Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

Holliday was back on his feet, making it clear that the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group, now extending to at least four other communities in the area, would be dissociating itself from any course of action designed to legitimize superstition.

‘And indeed, Chairman, the very idea of suggesting that the ghost of Sir Ed—’

Clack . The end of his sentence was chipped off by the gavel.

‘ The cyclist , sir, if you please. There’ll be no ridiculous conjecture in my meeting.’

‘The idea that the story of the cyclist –’ Holliday smirked ‘– would generate wider publicity for our campaign now seems…’ He coughed. ‘It seems clear to me that this would succeed only in leaving us open to ridicule.’

‘But you thought about it, didn’t you, Leonard?’ Devereaux said.

‘It did occur to me, yes, I’m rather ashamed to say, and I’ve now rejected it.’

‘Very wise of you, sir.’ Devereaux smiled. ‘Now, I think we have a proposal…’

A man stood up.

‘I’d like to propose that, in the wake of the weekend’s fatality, we renew our call to the County Council and the police for the installation of speed cameras.’

‘Right, proposal by Mr Sedgefield, of The Wellhouse.’

‘Seconded,’ another guy said without getting up. ‘Perhaps they’ll capture this bloody ghost on film – then we’d all be able to see it.’

Laughter. Preston Devereaux gavelled for silence, letting his smile fade.

‘I don’t really see there’s much more we can do than that. But before I close the meeting, regarding the very regrettable incident involving myself at the weekend, several people have asked me two questions which, with the meeting’s permission, I’d like to answer publicly tonight. Question one: no, I’m glad to say I was not hurt, for which I have to thank the famously robust physique of the British Land Rover. I very much wish, mind, that I’d been in my ordinary car – might’ve been able to get out of the way in time and the whole thing might’ve been less serious. But fate decided otherwise. Therefore, I’d like to propose that the whole community join me in expressing our condolences to the families of the two young people. Because, whatever some of us may think about the Royal Oak…’

Subdued murmurs were lifted by the church’s crisp acoustics into a substantial expression of assent.

‘Good,’ Preston Devereaux said. ‘Now … question two. Simple answer: no, of course I bloody didn’t!’

Laughter. Devereaux half-rose.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now, unless anyone has something to add, I’d like to formally close this meet— I’m sorry, was that a hand at the back?’

‘Yes, if I could just…’

She’d probably regret this later, Merrily thought, but you could only stand so much of this kind of crap.

She stood up, pulling down her zip.

The admonishing angel in her head looked a lot like Sophie.

‘Oh, wow, look over there…’

Jane was standing on the massive, half-collapsed capstone, this huge jutting wedge. She was gazing to the south-west, the evening light thickly around her like the pith of some vast luminous orange, and she felt that if she jumped off now she’d go on flying, in a dead straight line to the crooked mountain on the horizon.

Arthur’s Stone was the most impressive prehistoric monument in Herefordshire. It crouched like a dinosaur skeleton on Merbach Hill, above the Golden Valley, which melted like grilled cheese into Wales. Arthur’s Stone was not one stone but many … the remains of a dolmen or cromlech, a Bronze Age burial chamber which had once been covered with earth.

Alfred Watkins had found several leys passing through here, connecting it with country churches and unexcavated burial mounds and the remains of a medieval castle on an ancient hilltop site at Snodhill.

And if you stood where Jane was standing, on top of the monument, you could see, in misty profile…

‘It’s the Skirrid, isn’t it?’ Eirion said.

Like he could fail to recognize the holy mountain of Gwent, which he could see every day from his bedroom window just like Jane could see Cole Hill. The volcanic mountain cleft in two, according to legend, at the moment when Christ died on the cross.

Lying in Eirion’s bed in the heat of the afternoon Jane had found herself visualizing the elemental force that split the mountain just as…

Oh God, was that some kind of sacrilege?

The day replayed itself in her memory: one of those wild, hazy days when you weren’t aware of how magical it had been until it was nearly over.

She’d persuaded Eirion not to go to school – school hardly mattered at his stage of the game, A levels over, future in the lap of the gods. They’d gone back to his dad’s place at Abergavenny and compiled the Coleman’s Meadow document on his computer, with the photos and quotes from The Old Straight Track . Eirion had rewritten Jane’s rant, draining off some of the vitriol, and, she had to admit, it now seemed more rational and convincing. And then, with his dad and his stepmother safely away at the same conference in North Wales, they’d gone to bed.

Afterwards, she’d tried to ring Mum at the vicarage to imply subtly, without actually lying, that Eirion was picking her up from school. But Mum wasn’t there, and the mobile was switched off most of the time. And then she’d remembered that Mum was going to be at a meeting over on the other side of the county for most of the evening, which left her and Eirion whole hours to go in search of the old straight track.

Eirion, in his post-coital whatever mood, had been cool about it, so they’d started off by looking for Alfred Watkins himself. First and foremost a Herefordshire man , it had said in his obituary in the Hereford Times in 1935, as native to the county as the hop and the apple .

Jane had found that in the Watkins biography by Ron Shoesmith, which had taken them in search of Vineyard Croft, the house near the River Wye, on the edge of the city, where Alfred had lived for about thirty years with his wife, Marion. But they couldn’t find it; they found a Vineyard Road, but it seemed all suburbs around there now. It was much easier to locate the house the Watkinses had moved to, just off the Cathedral green. It actually had a plaque on it, identifying its importance – probably the nearest thing to a monument to Alfred in the entire county.

‘There ought to be an official Watkins memorial ley,’ Eirion had said. ‘Where you can stand and have the whole line pointed out for you.’

‘So that even councillors could see what it was about?’

‘They’d only be able to follow it if it was marked out in new branches of Asda and B & Q.’

We really understand each other, don’t we? Jane thought. And in a few weeks he’ll be gone.

She felt very close to tears and climbed down from the stone before she was tempted to throw herself into the horizon.

In the normal way of things, you were consulted by worried individuals whose world-view had been jogged out of focus – frightened people mugged by skewed circumstance. Since yours was the only hand reaching out they switched off their scepticism and clasped it.

Always individuals. Never a community, a society, a committee. In any random group, scepticism ruled.

‘I’m confused, Mr Chairman,’ Merrily said.

‘Can’t have that.’ Preston Devereaux peered into the growing gloom. ‘I pride myself on clarity. May we have your name, madam?’

‘I’m, erm, Merrily Watkins.’

‘Are you indeed?’

‘I’m a consultant to the Diocese of Hereford on matters … paranormal. And…’ she saw Joyce Aird had turned, looking both grateful and worried ‘… the Rector asked me to come tonight.’