Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

‘You see much of your cousin Gerry?’ Gomer said. ‘Gerry Murray, Lyonshall?’

‘No.’

‘Ar,’ Gomer said. ‘What I’d yeard.’

Jane looked at him, curious. He’d had very little to say in the jeep on the way here. But Gomer knew about the local network, its grudges and its feuds, and what he didn’t know he’d find out.

‘ You know him?’ Mrs Kingsley said.

‘No. But I knows of him. If you see what I mean.’

Standing there with his hands behind his back, not pushing it. Little and lean, the cords in his neck like plaited bailer twine.

‘Gerry … knows what he wants and makes sure he gets it,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘One way or another.’

‘Yeard that, too. And your Auntie Maggie … seems to me her was a bit like Janie, yere – worried too much about what was right and what was wrong, kind o’ thing.’

Mrs Kingsley looked down, brushing her apron. It was beige, with black cats on it.

‘My aunt did talk about you once or twice, Mr Parry,’ she said. ‘You’re making this very difficult for me.’

‘Ar?’

‘I have some letters … and photographs.’

‘What Mrs Pole left you.’

‘You obviously know about them.’

‘Mabbe.’

‘I was going to offer them to the Hereford Museum. Or perhaps the Woolhope Club.’

Gomer looked blank.

‘The naturalist and local history club that Alfred Watkins belonged to,’ Jane said. ‘It still exists.’

‘Mr Watkins was a member, yes. Among other important people. The photographs belonged to my grandmother, Hazel Probert. I think it’s what she would have wanted, after all this time.’

Mrs Kingsley looked out over the housing estate. You could hear lawn-mowers and strimmers and a few children shouting. Across the estate and another estate, on higher ground, you could see the top of Dinedor, Hereford’s own holy hill.

Jane found she was holding her breath.

‘After the TV item, I brought them down,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘On television, it didn’t look like the same place – all that fencing and the signs.’

‘That’s nothing to what it’ll look like when it’s covered with executive homes,’ Jane said.

‘Well,’ Mrs Kingsley said, ‘I can’t let you take the photographs. But I can let you see them. I suppose they explain why my grandmother might not have wanted someone like Gerry Murray to have the meadow.’

Merrily got in, and there was nobody there except Ethel. Forking out a tray of Felix, drifting through to the scullery, it felt like weeks since she’d last been in here, doing ordinary things. The answering machine was overfed, no longer accepting messages. The air was stale and stuffy, and there was the rattle and hum of a bluebottle in the window.

She opened the window, sat down at the desk with a bag of crisps and rang Lol: no answer. Rang his mobile: engaged.

She needed advice, wanted to pray but wasn’t sure what she’d be asking for. She’d never felt so confused. Laying her head on the sermon pad, she closed her eyes. Forget the answers, some coherent questions would help.

Despite the open window, the bluebottle wouldn’t go out, as though it was determined to tell her something. All the buzzing things that wouldn’t go away.

Merrily jerked upright. The phone was ringing right next to her ear. Last birthday, Jane had bought her another old-fashioned black bakelite phone with a real ring, loud and warm and thrilling, like the church bells which had once pealed across the land from steeple to steeple to warn of impending invasion. She grabbed the phone in a panic, something quaking in her chest.

‘Merrily?’

‘Frannie?’

‘You all right?’

She shook herself, blinking, rubbing at her eyes.

‘Sorry, I was…’

‘I don’t know why I’m calling you, really,’ Bliss said. ‘I didn’t plan to. I was just tearing through the CID room with no time at all to spare – not now, no bloody way – but a little voice is going, ring Merrily .’

‘You’re not a man who responds to little voices.’

‘Nah, you’re right. You been listening to the local radio at all today, Merrily?’

‘Haven’t even had it on in the car. Probably afraid of hearing people talking about Jane. Just tell me this isn’t about Jane.’

‘Not unless she’s shot somebody.’

‘The problem was my grandfather,’ Mrs Kingsley said. ‘It seems Mr Watkins turned up at the door this day – quiet sort of chap, my grandma always said, according to my mother. Very polite, and could he have a look at their bottom meadow?’

Jane clung to an arm of the sofa. He came? He knew? He really knew about the Ledwardine ley?

‘My grandma was all of a flutter, of course, that such a man as Mr Watkins should be calling on the likes of them. She was quite young at the time, not so very long married. They’d all heard of Mr Watkins, quite a public figure by then, though not because of ley lines.’

‘This was … when, exactly?’ Jane asked.

‘About 1924, I would guess. The Old Straight Track hadn’t been published, I’m fairly sure of that, so not many people knew what it was all about. To be told you had an ancient trackway across your land which had been used by Stone Age people … well, it didn’t mean anything. Certainly not to my grandfather.’

Gomer said, ‘He’d’ve likely been in the First World War, then, your ole grandad?’

‘Yes, he was, Mr Parry. And came back a different man. Not the man Grandma married, my mother used to tell me. He just wanted a quiet life surrounded by his own land. Positively antisocial. It wasn’t a very big farm, even if you included the orchard, and he was determined to hold on to it. My grandma liked to go to concerts and the plays, but he would have none of it. Wouldn’t take a holiday. And was suspicious of anyone who appeared on his land. Particularly someone with strange equipment, like Mr Watkins. I expect you can guess what that was, Jane.’

‘Didn’t he sometimes use, like, surveying tools?’

‘Surveying tools?’ Mrs Kingsley laughed. ‘Good heavens, he wouldn’t have got as far as the gate. No, his camera … that was enough. Aunt Margaret, who would have been a very small child at the time, thought she remembered some of this, but I suppose the details were filled in for her later. As she described it, Mr Watkins stood for a while at the field gate then walked the length of the meadow to the other gate, near the foot of Cole Hill, and then he came back, and he said, “Mr Probert, would you permit me to take some photographs?”’

‘I suppose his camera was … pretty big.’

‘And on a tripod. In those days, there weren’t that many cameras in Herefordshire. Having your photo taken was a big occasion. Almost ceremonial. It was a matter of taking your place in history and you had to look your very best. And, of course, that field didn’t. Despite all Grandad’s efforts, it was still poorly drained and there’d been floods, and so Grandad says “No, absolutely not.” Because it would be a permanent reflection on him, you see, the state of that field, and he was a very proud man.’

Mrs Kingsley held out a faded sepia photograph of a couple standing in front of a fairly run-down-looking cottage. The man wore a tie and a waistcoat and a bowler hat, and he wasn’t smiling.

‘Well, Mr Watkins tried his best to explain that the field was very important, archaeologically, and he wanted to include it in a book … and of course this made things worse. A book! The state of that field preserved for all eternity, to be sniggered over by farmers all over the county. My grandad took what he believed to be the only reasonable action open to him and respectfully ordered Mr Watkins to leave his property at once. Mr Watkins appealed to him to think again and said he would call the next time he was passing. And he did call again, but in the meantime my grandad had been talking to some other councillor who told him not to worry as Mr Watkins’s ideas were nonsense.’