Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘Oh…’ Merrily’s gaze went instinctively to the ceiling. ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘Which effectively did for my glittering future as a career scientist. Doing research at the time, bit of teaching. Having a good time. Had a smart city woman and a kid, and when I came home to bury the old man, everything in me was screaming, don’t look, don’t look . Don’t look at the state of the place, just get it on the damned market. And then I found out, as I say, that there was not a single local family left in Wychehill. And the curse came down.’

‘Your mother was still alive?’

‘Moved my ma down to Ledbury – she wouldn’t live here after that. Told her I’d take a couple of years off to pull it all together, before resuming the glittering career. Then we had Hugo. More roots.’

‘What … happened to the boys’ mother?’

‘Left a long time ago. Wilful London girl, didn’t get on with the country. Bit like Syd Spicer’s missus. We weren’t married, so no complications in those days. She went abroad, I got the boys. And we turned it around, by God we did, in spite of the shiny-arsed civil servants and the scum from Brussels. Diversification .’

‘I remember that as a buzz word put around by the Min of Ag.’

‘The pragmatic farmer’s way out of the agricultural crisis. Thatcher’s message. And, fair play, it worked for some of us. You felt a bit sick about it, but it worked. My case, luxury self-catering holidays. Not that they self-cater, they all eat out. But it works, and it provides employment locally. All nicely old-fashioned, and folks come back year after year, all the sad townies, and we charge ’em more every time and they still come.’

Preston Devereaux slumped into a wing-backed chair next to the big dead fireplace, smoke-blackened and flaked with log ash. He waved Merrily to a faded chaise longue.

‘All the antique furniture from the house we put in the units – what do we need with antiques, me and the boys? Install a Queen Anne writing desk in your stone holiday chalet, that’s worth an extra two hundred a week on the bill. You see the buildings out there?’

‘Very classy.’

‘Turned over all the old stone barns and stables and chicken houses to holiday units, added a few new ones in the same style. Put the farm, what’s left of it, into new galvanized sheds painted dark green and nicely screened off. And the farm life, what’s left of that , goes on around the townies. Give them an illusion of what it’s like, let them into what country pursuits we’re allowed to practise now – shooting parties and the like, hunting, before it was banned. Joining what they think of as the Old Squirearchy for a fortnight.’

‘So the boys are part of that? Plenty for them to do. Don’t want to move away like you did?’

‘They won’t leave. All changed since my day, look. It was either/or back then. Now you can take what you want from the city and come back next day. And growing up in the country hardens you. We can deal with the towns better than the townies can deal with us.’

‘Only I heard that Louis…’

Merrily looked up at the foxes’ heads above the door – the way their mouths were always forced open around their pointed canines, to make them look like savage beasts gloriously killed.

‘Heard Louis what?’ His voice spiking.

‘Had some kind of breakdown? After hunting was banned?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Can’t be sure.’

‘Selective memory you got there, Mrs Watkins.’ Preston Devereaux, relaxed again. ‘Aye, he loved his hunting. We ran the Countryside Alliance campaign in this area. Fight the Ban posters everywhere. Boy lost his rag at a demo, belted a copper guarding some Blairite toady. Weekend in custody. That’s the state we’re in – fight for our traditions, we’re branded criminals. This government’s scum. Anti-English. Don’t get me started. We lost. You move on . You ask me a question? I can’t remember.’

Merrily was confused by all the contradictions here. Trying to understand a man who, having been determined to escape his roots, came back to be driven by a born-again fervour fuelled by bitterness.

‘Oak trees,’ she said. ‘Tim Loste has a lot of oak trees. Which, for a man with a tiny garden…’

‘Does he?’

‘Elgar and oak trees. Is there some connection I might not have heard about?’

‘No idea. The only oak I know’s the Royal Oak. Which is a pretty common name for a pub, relating, surely, to the tree where Charles II hid from his enemies.’

‘No local legends about oaks?’

‘Not that I know of. Can I get you a drink? Some coffee?’

‘Thanks, but I’ll have to be off in a few minutes. I shouldn’t have come, anyway, without ringing.’

‘Drop in anytime, we’ve nothing to hide.’

‘Is there any kind of mystery … legend … rumour, connecting Elgar with Wychehill?’

‘Only the church. Longworth and his so-called visionary experience.’

‘What was that?’

‘They say it’s what he has on his tomb.’

‘The angel?’

‘Gruesome bloody thing, ennit? Not my idea of an angel. Story I was told as a child is that it appeared to the mad old bugger up on the hill, in a blaze of light, and drove him in a state of blind fear to religion.’

‘And to Elgar.’

‘Same thing. Elgar’s become a religion now. I’m not a fan, Merrily, as you may have gathered. If he hadn’t encouraged Longworth to build that bloody church there’d’ve been no Upper Wychehill for the townies to colonize. And what did Elgar ever do for the Malverns, anyway?’

‘Massive tourism?’

Devereaux snorted.

‘We’ve always had that . We got the scenery, don’t need the bloody incidental music. Bugger always claimed he got his inspiration here but he cleared off soon enough when he was famous. And when he came back, as an old man, he came back as an incomer , that’s what gets to me.’

‘I don’t understand. If he—’

‘He’d changed . Starts out as a country boy, I’m not disputing that, even went foxhunting, according to some accounts. But then, soon as he makes it big, he’s off … big house in Hereford, then London, mixing with the nobs and the arty-farty veggies, George Bernard Shaw and the like. And when he finally returns, as this distinguished old man, he’s turned into one of them – having places laid at the table for his bloody dogs. Likely, he thought the hills’d give him his inspiration back, but it never happened, did it? Closed door this time. Given up his soul to mix with the great and the good and – excuse my terminology – lost his balls. Never wrote another thing that was worthwhile. No wonder he’s an unhappy bloody spirit. You believe that?’

‘That he’s unhappy, or that he’s…’

Devereaux leaned his head into a wing of his chair and looked at Merrily sideways through a bloodshot eye.

‘That dead Elgar still bikes the hills.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Ha!’

‘Sorry. I’m not usually so … no, I suppose I am. I suspect there’s something happening … in the atmosphere. I’m just not sure it’s anything to do with Elgar.’

‘Well…’ Preston Devereaux smiled. ‘If you ever decide it is and you want to exorcize the old bastard … you can go ahead, far as I’m concerned. By all means. Wipe whatever’s left of him off the hills for good and all. Just keep quiet about it.’

Thursday began badly and got worse. Just as Merrily was about to corner Jane on the Coleman’s Meadow issue, Winnie Sparke was on the phone.

‘Merrily, you talked to the cops?’

‘Well, I have, but—’