The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  It had begun. For the last time?

  Please, God.

  She looked out of the window-space, unblinking, cheeks awash.

  Fifty yards away, hunched in the peat, bound in cold winding-sheets of rain, the black bag under his arm like a third lung ...

  ... Matt Castle playing on his pipes.

  Eerie as a marsh bird, and all the birds were silent in the rain.

  The tune forming on the wind and falling with the water, the notes pure as tears and thin with illness.

  Dic rubbed his eyes with his fingers. 'I don't know it,' he said. 'I don't know this tune.' Petulant. As if this was some sort of betrayal.

  'He only wrote it ... a week or so ago,' Lottie said. 'When you were away. He said ...' Trying to smile. 'Said it just came to him. Actually, it came hard. He'd been working at it for weeks.'

  Lament for the Man, he'd called it. She'd thought at first that that was partly a reference simply to their pub, The Man I'th Moss, adrift on the edge of the village, cut off after all these years from the brewery.

  But no. It was another call to him, wherever he was. As if Matt was summoning his spirit home.

  Or pleading for the Man to summon him. Matt.

  'I can't stand this,' Dic said suddenly. Dic, who could play the pipes too, and lots of other instruments. Who was a natural - in his blood too, his dad more proud than he'd ever admit, but not so proud that he'd encouraged the lad to make a profession of it.

  'Christ,' said Dic, 'is this bloody suicide? Is it his way of ...?'

  'You know him better than that.' Figuring he just wanted a row, another way of coping with it.

  'It's not as if he's got an audience. Only us.'

  'Only us,' Lottie said, although she knew that was wrong. Matt believed - why else would he be putting himself through all this? - that there had to be an audience. But, it was true, they were not it.

  'All right, what if he dies?' Dic said sullenly, brutally. 'What if he dies out there now?'

  Lottie sighed. What a mercy that would be.

  'What I mean is ... how would we even start to explain ... ?'

  She looked at him coldly until he subsided into the passenger seat.

  'Sorry,' he said.

  The piping was high on the wind, so high it no longer seemed to be coming from the sunken shape in the wheelchair, from the black lung. She wondered if any people could hear it back in Bridelow. Certainly the ones who mattered wouldn't be able to, the old ones, Ma Wagstaff, Ernie Dawber. They'd be in church. Perhaps Matt had chosen his time well, so they wouldn't hear it, the ones who might understand.

  Dic said, 'How long ... ?'

  'Until he stops. You think this is easy for me, Dic? You think I believe in any of this flaming stupid ... Oh, my God!'

  The piping had suddenly sunk an octave, meeting the drone, the marsh bird diving, or falling, shot out of the sky.

  Lottie stopped breathing.

  And then, with a subtle flourish of Matt's old panache, the tune was caught in mid-air, picked up and sent soaring towards the horizon. She wanted to scream, either with relief and admiration ... or with the most awful, inexcusable kind of disappointment.

  Instead she said, briskly, 'I'm going to call Moira tonight, I've been remiss. I should have told her the situation. He wouldn't.'

  Dic said, 'Bitch.'

  'That's not fair.' He was twenty, he was impulsive, things were black and white. She leaned her head back over the seat. 'I can understand why she didn't want to get involved. OK, if she'd known about his illness she'd have been down here right away, but at the end of the day I don't think that would have helped. Do you?'

  The end of the day. Funny how circumstances could throw such a sad and sinister backlight on an old cliché.

  Dic said, 'It would have taken his mind off his condition, maybe.'

  Lottie shook her head. 'It's an unhealthy obsession, this whole bogman business.' They'd never really spoken of this. She'd have made things worse. She probably knew that.'

  He said sourly, 'Why? You mean ... because of his other unhealthy ...'

  Lottie suddenly sat up in the driving seat and slapped his face, hard. 'Stop it. Stop it now.'

  She closed her eyes on him. 'I'm tired.'

  The pipes spun a pale filigree behind her sad, quivering eyelids, across the black moss where the rain blew in grey-brown gusts.

  Take him, she prayed. To God. To the Man. Away.

  Was this so wrong? Was it wrong, was it sinful, to pray to the Man?

  God? The Man? The Fairies? Santa Claus? What did it matter?

  A thrust of wind rattled the wound down window, pulling behind it an organ trail from St Bride's, the final fragment of a hymn. It lay for a moment in strange harmony upon the eddy of the pipes.

  No, Lottie decided. It's not wrong.

  Take him. Please.

  Anybody.

  CHAPTER II

  Three hours.

  Three hours and he hadn't touched her. Chrissie had heard of men who paid prostitutes just to sit on the edge of the bed for half the night and listen to them rambling on about their domestic problems.

  Maybe she should demand overtime.

  'The other one,' Roger said, 'the one they found in Lindow, I mean, they christened him Pete Marsh. They had this instant kind of affection for the thing.'

  Chrissie had been Dr Roger Hall's temporary admin assistant for nearly a fortnight and was a lot more interested in him than bog people. She poured coffee, watching him through the motel mirror. Unfortunately, he looked even more handsome when he was worried.

  'Well, I mean, there's no way,' Roger went on, 'that I feel any kind of affection for this one. It's about knowledge.'

  'So why not just let him go? After all, he must be pretty bloody creepy to have around,' said Chrissie, who shared an office at the Field Centre with a woman called Alice. She tried to imagine the situation if Alice was a corpse.

  'It's not creepy, exactly.' Roger sat up in bed, carefully arranging the sheet over his small paunch.

  'Spooks me,' Chrissie said, 'to be honest. And I never have to see him, thank God.'

  'No, it's just ... it's as if he knows how badly I need him. How much I need to know him, where he's coming from.'

  'You're getting weird. You tell your wife stuff like this?'

  'You're kidding. My wife's a doctor.'

  That was a novel twist, Chrissie thought. My wife doesn't understand me - she's too intelligent. Chrissie didn't care for the underlying message Roger was sending out here. OK, he was tall, he had nice crinkles around his eyes, everybody said how dishy he looked on the telly. And OK, she was seducing him (with a bit of luck). But, in the end, one-to-one was the only kind of relationship Chrissie was basically interested in.

  'No need to pout,' he said. 'I wasn't suggesting you were a bimbo. Just that a corpse is a corpse to Janet, regardless of its history.'

  She brought him coffee. Outside, coming up to 7 p.m. on an autumn Sunday evening, traffic was still whizzing up the M6. Roger said he felt safe here: the one place he could count on people he knew not showing up was the local motor lodge.

  Chrissie had booked in; he'd arrived later, leaving his car on the main service area, away from any lights.

  He was a very cautious man. He was supposed to be in London until tomorrow evening, on Bogman business. They were re-examining the stomach-lining or something equally yucky.

  'Roger, look ...' Chrissie lit a cigarette. 'I know how important he's been to you - for your career and everything. And I take your point about him giving the Field Centre a new lease of life - obvious we were being wound up, the amount of work we were actually doing ... I mean, I've been wound up before.'

  'I bet you have,' Roger said, looking at her tits, putting down his coffee cup. But he still didn't reach out for her.

  Chrissie tried to find a smile but she'd run out of them. 'Sunday,' she said sadly.

  'Didn't know you were religious.'

  'I'm not.' She'd just su
ddenly thought, What a way to spend a Sunday evening, in a motel no more than two miles

  from where you live. With a bogman's minder. 'Do you touch him much?'

  'You make it sound indecent. Of course I touch him. He feels a bit like a big leather cricket bag. You should pop in sometime, be an experience for you.'

  Chrissie shuddered. „

  He grinned. 'Not that you'd get much out of it. He hasn't got one any more.

  'What, no ...?'

  'Penis.'

  Chrissie wrinkled her nose. 'Dissolved or something?'

  'No, they must have chopped it off. And his balls. Part of the ritual.'

  'Oh yucky.' Chrissie wrapped her arms around her breasts and eased back into bed, bottom first.

  'What I like best about your body,' Roger said, not moving, 'is that it's so nice and pale. All over.'

  'Actually, I had quite a deep tan in the summer. Still there, in places.'

  'Not as deep as his tan, I'll bet. That's what you call being tanned. Literally. Tanned and pickled. It's what it does to them. The acids. I like you. You're pale.'

  It's not healthy, Chrissie thought, the way he brings everything back to that ancient thing. It's like 'Love me, love my bogman Oh, well... 'Roger,' she said hesitantly, looking at the gap between them, probably just about the size of the bloody bogman. 'Can I ask you something ?'

  'Sure,' he said tiredly, 'but if you want me to do anything complicated, you'll have to ...'

  'Don't worry. I just want to know something about you and ... him ... Just to clear the air. Then maybe we can relax.. Thing is, there've not been all that many bogmen found, have there? All right, that Pete Marsh, and before him a bunch of them in Denmark. But when one's discovered in this country, it's still a major find, isn't it?'

  'In archaeological terms, he's worth more than the average Spanish galleon, yes.'

  'Hot property.'

  'Very.'

  'So what,' said Chrissie very slowly, 'is he really doing in a little-known university field centre behind a school playing-field in the North of England? Why did the British Museum experts and all these London people ... why did they let you bring him back?'

  Roger's eyes closed in on one another. This is where he starts lying, Chrissie deduced. The more university degrees a man had, she'd discovered, the more hopeless he was at concealing untruths.

  'What I mean is,' she said, airing the bits of knowledge she'd rapidly absorbed from the Press cuttings file, 'they like to keep these things, don't they? They go to Harwell and Oxford for this radiocarbon dating, and then ...'

  'Well, he's been to Harwell. He's been to Oxford. And he's been to the British Museum.'

  'And he's come back,' said Chrissie. 'Why's that?'

  The Archdeacon poured himself a cognac, offered the bottle to the Rev. Joel Beard but wasn't entirely surprised when Joel declined.

  Only we poor mortals have need of this stuff, the Archdeacon thought. He's above all such vices.

  Sadly, he thought.

  Between them on the leather three-seater Chesterfield sat a shining white dome, like a strange religious artefact.

  It was Joel's crash-helmet.

  He's deliberately placed it between us, the Archdeacon thought. He's heard about me. 'And so you know the place well, I gather,' he said hoarsely. 'You know Hans. And his family.'

  'Well, I remember his daughter, Catherine,' Joel said. 'A wilful girl.'

  All right, thought the Archdeacon. So you're one hundred per cent hetero. I can take a hint, damn you.

  He edged back into his corner of the Chesterfield and looked into his drink, at the pictures on the wall, out of the window at the bare front garden, sepia under a Victorian streetlamp. Anywhere but at Golden Joel, the diocesan Adonis.

  'Of course,' Joel said, 'he's been in better health.'

  'Erm ... quite. And it isn't, you know, that we think he's failing in some way. He's been an excellent man. In his time. He's a very ... tolerant man. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Ah ... not that I'm decrying his tolerance ...'

  The Archdeacon snatched a sip of his brandy. Oh dear. Why did he let Joel Beard do this to him?

  Joel smiled. Or at least he exposed both rows of teeth. 'Look, perhaps I can clarify some of this, Simon. I don't think tolerance is such a fundamental virtue any more. I think we've been tolerant for so long that it looks as if ... I mean, what, increasingly, is the public's idea of a typical Anglican clergyman?'

  You dare, you brute, the Archdeacon thought. You dare ...

  'A ditherer,' said Joel. 'An ineffectual ditherer.'

  'Oh.' The Archdeacon relaxed. 'Quite.'

  'There's a big game going on, you know, Simon. We - the Church - ought to be out there. But where are we?'

  'Ah ... where indeed?'

  'We aren't on the pitch. We aren't even on the touchline.'

  'Perhaps not.'

  'We're in the clubhouse making the bloody tea,' said Joel Beard.

  'Well, I ...'

  'There's real evil about, you know. It's all around us and it's insidious. A burglary somewhere in Britain every thirty seconds or so. An assault. A rape. A husband beating his wife, sexually abusing his small children. We talk of social problems. Or if we use the word evil, it's social evil ... We're making excuses for them and we're excusing ourselves. When I was a gym teacher ...'

  Oh, please ... The Archdeacon saw beneath the cassock to the tensed stomach and the awesome golden chest.

  '... before each rugby lesson, there'd be the same pathetic collection of little notes. "Dear Sir, Please excuse my son from games, he has a minor chest infection." This sort of nonsense. Same ones every other week The wimps. Well I'm afraid that's what we look like sometimes. "Dear People, Please excuse me from confronting Satan this week, but my steeple's developed stone-fatigue and I have to organize a garden party." This is what we've come to. We've reached the point where we're ashamed to wield the weapons forged for us by God.'

  The Archdeacon refused to allow himself to contemplate the weapon God had forged for Joel Beard. He took a mouthful of cognac and held it there while Joel talked of the Church's manifest obligation to confront the Ancient Enemy again. Lord, but he was a magnificent sight when fired-up - that profile, hard as bronze, those rigid golden curls ...

  Upstairs, in his files', the Archdeacon kept seven photocopies of the famous picture of Joel in the Sheffield Star - the one of him brandishing his outsize pectoral cross. At the time this dramatic pose had only reinforced the Diocesan consternation expressed when Joel, still at college, had been on local radio threatening physical disruption of certain Hallowe'en festivities planned by the university students' union.

  The Archdeacon had managed to placate the Bishop, who'd been suggesting immediate efforts ought to be made to interest this turbulent mature student in a period of foreign missionary work - the Colombian jungles or somewhere equally dangerous.

  Known his type before, the Bishop fumed. More trouble than they're worth, these self-publicists. Nonsense, said the Archdeacon. With respect, men like Beard must be considered the Church's Future ... if the Church is to have one.

  During these discussions about his future, Joel had apparently received a series of telephone calls alerting him to inbred evil in a small village in the Southern Pennines. Anonymous, of course. But weren't they always? And wasn't the Archdeacon himself becoming just a little tired of Hans Gruber, the old-fashioned rural priest treading his own sheep-tracks, totally immersed in his parish, oblivious to the Diocese?

  '... mustn't be afraid to get physical.' Joel thumped the back of the Chesterfield, and the Archdeacon almost fainted.

  Or, indeed, metaphysical ...'

  'Well, then ...' The Archdeacon's hand was shaking so much he had to put down his glass. 'If you're determined to face this thing head-on, we'll delay no longer. There's just this

  question of accommodation in Bridelow. Not had a curate for so long we let the house go.'

  'I understand,' said Joel, 't
hat there's accommodation in the church itself.'

  'In the ch ... ? You don't mean this ... priest's hole sort of place under the floor? You're not serious.'

  'Well,' said Joel. 'Short-term, I see no reason why not. It was originally intended as emergency accommodation for visiting clergy, I gather. And how often does a priest get the opportunity to experience a night in the House of God?'

  'Quite,' said the Archdeacon. 'Quite.' He was remembering the old story about an itinerant Bishop of Sheffield a century or so ago, who'd spent a night under the church at Bridelow and was supposed to have gone potty. Silly story. But still, was it wise for Joel to sleep down there? Alone?

  The Archdeacon tingled.

  Finally Chrissie said, 'Admit it, you're getting a bit obsessed.'

  'That's ridiculous.' Not much conviction there. 'I'm just ... stressed, that's all. I'm not good at deception.'

  'No, you're not.'

  'I meant with Janet. Look, would you mind putting that thing out.' He reached over her, took the cigarette from between her fingers and dropped it in an ashtray on the bedside ledge.

  Well!

  'Honestly, it's not an obsession,' he said. 'Not the way you think. Look, I'll tell you, OK. But you've got to keep it to yourself. Not a word, OK? Thing is, I've ... I've had approaches.'

  'Lucky you.' When, a few minutes ago, he'd put a hand experimentally on her thigh, it had felt like a lukewarm, wet sponge.

  He said, 'When you were young ...'

  'Thank you very much, Roger.'

  'No, no ... I mean, when you were a child ... Did you ever read Stanage's books?'

  'Sta ... Oh, John Peveril Stanage.' She felt a mild stirring of interest; not his usual type of stultifying archaeological tome.

  'Well, who didn't?'

  'He wanted to see me,' Roger said. 'Or rather he wanted me to go and see him.'

  'Good God, is he still alive?'

  'Very much so. Not yet sixty, I'd guess. 'Course, he's been a published writer since his early twenties, which makes him ...'

  'Very rich, I suppose,' Chrissie said.

  'You wouldn't know it to see where he lives - end of one of those run-down Georgian terraces in Buxton. Sort of seedy - palatial inside, but I'm assured he's loaded. You remember much about his stuff?'