by Phil Rickman
‘Oh hell…’
‘Boy’s still on his feet, mind, so that en’t too bad.’
‘Could you tell the paramedics?’
Gomer nodded.
‘You all right, vicar?’
‘Feel slightly dizzy. Bit of a headache. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.’
‘Lol?’
‘I saw him a minute ago. He’s…’
She was thinking about what Lol and Jane had said about Aidan’s face in the coffin, what Lol’s face would have been like if he hadn’t been wearing the green man mask when he ran out after Darvill.
A snowplough, an actual snowplough, had arrived, to make a track for ambulances.
‘I’m going with Irene,’ Jane said.
‘The ambulance will probably come off the road into a ditch,’ Eirion said. ‘I’d completely forgotten how exciting life could be with you, Jane.’
And laughed himself into a coughing fit, Jane clutching his hand.
Rachel was trying to explain to desperate people why there was very little they could do not involving cold water. Don’t apply ointments. Don’t remove anything sticking to a skin burn. Nothing much for Merrily to do. There were times for prayer and times when it sounded like a trite and pointless reminder of what God could allow to happen in front of a church.
‘How could he do this?’ she said to Gomer. ‘You know him.’
‘Iestyn? Don’t know him n’more, vicar. En’t much left. He don’t know how he got yere, but summat in him seemed to know where it was.’
She was thinking what a lousy vicar she was. Should have known about Iestyn’s condition, gone to visit him. But then, it had been concealed, hadn’t it?
And yet Julie had got through.
Or had she only talked – fatally – to his stepson?
summat in him. A conveniently flammable feud, an old resentment kept smouldering. Tempting to see a small apocalypse outside the door of the Darvills’ unknowable holy of holies. She hugged her arms under the cape. The low moans were muffled now. White and blue lights flitted over the stone, finding faces.
‘Tell you one thing, vicar,’ Gomer said. ‘Dunno where that thing’s been the last day, but a self-propelled sprayer, bit of a handful, he is.’
‘Could Iestyn actually have driven it over here on his own?’
‘Hard to see how it come all the way from Ledwardine tonight, but he’s still got friends round yere, ole roots. Mabbe had it rented out, borrowed it back. Or somebody did, daft devil. But Iestyn, you wouldn’t trust him with a shoppin’ trolley now.’
‘But he’d still…’
‘Dream? Oh hell, aye. His pride and joy, that American thing.’
A shining symbol of Iestyn’s control over nature, Merrily thought. Killing what he believed needed to be killed, what he saw as weeds. Deciding what lived and what died. Sacrificing both the past and the future for present gain. We’ve shrunk, Watkins, Darvill had said. The human race has shrunk.
‘Oh aye,’ Gomer said. ‘He’d dream of bein’ back on that bugger, all right.’
Sitting on the side of the bed in Annie’s hotel room, Bliss caught the mobile on its first cheep.
Vaynor. Calling from Hurst’s house in Breinton, within sight of the city but on the edge of the countryside. Often said to be the perfect place to take one end of the long-awaited Hereford bypass, except too many influential people lived there. Hurst wouldn’t have been perceived as one of them; his place was a bungalow, modern but run-down, quite sparsely furnished like he didn’t spend much time there.
At the bottom of the airing cupboard, where nothing was airing, they’d found a metal box lined with oily cloth, containing two target rifles and two Makarov pistols.
‘Made me wonder if they weren’t all his, boss, originally? I mean the ones Karen found in Jag’s inspection pit. Noted marksman. Loves pistols.’
‘Yeh.’
‘What if he planted some in Jag’s garage after he shot him. Make him look more of an underworld figure than he actually was?’
Theory upon theory. But they’d have to get him first.
‘They’re going out in force,’ Vaynor said. ‘War-footing.’
‘Chances are they won’t find him in Kilpeck, Darth. If he was in that sprayer with the old feller, he’ll’ve had his escape route worked out. All the confusion, nobody would notice. Probably gorra Land Rover waiting for him somewhere. Mad, but not stupid.’
‘Why?’ Vaynor said. ‘Why this?’
‘Dunno. Unless he chooses to tell us, we might never know. Maybe thought something was gonna come out in that service. Thing is, if they’re not mad when they start killing… slippery slope, Darth. At some stage they know there’s no way to put the brakes on.’
The worst of this, he kept thinking when he’d let Vaynor go, was Julie Duxbury. Murdered because a quick killing had become the most expedient answer. That pretend break-in at the neighbouring house to make it look like burglars, that had been halfway clever. But an element of madness in all of that. And evil. Amplified now at Kilpeck.
He turned to tell Annie about it, but she’d fallen, fully dressed, into a exhausted sleep, her face weirdly relaxed.
Bliss looked at her in wonderment. She was free from Charlie, probably hadn’t processed the significance of this. Not consciously, anyway.
‘Lost my stick somewhere,’ Lol said to the dancers congregated around the yew tree.
‘You won’t find it,’ Tim said. ‘You won’t find any of the sticks. It wasn’t a stick dance. You won’t forget that, will you, son?’
‘We won’t get away with that,’ Bob Rumsey said. ‘Somebody’ll remember.’
‘Why would they? That won’t be how he died.’
‘Who?’ Lol said.
‘Him.’
The dancers divided, exposing the hollow in the ancient yew, turned into a grotto by the snow in its sinews.
‘Oh God.’
Lol jumped back.
The yew had the body in a rigid embrace, like a trophy. Tongue jutting from a twisted mouth. Congealed blood rambling down the neck of a black North Face jacket. Lol took in the hair, red, but less red than the face, with its vivid, chemical death-blush.
‘Where… where did he come from?’
‘Came from out of the sprayer, originally, I believe,’ Tim said. ‘But that was a while back. Before he… became part of the dance. But you wouldn’t remember that, would you, Lol? You were up there in green man land.’
‘Did we…?’
‘Who knows what the dance does? What would I know, an old soldier?’
His rag jacket had been replaced by a tweed jacket, but his face was still blackened.
‘We were all a bit out of it, weren’t we?’ Tim said. ‘Could’ve hit his head on anything. Bit stunned, goes crawling out in the darkness, gets a faceful, throatful. Too fuddled to escape. Horrible stuff that.’
Lol stared at him. He was thinking that an old SAS man was never entirely out of it. Had they known? Had they known who he was, what he’d done?
Tim’s black face split into a huge smile.
‘Nice service, I hear.’
He patted Lol on the shoulder, went jingling away as the air was seared by sirens.
71
Oaf
LOL LAID HIS foliate face carefully in the snow on the tomb next to Darvill’s chair, up against the church wall, under the Sheela-na-gig and the comical cat. He’d waited until Gareth Brewer had brought Iestyn Lloyd out, to go down to the ambulance and the two police Land Rovers which had pulled in tight to the mound.
Darvill had a blanket over his useless legs. His head light lit up the holly, the strands of yew, the mistletoe and the small eyeholes in the mask.
‘Leave him there, Robinson. Done his job, I’d say.’
‘Yes. I suppose he has.’
‘I’d be blind. Legless and blind.’ He laughed. ‘Just when you think it’s safe to come out of the spinal ward. Just when you think you’ve paid the price.’
‘Price?’
Darvill reached up and switched off his head lamp.
‘Did you even know what was happening when you ran in front of me?’
‘To be honest, no. No, I didn’t.’
He didn’t remember getting to the church door. All he remembered were the words of the song, and then the irony of it, no darkness danced down.
‘I remember it on the mask, like a power washer. And the smell. Still smelling it.’
‘Looks after his own, the Man of Leaves. Saved us both.’
‘Didn’t save Aidan.’
‘Sometimes,’ Darvill said, ‘we need to be shown evil, or we won’t know the difference. There’s evil in these walls. Necessary good, necessary evil.’
Darvill’s hands had burned skin which he said Nora, the life-keeper, would attend to later.
‘Might ask her something later, too. Good night for it, do you think? Death, destruction and possible matrimony.’
‘Why not?’
‘Two would-be Lady Darvills dumped me because I told them I didn’t want kids. Time this dynasty ended, Robinson. We’re not getting any luckier.’
‘No.’
‘When I go, all these wannabes will be coming out of the woodwork trying to claim the title. What use is a title except for when you’re on the pull? Aidan was to have had Maryfields. The Man of Leaves. Would’ve had two organic farms eventually. End of a feud that should never have been. And perhaps a Ledwardine Morris? The morris sides used to be a kind of priesthood, did you know that? No you didn’t, and neither do I, but I believe that’s how it was. A band of brothers connected to a place not by dogma but by the dance and what the dance passes on from the earth. It’s not whimsy, you know. I don’t think it’s whimsy. I think it works. I know it works.’
‘You never thought of telling Iestyn – about Aidan and Maryfields?’
‘No, I didn’t. Would you have? He’d think it was a scam. The way his brain worked. Or didn’t.’
‘You tell Aidan?’
‘Well, of course. This was how it worked: the land at Ledwardine had been put in trust for Aidan, possibly to avoid death duties, soon as Iestyn knew he was on the blink. Unknown to Iestyn, we had an agreement, Aidan and I. Whichever of us died first – wouldn’t be him, I assumed – would get the other’s land.’
‘That was a legal agreement?’
‘Oh yes. I’m not stupid. Solicitors, witnesses, all that.’
‘Could Iestyn and Hurst have only just found out? That whatever happened, Hurst was going to be on the outside? Without a penny? And all that pretence about him never wanting the farm would be closer to the truth than he could’ve imagined.’
‘If they’ve seen Aidan’s will, undoubtedly,’ Darvill said. ‘Could lead to years of legal wrangling, at the end of which Hurst still winds up with nothing. That would have pushed him over the edge, wouldn’t it? Fucking hell. Tectonic plates have shifted under less.’
He was shaking his head, chuckling bleakly.
‘Don’t panic, Robinson, I wouldn’t try to hang anything on you. There’ll be a more suitable Man of Leaves – not that you haven’t done rather well, one way or another.’
‘Got me back in the dance.’
Lol looked up at the Sheela-na-gig.
‘Lionel, can I ask…? You came down on me pretty hard when I made a stupid joke about her and… and the cat.’
The Sheela grinned. Darvill blew a soft sigh down his nose.
‘Going to have to tell you, now, aren’t I? After you saved my face.’
‘I was pretty pissed off,’ he said, ‘when my old man brought us back here. Didn’t know anybody, didn’t want to. Got myself a motorbike – the one I later sold to Aidan for peanuts – and shot off to Hereford most nights. Hanging out with guys who very much were not farmers. Drank copiously and smoked a lot of dope – which I still home-produce, by the way. Flog the surplus to a chap in Hereford.’
‘Ah,’ Lol said.
‘Quite. Anyway, it wasn’t that, it was the dance that saved me from going mad.’
‘A lot of people say that.’
‘It’s true. Even if you ignore the mystical stuff, it brings a strange kind of unruly order to your life. Naturally, as my old man had started the Kilpeck side, I wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn’t even try to persuade me. He was clever that way, my father. He never encouraged me to follow whatever he was into, which sometimes made me desperately want to. I watched and studied, while feigning complete disinterest. Practised on my own. Read his weird books secretly. And then, when one of the morris side couldn’t make the winter solstice, I offered to step in. Not as good as I thought I’d be at first, but then it just… clicked.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
‘We danced to the south doorway. I felt a tremendous heat. I was aware of all the extremities of my body, complete control and mastery, an enormous excitement at the pit of my stomach, the solar plexus. Still didn’t get it, mind. Still resented this bloody church and the influence it had. Still behaved like an oaf. Still behaved…’
He glanced up at the Sheela-na-gig and shook his head.
‘Some of my mates came down from Hereford and we’d spent all night in the pub in Kilpeck. Short walk from the church. I started talking about my, er, girlfriend – famous, after all, the world over – and we all went over to the church to have a gander at her. Unfortunately, you couldn’t actually see her very clearly because of the scaffolding. They had scaffolding up for minor repairs to the roof. Gave me an idea after they’d gone.’
‘Oh dear,’ Lol said.
‘People used to say she was a warning of the dangers of lust. Are you kidding? You seen the way she smiles? And when you’re, you know, very pissed, she can start to look like a challenge.’
The snow had stopped and he wheeled his chair away from the wall.
‘The scaffolding, that was easy. Well, looked easy from the ground. If you were pissed. Unzipped my jeans, hung them over a bar, but they slipped and fell to the path. No going back now. Starlit night and her face had altered. Hell, Robinson, if you think you’ve ever been horny…’
‘You must’ve been very pissed,’ Lol said sadly.
‘Keep telling you that. The stone… the roof stone projects over her, I had to lean back to… you know? I’m lying on this fucking plank at the very top of the scaffolding…’
‘I’m not sure I want to know any more,’ Lol said.
‘It was…’ Darvill began to choke with laughter. ‘All you could ever wish to…’
‘Don’t,’ Lol said. ‘Even she can be embarrassed.’
‘Bitch. Anyway, that’s when I fell. At the moment of ecstasy. Not that far when you look at it now, but I fell crookedly, into the space between the scaffolding and the wall, and there was a big wheelbarrow at the bottom, full of stone. I was laughing through the pain. Until I realized something was wrong. Turned out my back was broken.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Lay there. Lost consciousness. Dreamed about her. Regained consciousness and looked up and she was laughing. May not have woken up. She may not have laughed. Morning came. People came. People who didn’t talk, fortunately. Churchwarden. Nice chap. Awoke in hospital. Was transferred to another hospital. Eventually was told I wouldn’t be walking again. Except in dreams. In dreams…’ Under his head lamp, his eyes had filled up. ‘In dreams I still dance.’
Merrily was waiting for Lol by the south door.
She brought out a hand from inside her cape. It held a candle. She lit it with her old Zippo and presented it to him.
‘Better late than never.’
She looked up at the carvings, the green man and the animals.
‘It’s all here, did you know that? Everything. Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Book of Job. It’s quoted in the church guidebook. It goes on, Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee. And then the guidebook recommends reading the rest of the chap
ter. So I did. Just now. Trying to calm down. Job, chapter twelve. Goes on to say He discovereth deep things out of darkness. And – ominously – he taketh away the understanding of the aged and he leadeth counsellers away spoiled. OK, so the spelling’s different.’ She took his arm. ‘Let’s get out of here before we both go insane.’
Credits and background
The morris is, of course, still a part of Welsh border life. The Border morris lay low for a while and was given a new impetus in the 1970s by musicians and dancers led by John Kirkpatrick. On the recording side, check out the Morris On albums sequence and (for Border morris, especially) Ashley Hutchings’ Rattlebone and Ploughjack.
Phill Lister, formerly Green Man of the Breinton Morris, was the first to suggest, some years ago, that there might be a novel in the mysteries of the morris and has been really helpful. It took some time, and other ingredients, for certain ideas to ferment, with the assistance of Ruth and Paul Ferret and the Foxwell Morris, and Mark Roberts, Oxfordshire Border morris.
The Nine Men’s Morris stone was indeed discovered in the earthworks at Kilpeck Castle in 2013.
Thanks to James Bailey, Pete Bibby, Jason Bray, Anne Brichto, Richard Coates, Ashley Evans, Anne Holt, Terry Hopwood-Jackson, Mike Inglis, Liz Jump, Ced Jackson, Peter Mahoney, Nick Mole, Gary Nottingham, Mairead Reidy, Terry Smith, Tracy Thursfield, Les Watkins, Allan Watson and Tom Young.
Thanks again to Sara O’Keeffe, editorial director at Corvus, and my brilliant wife, Carol, who spent three weeks finding flaws, masterminding solutions and sharing two gruelling twenty-hour working days at the end.
An early source for the esoteric history of the morris – and an inspiration – was a fascinating pair of articles written in the 1970s for The Enneagram, by A.G.E. Blake, one of the most significant studies of the morris tradition, combined with informed speculation that rings true. Tracy Boyd’s essay, ‘The daunce of Nine-Men’s-Morris and the boundaries between worlds’ (2004) completed the picture along with two articles in Dowsing Today, by John Moss, of the British Society of Dowsers, who led a survey of Kilpeck Church and its environs.
