by Phil Rickman
‘Well, good…’
‘No. Not good, Jane. Bad for all of us. Costly. So, to forestall the possibility of further public disturbance, Mr Murray took the entirely sensible decision to remove what our county archaeologists have formally confirmed was never there in the first place. And invited me, as the local representative, to come along and observe that no regulations were breached, and that’s what I’m doing. That’s it. All right?’
He turned away, adjusting his hard hat. He was wearing a khaki-coloured shirt and cargo trousers, like he was in the SAS or something, on a special high-risk mission.
‘So he invited you, is it?’ Gomer said.
‘I gotter say everything twice for you, is it, Mr Parry?’
‘Sure you din’t invite yourself? Strikes me this is just the sorter thing you’d think of all by yourself, that’s all.’
Lyndon Pierce didn’t reply.
‘Because, like, all you care about,’ Jane said, ‘is protecting your corrupt schemes and the bungs you’re getting from the guy who’s flogging his land to the supermarket firm, and the bungs you’re probably getting from the developers of the luxury, executive…’
Pierce turned slowly. Too late to stop now.
‘You’re just … totally fucking bent. Just like your dad. With your crap Marbella-style villa and your naff swimming pool and your … You couldn’t lie straight in bed.’
Gomer said quietly, ‘Janie…’
‘Right…’
Pierce turning to Gomer, the lamp under his face, uplighting it, the way kids did to turn themselves into monsters.
‘Now, I want you to remember this, Mr Parry. First off, I don’t give a fig what this nasty little girl says, on account she’s too young to think of any of it for herself—’
‘Like fuck she is!’
‘Janie—’
‘So I’m holding you solely responsible for that actionable shite. Even though nothing you say counts for a thing round yere and never did. Never did, ole man.’
Jane kept quiet. Stopped breathing.
Because Pierce had lost it. His accent had broken through again, and his language had broken down. Gomer went silent, too. This was, like, confirmation. Well, wasn’t it?
Pierce shone his hand-lamp from Gomer’s face to Jane’s face and back again.
‘You’re halfway senile, Mr Parry. You and your bloody plant hire. You don’t even know what bloody plant hire means. You’re a joke, ole man. You en’t even safe to climb into one of them no more.’ Pierce jerking a thumb at the JCB, his words coming faster. ‘And everybody knows … everybody knows you always got it in for farmers like Gerry, does their own drainage rather than paying good money, out of pity, to a clapped-out ole fart like you for half a fuckin’ job.’
Gomer didn’t say anything, but something tightened in his neck and he went rigid, the lamplight swirling like liquid in his glasses. For a terrified couple of seconds, Jane thought, Oh Christ, he’s having a stroke.
Wanting to kill Pierce and only dimly aware of the JCB’s engine revving up, until Pierce turned to the meadow, his hard-hat tipping back as his arm came up like the arm of some petty Roman-emperor figure.
‘You wanner watch?’ he said. ‘All right, you watch.’
‘No!’ Jane screamed. ‘No!’
Pierce brought his arm down, a chopping motion.
On the other side of Coleman’s Meadow the big digger rocked, its blade lowering. And then it began to roll on its caterpillars towards the last, pathetic piece of old straight track.
‘Oughter be in an old folks’ home, you ought, Parry,’ Pierce said as he walked away. ‘I should think about that, I were you.’
He’d been blocking the long view of Cole Hill, which never entirely faded away on summer nights. A lick of moon had risen behind it like a candle on a coffin. Down below, the last four or five metres of track made a perfect shadow.
‘Stop him! Please stop him!’ Jane arching forward, screaming at Pierce’s back. ‘You shit!’
He was gone. He’d walked casually away into the orchard, and all there was left was the yellow lights and the roaring, and Jane looked back at Gomer. But Gomer wasn’t moving, he was just standing there, a bit bent now, like one of the old, dying apple trees in the derelict orchard behind him.
It was almost over.
Jane was on her own. She’d failed. She’d mishandled everything, through immaturity, her eagerness to do something, be somebody. She couldn’t live with that.
She was only half aware of running blindly towards the digger’s bobbing lights. Running out, sobbing, into the meadow, where the ruined ley carried what remained of the ancestry of an historic village.
Oh, not historic in the sense of having kings or dukes living there or battles fought on its soil. More important than that.
She heard a shout from behind her, glanced over her shoulder and saw Gomer stumbling after her, and she shouted back at him, ‘No…’ But he was already slipping sideways into a new-made trench, sinking down on his knees, and her heart lurched and she desperately wanted to go rushing back to help him, but she was too far now, too far gone.
And convinced, despite the savaging of the meadow, that she could still see the mystic line, glowing and alive and fresh with the clean, crisp scent of apples … sharp with the cool, dry tang of the cider … hardened by the hooves of Hereford cattle with hides the colour of the soil … marked out by the shadow of the church, where the bells had called generations of farm workers to prayer … still walked by the sombre shades of Alfred Watkins and his distinguished musical associate and the spirit…
… The sad, sepia spirit of Lucy Devenish herself, hiding her anguish in the folds of her poncho as Jane threw herself into the gutted ground and rolled in front of the blade.
52
Remembering the Hurt
Half past ten and no signs of apocalypse.
Parked alone in the bay outside Wychehill Church, with the window down, Merrily could just about hear the choir. Not what she’d expected, not the fulsome, floating sound which had gilded the air last Monday night when she and Lol had arrived in Wychehill. This was low-level and travelled in pulses.
She’d walked quietly down to the church, some of whose windows were quietly aglow. Sliding into the porch with the idea of inching open the doors to see if Loste or Winnie was in there. But the doors were locked. No audience for this choir tonight.
She’d crept outside again, found a metal bucket and positioned it upside down below one of the clear windows and stood on it.
‘Ave Mary,’ she heard. Low and liquid. ‘Ave Mary.’
She saw a group of heads in the chancel, in a nest of candelight. A candle in a pewter tray on the lectern, a candle on the pulpit, eerily Dickensian.
Also workmanlike. Not a performance.
Anyway, the conductor was bald. Merrily had fled back to the car.
Two police vehicles went past slowly: a lurid traffic car and a dark blue van. Perhaps the action wouldn’t start until the early hours. Perhaps it wouldn’t start at all. Perhaps Khan was right and what worried people like Leonard Holliday was not so much the reality of the Royal Oak as the idea of it, any challenge to the idyll. Hard, however, to imagine Holliday ever experiencing an idyll.
She lit a cigarette, looked across at the Rectory. Like everywhere else, it was in darkness. Ledwardine Vicarage was never entirely in darkness. If there was no light on in the house, a low-powered bulb would be burning in one of the outside lanterns. The light of the world. The glow of sanctuary.
No sanctuary here.
She got out and locked the car and walked up through the cutting into Church Lane, saw a TV flicker in Hannah Bradley’s cottage and thought about knocking. No time. Stay focused.
She walked on up the lane, surprised at how bright the night was with a moon that was far from full. There was a single guiding lamp at the top of the steep path down to Starlight Cottage, but the place itself was unlit and clearly deserted, even the windchimes un
moving in the herb-scented silence. Wind chimes: part of the illusion of innocence.
If Sparke had deliberately misdirected her, neither she nor Loste were going to be easily discovered tonight. Merrily didn’t hang around, walked quickly back up to the lane and down the hill towards the church.
A bulkhead light blinked on across the lane and a door opened.
‘Hey, I thought it was you,’ Hannah said. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘Looking for Winnie, that’s all.’ Merrily walked across the road. ‘You haven’t seen her?’
‘I never look out for her.’ Hannah was standing by her gate. She wore a Keane T-shirt and shorts. ‘She looks out for herself.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Nice bloke, Tim Loste. Used to be. I don’t know what he’s like now.’
‘I wouldn’t know, either,’ Merrily said. ‘I haven’t been allowed to talk to him.’
‘Join the club. Phew, it’s hot tonight, innit? Yeh, I do a bit of running on the hill, you know, and I ran into Tim a few times. I thought he’d be all up in the air and highbrow, but he wasn’t. Not like that at all. Quite uncomplicated, really. We went to the theatre in Malvern once. Matinée. It had some quite famous actors in it, from TV. It was a laugh. Then she found out.’
‘Winnie?’
‘And that was it. Our paths, as they say, stopped crossing. And not for want of me going out of my way, I’ll tell you.’
‘When was this, Hannah?’
‘Few months ago. I think he’s back drinking now. She won’t stop him. She’ll bloody kill him before she’s done, and that’s a shame.’
‘Go on. Tell me.’
Merrily leaned on the gate. Hannah looked up and down the lane and then lowered her voice but not much.
‘When we were in Malvern, right? We ran into this old mate of Tim’s, from when he was a teacher. And I remembered his name after and I rang him up to ask him, like, you know, what’s the situation with Tim. And he said the Sparke woman was the reason his engagement was broken off…’
‘Tim’s? What, you mean she—’
‘Oh, nothing like that. She’d eat him for breakfast. She just tells him he’s a genius. She’s good at making people feel special. I don’t know if he’s a genius or not, but what’s it matter if genius is being miserable all the time? You know he tried to top himself? If you see her, you can tell her what I said. I don’t care any more. I wish I could get between them, but he won’t listen.’
‘And how are things with you?’
‘I just don’t go that way any more on the bike,’ Hannah said. ‘You getting anywhere with it?’
‘To be honest … don’t know.’
Back at the car, Merrily lit another cigarette, brought out the phone, watched it flare up, singing in her hand, and called Jane again. Her call could not be taken. Left another message on the voicemail and then called Gomer’s landline – Gomer’s partner Danny Thomas kept the firm’s only mobile, as Gomer had never been known to charge it up.
No answer.
At least this was likely to mean that wherever Jane was, Gomer was also there. Made no difference; she should be there. There was nothing much to be done here. If Loste and Winnie were doing a Last Night of the Proms before they were barred from Wychehill Church, it was perhaps none of her business.
On the other hand, when somebody had deceived you…
She rang Bliss: voicemail.
‘Frannie,’ Merrily said, ‘I don’t really know what to say to you except that something’s not right here. Which of course you— Oh, sod it, just call me back.’
She killed the connection and her cigarette, leaned back into the seat. Time to go and collect poor Lol. Drive back to Whiteleafed Oak hamlet and then call him on the mobile, call him away from the perpetual choirs.
Nice concept, lovely imagery. The great and beautiful mystery: how Elgar tapped into the music of the spheres. The ultimate unprovable theory. But also undis provable. Clever Winnie.
She decided to drive back to the Ledbury road by the slightly longer route that would take her past the Royal Oak which, after all, she’d never seen fully operational – the moral cesspit, the gateway to hell. The road taking her past the gaunt Edwardian home of Tim Loste, which she hadn’t yet checked. She made out its wall and its peeling railings. No lights on here either, and she hadn’t expected any, but, as she accelerated away, something did catch her eye. Not a peeling railing, but…
Oh hell.
Merrily braked, lowered her window, looked behind her for oncoming headlights and, when it was clear there was nothing, reversed along the road to the front of the house and switched off the engine.
She couldn’t see it from here and had to get out. The narrow house rose up against the hill like an upended domino, double blank, and, halfway into Loste’s cramped driveway, she was able to confirm what she’d seen from the car.
It was the oak sapling planted in his tiny front garden, the tree which eventually would have crumbled his foundations and fused destructively with his supporting walls. The oak which she now knew represented something infinitely bigger. A symbol of something, is all, Winnie had said. A symbol he could use for meditation.
Merrily walked up to the front of the house and held the sapling in both hands, halfway up, where it was gleaming white.
Not white leaves. Somebody had snapped its trunk.
Jane tasted the earth.
It was cold and gritty and bitter, and her ears were full of roaring night.
‘Get up.’
‘Nergh.’
Jane rolled away from the blade but kept on hugging the earth.
‘Get up out of there before I pull you out.’
A voice she didn’t know. Then a voice she did.
‘Don’t touch her, Gerry. You must never touch them these days.’
‘I’d like to fucking—’
‘I’ve already called the police,’ Lyndon Pierce said. ‘Jane, you know what’ll happen if the police have to move you. You’ll be arrested. You’ll be charged. You’ll appear in court, and when you’ve appeared in court once, at your age, that’s the slippery slope.’
Jane dug her fingers into the soil, opened her eyes slightly and saw the white eyes of the JCB, heard its engine idling. She saw the boots of Gerry Murray, heard the voice of Lyndon Pierce again.
‘—Mother won’t survive that. Be on your way, the pair of you. No skin off my nose. Women vicars, that was always gonner be a mistake.’
Jane concentrated on the roaring of the engine in her ears and gripped the earth, one hand aching where the grit was in the bleeding cut. The earth smelled rich and raw and warm, now. Warm as the grave.
‘I been talking to Tessa Bird, in Education,’ Pierce said. ‘Looks like you’re finished at the school anyway. You’re maladjusted, Jane. Always been a problem child—’
‘What the fuck—?’
She heard the change in the engine’s tone. A gear change like a huge throat-clearing. When she opened her eyes, the digger’s lights were receding.
Murray screaming, ‘Get the fuck out of there, you mad ole bastard!’
Swallowing wet clay, Jane saw the swirl of the digger’s lights, and then the night went mad.
* * *
It wasn’t the wind; there was no wind. It wasn’t an accident, either. The sapling was too thick in its lower trunk for Merrily to clasp a hand around.
Someone had bent it over until it split. It wasn’t quite severed but the top three or four feet of it were hanging off.
She felt the violence still in the air, could almost smell someone’s sweat. It was, in some indefinable way, like when she and Syd Spicer had been standing by the remains of Lincoln Cookman’s car. As if the violence had been inflicted on the atmosphere itself and the atmosphere wanted you to know that it was remembering the hurt.
She went around the path to the back door to see if the oaks in plant pots had been damaged. They seemed to be intact, although one was knocked over. But the
back door, which Tim Loste was said never to lock, was ajar, and the bar of pinkish light down the side was, amidst so much darkness, a lurid shock.
Merrily took a step back and waited. No suggestion of movement inside. She didn’t go in, but she prodded the door a little wider open and called out.
‘Mr Loste?’
Not really expecting an answer. But from out on the hill behind the house she could hear a distant sound, both explosive and staccato, like duelling machine guns: dance music from the Royal Oak somehow deflected from the hill, bouncing back toward the house and the road.
I spend all of Friday and Saturday evenings with Tim. When the Royal Oak starts up. He needs me – he’ll go crazy, else.
If they weren’t here and they weren’t at Whiteleafed Oak, where were they?
With her left trainer, Merrily pushed the door further open, saw into the kitchen, which she hadn’t really taken in when she was here with Annie Howe. It was basic but not small. Pine units and cupboards up to the high ceiling. A microwave, a dishwasher, a coffee-machine. An empty pizza packet on the worktop near the microwave. All of this lit by one long, thin peach-coloured strip light.
No conspicuous damage, no sounds of intrusion. So who had left the door open? Had the sole objective been the killing of the oak tree?
Who would have known its importance? Presumably, only Winnie Sparke. And Merrily, now, and Lol.
She stepped cautiously over the threshold.
‘Mr Loste?’
It seemed so unlikely that she hadn’t met this man she knew so much about. Or did she? Like all the impressions you received of Elgar, the individual portraits of Tim Loste didn’t quite match. He was inspired and inspirational; he was crazy and manipulative.
There was certainly nothing of him in this kitchen. Opposite her, the door to the hall was wide open. The hall was in darkness. She started thinking about the big framed photograph of Whiteleafed Oak over the mantel-piece in the living room and all the other pictures of the sites of the perpetual choirs. Obvious and easy targets if someone really wanted to upset him.
She went into the hall. Always hated being inside someone else’s house when they weren’t there.
Especially in the dark. Merrily felt around for a light switch, and as soon as her hand found it – one of those little metal nipples – the light from a white crystal bowl in the ceiling sprang into the otherworldly eyes of Edward Elgar, urging Mr Phoebus out of the shadows towards her.
