by Phil Rickman
Caple End
GOING TO SEE the Riverman wasn’t much of a journey any more. On the edge of the cobbles, Jane lost her footing, swaying like a tightrope walker before going down on one knee into a depth of water that surprised her.
Squatting down to squeeze some out of her jeans before her welly could become flooded, she looked up to see an ovoid moon with a wide halo of dirty yellow, like a tallow candle.
Over a Christmas-card village?
No, not at all. Christmas-card villages were always lit with a warm haze of security. Pre-dawn, in the stillness of no-rain, Ledwardine looked stark and stripped, rigid with shock, its black timbers receded into shadows and its white plaster turned to bone.
Slopping down Church Street under moonlit, mushroom-coloured clouds, Jane was glad Eirion hadn’t woken when she’d slid out of his bed to creep back to her apartment to wash and dress.
Last night she’d needed him with her, but afterwards there had been bad dreams. She’d been walking, then running through the churchyard in the blinding rain, trying to find Lucy’s grave. Knowing roughly where it was and taking different turnings, the cold mud thickening on her legs, but the graves always had the wrong names on them, and then she’d wind up on the footpath which led into the old orchard, where she didn’t dare look up because she knew the remains of old Edgar Powell’s blown-off head were up there.
And then she did look up . . . and awoke.
As one did.
Dreaming of the dead again, but there was no rain this time, only what had already fallen, massively, and now she was alone on the Isle of Ledwardine, under the yellow moon.
She’d thought there might be some people still around. There’d been a few out until well after midnight, bunched together, talking on mobiles, waiting for news. Barry at the Black Swan and his evening staff had kept the long bar open until one, though mainly for coffee. Jane had taken one out to Gomer, waiting on the square with Gwyneth. Who was going to pay Gomer Parry Plant Hire for all this work? Probably nobody. He was doing it for Ledwardine.
Jane stood watching the moon reflected in the deep water at the bottom of Church Street, most of the village bridge invisible now, a few nervous lights on in the hestate, but no more giant Santa’s sleigh. No Christmas lights on the square, either: the Christmas tree had been unplugged before midnight, as if someone had felt there was a need to conserve electricity now that the village had become isolated.
Nobody had seen it happen. Everybody had been very confused last night; nobody could quite grasp what it meant. What are we going to do? If she’d heard that once, she’d heard it a dozen times, from both men and women.
Possibly her last totally clear memory was of Lol coming back into Lucy’s house, where she and Eirion were still sitting by the wood stove, Lol’s new music playing low on the stereo.
What? Jane had demanded, suddenly fearful. What’s happened?
And Lol had said,
It’s the bridge.
Jim Prosser had told him. Jim had been standing in his shop doorway telling everybody that the bridge had collapsed.
What? Jane reeling, springing up and rushing past him, out into the rain because she’d thought he’d meant her bridge, the bridge at the bottom of Church Street.
But it was worse than that. It was the one at the end of the bypass.
Caple End.
Which wasn’t even very old – nineteenth century – and had just given way. Lay in pieces in the river.
Weight of water, Jim Prosser says. Came surging down at about five times the normal—Lol had broken off, then, and stiffened. Where’s Merrily?
Jane had lied. Well, there was no alternative. Small Deliverance job, she’d said. When she’d tried Mum’s mobile it was always engaged. When they’d gone out to join the growing crowd in the street, she’d cornered Jim Prosser. Nobody had been . . . hurt . . . had they?
Jim didn’t know.
When Mum eventually rang it was from the bastard Ward Savitch’s farm. Nearest to Caple End, apparently, and there was a fairly wide footbridge on Savitch’s land, originally for getting cattle to and from fields either side of the river. No good for cars, but at least you could get across on foot or a mountain bike or something. The only access now.
Police were sending everybody back, Mum had said, but all the other lanes were flooded. With the bypass cut off, it meant there was no way in and out of Ledwardine for vehicles until the council could get something called a Bailey bridge installed, and that was going to be well after Christmas.
Mum said she’d walk, which might take some time, but at least she had the torch, but Jane had called Gomer, who’d taken his latest old jeep across the fields, all the gates open, now that all the livestock had been taken inside or onto higher ground.
About an hour later, Mum had come stumbling in, hooded and dripping, thrusting the guitar case at Jane: Hide that somewhere, would you, flower?
Surreal.
And now it was Christmas Eve and Mum, up till one, was, Jane hoped, still sleeping. One way or another, this was going to be a very different kind of Christmas.
‘You’ve done just about enough now,’ Jane told the river. ‘You’ve made your point.’
She noticed how the dark water was creeping like a shadow up the pavement towards the steps of the first of the black and white houses, and heard Nick Drake singing,
‘Betty said she prayed today . . .’
Jane spun round.
‘. . . for the sky to blow away.’
‘God.’
He was standing in his doorway, in dark clothing and no light behind him. She must’ve walked right past him.
‘You couldn’t sleep either, then,’ Lol said.
‘No.’
She was shaken. It was probably the first time he’d sung to her live, and he’d sounded so much like the dead Nick Drake it was eerie.
‘How long’ve you been there?’
‘Couple of minutes, that’s all.’ Lol pointed down Church Street. ‘See how it’s actually rising?’
‘Even though it’s stopped raining?’
‘It’s coming down from the higher streams now . . .’
‘That means even if it doesn’t rain for a while, it’s actually going to get worse?’
‘It’s got worse in the past few hours. They’ve put sandbags out at the Ox.’
‘God, sandbags for Christmas?’
‘And now we won’t be able to get the fire brigade in to pump water away. Maybe Pierce is right. If Ledwardine was twice the size it might have its own fire station.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ Jane had lowered her voice, aware of the echoes they were making in the still, shiny street. ‘What’s going to happen, Lol? I mean, what are people doing?’
‘Bull-Davies and Lyndon Pierce seem to be working together, for once. I think people whose homes are in danger will be encouraged to move out today. Better now than Christmas morning. At least it’s still more or less a working day.’
‘But how can they get out?’
‘Special buses. Coaches. They’ll set up a pick-up point at Caple End, on the other side of what used to be the bridge. Ward Savitch is making a field available as a parking area – where your mum left the Volvo, I imagine. And then they’ll go across his footbridge to the bus.’
‘I suppose Savitch is charging an arm and a leg for parking.’
‘I don’t think he’d dare charge anything,’ Lol said. ‘Somebody was saying he’d been using bales of straw as some kind of cheap flood barrier, and the whole lot had given way and fallen into the river, blocking up the bridge arches. Which may have been what drastically increased the pressure. Or helped, anyway.’
‘Savitch might’ve caused the bridge to collapse?’
Lol shrugged.
‘Lol, look . . . why don’t you try and get some sleep while you can? Big night tonight.’
‘Won’t be that big. Might not be much of an audience left.’
‘Well, I put it up on the Col
eman’s Meadow website. People the world over . . .’
‘That was a kind thought, but they can’t get in. Anyway, I might have to go out with Gomer again, if it—’
‘Like, no way.’
‘I might be fairly useless,’ Lol said, ‘but I think he trusts me to follow orders.’
‘What if you damage your hand? What about your shoulder?’
His injury from Garway in October. He never mentioned it but she was sure it must flare up. And anyway, there’d be a lot of blokes available to help Gomer now. It wasn’t as if anybody was going to be able to go to work or for last-minute shopping . . . or anything.
Jane gazed down the skeletal street. It was going to be weird. There’d be no traffic. No one driving in, no one driving out. Nowhere to go.
Almost like a return to medieval times.
46
Pentagram
AROUND DAWN, BLISS’S phone was ringing as if from the bottom of a lift shaft. In fact, from the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet, where Kirsty had made him keep it. He pulled out the whole drawer to get at it and the drawer came apart, like it was reverting to flatpack, whole shoddy sections dropping into the still-sodden pile of Bliss’s clothes.
‘Boss?’
‘Frigging time you call this, Andy?’
Peering towards what light there was. The sky through the bedroom window looked like a badly bandaged wound.
‘We got you an early Christmas present,’ Mumford said.
Bliss sat up. The bedroom was cold enough to preserve a corpse for a fortnight. Still hadn’t worked out the heating cycle; had had to use the immersion heater when he’d squelched in last night to raise enough hot water for a shower – buggered if he was going to make Charlie Howe’s Christmas by contracting pneumonia.
‘Done a bit of a dawn raid, we have,’ Mumford said. ‘Just like old times, though not for Jumbo, obviously, as he en’t never actually been in the job.’
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Think of your favourite housing project.’
‘Andy, please tell me you haven’t done anything . . . stupid.’
‘Got a friend with us. I think he’d like a word. Hang on.’
Bliss heard a slurred voice saying something unintelligible but strongly suggestive of split lip. He swung his bare legs out of bed, sat on the side of the mattress in his underpants, shivering. Still aching, but that might be deeply internal.
‘Got his own place, now en’t you, boy?’ Mumford said. ‘Girlfriend and a youngster on the way and, like he says, not a good time to go away. Reason he wouldn’t mind a word with you, boss, you get my drift.’
‘Jesus, Andy, what’ve you done?’
The phone went dead for a few seconds, then this other voice came on, barking like an old Merthyr mountain ewe in the night.
‘Andy’ve had to walk him round the block, Mr B. Get the circulation back into the boy’s cold feet, kind of thing.’
Jumbo Humphries’s wheezy laugh.
This was all he needed. Bliss scrabbled in the pile for something that felt halfway dry, his head full of images of ex-Detective Sergeant Andy Mumford beating up some low-life tearaway behind a garage block on the Plascarreg.
‘Truth of it is, see, Mr B, he rung me last night, said he couldn’t get you out of his head. He haven’t heard you talk like that, never. Greatly worried about your state of mind. Figured we oughter do what we could, like.’
‘Jumbo . . . listen to me . . . who’ve you got with you?’
‘You still there, man? Bloody battery’s on the blink, it is.’
‘Who, Jumbo?’
‘You ever see that ole film, early days of special effects, all these skeletons with swords?’
Bliss sighed. Jason and the Argonauts.
‘We’ll be on the spare ground, end of the first row of garages on the left,’ Jumbo Humphries said. ‘Blue Land Rover, long wheelbase, no side windows. Need to come in from the city. Belmont’s still submerged, see. The real thing, this is, Mr B. You won’t regret it, man, I’m telling you.’
Bliss threw a stiffened sock at the wall. Somebody save him from middle-aged cowboys looking for kicks.
‘Best to come in civvies, mind,’ Jumbo said.
Bliss thought about it all the time he was in the bathroom. He went downstairs, stood by the sad unplugged Christmas tree in the hall, picked up the phone, stood with it in his hand until the computer voice reminded him it was off the hook. Then he stabbed the button to get the line back and called in sick.
Jane wore a grey fleece over a pink T-shirt. She looked fresher but pale. They sat on opposite sides of the refectory table with a pot of tea. It was just after eight a.m., Eirion not yet up, a rare chance to talk, just the two of them.
Merrily poured the tea. Apple, mango and cinnamon, Jane’s current favourite. They were trying not to talk about the bridge and living on an island.
‘Eirion was telling me what Neil Cooper said. About the possibility of more extensive archaeology in Coleman’s Meadow.’
‘Or beyond,’ Jane said.
‘Yes.’
‘And this is where you say, Don’t get carried away about it. Don’t get carried away like you did before, and look what happened.’ Jane gazed down, addressing the table, speaking very slowly and softly. ‘I know what happened. I got humiliated. And now half the nation’s going to see it happen. And all the kids at school. And Morrell. And the heads of every university department of archaeology in the UK, they will all see me getting humiliated. Maybe it’ll even be released on DVD so people who really don’t like me can watch me getting humiliated over and over again.’
‘It’s not been televised yet.’
‘Oh . . . no.’ Jane’s head came up. ‘You don’t go near him. This is not your problem, Mum. And, like, don’t give me the old your-problems-are-my-problems line, because that doesn’t apply. I’m eighteen, I’m an adult, I need to learn to deal with it. I will deal with it.’
‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Help me with my problem, then.’
She put her cigarettes and the Zippo on the table. Told Jane about the Stookes, the various anomalies, proven and alleged, at Cole Barn.
It was legitimate to share this stuff; Jane had been part of it from the start. She only wished it sounded more convincing in the cold, damp morning. Pre-Blore, Jane would’ve become excited, full of the implications of this for Coleman’s Meadow, the energy line, the spirit path.
She just drank some tea, sighed.
‘Well . . . couldn’t make that up, could you. Mum?’
Ethel pattered across the stone flags to her dish of dried food, began crunching.
‘I couldn’t,’ Merrily said. ‘But could they?’
Jane nodded, already resigned.
‘Was there anything on your website about, say, site-guardian legends?’
‘Mmm. Possibly.’
‘And you had an email from a man who said Coleman’s Meadow had one.’
‘It was the dowser from Malvern who had the argument with Blore in the meadow before he started on me. Lensi was there, doing pictures. She might’ve talked to him.’
Merrily lit a cigarette, noticed there were only three left in the packet. She missed the rumble of the old Aga, a victim of its oil consumption.
‘He seemed a decent bloke,’ Jane said. ‘I haven’t spoken to him about it. If you want, I can email him now.’
‘No, it wouldn’t prove anything. Let’s shelve any discussion about what a guardian is and whether there could be one in the meadow. Let’s deal with the prosaic facts. Go back to your meeting with Leonora at Lucy’s grave – presumably you’d had the email by then?’
‘Weeks before.’
‘Did you mention anything to Leonora to suggest there might be any kind of psychic disturbance in Coleman’s Meadow?’
‘I just told her about the spirit path and the need to maintain a link with the ancestors.’
‘You didn’t suggest to her that there might be something w
eird about Cole Farm?’
‘I didn’t know there was anything weird about it. What are you suggesting? They might’ve put all this together from bits they picked up from people like me?’
‘Just eliminating various possibilities. Stooke’s looking for material for another book and he’s shown a slightly more than cursory interest in me . . . and you, of course.’
‘So the bottom line . . .?’
‘The bottom line might be me telling them their house may have a problem, and they go, well, if you say so, vicar, but what can you do about it? And then I go in and do the business and perhaps they video the whole process from some hidden camera, stupid little priest furthering the spread of primitive superstition . . . and suppose, instead of being the intelligent, sophisticated types they are, they’d been some poor old couple, et cetera, et cetera. I’m reading it already.’
‘That just . . . stinks.’
‘They haven’t done anything yet, just told me the kind of stuff that people usually hand me along with a plea for help. But I shall be cool, Jane, I shall make inquiries.’
‘What about Mad Shirley?’
‘And I’ll talk to Mad Shirley. As Huw points out, no need to approach her on behalf of the Stookes. Now she’s telling everybody I’m not a fit person to be the vicar, it’s . . . personal.’
‘Take her down, Mum.’
‘Yeah, and then I’ll get on the phone and blast the cops for not returning my computer. God, it doesn’t feel like Christmas, does it?’ Merrily finished her tea and stood up. ‘I’m just going to pop over to the shop before it gets crowded. Nearly out of cigs.’
‘What about breakfast?’
‘You and Eirion get something decent. I’ll just have toast and Marmite or something when I get back.’ She grabbed her waxed coat from the peg behind the kitchen door. ‘Won’t be long.’
Eirion had come down in expectation of central heating, gone back for a fleece, still looked cold. Pampered rich kid. Jane moved away from the sink, picked up a towel to dry her hands.
‘She’s annoyed with herself for letting things slide. I’ve seen this before. She needs to walk around the square a couple of times, smoke a cigarette, gear herself up.’
