Evan and Elle - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,4

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