December

by Phil Rickman

  A call back from Case's secretary to say the Reverend Simon St John had her booked into an inn a few miles from the Abbey. The Reverend! Jesus God, redemption took some strange, stony paths, didn't it just.

  And now she was pointing at the mellow-looking guitar in the air-conditioned showcase - the only exhibit in the store behind protective glass; all the other guitars were on racks, so the punters could pull them down, try a few chords.

  The young guy in charge said, 'You do know what mat is, don't you?'

  Looking down at her in his superior way, having no doubt cast her as a Mum pricing up Junior's first wee guitar for Christmas.

  And, hell, it was a lot of money. These imports just got more and more pricey; no way you'd pay that much in the States, no way at all.

  On the other hand, spending more money than she could afford would be a further statement of commitment, right? Leaving so abruptly, making no attempt to contact Simon or Tom, not even waiting for Davey to call back, all that was a demonstration of how insecure she still must be, underneath, about this thing. Having to act fast, get on the road, do some hard driving, before reason could prevail. We're no' safe together .. . we're too much. This, fourteen years ago, saying: We blew it, let's cut our losses, we're too inexperienced to handle this, let's get the hell out while we still can.

  Thinking she could leave it all behind, that none of it was going with her, that by being somewhere else, doing other things with other people, she could shake it off. Like purging the body of a need for drugs. Only purging the spirit was just so much harder.

  'Sure I know what it is,' she said to the store manager, almost snarling. 'It's an M38 Grand Auditorium. Now get the damn thing down before I change ma mind.'

  Leaving him flushed and dumbfounded as she walked out of the store, nearly three and half grand lighter, a guitar case in each hand. Thinking, you lucky wee swine, if you don't sell more than a pair of castanets the next fortnight you'll still have earned your Christmas bonus.

  Feeling better - terrified, but at least it had a focus - she headed south, eyes open.

  Eyes open, right?

  On her own now, but not naked.

  Oh God.

  At the pub, effortlessly hammering the locals at darts, Weasel had learned a good deal about thin Meryl, who, being of farming - or, rather farm labouring - stock, had a whole bunch of relatives hereabouts.

  Born out Bisley way into a big family, good-looker from an early age, never slow to exploit it. Big ideas. Too good for the local boys, except for the odd fumble behind the hedge, for the experience. Buggers off to Cheltenham, marries a businessman, Charles Somers, moves down to the West Country, but it don't last, couldn't be expected to, not with this lady.

  Divorced, Meryl high-tails it back to Cheltenham, teaches cookery for a few years at some snooty school. Succession of blokes, then talk of her going all religious, but, like weird-religious. Finally fetches up as 'cook-housekeeper' to that Councillor Broadbank - talk about a slippery bastard.

  So how would you feel - Weasel asking - if she'd pissed off with your, er, best mate?

  So much merry laughter at that one that the poor sodding landlord must've been scared it'd bring half his beams down.

  Next morning, Weasel stakes out this Hall Farm for an hour or two, parking in the village half a mile away. Watches Broadbank cruising off about ten then has a little nose around.

  True enough, all quiet, no Meryl. The slippery bastard was on the level this time.

  Weasel motored over to the Love-Storey wholesale depot in Stroud to borrow the phone. He rang Directory Enquiries and got a number for Dave Reilly's old ma in Hoylake - it being Dave who'd directed him to Tom when he come out of pokey, so worth a shot.

  Phone was answered by an unknown male, elderly. Maybe Dave had got hisself a new daddy.

  'David? Gone off with his girlfriend, pal.'

  'Girlfriend? Who? Where's she hang out?'

  'Scottish girl. She rang here for him, like you, yesterday. We gave her his London number.'

  'Which is?'

  'Hang on. Rhoda, what's that number for your David?' But when Weasel rang the London number some geezer, gave his name as Adrian, said irritably that Dave Kite (Dave Kite?) wasn't here no more, no idea where he'd gone, he'd had to clear off in a hurry this morning so that he, Adrian, could take up residence as was his right under the deal with Muthah Mirth.

  Scottish girl?

  Couldn't be, could it?

  Nah.

  Dave, at the wheel of the grumbling old Fiat, was trying to remember coming across the Severn Bridge before. Didn't remember the mud flats, water like sheet-metal, or the crazy toll they made you pay to go into Wales. The fact that they let you out for nothing, if you were in any state to get yourself out … Was this an omen?

  give yourself a break, Dave. Pretend there's no such things as omens, yeh?

  'That's bloody rich. You believed in them. Least, she did, Yoko, which amounted to the same thing. And fate …'

  don't fucking start, Reilly ...

  '... And how you could change the whole pattern of your life if you went off in some pre-arranged direction along a certain line of latitude, some crap like that. Is it right she used to put you on a plane for somewhere you'd never heard of, because it would be quote good for you unquote, and you never argued, you just went? "Directional Therapy", right?'

  don't push it, Dave.

  'All I'm saying is, how is that any more stupid than what I'm doing now? Moira just leaves a message on me answer phone and I leap up and pack me bags - yeh, yeh, I had to leave there anyway, but ...'

  did I say it was stupid? Listen, if there's only one woman you ever connected with, sooner or later you've gorra go for it. Even if you're wading into a river of shit with no wellies.

  Curiously, the countryside seemed greener, better-wooded on the Welsh side of the bridge. And undulating; already there were hills, easy, rounded hills. He came off the motorway at Chepstow; should've waited for the Abergavenny exit, but he wanted to take it slowly.

  On the basis that he couldn't believe he was here.

  It was a bright, cold morning. December 4. Bright and cold and unreal. The further he drove into the green border country, the more detached he became, the deeper the feeling of unreality.

  'Suppose she's not there.'

  No reply.

  'I said, suppose ...'

  He peered into the rear-view mirror. It was clear, no mist, just a reflection of the road from Chepstow to Monmouth. Ahead of him was the wide, wooded canyon of the Wye Valley.

  He drove around a bend and - Christ!

  The abbey ruins were enormous. They filled the car windows, blocked out the forestry and the river and half the sky. He was thrown into panic, wanted to slam the Fiat into reverse, swing round in the road, race for the border.

  wrong Abbey, Dave.

  'What?'

  'Tintern. This is Tintern Abbey. A very famous national monument.

  'I ...'

  The ruins were massive, far too massive. And manicured, and spread out like an enormous medieval film set.

  Unreal. There was no reality here. This abbey was a tourist attraction. There was scaffolding all over it; winter maintenance. This abbey was dead.

  The road slid into the village of Tintern and Dave stopped the car, bowed his head over the steering wheel and took long, deep breaths. He sat back, leaned his head over the seat back.

  What am I doing here?

  Suppose the other Abbey - that Abbey - did not exist except in some maverick sphere of the imagination. Suppose he was driving in wild pursuit of an impossible dream. Suppose that he'd manufactured Moira's voice on his answering machine. That when he'd called Kaufmann's office and heard the secretary say, 'I'm sorry, Moira's left, said to tell you she'll meet you at the Abbey, does that make any sense? What she'd really said was, I'm

  sorry, there's no one called Kaufmann here and I've never heard of Moira, perhaps you have the wrong ...

 
; He sat at the wheel several minutes with the engine running, shaking as violently as the gearstick, before forcing himself to go into a phone kiosk, feeling in his pocket for the out-of-date diary in which he'd written Kaufmann's and Stephen Case's numbers.

  Trying to call Case, it was just like being in one of those blurred, inexact dreams; his fingers kept hitting the wrong buttons and he'd have to keep starting over.

  He felt pitifully grateful when the crisp female voice answered TMM?' And almost a warm affection for the cool, offhand, 'Dave, glad you called. You need to know that Simon St John's booked you a room at a pub called ... have you got a pen?'

  He must have been looking strange because, when he left the phone box, clutching his diary, an elderly couple stared at him - he a retired colonel type with a tight, grey military moustache and she with knife-crease trousers, silk scarf and, around her fine, white coiffure ... a very pronounced quivering nimbus of deepening purple and black.

  No. No! No! No! The old couple staring at him and then turning and hurrying away, Dave laid his head against the cool, wet windscreen of his Fiat.

  December again. Maybe, this time of year, tension thrust his psychic circuitry into overload, feeding his mind with misinformation. Maybe his eyes were going, he needed glasses. Maybe he had a brain tumour.

  nobody said it teas gonna be easy, Dave. Sometimes you just gorra take the rough with the rough.

  'Bugger off,' Dave said.

  The Castle Inn was on the old Hereford road, eight miles east of the Abbey, almost under the Skirrid. Despite its name, it was no older than the century, a bright, compact place; it felt OK.

  Simon decided it would do.

  Going directly to the Abbey would be beyond crazy; they needed to meet, talk things over, work out some kind of strategy. Maybe the closeness of the Skirrid would help. His head felt like a spin-drier. Everything was happening at whirlwind speed, and yet it seemed as if time had been slowed, the machine pre-programmed to accommodate everything that needed to be arranged.

  Sile Copesake had been on the phone at ten a.m. Calling from where? From the Abbey? He hadn't even thought to ask. Sile had told him, in essence, that the other members of the Philosopher's Stone had been contacted and were ready to record within the week. Sile had given him the number of a man called Stephen Case at TMM, who would be co-ordinating the operation.

  Simon couldn't believe the way it was happening. In his admittedly limited experience, recording sessions usually took months to set up. He felt as if he was spiralling in a vortex. Which was exactly how it had happened last time, fourteen years ago. Whisked into Goff's magical new studio. The psychology: don't give them time to think too hard.

  The other difference being that, then, they'd believed it was safe. Holy ground. Now they knew nowhere was safe, least of all the Abbey. This time, they were going to have to be prepared. Physically and spiritually.

  Hence, the Castle Inn. He'd called Stephen Case, given him very detailed directions. Said he would be booking four rooms; no way could this band be plunged cold into the Abbey. To his slight surprise. Case had eventually said OK; he'd pass on the information.

  Needing for there to be at least one technical difficulty, some small moral or ethical hitch, he'd called his bishop. And the Bishop had said, to his incredulous dismay, 'Simon, what an absolutely splendid idea, I had absolutely no idea you were a musician. I think it's awfully important for the Church to be involved in aspects of youth-culture, and ... I say, let's tell the Press!'

  Simon had talked him out of that one, at least. For the present.

  When he got back to the vicarage after checking out the Castle Inn and its ambience he found an envelope behind the door. No stamp.

  SIMON, it said.

  And over the top of that,

  PRIVATE. URGENT.

  The note inside was handwritten.

  I've been trying to get hold of you since last night. If you don't know already. I've had one of the brown candles analysed. It's believed to be made from animal fat, possibly human. I'm afraid I was forced to call in the police. Expect a visit from Supt. GA Jones. Try and see me before he sees you, for God's sake.

  Eddie

  Simon read the note twice.

  'I really thought it was simply tallow,' he whispered, as if the policeman was already questioning him. 'Tallow, brown with age.'

  He went to the study window to check the lane.

  Nobody about, thank God. Quietly, he let himself out of the house and ran to his car.

  'Thought I was leaving it behind, see, transferring to Gwent,' mused Gwyn Arthur to Eddie Edwards over pints of Welsh bitter in the Dragon.

  'Filthy weather?'

  'Not exactly that. Not only that. The things that happened in the West that you had problems explaining in a police report. I thought that here, being so close to the Border and barely an hour from Cardiff, it would all be so much less ... do you know the word "numinous"?'

  Eddie Edwards, never a man to throw his academic background in anyone's face, said he thought he probably did.

  'Well, like that,' Gwyn Arthur said, cleaning out his pipe with his car key. 'Know why I sent myself on this job instead of one of my youngsters? Because I had a feeling, Eddie. A feeling.'

  He craned his neck to see out of the window, where the pub's tiny car park went into a drastic slope towards the valley road. 'Where's that go to?'

  'Abaty Ystrad Ddu' said Eddie, 'to quote the bilingual sign which disappeared last year and was never replaced. Now, as far is the Welsh Office highways department is concerned, it goes to the heart of nowhere.'

  Gwyn nodded. 'Feelings,' he said. 'Not much place for feelings any more in police work. If it isn't on the National Computer we don't want to know.'

  'Like everything else, these days.'

  'My day off, this is. Can't leave well alone, can I? Your vicar, now, think he knows all about those candles? Why is he avoiding me?'

  'You think he might know something about it?'

  'And the rest,' said Gwyn Arthur. 'And the rest.'

  'And what do you think the rest is?'

  'I think,' said Gwyn Arthur, 'that we shall probably see. And soon. The Heart of Nowhere", you said? Very good. I like that.'

  Part Four

  I

  Old Love

  Out of the brown hedges, above the fields of sheep and cows, a hill jutted like a cut thumb. It jolted Dave; it was the first landmark he'd recognised since crossing the Severn Bridge.

  The Skirrid. The Holy Hill, said to have been split by an earthquake or a bolt of lightning when the darkness fell over Calvary. You never forgot the Skirrid.

  Rusting, late-afternoon clouds were setting respectfully around the summit of the hill. It did nothing to dispel the dream state.

  And at that moment, in this narrow, switchback lane, the Fiat's engine began to die. Dave trod the accelerator flat to the rubber mat, but the energy was draining away into a parched kind of death-rattle.

  He didn't say shit or anything like that. He didn't shake the wheel or thump the dash. He felt curiously calm when the old car finally gave up the ghost on the single-track country lane, within pushing distance of a gated field-entrance.

  Dave shrugged. He got out, let the handbrake off, walked the car down a gentle gradient into the field entrance, applied the hand brake, locked the car and left it there, his suitcase in the boot.

  And walked off along the road.

  He knew it must be getting cold, it was, after all, December, but it didn't feel cold. He was wearing an old grey cotton jacket over a polo-neck sweater.

  The deserted lane led in almost a direct line towards the Skirrid. It was as if some form of magnetism in the rock had stilled the engine. Like he was destined to do this stretch on foot. Like it was all meant.

  Dave walked towards the mountain. It only looked like a mountain because it was on its own in the fields, the only mark on the sky, a solitary pilgrim in a wintry wasteland.

  There ought to be a sen
se of sacred peace, but there wasn't. Close up, the hill looked crooked, crippled. There was a cindery projection, like a scab, a wound only partly-healed. More than anything, the feeling the Skirrid was giving off was one of unrest. Dave remembered seeing it for the first time in 1980. Max Goff had sent each of them a guidebook to the area to prove what a safe and sanctified spot this was. The booklet told how local people had collected holy soil from the God-smitten hill. How tons of the stuff had been carried down and dumped in the foundations of churches, the way alleged splinters from the One True Cross had once been handed around.

  There was supposed to have been a chapel up near the top dedicated to St Michael, God's senior bruiser, but there wasn't much left of it, apparently.

  And it just didn't feel holy.

  Maybe these legends were thrown up not so much by Christianity as ancient paganism. Other places, it was less exalted - you had a strange-looking chunk out of a hill, it was caused by some giant with big boots. Here, inside a wide circle of medieval castles and abbeys, it had to be an Act of God. Dismayed by developments in the Middle East, the Almighty decides to punch a hole in a small mountain in South Wales. Divine logic.

  The nearness of the Skirrid made him think of the Abbey half a dozen miles the other side. And that led to thoughts of Moira Cairns and an image of a woman trailing a guitar along a beach, the word deathoak scrawled in the sand, and the hideous bonnet and an echo of Prof Levin asking, after hearing the Black Album, if she was still alive and everything.

  And am I ever gonna see you again?

  I doubt it

  I doubt it.

  Bloody song kept drifting into his head. He hated that song. That song was the worst thing he'd ever done.

  can't take it back now, Dave.

  'Shut up,' he screamed at the song locked in his brain. 'Shut the fuck up, will you?'