The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  He said, 'You are a strange, witchy woman, Moira.'

  'Malcolm,' Moira said. 'Go fuck yourself, huh?'

  From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

  RELIGION (i)

  Bridelow is dominated by the ancient church dedicated to Saint Bride and built upon a small rise, thought to be the remains of the 'low' or burial mound from which the village gets the other half of its name.

  The tower is largely Norman, with later medieval embellishments, although there was considerable reconstruction work to this and to the main body of the church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The clock was added to the tower following a donation by the Bridelow Brewery in 1889 and was subsequently illuminated, enhancing the role of the tower as a 'beacon' for travellers lost on Bridelow Moss.

  The churchyard offers a spectacular view over the Moss and the surrounding countryside, which, to the rear, gives way to a large tract of moorland, uninhabited since prehistoric days.

  CHAPTER IV

  During evensong, though he still didn't know quite what had happened with Matt, the Rector said a short prayer for the dying landlord of The Man I'th Moss.

  Holding on to the lectern, eyes raised to the bent and woven branches of the Autumn Cross, he said carefully, 'Grant him strength, O Lord, and ... a peaceful heart.'

  Not quite sure what he meant, but he felt it was the right thing to say; you learned to trust your instincts in Bridelow. Sure enough, several members of the congregation looked up at him, conveying tacit approval. Briefly, he felt the warmth of the place again, the warmth he'd always remember, a quite unexpected warmth the first time he'd experienced it.

  Unexpected because, from the outside, the church had such a forbidding, fortress-like appearance, especially from a distance, viewed from the road which traversed the Moss. He remembered his first sight of the building, close on thirty years ago. Not inspiring, in those days, for a novice minister: hard and grey-black with too many spiky bits and growling gargoyles. And Our Sheila perpetually playing with herself over the porch.

  This was the 1960s, when what the young clergyman dreamed of was a bright, modern church with a flat roof and abstract stained glass (after ten years it would look like a lavatory block, but in the sixties one imagined things could only get better and better.)

  'Amen,' the congregation said as one. The old schoolmaster, Ernest Dawber, glanced up at the Rector and gave him a quick, sad smile.

  The warmth.

  Sometimes it had seemed as if the church walls themselves were heating up under the pale amber of the lights - they were old gas-mantles converted to electricity, like the scattered streetlamps outside. And at Christmas and other festivals, it felt as though the great squat pillars either side of the nave had become giant radiator pipes.

  But the warmth was rarely as apparent now. The Rector wondered if it would even be noticeable any more to a newcomer. Perhaps not. He'd gone to the expense of ordering more oil for the boiler and increasing the heat level. Knowing, all the same, as he went through the motions, that it couldn't be that simple.

  There'd been a draught in the pulpit today; he certainly hadn't known that here before. The draught was needle-thin but it wasn't his imagination because, every so often, the Autumn Cross would sway a little over his head, rustling.

  It rustled now, as he read out the parish notices, and something touched his hair, startling him. When he reached out, his flingers found a dead leaf. It crackled slightly, reminding him of the furious flurry of leaves blasted against his study window at dusk, like an admonishment: you must not watch us ... you must turn your face away.

  A strikingly cold autumn. October frost, nearly all the trees were bare. His arthritis playing up.

  Giving him a hard time tonight. Difficult keeping his mind on the job, wanting only to get it over and limp back to his study - even though, since Judy's death, this had become the loneliest place of all.

  '... and on Wednesday evening, there'll be a meeting of the morrismen in the Function Room at The Man, that's 7.30 ...

  The congregation numbered close on seventy tonight, not a bad turnout. A few regular faces missing, including several members of the committee of the Mothers' Union, but that wasn't too surprising, they'd been here this morning. Couldn't expect anyone to attend twice, even the Mothers.

  He rounded off the service with a final hymn, accompanied as usual by Alfred Beckett on the harmonium - a primitive reedy sound, but homely; there'd never been an organ In Bridelow Church, despite its size.

  'Well done, lad,' Ernie Dawber said at the church door patting his shoulder. 'Keep thi chin up.' Fifteen years his senior, Bridelow born and bred, Ernie Dawber had always called him 'lad'. When the Rector had first arrived, he'd expected a few problems over his name. It had still seemed too close to the War for the locals not to be dubious about a new minister called ...

  '... Hans Gruber,' the schoolmaster had repeated slowly rolling it round his mouth like a boiled sweet.

  'Yes.'

  'That's German, isn't it?'

  Hans had nodded. 'But I was actually born near Leighton Buzzard.'

  Ernie Dawber had narrowed his eyes, giving the new minister a very hard look. 'Word of advice, lad. Keep quiet about that, I should. Thing is ...' Glancing from side to side '... there's a few folks round here who're not that keen on ...' dropping his voice,'... southerners.'

  The Rector said now, thinking of his lonely study, 'Come back for a glass, Ernie?'

  'I don't trunk so, lad.' Ernie Dawber pulled on his hat 'Not tonight.'

  'I'll never forgive you for this.'

  He was gripping the stiffened edge of the sheet like a prisoner clutching at the bars of his cell, his final appeal turned down.

  'We should never have let you go home, Mr Castle,' the nursing sister said.

  'Matt, please ...' Lottie put her cool hand over his yellowed claw. 'Don't say that ...'

  'You never listen.' Feebly shaking his head, inconsolable All the way here in the ambulance, Lottie holding his hand, he'd been silent, away somewhere, still on the Moss perhaps.

  His eyes shone with the tears that wouldn't come, no moisture left in his body.

  The nurse said, 'I think he should have some sleep, don't you, Mrs Castle?'

  'Sleep?' Matt was bleakly contemptuous. 'No real sleep in here. Comes out of the bloody ... drug cabinet ... only sort sleep you can get in here.' He looked past the nurse, 'Where's Dic?'

  'I told you, Matt,' Lottie said gently. 'He wouldn't come in. He's too confused. He's probably walking round the

  grounds, walking it off. He'll come in tomorrow, when he's ...'

  'Might be too late, tomorrow.'

  Lottie smiled at him. 'Don't be soft.' There was a small commotion behind her, a nurse and a young porter putting screens around a bed opposite Matt's.

  'Another one gone,' Matt grunted.

  'Bath time, that's all,' the nurse said unconvincingly.

  'Give you any old crap in here. Look, tell Dic ...' His faltering voice forming words as dry and frail as an ancient cobweb... Tell him, he can be in the band. If he wants to. Then ... when Moira comes, he can play. But you won't, will you? You never do owt I say.'

  'You tell him,' Lottie said. 'Tell him when you see him in the morning.'

  Matt Castle made no reply. He seemed too dehydrated to sweat or to weep. It was as though somebody had talcumed his face, like a ...

  Lottie swallowed hard.

  'Useless... bitch.'

  Matt fell asleep.

  Shrivelled leaves, unseen, chattered on the window-pane. The dead leaves said, Go away, draw the curtains, put on the light.

  It's not your affair, the dead leaves said.

  The Rector didn't move, just as he hadn't moved in the late afternoon, at dusk, when the warning flurry had hit the pane, as if flung.

  At the top end, the vicarage garden almost vanished into the moor. When the light faded, the low stone wall between them dissolved into shadow and the garden and the moor b
ecame one. On the other side of the wall was a public footpath; it was along this they came, and sometimes, over the years, around dusk, the Rector had seen them, had made himself watch them.

  Tonight, resting up before evening service, sitting in the window of the darkening study, wedged into a hard chair, his swollen foot on the piano stool, he'd watched three of them enter the churchyard from the footpath, passing through the wooden wicket gate. They were black, shapeless, hooded and silent. A crescent moon had wavered behind smoky cloud.

  It was all over, though, as was usual, when he walked out across his garden, through the gate and into the churchyard

  Half an hour before the evening service.

  Now he was back in his study, listening to the leaves with the lights out. All he could see through the window was the reflection of two bars of the ineffectual electric fire.

  When Judy, his wife, was alive there'd been a coal fire in the study every night from the end of September until the end of April.

  The Rector was cold. Eleven years now since Judy's death. Where had all the warmth gone, the warmth which before had only increased with the drawing-in of the days? Where had the smiles gone, the smiles which lit the eyes while the mouths stayed firm?

  And why, for that matter, had Ma Wagstaff's herbal preparation had so little effect this time on his arthritis?

  He stood up, hobbled close to the window, cupped his hands to the pane and peered through.

  At the garden's edge, a few graves lurched giddily on the slope, and then the church loomed like an enormous black beast. Lately, Hans Gruber had been wondering if life would not have been a good deal simpler in one of those modern churches, where one's main headache was glue-sniffing behind the vestry. Us and Them. Good and evil. God and Satan.

  Hans thought, Wouldn't that be wonderful?

  After his wife had left, they'd wheeled Mr Castle's bed into a the ward where, unless anyone was brought in suddenly, he'd be alone, until...

  'Until morning,' the young nurse whispered, reassuring herself.

  Mr Castle was sleeping. She was glad; she was still afraid of people who were dying, who were in the actual process of it. She wasn't yet sure how to talk to them, how to look at them, and the awful suspense - what it would be like, the atmosphere in this small, comparatively quiet space, in the moment, the very second when it happened.

  She was never going to get used to this. She was supposed to comfort the dying, but more often than not it was the dying who comforted her - old ladies, all skin and bone and no hair, patting her hand, one actually saying, Don't worry, luv, I won't keep you long.

  Less bothered, it often seemed, than she was. Sometimes it was like they were just waiting for a bus.

  She sat at the desk by the door, under the angled, metal-shaded lamp, the only light in the room. There were four beds in the side ward, three of them empty. It was the only part of this hospital where you could usually count on finding a couple of spare beds, it being the place where terminal patients were often brought in the final stages so they wouldn't distress other patients who were not quite so terminal.

  Tamsin, the other nurse, a year or two older, was out on the main ward. Sister Murtry would pop in occasionally, see if they were all right.

  Sister Murtry had been very firm with Mrs Castle, who was a tall, strong-looking woman - only Sister Murtry would have dared. 'Come on now, he needs his sleep and you need yours.'

  ... Mr Castle waking up suddenly and chuckling in a ghastly, strangled way when she said he needed sleep.

  (She looked across now at his face on the pillow; his skin was like cold, lumpy, wrinkled custard. He wasn't so very old: fifty-seven, it said on his chart, not even elderly.)

  'Will you be sure to ...' Mrs Castle had been in the doorway. Sister Murtry's hands on her shoulders, pushing her out.

  'Yes, I'll ring you myself if there's any change. But there probably won't be, you know ... Just go and get your sleep, or we'll be seeing you in here too ...'

  She imagined Mrs Castle lying wide awake in a cold double bed, waiting for the phone to ring. The wind howling outside - they lived up by Bridelow Moor, didn't they? The wind always howled up there.

  He was quite a famous man, Mr Castle. There'd been dozens of Get Well cards when he was in last year for tests and things. Dr Smethwick, the registrar, who was a folk music fan, had been thrilled to bits to have him in. 'Pioneer of the Pennine Pipes,' she remembered him saying, and Dr Bun had said, dry as a stick, 'Oh, he works for the Water Authority, does he?' And she'd rushed out, scared to giggle because she was still a student then, and Dr Smethwick was senior to Dr Burt.

  Dr Smethwick had moved on, to a better job in Liverpool. Now there was nobody left who knew anything about Mr Castle or the Pennine Pipes. All he had tonight was her, and she was afraid of him because he was dying.

  She wondered how many folk had died here, in this small space, over the years. Passed away, they still preferred you to say that to the relatives. She said it to herself.

  Passsssed... awayyyy. Soft, like a breath of air.

  She jumped. Mr Castle had released a breath of air, but it wasn't soft. It was ... phtttt... like a cork popping out of a bottle or like a quiet fart (one of the regular noises of the night here).

  'Mr Castle ... ?' Whispering, rising rapidly to her feet with a rustle of the uniform, bumping her head on the edge of the metal lampshade.

  'All right, Mr Castle ... Matt.' A hairgrip, dislodged by the lamp, fell to the desk, she felt her hair corning loose at the back. 'I'm here.'

  But when she reached the bedside he was breathing normally again - well, not normal normal, but normal for a man who ... for a man in his condition.

  Holding her hair in place with one hand, the grip in her teeth, she went into the main ward to collect her mirror from her bag.

  Plenty breathing out here, and snoring, and a few small moans, everything hospital-normal. Up the far end of the ward, Tamsin was bending over Miss Wately's bed. Miss Wately the retired headmistress who wouldn't be called by her first name, which was Eunice. Tamsin straightened up, saw her and raised a hand to her lips, tilting her head back as if the hand held a cup.

  She nodded and smiled and pointed over her shoulder to the side ward, and Tamsin nodded and held up five fingers.

  'Ger ... yer owd bugger ...' an old man rasped in his sleep. It was supposed to be a mixed ward but because of the attitude of patients like Miss Wately, the men tended to be at one end and the women at the other. Best, really, at their age.

  No kimono-style dressing-gowns and baby-doll nighties on this ward.

  She found the mirror, slipped it into her pocket, went back to the side ward and sat down, her eyes moving instinctively from bed to bed, four beds, all empty.

  'Moira?'

  All empty.

  'Oh!' She spun round, her hair unravelling down below her shoulders.

  He said, 'You've come then, eh?'

  God help us, he was hanging over her ... like bones in pyjamas.

  'Mr Ca—'

  What was holding him up? She'd seen his legs, his muscles, wasted, gone to jelly. Been in a wheelchair for weeks and weeks. They'd said to watch him, he might even die in the night, and here he was standing up, oh God, his lips all pulled back and frozen into a ric-rictus?

  'Tarn ...' trying to shout for the other nurse, but her voice was so dry the name just dropped out of her mouth like a piece chewing gum '... sin.' Hardly heard herself.

  His eyes were far back in his head, black marbles, like the eyes had already died.

  Then one of his hands reached out, it was all shrivelled and rigid, like a chicken's foot, and he started ... he started playing with her hair, pulling it down and fingering it, looking down at it in his fingers, mumbling, Moira ... Moira.

  Eventually she managed to say, 'I'm not your wife, Mr ...Mr Castle ...'

  But remembered Sister Murtry saying, 'Her name's Charlotte, I think.' And then, later, 'Come on, Charlotte, let's be having you, can't st
ay here all night. Not good for either of you.'

  She couldn't move. The metal bars on the bed heads made hard shadows on the walls, the little ward was like a cage. If only Sister Murtry would come now, bustling in, short and dynamic. Nobody Sister Murtry couldn't handle.

  Oh, God, this was the wrong job, she hated dying people, their stretched skin, their awful smell, especially this one - the damp stench of ripe, putrid earth (the grave?). She began to shiver and tried to stand up, drawing back, away from him, but there was nowhere to go, her bottom was pressed into the edge of the desk, and Mr Castle was still hanging over her like a skeleton in a rotting sack and smelling of wet earth.

  How could he smell of earth, of outside?

  'Tam ... sin ...' Her scream was a whisper, but her mouth was stretched wide as his greenish chickenfoot hand whipped out and seized her throat.

  CHAPTER V

  CENTRAL SCOTLAND

  The scuffed sixteen-year-old Ovation guitar, with its fibreglass curves, was a comfort. Its face reflected the great fire blazing on the baronial hearth.

  'Ladies of noble birth ...' Adjusting the microphone. 'In those days, they didn't have too much of a say in it, when it came to husbands. This is ... thumbing an A-minor, tweaking the top string up a fraction, '... this is the story of a woman who's found herself betrothed to a titled guy much younger than she is. However ...' gliding over a C, 'I doubt if we're talking toy-boys, as we know them. This is like ... nine or ten, right?'

  Tuning OK. 'I mean, you know, there's a limit to the things you can get from a boy of nine or ten.'

  No reaction. You bastard, Malcolm. And you, Rory McBain - one day you really will be sick.

  'Anyway, she's stuck with this kid. And she's standing on the castle walls, watching him playing down below, working out the dispiriting mathematics of the situation and wondering if ...'

  Shuffling on the stool, tossing back the black wings of her hair, the weight of it down her back pulling her upright so that she could see the audience and the gleaming stag skulls all round. The walls of neatly dressed stone, with spotlit banners and tapestries. The black eye-holes in the skulls, and the eyes of the conference delegates looking, from five or so yards away, just as opaque and unmoving.