December

by Phil Rickman

  'What do you want me to do?'

  'Just listen to what I've got in mind. If you think that's OK, I'll go back down and lay it on them.'

  'OK,' Moira said. 'Lay it on me first. Like, the way I see it, we play by our rules this time or we're taking our ball home.'

  The feeling of pushing Copesake and Case around, putting them on the spot, this was almost as good as a drink.

  Well, somebody had to help these people. If they'd got in some shit last time, being produced by Russell Hornby couldn't have helped. It was all a question of which side you were on.

  Russell was a management man and therefore rich enough to own a Roller, whereas Prof was a musician's man and lucky to be allowed to produce his very first album at the age of sixty-four.

  Copesake and Case. Pair of wankers. Stuff 'em.

  And this was what Simon was doing.

  Prof was starting to like this vicar. He was kind of suave.

  Also he had the authority now that was invested in you by virtue of having God and the Skirrid on your side.

  Simon had returned to his seat by the fire. It was getting towards last-orders time, although the way the local punters were not clustering around the bar suggested this was academic at the Castle Inn on a Saturday night.

  'Here's the deal,' Simon said. 'It's not open to negotiation.'

  Steve Case looked immediately hostile. Sile Copesake leaned back and sipped his pint of mild.

  'We go in on Monday,' Simon said quietly. 'We go in for a week. At the end of that period we give you the new tapes, you give us the old tapes, the 1980 recordings, and you sign away all rights to them. Our management will be in touch about contracts, including Prof's, early next week.'

  Management? Prof thought, what management?

  'Hang on,' Steve Case said. 'How do we know ...?'

  'You don't,' Simon said. 'You trust us. We go in alone. We aren't disturbed. Nobody comes near. When it's over, we come out.'

  'That's irregular,' Steve said, it's our premises.'

  'That's the deal,' Simon said.

  Sile Copesake unhurriedly finished his pint, set his tankard down on the table, wiped froth from his lips with the back of a hand.

  'Fair enough,' he said.

  For Prof - maybe for all of them - it was a strangely dispiriting moment of anti climax. A dead moment.

  IV

  Whatever Gets You

  Through the Night

  Well?' Moira asked playfully. 'Can you still respect me?'

  She and Dave had slept together.

  Dave said, 'You made me the second happiest man in world.'

  They were in Moira's car, the muddy old BMW, skirting Abergavenny under an ice-white sky.

  'OK, I'll buy it,' she said after a while. 'Who's actually the happiest?'

  'Whoever it was you were fantasizing about,' Dave said.

  It was a cheap, throwaway line. He remembered using it once with Jan, who'd then presented him with a list including Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas and Richard Gere. At least, he said, you didn't say Rowan Atkinson. Oh, and Rowan Atkinson Jan had said, but only when I opened my eyes.

  All this was academic, anyway, because Dave and Moira slept together only in the literal sense, entwined on Dave's bed fully clothed. Innocent as children. A Martin guitar at their feet like a dog.

  Now, away from there, it wasn't easy to believe this had happened. Or, rather, that nothing had happened.

  Moira was driving; he was aching for her.

  He studied her. Her black hair was almost down on her shoulders. It had been much longer before and tangly. There was a single vein of grey, which looked exotic. She wore no make-up. She'd changed her sweatshirt for an off-white jumper with a textured black sheep on the front.

  Last night, everything about last night, had been hermetically sealed against reality. The dream-medium had been congealing around him as the day wore on, from crossing the Severn Bridge.

  A state of mind never remotely real enough for sex.

  Moira said, 'You really want to know who I was thinking about. Who I dreamed about?'

  They were on a dual-carriageway, hills either side alive with sheep and cows and horses, farms and cottages with smoking chimneys. No sign of the Skirrid.

  They'd awoken early, cold. Moira had said. Let's get out of here before Tom's about. Things to discuss, not for Tom's ears. By half-past nine they'd driven fifty miles in a big circle and eaten greasily in a transport cafe.

  It was there that Dave, scalding his hand pouring tea from a chromium pot with a loose lid, had asked her why. Fourteen years. All those letters, all those cards. The fruitless pilgrimage. Fourteen years. Fourteen years.

  Why?

  'There's no easy answer, Davey. If there was an easy answer I'd give it you.'

  'It might have been presumptuous,' Dave said, 'it might have been wishful-thinking, it might have been the arrogance of youth, but I kind of had hopes for us.'

  'Wouldn't have worked. Would've been disastrous.'

  'That's what you said on the night - that night. I didn't understand it then, I don't understand it now.'

  'We were carrying too much baggage, Davey.'

  'I accept that. But you can jettison excess baggage, can't you? We just needed a breathing space.'

  'Did you manage to jettison your excess baggage, Davey?'

  'That's not fair.'

  'Did you?'

  'No. It gets heavier and bulkier all the time. But I do think we could have helped one another.'

  'Or killed one another.'

  'You don't mean that.'

  Moira had said, 'Something killed my mother.' But declined to explain.

  'Tom Storey,' Weasel said. 'Yeah, that Tom Storey.'

  Sunday morning, and he was getting impatient. Gone through his list of mates; most of the people he was calling now could barely remember him, who he was, whose amps he used to carry out of the van into major gigs - the Albert Hall, once.

  It was all so long ago. Reminders was called for. Luckily Tom Storey was still a magic name to most of them.

  Vanessa was with him in Shelley's office, back of the house. It was the effect on the Princess that was getting to him most, always such a happy kid, would skip around singing to herself, saying hello to miserable gits like the late Sir Wilf. Even when Vanessa looked solemn, you knew she was happy inside.

  Today, Vanessa was not happy inside or outside.

  'Nah, see I'll be straight wiv you.' Weasel said down the blower. 'My instinct says somefink's going down at TMM, and this Meryl's - nah, it don't matter who she is, some tart - this Meryl's been set up to, like, lure Tom into ... Nah ... he ain't. He's, like, dead innocent. A big innocent.'

  Funny thing. Since Tom had disappeared, Weasel was seeing much more of the big guy in Vanessa. This had never been obvious before, whose daughter she was - well, like, obviously, the ways their faces was arranged, these kids. But Tom, the times he was at peace with the world, had a kind face, too.

  'He's stubborn, don't get me wrong. Like a big mule. But, like, if you know how to handle him, he'll follow you around. Listen, Steve Case, there's a guy called Steve Case. Where's he at now ...? Yeah ... Gotta be. Too much coincidence.'

  Weasel had on the phone a geezer worked in maintenance at the TMM building. See, the thing about most of these people is what you might think of as humble positions with record companies was that they was generally all into the music. So you mentioned the name Tom Storey to, say, a caretaker of a certain age and you had his full attention. Like telling a pensioner you'd been to bed with Vera Lynn. It was a magic name, on account of Tom's playing had given a lot of people a lot of pleasure and he was like an icon, and even on a Sunday morning …

  'Sorry, wossa name again?' Weasel scrabbled on Shelley's desk for paper. 'Yeah, right, gimme that again ...'

  What he had now was the home number of a secretarial assistant in admin at TMM who used to work - this was especially good - at Epidemic. In the old days, Tom - Weasel too -
used to spend a lot of time around the Epidemic offices, chatting up the ladies and that. How the big guy'd met Shelley, in fact. Tom had actually known Shelley a year or two before Debs, and afterwards, Shelley was the obvious shoulder - well, breast - to cry on while he was fixing up to make his miserable solo album, Second Storey, the one everybody tried to forget about ...

  'Hello? Yeah, that Barbara Walker? Oh. Yeah, if you could, Beasley. Eric Beasley. Nah, she prob'ly don't know me ...'

  He smiled at Vanessa, who was sitting in the window hugging a cushion. 'I'll find him, Princess, 'fit's the last ... Hello, Barbara Walker? My name's Eric B ... Well, ah ... yeah, it is. Weasel, yeah! It's not ... Ginger? Nah! Ginger Hodge! Fuck me! I never even knew your name was Barbara. That was your daughter, was it? Blimey, little Ginger Hodge.'

  Now this - this was a stroke of luck. Ginger Hodge'd been the junior at Epidemic, all starry-eyed. Ginger Hodge was the kid Weasel had once driven - and her mate, nothing like that - up the Ml to Brum to catch Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers … '77 was that, or was it later? Time went by so fast. Little Ginger Hodge with a teenage daughter.

  Weasel was on the phone with Ginger Hodge best part of an hour. Vanessa came and went twice and was back again by the time Weasel hung up, head full of enough info to keep him going all day, thinking and reasoning.

  'How's it going. Weasel?' Shelley asked tiredly, head around the door, hair uncombed. This was a first; never seen her before without the full gloss. Shelley had been natural gloss - what she was about, health foods, vitamins.

  The shit people took from Tom. Bastard. No excuse this time.

  Weasel did some rapid thinking. Anything he told her she was going to pass on to this Broadbank, who might be OK, but might not, living with Morticia, ducking and diving in the business world, the local council ...

  'Hard going, Shel,' Weasel said heavily.

  Shelley said, 'I just don't subscribe to your theory that Meryl has to be somehow in this with Case. I think she's just fallen for Tom.'

  Her face looking pinched, quite middle-aged, you had admit it. Weasel felt desperately sorry.

  'I mean, not in the way that women used to, Weasel, and that was never a major problem. But it's clear from what Martin says that she's hungry for some, I don't know, other worldly experience. Women think they've got problems if somebody's after their husband's body, but when it's his … I don't even know what to call it. "Mind" doesn't even close.'

  He wanted to tell her what he'd learned: how, just lately Sile Copesake had been spending hours locked in an office with Steve Case. Sile Copesake, whose band Tom had joined in a screwed-up state on the rebound from the Brain Police after a prediction about Carlos their manager's accident what put the slave-driving bastard in Stoke Mandeville. Sile Copesake, who would know all about Tom's extra-sensory wotsit, who was now a big cheese on the TMM board of directors.

  He wanted to tell her this and a lot more he'd got from little Ginger Hodge, sweet kid, delighted to help, promising to find out more and call him back Monday.

  But, in the end, Weasel kept shtumm. He told himself that this was to spare Shelley unnecessary grief.

  What he wanted, though, what he needed, was to find Tom himself. And the big guy better come up with some good answers else Weasel was gonna butt him in the balls.

  Bastard.

  It was an important, much-valued part of clerical tradition for the vicar to hang around outside the church door after morning service for the purpose of shaking hands with each and every member of the congregation.

  'Mrs Watkins, how are you? And how's Ted's knee?'

  The vicar was also required to update his mental file on each of them.

  'Get your car fixed in the end, Mr Willey?'

  Simon had returned far later than he'd intended last night. Tom and Meryl had gone to bed, perhaps to conduct an impromptu therapy session. Simon had stayed behind in the emptying bar, having a final coffee and talking to Prof. Hearing about Barney Gwilliam and Soup Kitchen. And Dave.

  At least he didn't have Dave's particular problem.

  Ah, good morning, Mr Ellis. Tell me, is that your aura or is that chimney of yours smoking again?

  So here he was, all smiling and jolly at the church door, while chewing himself up inside, anxious to get away, get back to the Castle Inn. One day to organise themselves. It wasn't enough, but it was all they had.

  'Mrs Jarman,' he said warmly to the last parishioner, a nice, sparky-eyed old lady leaning over her Zimmer frame to shake his hand with both of hers, as if he was a healing force. 'God bless you for coming. Fantastic to see you on your feet again.'

  'Seeing me on mine, now,' another voice said caustically, 'that really would be a sight for sore bloody eyes.'

  Ah. He'd wondered where she'd gone. She'd been all too noticeable during the service, chair parked behind the pews.

  Isabel Pugh, chartered accountant of this parish, looking businesslike and deceptively demure in a charcoal-grey, tailored two-piece suit.

  Now everyone had left, even Eddie Edwards, and the two of them were alone together outside the little grey cowshed church and Isabel, her head about two and half feet below his, was looking very much like an immovable object under the hard, white sky.

  'Where were you last night?' Asked rather mildly, for her.

  'Bugger,' said Simon, 'I clean forgot that I was supposed be reporting to you, every hour, on the hour.'

  Isabel's shiny hair was freshly and stylishly highlighted with gold. He wondered where she had it done; or did the hairdresser come to her? He found himself wanting to touch it. Silly.

  'My information,' she said casually, 'is that you were out the other side of Pandy, at the Castle Inn.'

  'Really.' God, she must be running an intelligence network from that chair.

  'And your friends.' Her eyes glowed amber. He read them like traffic lights. Caution. 'Quite a little party, according to my information.'

  'Don't tell me,' Simon said. 'You do the Castle Inn accounts, right?' Two confirmatory dimples appeared, distressingly appealing, in Isabel's creamy cheeks.

  It was another side of her. He was more comfortable with the embittered cripple, selfish and aggressive and determined to shock. Perhaps that was the act, because being pitied was demeaning.

  'I'd like to meet them,' Isabel said. 'You get so fed up the same old miserable faces.'

  'Isabel,' Simon said delicately, 'you don't know what miserable faces are like until you've met these people. Besides …'

  'I thought about just turning up last night. It didn't seem polite, though.'

  'How would you ...?'

  'I've got a van,' Isabel said. 'Wheel on, wheel off. Hand controls. It's behind the house. Don't get it out much. Hate driving. Like driving your own ambulance. Or your own hearse. It would have embarrassed you, anyway, me creaking in. Especially if there was one of them you're sweet on. A bloke I mean.'

  'There isn't,' Simon said. 'You evil-minded bitch. Anyway, my warning remains. Any involvement here would be seriously detrimental to your well-being.'

  'Well-being! Simon, when you're a fallen woman, in every sense, the only way is up.'

  'Wrong,' Simon said. 'And you've got to start believing me. Vicars don't lie.'

  Isabel said, 'You make me so mad that if I could feel my foot I'd stamp it.'

  'Can I push you home?' Simon smiled sweetly. 'Save electricity?'

  'Nobody pushes me anywhere. Vicar.'

  His smile vanished as he thought of hurling her from the top the tower and crawling towards the black monk, exposed. The aching, slavering desire he'd felt in his dream replaced now with dark disgust, lodged like an old, cold brick in his chest.

  'Look,' he almost shouted, virtually unaware of what he was going to say until it was out. 'You're good with other people's money. How would you like to manage a rock band?'

  Moira changed down to second gear for the steep hill into the village. Dave remembered this place, especially the overhanging rock with the V-sh
aped fissure, the December sky sombre above it: darkness at the break of noon, again.

  'John Lennon,' she said. 'That was who I kept dreaming about. Once, I awoke convinced he was in the room with us.'

  They'd driven around in another circle, this time a smaller one. A sign had said Ystrad Ddu 5. They'd looked at one another and then nodded simultaneously, reluctantly, neither of them happy about it. Moira had said she didn't want to go there for the first time with the whole bunch of them tomorrow. Sure, sometimes there was safety in numbers; but sometimes, also, this was an illusion.

  And there were going to be no illusions this time.

  'I didn't bring him with me, Davey.'

  'Bring who?'

  Moira sighed. 'John Lennon.'

  'Sorry.' Dave cupped his hands over his face. He decided to tell her everything.

  Meryl and Tom came down to a late breakfast and were surprised to find themselves alone in a tiny, panelled dining-room, seated beneath a pastel-hued watercolour painting of serene nuns under an azure sky.

  'Shit,' said Tom. 'Find another table, quick.'

  'This is the only one laid,' Meryl pointed out.

  Tom stabbed a calloused forefinger at the picture. 'You know what that is? It's a fucking omen.'

  'Is that the Abbey? It looks quite pleasant.'

  'I've heard of artistic bleeding licence,' said Tom. 'But that is a joke'

  'Perhaps it's a good omen, have you thought of that? It looks so pretty.' Meryl smiled at the pink-checked waitress. 'I think I'll just have a boiled egg. What are you having, Tom?'

  'Coffee. Black.'

  'Too much caffeine ...' Meryl began, and then stopped. He was married to a health food dealer; he'd know all about caffeine.

  Besides, she was coming to realise how unwise it was to lecture Tom about anything. He was a good man, but he was also a difficult man.

  Meryl thought about the devious but essentially bland Martin Broadbank and wondered if he'd made the inevitable move on Shelley Storey yet. In a way she hoped he had. Hoped, too, that Shelley had accepted it. Meryl liked everyone to be happy.

  She thought about Stephen Case and his impassive colleague. How they'd reduced what she now thought of as the Abbey Experience to a matter of money and image. Both of them closer to Martin's viewpoint than to Tom's. But at least Martin got some sort of pleasure out of it, was not so grim and humourless.