The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Holy shit,' said Macbeth.

  'We didn't talk much. Nobody was gonna try and kidnap me or anything. Nobody offered me anything. Except the comb. She gave me that.'

  'And is it a magic comb?'

  'It's just a comb,' Moira said, more sharply than she intended.

  'He's close to you,' the Duchess said.

  'Who?'

  'The departed one.'

  'Still?'

  'We'll have some tea,' the Duchess said in a slightly raised voice, and a young woman at once emerged from the kitchen with a large silver tray full of glistening white china. 'One of my nieces,' the Duchess said, 'Zelda ...' There would always be nieces and nephews to fetch and carry for the Duchess.

  She lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed. 'Earl Grey. Never mind. You should take a rest, Moira. Unravel yourself.'

  'Maybe I'd rather not see what's inside of me.'

  The Duchess stirred the tea in the pot, making it stronger, making the Earl Grey's rich perfume waft out. 'Maybe you should get away, and when you get back your problems will be in perspective. Go somewhere bland. St Moritz, Barbados ...'

  'Jesus, Mammy, how much money you think I'm making?'

  'Well, England then. Tunbridge Wells or somewhere.'

  'Tunbridge Wells?'

  'You know what I mean.'

  'Yeah. You're telling me it's something I'm not gonna get away from no matter where I go.'

  'Am I?'

  'You said there was damage to repair. You think I damaged Matt Castle?'

  'Do you?'

  'I don't kn ... No! No, I don't see how I could have.'

  'That's all right, then,' said the Duchess. She smiled.

  Moira felt profoundly uneasy. 'Mammy, how was he when he died? Can you tell me that?'

  'Moira, you're a grown woman. You know this man's essence has not returned to the source. I can say no more than that.'

  Moira felt the weight of her bag on her knees, the bag with the comb in it. The bag felt twice as heavy as before, like a sack of stolen bullion.

  She said in a rush, 'Mammy, somebody was after the comb. I had to fight for it.'

  'Yes. That happens. The comb represents a commitment. Sometimes you have to decide whether or not you want to renew it.'

  'So it was this struggle which caused ... See, I'm confused. I feel exhausted, but I feel I made it through to a new level, a new plateau. But that usually means something heavy's on the way. Well, doesn't it?'

  The Duchess blinked. 'How is your father?' she said brightly. 'Docs he speak of me often?'

  She said goodbye to Donald at the gate and patted the Dobermans. Her old BMW was parked about fifty yards away near a derelict petrol station. Parked behind it was a car which had not been there before, a grey Metro with a hire-firm sticker on the rear window.

  Leaning against the Metro was a man wearing a dinner jacket over a black t-shirt. On the t-shirt it said in red, I ♥ Govan. The remains of a thistle hung out of one lapel of the jacket.

  His face fumbled a grin.

  'Uh, hi,' he said.

  Moira was furious.

  'You followed me! You fucking followed me!'

  'Listen ... Moira ... See, this has been ... Like, this was the most bizarre, dramatic, momentous night of my life, you know?'

  'So? You've had a sheltered life. Is that supposed ... ?'

  'I can't walk away from this. Am I supposed to like, push it aside, maybe introduce it as an anecdote over dinner with my associates?'

  Moira stood with her key in the door of the BMW. She wanted to say, OK, while you're here maybe you can tell me something about a tall, pale man with white hair.

  Instead, she said, 'Macbeth, you shouldn't believe everything a woman tells you when she's in shock.'

  'I ... Goddammit, I saw. And I tried to sleep on it and I couldn't, so this morning ...' Mungo Macbeth looked sheepish and spread his hands ...

  She gave him a cursory glance intended to wither, fade him out.

  'I figured maybe you could use some help,' he said.

  OK,' she said. 'You see those gates? Behind those gates is a guy with two huge and ferocious dogs. The dogs'll do anything the guy says ... And the guy - he'll do anything I say. You got the message?'

  'Couldn't we go someplace? Get a bite to eat?'

  'No, we could not.' Moira opened the driver's door of the BMW and got in, wound down the window. 'You think I need a strong male shoulder to lean on, that it? Or maybe a bedpost?'

  Macbeth said helplessly, 'I just think ... I just think you're an amazing person.'

  'Macbeth ..." She sighed. 'Just go away, huh?'

  He nodded, expressionless, turned back to his hire car. He looked like he might cry.

  This was ridiculous.

  'Hey, Macbeth . . Moira leaned back out of the window, nodded at his T-shirt. 'You ever actually been to Govan?'

  'Aw, hell ...' Macbeth shrugged. 'I cruised most of those Western Isles. Just don't recall which is which.'

  Moira found a grin, or the grin found her. Hurriedly, she put the car into gear, drove away, and when she looked back there was only a bus, a long way behind.

  From Dawber's Book of Bridelow.

  THE BREWERY

  Fine beers have been brewed in the Bridelow area since time immemorial, the most famous being the almost-black Bridelow Bitter.

  This, or something similar, was first produced commercially, on an relatively small scale, by Elsie Berry and her sons in the late seventeenth century, using a species of aromatic bog-myrtle as a preservative. The Berry family began by providing ale for the Bridelow pub. The Man I'th Moss, but demand grew swiftly in communities up to fifteen miles away.

  The Bridelow Brewery as we know it today was founded in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Horridge, a businessman from Chesterfield who bought out the Berry Family and whose enterprise was to provide employment for many generations of Bridelow folk. He at once began work on the construction of the first proper road across the Moss to facilitate the movement of his brewery wagons.

  Descendants of Thomas Horridge continued to develop the industry, and the family became Bridelow's greatest benefactors, building the village hall, enabling major repairs to be carried out to the ancient church and continuing to facilitate new housing as recently as the 1950s.

  However ...

  CHAPTER VIII

  In the bar at The Man I'th Moss, lunchtime, Young Frank Manifold said, in disgust, 'Bloody gnat's piss!'

  And angrily pushed his glass away.

  'I'll have draught Bass next time,' Young Frank said. Never thought I'd be saying that in this pub. Never.'

  'Eh, tha's just bitter, lad.' said Frank Manifold Snr, who preferred Scotch anyway. 'Tha's a right to feel bitter, mind, I'm not saying tha's not... Know what they've done, now, Ernie? Only paid off our drivers and replaced um wi' their own blokes.'

  'Ken and Peter?'

  'Paid off! Cut down lorries from five to two - bigger uns, like. Needed experienced HGV drivers, they reckoned. Makes you spit.'

  Ernie, who also was on whisky, had a sip out of Young Frank's beer glass. 'Lad's right, I'm afraid,' he said. 'It's gone off.'

  'Well, thank you!' Young Frank said devoutly. 'Thank you very much, Mr Dawber.'

  'Only just don't go shouting it around the place,' Ernie muttered. 'Lottie's got to sell the stuff and she's enough problems.'

  'No, she doesn't,' said Young Frank, back-row smart-arse in Ernie's top class fourteen years ago. 'Doesn't have to sell it at all no more. Free house, int it?'

  Lottie wasn't here this lunchtime. Stan Burrows, who'd also been made redundant from the brewery, was minding the bar. Stan said, 'I heard as how Gannons was kicking up, claiming they'd been sabotaged, not given proper recipe, like. Threatening legal action, what I heard.'

  'Balls,' said Young Frank, glaring at his discarded glass. 'They don't give a shit.'

  Ernie Dawber, on his usual stool at the end of the bar, by the telephone, pondered this. The way he saw
it, there was no way the Horridge family could have got away with not providing Gannons with the correct recipe. And why should they want to, with Shaw Horridge on the Board?

  Yet it was a fact. Since the brewery had been taken over,

  the stuff had been slowly shedding its distinctive flavour.

  Surprising, because it was well known that Gannons, whose bestselling product was a fizzy lager with a German name produced down Matlock way, had been anxious for some time to acquire their own genuine, old-established Real Ale - and would therefore be expected to treat Bridelow beer with more than a modicum of respect.

  Ernie decided he'd better go up to the Hall one night and have a bit of a chat with Shaw Horridge or his mother. Bridelow Black Bitter had a reputation. Even if the brewery was in new hands, even if there'd been this swingeing 'rationalization', which meant firing half the lads, it was still Bridelow beer.

  Gnat's piss! By 'eck, he'd never thought to hear that.

  When his daughter rang from Oxford, in the early afternoon, the Rector barely made it to the phone in time.

  'Were you in the garden?' Catherine asked him suspiciously, and Hans didn't deny it. It had taken him almost a minute to hobble from the kitchen to the study.

  Pointless, however, trying to conceal anything from Cathy. 'How's the knee?' she demanded at once and with a certain menace.

  'Oh,' Hans said, as airily as he could manage with clenched teeth. 'Could be worse, you know.'

  'I've no doubt that it could, Pop. But worse than what is what I'd like to know.'

  Hans tried to keep from screaming out loud as he fell into the window chair, pulling the phone on to his knees.

  Cathy said, 'I don't suppose you'd even tell me if you'd had to have a Zimmer frame screwed into the back of the pulpit.'

  The still-aggressive sun, having gouged chunks out of the church wall, began to attack the study window, and when the Rector twisted away from it, his left knee felt like a slab of volcanic rock with a core of molten lava.

  'Well, actually,' he said, abandoning pretence with a sigh, 'it couldn't be a lot worse.'

  'That's it,' his daughter said. 'I'm on my way. Pop. Expect me for supper.'

  'No, no, no. Your studies ... whatever they are.'

  Cathy said crisply, 'In a post-graduate situation, as I keep explaining, you get a fair bit of leeway. I'm coming up.'

  'No. Listen. You don't understand.' Raising his voice, trying to shout down the pain as much as her. 'I'm getting a lot of help. The Mothers' Union ... terribly kind, and ... look, when I need you, I promise I'll be in touch. You know I will.'

  He swallowed a great slab of breath and bit his tongue, jamming his palm over the mouthpiece just in time. Change the subject. Talk about something else. 'Erm, Matt Castle ... Poor Matt died on Sunday night.'

  'Oh, no.'

  'It was a mercy, Catherine.'

  'Yes, I suppose it would be. Did ... ?'

  'Oh, very quick. In the end, he spent no more than a few hours in hospital. Kept signing himself out, you see. Determined to die in Bridelow. He was even out on the Moss yesterday morning, I'm told, with Lottie and the boy. Brave man. Poor Matt.'

  'What's going to happen to the pub?'

  'She'll stay on, I imagine. For a while. You know what she's like. Terribly independent. Old Mrs Wagstaff sent one of her special potions across, to help her sleep. Lottie bunged it

  back at once, with Willie. She's very resistant to all that.'

  'When's the funeral?'

  'Friday afternoon.' .

  'You're going to have difficulty, aren't you? Especially if it gets colder.'

  Putting her finger on it, as usual. So Hans had to come out with what, apart from the pain, was on his mind. 'Cathy, they've given me a curate.'

  'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'Well, you certainly could do win

  the help. But it, er ... that could be a headache, couldn't it?'

  'It was only a matter of time,' Hans said, 'parish this size. Suppose I've been holding out. Putting it off. That is, I realise this sort of thing - new chaps - has always taken care of itself in the past. I mean, I myself was not ... well, not, perhaps, the man they would have chosen at the time. But one gets acclimatized. Headache? Hmm ... let's hope not.'

  'Anybody I know?'

  'Oh, a young fellow, few months out of college. Simon's very keen ... Well, actually not that young. Late twenties, I suppose. Used to be a teacher. Joel Beard, his name. Pleasant enough lad. Slightly earnest, but so many of them are, aren't they?'

  Cathy said, 'Jesus Christ.'

  Hans didn't say anything. His daughter never blasphemed for effect.

  'I was at the high school with him.' Hans could hear her frowning. 'For a year or two. That is, he was four or five years in front of me. He was Head Boy. One of those who takes it seriously. Very authoritative, very proper. Seemed more of a grown-up than some of the teachers, do you know what I mean? Most of the girls were crazy about him. But I was never into Greek gods.'

  She stopped. 'Pop, listen, you do know he was at St Oswald's, don't you?'

  Yes, he did. He was surprised, though, that she knew the significance of this. 'It's not necessarily a drawback, you know, Cathy.'

  He tried to straighten his right leg and, although there was no great pain in this one, the right knee fought him all the way. Both knees now. God save us. Wheelchair job soon. Or one could go into hospital and leave Joel Beard in charge.

  'Simon thinks he's a star,' he said. 'Which means, I suppose, that the silly sod's fallen in love with him. He used, apparently ... Joel, this is ... he used to be some sort of Born Again Christian. Before he decided to go straight, as it were.'

  You call two years at St Oswald's going straight? The most notoriously fundamentalist theological college in the country?'

  'I like to think I'm broadminded,' Hans said.

  'Sure, but how broadminded is Ma Wagstaff?'

  'Look,' Hans said, 'people adjust. Bridelow adjusts people. I'd rather have a fundamentalist or a charismatic than some bureaucrat with a briefcase and a mobile phone.

  Anyway, the Diocese likes him. "He's tough, he's athletic" - this is Simon talking - "and he's bringing God back into the arena." Bit of muscle. They're into that these days. The anti-pansy lobby. Even Simon, ironically. I mean, all right, I could refuse him, I could tell them to take him back, say he doesn't fit it ... but somebody's going to ask, why doesn't he fit? And anyway, who's to say ... ? They might not be ... orthodox here, but they have a strong faith and strong, simple principles. Ma Wagstaff? Very broadminded in some ways.'

  'Hmmm,' said Cathy, unconvinced.

  'However, rest assured, I won't let him take Matt's funeral. I suspect the ladies have plans.'

  'God, no, you mustn't let him do that.'

  'So if I have to go out there on a pair of crutches ... or a Zimmer frame.'

  'Don't you go talking about Zimmer frames. Pop.'

  'You did.'

  'That's when I'll come,' Catherine decided. 'I'll come on Wednesday night. I'll get you through the funeral. I won't have you talking about Zimmer frames.'

  'Now, look ...'

  'I'm not going to argue, my phone bill's getting ridiculous. I'll see you Wednesday night.'

  And she hung up on him.

  'Thank you,' the Rector said with resignation into the dead phone. 'I suppose.'

  The Hall had once been surrounded by parkland, although now it just looked like ordinary fields with a well-ordered assembly of mature trees - beech and sycamore and horse-chestnut.

  The trees were higher now, but not yet high enough to obscure the soaring stone walls of the brewery, four storeys high, an early Victorian industrial castle, as proud and firm in its setting as St Bride's Church.

  She hated it now.

  You could not see the brewery from the drawing room. But with all the trees nearly bare again, Eliza Horridge, from her window seat, could see the village in detail. She supposed she'd always preferred autumn and winter for this
very reason: it brought her closer to Bridelow.

  The sad irony of this made her ache. On the night the redundancies had been announced, she'd gone - rather bravely, she thought - down to the post office to buy some stamps which she didn't need. She'd just had to get it over, face the hostility.

  Except there hadn't been any. Nobody had screamed Judas at her, nobody had ignored her or been short with her.

  But nobody had said a word about the jobs either. They didn't blame her personally. But Liz Horridge blamed herself and since that night had never been back into Bridelow.

  Self-imposed exile in this warm and shabby-luxurious house with its pictures and memories of Arthur Horridge.

  Self imposed; could go out whenever she wanted. Couldn't she?

  She snatched up the phone on its second ring to wrench her mind from what it couldn't cope with.

  'Yes?' The number was ex-directory. There were too people down there with whom she could no longer bear to speak.

  'Yes? Hello? Is that you, Shaw?'

  Something told her she was in for a shock, and her eyes clutched at the view of the village for support, following the steep cobbled street past the pub, past the post office, past

  the line of tiny stone cottages to the churchyard.

  'Liiiiz ...' Mellifluously stretching the word, as he used to, into an embrace. 'Super!' Shattering her.

  'Thought I saw you last week, m'girl, in Buxton. Was in a wine bar. Thought you came up the street. No?'

  'Couldn't have been,' she scraped out. 'Never go ...'

  'Thought you sensed me ... turned your head so sharply.'

  '... to Buxton.' Her voice faded.

  'And looked at the window of the wine bar, with a sort of sadness in your eyes. Couldn't see me, of course.'

  She stared down at the village, but it was like watching a documentary on the television. Or a soap opera, because she could identify most of the people and could map out the paths

  of their lives from their movements, between the post office, the pub and the church.