The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  Had the old woman spoken to neighbours of her encounter yesterday by the pagan shrine? He remembered, with no pleasure now, the gratification he'd allowed himself to feel as he left her in the churchyard and watched her stumping angrily away. The feeling that he finally had her on the run.

  Had she run hard enough to bring on a stroke? To give her a heart attack?

  Was there a general feeling that he, Joel, was responsible for her death? And for Hans's collapse at the graveside? Was that what this was all about?

  Joel sat bowed across Hans's desk, his fingers splayed over his eyes. Was this to be his reward for following his Christian instincts, reacting fiercely and publicly as God's blunt instrument?

  Was it?

  Joel lowered his hands and saw a tower of books before him on the desk. Amidst the acceptable, routine theology, he saw inflammatory titles as The Celtic Way ... The Virgin and

  the Goddess ... Pagan Celtic Britain ... The Celtic Creed ... The Tenets of Witchcraft. Evidence of Hans's attempts to rationalise this evil, the way one might seek to explain crime in era of social deprivation.

  When it came to basics, Joel had no great illusions about himself. He was not a scholarly man. His strength was ... well, literally that. His strength.

  He wasn't going to be able to work in this study. He'd lock the door on Hans's collection of pornography, just as he'd locked the dungeon door behind him. Ante-rooms to hell, both of them.

  With a sweep of his arm which sent the books in the pile spinning to the four corners of the room, he experienced again the sublime grace of movement he'd felt as he leaned from the ladder and slashed the cord which bound the Autumn Cross.

  Bound to be casualties. But he would go on. He must.

  She led him out of the back door to an old barn of a place only a few yards from the main building. Unlocked the door.

  'How did they get in?' Ashton asked,

  'I don't know.'

  'No windows forced?'

  Lottie shook her head, bewildered.

  'What's been taken?'

  Lottie still shaking her head. 'Nothing. Nothing I can see.'

  Ashton looked hard at her and let her see that he was looking. Was this a wind-up? Or was there a mental problem?

  He didn't think so. She was standing in the middle of the barn, hands on hips, the sleeves of a bulky Scandinavian-type cardigan pushed up to the elbows.

  She had firm, strong arms.

  'Mrs Castle ...'

  'I know. You think I'm off my head.'

  'I didn't say anything

  'Well, me too, Mr Ashton. I think I must be cracking up.'

  'Gary,' he said. 'And I'd like to help. If I can.'

  'You not got better things to do? One of the lads was saying there's a big police hunt up on the moors.'

  'That's South Yorkshire's,' Ashton said. 'Our manor finishes just this side of the Moss. We'll help if we're asked, but we've not been asked. I'm off-duty anyroad.'

  'Who're they looking for?'

  'Farmer. Don't ask me his name. Went off after some trespassers last night and didn't come back. Had his shotgun with him, that's the worry. Why? You think it might be the same hooligans broke in here?'

  Lottie shook her head again. It wasn't so much a denial, Ashton thought, as an attempt to shake something out.

  'But then,' he said gently, 'there wasn't a break-in here, was there, Mrs Castle?'

  'There had to've been,' Lottie said, quietly insistent. 'There's no other explanation.'

  Ashton sat down on the edge of a dusty old couch next to a black thing that made him think of a dead animal, all skin and bones. He saw Mrs Castle glance at it briefly and recoil slightly.

  'What's this?' Ashton was curious. There was a flute bit sticking out of it, with airholes.

  'That?' Lottie said. 'That's the Pennine Pipes, Mr Ashton. Primitive kind of bagpipe. My husband's instrument. Woke me ...' She hesitated. 'Woke me up, Mr Ashton. About two o'clock this morning.'

  'What did?'

  'Them. The pipes. Somebody down here playing the pipe'. You think I could mistake that noise after living with it twenty-odd years?'

  Ashton experienced a sensation like the tip of a brittle fingernail stroking the nape of his neck.

  He said, 'What did you do?'

  'Well, I didn't go down,' said Lottie. 'That's for sure.'

  'Perhaps somebody wanted to frighten you, Mrs Castle.'

  She said, 'When you got Matt's coffin out, did you ... ?'

  'No,' Ashton said. 'We had no reason and no right to disturb your husband.'

  She said, 'Do you mind if we go outside?'

  'After you,' Ashton said. He pulled the wooden door into place behind them, quite thankful to be out of there himself. Place was like a mausoleum without a tomb.

  Lottie Castle sniffed and one side of her mouth twitched in latent self-contempt. 'You know what it's like when you're alone - Or maybe you don't.'

  'Yes,' he said, 'I do.'

  'Things that would otherwise seem totally crazy go through your head.'

  'True.'

  'And with you lot digging up his grave, I thought... Well, it was as if he was ...'

  Lottie Castle thrust open the kitchen door. Ashton followed her in, quietly shut the door behind them and stood with his back to it.

  'I didn't catch that,' he said. 'As if he was what?'

  'As if you'd let him out,' Lottie Castle said in a parched monotone, looking down at the flags. 'And he'd come back. For his pipes.'

  She turned her back on Gary Ashton and walked over to the stove.

  'Listen,' Ashton said, wondering if he was cracking up. This piping. Was it, like - I'm sorry - any particular tune?'

  'No,' she said. 'No particular tune.' She was silent a moment, then she said, 'When Matt used to get the pipes out, he'd flex the bag a bit, get the air circulating, make all these puffing, wheezing noises and then a few trills up and down the scale. Warming up, you know? Getting started.'

  Lottie placed both palms on the hot-plate covers. 'Matt Castle getting warmed up,' she said. 'That was what I thought heard.'

  Hans moistened his lips with his tongue. Cathy got up. 'I'll fetch you a cup of tea.'

  'No ...' Her father moved in his chair, winced. 'No, it's all right. I ...' He looked quietly down at his knees for a while. Then he said, 'They were talking about a plastic one. Back at the hospital, you know. I said to leave it a while. I said I was seeing a very experienced private therapist.'

  Cathy smiled. 'Wasn't working though, was it?'

  'No.' Hans sighed. 'She was talking, the last time I saw her, about something getting in and sapping her powers. Perhaps it was intimations of mortality. That was her way of expressing it - that she was corning to the end of her useful life. And maybe she could see the end, as well, of over a thousand years of tradition. And I'm wondering, too, if this is going to be the end of it.'

  Cathy said nothing.

  Hans said, 'Bit of a rag bag, the Mothers, aren't they? Now? Nobody to really take over. Nobody with Ma's authority. Milly Gill? I don't think so, do you? Nice woman, but too soft

  - in the nicest way, of course. And the rest of the village - well, modern times, modern attitudes. General loss of spirituality. I blame the eighties, Mrs Thatcher, all that greed, all that materialism. Some of it had to find its way across the Moss sooner or later.'

  'It's still a good place, Pop, in essence.'

  'Yes ... as long as that essence remains. I'm very much afraid the essence has gone.'

  Cathy thought they'd never come as close as this to discussing it. He'd always been too busy organising things, fudging the issue. The issue being that the parish priest in Bridelow must become partially blind and partially deaf. This also was a tradition.

  In the old days - which, in this instance, meant as recently as last year - it wasn't possible to get to Bridelow Brewery without passing the Hall.

  The Hall was built on a slight incline, with heathery rock gardens. Ernie Dawber c
ould remember when the old horse-drawn beer drays used to follow the semi-circular route which took them under the drawing-room window for the children admire. The Horridges were always proud of their shire horses; the stable block had been a very fine building indeed, with a Victorian pagoda roof.

  Now it was decaying amid twisted trees grown from hedges long untrimmed. No horses any more; it was heavy trucks and different entrances, no obvious link between the brewery and the Hall. Liz Horridge, Ernie thought, must be feeling a bit bereft. He shouldn't have left it so long. There was no excuse.

  The Hall itself, to be honest, wasn't looking too good either. Big holes in the rendering, gardens a mess. Arthur Horridge would have a fit. Ernie was merely saddened at another symptom of the Change.

  Gettin' a bit whimsy, Ernie?

  Leave me alone, Ma. Give me a break, eh?

  Fifty yards below the house, the drive went into a fork, the other road leading to the brewery.

  'By 'eck,' Ernie Dawber said, stopping to look.

  For suddenly the brewery was more impressive than the Hall.

  In the past it had always been discreet, concealed by big old trees. But now some of the biggest had been felled to give the Victorian industrial tower block more prominence.

  Gannons's doing? Had they made out a case for the brewery as an historic building and got a Government grant to tart it up?

  Bloody ironic, eh? They sack half the workforce, talk about shifting the operation to Matlock, but if there's any money going for restoration they'll have it. Happen turn it into a museum.

  They'd even finished off repairing the old pulley system for the malt store, briefly abandoned last ... May, was it? How soon we forget ... when a rope had snapped and Andy Hodgson had fallen to his death. Accidental death - official coroner's verdict. No blame attached.

  Don't want to put a damper on things, Ernest, but summat's not right.

  Go away, Ma.

  He had to stop this. Snatches of Ma Wagstaff had been bobbing up and down in his brain ever since he'd awakened, like an old tune that'd come from nowhere but you couldn't get rid of it. Reminding him of his commitment. Get him back.

  And if I don't? If I fail? What then?

  He could only think of one answer to that. One he'd thought of before, and it had made him laugh, and now it didn't.

  Well. Nagged from beyond the grave. You wouldn't credit it. Ernie straightened his hat, girded up his gaberdine, turned his back on the brewery, which suddenly offended him, and hurried up to the Hall.

  He pressed the bell-push and heard the chimes echo, as if from room to room within the house.

  Even as he pressed again, he knew there was nobody inside.

  So she doesn't come down to the village any more ... Well, she's always been a bit aloof. Not a local woman. Only to be expected with this bad feeling about the brewery. She supposed to subject herself to that when it wasn't her fault?

  But you, Ernest... Nowt to stop you going to see her.

  Ma ...

  ... She were in a shocking state, banging her fists on Ma's door - 'please, please', like this ...

  'Please, Liz.' Ernie, sheltering under the overhanging porch as the rain came harder. 'Answer the door, eh?'

  He remembered attending her wedding back in ... 1957, would it be? This high-born, high-breasted Cheshire beauty, niece of Lord Benfold, on the arm of a grinning Arthur Horridge, boisterous with pride - free ale all round that night in The Man. 'Sturdy lass,' Ma Wagstaff had observed (they were already calling her Ma back in the 'fifties). 'Never pegged her own washing out, I'll bet.'

  Ma talking then as if Eliza Horridge were nowt to do with her. As if there was no secret between them.

  It was years before Ernie had put two and two together.

  ... put me hand on her shoulder and she nearly had hysterics, I want Ma, I want Ma ...'

  Oh, Lord, Liz. Answer the bloody door. Please.

  Hans said, 'I realised a long time ago where the essence was. That' a real centre of spirituality was what was important - that what kind of spirituality it was was, to a large extent, irrelevant.'

  'You say you realised ...' Cathy said slowly. 'Did that come in a blinding flash, or were you ... tutored, perhaps?'

  'Both. They started work on your mother to begin with, through the well-dressing. She was always interested in flowers.' Hans laughed painfully. 'Can you imagine? Doing it through something as utterly innocuous as flower arranging? Millicent Gill it was taught her - only a kid at the time, but she'd been born into it. Flowers. Petal pictures. Pretty.'

  'Yes,' Cathy said.

  'Then flowers in the church. Nothing strange about that. But in this kind of quantity? Used to look like Kew Gardens in August.'

  'I remember.'

  'And the candles. Coloured candles. And the statues. I remembered commenting to the bishop - old Tom Warrender in those days, canny old devil - about the unexpected Anglo- Catholic flavour. "But they still turn up in force on a Sunday, don't they, Hans?" he said. And then he patted me on the shoulder, as if to say, don't knock it when you're winning. Of course, even then I knew we weren't talking about Anglo-Catholicism - not in the normal sense, anyway. And then, when we'd been here a few years, your mother went into hospital to have you and Barney …'

  'Which reminds me, Pop, Barney called from Brussels - he'll be over to see you before the end of the week.'

  'No need. Tell him ...'

  'There's no telling him anything, you know that. Go on. When Mum was in hospital ...'

  'I was approached by Alf Beckett, Frank Manifold and Willie Wagstaff. They said the house was no place to bring families into, far too dismal and shabby. Give them a couple of

  hours and they and a few of the other lads would redecorate the place top to bottom. Be a nice surprise for your mother - welcome-home present from the village.'

  'I didn't know about that.'

  'Of course you didn't. Anyway, I said it was very good of them and everything, but the mess ... Don't you worry about that, Vicar, they said. You won't even have to see it until it's done. We've arranged accommodation for you.'

  'Ah,' said Cathy.

  'They'd installed a bed in the little cellar under the church,' said Hans. 'The place had been aired. Chemical toilet in the passage. Washbowl, kettle, all mod cons. Of course, I knew I was being set up, but what could I do?'

  Hans paused, 'I spent... two nights down there.'

  'And?' Cathy discovered she was leaning forward, gripping the leatherette arms of her chair.

  'And what? Don't expect me to tell you what happened. I came out, to put it mildly, a rather more thoughtful sort of chap than when I went in. Can't explain it. I think it was a test. I think I passed. I hope I passed.'

  'But you didn't want Joel sleeping down there?'

  'God, no. The difference being that I'd been there a few years by then - I was halfway to accepting certain aspects of Bridelow. They knew that. Somebody took a decision. That the vicar should be ... presented. To Her. I think ... I think if I hadn't been ready, if I hadn't been considered sufficiently ... what? Tolerant, I suppose. Open-minded ... then probably nothing would have happened. Probably nothing would have happened with Joel. But I didn't want him down there. I don't want to sound superior or anything, but that boy could spend fifty years in Bridelow and still not be ready.'

  Cathy said, realising this wasn't going to do much for her father's recovery, 'Suppose ... suppose he did spend a night down there. And he was already worked up after that business at the funeral. And he stirred something up. Brought something on. Suppose he was tested - and failed?'

  'Well,' Hans said. 'There's an old story Ernie Dawber once told me. About what really happened when that bishop spent a night down there in eighteen whenever. They say he went totally bloody bonkers.'

  Hans patted Cathy's hand. 'But then,' he said, 'wouldn't have been much of a story at all if he hadn't, would it?'

  There was a loud, urgent rapping on Willie's front door, which could
only be Milly.

  Who knew the door was hardly ever locked - certainly not when Willie was at home - but who'd knock anyway, for emphasis, when it was something important.

  Willie had been re-reading Moira's note. It had been a relief at first; didn't think he could really apply himself to Matt's bogman music, not right now, not the way he was feeling.

  But what did she mean, I have to go home? Why did she have to go so quickly she couldn't wait to say ta'ra?

  'Aye,' he shouted. 'Come in, lass.'

  'Willie.' She stood panting in the doorway, her flowery frock dark-spotted with rain.

  'I were just going to make some toast for me tea. You want some?'

  'Willie,' she said. 'Come and see this.'

  "s up?'

  'You've got to see it,' Milly gasped,

  'It's pissing down. I'll need me mac'

  'Never mind that!' She pulled him out of the door, dragged him up the entry and into the street. 'Look.'

  'It's a bus,' said Willie.

  A big green single-decker was jammed into the top of the street outside the Post Office. Thin rivers of rain were running down the cobbles around its back wheels. On the back of the bus it said, Hattersley's Travel, Sheffield.

  'Coach tour?' Willie said, puzzled. Coaches would come to Bridelow quite often in the old days. In summer, admittedly, not on a wet Sunday at the end of October.

  'Look,' Milly said.

  About forty people had alighted from the coach, mostly young people in jeans and bright anoraks. A small circle had gathered around the unmistakable, golden-topped figure of Joel Beard. They stepped forward in turn, men and women, to hug him.

  'Praise God!' Willie heard. As he and Milly moved further up the street, he heard the phrase repeated several times.

  Willie looked at Milly through the lashing rain. 'What the bloody hell's this?'

  Milly nodded towards two young men unwrapping a long, white banner. Gothic golden lettering explained everything - to Milly, anyway.

  'Who the bloody hell,' said Willie, 'are the Angels of the New Advent?'

  'They've got a church in Sheffield. Me cousin's daughter nearly became one about a year ago. They're fundamentalist Born Again Christians, Willie. They see the world as one big battleground, God versus Satan.'