The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Mechanic too, eh?' the Rector said. 'You're obviously an endlessly useful man to have about the place.'

  Joel, deaf to all sarcasm, said, 'I told Sam I'd go along to the farm, talk to his wife. And perhaps... perhaps do what I can to protect them.'

  'Joel, if there's any protecting to be done in this parish ...'

  God in heaven, this was the man's first full day in Bridelow, and he was taking over!

  'Oh, I realised, of course, that you'd be along there yourself if it wasn't for your, er, leg. I explained all this to Sam, of course I did.'

  'Made my excuses, did you?'

  'Hans ...' Joel Beard wore a hefty gold-plated crucifix on his chest. Joel, the avenging angel. For the first time, Hans was getting an inkling of how disruptive this man could turn out to be.

  'Hans, I'm only trying to help,' Joel said, like a social worker addressing some uppity pensioner.

  'The problem is, Hans, people sometimes don't realise the amount of sheer legwork involved in ministering to a rural parish. Admit it, now, you've needed help for quite some while, and been too proud to ask for it. Well, naturally, we all admire you for that, but there's a job of work to be done here, you know that.'

  The Rector said coldly, 'I really don't know what you're talking about.'

  'Perhaps,' Joel said gently, 'that's because you're too close to it. You know what I think? I think these filthy rites on the moors are only the tip of the iceberg.'

  He glanced back out of the window to the place where the hooded woman had disappeared. Stay away, Hans pleaded inside his head. Stay out of sight ...for God's sake... whoever you are.

  'There's been talk, you know,' Joel said into the glass pane. 'I have to be frank, it's the only way I can be. And I think it's only fair you should know. A good deal of talk. At diocese level.'

  Hans sat down suddenly, carelessly, in his armchair - and felt the pain might hurl him at the ceiling. 'Listen,' he gasped, gripping the chair arms, holding himself down. 'Has it ever occurred to you for one blessed moment that perhaps there are things you don't understand? I know you were at St Oswald's. I know the sort of bull-at-a-gate Christianity they go in for ...'

  'I only know what's in my heart.' Joel almost chanting, his eyes squeezed to slits, Joel the seer, Joel the prophet. 'I know that God is living in my heart, and therefore what I feel to be right and good must be right and good because it is His Word.'

  God save us, Hans thought, from Born Again Christians cunning enough to get into the business proper. And God help me to restrain this man's excesses.

  Leave him alone! Can't you see what you're doing to him?

  Cathy, in the hall, ear to the study door. Dressed for the funeral, black jumper and skirt, coat over her arm.

  Half an hour ago she'd sneaked down to the wine-cellar to discover that Joel had set up a camp bed on the stone flags and a card-table with candles, like a makeshift altar.

  A bit eerie. A lot disturbing.

  What the hell was this bloke trying to achieve, digging himself in, like a big mole, under the very heart of Bridelow?

  'Talk,' Hans said. 'You say there's been talk. What kind of talk?'

  Joel walked back to the centre of the room, stood in front of the piano, his hands behind his back, the polished cross flashing from the black of his cassock. Like a cheap medallion, Hans thought from the sour darkness of his pain.

  'I'm not a humble man,' Joel said.

  Hans, coughing, nearly choked.

  'I know this,' Joel said. 'And I pray one day Almighty God will let me come to humility in my own way. But not ...yet.'

  His hands whipped round from behind his back. One was an open palm and the other a fist. They came together with a small explosion in the still, fusty air of the Rector's study.

  'Not yet.' Joel Beard said softly, turning back to the window. Still, presumably, no sign of the woman in black.

  Whichever of them it was, Hans thought, she would do well to depart quickly and discreetly, the way they could when they wanted to.

  'It's not the time, you see, for humility.' Joel standing behind Hans's chair now, blocking his light. 'The clergy's been humble and self-effacing for so long that it amounts to downright indolence. It's time, I believe, to remember the other Christ. The one who ejected the traders and the money lenders from the temple. There's worse than that here. Isn't there?'

  'Look ...'

  Joel spat out, 'It's the Devil's lair!'

  'It's ...' Hans tried to get out of his chair, felt suddenly dizzy.

  'That's what the talk's about.' Joel's eyes burning in the afternoon gloom. 'Satan walking openly in the street. Satan walking, bold as brass, to the very door of this church, where that filthy whore parades her ... her parts.'

  'No.' Hans felt old and ineffectual. 'It's not true.'

  'Yes! There's a cult of Satan, making blood sacrifices on the moors, and this is where it's emanating from. God only knows how long it's flourished here.'

  Cathy breathed in, hard.

  Half an hour ago, Joel had caught her spying. Stood and watched her coming up the steps from the cellar, smiling at her from the vestry doorway. Cathy, red-faced, mumbling, 'Just seeing if there was anything I could do. To, er, to make you a bit more comfortable down there.'

  Could have bitten her tongue off. She supposed lots of women would find him awfully attractive, with the tight golden curls, the wide smile - and that physique. Perhaps she really

  was gay.

  Certainly she hated the man now. How could he say these things?

  ... that filthy whore parades her parts ...

  Our Sheila?

  You're insane! She wanted to fling open the study door and scream it at him.

  Joel said reasonably, 'We're not asking you to do anything yourself. Obviously, you've had to live with these people for a very long time. Big part of your life. And we all realise you're not well ...'

  'And who?' Hans asked wearily, as if he didn't know, 'are we?'

  Joel, for once, was silent.

  'The Bishop? Our newly appointed archdeacon? Perhaps he fancies you, Joel, have you thought about that?'

  Joel Beard turned away in distaste. 'Christ says ...'

  'But... but you're not Christ, Joel,' Hans said, horrified at the hollow weakness of his own voice. He slumped back into the chair, into the endless cavern of his pain, his eyes closed. The Rev. Joel Beard laughed agreeably. 'We'll crack this thing together, Rector. You and me and God.'

  Hans heard him rubbing his hands. 'Well. Time's getting on. Funeral to conduct. Though I can't think why you left it until so late in the day.'

  'Family request,' Hans mumbled, lying. 'Some relatives had ... long way to travel.'

  'Hmm. I see. Well, come on, old chap.' Joel's strong Christian hand on his shoulder. 'Soon be over.'

  From behind the door, Cathy scurried away, pulling on her coat. He'd caught her once today. He'd never catch her again.

  The two of them stood at the bottom end of the churchyard, not far from the lych-gate. There was a monument here on its own, stark and pointed, like an obelisk, one word indented on a dressed-stone plaque.

  HORRIDGE

  'It was always pretty scary, Shaw said, 'to think that one day I'd be under that too.'

  Therese, in her ancient fox-fur coat, walked all round the monument. 'Is it a vault?'

  'Something like that. I didn't take too much notice when they stuck my father in there. I'm sure that one of the reasons I was determined to unload the brewery was to avoid being buried here. I mean, I didn't think about it at the time, but it must have been at the back of my mind. To break the family ties with Bridelow, get the hell out of here. For good. I mean ... not have to come to people's funerals who you hardly knew, because you're a Horridge. I reckon the old man would have sold out himself if he'd had half a chance.'

  'Where would you like to be buried?'

  'Somewhere warm. If it has to be in this country I'd prefer to be cremated.'

  'I wouldn't mi
nd.'

  'Being cremated?'

  'Being buried here,' Therese said. 'I like vaults.' She smiled, her eyes glinted. 'You can get out of them.'

  Shaw shuddered, a feeling he was growing to enjoy. She looked very edible today, as ever. However, for the first time, he rather hoped she was not naked under that coat. It was so cold, though, that he didn't really imagine she could be. She'd attached a scarf-thing to it today, with the fox's head on the end. Shaw, who'd ridden to hounds two or three times whilst staying with friends, didn't find this offensive but suspected there were people in Bridelow who would; they appeared to have strong views about killing animals for pleasure.

  She said, 'Have you ever seen him, your father?'

  He knew her well enough by now to know exactly what she meant by that, but he pretended he didn't. 'Of course I've seen him. He didn't die until I was twenty-five. Come on, let's get a drink before the show starts.'

  'It's your family vault, after all,' Therese said. 'You've got rights of access. Why don't we pop in and visit him one ...'

  'For God's sake, Tess ...' Not his bloody father, the sanctimonious old sod.

  'I've told you before,' she said coldly. 'I don't like to be called Tess.' Then she turned her head and looked up into his face, and the fox's glass eyes were looking at him too. 'We could ask him, you see.'

  He felt the chill wind raising his hairline even more, wished he'd worn his stylish new Homburg. She was playing with his mind again. Sometimes it was difficult to sleep.

  'We could ask him if you were right. That he really did want to get out of Bridelow. That he would've had no objections at all to Gannons taking over the brewery. Give your mother something to think about.'

  'I'd rather not, if you don't mind,' Shaw said. He was thinking about last summer, a warm day in August, when he'd found out about another side of Therese.

  Over dinner one night in Manchester, he'd giggled nervously and said to her, 'You know, I'm beginning to think you must be some sort of vampire, only ever corning out at night.'

  'Would you like that - if I was a vampire?'

  'I don't know. What would it mean?'

  'I could make you undead, couldn't I?'

  'Er ... haven't you got to be dead before you can be undead?'

  She'd put down her glass and looked at him, red wine glistening on her lips, face still and golden in the moving candlelight, like a mask from some Egyptian tomb.

  'And what,' she said, 'makes you think you aren't?' And he began to shake with desire, a new kind of desire which began at the bottom of his spine.

  But he'd kept on at her in the car - it was a Range Rover this time, belonging, she said, to a friend - as she whizzed them down Deansgate around 1 a.m. What did she do at weekends, in the daytime? Social work, she said.

  'Social work?'

  And it was true; two days later they were out on the moors. He was following Therese in gloriously tight jeans and there were two friends called Rhona and Rob and a bunch of

  people Therese described loosely as 'offenders'.

  Rhona, who was quite attractive, despite having a sort of crewcut, was apparently a professional social worker with the local authority. Rob, a lean, hard-looking man, was - amazingly - a policeman, a detective sergeant. You had to admire her cheek, being friends with a copper after all the cars and things she'd stolen.

  They'd parked their vehicles in a long lay-by off the Sheffield road and after two hours of hard walking, Shaw's legs were starting to ache.

  'Where are we going exactly?'

  'Not far now,' Therese assured him. The six 'offenders', who were of both sexes and ranged in age from teens to about sixty, were fairly silent the whole way.

  After a further few minutes, Therese stopped. They were on a kind of plateau, offering a magnificent view of miles of sunlit moorland and, more distantly, a huge expanse of darkness which he assumed was the Moss, with the hills behind it reaching up to Kinder Scout.

  'Gosh, look,' Shaw said, 'there's the Bridelow road. We've come a hell of a long way round. If we'd just gone through the churchyard and carried on up the moor we'd have been up here in about half an hour.'

  'It was better to come this way,' Therese said. 'Don't whinge, Shaw.'

  There were stubby stones around where she was standing, arranged in a rough sort of circle, or maybe an egg-shape; it was hard to tell, they were so overgrown.

  One of the older offenders was on his knees. He was probably exhausted. He had his arms around one of the bigger stones, a thing about two and a half feet high, and he seemed

  to be kissing it.

  'What sort of offenders are they?' Shaw whispered.

  'Just people who society considers maladjusted,' Therese said. 'It's stupid. They all have special qualities nobody seems to want to recognize.'

  Rob said, 'We're helping to rehabilitate them.'

  Therese had taken a few objects from her backpack - odd things, photographs in frames, a small pair of trainers, a large penknife - and arranged them around the circle, up against the stones.

  They had a rough sort of picnic outside the circle of stones, with a whole cooked chicken, which everybody pulled bits off, and red wine. Afterwards, they all sat around in the springy yellow grass, not talking, the sun going down, Shaw starting to feel a little drunk, a little sleepy.

  He was aware that Rob and Rhona had entered the circle and were murmuring to themselves in low voices. They seemed to have taken all their clothes off. They began to touch each other and then to have sex. Shaw was deeply shocked but kept quiet about it. It went on for some time. Until suddenly, dreamily, a plump, spotty, middle-aged woman called Andrea stood up and joined Rob and Rhona in the circle and began to behave as though there were some other people in there too.

  'Hello, David,' she said joyfully, the first time she'd spoken all afternoon. 'All right, Kevin?'

  She giggled. 'Yes,' she said. 'Me too. Do you like it here? It's nice, isn't it?'

  At that stage Rhona and Rob left her and came out and sat with Therese and Shaw. Flies and midges buzzed around Andrea in the dusk. Shaw seemed to fall asleep. When he awoke he saw Andrea on her knees in the circle with her arms around what looked like two dusty shadows.

  'Isn't it heart-warming?' Therese was whispering, as if they were watching a weepy from the back stalls. 'She's becoming reconciled to the loss of her brothers.'

  'What happened to them?'

  'They died,' Therese said. 'A long time ago. She killed them. With a penknife. They were only little. 'Course she was only a child herself. It was such a shame, they put her away for a long time.'

  He didn't remember how they got back to the cars except that it was dark by then and it didn't seem to take nearly as long as it had taken them to get to the circle.

  In the churchyard, Therese said, 'Is she here - your mother?'

  'No, she ... she thinks she's got that Taiwanese flu. I've tendered her apologies.'

  'Funny, isn't it, the way she won't come into Bridelow?

  'She should leave. She's no connections here.'

  'Why won't she leave?'

  'I don't know,' Shaw said, but he did. His mother couldn't bear to be supplanted by Therese. His mother did not like Therese. This was understandable. Sometimes he wasn't

  sure that the word 'like' precisely conveyed his own feelings.

  Her dark hair, swept back today, was mostly inside the collar of the fur coat. She wore a deep purple lipstick.

  Nor, he thought, was 'love' appropriate. So why ...

  Therese nodded back towards the village. Shaw looked his watch: three minutes to four, and the light was weakening.

  ... why ...

  Therese said, 'It's coming.' Meaning the funeral procession.

  Shaw shuddered again, with a cold pleasure that made him afraid of her and of himself.

  'You know,' Therese said, 'I think it's time you met father. Properly.'

  'Is he dead?' Shaw asked fearfully.

  CHAPTER V

&nbs
p; Everything that happened, the dreadful inevitability of it all, Ernie Dawber would remember in horribly exquisite detail. Like a series of grim cameos. Or the meticulously etched illustrations in the pre-war picture-book from which he used to tell stories to the youngest children on Friday afternoons, enjoying the measured resonance of his own headmasterly tones and then holding up the book to what was left of the light so they could all see the pictures.

  Cosy, back then. Friday afternoons in mid-autumn, with Mr Dawber and The Brothers Grimm. Home to buttered toast for tea.

  Now it was another Friday afternoon. But this time the text was being read to Ernie and he could see all the pictures, the pages turning over in a terrible, considered rhythm, until he wanted to leap up from his seat in the back row, crying out, Stop ... stop!

  He didn't leap up much any more. Sometimes, lately, he felt unsteady and disconnected in his head. But when he went to the doc's for some pills for it, the doc had made him have tests. Sorry he'd gone now.

  No leaping up, anyroad. Nowt he could do except to witness it, for this was all he was now: the observer. The local historian, dry and factual. Not for him to comment or to judge. Nothing that happened on this day would ever be recorded, anyway, in The Book of Bridelow. And so was best forgotten.

  As if ever he could.

  Cosy, too (the first picture) in the bar at The Man before the funeral, having a whisky for the cold, with his half of Black, his mind charting the changes from that warm evening when Matt Castle had brought them hope.

  Although, unknown to him at the time, the Change must have begun on the bright March morning when the roadmen found the bog body.

  Hand clenching on his glass of Black, now condemned as gnat's piss by them as knows. The only light in the bar is greenish-blue, from the old gas-mantle Matt Castle reinstated, childishly happy when he found it could still be made to work.

  Such small things seemed to delight Matt, painstakingly patching up frail memories of his childhood.

  Unaware that he, too, was part of the Change.