The Wine of Angels

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Where the Bulls took their women. Not their wives, like, you know. Their women. Them as was old enough to qualify as women.’

  ‘Their mistresses?’

  ‘Not even their mistresses, Vicar. The ones they used for their sport, you might say. The ones as didn’t count for shit, ‘scuse my language.’

  ‘There were more like this ... Janet?’

  ‘I should say. God bless you, Vicar, it were cheaper than fox ‘untin’, and no hounds to feed.’ Gomer shook his head sadly. ‘You looks in need of a ciggy. I got a few yere, ready rolled.’

  ‘Thanks, but ... Oh, sod it ... if you can spare one.’

  Gomer produced a skinny roll-up and lit it for her.

  ‘When you’re retired, see, God damn it, you gets to hangin’ around and dwellin’ on things and all the folk you ever worked for or had a pint or two with, and they all gets jumbled up in your memory, and then a coupler things rolls out when you en’t expectin’ it, and you thinks, well bugger me. Why’d ole Edgar Powell shoot ‘isself ... accidently, like? Why en’t the cider the real stuff?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ll tell you, you got time. I’m sick of keepin’ it all up yere. ‘Cause I don’t understand, neither, and I reckons it’s time we did.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, you start with the ole cider house. That’s the Powell cider house now, see. The Bulls originally, but the Powells, they had it off ’em, way back when the Bulls got rid of all that ground. Interestin’, when you works out just how much Bull ground’s now Powell ground. I reckon it’s gotter be ...’

  Gomer stopped talking. Merrily followed his gaze towards the lych-gate, through which they could see car lights.

  ‘You notice when you come in, Vicar, them cars parked on the edge of the square just across from the church.’

  ‘So many these days. Why?’

  ‘Miserable Andy Mumford in one, coupler young fellers in the other usually wears uniforms, but plain clothes tonight. Mind if we just ...?’

  Gomer set off towards the lych-gate, Merrily following.

  ‘They’re on to somefhin’, I reckon. Don’t waste manpower on that scale, less they got somefhin’ in mind. And that lady copper in the church? They’re lookin’ for somebody. Or they got somebody in mind. Where’s your friend Mr Robinson tonight?’

  As they approached, one of the parked cars had put on its lights and pulled out to make way for another vehicle which took over its space just left of the lych-gate. The new vehicle was a battered blue Land Rover with a torn canvas. The driver’s door opened as the wheels gritted to a halt.

  Gomer put a hand under Merrily’s arm and pulled her into the trees beside the gate, as James Bull-Davies stepped down and ducked quickly under the lych-gate, slamming the Land Rover door behind him.

  Both front doors of the parked police car opened. Mumford and another man followed Bull-Davies at a distance.

  Gomer looked at Merrily.

  ‘Not my place to ask, mabbe, but they clear this with you, the police? Stakin’ out your church and whatnot?’

  She could hear Bull-Davies’s voice crackling into the answering machine. I shall personally take action to put a stop to this homosexual farce. You may consider this an ultimatum.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They bloody didn’t.’

  ‘You better get back in there. Wouldn’t be anythin’ I could do, would there?’

  ‘I think there would.’

  From the apple trees next to the porch, Jane watched James Bull-Davies go in, followed by the two detectives.

  The Eternal Bull. It could start to get interesting at last. Sadly, she couldn’t stay for it. She waited for Mum to come back – on her own and looking pretty fired up – before she slipped away.

  46

  Pretty Foul

  ‘THE ORCHARD WAS mine,’ Stefan Alder said.

  The spotlight hugging him like a sunbeam from a high window as he knelt at the pulpit steps, looking up towards the rood-screen, where a hundred apples were carved.

  ‘Oh, yes, it belonged to the church, the whole forty acres, but it also belonged to me. It was where I found my peace. And my God. God was always in the orchard.’

  He turned full into the light, his hands held out in supplication, half an apple in each. His face was creamed with sweat. Even from the back, Merrily could see the film of desperation over his eyes.

  He was losing it. He’d gone on too long. Without Coffey’s cohesion, his performance had become shapeless and over-emotional. The dramatic edge was blunt. The audience shuffled and coughed, older Ledwardine folk beginning to see the holes.

  And there were holes, despite the research. Richard Coffey had not wanted this because he was not ready, but Stefan had been lured here by Merrily and when the evening was discredited as a piece of faintly tedious, overdramatized, gay propaganda the remaining fragments of her own credibility would go with it.

  By the light of a cluster of candles, she could see a satisfied smile on the face of Dermot Child. Occasionally he would glance towards one or other of the police.

  He would have told them Lol could well be here. Knowing that the vicarage was now unsafe, where else would she hide him? One of the few pieces of information to escape Dermot’s intelligence net, perhaps, would be Merrily’s appointment as Lucy’s executor, her receipt of the keys to Lucy’s house. Although you could rely on nothing in a village this size.

  But where – much as he would enjoy the sight of Lol being taken away with Merrily as an accessory – did Bull-Davies come into this?

  She’d followed them into the church prepared to battle this out; now she felt drained again. Get it over. Whatever it is, just get it over.

  ‘For God was inside every apple.’ Stefan held up the halves. ‘And here had left his mark, the five-pointed star of wisdom.’

  ‘That’s not God,’ a woman called out scornfully from the middle of the Northern aisle. ‘I’ve seen that. We all know that. That’s a pentacle. It’s satanic. It’s the mark of the serpent! That’s why you’re supposed to cut the apple the other way.’

  Stefan reeled for a moment, as if struck in the face and then, in a graceful piece of theatre-craft, came back.

  ‘There!’ Dropping the apple halves, he arose, pointing, straight-armed, at the woman. ‘This is how it starts. What upon a tree is more beautiful, more wholesome, more sacred than an apple? The whole world is in an apple. The apple was God’s most precious gift to Hereford. The apple heals! And yet ...’

  His arm and voice dropped together. He backed against the pulpit, glanced from side to side, hunted.

  ‘... in the wrong hands, even an apple can be poisonous. And this is how it began. This is where the hounding began.’

  In front of Merrily, Annie Howe leaned forward, revealing the fine, light hair cut close to the nape of the neck, the ears exposed, no earrings. Raised a forefinger to someone.

  Towards the front, a hand went up. Merrily saw that it belonged to James Bull-Davies, sprawled now in the Bull family pew, an arm stretched along its back. Although every eye was focused on him, he seemed entirely relaxed.

  Stefan had left the spotlight, was walking from candle to candle in a circle round the church, showing how the net had gathered around Wil Williams. Who was alone now in Ledwardine, the much-respected Thomas Traherne, although still nominally the vicar of Credenhill, having gone to London as chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman. Now Wil had no champion, no defender. No lover was the implication.

  ‘And one enemy,’ Stefan said, arriving back at the pulpit.

  A buzz. With those words he had his audience back. They didn’t want to hear about his sensitivity, his affinity with nature, his perception of the whole world in an apple. They wanted the full, unexpurgated chronicle of hate.

  ‘We were friends, Tom Bull and I,’ Stefan Alder mused. ‘He was not a well-schooled man, but he had some small understanding of Latin and of the Welsh language and was always eager for news of advances in the
physical sciences. He would dine at the vicarage and sometimes I would spend an evening at the Hall and talk of letters we had received from Oxford and London. So what went amiss?’

  It was clear that Stefan had not yet noticed James.

  ‘I will tell you,’ he said. ‘The Bull discovered – or rediscovered – an aspect of himself that he could not bear to confront.’

  Stefan rose up several inches in the pulpit, as though jagged lightning was working through his body. Abruptly, he turned away and vanished into the darkness, reappearing at the foot of the pulpit, sitting on a step, full in the spotlight.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. And laughed. ‘Tom Bull had fallen in love.’

  A tapping on the window this time.

  Lol stood in the dark, with his back to the kitchen door. The front doorbell had rung twice, the back door had been knocked on.

  ‘Mr Robinson? Lol Robinson? Gomer Parry, it is, see.’

  Well, everybody knew Gomer Parry, even Lol. Genial, harmless Gomer.

  It was the name you’d announce yourself by if you didn’t want to scare someone away, if you wanted them to open the door, nice and quiet ...

  ‘You listenin’, Lol?’ the voice said. “Cause this is what the vicar told me t’say, see? ‘Er says – you ready for this? – ’er says, have you noticed ... the Dick Drake Moon? Hope I got that right.’

  Lol let him in anyway.

  Now that the blossom had dropped from neighbouring trees, and because it was lighter tonight than the last time, you could see that the Apple Tree Man was actually very sad. Half-dead. Covered with scabs and sores and his branches stuck up like an umbrella with its fabric torn away, some of the prongs bent.

  The more Jane drank, the more bent they would seem against the brown sky and the brick-coloured moon.

  She lay with her back to the tree, roughly where she’d lain the night Colette had brought her here. It had been easy to find the Man, in his small clearing, but now she was here nothing was quite as she remembered it. It was a different kind of night.

  And a different kind of cider.

  She’d come in over the wall from the vicarage, tossing the strong, heavy, dark green bottles before her. The idea she’d had from Lucy, of this traditional Ledwardine drink, made from the legendary Pharisees Red, was that this was the booze endorsed by the fairies, who were the little angels of the orchard, and so it would be like nectar, right? The cider itself would have mystical properties.

  She’d eased out the champagne-style cork, expecting an emphatic pop, like a magical starting pistol. This is where it begins. But the cork had merely fallen out and rolled away and, although the bottles must have been shaken up getting here, there was no exciting frothy rush either, just this joyless dribble.

  Oh well. Jane had leaned back against the trunk, trying not to think of Edgar Powell with his grizzled old head blown off – that episode was a complete irrelevance – and had gripped the lips of the bottle with her own and thrown her head back.

  And then came the real shock.

  The Wine of Angels was actually pretty foul.

  To begin with, it was dry. Horribly dry. The cider she and Colette had drunk that night in the Ox was cheap and sweet and went down very easily and made you happy and bubbly. But the Wine had this cloying taste that was more like soil than apples. She recalled the first time she’d had real champagne, at a wedding Mum had conducted up in Liverpool, and what a bitter disappointment that had been, especially out of such a brilliant bottle. This was worse.

  And this was The Wine of Angels, named by Lucy Devenish.

  She sat in the toffee-coloured night and felt like crying. What it was – she was bloody useless on her own. She was just a kid and a townie kid as well. She’d tried to imagine Lucy walking alongside her into the orchard, but Lucy was cold in the mortuary, Lucy was never coming back to the orchard.

  Upset and furious and frustrated, Jane had another drink. It couldn’t really be so yuk. Must be another sign of how immature she was that she couldn’t appreciate the quality of a fine cider made to an ancient recipe, fermented in the bottle.

  But she wasn’t bloody well going back now. She had to go all the way with this, so that nobody could say she hadn’t tried. She’d even put on the same old blue Pulp T-shirt she’d been wearing when Colette had first brought her in here. All for Colette.

  Do it. Be there for her. Use your contact.

  What she needed was to get into the same mood, to find the same state of mind. She went over all the events leading up to the golden lights moment, getting the sequence of it, starting with the outstanding time they’d had in the pub, laughing at people like James Bull-Davies, realizing they had this repartee going between them, that they could be good mates, if not exactly soulmates. Then that sweating boil, Dean Wall, and his cronies eyeing them up and coming after them, the smell of urine from the Gents’ toilets, the flight past the old bowling green to the church porch, the afterhours social club, Colette’s delight at Jane throwing up all over ...

  Her stomach lurched at the thought of that and she pressed her hands down on it and belched. This cider was so much gassier. And it wasn’t working. She’d drunk masses of the stuff, or it felt like it, and yet she didn’t seem to be particularly drunk. Certainly didn’t feel at all happy. All the optimism was long gone, the feeling that Ledwardine was her real, preordained home, that she could really function here, help Mum make a go of it, have some laughs with Colette – maybe find some cool guys together – help Lol get himself straightened out and organized and recording again, work with Lucy on re-establishing the natural way of things, become more aware of the orb.

  The orchard smelled damp and mouldy. She was sure it hadn’t been like this before. She tried to remember the moment they’d both flopped down under the Apple Tree Man, but she couldn’t. Her only memory was of saying she was dying and then Colette’s voice, so cool, so smokey, so sassy, coiling out of the ground beside her.

  You ain’t felt nothin’yet, honeychile.

  Those really prophetic words. Like she really knew the score. But it was just some scam to scare Jane. Colette hadn’t known a thing. Not then. And afterwards was far too cool to think she had anything to learn from a weird old bat like Lucy Devenish. But she’d hated to feel she’d been left behind by anybody. She had to be the leader, and on the night of her party she’d impulsively led some kind of raiding party on the orchard, determined to break through to whatever it was Jane had accessed. Bust into what Lucy called the orb, find the contact.

  And had vanished.

  Search was made for her and she appeared to her friends from time to time, but when they spoke to her she immediately disappeared.

  Jane took another swig of the awful Wine of Angels and slumped back with her hair against the knobbly bark of the Apple Tree Man, still clutching the big bottle by its neck. She closed her eyes, lay very still and tried again. She imagined Colette in a land of lights, separated from the orchard by a billowing night mist. The point being that Colette was nobody special in this place; she was learning that there were higher forces and inner structures and that most of the things she thought were really cool were actually quite trivial and insignificant.

  It was time for her to return, chastened.

  ‘Colette,’ Jane whispered. ‘You hear me, you dumb slag? It’s me. I’ve come back. I’ve come to fetch you.’

  There was an answering rustle of leaves from somewhere beyond the edge of the clearing. It was probably a fox or a badger, but in her mind Jane turned it into Colette.

  She had a clear picture of Colette strolling through the orchard. She could see the nose stud and the red plastic windcheater open over the daring black dress.

  The rustling came closer. If she opened her eyes now, she would see ... She was getting shivery vibrations at the back of her neck, remembered Dr Samedi:’... and de drummin’ begin, feel de drummin’ inside, fingers dancin’, dancin’, dancin’up an’ downyo spine...’

  Colette.
Colette was coming. She was coming back. The urge to open her eyes was overpowering.

  But she didn’t. She mustn’t. The moment must be absolutely right.

  She must be very quickly seized, without speaking, or she would never come back.

  She heard breathing. It wasn’t a fox or a badger, it was her old friend Colette Cassidy, and she’d stop in the clearing, the cynical cow, and she’d go, Aw, Janey, you’re not still here? This is just so sad. And then they’d both crease up laughing.

  Come on, lady.

  She concentrated on keeping her eyes squeezed tight, tight shut and holding her breath, and putting everything she had into the image of Colette, summoning this incredible detail: a light sheen of sweat on the forehead overhung by a wing of hair, a blob of mascara on the end of an eyelash, the weird red moon glinting in the nose-stud, a slick of crimson lipstick on her avaricious little teeth when she smiled.

  She heard Colette’s voice calling to her across the nights.

  Look up. For me. Just look up, once. And then we’ll go.

  Jane looked up.

  47

  False Lover

  GOMER SAID, ‘DON’T suppose Lucy kept the odd bottle about the place? Helps you think better, it do, my experience. Well, not better, mabbe, but a bit wilder, like. You gotter think wild to get your brain round this kinder business.’

  He certainly looked wild tonight. Lol recalled them watching the little guy troop past the shop one afternoon and Lucy saying Gomer Parry was an object lesson on the dangers of retirement. Not the man he used to be. Not the man he was a year ago.

  Tonight though, Gomer’s springy white hair was on end like a lavatory brush and his eyes looked hot enough to melt the wire frames of his glasses.

  ‘No accident?’ Lol said, going through to the kitchen. ‘You sure of that?’

  ‘Course I en’t,’ Gomer snapped. ‘All I’m sayin’, see, is I’ve used bloody hedge trimmers with more power than that little bike. And it never got much stick from Lucy Devenish. You know Lucy, it makes no sense.’