The Wine of Angels (34 page)

‘Well,’ Merrily said. ‘It sounds fair enough to me. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m trying to make the church less formal, more accessible, and while it might be a bit early to set up an actual bar, with beer pumps and optics and things—’

Caroline tittered shrilly.

‘—I can’t see any problem over a few glasses of cider. Do you want me to kind of bless the stuff or something?’

Caroline looked thrilled. ‘Would that be in order?’

‘I don’t know, really. Ted?’

Didn’t know why she was asking him. She was, after all, entirely on her own.

‘Merrily,’ Ted said, ‘in his time, Alf Hayden blessed everything from tractors to the microwave oven in the village hall.’

Didn’t seem to be a problem, then, even if the mention of Dermot Child in connection with cider had sent a bad ripple down her spine.

‘OK then,’ she said. ‘What’s it called?’

‘The cider?’ Barry Bloom said. ‘The Wine of Angels. You like that?’

‘That’s Traherne?’

‘The line goes “Tears are the Wine of Angels and the Delight of God, which falling from ...” what is it, Mrs Cassidy? The whole verse is printed on a label on the back.’

‘Something about them being sweet, precious and wholesome.’

‘That’s the bit. “Sweet, precious and wholesome ... and delicious indeed.” And then there’s a bit of a duff line about them being the best water works to quench the Devil’s Fires, but we’ve stopped it before that. Sweet, precious and wholesome and delicious indeed. You couldn’t get an ad agency to do a better one than that, could you, Vicar?’

‘But, I mean, he wasn’t actually talking about cider, he was talking about tears.’

‘Well ...’ Barry spread his hands. ‘If it ends in tears, at least we can all get drunk.’

Leaving the church, Merrily met James Bull-Davies coming in.

‘Ah. Mrs Watkins.’

As if the meeting was a surprise.

It was the first time they’d been face-to-face since the exchange in the vicarage kitchen.

‘Look.’ Bull-Davies shuffled slightly. ‘Glad I caught you. Fact of the matter is ... bit of a pig the other night. Tried to pressure you. Wrong of me. Want to apologize.’

Merrily said nothing. She walked out of the porch. He followed her into the churchyard.

‘Gets on top of one, the old family heritage thing. Narrows the outlook. Can’t focus. Sorry.’

‘So.’ Merrily stopped before the first grave, turned to look up at him. ‘You’ve had a think about it.’

His eyes narrowed.

‘And perhaps come to the conclusion that the idea of your family’s stature being toppled by a polemical play with an axe to grind about gay rights is something of an overreaction?’

His long face began to redden. He had not, of course, concluded any such thing.

‘Anyway,’ Merrily said, ‘on the question of the church being used, I’ve come to a decision, and I’ll probably slip it in when I say a few words at the reception tonight, OK?’

The silence lasted all of three seconds. Merrily didn’t move.

‘You have made a decision,’ Bull-Davies said heavily.

‘Yeah. Just this afternoon, actually.’

He scowled. ‘Heard you’d been talking to the actor. Alder.’

‘Sure. We had a chat.’

She wondered how he knew, who his informant was. Or perhaps he’d seen them himself.

‘Suppose he won you over. Cried on your shoulder.’

‘We had a private conversation.’

‘I don’t cry myself,’ James Bull-Davies said.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘real men don’t, do they?’

‘You’re mocking me.’

Merrily thought about him in the vicarage kitchen.
You make it hard for me, Mrs Watkins. And perhaps for yourself.
She thought of the funeral card delivered to the Black Swan –
Wil Williams was the Devil’s Minister.
She thought her decision was the right decision, but, by God, some people were making it bloody hard and all her human reactions were still urging her to go the other way.

But she had to say something. So she thought what Jane would say and said that.

‘You know, James, you really are a sad bastard.’

He blinked.

‘I gave it a lot of thought. And the only decision that seemed ethically and spiritually right, in the end, was to offer Richard Coffey and Stefan Alder the village hall for their play. If that’s all right with the parish council’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to explain how I decided. But I can say it had nothing to do with anything you said about the need to protect your illustrious family. And in fact ...’

She went right up to him. Looked up, a full foot, into his narrow, autocrat’s face.

‘... if you ever ...
ever
... try to put the arm on me again, over anything – anything at all – I’ll ... I’ll have your balls.’

She stepped back. There was no reaction on James Bull-Davies’s face, but his back stiffened and she saw his feet come instinctively together. His eyes were focused over her right shoulder.

‘Understood,’ he said.

22

I, Merrily ...

T
HE FIRST PERSON
Jane saw when she got off the school bus was Colette, wearing her leather jacket and a black chiffon scarf. She was with a black guy, maybe in his thirties, unloading some gear from a dirty white Transit van.

Unfortunately, Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes and a couple of their mates had spotted them too.

I’m telling you, it
is,
’ Danny Gittoes said. ‘I seen him in Shrewsbury. He looks different, nat’rally, with all the stuff on.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Dean said. ‘Mr Cosmopolitan. You hear that, men? Gittoes’s been to Shrewsbury. Hang on, I’ll find out. I’ll ask the slag.’

It was a dull afternoon, a slow drizzle starting. Dean Wall waddled across the square to Colette, Jane following at an angle.

‘Party then, is it?’ Dean trying to peer into the van.

Colette didn’t look at him. ‘Might be.’

‘This a mate o’ yours?’

Dean looked down at the black guy, who was short and lithe, wore a black T-shirt and white leather trousers, Dean looking like a Land Rover next to a Porsche.

Colette still didn’t look at him.

‘This is Dr Samedi,’ she said.

‘No shit,’ Dean said, reluctantly awed.

Dr Samedi lifted a big, square vinyl case out of the van and pushed it into Dean’s barrel stomach.

‘Carry dis into de restaurant fuh me, mon?’ Dr Samedi said.

‘Right,’ Dean said. ‘Sure.’

‘Don’ drop it.’

Danny Gittoes had arched over, with his big, stupid grin, and Dr Samedi allowed him to carry an even bigger black vinyl case into Cassidy’s Country Kitchen.

‘Seen you in Shrewsbury last year,’ Danny called over his shoulder. ‘Shit hot. Man.’

‘Up de stairs,’ Dr Samedi said. ‘Leave ‘im by de restaurant door. An’ no peekin’.’

When they’d gone, Colette looked at Jane and shook her head and grinned. ‘This is Jeff. Jeff, this is Janey. Her mother’s a priest.’

‘Brilliant. Yow bringing her along, too?’ His accent was now closer to Kidderminster than Kingston, Jamaica.

‘I don’t somehow think so,’ Jane said. ‘Er ... you
are
Dr Samedi?’

He fixed lazy eyes on Jane’s. He growled, a low, seismic rumble.

‘
Long night, moonbright, burnin’on a low light, everythin’you wearin’, honey, just a liddle
too
tight ...
’

‘Oh, wow,’ Jane said, impressed. She’d always found rap and drum ‘n’ bass stuff quite tedious after a while, but the idea of it happening in Ledwardine was something else.

‘...
and de drummin’ begin, feel de drummin’ inside, fingers dancin’, dancin’, dancin’up an’downyo’spine
...’

Jeff killed the rap, yawned and stretched. ‘Excuse me, ladies, I better go make sure them sheep-shaggers don’t put that gear the wrong way up.’

Colette watched the little guy sashay towards the glass doors. ‘Isn’t he just like magnetic?’

‘I guess.’

‘He will blow you away, Janey. I promise. Heavy magic’

‘Seems a bit cheeky, getting Wall and Gittoes to carry all the stuff in when they aren’t invited,’ Jane said. ‘I mean, you know, cool. But ...’

‘I want them like really desperate to get in.’ Colette lightly tongued her upper lip. ‘And all their mates. I want them wetting themselves to be in there.’

Jane looked at her. There was this perverse side to Colette she didn’t quite understand.

‘They might cause trouble.’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ Colette agreed. ‘They just might. If they can find their balls.’

‘You
want
that?’

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, Janey ...’ Colette sighed in despair. ‘When they
do
get in, I want them to feel like gatecrashers. Unwanted. Resentful, you know? My dipshit parents have naturally gone over the guest list, so we have a lot of
nice
boys from
good
families, that kind of thing, plus a few like Lloyd Powell on account of his old man’s a
councillor.
I mean, you tell me, where is the tension in that?’

‘Tension?’

‘A party,’ Colette said with heavy patience. ‘Ain’t a party. Without tension.’

The evening was still and heavy with the scent of apple blossom, which clung to the orchard trees like hoar frost. Made Lol shudder as he got out of the rusting Astra in the drive.

As he let himself into the cottage, the phone began to ring, and his spirits collapsed like a card-house. It’s Lucy, he thought. Something’s wrong.

Around his trainers, on the doormat, he saw a pale confetti.

On the mat
inside.
Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. Examining the soles of his shoes to make sure he hadn’t brought them in himself. The orchard was coming in on him. There’d be petals all over the carpets, on the table, over the bed, in the bath.
Jesus.
Calling out, in his panic, to the stern, unforgiving God of his parents, collecting the usual stab of guilt – he’d once, aged sixteen, dropped a cup washing up and muttered
Jesus Christ,
and his mother had slapped his face with some ferocity, wouldn’t speak to him for two days.

The phone kept on ringing and Lol kept staring at the petals on the mat.

Maybe they just came in through the cat door. Maybe Ethel brought them in. That was it: Ethel had been hunting in the orchard and returned with her fur full of apple blossom. That made sense, didn’t it?

The phone went on ringing. Who would know he was back, except Lucy?

Lucy. Who had sent him away after the thing with Jane Watkins. Seeing at once that he was in no fit state to go back to the cottage.
Go off somewhere for a few days. I’ll feed the cat. Go to a city. Somewhere not like this, do you understand, Laurence? We’ll talk when you return. When you’re in a more receptive state.

In Oxford, over four days, he hadn’t even seen Gary Kennedy. Just walked the touristy streets and the parks and gardens and the riverside, dipping into bookshops and record shops and pubs.

And reading Thomas Traherne and getting as much sleep as he could take and reading more Traherne – the poet who’d found the whole universe in the fields and woods and hills within a few miles of Lol’s cottage and was completely knocked out by everything he experienced out there.

He has drowned our understanding in a multitude of wonders.
Lucy had underlined this in his copy of Traherne’s
Centuries,
and written in pencil in the margin.
Just because it’s something you can’t explain, it doesn’t have to be bad. It doesn’t have to be ominous. It might just be wonderful.

But the old strength, the conviction, had been missing. It was a worried Lucy who’d waved him off in the rusting Astra. When he’d come down from the loft and said this was a nightmare she hadn’t contradicted him. It had a fuzzy dreamlike quality when it happened, when he saw Jane Watkins lying in the orchard, but the implications were nightmarish.

The living-room door was always left ajar for Ethel, and when Lol went in, she was weaving in and out of his ankles. He picked her up and she purred into his chest as he grabbed the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘You little fuck.’ The rasp distorting in the earpiece. ‘What you trying to do to me?’

Karl Windling, the
old
Karl Windling sounding cracklingly close. He’d spoken to Dennis; it had made him angry. Lol felt cold sweat on his forehead. Windling could be at the Black Swan. He could be in his car, in the lane.

‘Don’t shit me, son. Do
not
shit me.’

Lol said, ‘Where are you?’

‘Close enough. Now you fucking stay there. You understand? You go anywhere, I’ll find you. You don’t move the rest of the night. I’m coming over. I’ll have a nice, simple contract with me. Which you are signing, son. You won’t—’