The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  Voice raised, muffled. Voice out of the grave.

  '... Got to be ... Chrissie, the trowel ... pass me the trowel!'

  'Take your time, Dr Hall, you won't get another chance.'

  Hand inside, Alf could feel the quilted stuff and the stiff, lacy stuff, the lining. Felt more like nylon than silk. Sweat bubbling up on his forehead to meet the rain, his moustache dripping.

  The smell from inside the box was dank and rotten. Alf wrenched his head aside, looked away from the blackened hump of the coffin towards the people gathered round the open grave, Joel Beard singing out contemptuously, 'You see ... nothing. Are you really surprised?'

  Alf propping himself on his right arm, the hand splayed into the grass.

  'Ashton, it has to be. I refuse to ...'

  It hit Alf Beckett, in a sudden burst of bewilderment. The bogman. They can't find it... why can't they find it?

  And then his stomach lurched, hot vomit roared into his throat. His supporting arm collapsed, the nerves gone, and his mouth stretched into a scream so wide it seemed it'd rip his lips apart.

  The scream was choked by the vomit.

  His left hand, the one inside Matt Castle's coffin, had slipped, all five fingers dropping into a soft, cold and glutinous mess. A thin and viscid slithering thing was pulsing between them.

  CHAPTER III

  'This time,' Sam Davis said, 'you won't stop me.'

  He'd already dressed by the time Esther awoke.

  'Lights?' she said. 'Lights again?'

  Sam nodded. Cradled in his arms was his dad's old twelve-bore shotgun.

  'Get that out!' Esther shouted. 'I'll not have that thing in my bedroom.'

  'Fair enough,' Sam said, patting the pockets of his old combat jacket.

  'I will stop you,' Esther said, sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes, if you go out with that gun I'll've called the police before you get to the end of the yard.'

  'Please yourself.' Sam broke the gun. 'Man's got to look after his own.' He pulled a handful of cartridges from his jacket pocket and shoved a couple into the breach.

  Esther started to cry. 'Don't waste um, luv,' Sam said. 'We tried your way. Big wanker. "Oh, Satan, get thee gone, I'm giving thee notice to quit."' Sam snorted. 'Now I'm giving um notice to quit. Wi' this. And they'll listen.'

  'You're a bloody fool, Sam Davis,' Esther wept. 'You're a fool to yourself. Where will I be wi' you in jail for manslaughter? Where will your children be?'

  'Shurrup, eh?' Sam said. 'You'll wake um. I'll be back in half an hour. Or less. Don't worry.'

  'Don't worry ... ?'

  'I'll show it um. Happen I'll fire it over their heads. That's all it'll take.'

  Sam Davis moved quietly out of the bedroom, and his wife followed him downstairs. 'I've warned you. I'll ring for t'police.'

  'Aye.' Leaving the lights off, Sam undid the bolts on the back door. It was raining out, and cold enough for sleet.

  When he'd gone, Esther, shivering in her nightie, said, 'Right,' and went to the phone.

  The phone was dead. He'd ripped out the wire and pulled off the little plastic plug. Esther ran to the back door and screeched, 'Sam ... Sam!' into the unresponsive night.

  The nights were the worst times, but in a way they were the best because they hardened Lottie's intent to get out. By day - local customers drifting in around lunchtime, nice people - she got to thinking the pub was an important local service and there weren't many of those left in Bridelow and if she didn't keep it on, who would? And Matt. Matt would be so disappointed with her.

  But at night, alone in the pine-framed bed which kept reminding her of her husband's coffin, enclosed by the still strange, hard, whitewashed walls, she felt his stubborn obsessiveness in the air like a lingering, humid odour. And she knew she'd paid back all she owed to Matt, long since.

  If indeed he'd ever given her anything, apart from headaches and Dic.

  She lay down the middle of the bed, head on a single white pillow; for the first time entirely alone. Dic had gone off - relieved, she knew - to his bedsit in Stockport; back on Monday to the supply-teaching he was doing in lieu of a real job. Dic looking perpetually bewildered all day, saying little, mooching about rubbing his chin. Offering, in a half-hearted way, to stay here until Sunday night, but Lottie briskly waving him out - fed up with you under my feet, moping around, time I had some space for myself.

  To do what, though?

  Well ... to try and find a buyer for the pub, for a start. That would be a picnic. Best she could hope for was to flog it to some rich Cheshire businessman with romantic yearnings, for conversion into a luxury home with an exclusive view of peat, peat, peat.

  Bloody peat. In the mornings she'd draw back the bedroom curtains and the first thing she'd see would be black peat and on to the scene her mind would superimpose Matt in his wheelchair, sinking into the Moss and fighting it all the way, and every bloody marsh-bird banking overhead would be imitating the Pennine Pipes of blessed memory.

  All I want is Bridelow Moss behind me. To be able to draw back the curtains on to other people's gardens, parked cars, the postman, the milkman, no hills in view over the tops of the laburnums. (In other words, the view from the bedroom window in Wilmslow which Matt had despised and which she carried in her mind like a talisman of sanity.)

  With the bedside light on, she gazed unblinking at the ceiling, a single hefty black beam bisecting it diagonally so that half the ceiling was light, half shadow.

  'Ma ...'

  '... aye, gone.'

  '... agstaff... dead...you didn't know?'

  '... God, no. . :

  If walls could record voices and mood and atmosphere, The Man's ancient stones would have been crumbling tonight under the dead weight of suppressed emotion. The death of Ma Wagstaff: the underlying theme below all the trivial tap-room chat about Manchester United and the sodding Government, and the more meaningful analyses of working conditions under Gannons.

  Lottie saying nothing, playing barmaid, pulling Bridelow Black for those committed to preserving the brewery and lager and draught Bass for those who'd been made redundant.

  So Ma Wagstaff had gone.

  Well, she was old, she was half-baked, she'd clung to her own loopy ideas of religion; let them be buried with her.

  Not that anything stayed buried round here. The bogman rising again after who could say how many centuries, to cause torment and to haunt Matt's latter days. And now poor Matt himself rising again to help the police with their inquiries.

  Which - jaw tightened, both hands clenching on the sheet for a moment - was none of her business, and none of Ma Wagstaff's any more. Just let it be all over. Just let them have found what they wanted and put Matt back m his grave and stamped down the soil.

  What they wanted. She knew, of course, that it had to be the bogman. How honoured Matt would have been to know he'd be sharing his grave with his illustrious ancestor.

  Most likely, she conceded, he did know. Matt always could keep a secret. Even from his wife.

  Especially from his wife.

  And that does it, Lottie thought. I'll talk to estate agents first thing Monday morning.

  She put out the lamp and shut her eyes.

  She was not lonely.

  She was relieved at last of the horror and the pity of Matt and his illness and his all-consuming passions.

  And relieved, too - now that Moira had been here, now that she'd received his taped begging letter - of the responsibility of overseeing the completion of Matt's magnum opus, his Bogman Suite. Moira's responsibility now. Poetic justice: one obsession taking care of another.

  Not that Moira, presumably, had ever wanted to be Matt's obsession.

  Lottie opened her eyes and stared searchingly into the darkness.

  Or perhaps, obscurely, perversely, Moira had. She kept her ego under wraps, but it was there; it existed.

  Maybe it is poetic justice.

  You've been relieved. You're free to go.

  The lino
was as cold as flagstones under Ernie's bare feet, and although his bedroom slippers were under the bed, he didn't fetch them out; the cold was better.

  I don't want comfort. I want the truth. An answer. What must I do? What is there left I can do?

  Through the window, he could see the churchyard, gravestones wet with rain and blue under the Beacon of the Moss. Be one for me, happen, this time next year.

  He couldn't, from here, see Matt Castle's grave, but he'd heard about all that from Alfred Beckett, who'd come pounding on his door while the dregs of the Mothers' Union sat dispiritedly drinking tea in his study. What can we do, Mr Dawber? Who's going to explain?

  Me, he'd stated firmly. I'll explain, if necessary.

  He'd never seen the Mothers in such a state and never imagined he would. Old Sarah Winstanley, with no teeth, just about said it all. No Ma. No teeth. No hope.

  Not for me now, neither, with Ma gone.

  'Everything's changing,' Millicent had said. 'Hardening. And now we've lost the Man, for good and all. They'll take him back to London this time, no question about that. Bad luck on this scale, Mr Dawber - it's not natural. Mary Lane died, did you hear? Pneumonia. Fifty-three, God forbid.'

  Shades, Ma had said. Them's what's kept this place the way it

  is. They started talking about shades again, and it was not really his province. He'd promised Ma Wagstaff that he'd get the Man back, and now it was all falling through, and it was his responsibility. What was there left, in the time he had?

  And then Milly had told them about Liz Horridge.

  'I forgot all about it, wi' Ma being found not long after. I found her up Ma's front path. First time she's been seen in t'village for months. Well ... she were in a shocking state, banging her fists on Ma's door - "please, please", like this, whimpering, you know? I put me hand on her shoulder and she nearly had hysterics. "I want Ma, I want Ma." I says, "Ma's not here, luv. Come and have a cuppa tea," I says. She just looks at me like she doesn't know who I am, and then she pushes me aside and she's off like a rabbit. I rang the Hall to tell somebody, but Shaw's never there, is he?'

  And Moira Cairns staying with young Cathy, in the Rectory, at the very heart of the village.

  He looked down at the graves. Why had she come so secretively? And why hadn't she gone away again? He'd seen her walking down from the church this morning. Strikingly good-looking lass. Probably in her late thirties, looking it, because of that white strand in her hair, like the light through a crack in the door of a darkened room.

  But what did they know about her?

  'Nowt,' Ernie said aloud to the silent graves.

  Should he say owt to the Mothers? He wasn't a stirrer, he wasn't a gossip, he'd always known more than he passed on, just as Dawber's Book of Bridelow was only ever a fraction of what the Dawbers knew about Bridelow.

  Who'd take over the Book from him? No more Dawbers left in Bridelow. Happen it really was the end of an era. Happen the Bridelow to come wouldn't have the distinction that warranted a book of its own. Ernest Dawber, last of the village scribes. Chronicler of the Fall.

  Alf Beckett's arrival had saved him. If Alf hadn't turned up, one of them, or all of them, would surely have sensed he had worries and sorrows of his own.

  By 'eck, he'd been scared, had Alf Beckett. So scared, as he'd told them, that he could hardly keep his spade level when the time came to shovel the soil back on Matt Castle's coffin.

  After finding no trace of the bogman.

  'They didn't find it?' Milly Gill up on her feet in a flash, for all her weight. Alf shaking his head dumbly.

  'What's it mean, Milly?' Frank's wife, Ethel, dazed.

  'I don't know.' Milly's voice hoarse, 'I don't understand.'

  'But it's good, isn't it?' the youngest of them, Susan, said. 'We dint want um to find it.'

  'Of course it's not good,' Milly said. 'You don't suddenly get a miracle like that in the middle of a lot of bad. It's not the way of things. What frightens me: if he's not there, where in God's name is he?'

  She broke off for a sip of tea. 'I'm sorry, Mr Dawber. I should've told you earlier. It were finding Ma. Knocked me back. Strange, though, isn't it? Everything's so terribly strange all of a sudden.'

  When they'd gone, Ernie had telephoned the Hall himself. No answer. He'd go up there tomorrow, a visit long overdue.

  'It must be deliberate, you know, all this,' Milly had said. 'An attack. Village is under attack.'

  'Eh?'

  'Like I said, things go in waves, Mr Dawber. Good times, bad times. We're used to that.'

  'Aye ...'

  Ma had said, What this is ... it's a balancing act.

  'But this is an attack,' Milly said.

  Ernie had been flummoxed for a minute. 'You mean the curate? Joel Beard?'

  'Well, he's part of it. We let them disturb the Man in the Moss. We didn't do right by him. Now we've no protection. All sorts are coming in. Unsuitable people. Aye - people like

  him.'

  'All my sources tell me,' Ernie said, 'that Joel's ambitions are being fuelled by the new Archdeacon, who fancies him summat rotten.'

  'Joel Beard's gay?'

  'Not as I know of, but the Archdeacon certainly is.' Ernie noticed old Sarah looking mystified. 'No, Joel Beard's incorruptible, I'm afraid. Whatever he's doing, he thinks he's doing it for the good of mankind.'

  'They'll all be coming in soon,' Milly said despondently. 'Look at all them strangers at the brewery. Three of ours sacked, one of theirs brought in. Rationalization, they call it. We don't see it till it's happened. Sometimes I think all we see is ...'

  'Shades of things. Aye.' Then Ernie had fallen silent, thinking of a woman in a black cloak at Matt's funeral. Moira Cairns, former singer with Matt Castle's Band.

  Alf said, 'That bloke, Hall, he wouldn't accept it at first. Said he were convinced it were theer and if he had to dig all night he'd get it out.'

  'Aye,' Milly said grimly. 'Happen somebody told him. Somebody wanted that grave dug up so we'd know there was nowt down there, apart from Matt. Oh, Christ. Oh, Mother, I don't like this.'

  Alf sat down on the footstool Ernie would rest his feet on while thinking. 'This Hall, he even wanted to open Matt's coffin. Thought happen bogman were in theer.'

  'God in heaven,' said Ernie.

  'Joel Beard - he started kickin' up then. Wouldn't let um go near. Said they 'ad no permission except for t'take coffin out, like.'

  'Quite right too,' Ernie said.

  'Alf,' Milly said anxiously. 'The bottle. You did get the bottle in?'

  'No.'

  Milly Gill closed her eyes and clasped her hands together in anguish.

  'Couldn't do it,' Alf said. 'Seemed no point.'

  Milly said angrily, 'Did you even try?'

  'Oh, aye.' Alf's hands had been dangling between his legs as he squatted on the stool. Ernie saw that both hands were shaking. 'I got lid off, no problem. Nobody were watching, thank Christ.'

  They were all looking at him now. Alf Beckett, soaked to the skin, moustache gone limp, eyes so far back in his head that they weren't catching any light from Ernie's green-shaded desk lamp.

  'Weren't theer!' Alf suddenly squealed. 'Matt weren't theer! Nowt in t'coffin but bloody soil!'

  There'd been a silence you could've shovelled into buckets.

  Ernie could still hear it now, as he stood looking over the graveyard, glittering with rain and the blue light of the Beacon of the Moss.

  'And worms,' Alf had said finally, shaking on the little wooden footstool, staring at the floor. 'Handfuls of big, long worms.'

  At the window, Ernie Dawber sighed very deeply.

  Moira awoke with this awful sense of doom set around her like a block of ice.

  She was hot and she was cold. She was sweating.

  And she was whimpering, 'Mammy. Oh, mammy, please ... don't let them.'

  She'd dreamed a version of the truth. She was a little girl again, living with her daddy and her gran in the almost posh Gl
asgow suburb, catching the bus to school. Gran's warning shrilling in her ears, '... and you just be sure and keep away from the old railway, you hear?'

  On account of the gypsies were back. The gypsies who still came every autumn to the old railway, caravans in a circle like covered wagons in a Western when the Indians were hostile.

  Corning home from school, getting off the bus, the two dark skinned gypsy boys hanging round. 'Hey, you ... Moira, is it? The Duchess wants tae see ye ...'

  'You leave me alone ... Get lost, huh.'

  'We're no gonny hurt ye . .

  'You deaf? I said get lost.'

  'Ye gonny come quietly, ye wee besom, or ...'

  Dissolve to interior. A treasure cave, with china and brass and gold. And the most beautiful, exotic woman you ever saw.

  'My, you're quite a pretty child ... Now, I have something ... Think of it as a family heirloom ... Tell no one until you're grown ... Guard it with your life now!' This rich, glowing thing (which would be dull and grey to most people) heavy in your hand.

  'You must remember this day, always. You will remember it, for you'll never be a wee girl again.'

  And that night she had her first period.

  Guard it with your life.

  Moira sprang from her bed, snapped on the light. The guitar case stood where she'd left it, propped between a mahogany wardrobe and the wall. She dragged it out, lay it flat on the worn carpet, the strings making wild discordant protest as she threw back the lid, feeling for the felt-lined pocket, where might be stored such things as spare strings, plectrums, harmonicas.

  And combs.

  The door was tentatively opened, and Cathy appeared in rumpled pyjamas. 'What's wrong?'

  Moira was shivering in a long T-shirt with Sylvester the Cat down the front.

  'Moira, what's wrong?'

  Moira's voice low and catarrhal, growly-rough, 'The broken window. Wasny just vandals.'

  'You're cold.'

  'Damn right I'm cold.'

  'Come downstairs. I'll make some tea.'