The Man in the Moss (52 page)

           
'Yes,' said Moira.

           
'Did she talk to you?'

           
'No,' Moira said. 'I'm afraid not.'

           
Then Cathy discovered the sugar bowl was empty and went
into the pantry, the little room under the stairs, for a new bag.
           
'Oh,' she said. "The
little scumbags.'

           
'Huh?'

           
Moira peered over her shoulder. Cathy was holding a
brick. There was a small window in the pantry and the brick had clearly been
used to smash it.

           
'Little bastards,' Cathy said. 'You know, this never used
to happen. I know people say that all the time ... "Oh, things were
different when I was a kid and you could get in the cinema for sixpence. None
of this vandalism in those days, kids had respect." But it's true. Even -
what? - six months ago it was true in Bridelow. They
did
have respect.'

           
Cathy put the brick down on the floor. Now there's
graffiti in the toilets at the parish hall. A week or two ago somebody had a
... defecated on the seat inside the lych-gate. Can you believe that? In
Bridelow?'

           
'You better check the house,' Moira said.

           
Cathy had a cursory look around the downstairs rooms.
Everything seemed to be in order. 'Little sods. Everybody knows Pop's in
hospital.' She looked at Moira. 'Oh. Yes. That's another thing. They're sending
him to a convalescent home.'

           
'I thought it wasn't too serious.'

           
'Coronary,' Cathy said despondently. 'That's serious.
They're sending him - committing him is how he sees it - to this Church nursing
home down in Shropshire. At least a month. Which means Joel's got to move in
here.'

           
'With you?'

           
'You're joking,' Cathy said. 'Even if I could bear to
have him in the house, he's much too proper to countenance it. No, I'll go back
to Oxford. Come up at weekends and see Pop. I mean, I expect you'll be wanting
to be off, won't you?'

           
Moira said. 'Look, you got any cardboard in the garage or
somewhere? We can block up this window.'

           
'Never mind, Alf Becket'll fix it tomorrow.'

           
Moira said, 'Cathy ... um ... something bad's happened.'

Because of the Post
Office's strict security regulations, Milly Gill's front door had two steel
bolts and a fancy double lock, which she'd always thought was damn stupid in a
place like Bridelow. Tonight, though, first time ever, Milly was glad to turn
the key twice over and slide the big bolts. Even though she knew there were
some things no locks could keep out.

           
The urgent banging on the door shook her. Willie Wagstaff
never used the knocker. Willie would beat out his own personal tattoo with his
fingers.

           
'Oh, Mother,' Milly Gill said, clutching her arms over
her breast. 'I'm not going to be up to this.'

           
It was an hour since the doctor'd had Ma taken away,
Across the Moss. He'd said there might have to be a post-mortem, probably no
more than a formality, it was most likely natural causes. But if there was
reason to think she might have fallen accidentally, there'd have to be a public
inquest.

           
Pity Bridelow didn't have a resident doctor any more;
this was an Asian gentleman from Across the Moss who couldn't be expected to
understand. Milly had pleaded with him not to let them cut Ma up if there was
any way it could be avoided. It was important that all of Ma's bits should be
returned to Bridelow for burial, not tissue and stuff left in some hospital
waste bin.

           
More crashing at the from door.

           
'Who is it?' Milly shouted. Didn't recognize her own
voice, it sounded that feeble.
           
'It's me. Alf.'

           
Milly tut-tutted at her cowardice. Why she should think
there might be something abroad because something that happened to hundreds of
pensioners every week had happened to Ma Wagstaff ...

           
She undid the bolts and turned the key twice. 'I'm sorry,
Alf. Not like me to be nervy.'

           
But, if anything, Alf Beckett looked worse than she felt.
There was a streetlamp outside the door, a converted gas lamp with an ice-blue
bulb. Its light made Alf look quite ill, eyes like keyholes.

           
'Milly,' he said. 'We're in t'shit.'

           
'Come in, luv,' Milly said. Her responsibility now, this
sort of problem, keeping up community morale. She sat Alf down on the floral
settee. He was ashen.

           
'Now then, come on,' Milly said, it's all right. We'll
get over this. We've had bad patches before.'

           
'No ...' Alf shook his head. 'Listen ...'

           
'It's my fault,' Milly said. 'We always left too much to
poor old Ma. We thought she were immortal. Thought we could sit back, everybody
getting on with their lives, foreign holidays, videos. Didn't seem to matter
like it used to. And then when Ma started getting gloomy, we all thought it
were just her age. Even me, daft cow. And now everything's happened at once,
and it's shaken us. But we'll be all right, honest, luv.'

           
She got up to put the kettle on. 'I've sent Willie to
t'Man for a pint. Life's got to go on, Alf. Just means we'll have to have a bit
of a get-together. Soon as possible. Sort this lad Joel Beard out for a start.
Then we'll see what else we've got to tackle. Mrs Horridge, that's another
thing ...'

           
'Milly!' Alf Beckett's hearth brush moustache looked bent
and spiky. 'Police've come.'

           
'Eh? Because of Ma? Have they found summat?'

           
'No, no listen to me, woman, for Christ's sake.' Alf sat
up on the couch, hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles were
whiter than his cheeks, it's t'grave. They're coming to dig Matt's grave up.'

           
In the narrow doorway to the back kitchen, Milly froze,
filling it.

           
Alf said, 'Some bugger's told t'coppers as t'bogman's in
theer.'

           
Milly felt sick. All churned up inside. Ma gone, the
Rector in hospital. And her at the wrong time of life to cope with it all. She
covered up her face with her hands and looked at him through her fingers.

           
'Lord,' she whispered. 'What've we done, Alf? What've we
done in Brid'lo to deserve this?'

Cathy said to Moira, 'If
Pop hears about this, he's going to do something stupid.'

           
She'd told Cathy only about Ma's death. Not about seeing
the old woman out on the Moss fighting a dead tree.

           
She said, 'Like what?'

           
'Like discharge himself,' Cathy said glumly. 'Moira, I
don't know what to do. They ran this place between them, Pop and Ma Wagstaff.
They hardly ever met, but they had an understanding, you know?'

           
They were in the sitting room. Cathy had lit the fire.
She was sitting on the sofa where Dic Castle had sprawled. She'd taken off her
shoes and her thick woollen socks were planted on an old rag hearthrug dark
with scorchmarks from stray coals.

           
'He doesn't talk much about it, but it was obviously
really tough for Pop when he first came here. He was pretty young - younger
than Joel. And a Southerner. With a funny German name. Hell of a culture shock.
Series of shocks, I suppose.'
           
'Like, when he finds out
they're all heathens?'

           
'Is that what we are?'

           
Moira smiled, 'It's no' that simple, is it? I was up on
the moor with Willie Wagstaff earlier. We saw the holy well. Who's that
dedicated to? The goddess Brigid? St Bride? The Mother Goddess? Or the Holy
Mother of God?'

           
'Gets confusing, doesn't it?' Cathy said.

           
'And the cross that was in the church, made out of twigs
and stuff.'

           
'The Autumn Cross.'

           
'And there's a Winter Cross - yeh? - made of holly and
mistletoe and stuff, and then a Spring Cross, made of ...'
           
'You've got it.'

           
Moira said, putting it all together finally, 'They can't
make up their minds
what
they are,
can they?'

           
Cathy folded her legs on to the sofa. 'Like I said, you
need to talk to Mr Dawber, he can put it into an historical context. But the
first Church in Britain was the Celtic Church, and by the time they came along
I like to think Celtic paganism was pretty refined, with this give-and-take
attitude to nature and animals and things.'

           
'In parts of Scotland,' said Moira, 'particularly some of
the Western Isles, it's not been so much a takeover as a merger. Like, nobody
could say the teachings of Christ were anything less than a hell of a good
framework for, say, human behaviour, the way we treat each other. But ...'

           
'... in isolated areas, there were aspects of life it
didn't quite cover,' said Cathy. 'Maybe still doesn't. And this area was always
very isolated. Cut off. Self-sufficient. Immune from outside influences. We got
electricity later than everybody else. Piped water was a long time coming. Television
signals are still so lousy that most people haven't got one yet.'

           
'Yeh, but look ...'

           
'... now it's a brick through your window and
"Sheffield United are shit" on the walls, and somebody has one on a
public seat - that's outside influences for you. Be a rape next.'

           
'Cathy, this bogman ...'
           
'Oh,
he's
all right.'

           
'No, he's not. Matt Castle was besotted with him. The Man
in the Moss. Matt was seeing him in Biblical terms - sacrificial saviour of the
English Celts.'

           
'He died to save us all,' Cathy said. 'Gosh. Isn't that a
terrible piece of blasphemy? Can you imagine the sleepless nights Pop had over
this? The bogman: was he some sort of Pennine Jesus?'

           
'Or the anti-Christ, huh?'

           
Moira thought of the black, snaking branches of the tree
on the Moss. Her head throbbed, as if the thing were lashing at her brain.

           
'OK,' she said hurriedly. 'Let's leave that be for a
while. When they built the first Christian church here, they put it on the old
sacred site and it's dedicated to Brigid, or Brigantia, now known as St Bride.
And the ministers here have always had a kind of agreement with the priestess
and her attendants who, in time, become known as the Mothers' Union, right?'

           
'All the Anglican Churches have Mothers' Unions. Young
Wives' groups too.'

           
'Yeah, but most of them, presumably, don't recognize the
symbolism: the mothers and the hags. The hags being the ones over the
menopause.'

           
'When you're over the Change,' Cathy said, 'you go on to
a new level of responsibility. Well ... so I'm told. How do you know all this?'

           
'I read a lot of books. Now, OK, the bogman turns up
again. The willing sacrifice. The pagan Jesus-figure who supposedly went to his
death to save his people. That's one powerful symbol, Cathy. Regardless of what
else it might be, it's a heavy symbol. It churns things up.'

           
'I've told you, he's all right.'

           
'What d'you mean he's all right? Somebody's
stolen
him. I'm telling you there are
people around who will
do things
with
a relic as powerful as that.'

           
'Look, it's OK, that's sorted out.'

           
'Sorted out?' She had to stand up, walk away from the
fire, although she was shivering and it hurt when she swallowed.

           
'Moira, come on, sit down. I promise you, it's OK.'
           
'Why?' Moira demanded. 'Why is
it OK, Cathy?'
           
'Because,' said Cathy simply,
'the bogman's had a full Christian burial.'