The Wine of Angels (9 page)

‘Get rid o’ this lot, no big problem, Vicar. However, wise not to widen the ditch this side, on account some of these ole graves’ve slipped and slid a bit over the centuries like, and you goes into that bit o’ bank you never quite knows what’s gonner tumble out, you get my meaning.’

‘Oh.’

Merrily imagined ancient bones rattling into the shovel of Gomer’s JCB.

‘As for the other side ... Well, who knows, Vicar, who knows?’

‘Who knows what?’

She hitched up her cassock to bend down and peer into the ditch. A rich, musty smell rose up. She looked across to the other side; the nearest apple tree was a good twenty yards away. Further into the tangly orchard, she was sure she recognized the twisted boughs of the Apple Tree Man and couldn’t suppress a shudder.

Gomer followed her gaze.

‘They won’t do that again, Vicar.’

‘The wassailing? No, I suppose not.’

‘Funny thing, though ... You wanner see the buds on ‘im now.’

‘On the ...?’

Merrily looked at Gomer. Those ridiculous, little round glasses and the often-unlit cigarette, like a baby’s dummy, made it hard to take him seriously.

‘Gonner be ablaze with blossom in a week or two, that ole bugger. You’d’ve sworn he’d given up. Makes you think, don’t it?’

She was chilled.

‘I think I’d rather
not
think. What did you mean just now when you said
who knows?
About the other side of the ditch.’

‘Ah. Well. You gotter ask yourself why the ole orchard’s still there, see. Rod Powell, he en’t a man to keep a worthless bit o’ scrub without there’s a reason for it. Well, a cider apple’s no use for nothin’ but cider, specially them stunted little buggers, and the Powells en’t made but their own in half a century. Rest of the farm’s beef and’ – Gomer growled – ‘battery chickens.’

Merrily, who also disapproved of battery chickens, kept quiet.

‘So you gotter ask yourself, Vicar, why’s he keep that ole orchard?’

‘Sentiment?’ Before the word was out, Merrily felt embarrassed.

‘Superstition.’ Gomer tapped his nose. ‘Them as don’t believe superstition counts for much in the countryside no more en’t never lived yere. Powells put in a bunch of new trees down the bottom end, to please that Cassidy, but Edgar wouldn’t grub up this bit, nor even scrat around too much in there, on account of he knows and all his family knows that there’s ...’

Gomer paused, took off his flat cap. Wild white hair erected itself.

‘... the First Unhallowed Ground.’

Merrily thought she understood, but she wasn’t sure.

‘You dig up decently buried bones, see, well, that’s one thing. You just puts ’em straight back. But any bones the
other
side o’ that ditch ... Now don’t get me wrong, Vicar, I’m not saying I goes for this ole toffee, I’m just telling you the kind of superstition you’ll encounter if you sticks around these parts ... But the bones t’other side, them’s the ones you don’t wanner be diggin’ up, you get my meaning.’

On the other side of a curtain behind the counter was an iron spiral staircase leading up into what seemed like complete darkness, apparently a loft without a window. Jane stuck her head through the curtain.

‘OK, Lol. He’s gone.’

‘You sure?’

The voice was hollow with – Jane was amazed and thrilled – actual, real
fear.
It made her think again about the little crunch before the man had left.

‘Jane?’

‘Yeah, honest. I’m certain. Gave him two minutes, then I went to the end of the mews and he was talking to Colette Cassidy, then he was getting into this pretty smart yellow sports car. Toyota.’

‘He didn’t see you following him?’

‘Not a chance.’

His face appeared at the top of the spiral, blinking from the dark, full of suspicion and ... yeah, anxiety. Definitely that. The lines around his eyes deeper.

‘You know the Cassidy girl?’

‘Only by sight’

He came down. ‘That means you’re local?’ He looked dismayed.

‘I am now,’ Jane said. ‘For my sins.’

She was still feeling rather electrified. This could be the most utterly bloody brilliant place she’d ever lived. Best of all, she felt in control. She’d saved this man from God knows what. He owed her one.

‘So what exactly are we looking at here?’ Jane said loftily. ‘Drugs?’

‘Huh?’ He slumped back on the stool behind the counter, shaking his head. He looked drained, as though he’d spent the last few minutes on the lavatory.

Pretty heavy.

‘Listen.’ Putting on her cynical smile. ‘I might be local now,
Mr Robinson,
but I’ve been around. Like you’re into that guy for some amount you can’t afford, and he wants his money. What are we talking? Coke? Smack?’

‘What?’

Jane said, ‘Es? Whizz?’

‘Huh?’

‘You can tell me.’

‘Oh ...
God.
’ It was probably the last thing he felt like, but he started to laugh. ‘Who the hell
are
you?’

‘Don’t change the subject. My general feeling is, that wasn’t a very nice guy. Underneath all the charm and the Florida tan and the really white teeth. I can sense these things.’

‘He buy anything?’

‘He said he was looking for an old friend. He described you. Puny little guy, long hair, glasses. He said he’d been to your house and asked around and somebody said they’d seen you with Miss Devenish, and this is her shop, so ...’

‘And you said?’

‘I said I didn’t know anybody called Robinson, which was true. I said I couldn’t think who he meant. So he’s like ... Oh, well, he might’ve changed, got fatter, lost his hair. And I’m saying, Well, in that case he could be any one of a dozen people.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Like, I don’t think he believed me that you weren’t here. He said – in this kind of
knowing
way – that if I should just happen to come across you, tell you he’d be back. And he kept like looking at the curtain. As if he was wondering whether to thrust me aside and go in and drag you out.’

God, this was fun. If not so much for Mr Robinson.

‘He say
when
he’d be back?’

‘Nn-nn.’

‘What was his attitude?’

‘Like I said, charming. Lovely white teeth. Capped, I suppose. He imports the stuff, does he?’

‘Look ...’ Mr Robinson pulled hair out of his glasses. ‘He may be into drugs, I wouldn’t know. We are not business associates. He’s what he said he was. An old ... friend. Sort of.’

‘If you think I’m that dumb,’ Jane said loftily, ‘you’re spending too much time with the fairies.’

‘He’s just hard to get rid of. You must’ve had friends like that. That’s all it was. No drugs. Sorry. Oh—’ Alarm doubled back across his face. ‘You say he talked to the Cassidy girl?’

‘Briefly. Like he was asking her the way or something.’

‘Look. Seriously. Jane? You listening? If you see him again, keep out of his way, yeah? Will you promise me that, Jane?’

‘You want me to come and tell you if I see him again?’

‘No! Just stay out of his way. Tell Colette, too ... No, don’t, it’d just get her interested. Leave it. Please. Forget it happened.’

Fatal instruction. ‘Bit bloody one-way, this, if you ask me,’ Jane said.

‘Suppose I give you the dirt on Wil Williams.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Jane said. ‘Change the subject.’

‘It’s one L, by the way,’ Lol said. ‘If you didn’t know. W-I-L. The Welsh way.’

‘All right then,’ Jane said. ‘Wil Williams. One L. And it better be good.’

‘It wasn’t that good for him. But I expect you’ll find it good. It’s spooky. Here, have a notebook to write it down.’

Lol reached up, flipped one from a rack behind him. A quick, nervous thing, as though he was giving his hands something to do to stop them shaking. He laid the notebook on the counter; it had an apple on the front.

‘I’ll pay for it,’ Jane said primly. ‘And what should I do about
this?
’

Opening her left hand over the counter. A tiny fairy looked up, stricken, from her palm, its apple-streaked gossamer wings in shreds, its matchstick spine snapped.

‘Your ... old friend ... knocked it off its perch. Crunched it under his shoe on his way out. Pretended not to notice, but I think he did.’

Both Lol’s hands were behind his back now. He bit his lip.

After the lady vicar had gone, Gomer Parry was down the ditch dragging some of the brambles away, sizing up the job, when the shadow fell across him.

‘What d’you think of her, Gomer?’

The hooked nose under the hat. Like some old eagle, she was.

‘The vicar? ‘Er’s all right, Lucy. Nice little girl. Don’t throw the Ole Feller in your face the whole time.’

‘
Nice little girl.
Pshaw! You know what I’m asking, Gomer. Is she strong?’

‘’Er gonner need t’be, Lucy?’

‘She’s a woman.’

‘Never thought to hear that comin’ from you.’

‘Because you don’t know what I mean, do you?’

Gomer tried to climb out of the ditch, slipped back, and she offered him a hand and pulled him out easy as this hydraulic winch he used to have.

‘What did you talk about? When you were looking out to the orchard?’

Ah, watching them, was she? ‘This an’ that,’ Gomer said. ‘Number of buds in the Apple Tree Man kind of thing.’

‘The Apple Tree Man?’ Face near black against the light. ‘Heaven save us, there’s no such damn thing as the Apple Tree Man! Not
here.
That’s Somersetshire lore. Ours is a different tradition altogether. You should know that. No apple tree man, no guns.’

‘Well, pardon me,’ Gomer said, ‘for bein’ just a humble plant-hire operative.’

‘It’s
important,
Gomer. These clowns move in with their twisted interpretations, and we wake up one day and we’re living in a different place – a fantasy village. It’s what happens when you get too much change too quickly. This was a terribly poor place when I was a child – miserable farm wages, children still in rags. Now it’s damn near the richest village in the county. Looks beautifully authentic, but it’s a sham. And do they care, the locals, what’s left of them? Do they hell.’

‘Money’s money,’ Gomer said, winding her up, see where this was heading. ‘Shops doin’ well. Plenty jobs for plumbers, builders, carpenters, the ole rural craftsmen. Why should they care?’

‘It’s false wealth, you know that.
Cider
was Ledwardine’s wealth, and it dried up long ago.’

‘But hang on yere, Lucy, if this Mr Cassidy’s out to
revive
it—

‘In his dilettante, touristy fashion.’

Gomer studied her. She’d never been what you’d call pretty, but there was a time when she could’ve had her pick of men. And, from what he’d heard, she’d picked a fair few in her time and thrown them back a bit more out-of-breath than they might’ve reckoned on. But time passed.

‘Well’ He fished out his ciggy. ‘I wouldn’t know what that means, dilly-whatever ... me bein’ just an ill-educated plant-hire man, like. But it do strike me, Lucy, as you’re bein’ a bit of a wosname in the manger. Cause you din’t think of it yourself, you don’t wannit to work. Same with the festival. You feels ... what the word? Sidelined.’

Lucy Devenish blinked and brought a hand to her face, and for one terrible moment, Gomer feared she had a tear coming. But she used the hand to straighten her hat.

‘What I feel, Gomer,’ she said, ‘especially when I stand on this side of the churchyard, is a certain fear for your nice little girl.’

6

Cold in the House of God

M
ERRILY WALKED SOFTLY
into the darkening church, still hesitant, still unsure.

‘Do you know what I couldn’t do?’ her mother had said a couple of years ago. ‘I couldn’t go into one of those old churches alone at night. Spooky. Anybody could be in there: tramps, rapists. That’s another reason why it isn’t a job for a woman, in my view.’

Least of my problems, Merrily thought, still half-afraid that she would be met by a chill of hostility, a cavernous yawn of disapproval.

It had all been too easy, so far. Respectable congregations (all right, curiosity, novelty value). Sermons which seemed to write themselves, even in the hotel room at midnight. No dark looks in the street, no suspicious stares.

And not even inducted yet. Apart from reducing the number of hymns, she hadn’t even started on what she planned. Although she didn’t, to be honest, know what form it was going to take yet.

It still didn’t feel quite real, this was the problem. Staying in a hotel – even when you had to drive into Hereford at night to use the launderette – created this illusion of a holiday. Perhaps when they moved into the vicarage, reality would set in.

She wasn’t looking forward to that; the vicarage was too big to be a home; it scared her far more than the church.