by Phil Rickman
Behind the bar, Stan Burrows in a black waistcoat, says passively, 'Tough about Gus Bibby, eh?'
'Why? What's up?'
'You not heard, Ernie? He's closing up the Stores.'
'No!'
'I could see it coming, me. Just not up to it no more. Bent double half the time. I went in for a bucket last week, had to climb up and get it meself. 'Sides which, he's selling nowt. What can you buy in Gus's you can't get in Macclesfield twenty per cent cheaper?'
'It's a matter of principle, Stan. We're glad enough to shop at Gus Bibby's when there's snow or floods and you can't get across the Moss. Anyway, what about his son?'
'How many days a year can't you get across t'Moss since they've built that road up? Nay, it's price of progress, int it?'
'Progress? Ernie nearly choking on his so-so half of Black.
Stan saying, 'Nay, Bibby's'll shut and it'll stay shut. Who's going t'buy that place?'
'What about his son?'
'He'll not come back, will he? Got a good job wi' Gas Board in Stockport. Would you come back?'
'Aye,' said Ernie. 'I would.'
'How many's like you, though, Ernie? Any more. Be honest. How many?'
Second picture.
Halfway up the street, church behind him, looking down towards The Man. From up here, the pub looks as if it's built on the Moss itself.
A bitter wind has blown through Bridelow, snatching the leaves from the trees and bleaching the colour from the faces inside the front porches. The faces hovering, ghostly in the shadows, the bodies invisible in black.
The villagers start to step from their doorways; the coffin's coming.
A fair turn-out, thanks to Matt's folk-music friends from the Manchester circuit and outsiders with an interest in Bridelow like Dr Roger Hall. And the former brewery workers who failed to find employment in Buxton, Macclesfield, Glossop, or even Manchester and Sheffield; they're all here, except for the ones hunched over their fires with their Beecham's Powders and a bad case of Taiwanese flu, the like of which would never have got Across the Moss in the old days.
Ernie fancies he can hear wretched coughing from behind the drawn curtains, as if the virus has spread to the stones themselves.
Turn the page, lad.
Up by the arched lych-gate now, watching people stepping down to the cobbles to join the ragged tail of the procession.
The blinds are down at the Post Office, soon to be the only shop remaining in Bridelow. Ernie hardly recognizes black-clad Milly Gill, who normally looks like a walking botanical garden. Is she in mourning just for Matt Castle, or for Bridelow itself?
The coffin's at a funny angle because of the respective heights of the men carrying it, from little Willie to gangling Frank. Are Willie and Milly Gill back together? Ernie hopes so; they need each other, time like this.
Lottie Castle follows immediately behind and, by 'eck, mourning becomes her, she's never looked as fine, the red hair swept back under a neat, black pillbox hat with a little veil, generous mouth set hard. With her, half a pace behind, is the lad, Dic, a leather case under his arm.
Go on, turn over, you've got to look ...
The coffin on a wooden bier beneath the Autumn Cross, the Rector hunched stiffly before it, his strong hair slumped over his forehead, not quite hiding pearls of sweat, and the lines in his face like an engraving.
Behind the Rector bobs the new curate, curly-haired lad, built like a brick privy. Bit of a firebrand, by all accounts.
He'll be all right. He'll settle down. Won't he?
At the side, by the choir stalls, is Hans's lass, Catherine, who seems all of a sudden to have lost her youth. Anxiety on her firm, plain face; worried about her dad, and with good reason. Needs a long rest, that lad.
Two youngsters with guitars who Ernie doesn't recognize sing a wistful but forgettable ballad, stop and look around afterwards before realising congregations aren't supposed to
applaud, especially at a funeral.
Then the Rector gets down to it.
'Lord, we're here to thank you for the life of Matthew Castle, and to pray that his soul might...'
Ernie, in the centre of the rearmost pew, locates Ma Wagstaff without much difficulty - that's quite a hat Ma's got on, with those big black balls on it. Anyway, it's through Ma that he spots ... the mystery woman. Otherwise he never would have noticed her, all in black like that and in the shadow of the pillar.
Ma turns around just once, with that famous penetrating stare. Thought at first the old girl was looking at him. And then he sees the black, hooded figure to his left, on the little seat wedged up against the stone pillar.
By 'eck. They're not usually as public as this about it, these women.
Pretty place, this church. Norman, was it, those huge archways? And candles here and there, like in a Catholic church.
Warm stained glass with Garden of Eden-type pictures full of flowers and fruit.
And the cross that hung above the carved wooden screen dividing the nave from whatever the altar area was called.
The cross was of green wood. Or at least wood that had been green last summer. Woven boughs, some with shrivelled, dead leaves still hanging from them. A cross from the woods and the hedgerows. Yeah, nice. And strange. One of several strange things in here - like the German Shepherd dog sitting stoically on a pew next to a small boy.
Well, why not?
But still just a wee bit weird.
Jesus, she'd be feeling at home here next. But she still kept the cloak about her; it was pretty damn cold in here and going to be a good deal colder outside, when the darkness came down.
Underneath the cloak, the jeans and jumper she'd travelled down in. No place to change. Wouldn't worry Matt how she looked, but jeans might not be viewed as entirely respectful at a funeral in these parts; keep them covered.
Also ...I don't want this place to know me. Don't want to be identified by Lottie or Willie or Dic or anybody who ever bought a Castle Band album.
Not yet, OK? .
Locking the car, she'd glanced up into the thickening sky, and thought, Before this burial's over, it's going to be fully dark. Matt Castle going out of the dark and into the last black hole, and the peaty soil heaped upon him under cover of the night.
But no bad thing, the dark.
I can't face anybody, she'd thought, standing alone in the muddy parking area behind the church, pulling up the deep hood until her face was lost, traitorous cow, I'll stay at the back, out of sight, I'll pay my respects in my own way. And then I'll get the hell out, and nobody'll be the wiser.
And yet ...
She'd stared up at the church, at its dour, crenellated walls, at its Gothic stained-glass windows showing their dark sides to the sky, taking the light and giving out nothing. At all the pop-eyed stone gargoyles grinning foolishly down on her.
... somehow ...
Followed the walls to the tower and the edge of the churchyard where the moor began in ochre tufts and gorse bushes, and in the distance there was a clump of rocks like a toad, and if you blinked the toad would be quivering, having leapt and landed five yards closer.
... there's something here that knows me already.
No people around at that time, only the sensation of them behind the drawn curtains. Not peering through the cracks at the stranger and the stranger's dusty BMW, nothing so obvious.
'This is a knowing place,' she'd found herself saying aloud.
Then, all too damn conscious of looking very like an extremely witchy woman, she'd passed through a wooden wicket gate under a steep, stone archway, to walk a while among Bridelow's dead.
There, at the top of the churchyard, was the hole awaiting Matt, the area immediately around it covered with bright emerald matting, luridly unconvincing artificial grass. She stood on it, on the very edge of the hole, staring down into the black, rooty soil. And saw again the smoke-choked mouth of the great fireplace at the Earl's castle, the clawing thing her mind had constructed there.
&n
bsp; Mammy, how was he when he died, can you tell me that?
Backing away from the open grave, thinking, There are people here who can tell me that. And I can't ask.
Standing several yards from the church doorway now and feeling strongly that someone was watching out for her. But knowing from experience that this feeling of being watched wasn't necessarily a case of someone but something. That the watcher could be something in the air, something that existed purely to watch.
Spooking herself. Down here in England, where she had no heritage and there should be no reverberations.
'Aw, fuck this,' she'd said aloud, turning towards the church doorway, looking up ... directly into the massively exaggerated, gaping pussy of the Sheelagh na gig.
'Shit,' Moira said. 'Was you, wasn't it?'
The Sheelagh. The exhibitionist. The stone effigy of a woman, compressed to the dimensions of a gargoyle. Thrusting out her privates and leering about it. A blatant fertility symbol (or something) almost always found in the stonework of churches, mostly in Ireland.
But rarely as prominent as this.
'Got yourself a prime spot, here, hen,' said Moira. She'd walked under the Sheelagh na gig, through the porch and into the church, feeling better now she knew who'd been watching her. This was OK, this was not the white-haired, white-faced man who'd tried to steal the comb and (maybe ... ) brought the bloody house down. This was something older, more benevolent (maybe... ).
She'd been the first in church. She'd sat here alone inside her own dark shroud, concealed by a pillar, until...
Until Matt arrived.
'... we'll all of us remember the day Matt returned,' the Minister said. 'The gratitude felt by the whole village that its second most important institution was to be saved ...
He's not well, this minister, Moira thought. And he's worried. A real sense of oppression coming off him. And there shouldn't be that in here. This is abnormal.
The old lady knows, the one in the really bizarre hat.
Hans leads them out into the churchyard, the pace all the more funereal because he can hardly walk.
As they near the doors, Ernie Dawber, standing up in his pew, sees the curate, Joel Beard, stride forward to take the Rector's arm. Then there's a rush of footsteps down the aisle and he sees Catherine squeeze past the coffin resting on the shoulders of Willie and Eric, Frank Senior and Young Frank and practically throw herself between the two clergymen, dashing the curate's hand aside and snatching her father's arm, clasping it.
By 'eck. No love lost there and she doesn't care who knows it.
The pews are emptying from front to back, which means Ernie will be the last out, except for the Mystery Woman. He glances behind just once, as he joins the end of the procession, but she's not there.
Sometimes they just disappear, these people.
The next picture is so black at first, because of the sky, that it's almost like a woodcut.
The graveyard packed like a dark fairground. But a circle of space at the top, where the moor looms above the rectangular hole in the soil, which, when the lamplight flares, is like the opening of a shaft.
Alfred Beckett, verger and organist, has lit a metal paraffin lantern which he holds up on a pole, hanging it over the grave as Hans completes the burial rite, his own version, some of it turned about, but all the old lines there.
'Man born of woman hath but a short time ...'
As the phrases fade, like a curlew it begins.
The piping.
Ernie gasps, muffling his mouth with a leather-gloved hand, clutching a Victorian marble cross for support. A hush enclosing the churchyard as the cold and homeless notes roam the air.
He straightens up against the cross, brushing in relief at his overcoat. It's the lad. Dic. Matt's coffin on the ground at the edge of the grave and Dic standing by it, the Pennine Pipes under his arm and the wilderness music swirling up into the cold.
Only the lad. For just a few seconds ...
Ernie moving closer. The lad plays well. His dad'd be proud. Tries to see Lottie's face, but her head's turned away.
Someone weeping behind him.
Can't see the coffin any more. The four bearers lined up on either side of Dic, concealing the grave. Lamplight shows him the fingers of Willie Wagstaff's left hand starting to move against his thigh, a slow beat, in time with the piped lament.
Ernie finds he's standing next to the lamp-bearer, Alf Beckett, when somebody - likely a woman - whispers, 'Put it out, Alf.'
'Eh?'
'Put lamp out.'
Silently, Alf Beckett lowers the pole to the ground, unhooks the lantern, lays it on the grass at his feet, shuffling around to put himself in front of it so that no light is cast into the
grave.
'That do?'
'Fine. Ta, lad.'
Oh, hell.
Quite soon, behind the pipes, there's a scraping and a scuffling on the ground, like mice or rats. Ernie tries to shut it out. He's not supposed to hear this. He looks up, away from it, and the only face he can see clearly is the Rector's, upturned to the sky, to what light remains.
The Rector also knows he is not supposed to hear or to see. He has his eyes tightly closed.
'Get it over with,' Ernie hisses. 'Get it bloody done!'
Raises his eyes above the little graveside scrum but doesn't close them. Sees the black shapes of the sparse trees on the edge of the churchyard, where it meets the moor. The trees trembling. Has this withering, shrivelling sense of something blowing towards them, off the moor, off the Moss.
Irrational. His nerves. Like the night when he was scared the Moss would swallow the sun and it would never come up again.
Come on, settle down, calm yourself, there's nowt you can do except keep your mouth shut and your eyes averted. Nowt here for the Book of Bridelow.
Dic keeps on piping, the same melancholy tune, over and over again, but erratic now, off-key; he's getting tired ... but the noises behind him go on, the scuffling on the ground, and now a jarring creak and an intake of breath.
And then all hell ...
'Stop! Let me through!'
Rough hands thrusting Ernie aside.
'Mr Beckett, where's the lamp? Stand back, will you. Stand back, I said, or somebody ... will ... get ... hurt.'
The lantern snatched up, its gassy-white flame slanting, flaring in the furious eyes of the Rev. Joel Beard, smoke rolling from the funnel.
Hands grab at him to hold him back from the grave, but Joel, snarling, is big and fuelled-up with rage, the metal cross swinging as his cassocked chest swells and his elbows slam back.
The lamp flies up into the night and Joel catches it by its base as it falls, pushing Alf Beckett so that Alf spins sideways into Dic Castle and the Pennine Pipes make a squirming, ruptured noise, subsiding into empty, impotent blowing and wheezing.
The Rev. Joel Beard steps to where the coffin of Matt Castle lies at the grave's edge, and he lifts the lantern high.
CHAPTER VI
She was not among those weeping when the Pennine Pipes began.
It got to her in other ways ...
Hanging back behind the crowd, still as the headstones around her, Moira felt confused, puzzled ... the plucking at something inside her, starting this small, familiar tingle in her lower abdomen.
OK, she would have known anyway that it wasn't Matt she could hear, there wasn't the same lilting, light-as-air technique, the inimitable agility. Would have been no mistaking that.
And yet ...
The Roman numerals on the church clock, lit-up, said 5.30. It would be dark at 5.30 this time of year. But the darkness had the icy, velvet quality of midnight, and whoever had organized this service had known it was going to end like this.
Why?
Sure as hell was the strangest funeral she'd ever been to, the minister and the principal mourners in a distant lamplit huddle, the freezing air over the entire churchyard somehow electric with this almost feverish, dreamlike tension, and the piping g
oing on and on and on, like in a time-loop ... so that you wound up mentally pinching yourself, asking, is this real?
Like, where am I? Did I drive across these unknown hills into some dream dimension?
Needing at last to break through, maybe talk to someone, hear the sound of her own voice, anybody's voice, she moved closer, symbolically tossing back the hood of her cloak ... at the moment the lantern went down.
She saw the big shapes of the trees at the end of the churchyard. Below them, shadows intertwined. The amorphous tableau at the top of the small rise where Matt's grave was to be. From whence came the insistent, never-ending piping but no sounds of a funeral service, no suggestion of anyone leading the proceedings.
Only - under the pipes, as she drew close - a whispering, as if there was more than one person whispering but they weren't listening to each other, the voices rustling together like wind-dried leaves.
And she caught a passing perfume, a sick, sad smell.
Then, to her left, a small commotion. An expulsion of breath from a yard or so away, a dragging on her cloak and she was almost pulled down.
'Stop!' A man's voice, strong, authoritarian. 'Let me through': For just a second everything froze, and then there was this instinctive communal resistance, a tightening of the clutch of bodies around her. The whispering intensified, new urgency in it, the dead leaves really crackling now.
A scrabbling now, by her feet; some guy had been pushed over, rolled on to the cloak. He found his feet, she reclaimed the cloak. Somewhere nearby there was a struggle going on.
She didn't move. The lamp appeared again, bouncing wildly in the air, like some will-o'-the-wisp thing. In the spinning light she got a split-second picture of ... must be Matt's boy, Dic Castle, playing the pipes, the bag trapped in an elbow, his face red with effort, and Willie Wagstaff next to Dic, Willie's eyes flitting anxiously, from side to side, and she could almost feel the rhythm of the little guy's famously impressionable fingers in her head, thud, thud ...
Thud, thud... . And then the oil-lamp went up again, was held steady.