know, linking the houses. Then maybe she wouldn't feel quite so alone."

"There is one," said James. "But it hasn't been opened in years. I wouldn't think there'd even be a key for it, anymore. That reminds me," he said, "I did look for that key to the tower, you know, like I promised. Seeing you climb all those stairs at die castle reminded me how you had asked to go up. But no luck, I'm afraid."

"Never mind," I excused him.

We had dipped down now between the dunes, where the soft russet sand spilled out over the tarmac in heaps and the coarse marram grass bent to the wind, shivering in waves that showed an undercoat of green beneath the gold.

"They've done a good job with this stretch of the coastline," said Christopher. "It's fairly unspoilt. There were caravans down here at one time, but they've been cleared out. And the dunes are protected—no holiday cottages."

Which was, I admitted, a rare thing indeed for any stretch of British coastline. The road brought us up for a last look at Freshwater West and the dangerous surf, with a red warning flag flapping high on our right. Then we turned briefly inland, through a small village and round an unusual roundabout with a truncated stone turret set at its centre. I might have asked what it was if we hadn't, at that moment, rolled down and over a bumpity cattle grid. It rattled my fillings, fragmenting my thoughts as I brought my eyes back to the road.

I couldn't see cattle, but sheep stood at odd tilted angles all over the banks at the sides of the road, blinking down at the car without any real interest. Twice we were forced to slow almost to stopping, to edge past a clog of the creatures. "I think I prefer the tanks to this," said Christopher.

I turned my head. "I'm sorry?"

"The tanks," he repeated, nodding out the window as we passed more red flags and a small unmanned guardhouse. "This is all MOD land. We're on the Castlemartin firing range."

"I see. Should I duck?"

"Not to worry. They keep it closed off when they're blasting things."

"Unless, of course," said James, "it's the element of surprise they're after." He glanced over. "Speaking of surprises, I must say that what you did last night was not what I'd expected."

"Oh?"

"If I'd left Ivor in that house alone, he would have spent the night helping himself to my brandy and reading my manuscript. Whereas you, from what I can tell, didn't even go into die writing-room."

Not for want of curiosity, I could have told him. Ivor and I weren't so different on that level. But I did consider trust to be a vital part of my relationships with authors, and the thought of drinking James's brandy never crossed my mind. "And how do you know," I asked him, "that I'm not just good at sneaking into rooms?''

"Because I'm good at catching people sneaking into rooms."

Christopher confirmed this. "He used to set some damned clever traps, when we were kids. Hairs in the door-jamb, and that sort of thing. Like James Bond."

I leaned back with a smile. "Well, I'm glad I behaved myself, then."

"Perhaps," said James, "you're not so keen to read my manuscript..."

"I'm longing to read it, of course, but I don't need to read it to know that it's good."