Merrily Watkins 11 - The Secrets of Pain (30 page)

‘You’ve met Liz?’

‘One or twice. At funerals. Walking – metaphorically – half a pace behind Byron. They’re often the ones who get hurt in the end. Wholesale philandering goes with the territory. Like Vikings.’

‘But not Sam.’

‘Sam was a misfit who didn’t know what he wanted or where he wanted to be. The army straightened him out for a while, religion messed him up again.’

‘Did he ever mention Brinsop?’

‘Who?’

‘It’s a hamlet near Credenhill. Where Byron lives. Where, according to Liz, he seems to think it’s very important for him to live. Syd ever mention it?’

‘No. And if you were thinking of going to visit him I’d urge you not to. Some of these guys, there’s another side to them which is great in warfare but, in ordinary life, relatively… antisocial.’

‘Fiona… do you have any idea what all this is about? You must’ve given me those books for a reason.’

‘Knee-jerk reaction. Probably a mistake. I don’t know anything about deliverance, and Wordsworth – no idea what that’s about either. Merrily, I have to go. Have people to see… solicitors… and whoever you see to register a death. I’m sorry.’

***

Danny pulled down a squared bale of straw and sat on it.

‘Likely you don’t know much about cockfighting. Well, me neither. Us ole hippies, we never done that stuff. Foreign to our nature. But it went on.’

‘Round here?’

‘Part o’ country life. Country folks was cruel, too.’ Danny reached over and turned off the amp. ‘Gomer found a dead gamecock in the vicar’s shed. Turns out young Jane put it there. Told Gomer a feller dumped the sack in a bin on the square. Feller was this Cornel.’

‘Oh…’ Lol closed his eyes ‘…
God
.’

‘You en’t lookin’ as surprised as I figured you might be.’

‘No.’

Lol pulled the Boswell across his knees and told Danny about what he and Merrily had watched in the Swan, the night before last.

‘Only we got the impression from Barry that it was a pheasant.’

‘He still stayin’ at the Swan, this Cornel?’

‘I think he just comes in for meals now. I don’t know where he’s staying. How did Jane know it was a fighting cock?’

‘Her didn’t. Gomer knowed straight off.’

‘Gomer’s on the case?’

‘En’t nothin’ Gomer wouldn’t do for Jane, is there? Jeez, why they gotter—’ Danny pulled off his baseball cap, sent it spinning to the straw. ‘Cockfights! They tells us we’re in recession, so we gotter degrade ourselves by stagin’ cockfights for the freakin’ tourists?’

‘Who?’

‘Who d’you think?’

‘You really think Savitch would risk his reputation by supporting something illegal and… universally condemned?’

‘Gomer phoned around. Farmers, dealers. Drew a blank. Wherever it’s happenin’ it en’t at no farms round yere. Gotter be some bastard from Off. Now… where was the ole Ledwardine cockpit?’

Lol shook his head.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Danny said. ‘Up by the top bridge, where the river come through in the floods? Used to be a pub there, knocked down seventy, eighty year ago. You can still see the outline, they reckons. Like a depression, middle of a copse, now. Cockpit was back o’ that pub.’

‘So that…’ Lol stroked a sinister E-minor on the Boswell ‘… would be on the ground…’

‘Bought up by The Court last summer – when wassname, Wickhams, sold up?’

‘You’re saying that whatever remains of the old Ledwardine cockpit is now owned by Ward Savitch.’

Suddenly, Lol could see why this just might be Savitch.
All for traditions
. The first man to stage a cockfight in Ledwardine for a century or whatever. Even if he only did it once or twice, for selected guests.

‘Jane know about the cockpit?’

‘Not yet, boy. See the problem?’

‘Case closed, far as Jane’s concerned. And it looks very likely, doesn’t it? I mean, how else would Cornel’ve been to a cockfight?’

‘Exackly.’ Danny stood up, strapping on his Telecaster. ‘So what’s Gomer do now, boy? Do he tell her… or don’t he? Bein’ as how her’s likely to go off like a rocket.’

‘Even if Savitch wasn’t charged with anything,’ Lol said, thinking hard, ‘it would make him a figure of hate.’

‘Sure to.’

‘Would
you
be able to tell, if you saw the pit, whether it had been used recently?’

‘Gomer might. But… private land now. Big fences.’

‘Not this weekend. It’s open to the public on Easter Monday.’

‘Still be restricted access. Public won’t get near an active cockpit.’

Lol said, ‘Tomorrow, however…’

Laying down the Boswell in a manger full of last year’s straw, he told Danny about Savitch’s visit and the offer of a site for an open-air music event. Half afraid that Danny, whose musical
aspirations had been frustrated for so long, would see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stage some kind of Welsh Border Woodstock. Danny sniffed and smiled.

‘En’t life a bitch?’

‘So I’ve got these two tickets for the press launch and reception for invited guests. Be far more informal. Fewer stewards, not much security.’

‘Right.’

‘If I gave the tickets to you and Gomer, would you be able to maybe find out one way or another?’

A short, worried whine came out of Jimi the sheepdog as Danny stood up, gripped the Telecaster around the bottom of its neck, pulling it hard to his gut.

‘What time?’

A
T ONE STAGE
, the narrow lane to Brinsop pointed you directly at a wooded flank of Credenhill. You felt that if it didn’t veer off soon you’d vanish into a green mouth.

The first time, Merrily missed the turning to the church, then spotted in the rear-view mirror what might be a bell tower. At approaching midday, a pale blue hole in the clouds was broadening into a small lagoon. She reversed into the next track, and the long hill fell away to the side. Nobody about. No other vehicles.

No village. Plenty of fields, woodland, a few dwellings, and a church, on its own, set apart.

Merrily’s stomach was hurting. Really needed something to eat. Maybe she should go home. Only twenty minutes away. Three warnings about Byron Jones – secretive, embittered, obsessive. She didn’t want to find him, not yet. Just to get a hint of what, in Brinsop, had caught his eye.

The church was at the end of a private track with weeds growing up the middle. A sprinkling of homes, old and newish, barns and sheds, and then the Volvo was up against a fenced field of ewes and lambs. A dead end with the churchyard alongside, raised up. Jane maintained that an elevated churchyard always indicated a former pagan ritual site. But then, for Jane, signs of paganism were everywhere.

OK. Merrily stayed in the car and leaned back, easing the pressure on her stomach. Do this properly. She pulled her bag onto her knees and consulted her contacts book.

Dick Willis, priest in charge of the Credenhill cluster of churches. A cautious guy, not far off retirement. The signal here wasn’t good, but she got him.

‘Ah, Brinsop,’ he said. ‘The jewel in my crown.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never been before.’

‘Then I mustn’t spoil it for you, Merrily. Is there a problem there? I certainly haven’t heard of one, but when one hears, out of the blue, from your good self…’

‘Do you know a guy called Byron Jones? Colin Jones?’

‘Ah, now, that would be the man with the private army base?’

‘Say that again.’

‘I exaggerate. He calls it The Compound. Once a pig farm, a mile or so out of what used to be the village. The farm became derelict, the house was sold off and this chap bought the land. Lived there in a caravan, then suddenly built this rather lavish bungalow, as if he’d come into money.’

‘What did you mean by private army?’

‘Not an army, a base. He has a training area with an assault course and all that sort of thing. He run courses for military enthusiasts, and the place is done out like a real army base with high wire fencing and authentic warning signs. Part of the mystique, I suppose. Looks more secret and exciting than the actual SAS place down the road. Boys will always be boys, Merrily.’

‘He had planning permission for all this?’

‘Not always needed. And some of the objectors were appeased when, at his own expense, he planted extensive woodland to conceal the site. That was about a year ago.’

‘Mr Jones is ex-SAS, I believe.’

‘Well, yes, that always helps, doesn’t it? Especially in this area.’

‘Does he come to church?’

‘If he does, it’s not when there’s a service on,’ Dick Willis said.

The sun was just visible through the cloud, like a pound coin in a handkerchief, as Merrily got out and locked the car. She shook herself, felt a little better.

The site was fairly remote, but the churchyard was well looked after. Nothing overgrown here, and most of the uncrowded gravestones were upright. A huge sentinel evergreen stood beyond the wooden gate, looking taller than the church which sat behind it, under the hill. A compact greystone church with a conical bell-tower. More central Wales than Herefordshire, but comfortable in its lusher ground.

And the site… Jane might well be interested. Different levels, perhaps a suggestion of earthworks and, across the lowest field beyond the church, a small, dark-green lake. Or a big reeded pond. Or, possibly, a moat, all wooded-in.

A lovely spot, really. This was one of those churches that had
had
to be here, Jane would say. Had to be
here
. Sacred ground long before Christianity.

Merrily walked past the church porch towards the water and was pulled up by a name on a gravestone, directly in front. Not ornate, but tall and prominently sited and making an instant connection with one of the paperbacks on Syd Spicer’s desk.

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
JANE WINDER
WHO WAS BORN AT
KESWICK
, CUMBERLAND
AND DIED AT
BRINSOP COURT
,
IN THIS PARISH OCTOBER 16, 1843
IN THE 43 YEAR OF HER AGE.

This Stone is erected by WILLIAM
and MARY WORDSWORTH, of Rydal Mount
Westmoreland in affectionate and grateful
remembrance of her faithful services continued
through fifteen years
.

Good
God
. Merrily began to tingle. That sense of the preordained. A piece of an unknown jigsaw. The piece that slotted in to tell you there
was
a jigsaw.

William and Mary. Rydal Mount. Westmoreland. The Wordsworths –
the
Wordsworths – were here?

She walked back to the porch, went in. Always the same when you approached an unknown church, that frisson of mild apprehension, as you turned the ring handle. Some resistance, but the door wasn’t locked. It gave, and she went in, and whatever she was expecting – perhaps, given the location, something frugal, cold, drab, rudimentary – it wasn’t.

No smell of stone or damp. She made out lurking colours, and not only in the windows. Much metallic glistening from the chancel.

Merrily waited at the bottom of the nave. Waited for something to happen, something to move, shadows to part.

‘Blimey,’ she said, to nobody she could see.

This was all strongly medieval. Medieval like in the actual Middle Ages. A concave golden canopy was shining over the altar, like the reflector on a lamp. There were three gilded angels, wings aggressively spread, brandishing candles.

A treasure house. Out here in the deep sticks it was all so entirely unexpected as to be approaching the surreal. Merrily picked up a leaflet from the pile and took a seat at the back. Chairs, light-coloured wood, not pews. A lot of money had been spent since medieval times, enhancing what was here. The angels were confidently balanced on the top edge of the chancel screen, guarding a Christ on the cross. A chess-piece kingly Christ in a golden crown. Not suffering, but proud and triumphant. In control.

And when you looked more carefully, you began to see all the dragons. Merrily came back to her feet.

Everywhere, dragons were dying.

There he was, red-crossed, in a window. And here he was again, more modern and explicit, on a pedestal, in full armour with his foot on the dragon’s neck, his spear down its throat.

Merrily opened the leaflet.
St George
. Brinsop Church was dedicated to the dragon-slaying patron saint of England. The
leaflet said the church had been saved from ‘certain ruin’ in the mid-nineteenth century, old windows rediscovered and restored. It had never looked back since, acquiring much sympathetic embellishment by Sir Ninian Comper, ecclesiastical architect and Gothic revivalist, in the early twentieth century. His work included the angels on the wooden screen. And yet, for all Comper’s bling, it still felt like a country church, small enough to be welcoming. Some bright, modern stained glass: a St Francis window with birds. A First World War window with crucifixion symbolism. And one…

In memory of Wm Wordsworth, poet laureate.
A frequent sojourner in this parish
.

Back to the leaflet. Wordsworth’s wife, Mary, had been a sister of Thomas Hutchinson, who was leasing the twelfth-century Brinsop Court, the poet often spending holidays here, with his wife and his sister, Dorothy.

Merrily stood up, feeling ignorant… parochial. Why hadn’t she known about this? The next church to Traherne’s, at Credenhill. Traherne and Wordsworth… separated by more than a century, but two poets with a lot in common. Lovers of landscape, solitude. Nature mystics.

Odd.
Was
it odd? She walked into the chancel, looked back to where the far window was halved by the bar of the screen, split by the shaft of the cross. This was very much a theme church, St George the principal one. Why did you always feel sorry for the dragon, instantly disliking the smug bastard with the spear? The charitable view was that – lance, deep throat – it was a piece of early sexual symbolism.

She padded across the nave. As usual, alone in a church, Merrily didn’t
feel
alone, but this time it wasn’t just about God. That little green book of Wordsworth poems suggested that Syd Spicer had been here.