by Phil Rickman
‘How did you feel at that moment?’
‘Feel? Mixture of … shock and … just sheer, primitive terror. I thought I was actually going to die. Die of shock, you know? All I remember after that was being out of the car and just standing at the side of the road, shivering. They wouldn’t come near me, the people in the camper, they wouldn’t leave their vehicle, I must’ve looked—’
‘Was there any … change in the atmosphere when you saw the cyclist? The temperature?’
Merrily saw that the focus of the room had altered, people drifting to the ends of pews on either side, two semicircles forming and Preston Devereaux on his own by the chancel, sitting upright, his long sideburns like the chinstrap of a helmet. Stella Cobham gripped the pew in front of her.
‘I felt cold. Whether that was just the shock … Couldn’t seem to keep a limb still until daylight. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything else. Kept seeing him again and again in my head. I can see him now.’
‘Mrs Watkins…’ Preston Devereaux was on his feet. ‘This is neither the time nor the place…’
Merrily just kept on talking to Stella Cobham, a damped-down silence around them, the windows in the nave filled with a dull purple half-light that didn’t go anywhere.
‘Could he see you, do you think?’
‘I don’t think he could see anything. His eyes were … somewhere in the distance. It was the eyes I remember most. It was the eyes that … there’s a photo of him on the back of one of these books we bought – it’s called Elgar, Child of Dreams – and it’s one of those double exposures with his face superimposed on the hills, and his eyes are looking away, into some sort of infinity? You know? And there are these pinpoints of light in his eyes. Where’s … where’s Tim Loste?’
‘Gone,’ a man said. ‘Or he didn’t come.’
‘Well, can somebody get him back? Because he’ll be able to tell you—’
‘Leave him alone.’ Helen Truscott had appeared in the aisle next to Merrily. ‘He’s not well.’
‘Oh God, the fount of all medical bloody knowledge. I’m trying to give him a chance to unload it.’
‘And you think he’ll be happy to have his beloved Elgar exorcized? There, I’ve said the forbidden name, too. You don’t understand about Tim, do you?’
‘I understand what I saw, Mrs Truscott…’
‘You don’t understand what state that man’s in. You leave him alone.’
‘Look, I was told people would say I was sick or mental or drunk, like Loste, and I … I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Merrily.’
‘Well, Merry, whatever they’re saying.’ She swung her head angrily from side to side like a gun turret. ‘I’m telling you there is something wrong here. The cyclist … Jesus.’
In the swollen silence, Merrily looked around and saw … individuals. All these people together but essentially still pews apart. Maybe they knew one another by sight, by name, by reputation, but they were no more than a cluster of islands with separate climates, separate cultures.
Isolation. Midsummer Eve, and a chill in the air in a too-big church.
‘Excuse me.’ Preston Devereaux was brushing past. ‘I suspect this meeting is now over. Would the last lunatic out of the building please turn off the lights?’
‘Yeah, you go, Mr Devereaux!’ Stella Cobham snarling at his back. ‘You piss off. You keep nice and quiet about whatever you saw. You play it down. You weren’t for playing everything down when the fox-hunting thing was on, were you?’
Devereaux stopped. ‘That’s over. It’s over and we lost. You move on.’
Which was what he did. He walked out. At the same time, Merrily saw Leonard Holliday and three or four other people moving down the second aisle towards the main door … and more faces were swimming towards her.
‘If this—’ She took a breath, inspiration coming. ‘If this is really an issue, I’d just like to point out that the possibility of me or anyone attempting to exorcize Sir Edward Elgar … that is very much not an option. And even if there was a connection with Elgar—’
‘You can take it from me,’ Helen Truscott said, ‘that the connection was entirely in one unbalanced mind.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘And the devious heads of a few opportunists, who I hope have now seen the error of their ways.’
‘What I was going to say, Mrs Truscott, is, if there really is evidence of some pervading negative spiritual presence here, then a small roadside blessing is probably neither sufficient nor appropriate. I was going to say that another way of dealing with it would be to hold a full Requiem Eucharist, here in the church … perhaps extending out to the roadside?’
‘What’s that?’ Stella Cobham said.
‘A requiem is basically a funeral service. It’s not something we do lightly, but it’s sometimes a way of drawing a line under something.’
‘You want to hold a service for the cyclist?’
‘As some of you are a bit unsure about that, I’d be more inclined to suggest a service for the two people who died here last weekend, Lincoln and … Sonia? But I wouldn’t do it unless I was persuaded that there was a good reason, and I’d need to consult the relatives.’
The mobile began to chime in Merrily’s shoulder bag. She didn’t even remember switching it back on. She saw Joyce Aird staring at her, mouth half-open.
‘You want to hold a full requiem – a communion service – for those drug dealers?’
‘Think I need to take this call, if you don’t mind.’ Merrily backed off. ‘Look, that’s just a proposal, OK? If you want to have a bit of a discussion about this, I’ve got some cards in my bag with my phone number and my email if anyone wants to … talk about anything privately or tell me anything. Excuse me, I’ll be back.’
She hurried to the door, pulling out the phone, slumping on a bench in the porch with her bag on her knees.
‘Jane?’
‘Where are you, Merrily?’
Bliss.
‘I’m at Wychehill Church. Why? What’s happened?’
‘You don’t know?’ Bliss said.
She went cold, thinking as always, Jane.
‘Stop messing about, Frannie.’
She could hear the sounds of a car engine, the intermission of Bliss thinking.
‘Don’t go away,’ he said. ‘Might pick you up on the way, if that’s all right with you.’
‘The way to where?’
‘We’ve gorran incident.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Look, if you want to stick around I’ll pick you up on me way. Be about half an hour. Yeh, do that, would you? Stick around.’
The line was cut. Bloody cop-speak. Why did they never spell it out? What was she supposed to do now? She stood in the church doorway, the sky outside the colour of the flash around a blackened eye. It must be nearly half past ten.
Behind her, the church door swung to and someone coughed lightly. There was a whiff of jasmine on the air.
‘You’re cute,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘I thought the exorcist was the guy with you, and you didn’t put me right.’
Her face was white and blurred, her hair curling into the shadows in the porch.
‘What’s wrong with this place?’ Merrily said.
‘You noticed that, huh?’
‘Sorry, I think I was talking to myself.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, anyway. Too much quarrying, way back, is what’s wrong. Way back for us, that is, but like yesterday in the memory of rocks millions of years old. The hills are still hurting.’
‘You think?’
‘This is not a place to settle, believe me. Bad place to be, when the rocks are in pain, and you can take it from me, lady, these rocks hurt like hell.’
20
Accidents Happens
He was winding the new lime-green line into his brush-cutter head without even looking at it – finishing up with the two ends of line exactly the same length and pointing in different directions, the way the manufacturers and God had
intended.
Incredible. Jane had tried this once, with just an ordinary garden strimmer, and about fifteen metres of the stuff had come spinning off the reel like one of those joke snakes out of a tin.
Gomer Parry had probably left school at about fourteen, and he could reload a brush cutter in three minutes, sink a septic tank, devise a stormproof field-drainage system…
… And he also knew where the bodies were buried in Ledwardine. Knew better than anybody since Lucy Devenish.
‘Bent?’ Jane said. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Not as I could prove it.’ Gomer snipped off the nylon line with his penknife. ‘But I’d prob’ly give you money on it.’
He clicked the rubberized top back on to the head and, whereas Jane would’ve been beating it against the church wall and still one corner would be hanging off, it just … stayed in place.
She became aware that she was squeezing her hands together, impatient. Which was really childish. And this was not a childish matter. It had to be got right … might just turn out to be the most important thing she would ever do.
With Mum still not back when Eirion had dropped her off at home, Jane had walked down to Gomer’s bungalow, ostensibly to return the wire-cutters she’d borrowed but really to sound him out about Lyndon Pierce. Gomer hadn’t been at home but then, coming back across the square, in the gloom of a now-sunless sunset, she’d heard the whine of the brush cutter in the churchyard.
Gomer propped the cutter against the lych-gate while he took out his ciggy tin and opened it up and inspected the contents through the specks of shredded grass on the thick lenses of his glasses.
‘Gotter be a bit careful, Janey. Walls got years. Even church walls.’
Jane looked around the churchyard and out through the lych-gate to the village square. Nobody in sight except James Bull-Davies getting into his clapped-out Land Rover.
‘Please, Gomer…’
Gomer made her wait until he’d rolled his ciggy. He was wearing his green overalls and his Doc Martens and a new work cap that looked pretty much like the old one and probably the one before that.
‘Ole churchyard’s gonner need doin’ twice a week soon.’
‘Gomer!’
Gomer did his gash of a grin, the little ciggy clamped between his teeth.
‘En’t no rocket science, Janey. Councillors … all this on the election leaflets about directin’ their skills for the good o’ the community … load of ole wallop, and they knows it and they knows you knows it.’
Gomer sniffed the air.
‘Well, all right, mabbe ’bout thirty per cent of ’em is straight-ish. Or, at least, when they first gets elected. Don’t last, see, that’s the trouble. All them good intentions goes down the toilet soon as they gets a chance of a slap o’ free tarmac for their path, or their ole ma needs plannin’ permission for a big extension to the house what her’s gonner leave ’em when her snuffs it. So all I’m sayin’ is, if you has to have dealings with your local councillor, best way’s to start off assumin’ he’s bent. Saves time.’
‘But, like, Lyndon Pierce, specifically … ?’
‘Lyndon Pierce, he en’t the sort of feller gets hisself elected juss so’s he can call hisself Councillor Pierce.’
‘Well, yeah, I realize councillors are always taking bribes from builders and people like that, so the chances are Pierce is getting a bung to make sure the Coleman’s Meadow scheme—’
‘Janey—’
Gomer started coughing, snatching his ciggy out of his mouth.
‘I’m only saying that to you, Gomer. I’m not going to shout it all over the village, am I?’
‘You don’t even whisper it, girl, less you got the proof.’
Gomer took off his glasses, blotted his watering eyes on his sleeve. Jane bit a thumbnail, dismayed. Reticence was not his style. Gomer did not do restraint.
She stood there, chewing her nail. Since Minnie died, Gomer had become almost family, which was cool, because he was good to have around – like a grandad, only better. Well past normal retirement age now, but he’d never given up work. Kept his plant-hire business going with the help of Danny Thomas, dug graves for Mum with his mini-JCB, free of charge, treated the churchyard like his own garden.
And the great thing about Gomer was that he was … untamed. Untamed by age. In a way that made you think there might actually be something quite interesting about being old, if you knew the secret.
He went over to one of the ancient caved-in tombs, where there was a big gap in the side and it was obvious that the body was long gone. He sat down on it and smoked for a while, Jane watching him and the tomb fading into the dusk.
‘When I first went into Coleman’s Meadow,’ she said, ‘I felt … I felt the last person to go there and actually see it for what it was … was Lucy Devenish.’
Gomer’s ciggy was like an ember in the shadows.
Jane said, ‘I could almost see her.’
Could almost see her now, in fact: the batwing swirl of the poncho, the hooked nose of an old Red Indian, the sharp gleam of a glancing eye, like a falcon’s.
‘Lucy hovers over this village, like a guardian of the old ways,’ Jane said. ‘That’s the way I see it.’
‘All right.’ Gomer stood up, brushing ash from his overalls. ‘First knowed him when he was a mean-minded little kid.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Pierce. One day, middle of January, Lucy caught him shooting at the blue tits with his air-rifle, when they come down to the nut feeder Alf Hayden used to hang by the ole gate into the orchard.’
‘Bastard. How old was he then?’
‘Mabbe fourteen? I wasn’t living yere then, but we was dealing with a drainage problem, side of the orchard, for Rod Powell, and I’m in the ole digger when I years Lucy’s voice shoutin’ at somebody to hand over that gun now, kind of thing. So I goes trundlin’ over, in the digger, and there’s Lyndon Pierce pointin’ the bloody thing at Lucy.’
‘He was threatening to shoot Lucy?’
Jane started to tingle. It was – wow – like she’d been guided to this.
‘Kids is daft,’ Gomer said. ‘Don’t think ’fore they acts. ’Course, when he sees the digger, he hides the gun behind his back, but I leaves the engine running, see, jumps down the other side, grabs it off him. As I recall, it wound up under one of the caterpillars of the JCB. Accidents happens, Janey.’
‘I am so proud of you, Gomer.’
‘Boy tells his dad I’ve stole the gun off him. Dad rings me, threatens me I’ll get no more work in this village ever again.’
‘How could he do that?’
‘’Cause he was on the council. Two councillors representin’ Ledwardine in them days, see – Garrod Powell and Percy Pierce. Then they had a big reorganization, and it was reduced to one, and Percy lets Rod have it uncontested, like. Real noble of him. Har! Amazin’ all the arrangements as went through after that, to the benefit of Percy. Had a dealership in farm machinery, see, and some interestin’ contracts comes his way, through the council, as wouldn’t have looked quite right if he’d still been on the council. Also – you know what agricultural occupancy’s about, Janey?’
‘That’s where there’s a house that nobody can live in unless they can prove they’re making a living from the land?’
‘More or less. Point bein’, a dwellin’ with an agricultural restriction, you can’t ask much money for him. So there was this bit of a jerry-built 1960s bungalow, bottom of Virgingate Lane, feller name of Ronnie Carpenter owned it, with fifteen acres, and he needed the money and he couldn’t find nobody wanted to buy this ole place on account of fifteen acres don’t give you much of a livin’ no more. So Ronnie tries to get the restriction lifted so’s he could flog it to somebody with the money to replace it with a proper house. Ronnie keeps applyin’, keeps gettin’ turned down … and then suddenly it goes through. Good ole Rod Powell, eh? What nobody knows is Ronnie Carpenter’s arranged to sell the bungalow and the land, provisional-li
ke, to Percy Pierce for his son Lyndon, who’d just qualified as a chartered accountant.’
‘You’re saying they only got to build that piece of pseudo-Beverly Hills crap because of a dirty deal between Rod Powell and Percy Pierce?’
Gomer dropped his last millimetre of ciggy onto the tomb, crushed it out and reminded Jane how people had always quietly helped each other in the country. And Rod Powell was dead now and Percy Pierce had retired to Weston-super-Mare, and now his boy had his seat on the council.
Was Lyndon Pierce really going to abandon a family tradition of being bent?
‘So is it possible Pierce is tied up with this guy Murray, who owns the meadow?’ Jane asked.
Not that it would matter. No need for corruption when you had council planning guys who thought appalling desecration was acceptable infill.
‘Not many folk he en’t in bed with, truth be told,’ Gomer said. ‘Accountant by profession, specializin’ in smoothin’ things out between farmers and landowners and the ole taxman. Local accountant who’s also on the council? Popular boy, Janey. Popular boy.’
‘A boy who used to shoot blue tits off a nut dispenser?’
Jane looked up at the church steeple, a sepia silhouette against a clump of cloud like dirty washing. Was this the Herefordshire of Alfred Watkins, who led genteel parties of gentlemen in panama hats and ladies with sunshades to explore ancient alignments of stones and mounds and moats and steeples? Was this the Herefordshire of the mystical poet Thomas Traherne, who was clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars?
She hugged herself, wishing she could be back in Eirion’s bed – and then wondering if she ever would be again.
‘Makes you sick,’ she said.
‘Ar, it do,’ Gomer said. ‘Evenin’, Lol, boy, ow’re you?’
Jane turned to see Lol, in one of his alien sweatshirts, leaning against the lych-gate and shaking his head.
‘You know how I hate to interfere, Jane,’ Lol said in his mild, tentative way, ‘but is it possible you’re avoiding your mum?’
‘Lol, she’s been busy. She’s out all the time.’
‘A situation you might just be … you know … exploiting?’