by Phil Rickman
‘So how long was that before…’
‘Oh, mabbe a year or two. ’Course, there was a lot o’ gossip ’fore that, about Hattie and her men.’
‘She had other men?’
‘Oh hell, aye. Any number, you believed the stories. Any number. Good-lookin’ woman, see. Golden-haired and statuesque, like. There was tales…’ Gomer looked into his cup, cleared his throat. ‘Like, you’ll’ve yeard how a new huntsman gets blooded, from his first kill. They reckoned the Middle Marches had its own… test. For a new boy. See if he was up to it, like.’
‘What — up to Hattie?’
‘Her was said to be… I suppose today you’d have a name for it.’
‘Generous?’
‘Nympho,’ Gomer said. ‘Appetites like a feller, my mam used to say — not to me, like, but I overyeard her and Mrs Probert from the Cwm once. Well, naturally, after her done what her done, they all had their theories. More like a feller. Used to get in fights in the pub. Smash an ole pint glass, shove it at you.’
‘She glassed people?’
‘All kinds of stories went round after her killed Robert. Stories I wouldn’t rush to repeat.’ Gomer sniffed, stirring his tea, ciggy in his lips. ‘Not to a young woman.’
‘Oh, Gomer.’
‘Janey, it was gossip. We was kids. Young boys. ’Sides, it was five or six years after her was dead I yeard this. Durin’ the War. Young lads talkin’, the way young lads talks at that age.’
Jane had an image of Gomer in adolescence: thin as a straw, hair like a yardbrush.
‘Gomer, I’m like… seventeen, now? You know?’
Gomer stirred the dregs of the tea in the pot and filled his cup with it — tea like sump oil. ‘It was Stanner Rocks,’ he said. ‘Used to take ’em up Stanner.’
‘Men?’
‘Funny place, see. Scientists now, they reckons it’s down to what they calls a Standing Wave. Meteological stuff. Gives it a rare climate up there, like in Italy and them places. Nowhere like it, ’specially not on the edge of Wales.’
‘Mediterranean.’ Jane nodded. Ben had gone on about it, bemoaning the fact that the rocks, with their odd climatic conditions and their rare plants, didn’t belong to the hotel. A national nature reserve now, so you had to have special permission to go up there, which meant Ben couldn’t even build it up as a tourist attraction.
‘They din’t know the scientific stuff then,’ Gomer said, ‘but everybody said it was a funny place, what with the Devil’s Garden where nothing grew — just thin soil, more like, but they always called it the Devil’s Garden. Soil’s that thin on them ole rocks that in a good summer you’ll have a drought up there as kills off half the trees and the bushes. See, what—’
‘And she used to take men up there?’
Gomer sucked the ciggy to the end, carefully extracted the remains. ‘Boys’ talk. No matter what the weather was like, see, you’d always find a warm spot on top o’ Stanner.’
‘Like for sex?’
‘Bloody hell, Janey! Can’t get to it fast enough, can you?’
‘Sorry.’
Gomer drank his tea. ‘Her’d make ’em go right to the edge. Right to the edge of the rocks. The cliff edge. Hundred-foot drop or more, onto stones. And her’d have ’em right on the edge, more ways than one. Whoop whoop.’
‘Oh.’
‘Boys’ talk, Janey. Stories, that’s all.’
‘So like, did you know anybody who…?’
Gomer stared into his teacup; it was empty.
‘Gomer!’
‘Pal o’ mine — his older brother. He was one.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Men wasn’t experienced back then, Janey, not quite the same way they are now. Her gets him… overwrought.’ Gomer’s face went dark red. ‘And then, when he can’t think proper, her’s got him hanging half over the edge. Thought he was gonner go over the top and he… he din’t care, see. Din’t care if he went over or not.’
‘Bloody hell, Gomer.’
‘Boys’ talk,’ Gomer said. ‘They used to say her liked ’em to be real scared. This was the thing for Hattie. Take the boys to the edge, show ’em who was boss.’
‘Domination? Like, she got off on it?’
‘Mabbe.’
‘So it wasn’t just boys’ talk at all, was it?’ Jane said softly.
Gomer coughed. ‘Mabbe not all of it.’ He started rolling another ciggy, then stopped and shut the tin and looked past Jane into a corner of the kitchen as if he thought Minnie might be there, watching him with disapproval. ‘Afterwards, her’d make ’em bring a rock back for her. A stone. Mabbe the size of half a brick.’
‘What for?’
‘Kept the stones on the mantelpiece. In a line.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Trophies,’ Gomer said. ‘Every time her had a different feller up the top he’d have to fetch a new rock back. All laid out on the mantelpiece in the big drawing room, all in a line, where poor Robert could see ’em — watch the line of stones gettin’ longer. He wasn’t a well man by then. Chest. Spent a lot o’ time in the lounge in front of the fire. Under this line of stones, gettin’ longer.’
‘What a total bitch.’
‘We had all the gossip from the servants, see — local people. Her used to scream at him that he was weak — a malingerer. He was ill, was what it was, but Hattie din’t wanner know ’bout that. Not her idea of what a countryman should be — a countryman was healthy. When her was out huntin’, he’d go to bed, try to build up his strength, mabbe fall asleep and then her’d come back and find him… rip all the bedclothes off him, leave him shiverin’. Always made her angry, the drink. Some folks gets merry, some— What’s wrong, Janey?’
‘She pulled the bedclothes off him?’
Jane moistened her lips. In her head, a memory of being in the doorway of her first bedroom at Stanner, looking in at all the duvet pulled off, its cover gathered in a heap like a flaccid parachute.
‘If he was still up,’ Gomer said, ‘there’d likely be a fight — a real fight: bruises, split lips. His lips. That was talked about, oh hell, aye. Can’t cover up a split lip, can you? Can’t pass it off as how you fell over the grate.’
‘How could he stand it?’
‘Her house, her money. Where’s he gonner go? Pitiful, Janey.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that was how it come to the end. Night of the day of the hunt. Hattie real fired up, as usual. Her’d ride like the devil, and if they ever come back without a kill… not a happy woman.’
‘You make her sound like…’
‘Ar?’
‘Doesn’t matter, go on.’
‘This night — round about now on the calendar, night of the Middle Marches Hunt Ball… See, Robert, he wouldn’t go to the Hunt Ball, couldn’t get on with these country sports types. Hattie goes alone. Comes back alone around two or three in the mornin’, but whether her was alone between leavin’ the ball and gettin’ back to Stanner, that’s anybody’s guess.’
‘Slag.’
‘Ar. So he’s still up when her gets in, mabbe asleep in the chair. Then, all this noise, shoutin’ and screamin’. Servants yeard it, but they was used to it, see. It was only when it carried on out in the garden — and then it all goes quiet — that a couple of ’em comes out, the servants. Found Robert out in the garden, down near this ole seat where he used to sit and stare out at the hills. They reckoned he’d tried to crawl up onto the seat, but he’d just fallen back, down on the grass. And Hattie — her was just standin’ there, a few yards away, like a marble statue, arms down by her sides. A rock in each hand. From the mantelpiece.’
‘Jesus.’ Jane wondered how much of this Ben had told Amber. How much Ben himself knew. If he knew anything when he was planning his cute little murder-mystery weekend.
‘Then Hattie, her drops the rocks and walks calmly past ’em, up the path and into the house. Servants carries Robert in, lays him out on the long sofa. One of ’em
rings for the doctor, though they knows it’s too late. Hattie’s movin’ around upstairs, but nobody’s brave enough to go up there. And then one of ’em notices the desk drawer’s hangin’ open. This is where Robert kept his service revolver, locked away.’
‘Oh hell, Gomer.’
‘No sooner they seen the drawer’s open than it’s too late. Echoes through the whole house like…’
Oh. Oh G—
‘… thunder. Took a while ’fore one of ’em was up to goin’ up them stairs. Ole Leonard, the butler, it was. Had a bit of a job getting the bedroom door open on account of Hattie was on the floor behind it. Big woman, see, like I say.’
Jane heard her own voice saying, ‘Was she dead?’ Like from a distance, like it was someone else speaking, because she didn’t think she could move her lips.
‘Her’d put the end of the ole revolver in her mouth, Janey.’
She wanted to scream aloud. She wanted to leap up and go screaming down the lane. Anything to take her out of her own head, where an explosion had happened in the early hours.
‘Not the nicest way to go,’ Gomer said. ‘But I s’pose it’s what you’d expect, kind of woman her was. No nonsense. You chews on the barrel, en’t nothing gonner go wrong. Hexpedient. How much them kids saw, nobody knows — mabbe it’s what messed Paula up in the head.’
‘She doesn—’ Jane’s lips were rubbery. ‘Doesn’t seem like a woman who would kill herself.’
‘What’s the alternative, Janey? Even if her didn’t get hanged, her’d’ve gone to jail for life. Go to jail? Leave Stanner? Lose it all for a few moments of black madness? Naw, her took the man’s way out — that’s what they used to say. And took Stanner Hall with her. You inherited Stanner, would you wanner live there after that? Not like it was ancestral — two generations? Never was a house again. Commercial premises from then on. Grounds all overgrown. Us kids tellin’ stories of Hattie’s big ghost, gliding through the tangled ole gardens with a rock in each hand.’
Gomer gathered the teacups and the pot on a tray and took them to the sink.
‘Goin’ Whoop, whoop,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Whoop, whoop.’
23
Showdown Time
Danny had awoken in the dark with this sense of something closing around him like a fist. Like during the Foot and Mouth — filthy smoke from distant pyres of flesh and hide, mostly unnecessary, an uninvestigated crime perpetrated by the wankers of Westminster, and all you could do was turn away and weep.
In the end he’d got up, leaving Greta rumbling warmly, happy as an old Rayburn. Half-past three in the morning, and he’d gone downstairs and shoved a block into the stove, putting on his cans and letting in the soaring fury of The Queens of the Stone Age. There were times when only heavy music could blank out the foundry of your thoughts.
Even though he’d resisted rolling a joint, he awoke before seven with a mouth like the deck of a New Age traveller’s bus, and Greta bending over him, lifting off the cans, closing his hands around a mug of tea.
‘You en’t got to, Danny.’
Danny sat up, spilling the tea.
‘Like you said, it en’t really your business,’ Greta said.
‘But…?’
‘But nothing.’
‘But you think I should tell him. Don’t you?’
‘You can tell me. If you want to.’ Greta sat down next to him, in her old pink towelling robe. Danny remembered a seventeen-year-old rock chick in a kimono, and how he used to picture her with him in a beach house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, knowing — totally bloody knowing — that one day that was where they’d be, him and Gret. And here they still were, after thirty years, and it was too cold for kimonos and always would be now.
‘Tell you what?’
‘The rest of it,’ Greta said. ‘There’s more to it, en’t there?’ Mabbe years since her’d spoken to him like this — this quiet.
‘Dunno what you mean.’
‘Look at me,’ Greta said.
He did. Always looked good with her hair down, but it was only ever down in the mornings. Danny felt a sense of loss and sadness.
‘He’s different is what it is, Gret. You know that. Different from the rest of ’em, different even from me. But at least I can see it.’
‘Different how?’ Greta said, holding his gaze with her big brown eyes. You, my brown-eyed girl. The young Van Morrison. How long ago? God.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry what I said about you gossipin’. I was distraught.’
‘You don’t tell me things n’more, Danny. Think I’m gonner spread everything round Kington market. It’s like Gomer’s your wife now.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ And yet he knew this was partly right. There was things that Gomer understood, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him with his ciggy jammed in and his glasses alight. You’d think Gomer was a bit touched. But mabbe that was it — you needed to be a bit touched to understand some things. Greta and him, folks used to say they was both touched, back in the wild ole days.
‘You were right about one thing,’ Greta said. ‘Mary Morson was never the one for Jeremy. No sensitiveness there at all.’
‘No.’
‘Jeremy’s mother used to say he had the Sight.’
‘Even his mother did? You never told me that before.’
‘Din’t wanner set you off. Visions and stuff.’
‘That was acid. I wouldn’t do that now.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
Danny smiled. Greta continued to sit there. Bugger, Danny thought, it’s too early for this.
‘Never loses a lamb, do he?’ Greta said. ‘Never loses a lamb to the fox. It’s like he’s come to an agreement with the foxes. His mother used to say that, too. When he was real little, he’d creep out at night and they’d find him sitting with the sheep. Catch his death, his mother used to say.’
Funny phrase that, Danny thought. Catch his death. Funny how a familiar saying could sound new and full of meaning, if it caught you in the right mood. Aye, if death was coming, Jeremy would see it, mabbe have a chance to catch it in both hands, his eyes wide open.
‘He’s part of that farm,’ Danny told Greta. ‘The land, the stock, Jeremy. A whole organism, see, and he’s the part as thinks. And he keeps it all balanced, and in that way I always feel the boy’s good for this whole area. Balance — don’t ask me to explain it. It’s the way he works, goes quietly on… if they’d leave him alone.’
‘People?’
‘He just en’t good with people. They don’t get to know him easy, and he don’t know them. Hard to go quietly, nowadays.’
‘Mary Morson made all the running,’ Greta said.
‘Her’d have to.’
‘He was a catch. A good, sound farm.’
‘Mary Morson’s a cold-hearted little bloody gold-digger.’
‘And this Natalie?’ Greta said. ‘Where’s the difference there? Got it made now. Single parent in need of a home. Where’s the difference?’
Danny drained his mug. ‘There is a difference. All I can tell you is, the first time they met, it was in the air. Like some’ing he’d been waiting for all his life. I can’t explain it. It didn’t seem right, but then it did — later. I don’t know why.’
‘She’s beautiful, Danny, how else would he be?’
Danny bowed his head. ‘This is gonner kill him, Gret.’
‘It’ll kill him if he gets it from somebody else.’
‘Mary.’ Danny sighed. ‘Aye, Mary’ll spread it.’
‘Only thinks of herself.’
‘Shit.’ He stared at the light on the stereo, a little red planet. ‘See, the rest of it… I can’t figure it out, but some’ing’s gone unstable. Sebbie Dacre feels it, I’m sure of that. Sebbie feels threatened — big farmer, big magistrate, Master of the fucking Hunt, and he feels threatened. By Jeremy? How’s that possible? Lived side by side with Sebbie all his life, no trouble — no pally-pally either, but that’s a class thing. Yet here’s
Sebbie sending his Welshie shooters to terrorize the boy. Why?’
Greta put a hand on Danny’s thigh. ‘You got a job today, with Gomer?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then you better go talk to him, en’t you? You go this morning. Get it over.’
‘Aye.’ Danny put his mug on the floor and then he put his arms around her, his eyes full of tears that he couldn’t have fully explained.
Around mid-morning, it finally started to snow. Real snow, the kind you knew wouldn’t stop. Flakes the size of two-pound coins, and it was already an inch deep on the vicarage drive when Merrily opened the front door to Gomer Parry.
‘Vicar.’ The end of Gomer’s ciggy was the only warmth out there. He had his old cap on and his muffler. When you looked up, the snow was almost black against the sky.
‘You must’ve heard the kettle.’
‘Ah,’ Gomer said, ‘that’s what it was.’
He sat down at the kitchen table, with his cap, his muffler and his ciggy tin in a little mound by his elbow, and she made him tea and put out chocolate digestives for him to dunk. When the phone rang, she let the machine take it.
‘You talked to Jane last night?’ She switched on the lamp on the dresser.
‘Difficult,’ Gomer said.
‘Goes without saying.’
‘Don’t wanner break no confidence.’
‘You’re not the first to say that, in relation to Jane.’ Merrily came and sat down opposite him. ‘Vicars aren’t good for much these days, but we’re good at keeping confidences. Take it all with us to the grave.’
‘I know that, vicar. ’Sides, this prob’ly en’t confidential.’ He glanced around. ‘Her’s at school?’
Merrily nodded. ‘Last day of term tomorrow. If it carries on snowing like this, she may not even make it tomorrow.’
‘So this…’
‘This could be our last chance to talk about her behind her back, yes.’
‘See this—’ Gomer broke a chocolate digestive in half. ‘Her’s likely told you about it already, but if her en’t…’ He stared up at the snowy window.
Merrily said, ‘It isn’t about spiritualism, is it?’
