by Phil Rickman
‘Round here?’
‘Part o’ country life. Country folks was cruel, too.’ Danny reached over and turned off the amp. ‘Gomer found a dead gamecock in the vicar’s shed. Turns out young Jane put it there. Told Gomer a feller dumped the sack in a bin on the square. Feller was this Cornel.’
‘Oh…’ Lol closed his eyes ‘… God.’
‘You en’t lookin’ as surprised as I figured you might be.’
‘No.’
Lol pulled the Boswell across his knees and told Danny about what he and Merrily had watched in the Swan, the night before last.
‘Only we got the impression from Barry that it was a pheasant.’
‘He still stayin’ at the Swan, this Cornel?’
‘I think he just comes in for meals now. I don’t know where he’s staying. How did Jane know it was a fighting cock?’
‘Her didn’t. Gomer knowed straight off.’
‘Gomer’s on the case?’
‘En’t nothin’ Gomer wouldn’t do for Jane, is there? Jeez, why they gotter-’ Danny pulled off his baseball cap, sent it spinning to the straw. ‘Cockfights! They tells us we’re in recession, so we gotter degrade ourselves by stagin’ cockfights for the freakin’ tourists?’
‘Who?’
‘Who d’you think?’
‘You really think Savitch would risk his reputation by supporting something illegal and… universally condemned?’
‘Gomer phoned around. Farmers, dealers. Drew a blank. Wherever it’s happenin’ it en’t at no farms round yere. Gotter be some bastard from Off. Now… where was the ole Ledwardine cockpit?’
Lol shook his head.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Danny said. ‘Up by the top bridge, where the river come through in the floods? Used to be a pub there, knocked down seventy, eighty year ago. You can still see the outline, they reckons. Like a depression, middle of a copse, now. Cockpit was back o’ that pub.’
‘So that…’ Lol stroked a sinister E-minor on the Boswell ‘… would be on the ground…’
‘Bought up by The Court last summer – when wassname, Wickhams, sold up?’
‘You’re saying that whatever remains of the old Ledwardine cockpit is now owned by Ward Savitch.’
Suddenly, Lol could see why this just might be Savitch. All for traditions. The first man to stage a cockfight in Ledwardine for a century or whatever. Even if he only did it once or twice, for selected guests.
‘Jane know about the cockpit?’
‘Not yet, boy. See the problem?’
‘Case closed, far as Jane’s concerned. And it looks very likely, doesn’t it? I mean, how else would Cornel’ve been to a cockfight?’
‘Exackly.’ Danny stood up, strapping on his Telecaster. ‘So what’s Gomer do now, boy? Do he tell her… or don’t he? Bein’ as how her’s likely to go off like a rocket.’
‘Even if Savitch wasn’t charged with anything,’ Lol said, thinking hard, ‘it would make him a figure of hate.’
‘Sure to.’
‘Would you be able to tell, if you saw the pit, whether it had been used recently?’
‘Gomer might. But… private land now. Big fences.’
‘Not this weekend. It’s open to the public on Easter Monday.’
‘Still be restricted access. Public won’t get near an active cockpit.’
Lol said, ‘Tomorrow, however…’
Laying down the Boswell in a manger full of last year’s straw, he told Danny about Savitch’s visit and the offer of a site for an open-air music event. Half afraid that Danny, whose musical aspirations had been frustrated for so long, would see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stage some kind of Welsh Border Woodstock. Danny sniffed and smiled.
‘En’t life a bitch?’
‘So I’ve got these two tickets for the press launch and reception for invited guests. Be far more informal. Fewer stewards, not much security.’
‘Right.’
‘If I gave the tickets to you and Gomer, would you be able to maybe find out one way or another?’
A short, worried whine came out of Jimi the sheepdog as Danny stood up, gripped the Telecaster around the bottom of its neck, pulling it hard to his gut.
‘What time?’
35
Comper’s Bling
At one stage, the narrow lane to Brinsop pointed you directly at a wooded flank of Credenhill. You felt that if it didn’t veer off soon you’d vanish into a green mouth.
The first time, Merrily missed the turning to the church, then spotted in the rear-view mirror what might be a bell tower. At approaching midday, a pale blue hole in the clouds was broadening into a small lagoon. She reversed into the next track, and the long hill fell away to the side. Nobody about. No other vehicles.
No village. Plenty of fields, woodland, a few dwellings, and a church, on its own, set apart.
Merrily’s stomach was hurting. Really needed something to eat. Maybe she should go home. Only twenty minutes away. Three warnings about Byron Jones – secretive, embittered, obsessive. She didn’t want to find him, not yet. Just to get a hint of what, in Brinsop, had caught his eye.
The church was at the end of a private track with weeds growing up the middle. A sprinkling of homes, old and newish, barns and sheds, and then the Volvo was up against a fenced field of ewes and lambs. A dead end with the churchyard alongside, raised up. Jane maintained that an elevated churchyard always indicated a former pagan ritual site. But then, for Jane, signs of paganism were everywhere.
OK. Merrily stayed in the car and leaned back, easing the pressure on her stomach. Do this properly. She pulled her bag onto her knees and consulted her contacts book.
Dick Willis, priest in charge of the Credenhill cluster of churches. A cautious guy, not far off retirement. The signal here wasn’t good, but she got him.
‘Ah, Brinsop,’ he said. ‘The jewel in my crown.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve never been before.’
‘Then I mustn’t spoil it for you, Merrily. Is there a problem there? I certainly haven’t heard of one, but when one hears, out of the blue, from your good self…’
‘Do you know a guy called Byron Jones? Colin Jones?’
‘Ah, now, that would be the man with the private army base?’
‘Say that again.’
‘I exaggerate. He calls it The Compound. Once a pig farm, a mile or so out of what used to be the village. The farm became derelict, the house was sold off and this chap bought the land. Lived there in a caravan, then suddenly built this rather lavish bungalow, as if he’d come into money.’
‘What did you mean by private army?’
‘Not an army, a base. He has a training area with an assault course and all that sort of thing. He run courses for military enthusiasts, and the place is done out like a real army base with high wire fencing and authentic warning signs. Part of the mystique, I suppose. Looks more secret and exciting than the actual SAS place down the road. Boys will always be boys, Merrily.’
‘He had planning permission for all this?’
‘Not always needed. And some of the objectors were appeased when, at his own expense, he planted extensive woodland to conceal the site. That was about a year ago.’
‘Mr Jones is ex-SAS, I believe.’
‘Well, yes, that always helps, doesn’t it? Especially in this area.’
‘Does he come to church?’
‘If he does, it’s not when there’s a service on,’ Dick Willis said.
The sun was just visible through the cloud, like a pound coin in a handkerchief, as Merrily got out and locked the car. She shook herself, felt a little better.
The site was fairly remote, but the churchyard was well looked after. Nothing overgrown here, and most of the uncrowded gravestones were upright. A huge sentinel evergreen stood beyond the wooden gate, looking taller than the church which sat behind it, under the hill. A compact greystone church with a conical bell-tower. More central Wales than Herefordshire, but comfortable in its lush
er ground.
And the site… Jane might well be interested. Different levels, perhaps a suggestion of earthworks and, across the lowest field beyond the church, a small, dark-green lake. Or a big reeded pond. Or, possibly, a moat, all wooded-in.
A lovely spot, really. This was one of those churches that had had to be here, Jane would say. Had to be here. Sacred ground long before Christianity.
Merrily walked past the church porch towards the water and was pulled up by a name on a gravestone, directly in front. Not ornate, but tall and prominently sited and making an instant connection with one of the paperbacks on Syd Spicer’s desk.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JANE WINDER WHO WAS BORN AT KESWICK, CUMBERLAND AND DIED AT BRINSOP COURT, IN THIS PARISH OCTOBER 16, 1843 IN THE 43 YEAR OF HER AGE.
This Stone is erected by WILLIAM and MARY WORDSWORTH, of Rydal Mount
Westmoreland in affectionate and grateful remembrance of her faithful services continued through fifteen years.
Good God. Merrily began to tingle. That sense of the preordained. A piece of an unknown jigsaw. The piece that slotted in to tell you there was a jigsaw.
William and Mary. Rydal Mount. Westmoreland. The Wordsworths – the Wordsworths – were here?
She walked back to the porch, went in. Always the same when you approached an unknown church, that frisson of mild apprehension, as you turned the ring handle. Some resistance, but the door wasn’t locked. It gave, and she went in, and whatever she was expecting – perhaps, given the location, something frugal, cold, drab, rudimentary – it wasn’t.
No smell of stone or damp. She made out lurking colours, and not only in the windows. Much metallic glistening from the chancel.
Merrily waited at the bottom of the nave. Waited for something to happen, something to move, shadows to part.
‘Blimey,’ she said, to nobody she could see.
This was all strongly medieval. Medieval like in the actual Middle Ages. A concave golden canopy was shining over the altar, like the reflector on a lamp. There were three gilded angels, wings aggressively spread, brandishing candles.
A treasure house. Out here in the deep sticks it was all so entirely unexpected as to be approaching the surreal. Merrily picked up a leaflet from the pile and took a seat at the back. Chairs, light-coloured wood, not pews. A lot of money had been spent since medieval times, enhancing what was here. The angels were confidently balanced on the top edge of the chancel screen, guarding a Christ on the cross. A chess-piece kingly Christ in a golden crown. Not suffering, but proud and triumphant. In control.
And when you looked more carefully, you began to see all the dragons. Merrily came back to her feet.
Everywhere, dragons were dying.
There he was, red-crossed, in a window. And here he was again, more modern and explicit, on a pedestal, in full armour with his foot on the dragon’s neck, his spear down its throat.
Merrily opened the leaflet. St George. Brinsop Church was dedicated to the dragon-slaying patron saint of England. The leaflet said the church had been saved from ‘certain ruin’ in the mid-nineteenth century, old windows rediscovered and restored. It had never looked back since, acquiring much sympathetic embellishment by Sir Ninian Comper, ecclesiastical architect and Gothic revivalist, in the early twentieth century. His work included the angels on the wooden screen. And yet, for all Comper’s bling, it still felt like a country church, small enough to be welcoming. Some bright, modern stained glass: a St Francis window with birds. A First World War window with crucifixion symbolism. And one…
In memory of Wm Wordsworth, poet laureate.
A frequent sojourner in this parish.
Back to the leaflet. Wordsworth’s wife, Mary, had been a sister of Thomas Hutchinson, who was leasing the twelfth-century Brinsop Court, the poet often spending holidays here, with his wife and his sister, Dorothy.
Merrily stood up, feeling ignorant… parochial. Why hadn’t she known about this? The next church to Traherne’s, at Credenhill. Traherne and Wordsworth… separated by more than a century, but two poets with a lot in common. Lovers of landscape, solitude. Nature mystics.
Odd. Was it odd? She walked into the chancel, looked back to where the far window was halved by the bar of the screen, split by the shaft of the cross. This was very much a theme church, St George the principal one. Why did you always feel sorry for the dragon, instantly disliking the smug bastard with the spear? The charitable view was that – lance, deep throat – it was a piece of early sexual symbolism.
She padded across the nave. As usual, alone in a church, Merrily didn’t feel alone, but this time it wasn’t just about God. That little green book of Wordsworth poems suggested that Syd Spicer had been here.
Byron and Syd? Byron who despised Christianity… not a man’s religion, not a soldier’s religion. She felt Syd pondering this, lighting up. He’d want to smoke in here. Too rich for Syd, this place. Wouldn’t have liked the golden angels. Phoney High Church iconography , he’d said of what had been inflicted on his own church at Wychehill. Grotesque.
Syd, you just knew, preferred drab, damp and frugal.
Merrily moved on to a small lady chapel with more Wordsworth memorials. A medieval stone coffin lid in the floor reminded her of the Knights Templar church at Garway. Stories everywhere, written in glass and stone, many of them modern and literal but no less effective for that.
And then she came to what, unmistakably, was the real thing. Out of place, isolated, but probably pre-dating the wall into which it was set.
A stone slab. Carved images. St George again, an early depiction. George in dragon-slaying mode, but on a horse this time. She consulted the leaflet: originally a tympanum, a piece of ornate masonry between the top of a door and the arch. Herefordshire Romanesque. She knew a bit about that – early medieval. The leaflet said that a stone in an adjacent field was believed to mark the actual spot where St George had killed the dragon.
Sure. The St George who apparently was Turkish, the dragon whose legend was set in the Middle East. Merrily imagined Syd tapping his ash on the saint’s helmet, knowing he could’ve taken George, unarmed, any day of the week.
Never quite understood how saints like George fitted into the fabric of Christianity. A medieval thing, probably, an excuse for crusades, brutality masquerading as valour… a frenzy of pure excitement.
There was a whiff of cigarette smoke. Syd Spicer was back.
The Syd of an overheated confessional afternoon in the church at Wychehill, when he’d used those exact words, recalling the lethal focus you acquired in the Regiment.
…a frenzy of pure excitement… I understand the rush you get when you convince yourself that, in the great scheme of things, it’s not only justified but necessary. When you know that a difficult situation can only be resolved by an act of swift, efficient, intense and quite colossal violence.
God…
Merrily was jerked back against the stone by a shuddering in a pocket of her jeans. She fumbled out the mobile.
There was no sound for a couple of seconds, wonky signal, then Fiona’s voice.
‘You’re there, aren’t you?’
‘Brinsop. At the church.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d better tell you,’ Fiona said.
36
The Having Done It
Merrily took the phone outside and stood by the grave of the Wordsworths’ faithful servant Jane Winder. Looking across to the possible moat, the clutch of trees on what might be an island, the viridian march of conifers up the flank of Credenhill.
‘There was a party,’ Fiona said. ‘A publication party. Not for Byron: one of the other better-known SAS authors, a friend of Sam’s, so although he didn’t like parties much he thought we should go. And there were a lot of people there that Sam hadn’t seen in years, so he was doing a fair bit of catching up. Are you still there?’
‘I’ll try and improve the signal.’
Merrily moved up to the high
ground behind the church, overlooking lumped and tiered fields where a village might once have stood. The signal had moved up to two stars.
‘When was this?’
‘About a month after the book was burned. I hadn’t been feeling well that night, and Sam was talking to his old mates, so I slid away and sat down at a table on my own. And then Byron was there. Not Liz, just Byron. Sam was conspicuously avoiding him, but he came up to me. Very charming and attentive. Very smooth and elegant in his Heathcliff way. Got me a brandy and sat down. Said he didn’t know what he was doing here, he’d never particularly liked… the author we were supposed to be celebrating, and his book was rubbish.’
‘This was in London?’
‘No, it was a country-house hotel, in Buckinghamshire. We’d decided to stay there, so Sam could have a few drinks. All free – the publishers were spending a lot of money on this guy at the time. A lot more than had ever been spent on Byron, anyway, and he seemed to be taking it as a personal slight. But he was very nice to me. Coming out with all sorts of bullshit. How he wished he had a wife like me, who understood.’
‘Understood what?’
‘Oh, you know, what it was like leaving the Regiment. Having to slow down your metabolism… all this. His metabolism didn’t seem to have slowed at all. He was very intense, whatever he was talking about, very concentrated. Much, I suppose, as you’d imagine he’d be on some operation behind enemy lines. In fact, I remember thinking perhaps that was how he saw this party. Someone else’s wealthy publisher, someone else’s inferior book. As though he was at war with other writers who’d been in the Regiment. The underdog, because his was a kids’ book.’
‘This was before Harry Potter, I presume.’
‘Probably. There was a tremendous… frustration there. Pretty soon, he’s pouring out his troubles, and I’m trying to be sympathetic.’
‘Wife didn’t understand him?’
‘Wife didn’t understand anything. Wife was completely bovine. After a while, I was starting to find it repellent. Self-pity I can handle – it was the venom I didn’t like.’