by Phil Rickman
The spring night air was lovely and warm. Softly lit by a wrought-iron lamp over the pub entrance and overlooked by crooked black and white gable-ends, the cobbled alley was intimate and story-book romantic. Ledwardine by night: wonderful. Jane stood there, gazing up at the stars, feeling suddenly, amazingly, more absolutely at home than she’d felt anywhere they’d ever lived and that was a lot of places. Another lantern hung across the entrance of the alleyway, orangey, alluring, and she glided towards it.
‘Not that way. Right.’ Colette tugging her back across the cobbles. ‘Follow your nose.’
Meaning the horrible, acidy pong from the public toilets at the end of the alleyway. The proximity of the dirty-brick toilet-block spoiled the idyll, and the smell killed the atmosphere stone dead. Obstinately, Jane turned her back on it.
‘Why can’t we go—?’
‘Shut up!’ Colette’s hand came down over Jane’s mouth with a slap. ‘They’re coming out.’
Jane was shocked into silence. She swallowed, feeling unsteady inside. Colette took the hand away from her mouth and used it to haul her past the cracked gents sign, up some steps, on which Jane stumbled, and then it was soft underfoot and suddenly really dark.
‘The old bowling green, all right?’ Colette said. ‘We cut across here, over to the footpath, round by the churchyard, out of the church close and we’re back on the square.’
‘Ingeniush,’ Jane said thickly. She looked up. The sky was brilliant, the stars huge and blotchy like Van Gogh stars. Actually, everything was bigger and blotchier.
‘All right?’ Cocky voice from just a few yards behind them. ‘Need any help, do we, ladies?’
‘Shit.’ Colette pulled Jane across the grass. ‘Duck.’ Branches grazing her head. ‘Not a word.’ Colette tugged her down behind the trees. She fell back into the grass, lovely and soft at first. Closed her eyes and everything turned into a big, waltzing fairground ride, which wasn’t so pleasant, so she opened her eyes and sat up, feeling kind of damp and clammy and wishing she was in bed in the Black Swan.
‘You all right, girls?’
‘Danny Gittoes,’ Colette hissed into her ear. ‘If he knew where we were he wouldn’t keep shouting.’
‘He’s not so bad.’ Jane recalled a lanky, slow-moving character who played the trombone in the school orchestra.
‘Keep your bloody voice down. Not so bad sober. Not so bad on his own. Bunch of them at closing time, you don’t get involved. Bad news. I got caught once, never again.’
‘Thought you were a woman of the world.’
‘You do it on your terms, Jane. Not theirs. Never theirs. Besides, if Gittoes was mine, you’d get Wall. Up against the back of the toilets. Fancy that, do you?’
‘Yuk.’
‘Right. So shut up. Come on, on your feet. There’s a path. We get to the churchyard we’re all right.’
‘You wanner come to a party, girls?’ Danny Gittoes called out, further away now.
Colette sniffed. ‘Very small party, I reckon. Hold on to my arm, Jane, this bit’s muddy.’
Danny Gittoes bawled out, ‘Bring your mother, you wanner.’
The ground was harder underfoot; they’d found the path. Danny Gittoes was lumbering about, a good twenty-five yards behind.
‘Give ‘er some holy communion, I would. Any day o’ the bloody week.’
‘I rest my case,’ Colette murmured. ‘Scumbag?’
‘Scumbag. Least he’s on his own.’
‘Yeah, but that worries me a bit.’
Jane felt cold now. She was glad to see the big, black hulk of the church thrusting through the trees and bushes like a liner on a dark ocean, stars drifting around the steeple. Another hundred yards and they’d be out on the square and the only problem then would be slipping quietly into the Black Swan and looking like she’d just been for a meditative stroll. Best thing, before going up to the suite, would be to pop into the downstairs Ladies’, slap some cold water on her face. Although the chances were Mum would be too stressed up over tomorrow’s sermon to notice much.
‘Wow.’ Jane leaned into the rough stones of the church wall. She felt like they’d walked miles. ‘I think I got cider a bit wrong.’ When she closed her eyes it felt like she was falling through the wall. ‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah, well, we all have to learn.’ Colette patted her shoulder. ‘Come on, Janey.’
‘Sorry.’ Jane blinked a few times and straightened up. ‘I ... you know ... I just ...’
Becoming aware that Colette’s hand hadn’t left her shoulder. In fact it had gone into a grip.
‘Shit,’ Colette said. Jane turned quickly; the sudden motion made her queasy.
‘Evening, girls.’
He was leaning up against the wooden lych-gate. Dean Wall. The sheep-shagger.
‘Very clever,’ Colette said in a bored voice. ‘Do they call that a pincer movement?’
‘Told ’em about the party.’ Danny Gittoes came up behind. ‘At the club.’
‘What you on about?’ Dean said. ‘Oh. Right. The ole after-hours social club.’
The only good light was pooled around one lamp on the corner of the close, where it met the square. She saw two other boys skirting the light. There was nobody else about, no cars. The olde worlde, time-warped magic of Ledwardine late at night.
The two other boys slouched into the close to join Danny and Dean, the four of them forming a rough circle around Colette and Jane. God. Big boys. Men, really. In the same way that Colette was a woman.
So why did Jane feel like a little girl? Wanting to be up in the big, safe hotel suite, warm in the glow from two bedside lamps, Mum bent over her sermon pad.
Another figure walked over from the square. ‘What’s all this, then?’
It was Lloyd Powell, the councillor’s son. He was a few years older than the others, a working farmer. Lloyd was good-looking, drove a white American truck and was considered intensely cool by some of the girls at school, possibly because he was always so aloof.
‘What you got yere, Dean?’
‘No problem, Lloyd.’
‘You girls all right? This lot bothering you?’ Like his old man, Lloyd was an old-fashioned gentleman. Pretty boring, in some ways.
Colette said lazily, ‘Like he said, no problem.’ Jane, who was starting to feel sick, was annoyed with her. Lloyd Powell could’ve stopped this, let them get home.
‘You sure?’ Lloyd said.
‘Yeah,’ said Colette. ‘The day I can’t handle hairballs like this is the day I enter a fucking closed order.’
Lloyd shrugged and strolled back to the market place. Jane suspected there were going to be times when she wished Colette’s sass-quotient was not so far off the local scale.
Still, she did her best to sound cool.
‘So like where’s the After-hours Social Club?’
Colette Cassidy sighed. Dean Wall grinned. He really was huge and had big muscles. You saw him heaving around great sacks of potatoes and stuff at his father’s farm shop on the edge of the village.
‘I think he means the church porch,’ Colette said.
9
A Night in Suicide Orchard
‘POOR MERRILY.’ Like a white, woolly terrier, Dermot Child followed her into the lobby of the village hall. ‘Can I walk you back to the Swan?’
Merrily unhooked her coat from the peg. ‘You can walk with me. If you’re going that way.’
‘Well ... yes.’ Child held open the metal door for her. ‘I thought I’d have a nightcap.’
Merrily locked up the hall. Double lock, big key. She had quite a bunch of these things in her bag; the vicar seemed to be responsible for the security of half the public buildings in the village. Maybe she could use a minder.
But not Mr Child. Oh no. He’d nearly become Dermot, but he was Child again now. Quite blatantly fancied her, but was not necessarily on her side. Bad combination.
‘Rod and Terry cleared off pretty rapidly, Vicar.’ Wry smile as they crossed the car park.
; True enough. Rod Powell heading for the Ox, round the corner, Cassidy striding rapidly up towards the lights of the square and his restaurant, to regale Caroline with the juicy details of their dilemma.
‘A lot to talk about, I suppose,’ Merrily said.
‘Oh yes.’ Dermot Child fairly bounced along, his springy, white hair flopping. One of those volatile characters who thrives on discord, was energized by controversy. Fun to have around, but you wouldn’t trust him to the end of the street.
‘All right.’ Plunging her hands down the pockets of her new but even cheaper fake Barbour. ‘What did you mean, poor Merrily?’
‘Well ...’ He gazed up the dark street, into the future. ‘Going to get the blame, aren’t you?’
‘For what?’
‘For whatever you decide. Yes or no to a witch trial in the church. You’ll be either the trendy, radical priest who cares nothing for local sensibilities or just another reactionary who doesn’t want to muddy the waters or offend the nobs. Either way, your congregation suffers. Must be hell, being a vicar.’
‘Hang on. What makes you all so sure it’s going to be me who makes the decision?’
‘Oh, really!’ Dermot Child stopped, leaned back against the railings of a white, Georgian village house, base of Kent Asprey, the jogging doc. ‘You were there when they decided)’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, Bull-Davies buggered off – for reasons which will soon become very apparent. Then Rod Powell advised you to examine your conscience. And finally the appalling Cassidy told you very politely and sympathetically that he rather thought it was going to be your decision. How firm d’you want it? They’ve all officially copped out! Tossed the hot potato into your lap and run like hell. When it makes the papers – which it surely will – it’ll be Vicar Bans Top Writer!
‘And if I don’t? If I don’t block it?’
‘Then you’ll get – I don’t know – Vicar Backs Poof Playwright Against Local Protests ... Well, not that, obviously, but you get the idea.’
‘I see,’ Merrily said. ‘You’re saying that, whatever happens, I’m stuffed.’
‘Burden of village life, my dear. This was some suburban parish in London or Birmingham, you’d have a small flurry of controversy and then it would all be forgotten. Here ... Well, don’t be fooled by appearances. All right, post-modern ... state of the art ... the New Countryside of rich commuters, hi-tech home business people, oak beams and the Internet ...’
He motioned to a half-lit shop window. MARCHES MEDIA: Fax, photocopying, computer supplies.
‘Illusion. Surface glitter, Merrily. And only the surface changes. Underneath, the structure’s as rigid as an old iron bedframe.’
‘You seem to like it here, all the same.’ She knew he’d been a music teacher at some London college, had links with a small record label specializing in modern choral works. Suspected he’d left at least one ex-wife somewhere.
‘I know my way around, Vicar. May not sound like it, but I’m a local boy. We go back three generations. Not many, compared to your Powells and your Bull-Davieses, but it’ll do. Born here, and I suppose I’ll die here, sooner or later. As for that big, sloppy lump of life in the middle, skipping round London, Paris, Milan ... that was just time spent finding out that, in the end, it’s really better the hell you know ...’
‘Hell?’
He didn’t respond. There were eight or nine cars parked on the square, clustered under a black-stemmed electrified gas lamp. The cars included two BMWs, a Jaguar and a Range Rover. People dining at Cassidy’s or the Black Swan. The village centre, also quietly lit by uncurtained windows and the stars, looked, if not exactly smug, quite settled in its prosperity.
‘When d’you move into the vicarage, Merrily?’
‘Could be next week.’
‘Terrific. Mind you ... big old place.’
They could see, on the edge of the church close, the end gable of the vicarage and its chimneys, rising above most of the others.
‘I think I’d rather have a bungalow,’ Merrily said.
‘Oh no. God, no. That would never do. Has to be the official residence. Nice, roomy lawn for garden parties. Vicar – all right, priest-in-charge, but still an important figure in Ledwardine. Mind you, you do need a husband.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Oh yes. Decent local man. Solid foundation. The WI will have it at the top of their agenda.’
‘Bloody nerve,’ Merrily said. ‘What is this, Jane Austen?’
‘Like I told you, the framework doesn’t change. What do you expect? You’re a very lovely young woman.’
‘Oh, please. Anyway, I’m an old widow.’
‘Ah yes.’ They’d stopped at the steps of the Black Swan. ‘Which rather got you out of a hole, I gather.’
Merrily froze.
Dermot Child dropped a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, my dear. Am I being indiscreet?’
Merrily gazed across the square towards the vicarage.
‘Ted Clowes is a dead man,’ she said.
Of course, it was Colette they really wanted. The squashy lips, the provocative breasts in the white frock. Colette was the nymph, the real thing. Grown up.
This was very clear to Jane, if nothing else was. She could smell their sweat, and the heat source that brought it out was Colette.
Jane was feeling more and more queasy, and strangely separated from it all. Like they were the players and she was merely the audience. And she couldn’t alter what was happening because she was just ... well, just a kid. If she spoke, nobody would hear her. Bring your mother ... give ’er some holy communion ...
Her stomach felt horribly tight and distended. Something like liquid gas welled up in her throat and she gulped it back, clinging to the church wall. The stones felt damp and gritty. Slimy. The sweat smell was a disgusting haze.
‘Come on,’ one of them said. ‘We got a few bottles. And Mark’s brought some sweeties.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Colette said.
‘Es,’ this Mark said. ‘No rubbish, mind. Got ’em in Leominster.’
Colette looked at them, hands on her white-sheathed hips, shoulders against the church wall.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, doesn’t that just about show the mentality of you seed-suckers? Like we’re all going to get hyped-up in the church porch and put on our iPods and pretend it’s a major rave. Come back when you’re older, yeah?’
‘How old you like us to be?’ said the fourth boy, who’d come along with Mark who had the pills.
‘Old enough that you don’t have to hang around with kids any more,’ Colette said.
Jane was in awe of her. The boys were quiet for a moment. She could smell the beer on them, through the hot sweat. Their senses were surely too fuddled for clever repartee; maybe they’d slink off, spit a few insults from across the street then melt into the night like foxes.
But then Dean Wall said, all the humour gone, ‘Think we’re kids, is it?’
Danny Gittoes put a hand on his arm. ‘Let it go, Dean.’
Dean shook him off. ‘Fucked if I will.’
‘Please.’ Colette smiled thinly. ‘Don’t use words till you know what they mean.’
Dean took a couple of seconds to work this out, then he gave out a kind of strangled sob.
‘Right. Got some’ing to prove, do you?’
‘Not now, Dean,’ Danny said. ‘You blown it, I reckon.’
‘Come yere ...’ Dean moved apelike towards Colette. ‘Come yere, you fuckin’ clever bitch.’ Big hands clawing for Colette’s breasts. She sprang back like a cat, reared and spat.
‘Touch me once, mucus-sac, and I’ll tear your balls off!’
‘Wooooh!’ Danny Gittoes and Mark backed off in not-quite-mock terror.
But Dean didn’t. It was personal now. It had history.
‘Cathedral fucking School fucking snob. Not puttin’ out for the likes of us, eh? You’re just a slag, Cassidy. Stand outside your shitty cafe, tongue hangin’ out. Yo
u’re panting for it, you are.’
‘Well, maybe.’ Colette didn’t blink. ‘But unless you’ve brought along one of your old man’s best carrots—’
Like a sack of potatoes falling over, Dean Wall tumbled at Colette, who was spinning and hissing, too fast for him, but there were four of them, and in a second it had become a soggy blur and although Jane thought she heard a distant man’s voice shouting, ‘What’s going on down there?’ there was no sound of footsteps behind the squeals and grunts.
And so, feeling very ill, Jane went in scratching, nails raking the back of a leather jacket.
‘Nnnnnooooo!’ she screamed.
Aware, though, before it was half out, that it was going to be rather more than a scream.
That she was being sick.
Boy, was she being sick ...
‘Oh! Oh, shit! Oh, you fuckin’ little cow!’ Dean Wall was on his feet, flailing about, dripping. He no longer stank of sweat. ‘Oh, you fuckin’ disgustin’ little ...’
Dean had his jacket off and he was shaking it, gobbets of vomit flying through the air. Then he started slapping it against the church wall, screeching outrage, Danny and Mark laughing at him from a safe distance.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jane gasped, wiping her lips on her sleeve, mouth full of sourness. ‘Oh God, I—’
Then her left hand was snatched, her arm jerked savagely out in front of her and she had to start running to avoid falling over. All she could hear behind her, as she was dragged over something shin-scrapingly hard and wooden, were curses and oaths and the sound of the leather jacket being slapped repeatedly against the church wall.
‘No escape that way, you bitches.’ From a distance.
‘Up yours, slimeball!’ Colette shrieked, triumphant.
Halfway up the steps of the Black Swan, Merrily tensed.
‘What was that?’
‘Kids, I expect.’
‘In the churchyard?’ Happened every night in Liverpool; you didn’t expect it here.
‘They don’t have many places to go,’ Dermot Child said. ‘There was a plan for a big youth centre a couple of years ago. On the derelict bowling green behind the Ox. An influential lobby of local people – i.e. newcomers – managed to get it squashed. Not in keeping, you understand.’