by Phil Rickman
She wondered if she should ring Robert Morrell at home and make a crawling apology, telling him how stressed-out she’d been and what a difficult year it had been for Jane. Wondered whether this might actually work, or whether Jane would just despise her.
Probable answers: no and yes.
Just before twelve, Syd Spicer had rung to say that he’d spoken to Tim Loste’s parents in France. He’d asked Merrily how she’d feel about conducting the funeral. The full Requiem, as High Church as she was prepared to go.
Incense, even.
She’d said OK.
The young guy at the door was in jeans and a Mappa Mundi T-shirt.
‘Neil Cooper. Herefordshire Council.’
‘I think I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ Merrily said.
‘It’s possible, yes. I wondered if Jane was in.’
‘Well, she—’
Jane appeared in the hall.
‘Oh—’
‘This is Mr Cooper, Jane. From the Council.’
‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘I overreacted. I behaved like a kid. But on the other hand I’m not going to apologize.’
‘I don’t expect you to.’ Neil Cooper looked grim. ‘But I think you ought at least to come and see the extent of what you’ve done, you and your … volatile friend.’
‘For what it’s worth, I’m accepting full responsibility. Gomer thought I was in danger, and that’s why he did it. In fact it was an act of protest.’
Merrily said, ‘Jane—’
‘Also, he was insulted by Lyndon Pierce. Made to look small. And old and knackered. Gomer’s a proud sort of guy in his way, and he’s a good guy, and he could drive a JCB in his sleep, and Pierce was stupid to leave his car there with no lights.’
‘I really don’t want to argue,’ Cooper said. ‘If you’re prepared to face up to—’
‘All right, I’ll come. OK? But if you’re going to offer me any kind of a deal, like the police did, to drop Gomer in it…’
Merrily watched them go, wondering what all this was going to cost, in terms of money and their future in the village. Then she went over to Lol’s.
* * *
Lol was sitting on his sofa with the Boswell guitar. Merrily sat down next to him and listened while he played a couple of strange, drifting chords, singing in a low mumble.
‘Don’t need … The Angel of the Agony.
Don’t want … the pomp and circumstance.’
He put the guitar down.
‘Lay down here when we got in. Slept for a couple of hours and I woke up and that was in my head. Crap?’
‘It’s haunting,’ Merrily said.
‘Develop it, do you think?’
‘And when you record it, have Simon St John on cello.’
‘Elgar would hate it.’
‘Tell me – would that have bothered you before?
‘Um…’
‘Seventeen,’ Merrily said. ‘You remember?’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Wasn’t seventeen?’
‘It was Severn … Teme. Elgar said he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at the confluence of the River Severn and the River Teme.’
‘So Tim meant…’
‘There wasn’t much cremation back then. They talked him out of it, and now he’s with Alice in Little Malvern.’
‘Where does the Severn meet the Teme?’
‘No idea.’
‘I wonder if there’s a country church near there. And an amenable vicar with a fondness for Elgar. Take some arranging and negotiations with relatives, of course, but…’
‘You’re thinking Tim?’
‘Thinking both of them. Tim … and Elgar, in essence. But…’
Faraway eyes and a lonely bicycle lamp in the dusk. A floating sadness.
‘… I just don’t know,’ Merrily said.
It was a mess, no arguing with that. A spreading wound in the belly of the village. OK, some of it had been done by Gerry Murray before they arrived, but a lot of it was clearly down to Gomer. The way the fence had been smashed down and spread across the field. The way the council sign describing the plans for luxury executive homes had been snapped off halfway up its post and crunched and splintered into the mud that used to be Coleman’s Meadow.
And Pierce’s car, of course. The car was still there. Pierce’s BMW with its windscreen smashed and its bonnet turned into a sardine can. Well, it had been dark. How was Gomer supposed to know that Pierce was giving Murray a lift home? And wasn’t the fact that Pierce was doing this a clear demonstration that they were in this together? Pierce wouldn’t want that coming out. Would he?
He wouldn’t give a toss. He had Jane, unhinged, crazy as a binge drinker on New Year’s Eve, and dragging an old man into it.
He wouldn’t get jail for a first offence – Jane hoped – at his age, but there’d be a heavy fine and, worst of all, the possibility of some kind of ban, and if they stopped Gomer driving his JCB he’d just slink off and die.
All her fault.
If anything happened to Gomer because of what she’d done she just couldn’t go on living here.
Didn’t want to live here any more, anyway.
The afternoon was dull and sultry. A bleak posse of clouds had gathered around Cole Hill. It was like a sign. Coleman’s Meadow was desolate, an old battlefield, but the only blood was hers.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Jane said. ‘I’ve messed up. I admit it.’
Neil Cooper strolled out to the middle of the field. He wasn’t bad-looking in an insubstantial kind of way.
‘But it is a ley,’ Jane shouted after him. ‘Or it was.’
‘I’m not sure I believe in leys,’ Cooper said.
‘Yeah, well, you wouldn’t.’
‘Look at the state of this.’ He bent down. ‘Come on. Look at it.’
‘Sod you,’ Jane said. ‘You’re determined to rub my nose in it, aren’t you?’
‘Will you come here?’
Jane sighed. How much more of this? Monday she’d have to face Morrell. Tuesday she’d be looking for a new school. Or a job. Maybe stacking shelves for Jim Prosser.
‘It’s my day off, actually,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘I just heard about it on the radio and thought I’d wander over. OK, here—’
She went and looked over Neil Cooper’s shoulder to where a great slice of soil and clay had been peeled away like a giant pencil-shaving. Murray’s work, but somebody had been at it with a spade and there was a trench there now. Neil Cooper tapped the bottom of it with a trowel. It rang sharply off something.
‘Oops, shouldn’t’ve— You know what this is, Jane?’ Jane stood sullenly on the edge of the trench, which was still roughly aligned with the ley.
‘No.’
‘It’s a stone,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘Approximately four metres long. Like a very big cigar. It was about half a metre under the surface. A large part of it would’ve been underground, but when it was standing it would’ve been taller than me.’
Jane said, ‘Standing?’
Cooper walked lightly along the bottom of the trench and then stopped.
‘It seemed even longer at first and then I realized that…’ He bent down, tapped again with his trowel. ‘That this was a separate one.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘And then I brought in a couple of mates and we found a third.’
‘What?’
‘Have you ever seen Harold’s Stones at Trellech? What’s that – forty miles from here?’
‘Thereabouts.’
She and Eirion had been. Twice. Harold’s stones were magnificent. Jane felt herself growing pale.
‘Probably not going to be quite that tall,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘But when we get them up, at least as high as Wern Derys, which is the tallest prehistoric stone in Herefordshire. And, of course, as a stone row. . .’
‘Who are you?’
‘I get the feeling we met once before, when I was working on the renovation of the Cantilupe
tomb in the Cathedral. I certainly recognized your mum. I’m with the County Archaeologist’s Department now.’
Cooper was on his feet.
‘Jane, they’ve been buried for centuries. They’re way beyond living memory, and there are no records. There was a time when farmers would do this because the old stones got in the way of ploughing.’
‘Bury them?’
‘Broke them up, sometimes. Fortunately that didn’t happen here, although the one at the far end was quite badly chipped by Mr Murray’s JCB. But then, if he hadn’t been so determined to destroy your bit of … ley line, we wouldn’t have found out about it – if we ever did find out – until the housing estate was well under way, and then it would’ve been just rescue archaeology because the estate would have planning permission. Whereas now—’
‘These are real, actual, prehistoric standing stones?’
Jane felt like her body had filled up with helium and her voice was coming out in this thin squeak.
‘I’d stake my future career on it,’ Neil Cooper said.
‘What … what does that mean?’
‘Means a long and careful excavation, and then, with any luck, the stones will get raised again and carefully repositioned just as they once were.’
‘And the … and the housing estate?’
‘What housing estate?’ Neil Cooper said.
Jane went down on her knees in the trench, rubbing away the soil, getting dirt all over the big plaster on the back of her hand. She closed her eyes and saw a swirl of faces: Neil Cooper looking down on her with Elgar on one side of him and Alfred Watkins on the other, peering over his glasses, eyes alight, and all of them in the enveloping shadow of the batwing poncho of Lucy Devenish.
‘This time, we’ll call the media,’ Neil Cooper said. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘I need to talk to my agent,’ Jane said.
Credits Plus
Although links between Edward Elgar and Alfred Watkins have not been mentioned in major biographies of either man, the geographical facts, as discovered by Jane Watkins, speak for themselves. However, confirmation: Jacob O’Callaghan records in Elgar, A Herefordshire Guide how the by-then eminent composer joined the famous Woolhope naturalists’ club, ‘possibly introduced by his neighbour, Alfred Watkins.’ And Laurence Meredith notes in In the News – Herefordshire, that Elgar, who had a photographic darkroom at Plas Gwyn, ‘was also a great friend of Herefordian Alfred Watkins, inventor of the modern photographic light-meter, and he and Elgar frequently met to discuss photography.’ Thanks to Woolhope member Sue Rice for pointing this out. It seems unlikely that Watkins and Elgar would not also explore their mutual fascination with the landscape.
Whiteleafed Oak, of course, exists as described, right down to the severely limited parking. Please treat it with respect. The theory of Whiteleafed Oak and the perpetual choirs was, as explained, first outlined, in comparatively recent times, by John Michell in his inspiring books City of Revelation and New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury, developed by John Merron in an article in The Ley Hunter magazine, investigated by members of the Malvern-based British Society of Dowsers and guarded by Val de Heer, of the Aquarius shop, Malvern, who supplied essential background.
Did Elgar know it? None of the biographers mention it, but local people say, Yes … definitely.
The earliest mention of the Three Choirs Festival seems to have been about 1700. It was established for the performance of sacred music – originally Handel and Purcell – by the combined choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford, with an orchestra behind them. And it was always held in the late summer. A gentrified, fairly formal event … or so they thought.
Many thanks also to Mike Ashley, author of Starlight Man, the excellent biography of Algernon Blackwood, for essential advice and perusal of correspondence; Richard Bartholomew on Elgar and Malvern topography, and Chris Bennett at the Elgar Birthplace Museum; Hereford Cathedral Director of Music Geraint Bowen; the Rev. Peter Brooks for crucial eleventh-hour assistance with the Welsh Triads and other problems; the Rev. Keith Crouch; Paul Devereux, author of Earthlights, Earthlights Revelation, Haunted Land and many other essential books on some of the mysteries dealt with here; Ros Ephraim, chorister and proprietor of Burway Books, Church Stretton, for the essential Gerontius; David Furlong, author of Working with Earth Energies; Nicola Goodwin, author of Tales from Herefordshire’s Graves and Burials; Paul Gormley for atmosphere; Robert Hale of the Malvern Gazette, my agent Andrew Hewson, BBC journalist Dave Howard, Phil Howard, Wendy Howell, Ced Jackson, Helen Lamb, Prof. Bernard Knight, Owen Morgan, John Moss, Mervynne and Ceri Payne and Edith Powell at the Arcade Bookshop in Pershore; Ron Phillips for Elgar-analysis and some inspiring discussions; the playwright David Pownall for Elgar psychology; Alun Rees for Gomer-related offences, Canon John Rowlands, author of Church, State and Society: the Attitudes of John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froud and John Henry Newman, 1827–1845; and leading Hay-on-Wye bookseller Tracy Thursfield, who put me on to The Human Chord and other Elgar-linked esoterica.
Principal books on Elgar consulted include Elgar’s Sacred Music by John Allison; The Life of Elgar by Michael Kennedy; Elgar – Child of Dreams by Jerrold Northrop Moore; Gerontius, a novel about Sir Edward Elgar by James Hamilton Paterson – better than any of them at presenting the great man as a complex, mixed-up human being. (No one, however, seems to have quite pinned him down. Michael Kennedy, distinguished music critic and former Northern Editor of the Daily Telegraph, is quick to squash suggestions that Elgar was a liberal, claiming triumphantly that he went fox-hunting, while Jacob O’Callaghan points out that Elgar allied himself with the campaigns of his vegetarian friend George Bernard Shaw and told a journalist that he had developed ‘a horror of the slaughter of wildlife for “sport.”’)
Also The Malvern Hills, An Ancient Landscape by Mark Bowden with contributions by David Field and Helen Winton; The Malverns by Pamela Hurle; The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins; Alfred Watkins, A Herefordshire Man by Ron Shoesmith; The Human Chord by Algernon Blackwood; the revised Who Dares Wins by Tony Geraghty; Bravo Two Zero and Immediate Action by Andy McNab; Freefall by Tom Read; The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James; Sacred Sounds by Ted Andrews; Ray Simpson’s Celtic Worship Through the Year; The Inner Teachings of the Golden Dawn by R.G. Torrens; and Not the Least (that’s the title), The Story of Little Malvern by Ronald Bryer.
Wychehill, by the way, is not the same place as either the Wyche or Lower Wyche areas of Malvern. However, an interesting ghost-road situation did arise a few years ago not too far away in the Herefordshire village of Stoke Lacy, scene of several unexplained road accidents. In this case, drivers said they felt as if something had taken over the steering. You couldn’t make it up; sometimes you don’t have to.
Thanks, as ever, to Krys and Geoff Boswell who preserve the website, www.philrickman.co.uk, against all kinds of negative forces, and Terry Smith who organises the T-shirts. In America, Rick and Claire Kleffel, Jani Sue Muhlestein, Marla Williams and Andy Ryan, Trudy Williams and Kevin Bowman, Jerry Handspicker and Rob Wilder.
And, on the publishing side: Anthony Cheetham, Nic Cheetham, Rosie de Courcy, Nick Austin and, of course, the lovely and phenomenal Carol who worked double shifts on this extremely taxing novel for about six weeks before we managed to pull it into shape.
Final note. Noctilucent clouds were visible in the northern sky over the Welsh border counties on at least one night towards the end of June, 2006. The aforementioned Paul Devereux (no relation to Preston – different spelling) explained what they were.
I’d seen them around midnight and wished I’d been at Whiteleafed Oak.
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