December

by Phil Rickman

  'That little chap's at the house, surely? And ... Well, Tom could be anywhere, couldn't he? Where were you from originally, London?'

  'He wouldn't go back to London. He'll stay in the area, until he thinks it's safe.'

  'Well,' said Meryl. 'You know your husband.'

  But does she? Meryl wondered. I was the one shared his vision, not her.

  In the vision everybody had been dead, except for Meryl and Tom. Within a short time, the Tulleys were dead. Horribly so.

  In the early hours, while Martin was showing Shelley and Vanessa to their room, Meryl had taken the little man, Beasley, into the kitchen, got some coffee into him and, out of him, a harrowing description of the inside of the Tulleys' Daimler. When he'd told her, a bit hesitantly, that Lady Tulley had been decapitated, a long shiver had coursed through Meryl like a black waterfall.

  It had left her hot and cold. Cold with fear, hot with anticipation.

  She had to see him again. The appalling, awesome Tom Storey.

  The shaving mirror was bored with Dave.

  The shaving mirror had heard it all before, the same old questions.

  Why can't I hold on to a guitar?

  Why can't I hold down a relationship?

  Why can't I write my own songs any more?

  Why can't I direct my life?

  Why do I have to shelter under other guys' tragedies?

  Why can't I make any real money?

  Why am I still living in a bloody bedsit?

  Why do I keep letting people down?

  Why me?

  Why does it have to be like this?

  The mirror was balanced on a glass shelf over the washbasin in the bedsit. Dave sat on a rickety stool and gazed into it through the smoke from his cigarette and said why, why, why, until it became almost a mantra, the mirror clouded with the smoke and his breath.

  And after a while

  because you're a useless twat, Dave, the mirror said in a familiar voice, grinding with irony. You're physically wasted, emotionally stunted, spiritually sterile. Completely fuckin' useless.

  Meryl threw on a scarf and shouldered her black leather shopping bag.

  'You're going shopping?' Martin was whispering at the door. 'At a time like this?'

  A few yards away Vanessa was inspecting Martin's extensive landscaped gardens from the terrace. There was some frost on the ground.

  'Life has to go on,' Meryl told him. 'Besides, you'll be all right on your own. That little girl seems to have taken quite shine to you.'

  Knowing he'd be wondering to what extent the little girl's stepmother felt the same way. Martin was a kind man in many respects but would be the last to reject any possible rewards for his altruism.

  Meryl said, 'You know what I'd do, if I were you, Martin? I'd ring the police before they show up here. They'll be wanting to establish Sir Wilfrid and Angela's movements leading up to the accident. When they find out the Storeys and the Tulleys were both here ...'

  'You're quite right, of course,' said Martin. 'Nothing suspicious, but rather too coincidental. Be simple enough if Storey hadn't buggered off. Yes, you're right, good idea. I'll sort things out with the police. Give them a statement. Keep Shelley well out of it.'

  'Of course you will, Martin. And perhaps you could also take Shelley and Vanessa home and stay with them a while. She'll need someone to repair that fence and everything.'

  'I can't repair fences.'

  No one better at it, Meryl thought, remembering last night, Stephen Case and the Tulleys.

  'But you know the people who can,' she said. 'Why don't you make yourself useful?' A knowing smile. 'Will you be lunching out today, Martin?'

  'Why, what have you got planned?'

  'I was going to take my day off, after I've done the shopping. If that's all right with you?'

  'Would it matter,' said Martin good-humouredly, 'if it wasn't?'

  He'd learned, where Meryl was concerned, never to push curiousity too far.

  Meryl waved to Vanessa and moved swiftly across the frosty drive to her Peugeot, confidence and determination in every step.

  The other thing people got wrong - these were the people who thought you were bound to be tranquil, serene and in control - was to equate possessing psychic faculties with being in a permanent state of spiritual grace.

  There was nothing inherently spiritual about the other five senses, so why should the sixth be a stepping stone to sainthood?

  The shaving minor had heard this one, too.

  The shaving mirror knew Dave had never wanted to be a saint anyway.

  You are what you are, pal, the mirror said, a little more kindly. You make of it what you make of it. Or that's what you think, until you realise all you are is what other people've made of you. You spend fuckin' years being what people want you to be. Butsooner or later you've got to discover what you're supposed to be, yer know? This is like only way you're gonna live with yourself in the end.

  There were layers of white cloud in the mirror now, condensation upon condensation. Little white clouds which had floated in through the grimy bathroom window and settled in the mirror with the cigarette smoke.

  A lot of the time what the mirror said was trite. The mirror was as likely to talk crap as the person looking into it.

  And this was the other fallacy. That the messages coming from the mirror (the crystal, the cards, the tealeaves, the fat lady in a trance) were full of wisdom and insight.

  Sometimes they sounded clever and evocative, like 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. You were entertained, you were full of admiration. But were you enlightened?

  Sometimes they were like deathoak, nearly an anagram of The Dakota, but not quite. Were you just too stupid to work out the significance of that spare T? Was it a cross? Think about it; the original crosses on which people were crucified often had no top pieces. In 'The Ballad of John and Yoko', Lennon was worried that the way things were going they were gonna crucify him.

  Not both of them. Just him. Crucify me. John.

  Dave shook his head. You put your mind to it, you could make anything mean anything. Look at what they'd all done to Nostradamus.

  Ultimately, it was a waste of time. The cosmic joker would lead you by the nose in ever-decreasing circles. Whatever the system was, it wasn't a system you could beat. What it came down to was: you were better off leaving it alone. If it would leave you alone.

  Somewhere in Dave's head, somewhere beyond reach, the mirror was still rambling.

  ... it's like the Beatles. It was great at first. We were big novelties ... all these educated gits prodding us with their fuckin' intellects ... 'So fresh, so unspoiled - listen to those delightful rough, working-class accents.' And we're laughing up our fuckin' sleeves and wheeling home the money in barrows. But you can only go on like this for so long, this is the problem, Dave, and then it becomes like an insult to yourself, to what you could be.

  'Yeh. Well, I never wanted to be a professional parody. Never wanted a secondhand life. Wanted to be a ... you ready for this ... a creative person. Figured I could channel it... it ... into art. Only it doesn't work like that, you probably know that now. It doesn't co-operate. It took me a long time to find that out, and now I can't cut it any more.'

  Dave took hold of the mirror, like grabbing someone by the lapels. 'Money. That's the only reason I ever got involved. I'm just earning enough to get by. No big gigs, no festivals, no telly. Just a crappy little stage act. Where's the harm?'

  He heard raucous, contemptuous laughter.

  'Of course, that was never a problem for you, was it? Bloody millionaire at twenty-two. People tried to push you into stuff, you told them to piss off, in public, and everybody loved you for it. You were a "rebel". And when it came to it you could waffle on about peace and love and nobody thought you were sanctimonious and holier-than-thou or anything, because they knew that underneath you were a rebel and a bastard, so that

  was all right.'

  He put the mirror back on the shelf but
held on to it. 'Money. That's all. Not guilt. Not even about "On A Bad Day". That was justified. Ill-timed, I agree. But justified. Definitely no guilt, John.'

  No guilt. Sure.

  The raucous laughter came again and he realised it was the phone. Startled, he let the mirror fall into the washbasin, where it didn't break. He ran both hands through his damp hair and breathed in long and raggedly.

  The phone didn't stop.

  He snatched it up. 'Found it, have you?'

  'Nah.' A voice like a broken coffee-grinder. 'Me, I can't even remember what I was looking for. And when I find it I'll be too pissed to recognise it.'

  'Oh.' Dave collapsed across the bed. 'Prof. I thought you were somebody else.'

  'If only. David, I've been making a few inquiries. Woke some people up. Sod 'em, if I can't sleep, why should they? Anyway, it seems Russell Hornby, your erstwhile producer, is currently recording a band at the Manor in Oxford.'

  'Why should I want to know that?'

  'Seemed to me you might want to talk to him about certain tapes and how and why they came to be saved from the inferno.'

  'Shit, Prof,' Dave said. 'You're determined to get me involved in this, aren't you?'

  'And you aren't involved at all, are you? I mean, you were never there, you nor Tom nor whatsername, Moira ...'

  Moira.

  I'm not ready to think about this. Talk to me about Russell Hornby, John Lennon, Aelwyn Breadwinner. Just don't mention Moira.

  'You still there, David?'

  Don't talk to me about long beaches, cold sea, messages in the sand. Don't talk to me about black bonnets.

  'David!'

  'Yeh,' he said.

  'Pick me up at eleven.'

  III

  Can This Bastard

  See My Aura?

  Ghosts.

  The word itself. Whispering it was like creeping through a carpet of soft, damp leaves.

  Meryl whispered it as she curved the Peugeot around the traffic island to find the Gloucester road out of Cirencester. It was a bright morning now and brisk rather than cold, for late November. The brightness and the sharp air made her feel comfortably alert, despite so little sleep.

  Two and a half hours, to be precise. Meryl had lain down - in her own bedroom, not Martin's - and slept immediately, until it was light. She'd always been a good sleeper. Nothing kept her awake, least of all the Lady Bluefoot.

  Least of all the ghosts.

  Meryl Coleford, Miss Burns had demanded sternly. What's this you've got?

  It would always be a paperback of ghost stories. At the school, the teachers had been vaguely disapproving, the other girls curious but always a mite fearful.

  Not Meryl.

  It's a wonder you can stay awake in class, all the sleepless nights you must have.

  I never have sleepless nights. Miss. And I never have any nightmares.

  At the church school, in the village where she lived now with Martin, every day had begun with a scripture lesson, and the only words in the Bible Meryl had found inspirational had been

  Holy Ghost

  Religion, the way they taught it at school, was very boring. God and his angels were surely supernatural beings, but they might have been members of the parish council for all the charisma allotted to them by these sedate, matronly teachers. And when Meryl had asked the vicar himself how might she see God, where might she go to watch an angel and if she spent a whole night by herself in the church would she ... the vicar had replied: Don't be silly.

  She'd always remember that. Don't be silly.

  But if nobody in the village had ever spotted God or even a solitary angel in the vicinity of the parish church, one or two had certainly seen ghosts of the dead, holy or otherwise. John Westbury, for instance, who was gardener at the Hall, could be persuaded of a summer evening to sit on his upturned barrow, light up his clay pipe and talk of the Lady Bluefoot, an apparition of such glamour and romance that God and the angels seemed, by comparison, terribly ordinary ... and so distant, whereas She was here.

  One day, Meryl had told herself, aged twelve, I'm gonner live at the Hall and me and the Lady Bluefoot's gonner be best friends.

  Well, the Hall itself had been abandoned and become a picturesque ruin by the time Meryl was grown up, but the Hall Farm remained, and this, after all, was where Lord Rendall had Iain when they brought his body from the fields and where his lady had seen him first. But although Meryl indeed lived here now and although she'd found a spiritualist church where the supernatural nature of God was not exactly played down, she'd become ever-so-slightly disillusioned. Yes, she did like to consider the Lady her best friend now, but it had all been rather one-sided, with no great mystical revelations and no ... actual

  ... manifestation.

  Until last night.

  The reality, the urgency of it, made Meryl grip the steering wheel tightly with both hands.

  It had been a hard, harsh lesson. Revelation had come not with a soft and scented vaporous thing in blue shoes, but with the hideous vision of a man with a hole in his face who had shown to her the future - or, at least, the short-term future of Sir Wilfrid and Lady Tulley.

  And the future of Stephen Case?

  And of Martin and Shelley Storey?

  In the white-hot exhilaration of having seen, Meryl had put to the back of her mind the sight of the other bloodied bodies around the table.

  But as she drove, she thought, Surely the future is not written in stone, else why should anyone he sent such a clear precognitive experience?

  Should she so eagerly have sent Martin off with Shelley Storey, in whose bloody breast his head had been buried, just to get him out of the way so she could pursue her own quest? Should she not have warned him, in the interests of his own survival, to forget Mrs Storey and her magnificent mammaries?

  Meryl was in no doubt of the extent of her power over Martin; she was certainly of more lasting value to him man an hour or two with Shelley's nipples in his ears. He would listen to her. But she must be surer of her ground.

  The way had been opened for her. She must follow it as far as it led.

  Oh Lord, if only ...

  About eleven miles out of Cirencester, Meryl's heart lurched at the sight of a red and white flag against the light-brown of distant hills, a little man with a tall white hat and a frying pan.

  She pulled into the forecourt of the Little Chef, past the garage, to a long, low building with a big sign:

  TRAVELODGE.

  There'd been a Little Chef on this road for years, but the motel part was new, had been open for barely three months.

  Meryl held her breath as she slid the Peugeot slowly towards a small group of parked cars and

  Oh my Lord

  one was a dusty, dark blue Volvo estate, obviously parked in a hurry, hopelessly askew and straddling a white dividing-line so you couldn't see whether it was outside apartment nine or apartment eleven.

  Oh. This was almost uncanny. She'd known.

  Meryl sat for several minutes, trembling at the sudden precision of her intuition. Had proximity to him brought this about? She felt suddenly quite nervous. He was a temperamental man, by all accounts. As well he might be with his peculiar talents.

  Then, 'Come along, girl,' she said aloud. Switching off the engine and shouldering her door open, she gathered up her bag and her resolve and went to hammer on the door of number eleven.

  At the Manor Studio in rural Oxfordshire, quite a few people recognised Prof Levin.

  'Blimey, Prof,' an engineer said. 'Must be a fair while since you last showed your face here. Branson himself still around, was he?'

  'Branson was just a kid,' said Prof. 'But it ain't changed, has it?'

  'I'll see if I can find Russell for you,' the studio manager said. She didn't know Prof; too young. 'He's here somewhere. That's his car, if you'd like to go and have a worship.'

  'Stone me.' Prof stared at the bronze monster under the trees. 'That's a ... a whatsit.'

  'R
olls-Royce Corniche,' Dave said. 'Makes you wonder.'

  'I heard he was doing all right for himself. I didn't realise it was this much all right.'

  'Whether it's made him happy,' the manager said drily, 'is debatable. Look, maybe he's not up yet. They were recording until about three this morning.'

  'No hurry,' Prof said. 'We'll have a wander around, see what's new.'

  The Manor was a real manor, a mellow fifteenth-century house in fifty acres at Shipton, a few miles outside Oxford. The studio was in the barn; the musicians slept in the house, in luxury rooms with round-the-clock service. There was a swimming-pool and a tennis court. The sun shone.

  Dave had never been before. If made him feel nostalgic for all the albums he'd never made.

  'The Abbey, it's not.' He was looking up at a brass chandelier and a mural depicting Richard Branson, founder of the studio, and Mike Oldfield and their mates, all in medieval costume. The romance of yesteryear - the early seventies, this would be.

  'EMI own the place now,' Prof said. 'If there's a TMM connection, I don't know about it. But anybody can hire the Manor, if they've got the loot.'

  On the way here, Dave driving, Prof had told him everything: about the box under the late Max Goff's bed, about the baking of the tapes and the chaos at Audico. Was that likely? Could mouldy recording tape do that? Was Prof going mad? Was Maurice of Audico losing his marbles? Did this tape, once listened to, ever go away?

  You're talking about energies, Dave had said. Who can say?

  And what about the woman's voice? What about the tape coming out of the oven, freezing cold? Was that kind of business inside Dave's experience?

  Dave had nodded. Maybe. Hadn't elaborated.

  Prof had laughed. He said that in tracking down Russell Hornby this morning one of the people he'd called up was Maurice at Audico and the last thing Maurice had said was: Listen, the other day, I was overwrought. I was talking out of the seat of my trousers. We'd had a break in, I was confused, was angry. Disregard it. I'm sorry. Forget about it.

  And Dave had smiled nervously. People did get deluded, he'd said, thinking - hoping - me too.