The Wine of Angels mw-1

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Can’t handle it,’ she said. ‘Talk about a cross to bear. Just embarrasses me to bits.’

  It was really dark in the Ox. Dark like a church. And hazy, so that the red and green and orange lights in the old slot-machines hung in the gloom like the small panes in the corners of stained-glass windows. Which was what had reminded her, brought up the awful image of Mum wearing out the knees of her tights.

  Colette was unimpressed. ‘At least praying’s quiet. My mother shouts a lot now. Shouts at my old man, shouts at the cleaner and the cook and the waitresses. I don’t mean bollocking them, just being loud. Asserting herself. It’s one of her new words. Assertive. She went on this course for it. Kind of menopause training – when you start to lose your looks, make sure you get on top in bed kind of stuff.’

  Jane didn’t contest the issue. Everybody knew Colette’s parents were a first-division pain.

  ‘You just have to accept,’ Colette said, ‘that one way or the other they’re going to embarrass the piss out of you. It’s what they’re for. At least yours is youngish.’

  ‘And paranoid. She’s convinced I’m gonna make the same mistake. Like get pregnant before I’m twenty. Doesn’t realize how everything’s changed. Like with condoms. Her day, you had to sneak into chemist shops wearing a false beard or something. Now they’re hanging on Christmas trees. Anyway, I’m never going to get pregnant. Nobody with any sense of responsibility these days wants to dump another kid on the heap.’

  ‘You should get her to put a condom machine in the church porch,’ Colette said. ‘That’s where it all happens.’

  ‘Yeah. And have them handed out with the prayer books!’

  And they both broke up laughing and clutched at each other, and Jane thought, Hey, this woman is really OK, you should never judge people by their parents.

  ‘Another one.’ Colette stood up. ‘You got anymore money?’

  Jane found the last fiver in her jacket pocket. Colette was getting the drinks because she looked the older, at least twenty-five, although she was only a few months older than Jane, coming up to sixteen and able to do It legally – be no fun any more, she reckoned. Woman of the world.

  And one day ... Jane leaned back against the scratched oak settle, which was kind of like a pew. Feeling pretty dreamy actually.

  But aware that some of the guys at the bar were sneaking little glances at her. Even if one of them was this oozing gumboil, Dean Wall, a year over her at the high school. Dean and his mates played three-card-brag on the bus, big men. When they’d sidled over once tonight, Colette had taken no crap at all, told them to piss off back to their homework, and they’d slunk off, laughing, although you could tell they were really feeling stupid. One of them said something to Colette now, as she turned away from the bar with the drinks, white dress rucked up to her thighs, and she turned and raised a contemptuous middle finger and the boy laughed, but he was blushing too, under the sweat.

  ‘Virgins.’ Colette put down their ciders. ‘Got virgin written all over them.’ Except for the ones who’ve done it with sheep.’

  ‘That’s not really true, is it?’ Jane drank some cider. ‘I mean you hear all these jokes—’

  ‘Of course it’s true! This is the country. You only have to look at that Dean Wall, his eyes all wide apart. Even looks like a sheep.’

  ‘Maybe his mother was a sheep.’

  Jane looked over at Dean Wall, and his eyes were actually quite a long way apart and also his upper lip seemed to overhang the other one, like a sheep’s did. She spluttered over her drink. Couldn’t remember how many they’d had; must be the fourth, good job it was only sweet cider. She mopped her mouth and then the table with her handkerchief. The table seemed quite a long way below her and wobbling, and she kept missing the puddles.

  She remembered something important. ‘Hey, what did that bloke say to you this afternoon?’

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘In the sports car?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right. Not bad, was he? Bit old. He just said was it too late to get some lunch, and I said it was and he said maybe he’d come back for dinner, would I be there, the way guys do. What were you doing with little Lol?’

  ‘Oh. Just, like ... checking out the shop. Weird.’

  ‘Sad. Lol’s mega-sad. Lucy doesn’t need anybody to look after the shop on a Saturday, she’s just trying to bring him out, introduce him into the community. Gives him nice poetry to read.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Like with mental patients? They don’t lock them away any more, they let them out on the streets. The way there used to be village idiots?’

  ‘You’re saying he’s mental?’

  ‘Sort of. He had a breakdown. Actually, he used to be a sort of pop star, way back. Well, very minor. I mean, like, tiny.’

  ‘Pop star ...?’

  ‘Like, he was in this band and he wrote songs for other people.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? It’s way back. I’m not interested. I only listen to dance music’

  ‘Why’d he have a breakdown?’

  ‘I don’t know. He lost his girlfriend, but I’m not sure whether that was before or after or maybe the reason she walked out on him. They never looked right together, she was taller than Lol for a start. And then she left him for ... Oh ... in fact, for him.’

  Colette nodded towards a big guy in a tweed jacket, with leather patches, and khaki-coloured trousers. Jane recognized him at once, course she did. Why, it was ... it was ... Jesus, what was up with her?

  ‘James,’ Colette said. ‘The anachronism. Hey, anachronism. Not bad after six glasses.’

  Six? ‘What?’

  ‘Bull-Davies. He’s this kind of throwback. Family used to be lords of the manor. They say he’s got a seventeen-inch ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe it was seven. Oh, shit. He’s on the bloody festival committee, isn’t he?’

  Jane blinked blankly.

  ‘Means they’re out, Jane. Yes? Got it? Committee-meeting over? Reverend Mumsie on the loose?’

  ‘God, wazza time?’ Where was the clock? Didn’t seem to have one at the Ox. Hadn’t been here that long, had they? Then again, it seemed like hours, days ... ‘Oh, shit. This is the problem when you have to share a suite with your mother. Can’t sneak in, can’t sneak out. We’d berrer go.’

  ‘Finish your drink first. You paid for it.’

  Jane didn’t really feel like it, but at least it was only cider and went down quite easily. Trouble was that when she stood up, she couldn’t. Well, couldn’t stay up. Sank back into the settle and didn’t want to move again. All the little red and green and orange lights dancing like the fairies on wires in Ledwardine Lore.

  ‘Oh no,’ Colette said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Wassup?’ Over the other side of the bar she saw Dean Wall and his mates nudging each other in a kind of soupy haze.

  Colette wore a big, ice-cream grin. ‘You are completely pissed.’

  ‘I’m not! You can’t get pished on cider.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. You poor little sod. Come on, Janey, we’ll make a discreet exit. Just like hold on to my arm.’

  Jane raised herself up again and Colette threw a surprisingly capable arm around her waist. She was already a good mate, Colette. You needed a good mate in a new place.

  ‘Don’t look at Jimmy Bull, Jane. Don’t look at anybody. And for Christ’s sake don’t throw up on me.’

  Silence hung over the four of them for quite a while. The festival chairman, the musician, the councillor, the new vicar.

  ‘Well,’ Garrod Powell said slowly. ‘If he wasn’t a witch, what was he?’

  He looked genuinely puzzled.

  Richard Coffey opened out his hands. ‘I shall let you deliberate at your leisure. Suspect I’m overdue for an early night. Country air rather hits one after a couple of weeks in town. I’d ask you, of course, to keep the details to yourselves until we’re ready for the publicity.�
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  ‘Of course. Thank you for coming, Richard.’ Cassidy’s face was glazed. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, if I may.’

  ‘Make it Monday.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well,’ Dermot Child said when they heard Coffey’s tyres spinning brusquely on the gravel. ‘It’s quite funny, really.’

  ‘Is it?’ Cassidy said weakly, covering his eyes with the fingers of both hands. ‘Is it funny, Dermot? I don’t think it is. I think it’s going to cause a lot of trouble. I think it’s going to split the village and I don’t see what we can do about it.’

  James Bull-Davies had not returned. Perhaps, Merrily thought, that was as well.

  ‘He could, of course, be right,’ she said hesitantly. ‘About Wil Williams. It makes a lot of sense.’

  ‘It makes perfect sense,’ Dermot said. ‘But it doesn’t make it into a happier story with which to climax the festival and put Ledwardine on the national tourism map.’

  ‘I suppose it might become more of a ... a sort of shrine. To a certain kind of martyr. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘And how would the Church take that, Vicar?’

  Merrily shrugged uncertainly. ‘These days, no problem. I suppose. It’s politically correct. Plus, it removes the ancient stain of Satanism or whatever.’

  ‘Just, just ...’ Councillor Garrod Powell beat a small, agitated tattoo on the tabletop, ‘just let me get this absolutely right. What our friend Mr Coffey is suggesting is that he uses the church for a performance featuring his ... companion ... Mr Stephen ...’

  ‘Stefan Alder, Rod,’ Cassidy said through his fingers. ‘Alder, as Williams, will appear in the pulpit before a capacity congregation to formally defend himself against the charges of witchcraft levelled by his parishioners.’

  ‘The delegation of local bigwigs will lay out the various charges, one by one,’ Dermot Child said. ‘Witnesses will be called, including the drunken tanner, Silas ... Monk? Monks? And Williams will reject all the accusations of consorting with sprites, giving the simple explanation that, although he is a fully committed Christian and renounces the devil and all his works, he is also ...’

  ‘A homosexual,’ said Councillor Powell. His voice was flat. ‘That’s right, is it?’

  Child sighed with mischievous pleasure. ‘Yes, it is, Rod.’

  Councillor Powell thought about this for nearly half a minute before he said, ‘So what this play’s gonner be implying is that the people of our village – that’s our ancestors ... our ancestors, not Mr Coffey’s ancestors – drove this young man to his death ...’

  ‘... in a frenzy of post-Restoration queer-bashing,’ Child said. ‘Also – I wasn’t entirely sure about this, but the impression I gathered was that the slender persons shining palely in the moonlight will turn out to have been not necessarily local youths corrupted by Williams, as much as—’

  ‘Careful,’ Cassidy said.

  ‘Sorry, did I mean converted? Not so much having been converted by Williams, as having conspired together to display their bodies in his churchyard, thus tormenting the poor bloke beyond the point of human endurance, until he chased them into what is now your orchard, Rod, and—’

  ‘What I thought.’ Powell’s face had closed right up. ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’

  Taking a stand at last, from which he’d not be swayed. Of course, Merrily realized, he was a magistrate. If it was happening today he’d be in that stern delegation of local bigwigs.

  ‘And I would have to say, as your elected local government representative, that, in my view, this is a very sick idea. Gonner rake up stuff as shouldn’t be raked up.’

  ‘Idea being the operative word, Rod,’ Child said. ‘Coffey’s using the Williams story to make a political point. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller employed the Salem witch trials as a parable reflecting McCarfhyism. Coffey’s turning Wil Williams into a gay icon. There’s really no evidence at all that Williams was gay.’

  Merrily’s liberal instincts began to nudge her. ‘You’d rather he was a devil-worshipper?’

  Dermot Child regarded her with a lopsided smile. ‘I do believe you’re starting to smoulder, Vicar.’

  Merrily scowled.

  ‘What I would rather ...’ Rod Powell was on his feet. He made quite a distinguished figure, the only one of them in a suit and tie. ‘... is that this whole damn business went away.’

  ‘Well, it won’t,’ Cassidy said. ‘So let’s not get it out of proportion. At the end of the day, we’re being given the opportunity to present a significant work of art by a distinguished writer.’

  ‘With an axe to grind, Mr Chairman.’ Rod Powell thumped the table. ‘An axe to grind.’

  ‘Well, perhaps ... But isn’t that what worthwhile art is all about?’

  ‘Then let him grind it somewhere else, sir. Not in our church.’

  ‘I rather think that’s up to the Church itself to decide, don’t you?’

  They all turned to Merrily.

  ‘Hey, don’t look at me, I’m only the vicar. I’ll have to consult ... somebody.’

  ‘And your conscience, Mrs Watkins.’ Rod Powell’s voice was low and quiet but somehow carried all the resonant menace of Dermot’s auld ciderrrrr.

  The village hall went ominously quiet after this. Until Terrence Cassidy said gently, ‘Merrily, I rather think you may find, at the end of the day, that this will be your decision.’

  Well, thank you, Mr Chairman. How was she supposed to react? Come over all spiritual and lofty, tell them she’d pray for guidance and hope they’d all do the same?

  Garrod Powell looked distant, Terrence Cassidy anguished. Dermot Child gave his vicar a sympathetic smile, but his eyes were bright with anarchic glee.

  ‘Er ...’ Merrily reached for her bag. ‘Anybody mind if I have a cigarette?’

  Before Colette pushed her out of the pub door, Jane glanced over her shoulder and saw the slug Dean Wall and his mates frantically gulping down their lagers.

  ‘Shit,’ Colette said. ‘Move, you silly cow. Listen. When we get outside, we go right. Got that?’

  Jane’s legs felt like somebody else’s legs.

  ‘Jane ... You listening to me? I’m not dragging you up the street, past all the houses. Those low-lifes’ll be trailing after us, making smart remarks, and it’ll be all round the village before breakfast, and you’ll never get out at night again.’

  ‘Legless.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Leg ...’ All the times she’d heard the term and never once thought about what it really meant, and now she knew.’... less. I’m leglesh!’

  It was suddenly the funniest expression she’d ever heard.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said Colette.

  The spring night air was lovely and warm. Softly lit by a wrought-iron lamp over the pub entrance and overlooked by crooked black and white gable-ends, the cobbled alley was intimate and story-book romantic. Ledwardine by night: wonderful. Jane stood there, gazing up at the stars, feeling suddenly, amazingly, more absolutely at home than she’d felt anywhere they’d ever lived and that was a lot of places. Another lantern hung across the entrance of the alleyway, orangey, alluring, and she glided towards it.

  ‘Not that way. Right.’ Colette tugging her back across the cobbles. ‘Follow your nose.’

  Meaning the horrible, acidy pong from the public toilets at the end of the alleyway. The proximity of the dirty-brick toilet-block spoiled the idyll, and the smell killed the atmosphere stone dead. Obstinately, Jane turned her back on it.

  ‘Why can’t we go—?’

  ‘Shut up!’ Colette’s hand came down over Jane’s mouth with a slap. ‘They’re coming out.’

  Jane was shocked into silence. She swallowed, feeling unsteady inside. Colette took the hand away from her mouth and used it to haul her past the cracked gents sign, up some steps, on which Jane stumbled, and then it was soft underfoot and suddenly really dark.

  ‘The old bowling green, all right?’ Colette said. ‘We cut across here
, over to the footpath, round by the churchyard, out of the church close and we’re back on the square.’

  ‘Ingeniush,’ Jane said thickly. She looked up. The sky was brilliant, the stars huge and blotchy like Van Gogh stars. Actually, everything was bigger and blotchier.

  ‘All right?’ Cocky voice from just a few yards behind them. ‘Need any help, do we, ladies?’

  ‘Shit.’ Colette pulled Jane across the grass. ‘Duck.’ Branches grazing her head. ‘Not a word.’ Colette tugged her down behind the trees. She fell back into the grass, lovely and soft at first. Closed her eyes and everything turned into a big, waltzing fairground ride, which wasn’t so pleasant, so she opened her eyes and sat up, feeling kind of damp and clammy and wishing she was in bed in the Black Swan.

  ‘You all right, girls?’

  ‘Danny Gittoes,’ Colette hissed into her ear. ‘If he knew where we were he wouldn’t keep shouting.’

  ‘He’s not so bad.’ Jane recalled a lanky, slow-moving character who played the trombone in the school orchestra.

  ‘Keep your bloody voice down. Not so bad sober. Not so bad on his own. Bunch of them at closing time, you don’t get involved. Bad news. I got caught once, never again.’

  ‘Thought you were a woman of the world.’

  ‘You do it on your terms, Jane. Not theirs. Never theirs. Besides, if Gittoes was mine, you’d get Wall. Up against the back of the toilets. Fancy that, do you?’

  ‘Yuk.’

  ‘Right. So shut up. Come on, on your feet. There’s a path. We get to the churchyard we’re all right.’

  ‘You wanner come to a party, girls?’ Danny Gittoes called out, further away now.

  Colette sniffed. ‘Very small party, I reckon. Hold on to my arm, Jane, this bit’s muddy.’

  Danny Gittoes bawled out, ‘Bring your mother, you wanner.’

  The ground was harder underfoot; they’d found the path. Danny Gittoes was lumbering about, a good twenty-five yards behind.

  ‘Give ‘er some holy communion, I would. Any day o’ the bloody week.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ Colette murmured. ‘Scumbag?’

  ‘Scumbag. Least he’s on his own.’