The Wine of Angels

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Why don’t you just go back to bed?’

  ‘What bloody bed?’ Merrily leaned over the stove with a cigarette in her mouth, wondering if there was somewhere to ignite it; evidently there wasn’t.

  ‘I’m quite sure,’ Jane said primly, ‘that your God wouldn’t want you to smoke like a chimney.’

  ‘Listen, flower, if you can find the bit in the Bible where it says that ...’

  ‘All right, sorry. Just because I had a decent night’s sleep and you didn’t.’

  ‘That’s because you’re a child. An innocent. Look, I don’t suppose, if I were to mind your toast, you could run upstairs and fetch my Zippo from the bathroom?’

  Jane raised her eyes cynically to the ceiling and trotted off. Merrily stood resting her forehead on folded arms on the plate rack over the stove.

  Stress? Hell, she’d only been here a month. It hadn’t started yet. She wasn’t even official until the end of the week, and people were still not sure where to find her. There were communion classes to organize, visits to the primary school, the senior citizens’ social club, an invitation to address the WI ...

  And there’d be more, much more. Domestic situations where, as she’d learned in Liverpool, a clergyman would never have been approached. Failing marriages. Problem kids. Spiteful, invalid mothers who declined to die. Any one of which would make something like the Wil Williams controversy seem precious and fatuous.

  She needed to get it all into perspective. She’d wander over to the church after breakfast, when Jane had gone to school, and she wouldn’t come out until she felt purged.

  Although it was more than an hour before the school bus was due, Jane didn’t see much point in hanging around an empty house with a grouchy parent. Besides, it was good walking about the village before most people were up and about. It sparkled, as though the air itself were alive. Strange.

  And she might see Miss Devenish.

  The need to see Miss Devenish was, in fact, pretty urgent. Firstly, she had to thank her for whatever she did on Saturday night. Secondly, there was the question of Lol Robinson. The way that guy Karl had been winding him up, the talk of suicide and Kurt Cobain and Nick Drake ... and then Colette implying that Lol was already wound so tight he couldn’t go out in the dark without Miss Devenish to hold his hand.

  Karl was obviously the Karl Windling (bass, backing vocals) mentioned on the back of the CD. Karl was offering to kickstart Lol’s career again. And on the evidence of the album, for which Lol had written all the songs, Lol was good, Lol was brilliant. But for some reason he didn’t want to go back, and it wasn’t just a case of playing hard to get. He hadn’t even wanted to see Karl; he’d been afraid to see Karl. So why was he in this state? Why was he hiding himself away in Ledwardine? Why was he alone? Why had the cool, beautiful Alison left him for the horrible and grotesquely old James Bull-Davies?

  Money and status probably. Actually, what was even more strange was how someone as sensitive as Lol had ever got involved with someone as glossy and superficial as Alison.

  It all made Jane feel anxious, in a rather thrilling way. And protective, because Karl Windling was such a bully. She tried to feel the state of mind you’d have to be in to want to just end your life. Where you didn’t want to do anything else in the world ever again, or go anywhere, or love anyone. Or write another sad song.

  She couldn’t imagine it. She was probably emotionally backward. Though, perhaps, in some cases, it was just kind of an impulse thing. Especially if you were already more than a bit unstable.

  She wondered where Miss Devenish lived. No point in going to the shop this early. But Miss Devenish and Jane, they needed to talk.

  It was going to be another warm day. She walked up to the square, school books in a canvas airline bag over one shoulder, school blazer over the other. Nearly forty-five minutes to kill before the bus was due. School: French and economics and maths, then double games. She looked up into a tide of flawless blue coming in over a smooth sandbank of early cloud. What, really, was the point of going to sodding school today when there was so much she needed to learn here in the village? Schoolwork, essays and stuff, you could always get over that with a bit of effort. Real life ... not so easy.

  A snatch of one of Lol’s songs kept coming back to her.

  ... and it’s always on the sunny days

  you feel you can’t go on.

  That album was sending her signals. She just knew that the girls Karl Windling had seen in Andy’s Records in Hereford had been the friends of Colette’s who’d bought the album.

  It was all fated: Jane Watkins was somehow destined to rescue the tragic Lol Robinson. The cobbles glittered in affirmation. Strange.

  It wasn’t a schoolgirl crush, of course. Nothing so immature. Anyway, he was old enough to be her father. No, this was on an altogether higher level.

  She’d known last night, when she’d first opened the brown-paper bag and seen the name of the band on the front of the CD. The band formed by Lol Robinson over fifteen years ago, before she was born. Or perhaps ... perhaps exactly at the time she was born.

  Some kind of omen; it had to be. The name so exactly summing up the way she was feeling. Had been feeling since ... well, Saturday night.

  Lol’s old band had been called – eerily – Hazey Jane.

  Hardly even thinking about what she was doing, Jane wandered past the market cross and into the cool, secretive shade of Blackberry Lane, the trees overhead throbbing and pulsing with spring. Spring like she’d never felt it before.

  A grey van was parked outside the church. Who could that be? The main door was still shut, so Merrily went round the back with her fat bunch of jailer’s keys.

  However, the small, south-east door, leading in by the Bull Chapel, was already ajar. As she slipped inside, there was a vast discordant wail from the organ, and she jumped, alarmed. An organ in an empty church was a spooky sound.

  ‘See?’ Dermot Child’s voice called out. ‘It’s sticking. I’ve tried working it up and down.’

  ‘Hmm. May need replacing. You can’t keep on bodging these things for ever.’

  Midlands accent. Obviously Mr Gerald Watts, the organ repair man from Bromsgrove. Ted had mentioned him; his phone number was in the book of essential parish contacts. And Dermot had remarked the other week that the organ would soon need some attention.

  ‘Problem is, Dermot, I’d have to make one to fit. Can you manage like this for a couple of weeks?’

  ‘Sounds like I haven’t got a choice.’

  Merrily slid into the Bull Chapel. It was separated from the organ by an eighteenth-century wooden screen, so they couldn’t see each other, she and Dermot and Mr Watts, the organ man. She stood with her back to the screen, didn’t want to interrupt them.

  ‘So what’s the damage, Gerry? Roughly. If it’s over fifty, I’ll need to check it with the vicar.’

  Sunlight fanned in through the chapel’s leaded window and pooled in the eyes of Thomas Bull. They were fully open. She hadn’t really noticed that before. It was disturbing, abnormal. His lids surely should be lowered, displaying for eternity the familiar and usually false humility of the wealthy dead.

  ‘All right, what I’ll do, Dermot, if it’s looking a bit heavy I’ll send a copy of the estimate to Hayden, but I’ll give you a ring first, so you’ll know.’

  ‘It isn’t Hayden any more.’

  ‘Lord, no, I’d forgotten. Saw her picture in the Hereford Times. Looked like a pretty fair swap to me, unless it was an unusually flattering photo.’

  ‘Didn’t do her justice, Gerry. Didn’t do her justice. Absolute little cracker. I tell you, it’s bloody hard to concentrate on your playing sometimes.’

  Merrily was aware of smiling. What, in the end, could you say?

  ‘Must be a new experience for you,’ Mr Watts said.

  ‘Fancying the vicar. Least, I hope it is.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing, Gerry. It’s a bit like nurses. The uniform gives it an added some
thing. She’s being very traditional – I suppose she’s a bit insecure – and she wears this long, supposedly shapeless black cassock. Only on her it’s not shapeless at all. You get bumps in all the right places. And it’s got about a hundred buttons down the front, and you imagine yourself undoing them all, very slowly, one by one. Oh God.’

  Merrily’s face began to burn.

  Mr Watts said, ‘What d’you reckon they wear underneath?’

  ‘Exactly. What do they wear underneath? You could go mad thinking about it. Could be nothing, couldn’t it? I mean, it could be nothing at all.’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘In my dreams, Gerald, she’s wearing nothing but the bloody dog collar. Imagine that: white collar, pink body, brown nipples.’

  Merrily wasn’t smiling any more. Her eyes found the wide-open dead eyes of Thomas Bull. He was clothed in what, for those frilly Cavalier times, must have been a rather severe jacket, with a high collar. A sword, unsheathed, was lying by his side. Thomas was carved out of local stone, worn smooth now, his eyes wide open to face his God without fear, without excuses, in the year 1696 – a quarter of a century after his pivotal role in the hounding of Wil Williams. Bull’s face was stern, but, as she watched, the angle of the sun created the illusion of a supercilious smirk on the full, beard-fringed lips.

  Mr Watts said, ‘You’ll go to hell, Dermot.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dermot Child. ‘And it might even be worth it. Don’t forget your cap.’

  They were coming out and there wasn’t time for her to reach the door without being seen.

  Lol’s cottage was really rather lonely, the last one in the lane before it narrowed into a cart track. On each side, the Powell Orchard was starting to shimmer with new blossom.

  Jane walked up the path between the front lawn that needed mowing and the fence bordering the orchard, and found herself knocking on the white-painted door around which red and orange early roses grew.

  There was no answer. A small black cat watched her from a fence post.

  She peered through the window into the room where Lol had talked with Karl Windling. It was so sparsely furnished it gave you the impression the cottage was not really occupied. As though someone had dumped a few things there in advance of moving in.

  What if I’m too late? In her mind was an image of Lol lying limply across his bed, one arm outstretched, the fingers just parted from a small brown pill bottle. A variation, she realized, of a famous painting about a dead, young poet. But oh God ... She had to stop herself banging on the window. When she stepped away from it, she could hear faint music from the rear of the cottage.

  There was a small gate hanging from one rusty hinge, and the path continued round the back. Jane carefully lifted open the gate and went, half-fearfully, through. In the small back garden were about four apple trees, all of them bending away from the cottage, as if the garden were trying to join the orchard. Or the orchard was trying to draw in the garden. Sunlight was sprinkled through the fragile white blossom.

  ... and it’s always on the sunny days

  you feel you can’t go on.

  Trembling a little, Jane went to the back door and was about to knock gently when she became aware of the music again. It was behind her now and so not coming from inside the cottage but from the garden itself, or the orchard, separated from it by the narrow path she knew was a bridleway.

  She wandered among the apple trees, and the music came and went in snatches. It sounded a little like the music on the album, Hazey Jane, far away and melancholy.

  There was another old garden gate, leading to the bridleway and the orchard. Jane drifted towards it.

  The side of the tomb was cold on her face. She crouched there in her cassock, furious – hiding in her own church! – as Dermot Child and Mr Watts walked out. The cassock felt soiled, as though Child’s fingers had already been up and down the buttons. She wanted to have another bath, to scrub herself like she’d done once, late at night, to remove the blood of Edgar Powell.

  Dermot’s key turned in the lock, but she didn’t move from behind the tomb, in case they came back.

  Silence in the chapel. Only inches between her and Tom Bull’s bones. She saw, with a twinge of unease, that part of the tomb, below the feet of the effigy, had been repaired, as though Tom Bull had stretched out in death and pushed out a couple of the sandstone bricks to make more room for himself. You could feel quite resentful at the way influential local families thought they could buy into Paradise with a fancy tomb.

  Traherne had a lot to say about that. Tom Bull must have known Traherne. But Traherne had left for London by the time they were laying their accusations at the door of his friend, Wil Williams.

  How did James know about his ancestor’s role in the persecution and his feelings at the time? Were there family documents?

  How, in fact, had the Williams story been passed down? She was reluctant to ask the old guy who did the All Our Yesterdays bit for the parish mag. He was sentimental and unreliable, and he’d keep her talking all day. And, anyway, he would never have been given access to the Bull-Davies family records.

  Merrily stood up, brushed herself down. ‘Smug bastards,’ she muttered to Tom Bull and his absent descendant. ‘Nothing changes, does it?’

  ‘Well, that’s true,’ a woman murmured behind her. ‘In this family, anyway.’

  Merrily spun round.

  She wore an ankle-length skirt, the colour of Ledwardine soil, and possibly the same black, cotton shirt she’d worn on the square that night, open to the gold pendant in the cleft of her breasts. She also wore a knowing smile.

  ‘You drop something?’

  ‘Just a key,’ Merrily lied. She hadn’t heard the porch door open, or footsteps. ‘Sorry. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Just this minute walked in.’ She had glazed, Marilyn Monroe lips, but the resemblance ended there, before the steep, regal nose, before the slanting, dark blue eyes. ‘Alison Kinnersley. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.’

  ‘Probably because I’ve never seen you here before. Merrily Watkins.’

  ‘I do come here sometimes,’ Alison said. ‘To look around. And think. But never with James.’ Her voice dropped into the Bull-Davies bark. ‘Not seemly, you know.’

  Merrily raised an eyebrow. ‘Anyone care about seemly any more?’

  Twenty-five, even fifteen years ago, Alison Kinnersley would have been a scarlet woman. Today, the villagers still gossiped, but not many would be scandalized.

  ‘James cares,’ Alison said.

  ‘Yes.’ Merrily walked away from the tomb. ‘I expect he would.’

  Then why? she wanted to ask. Remembering Alison’s hands inside James’s sheepskin on the night of the wassailing. Why does he let you flaunt him in public and yet, when you’re not there, behave as if you don’t exist?

  ‘Poor guy ...’ Alison moved into Merrily’s place at the tomb-side. ‘Poor guy came home in a bit of a state last night. He’s convinced you’re going to shaft him over that play.’

  ‘That’s rich. He threatened to shaft me.’

  Alison laughed. ‘James is full of shit. OK? I just thought I should tell you that.’ She looked down dispassionately at the effigy. ‘He’s gone to Hereford today. For the Powell inquest. Gone to do his duty and help Rod Powell convince the coroner his old man didn’t top himself. He’ll be gone most of the day. And so, I ...’

  The dark blue eyes focused directly on Merrily, as though this was very important.

  ‘... I just got the feeling you’d had this horrendous scene with him and you might be feeling intimidated. So I thought I’d tell you he was full of shit and whatever he said you should disregard. I’m relying, of course, on your discretion. As a woman of the cloth.’

  Merrily didn’t know how to react. As a woman of the cloth or, indeed, as a woman.

  ‘I really wouldn’t mind seeing that play,’ Alison said. ‘I think it could be quite interesting.’

  There was the
faint hint of a rural vowel there – quoit interesting – which showed she didn’t exactly share James’s background.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing.’ She touched, with a pink, ovalled fingernail, the sandstone lips of Tom Bull. ‘There was more to this old bastard than James is prepared to admit.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know.’ Alison’s lips turned down. ‘If I knew that ...’ She pulled her hand away from the effigy. ‘Anyway.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m a bit baffled. You’re James’s ...’

  ‘Mistress,’ Alison said softly. ‘Mistress. Old-fashioned word, old-fashioned guy.’

  ‘I had that impression.’

  ‘So why would I want to do this to him?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Alison nodded. ‘Well, you’ve met him. You’ve been exposed to the archaic, paternalistic balls.’

  ‘I’m still baffled,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Well, fine,’ Alison said lightly. ‘That’s all right. So long as you’re not unsettled about it.’

  She began to walk away, half turned, wryly raised a hand and brought the fingers down twice, like a bird pecking.

  ‘See you, Vicar.’

  Merrily went directly to the Black Swan. She had some pleading to do; couldn’t face another night in a sleeping bag.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Mrs Watkins,’ Roland said. ‘I was only going by your instructions. I’ve got a theatre director and his partner arriving for lunch tomorrow, and they’ll be taking the Woolhope Suite until the weekend.’

  ‘One more night?’

  ‘I’m so sorry. No reflection on you, of course, but it’ll require the full works tonight. We were allowing for you having all your things out by ... seven? Oh, and this came for you. Somebody dropped it through the letterbox.’

  A white envelope addressed to The Vicar, The Black Swan.

  ‘OK,’ Merrily said wearily. Til go up and get everything sorted out and when Jane comes home we’ll get it all moved.’

  Up in the suite, she thought, sod it, and ran a bath in the creamy bathroom. Got out of the cassock, rolled it into a ball and threw it into a corner. So much for tradition. As the bath filled up, she went to the wardrobe and found a plain black sweater and a charcoal-grey jersey skirt. Too hot but probably less appealing to the fetishist. Pity about the cassock; it was comfortable, like a kaftan, but it wasn’t coming back.