by Phil Rickman
‘He apologized to me.’ Jane smiled. ‘Not something a little girl should see.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Wasn’t my all-time favourite Saturday night. But I suppose you need to learn to catch what life throws at you, and like…’
‘Run with it?’
Perhaps she was right. They’d come too far to stop running with it.
But Jane had baggage to unload first and nowhere else to unload it.
‘When I looked, I was convinced at first that his… his chest and his abdomen had been cut into strips. By the pathologist. Maybe that was what they did.’
‘I really wouldn’t know.’
‘Like, a rag jacket wasn’t going to be the first thing to come into my head when I’d never even heard of one till just a few hours earlier. What about the rest? Did he really have the rest of it on?’
‘Yes. His body was dressed as a morris dancer. More or less. The bells weren’t strapped to his legs, they were just laid on top. We pushed them down the sides of the coffin where they would’ve been if he’d been wearing them.’
‘There was a stick.’
‘I think it had rolled to one side when we opened the coffin. So I put it on his chest between his hands.’
‘I can’t believe you did that. I think I’d’ve just made sure he was in there and slammed the lid back on.’
‘Maybe I didn’t want to look like… not a real man… in front of Gomer. It had gone too far, anyway. We had to go through with it. And my hands were as cold as… as his, by then. Even with gloves on I couldn’t feel anything. And I’m thinking… the guys who did this, they were all a bit drunk, weren’t they? Not drunk enough to mess it up, but enough to see it through without going to pieces.’
‘We were thinking they’d come to dance on his grave,’ Jane said. ‘But in fact they were opening the grave… so they could dress him as a morris dancer?’
It was as if the surrealism of this had only just occurred to her, as if she’d been so dislocated by the horror of what they’d done that the black humour in what they’d found had drifted past her.
‘I can’t imagine his family having him buried as a morris man,’ Lol said, ‘so we have to assume that someone thought he should be.’
‘But like… nobody would know… at least not until archaeologists in about a thousand years’ time discover these bizarre grave goods and it all just gets filed under the heading of… Ritual.’
Jane’s eyes found Lol’s.
Ritual.
He asked her if Aidan Lloyd had been a dancer. She didn’t know.
‘But all of them in dancing kit,’ she said. ‘They dressed up in morris dancing kit to dig him out of his grave and put him into costume?’
‘We have to assume that’s what they did, yeah. I… hung out with these Cotswold morris men for… well, for not very long, but long enough to know that they were… not exactly a race apart, but they’d definitely developed a different mindset from most of us.’
She looked at him, curious, but he wasn’t sure he could explain it. Knew he’d experienced it briefly – that moment beyond failure and fatigue when the body took charge. Or something took charge of the body. All the years when he hadn’t thought about this, but it hadn’t gone away. Whatever it was.
‘OK, suppose what we were looking at is connected to some Border morris tradition that’s never really been recorded. That isn’t talked about.’
‘We can find out, can’t we?’ Jane was on the edge of the sofa. ‘This happened just a couple of days ago. This is fresh. And we have a name.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘Gareth Brewer. And a place. We have a place.’
‘You been there much?’
‘Kilpeck? Me and… and Eirion went there once. To check out the church. All these mysterious old carvings projecting from under the eaves. It’s unique. Like a medieval picture-book in stone. We didn’t stop long, it was raining hard and we… anyway, we didn’t stop. Always meant to go back. Never have.’
‘It’s not a huge village, shouldn’t be too hard to find him.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Jane held up her phone. ‘Seems to be only one Brewer in Kilpeck.’
‘Oh, Jane—’
‘H. G. Brewer,’ Jane said. ‘Farrier. Which of us is going to ring him?’
‘We need to think about this.’
‘No. You can spend too much time thinking. Lol, we can sort this.’ She had her hands clasped in front of her and they were vibrating with energy and impatience. ‘We know what they did. All they have to tell us is why.’
‘They don’t have to tell us anything.’
‘We can lean on them. We know what they did.’
‘But we can’t tell anybody how we know.’
‘We can get over that, you know we can. What if me and Mum saw everything?’
‘No. God. I definitely wouldn’t tell anybody that. We don’t know who they are, and we don’t know how important it is to them to keep a lid on it.’ Coffin lid; he felt the weight of it between his hands, the wood slick with damp earth. ‘This is the country, Jane. Different rules have always applied. You know that.’
They were both silent for some seconds. The light in the window was blue and cold and empty. Then Jane said,
‘It was like… I don’t know how to explain this, but last night, it was like my whole life coming down to this… this journey into death. Deadness. The grave. Finality. The reality of it. It was like being exposed to the greatest mystery, the reality behind the big taboo that we hide away in the earth and then turn away from and realizing why we turn away. And Mum out there – out there now – trying to tell people that it doesn’t end down there in the soil and the clay and the shit. Do you really believe she’s doing anything but—?’
‘Positive.’ He could hear his own desperation. ‘She’s doing something positive.’
‘But is it a lie? Is she perpetuating total crap to make a handful of people feel better about where they’re going, so when they come out of the church and walk past the graves they can feel something other than like, at least it’s not me down there?’
She was staring into the red gases in the wood stove, the crematorium for logs, the alternative.
‘And here’s me, Lol… Here’s me about to commit most of my life to unearthing more death. Getting all excited about ancient corpses and… oooh, are we looking at ritual here?’ Her eyes were dry now, coming back to look into his. ‘What about the face?’
‘The face?’
‘His face?’
‘Yes.’
He was hoping she hadn’t seen the face.
‘Border morris is black-face,’ Jane said.
‘Mmm.’
For black-face you needed a face.
‘He was wearing some kind of mask,’ Jane said.
‘Yes, he was.’
Because the coffin had been at an angle, the mask had slipped. As he and Gomer had seen when they’d taken off the lid.
This morning, he’d put Aidan Lloyd into the Net. Newspaper reports avoided these details, but Aidan had been hit by a van coming round a bend. He’d been on an open quad bike, probably not wearing a helmet. What they’d seen in the lamplight had been the results of the crash and also the post-mortem. And, finally, presumably, the attempts by the undertakers to make what was left of his face look less hideous.
They’d failed.
‘Holes for the eyes,’ Jane said. ‘In the mask.’
Except that underneath there hadn’t been any eyes.
‘Which was wood,’ Jane said. ‘Wildwood. Twigs and leaves. Holly leaves. All stuck together.’
‘And yew, I think. And mistletoe. In a wooden frame. It was a proper mask. It would have been tied at the back if it had been worn by a living person.’
‘Is there a morris side in Kilpeck?’
‘I’ve never heard of one,’ Lol said. ‘Leominster, the Silurian side down in Ledbury, the Bedlams up in Shropshire, the Foxwood in Hay. Kilpeck, no.’
/>
Jane leaned forward over clasped hands.
‘We could go and see him, Lol. Gareth Brewer. Both of us.’
‘Just interrupt him at his forge to quiz him about digging up a grave?’
‘Don’t go cold on this now.’ She pulled a tangle of hair out of her eyes. ‘Sorry. I can hardly blame you.’
‘All right, I’ll call him.’
‘When?’
‘Today.’
‘And you’ll tell me what he says?’
‘Of course I’ll tell you.’
Jane stood up.
‘Better go. I said I’d make some lunch. I’m sorry, Lol. It’s just that…’ She’d got her phone and was fiddling with it. ‘This came.’ She put the phone down on the sofa. ‘See what you think.’
Lol went to pick up the phone; Jane raised a hand.
‘No hurry. Give it me back next time you see me.’
‘Jane, is there—?’
‘I’d just rather not be there if it rings, OK?’
21
Latchkey kid
WHAT MERRILY NORMALLY did on the Sunday after a funeral was to invite prayers for the family.
It usually helped if the family was there to hear the first one.
Even a fragment of the family.
The stained-glass ripe apple glowed unseasonally in the window on her right, as, during the second hymn, she looked down from the lectern at the elderly regulars and the families – two couples who’d dragged their kids away from the Xboxes and taken away their phones in the hope that the seed of something worthwhile might take root during a period of being bored out of their skulls. She looked at James Bull-Davies, hands behind his back, who came because generations of his squirely ancestors had come on the Sabbath to occupy that same front pew.
About twenty-five people altogether – normal for a sunny winter Sunday when there was coffee afterwards.
And not one of them called Lloyd, unless…
Just one person she didn’t know. A black-haired young woman dressed for the weather in a bulky black woollen coat, who had arrived ten minutes after the start of the service. Sometimes you’d get visitors or second-homers who never went to a church near their first homes, but they were nearly always couples.
This woman just sat there, not far from the doors, didn’t sing or respond to prayers, remained blank-faced through the parish notices, and then slipped away – bugger – towards the end of the final hymn.
Merrily slipped away, too, pulling off her surplice, while Jim and Brenda Prosser from the Eight Till Late were serving the tea and coffee from the vestry. She left the surplice screwed up on a bench in the porch and went out into the churchyard in her cassock, cutting across the grass, looking from side to side.
Ah…
She’d reached Lucy’s stone, its moss limelit by the cold sun, when she saw that the woman was standing by the small tump that was Aidan’s grave, looking out across Iestyn’s field.
Merrily stepped off the coffin path.
‘Erm… I don’t normally chase people like this, but… are you a relation of Aidan’s?’
The woman turned. Early thirties. A lean, concave face, grey eyes, the black hair below her shoulders.
‘Just someone who decided she ought to know him… a lot better than she thought she did.’ A glance back towards the apple trees. ‘Did they tell you to play it down? At the funeral?’
‘Were you there?’
‘In the church. For a while. Stayed at the back. Didn’t attend the burial. Or the tea.’
‘That was the general feeling, was it? That it was played down?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t talk to anyone.’
‘I’m not too happy with the way I conducted that funeral. And I’m not blaming anyone else. Should’ve been more… curious. That is, I was curious, but I didn’t know the family and I get worried about treading on people’s—’
‘I suppose they told you he was stoned most of the time,’ the woman said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘And that when the accident happened he was probably doped to the eyeballs, didn’t know he’d even come out of the field.’
‘Who said that?’
‘While the tea was taking place, I went into the bar instead. You only had to keep your ears open.’
‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know your…’
‘Rachel. There’s no reason you should know me. I’m the woman who wasn’t sleeping with him.’
Merrily said nothing.
‘In the strictest sense. If I had, I might’ve known more about him. The significant things you learn when you spend the whole night with someone and wake up with them. You know? And I never saw him roll a spliff.’
‘Listen,’ Merrily said, ‘my vicarage is just over that wall. Give me fifteen minutes to wind things up at the church, put some stuff away—’
‘No…’ She looked uncertain suddenly. ‘I’d rather not do that.’
‘Rachel, I’ve been told about the cannabis, for what that’s worth, but nobody’s mentioned you, or any woman, in connection with Aidan Lloyd. No reason they would, but…’
‘He never stayed the night, you see. I used to think he must have had a wife somewhere. Wife and kids. I didn’t really care.’ Rachel frowned. ‘No, that’s wrong. Of course I cared. I just cared more when I found out he didn’t have a wife. If he didn’t have a wife, then why did he never stay the night?’
‘Where did you meet him? Do you mind if I ask?’
‘In a pub. After a talk, in Hereford, about the theory of universal consciousness. Wasn’t very interesting, as it turned out. Amazing how some people can turn universal consciousness into something not very interesting, but there you go. I was with some friends and we went to a pub afterwards and he was there, and I remembered he’d been at the talk, so…’
‘What was he like?’
‘Ah, well…’ Rachel very nearly smiled. ‘… that’s it, you see. Do I really know what he was like? That’s the whole point, isn’t it? He was a quiet, sweet guy, hard to have a row with him, he didn’t argue. And he… was different to any man I’d ever met – and I’ve met one or two – and I still don’t quite know why.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a doctor. GP.’
‘Oh.’
‘I was quite surprised to discover he was a farmer, which was a bit pompous and patronizing of me, but there you go, I don’t know much about farmers. I only see them when they’re ill, and not many. I’m in a city practice.’
‘What did you hope to find by coming here today?’
Something, definitely.
‘Only I’m a stranger,’ Merrily said, ‘and you’re telling me all this private stuff.’
‘I Googled you.’ Rachel smiled at last. Kind of. ‘You’re the woman who investigates hauntings and things. I didn’t know the Church did that. But you believe in all that stuff, obviously.’
‘Some of it. And, as a doctor, you…’
‘I’m not saying I don’t. I just wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk to someone like you. Still not sure, really.’
‘It’s usually nurses who tell me the stories.’
‘In hospitals. Yes. We hear them, sometimes. Mine, however… all right, mine happened at home.’
‘Oh?’
‘What if I was to tell you Aidan came… came in last night?’
‘Then I’d ask you again if you wanted to come over to the vicarage,’ Merrily said softly. ‘Or across the square to the Swan. Or anywhere.’
The Kilpeck number was scrawled sideways on the lyric pad, next to some phrases for a new song, a winter song. The pad was next to the phone. Lol was sitting there, touching nothing.
But then, if he didn’t make the call, Jane would only do it, and Jane was not always subtle and, in her present state of mind, might say anything.
Should’ve told her mother weeks ago about Samantha Burnage. He could understand why she hadn’t at the time, and now the time had passed and telling
her wouldn’t be so easy.
Sam. How it had all arisen out of gratitude.
Sam: the woman who’d taken her side against some of the archaeologists in Pembrokeshire who’d sneered at Jane’s passion for folklore and earth-mysteries. Sometimes, Jane seemed to be living on parallel levels, the so-called real world and a numinous place where everything was interlaced, conditioned by the past.
Suppose I kind of worshipped Sam, like when you have a crush on your teacher.
Inevitable that an attachment would form, Jane on her own amongst qualified professionals, thinking she had only one friend. At the end of the dig, they’d got drunk together and Jane had woken up in Sam’s bed, not entirely sure what, if anything, had happened in it. Back home, she’d actually approached Gus Staines, the friendly half of the gay couple running Ledwardine Livres, to find out if she might be a closet lesbian – like just so she knew. Gus, after quizzing her about the sex of her teddy bear, hadn’t thought so.
Lol picked up Jane’s phone and reread the email she’d left for him.
See what you think.
Hi Jane
How are you?
Listen, I have good news. A university
archaeology dept. with sudden money
to spare is looking for a project. Doesn’t
happen too often any more.
I’m thinking of proposing your henge.
Wanna talk about it? In depth?
I can probably come over quite soon.
much love,
Sam.
In depth, huh?
She’s, you know, a nice woman, Jane had said once. I’m convinced she really does share my values. You’d like her.
All right, then. What the hell.
He picked up the phone.
She’d cleared up at the church, made her apologies for disappearing so suddenly, collecting a reproving glance from Uncle Ted, senior churchwarden. She rang Jane, explained she could be late, why didn’t Jane just get herself some lunch. A familiar scenario. She could’ve sworn Jane seemed almost glad.
When she made it to the Swan, the bar was crowded; she wasn’t sure that Rachel would have waited. But there she was behind either a tomato juice or a Bloody Mary, at the most discreet table for two, under a small, milky mullioned window. She hadn’t taken off the big black coat.
