To Dream of the Dead (39 page)

He leaned back, took a long breath. Well, why not?

Why the fuck not?

He wrenched the car out of the mud at the fourth attempt and put on his lights. He didn’t know if this was going to be right, but
knew he wouldn’t sleep now if he didn’t go for it, and the thought of dragging himself back to the empty house at Marden, back to the pile of Chrissie cards on the mat, the spread of white envelopes with a few red ones, like blood in the snow . . .

On the way to Leominster, he crawled through five pools of flash-flood in the road. He passed twenty-seven houses and bungalows with Christmas lights all over their walls and wrapped around trees and chimneys. Didn’t know why he counted them.

Once, disgracefully, he pulled in to the side of the road and wept and almost turned back.

In Leominster, there was no flooding, and no lights at all in or outside the Victorian three-storey terraced house where Charlie Howe lived.

T
HERE WAS, INEVITABLY,
an element of ceremonial. Merrily had slipped out of her wet shoes in the stone and panelled hall, and that seemed symbolic now, as Al Boswell laid the wooden case on the long oak table below a big copper lantern.

Al must know there was no time to waste. Although the River Frome seemed to be staying within its banks, the duck pond in front of the Hop Museum was brimming, the green and gold gypsy caravan up to its axles in water darker than beer.

‘We didn’t think you’d come,’ Sally Boswell said. ‘Nobody should be out on a night like this.’

Sally’s long white hair was down. Al was spindly and ageless, like some woodland sprite, Sally the lovely mortal he’d abducted by means of Romani magic.

‘The
drukerimaskri
?’ Al said. ‘Of course we knew she would come.’

He’d had the guitar ready for her. She’d expected him to take her down to his workshop, through the exhibition of hop-growing memorabilia, old pictures of the Romani who had travelled to the Frome Valley for the annual hop harvest. But Al had known there wasn’t time.

When he opened the case, the strings of the lute-shaped dark-wood guitar shivered in a draught from somewhere.

‘God, Al, it’s so . . .’

Merrily leaned over the case but didn’t touch. The air felt fresh after the stifling Cole Barn, and the night felt unreal, as if she’d become part of some mythic saga involving the lost lyre of Orpheus or something.

‘It’s too dim in here,’ Al said, ‘but if you look into the soundhole
when you get it home, you will see, in the wood below it, a quite perfectly proportioned cross.’

‘You did that?’

‘No, no.’ Al laughed lightly. ‘The cross was naturally in the grain, and I placed it under the soundhole. In your honour. Would you like to bless the instrument before you take it away?
Drukerimaskri
?’

Romani for a woman priest.

Al bowed and straightened up, spreading his arms, revealing the golden lettering on his black sweatshirt:

Boswell Guitars. The Lute of the Frome.

‘I think,’ Sally said briskly, ‘that we can consider the instrument to be blessed already and not delay Merrily any longer. It’s a terribly cruel night. I heard on the radio that all the bed-and-breakfast places in Hereford were full because of people trapped in the city. How will they get home for Christmas? How will
you
get home, Merrily?’

‘I don’t need to go through Hereford.’

‘You should have waited until tomorrow.’

‘Couldn’t. I’ve too much on and, besides . . . he’s doing a concert at the Swan in Ledwardine tomorrow night. His first. He’s a bit worried about it, playing on his own doorstep and I thought . . . Well, I was going to give this to him on Christmas Day, but . . .’

‘You’ve driven across the hell that is Herefordshire on the worst night of the year.’ Al’s eyes lit up and his face split like a polished wooden puppet’s into a crooked but radiant smile. ‘This is love, I think.’

‘Yes. I—’

‘But you’re worried.’

‘This and that.’

She’d put Cole Barn on hold to concentrate on the road, getting the guitar back home.

Al studied her.

‘Tell me . . . where does Nick Drake come into this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Merrily felt a small seepage of alarm in her stomach. ‘I mean, apart from him being Lol’s original inspiration. But you knew that, didn’t you?’

‘Of course he knew that,’ Sally said. ‘Al’s anything but psychic.’

‘Alas, she’s right. Disregard my whimsy.’ Al closed the guitar case, held it out to her like a sheaf of flowers. ‘Take her home.’

‘Al, you’ll have to hold on to her while I get my chequebook out.’

‘Pay me after Christmas,’ Al said. ‘As the sofa retailers say.’

‘Absolutely not. Just tell me how much. It’s not a problem. I’ve some money put by—’

‘I haven’t yet decided on a suitable price,’ Al said.

‘Please. Let’s not quarrel about this. I want to pay the proper price and Lol would want that, too. Especially Lol, because of . . . what happened to the other one.’

‘Ah, yes. The man who had it smashed, as a warning. Leave a hundred pounds in cash on the table. Do you have a hundred pounds? If not, fifty will do. Don’t cross me,
drukerimaskri
, or the curse will come down, and you know how good we are at this.’

‘I do have a hundred pounds, but . . . it’s just a deposit, Al.’

‘There we are, then.’ Al thrust the guitar case at her and then sprang back, laughing, all limbs, like a grasshopper. ‘Tell me . . . does Laurence feel guilt, because the young man died unfulfilled, unrecognised, and now Laurence is . . . almost halfway famous?’

‘Nick Drake?’ Merrily said. ‘You’re talking about Nick Drake again?’

She wasn’t about to say that Lol had seen the destruction of the Boswell, the finest handmade acoustic guitar in the country, as a sign of his unworthiness. A confirmation that he’d never be as good as Nick Drake.

‘Leave it, Al,’ Sally said, and Merrily was grateful.

Before she left the Hop Museum, she put down all the notes in her wallet without counting them.

‘A deposit, Al.’

Before she drove away into the cold, liquid night, she sat in the back seat with the guitar case across her knees and, without thinking too hard about whether this was right or reasonable, she asked God to bless the Boswell.

In Lol’s house, Jane sat with Eirion next to the wood stove in the mouth of the inglenook, sipping hot chocolate, listening to Lol’s new music.

Can melting sugar sweeten wine?
Can light communicated keep its name?
Can jewels solid be, though they do shine?
From fire rise a flame
?

Her back almost touching the stove, Jane felt this odd, warm shimmer as Lol’s voice rose to meet a high guitar note. Lol sat on the edge of the sofa, looking apprehensive, the guitar on its stand under the window.

The room was lit by a fat candle on the low table, the music crisp and real, from the stereo. Lol had made demos on mini-disc of most of the new songs. He could do concerts now, even fairly intimate folk-club-type gigs, but he was still too shy to play live in front of friends. Like he felt that people who knew him would see through the songs to all the flaws in his character, his weaknesses.

Crazy?

Not when you knew the Lol Robinson story. Barely twenty and convicted of sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old girl while on tour with Hazey Jane. An offence actually committed, while Lol was asleep, by the band’s bass-player, who’d walked away, leaving Lol on probation, unjustly disgraced, disowned by his creepy Pentecostalist parents, swallowed by the psychiatric system. His career wrecked, his spirit smashed.

It was Jane’s mum who’d finally brought him out of the past. But before he even knew Mum, Lucy Devenish had begun to reassemble him. Lucy and the poems of Thomas Traherne, who’d seen the essence of paradise in this border landscape. Found happiness.
Felicity
.

Before dying at thirty-seven.

Which meant that Lol was older than Traherne now. Oh God, nothing was ever perfect, nothing was easy.

Thus honey flows from rocks of stone
Thus oil from wood, thus cider, milk and wine
From trees and flesh . . . thus corn from earth
. . .

He’d turned three of Traherne’s 17th-century poems into songs, and it couldn’t have been easy at all; they all had strange, archaic rhythms.

‘We can illustrate this no problem,’ Eirion said. ‘I’ve got dozens of pictures from last summer that we shot along the ley. All very lush and pastoral. It’s the Elgar stuff I’m not sure about. Maybe I could download some pictures from the Net. Could I hear that again, Lol?’

Lol located it on the disc. The song was just called ‘Elgar’, dealing with the composer’s thoughts as he lay dying, but it wasn’t morbid; it was, in the end, uplifting.

When it was over, Lol said, ‘People misunderstood Elgar for years, thought he was too grand. Just an ordinary guy, lower middle-class. Insecure . . .’

‘Right.’

Jane was getting a real feel for this now, how it all tied in. Elgar had been a friend of Alfred Watkins and had actually had his picture taken with Watkins in what was almost certainly Coleman’s Meadow. Lol had written a new song about Alfred Watkins, using lines from the seminal
Old Straight Track
set to this kind of chugging, pulsing rhythm, like you were following a ley on foot, the music speeding up as you reached what Jane was certain had to be Cole Hill at sunrise, midsummer.

Whether some of the crass bastards who drank and dined at the Black Swan would get any of this was anybody’s guess and, for a moment, Jane could hear it all being drowned out by whoops and laughter and inane chat.

And then realised she was actually hearing voices. Raised. Outside the window. Raised voices, excitement. Or panic.

Lol stood up, turned the music down and went over to the window, wiping off condensation with his sleeve.

‘Something seems to have happened.’

Merrily had taken what seemed to be the safe route, through Bromyard, but who could tell? The entrances to several side roads were blocked by portable signs, some of them semi-submerged.

FLOOD
ROAD CLOSED

She flicked the wipers to double speed, driving like a learner first time out, hands on the wheel at ten to two, unblinking, the radio on low. Halfway to Leominster, the Radio Hereford and Worcester all-night flood special said,

‘. . .
And if you’ve just tuned in and you’re heading into Hereford from the south on the Abergavenny or Ross roads, police advise turning back because the Belmont roundabout has now been closed. Belmont roundabout
is
closed
.’

Not good. Halfway to becoming the Isle of Hereford.

The wipers strained and the surface water tugged at the wheels, but she made it around Tenbury Wells, its town-centre streets turned into canals, according to the radio.

‘
They knew this was coming, look
,’ a caller to the station said, ‘
and they’ve never spent a penny on flood prevention. When was this river last cleaned out? Tell me that
.’

Merrily switched off the radio. Getting repetitive, the litany of recrimination. She followed a silver container lorry at 25 m.p.h. all the way to Leominster. The town centre was clear, its lights dulled, its swilled streets empty. She drove up the hill towards the roundabout beyond Morrisons supermarket. There was little traffic. She thought she saw Frannie Bliss’s yellow Honda Civic, same blue sticker in the rear window, parked at the side of the road, but it couldn’t have been.

Back into the countryside. Only ten minutes from home now, in normal conditions. Water was pumping out of the fields into the basin of the road, and the rain ricocheted from the tarmac like a thousand plucked stitches in the headlights.

On the passenger seat the mobile chimed.

Merrily drove up onto the grass verge, kept the engine running, watching the silver container lorry disappearing between dirty curtains of rain.

‘Go on then,’ Huw Owen said. ‘Let’s hear it. What happened at Stooke’s place?’

All the way to Knights Frome and all the way back she’d been blanking this out. It needed a cool head.

‘I was going to call you when I got a bit nearer home. I can’t park here, Huw, I’ll have to—’

‘Christ, you’re not bloody well out in this, are you? It’s just I rang your landline but t’machine were on.’

‘I had to go and see someone. I’ll find somewhere and call you back.’

‘Just get home.’

‘No, we do need to talk about this. Give me two minutes.’

B
LISS WATCHED HIM
walking stiffly down the pavement, leaning only slightly on his aluminium crutch. Once, he stopped and lifted it up to point at something. Only Charlie Howe could make a lightweight crutch look like a twelve-bore.

Bliss was relieved to see him. At least somebody was coming home tonight.

Just a chat, Charlie, one to one. Only way to deal with this. Get the elephant out of the toilet cubicle
.

Charlie was under a big black umbrella held by a woman with big blonde hair. Not
young
young but had to be a good thirty years younger than Charlie. About Annie’s age, in fact. Annie’s mother, Bliss had heard, was like Cleopatra – ancient history.

As well as the brolly, the woman was carrying a plastic carrier bag with what looked like bottles in it. Bliss guessed they’d been to Morrisons. Maybe Charlie had even met her there; supermarkets were good for pick-ups.

Whoever she was, she’d need to be persuaded to leave them alone for an hour. Bliss got out of the car as they went in through Charlie’s gate, up the short path to the front door, where Charlie started fumbling in his pocket for his keys.

Bliss trotted up behind.

‘Hold your crutch, Charlie?’