by Phil Rickman
‘Still… you at least know where you are now, geographically, I would guess.’
‘Well,’ said Lol, ‘I know why Knight’s Frome’s all in pieces.’
Prof sniffed. ‘The Great Lake,’ he said.
‘Conrad Lake?’
‘A moral tale.’ Prof went back to his swivel chair, behind the board. ‘The Fall of the Emperor of Frome – that’s what they called Conrad, behind his back at first, but they say he grew to like it. She told you how the gods turned against him? His problems with the wilt?’
‘Actually, it wasn’t the wilt as such. It seems that Verticillium Wilt only—’
‘Verticillium! That’s the word.’
‘Only really hit these parts in the seventies. It started in Kent, and took a long time, decades, to reach Herefordshire. But there were other scourges before that: red spiders, aphids, white mould. He got them all, like the Seven Plagues of Egypt.’
They were both talking in epic terms, Lol realized, because it had seemed epic: the bountiful legacy of four generations of hop-masters wiped out in about seven years. Conrad Lake was, in effect, the last – and for a while the biggest and wealthiest – hop-master in Herefordshire. His poles and frames had surrounded Knight’s Frome like a great creosoted barrier. Looking like Belsen, Sally Boswell had said disdainfully, like Auschwitz. The estate was big enough when he inherited it, and twice as big when the first disaster struck.
Lol recalled the portrait photograph of Conrad Lake in the third and smallest room at the hop museum, his smile submerged in a heavy moustache. A difficult, greedy and obsessive man, Sally had said, referred to by the locals, behind his back, as the Emperor of Frome. Twice married and both wives had left him, the second taking his infant son. They never divorced; the boy, Adam, was raised by his mother and grandparents in Warwickshire – never again saw his father, who stayed in Knight’s Frome and fought all through the 1970s against the aphids, the red spiders and the white mould. And against the banks, who kept squeezing him, forcing him to sell off his estate piece by piece.
‘Big drama,’ said Prof laconically.
The land had then been bought by various farmers, most of them from outside Knight’s Frome, which explained why there was no real community any more, why so many of the scattered houses were now owned by incomers like Prof. A few of the old hop-yards had been reinstated, but demand was no longer so great, with so many breweries importing cheaper hops from Germany and the USA. Most of it was grazed now. A pity, in a way, Sally Boswell had said, because the deep river loam in the valleys of the Frome and the Lugg was so perfect for hops. And yet, in a way, not a pity at all; it was no accident that the third room in the museum was the darkest, a sober coda to the song of the hop.
But not everyone, it seemed, believed it was over. Least of all Adam Lake, son of the Emperor.
Though the storm had passed and the evening fields were left steaming under a bashful sun, the power failed to return, and Prof announced in disgust that he was going to bed.
‘You give me a call when it’s dark, Laurence… if we’ve got the bleeding juice back. I always work better after dark, as you know.’
Lol watched him stumping across the yard to the cottage, then went back and sat for a while in the studio, trying the River Frome song again on the Boswell, and then, because he felt bad about deserting it, on his faithful old Washburn.
But the song still lacked direction, and after a while he gave up and went out into the luminous, storm-washed evening. As the trees dripped and the air glistened with birdsong, Lol made his first real foray into what remained of the community of Knight’s Frome.
A soggy rug of slurry unrolled from a farm entrance towards the edge of what passed for the centre of the hamlet. Big old trees, oak and sycamore and horse chestnut, were still dripping onto the roofs of stone and timber-framed cottages that sprouted like wild mushrooms. A humpback bridge straddled the Frome, and on the other side of it was the church, sunken and settled as an old barn, and next to it the white-painted vicarage where Simon St John lived.
There was no shop here any more, but a pub survived – a pub created sixty years ago, Lol had learned, out of a row of terraced cottages, to cater for the hop-picking hordes. It hadn’t changed much. There were no friendly signs promising food or coffee, no rustic fort for the kids, just a rotting bench beside the porch.
The pub was called the Hop Devil; on its sign, nothing more demonic than a red and smoking brazier. The sign was hanging from a gibbet at the road end of the dirt forecourt.
It was reassuring to see places like this still in business, but that didn’t necessarily mean you had to go inside. Lol, the sometime folk singer, the traditionalist, was actually wary of country pubs – often the haunts of old men in worn tweeds and young men in stained denims, bruising you with their stares until you finished your drink too quickly and slid away.
As he padded cautiously past the pub, its scuffed and rust-studded oak door creaked open, releasing a richly brackish old-beer smell and also a man in a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, moleskin trousers stuffed into high tan boots. He came loping angrily over the puddles in the forecourt, a tall bloke with mutton-chop whiskers, swallowing his scowl when he saw he wasn’t alone, glancing briefly over Lol’s head.
‘Evening.’
Lol took a step back into the slurry to avoid having the guy knock him down and walk over him.
‘Needed that storm, I suppose,’ the man called back over his shoulder. He was about thirty-five, with a lean face and a wide, beer-drinker’s mouth. He gave the sky a dismissive glance. ‘Getting too muggy.’
Lol nodded. ‘Was a bit.’
But the big guy appeared to have finished with him, was climbing into a mud-scabbed Land Rover Defender on the edge of the forecourt, and now another voice was curling lazily out of the pub porch.
‘Lol Robinson.’
Prof’s unwelcome neighbour, Gerard Stock, was leaning against the door frame, a whisky glass in his right hand, a roll-up smouldering in his left.
Lol walked over – like he had a choice. The Defender crunched and clattered away through the trees and into the lane, while Stock stood watching it go.
‘Wanker,’ he said. ‘Arsehole.’
Lol realized he was drunk.
‘Wanker strolls in’ – Stock tossed his cigarette into a puddle. – ‘and here’s Gerard Stock sidding at the bar, minding his own. Wanker barks out cursory greeting, then drifts off to the dark end of the bar, engaging Derek, the landlord, in some trivial chat. And all the time, liddle sidelong glances, corner of an eye, wondering whether this is the day to make his move. And Gerard Stock’s just smiling into his glass and saying nothing. And the wanker knows that Gerard Stock knows he’s a phoney liddle arsehole.’
‘I don’t really know too many people around here,’ Lol said. ‘Who was he?’
Stock swallowed some whisky. There was a powerful fug of mixed fumes around him, like, if you struck a match, the air would flare and sizzle.
‘See, I don’t have to talk to people if I don’t want to. It’s a rare skill and I’m good at it, man. I can be very relaxed, very cool, sidding quietly, saying nothing. Liddle-known trick of the trade – people think PR men talk all the time, talk any old shite, but a good publicist has control. Tells you what he wants you to know, when he wants you to know it. Timing. And Gerard Stock, ’case you were wondering, is still a fucking good operator. You coming in, Lol?’
‘Well, I don’t think—’
‘Come ’n have a drink. I’d offer you some spliff, and we could sit out here, chill out, reminisce, but poor old Derek’s very timid, for a country landlord.’ Stock grinned. ‘See, I’ve made you curious. You thought you were supposed to know who the wanker was, and now you want to. You really want to. Technique: I can turn it on, man.’
They were inside the Hop Devil now, small and square and dark as a chapel. The landlord peered out from the shadows around the bar. ‘Sorry, gents, only bottled and shorts. P
ower’s off, see.’
‘Put your glasses on, Derek, it’s me again,’ said Stock. ‘With a friend. What are we having, Lol Robinson?’
Lol said a half of shandy would be good and Stock groaned. ‘Jesus Christ, no wonder you got yourself out of music.’
‘Have to pay for a pint shandy, I’m afraid,’ the shadowy Derek said. ‘Got to open a bottle of beer, see, and they don’t come in quarter-pints.’
‘And another Macallan,’ Stock said. ‘How long’ve I been here, Derek?’
‘Since just before lunch.’ Derek sighed. ‘On and off.’
After they collected their drinks, Stock steered Lol to a table by the biggest window. The only other customer appeared to be an elderly man with a bottle of Guinness and a copy of the Worcester Evening News he surely couldn’t see to read. Lol made out an inglenook fireplace with a brazier like the one on the sign outside.
‘What’s a hop devil?’
‘Thing they burned coke in. Hop-pickers used to cook their meals over it. You wanna know all this rustic shite, there’s a dear old couple run a hop museum out on the main road. Sold me a hop-pillow.’
He obviously hadn’t discovered who Al Boswell actually was.
‘Supposed to give you a good night’s sleep. Sleep?’ Stock brayed. ‘Fucking hops work like rhino horn. Fact, man. Me and Steph, we’re living in this old kiln, walls impregnated with as much essence of hop as… as the beer poor old Derek can’t pump. My wife’ – Stock swallowed whisky, shook his head and growled, – ‘leaves scratches a foot long down my back. You wan’ see?’
‘I’ll take your word.’ Lol avoided Stock’s eyes, wondering how he could find out what the guy’s wife looked like.
‘Could use some bloody sleep.’ Stock bawled out, ‘Can I sleep here, Derek?’
‘Thought you always did, Gerry,’ said Derek.
‘Gerard, you fucking peasant!’
The old man looked up from the paper he couldn’t see to read.
‘Language, sir,’ said Derek.
‘Derek goes to church, Lol.’ Stock had lowered his voice but not much. ‘Derek listens to Saint Simon’s sermons. Can’t be so pissed, can I, if I can say that? Shaint… Did I tell you I was briefly head of publicity for TMM? For whom Saint Shimon used to record as a young man? Wasn’t so fucking saintly in those days, by all accounts. Shaint Shimon the shirt-lifter—Jesus, that’s an even better one. Shaint Shimon the shirt—’
‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave in a minute, Mr Stock.’
Stock waved an arm in the direction of the bar. ‘I’ll be quiet. Don’t send me home, landlord, I’m too shagged out.’
‘You were going to tell me who that guy was,’ Lol said. ‘The guy with the…’ Putting a hand either side of his face to signify side-whiskers.
Stock beamed. ‘I said, didn’ I? Said I could still do it. You’re curious, yeah?’
Lol sighed. ‘I’m curious.’
‘Liddle shit annoyed the piss out of me, following me in here like that.’
‘You’d already been here about six hours,’ Derek said quietly, ‘before Mr Lake came in.’
‘As if he thought I was going to make the move – that I’d ask him to make me an offer. No chance. No frigging chance.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lol said. ‘I’m not getting this.’
‘Course you aren’t. I’m about to tell you. Wanker’s Adam Lake. His old man owned Knight’s Frome, more or less. Then lost it. The lot – several farms, this pub, finally even my place, that clapped-out old kiln. Died in penury, well-deserved, by all accounts. And now Adam, the boy—’
‘That was him? With the—’
‘The young squire… the wanker… wants it all back… roots, birthright – the whole, sprawling Lake estate.’
‘Right,’ said Lol. Some of this he’d already had, if less colourfully, from Sally Boswell.
‘Field by field, barn by barn. He’s approaching the buggers who bought land off his old man, one by one, making ’em offers only a complete idiot would refuse. His heritage, geddit? Buying back his heritage. The young Emperor of Frome.’
‘He can afford?’
‘Oh, yeah. Big irony is the liddle shit can well afford. He’s a dot… com… fucking… millionaire.’ Stock spat out the words like cherry stones. ‘Or whatever else they called them ’fore someone coined the term. Adam, we’ve since learned, invested some of his ma’s money, few years ago, in what might’ve appeared at the time to be an off-the-wall software concept proposed by an old university friend… which in fact created the world’s fastest search-engine… at the time. Probably be like a bloody steamroller these days. Sold it off for some obscene sum, and then… Oh, this is boring, it’s not bloody important how the cunt got his millions.’
Lol sipped at his shandy, which was warm. ‘I’m sorry about your wife’s uncle.’
‘Poor old bugger,’ Stock said viciously. ‘Wonder how well he knew the fucking vicar.’
‘That’s it,’ said Derek softly, coming out of the shadows, a bald, middle-aged man with serviceable fists. ‘Out you go, Mr Stock.’
‘Shimon shirtlifter,’ Stock said and giggled into his glass.
Lol couldn’t avoid walking back with him, and for most of the way Stock was talking about his career as a publicist, at TMM and other recording and management companies, and then working solo for book publishers and film and TV companies: outfits that hadn’t known how badly they needed him until they had him on board.
‘And I could do it for Levin, too, man. Doesn’t see it yet, but he will. Poor old guy thinks he’s being cool and enigmatic getting out of London, downsizing, all that shite. Doesn’t realize how soon he’ll be forgotten.’
‘Actually, I think he wants to be—’
‘I could make that hovel of a studio world-famous in six months. A hint here, a line there. I could get Levin on The South Bank Show. Got a good friend at LWT.’
‘Maybe, you—’ Lol gave up. Stock wasn’t the kind of bloke to whom you said: You don’t really know Prof very well, do you?
They left the lane and walked down the track, past Prof’s stables towards the concealed river, under a sky like beaten copper. Gerard Stock raised his face to the sun and it reddened his beard. He looked wide and powerful and ruthless – and yet somehow, Lol thought, unsure of himself, like a Viking on a strange shore.
‘And you, Lol Robinson. Shy boy with the liddle glasses. Very cute, to a certain kind of woman. You were marketable, man. Once.’
Lol said nothing. Stock was talking, the way he had earlier, as if it was all too late for a career which Prof seemed to see as still salvageable. Maybe this was deliberate, to sound him out – or put Prof down.
‘And let us not forget’ – Stock grinned slyly – ‘all those years in and out of the loony bin. Marketable, plus.’ Lol shot him a sidelong glance. ‘Oh, yeah, I know your history. Checked you out soon’s I got home. My business is to know everything about everybody. I am The Man.’
Stock kicked a stone down the track, and then he looked directly into the sinking sun and his voice suddenly sagged.
‘And now – all right – I’m broke. Only cash flow, of course, as we say.’
‘You’ve got the house – the kiln.’
‘Yeah, stroke of luck, there, ’cause we’d been reduced to living in a bloody trailer at the time. Poor old Stewart. Perhaps he should’ve taken the wanker’s offer when he had the chance. You see, buying the kiln back – very, very important to Adam, because that was the site of the original ancestral home.’
‘Conrad Lake’s mansion?’
‘Lord, no, that came later. But this was the original family farm. Twice the size it is now – but not big enough for Conrad, once he was on the up. Built the new place for the new wife, ’bout a mile over the hill there – where Adam lives. All there was left to bequeath to the boy. The old man’d already knocked down half the farmhouse – this is late sixties, when you could still get away with flattening history – just kept t
he kiln. When he died and the bank or whoever flogged it off, Stewart picks it up for a song.’
They crossed the river bridge, passed between the poplars. And then suddenly the kiln was in view, halfway up a hill – or, rather, part of a conical tower was visible, the tip of its cowl pointing at an angle.
Lol stopped, shocked.
A wall of bright blue corrugated metal concealed the rest of it – the side of some huge industrial building, rising almost as high as the kiln itself. It hadn’t been apparent the other night, except as a patch of shadow that might have been trees or part of the hill. Now, in an area where most of the farms and cottages looked almost organic, its brashness was savage.
Stock watched Lol’s reaction, half-smiling. ‘You like Adam Lake’s barn? There’s another one the other side, even higher. About ten yards away. Man, we’re living in a barn sandwich.’
‘He did that?’
‘Wanker’s land surrounds us. Had the first one put in place after Stewart refused to sell him the kiln.’
‘Can he do that?’ Stock’s fury made sudden sense.
‘Done it, hasn’t he? Yeah, sure he can. Country landowners can throw up whatever kind of monstrosity they want, long as it’s an agricultural building and they can show a need for it. Need. Jesus. You know what those barns are used for? Nothing. They’re empty – great, echoing, empty shells.’
‘He did it just to—’
‘Steal the light.’ Stock was sweating, but he seemed sober now. ‘It’s about stealing the light. You see, this was particularly cruel – though whether Lake was subtle enough to realize that is anybody’s guess – because the old boy was a photographer.’
‘Light being his medium.’
‘Yeah.’ Stock took out his tin to roll a smoke. ‘He loved light. Course, Lake wasn’t trying to force him to sell. He just needed some extra storage facilities for hay and sundry fodder at the extremity of his estate. That’s what he tells you. The cunt.’
