by Finch, Paul
Or rather a chapel.
It took me completely by surprise, nestling deep amid the trees and bushes, and seemed to spring out on me like a large animal that had been lying in ambush.
I looked it over, and briefly took it to be another folly – a stone frontage with an arched doorway, and what looked like a heavy bronze door set into it, firmly closed – but then I saw the two tall windows, one on each side, neither of which contained glass but both of which were frilled around their inner rims with fragments of ancient leading, suggesting that stained-glass images had once been held there. I glanced upward. A stone crucifix occupied the peak of the facade, with two crossed sceptres in front of it. At either side of this, at roughly the point where the sloping ends of the roof came down to the eaves, two figurines abutted outward, both angels blowing on trumpets, both now badly eroded. This was no folly. A crumbled ruin, yes, but reduced to this state through venerable age rather than indifference or neglect.
I approached it warily, trying to remember what I knew about the relatively recent history of this place. The Rillingtons had been Catholics who’d fled abroad during Cromwell’s period of power. They’d returned under Charles II, when their religion was tolerated again, so it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the chapel dated from that era. That it had fallen into disrepair was odd given that so much else here of antique value had been preserved, but it was explainable if the modern-day owners had no religion, which they didn’t appear to.
However, that certainly did not provide a reason for the extensive claw-marks .
Of course, they weren’t claw-marks really. They couldn’t have been. But they looked like claw-marks. The entire front of the aged building had been slashed and scarred all over, as though some party of hooligans had attacked it with a variety of edged implements. There was no rhyme or reason to the damage, and no damage that was actually more than skin-deep, though it was clearly deliberately inflicted. Every portion of the structure had been assailed. Slashes and gouges were visible on all parts of it, like pockmarks on a diseased face.
I was fascinated but also baffled. It occurred to me that maybe this vandalism dated from before the Restoration. Maybe Cromwell’s puritanical hordes had come and taken out their self-righteous wrath on it. But if that had been the case, why hadn’t the destruction been completed? They’d had powder at their disposal, horses, ropes; they could easily have razed the small building to the ground. The question lingered, and I was just about to lean in through one of the windows to investigate further, when I heard feet approaching. I turned sharply. When Miss Ryder-Howe emerged from the path, she smiled, as if delighted to see me.
“Hello,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind me following you. I saw you coming this way from the house, and wondered if you wanted some company?”
It was difficult to imagine any red-blooded man not wanting her company. She was stunning, though she’d dressed down considerably from the night before. She’d loosened her blonde hair over her shoulders and wore a sleeveless pink t-shirt, a short denim skirt and white sneakers, which did the world for her sleek, brown legs.
She watched me hesitantly. “You don’t mind?”
“No … of course not.”
“I didn’t fancy hanging around the house all day.”
“No, of course.”
“I usually spend the weekends up in London, you see. I’ve a flat in Chelsea.”
“I, erm … I thought you probably would have. Something like that, I mean.”
We smiled at each other awkwardly.
“You were the bass player, weren’t you?” she said.
I couldn’t help laughing, which surprised her.
“Sorry,” I replied, “sorry … I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, well that’s the sort of thing I get a lot of. Some industry big-shot would come up to us after a gig, and say: ‘You’re Luke Hennessey, you’re Joe Lee, you’re Rob Ricketson, you’re Charlie Smollet, and you’re, er … you’re the bass player’.”
She looked worried, as if she’d upset me. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know. Don’t fret. It goes with the territory.”
There was another uncomfortable silence.
“I was just examining your chapel,” I eventually said.
“Oh yes.” She glanced up at it with the sort of wide-eyed interest I’d normally associate with someone seeing something for the first time.
I ran my hand along one of the gouge-marks. “Looks like someone’s been over it with … I don’t know, a blade of some sort. It’s almost like a deliberate desecration.”
“It may be. We’re in the New Forest, after all. A lot of weird stuff goes on here.”
I’d heard that, myself. The New Forest is only one of many places in modern England where the old witch religions are alleged to be re-establishing themselves; even by current ‘New Age’ standards, it’s reputedly a hotbed of activity.
“Don’t suppose that’s anything new to you, of course,” Miss Ryder-Howe said, standing quite close to me. Her lips glinted and the sun made a fine golden mist of her hair. “You being an ex-heavy metaller and all.”
I laughed again. “Don’t get me on that one. All that Satanist bullshit is what cost me my enthusiasm for the industry in the first place.”
“How do you mean?”
I shrugged, and stepped up to the bronze door. When I leaned against it, it gave slightly. I pushed harder. The hinges squealed and the door grated on the old flagstones.
“We used to get slagged off for it back in the old days when all we were writing about was elves and wizards,” I said. “But thanks to that thrash, speed-metal crap that came later … say ‘heavy metal’ now and it instantly means devil-worship.”
She seemed surprised. “It’s just an act, though, isn’t it? All pretence?”
“I dunno.” I kept pushing. “Some of this modern lot don’t seem to think so. As soon as all that rubbish started, we decided to get out. We were old fogies by then, anyway. No-one wanted Wolfbane when they could have Celtic Frost.”
The door was now open sufficiently for me to step around it and enter. So I did.
The interior of the chapel was even more devastated than the exterior, though this was mainly due to time and decay. Almost nothing was left. The roof had long ago fallen in, and only blackened oak ribs remained. The pews were reduced to moss-covered stumps, while the altar was buried in brambles. The internal walls, which once must have been plastered and probably bore all manner of religious frescoes, had crumbled to the bare lathing.
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d expected, but was disappointed. I didn’t hear our hostess come in behind me.
“I wouldn’t say you were old fogies,” she said.
“That’s kind of you. But we’re not under any illusions about who and what we are.”
“I’m not saying it to be kind. I’m saying it because I mean it.”
There was a subtle change in the tone of her voice, and I turned to face her.
It was no great surprise to see that she was smiling in rather wanton fashion. But the fact that, while my back was turned, she’d removed her lace panties and now had them looped over her forefinger was a bit more than I’d expected. This sort of thing hadn’t happened to me for several years at least.
“And what’s this?” I asked.
“Well …” and she glanced at the rotted walls encircling us, “I’d call it a nice bit of privacy.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“Oh yeah. I always take my knickers off for guys I’ve just met. Mind you, normally I don’t have any on. I only put these on so I could take them off for you.”
And there was something naughty and saucy, and undeniably horny about that.
“And you want to do it here?” I said. “Like … now?”
Casually, she tossed the undergarments at me. Once I might have caught them, maybe been bold and sniffed them. Not now. I let them strike me on the chest and drop to the floor.
One advantage of being, or having been, a rock star, is that you get more than your share of willing girls. Eventually, even the most undiscerning among you learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not that Miss Ryder-Howe wasn’t sexy and gorgeous, and moneyed to boot – which under normal circumstances might make her a very fetching catch indeed – but she wasn’t anything I hadn’t encountered before; an upper-class wild child, so rich that she didn’t have anything else to do but slum it for a day with some burnt-out pop relic.
“I think you might have made a mistake,” I told her.
She shook her head confidently. “You’re easily the most fanciable of your lot.”
“That wouldn’t be hard.”
“I like your sun tan then. Come here …”
She stepped towards me, but I backed off.
“I’m married,” I reminded her.
She gave me a puzzled look. “So what? I’m engaged.”
To emphasise the point, she ripped the engagement ring from her finger, and flung it – diamond centre-stone and all – into the undergrowth. I continued to retreat, until the hulk of an old pew came up behind me and stopped my progress.
“Look, I’m not some rock and roll mattress-jockey anymore,” I said. “I’m old enough to be your dad.”
She halted, apparently baffled. “What exactly are we talking about here?” She raised the front of her denim skirt. “We’re talking about this . And how much it needs you right now.”
I stared at her exposed vulva. It was shaved smooth and very plump. Moistness glistened down its central cleft.
As soon as I’d realised what she was up to, I’d been determined to resist. I loved Andrea. It was that simple. She was my wife and my best friend. Okay, we’d only been married ten years, and before that I’d played the field like there was no tomorrow, but I now considered that I’d grown-up, that I’d finally found my soul-mate and was happy to remain with her for the rest of my life. Call me old-fashioned, I don’t care; I’d been modern and free-spirited for two decades, and it had never brought me anything comparable. Of course, I’m heterosexual as well, and, owing to me being here and Andrea still being in Tenerife, I hadn’t made love for several days, so there was no denying that I was stimulated. In fact, I was more than stimulated. Because Miss Ryder-Howe was beautiful and statuesque, and this approach was so unashamedly explicit and lewd and in-yer-face that my resolve was seriously undermined by it. I felt sweat on my neck and the inevitable stiffening in the front of my jeans. And the next thing I knew, I was in her arms.
Our open mouths clashed forcefully, our tongues entwining like two voracious snakes. Her pubis was still naked and available to me, and now she guided one of my hands down and pressed it home, and suddenly I felt my fingertips penetrate her hot, drenched cavity.
And that was when the failsafe kicked in.
When the alarm bells started to sound.
It was like we’d reached the point of no-return too quickly. Like, if I took one step more, everything I’d so painstakingly built over the last few years would fall apart. And for what – a few seconds of sensual pleasure?
Thank God for maturity.
I jumped backward, disentangling us. “No … I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but this is crap. I’m a married man now. I’ve done all this shagging around bit … and frankly, it’s overrated.”
Initially, she seemed shocked. Very quickly though, that shock turned to simmering anger. She made no effort to come after me again, but stood there rigid, her green eyes slitted and cat-like. “God, you really are finished, you lot, aren’t you. Without Troy, you’d be on your way to the knacker’s yard without a chance of looking back.”
There was such vitriol in her voice that I was taken aback. I’ve known beautiful women get angry when blokes turn them down before. It’s because they’re confused, because rejection is something unknown to them. But on this occasion more than pride appeared to have been hurt. Her eyes blazed as she snatched her knickers up and climbed back into them. Her once-lovely lips curled into a feral snarl, and, without warning, she launched herself forward and dealt me a furious, stinging slap on the cheek.
“Well, don’t let me bother you anymore!” She backed off, breathing hoarsely. She’d literally gone white with rage. “Jesus H. Christ … go back to your wife’s wrinkled old cunt, if that’s what you want! Or is it some underage rent-boy’s arsehole!”
I stood there stunned, my head spinning from the blow.
She stormed towards the half-open door, but looked back before she got there. “You’d better get your fucking act together though! You’re going to need it!”
“What?” I said.
“You’re not here for a holiday, Mr. noble fucking bass-player, whatever your name is! You’re here to deliver. And you’d better, or there’ll be real trouble!”
“Trouble? From who?”
“You don’t want to know.” And she almost laughed. “Believe me, you really don’t want to know.”
And then she was gone.
And I was alone in that gutted shell of a church, surrounded only by weeds and thorns and the mouldering remnants of a faith that seemed, from appearances at least, to have fled this part of the country many, many years before.
8
It was a little while before I could actually bring myself to go out of that chapel again.
It wasn’t that I was frightened that the girl might be hanging around in the bushes, waiting for me, though it did cross my mind (I’m no coward, but the look of hatred on her face when she’d fired her parting shots had been amazing). I was more concerned that one of the others might spot me coming out of the old building shortly after her, and draw the wrong conclusion. If that happened, it was a near-certainty the word would get back to Andrea, and then the one source of solace I could draw from the nasty incident – namely, that I’d gallantly resisted a very tempting offer – would be wasted.
But there was something else as well.
I was shaken up. I mean, seriously shaken-up. Up until five minutes before, Miss Ryder-Howe had been all peaches and cream – pleasant, polite, wholesome, pretty as an English summer morning. And now she was a venomous harpy, who – by her own words, at least – would be quite happy to see harm done to us. So swift and complete a turnaround had been shocking and inexplicable, and again made me wonder why we were even here.
When I finally did emerge, it was slowly and stealthily, and I carefully scanned the surrounding foliage before coming fully out into the open. Once I realised I was alone, I set off back in a hurry, but I didn’t head straight to the house. I didn’t think I could manage that just yet. The others would only need to take one look at me and they’d know something was wrong. And then there was our hostess. I didn’t have a clue how I was going to face her again. Instead, I went back to the main drive, then down it towards the car park, where the bus still waited. The driver, by prior arrangement, had been dismissed to a hotel in nearby Lyndhurst, with a fat cheque in his pocket and orders to return in five days’ time. I wasn’t sure whether in his absence the bus would even be open or not, but I’d left the charger for my mobile in there, and now sought to retrieve it so that I could power the phone up and call Andrea. Not only did I suddenly yearn to hear my beloved’s dulcet tones, but I also thought I’d tell her what had just happened – before someone else gave her a more imaginative version. Other items of luggage would still be on the coach too. Not quite sure what we’d be doing while we were here, we’d brought along several bits and pieces of gear, which we hadn’t yet unloaded. With this in mind, it was perhaps odd that I finally reached the bus and saw that not only were the sliding doors open, but that the luggage compartment was open too.
I halted, wondering if we’d been robbed. Then I heard a voice coming from the other side of the vehicle. It was low and intense, and seemed to be speaking in verse.
I didn’t think anything else could surprise me that day, but I was wrong.
I circled around the vehicle, and on the ot
her side found Troy. But Troy as I’d never seen him before.
At first his back was turned and he was oblivious to me. Some property of ours – a selection of our instruments – had been laid out on the grass beside the bus, and Troy was walking slowly around it. He carried a small paper bag; at first I thought it was full of sweets, because he kept on picking into it and popping items into his mouth. But each time he would then spit them out again, and intone the following mantra: “With these beans, I redeem me and mine.”
Yes that’s right, “beans”. I even checked. I walked slowly behind him and picked one of them up. It was indeed a bean – a hard black bean, like a coffee bean.
I was still gazing down at it when he turned round and spotted me. His eyes shot open behind his thick glasses; he dropped his paper-bag, went rigid. “Shit!” he finally said, and then he laughed. But it was feigned – I could tell that at once. “Shit, you scared the crud out of me.”
“What are you doing?”
He shrugged, before swooping down, scooping up the bag and stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
His good humour faded a little. “Nothing. ”
I glanced over the assembled items. One of my battered bass guitars was there, alongside Joe’s old Flying V, a pair of Charlie’s sticks and Rob’s Yamaha keyboard, which, in one of his most inventive moments, he’d had fitted with a shoulder-strap so that he could play it like a guitar. “So all this is on a need-to-know basis as well, is it?”
Troy’s smile faded completely. He realised that he hadn’t fooled me. He started picking the instruments up and crossing the gravel to the coach, where he shoved them unceremoniously into the open trunk. “Don’t talk like you’re Rob, Rick,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s not convincing.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
He gave me a glance that was somewhere between uncertainty and contempt. “You’re no conspiracy theorist, so stop trying to pretend you are.”
I watched him as he piled the rest of the stuff onto the bus. The bag of beans remained in his pocket.
“Our hostess is something of a headcase,” I eventually said.