Living so close by, Mr Golightly could hardly help casting an eye over the exterior of the church, but so far he had not set foot inside. Possibly the reminder of the coming festival jogged his curiosity, for, on the way back from Sam’s, he turned through the moss-packed gate and up the path past the gravestones, which stood at angles, like the crooked, unruly teeth of some huge earth-dwelling hobgoblin.
Nowadays, with so much crime abroad, many church doors are kept locked, but the Reverend Fisher was much against this habit, believing it showed an unchristian mistrust. Mr Golightly negotiated the large latch and stepped across the stone threshold into the narrow interior, with its barrel ceiling, its painted roof bosses, its threadbare flags and jugs of bright flowers – narcissi, primroses, daffodils, grape hyacinths – echoing the instructive windows of coloured glass.
The air was old and musty, with the peculiar mix of dust and damp which scent the houses of the Lord. Distributed on a wooden table at the entrance were piles of hymn books and copies of the modern Prayer Book, one of which Mr Golightly picked up and leafed through and then put down again with an expression of mild disgust. He was not a one for favourites, but he’d a soft spot for Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer’s prose was to die for.
It was shocking that the austere and plangent language had been allowed to die instead, but was this not just the problem with his own work, its failure to keep abreast of changing times? Drifting up the side aisle, he stopped to inspect the plaque which bore the name of the men of Great Calne who had died in the Great War – and those in the even greater one which had followed it – and the rood screen carving of Noah, drunk and exposing himself, while his sons cast furtive wooden glances – and garments – at their father’s immodesty. There was another carving, of the prodigal son, but this story of paternal loyalty affected Mr Golightly unhappily and he turned back, past the old banner of the Lion and the Unicorn, dating back to Queen Victoria’s jubilee, to the table with the guides and postcards, slightly the worse for damp, and the box in the wall which invited him to be honest and place in it any money he might choose to spend on purchases.
Mr Golightly dropped in a pound coin for a guide to the church and a damp-curled black-and-white postcard to send to Martha. She would enjoy smoothing it out.
Writing the postcard back at the cottage reminded him that there were office matters to attend to. But he had only bought one postcard and had already used up the limited space allowed for correspondence, describing two of the carved roof bosses: the pelican-in-its-piety, feeding its young from the blood of its own breast; and the leaping, altogether impious-looking hare, whose sole purpose seemed to be to celebrate its own abundant life.
Intending to e-mail Mike, he opened up his laptop:
canst thou bind the unicorn?
who hath begotten the drops of dew?
Two new messages had arrived.
Since his grievous loss Mr Golightly’s disposition to take offence had much abated. From time to time it crossed his mind to question this longanimity, since those who discovered his willingness to let bygones be bygones seemed so ready to take advantage of his new latitude. In times past, when he had been quick to anger and quicker still to take vengeance, there was no doubt he commanded more respect. Nowadays, there was a tendency to treat him as a busted flush, a toothless tiger. The series of e-mails was a case in point: it looked as if he had become the ignominious butt of a taunter.
The annoying questions were goads, the latest seeming to point mockingly at the difficulty Mr Golightly felt himself labouring under. ‘Unicorns’ were the stuff of fiction – a medium in which he was stuck fast.
But the question provoked another: was a unicorn less ‘real’ for being fabulous? There were those – poets and artists – who had ‘bound’ the unicorn, rendering the imaginal creature as distinct and palpable as if they had seen and conversed with it. Some might say – his son had been one – that it was in the artefact of the ‘impossible’ that reality showed its true reach.
Looking outside he saw a spider’s web, one of many whose delicate dentations decked the cottage windows. The spider spun its web simply to trap flies – but what was designed by nature for a natural function may take on more than nature’s ends. The fragile structure had caught, in its subtle mesh, the drops of rain from a morning shower and the diamond beads shone in the sun, fragments of some larger, profounder, more luminous light, reflecting the mysterious power of creation to recreate, from its own forms, an infinite scintillation of possibilities; possibilities which gestured at realms far beyond the demands of immediate survival.
Why should that wholly practical, sticky emanation, devised by evolution to trap the food to fill the hungry spider’s belly, be able also to catch the human imagination and draw in the impressionable heart? The power of the universe to create and ascend beyond itself was also part of the reality of things – every bit as ‘real’ as the dead fly in the spider’s maw.
And had not his son, his own dearest creation, been just such a spinner of spells, a weaver of stories to catch human hearts?
7
FROM HER POSITION ON THE SOFA, ELLEN Thomas was observing the brilliant orange bills of the white geese picking at the plantains, the plants said to have sprung up, from the prints of his feet, wherever Christ walked. It was Good Friday and the bells from the church tower were ringing for the respectable, and the God-fearing, to make their way to church. Ellen Thomas was neither. If we are quiet and still, she thought, the world turns through us, and what we know turns with it, which is truly to repent.
Mr Golightly also had no thoughts of church that morning. His mood was pensive when Johnny Spence came by to see if there was any work for him.
‘Do you know,’ said Mr Golightly, ‘I think what I’d like is to visit the mire.’
Johnny had told his employer about the mire, which was a place, Mr Golightly gathered, where it was still unsafe to walk at night, or under the frequent fickle Dartmoor mists. Johnny had been warned about its dangers by his mother when he had run away for the first time. Research on future escapes had revealed its whereabouts. He had been punished regularly by his stepdad for his absences, but this upbringing in the hard school of disappointment meant that he never took for granted a right to his own desires, and it was partly this feature of his character which endeared him to Mr Golightly.
Under Johnny’s directions, Mr Golightly drove up past the cattle grid and then, taking a bridle path, into the heartland of the moor. The old half-timbered van traversed the rough ground like some shifting creaking house on wheels from Stratford-upon-Avon, but soon they were well out of sight of those who had chosen to celebrate the festival by worshipping with bare arms and knees and quantities of suntan oil.
After a while, Johnny brought them to a halt and they got out and stood at the edge of a patch of land where, to the innocent eye, there was nothing to be seen but grass.
‘Here y’are,’ said Johnny. He had once watched a sheep struggle to death in the mire and nursed a hope that he might one day witness the dispatch of a human being.
Mr Golightly examined the verdant treacherous vegetation, over which hovered hoards of tiny primeval insects. This example of unredeemed nature suited his mood. There was something about it which seemed to mirror his resiling sadness.
His choice of companion was well founded: Johnny had also wandered in the caves of despair. He told Mr Golightly about the sheep.
‘It weren’t half struggling, an’ making this wicked screeching and its eyes all rolled back and its teeth, and then it went down and you could see this bubbling. They didn’t find nothing of it, after.’
This grisly account was offered up through Johnny’s implicit sense of the other’s mood. Mr Golightly acknowledged the gift sombrely.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Death is not a pretty sight but people seem to like it, provided, of course, it is not their own or doesn’t touch them too nearly.’
‘Yeah,’ said Johnny, whose pitiless education ha
d freed him of sentimentality. ‘Wouldn’t mind if me stepdad dropped dead.’
Mr Golightly, who was no sentimentalist either, was still looking at the deceiving surface of the mire. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Death improves some people.’
The tragedy was these were so rarely the ones who were chosen.
Ellen Thomas lay on her sofa watching the Holy Spirit bend back the grasses with its irrefragable force. The sound of Jackson hammering overhead didn’t bother her. Nor when he dismounted the ladder and came past the window did his soft swearing, for Jackson, miraculously, had continued to exempt Ellen Thomas from his general misogyny and was demonstrating this by keeping his language under his breath.
Jackson had astonished even himself by his fidelity to Ellen Thomas’s roof. He had turned up on the dot of nine, wearing workmen’s boots and the old baseball cap which showed he meant business. At twelve noon he appeared at the glass door and asked if he might be excused.
‘Oh, certainly, Mr Jackson, how rude of me not to say, of course you may use the lavatory any time.’
Jackson, who had been taking a leak from the roof – at best behind the mahonia bush – went puce. The word ‘lavatory’ from the mouth of Mrs Thomas sounded indecent.
‘I mean get me dinner,’ he explained.
‘Oh, how silly of me, Mr Jackson, of course you must eat. Would you like to eat in here or are you happier outside?’
Jackson had planned to nip up to the Stag and Badge for a couple of quick ones. Paula had the day off and was back at Rabbit Row getting her things from the loft. These, Jackson had been informed, included her collection of True Life Romances, a prospect which struck a chord of foreboding in Jackson’s heart. He sensed the days of dodging his own true-life romance were drawing to a close, if the door had not already been slammed shut. The prospect was a bleak one.
‘Yeah, like to, yeah,’ he mumbled. There was something about Mrs Thomas which soothed his anxiety over Paula. This meant, though, he had to go to the shop for a sandwich. ‘Get you anythink?’ he asked.
Ellen gave him a five-pound note and said she’d be grateful for half a pound of tomatoes.
‘Getting your leg over the widow, are you?’ asked Steve, up at the shop. He was quite scared when Jackson, flushing furiously, told him to shut his fucking mouth or he’d find his teeth up his arse.
Ellen Thomas was mildly surprised when Jackson returned with a bunch of stiff white daisies, along with the tomatoes, a sandwich and a can of Red Bull. He returned the five-pound note, refusing to take any money for the tomatoes, and offered the flowers awkwardly. ‘F’r Easter.’
‘How terribly kind, Mr Jackson,’ said Ellen, who liked most flowers. That she did not much like these made her arrange them the more carefully in the cut-glass vase Robert had bought her.
Jackson ate a tuna sandwich on the sofa, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand until Ellen supplied a napkin. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Jackson. Let me get you a glass for your pop. It looks exciting.’
Jackson was all but illiterate and not having drunk a soft drink for many years had chosen this because ‘Red’ was one of the few words he could read. He poured most of the content on the carpet trying to get it into a glass.
‘How silly of me,’ said Ellen. ‘I can see now it’s supposed to be drunk from the can.’
Jackson went the colour of the name of his drink and said he’d best be getting back to work. It was the first time in years he had worked for more than a single hour at a time and he found himself strangely agitated by the process.
There was a problem in starting the Traveller when Johnny and Mr Golightly came to leave the mire. Johnny poked about under the bonnet and wriggled under the carriage but was forced, rather unwillingly, to admit he didn’t know what was wrong. In the end, with Johnny steering and Mr Golightly lending his weight, they got the van going. Johnny was keen to stay at the wheel but Mr Golightly considered it prudent to take over once they reached the cattle grid at the moor’s edge.
Perhaps it was the temperamental behaviour of the Traveller but Mr Golightly had even less conversation than usual as he drove back down the hill towards Great Calne. He turned on the radio, and when Johnny asked about the music he was told it was by someone called ‘Bark’.
‘The Matthew Passion, John. Extraordinary, wouldn’t you say? One could almost imagine the man was there to witness it!’
Johnny, uncertain what event was being referred to, said that he agreed it made ‘a fair sound’. He was pleased to be asked in to Spring Cottage and spent the rest of the afternoon listening to a pianist called Solomon whom Mr Golightly said he admired.
‘The Jews were always a musical people, John. Look at David. He was a great little scrapper, too. Fighting and music, it’s in their blood!’
Later that evening, the sombre mood still upon him, Mr Golightly walked up the hill to the Stag and Badger. Barty Clarke and Sam Noble were drinking together in the bar and discussing the escaped prisoner.
‘I promise you he’s from hereabouts,’ said Barty, whose researches into local history were, for different reasons, as thoroughgoing as Johnny’s.
‘But shouldn’t the police be giving us special protection, then?’ asked Sam, nodding coolly in Mr Golightly’s direction. He had not forgiven the lamentable dereliction over the writers’ group. ‘Surely we’re all under threat!’
‘That’s right,’ said Barty. ‘I expect we’ll all be murdered in our beds. Still, look on the bright side, it’ll make a good item in the Backenbridge!’ He laughed heartily.
‘Jesus wept!’ said Sam, for whom his own safety was no laughing matter.
At that point the sky broke apparently in two with a resounding crack of thunder, so deafening that George said it might have woken his poor wife, Anna, from her comfortable graveyard bed. As for the lightning which sizzled to the ground, barely missing the pub, everyone agreed it must have been visible all the way to Land’s End. Mr Golightly, who had ordered a pint of best, was evidently so perturbed by the violence of the storm that he left the inn altogether, with his beer undrunk on the bar counter. Colin Drover, who had seen that it was untouched by any human hand but his own, drank it himself because, as he remarked to his wife, to waste good bitter was a crime worse than rape – a comment which got a sharp retort from Kath, who informed him he was dissing women in saying so.
But this exchange was lost among the general excitement over the weather, which, everyone agreed, even in the unpredictable South-West, was extraordinary.
8
JACKSON’S NEW WILLINGNESS TO WORK HAD PUT Paula in a good temper. He was up and off out of the house without her even having to try. The success with Jackson made Paula uncharacteristically charitable to Mary Simms and now she’d got Jackson in line, Paula’s energy needed a new target.
Paula had been back to Rabbit Row regularly and had seen Luke’s pathetically few possessions installed there. Mary was soft in the head and would make a perfect match with Luke, who was also a few pence short of the pound. If Mary Simms moved in with Luke her mum could charge double!
Up at the Stag and Badger’s kitchen she remarked, casually, ‘Know what, if you lay in a man’s bed and say his name forty times forty, he’s the one you’ll marry.’ This old wives’ tale had been freshly minted by Paula’s inventive brain, but it is a rare soul unhappily in love who can resist superstition, particularly a palliative one.
‘Is that true?’ asked Mary, whose nights had been tearful over Luke.
‘Yeah.’ Paula busied herself chopping off the heads of the plaice they were deep-frying. She liked looking into their dull dead eyes. ‘D’you want the key to me mum’s house, then?’ Time someone sorted out Mary Simms.
Mary didn’t grasp the point of this suggestion at first. She was no gossip herself and knew nothing of Paula’s changed circumstances.
‘That Luke’s staying in me old room now I’m up at Jackson’s.’
Light dawned on Mary Simms. ‘Oh, d’you think I should though?�
�
‘Yeah, give it a go, why not. It worked with me and Jackson.’ Paula, unused to employing her fictional powers, was enjoying herself.
‘What if he comes back? What would I say?’ But faced with this heaven-sent opportunity, she was ready to throw caution to the winds.
‘S’all right,’ said Paula. ‘I’ll keep him chatting here.’
Her plan was to pack Luke off smartly to her mum’s before Mary Simms had time to leave. Paula’s own previous failure to master Luke was no discouragement – having spent time with him, she was more confident of getting him to leave her company than getting him into bed; and if Luke found Mary actually in his bed surely even he wouldn’t be so daft as to pass up the opportunity.
‘D’you want the key or not?’ she asked, expertly slicing down the backbone of a plaice. ‘Me mum’s at me Auntie Edna’s over Easter so there’ll be no one in the house but you. Here’s what we do – you go off early and I’ll tell old Colic you’ve come on with your period and had to go home to lie down. Then I’ll think up something to say to that Luke. Won’t be hard – trust, me!’ – to send him off to Rabbit Row, she added mentally.
Mr Golightly had his own reasons for retiring from the pub when the great storm broke on Friday night. Whatever the cause, his disquiet had been increased by the arrival of another disturbing e-mail.
have the gates of death been opened unto thee?
was the question which had faced him when he returned to the cottage that evening.
Death was a subject Mr Golightly had had occasion to contemplate. It was apparent that men and women feared it – the latter perhaps less so; and yet, he couldn’t help thinking, without death life was hardly possible. How to spend one’s time if ‘time’ became eternal was a question he was used to pondering.
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