The Wine of Angels (45 page)

‘Kind of thing,’ Lloyd said. ‘Good stuff, mind.’

‘The Wine of Angels?’

‘Sharp, though. Dry. Take the hairs outer your nose.’

‘Your dad done it all by isself then?’

‘Old recipe, Gomer.’ Lloyd tapped his nose. ‘Cassidy, he wanted to make a thing out of it, let the visitors in, get a carthorse workin’ the ole mill. Bugger that, Dad says, that’s for the museums. So we done it all ourselves, the millin’ and the pressin’. Served up the casks to Barry Bloom – least you can get some sense out of ‘im – and he organized the bottles. It goes all right, we’ll do it next year. Be a good crop. Plus we won’t have to buy no apples in next time, looks of things.’

‘Aye,’ Gomer said and left it at that. Boy was right; never seen that much blossom in the Powell orchard, not in his lifetime anyway. Caused a fair bit of comment, too, grizzly farmers in the Ox mumbling about how it was Edgar’s brains must’ve fertilized them twisted ole trees.

‘Looks like that’s it, then, Gomer.’ Lloyd looking up at the bunting and lanterns. ‘May’s well take ‘im home.’ He grinned. ‘If Minnie’ll let you bring ‘im through the gate.’

Gomer growled. Boy was more right than he knew. Minnie, she’d got this plan for a proper garden now, with rocks and a bloody fountain – cherub having a pee, no doubt. Which would require space, see. And what was taking up more space than a certain collection of near-vintage plant-hire equipment? Things was getting tense.

He pulled in the bucket, nice and tidy, and gently trundled Gwynneth to the edge of the square. By God, he loved this ole thing. The way she answered to every little flick of the levers. You could do anything with Gwynneth, with both eyes shut. Responsive, see, like a good sheepdog.

Waiting to get her into Church Street, Gomer saw two people. First was Lucy Devenish in her woolly cape-thing, striding out determined behind her moped. The ole warrior out for somebody’s scalp this morning, sure t’be.

Second was that little Jane, the vicar’s daughter. Not so bright and smiley today as she come out the vicarage gateway. A friend of that Colette Cassidy’s. Lucky she hadn’t gone with her last night to wherever it was. And Gomer was frankly a bit dubious about Dermot Child’s theory that Colette’d been whisked off by some young stud with pleasure in mind. He did not like the feel of this, the way she’d disappeared into the orchard, no more than he liked the feel of the orchard itself, for all its explosion of blossom.

Too much blossom. They used to say that orchard’d been no good since it was cursed, back in the seventeenth century, by this Wil Williams, the vicar who done his bit of wizarding on the side and hung hisself when he was rumbled. Well, Gomer had no fixed opinions on cursing, and there was some as said the orchard was just let go on account of the crippling new tax on cider imposed by King Charles II – fifteen pence on a hogshead. But there was nobody could deny that if he’d hung hisself where they said he’d done it, the last thing this Wil Williams would’ve seen as he was swinging there ... was that orchard.

He’d have stopped Lucy, got her opinion on a few things, except she looked so purposeful you’d have to block the way with ole Gwynneth to get her to pull up.

Unless you was young Jane, just as determined it looked like.

‘Lucy!’ The youngster running after the ole woman down Church Street.

Gomer saw Lucy stop in the middle of climbing on to her moped, and then they was talking something furious, arms waving and such. What he wouldn’t’ve given to know what they was jabbering on about this gloomy ole morning.

‘No, listen, Jane,’ Lucy said. ‘Please listen.’

Under her hat, her face was very red and her eyes were burning. She looked like an old-fashioned stove, this like huge, massive heat building up inside her.

‘You know, don’t you?’ Jane said. ‘You know where she is.’

‘No.’ Lucy took hold of both Jane’s shoulders, propelled her backwards into the alley by the side of the Ox, where she and Colette had escaped from Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes. ‘I
don’t
know. But Jane, you must stay well away from it. Listen to me. What you must do is stay with your mother. Talk to her. Make her understand something.’

‘Till the apple appeared on the ground, I thought, you know, I thought the worst that could happen was she’d get like ... taken away. Like me. And maybe she wouldn’t be able to handle that because of the kind of person she is, and—’

Lucy’s grip tightened on her shoulders. Her hands were terrifically strong, and there was so much heat there that Jane was scared into silence. She’d never seen Lucy like this before.

‘Jane. Are you listening now?’

‘Yes.’ Jane felt very small. It was quite dim in the alley on a dull day like this. She could detect the thin, acid odour of urine from the Gents’ toilet. It reminded her, in some awful way, of cider.

‘Something happened to your mother last night,’ Lucy said. ‘In the church.’

‘She was ill. Dean Wall and those creeps were making a big joke about it at the party and saying she was like possessed by a demon or something.’

‘And they won’t be the only ones,’ Lucy said. ‘Others may be subtler. There’ll be pressure on her. Much of it from inside. Self-doubt. Do you know what I mean?’

Jane wasn’t sure she did. ‘She gets a bit overtired sometimes. She’s not as certain about things as she used to be, but, like, she doesn’t talk much about it. She just asks me questions I can’t answer.’

‘Yes, I know you can’t. But what I mean, Jane, is that it will have occurred to her, consciously or not, that she became ill at the moment of taking her vows because she was not
meant
to take those vows. Not meant to commit herself to this parish. At some point, if it hasn’t happened already, she’ll be telling herself it was all wrong and that she really knew this all the time. That she made a mistake.’

‘What, becoming a vicar? Going into the Church?’

‘Possibly that. Or coming here. I know that must have been a shock for you, too, having a mother who suddenly decides to commit herself to God.’

‘I’m not really jealous of the Old Guy.’

‘I know.’ Lucy’s grip softened. ‘But perhaps you haven’t been as supportive as you might have been.’

‘I’ve tried, really. I mean, we always talked the same language basically, if we stayed off religion. And like, after what’s been happening I thought maybe there’s some chance we could connect there as well, but we’re coming at it from different directions, aren’t we? I mean, sometimes I feel really ... alight with it. But I can’t tell her, she’s like so blocked ... yeah? With all the dogma and stuff. I mean, I left the Traherne book lying around, but she’s always so busy.’

‘Jane.’ Lucy looked very serious. ‘This is not the time to sit up on your superior teenager’s perch ... And don’t look at me like that, you little snot. Your mother may have a restricted viewpoint professionally, but there’s a thinking, feeling, responsive person under that cassock.’

‘She doesn’t wear that thing any more, thank goodness. Except, like, on the shop floor.’

‘Yes. A sign, perhaps, that the person’s re-emerging. She’ll come to it in her own way, perhaps, and while you might have had a crash course, her knowledge is still a hundred times greater than yours. But you have to help her. If she won’t come to me, and I can understand why she won’t, then she needs you to tell her that coming here was not the mistake she’s fearing it may have been. That she’s very much needed here. She needs assurance from
you,
not from the bishop, not from the Cassidys, not from that pompous old fool, Ted Clowes.’

‘She just asks me questions!’

‘Then answer them as best you can, and pray for help.’

‘Pray?’ Jane turned away from the toilet smell, avoiding Lucy’s hawk-like eyes. ‘Who to?’

‘You’ll know,’ Lucy said. ‘And there’s another thing. Last night, your mother indicated to me that she was going to refuse to allow Richard Coffey to put on his dreadful play in the church.’

‘Yeah. We had a bit of a row about it. She talked to Stefan Alder and she thought he’d got this unhealthy obsession. This kind of gay thing, you know? But that’s not why she’s against it. It’s because he’s in love with someone who’s dead and it’s like, you know, spiritual necrophilia and all that yuk stuff she doesn’t think I know about. Like she doesn’t want him to satisfy his weird lusts or whatever in church. I said I thought it was cool and kind of beautiful and she was being stupid.’

‘You were right,’ Lucy said. ‘But for the wrong reasons. Jane, she must change her mind. She has to let Wil’s spirit speak. She must be convinced. You’ll have to be subtle.’

Jane was confused. ‘But you said it was a
dreadful
play ...’

‘It’s not the play, it’s the machinery of it. The cogs it turns. The play may not be the play Coffey envisages. Not if Merrily stays. I thought she’d be a catalyst, but I thought it might take years, but it isn’t, it’s happening very, very quickly.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lucy was looking feverish again, burning up inside. ‘Jane, I have to go.’

‘Where?’

‘Perhaps I shall come and see you and your mother. It’s too much for one person to carry, especially someone old and creaky like myself.’

‘What is?’

Lucy lowered her arms, stepped away from Jane, looking about as old and creaky as a jumbo jet on the verge of take-off. Jane didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone as powered-up. She thought she ought to tell Lucy about Lol and his problems, why he’d spent the night at the vicarage, how he’d inadvertently let Mum in to see the painted walls, leading to one of those questions Lucy said she’d have to try and answer.

‘Go home, Jane. Remember what I said.’

‘OK.’ They walked out of the alley into Church Street, where Lucy climbed on to her moped.

A police car went past. ‘I didn’t tell
them
anything,’ Jane said.

‘The police? The police questioned you?’

‘Inspector Howe. She was horrible. She looks like a sadistic dentist. She’s coming back if they don’t find Colette. She seems to think I know something.’

Lucy smiled briefly. ‘Jane, if you told her what you know I think it would be safe to say she would never bother you again.’

‘She’d think I was bonkers? She told Mum something I couldn’t hear, when they were leaving, and Mum was a bit funny afterwards.’

Lucy stopped. ‘Funny in what way?’

‘Kind of shocked. And when I felt I had to come out of there and think about things on my own and I said maybe I’d go for a walk and kind of cool off, she seemed glad and she almost pushed me out, you know? I think that woman told her they thought Colette had been attacked or raped or something so bad she couldn’t face talking to me about it. I mean,
you
don’t think ...?’

‘I shall be honest with you, Jane,’ Lucy said. ‘I fear your inspector maybe right’

‘No!’ Jane stared at her, filled with a horrid, stark dismay. ‘I wanted you to tell me I was wrong! Tell me that old apple was just ... just like some stupid coincidence.’

Realizing as she said it that this was a stupid, make-it-all-right-mummy, little-girl reaction.

‘Help your mother,’ Lucy said. ‘Be there, as they say, for her. I shall come and talk to you both.’

‘You’re not going to the orchard, are you, Lucy?’ Lucy’s smile was somehow less ... brave.

‘Not exactly. Go to your mother.’

The vicarage looked at its biggest and drabbest when approached uphill from Church Street. Its timbers needed a few coats of paint or preservative, or whatever they used, its white bits were grey, its windows black, except ...

Jane froze on the pavement, looking up. There was a light in the third storey. In the Apartment. A single, white light.

It was the sun, surely, the sun must have come out. She turned, looked all over the sky for the sun, catching a sliver of light between two bunches of cloud, but it wasn’t enough. Something in that room was alive.

Wrong word, Jane thought, in terror.
Wrong word.

30

Affliction

I
T WAS THE
way she looked at him.

Lol came in from the scullery.

She was waiting for him in the kitchen. Merrily. Little and dark and not girlish. This quietness around her.

The way she looked at him made him feel sick. The black-eyed dog was with her, like a shadow.

He’d listened to the detective dealing out the questions in a clipped and unsympathetic way that was surely all wrong for getting information out of a kid like Jane. Maybe, wherever the detective had come from, the teenagers she was used to questioning were hard and sullen, you had to be heavy with them. Lol thought Jane had been incredible, the way she’d handled it. So young, so much together.

And then the heavy one.

How well do you know Laurence Robinson?
The question coming over like a missile, making him cringe into the corner of the doorway, a greasy, steel hinge biting into his forehead.

‘OK,’ Merrily said coldly, ‘sit down, Mr Robinson.’

He went and sat in the chair vacated by Jane and then wished he hadn’t; she was looking at him like he was caressing some item of the girl’s underwear.