The Wine of Angels

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Wel-come ... to ... de ... carn-i-valf

  The ceiling light was blurred and swirling.

  She was waking up. She’d been asleep. Dreamed it all. Again. Oh my God.

  It was not possible. Hadn’t she heated her hands on the Aga, gripped the poker until it hurt, bashed her knee so hard the pain had given her a headache? Proving beyond all doubt that she was awake?

  The light above her was in a warm, orange shade. Jane’s shade. Taken with her from Birmingham to Liverpool to Ledwardine ...

  To the third floor.

  She was in Jane’s bedroom, in the Apartment. Lying on Jane’s bed. She didn’t remember coming here. Why would she come in here, lie down on Jane’s bed? Fear streaked through her and she struggled to sit up and looked into a blank, grey, oval face with dark slits for eyes.

  Merrily screamed and squirmed away. Hurled herself back against the headboard, slamming it into the wall behind.

  ‘It’s OK!’

  The grey face was printed on a jumper, a sweatshirt. Over it was a real face behind glasses. The real face looked scared.

  ‘No ... look ... hey ...’ he said. ‘I’m harmless.’

  She looked down, registering that she was fully dressed, the bed unrumpled.

  ‘Mrs Watkins ... I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I thought you might need a cup of tea ...’

  One of her cups coming at her, on one of her saucers. She didn’t move.

  ‘What are you doing? What are you doing in ...’

  Aware that, even in her fear, she couldn’t say, What are you doing in my house? It wasn’t. It was the vicarage. It was huge and alien and maybe this man lived here, too, in some derelict attic room, coming and going by the forgotten back stairs. Part of the mad, sporadic nightmare. Oh God, get me out of here.

  ‘I’m a kind of ... friend of Jane’s.’ He was very untogether; big, unsteady eyes behind the glasses. Like a scared version of the alien on his sweater.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went to a party. See, what happened, we met in the street, I needed to take a look at my cat, and she just like brought me up here, you know? Jane says, you know, Bring her inside, we’ll have a look at her. Obviously I didn’t realize she meant ... her room. Believe me, there is no way I’d’ve come up here.’

  ‘Cat,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Somebody gave her a kicking. We brought her up here and then she got away. We must’ve touched her in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I don’t do things like this.’

  She accepted the tea with numb relief. ‘You’ve got an injured cat somewhere in the house? Wandering around, making bumping noises maybe.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Merrily could hear heavy music coming through the trees from the square, insistent as a road drill. This wasn’t going to endear the Cassidys to their neighbours. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  It wasn’t long before they started coming out of their homes, gathering in small groups. You could see pyjama bottoms sticking out of trouser turn-ups, one woman in an actual hairnet. Big torches, walking sticks.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ a man shouted. Not a local voice. A sort of retired colonel voice.

  The music was turned up even higher. Maybe fifty people dancing. Someone grabbed hold of Jane’s arm, tried to pull her into the crush of quivering bodies.

  It was Colette. ‘Aw, come on, Janey. Get your shit together. Stuff the Reverend Mumsy. Like she’s in any position to complain.’

  ‘You’re disturbing the peace!’ The man’s voice rose again. ‘This is noise pollution. If you don’t turn that racket off and go away now, at once, I’m going to call the police! Do you hear me?’

  Jane let herself be dragged in, knowing they were all on borrowed time. If Barry hadn’t rung the police already, quite a few people were surely doing it right now; you looked up and you could see small, furious faces peering out of dark windows, could imagine outraged fingers stiffly prodding out 999. Anticipating it, Mark and his friend had already disappeared from the Marches Media doorway. But whatever they’d been selling was taking effect: all around her, open mouths and too-bright eyes.

  ‘We comin’ out,’ rapped Dr Samedi. ‘We comin’ back. We gonna turn, gonna turn de whole sky black.’ But he no longer sounded in control.

  A boy pushed past Jane, having come out of the antique shop doorway, zipping up his jeans. ‘Did you see that?’ a woman yelped. ‘That yob’s just urinated in there!’

  ‘You hear me?’ the man shouted. ‘I’m calling the police!’

  ‘Oh, do fuck off, grandad!’ replied a girl with an equally posh voice, and there were wild peals of laughter and somebody turned the music up even higher, so that even Dr Samedi was drowned out.

  But they were on borrowed time and Jane wasn’t unhappy about that because she needed to get back and find out about Lol. Lol who’d come over very weird when she’d taken him up the back stairs and he’d found himself in her room. Backing off, shaking his head, saying this was a mistake. His agitation picked up by Ethel, the cat, squirming out of his arms and disappearing into the bowels of the vicarage.

  Lol was in trouble. He couldn’t go home because Karl was in there and Lol, for reasons Jane still couldn’t quite put together, was scared of Karl. And was also – for reasons even more obscure – scared other. He’d seemed relieved to pack her off to the party, to hide out there alone in the part of the house where Mum was banned. He wouldn’t be there when she got home, he said. He’d wait until Ethel reappeared and then he’d go. She’d left him her secret key to lock the small back door behind him; he’d leave it, he said, with Lucy.

  But what if Karl was still in the cottage when he got back? Where would Lol go then?

  One idea had occurred to Jane. Maybe she could get a few of the guys from the party – rugby-player types – to go over to Lol’s place and force that bastard out of there. But the state they were in now, how could you even explain to them what was needed? By the time they made it to Blackberry Lane they’d have forgotten why they were going.

  Chaos. Nothing more unstable than well-brought-up kids on the loose in some place they and their parents weren’t known.

  The music stopped.

  The silence was deafening. Beyond the hollow roaring in her ears, Jane heard the sound of car engines.

  ‘OK.’ Colette’s voice over the loud hailer. ‘Listen up. It’s probably the filth, yeah? We’re moving on. Don’t worry, no cars required. Follow me ... or Janey. Where’s Janey? She knows.’

  It wasn’t the police. The car that turned on to the edge of the square was a Volvo like Mum’s, only about ten years younger. Both front doors opened at once.

  The Cassidys.

  ‘Janey,’ Colette called out. ‘OK?’ And then the loud hailer was silent.

  Jane didn’t move. What was Colette saying to her? She knows. What? She slipped back under the market cross as Terrence Cassidy appeared on the cobbles, panting. ‘Colette! Where are you? Please—’ and was almost pulled off his feet by the stampede from the square.

  ‘Colette!’

  Mrs Cassidy was less circumspect. ‘The unutterable little bitch. I knew something like this would—’

  ‘Colette,’ Terrence implored. ‘Where are you. Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘It’s ‘cause you’re such a wanker, mate,’ Dean Wall confided chattily over his shoulder and cackled and followed the others.

  The music had resumed, from the top of Church Street, booming off into the churchyard. Jane’s shoulder brushed against a poster tacked to one of the pillars of the market cross, bold black and yellow lettering inside a big red apple, LEDWAR-DINE SUMMER FESTIVAL: OFFICIAL OPENING, SATURDAY, MAY 23. MARKET SQUARE 2.00 p.m. BE THERE!

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  Jane found Dr Samedi next to her, the loud hailer dangling limply from his hand. Back in Midlands mode.

  ‘Can y’ believe it? She’s buggered
off with my flamin’ box. Bloody rich kids. I hate bloody rich kids, I do. Gimme ghetto any day of the week.’

  ‘Sorry, Jeff. She’s hard to stop when she gets going.’

  ‘That don’t help me, does it?’

  And suddenly, Jane knew where Colette was taking them.

  ‘Oh no.’ She looked around for help, but the Cassidys had rushed into their restaurant, presumably to assess the damage and take it out on Barry. Even the locals were melting away – wherever the mob was heading, it was at least out of their earshot, away from their backyards, so what did they care?

  ‘Thing is,’ Dr Samedi was moaning, ‘I don’t know if my insurance covers this.’

  Jane saw a tall figure strolling towards the churchyard.

  ‘Lloyd!’

  Lloyd Powell turned and waited for her under the fake gaslight, Jane found herself clutching at his sleeve.

  ‘You’ve got to stop them.’

  ‘I think we’ll wait for the police, don’t you, Miss Watkins?’

  ‘No!’ You could never tell with people like Lloyd whether they called you Miss out of politeness or because they were laughing at you. ‘They’re going to the orchard. You can stop them. It’s your land. You can go in there and turn them out.’

  ‘On my own?’

  He was laughing at her. Everybody knew the Powells didn’t really care about their orchard.

  But they should. They should.

  ‘Please. It’s not safe. It’s not respectful. You’ve got to get them out. Please, Lloyd.’

  ‘Hey.’ He put his big, rugged hands on her shoulders, peered at her from under his Paul Weller fringe. ‘Don’t get into a state about this. They’re just daft kids.’

  ‘Please.’ She was crying now.

  ‘All right,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’ll go and see what I can do.’ He smiled wryly, hunching his shoulders. ‘You wanner come?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jane said. ‘I couldn’t.’

  She stood on the edge of the cobbles, hopelessly confused, awfully apprehensive for reasons she couldn’t explain.

  26

  The Mondrian Walls

  ‘BLEEDING FROM THE mouth,’ Merrily said.

  Lol Robinson held Ethel on the kitchen table. ‘That means internal injuries?’

  He looked shattered. They’d found the little black cat cowering into the side of the Aga.

  ‘Who did this?’

  He didn’t reply, which meant he knew. In the hall Merrily found an old quilted body-warmer she’d kept for gardening.

  ‘You know what to do with this?’

  ‘I’ve never actually had a cat before.’

  ‘You wrap her up tight, so there’s just her head sticking out. So there’s plenty between you and the claws?’

  ‘Er ... right’

  ‘Never mind. Just grab her by the scruff and don’t let go. No ... You have to be firm, Lol.’

  ‘I’m not really a firm person,’ Lol said.

  Merrily rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. She opened out the jacket, swept it swiftly around the cat. She tucked the ends around Ethel’s claws.

  ‘Anybody I might know? Anybody whose soiled soul I should be praying for?’

  ‘Any spare prayers,’ he said quietly, ‘I would hang on to them.’

  ‘No prayers are wasted.’ Handing him a bundle with a small black head sticking out. ‘Hold her very tightly. God, these lights are crap.’

  He glanced up at her.

  ‘Yeah, I know, some people would call that taking the Lord’s name in vain.’ Trying to prise the jaws apart. ‘No, tight, Lol, you’ve got a leg coming out. The way I see it, it helps keep the holy names in circulation. Especially when used in times of stress.’

  Ethel’s mouth snapped open; Merrily gritted her teeth, slipped a forefinger inside.

  ‘Not entirely sure whether I should’ve used it in the same sentence as crap, mind ... See there? Lost a tooth. Possibly a couple. Where the blood’s coming from.’

  ‘Not internal?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ She touched the spot; Ethel writhed. ‘Good.’

  ‘God,’ said Lol. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘One of my uncles used to be a vet. In Cheltenham.’

  ‘I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid, then I found out you had to put things down a lot. She’ll be OK?’

  ‘If you’re still worried, you can pop her over to a real vet in the morning. You can let her go now.’

  They watched the liberated Ethel make like a bullet for the door to the scullery. Merrily held up her finger with blood and a tiny, white splinter on the end.

  ‘That’s probably the last bit of it. So ...’ She sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘Talk to me, Mr Robinson. I’m a priest.’

  It was fairly quiet on the square now, but she could hear music coming from somewhere else, fainter. It didn’t seem a problem but it didn’t make sense.

  Ethel had reappeared in the doorway, looking miffed but not distressed. Merrily wished Jane would also show.

  She smoked in silence while he told her about this guy, now occupying his cottage, who’d been in the band, Hazey Jane, with him years ago and had come back from the States with ambitions involving Lol and some new songs and an album. Which sounded reasonable.

  ‘Just I have problems with this guy,’ Lol said.

  ‘He knows that?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to realize how deep it goes.’

  ‘Not a sensitive person, then.’

  ‘That would be about right,’ Lol said. ‘And he drinks. And when he drinks he gets over-emotional.’

  ‘Violent temper.’

  ‘As you saw.’

  ‘And he’s in your house. He’s broken in.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So – pardon me if this is incredibly naive – but why don’t you just call the police?’

  Almost immediately she regretted asking that. He looked like he’d rather throw himself in the river.

  The police arrived, just the two of them in a car. No hurry, no panic – except on the part of the Cassidys, who came out of the alley to meet them, with Barry the manager.

  Jane crept back under the market hall to listen, blending into the mingled shadows of the oak pillars.

  ‘Certainly seems quiet enough now,’ one of the cops said.

  ‘That’ – Caroline Cassidy was in tears – ‘is because they’ve gone on some sort of drug-crazed rampage. Everything was perfectly under control, all decent, well-behaved young people from good families, no strong drink. And then it was gatecrashed by some ghastly local thugs. Barry ... Barry, you tell them.’

  ‘Exactly as Mrs Cassidy says,’ Barry said, the crawling sod. ‘It was all fine until these lads came in. Somebody must’ve let them in, because we had the doors bolted. Well, with the flashing lights and things I didn’t notice them for a while. But they brought the drugs in, no question.’

  ‘Kind of drugs, Mr Bloom?’

  ‘Oh, well, Ecstasy, I reckon. Probably some amphetamines. Crack, maybe, I wouldn’t rule it out. They target parties, don’t they?’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘Seen ’em around. There’s a thin lad, about seventeen. Mark ... Putley? Dad’s got the garage on the Leominster Road. Then the fat one, Dean ... Dean ... I can find out.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!’ Mrs Cassidy was close to hysteria. ‘They’ve gone into the woods. They’ve taken my daughter!’

  Unbelievable. Jane longed to step out there and tell them it was the other way round, that if they pulled in Colette, it would all be sorted out. Tonight, Colette was overstepping even Jane’s mark. On the other hand, she didn’t want to get involved. She just wanted the police to get them out of the orchard.

  ‘And where were you while this was going on, Mrs Cassidy?’

  ‘My wife and I,’ said Terrence, ‘were having discussions with Mr Richard Coffey, the playwright, at his home. Earlier, we’d been to an event at the church.’

/>   ‘All right. And you think the kids’ve gone into some woods?’

  ‘The orchard. Down there, through the churchyard. The Powells’ land.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to get too excited about trespass at the moment, sir. You think they’ve got drugs with them, that’s going to be our main interest.’

  ‘And my daughter ...’

  ‘Quite.’

  Lol was cleaning his glasses on the hem of his sweatshirt. Without them, he looked bewildered and innocent, an ageing teenager. She was supposed to turn him out now, with his injured cat in his arms?

  ‘You obviously can’t go home tonight.’ Teapot and cigarettes between them on the kitchen table. ‘You need to give this guy a chance to sober up and realize what he’s done. So if you don’t mind a sleeping bag, you could stay here. We’ve got masses of bedrooms, no beds.’

  Lol said that was really nice of her, but it was OK, really, he’d got a car down the road. Merrily thought the state he was in he’d probably pile it into a tree.

  ‘Look at it this way. One of the oldest traditions of the Church is offering sanctuary. I’ve always liked to do that. I’m not good at much else. I write lousy sermons, my voice is too tuneless to lead the hymns, I get upset at funerals and I’ve had a really bad night. So just give me a break, huh?’

  ‘I heard about that,’ Lol said.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘That you ... weren’t well.’

  Merrily felt for another cigarette. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I ... overheard somebody talking about it.’

  ‘Saying what?’ She bit on the cigarette, fumbled for her lighter.

  ‘That you were ill. At your inauguration service.’

  ‘Word travels fast in a village.’ By tomorrow half the county would know. She stood up. ‘Let’s get this sleeping bag sorted out.’

  ‘You’re still not well, are you, Mrs Watkins?’

  ‘I’m Merrily. And I’m fine. Just need to eat sometime, but it’s a little early for breakfast. I’m trying to think where we put the sleeping bags. I think Jane’s room. Jane’s apartment!

  He followed her upstairs, the main stairs this time.

  ‘It’s a big house, isn’t it?’