Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘Please, Gomer…’

Gomer made her wait until he’d rolled his ciggy. He was wearing his green overalls and his Doc Martens and a new work cap that looked pretty much like the old one and probably the one before that.

‘Ole churchyard’s gonner need doin’ twice a week soon.’

‘ Gomer! ’

Gomer did his gash of a grin, the little ciggy clamped between his teeth.

‘En’t no rocket science, Janey. Councillors … all this on the election leaflets about directin’ their skills for the good o’ the community … load of ole wallop, and they knows it and they knows you knows it.’

Gomer sniffed the air.

‘Well, all right, mabbe ’bout thirty per cent of ’em is straight- ish . Or, at least, when they first gets elected. Don’t last, see, that’s the trouble. All them good intentions goes down the toilet soon as they gets a chance of a slap o’ free tarmac for their path, or their ole ma needs plannin’ permission for a big extension to the house what her’s gonner leave ’em when her snuffs it. So all I’m sayin’ is, if you has to have dealings with your local councillor, best way’s to start off assumin’ he’s bent. Saves time.’

‘But, like, Lyndon Pierce, specifically … ?’

‘Lyndon Pierce, he en’t the sort of feller gets hisself elected juss so’s he can call hisself Councillor Pierce.’

‘Well, yeah, I realize councillors are always taking bribes from builders and people like that, so the chances are Pierce is getting a bung to make sure the Coleman’s Meadow scheme—’

‘Janey—’

Gomer started coughing, snatching his ciggy out of his mouth.

‘I’m only saying that to you , Gomer. I’m not going to shout it all over the village, am I?’

‘You don’t even whisper it, girl, less you got the proof.’

Gomer took off his glasses, blotted his watering eyes on his sleeve. Jane bit a thumbnail, dismayed. Reticence was not his style. Gomer did not do restraint.

She stood there, chewing her nail. Since Minnie died, Gomer had become almost family, which was cool, because he was good to have around – like a grandad, only better. Well past normal retirement age now, but he’d never given up work. Kept his plant-hire business going with the help of Danny Thomas, dug graves for Mum with his mini-JCB, free of charge, treated the churchyard like his own garden.

And the great thing about Gomer was that he was … untamed . Untamed by age. In a way that made you think there might actually be something quite interesting about being old, if you knew the secret.

He went over to one of the ancient caved-in tombs, where there was a big gap in the side and it was obvious that the body was long gone. He sat down on it and smoked for a while, Jane watching him and the tomb fading into the dusk.

‘When I first went into Coleman’s Meadow,’ she said, ‘I felt … I felt the last person to go there and actually see it for what it was … was Lucy Devenish.’

Gomer’s ciggy was like an ember in the shadows.

Jane said, ‘I could almost see her .’

Could almost see her now, in fact: the batwing swirl of the poncho, the hooked nose of an old Red Indian, the sharp gleam of a glancing eye, like a falcon’s.

‘Lucy hovers over this village, like a guardian of the old ways,’ Jane said. ‘That’s the way I see it.’

‘All right.’ Gomer stood up, brushing ash from his overalls. ‘First knowed him when he was a mean-minded little kid.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Pierce. One day, middle of January, Lucy caught him shooting at the blue tits with his air-rifle, when they come down to the nut feeder Alf Hayden used to hang by the ole gate into the orchard.’

‘Bastard. How old was he then?’

‘Mabbe fourteen? I wasn’t living yere then, but we was dealing with a drainage problem, side of the orchard, for Rod Powell, and I’m in the ole digger when I years Lucy’s voice shoutin’ at somebody to hand over that gun now , kind of thing. So I goes trundlin’ over, in the digger, and there’s Lyndon Pierce pointin’ the bloody thing at Lucy.’

‘He was threatening to shoot Lucy ?’

Jane started to tingle. It was – wow – like she’d been guided to this.

‘Kids is daft,’ Gomer said. ‘Don’t think ’fore they acts. ’Course, when he sees the digger, he hides the gun behind his back, but I leaves the engine running, see, jumps down the other side, grabs it off him. As I recall, it wound up under one of the caterpillars of the JCB. Accidents happens, Janey.’

‘I am so proud of you, Gomer.’

‘Boy tells his dad I’ve stole the gun off him. Dad rings me, threatens me I’ll get no more work in this village ever again.’

‘How could he do that?’

‘’Cause he was on the council . Two councillors representin’ Ledwardine in them days, see – Garrod Powell and Percy Pierce. Then they had a big reorganization, and it was reduced to one, and Percy lets Rod have it uncontested, like. Real noble of him. Har! Amazin’ all the arrangements as went through after that, to the benefit of Percy. Had a dealership in farm machinery, see, and some interestin’ contracts comes his way, through the council, as wouldn’t have looked quite right if he’d still been on the council. Also – you know what agricultural occupancy’s about, Janey?’

‘That’s where there’s a house that nobody can live in unless they can prove they’re making a living from the land?’

‘More or less. Point bein’, a dwellin’ with an agricultural restriction, you can’t ask much money for him. So there was this bit of a jerry-built 1960s bungalow, bottom of Virgingate Lane, feller name of Ronnie Carpenter owned it, with fifteen acres, and he needed the money and he couldn’t find nobody wanted to buy this ole place on account of fifteen acres don’t give you much of a livin’ no more. So Ronnie tries to get the restriction lifted so’s he could flog it to somebody with the money to replace it with a proper house. Ronnie keeps applyin’, keeps gettin’ turned down … and then suddenly it goes through. Good ole Rod Powell, eh? What nobody knows is Ronnie Carpenter’s arranged to sell the bungalow and the land, provisional-like, to Percy Pierce for his son Lyndon, who’d just qualified as a chartered accountant.’

‘You’re saying they only got to build that piece of pseudo-Beverly Hills crap because of a dirty deal between Rod Powell and Percy Pierce?’

Gomer dropped his last millimetre of ciggy onto the tomb, crushed it out and reminded Jane how people had always quietly helped each other in the country. And Rod Powell was dead now and Percy Pierce had retired to Weston-super-Mare, and now his boy had his seat on the council.

Was Lyndon Pierce really going to abandon a family tradition of being bent?

‘So is it possible Pierce is tied up with this guy Murray, who owns the meadow?’ Jane asked.

Not that it would matter. No need for corruption when you had council planning guys who thought appalling desecration was acceptable infill .

‘Not many folk he en’t in bed with, truth be told,’ Gomer said. ‘Accountant by profession, specializin’ in smoothin’ things out between farmers and landowners and the ole taxman. Local accountant who’s also on the council? Popular boy, Janey. Popular boy.’

‘A boy who used to shoot blue tits off a nut dispenser?’

Jane looked up at the church steeple, a sepia silhouette against a clump of cloud like dirty washing. Was this the Herefordshire of Alfred Watkins, who led genteel parties of gentlemen in panama hats and ladies with sunshades to explore ancient alignments of stones and mounds and moats and steeples? Was this the Herefordshire of the mystical poet Thomas Traherne, who was clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars?