by Phil Rickman
'Can you finish it, Willie? Can it be done?'
Willie looked up at her through his lank, brown fringe, like a mouse emerging from a hole in the wall. Lukewarm autumn sunbeams danced with the dust in the big kitchen behind the public bar. Such a lot of dust. She'd been neglecting the cleaning, like everything else, since Matt had been bad. Now it was over. Dust to dust.
Willie said, 'We got two or three instrumental tracks down, y'know. The lament. It all got a bit, like ... half-hearted, as you can imagine. Me and Eric, we could see it weren't going to get finished. Not wi' Matt, anyroad.'
'I want it finished,' Lottie said crisply. 'It was his last ... I'm not going to use the word obsession, I've said it too much.' She hesitated. '... I'm not religious, Willie, you know that, not in any ... any respect.'
Willie gave three or four nods, his chin keeping time with the fingers on his knees.
'But I just feel that he won't be at peace ... that it won't be over ... until that music's finished.'
'Aye.' Willie's fingers didn't stop. Nerves.
'So what about Dic?' Lottie said.
'Will Dic want to do it?'
Lottie said grimly, 'He'll do it. Is he good enough?'
'Oh, aye,' Willie said without much difficulty. 'I reckon he is. With a bit of practice, like. But really, like, what we could do with is ...He beat his knees harder to help him get it out. ' ... Moira.'
'She rang me,' Lottie said. 'Last night.'
Willie's eyes lit up, expectant. Dear God, Lottie thought, they're all in love with her.
'Actually, it was early this morning. I mean very early. Gone midnight. The kind of time people don't ring up unless it's an emergency.'
'Oh,' Willie said, and his hands were suddenly still.
'She asked me about Matt. She said, was he ill? I told her yes he was very ill. I told her it was close to the end. I told her ...' Lottie stood up and put her hands on the warm metal covers over the hot-plates of the kitchen stove, pressing down with both hands, hard. 'I didn't need to tell her.'
Willie was quiet.
'We didn't say much. She started to explain why she'd put him off when he wrote to her. I stopped her. I said we'd discuss it some other time.'
There was a new kind of silence in the room.
'I put the phone down,' Lottie said. 'It was about twenty-five past twelve. I waited for a minute or two, in case Dic had heard the phone, but he was fast asleep. I thought, I'll make some cocoa, take it up with me. But I didn't move. I knew. I mean, why should she suddenly ring after all these years at that time of night? And sure enough, not five minutes had passed and the phone rang again, and it was Sister Murtry at the hospital. And I just said, He's gone, hasn't he?'
There was more silence, then Lottie said, 'I've not slept since. I've just sent Dic to bed for a few hours. I'm not tired, Willie. I'm not using up any energy - not thinking, you know?'
Lottie sat down again. 'I shan't be staying here. Only until it's done. His bloody project. I think coming back here, buying the pub, the whole bit, that was all part of it. The project. All I want is to draw a line under it, do you see? I mean, I hope somebody'll buy the pub, somebody sympathetic, but if not ...' She shrugged. 'Well, I've got to get away, regardless.'
Willie nodded. Fingers starting up very slowly. 'Um ... what about Moira?'
'I'm not inviting her to the funeral, that's for sure.' Lottie folded her arms, making a barrier. 'If she wants to help complete these songs, that'd be ... I'll not be begging. No more of that. And another thing, Willie - tell whoever needs to be told, tell them I'm not having anything to do with these stupid ... traditions. You know what I'm saying? Matt might've accepted it, I don't. All right?'
'Aye, all right,' Willie said, not sounding too happy. But that was his problem, Lottie thought. 'Yeh,' he said. 'I'll tell her.'
When Willie had gone, Lottie pushed her hands on to the hot-plate covers again, seeking an intensity of heat, needing to feel something. Something beyond this anaesthetized numbness.
Wanting pain - simple pain. Loss. Sorrow.
Not any of this confusion over the gratitude that he was gone and the wanting him back ... but back as he used to be, before all this. Before his project.
A blinding sun through leafless trees ricocheted from the windscreens of cars on the forecourt. A perky breeze ruffled the flags projecting from the motel's awning and lifted tufts of Chrissie's auburn hair. She thought she probably looked quite good, all things considered.
That, she told herself, was what a good night's sleep could do for you.
Ha!
Roger Hall paused, gripping the door-handle of his Volvo Estate. Don't say it, Chrissie thought. Just don't give me that, I still can't understand it, this has never happened to me before ...
He didn't. He merely put on an upside-down, pathetic grin.
'Can we try again sometime?' Eyes crinkled appealingly, full of silly morning optimism, and she felt herself falling for it - even if she knew he still wasn't telling the half of it.
'Why not,' she said, daft bitch. She squeezed his arm. 'How long will you be gone?'
'Oh, only until Tuesday. That is, I'll be back late tonight so I'll see you tomorrow morning. Have lunch together, shall we? Would that be ... ?'
'Of course,' she said. She would have wangled the day off and gone to London with him. They'd been too close to the Field Centre last night, that was probably the problem. Too close to him.
'I'm really only going down there,' Roger said, 'to make sure we get all the stomach returned. Don't want them trying to pinch him back, bit by bit.'
Shut up! Just shut up about that fucking thing!
'Don't worry about it, Roger. Just drive carefully.'
As the Volvo slid away past the Exit Southbound sign, two commercial traveller types came out to their twin Cavaliers and gave her the once-over. Chrissie found herself smiling almost warmly at the younger one. It would be two years in January since her divorce.
She got into her Golf. She looked at her face in the driving-mirror and decided it could probably take a couple more years of this sort of thing before she ought to start looking for
something ... well, perhaps semi-permanent.
Sadly, Roger's marriage was now in no danger whatsoever. Not from her, anyway.
All the trouble he'd gone to to deceive his wife. Was that for her? Was that really all for her? And then he couldn't do it. Because of 'tension'.
She imagined him driving like the clappers to London, where he was supposed to have spent the night, and then driving determinedly back with the bogman's peaty giblets in a metal samples case.
There was his real love. And there was more to it
Alter the way he'd been talking last night, she'd half expected to wake up in the early hours to find him all wet and clammy and moaning in his sleep about lumps of the stuff in the bed.
But that hadn't happened either. Indeed, the only thing to remind her of soft, clammy peat was the consistency of Roger's dick.
Chrissie got out of the motel compound by the service entrance and drove to work.
Not to worry.
Later that morning, little Willie Wagstaff went to see his mother in her end-of-terrace cottage across from the post office.
'Need to find a job now, then,' the old girl said sternly before he'd even managed to clear himself a space on the settee. Ma was practical; no time for sentiment. Dead was dead. Matt Castle was dead; no living for Willie playing the drums on his own.
'Can't do owt yet,' Willie said. "Sides, there's no work about.'
'Always work,' said Ma, 'for them as has a mind to find it.'
Willie grinned. Rather than see him relax for a while, Ma would have him commuting to Huddersfield or Chorlton-cum- Hardy to clean lavatories or sweep the streets.
'Devil makes work for idle hands,' she said. Her as ought to know - half the village reckoned she'd been in league with the bugger for years.
'Aye, well, I've been over to see Lottie this
morning.'
'Oh aye? Relieved, was she? Looking better?'
'Ma!'
'Grief's one thing, our Willie, hypocrisy's summat else. She's done her grieving, that one.'
'I've to tell you ...' Willie's fingers were off ... dum, dum de-dum, side of his knees.
Ma's eyes narrowed. Her hair was tied up in a bun with half a knitting-needle shoved up it.
'Er ...' Dum, dum, dum-di-di, dum-di-di...
'Gerrit out!' Ma squawked.
'No messing about,' Willie mumbled quickly. 'Lottie says, none of that.'
'What's that mean?' Making him say it.
'Well, like ... well, naturally he'll be buried in t'churchyard. First one. First one since ...' His fingers finding a different, more complicated rhythm. 'What I'm saying, Ma, is, do we have to ... ? Does it have to be Matt?'
Ma scowled. She had a face like an over-ripe quince. She wore an old brown knee-length cardigan over a blue boiler-suit, her working clothes. The two cats, one black, one white, sat side-by-side on the hearth, still as china. Bob and Jim. Willie reckoned they must be the fourth or fifth generation of Ma's cats called Bob and Jim, and all females.
Willie liked his mother's cottage. Nothing changed. Bottles of stuff everywhere. On the table an evil-looking root was rotting inside a glass jar, producing a fluid as thick as Castrol.
Comfrey - known as knitbone. And if it didn't knit your bones at least it'd stop your back gate from squeaking.
'Rector come round,' Ma told him. 'Said was I sure I'd given him right stuff for his arthritis.'
'Bloody hell,' said Willie. 'Chancing his arm there.'
'No, he were right,' said Ma surprisingly. 'It's not working. Never happened before, that hasn't. Never not worked, that arthritis mixture. Leastways, it's always done summat.'
She reached down to the hearth, picked up an old brown medicine bottle with a cork in it; Ma didn't believe in screw tops. 'Full-strength too. Last summer's.'
Willy smiled slyly. 'Losing thi touch, Ma?'
'Now, don't you say that!' His mother pointing a forefinger stiff as a clothes-peg. Think what you want, but don't you go saying it. It's not lucky.'
'Aye. I'm sorry.'
'Still...' She squinted into the bottle then put it back on the hearth behind Bob or Jim. 'You're not altogether wrong, for once.'
'Nay.' Willie shook his head. 'Shouldn't've said it. Just come out, like.'
'I'm not what I was.'
'Well, what d'you expect? You're eighty ... three? Six?'
'That's not what I'm saying, son.'
Ma's brown eyes were calm. She still didn't need glasses, and her eyes did wonderful things. In Manchester, of a Saturday, all dolled up, she could still summon a waitress in the café with them eyes, even when the waitress had her back turned. And Willie had once seen this right vicious-looking street-gang part clean down the middle to let her through; Ma had sent the eyes in first.
But now the eyes were oddly calm. Accepting. Worrying, that. Never been what you might call an accepter, hadn't Ma.
'None of us is what we was this time last year,' Ma said.
'Ever since yon bogman were took ...'
'Oh, no, Willie stood up. 'Not again. You start on about that bogman and I'm off.'
'Don't be so daft. You know I'm right, our Willie. Look at yer fingers, drummin' away, plonk, plonk. Always was a giveaway, yer fingers.'
'Nay,' Willie said uncomfortably, wishing he hadn't come.
'I'm telling you, we're not protected same as we was.' Ma Wagstaff stopped rocking. 'Sit down. Get your bum back on that couch a minute.'
Willie sat. He was suddenly aware of how dim it was in the parlour, despite all the sunlight, and how small it was. And how little and wizened Ma appeared. It was like looking at an old sepia photo from Victorian times. Hard to imagine this was the fiery-eyed old woman who'd blowtorched a path through a bunch of Moss Side yobboes.
'We've bin protected in this village,' Ma said. 'You know that.'
'I suppose so.'
'We're very old-established, y'see. Very old-established indeed.'
Well, this was true. And the family itself was old-established in Bridelow, at least on Ma's side. Dad had come from Oldham to work at the brewery, but Ma and her ma and her ma's ma ... well, that was how it seemed to go back, through the women.
'But we've let it go,' Ma said.
Willy remembered how upset she'd been when her grand-daughter, his sister's lass, had gone to college in London. Manchester or Sheffield would've been acceptable, but London
He said, 'Let it go?'
Ma Wagstaff leaned back in the rocking-chair, closing her eyes. 'Aye,' she said sadly. 'You say as you don't want to hear this, Willie, but you're goin' t'ave to, sooner or later. You're like all the rest of um. If it's up on t'moor, or out on t'Moss, it's nowt to do wi' us. Can't do us no harm. Well, it can now, see, I'm telling thee.'
All eight of Willie's fingers started working on his knees.
Ma said, 'They're looking for openings. Looking for cracks in t'wall. Been gathering out there for years, hundreds of years.'
'What you on about, Ma?' .
'Different uns, like,' Ma said. 'Not same uns, obviously.
'Yobboes,' Willie said dismissively, realising what she meant. 'Bloody hooligans. Always been yobboes and hooligans out there maulin' wi' them owd circles. Means nowt. Except to farmers, like. Bit of a bugger for farmers.'
'Eh ...' Ma was scornful. 'Farmers loses more sheep to foxes. That's not what I'm saying.'
Her eyes popped open, giving him a shock because there was no peace in them now, no acceptance. All of a sudden they looked just like the little white marbles Willie had collected as a lad, shot through with the same veins of pure, bright red.
She stabbed a finger at him again. 'I can tell um, y'know. Couldn't always ... Aye. Less said about that...'
Willie's own fingers stumbled out of rhythm, the tips gone numb. 'Now, don't upset yourself.'
'But there's one now,' Ma said, one hand clutching an arm of the rocking-chair like a parrot's claw on a perch. 'Comes and goes, like an infection. Looking for an opening ...'
'Shurrup, Ma, will you. Whatever it is, Lottie doesn't want...'
'Listen,' Ma said without hesitation. 'You tell that Lottie to come and see me. Tell her to come tomorrow, I'm a bit busy now. Tell her I'll talk to her about it. Just like we talked to Matt. Matt knew what had to happen. Matt were chuffed as a butty.'
'Aye.' Matt and his mate, the bogman. Together at last.
'Only we've got to protect the lad,' Ma said.
'I don't like any of this. Ma. Lottie'll go spare.'
'Well, look.' Ma was on her feet, sprightly as a ten-year-old, moving bottles on the shelf. 'Give her this.'
'What is it?'
Daft question.
'Aye.' Accepting the little brown bottle. 'All right, then, I'll give it her. Tell her it'll calm her down. Make her feel better. But I'll not tell you're going ahead with ...' Willie gave his knee a couple of climactic thumps. 'No way.'
He didn't tell Ma what Lottie had said about them finishing Matt's bogman song-cycle. Because, when it came down to it, he didn't like the thought of that himself. And he had a pretty good idea how Ma would react.
I warned him not to meddle with stuff he knows nowt about, she'd say. And I don't expect to have to warn me own son.
So, in a way, Willie was hoping Lottie would have forgotten about the whole thing by the time the funeral was over.
A funeral which, if she'd any sense, she'd be attending with a very thick veil over her eyes.
CHAPTER VII
The man with two Dobermans prowling the inside of the wire mesh perimeter fence was clearly too old to be a security guard. His appallingly stained trousers were held up by a dressing-gown cord with dirty gold tassels; a thinner golden cord was draped around the crown of his tattered trilby.
However, the dogs looked menacing enough, and when the man flung open the metal gate, th
ey sprang.
For just a few seconds, the dun-coloured sky disappeared as the Dobermans rose massively and simultaneously into the air. And then they were on her, both heads into her exposed face, hot breath pumping and the great, savage teeth.
'Oh, my God!' Moira shrieked as the rough tongues sliced through her make-up. 'Do you guys know what this bloody stuff cost?'
She threw an arm around each of the dogs, trapping the four big front paws to her tweed jacket, and they all staggered together through the gate and on to the site, knocking over an empty, grey plastic dustbin.
The elderly man in the black trilby caught the bin as it fell. 'Moira!,' he yelled. 'Hey!'
'Donald,' Moira said, arms full of black and gold paws. 'You all right?'
'Well, damn.' He pulled his hat off. 'We wisny expecting ye today, hen, the Duchess didny say ...'
'That's because she doesn't know,' Moira said. 'I hope she's not away from her van ... Down, now ...'
The dogs obediently sat at her feet. 'Ye've still got the way, all right,' Donald said admiringly.
'They've grown. Again. I swear I've never seen Dobermans this big. What d'you feed them on?
Donald didn't smile. 'Public health officials.'
'My daddy,' she reminded him gently, "was a public health official.'
'Aye, I know. But your daddy wisny like the hard-faced bastards they send 'round these days.' Donald turned his head and shouted at a woman pegging baby-clothes to a washing line outside a lilac-coloured caravan.
'Hey, Siobhan, the Duchess, she in now?'
'Oh ... sure' The woman stumbled and dropped a nappy in a puddle. She picked it up, wrung out the brown water and hung it on the line. 'Leastways, I haven't seen no red carpet goin' down today.'
'Tinkers,' Donald said disparagingly. 'They're all bloody tinkers here now, 'cept for the few of us.'
Moira followed him and the dogs through the site, with its forty-odd vans on concrete hard-standings and its unexpectedly spectacular views of the Ayrshire coast. It might have been a holiday caravan site but for the washing lines full of fluttering clothes and the piles of scrap and all the kids and dogs.
