The Wine of Angels

by Phil Rickman

  I saw her. Oh my God, I saw her.

  ‘I ... It’s funny ...’ She looked up. ‘My daughter, Jane, was drawn to the attic from the moment she entered the house. I was thinking what a miserable, draughty-looking house it was, and Jane was dashing upstairs and claiming the attic for herself.’

  She thought of the Mondrian walls which had become orchard walls. Had whoever became Wil Williams lain up there and closed her eyes and dreamed of walking out as a woman, smelling apple scents? Seeing those little golden lights among the branches and floating, like Jane on cheap cider? Had the presence – the spirit – of the orchard manifested there?

  It was getting on for midnight. Gomer sat down at the base of the tree, where the moon couldn’t find his glasses.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you why I don’t like the Powells.’

  Lol was getting restive. He didn’t know what to do but he wanted to be doing it. Could Gomer make it brief?

  ‘En’t a long story.’

  Went back mainly to that day fifteen or so years ago, when Rod hired Gomer Parry Plant Hire to dig some drainage ditches. The hot day, when he’d had some of Edgar’s excellent cider, made from the Pharisees Reds. Except the cider wasn’t served up by Edgar or Rod, who were both at a cattle sale that day.

  ‘Jennifer, it was. Jennifer Powell. Jennifer Adair, who used to work in the kitchen at the Black Swan.’

  ‘Lloyd’s mother?’

  ‘And Rod’s missus, and a hell of a nice girl. ‘Er’d’ve been about thirty at the time and Lloyd was ten and Rod was forty and a bit more. They likes ’em younger, the Powells and they don’t marry till late.’

  Cut a long story short, it was clear Jennifer Powell had been crying and if you knew her mother-in-law, Meggie Powell, it didn’t take long to work out she was the reason.

  Tough wasn’t the word for Meggie Powell.

  ‘Built like a Hereford bull, face to match,’ said Gomer. ‘Bit less feminine, mabbe. When the 1959 flu epidemic took off half the fellers worked at the slaughterhouse there used to be, bottom of Ole Barn Lane, Meggie filled in for a fortnight. That kind o’ woman, you know? Good wife to Edgar, mind, all senses of the word. Good mother to Garrod, likewise. By which I means ... likewise.’

  ‘Aw, shit,’ said Lol.

  ‘Ar, sixty-seventh woman Edgar slept with, sure t’be. First one for Rod.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘It was normal enough then, boy, some families. Normal sex education, like. Well, not normal, but not uncommon. Teach ’em young. Teach ’em how it all works. Self-sufficiency, see. Look after your own, don’t make a mess, but if you do, make sure you clears up after yourself. And, above all, keep it quiet.’

  What rural life was all about in the old days. Feller beat up his wife in the city all the neighbours knew about it. Same thing happened in the country ... well, all the neighbours knew about it too, but they kept quiet. Anybody got really out of hand, they got dealt with. One way or another.

  The Powell women were chosen with care, Gomer said. There were traditions they had to observe. Had to be a special sort of woman, which was not always the prettiest ... Well, look at Meggie. By the time a Powell married, usually at thirty-five-plus, he’d sown his wild oats over a wide area and was ready to settle down and pass on his knowledge to the next generation. By Powell standards, however, Rod chose unwisely. Jennifer Adair was too prissy, too genteel and on the day, fifteen years ago, when Rod and his old man were at the cattle sale and Jennifer Powell learned, in a heart to heart with Meggie, what was going to be expected of her in relation to Lloyd in a couple of years’ time, Jennifer fled the premises and wound up weeping into the upholstery of Gomer’s Jeep.

  ‘What it come down to, ’er knowed Rod must’ve put it about, though he never said much and she never asked, like. But one thing she couldn’t cope with was the thought of spendin’ the rest of her life sleeping next a feller slept with Meggie.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I seen her point and give her a lift to Hereford Station and a hundred quid and she en’t been back to this day, and not a word, Lol, boy, ‘cause if Rod ever finds out I’m a dead man, and that en’t a figure of speech, like. Behind that wooden mask, Garrod Powell’s the bitterest bastard you’ll ever meet. Never married again after Jennifer walked out, never a girlfriend – not seemly, like, not proper. Plus, he’s doubly suspicious of all women, he don’t like women. But you puts that together with a sex drive could light up half the county, you got a few big question marks, innit?’

  ‘This common knowledge, Gomer?’

  ‘Were never exactly common knowledge, except to the few of us working over a wide area of farms and such. And nowadays, when half the folk in Ledwardine was living other side of the country three year ago, ole Rod’s a councillor and a gentleman and Lloyd’s the decentest, politest boy you’d want your daughter to fetch back for Sunday tea.’

  ‘I’m confused.’ Lol massaged the back of his neck where the ponytail used to lie. He was thinking about Patricia Young. ‘I don’t know whether we’re looking at the Bulls or the Powells.’

  ‘There you hit it, boy. People’s always looked at the Bulls in the big house. Looks at the Bulls, don’t see the Powells. But them two families been linked up for years, centuries. Lives are entirely separate, o’ course. Bulls is walkin’ out with nice ladies, doin’ the hunt-ball circuit and what have you. The Powells is huntin’ on another level. When mammy done her bit, see, the old man’d take over their education. Take the boy into town – bit further away, Ledbury, Abergavenny mabbe, show him how to hunt and not get hunted. Powells liked to marry late, like I said, so there’d be plenty of huntin’ for a good few years. But there’s huntin’ ... and there’s baitin’.’

  ‘What the difference?’

  ‘Baitin’s where you brings ’em back,’ Gomer said grimly.

  52

  The Loft

  IT WAS THE part she’d been worrying about. Merrily walked up the two steps to the chancel to whisper to Alison in the choir stalls.

  ‘I know,’ Alison said. ‘I know what you’re asking, and now I’m not so sure. I mean, for Christ’s sake, look at him.’

  James sat with his head bent, as if in prayer, revealing a bald patch like a tonsure.

  ‘Sooner or later, somebody’s going to have to explain what’s in the Journal,’ Merrily said, ‘and it isn’t going to be James, is it?’

  ‘And if I don’t do it, you’ll tell him who I am, what I’m doing here, right?’

  ‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m never going to tell him. It’s not my place.’

  Emotions crowded Alison’s starkly beautiful face. Merrily tried to see a resemblance there to James and couldn’t.

  ‘You see, it’s changed some things,’ Alison said. ‘Fundamental things. I haven’t taken in half this stuff tonight, I’ve just sat there going over and over it.’

  ‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘Whatever’s in there, both you and James know exactly what it is, while everybody else is going to speculate for generations. It needs to come out. We’re exorcizing this village tonight; you must have sensed that.’

  ‘I don’t trust what I sense,’ Alison said. ‘Not any more.’

  As Alison walked from the choir stalls to the chancel steps, James Bull-Davies came out into the aisle.

  ‘Alison. No. No.’

  Alison walked down the steps. Merrily moved back against the pulpit.

  ‘It’s getting bloody late and I’m tired,’ James said. ‘I’m tired of defending my family against a load of pure fantasy. And I’m tired of you, Mrs Watkins. I’m tired of your smugness, your high-handedness, and I’m tired of your bloody voice.’

  ‘Mr Davies, sit down this instant!’ Mrs Goddard shook off her daughter’s hand and rose painfully from her pew. ‘I want to hear what Mrs Watkins and this young woman have to say and I want you to hear it too. You’re emerging as even more of an obnoxious man than we thought and a liar to boot. Don’t show yourself
to be a coward as well. Sit down!’

  He didn’t sit down, but he didn’t leave. He went to stand at the back, near the vestry curtain. DC Ken Thomas was watching him.

  Alison stood just forward from the rood screen with its wooden apples. Her voice was muted but distinct.

  ‘What we learn from the Journal is that Wil Williams was buried on the wrong side of the ditch. He ... she ... did not commit suicide.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Goddard, as if she’d known all along.

  ‘Thomas Bull says nothing about having a physical infatuation with the minister, but he does say he came to believe he was bewitched. The implication is by Wil’

  ‘He doesn’t say that!’ Bull-Davies shouted in pain from the back of the church.

  ‘Of course not,’ Merrily said. ‘But he wouldn’t, would he? I think we can assume he was tortured in all kinds of ways. He was frightened of his own feelings, which were foreign to everything he’d always understood about himself. And perhaps he was worried about it coming out. I’m not qualified to comment on the level of anti-gay prejudice in the seventeenth century or whether Tom Bull was particularly homophobic. But he must have been pretty scared.’

  Alison said, ‘What seems likely – and this is very strongly implied, Jamie, whatever you say – is that Tom, having built up this spurious witchcraft case against Wil, then became extremely paranoid about what might come out in court.’

  Merrily came to stand next to Alison, to give her some support. ‘She wasn’t even hanged, was she?’

  ‘Oh, she was hanged, Merrily. She was hanged after death. They took the body out to the orchard and put a rope around its neck and hung it from the tallest apple tree.’

  ‘No!’ James howled.

  ‘She was probably strangled,’ Alison said.

  Merrily said, ‘Tom Bull admits that she was murdered?’

  ‘Tom Bull agrees that Wil Williams was murdered. The extreme remorse he shows only really makes sense when you start to think of Wil as a woman.’

  ‘He was not a bad man,’ James said. ‘Not the brutal archvil-lain you’re making out. He overreacted.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Mrs Goddard.

  ‘James,’ Merrily said, ‘for God’s sake ... there’s a lot of things you could clear up. You took those papers out of the tomb, so obviously the family knew they were there. I don’t understand why, if the Bulls and Bull-Davieses were so embarrassed by all this, that journal wasn’t simply destroyed years ago.’

  ‘Because you’re not damn well supposed to understand. It’s no one’s business but ours.’

  ‘Oh, you pompous prick!’ Alison threw up her arms. ‘Can’t you ever see the virtues of opening out, hanging out the dirty washing? You’re so curled up and tight inside it’s a wonder you can breathe. Come on, James. For Christ’s sake, come out here.’

  ‘You don’t understand, you can’t understand ...’

  ‘But we need to,’ Merrily said. ‘Because we know that poor Wil Williams was only the start.’

  Alison put out an elegant hand. ‘James ...’

  For close to half a minute, James Bull-Davies remained motionless.

  Then, slowly, he pushed himself from the back wall and moved into the central aisle.

  Alison didn’t move.

  Jim Prosser started to clap.

  As James walked towards the chancel, other villagers joined in the applause, and Mrs Goddard banged her stick on the stones. When James Bull-Davies was halfway to the front, someone squeezed out of a pew, and he and James glanced at each other once. James carried on walking. The other figure moved silently towards the south porch, where Ken Thomas blocked his way.

  ‘I think it’s better nobody leaves just yet, if you don’t mind, sir ... Oh, sorry, Rod.’

  ‘Bit late this, Ken, for a farmer.’

  ‘Sorry, Rod,’ said Ken, moving aside at once.

  Lloyd had gone out again to wait for his father. Periodically she would hear him tramp past the door or the beep-beep of his fingers on the phone as he tried to reach his father’s mobile.

  Jane seethed. The idea of this brutal, humourless tosser sizing her up as a future bride blew through her fear. She would refuse to think what he might do to her. She’d think instead of what she might do to him.

  She got to her feet, her jeans feeling disgustingly damp from the straw, and crept silently around the cider house. Perhaps there was a wooden paddle or something they used to push the apples around in the mill. She imagined herself waiting behind the door with it raised and smashing it down on him when he next came in. It always worked in films.

  But then, in films, there was always something handy. The only stave in the cider house was the one used to turn the screw mechanism on the press and this proved to be metal and bolted firmly into place, and the bolts were so rusty even a wrench wouldn’t dislodge them.

  She kicked about in the hay, in case there was something underneath. Only flagstones.

  Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  She flung herself at a wall, scratching at the bricks on the off chance one was loose and could be prised out and she could throw it at him.

  Hopeless. Was she even strong enough to hurl a brick with any force? She still tried, going from wall to wall, even looking up at the roof to see if there was a loose slate (which she could send skimming at his throat, oh, sure ...) arriving finally at the hayloft over the mill. She’d forgotten all about that.

  Worth a try. She might be able to hide up there and drop something on his head. Height was always an advantage, wasn’t it?

  There was no ladder (which, anyway, she would have broken up for a hefty stick) but only a couple of feet separated the loft from the top of the stone millwheel.

  No problem, probably. Jane tested the thick wooden axle stuck through a hole in the middle of the stone. It was all so crude, in a Stone Age kind of way, but the wood wasn’t rotten and she was able to get a foot on it to hoist herself to the top of the wheel.

  She had an awful vision of the wheel suddenly rolling away, leaving her dangling from the rafters, but it was as solid as a rock, which she supposed it actually was, and she hauled herself up, quite easily in the end, into the loft, where she rolled over and flopped on her stomach between a couple of black bin liners. (She could wait behind the door with one and throw it over his head, then duck behind him to freedom; oh Jesus, this was getting ridiculous.) It seemed much brighter up here; the fluorescent tube was only about three feet away; and she felt exposed and pushed herself back from the edge until she felt her feet slot into the narrow area where the rafters met the sloping slates.

  Now she was up here, the total seriousness of the situation clouded around her. Her bowels felt suddenly weak and she threw her arms over one of the bin sacks to stifle a sob. Oh, Mum, please be looking for me. Please, please, plea—.

  The evil little smell from the bin sack had entered her nose like a thin needle.

  Not a smell she knew, but one she had a horrid feeling she ought to.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she’d drawn the plastic back.

  Over the damp hair and the soft, white skin, purpled by the light. The open, bulging eyes and the big, squashy lips, and the tongue out like a dog’s.

  The diamond nose-stud winking in the clinical light.

  53

  Watching

  ‘I’M A BLOODY madman, en’t I?’ Gomer said. ‘Even look like a bloody madman, so people tell me. I got a wife en’t gonner speak to me for a month as a result of what I already done tonight this far. So what do we do, boy? What we gonner do about this?’

  ‘The cider house?’

  ‘The cider house where the Bulls took their women until they give it to the Powells. Soon as Tess Roberts told that story tonight, it bothered me. Had to go out, have a ciggy. Whatever they’re doin’ in that cider house it en’t makin’ cider.’

  ‘Whereabouts is it?’

  ‘Top of a field, other side o’ the new road, as I recall. A barn, an ole s
heep shed and the cider house. Used to be a tiny little shepherd’s cottage there at one time, but that got pulled down years back.’

  ‘You want to take a look?’ Lol said. ‘Put your mind at rest?’ Meaning put my mind at rest. If they’d found Jane he’d have said, Let’s call it a night, let’s go and find Merrily and talk about all of this, see how it looks in daylight.

  But they hadn’t found Jane.

  ‘Unpredictable kid, though, Gomer. She comes and goes. Has her own ideas, her own apartment in the vicarage. She could be back there now, for all we know.’

  ‘All right, boy, I’ll tell you what we does.’

  Gomer said he’d go back via the old bowling green, through into the churchyard, check on the situation there and whether the kiddie had been found, grab his Jeep off the square – always felt better on wheels, never much of a foot soldier, see. Lol, meanwhile, would torch-sweep as much of the orchard as he could before making his way to the gate opening on to the new road, where Gomer would pick him up in about half an hour.

  ‘That way, we covers both exits. If her’s in the orchard, one or other of us’ll mabbe stumble—’ Gomer coughed, shuffled. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean ...’

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ Lol said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ Like repeating it was going to make it so. ‘She’s always OK.’

  But when Gomer had gone, the Garrod Powell in his head faded into Lloyd Powell and both of them merged into Karl Windling and the white-robed apple trees stood around like bent old druids at some woodland ceremony, and he didn’t think Jane was OK.

  He was very fond of Jane. He could say that to himself now. It was OK to be fond of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was OK to fall in love with her mother. He walked away. The salmon moon was entangled in a cluster of spiky dead branches projecting from the blossom below. Gomer was right; the only way to make any kind of productive orchard here was to start again.

  He walked quickly, pointing the torch at what remained of the path, sometimes apprehensively sweeping it from side to side, and finding patches of fungus pale as flesh and exposed roots like withered limbs.