Chapter 3

The bar at the Red Dragon was crowded as Evan pushed open the heavy oak door and ducked under the beam to enter. A fire was burning in the big fireplace on the far wall. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke.

“Look you—there he is now!” A high voice rose over the murmur in the bar. Betsy the barmaid’s face lit up as she spotted Evan. “Noswaith dda, Evan bach!”

Heads turned in their direction.

“We were wondering where you’d got to, Evan bach,” Charlie Hopkins called. “It’s not like you to miss opening time. Betsy was all set to send out a search party . . .”

“I was not!” Betsy said, her cheeks flushing. Evan was startled to see that Betsy’s hair was a dark, rich auburn color this evening. Ever since she had almost been seduced by a famous opera singer who liked his women dark she had been experimenting with hair color. She was also wearing a leopard print velour tank top with a low scooped neckline. The result was disconcerting, to say the least.

“I know very well that Evan Evans can take care of himself,” Betsy went on, giving him a challenging smile. “I mean, he’s built for it, isn’t he?”

“Unless he managed to find himself trapped by you someday,” Charlie Hopkins said, and his skinny body shook with soundless mirth, revealing missing front teeth. “I’d like to see him fight his way out of that!”

Betsy smoothed down her tank top, pulling the low neckline to an almost X-rated level. “When I manage to get Evan Evans alone, he won’t want to fight his way out!” she announced to the assembled crowd. “And it won’t be bird-watching that will keep us busy, either . . . unless I decide to go ahead with those tattoos I’ve been thinking about.”

The low ceiling echoed back the laughter. Evan gave a good-natured grin and decided there was nothing he could say that Betsy wouldn’t take as encouragement.

“So what will it be tonight, Evan bach? Your usual Guinness?”

“I think I’ll join Mr. Owens-the-Sheep and have a Robinson’s tonight,” Evan said. “I’ve worked up a powerful thirst.”

Betsy’s hands deftly drew two pints of Robinson’s bitter with just the right amount of froth on top. “Here, get those down you, and then you can tell us where you’ve been.”

“I told you he went out climbing today,” Roberts-the-Pump said. “I saw him heading for Glyder Fawr.”

There was nothing that escaped the Llanfair bush telegraph.

“I heard that Bronwen Price had a teachers’ meeting at the university in Bangor,” Evans-the-Milk said with a knowing wink.

“Bronwen-bloody-Price!” Betsy muttered and set down a pint glass none too gently. Evan loosened his collar. It really was warm in here tonight.

“Young Betsy was dying for you to come back, Evan,” Charlie Hopkins said, “so that you could invite her to the new French restaurant.”

Betsy gave Evan a challenging smile. “I wouldn’t say no to an evening with Evan Evans, but I don’t fancy a French restaurant, thank you. They eat snails and frog’s legs, don’t they—and little birds with the heads still on them . . .”

There was a mixed expression of disgust and laughter from the crowd.

“They do,” she insisted. “I saw a travel program once on the telly.”

“Just a minute—what French restaurant are we talking about?” Evan interrupted.

“The new one that’s opening in the old chapel above Nant Peris,” Charlie Hopkins said. “Reverend Parry Davies spotted it this afternoon, didn’t you, Reverend?”

“Indeed I did, Mr. Hopkins. It made my blood boil to see a house of the Lord turned into a den of iniquity.” The voice came from a table in a darkened corner. Unlike his counterpart at Chapel Beulah, Reverend Parry Davies was not above an occasional pint at the pub—so that my congregation knows I am human, was how he explained it. In fact he often took the back exit from the chapel and the back path to the Red Dragon with other male members of his congregation on Sunday nights.

“It’s a restaurant, Reverend,” Evans-the-Milk pointed out, “Not a brothel.”

“How do you know, boyo?” Barry-the-Bucket, the young bulldozer driver, chuckled. “It might be a front. I think I’d better go and check it out for myself, anyway. Chez Yvette, I like the sound of that—I bet she’s hot stuff. I bet she wears black lace corsets—Frenchwomen wear that sort of thing, you know.”

“And how would you know that, Barry-the-Bucket?” Betsy’s voice was scathing.

“I’ve been around.”

“You’ve never been farther south than Birmingham,” Betsy said triumphantly.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you in a black corset, Betsy.” Barry grinned at her.

“And I wouldn’t mind winning the lottery. The chances of either happening are about equal, I’d say.”

Evan laughed with the other men. He had always admired Betsy’s quick wit.

“Well, I’m not going near any French restaurant,” Evans-the-Meat said loudly. “There are too many foreigners here already. Planting stupid fir trees and wrecking the hillsides, buying up all our cottages . . . If I had my way—”

“You’d build a bloody great wall around Llanfair and make people show a Welsh passport before they were allowed in,” Evans-the-Milk chuckled, getting a general laugh.

“I would indeed,” Evans-the-Meat agreed. “Same again, Betsy love, if you don’t mind.”

Betsy refilled the pint glass. “Tell Evan Evans about your van, Reverend,” she said. “He’s bought himself a big van—”

“To bring in the people from down the valley,” the minister said. “I’ve been worrying about those poor people who’ve had no chapel this past year and no way of getting up here on a Sunday when the buses don’t run. The van was the answer to my prayers.”

“You’d better ask Farmer Owens here to be your driver,” Barry-the-Bucket said. “He’s good at rounding up sheep. Maybe he’ll lend you his dogs.”

“Speaking of dogs, how is your bitch now, Mr. Owens?” Roberts-the-Pump asked. “All right, is she?”

“Luckily,” Mr. Owens said.

“Why, what happened to her?” Betsy asked, leaning across the bar and stretching her neckline enough to make the patrons stop drinking again.

“She almost got run over by that Englishman, didn’t she?” Roberts-the-Pump said. “And not even on the road either. Driving up the track to the cottage.”

“And he had the nerve to shout at me and tell me to keep her under control,” Mr. Owens said. “On my own land, too!”

“I knew we were in for trouble when Rhodri sold his cottage to foreigners,” Evans-the-Meat said angrily. “I told you, didn’t I? No good can come of it, letting foreigners into the community. It’s not as if they patronize the local shops, do they? Only once I think she’s been in to my shop, and then she had the nerve to ask me if I spoke English and she waved her arms around as if she was speaking to an idiot.”

“Perhaps she thought you were Evans-the-Post’s brother,” the milkman chuckled. “Perhaps she thought daftness was in the family.”

Evans-the-Meat put down his glass with a bang. “If anyone’s related to that daftie, it’s you!”

Evan had been standing at the bar, downing his drink, too tired and relaxed to feel like joining in the conversation. Now he stepped out between the two men, just as Evansthe-Meat raised his fists.

“Easy, Gareth bach. I’m an Evans, too, remember,” he said lightly.

Evans-the-Meat lowered his fists. “I just wish I’d known Rhodri’s cottage was for sale. I’d have bought it myself.”

“And gone to live up on the mountain? Don’t be daft, boyo.”

“Anything to stop foreigners buying it!”

“Too late now, anyway,” Farmer Owens said. “They’ve put a lot of money into that place. They’re not going to leave in a hurry.”

“Unless somebody makes them,” Evans-the-Meat muttered.

“Well, they’ve gone now for a while,” Farmer Owens added. “And they won’t be coming back so often when the weather turns nasty. A few good rainstorms and that track will be a rushing stream. Let’s see him get his Jaguar up there then!”

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Betsy said. “They don’t bother us. It’s not like they’ve ever been in here.”

“There you are, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Evansthe-Meat said triumphantly.

Everyone looked up as the door was suddenly flung open. A young man came in, his sandy hair windswept and his freckled cheeks glowing from the wind.

“Well, if it isn’t young Bryn,” Charlie Hopkins exclaimed. He turned to the other men. “You know my daughter’s boy, don’t you? He’s just joined the fire brigade. I told him now we’ll have to call him Bryn-the-Bell.”

“Where’s the fire then, boyo?” Barry-the-Bucket called, chuckling loudly.

“Don’t just stand there. Come and have a pint,” Charlie began, lifting his arm to slap his grandson on the back.

The young man shook him off. “Not now, Taid. I need a telephone. I’ve got to call the station right away. There’s a fire on the mountain!”