December

by Phil Rickman

  All he could think to do was nod. The bright light made him blink. It was completely plain. Jan despised him. Fear and ignorance could be overcome, given time. Contempt - forget it.

  Silently, he picked up his suitcases, carried them to the door, went back for the guitar.

  'Dave, haven't you forgotten something?'

  Like she was asking for a goodbye kiss.

  He stopped and thought, bitch. He laid the guitar case down, found his key ring in a hip pocket of his jeans. From it he detached her front door key.

  He laid the key, almost ceremoniously, on the table in front of her. Feeling like a small boy required to turn out his pockets and surrender his bag of toffees. The humiliation somehow made it easier.

  He thought, fuck you, Jan.

  'Thank you,' she said.

  Climbing into his peeling Fiat, he looked over his shoulder once and saw the curtains had been drawn in Jan's living-room and he hard light had given way to the soft light. All very homely. He used to love arriving here after midnight, and these lights would still be on. Or, better still, there'd be a rosy light in the bedroom.

  It was cold in the car and wouldn't warm up; the heater was clapped. It occurred to him that he had nowhere to go, ought to have had something worked out. Wasn't as if he hadn't known this was coming. There should be a telephone help-line organization, Self-Pitying Bastards Anonymous, which you could dial on such occasions as this, it was ...

  somebody call?

  Glancing up warily, Dave saw two tiny orbs of white light in the misted rear-view mirror.

  some ineffectual little twat seeking a spot of advice?

  'Piss off, John.'

  now what kind of attitude's that? listen, take it from someone who's been there, you're well out of that one, nice girl and everything, but you start suppressing one side of you for a quiet life, you're inviting grief, pal.

  Dave drove away.

  tie a knot in it, that's my advice, son. just for a while.

  Dave considered his options. Muthah Mirth had offered him a few gigs coming up to Christmas. Fees weren't monster, but the availability of Bart's bedsit round the comer was a plus.

  cos you've got problems coming.

  'What?'

  fax it.

  Moira? You reckon?

  fax it, dickhead.

  It was fully dark now. The link road to the bypass curved back over a new viaduct overlooking Jan's terrace. The last he saw of the end house was a curl of new white smoke from its chimney.

  IV

  Profanity from a Man

  of the Cloth

  Two men and a sheepdog strolled down the valley from Ystrad Ddu, thickly conifered hills either side and the grey sky flat and low like a lid on a box.

  'Why do you say "brave"?' the new vicar asked.

  'Ah well,' said Mr Eddie Edwards, who was built like a pillar-box, 'perhaps ill-chosen, that was, I don't know. It depends on what kind of a man you are.'

  He looked up at the vicar from under the brim of his crimson cap, pulled down to prevent the wind stealing it and thus enhancing the illusion that you could post letters in him.

  'A challenge, it was, for some of your recent predecessors, see. The old biblical stony ground. Could they persuade from it a harvest?' Mr Edwards laughed. 'Could they hell.'

  'But in trying ...'

  'Aye. In trying, they produced their own harvest. Or not. As the case was usually.'

  'You sound disillusioned,' the vicar said.

  'An old cynic I am. Not from these parts, see, originally, as you might have guessed, but from a, shall we say, less agricultural part of Wales. Another refugee, Vicar, like yourself. Early retirement, ten years ago. But, still, we nosy retired people, we have our uses. And we talk. We talk to the locals, and we also talk to the strangers. And this way we find out.' Mr Edwards beamed. 'Sooner or later, we find out everything.'

  This was true. The vicar had served at two previous parishes, one as a curate, one his own living. And each of them had had its Mr Edwards: bright, retired, time on his hands. Anxious to show the new vicar around, put him wise on local issues.

  I knew a lot about this place, mind, before we came. Zap, come yere, boy, it's only an old dead sheep. Typical, this is. Bloody farmers are supposed to bury them. Hydatid disease, heard of that? Tapeworm. Breeds in the sheep, gets picked up by dogs from carcasses and passed on to the owner. No time at all, bloody cyst the size of a grapefruit in your liver or somewhere. Dangerous place, the countryside, Vicar, got to learn the rules.'

  'Yes,' the vicar said, 'that's true' Several clergymen had expressed an interest in having this parish. He suspected he'd been chosen because the others had been simply too enthusiastic about the delights of rural life. And also, perhaps, because he'd hoped so desperately that he wouldn't be chosen.

  'And also, see, Vicar, it's a funny place as regards the church. Ecclesiastical history lies deep on the ground - all these ancient abbeys and priories: Abbey Dore, Craswall, Llanthony. And of course our own, which we shall come to soon.'

  Mr Edwards paused to take in the sharp November air.

  'When we lived in Aberdare, we'd spend weekends out by Raglan, so we always knew we'd retire this way, get ourselves a bit of ground. But the prices! The motorways done it, see, M4, M50. But this is a bit out of the way, so the prices come down accordingly.'

  The home Mr Edwards and his wife had finally acquired was the former vicarage, now replaced by a smaller, less characterful modern dwelling in Ystrad hamlet. For which the vicar, who lived alone, was grateful.

  The track followed the path of the river, not much more than a rocky stream. They came to a vague fork, marked by a wind-bent thorn-bush. The main path went with the river, but Mr Edwards took the other one, not much more than a sheep track.

  Zap! This way, boy. Bloody silly name for a dog, eh? My grandson, Jason, his mam and dad brought him up to see the puppy; he says. Grandad, you got to call a sheepdog something simple, so's he can hear you when you gives him a command. What would you call him then? I says. Daft thing to say to a ten-year-old. So he's Zap.'

  The dog grinned at the vicar, the way sheepdogs did. The vicar gave him a sympathetic pat.

  'Slowly now,' Mr Edwards said. 'Don't let him know you're coming. Have to try to catch him unawares, see.'

  'The dog?'

  'No, no, man, the Abbey.'

  The vicar said sharply, 'Why do you say that?'

  'I don't know really. Daft to talk about catching a building unawares. But the Abbey ... all alone down here, the Abbey's got his thoughts, it always seems to me. And his moods. Well, how would you feel. Vicar? For centuries you're this important place, this great centre of worship, everything revolving round you, and then you're nothing and falling down a bit more each year. I can sympathize with the Abbey, being retired, like. Now ... prepare yourself.'

  They were half-way to the summit of a green hump when Mr Edwards stopped and seized the vicar's arm. A row of stones like brown and rotten teeth had arisen from the grass.

  'Here he comes, see.'

  The sight of the rising stones had taken the vicar's breath away. Literally. He stopped.

  'Out of condition, you are. Vicar. You townies.' Mr Edwards chuckled and pulled the vicar towards the top of the hump.

  As they climbed, the teeth began to lengthen and then holes appeared in them. And then a huge hole, which became an archway, and then a series of ruined arches, like worn, pink-brown ribs, and suddenly they were looking down on all of it.

  'Bit like that old dead sheep, isn't he?' Mr Edwards said. 'On a grand scale. Come along now, there's a path winds down. And I was right, though, wasn't I?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'You can't do it. Can't sneak up on him.'

  The Abbey seemed to be stretching, almost languorously, rising up around and beyond them.

  The other times, the vicar had come to it by the more direct route, the narrow, twisting road, like a tunnel in summer. And never before on foot.


  'I've tried it from every angle,' Mr Edwards said. 'Stroll down the valley, the normal way and, of course, he spots you from a distance, that's easy. Come through the wood, and he explodes on you all at once - well, too much to take, that is. But even this way, sneaking in from behind, he knows you're approaching and before you know it, he's got you surrounded.'

  The vicar looked nervously behind him and there was this jagged stone wall he didn't even remember passing. A lump of rubble was lying by his shoe like a brown skull. When he turned again, the great archway was rearing over him, the holes in the wall above it like cold, white eyes.

  'Come on, then. Vicar, I'll show you the layout.'

  'Perhaps another day,' the vicar said, adding faintly, 'There'll be lots of other days.'

  At the far end, the Abbey ceased to be a ruin. There was a square tower with a chimney, its stone the same weathered pink-brown but not so rough-hewn, its windows opaque.

  A wind had arisen. Backing off, the vicar felt the Abbey somehow swirling around him, a dusty mist which might get to his lungs.

  Zap began to whine.

  'Bloody dog,' Mr Edwards said. 'No feeling for the glories of the past. Never likes to come this way.'

  'Let's go.' The vicar was shocked at the weakness of his voice, no projection, so much for the sermon-training at college. Perhaps it was in his lungs.

  Mr Edwards had started down the slope. 'Won't take ten minutes, Vicar. We can take a quick stroll around the ruins and then return along the valley bottom, more direct, see.'

  The vicar said, 'Let's just get the fuck out of here.'

  If Mr Edwards had heard this sudden, surprising profanity from a man of the doth, he didn't react. He began to climb back to the top of the hump. Perhaps he actually wants to get this over, the vicar thought. Then we wouldn't have to return to the Abbey

  Mr Edwards arrived next to him, panting a little. 'Aye, he's a funny old bugger, the Abbey. The tourists and the backpackers come and go, but local people ignore the place, no appreciation. No feeling for the past. Have it demolished, they would, the farmers, to make more grazing land.'

  'Who owns it now?'

  Mr Edwards explained that it was in the care of the Government. The ancient monuments people, they maintained it, although it remained in private ownership. Had been a hunting lodge, an inn, an outward-bound centre for bad boys. And then a recording studio - 'more bad boys, rock and rollers, see. Not seemly for a holy ruin, you ask me'. He smiled slyly. 'You have views on this. Vicar? Sacrilege? 'Course, being an Anglican ... All left-footers, we were, when the Abbey was last in use.'

  'We're still all Christians, Mr Edwards.'

  'That's the modern view, is it? Ecumenical. Well, I have no quarrel with that, though I know some that would. But as a ruin, is this still a holy place, would you say?'

  The vicar pondered what he should reply to this.

  Eventually, he said, 'Some people say, fancifully perhaps, that the stones retain things. All that worship. All that veneration.'

  'All that rock and roll?' said Mr Edwards. 'And what would old Abbot Richard have said to that?'

  'What could he say, Mr Edwards, with his own personal history?'

  The story of Abbot Richard, who founded the first abbey at Ystrad Ddu, was set down in the Department of the Environment official handbook which the vicar had found on his shelves when he arrived, along with local Ordnance Survey maps.

  'I never thought about it like that,' said Mr Edwards. 'Gives hope to us all, I suppose, old Richard.'

  It was an apocryphal story: the maverick monk who'd funded the Abbey in the eleventh century had been dismissed from a religious house at Hereford for alleged thieving and fornication and had finally found salvation through a holy vision this beautiful valley, falling to his knees, vowing to establish a religious community on this very spot.

  I suppose Richard would have been quite sympathetic towards rock and roll,' the vicar said. 'At least it was an attempt put new life into the place. What happened to it, do you know?'

  It had closed down some years back, Mr Edwards said, shaking his head. The boss of the record company that owned it had died suddenly, leaving problems over the estate. Rumours were that it had been resold. Rumours suggested the people who'd recently bought the old Abbey farm across the valley were interested in acquiring it. But there were always rumours in a place like this, and meanwhile the tower house lay silent and derelict. Shame.

  And people in Ystrad, see, they are always a touch restive when the place is derelict.'

  'I thought you said they'd all rather see it flattened.'

  'Aye, but as long as it's there they like to have someone in residence. They've never forgotten the tragedy, must be twenty years ago, when it was abandoned for a year or so and two young people, boy and a girl - in search of a spot of privacy as you might say - climbed the spiral staircase to the south-west tower and half the bloody wall collapsed and they tumbled thirty feet the ground, with a ton or so of masonry on top of them.'

  'God,' said the vicar. 'What happened to them?'

  'Lay there all night, at the foot of the tower. Young chap was dead by the time one of the farmers found them next morning. And the girl ... the girl's still paralysed from the waist down. Your Mrs Pugh, your housekeeping woman ... her daughter, you know?'

  'God almighty. Isabel Pugh? That's how it happened?'

  Mr Edwards beamed at having imparted to the new minister another essential piece of local knowledge. 'As I said, Vicar, the countryside is a dangerous place'

  As if to amplify his point, the slated roofs of the hamlet that was Ystrad Ddu slipped into view, and the little community indeed look vulnerable, the black and viridian forestry swooping down on it from other side, the bare, pink, clefted rock partly overhanging it in a huge shelf. The old church, which at some stage had lost its tower, was so small and insignificant that it might have been just another of the hillside cottages which lay haphazardly, like old books fallen from the shelf.

  It was late afternoon now and hesitant wisps of smoke curled from the squat chimneys. One smudgy plume had drifted up into the cleft of the overhanging rock, making it look like a smoking volcano. Beyond it was the lump of a semi-distant mountain top.

  'That the Skirrid, Mr Edwards?'

  'It is indeed. Notice how, from here, the peak seems to be rising from the gap in our own rock? Perhaps it is on the very same fault line. Perhaps they were both cloven at the same time.'

  'What, during the Crucifixion?'

  One of the guidebooks left behind for the vicar had related the local legend explaining how the Skirrid, the malformed mountain beyond Abergavenny, had acquired its peculiar shape, having been split by an earthquake at the very moment of Christ's death on the cross. The event was graphically depicted on the sign outside the Skirrid Inn - an arrow of lightning piercing the peak.

  Mr Edwards donned his sly expression again. 'You believe that, Vicar?'

  'Now, what am I supposed to say to that? I'm sure there are sound geological reasons why I should dismiss it as superstitious bollocks. On the other hand ...'

  'Yes!' The little man quivered with delight. 'Exactly what I meant when I said the modern church was a bit uncomfortable in this area. So much history, so much legend - and most of it distinctly ecclesiastical in nature. The vision of Richard, the martyrdom of Aelwyn. And the holy mountain of Gwent.'

  Mr Edwards extended an arm towards the horizon. 'For many years ...' his voice deepened, went suitably sonorous and sepulchral... people would take helpings of soil from the summit of the Skirrid. Farmers scattered it on their fields for fertility and whole churches, it's said, were built on mounds of earth brought from up by the site of the old chapel of St Michael, close to the great cleft - the spear wound in the side of the saviour. Am I embarrassing you, Vicar?'

  'Just a little.'

  'Your predecessor, now, he wouldn't hear a word of it. Oh, no place for this old nonsense in the modern Church! Got to move on from superstition! Even wante
d to start a fund for electric lights and heating in the church. Didn't get very far, I'm afraid.'

  They came to the new vicarage, built of brick, faced and white washed, on the edge of the sloping village. It was just out of the shadow of the cloven rock, open to the fields and the valley.

  'And where do you stand, Mr Edwards? Do you think we should all be up the Skirrid with our shovels?'

  'Well...' Mr Edwards took off his cap, scratched the centre of a full head of pewter-coloured hair. 'Before I retired I was, as you know, a history adviser for schools in Mid Glam. So my feeling is that we should continue to be aware of these matters, but not to the point of- how can I put this? - getting obsessed.'

  'No,' said the vicar, who knew all about the power of obsession. 'And you really don't like the Abbey, do you, Mr Edwards?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The Abbey. The atmosphere there.'

  'It's a piece of history,' Mr Edwards said, as if this was all that mattered, isn't a question of not liking a place. If we all stopped visiting ancient sites because we found the atmosphere oppressive, what would happen to them then? Go to rack and ruin.'

  'Which it has,' the vicar pointed out, lifting the latch on his garden gate. 'And how do you mean, "oppressive", exactly?'

  'Oh, the wife, I think it was, used that word, the first and last time she walked there with me. The wife, God help us, likes old places to be ... pretty.

  The vicar thought, his wife won't go with him, his dog only goes 0n sufferance. 'I bet,' he said carefully, 'that you don't really like going on your own.'

  'Now, that's ridiculous,' said Mr Edwards, putting his cap back on, tugging it over his ears. 'Stuff and nonsense, that is.'

  V

  A Sighing of Satin

  'Your daddy wis here last night,' Donald said. 'Still wearin' the big horn-rims. When he came out they wis good an' misted.'

  Donald stepped back and waved her up the steps of the huge caravan, a mobile mansion, and into the china cave which had been the Duchess's parlour.