December

by Phil Rickman

  'Now you're asking, ain'tcher? Whatever it was, it wasn't gonna let go, and it got into me, right in, after that last break.'

  'Break?'

  'Guitar break, darlin'. I'm going over the top like bleeding John Wayne wiv a sub-machine-gun. Felt good. At the time. But afterwards ... Warning signs everywhere. Monk shapes. Man wiv two mouths. Had to shake it. Take it out. Grabbed the Jeep. Forgot about Debs. Forgot about my fucking wife.'

  Tom rolled away, lay on his stomach, lay on his anguish, face in the pillow.

  'Hiding away,' he mumbled. 'No use. No relief. I need to nail it, nail it good.'

  'Listen. Please. Will you just listen?' Running his hands through his damp hair. A clock somewhere chiming ten. Her mother would be back soon. She held the Southern Comfort bottle upside down, shaking drops into her glass.

  'Get some Scotch,' she said.

  'Will you listen?' He'd told her, best he could, about Sile Copesake.

  She put down the bottle.

  'Sure.'

  'You have to realise ... the Abbey cannot cure you. There is no healing in the Abbey. The Abbey has become a bad, cruel place.'

  'It's still got part of me.'

  'And you won't get it back.'

  'My youth. My energy. My virginity. All the best bits.'

  'None of it. I promise you. Keep away. You can only lose what you have left.'

  'Some loss.'

  'Isabel, listen to me. You're part of its history now. The stones cemented in blood? You've heard that? Like attracts like. Blood attracts blood. Stay away.'

  'But you're going back. They want you to go back.'

  'Yes. Sure. I think I'm going back. If the others go back, I'll go back.'

  'So how come, Mister Cleverdick Priest, if I go back I can only lose what I've got left, while you ...'

  'Because, you stupid cow, what you have left is good. You're a good person, Isabel. That's the difference. You're worthwhile. Me, what I've got left is really nothing worth saving. I'm soiled. I'm a piece of shit.'

  'You're a prat is what you are.'

  'OK, let me tell you about the candles.'

  'Eddie said you'd know about them. What are you going to tell me? You've been followed here by evil satanists who're desecrating your church?'

  'Sweetheart, evil satanists, I just throw holy water in their faces and kick their arses. Do you want to hear this? It isn't pretty. It isn't endearing.'

  'Do you want to tell me?'

  'Yes, if it'll get you off my back.'

  'Get the Scotch then.'

  The up side of being in a wheelchair was the curious power it gave you over intelligent, able-bodied people. The way it was now, with everybody so politically correct, concerned about facilities for the disabled, you almost had to be careful not to abuse the power.

  Simon St John was the first person who'd called Isabel Pugh a stupid cow for precisely twenty-one years.

  That she found endearing.

  That and his longish fair hair, his rueful smile, his bizarre reputation for slagging people off at their own funerals. And the knowledge, gleaned from her mother, that in his attic, locked away like a weapon, he kept an electric bass guitar.

  And not afraid to use it?

  Maybe he was. Maybe that was precisely what he was afraid of. Simon was telling her horror stories. Not pretty. Not endearing. Stories to convince her that he was a piece of shit. Stories which - but for one crazy, orgasmic night twenty-one year ago - she would have been rejecting out of hand. And him. Throwing him out, the pervert.

  She poured herself more whisky. Bit of a risk. She pretended to be a heavy drinker (hard-drinking, hard-hitting, bitter, cynical cow) but in fact it tended to make her sick sooner than she'd care to admit.

  She said, as conversationally as she could manage, 'And you don't know who he is, this monk?'

  Teeth-grindingly determined not to let him know how much - whether she believed it or not - this was frightening her. And yes, all right, nauseating her too. Or maybe that was the whisky.

  Simon said, 'There must have been hundreds of monks over the centuries. A large proportion of them were probably ...'

  'Gay.'

  'Or whatever they called it then. Yes. Buggers,' he said, verbally scourging himself. 'Sodomites.'

  'You mean he ...'

  'Don't even think about it. I've been trying not to think about it for fourteen years. Which is, I'm afraid, terribly difficult, because he ...'

  'Got you flying,' Isabel said, a horrid, blasphemous porno-video playing in her head, all darkness and sweat.

  Get him out of here. Tell him your mother's due back.

  'And 1980, this was?' She couldn't. She had to know. Wouldn't have slept much anyway, tonight.

  'December. We were here from the first of December until ... until the eighth. There's only one room on each floor, and I was sleeping in the fourth one, the room at the very top of the tower. That's the rebuilt tower, not the one where you ...'

  'On your own?'

  'Yes. Until the second night. It was the second night he came.'

  'Did you have girlfriends at all before then, Simon?'

  'I suppose so.'

  'Bisexual, eh? Fashionable in the seventies, it was, Bowie and all those guys. Before Aids.'

  'I was never a designer-poof,' Simon said, affronted.

  'Were you even one at all before then?' Isabel said, almost eagerly.

  His eyes shut down. 'I don't know what you mean.'

  Of course he knew what she meant. She was suddenly struck by the surrealism of the situation: a crippled slag and a gay vicar sharing a bottle of Scotch, reminiscing about their respective disabilities. Oh God, mustn't call it that, now who wasn't being politically correct?

  She could never have been interested in a vicar in the old days. But then, in the old days, there surely never were vicars like Simon.

  Or maybe there had always been vicars like Simon. Maybe, back in the twelfth century ...

  He was saying, 'You spend a lot of time looking for a psychological answer. It's just your own sick fantasies. This is holy ground, for God's sake. How can this be happening on holy ground? And then, as if to prove himself, he sent me things, little presents.'

  Simon sat back in his chair, his hands open on his lap. 'I'd find myself sleeping like this, particularly in chairs. I've always preferred sleeping in chairs.' He smiled. 'Fear of bed, probably.'

  'I hate bloody chairs,' Isabel said. 'As you can imagine.'

  'When I woke up, quite often, there'd be something in my hand.'

  Isabel raised an eyebrow.

  'No, you slut,' Simon said. 'Not that. A wooden cup, once, smelling of wine, very vinegary. Half a loaf of the roughest bread you ever saw. A piece of rope. A knife with a wooden handle, bound with thin strips of leather.'

  Isabel looked above her to the big hole in the ceiling, the chair-lift to her bedroom, her - you had to laugh - escape route.

  Otherwise, apart from minor aids, the room was as she had always known it, stiflingly conventional.

  'And candles,' Simon said. 'Often candles.'

  Couldn't get away from here fast enough, had the money now. Had only stayed because the best of her was at the Abbey.

  'You know what I'm saying,' Simon said.

  Isabel said, because she knew she ought to say it at some point. 'You're having me on, aren't you?'

  Simon did his lopsided if only smile. 'All the items had a really pungent smell about them. Often it was the pong that woke me up. Diseased. Horrible. I'd wash my hands a hundred times, but there are some things you can't wash away.'

  'Miracle man, aren't you?' Isabel was alarmed at the unstable, whinneying tone in her voice.

  'And it all began at the Abbey. Dollop' of tallow on the pillow in the morning. And, worst of all, on the sheets. You know ... underneath. I didn't tell the others. I mean, God, it was fascinating at first. And I was ... flying, if you like. Intensity ... white hot ...'

  Shaking his head, too hard.
Disgusted. But worried, perhaps, that he still wasn't quite disgusted enough.

  'Also, I felt I had some degree of control. Even when - the most spectacular exhibition he put on - a whole circle of candles had appeared in the studio when we came back from supper, to record. I didn't count them. I should have counted them. Dave counted them, but he kept quiet because he didn't want to spook Tom, Tom being a bit... erratic.'

  Isabel's senses were swimming. No, it was not pretty, it was not endearing.

  But never had the wheelchair felt lighter beneath her. Never had she looked through the hole in the ceiling and seen a shaft of light going all the way to the night sky.

  Simon was looking at her in dismay. 'There were thirteen. Thirteen candles.'

  'So?'

  'Do you know what I do now? When I go to sleep in the chair, I have the Bible on my knees. I take it to bed with me. I don't want dreams.'

  'Dreams are all I have,' Isabel said.

  'Dreams are a doorway.'

  'Yesssss,' she said, excited.

  'You really don't understand, do you? Or maybe you don't want to.'

  'Simon, if the Abbey can send you bits and bobs and candles from the twelfth century, then it proves I've been right all this time. It's taken away the best of me ... and it can give it all back.'

  'No!' Beating his fist on the table. 'Whatever you got back you wouldn't want, believe me. Look - the candles. The candles it's been sending into the church. If they really are made from human grease, doesn't that tell you anything?'

  She looked into his eyes. They were gentle eyes, full of pain. Whatever he'd been, he was a good man now. But he also had the knowledge and, with him, maybe, just maybe, she could fly again.

  There was the jiggling sound of her mother's key in the door. For the sake of Simon's reputation more than hers, Isabel slid the bottle of whisky and their glasses along the table, behind her computer monitor.

  'Listen.' Simon whispered urgently. 'The night the thirteen candles came was the night Tom Storey killed his wife. The night John Lennon was shot. It was a bad night. The eighth of December.'

  'And seven years to the night,' Isabel said, as the door opened, 'since a young boy called Gareth and I took a dive from the south-west tower. But you knew that too, didn't you? It was what brought you to my door.'

  She smiled sweetly at him. 'And I've always wanted to watch a record being made.'

  'No way,' he said standing up. 'Just put it out of your mind.'

  'Oh no,' Isabel Pugh said. 'I don't think so.'

  XII

  Heart of Nowhere

  Until it was time to go to the airport, Stephen Case spent so much of the day on the phone he was sure his right ear must be bruised.

  He spoke to Sile Copesake in Gwent and Sile said softly, 'Simon St John: it's a provisional yes.'

  Dave Reilly called him, sounding hostile. The bottom line was maybe. Also, if he did confirm, he wanted Prof Levin as producer. Not engineer, producer. If that bastard Russell Hornby was anywhere within a hundred miles of the Abbey, the deal was off.

  'I'll see what I can do,' Steve said. Prof getting involved, this had been the idea all along, hadn't it?

  An hour later, Reilly's maybe was hardened by a call from Moira Cairns, who wouldn't say where she was. 'Mr Case, I'm prepared to come down and talk about it.' Lovely low Scottish burr, the voice had survived anyway.

  'Of course, Ms Cairns,' Steve said expansively. 'Whatever you think best.'

  The most curious call was from a woman called Meryl Coleford-Somers.

  Meryl C...?

  Hell, yes. Meryl. Mrs Whiplash.

  Meryl said, 'He's an important man. You must treat him with care, you hear me?'

  'Of course,' Steve said. 'It's what we're known for.'

  Meryl said, 'And he won't sign anything. Not this time, he says.'

  'Fine,' Steve said sensitively.

  'He'll have a car there the whole time, and if the situation becomes in any way difficult, he reserves the right to leave, as and when.'

  'I can accept that,' Steve said soothingly.

  'I shall be driving him,' she said. 'I'll be with him.' And Steve wrote on his memo pad,

  ??CALL BROADBANK!

  And finally Simon St John. The vicar. Referred to him by Sile Copesake. Cautious, naturally. He wanted them all booked into a hotel for at least one night before they went near the Abbey. At which, Steve became equally cautious, especially since St John said he would arrange the hotel himself. What did he want, to talk them all out of it? The conversation became a little tense. Steve sensed that if he didn't agree, St John would cry off, leaving Steve with Sile Copesake to deal with.

  He crossed his fingers, said OK. He took down directions to be passed on to Reilly and Cairns and, er, Meryl Coleford-Somers. Called up Sile to report this development, but Sile was out, and it was time anyway to summon TMM's chauffeured stretch Mercedes and have himself driven to Heathrow.

  Steve remembered the heady days when, if you were meeting a rock star off the plane, you'd have to beat a path through a thousand schoolgirls. Now it was only the paparazzi, and they wouldn't recognise this guy from any of the flash financiers flying in. Big in America wasn't the same.

  The British-born superstar said he'd kind of like to stay at the Ritz. He'd never stayed at the Ritz before. Last time he toured here, he wasn't quite big enough, and now he was, so he wanted to stay at the Ritz.

  In the back of the Mercedes, en route to the Ritz, Steve said, 'We're really glad you could make it, Lee.'

  A grin spread over Lee Gibson's swarthy pirate's face. He had a long, sharp nose and shoulder-length curly hair. He wore the kind of jacket of which Steve's was an imitation. Lee's was more creased.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'Be interesting to see what the years've done to those neurotic assholes.'

  Lee had been living in L.A. seven, eight years. There was a time, Steve remembered, when it was considered suitable in America for British rock stars to maintain their British regional accents, especially if it was London or Liverpool. Not any more, apparently.

  Lee also had a token Californian suntan, not enough of one to pose a melanoma risk, presumably. He gazed happily out of the Merc's middle window at all the grey-faced English people with tense expressions and umbrellas. Shot Steve another grin.

  'What a shithole, huh?'

  'Right,' Steve said.

  'You fixed up about the mobile home? No way'm I gonna stay in that tower again. Fucking freezing, man.'

  'It's ordered, Lee. Don't worry.'

  'I never worry, man,' said Lee. 'All my worries are sub-contracted to the highest bidder.'

  They both laughed, Steve through gritted teeth. Still unable to figure this out. Why should Lee Gibson, double-Grammy Award winner 1993, now among the top ten richest expatriate British rock musicians, have agreed to return to the country which failed to recognise his talent to reunite with a weird little band which had used him as a session-drummer?

  It was certainly a coup for TMM and for Sile Copesake who'd organised it. It would sell a lot of albums. But it didn't make a lot of sense.

  Surprising how sentimental people could be.

  The sight of the guitar behind glass turned Moira's heart to marshmallow.

  The guitar had a golden spruce top, rosewood body, an ebony fingerboard and mother of pearl around the soundhole.

  It wasn't as big as some of the Dreadnoughts, maybe the old jumbo size, with a thin back. But it was the most expensive instrument in the store by several hundred pounds. And it shimmered with memories.

  She had enough left for that and a new Ovation. Just about. If she was being really, really crazy.

  There hadn't, in fact, been much left in the deposit account at the Bank of Scotland by the time Moira had come out of there. Knowing full well that if she went all the way back to Skye to fetch her regular Ovation she'd find some excuse to stay there, she'd drawn out a whole five grand, gone shopping for clothes. Cold weather clothes.

&nbs
p; And for a guitar.

  There'd been a nice secondhand Ovation Glen Campbell in the store, but she'd settled for a humbler model because it was the only Ovation they had new. Secondhand was always a risk. Like, maybe the last owner had sold it to buy smack. With a secondhand, it could sometimes take a couple of months to play out the bad stuff (drugs, or depression due to failure, broken relationship, money trouble). She didn't have a couple of months and the last thing she needed was to take any bad stuff with her to the Abbey.

  To the Abbey. Black walls, death.

  Jesus, I can't believe I'm doing this.

  Malcolm had even been dialling the TMM number for her as she took the phone, like he was handing her a pistol to put in her mouth and helpfully cocking the hammer.

  This guy Steve Case had sounded like your standard record company executive trash. Throwing out phrases like Aelwyn the Dreamer to prove they had the tapes. Her being distant, shooting hostile rays down the mouthpiece - as if any 1990s record company exec would be sensitive enough to notice.

  But when he said, We've remodelled the Abbey, we're going to reopen it, she'd known at once what this was about and gone cold and still with the knowledge.

  Got to go back.

  The Duchess in the steam. The sad figures of lumbering Tom and Simon in his monk's robe and poor wee Davey fading away. So many years blocking it all out, avoiding the inevitable.

  Oh, Lord ...

  And when it finally comes back, it comes back over the phone from London, courtesy of some smooth, laid-back creep with a coke spoon in his inside pocket.

  Got to go back.

  For the healing.

  Who sang that? Van Morrison. Poor old Van, the eternal seeker after spiritual truth, redemption.

  If it had come last year, a month ago ... Christ, if it had come last week, she'd have hung up immediately. What did they think she was, a basket case?

  OK, she'd said, very quietly. I'll think about it. Call you back.

  And she had. Automatically, almost. With hardly a thought, except that she was no damn good to anybody, least of all herself, with the Duchess dead and the Abbey hanging over her.

  And when she'd done it - called him back first thing this morning - it was like some cosmic flunkey was suddenly running in front of her removing all the barriers. Malcolm having the rest of her stuff taxied over from the Clydeview Private Hotel.