December (98 page)

      
Tom looks down, rubs his eyes.

      
'Nuffink. Can't get ... wevver it's the smoke or what. I don't
like fire. I told you, keep me away from the fire, so you brung me here.'

      
'Let's try something. Come on.'

      
'Ain't moving. Don't like fire.'

      
'Tom, I know you don't like fire. Where we're going you won't see
the fire.'

      
Moira takes his hand, leads him out of the car, along the
street, past a couple of men at the roadside with pints of beer from the Dragon
- festival time in Ystrad Ddu.

      
Tom doesn't once raise his gaze from the tarmac.

      
'Where we going?'

      
'To church.'

      
'Why?'

      
'Find some peace and quiet. Away from the fire. OK?'
      
Sometimes you have to treat Tom
like a large kid. She leads him through the churchyard to the stone shed that
passes for a church in this village. The door is unlocked.

      
Because the church is half under the rock, the light through
the plain Gothic windows is only faintly blushed. They can't hear the roar from
above which made the street sound like it was under a motorway.

      
'This place OK, do you think?'
      
Tom sniffs. 'See some action. I
reckon it's OK.'
      
Moira digs a box of matches from
the pocket of her long skirt and approaches the two long, white candles on the
altar.
      
'These OK?'

      
Tom nods. She lights both candles. Shadows rear. Tom sits on a
wooden chair, head bowed, hands in his lap.
      
Moira waits.

      
The candle flames don't waver. Serene spears sending wisps of
smoke towards the ceiling, which complete the illusion of a sacred shed - a minimum
of crossbeams and then the roof slates, edged now with rosy light.

      
No wonder it's cold. Moira hugs herself, wishing she'd
borrowed Isabel's woollen cape or something.

      
'Dad,' Tom says.

      
'Dad? Whose dad?'

come on then, Dad.

      
Keeps calling him 'dad' in that sarky voice.
      
'Get off my arm. Who are you?'
Eddie splutters.
      
don't
ask so many fuckin' questions.
      
'Not from round here, are you?'
      
that's
true.

      
'Your friend's not saying much.'
      
he's
new.

      
'In the fire brigade? Are you the fire brigade? What's going on?'

A hush has enfolded the
street.

      
Nobody wants to breathe.

      
'Oh ... my ... Christ.' A lone, female voice.

      
The great clefted rock of Ystrad Ddu gleams like the metal apron
in front of an open furnace.

      
Two figures on the very edge.

      
A buxom woman with blonde hair in a bell-shape rushes out into
the middle of the road.

      
'Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo'

      
And then a third figure. Some people will swear later that
they saw a third figure in the half-second before the blue lights and fire
sirens.

      
Tom stands up slowly, carefully straightens the flat cushion
on the wooden chair. His eyes have clouded. He beckons Moira to the altar.

      
She unwinds from a pew, shakes out her skirt. 'We gonna pray,
Tom?'

      
'Too late,' Tom says glumly. Moira takes his hand; it's deathly
cold, as if there's been no blood through it in hours.
      
Something's over. He's not resisting
any more; just standing there without expression, swaying like a big, rubber
toy. Moira is reminded of Donald the gypsy, the last time she saw him, on the
steps of the Duchess's caravan, soon to be stripped and sold.

      
The candle flames jerk sideways as the church door is thrust
open. A policeman stands in the opening with another man - incongruously, Steve
Case, straggly grey hair around his ears from a dismembered ponytail.

      
The policeman nods towards Tom.

      
'This the dad?'

      
Case nods and steps inside the church. 'Tom ...'
      
Tom says, 'Fuck's sake, geddout.'

      
'Look, sir,' the policeman says, 'I think we're going to need ...'

      
There's a mass gasp from outside. A couple of seconds later,
with a sound like a bomb in a crockery shop, the roof implodes.

Amazingly, when the dust
starts to settle, the two altar candles are still alight.

      
'Stop!' A police-sounding shout. 'That's far enough. Nobody comes
in.'

      
The policeman already inside, now crouching by a pew-end, says,
'Jesus' and puts a hand over his mouth.

      
Moira pulls hair and dust from her eyes. At first she sees
only slates, dozens of them all over the pews and the stone floor, slates
splintered into shards and arrows and needles.
      
And then she looks up.
      
'Holy shit,' she whispers.

      
Tom strolls to where the body hangs over a suspended crossbeam,
so perfectly balanced it's actually swinging gently.
      
Tom stoops to peer into the face.
      
'Shit is right,' he says.

      
Most of the skin has been torn from one side of the face, slivers
of slate projecting like stubble. The head is smashed and a grey ooze seeps
into the eyes. The jaw is hanging off. Moira turns away as two or three discoloured
teeth hit the stone floor with a ticking sound.

      
Over the noise of her own vomiting, she hears Tom say to the
policeman, 'If he ain't got the blues by now ...' on his way out.

      
And then the policeman starts to vomit. He's seen Steve Case
up against a wall pulling from his left eye a two-inch sliver of slate. And
something hanging out on a membrane and glistening looks very much like the eye
itself.

Tom and Moira are out on to
the road in time to see the firefighters reach Vanessa with their ladders.

      
She seems to be waiting for them quite calmly.

      
Shelley stands at the bottom of the ladder.

      
Moira says, 'You knew, huh?'

      
'Nah,' Tom says. He looks embarrassed.

Simon, spent in soft flesh,
moist with a mingling of sweat and musk and mysterious tears, whispered, 'I
don't understand.'

      
The sky was a deep, deep red, hung with curling rags of mist.
      
Another whisper, close and warm and
full of wonder. 'Have you never heard of magic?'

      
He remembered the black, wobbling thing looming unsteadily
across the stone parapet.

      
This?

      
The not-so-distant flames dancing in eyes close to his. Simon felt
angry, deceived. 'I don't f ... I don't understand.'

      
'Well, there's a bloody change. That's been the phrase on everybody's
lips for days, except for yours. Oh,
Simon
understands. Simon understands
everything
.'

      
Simon closed his eyes. He didn't dare believe. About the rapture.
That the rapture was no longer dark.

      
'You're not real.'

      
'I don't know which way to take that.'

      
Simon peered over the tower's edge. Far below, under the mist
line, he could make out small patches of burning grass, like campfires. The
fire had limped down from the hill, its wrath expended. It didn't quite reach
the Abbey, but the warning was implicit.

      
He said, 'You're enjoying this, aren't you?'
      
'I'm flying,' Isabel said.

      
The dawn came again in a tight, bright line, like copper wire between
two terminals.

      
Simon rose, shivering, and went to the guitar case, lying
flat, just as it had been throughout the night.

      
He looked back at Isabel, also shivering now, inside Moira's black
anorak in the south-eastern corner of the tower where they'd lain.

      
Lain.

      
He felt amazingly light-headed. He was trembling, but a grin
was shuffling, half embarrassed, across his face. To stop his hands from
shaking, he picked up the guitar case and carried it across to the woman.

      
'If you don't tell me the truth,' he said carefully, 'I'm
going to empty Aelwyn the Dreamer all over you.'

      
'Oh my God!' Isabel mock-cowered. 'All right. Tom. Tom, it
was. Moira got Tom to carry me up. Over his shoulder, like a fireman. All those
steps. All sixty-odd of them, poor
dab
. The cape was too big and cumbersome, so I
borrowed Moira's coat.'

      
Isabel smiled, seemed about to say something flip and then went
solemn. 'It was the only hope we had, Simon. Either of us. Tom wanted to stay
with me, at least until we knew if you were … Anyway, I said, just leave me at
the top and then get off down, quietly.'

      
He looked around the stone space. No wheelchair. Of course there
wasn't. So how...?

      
'On my bum,' Isabel said. 'Very slowly. You were asleep. Moaning
a lot. Disgusting.'

      
Simon said suddenly, 'Did you ...? Look, did you lick the blood
from my face?'

      
'What?'

      
'Where the cut is. Did you lick it off?'

      
Isabel bit her Up. 'No. I didn't do that.'

      
Simon went cold. He felt pressure in the palms of his hands. Who
licked the blood?
Who had been drawn to
the vapours of the blood?

      
'Isabel,' he said in a hell of a rush. 'I had this dream.
Seems a long time ago now. In the dream, I had to choose between you and
Richard Walden. I pushed you off the tower. This was a dream.'

      
'You didn't push me off last night,' Isabel said simply.
      
'No. I didn't, did I? Why?'

      
'Thanks very much.'

      
'No, I mean ... I mean, Christ, you were taking a hell of a risk
because this is
his
place, and you
knew that. At night, this is...'

      
The thoughts came frantically, elbowing each other out of the
way.
This isn't how it happens. This is wrong.
Something's terribly wrong. Trickery. Deception. It's not over. Not over...

      
'Put that case down,' Isabel said, 'and come back and hold me.'

      
He sat down next to her. It was colder now, a hard December morning.
She'd put most of her clothes back on. Still, as soon as he touched her, his
jeans felt too tight again. It couldn't last. He kissed her. 'Don't start me
off, Vicar,' Isabel said.

      
Simon held her, with desperation.

      
'I dragged myself across,' she said. 'On my bum. I leaned over
you. Nearly passed out, you smelled so revolting. Like ...' Isabel wrinkled her
nose '... Well, shit, if you really want to know. And bad breath. And ... body
smells. All around you. All over you. It was like finding a dead body, and it's
all decayed. I couldn't touch you. I didn't want to go near you. It was the
most horrible moment of my life - that's saying something. I hated you.'

      
She stiffened slightly in his arms.

      
'Dragged myself to the edge of the tower and just leaned over,
right over, desperate for some fresh air, and ...'

      
Simon tensed at the image, felt the heat of her on his cheek.