Phil Rickman: Remains of an Altar

‘Oh,’ Lol said. ‘I see.’

Like the shadow of a tall pole, a path cut directly across the meadow. A visible path that could have been contructed or simply made by sheep crossing the field from gate to gate – dead straight from the gate they’d just come through to another one at a slight angle in the hedge at the bottom of the field. Both gates and the path were directly aligned with the smokey, sepia steeple of Ledwardine Church.

Lol walked towards the centre of the field, keeping to the path, and turned to see that the path was perfectly aligned, in the opposite direction, with the top of Cole Hill.

Some of Watkins’s lines demanded imagination, but this one spoke for itself.

Jane stood on the line, as if she was standing before an altar. Although the sun was high and warm, Lol saw her shiver. She wrapped her bare arms around herself.

‘Before you reach the village, there’s a mound just inside the orchard – behind Church Street? It’s not marked on the map, but it must be an ancient burial site, if only by its position in the landscape. Absolutely on the line. Like, it’s not very high now, but a lot of them aren’t any more; they’ve been ploughed in over the centuries. And then, on the other side of the mound, you’re dead on course, across the market place, for the church.’

‘You’ve convinced me,’ Lol said. ‘It’s a nice one.’

‘And … and , Lol, if you continue the line, through the church – I’ve only done this on the map, but it works, it totally works – within a mile, on the other side, you’ve got an ancient crossroads and a genuine prehistoric standing stone which is not very big but is actually marked on the map.’

‘Well, congratulations,’ Lol said. ‘You’ve found a new ley line.’

‘ Ley ,’ Jane snapped. ‘Alfred Watkins called them leys. Ley lines – that’s just a term that’s been adopted in almost a disparaging way by so-called experts who say they don’t exist. And, OK, some of them you can draw the line by circling the sites on the map, but when you go there you can’t really see it. But this…’

‘Textbook,’ Lol said. ‘I suppose.’

‘I mean, I can’t claim any credit – except maybe for rediscovering it. This side of the hill’s been more or less hidden away for years, probably since the orchards went into decline. And, oh yeah, you know what this field’s called? Coleman’s Meadow . Geddit? The field where the track was laid out by the Cole -man, the shaman, the wizard … ? And you can feel it, can’t you?’ Jane stamped a foot. ‘Come on , Lol. You’re an artist, a poet. Do not tell me you cannot feel it.’

‘Well…’

‘You stand on the track and you’re, like, totally connected with the landscape. And with the ancestors who lived here and marked out the sacred paths. Thousands of years ago when people were more in contact with the elements? So like whether or not you believe the leys channelled some form of mystical life-force through the land, or they were spirit paths where you could walk with the dead, or whatever … I don’t care . I don’t need to understand the science. I just need to know that I can stand here and feel I’m, you know, part of something … bigger. Belong .’

‘It’s probably the most any of us can ever hope for,’ Lol said. ‘To belong somewhere.’

They stood quietly for a few seconds. You could hear neither the sounds of the village nor the traffic on the main road, only birdsong and the grass wrenched from the meadow in the jaws of the Herefords.

The sun was already high. Caught in its glare, Jane, in her yellow crop-top, looked young and uncertain.

‘I need some information off you, Lol.’

‘For this … project?’

‘Sort of. I need to know who decides what happens around here. Like with the council and stuff. I mean, I think I know the basics. Just want to be sure before I make a move.’

‘A move?’

Oh, hell .

Jane looked at her feet.

‘Jane…’

‘What?’

‘This day off school, to work on the project…’

‘Look,’ Jane said, ‘it’s nearly the end of term, the exams are over, nobody really cares . And this is a major crisis. And anyway it’s connected with the project, which is about how artists have dealt with earth mysteries, the secret harmonies in the landscape.’

‘You’re not making this very clear, Jane.’

‘All right.’ Jane unfolded her arms and pointed. ‘You want it made clear, go and read it what it says on that sign.’

A small placard was affixed to the gate on the opposite side of the field. Lol wandered over. On the other side of the five-barred gate the path broadened out, and he saw that he was in the orchard at the back of his own cottage, which fronted on to Church Street. When he looked back, Jane’s ley was no longer obvious, which presumably was why she’d brought him down from the hill.

Lol adjusted his glasses and read what it said on the sign, which was headed HEREFORDSHIRE COUNCIL PLANNING DEPARTMENT.

What it said, basically, was that an application had been submitted to turn Coleman’s Meadow into an estate of twenty-four high-quality detached executive homes. It invited observations from the public.

Oh.

Lol turned, at a click of the latch on the gate, to find that Jane had followed him.

‘Only they’ll need to kill me first,’ Jane said.

Joyce Aird’s drive sloped steeply down from the road in a tunnel of dark trees. It was like entering a badger set, until you emerged into a vastness of light.

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Your sins always find you out, don’t they? Yes, bring that chair out, dear, we can sit together in the window. Bring your tea.’

The sun-lounge overlooked the valley, across the long village of Colwall and on and on over Herefordshire, all the way to the Black Mountains and Wales.

‘How did you know?’

Mrs Aird had the kind of West Midlands accent which wore anxiety like old and trusted slippers. She was about seventy-five, soft-featured and with lightly blonded hair.

‘Oh…’ Merrily put down the cane chair with its thick, padded seat. ‘It’s just that if anyone’s inquired about exorcism, the arrangement is that the office tells me or our secretary, Sophie. And nobody seems to have.’

‘Well, no, I never rang the Diocese. That’s just what I told Mr Spicer. He’s a good man, Mr Spicer, at the bottom of him, give him his due, but he’s a man , isn’t he? And he has had a lot of personal problems lately. I thought, he’s just not going to do anything, is he? And I was telling a friend – we used to be neighbours when I lived in the Forest of Dean and we’ve kept in touch, and I was telling her on the phone about what had happened, and she immediately said I should get the Rector to ask for you. That’s how I got the number. Her name’s Ingrid Sollars.’

‘Oh.’ That was OK; nothing wrong with Ingrid Sollars. ‘Yes, she was involved in … a problem we had. She’s a nice woman.’

‘A much stronger person than me, I’m afraid. I get very frightened about things I don’t … well, none of us understands them, do we? We can’t. We’re not supposed to. But Ingrid gave me your number and she said you’d take it seriously, but it would be best to go through the Rector, for political reasons. But I get so frightened, now, you see.’

Mrs Aird had a single, lonely chair in the window. Called it her sunset chair. Never missed a sunset. You could just see Herefordshire Beacon, on the far left, but nothing of the road, although you could hear the traffic above you, like a sporadic draught in the attic.