Singing the Sadness. Reginald Hill

Nye got round to it.

      ‘Trippers, is it?’ he said, glancing at the lounging choristers. ‘Going to the seaside?’

      ‘Look like trippers, do we?’ said Joe grinning.

      ‘Don’t look like mountain climbers,’ said Nye.

      There was no gainsaying this, and Joe replied, ‘We’re singers. A choir. We’re on our way to the Llanffugiol Choral Festival.’

      He spoke with modest pride, confident of making some kind of impression. After all, this was the land of song where a good voice vied with the ability to run very fast with a pointed ball as the gift most desired from your fairy godmother.

      He was disappointed. Nye looked at him blankly for a long moment. Perhaps he was deaf, thought Joe. Or tone deaf. Or maybe it was his own poor pronunciation.

      ‘The Llanffugiol Choral Festival,’ he said carefully, blowing out the double-L sound with a singer’s breath.

      ‘Never heard of it,’ said the Welshman indifferently. ‘Pass me that wrench, will you, boyo?’

      Boyo, Joe had learned from Starbright, wasn’t a racist put-down but a term of familiarity in Welsh-speak. He passed the wrench and would have liked to discover whether it was just the festival or Llanffugiol itself Nye hadn’t heard of, which would be odd as Merv had assured them they were only half an hour’s drive away. But Merv was lurking menacingly and an enquiry could have sounded like a vote of no confidence in his navigation, so Joe held his peace.

      It took almost an hour for Nye to finish and another ten minutes to tot up his bill. Merv looked at it and indulged in an intake of breath so sharp that in another it would have merited a very severe whipping from Percy.

      A full and frank discussion followed with Joe as arbiter. Finally forced to admit the justice of the claims, Merv produced his clincher.

      ‘Don’t carry that kind of cash,’ he said, producing his wallet to demonstrate its leanness. ‘Joe, we’ll need a whip-round.’

      Joe, imagining Aunt Mirabelle’s reaction if he went to her with a collection plate, shook his head firmly.

      ‘It’s your coach, Merv,’ he said.

      ‘It’s your choir,’ retorted Merv.

      For a moment, deadlock. Then Nye broke it by reaching forward to pluck a credit card from the open wallet.

      ‘Plastic’s fine,’ he said.

      On the passenger seat of his van was a credit-card machine and a camera. As Merv with ill grace signed the counterfoil, Nye snapped him, then again full face as he looked up, and finally he took a couple of the coach after cleaning the dust from the numberplate.

      ‘Souvenirs,’ he said. ‘I like to remember my customers.’

      ‘Hope that card’s good, Merv,’ said Joe, as they watched the van hiccup into the distance.

      ‘Makes no matter,’ said Merv evilly. “Cos I’m going to run that squat little bastard off the road when I overtake him. Everyone aboard! Let’s get this wagon train a’rolling.’

      It was now early evening with the sun lipping the western hills and curls of mist patterning the surface of the stream.

      ‘How far to go, Mr Golightly?’ enquired Rev. Pot as he climbed aboard.

      ‘Fifteen, twenty miles, maybe a little more,’ said Merv vaguely.

      The Reverend Percy Potemkin had not spent half a lifetime curing souls without developing a sharp ear for human vaguenesses. But he was not a man to rush to judgement. His gaze met Joe’s and asked for confirmation that this lack of precision was merely a form of speech. Joe loyally gave an optimistic smile. But he knew that if his friend had a fault, it was his reluctance to admit the possibility of anything being wrong till the trout came belly up in the milk churn.

      At least the engine had a sweeter sound now. Someone started a chorus of ‘To Bea Pilgrim’, but their hearts weren’t in it and after a while most of the travellers settled down to inner contemplation or sleep.

      Joe studied his information sheet. Llanffugiol, it told him, was a substantial village which in recent years had become the focal point of musical life in this area of rural Wales. This was its very first Choral Festival so there was no list of previous winners, but there was an impressive roll-call of top choirs which had been invited to take part. It was a bit less impressive if you studied the small print and worked out those which had actually accepted at the time the info sheet was sent out, but it still contained enough first-class opposition, like the German Guttenberg Singverein, to make this a tough competition. But Boyling Corner’s triumph three years in a row at the Bed and Bucks Choriad had clearly given the chapel choir the beginnings of a national reputation which they were determined to live up to. As Rev. Pot said, ‘We sing for the Lord not for glory, but if the Lord fancies a bit of glory thrown in, who are we to argue?’

      Their accommodation was in the dormitories of Branddreth College, a boys’ boarding school a couple of miles out of Llanffugiol. There was a sketch map showing the relation of the college to the village, but nothing to relate the area to the outside world. Written directions had been sent and these were now in Merv’s possession, so all should have been straightforward, but Joe’s heart misgave him when he recalled Merv’s cavalier attitude to route-finding in his taxi. During daylight hours he used the sun, at night the stars, and when the weather was overcast, he fell back on instinct. ‘Salmon and swallows do it every year,’ he said. ‘And if man’s no better than fish or fowl, he’s got no right to be organizing the World Cup.’

      Well, it would be instinct tonight, thought Joe, glancing out of the window.

      Darkness was falling fast, accelerated by the mist which had long since escaped from the river and was now printing its bloomy patterns on the outside of the glass.

      Merv’s threat to the wellbeing of Nye Garage had proved empty as, despite the apparent debility of his van, they hadn’t overtaken it. Indeed, they hadn’t seen anybody to overtake or be overtaken by for over an hour, which was just as well as the roads seemed to be getting narrower and narrower.

      Suddenly the coach halted. In the headlights through the mist it was just possible to see a triple parting of the ways. There was a signpost, and Joe’s heart, always a buoyant organ, rose sharply as he made out the letters Llan. Merv got out with his flashlight to take a closer look and Joe joined him. It was crash-dive time again. True, each of the three arms pointed to somewhere beginning with Llan but none of them was Llanffugiol.

      ‘Merv, don’t you think it’s time to look at a map?’

      ‘Been looking at a sodding map for the past half-hour,’ said Merv, like an atheist admitting to prayer. ‘Trouble is, none of the funny names on the sodding map match any of the funny names on these sodding signposts!’

      ‘What you going to do then?’

      ‘Take the middle one till we reach the place mentioned then consult the natives,’ he said. Then, his irrepressible optimism returning, he added, ‘Maybe there’ll be a pub!’

      He climbed back in the coach and called, ‘Not long now, folks.’

      ‘So he knows where we are?’ said Beryl as Joe returned to his seat.

      ‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe.

      ‘Don’t think so? Joe, isn’t it time you got on that phone of yours and rang someone to ask for directions?’

      ‘Yeah, maybe. Only you can’t ask for directions less’n you know where you are. Soon as we reach this village we’re heading for, I’ll give it a go.’

      But no village appeared. The coach was now full of anxious and mutinous muttering. Rev. Pot went up the aisle and started talking to Merv. Joe knew it was strictly none of his business, but an accusatory glance from Aunt Mirabelle sent him to join the debate, which was getting so heated