by Phil Rickman
Mum said she’d walk, which might take some time, but at least she had the torch, but Jane had called Gomer, who’d taken his latest old jeep across the fields, all the gates open, now that all the livestock had been taken inside or onto higher ground.
About an hour later, Mum had come stumbling in, hooded and dripping, thrusting the guitar case at Jane: Hide that somewhere, would you, flower?
Surreal.
And now it was Christmas Eve and Mum, up till one, was, Jane hoped, still sleeping. One way or another, this was going to be a very different kind of Christmas.
‘You’ve done just about enough now,’ Jane told the river. ‘You’ve made your point.’
She noticed how the dark water was creeping like a shadow up the pavement towards the steps of the first of the black and white houses, and heard Nick Drake singing,
‘Betty said she prayed today…’
Jane spun round.
‘… for the sky to blow away.’
‘God.’
He was standing in his doorway, in dark clothing and no light behind him. She must’ve walked right past him.
‘You couldn’t sleep either, then,’ Lol said.
‘No.’
She was shaken. It was probably the first time he’d sung to her live, and he’d sounded so much like the dead Nick Drake it was eerie.
‘How long’ve you been there?’
‘Couple of minutes, that’s all.’ Lol pointed down Church Street. ‘See how it’s actually rising?’
‘Even though it’s stopped raining?’
‘It’s coming down from the higher streams now…’
‘That means even if it doesn’t rain for a while, it’s actually going to get worse?’
‘It’s got worse in the past few hours. They’ve put sandbags out at the Ox.’
‘God, sandbags for Christmas?’
‘And now we won’t be able to get the fire brigade in to pump water away. Maybe Pierce is right. If Ledwardine was twice the size it might have its own fire station.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ Jane had lowered her voice, aware of the echoes they were making in the still, shiny street. ‘What’s going to happen, Lol? I mean, what are people doing?’
‘Bull-Davies and Lyndon Pierce seem to be working together, for once. I think people whose homes are in danger will be encouraged to move out today. Better now than Christmas morning. At least it’s still more or less a working day.’
‘But how can they get out?’
‘Special buses. Coaches. They’ll set up a pick-up point at Caple End, on the other side of what used to be the bridge. Ward Savitch is making a field available as a parking area — where your mum left the Volvo, I imagine. And then they’ll go across his footbridge to the bus.’
‘I suppose Savitch is charging an arm and a leg for parking.’
‘I don’t think he’d dare charge anything,’ Lol said. ‘Somebody was saying he’d been using bales of straw as some kind of cheap flood barrier, and the whole lot had given way and fallen into the river, blocking up the bridge arches. Which may have been what drastically increased the pressure. Or helped, anyway.’
‘Savitch might’ve caused the bridge to collapse?’
Lol shrugged.
‘Lol, look… why don’t you try and get some sleep while you can? Big night tonight.’
‘Won’t be that big. Might not be much of an audience left.’
‘Well, I put it up on the Coleman’s Meadow website. People the world over…’
‘That was a kind thought, but they can’t get in. Anyway, I might have to go out with Gomer again, if it—’
‘Like, no way.’
‘I might be fairly useless,’ Lol said, ‘but I think he trusts me to follow orders.’
‘What if you damage your hand? What about your shoulder?’
His injury from Garway in October. He never mentioned it but she was sure it must flare up. And anyway, there’d be a lot of blokes available to help Gomer now. It wasn’t as if anybody was going to be able to go to work or for last-minute shopping… or anything.
Jane gazed down the skeletal street. It was going to be weird. There’d be no traffic. No one driving in, no one driving out. Nowhere to go.
Almost like a return to medieval times.
46
Pentagram
Around dawn, Bliss’s phone was ringing as if from the bottom of a lift shaft. In fact, from the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet, where Kirsty had made him keep it. He pulled out the whole drawer to get at it and the drawer came apart, like it was reverting to flatpack, whole shoddy sections dropping into the still-sodden pile of Bliss’s clothes.
‘Boss?’
‘Frigging time you call this, Andy?’
Peering towards what light there was. The sky through the bedroom window looked like a badly bandaged wound.
‘We got you an early Christmas present,’ Mumford said.
Bliss sat up. The bedroom was cold enough to preserve a corpse for a fortnight. Still hadn’t worked out the heating cycle; had had to use the immersion heater when he’d squelched in last night to raise enough hot water for a shower — buggered if he was going to make Charlie Howe’s Christmas by contracting pneumonia.
‘Done a bit of a dawn raid, we have,’ Mumford said. ‘Just like old times, though not for Jumbo, obviously, as he en’t never actually been in the job.’
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Think of your favourite housing project.’
‘Andy, please tell me you haven’t done anything… stupid.’
‘Got a friend with us. I think he’d like a word. Hang on.’
Bliss heard a slurred voice saying something unintelligible but strongly suggestive of split lip. He swung his bare legs out of bed, sat on the side of the mattress in his underpants, shivering. Still aching, but that might be deeply internal.
‘Got his own place, now en’t you, boy?’ Mumford said. ‘Girlfriend and a youngster on the way and, like he says, not a good time to go away. Reason he wouldn’t mind a word with you, boss, you get my drift.’
‘Jesus, Andy, what’ve you done?’
The phone went dead for a few seconds, then this other voice came on, barking like an old Merthyr mountain ewe in the night.
‘Andy’ve had to walk him round the block, Mr B. Get the circulation back into the boy’s cold feet, kind of thing.’
Jumbo Humphries’s wheezy laugh.
This was all he needed. Bliss scrabbled in the pile for something that felt halfway dry, his head full of images of ex-Detective Sergeant Andy Mumford beating up some low-life tearaway behind a garage block on the Plascarreg.
‘Truth of it is, see, Mr B, he rung me last night, said he couldn’t get you out of his head. He haven’t heard you talk like that, never. Greatly worried about your state of mind. Figured we oughter do what we could, like.’
‘Jumbo… listen to me… who’ve you got with you?’
‘You still there, man? Bloody battery’s on the blink, it is.’
‘Who, Jumbo?’
‘You ever see that ole film, early days of special effects, all these skeletons with swords?’
Bliss sighed. Jason and the Argonauts.
‘We’ll be on the spare ground, end of the first row of garages on the left,’ Jumbo Humphries said. ‘Blue Land Rover, long wheelbase, no side windows. Need to come in from the city. Belmont’s still submerged, see. The real thing, this is, Mr B. You won’t regret it, man, I’m telling you.’
Bliss threw a stiffened sock at the wall. Somebody save him from middle-aged cowboys looking for kicks.
‘Best to come in civvies, mind,’ Jumbo said.
Bliss thought about it all the time he was in the bathroom. He went downstairs, stood by the sad unplugged Christmas tree in the hall, picked up the phone, stood with it in his hand until the computer voice reminded him it was off the hook. Then he stabbed the button to get the line back and called in sick.
Jane wore a grey f
leece over a pink T-shirt. She looked fresher but pale. They sat on opposite sides of the refectory table with a pot of tea. It was just after eight a.m., Eirion not yet up, a rare chance to talk, just the two of them.
Merrily poured the tea. Apple, mango and cinnamon, Jane’s current favourite. They were trying not to talk about the bridge and living on an island.
‘Eirion was telling me what Neil Cooper said. About the possibility of more extensive archaeology in Coleman’s Meadow.’
‘Or beyond,’ Jane said.
‘Yes.’
‘And this is where you say, Don’t get carried away about it. Don’t get carried away like you did before, and look what happened.’ Jane gazed down, addressing the table, speaking very slowly and softly. ‘I know what happened. I got humiliated. And now half the nation’s going to see it happen. And all the kids at school. And Morrell. And the heads of every university department of archaeology in the UK, they will all see me getting humiliated. Maybe it’ll even be released on DVD so people who really don’t like me can watch me getting humiliated over and over again.’
‘It’s not been televised yet.’
‘Oh… no.’ Jane’s head came up. ‘You don’t go near him. This is not your problem, Mum. And, like, don’t give me the old your-problems-are-my-problems line, because that doesn’t apply. I’m eighteen, I’m an adult, I need to learn to deal with it. I will deal with it.’
‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Help me with my problem, then.’
She put her cigarettes and the Zippo on the table. Told Jane about the Stookes, the various anomalies, proven and alleged, at Cole Barn.
It was legitimate to share this stuff; Jane had been part of it from the start. She only wished it sounded more convincing in the cold, damp morning. Pre-Blore, Jane would’ve become excited, full of the implications of this for Coleman’s Meadow, the energy line, the spirit path.
She just drank some tea, sighed.
‘Well… couldn’t make that up, could you. Mum?’
Ethel pattered across the stone flags to her dish of dried food, began crunching.
‘I couldn’t,’ Merrily said. ‘But could they?’
Jane nodded, already resigned.
‘Was there anything on your website about, say, site-guardian legends?’
‘Mmm. Possibly.’
‘And you had an email from a man who said Coleman’s Meadow had one.’
‘It was the dowser from Malvern who had the argument with Blore in the meadow before he started on me. Lensi was there, doing pictures. She might’ve talked to him.’
Merrily lit a cigarette, noticed there were only three left in the packet. She missed the rumble of the old Aga, a victim of its oil consumption.
‘He seemed a decent bloke,’ Jane said. ‘I haven’t spoken to him about it. If you want, I can email him now.’
‘No, it wouldn’t prove anything. Let’s shelve any discussion about what a guardian is and whether there could be one in the meadow. Let’s deal with the prosaic facts. Go back to your meeting with Leonora at Lucy’s grave — presumably you’d had the email by then?’
‘Weeks before.’
‘Did you mention anything to Leonora to suggest there might be any kind of psychic disturbance in Coleman’s Meadow?’
‘I just told her about the spirit path and the need to maintain a link with the ancestors.’
‘You didn’t suggest to her that there might be something weird about Cole Farm?’
‘I didn’t know there was anything weird about it. What are you suggesting? They might’ve put all this together from bits they picked up from people like me?’
‘Just eliminating various possibilities. Stooke’s looking for material for another book and he’s shown a slightly more than cursory interest in me… and you, of course.’
‘So the bottom line…?’
‘The bottom line might be me telling them their house may have a problem, and they go, well, if you say so, vicar, but what can you do about it? And then I go in and do the business and perhaps they video the whole process from some hidden camera, stupid little priest furthering the spread of primitive superstition… and suppose, instead of being the intelligent, sophisticated types they are, they’d been some poor old couple, et cetera, et cetera. I’m reading it already.’
‘That just… stinks.’
‘They haven’t done anything yet, just told me the kind of stuff that people usually hand me along with a plea for help. But I shall be cool, Jane, I shall make inquiries.’
‘What about Mad Shirley?’
‘And I’ll talk to Mad Shirley. As Huw points out, no need to approach her on behalf of the Stookes. Now she’s telling everybody I’m not a fit person to be the vicar, it’s… personal.’
‘Take her down, Mum.’
‘Yeah, and then I’ll get on the phone and blast the cops for not returning my computer. God, it doesn’t feel like Christmas, does it?’ Merrily finished her tea and stood up. ‘I’m just going to pop over to the shop before it gets crowded. Nearly out of cigs.’
‘What about breakfast?’
‘You and Eirion get something decent. I’ll just have toast and Marmite or something when I get back.’ She grabbed her waxed coat from the peg behind the kitchen door. ‘Won’t be long.’
Eirion had come down in expectation of central heating, gone back for a fleece, still looked cold. Pampered rich kid. Jane moved away from the sink, picked up a towel to dry her hands.
‘She’s annoyed with herself for letting things slide. I’ve seen this before. She needs to walk around the square a couple of times, smoke a cigarette, gear herself up.’
‘Something happened I don’t know about?’ Eirion said. ‘I mean apart from us being cut off until January?’
‘Some people are messing her about, that’s all.’
Jane felt suddenly depressed. Everything seemed so… cheesy.
‘She’s so… not like a vicar, your mother, isn’t she?’ Eirion poured grapefruit juice into a glass. ‘Not like you think of vicars. Especially women. Not what you expect.’
‘What — like they don’t smoke, don’t swear? Don’t sleep with the bloke across the street?’
‘She doesn’t make you go…’ Eirion wiggled his fingers like he was getting rid of something cloying. ‘In a strange way, she’s more human than the rest of us. Forget it, I don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘It is odd, actually,’ Jane said. ‘I think it’s something about deliverance people. Something that makes them dispense with the bullshit. I don’t quite understand it either.’ She looked over to the window. ‘I wonder if Blore’s going to be back on the site.’
‘They’ll surely be going home for… See, I was about to say Christmas, but he doesn’t do Christmas, does he?’
‘The TV crew won’t be able to get all their stuff out. Unless they moved some of it last night after dark. But then, if the bridge went down around seven…’
‘Maybe they’ll have vans the other side and carry what they can across the footbridge.’
‘We should check it out, all the same. I more or less promised Coops.’
‘Your mum might be right, you know,’ Eirion said. ‘Blore might’ve found nothing. And Cooper’s just embittered because they didn’t give him control of—what?’
Jane had walked over, put her arms around him. She felt a bit tearful.
‘We’re destroying your Christmas, aren’t we?’
Eirion smiled sadly, running a hand down Jane’s hair.
‘So far, it’s the best Christmas I’ve ever had.’
‘Ah. Right.’ Jane looked up at him, solemn. ‘Just for a minute, I forgot you were Welsh.’
Dodging neatly away, grinning, clapping her hands and then, as Eirion chased her round the table, snatching an apple from the bowl and throwing it at him. Eirion caught the apple, tossing it from hand to hand, as a vague smear of sun in the high window opened up this white fan of light in the room.
Jane stopped,
catching her breath.
‘Jane…?’
‘Lucy.’
Jane sat down. Eirion did his wry smile, but his eyes were wary. He put the apple on the table.
‘It was just something coming back to me.’
As clear as reality. As clear as if it had been Lucy who’d caught the apple, and Jane was back in the old shop, Ledwardine Lore, the day they cut an apple in half, sideways. Not, as you normally did, through the stalk. She remembered Lucy holding out a half in each hand.
There… what do you see?
And Jane had seen, for the first time, the slender green lines and dots in the centre of the apple which formed a five-pointed star. The pentagram that lay at the heart of every apple but which you only discovered if you cut through it sideways, which people seldom did. The hidden magic in the everyday. Lucy saying, Forget all this black magic nonsense. The pentagram’s a very ancient symbol of purification and protection.
‘I think something’s staring us in the face,’ Jane said.
As if, in that momentary lifting of the spirits, when she’d ducked away from Eirion, picked up the apple, something had opened up for her, like two halves of an idea she couldn’t yet put together.
Let no one talk of the humble apple to me, Lucy had said.
Jane sat down. She felt slightly dizzy. Nothing was quite real.
‘Irene, could you…?’
‘Anything.’
‘If Lol has to go out with Gomer again? Like his hands…?’
‘I’ll help,’ Eirion said. ‘If Gomer will accept me.’
‘And tell Lol not to play “Fruit Tree” tonight.’
Most of the village was lying low. Many people had been up late talking in the street, half anxious, half excited, about the implications. Some of them driving out to see the bridge, just to make sure. Lights still burned here and there in the greyness, shimmered in the dark water, but only James Bull-Davies and Gomer Parry were to be seen, at the top of the square, leaning against Gomer’s jeep.
‘Long ole night, vicar.’
‘I don’t know how you do it, Gomer.’
He looked scarily happy. Shirley West would be seeing the Devil’s light in his bottle glasses.