by Rhys Bowen
“It’s a shame I’m not still married,” Bronwen said.
Evan swung around to glare at her.
She smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s wonderful that I’m not still married. What I meant was that my ex-husband would have been in heaven if they’d been raising a World War Two plane nearby. He’d have been up there, volunteering to hold their bags and make their tea. He was obsessed with old planes, especially World War Two planes.”
They started to walk together down the deserted street. The wind blew hard into their faces.
“Very boring,” she said and shuddered. “I can’t believe I ever married him.”
They walked on in uneasy silence. Evan had questions he wanted to ask, but didn’t. They had respected each other’s privacy for so long. He knew she’d tell him when she was good and ready.
“My, but it’s been a grand day,” Evan said. “Pity it’s a weekday. Last weekend was so wet and dismal.”
“Only dismal for you because you lost at Scrabble twice.” She gave him a challenging smile.
“Don’t rub it in. I’m aware of my intellectual inadequacy.”
“Don’t be silly. I had to read a lot of boring books at University and I picked up a lot of useless knowledge.” They had reached the gate to the school playground. There was smoke coming out of the schoolhouse chimney. “Shall we do something this weekend if the fine weather lasts?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’m likely to have the weekend free,” Evan said. “I suspect the film crew will work whenever the weather is fine.”
“It’s not fair,” Bronwen said. “They’re always making you work weekends.”
“It’s the same for all policemen. When there’s work to be done, we work. You don’t find detectives taking days off when they’re on a murder case, do you?”
“Supervising old planes is hardly the same as chasing a murder suspect,” Bronwen said. “Never mind. You’ll have your evenings free, won’t you? Maybe I can try another of those French recipes I learned.”
“Maybe you could teach me,” Evan said.
She looked surprised.
“I’ve got to learn to cook if I want to live on my own sometime.”
“Now that’s a very good sign,” she said.
“Sign of what?” he prodded.
“That you’re finally growing up,” she shot back. Then she rested her fingers lightly on his arm. “Are you still thinking about old Rhodri’s cottage?”
He nodded. “I haven’t had the time to find out what channels I’d have to go through to get hold of it. I’d imagine those English people would be only too willing to sell it, but it’s on National Park land, isn’t it? Any plans to rebuild would have to go through them. And I understand nothing is easy with them. But I’m still thinking about it.”
“I think it’s a lovely idea.” Bronwen smiled up at him. “And it’s plenty big enough, isn’t it?”
Big enough for two, Evan thought as he walked home alone. Is that what Bronwen was thinking? And Bronwen liked the idea. He was amazed how happy that made him. He planned to marry someday, of course. And he was pretty sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Bronwen. So get on with it, boyo, he told himself. You can’t go through life suffering from a major case of cold feet.
Chapter 4
A pleasant hum of conversation greeted Evan as he pushed open the heavy oak door to the Red Dragon pub that evening. For once, he wasn’t looking forward to an evening of beer and good company. It wasn’t going to be easy, steering a middle course between the locals’ curiosity about the new project and his instructions to keep it hush-hush. He suspected that every man in that bar knew almost as much about the newly arrived filmmakers as he did and was waiting to pump him for more details.
“Here he is now!” Charlie Hopkins looked up as he lifted a full glass from the bar. “Young Betsy was wondering what was keeping you, Evan bach. She was scared you were hobnobbing with all those movie starlets!”
Betsy the barmaid turned her wide blue eyes on him. Her hair was bright red this week and the effect was alarmingly Little Orphan Annie. Ever since she’d almost been seduced by a great opera singer who had suggested she change her hair color, she had been experimenting. Lately, she seemed to have settled on varieties of red.
“I don’t see what movie starlets have got that I haven’t,” Betsy said, her gaze holding Evan’s. “I’ve got plenty of everything in all the right places, haven’t I, Evan bach?”
Evan had noticed that Betsy was wearing what should have been a demure sweater. It was white and fuzzy, with a high turtleneck. Unfortunately, it was also about three sizes too small for her and emphasized every curve. Evan also suspected that she was wearing some kind of padded bra. He hadn’t remembered her breasts as quite so big before. As his eyes went down, he was disconcerted to find that the fuzzy sweater stopped about three inches below her breasts, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of smooth white flesh around her middle.
He swallowed hard. “You look as good as any movie star, Betsy,” he said.
“You see.” Betsy leaned forward to the group of men around the bar. “I told you he really fancies me, didn’t I? That Bronwen Price might be all right for hiking up mountains with, but in the end it’s only one thing that makes men happy, isn’t it? And it’s not hiking up mountains, either!”
Her gaze didn’t leave his face as she spoke. He found the room was suddenly very warm indeed.
“What this man wants right now is a pint of Guinness, please, Betsy,” he said.
“And there’s some of us been waiting for a refill so long we’re dying of thirst,” Barry-the-Bucket complained. “I don’t know why you waste your time waiting for Evan Evans to come around when there are plenty of good-looking, strong blokes here who’d know how to give you a good time.”
Betsy turned to face the young bulldozer driver. “I’d be happy if you’d introduce me to one of them then, Barry,” she said sweetly.
The other men in the bar broke into noisy laughter.
“You can’t outsmart her, boyo,” Charlie Hopkins chuckled. “Sharp as a wagonload of monkeys is our Betsy, right, Betsy fach?”
Barry’s face flushed red. “If she knew what was good for her, she’d take what was offered and be happy,” he said. “Not too many chances for a girl in a dump like this, are there now?”
Betsy ran her hands through her bright red curls. “And who says I intend to stay in a dump like this? I’m just biding my time, look you, waiting for fate to take a hand.” Her wide, innocent gaze moved on to Evan, “And who knows—maybe fate has just knocked on my door.”
“That was me, thumping on the bar for another pint,” Evans-the-Meat growled. “Stop mooning around and get on with it, Betsy. Men are dying of thirst around here.”
Betsy smiled serenely as she pulled the pint and placed the foaming glass in front of the butcher. “You’d better appreciate me while I’m here, Mr. Evans. Maybe I won’t need to be doing this much longer.”
“Why, where are you going then?” Evans-the-Milk asked.
Betsy smiled mysteriously in Evan’s direction. “I was hoping that Evan Evans would introduce me to the movie directors. They must be needing extras in their film and maybe I’ll be discovered and go to Hollywood.”
“Hold on a minute, Betsy,” Evan said hastily. “You’ve got it all wrong. They’re not from Hollywood … .”
“I don’t care. British movies are just as good. I wouldn’t mind starring opposite Hugh Grant—I think he’s lovely just. And what about Ieuan Griffith? I wouldn’t mind doing a love scene with him either—and we could do it in Welsh, too.”
“Betsy!” Evan raised his voice more than he meant to. There was a sudden hush in the bar. “They are not here to shoot a movie.”
“Then what is all that stuff for?” demanded Roberts-the-Pump, the local petrol station owner. “Mrs. Rees-Number-Twenty-three was telling me that her nephew, Johnny, who works at the Inn, had to carry the luggage
upstairs for them. He said they had all these strongboxes full of film and big heavy cameras, too. And they only gave him a lousy one-pound tip—”
“Bloody foreigners,” Evans-the-Meat muttered.
“And they were talking about location and shooting,” Roberts-the-Pump went on. “If that’s not shooting a movie, I’d like to know what is.” He leaned closer to Betsy at the bar. “I bet they want to keep quiet about it because they’re bringing some big star in who doesn’t want to be mobbed.”
“Ooh, I hope it’s Mel Gibson,” Betsy said. “He gives me the shivers all up and down my spine. He reminds me of you a little, Evan bach!”
“Oh yeah. Same great body, is it?” Barry chuckled.
Evan laughed to hide his discomfort. “You say the daftest things sometimes, Betsy.”
The other men were laughing too. “Maybe you could offer to be his stand-in, boyo. If he has to fall off the top of Yr Wyddfa, you can do it for him.”
“Hang on.” Evan held up his hand. “You people have got it all wrong. It’s not a movie they’re shooting at all. It’s just a group of people who’ve come to pull an old German plane out of Llyn Llydaw and these blokes are going to film them doing it for some museum or other. That’s all.”
“Is that it?” Betsy asked, the disappointment showing on her face. “No Hollywood stars then?”
“No stars at all. Just one old plane.”
“Out of Llyn Llydaw, you say?” Charlie Hopkins put down his glass and was suddenly attentive.
“That’s right. A German bomber from World War Two.”
Charlie let out a whoop of delight. “Then we were right all along. The plane did go down after all.”
“You know about it, Charlie?”
“Of course I do. My old dad and I saw it. I was a young lad at the time, just left school and apprenticed at the slate quarry. We were in the living room one evening, listening to the radio, when we heard this plane. We knew it was one of theirs right away—well, you did in those days, didn’t you? We rushed outside and we saw it coming up the valley, very low overhead. The engine sounded like it might be in trouble.
“My old dad, he starts rolling up his sleeves. ‘They better not think of landing here or they’ll have me to deal with,’ he says. Oh we did laugh, to think of my old dad taking on German military men with his bare fists. Although, come to think of it, I reckon he might have shown them a thing or two. Fit as a fiddle, he was. You built up good muscles working with slate, didn’t you, boys?”
Several heads nodded.
“I wish I’d been there to show those Germans a thing or two,” Betsy’s father, Sam Edwards, muttered from his usual corner table, where he slumped with his whisky chaser.
“You’d never have been able to see straight enough to hit them, Sam,” Charlie commented.
Betsy’s father accepted this affably. “Bloody Germans. No good’s ever come since we started making friends with them, has it? We join the bloody Common Market and what happens? They close the slate mine and we lose our jobs. Germans don’t want slate on their roofs, do they?”
“Oh stop talking so daft, Tad. The Germans didn’t make you lose your job.” Betsy dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Go on with the story, Charlie. What happened to the plane? Did it crash?”
“No, it kept on flying until it reached the top of the pass. Then it swung off to the right. If he’d only kept on down Nant Gwynant, I reckon he’d have been okay. He’d have made it out to sea and probably back to a French airport. But he kept on turning until he was heading up the mountain. The cloud had come down, see. He probably didn’t know there was a bloody great mountain there.
“‘He’ll never make it over the mountain, the way he’s going,’ my father says. Anyway, he disappears out of sight and we hear a couple of popping noises like an engine sputtering and cutting out, and then nothing more. No explosion, no fire, nothing.
“Of course, we run to the police station to call the local RAF, and they sent up people to look when it got light, but they never found anything. They thought we were making it up. But we were right all along. So it went to the bottom of Llyn Llydaw. Fancy that!”
Evan had been listening to Charlie’s animated account with growing interest. “Charlie, how would you like to tell your story to the film crew, just like you told it to us? They’re wanting to get firsthand accounts of the war for their film.”
“Firsthand accounts, is it? Well, how about that.” Charlie looked pleased. “Tell the gentlemen I’ll be happy to be in their film.”
Evan decided there was no point in being discreet any longer. “Anyone else who was in the village during the war and might have a story to tell?” he asked.
“I’ll see what my wife Mair remembers,” Charlie said. “She was here. And there’s Owens-the-Sheep up at Ty Gwyn. He was a young boy at the time.”
“And there’s Mrs. Powell-Jones, of course.” Evans-the-Meat lowered his voice and looked around as if he expected her to be eavesdropping, although the minister and his wife never came near the pub. “She was living up at the big house, wasn’t she? I think they had evacuees billeted on them.”
Harry, the pub landlord, had come to listen in on this conversation. He threw back his head and laughed. “She won’t want to admit that she’s that age. She goes around telling everyone she’s forty!”
“She’s sixty if ever she’s a day,” Charlie Hopkins said. “I remember when I was a lad, she was a snooty little thing who sat in the front row at chapel and gave herself airs and graces. And she got us in trouble for stealing conkers from their tree.”
“Did anyone else around here have evacuees?” Evan asked.
“I think all the farmers did,” Charlie said, nodding to himself. “There wasn’t much room in the cottages. We were sleeping two to a bed as it was in our place. Went in for big families in those days.”
“Well, they didn’t know any better, did they?” Barry chimed in. “All those long dark winter nights and no telly.”
“You be quiet, Barry.” Betsy reached across and slapped his hand. “It’s a pity that Granny died last year. She had lots of good stories, didn’t she, Tad?”
“Indeed, she did,” Betsy’s father answered. “Wonderful woman. Saintly. I really miss her.” He gave a big sigh as he stared down at his now empty glass.
“When she was alive, he called her the old hag, remember?” Evans-the-Meat dug Roberts-the-Pump in the side.
Betsy saw her father begin to stir from his seat.
“So it’s only old people who get to be in the film, is it?” she demanded loudly. “Well, I don’t think that’s fair.”
“They only want to add some human interest, Betsy,” Evan said.
“What about young humans? They’re interesting too, you know—and nicer to look at.”
A sudden thought had struck Evan. “Hey, what about Mrs. Williams? She might have some good stories for them.” Nobody had mentioned his landlady so far.
“But she’s not from around here,” Charlie Hopkins said.
“She’s not?” Mrs. Williams seemed like such a fixture in the Llanfair landscape that he couldn’t imagine the village without her.
“No. She only came here as a bride when she married Gwillum Williams after the war. He’d been away in the services and we all thought he’d marry a local girl—in fact, Mair’s sister Sioned was sweet on him, but then he shows up with her one day. But she fitted in soon enough. Didn’t bring too many foreign ways with her.”
“I’d no idea she was a foreigner,” Evan commented.
Charlie Hopkins chuckled. “You ask her about it, boyo.”
“And tell that film director he needs someone young and sexy in his film if he wants people to pay to watch it,” Betsy added.
“So will they be needing a bulldozer, do you think?” Barry-the-Bucket demanded. “How are they going to get their stuff up the mountain otherwise?”
“It sounded like they had the whole thing planned,” Evan said. “They were
talking about bringing in supplies by helicopter.”
“By helicopter! Fancy that! I’d like to see that.”
“Just a minute, folks.” Evan held up his hand. “They asked me to tell you—They don’t want anybody around when they’re filming. I’ve been assigned to keep sightseers away, so please cooperate and make my job easy, all right?”
“You don’t need to worry about us, Evan bach,” Betsy said sweetly. “As if we’d give you any trouble!”
Evan shot her a glance but she was calmly pouring another pint.
“Is that you, Mr. Evans?” Mrs. Williams called as he let himself in later that evening. She always called the same thing and he was always tempted to give her a facetious answer.
“Yes, it’s me, Mrs. Williams,” he called back.
“Home early from the pub, aren’t you? Would you like a cup of cocoa? I’m just making one,” she called out.
Evan came through to the kitchen. “No cocoa for me, thanks. I’ve drunk enough for one evening.”
“How were things at the Dragon—lively, was it?”
“Lively enough,” he said. “I’ve been hearing things about you.”
“Me? They were never gossiping about me in the pub. Escob Annwyl! What were they saying?”
Evan smiled. “Slander, I think. Charlie Hopkins said you were a foreigner.”
Mrs. Williams put a hand to her ample bosom. “A foreigner indeed. You tell that man that I haven’t one drop of foreign blood in my veins. Welsh through and through, I am. What on earth made him say that?”
“Maybe because you don’t come from Llanfair.”
“Ah—so that’s what he was getting at!” She started to laugh. “Silly old fool. That goes back to when I first came here after the war. My Gwillum’s friends used to tease him that he’d married a foreign girl.”
“So where did you come from?” Evan asked.
“Blenau Ffestiniog,” she said. “That’s where I was born and grew up. Gwillum was in the army with my brothers. He came to visit when they were demobbed and … . and we started courting.” She looked down shyly. “My family thought I’d never like it in Llanfair. They thought it was like moving to the end of the earth. But I’ve been happy enough here. I just wish my daughter and granddaughter hadn’t moved away. And speaking of my granddaughter, she was telling me about this dance they’re having at the Pavilion in Rhyl. She’d love to go but she wants the right escort, of course. So of course I thought that possibly you might … .”
