To Dream of the Dead (29 page)

‘I always think graves are for us, not the dead. Lucy’s grave . . . Jane thinks it’s on an energy line. A spirit path.’

‘Well, that’s Jane, isn’t it?’

‘If it gives her energy . . .’

‘What about this house?’

‘Who knows? I only got it because the last people moved out after a short time. Claiming it was haunted.’

‘But you . . .?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Maybe Miss Devenish is happy you’re here.’ Eirion drank some cider. ‘God, listen to me, I’ve not been here half an hour and I’m talking like Jane already.’

‘But I’m always conscious that if I slip back, she’ll bloody well manifest with that hooked nose and the eagle eyes and the poncho flapping . . .’

‘Steady on, Lol.’ Eirion shuddered, put the bottle down. ‘Slip back how?’

‘Or it’s like I’m only allowed to stay here for some purpose.’ Lol sat down on the hard chair at the desk in the window. ‘Anyway . . . I’ve been putting these songs together.’

He told Eirion about Christmas Eve at the Black Swan and the suite of songs illustrating elements of what Lucy had called the Ledwardine Orb.

‘Traherne . . . Wil Williams, the 17th-century vicar here who was accused of witchcraft . . . Alfred Watkins, who discovered leys . . . his friend Edward Elgar, the composer who turned the landscape into music . . . and Lucy, who bound it all together.’

‘How many songs?’

‘Five so far, three more in the works. And a reworking of Nick Drake’s “Fruit Tree”, which seemed appropriate. Apple trees . . . change and decay. Mortality.’

‘Nearly enough for an album. Hey . . .’ Eirion’s eyes lighting up. ‘This is actually the second solo album? The sequel to
Alien
?’

‘Maybe, if I can pull it off, I won’t be an alien any more.’

‘Like you’ll’ve landed?’

Lol shrugged, uncertainly.

‘Sounds a bit pathetic, doesn’t it? As for playing the songs for the first time in public, in the Black Swan on Christmas Eve . . .’

‘Bollocks!’ Eirion played a ringing C7th. ‘The heart of the village. Couldn’t be better, man. It was meant.’

‘You could almost think that,’ Lol said. ‘I came down this morning and the book of Traherne’s selected poems and prose was lying on the desk. The one Lucy gave me. Lying just there. No memory of getting it down from the shelf. Picked it up and it fell open at
You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens
. . .’

‘. . .
and crowned with the stars
.’ Eirion looked momentarily embarrassed. ‘Jane used to . . .’

Quote it when they were in bed, probably, Lol thought. Very Jane.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’re just the bloke with a guitar in the corner on Christmas Eve, nobody listens, and I’ve realised I want them to. Want the incomers to know about this stuff – it’s a bit of a white-settlers’ pub, the Swan. Even if they say
This is crap
, I want them to listen. So . . . I was thinking I could use back-projection? They’ve got some kit at the Swan, and Jane has this collection of old photos of Ledwardine – and some new photos of Cole Hill, taken by you, I believe . . .’

‘I look at them often,’ Eirion said. ‘Too often, really. Especially the one of Jane with her blouse . . .
but
, you don’t need to know this.’

‘So would you be able to take care of that aspect? Make sure the right pictures come up on the screen behind me at the right time? Also, with one song, I need to use a recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. I’ll need fingers on mixers.’

‘Hey . . .’ Eirion put down the guitar. ‘Look no further, Lol. Jane, too? Me and Jane?’

‘Well . . . hopefully.’

Eirion stiffened. ‘Lol, she is OK, isn’t she? There’s not something about Jane you aren’t telling me?’

Lol went to the window. Dusk was forming. There were no lights upstairs in the vicarage.

‘Oh my God, there’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Eirion said. ‘I felt it as soon as I walked on to the drive.’

‘Eirion . . .’ Lol turned round; he wasn’t good at this. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure.’

‘Listen, you might as well tell me.’ Eirion had gone pale. ‘Is it this fucking Neil Cooper?’

An hour or so later, with night wrapping itself around the village like an old grey coat, Jane and Eirion went down to the river with a lamp.

The air seemed to be throbbing with unshed rain. Merrily and Lol went back into the vicarage and sat in the kitchen.

‘I hope he gets more sense out of her than I did,’ Merrily said.

T
HE RIVER WAS
in an angry world of his own, heaving himself up against the arch of the bridge. Jane tried to get into his mindset; sometimes anger was a lifeline.

‘You think there’s room for someone like me in journalism?’

They were heading for the riverside footpath which did a half circuit of the village before veering off and ending up, like all the Ledwardine paths did, in one of the old orchards. Despite the growing darkness, Jane was walking fast and hard.

‘Don’t like the sound of that.’ Eirion scrabbling after her, not really dressed for this, looking fairly respectable for Mum. ‘Why would you suddenly want to get into journalism?’

‘Because you get to . . .’ Jane didn’t stop, climbing over the stile leading to the riverside footpath ‘. . . shaft people?’

She heard Eirion sigh, glanced quickly back at him. She’d always been on at him to lose weight but now he had, it was wrong. His face was leaner, more streetwise, less vulnerable, less . . . manageable.

Jane held the lamp and watched him climb over the stile without stumbling. In the old days he’d have stumbled. She turned and started walking away, against the flow of the river. The other side of it, the lights had come on, the big red Santa plumping out like some gross cyst from the wall of a new bungalow on what Gomer Parry called
the hestate
.

‘See, I used to think that was a pretty shoddy thing to do, but now I realise some people deserve it.’

‘Well, yeah, obviously,’ Eirion said, ‘but—’

‘Really arrogant people? Bastards who destroy other people without a thought?’

The rushing river beside her was brown with churned-up silt and gassy like cheap draught bitter. Eirion stopped.

‘So we’re talking about Professor Blore, are we?’

Jane kept on walking, forcing him to come after her. She wished it would start raining, give her an excuse for looking messed-up. Bloody rain, always there except when you needed some.

‘Blore?’

Eirion shouting like maybe she hadn’t heard. A bit out of breath now, she noticed. So he wasn’t doing gym, just missing meals.

‘Why would it be?’ Jane said.

‘Because when you rang last night to set this up, it was like, Oh
Bill Blore’s
going to save the Meadow, Bill Blore and me, Bill
Blore
who’s like totally cool and—’

‘
Shut up, you—!
’

Jane spun and stumbled, one foot going down the river bank, Eirion trying to grab her but she reeled away, fell on her bum on the soaking grass.

‘Oh, Jane . . .’

‘I need to rethink my future, OK?’ Jane refusing his hand, refusing to get up, feeling sick and stupid. ‘It’s no big deal. There are loads of other careers. No big deal. The world’s my . . . hairball.’

Blinking back tears like some little kid, an auto-reaction to the unexpected.

‘It is, Jane.’ Eirion standing with his arms by his sides now, shaking his head. ‘It’s a bloody great mega-deal. You had it all sorted. You knew totally where you were going. You couldn’t understand why you hadn’t spotted the obvious.’

‘I can make a mistake.’

‘Yeah, but you usually can’t bring yourself to admit it, which is why this is so totally . . . What happened? What did Blore do? Is he still around?’

‘Dunno.’

‘I mean, I can go and ask
him
. Corner him in the pub. Get him up against a wall, like, what’ve you done to my . . .?’

Behind Jane, the river surged and frothed, pitiless. But Eirion had dried up. God, he didn’t know what to call her any more:
My former girlfriend
?
My ex
?

She was shocked.

Eirion came and sat down next to her on the sodden grass in what was clearly a new jacket – worse, new trousers.

‘Start at the beginning,’ he said.

The hestate behind them now, they were walking more slowly, hand in hand, like thirteen-year-olds on a first date. Or at least like thirteen-year-olds did when Jane was thirteen. Five years ago . . . hell, that was a long time ago. So much pressure to grow up fast, pressure to put your life into a Jiffy bag, tick the boxes, meet the targets. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

‘He did exactly what he said he was going to do.’ Jane took a steadying breath. ‘Shot me.’

Eirion looked at her, up and down, like for exit wounds.

‘Can’t say I wasn’t warned, Irene. Like, Coops had said he was probably going to be in a crap mood. He said it was best not to approach him afterwards.’

‘Coops.’

‘Neil Cooper. County archaeologist guy?’

‘I know who you mean,’ Eirion said.

‘A friend, Irene. That’s all. Married.’

‘I’m sorry. Go on.’

‘I
didn’t
approach Blore, I really didn’t. I was just, like, standing around, and I could see him keep looking at me, like he was trying to remember who I was and what I was doing here. So I just kind of smiled and didn’t go over. I mean, it wasn’t just me, everybody was giving him a wide berth. The students, the camera crew . . .’

‘He’s an archaeologist, Jane, not bloody Brad Pitt.’

‘He’s a
distinguished
archaeologist. He has an entourage – students and . . . what’s the word . . . like fossils?’

‘Acolytes?’

‘Yeah. So then this other guy was there who wasn’t supposed to be. This dowser, with his divining rods?’

A man Jane remembered from a meeting of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society last summer. Schoolteacher-looking guy with grey hair and a white beard. A member of the British Society of Dowsers, who said he’d used his rods and his pendulum to track the ley line – the
energy
line – from Cole Hill to the church. Telling Jane to point out to Mum that the energy passed directly
through the pulpit and if she ever felt in need of spiritual fuel for a sermon she need only become aware of the line and energy would flow through her. And then telling Jane – like he’d once put in an email – that Coleman’s Meadow had a site-guardian attached to it, some kind of elemental force, and anyone who tried to damage it could expect a hard time.

‘I mean, he wasn’t doing anything
bad
. Just walking round with these copper dowsing rods. He’d been waiting there since first light, apparently. Told Coops he’d been waiting weeks to get into the site, see if the line corresponded to his calculations or whatever.’

‘I had a go at that once,’ Eirion said. ‘Dowsing. Farmer near us hired this bloke to tell him where to sink a borehole. It works, I think, but that was underground water, not . . . earth energy.’

‘Same thing.’ Jane looked at the river. ‘That’s
serious
energy. Anyway, Coops said this guy could have ten minutes. Just don’t get in the way and remember that he couldn’t come in after they’d started the dig. He was this really polite, inoffensive guy, you know?’

Eirion nodded.

‘So he must’ve had his ten minutes, and he was just walking back towards the gate, following whatever his rods were picking up, when Bill Blore practically walks into him. He’s just like standing in his path, like looming over him? And he’s, like, what are you doing on my site? And the guy like smiles and starts explaining about the energy line, and then Bill Blore says has he ever calculated how far a dowsing rod would go up his arse before it—’

Eirion winced.

‘And looking like he . . . like he wanted to actually do it? And then . . . I was outside the gate with Coops, staying out of the way, so he hadn’t seen me, and he goes, Where’s that fucking girl? Let’s get all the shit out of the way, then we can do some work.’

‘So that’s when you left, is it?’ Eirion said.

‘No,’ Jane said. ‘That’s when I
should
’ve left.’

It was that feeling of being locked into destiny. That it was all
meant
. That the secret of Coleman’s Meadow would have remained undiscovered, if
she
hadn’t come here.

Arrogance. She was just as bad as Bill Blore, who . . .

‘. . . said we just hadn’t got time to go to the top of Cole Hill with
the crew. Well, I should’ve realised then. How could I explain how I first, like,
perceived
the line, if I couldn’t stand up there, in the Iron Age ramparts and point to the steeple and the impression of the path across the meadow. You need to see it.’

‘Maybe he was thinking they could get some shots from up there afterwards,’ Eirion said. ‘Or from a helicopter. So they could overlay your description of it with the pictures.’

‘Yeah, that’s what he said. Don’t worry about it, they could overlay it. Whatever, I went along with it and they decided to record it on the edge of the meadow, by the gate, and he’s like, “So tell us how you first became interested in Coleman’s Meadow.” And I’m trying to explain, the best I could with nothing to point to.’

Telling him about discovering Alfred Watkins’s seminal work
The Old Straight Track
and realising how magically this line fitted Watkins’s concept of ley lines, which actually made a lot more sense than some people wanted to admit.’

Magically
. Bill Blore nodding.
I see
.

Jane telling him that of course she knew how archaeologists had rubbished Watkins and ley lines both, back in the 1920s, and how it was lucky they were so much more open-minded now.

‘And Bill Blore’s like . . . he’s just standing there with this kind of sardonic smile on his face?’

Occasionally shaking his head, slowly. There were two cameras, one on Jane, one on him. And this director guy, Mike, who was talking more to the camera guys than to Blore, giving them signals and stuff. And, of course, there were all these students gathered round, about six of them.