by Phil Rickman
Lottie groaned. Tonight's other topic of conversation.
'Soon bring that bastard out,' said Frank. 'Him and his children of God. Then I'd fill him in, good.'
'Don't think you would, Frank,' Stan Burrows said. 'He's a big lad, that curate. Once had trials for Castleford, somebody said. Nay, he'll quieten down. Let him get it out of his system. All he's doing's making what you might call a statement.'
'Twat,' said Frank.
'Don't rise to it,' Stan said. 'Best way. Mothers'll not ...' Stan realised he'd uttered a word Lottie preferred not to hear in her bar. 'Aye,' he said. 'Well.'
It went quiet. Not sure what they were allowed to talk about. Be better for everyone, Lottie thought, when I've gone.
She heard running feet on the cobbles outside and the gaslight sputtered as the door was thrown open. The porch lamp showed up rain like six-inch nails.
All the lads looking up from their drinks.
'Jeez.'
He wore a sweater and jeans. He shook raindrops out of black, wavy hair. Lottie didn't recognise him.
'Wet enough for you?' she said. Nobody drove out for a casual pint at The Man I'th Moss on dark autumn nights, and he certainly wasn't dressed like a rambler.
'Wet enough for Jacques Cousteau,' he said and grinned, brushing droplets from his sweater. It was, Lottie noticed, a very expensive soft-knit sweater. Cashmere, probably.
Lottie laughed. 'What would you like?'
'Scotch,' he said. 'Please. Any kind. No ice.'
'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'You're American. Sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that.'
'Bloody hell,' Young Frank Manifold called over, 'I know visibility's bad out there, mate, but I think tha's missed the turn-off for Highway 61.'
It began just like any normal hymn - well, normal for them.
Sort of hymn Barry Manilow might have written, Willie thought. Slow and strong, with a rolling rhythm and a big, soaring chorus, undeniably catchy. One of the Angels of the New Advent was playing the organ, backed up by a portable drum machine with an amplifier set up under the lectern. Willie couldn't prevent his fingers going into action on his blue serge knees.
Didn't reckon much to the words. Modern language, but humourless. No style.
He glanced at the girl in the Jesus sweatshirt. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She had a certain look Willie had seen before, but usually on people who were on something.
High. She was high on God.
As he watched, slow tears rolled down her white cheeks.
The hymn soared on. Joel Beard stood in his pulpit, apparently soaring with it, eyes closed and palms upturned. Willie thought of his mother, now lying in a chapel of rest in Macclesfield. How was he supposed to make funeral arrangements when the service would have to be conducted by this pillock?
The drum machine stopped and then the organ trailed away, but the voices went on, and the words were no longer trite, no longer actually made any sense. Were, in fact, no longer what you might call words.
Willie listened to the girl.
'Holia ... holia ... amalalia ... awalah ... gloria ...hailolalala ...'
He was bewildered. All around him voices rose and fell and rose and swelled, ululating together in a strange, enveloping coda.
Everyone singing different words.
'Ohyalala ... holy ... holy ... malaya ... amala . . '
He looked up at Joel, presiding Angel, and Joel was smiling, with his eyes closed.
For a while Willie closed his own eyes and was at once carried away on it, drifting, aware that his fingers were stretching, feeling as if they were coming directly out of his wrists, nerves extending. His fingers moved very lightly against his thigh, sometimes not quite touching it.
Something fluttering like a small bird in his own chest and rising into his throat.
'Mayagalamata ...'
That was me.
Willie stopped, stood very still for a moment, opening his eyes and taking in the scene. All those upturned palms. All those eyes, closed or glazed.
He sighed and slid quietly out of the pew and down the aisle to the church door. It was bolted, but nobody heard him draw back the bolts and slip out into the teeming rain.
Standing in a spreading puddle at the edge of the porch, Willie looked up at where Our Sheila used to hold open her pussy. He closed his eyes against the cold dollops of rain.
'Speaking in tongues,' he muttered. 'Speaking, chanting, singing in tongues.'
Language of the angels. Open up your hearts to God and He'll fill your mouth with rubbish.
'It's a block,' he said to Milly Gill and Ernie Dawber. 'They're blocking everything out. They're surrounding um selves with sound and emotion. But it's like blanket emotion - you feel good, you feel you're being drawn into something. It's just like candyfloss. You know what I mean? Like ... psychic candyfloss.'
Ernie couldn't remember when he'd heard such a long speech from Willie Wagstaff. Always such a shy lad, in and out of class. You kept forgetting he was Ma's son and therefore, even in a Goddess-oriented society, he must have picked up a few tips.
'It's stirring things up, though,' Milly said. 'And that's not good at All Hallows. You've got to be very careful at All Hallows.'
'We probably asked for it,' Willie said. 'Whole congregation going on strike like that.'
'He provoked it,' Milly said. 'He destroyed things dear to us. He provoked us. Were we supposed to sit there and listen to his pious ramblings after that?'
'Perhaps,' Ernie said reasonably, 'that was what he wanted to do. Provoke a confrontation. It's no great secret, if you know what you're looking for, that the religious practices in Bridelow are not as elsewhere. His brand of Christianity views it with very serious disapproval, not to say abject horror.'
'Hans could've said no to him,' Milly Gill said, 'Hans could've said he didn't want a curate.'
'Hans was a sick man, Millicent. He did need the help. And Bridelow does change people, you know. Straightened out, a lad like Beard could even be an asset. It's just everything happened so quickly. Left on his own in what he sees as an evil, pagan parish … The way he is now, everything's either black or white. Which is what Ma warned me about. Beware of black, she said, and beware of white.'
'Aye,' Willie said. 'But where's the black corning from?'
'Mr Beard thinks we're the black,' Milly said.
Ernie almost smiled. There she was in one of her endless wardrobe of floral dresses sitting on her flower-patterned sofa with her flower pictures on the walls, bundles of dried flowers and herbs dangling from the beams. She was life, she was colour. Flowers were all the children she'd never had.
Even if the flowers were wilting.
'You keep saying that,' Willie almost snapped. '"He's God, we're Satan". You're avoiding the bloody issue. There is bad here. Real bad. Ma saw it coming, and we all said, Ah, poor old woman's off her trolley. We ignored the signs. Look at that bloody tree as suddenly appears out on t'Moss. Did anybody really check that thing out?'
'I never go on the Moss,' Ernie admitted.
'No, you don't, Mr Dawber. You like t'rest of us - we can't turn it into allotments, so we ignore it. And when somebody like Matt comes back and he looks out there and he says, Thai's where we're from ... Well, we pat him on the back; we know he'll settle down. That's the trouble, see, we've all bloody settled down ... even the Mothers've settled down. This is not a place you can totally settle down, you've always got to keep an eye open and perhaps Ma was the last one who did.'
It's a balancing act, Ernie Dawber heard in his head, Ma nagging him again. Willie was right. Even this morning, going up to find Liz Horridge, he was telling her to go away, leave me alone, Ma, get off my back.
'I were out there,' Willie said, 't'other morning. Wi' t'dog. Young Benjie kept going on at me - "Oh, there's a dragon out there, Uncle Willie." "Nay," I said, "it's bog oak." But I went out t'ave a look, just to satisfy him, like. Dog come wi' me ... and he knew what it were about. And what did I d
o? I buggered off sharpish. I dint listen to t'dog and I made fun of Ma. I made fun of Ma over Matt's coffin and the witch bottle - scared stiff she'd ask me to do it. I dint mind helping pinch t'bogman back, bit of a lark, that were. But opening Matt's coffin ...'
Willie shuddered. 'Wimp,' he said. 'That's me.'
'She was right,' Milly said. 'Matt wasn't protected. We were putting him in as the Man's guardian. What use is a guardian without a sword?'
As usual, Ernie Dawber, schoolteacher, man of words, man of science, was floored by the exquisite logic of all this.
'Who ... was it?' he asked delicately. 'Who dug them up?'
Milly's sigh was full of despair, 'I can't begin to guess, Mr Dawber. So many signs. We could see them, but we couldn't see a pattern. I've been praying to the Mother for a pattern. Can't seem to get through, even to meself. It's like all the wires are crossed. Or there's a fog.'
'There's a fog in the church,' Willie said. 'They're making one. White fog. You can't get through because it's like all your lines of communication've been pulled down. The holy well, the church. Ma. It's like the white and the black have joined forces to crush us.'
'And what are we supposed to do?' There was no colour in Milly's cheeks. 'What can we do when we're so weakened, and we don't know who we're fighting or why?'
Ernie Dawber thought, So many sad, bewildered, frightened people. An invisible enemy. An ancient culture feebly fighting for its soul.
He noticed that all of Willie's fingers lay motionless on his knees.
'You know what I think,' Ernie said calmly, 'I think we need another sacrifice.'
CHAPTER IV
Milly Gill shifted on the sofa. It creaked.
'Eh?'
Ernie Dawber smiled in a resigned sort of way. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair, still wearing his old gaberdine mac, his hat on his knees.
'I don't know the story of the Man in the Moss,' he said, 'any more than anybody does. Some say he came all the way from Wales, or even Ireland. That he was sent as a sacrifice. Well, that seems likely, but we don't really know for certain why he was sacrificed.'
Willie said, 'I thought...' Then he shut up.
'Some historians speculate it was to keep the Romans at bay,' said Mr Dawber. 'But we don't know that. And in the end the Romans weren't so bad. They were a relatively civilized people. Bit stiff and starchy, like Joel Beard, but nowt wrong with them really. They taught us how to build proper roads and walls and useful things like that, but I like to think we taught them a lot as well.'
'We?' said Willie.
'The Celts. The earliest real civilization in Europe. Cultured, spiritual. Knew how to fight when it was needed, but not military like the Romans. The Celts never sought to impose order, only to recognise the order that existed around them. And the moods of nature and the atmosphere. "Shades of things," Ma said.'
'Aye,' said Willie, remembering. 'Shades of things.'
'Moderation,' said Mr Dawber. 'Equality. Respect for each other, nature, animals. For religions. A simple, logical philosophy and one I've tried to pass on to generations of schoolkids, just like my forefathers did. And do you know ...'
'Aye,' Willie said, it worked. It always worked. Kids leave school, bugger off to the cities, rebel against their parents and their parents' values and that. But there's summat about Bridelow. What we learned here, we didn't reject. I suppose ... 'cause it was so different. Radical, like, in its quiet way.'
'Little island, Willie. Sacred island of the Celts. Little island of moderation in an ocean of extremes. Takes some protecting that. A balancing act.'
Mr Dawber turned his hat round on his knees. He's nervous, Willie thought.
'I've written a new edition of The Book of Bridelow. What you might call the unexpurgated edition. Just for me own benefit really. Just to reason things out. You'll find it in a blue typing paper box on top of the big bookcase in my study.'
Willie said, 'Why're you telling us that?'
'Maybe it should be printed. Just one copy, to be kept in safekeeping, for posterity. As a reminder of how Bridelow was and why it was what it was. To look back on when everything's changed, when the outside world's absorbed us.'
Willie looked hard at the stately old chap, trying to remember what Mr Dawber had been like when he was young, when he'd taught him for four years. He couldn't.
He glanced at Milly, who was silent, pensive. 'Mr Dawber,' he said, 'why are you telling us now?'
'You see, that's the obvious explanation to me,' said Mr Dawber, looking down at his hat. 'That's what he died to save. Not to prevent anything as transient as another Roman invasion. He died to protect a way of life, a whole attitude. The Celtic way. Something worth dying for, don't you think?'
'Happen,' Willie said cautiously.
'I think I'd like to die for that,' said Mr Dawber.
Milly Gill leaned forward on the floral sofa and lifted one of his liver-spotted hands from his hat brim. 'What are you trying to say, Mr Dawber?'
The old chap said, 'Difficult times, lass. The outside's invading us. The White. The Black. Joel Beard. Gannons.'
'Yes,' Milly let go of his hand, 'it is an invasion. The worst kind. The kind you don't notice until it's on you.'
'You see, I don't quite know how it's done,' Mr Dawber said, matter-of-factly. 'I thought you might.'
'How what's done, Mr Dawber?'
'Why, the Triple Death, of course.'
'I don't like the way you're talking, Mr Dawber.'
'You see, I wouldn't like to cause any trouble for anybody. That is, I wouldn't like it to look like murder. So what I'll do is happen retire to the seaside. Health reasons. The owd chest's never been good. Got relatives in Bournemouth, you know.'
'Bournemouth,' Milly repeated.
'Aye, and nobody'll be interested enough to prove otherwise. I've packaged up the deeds and stuff, of the house, and I've left them with the manuscript, to go to Hans when he returns. With instructions that the house should be let, peppercorn rent, to somebody as needs one. Happen a new historian. Won't be called Dawber, but that wasn't much of a tradition, was it? Anyroad, I've tied things up very nicely, actually. I'll've gone. To the seaside.'
'Aye,' Willie said. 'You sound like you could use a holiday, Mr Dawber. Good long rest, eh?'
'I'll have that all right. In the Moss.'
Wearing a chilling half-smile, he carried on talking as if he couldn't see the pair of them staring at him, frozen.
'You know, when I first read the British Museum report it sounded quite horrific, but the more I thought about it ... Well, the garrotting bit and the cutting of the throat - that was mostly symbolic. He wouldn't have felt any of that because they'd have tapped him on the head first, you see.'
'Mr Dawber ...' Milly stood up. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing and I'll not have you talking like this in my house any more.'
I'm an owd man, Millicent. I've done me bit, had some good times.'
'And you'll have some more.'
'No.' He shook his head. 'There'll be no more good times for any of us, unless we do summat drastic. They've taken the Man in the Moss. This is far worse than the University or the British Museum taking him. He's gone to the dark. And it's All-Hallows. The Celtic New Year's Eve.'
'I know what day it is,' Milly snapped. 'I'm supposed to be a bloody witch. '
Time of change. Time to look back, store what's useful and important, discard the old stuff as isn't. Time when worlds overlap. Time to act. Sit down, Millicent.'
'Act?' Willie came aware of the power of the sheeting rain, could hear it smashing at the roof slates. A power surge brought a quiver to Milly's tulip-shaded standard lamp.
The lady bartender said, 'Stan, would you take over, I'm sorry,' and steered Mungo Macbeth into a back room, a big, chilly-looking kitchen.
'Who are you?' she demanded.
He told her his name again. He insisted he was a friend of Moira's. He repeated what he'd said in the bar, that he needed to talk to
her. Urgently.
'She's not here. Why did you think she would be?'
The woman was good-looking with a strong face, but she also looked like she was carrying a lot of trouble, her eyes vibrant with anxiety. She crossed the flagged floor to a big iron stove and laid her hands on it.
Macbeth said, 'I didn't think she'd be here, specially. Not this inn. This was the first place I came to, is all. With lights on. After I crossed the bridge.'
'What bridge?'
'Over the water.'
'It's a bog,' she said, it's not water.'
'I'm a stranger. Never came this way before. I'm sorry if I seem ignorant, Mrs ...'
'Castle,' she said.
'Oh, Jesus,' Macbeth said, 'I guess that means you're Matt Castle's ...'
'Widow.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Why should you be?' she said sharply. 'You didn't know him, did you?'
All you could hear in the kitchen was the sound of rain splashing on the yard outside with the force of a broken fire-hydrant.
'No,' he said, 'I knew that Moira ... thought a lot about him.' Shit. What'd I walk into here?
'Yes.' She bit her lip. 'Look, the last I heard, Moira was staying at the Rectory.'
'I called the Rectory. There were quite a few people there. They said she was, uh, no longer around.'
'The Born Agains, that would be. What would they know? How far've you come?'
'From Glasgow.'
'Glasgow? You drove all the way down from Glasgow? In this? Well, Mr ... I'm sorry ...'
'Macbeth.'
'Yes. Well, I suppose it isn't too surprising. Quite a few blokes have done crazy things for Moira Cairns.' A faint smile penetrated the anxiety. 'Look, we'll make some phone calls, shall we? See if we can find out where she is. There's a chap called Willie Wagstaff who might just know. It's funny he's not in tonight, actually. I'll give him a ring.'
'You're very kind. I'm sorry. I just had no idea who you were.'
'That's all right.'
'Is this your inn? What I mean is, you, uh ...'