The Wine of Angels

by Phil Rickman

  Controversy certainly attracts attention, Dermot had said, bemoaning the poor attendance, in real terms, on Day One. But this was the wrong kind of controversy.

  Coffey pursed his thin lips and raised his tightly plucked eyebrows and said nothing.

  ‘For a quick blast of publicity for the festival?’ It made sense; if the festival flopped now that Dermot was in charge, after his frequent disparaging of Terrence Cassidy, there’d be enough egg on his face to whip up mayonnaise.

  Coffey leaned his head on his arm. ‘Merrily, as I think I told you, I’m a thorough sort of chap, and I don’t do business with unknowns. I had them all checked out, with particular reference to precisely what they were doing before they came to Ledwardine ... or came back, in Child’s case. Cassidy? Small beer, a polytechnic poseur who inherited his father’s house and decided on a new start. Child. Hmm. Well. Stefan calls him the Goblin, don’t you, Steffie?’

  ‘Goblins being the entities that enter your house at night and mess up your possessions,’ Stefan said. He’d looked quite pleased to see them when he first opened the door. As though there was tension between Coffey and him.

  ‘He’s a failure, basically,’ Coffey said. ‘Started out as a music teacher at some comprehensive school, then decided his talents were worth more. Worked with an early-music ensemble and composed, in the loosest sense, the music for a television costume drama which was so awful they screened it around midnight. Been trading on it ever since, with diminishing returns. Child’s a loser.’

  ‘But a rather poor loser, I’m afraid,’ Stefan said.

  ‘A poisonous loser. Man’s so embittered he doesn’t care who goes down. So, if you’re looking for the designer, if not the actual distributor, of, for example, certain posters branding you a person of satanic bent, you might begin by checking out the equipment at the festival office.’

  Merrily was shocked. ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘Of course you can’t, he’s a charming little man.’

  Jane said, ‘Posters?’

  ‘Juvenile trivia, flower.’

  ‘Only, Dean Wall and Gittoes and those hairballs were coming out with all that Satanism stuff at Colette’s party.’

  ‘Who?’ said Coffey.

  ‘Just some yobs from Jane’s school’

  ‘Ah, well, schoolboys can be terribly useful,’ Coffey said, with a certain insouciance. ‘They always need money. And it doesn’t have to be a great deal.’

  Stefan glared at him.

  ‘But why would he?’ Merrily said. ‘What have I ever done to him?’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know. Perhaps not enough. Who can say?’

  ‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

  She couldn’t look at any of them and stared out of the window, across a few semi-wooded fields to the village. Between the lodge’s Victorian Gothic mullions, smudges of evening cloud had blunted the church steeple.

  After no more than about seventy-five minutes, the Queen’s Arms Quartet were showing signs of strain, and the tubby, beaming guy – Dermot Child? – arose to lead a standing ovation. Seriously undeserved, Lol thought, having detected more than a few bum notes. Still, it was at this moment – when they all stood up, with an assortment of creaks from an assortment of chairs – that Alison glanced, for the first time, directly to her left and met the eyes of the Rev. Sandy Locke.

  It was worth it. For a second, her face was frozen tight, before it imploded into a gasp. Another first. Maybe the gasp was even a tiny scream, but it was lost among the spurious applause, like a leaf in a gale.

  Lol clapped harder so that he swayed against Alison. He put his cheek next to hers and in his jolly vicar voice he said, ‘Alison Young, as I live and breathe.’

  Stefan Alder began to look excited, leaned eagerly towards Merrily. ‘So what are you proposing?’

  It was quite dark now, but Coffey had not put on a lamp.

  ‘I don’t quite know,’ Merrily said. ‘It all seems to go deeper than I can say. Or you, I suspect.’

  ‘It couldn’t go any deeper with me,’ Stefan said, and Coffey frowned.

  ‘In the village, I meant.’ Merrily thought of her afternoon with Lucy, who’d said she wanted the play to go on in the church so that the truth would come out. When the ditch-waters are stirred, the turds often surface. ‘I think I want whatever’s bubbling under there to come to the surface. Is that what you want?’

  ‘It’s all I want,’ Stefan said humbly, without even a glance at Coffey.

  ‘What I don’t want, though,’ Merrily said, ‘and what I don’t think the village deserves, is for it to happen in the middle of a media circus. I don’t want’ – a sideways glance at Coffey – ‘to play Dermot’s game.’

  Coffey said from the shadows, ‘Don’t try to be clever, Mrs Watkins. Spell it out.’

  ‘All right.’ She looked down to the village, where lights were coming on. ‘I heard Stefan and your friends Martin and Mira discussing the idea of involving the community in the drama by having a few local people virtually take on the roles of their ancestors. So you’d have Wil Williams defending himself from the pulpit, explaining his ... situation. And perhaps some reaction, whether it’s surprise or dismay or sympathy. Who’d play Thomas Bull?’

  ‘We’d have an actor,’ Coffey said guardedly. ‘I even considered doing it myself.’

  Merrily said, before she could stop herself, ‘You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?’

  A cold silence from Coffey’s corner.

  ‘We would hardly expect Bull-Davies to be there,’ Stefan said.

  ‘Don’t underestimate him.’

  ‘And don’t underestimate me, Mrs Watkins.’ Richard Coffey inclined his head to her. ‘Don’t push me too hard. There are other churches. There’s even a cathedral’

  ‘No!’ Stefan cried. Merrily raised a palm.

  ‘I’m not pushing anybody. I’m just suggesting that if you want the local people on your side and no embarrassing interruptions, then you might like to try a private run-through with a private, local audience. Unpublicized. Word of mouth. I can guarantee an audience.’

  ‘And Child would guarantee a television crew or two.’

  ‘I think not,’ Merrily said icily.

  ‘And when were you thinking we might do this?’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  She heard Jane gasp. Two or three seconds of incredulous silence followed, before Coffey’s forced laughter and Merrily interrupting it.

  ‘Why not? It’s all written, isn’t it? Stefan’s well into the role.’

  ‘Mrs Watkins, your ignorance of the demands of a theatrical production I find—’

  ‘But we’re not talking about a theatrical production! We’re talking about ... I don’t know what we re talking about ... A confrontation. A dialogue. A dialogue with the past. The village facing up to its most shameful episode, seeking redemption. Looking into its own soul and groping for the truth after three centuries of ignorance. Trying to find the light.’

  ‘The beginnings of a pretty soliloquy,’ said Coffey. ‘Who would you play, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘I understand what you’re worried about. You’re afraid of a shambles. Of word getting out that it was a disaster. Maybe Dermot Child shafting you. Well, all right, I can buy that. But this would be a village thing – the sort of thing churches were intended for.’

  ‘She might be right.’ Stefan Alder was on his feet, his back to the window, looking out over the lights of Ledwardine. ‘We know everything about the village,’ he said to Merrily. ‘We’ve a great, thick file of information. Richard paid a chap who used to work for the local paper to collect stories and memories from local people.’

  ‘Shut up, Steffie.’

  ‘This chap was marvellous. He hung out in the Ox and places, he talked to a meeting of the WI. They all thought he was collecting information for one of those local history books. Nobody knew it was for us. We can use all that. Well surprise everybody with how much we know, how much a part of th
is village we’ve become in such a short time. She’s right, Richard, we can bond with these people, we can win them over, prove beyond all doubt that we’re the right people to do this, to tell the truth.’

  ‘She might very well be right, Steffie, but what she’s suggesting is utterly impossible. Why tomorrow night anyway? Why not in a couple of months’ time, when we know where we’re going with this?’

  ‘Because I don’t know where I’m going with it, Mr Coffey. It keeps coming up in front of me. I keep telling myself it’s only a bloody play, but ...’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Stefan said. ‘It’s a public redemption.’

  ‘Yes. Whatever. Anyway, those are my terms. You want to do it somewhere else, you go ahead. You know my number.’ Merrily stood up. ‘Come on, Jane.’

  ‘All right.’ Stefan Alder turned towards them, a shadow, even his ash-blond hair black against the blue-grey window. ‘We’ll do it. We’ll do it tomorrow night. Bring who you want. Fill the church.’

  ‘Stefan, don’t be a bloody fool’ Coffey sprang up, his face pulsing. ‘Leave us, Mrs Watkins.’

  ‘Sure. Flower?’

  Jane crept quietly away from the empty hearth. They let themselves out. In the dark room behind them, they heard Richard Coffey snarl, ‘You stupid little shit. It’s my play.’

  ‘I’ll see he’s there,’ Stefan called after them, his voice high and tremulously theatrical. ‘I’ll have him there.’

  ‘It’s my play!’

  ‘Not you,’ Stefan sang out, with stinging contempt. ‘Wil. It’s Wil’s play.’

  38

  Winding Sheet

  MUM DROVE THEM slowly home in the Volvo with the Hazey Jane album playing quite loudly on the CD, a signal she didn’t want to talk. Maybe this was just as well, Jane was thinking. She’d only have said something really crass about Mum coming on, at last, like an actual catalyst.

  It was like Lucy was in the back seat.

  And what was so crazy about that? Jane looked out of the side window as they came into the village as if she might spot the lamp of the moped bobbing into the market place, a little golden light. What had they done with Lucy’s moped? Probably being examined by some police mechanical expert, who’d say the brakes were crap or something and the little bike was a death trap and why wasn’t she wearing a helmet?

  Because it wouldn’t fit over her big hat, you cretins! You want Lucy Devenish to go out without her hat?

  There was life after death. There had to be. Or there was no justice; no justice for good people like Lucy. Who nobody could replace; something had died with Lucy, a spirit. It was mega-depressing.

  She glanced at Mum’s profile, the dark curls in need of a cut. Run with this, Vicar, don’t let her down. And then thought about Colette. Where was she tonight?

  It’s like somebody cuts out a section of time and joins the ends together, second to second. Like with the dancing girl in Mrs Leather, maybe Colette will be visible occasionally in the little, green orchard.

  The thought wasn’t scary; it was hopeful. It had been there on the back burner since she first read that story. If Colette was there, somebody should try and reach her.

  The market place was still full of cars, but, at barely ten, people were already dribbling out of the Black Swan under the hanging lanterns. Not much of a gig, then. She wondered how Lol was getting on. It had just been so much fun making him look like a vicar, like traditional country vicars were supposed to look, kind of weedy and innocent. In the end he looked much more like one than Mum, but then Mum never really had.

  Before they left for Coffey’s place, Mum had told her the whole story about Lol and Karl Windling and the young girls in the hotel – which she’d found so awful and so barely credible that she wanted to go and find these girls and their smug parents and tell them just what they’d done. As for that bastard Windling ...

  On the CD, Lol was singing, the low, breathy voice solo with acoustic guitar, about being alone in the city in a cold January rain but not wanting to go home.

  It made such horrifying sense. It made her want to cry. It made her wish she was old enough to marry him or something.

  A police car rolled out of Church Street. The awful Howe would be hoping now, like Bella, that Colette was dead, turning it into a big case for an area like this. Dreaming of picking up Lol and shoving him into a little grey-walled room, like on The Bill, her and that Mumford asking him kind of nonchalantly what he’d done with the body. Telling him they just wanted to help him. That was what the police always did, they told you they just wanted to help you. But they were just in it for themselves. Like everybody was.

  Except Mum.

  ‘Suppose they’ve got him?’ she said as they pulled into the vicarage drive.

  ‘If they’d got him,’ Mum said calmly, switching off the engine and the stereo, ‘I think they’d be waiting for us, too. I don’t see anybody, do you?’

  ‘Lol wouldn’t finger us.’

  ‘No,’ Mum said. ‘I don’t think he would.’

  Inside the vicarage, she seemed to collapse. No sleep, not much food for over a day. Running on empty for too long. She was trying to open a can of sardines for Ethel, but the metal key thing snapped, and she just stood there in the kitchen and started to weep.

  Somehow, the vicarage did this to her. The vastness of it, the emptiness, was far worse for Mum than it was for Jane, who still thought a big house was cool. Not as if it was haunted or anything. It just seemed to do Mum’s brain in. She’d been dynamite at the Upper Hall Lodge, pushing even the scary Coffey into a corner, getting what she wanted. And now, here she was, sobbing her heart out in her own kitchen, and Jane just knew she was thinking about Dad and what a balls they’d made of their marriage and everything and how stupid she’d been to think she could manage a parish and all the other stuff that came down on you when were exhausted in a place you hated.

  ‘Go to bed, Mum. Please go to bed. I’ll look after everything.’

  ‘I can’t. What about Lol?’

  ‘I’ll wait up for him. Please go to bed.’

  Mum wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re overtired.’ Jane eased the sardine can out of her hands.

  ‘I gave him a key,’ Mum said. ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘I think you did. Don’t worry. Sleep.’

  Mum looked at her, just about finding the energy for suspicion.

  ‘I’ll go up too,’ Jane assured her. ‘I won’t go out again, I promise.’

  Not tonight, anyway. Got to prepare. Got to get it right.

  There was a lounge, for residents only, with a TV set tuned to a film about surfing, with the sound down. A waitress served cocoa to two elderly couples at a window table.

  Lol took a seat by the door. One of the elderly ladies smiled at him, and Lol said, ‘Good evening,’ in his soft but resonant vicar’s voice and sat, composed, his fingers loosely entwined.

  She would come. She’d directed him here. Smiling and nodding pleasantly for the thirty seconds she’d been speaking to the Rev. Locke, smiling for the benefit of James Bull-Davies, who’d been getting drinks at the time. An actress. Every move she made powered by this low-burning, high-octane fury.

  He saw that now. The Rev. Sandy Locke, one step removed from it all, seemed able to see so many things concealed from screwed-up, introverted Lol Robinson.

  ‘Two eggs,’ one of the elderly men said. ‘Bacon, sausage, liver, onions, black pudding, chips. Nine ninety-five.’ He sat back, triumphant. ‘Inclusive of sweet.’

  ‘The toilets weren’t clean, though,’ his wife said. ‘At least the toilets are clean here. And what’s more, what I always think is important in a hotel—’

  She broke off as Alison glided in, both elderly ladies looking rather shocked when this blonde in the revealing dress went to sit next to the clergyman, the old men looking pleased.

  ‘Hi.’ Lol smiled. ‘Where did you tell him you were going?’

  ‘Powder my nos
e. Evidently, I bumped into someone I knew in the Ladies’, you know what women are like.’

  ‘I’m kind of learning,’ Lol said. ‘At last.’

  ‘He’ll find someone’s ear to bend. Won’t notice I’m missing for a while. As to that’ – Alison gestured at his dog collar – ‘I’m not going to ask.’

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘No time.’

  ‘So you talk,’ Lol said. ‘And I’ll listen. I won’t interrupt.’ He felt like he was hovering, very steadily. Everything delicately balanced but, for the first time in his adult life, he was keeping the balance.

  Alison shook her hair back. ‘I suppose Devenish told you, God rest her heathen soul’

  ‘No, it was insight.’

  ‘From you?’

  He grinned. She couldn’t touch him tonight. He lowered his voice. He took this great leap in the dark.

  ‘I can’t help wondering what James would say, if he knew he’d been fucking his ... what? Half-sister?’

  She remained entirely calm. ‘You going to tell him?’

  Jesus. It’s right.

  ‘Probably not,’ he said.

  In the darkness of her too-big bedroom, Merrily knelt to pray by her too-big bed.

  ‘I, er ... I don’t know what I’m asking for. Strength, certainly. Yeah. I’m not strong. But You know that.’

  She went quiet. Receptive. Opening up a space in her heart. Wanting very much to receive something, if it was only an upsurge of blessed scepticism. She didn’t want to believe in bloody ghosts and fairies.

  In the silence, there was no sense of blue or gold. Was that itself a sign? Was the lack of response, the sense of praying into a black void, an indication that she should harden herself against phoney mysticism, spurious superstition? She felt distantly angry at God for never giving it to you straight.

  Of course, it was Lol himself who’d pointed her at Lucy.

  Mentioning, when Alison had talked about the Bull-Davies tradition of keeping horses, that James’s old man seemed to have carried on the equine tradition purely for a steady supply of stable girls.