by Phil Rickman
‘Bugger-all to see on the ground, unfortunately,’ Piers said, ‘although we think an excavation would be illuminating – and one day, not too far in the future, we’re going to have the money for it. Might persuade the Channel Four Time Team lot to start us off – that’s how we usually work… or Fergus does.’
‘The point about Ariconium,’ Fergus said, ‘is that it was as wealthy and successful – as unified – as this area’s ever been.’
On the screen a picture of Underhowle village had faded up – an overview, seen, presumably, from Howle Hill, with most of the pylons below the eye-line. There was a dull sky, duller than today’s, but it began slowly to lighten and the random scree of Underhowle’s architecture faded into a regular pattern of simpler buildings of stone and wood and a straight road along the valley.
Merrily said, ‘This is a vision of the future?’
‘You’ve got it, m’dear.’ Piers nodded, beaming. He had a football head, a loose-lipped smile. ‘Wealth. Growth.’
‘Out of iron in those days,’ Fergus said. ‘The Silures – the local Iron Age Celtic tribe – had it first. You can still see the sites of old iron workings and, of course, the hill forts above here and on Chase Hill above Ross, and into the Forest. Then the Romans crushed the Silures and Ariconium arose on the back of the iron industry, on the main road to Glevum – Gloucester – and Monmouth in the west.’
‘Iron was smelted here, big time,’ Piers said. ‘Big business. Plenty of work.’
Fergus levelled a forefinger at the screen. ‘I want the next generation to identify with that. Not with twentieth-century decay.’
We’re building this Website to chronicle the project,’ Chris Cody said in his quiet cockney accent. ‘And the school’s actively involved, along wiv the Development Committee’ – he bowed his head to the other two men – ‘in creating a visitor centre in the old Baptist chapel. There’ll be displays of the latest finds, plus reconstructions, models, computer enhancements.’
A menu had appeared. Fergus clicked on finds, and the screen filled up with a section of what looked like mosaic floor.
‘We’re expecting confirmation of a Lottery grant any day now. And then we’ll make a start. Building a tourist industry for the first time. New life, new blood, more jobs. There’s a fantastic surge of energy going through this place which you must have been able to feel.’
It certainly looked as if it was flowing through Fergus. He hit the mouse with the heel of a hand, bringing up shards of pottery, some coins, then turned to Merrily on the sofa. All three of them standing over her now, defying her to deny the energy.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see what you’re trying to do. It’s… exciting.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Piers Connor-Crewe said. ‘It’s bloody exciting. However, we had a taste, at the weekend, of a different kind of tourism.’
Fergus nodded grimly. He clicked on an icon bringing up the Ariconium homepage, clicked again and then the screen went blank. ‘I was about to get to that when you guys arrived.’
Of course, the point was that getting any kind of tourism here was a coup. Not only was Underhowle not a pretty place but it had the misfortune to be surrounded by places that were: riverside Ross and Symonds Yat, Goodrich with its medieval castle, Weston-under-Penyard with its hilltop Norman church. Underhowle wasn’t in the Wye Valley and it wasn’t, strictly speaking, in the Forest of Dean. There would be people over in Ledwardine who’d suggest Underhowle should be grateful for whatever it could get.
‘They’ve been coming down from Gloucester,’ Fergus Young said. ‘Over from Hereford. Up from South Wales, even. Unbelievable. Scores of them. Clogging the lane, parking on all the verges.’
‘Standing there like the morons they are,’ said Piers Connor- Crewe, ‘and just staring at the pylon, or taking photographs of their ghastly children with it in the background. Some of them brought sandwiches. Can you believe that? I mean, have you seen today’s papers?’ Piers turned to Chris Cody. ‘They’re linking Lodge with West now. West! Christ. What was that one… “Spawn of Satan”?’
‘“Devil’s Disciple”.’ Chris was smiling sadly, probably at the outdated excesses of the non-virtual world. ‘In the Sun. Or was it “Demon Seed”?’
‘Just doesn’t go away, does it?’ Piers said. ‘After all these years, that loathsome little man is still a household name. He’s won his place in the Black Pantheon now – the most famous murderer… God forbid, probably the most famous man – to come out of Herefordshire. And now Roddy Lodge. How many has Roddy killed? Could be years before they find them all. And the difference is that Gloucester Council was able to remove 25 Cromwell Street. They turned the site into a walkway so nobody can tell any more where the house was. And, as far as I know, there’s no physical memory of Frederick West in Much Marcle either – I believe they scattered his ashes in the churchyard there, and that was it. Blown away. Gone.’
‘About half the children at this school were watching when Roddy Lodge died,’ Fergus said. ‘Listening to him screaming out all that filth. We’ve talked about it with them, we’ve analysed it, we’ve had individual counselling where necessary. So the children will forget, of course they will – if they’re allowed to. We all realize we’re never going to get rid of the pylon, but we can make sure the tourist trail ends there. Merrily, I beg of you, if you have any influence at all over the Lodges, persuade them to have him decently cremated, and let’s all try to forget he ever existed.’
Chris Cody said, ‘I don’t really have a personal angle on this, but a few of our people – down the factory – are saying they got relatives in that churchyard and they don’t like to fink of them lying in the same, you know, soil, as Roddy Lodge.’
‘It’s a point,’ Fergus Young said. ‘Would you want Lodge buried side by side with members of your immediate family? No, it’s all right, I know what you’re obliged to say.’
Piers Connor-Crewe folded his arms. ‘But if it comes to the crunch, the Church itself can say no – you obviously realize that.’
‘But the Bishop hasn’t said no,’ Merrily told him. ‘I suspect he takes the line that if we were to refuse to bury sinners, it might just contravene one of the basic tenets of Christianity. As well as leaving us with the problem of where exactly to draw the line, you know?’
Connor-Crewe looked pained. ‘I understand that, but I think we’re—’
‘And let’s not forget that Lodge hadn’t actually been convicted of anything.’
‘Neither had West,’ Fergus said, ‘but that didn’t prevent some forceful opposition in Much Marcle. Which I believe succeeded.’
‘In fact, I also think I’m right in saying Lodge hadn’t even been charged.’
‘Look,’ Connor-Crewe said, ‘what you’re dealing with here – that is, us – is the polite form of protest. I can assure you that some of the locals would be more inclined towards what we might call direct action.’
‘As in… what?’
‘Well, if there is a grave, it could well get vandalized,’ Fergus said. ‘And I have to tell you we’re not only talking about relatives. I’m told there are friends of Melanie Pullman already making dark threats. And it seems to me, without laying it on too heavily, that this is as good a reason as any to tell the Lodge family it really can’t be done.’
‘All right…’ Merrily got to her feet. She’d faced hysteria, she’d faced tears and rage; there was nothing worse than reason. ‘Maybe they haven’t thought about the vandalism aspect. I’ll put it to them. But you have to understand there’s family history here. Tony Lodge feels an obligation to his father.’
‘Whereas we merely have an obligation to the future,’ Fergus Young said.
‘You have voice-mail,’ the mobile told her when she switched it on.
Merrily put the phone on the dash, sitting for a while, gazing through the windscreen at Underhowle: late-autumnal, yet throbbing with the spring of its future. Education, education, education, Tony Blair or somebody had o
nce said, when asked about New Labour’s priorities for a new Britain. She wondered what it would be like to have Underhowle as your parish: a kindergarten rather than a retirement home. Couldn’t see anything progressive in it for the Church, not short-term anyway. Not with the narrow and cynical Jerome Banks in place.
‘It’s out, then,’ Huw Owen’s voice grated from the mailbank. ‘Bliss – self-seeking little bastard. Lass, I’m coming over tonight. Don’t go anywhere.’
She flung her head back over the top of the seat, where the headrest had come off. Bloody men with their bloody agendas. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, another shadow had fallen across the side window.
‘I’m gonna take a chance on this,’ Sam Hall said when she wearily wound it down. ‘I think you have to be Merrily Watkins.’
33
Empty Heart
IT WAS ALL here, from the Norwegian cast-iron wood-burning stove – no glass, therefore no friendly flames to watch – to the two solar panels in the roof. Even the radio was clockwork, but there was a small, traditional stereo. His one vice, he said.
Otherwise, showpiece good-life. But how good was it really? It was a dark room, this big living area; the windows were triple-glazed and small. One of them, in a wall insulated with several hundred tightly packed books, offered a view down the hillside, picking up a line of pylons.
The wrong view, it seemed to Merrily.
‘I know… you’re asking yourself why,’ Sam said. ‘Why, if I want to live like this, don’t I do it on some Hebridean island, or in the empty heart of Wales?’
‘I did wonder that, but then I thought I’d come up with an answer. Which was: because he needs to keep reminding himself of something?’
‘You must’ve been a great loss to the cops, Mrs Watkins.’ Silent laughter in the dimness. ‘That goddam Bliss could’ve saved us all a heap of time and trouble if he hadn’t tried to pass you off as a detective.’
‘Why did he come to talk to you again?’
‘Usual stuff. He saw Ingrid, too. What did we know about Lodge? Did we know of any other girls Roddy went out with? Any guys he hung around with? I doubt if I was able to help him.’
But you think you can help me?’
‘Maybe we can help each other.’ Sam got down on his knees, opened up the stove and fed it a log that looked to have been sawn to size. ‘OK, I’m gonna condense this – I’d rather have derision any day than pity. Yeah, you’re right, of course. I lost my only kid to leukaemia in the States and, yeah, we lived directly under power lines and, sure, I became fanatical about the whole issue, drank too much, destroyed my marriage. And now I’m back in England and I’m still angry and I figure this is still a small enough country to make an impact. And yeah, you’re sorry for my loss – thank you – so that’s all that dealt with. How much did Lol tell you?’
‘He told me what you’d said about hot spots and the symbolism of the plague cross. And he said there was a spiritual side to it that he thought you weren’t inclined to discuss with him.’
‘The spiritual side, yeah. I guess he and I caught more than a hint of all that the night Roddy died. When we met in Ross, Lol had this other lady with him who I thought was gonna be you, and it threw me when she turned out to be another singer, so I kind of clammed up.’
‘Moira Cairns,’ Merrily said neutrally.
‘I think I was supposed to have heard of her. I guess I was away too long.’
‘The spiritual side…?’ Merrily prompted.
‘Sure. I tried to talk to the Reverend Banks one time, but if you’ve ever had anything to do with that guy…’
Merrily nodded. Sam Hall, bulked out with an Icelandic sweater, waved her to a big, overstuffed armchair and put himself into another. He’d untied his ponytail and salty hair framed his bearded face.
‘When I was a kid we lived for a while in the village. My dad was a friend of old man Lodge and I was a few years older than Tony Lodge, and Roddy was just a small kid when I left for the States. So I knew the family well enough to recognize the changes when I came back.’
‘What did you do out there?’
‘Oh, I was a film cameraman for some years – industrial, nothing glamorous, no movies. Then I got into some stills work for the underground press, who paid peanuts in the early days, though it improved when magazines like Rolling Stone took off. And that got me into radical politics – I was kind of an old hippy even when hippies were young. Which was fun. I wound up in this commune with my wife on the edge of the Nevada Desert – under power lines, as it happened. And then our daughter, Delawney, got sick and died and it all got serious. I guess I… became a little crazy for a while – paranoid. Became convinced the power industry had a contract out on me – hell, maybe they did, those bastards. When the wife walked out on me, I decided it was time to make plans to come back to the green and pleasant land.’
‘Only to find the power industry had beaten you to it?’
‘Yeah, and what was worse’ – Sam walked over to the window and looked down the valley – ‘the village had come out to meet the pylons. They must’ve been some distance away at first, with only the Baptist Chapel and the old garage up close. But then they built the council estate, with some houses right under the damn cables. Nobody gave a shit in those days, and of course some developers and local authorities still don’t. I was so mad when I saw that. It ignited all the old rage, and I thought, this time, this time, I’m really gonna do something about it.’ He turned around. ‘Hell, Mrs Watkins, this wasn’t gonna be about me, I was gonna give you the science.’
‘I’m not that good at science.’
‘And I found out one thing about the British media – you only get one chance. They come and they do one serious story on you and after that you either succeed or you become a joke. I became a joke very quickly. The Fool on the Hill – that’s my sig tune. By the time I had something worth saying, nobody was hearing me.’
‘And that was?’
‘Roddy Lodge, of course. And Melanie Pullman. Fellow sufferers, but it was Melanie I was most concerned about – maybe a mistake.’
‘Sufferers from what?’
‘Let me start at the beginning – which isn’t too long ago. Not quite three years. Just around the time my honeymoon with the media was coming to an end. The day Melanie Pullman told me about the lights in the night.’
Gomer climbed down from the digger. It was not yet lunchtime.
‘Done?’ Lol was surprised: it was already over and he could still walk? In fact, the ground frost, the wintry friction in the air, had put an edge on his senses.
‘At a quarter of the bloody Efflapure price,’ Gomer said, ‘and no fancy dials to check. Now, if you go up the house, get her to flush every toilet they got – upstairs, downstairs, en suite, the lot. Wanner make sure it’s coming through proper, see.’
Gomer beamed; he knew it would. On the way here, he’d talked about his mistake concerning Lodge and the fire and how the vicar had helped him get that into perspective. Gomer seemed very relieved this morning, like a Jack Russell unleashed.
Walking up the leaf-matted lawn, past the Gomer Parry Plant Hire truck, Lol saw smoke coming from one of the chimneys of what was a nice old stone house built at a time when nothing heavier than a horse would be moving along whatever had pre-dated the A49. Through a front window, as he passed, he saw Mrs Pawson hunched close to a wood-burner in the inglenook. She rose quickly, had the front door open before he reached it.
‘Is it finished?’ She looked pinched and starved.
‘Gomer thinks so. He’d like you to flush all the loos. Could I… help?’
She hesitated. ‘All right.’ A bit snappy. ‘The downstairs one’s just there, off the hall. I’ll do upstairs.’
He flushed the downstairs cloakroom toilet and went back outside to wait for her. He noticed the front door had two new locks, big-city style. When she came down, she was wearing a thick green woollen jacket and still looked shivery.
He smiled. ‘It should be fine. Anyway. Gomer won’t leave until it’s all perfect.’
‘Oh…’ Mrs Pawson shook her head absently, as if he’d said something unnecessarily technical. ‘I just want it to be working, that’s all. Then I can get out of here.’
‘For good?’
‘What do you think?’ She looked at Lol as though she wouldn’t expect someone like him really to understand. ‘Look, if you need me for anything, I’m booked into the Royal in Ross for tonight, to see estate agents. Then I’m going back to London. Mr Parry has my address, for the bill.’
‘You feel personally unsettled by all this?’
She’d turned away, as if to go back into the house. She turned back. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, he’s dead. And she…’ It wasn’t as if she was murdered here, was what he meant.
Mrs Pawson looked away from him, along the drive towards the road. ‘There was a morning paper in the hotel lounge, which I was silly enough to pick up. They now think he had a sick fascination with Frederick West, they don’t know how many other women he killed, and his neighbours don’t want him to be buried at their church. Is it so hard to see why this house is blighted for me?’
Gomer had talked about West on the way here, telling Lol about what had been in the attaché case they’d dug up at the back of the bungalow.
Mrs Pawson looked at Lol. ‘Did you know Lodge?’
‘Only by… by sight.’
‘He was a nightmare,’ she said. ‘A nightmare person.’ She was holding the lapels of her jacket together across her throat. ‘And so was the woman.’
‘She was with him, when…?’
Mrs Pawson didn’t reply and started to walk away then, but he sensed a very real distress that didn’t seem to fit in with the kind of woman she was. And afterwards he talked to Gomer about this, and Gomer agreed.
Sam reached over his shoulder and pulled a loose-leaf binder from a shelf behind him. ‘I’m not gonna make you read this, I just want you to know it exists. It’s the report of a six-year study out of Bristol University, linking power lines to a bunch of different cancers, depression and an estimated sixty suicides a year.’