The Gift by Peter Dickinson Page B

meet his Nationalist friends,” said Granny.
    â€œWelsh Nationalists!” said Penny. “I thought they were a joke!”
    â€œSilly they are sometimes,” said Dadda, laying his papers on his lap, “but I do not think they are a joke.”
    â€œI thought they were private armies of six men who wanted to make everybody talk Welsh by law,” said Penny.
    â€œYes, there are some like that,” said Dadda. “A funny look in their eyes, they have, as though they expected the heavens to open and a troop of angels to come flying down, crying to the world in Welsh that the heaven on earth would begin on Thursday week.”
    â€œThat’d puzzle the people who didn’t understand Welsh,” said Penny.
    â€œYes,” said Dadda, and reached for his paper.
    â€œBut it is different with the water boards,” said Granny.
    â€œIndeed it is,” said Dadda. “Drowning good valleys to make a reservoir for Manchester. Whole farms have been lost, you see, where Welsh families have lived for ten generations. It is not a joke to try to stop behavior of that sort.”
    â€œBut what about the private armies and blowing up power stations?” said Penny. “That sounds pretty stupid.”
    â€œYess,” said Dadda. “But every time a Welshman does some little stupid thing, you must remember that a hundred Englishmen in London have done a hundred big stupid things. Look in the dresser, Davy bach. In the third box are some books. Isn’t there a Shakespeare there?”
    There was. Davy took it to bed with him and read carefully through Henry the Fourth, Part I . The pages were much more thumbed than those of any other play in the book.
    Davy knew too much to try again at breakfast. He wasn’t going to get much time with Ian, so it was stupid to waste it starting conversations that were only going to produce that rasping note of scorn. It’s no fun to be hurt by people you’re fond of. So it was a surprise when Ian looked up from his buttered eggs and said, “By the way, Dave, I found someone who can tell you about this Glyn Dwr bloke. I’ll run you down after breakfast.”
    â€œAfter Chapel, you are saying,” said Granny.
    â€œSure,” said Ian. “Everything okey-doke with the deacons? I hope we get a couple of decent hymns.”
    They did. On the other hand the Minister had decided to prove that industrial pollution was the lesser beast in The Book of Revelation , Chapter Thirteen, verses eleven to eighteen. This took twenty-eight minutes by Penny’s watch and was so dull that pictures kept swimming into Davy’s mind, mostly thoughts that some of the men were having about Nancy Owen, the local beauty who had sung the solo anthem just before the sermon.
    They have torn up the railway line that once ran from Llangollen westward along the valley of the limpid Dee. Davy had been blinking forward over Ian’s shoulder, his eyes full of tears from the rush of wind, so at first he thought he was looking at some sort of bright bungalow at the bottom of the tilted lane down from the main road to the railway. But when the tears cleared, he saw that it was indeed a railway carriage, standing lonely on its siding, blazing with green and gold paint and with its name, Morfudd, lettered ornately on the side. It looked more like a gypsy trailer than a railway coach. As they walked down the steep timber steps toward it, he saw that the embankment on either side had been carefully cultivated and was planted entirely with leeks.
    By the time they reached the last step the door of the coach was open, and in the doorway stood a stout little man wearing an old brown dressing gown as if it were a monk’s habit; his beard and hair stood out an equal distance all around his head; it was mostly gray but tinged in places with an ugly yellow which might have been its original color but looked more likely to be nicotine stains from the large