The Wine of Angels mw-1

by Phil Rickman

  She looked away from Mark and across at Barry. ‘Sorry. I thought someone had a knife.’

  ‘One of these boys?’ Lloyd Powell wandered over, hooked out a chair with his foot to see if anything had been kicked under it. Lloyd looked pretty cool in a timeless sort of way; he was the only guy here who could get away with wearing a patched tweed jacket over his jeans and denim workshirt.

  ‘I didn’t really see,’ Jane said. ‘There was just a sort of flash. But with the strobelights ... Sorry.’

  ‘All right,’ Barry said. ‘You.’ Stabbing a finger at Dean Wall then Danny Gittoes, then Mark. ‘Out.’

  ‘Aw, come on, man.’ Dean stepped away from Jane. ‘We was only havin’ a laugh. Tell ‘im, Lloyd.’

  ‘You’re outer line, boy,’ Lloyd said sternly. He folded his arms, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Barry.

  ‘Out,’ Barry said. ‘Now.’

  Danny Gittoes stood up and edged towards the door. Some of the kids began to move back towards the walls. Dr Samedi stood protectively in front of his main console. Dean Wall didn’t move.

  ‘You’ve got five seconds,’ Barry said, like they were terrorists or something. ‘And that includes the door closing behind you.’

  It was starting to look nasty. Then Colette was there.

  ‘Ease up, Barry.’

  There was silence. Jane reckoned that every man in the room must be looking at Colette, including Barry and Lloyd. She looked like she’d stepped out of one of those moody, sexy, Sunday-supplement fashion spreads, one of the threadlike straps of her tight, black dress just parted from the shoulder, a perfect dab of perspiration in the little cleft over her top lip. She looked about twenty-seven and drop-dead gorgeous.

  ‘I’d be prepared to bet these lads are not on the guest list,’ Barry said stiffly. ‘You know your parents’ rules.’

  ‘One of my rules, Barry,’ Colette said, ‘was that the word parents would not be mentioned in here tonight, yeah?’

  ‘Sorry, Colette, but they pay my wages. We have a guest list, nobody comes in they’re not on it.’

  ‘These are local guys,’ Colette said. ‘We don’t want to be seen as snobbish, do we?’

  Dean Wall leered at Colette. ‘Tell the bastard, darlin’. These ex-SAS guys, they en’t got it out their system, see. They’re jus’ lookin’ for innocent people to beat up.’

  ‘Shut it, lad.’ Barry’s lips barely moved.

  ‘What you gonner do? You got a Heckler and Koch down your trousers, is it?’

  Danny Gittoes laughed feebly.

  ‘Don’t push it, boy,’ Lloyd Powell said.

  Dean turned on him. ‘Shit, Powell, I thought you were a mate.’

  ‘You’re outer line, boy.’

  ‘Colette, look ...’ Barry lowered his voice. ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘So it is ...’

  Colette’s eyes were shining with a steady, steely light that didn’t seem quite natural to Jane. Had she taken something? Well, of course she had. The eyes turned on Barry.

  ‘I mean, I know you army guys like your early nights, but you’re in the catering trade now, Baz.’

  ‘Just there’s a little ceremony planned,’ Barry said uncomfortably.

  Colette gave him a hard stare. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s your birthday party.’ Barry blushed. ‘We’ve got this ... cake.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Colette looked appalled. ‘Who’s idea was that?’

  ‘Your mother’s.’

  ‘Jesus wept!’ Jane saw Colette’s fists clench. ‘How old they think I am? Six?’

  ‘Please,’ Barry said. ‘It was supposed to be a surprise.’

  ‘Jesus Christ?’ Colette’s whole body went rigid and Jane saw tears of outrage and betrayal spring into her eyes. ‘They’re not coming?’

  Barry gritted his teeth. ‘Just for a few minutes.’

  Colette began to breathe rapidly, her breasts rising half out of the shiny, black dress, bringing a half-suppressed whimper out of Dean Wall.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Barry said.

  ‘You little toad, Barry,’ Colette spat. ‘You little fucking toad. You lied to me! They lied to me. What time?’

  ‘It’s after midnight.’

  ‘I mean what time are they coming, shifhead?’

  ‘Just before one,’ Barry said. ‘Look, Colette, you’re their daughter – you can’t blame them for wanting to share just a few minutes of your party.’

  ‘Balls. They just want to wind things up while the place is still intact and embarrass the piss out of me at the same time.’

  ‘Come on, love, you’d be winding up by then, anyway.’

  ‘Like fuck we would.’

  Colette strode away, the tips of two fingers to her mouth, thinking hard, that cold light in her eyes. A rock slide of emotions came down on Jane, a giddying combination of nervousness and extreme excitement.

  She watched Colette approach Dr Samedi, the whole room in a hush. Everybody looking for the first time tonight, Jane thought, like kids, unsure of how they were supposed to react to the hostess throwing a wobbly. Colette was speaking quickly to Dr Samedi, who started to back away, making sweeping motions with his hands, Colette pursuing him, her voice rising.

  ‘... getting half a fucking grand for this, Jeff, remember?’

  Dr Samedi glanced wildly from side to side, at the spread of his equipment, and Colette carried on advancing and talking ferociously at him, until he had his back against one of the big speakers, his top hat fallen off, and he seemed to concede, submit, whatever, his head nodding wearily. Colette smiled grimly, walked back to the centre of the room.

  ‘All right. Everybody listen up. Seems some of you are not, like, considered suitable.’

  Dean Wall whooped.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Colette waved a dismissive hand. ‘Wall’s first taste of fame, very sad. OK ... So if some of us are not welcome, I think we should all go, yeah?’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Quentin sighed. But Jane suspected he was being seriously premature.

  ‘It’s not a bad night out there, right?’ Colette said.

  ‘Could be better,’ a boy shouted bravely.

  ‘It will be. I reckon we get out of this shithole, take the action into the streets, yeah?’

  There was half a second of hesitation before the roars of enthusiasm started gathering their meaningless momentum.

  ‘Struth.’ Barry rammed his hands into his jacket pockets, glared at the floor. Jane was standing quite close to him now and she heard him mutter to Lloyd Powell out of the side of his mouth, ‘You better tag along with them, mate. I’ll make an anonymous call to the police.’

  Jane thought, Uh-oh.

  25

  Carnival

  MERRILY MOVED INTO the dark kitchen, carrying the poker.

  The Aga chuntered smugly in its insulated world. She laid a palm flat on one of its hotplate covers, held it there until it felt uncomfortably warm.

  What else could she do? Pinch herself? Did that really work? In the event, as she pulled away, she tripped on the edge of the rug and ... ‘Oh shit?’ dropped the poker, bumped her knee violently on a hard corner of the Aga, sending a bullet of pain spinning to the top of her head.

  She staggered to the switches, slammed on all the lights, bent down, rubbing hard at her knee. Apart from severe pain, what other proof could you give yourself that you were, in fact, fully awake, not dreaming?

  No, it was all real. It was quiet up there now, but the noise she’d heard from the drawing room had been real. And it wasn’t a mouse, it wasn’t a squirrel, it wasn’t a bird in the eaves, it wasn’t ...

  Real. What was real? Was a minister of the Church obliged to consult a psychiatrist these days to find out?

  Another small bump.

  Slowly, holding back her breath, Merrily picked up the poker.

  Closer, this time. Certainly not at the top of the house. She looked at the scullery door, which was never opened. The so-called scullery
was a narrow room, probably something connected with the dairy in centuries past. They’d found no use for it as yet, never went in.

  She lifted the metal latch and went through, wrinkling her nose as her hair mingled with greasy cobwebs. At the far end, another door opened on to a small, square hall. She found a switch and a dangling economy bulb sputtered on, curled-up white tubes like some frozen bodily organ sending shadows up walls already going black with damp. The absence of oak beams in here suggested it was a Victorian addition. Opposite her was the second back door, still boarded up.

  Except it wasn’t. The boards had been prised away; they were leaning against a wall, rusty nails sticking out of them. This was recent. Very recent. Jane. The separate door to the Apartment, soon to have an illuminated bell and a dinky little nameplate: Ms Jane Watkins. The door leading up, via the disused back stairs that you would forget were even here.

  The stairs came out at a black, wooden door. Her fingers found a hole to lift the latch. Of course, she knew where the stairs came out, but it seemed strange seeing it from this angle, the dim, first-floor passage with all the doors, all of them locked now, since the Sean dream, and the keys taken out and thrown into an ashtray in the kitchen.

  Padding past the locked doors, she arrived at the top of the main stairs, the oak-balustraded landing with its window full of pale, night sky. She stood at the foot of the second stairway to Jane’s apartment. Why was she doing this? Despite the unsealing of the second back door, she knew there was nobody up there. Nobody real. Why was she putting herself through this?

  Because I’m a priest, and priests are not supposed to be scared because they know that the strength and certainty of their faith protects them from the evil that walks by night ... don’t they just?

  Oh really ... Jane came up here all the time, for heaven’s sake. Jane skipped up here, never a thought, with books and boxes and cans of variously coloured paint and brushes and CDs, to be locked away in her secret study.

  It’s me. It only happens to me.

  I’m a sick woman.

  She thought.

  Before registering that one of the doors on the landing was already half-open and a shadow-figure was watching her from the threshold.

  Jane knew it was going wrong when she saw Mark and this unknown older guy in the unlit doorway of the computer shop, Marches Media.

  Or maybe wrong was the way it was supposed to go. A party ain’t a party without tension.

  Maybe this party was going exactly the way Colette had planned ... the plan hardening up when she learned she was being double-crossed by her parents. Actually, Jane didn’t see what was so wrong with having a sixteenth birthday cake. And if the Cassidys wanted to share the moment – well, they had paid for everything. And let her use their precious restaurant.

  Maybe Colette was going just a bit over the top.

  Jane watched from the cobbles, leaning against one of the oaken uprights of the market cross. With a low-burning excitement, because it was obvious what was going on down there in the shadowed doorway of Marches Media: the mousy Mark and the older guy were busy dealing drugs.

  And no shortage of customers. The nice boys from good families. Going in one after another, schoolkids at the tuck-shop. Not all the guests, but enough of them to put the market square well into orbit. This would be a good, safe pitch – rich kids at a posh party in a select restaurant in a picture-postcard village encircled by hills and woodland and with no resident police. Profitable, too. Most of these guys would have no idea of current street prices.

  Not that Jane did. It was just cool to watch from the shadows and speculate about these things.

  She was on her own now. The craven Quentin had made a swift escape, car keys in hand, a couple of other vehicles also puttering pusillanimously away from the square. She saw Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes watching Colette, keeping a respectful distance. A heavy chick.

  She and Dr Samedi were at the back of his Transit van, one rear door open. Dr Samedi backing out, arms full of something black, the size and shape of a child’s coffin. ‘Oh yes!’ Colette cried. ‘Yes, yes yes!’

  Dr Samedi was still unhappy and wouldn’t let go of whatever it was. But tonight you didn’t argue with Colette; she wrapped her arms around the black thing, wrestling with poor Jeff, until they both sprang back and the black box was in Colette’s arms now.

  Lloyd Powell was watching from the foot of the Black Swan steps. Mr Responsible, Jane thought. He might seem cool now, with that rangy Paul Weller look and his white pick-up truck, but Lloyd would turn, as the years went by, into his father, get elected on to the council. By which time Rod would have shrunken into Edgar, half-baked and not to be trusted with a shotgun. It was the depressing side of country life; they all seemed to know their place in the Pattern and the Pattern didn’t change.

  People like Colette fascinated them because they were part of a different pattern, Jane thought. But there was no meaningful overlap. She was thinking what a really profound philosophical concept this was, when it all began.

  ‘All right!’

  A voice crackling into the night. Dr Samedi had materialized under swathes of bunting put up for tomorrow’s festival launch. He held an old-fashioned trumpet loud hailer. His top hat was back on.

  ‘How you doin’? Sweatin’? Yeah!’

  A few cheers. Dean Wall’s familiar whoop.

  ‘All right!’ Dr Samedi raised the white loud hailer up over his head. A signal, obviously. Because, at that moment, the perfectly preserved medieval market square of rural Ledwardine just ... well, just erupted.

  The black thing, like a small coffin, had proclaimed itself, in the way it knew best, as a huge ghetto-blaster with about eight speakers. It was sitting on the roof of the van now, pumping tumultuous drum and bass into the square at this unbelievable volume, and Colette Cassidy was bouncing up and down beside the van and screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’

  A circle of people rapidly formed around her, everybody moving in a way it was hard not to when the big, black beat was everywhere and loud enough to pop up all the cobbles on the square. Oh my God, Jane thought, they’ll hear this in the centre of Hereford.

  ‘Welcome, ma friends ...’

  Dr Samedi’s phoney West Indian drawl had been processed by the primitive megaphone into a deep and eerie croak.

  ‘Wel-come ... to ... de ... carn-i-valf

  The ceiling light was blurred and swirling.

  She was waking up. She’d been asleep. Dreamed it all. Again. Oh my God.

  It was not possible. Hadn’t she heated her hands on the Aga, gripped the poker until it hurt, bashed her knee so hard the pain had given her a headache? Proving beyond all doubt that she was awake?

  The light above her was in a warm, orange shade. Jane’s shade. Taken with her from Birmingham to Liverpool to Ledwardine ...

  To the third floor.

  She was in Jane’s bedroom, in the Apartment. Lying on Jane’s bed. She didn’t remember coming here. Why would she come in here, lie down on Jane’s bed? Fear streaked through her and she struggled to sit up and looked into a blank, grey, oval face with dark slits for eyes.

  Merrily screamed and squirmed away. Hurled herself back against the headboard, slamming it into the wall behind.

  ‘It’s OK!’

  The grey face was printed on a jumper, a sweatshirt. Over it was a real face behind glasses. The real face looked scared.

  ‘No ... look ... hey ...’ he said. ‘I’m harmless.’

  She looked down, registering that she was fully dressed, the bed unrumpled.

  ‘Mrs Watkins ... I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘I thought you might need a cup of tea ...’

  One of her cups coming at her, on one of her saucers. She didn’t move.

  ‘What are you doing? What are you doing in ...’

  Aware that, even in her fear, she couldn’t say, What are you doing in my house? It wasn’t. It was the vicarage. It wa
s huge and alien and maybe this man lived here, too, in some derelict attic room, coming and going by the forgotten back stairs. Part of the mad, sporadic nightmare. Oh God, get me out of here.

  ‘I’m a kind of ... friend of Jane’s.’ He was very untogether; big, unsteady eyes behind the glasses. Like a scared version of the alien on his sweater.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went to a party. See, what happened, we met in the street, I needed to take a look at my cat, and she just like brought me up here, you know? Jane says, you know, Bring her inside, we’ll have a look at her. Obviously I didn’t realize she meant ... her room. Believe me, there is no way I’d’ve come up here.’

  ‘Cat,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Somebody gave her a kicking. We brought her up here and then she got away. We must’ve touched her in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I don’t do things like this.’

  She accepted the tea with numb relief. ‘You’ve got an injured cat somewhere in the house? Wandering around, making bumping noises maybe.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Merrily could hear heavy music coming through the trees from the square, insistent as a road drill. This wasn’t going to endear the Cassidys to their neighbours. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  It wasn’t long before they started coming out of their homes, gathering in small groups. You could see pyjama bottoms sticking out of trouser turn-ups, one woman in an actual hairnet. Big torches, walking sticks.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ a man shouted. Not a local voice. A sort of retired colonel voice.

  The music was turned up even higher. Maybe fifty people dancing. Someone grabbed hold of Jane’s arm, tried to pull her into the crush of quivering bodies.

  It was Colette. ‘Aw, come on, Janey. Get your shit together. Stuff the Reverend Mumsy. Like she’s in any position to complain.’

  ‘You’re disturbing the peace!’ The man’s voice rose again. ‘This is noise pollution. If you don’t turn that racket off and go away now, at once, I’m going to call the police! Do you hear me?’