by Rhys Bowen
“Not yet, Evans-the-Meat,” Evan called back. “But there’s still time, isn’t there? Are you planning on committing one?”
“I just might,” Evans-the-Meat replied, the smile fading from his face. “I’d like to murder all those bloody tourists. Why can’t they leave us alone, that’s what I want to know.”
Evan looked up and down the deserted street. Even in the height of the summer holidays, Llanfair could hardly be described as a tourist mecca. There was little here to make them stop—a petrol pump with small snack bar, and postcards that were sold at the post office and general store. A couple of cottages took in b-and-b visitors, and four new holiday bungalows had appeared this spring on Morgan’s farm, but that was the extent of the hospitality industry in the village itself. The well-heeled drivers of BMWs and Jags stayed at the new Everest Inn, further up the pass. Evan glanced up at the overgrown Swiss chalet that had so enraged the residents when it was built. It still looked monstrously out of place—a kind of Disney mountain fantasy on a bleak Welsh hillside.
“It’s not like we’re overrun with tourists here, is it?” Evan voiced his thoughts out loud. “And Roberts-the-Pump likes the extra money he gets selling snacks.”
Evans-the-Meat sniffed in disgust. “Sell his own mother for tuppence, that man would,” he said. “And that idiot Evans-the-Milk too.” He added this loudly, glancing hopefully at the open door of the dairy. One of his main hobbies was fighting with his next-door neighbor. But nobody came out of the dairy to meet the challenge.
“Evans-the-Milk?” Evans asked. “What’s he selling then?”
Evans-the-Meat leaned closer as if he was divulging a great secret. “He’s planning to make his own ice cream, that’s what,” he hissed. “He thinks the tourists will come running. I told him I didn’t want to see another tourist anywhere near my shop!”
Evan grinned. “But the tourists don’t bother you, do they?”
He couldn’t imagine too many out-of-town visitors would find a reason to pop into a butcher’s shop.
“Those people staying at the new holiday bungalows do,” Evans-the-Meat said. He glanced up at four new wood and glass structures that stood on what used to be Taff Morgan’s farm. They had been built during the spring and the villagers complained that Taff’s son Ted hadn’t even waited until his poor father was cold in his grave before he started spoiling things with his fancy London ways. Not that he ever came near the place himself. A contractor had simply shown up one day with instructions to build, and Mr. Ted Morgan hadn’t even come to check on the result.
Evans-the-Meat came closer, still waving his cleaver. “Would you like to hear what happened today, then?” he asked confidentially. “One of those English people from the bungalows had the nerve to ask me if I had any decent English lamb! I told her the day I had to start selling foreign lamb was the day I closed my doors for good.”
Evan tried not to smile. “I don’t suppose she’s ever had the opportunity to try our local Welsh lamb,” he said easily.
“Then it’s about time she bloody learned, isn’t it?” Evans-the-Meat snapped. He headed back to his store, then turned to Evan again.
“See you at the Dragon then, will I?”
Evan nodded. “I expect so. As soon as I’ve closed up shop at the police station.”
“It must be hard, all that walking up and down and stopping for cups of tea,” Evans-the-Meat said.
Evan smiled, although he was never quite sure when Evans-the-Meat was joking.
“It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, haven’t they?” he retorted. “See you then. Don’t go waving that thing around, will you, or I might have to cite you for carrying a deadly weapon.” He gave a friendly wave to the butcher and headed on up the street.
The boys were already in the midst of their football practice when he reached the village school. He paused to watch for a moment, his gaze straying to the gray stone school building beyond. Bronwen often stayed late to prepare the next day’s lessons. He hoped she’d glimpse him outside and come out to talk. Evan wasn’t usually shy about talking to women, but he had been deliberately taking it slowly with Bronwen Price. Sometimes he wondered if she wasn’t a little too serious and intellectual for him. He knew very well that two dates with one girl in a village like Llanfair would have everyone planning the wedding day. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to get married some day, but he wasn’t in any big hurry either.
But he certainly enjoyed Bronwen’s company and her quiet wisdom. She was the one person he could talk to when he had something on his mind. She was a great listener and didn’t make any rash judgements. The way she sat there, her head slightly on one side, her long ash blond hair falling like a curtain of golden rain, had often encouraged him to say far more than he had meant to. And he had gone away feeling strangely content.
But Bronwen didn’t appear from the school today and Evan resumed his trek to the top of the village street. The last two buildings were both chapels. On the left was Chapel Bethel, Reverend Parry Davies, Sunday school 10 A.M. worship service 6 P.M. (sermon in English). On the right was Chapel Beulah, Reverend Powell-Jones, worship service 6 P.M. (sermon in Welsh and English). They framed the street, unpretentious gray stone mirror images of each other, even to the identical billboards beside their front doors. Only the biblical texts on their billboards were different.
If the outsider paused to wonder why a village the size of Llanfair needed two chapels, the messages on the billboards should have given him a clue. The two chapels were at constant war. Today the message outside Chapel Bethel read “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” while Beulah proclaimed, “Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek!”
Evan grinned. The war of the billboards was the civilized way that Reverends Parry Davies and Powell-Jones got at each other. When one came out with a new billboard quote, the other rushed straight to his Bible to contradict or better it. There was no animosity more passionate than that between rival Christians, Even thought.
He had reached the end of the village. Before him the road snaked up to the top of the pass, a gray ribbon between green hills. The only building was the Everest Inn, its wood-shingled Swiss chalet roof glowing in the evening sunlight. Evan paused and scanned the hills above. He picked out a figure moving across the high pastures and caught the glint of something bright. That would be the colonel’s silver-tipped cane, he decided. On his way down from another of his expeditions. He marvelled at the old man’s strength and determination. He must be going on eighty and yet he was up there, tramping around, wet or dry, determined to come up with King Arthur’s crown, or maybe the rotting remains of the round table.
As Evan turned to head back to the police station, his attention was caught by something lower down the mountain. There was a flash of bright red in the meadow behind Chapel Bethel. It was a little girl with red-blond curls and a bright red dress. She was skipping across the grass so lightly that she looked weightless. Evan didn’t recognize her as one of the village kids. She must be an outsider, staying at the holiday cottages, and rather young to be out alone, even in a safe place like Llanfair, he thought.
He scanned the road for signs of someone keeping an eye on her, saw no one, and decided to keep an eye on her himself. It was an awfully big mountain up there and he didn’t want her to stray too far. Then she stopped her upward trek and started to come back. Evan sighed in relief. She was almost back to the dry-stone wall when she broke into a run. Evan saw she was heading for a young lamb, standing alone not far from the wall. He heard her call to it and throw open her arms as if she expected it to come to her like a puppy. Strangely enough the lamb didn’t run away. The little girl put her arms around it and picked it up. It was heavier than she had expected and she staggered forward with it, her face red with exertion. Evan wondered what she intended to do with it and where she was trying to take it.
But he never found out because the lamb started struggling and bleating frantically. Its cries reached the ears o
f its mother, grazing not too far away. The old sheep raised her head and then came waddling to the defence of her offspring. The little girl looked around to see a large sheep charging toward her, uttering threatening baas. She dropped the lamb and fled back to the wall, as fast as her little legs could carry her.
Evan ran to meet her, in case she needed help getting over the wall. But she scrambled over and jumped down the other side, her eyes still wide with fear. She ran down the bank, gathering speed as she went, and shot straight out into the road. Subconsciously Evan’s ears had picked up the whine of an approaching car some time ago. The whine had now become a roar. The little girl heard it too and froze in the middle of the road as the car came speeding up the pass.
Evan rushed out into the road, snatched her up, and flung her to one side as the car swerved, breaks squealing and horn blaring. It passed them within inches and screeched to a halt.
“Phew, that was a close one,” the driver yelled, his face a sickly green.
“No harm done luckily,” Evan called back. He waved to the driver as the car took off again. “It’s alright, love. You’re fine.” He smiled down at the child who had started to cry.
A scream made him look up. A young woman was running across the street, her eyes wide with terror. Her hair was a darker shade of red than the girl’s, but she was unmistakably her mother.
“Jenny! Ohmygod, Jenny! What happened? Is she all right?” she shrieked.
Evan set the little girl down. “She’s fine. Had a bit of a scare, didn’t you, love?” he asked the little girl. He didn’t add that he’d had a bit of a scare too. He could feel his heart still thumping.
“The bear chased me,” Jenny said, rushing to cling to her mother’s legs. “It growled at me.”
“Bear?” The mother looked at Even for explanation.
“She means sheep,” Evan said. “She picked up a lamb and its mother came after her.”
The young woman looked apologetically at Evan as she enfolded the child in her arms. “We’re from Manchester. She’s never seen a sheep before.”
The little girl sobbed against her mother’s shoulder, her thin body heaving with each sob. The woman held her more tightly. “You were a bad girl to go out without Mummy, weren’t you?”
The little girl nodded, her lower lip trembling.
“It’s my fault, I suppose,” the woman said, straightening up again. Evan was interested to hear that her accent sounded more London than Manchester. “It was such a lovely day that I had the doors open. She must have gone out the front door while I was busy cooking her tea.” She glanced across to the row of cottages opposite, where one front door stood wide open. “I didn’t think too much could happen in a place like this if you left the doors and windows open,” she added.
“There are still cars on the street,” Evan said. “You can never be too careful with kids, can you?”
“You’re right there.” She shook her head, giving him an exasperated smile. “She’s a little monkey, she is. Into everything the moment my back’s turned, aren’t you, you horrible little monster?” She nuzzled at the child’s neck, making the little girl stop crying and squeal with delight.
Now that the trauma was over, Evan noticed that she was a good-looking young woman, although her bright red hair, plucked and pencilled eyebrows, and heavy makeup seemed out of place in Llanfair, as were the skimpy white shorts and Hawaiian print halter top she was wearing. Not that they didn’t suit her with those long legs …
Evan forced his mind back to business. “Here for a holiday, are you?”
The young woman looked up, the little girl still clinging to her neck. “No, we just moved here a couple of days ago.”
“Moved here? For good, you mean?” Evan was surprised. Usually the village grapevine would have found out the moment anyone new arrived. This one seemed to have slipped in unnoticed.
“I can’t say how good it will be yet.” The woman smiled again. There was a wistful quality to her smile. “I thought we’d give it a try here. I wanted her to grow up somewhere healthy and safe, away from all the drugs and crime.”
“But why here?” Evan asked. “You’re not Welsh, are you?”
She chuckled. “If you heard me trying to say Chlanfair, you’d know the answer to that one. No, I’ve no connections with the place, which is part of the attraction, I suppose.”
“Then why here? Had you been here on holiday when you were a kid?”
She paused for a moment, staring out past him to the green hillsides. Evan wondered if he was being too inquisitive. “I’m sorry, I’m giving you the third degree,” he said. “I’ll leave you to get back to your tea.”
“I don’t really know what made me come here myself,” she said as he started to move away. “I’d never even seen the place before—not in the flesh anyway. I’d, uh, heard about it and it just seemed like a good place to bring up a kid.”
“So what do you think about it now that you’re here?” Evan asked.
She glanced up and down the street. A couple of men were walking past on their way to the pub, hands in their pockets and their caps pulled down over their eyes. A woman came out of her cottage further down the row and yelled back a torrent of Welsh insults as she left.
The young woman turned back to Evan. “I didn’t expect it to be so … foreign. There’s no way I’ll ever learn to talk Welsh. I suppose I’ll always be an outsider.”
“Give them time,” Evan said. “They’re friendly enough, once they get used to you. It’s just that we Welsh are a little shy and suspicious around strangers.”
“You don’t seem too shy.” The woman gave him a challenging smile.
“Ah well, it’s my job, isn’t it?” Evan could feel himself flushing and cursed his fair Celtic skin that showed the least embarrassment.
“So you’re the local bobby, are you?”
Evan nodded. “Constable Evans. I run the community police station here.”
She managed to free one arm while the little girl still clung to her and extended her hand to him. “Pleased to meet you, Constable Evans. I’m Annie. Annie Pigeon.”
“Nice to meet you, Annie.” Evan took her hand. “Welcome to Llanfair. If you need any help, just come to me.” He gave her a friendly smile. “I’d better get going. I’ve got to report in to HQ before I close up shop for the night. See you around then, Annie, and you too, Jenny. No more running out into the street without your mum, okay?”
The little girl glanced at him shyly then buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.
“She’s kind of shy around strangers, just like you Welsh people,” Annie said, her eyes challenging again. “I’d best be getting back to my cooking, if you can call baked beans and frankfurters cooking. See you then, constable, or do you have a first name?”
“It’s Evan.”
“Evan Evans?” She let out a shriek of laughter. “That’s about as bloody Welsh as you can get, isn’t it?”
Evan started to walk away as she made for her front door.
“Bye, Evan,” she called after him. “See you around. Go on, Jenny, say good-bye.”
He turned back, but Jenny’s face was still buried. He continued down the street, intrigued by Annie Pigeon who just appeared spontaneously in a place she had never seen before. Why? Why would a big-city girl from England come to live in a remote village in Wales? He got the feeling that there was no Mr. Pigeon around, probably never had been. It wasn’t going to be easy for a single mum, that was for sure. There was no denying that the Welsh took a long time to warm to strangers and most people in Llanfair spoke Welsh rather than English. He’d have to do what he could—
He stopped abruptly as he sensed, rather than saw, someone watching him. Bronwen Price was leaning on the gate to the school playground. Her ash blond braid hung over one shoulder, and the wind was blowing stray wisps of hair across her face. She was wearing a long blue cotton skirt and a blue denim shirt that matched her eyes.
“Good evening, Evan,” s
he said, repeating his name exactly as Annie had called out after him.
Chapter 3
“Damn,” Evan muttered under his breath.
He gave her a smile as he strolled over to her. “Oh, hullo there, Bronwen. You’re working late tonight, aren’t you?”
“I could say the same for you,” Bronwen said, her gaze going past him up the street to a front door that was just closing. “Giving the tourists advice on the local attractions, were you?”
Evan couldn’t tell from her voice whether she was annoyed or amused. “She’s not a tourist. She’s just moved here. Came from Manchester, of all places, and never been out of the city before by the sound of it. The little girl thought a sheep was a bear.” He attempted to laugh but Bronwen was still looking at him with large, solemn eyes. She said nothing so he went on. “I imagine it won’t be easy for her, coming here and not speaking Welsh.”
“So you’re going to help her get settled in.”
“I think we all should help her,” Evan said. “It can’t be easy, alone with a little kid.”
“You know your trouble, Evan Evans,” Bronwen said. “You’re just an overgrown boy scout. You can’t stop helping people, can you?”
“Just doing my job, Bronwen.”
“Right,” she said, giving him a sweet smile. “You’d better go and close up the station then, hadn’t you? They’ll be wondering down in Caernarfon where you’ve got to.”
She turned away from the gate and Evan walked on, feeling annoyed and confused. Had she just been teasing him or did she really think he’d been unnecessarily attentive to Annie Pigeon? Why was it so damned hard to understand women? And why should it matter what she thought? It wasn’t as if they were engaged or even officially dating. And yet Evan knew that it did matter. He cared more about Bronwen than he dared admit to himself. He liked having her around. He had come to rely on her. Like Henry Higgins, he had grown accustomed to her face. And he was approaching thirty—an age when a man should start to think about settling down.
