The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Back where?'

  'Into the darkness behind the mirror. He couldn't see me, I'm sure he couldn't see me at all. Am I going mad, Chrissie?'

  'No more than any of us. Do you want me to stay with you tonight? I've nowhere else to go.'

  Lottie's hands clutched each other, began to vibrate. She's wringing her hands, Chrissie thought. I've never seen anybody actually wring their hands before.

  'The truth is,' Lottie said, 'I hated him by the end. There was nothing left but the negative side. No enthusiasm, only obsession. He was, when it comes down to it, a very nasty man.'

  Lottie stared into her empty coffee cup as if trying to read a message in the grains. 'But he was also dying, you see, and you aren't allowed to hate dying people, especially if the nastiness is to some extent out of character and therefore, you think, must be connected with the dying.'

  Chrissie lit another cigarette. 'When my mother was dying, towards the end, I wanted it to be over. For her sake. But, if I'm honest, partly for my sake too.'

  'I don't think we're talking about the same thing, luv. Christ almighty ...' Lottie covered her ears - '... isn't that bloody rain ever going to stop?'

  'Listen to me,' Chrissie said. 'When you thought... when you saw this ... when he was in the mirror, tonight ... did, you hate him then?'

  'No. I felt sorry for him. Don't get me wrong, I was very frightened, but at the bottom of that there was a pity. It was the gas-mantle. Putting that together, wiring it up, was about the only innocent, gentle thing he did here. I was irritated at the time, but when I look back ... It's the only thing makes me want to cry for rum.'

  Chrissie stood up. 'I don't know why, but I think we should put it on. The light, I mean. The gas thing.'

  'Why?'

  'Because if that represents the nice, harmless side of him, perhaps you should show him you recognise that. I don't know, maybe it's stupid. But perhaps he wants your forgiveness, perhaps he wants to know you remember that side of him. The good side. So maybe, if you gave him a sign that you understood, then he ... he'd be ... you know ... at peace. Isn't that what they say?'

  'Who?'

  Chrissie shrugged. 'Old wives, I suppose.'

  'Old mothers in this village. OK.' Lottie came wearily to her feet. 'Let's try it.'

  'Might make you feel better.'

  'Might, at that.'

  They went through to the darkened bar and Chrissie lifted the flap and went round to the customers' side, so they were standing either side of the brass mantle. In the arrow of light from the kitchen, she could see it was on a hinged base screwed into the wooden frame of the bar and projecting about eighteen inches. Behind it, on Lottie's side, was the mirror in a Victorian mahogany frame. Chrissie made herself gaze into the mirror and saw only her own dim reflection, looking rather pale and solemn.

  'Perhaps we could say a prayer, Lottie.'

  'No, thanks,' Lottie said.

  'Well, at least think of him as you press the switch. Think of the good times.'

  'My memory isn't what it was,' said Lottie. 'No, I'm sorry. You're doing your best. All right. Matt, listen, if you can hear me …'

  At the end of the gas-mantle a feeble glow appeared.

  'Switch it off a second, Lottie. Let's get this right.'

  'I didn't …' Lottie said, in a voice which rose in pitch until it cracked. '…switch it on.'

  'Merciful God,' Chrissie pulled from somewhere in her past, 'please…'

  The small light at once flare to a dazzling, magnesium white. Huge shadows reared. Lottie screamed once and backed off into the kitchen.

  When the bulb exploded, with a crack like snapping bone, Chrissie found herself at the far end of the bar trying to hug the stone wall.

  CHAPTER VII

  'Listen,' Macbeth said, clutching Milly's plump arm, 'let me call the cops. Maybe it wasn't her car.'

  'Don't make it worse, lad,' Willie Wagstaff said, his eyes hollowed out with grief. 'I've already been on to um. I said me wife were out in a BMW and I were worried sick after hearing the news. I didn't want to get involved in identification or owt, so in the end I said the wife's car were red and they said this one was grey - had been grey - and give me the registration, and I went off, sounding relieved. Relieved. Jesus.'

  'I don't understand.' Macbeth stared desperately around the room. 'These things don't happen. I just don't fucking understand.'

  'They do happen,' Willie said hopelessly.

  'Especially here.' Milly was looking hard into the fire. 'Especially now.'

  'Shurrup,' said Willie gruffly. 'How far you come, lad?'

  'Glasgow.' The One Big Thing, he thought. God damn. And closed his eyes against the pain.

  'She was special,' Willie said. 'We all knew that.'

  'Yeah,' he whispered.

  'Special like your mother,' Milly said. 'I think we knew that too. And now they're both dead.'

  'Leave it, luv. It's coincidence.'

  'Is it?'

  Macbeth opened his eyes. Something badly wrong here, but did he care? And what could he do anyway? One week. Before that, Moira Cairns had been a face on an old album cover.

  One week. A chance meeting, an inexplicable cascade of bones, a talk on the terrace in the aftermath.

  There'd be another album now. The Best of Moira Cairns. In memoriam. Even if he'd never met her, he'd be grieving. In one week, she'd become the core of his existence - a woman whose last glance at him had said, fuck off.

  'There was a guy,' he heard himself saying, 'who meant her harm.'

  Donald told me the dogs disliked this man intensely. On sight.

  Willie Wagstaff and his girlfriend were both staring at him.

  'The Duchess wanted me to look out for her, you know? The Duchess said wherever she went she'd be ... touched with madness.'

  'Who's the Duchess?' Willie asked. Macbeth noticed that the fingers of Willie's left hand had struck up a rhythm on the side of his knee. He seemed unaware of it.

  Macbeth said, 'Her mother.'

  'The gypsy?'

  Macbeth nodded. He looked out of the window. A big van with a blue beacon and an illuminated sign had stopped down the Street. The sign said, Ambulance. 'Is this rain never gonna ease off? Is it normal?'

  'No,' Milly said, it's not normal. Who was the man? You said there was a man. Who... meant her harm.'

  Macbeth's mind slipped out of gear for a moment. He panicked, clutched at the air.

  The air in the room, so dense. The rain bombarding the roof. The Duchess said, If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need never know, need she?

  And how badly he'd wanted to deal with it and wanted her to know, and now it was too late to deal with it and, sure, she would never know.

  'John Peveril Stanage,' he said.

  And the other two people in the room slowly turned and looked at each other, and Willie blanched.

  The fingers of both hands were slamming into his knees and this time he was aware of it but seemed unable to stop it.

  When the ambulance arrived at the chip shop for Maurice Winstanley, both Maurice and his wife, Dee, were in a state bordering on hysteria.

  'I knew summat like this'd happen. I never wanted to open, me,' Dee shrilled, a skinny little woman - how could you work in a chip shop and be that thin? It fascinated one of the ambulance men for a couple of seconds until he saw how badly burned Maurice was.

  They had to treat his arm best they could, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do on the spot, what with Maurice gawping around and then kind of giggling with pain, and his wife going on and on like a budgie on amphetamines.

  'I says to him. Who's going to come out for chips, night like this? He says, What about all them young people up at church, they'll be starving before t'night's through. I says, All right, I says, you want to do it, you can do it on your own.'

  The ambulance man had fancied a bag of chips himself, especially after that drive over the hills and across the Moss: gruesome - he'd been
driving and felt sure he could see the bloody peat rising and sucking; put one wheel in there you'd have had it.

  'All right, Mr Winstanley, if we can get you out this way ...'

  'Where's your stretcher, then?'

  'He can walk, can't he, Mrs Winstanley? I was going to say, we need to get him in as quick as we can. He might need to go to the burns unit.'

  But chips would never be the same again. How gut-churning an appetizing smell like that could become when, on top of battered cod and mushy peas, there was the subtle essence of frazzled flesh, the result of Maurice Winstanley's right arm blistering and bubbling in the fryer.

  'Lucky you haven't got a heart attack case, as well,' Dee said. 'He let out such a shriek.'

  'I'm not surprised, luv. Any of us'd've gone through the roof.'

  'Oh, this were before he stuck his arm in t'fat. I says, Now, what's up, I says. And he turns round, white as a sheet, I says, Whatever have you done? And then he does it. Thirty years frying and he shoves his arm in. I don't think he knew what he were doing at all.'

  In the ambulance, racing back across the Moss, Maurice shivered and shook a lot, a red blanket round him, his arm in about half a mile of bandage. 'Never believe me, lad, she never will. I wouldn't believe me.'

  'Don't matter how long you've been at it, Mr Winstanley, you can always have an accident.'

  'No, not that.' Now Maurice looked like a chip shop proprietor. Maurice was a fat man. Maurice's big cheeks had that high-cholesterol glow about them and there were black, smoky rings around his eyes.

  'She had to believe that, naturally,' Maurice said. 'She seen it happen. Fact it were only t'bloody agony of it brought me 'round, see, and I couldn't even feel that at first. I were looking at it a good two seconds. I thought, what's that pink thing in t'bloody fat?'

  'Don't think about it, Mr Winstanley. We'll not be long now. What d'you reckon to United's chances, then?'

  'I don't want to talk about United, lad! I hate bloody soccer. Listen, no, it weren't that she'll not believe, I've allus been a clumsy bugger. No, see, what it were as caused it in t'first place, I'd just seen summat as frightened life outer me. Froze me to t'spot, you know? Numb, I were. Numb.'

  'Sounds like my mother-in-law.'

  Ok, Christ." said Maurice Winstanley, subsiding into his pain. What's the bloody use?'

  Even though Deirdre Winstanley opened all the windows into the place, the smell of fried skin wouldn't go away; only seemed to get stronger.

  When she opened the door, Susan Manifold, having seen the ambulance ran across the street through the torrent, asking her what was wrong, could she help.

  'His own fault,' Dee said. 'Silly bugger. Thirty years, I don't know.'

  'Will he be all right?'

  'Will any of us?'

  'I'm sorry?' Susan Manifold stepped inside the chip shop, to escape the wet, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

  'Well, look at it.' Dee gestured at the water, now level over cobbles and the drains weren't taking it. She seemed more worried about that than Maurice's injury, or perhaps she was looking for something to take her mind off it.

  'Will it flood?' Susan asked.

  'Never has before, but there's always a first time. Look at them drains. Is there nowt you can do?'

  I'm not a plumber,' said Susan.

  'No,' said Dee. 'But you're a Mother.'

  'Oh, come on!' Susan flicked back her ash-blonde fringe. We can't alter the weather.'

  'Could've, once. Not you, maybe, Susan. Happen before your time.'

  'Old wives' tale,' Susan said carelessly, and the full horror of what she'd said came back at her like a slap in the mouth. She was betraying Milly Gill and the memory of Ma Wagstaff.

  But, God help her, Mother help her, she had no belief in it any more.

  Upset, she walked back across the drowned cobbles, Frank wasn't home yet from the pub. When he did arrive he'd be drunk and nasty. Another problem the Mothers were supposed to be able to deal with.

  Dee Winstanley slammed the door. That was stupid, what she'd said. Stupid what Susan had replied. Stupid what Maurice had done. Stupid to have lived behind a stinking chip shop for thirty years.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  And the smell wouldn't go away; the layer of fat, from fish and pies and peas and fried human skin, hung from the ceiling like a dirty curtain, and the fluorescent tubelight was a bar of grease.

  Dee threw up the flap, stumbled behind the counter, slammed down the chromium lid on a fryer full of flabby chips congealing together like a heap of discarded yellow rubber gloves.

  Couldn't clean that tonight. Just couldn't.

  'Cod and six pennorth o' chips. Please.'

  The nerve of some people. 'We're closed,' Dee yelled into the thick air around the high counter.

  '... and six pennorth o' chips.'

  Dee sighed. Some people still thought it was funny to demand six pennorth o' chips, same as what they'd asked for in old money when they were kids.

  'We've had to close early,' she explained patiently. 'Maurice's had an accident. Gone to hospital. All the chips are ruined.'

  She peered through the shimmering grease at the persistent customer. Recognised the voice straight away, just couldn't put a name to it.

  '…pennorth o' chips. Please '

  The customer clambered through the lardy light and she heard the clatter of coins on the glass counter.

  'You deaf or summat Matt? I can't serve you. It's Maurice ...they've taken Maurice off in th'ambulance. He's had a ...'

  ' .. and six pennorth.. :

  At first there was no sound in the crowded, flowery sitting room, except for the endlessly percussive weather and Willie Wagstaff 's fingers on his jeans picking up the same rapid rhythm.

  'John Peveril Stanage,' Macbeth repeated in a stronger voice, because the name'd had the same effect as throwing three aces into a poker game.

  Doing this for the Duchess.

  Willie said, 'Never heard of him,' about a second too late to be convincing, and Macbeth, suddenly furious, was halfway out of his chair when there were four hollow knocks at the front door, all the more audible for being way out of synch with Willie's fingers and the rain.

  'Mr Dawber,' Milly Gill said tonelessly, but made no move to answer the door.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Milly Gill half rose and then sat down again and looked at Willie and then at Mungo Macbeth.

  'I'm sorry, Mr Macbeth. Sorry to've given you such awful news. But...' Spreading her hands: what else can I do?

  Telling him to get the hell out in other words.

  Macbeth stood up but made no move toward the door. 'I don't think so,' he said.

  The hollow knocking came again, a little faster this time, a little closer to the tempo of Wagstaff's restless fingers.

  'Why d'you do that?' Macbeth said, in no mood for tact. 'With your fingers.'

  Willie looked non-plussed, like nobody ever asked him that before.

  'He has a problem with his nerves,' Milly Gill said hastily. 'If you don't mind, Mr Macbeth, there's a gentleman come to see us.'

  So they know who it is. Knocking comes at the door, latish, and they know what it's about before they open up.

  'Sure,' Macbeth said. 'Thanks for your time.' Maybe he should go. Cancel his room at the inn, drive out of here, head back north. Maybe organise a flight home. And call on the Duchess? Could he ever face the Duchess again?

  He nodded at Willie Wagstaff, followed Milly Gill to the door.

  'Good luck,' he said, not sure why he said that.

  And then something told him to turn around, and he found Willie on his feet, a whole series of expressions chasing each other across the little guy's face like videotape on fast-forward.

  'Look.' Willie was clasping both hands between his legs like a man who badly needed to use the John. 'It's not nerves. It's ...'

  'Hey.' The big woman pulled back her hand from the door catch. 'A few minutes ago you were telling me to shut up
.'

  'I know, lass, but happen we've kept quiet too bloody long. This ... Moira. Dead. Finished me, that has. Too many accidents. Going right back to that lad who fell off top of the brewery. Too much bad luck. And when I hear Jack's name ... Hang on a minute, lad. Milly, let Ernie Dawber in.'

  Milly said, 'If it's Jack - which I...' She swallowed. 'If it is, we've got to sort it out for ourselves.'

  'Oh, aye. Like we've sorted everything else out. Let him in.'

  This Ernie Dawber was a short, stout, dignified-looking elderly guy in a long raincoat and a hat. He didn't look pleased at being kept wailing in the rain. He looked even less pleased to see Macbeth.

  'This bloke's a friend of Moira's,' Willie Wagstaff explained.

  'Mungo Macbeth.'

  Old guy's handshake was firm. Eyes pretty damn shrewd. 'My condolences,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Mr Dawber,' Willie said, 'I'll not mess about. This lad - Mungo - reckons Moira ...' He took a breath. 'He reckons there's a connection with Jack. With... John Peveril Stanage.'

  Willie's voice was so thick with loathing that Macbeth had to step back.

  'Not possible,' Ernie Dawber said. 'I know what you're saving, but it's not possible.'

  'No?' said Willie.

  'He was banished, Willie. In the fullest sense. Forty-odd years ago. In all that time he's never once tried to come back. And if your ma was here now she'd go mad at you for even saying his name.

  'Aye. But she's not. She's dead.' Willie's voice hardened. 'Suddenly. Under very questionable circumstances.'

  Ernie Dawber shook his head. 'You're clutching at straws.'

  Milly Gill said, 'Leave it, Willie. We've problems enough. Jack couldn't set foot in this village ...'

  'While Ma was alive!' Willie shouted.

  'He's a rich man now, Willie, he's got everything he needs. And like Mr Dawber says, he's never once tried to get back in. Why should he?'

  'Aye,' said Willie. 'Why should anybody want owt to do wi' Bridelow? Why's Bridelow suddenly important? Why's it on everybody's lips when things here've never been so depressed? Why? - Mr Dawber'll tell you, he's got the same disease.'