by Phil Rickman
Colette’s fault for being a slag.
Jane didn’t know how to talk to him any more. He wasn’t mad in the normal sense. He didn’t have the imagination to be mad. You couldn’t humour him; he had no humour.
Jane said, in a very low, faint voice, ‘I didn’t throw myself at anybody. I’m not going to spread any lies. Why can’t you just let me go?’
Lloyd shook his head in his brisk and businesslike way. ‘Not an option, Jane. You gotter see that. ‘Specially now.’
‘I’m sure your father’ll say to let me go. He’s a councillor, for God’s sake. My mother’s the—’
Lloyd sort of smiled. ‘You don’t really know Father, do you, Jane?’
And there, suddenly, was Mr Powell in her head, his council-chairman’s chain wound around his hands and tightened.
She braced herself to attack Lloyd. She would go for his balls.
Lloyd leaned back slightly on his heels and regarded her sorrowfully. ‘You try anything, Jane, on me, I got to tell you I’ll punch your face flat. Won’t offend Father. Won’t put Father off. Don’t look at the ole mantelpiece when you’re—’
She saw that Mr Powell wore no trousers and his shirt flap was sticking out. In Lloyd’s hip pocket, the mobile phone had begun to bleep.
‘And about time, too, Father,’ Lloyd said. ‘Excuse me.’
When he’d shut the door efficiently behind him and locked it again, Jane gave up, threw herself into the filthy straw. She was thirsty. She had no more tears left. Her chest hurt from sobbing. It was over. All she had left to hope for was that they would see her as a fox -fast, bang.
Please God, not a badger.
She thought back in horrified amazement to the side of herself which had persuaded her to go into the orchard with two full bottles of gassy cider. When you knew you were going to die quite soon, your body put into a clammy bin liner, the idea of being suspended in some parallel, ethereal, faerie universe was just the most awful, self-deluding crap imaginable. Lucy Devenish believed all this shit and they’d killed her too, and she hadn’t come back because all that afterlife stuff Mum preached was utter crap as well. What she’d had in the orchard that day had been some kind of black-out; she probably had a brain tumour and would have died anyway.
Jane lay there and sniffed the stinking straw because it was better than the piercing perfume of Colette. She, too, would start to smell like that, quite soon, when she was lying in her own bin sack, she and Colette decaying side by side, good mates turning bad. Jane sobbed and snuffled over this until, weak and exhausted – please God, not a badger – her body slackened into a thin sleep and Mr Powell was there, with his chain tight and his thing out, not smiling.
James lifted his chin, his eyes focused on the rafters. His tone was clipped.
‘Many times, I gather, the destruction of that document was mooted. But there was a sound reason for it being preserved. Eventually, about a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather suggested it should be entombed with its author. That’s all there is to it.’
‘James,’ said Merrily. ‘You can’t just tell us there was a sound reason without saying what it was.’
‘It’s a private—’
‘James, listen to me. About thirty years ago, a girl called Patricia Young went to work for your father in the stables. She got pregnant – never mind how I know, I know. She returned after the child was born, to try and persuade the father to face up to his responsibilities. He obviously did. He faced up to the responsibility he obviously felt to his family, and she was never seen again.’
Someone shouted out, ‘Patricia came back?
‘This is disgraceful,’ James snarled.
‘Bloody well come clean, Bull-Davies,’ a man yelled. Several people were on their feet. Ken Thomas had put on all the lights. Bull-Davies’s face was white, a vein throbbing in his forehead. He flung out his pointing arm at Merrily.
‘If there’s a bloody witch here, it’s you.’
‘Shame!’ Minnie Parry cried out and was echoed by at least a dozen people, some of them out in the aisle.
‘All right!’ James threw up his hands. ‘Reason we didn’t destroy that document is because it also vindicates Tom Bull. Didn’t kill Williams. Didn’t even order it done. Truth of it ... like Thomas a Becket all over again. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? One of his ... servants did it. And that’s all I’m saying. That’s it. Show’s over. I’m leaving. Goodnight.’
To a chorus of groans and protests from the pews, he strode away to the south porch, didn’t look at Ken Thomas, went out. Alison glanced at Merrily then followed him.
Merrily shrugged and followed Alison. Behind her, a score of conversations were detonated.
Garrod Powell had a Sunday car, a silver-grey Ford Escort. Whenever he came to church, he parked it in the same place on the square adjacent to the market hall where it reached out towards the mews where Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was and Ledwardine Lore. Rod’s space. Only tourists parked there when Rod wasn’t in town.
When Gomer spotted the car, Rod was in it, talking on the phone.
Gomer pulled his Jeep into the kerbside at the mouth of Church Street and waited.
Bull-Davies strode past towards his blue Land Rover, almost dragging the floozie behind him. He was unlocking the driver’s door when the little vicar caught them up.
Alison suddenly snatched her hand away and turned on James like a cornered cat.
‘Tell her, you bloody fool. Why don’t you just tell her everything you know? This has nothing to do with honour or tradition.’
‘If that were true ...’ He leaned back against his Land Rover and breathed in through his teeth. ‘If that were true, my darling mistress, this would not be a problem.’
‘The problem is,’ Merrily said, ‘that I think we’re talking about a tradition that’s far from honourable.’
‘You’re very clever, Mrs Watkins.’
‘No I’m not. I’ve not been very clever at all. I’ve got people killed.’
‘If you’re talking about Coffey—’
‘You didn’t kill Coffey, did you, James?’ It just came out.
‘What?’ James’s jaw fell open like a padlock. He blinked. ‘Good Lord. You saw Alder in there. Fellow as good as confessed. Didn’t say a word in denial, took it’ – he grunted – ‘took it like a man.’
‘He’s an actor,’ Merrily said. ‘His great performance was dying on its feet. I wondered if he was just grabbing the chance of getting out on a moment of high drama.’
‘Look. Mrs Watkins ... Mrs Watkins, no. I did not kill Coffey. Found the man and went to the police, cooperated fully. Even let them take my fingerprints. No. Did not kill Coffey. May have wanted to, but that’s not my way. Couldn’t. All right?’
‘Tell her, then,’ Alison said. ‘Tell her that the Bulls don’t kill. Tell her who—’
‘Stop. Please. All right. According to his own account, Thomas Bull got very drunk one night. Opened his heart to the only man he felt he could still trust. His bailiff, gamekeeper, head groom, land steward, his ...’
Merrily, shuddering, had a vision of big brown hands around a small, white throat.
‘His Powell,’ she said.
‘Now do you see?’ James bellowed. ‘Now do you bloody well see?’
‘The ... this Powell ... killed her.’ Merrily felt breathless, felt the sudden closeness of the woman who was Wil. ‘Strangled her.’
‘Robert Powell, his name. He was trying to help Tom Bull, and he did a terrible thing.’
‘Even more terrible,’ Alison said, ‘because he’d have soon realized he was killing a woman. It’s not so easy to strangle a man.’
‘He didn’t just strangle her,’ Merrily said. ‘He raped her first. He raped the minister. He went to kill a priest, and—’
‘Don’t make it worse, woman!’
‘But it is worse, James. It got worse. Because it didn’t stop. From then on, the Powells had a hold on the Bulls, and maybe it s
trengthened over the centuries because of the things the Powells would do without compunction. Things it wouldn’t have been proper or seemly or honourable ... Who killed Patricia Young?’
Bull-Davies reeled. ‘I don’t know that! Gord’s sake, don’t know anything. Don’t know if the damned woman was killed. I was a boy then, probably still away at school, nobody would have told me. I don’t know anything. Just inherited all this shit, been trying to keep the damned toilet lid down ever since.’
Merrily looked at Alison.
Alison gave a tiny nod, her face flushed with anticipation.
‘Who do you think killed her?’ Merrily said.
‘Do you never give up? Presumably the father of her child, whoever ...’ James swallowed. ‘Whoever that was. Certainly not my poor bloody father who for the last twenty years of his life was impotent through illness and drink and got his only pleasure from ...’
James clenched his teeth.
‘... watching.’
Alison gasped.
‘Watching who, James?’ Merrily’s voice was very faint.
He wouldn’t answer. He hardly needed to. An engine roared suddenly and the side of the Land Rover was blasted by headlights.
‘Vicar!’
‘Gomer?’
Merrily saw, with a spasm of panic, that he was alone behind the wheel of his jeep.
‘Where’s Jane?’
‘You en’t seen her?’
‘Oh Christ!’
Gomer reached over and threw open the passenger door.
‘Get in, Vicar.’
54
Way to Blue
LOL STUMBLED OUT into the road before he knew it, the tarmac unrolling to either side, a fence opposite with a ploughed field rising steeply behind it, pink moon on pink soil, to a bristle of trees.
No vehicles, no lights, no sign of Gomer.
He felt confused and upset, didn’t know how much time had passed, swinging the torch from tree to tree, tensely shining it under bushes and briars. Once, he’d lit up a rag and nearly thrown up with dread.
There was no pavement; he’d have to stand in the hedge if a vehicle came past. He stared down at his feet on the tarmac and found himself praying that Jane was alive and back at the vicarage, then stopped, scared it might do more harm than good, as if he was tapping into Merrily’s line to a God he wasn’t sure of and Jane often mocked. Omens and portents seemed to have soaked up all his spirituality. Pink moons and black-eyed dogs. Please, Jane.
He looked up then and saw her.
She was standing in the middle of the pink, ploughed field. She didn’t smile at him or come running towards him. She didn’t seem to notice him at all. She was standing very still, although a wind he couldn’t feel lifted her dark hair.
And then there was only the field and the distant trees with buildings behind, under the hardening moon, and Lol knew the curse, by way of Robert Johnson and Nick Drake, was reaching for him.
Merrily was struggling not to give way. She asked Gomer if he’d tried the vicarage. Had he been upstairs? Had he called out? Had he called out to the third storey?
Gomer told her no way was Jane in the vicarage, but Lol had spotted two cider bottles missing from a case in Lucy’s kitchen.
Merrily let out a long, serrated breath. ‘I know Lucy’s dead, I know she was your friend. But I wish to God Jane had never known her.’
‘Lol’s in the orchard now, searchin’. She’s there, he’ll find her.’
‘How is he?’
‘How d’you mean like?’ Gomer was watching a car on the other side of the square.
‘Lol is’ – she bit off the word unstable – ‘unsure of himself sometimes.’
‘He’s all right. Good boy, I reckon.’ Gomer pointed across the cobbles. ‘That’s Rod Powell’s car, see. Keepin’ an eye on him, I am. He’s on the phone. Now who’d Rod be callin’ this time o’ night, you reckon?’
Merrily was silent.
A second later, Rod was getting out of his car and walking, in his stately and confident way, across to the Black Swan, where a lemony light still burned in windows either side of the front door. Rod went up the steps and rapped on a window. Presently the door opened and he was admitted. A couple of minutes later, he came out with a bottle of whisky.
‘Councillor Powell keeps his own licensin’ hours,’ Gomer said. ‘How about that? Man’s gonner have himself a drink in his car, I shouldn’t wonder. Coppers in and out, every hour on the hour lately, that’s how arrogant the feller is.’
‘Perhaps he needs some courage. Perhaps he could see a few things starting to ... ooze out of the woodwork.’
She told Gomer, very briefly, what she’d learned in the last hour and what she’d surmised. Everything, except for the very mixed implications for Alison.
‘Bugger me,’ said Gomer. ‘Wouldn’t it just suit the bastard to get his end away with the Bulls’ women? Where’d that happen, I wonder. No prizes.’
‘The cider house?’
‘Likely why John Bull-Davies give Rod that bit o’ land with the ole place on it.’
‘With a convenient hole in the wall?’
‘Hole in the loft prob’ly. That bloody ole John Bull-Davies. He weren’t never any good. You look at that whole situation, Vicar, you can see why James is the screwed-up bugger he is. Obvious, he’s backin’ off from the Powells. Tryin’ to.’
‘I think he perhaps wanted to do that on his own terms, but circumstances aren’t letting him.’
‘They comes over so loud and haughty-like, the Bulls, but they’re weak underneath, most of ’em. They’ll always come back to the Powells. It’s like some ole magnetism. They might think they got away, but they en’t.’
As the tail lights of Rod Powell’s car came on and the strings of medieval, electric lanterns across the square were extinguished by some timer mechanism, Merrily thought of James and Alison, free to resume their odd relationship.
James Bull-Davies and Alison Kinnersley. Or Powell, as she might have been. The Bulls and the Powells. She hoped there would never be a child.
Lol ran across the road. There was an iron gate on the other side, leading to the pink-washed field. For a moment, as he climbed over, he thought he saw her again, a flitting thing, a wisp, a trick of the light.
He turned and looked back across the road towards the orchard. He should wait here. He should wait for Gomer.
There was a flash, like magnesium, on the very periphery of his vision and he spun round and once more saw her, in total, absolute clarity, standing in the centre of the field with her arms by her sides. She was dressed in black.
This time, he saw, in a heart-freezing moment, that her feet were not quite touching the soil. A girl dressed in black, hovering under a pink moon.
He stood with his back to the gate, snatched off his glasses and rubbed his hands over his face, replaced the glasses, looked back at the road and then spun around again. But there was nothing now.
He wasn’t sure if it had been Jane.
Or Colette.
Both of them? Both of them out here?
His hands were trembling as he pushed himself away from the iron gate and began to walk across the churned-up field, soil the colour of raw meat, the pink moon above him, the black-eyed dog, he was sure, at his heels.
He knew where he was going. Among the farm buildings behind the trees was the cider house, where The Wine of Angels had not been made. The place where the Bulls had once taken their women.
Lol stopped and looked once over his shoulder before walking steadily towards the buildings.
The Escort had turned down Church Street for Old Barn Lane before Gomer started to follow. He’d pulled back into the shadows to avoid Minnie spotting the Jeep when she came out of the lych-gate, accompanied by Tess Roberts and the Prossers. ‘Never get to keep my ole Gwynneth after this,’ Gomer muttered.
Rod was turning into Old Barn Lane.
‘Never even signalled,’ Gomer observed. He sucked on his ciggy. �
�What you reckon a man like Powell does, he sees the blinds come down after three hundred years?’
‘Wondering that myself Merrily thought about the unmissable password she’d given Gomer to identify himself to Lol. Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ was the song of his that seemed to get played more often than any other when she was a kid. She used to ask her step-brother, Jonathan, to put it on again because the idea sounded so pretty. It was years later before she found out the message was far from comforting, spoke of no escape. For anyone.
‘Magistrate like Rod,’ Gomer said soberly, ‘he feels it’s all over, last thing he wants is to sit the other side o’ the ole courtroom.’
Merrily fastened the webbing seat-belt. ‘I don’t know where this is going to end. I think we lost control a long time ago.’
‘Will of God.’ Gomer turned into Old Barn Lane. ‘En’t that the bottom line of it for you, Vicar?’
‘I’m a bit unsure about the strength of my faith, Gomer. If something happened to Jane I’d be swearing at the heavens and cursing in the night like nobody ever did.’
The sights and smells of the dream cider house swelled in her head. In the vaporous humidity, no longer the pulpy, sweating cheeks of the pumping Child but the emotionless, rhythmical rise and thrust of a piece of well-preserved, well-oiled farm machinery.
Gomer glanced at her and then turned back to the lane.
Lol had spoken to him only once before, when he and Alison had bought the apple wood for fragrant fires. But on another occasion, the week after Alison had left, he’d seen Lol buying cat food in the Spar shop and had laughed quietly.
‘What you doin’ yere?’ Lloyd Powell said now. Not a man who smiled, but he laughed sometimes.
Lol stood uncertainly on the edge of the field, where it gave way to a weed-spattered gravel forecourt.
‘I’m speaking to you, sunshine,’ Lloyd said. ‘Come over yere in the light.’
The only light was a dome-shaded bulb in a holder like a question mark over the door of what Lol took to be the cider house. He moved shyly to within six feet of it.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Lloyd was Marlboro County Man in denims but with no cigarette. Lol saw Karl Windling with no beard.
