Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘No, but it has a punchline. Elgar says to the guy, “If ever you’re walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don’t be frightened … it’s only me.”’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Only me, huh?’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Lol said, ‘he didn’t mention the bike.’

Just when you very much needed to talk to your daughter…

MUM. EIRION’S COMING THROUGH EARLY. WILL PICK ME UP. WE NEEDED TO TALK. E. WILL GIVE ME LIFT TO SCHOOL. SEE U TONITE. LOVE, J.

Seven-thirty, Merrily had come stumbling downstairs in her towelling robe and the note was on the kitchen table, suspiciously close to where she’d left her own message yesterday for Jane.

Eirion and Jane needed to talk? We need to talk. Do you want to talk about this? What an ominous cliché talk had become, thanks to TV soaps. It meant cracks, it meant falling apart.

Not that Merrily hadn’t been conscious of a reduced intensity in the Jane/Eirion department. Not so long ago, one of them would phone every night, maybe in the morning, too – on the landline from home, Jane having gone off mobiles because they fried your brain and texting was for little kids.

That was something else: of late, Jane had become kind of Luddite about certain aspects of modern life. A year before leaving school, feeling threatened by change and destruction – was Lol right about that?

And the biggest change was the one affecting her relationship with Eirion – a year ahead of her and about to become a student. Big gap between a university student and a schoolkid. The gap between a child and an adult.

Nearly a year ago, Eirion had been sitting at this very kitchen table, on a summer morning like this, humbly confessing to Merrily that he and her daughter had had sex the night before. Both of them virgins. It had been almost touching.

Merrily put the kettle on, made some toast. Hard not to like Eirion, but liking your daughter’s boyfriend was a sure sign, everybody said, that it wouldn’t last. In an ideal world, Jane would have met Eirion in a few years’ time, when she’d been around a little. But society wasn’t programmed to construct happy endings. Relationships were assembled like furniture kits, and everybody knew how long they lasted.

The sun was swelling in the weepy mist over Cole Hill, evaporating the dew on the meadow. The mystical ley recharging. But Jane was stepping off it, moving safely out of shot.

‘Oh, come on , Jane!’

Eirion lowering the digital camera. A Nikon, naturally. He’d shot the view from the top of Cole Hill and the low mound on the way to the church, the hummock that Jane was convinced was an unexcavated Bronze Age round barrow. And then they’d walked another half-mile and crossed a couple of fields to find the prehistoric standing stone, half-hidden by a hedge and only three feet high but that was as good as you got in this part of the county. Fair play, he’d taken pictures of them all and he hadn’t moaned. Until now.

‘ No .’ Jane flung an arm across her face. ‘For the last time, this is not about me, it’s about—’

‘Yeah, yeah, the balance and harmony of the village and the perpetuation of the legacy of the greatest man ever to come out of Hereford. But I have to tell you, Jane – speaking as a person only a few short years away from a glittering career in the media – that a shot of you, with your firm young breasts straining that flimsy summer-weight school blouse, will be worth at least a thousand extra hits.’

‘You disgust me, Lewis.’

Jane stepped behind a beech tree beside the bottom gate. A mature beech tree, full of fresh, light green life. One of several that would soon be slaughtered in the course of an efficient chainsaw massacre to accommodate twenty-four luxury executive homes.

Eirion tramped towards the tree, along the ley. Stocky, dependable Irene, his Cathedral-school jacket undone, the strap of his camera bag sliding down his arm.

‘Jane, listen, I’m serious. A view means nothing, basically. Just a field with a church steeple in the background? It needs a figure to suggest the line of sight. I’m not kidding. We have to persuade the various earth-mysteries organizations to run this on their sites.’

Eirion had reasoned that, if it was speed she was after, a website was probably not the answer at this stage. What they needed – a whole lot cheaper – was an initial explanatory document which could be emailed to interested parties and influential on-line journals.

Made sense. On that basis, if he shot the pictures this morning, he could have it laid out by late tonight, email her a copy for approval and by this time tomorrow they’d be up and running: the full horror of Coleman’s Meadow disclosed to the world before the weekend. Scores of people – possibly hundreds of people – lodging complaints with Hereford Council. Hundreds of New Age cranks and old hippies telling them exactly where they could put their acceptable infill .

Eirion stood watching her, keeping his distance.

‘What?’ Jane said

‘You clenched your fists. You looked positively homicidal. What have I said now?’

‘Irene, it’s not—’

Jane shook herself. Oh hell. To fit in this shoot, he must’ve been up at five, driving over from Abergavenny about ninety minutes earlier than usual. Face it: how many other guys would do that for you? She felt totally messed up again, her emotions all over the place, hormones in flood. For a moment she felt she just wanted to take him into a corner of the still-dewy meadow and…

… What would it be like making love on a ley? What kind of extra buzz would that produce?

What it would produce would be a golden memory.

‘Jane, are you all right? I mean you’re not ill … ?’

‘Sure. I mean, I’m fine.’

Jane clasped her hands together, driving back the tears. It was no use, she had a battle to fight, against slimy Lyndon Pierce and the chino guys and lofty, patronizing Cliff and the thin woman from Education. The mindless, philistine Establishment.

She sniffed and stepped out from behind the tree and walked back on to the ley, her head lowered.

‘How do you want me to stand?’

‘You’re perfect the way you are.’ Eirion smiled his glowingly honest, unstaged Eirion smile. ‘Just don’t look at me.’

Sophie displaying emotion was a rare phenomenon. When it happened it tended to be minimal: slender smiles, never a belly laugh. Disapproval, rather than…

‘Merrily, that is quite disgusting . It dishonours him.’

Sophie was looking out of the gatehouse window, towards the Cathedral green. There might even have been tears in her eyes.

‘It dishonours all of us.’

It was like you’d vandalized a grave. Spray-painted the headstone, trampled the flowers.

‘He lived in this city for nine years, at the height of his fame. Even after he’d left, he’d come back for the Three Choirs Festival, when it was held here … as it is this year .’

Sophie swung round, her soft white hair close to disarrangement.

‘Do you really want to besmirch that, Merrily?’

‘Me?’

‘I’m sorry, but this is giving credibility to something very sordid.’

She meant the road accidents. Merrily hadn’t even mentioned Hannah Bradley. Just as well, really.

‘Involving the Church in a campaign which might be laudable in itself but is extremely questionable in its execution is … I realize it’s not your fault, but you can stop it going any further.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be quite so … protective?’

‘I’m a former Cathedral chorister, I’m proud of my county’s link with Elgar. His homes at Birchwood and then here in the city. His many connections and friendships at the Cathedral—’