The Prayer of the Night Shepherd mw-6

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Whoop, whoop,’ he said, and then he finished his Guinness.

  The discussion died then, people drifting away. Last orders had been and gone. Danny drifted to the door and was sure he heard ole Joe Cadwallader, still sitting there behind him, going very quietly, like a whistling wind, ‘Whoop, whoop.’

  Somewhere in the middle of the night, the wind came in from Wales and rattled the eaves and made the pines shiver.

  Jane rolled out of bed, wrapped herself in her fleece and went to the window. Amber was right, it was freezing here, and it wasn’t even December yet. But that was OK; she wasn’t a guest, she wasn’t expected to be warm.

  She’d spent two hours helping Amber finish redecorating another bedroom. Tarting the place up, Amber had said desperately, in case they ever needed to accommodate a conference, ho, ho. Well, it was more fun than cleaning lavatories and changing bedding, and Jane was starting to take the injustice of this situation personally now. These were good people who worked hard, even if Ben was inclined to mess people around like he was still working in TV.

  In a way, she was drawn to his philosophy. Life’s like television — if it’s on the screen it must have happened. Well, why not? It was a way of actually making things happen. Or like amending reality. Amber had talked about it in a disparaging way, as though she didn’t understand why it was so intoxicating.

  Jane understood. She’d been going out with Eirion for nearly a year now, and Eirion was obsessed with getting into the visual media. And she herself… well, only another year at school after this one. Decisions had to be made.

  Through the window — there was a crack in the pane and a thin draught oozing through it — she could see a vague, orangey moon, and the clouds were sliding across it like they were on fast-forward.

  This little room wasn’t quite an attic, and there were much better views from inside the witch’s-hat tower, but it was high enough to overlook some of the forestry, and you could see across to the long plateau of Hergest Ridge and the sombre conifers under the moon. And down to the Celtic Border, this seam in the earth, the secret snake which sometimes awoke and writhed. She experienced that familiar longing to feel the Border and all it represented: points of transition, cultures in collision.

  But not from the tower room, thank you.

  There was something about that room that was essentially mind-shrinking. Unpleasant, basically. Haunted rooms were fascinating, but not on your own. If Eirion was here — the irresistible smile, the allegedly puppy-fat spare tyre — well, that would be a whole different ball game. That could’ve been… almost fun.

  Only she hadn’t seen him in a fortnight. And in a couple of weeks’ time, when they should be getting together for the Christmas holidays — intimate hours in candlelit corners — he would instead be on a plane with his wealthy Welsh family, bound for St Moritz or one of those other cheesy, overpriced, overcrowded playgrounds for bored tossers. It had been arranged months ago, before she had this job, and she could have gone with them — OK, so her mother was only a vicar on a pittance but they could have worked something out.

  Sure they could. Could have applied for a Lottery grant.

  Jane felt resentful and unsettled.

  A tiny light was moving somewhere below the ridge. A white light, bobbing, as if someone was carrying it. Perhaps the shooters again. The shooters who Ben had ordered off his land. Men with guns at night: bad news.

  Or maybe just Jeremy. Clancy said Jeremy would sometimes creep out in the night to check on his stock. Jeremy was married to his farm, Clancy had said, which didn’t hold out much hope for her mother. And Jane had thought, Huh? — wondering how Clancy managed to see it that way around. When you saw Natalie, this cool, careless beauty, with Jeremy, this stocky, hesitant little farmer with limited communication skills and hair like the fluff you found under the bed, you were like, What? However this unlikely liaison had come about, Jeremy must feel like it was his birthday every day it lasted.

  The bobbing light went out, or it disappeared into the forestry or something. Shedding her fleece, Jane went back to her single bed, wishing Eirion was here. Like here, now. The ironic thing was that Eirion had admitted he’d rather be coming here, talking to Ben, meeting some of the telly people — not so much the stars as the producers — who, according to Ben, were likely to drop in over the festive season. Like, this documentary guy, for instance, Largo. Eirion could talk their language; he’d done work experience at HTV Wales — other kids got to hang around behind the counter in the NatWest bank, Eirion spent a fortnight with a documentary team.

  Family connections, Daddy’s directorships.

  A distant gunshot had her springing back from the bed, back to the window.

  Nothing. No lights.

  They were very close last night, she’d said to Ben last Sunday when they’d come in from the rain and he’d been raging about the gun club.

  Yeah. So close, one of them was right inside her head. She’d awoken in the tower room — must have been about three in the morning — with this single colossal angry bang deep inside her head… this swelling, echoing explosion that awoke her instantly, absolutely cold with fear, immediately thinking — the way you always thought at three in the morning — of a brain tumour or something, and she’d felt just totally… sick. Nauseous, headachy and — considering the size of that room — so horribly claustrophobic that she’d rushed to open the window, sliding her head under the sash into the freezing night.

  There. It was out. She’d relived it.

  And it was, of course, probably something for Mum.

  And Mum was the reason she’d said nothing. This was what she did separate from Mum. The Independent Working Woman on the Border did not go crying to her mum.

  Jane wrapped herself in the duvet and lay on her back with her eyes wide open to the grey window. It was crap when something awoke you in the night. You wanted to be alive to the magic in life, but all you could see was the injustice of everything, and the fragility and the darkness beyond the glass.

  6

  Beastie

  The breakfast table was a battleground, and Ben was on his knees.

  When Jane came in with the extra toast that nobody had asked for, Antony Largo, the independent producer, was saying. ‘No, no, that is a wee bit unfair, pal, I certainly wouldnae use the word shite.’

  Largo must have got in very late last night. He didn’t look like he’d had much sleep — that room? — and he wasn’t eating much of the food that Jane was putting out for him and Ben. Breakfast was good for eavesdropping because you could make frequent trips to and from the kitchen with fruit juice and toast and coffee, and you could hang around a lot in the doorway.

  Ben was in his jogging gear, hanging back in his chair, probably thinking he was looking fit and relaxed and glowing. In fact, he looked nervous, and he was laughing too much. Jane was wincing inside for him.

  The dining room at Stanner Hall was long and chilly, its end wall encrusted with a chipped and faded coat-of-arms over the fireplace where unlit logs were piled into a dog-grate. Opposite was this church-size Gothic window, which still had some stained glass in veins of cold blue and blood red. The two men were sitting under the window, next to a flaking grey concertina radiator that made more noise than heat.

  ‘OK,’ Antony Largo said, ‘we’re mates, we go back, I can think aloud with you.’ He gave Ben this level stare, amusement in his eyes. ‘You tell me: where’s the contemporary dynamic? Where’s the now drama coming from?’

  Bloodied sunlight flared on Ben’s forehead. He’d have done his usual run, down the drive in the early mist, up through the forestry and back into the gardens. Working up an excuse for the sweat.

  ‘Actors,’ Ben said.

  Antony Largo studied the toast. The set of his shoulders said give me strength. He said patiently, ‘We talked about that. We said we could ship over a few famous faces from your illustrious past, old friends sampling the accommodation. That is no’ a difficulty.’
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  ‘That’s not—’ Ben picked up the silver pepper-pot, and Jane thought for a moment that he was going to whizz it at Largo’s head, but he just brought it down again on the tablecloth to emphasize a point. ‘That’s not what I meant. If we have one fairly prominent actor playing Doyle, this would be the only speaking part. All the rest — Vaughan, Ellen — would be shadowy figures, half seen… in black and white or sepia, so that’s—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it’d be entirely workmanlike, and perfectly acceptable at seven p.m. on Channel Five. This is peak-hour Channel 4 and requires viscera. Sorry, pal, it still leaves me half a dozen good thrusts short of a decent climax.’ Antony Largo looked up at Jane and winked. ‘My apologies, hen.’

  Jane grinned. Antony Largo leaned back and poured himself some coffee. With a name like that, you expected Armani and suave; what you got were faded old denims and this honed Glasgow scepticism. He was about thirty-five, and wiry, with oiled black hair. He had one ear-stud and a hard, blue-grey stubble. He looked like one of those guys who stayed fit without jogging and never put on weight — an honorary life member of the gymnasium of the street.

  ‘Antony.’ Ben laughed again, his anxiety lines deepening. ‘Why do you always, always start off by talking everything down?’

  ‘This is not tactics, pal.’ Antony leaned forward, shaking his head slowly. ‘Way back, when there was advertising coming out the networks’ ears, money falling from the sky, we just fenced around a bit, for appearances’ sake. But that was then, this is now — Independent TV drama belly-up and barely twitching.’

  ‘Yes, but drama-documentary—’

  ‘… Is the new drama, yeah. Doco is the new drama. But a doco with no contemporary propulsion, no plot line? OK. See it from my angle. I walk in there and I go, This is about where the Sherlock Holmes guy got his idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles, but hey, it’s not what you think. And they’re going, Why would we think anything? Why would we give a fart?’

  ‘Because…’ Ben looked up and saw Jane, who realized she must be standing there, blatantly listening, maybe with her head on one side and her mouth slightly open. She turned away and started rearranging things on her tray. ‘Thank you very much, Jane,’ Ben said, meaning Piss off. His laughter had gone tepid.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jane gave him an uncomfortable smile and slalomed away between tables that didn’t match. At one time, there would have been a single banqueting job down the middle of the room; now the small separate tables looked mean and utility, kind of cafeteria. Symptomatic of what was wrong with this place.

  She didn’t hear Ben explaining to Antony how he thought the TV people could be made to care. Which would have been interesting.

  Passing the foot of the main stairs, Jane could hear the bagpipe wheeze of Amber vacuuming up there — staying well out of it. Natalie was bustling in from the lobby, long legs in tight black jeans, red leather coat over her arm.

  ‘That the TV guy’s car, Jane? The old Lexus?’

  ‘Probably.’ Jane glanced over her shoulder. ‘Ben’s struggling. I don’t think he’s even got round to telling the guy there’s not going to be a Holmes conference.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Essentially, they’re talking at cross purposes.’ Jane put down her tray on the second step; the upstairs vacuuming droned on, suggesting it was OK to talk. She brought her voice down. ‘Ben’s flogging his Hound line and this Largo’s trying to convey that he’s only interested in Ben’s struggle to revive Stanner.’

  When she’d first gone in, with the fruit juice, Ben had been saying how well they were doing. He said he’d altered some bookings to keep the hotel empty so he’d have time to show Largo around. The guy would have had to be blind to fall for that. Where was all the staff, for instance?

  ‘The hotel trade looks like a pushover till you’re in it,’ Natalie said soberly. ‘I’ll be surprised if they can afford to heat this place through the winter.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  Natalie waggled her fingers, suggesting borderline wonky. ‘When you’re full up in summer it feels like the escalator’s never going to stop. In winter, the outgoings mount up. They’ve got three women in Kington on standby for that conference who won’t be happy to stand by in the future.’

  Ben ought to listen more to Nat; she had serious qualifications in catering and hotel management. Clancy said her mother had been running a big hotel at Looe, in Cornwall, before suddenly resigning (after a relationship with a man crashed). Then there’d been another admin job, at a motel near Slough, but Clancy had hated the school there and they’d moved on again. When the summer holidays came round, Nat had bought this old camper van and they’d just set off, looking for somewhere that felt right. Being gypsies, Clancy said.

  Nat shifted her leather coat from one arm to the other. ‘So this guy’s not interested in The Hound at all?’

  ‘Only as one of Ben’s wild schemes to attract trade, in this Punching the Clock series. And that would depend on having famous faces — actors, people like that — come to stay. Like out of pity; that’s how it’ll look, won’t it?’

  ‘Humiliation’s big,’ Nat said. ‘We love to see people going face-down on the concrete. Especially arrogant bastards from glamour jobs.’

  Jane nodded morosely, seeing it all now, like she was viewing the rushes — meaningful cutaway shots of damp patches and peeling flock wallpaper; Stanner Hall looking half-derelict under wintry skies; Ben striding around like some manic Basil Fawlty figure. She’d neither seen nor heard anything of Antony Largo until this weekend and, call her psychic, but she guessed that shafting his old mate wouldn’t leave him feeling over-gutted.

  The vacuum cleaner cut out. Jane glanced up the stairs, which had a new red carpet — an important buy, according to Ben: make the punters feel special going up to their rooms.

  ‘She shouldn’t be doing that. I should be doing it.’

  Nat eyed the tray. ‘She got you to serve breakfast instead, because she wants to stay in the background. Bloody shame, Jane. A class chef.’

  And you’re an experienced hotel manager, Jane thought. Yet here you both are. But she didn’t say anything about that because Ben and Antony Largo had emerged from the dining room, Largo saying, ‘… Oh, right down the shitter, ma friend, no question there. I’m no’ saying you didn’t get out at the right time, I just think there might’ve been better ways of—’

  He stopped. He’d seen Natalie, and he was looking at her the way male guests tended to. She was standing in a diagonal funnel of sun from the long window on the first landing. She looked typically gorgeous and typically unaware of it.

  ‘This is Natalie Craven.’ Ben took a step that put him between Nat and Antony. ‘Natalie’s my… house manager.’

  Nat raised an eyebrow. Antony put his head on one side. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re no’ an actress by any chance?’ When Nat started to shake her head and he could see she wasn’t smiling, he went on hurriedly, with a thickening of the accent, ‘Wisnae meant to be an insult, Natalie, I just thought Ben might’ve called in some old… favour.’

  ‘She doesn’t owe me any favours,’ Ben said tightly.

  ‘Hey!’ Antony put up his hands. ‘No offence, pal.’

  ‘None taken.’ Ben was looking a little weary now. ‘Nat, if you see Amber anywhere, can you tell her I’m taking Antony to the church to, ah, meet the Vaughans.’

  ‘Or perhaps you’d like to join us,’ Antony said softly to Nat. ‘Be good to get another perspective. I, er, gather the Vaughans don’t have a lot to say these days.’

  Nat smiled at him. ‘I’ve been there before. Also, there are people I need to phone. Bookings to make.’ She looked at Ben. ‘Like all the ones you put off this weekend?’ She threw her coat over the reception desk. ‘Why don’t you take Jane? Jane’s got a perspective on most things.’

  Ben shrugged. Jane glanced at Natalie, thinking she ought to be upstairs with Amber, cleaning and redecorating. But maybe Nat wanted to find out how this si
tuation worked out, come back with a report.

  Cool.

  ‘Time for your break, surely,’ Nat said, confirming it. ‘And you’ve never met the Vaughans, have you, Jane?’

  Kington Parish Church was alone on the edge of the town. From the road it looked like a country church, walled and raised up against the cold sky. Ben didn’t even glance at it, just drove straight past the entrance in his old blue MGB, with the top down. Antony Largo was beside him, Jane fleeced and huddled into the little seat behind them, her hair blown across her face.

  ‘That was a church, wasn’t it?’ Largo said. ‘The chunky grey thing with the wee spire we just passed?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ On the edge of the town centre, Ben had turned right, heading back into the country, raising his voice above the engine’s dirty growl. ‘I’m going to take the story in sequence.’

  ‘Can we no’ have the damn top up?’

  ‘It’s jammed, if you must know.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Do you good, a bit of air.’

  ‘I know what’d do me good, pal, but we left her behind.’ Largo leaned his head back. ‘That’s no offence to you, Jane, but I don’t think your mother would approve of me.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for a new dad, anyway,’ Jane said.

  ‘Hmm,’ Largo mused. ‘Feisty.’

  They came out of a shady lane with detached houses in it, and now they were in hilly countryside. Jane had never been down here before; she had no idea where the road led. The sun was pulsing feebly, a blister behind clouds like strips of yellowing bandage.

  ‘And you can keep your filthy paws off my staff, Largo,’ Ben said mildly. ‘Natalie’s in a relationship, and she’s bloody good at what she does.’

  Largo turned to Ben. ‘How would you even know?’

  ‘What?’

  Something fractured then, Largo bawling at Ben, raising himself up in the bucket seat. ‘Come on, what do you know about the hotel trade? I mean really? What have you done, you maniac? You could’ve found something in the independent sector, no problem, like every other bastard gets dumped by the Beeb. You could’ve gone to Kenny and Zoë Fitzroy. You could’ve come to me, for Christ’s sake! How naive is this? Find you can afford some Disneyesque mansion wi’ wee towers for the price of your Dockland penthouse, and you have to grab it like it’s now or never.’