Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

The enemy was pointing at them across the meadow and Jane could see the shape of its driver, hunched behind the levers in the reinforced glass cab. Gerry Murray, presumably. Sitting there watching them now, waiting, an agent of the darkness.

‘ Stop him .’ Jane’s fingers were sticky. ‘Stop him while you can. While there’s still some of the track left. Because it’s not going to look good for you tomorrow when … when the truth comes out.’

‘Truth?’

Pierce laughed. Jane felt the delta of blood washing down from the back of the hand she’d slashed on the sign, oozing between her fingers.

‘Jane, the only truth that’s coming out is the kind of truth that’ll be damaging to you and your mother and your mother’s hippie boyfriend. Now go home quietly before you make things worse.’

‘Like I’m really going to let you destroy an ancient monument?’

‘We’ve been there, Jane. This is no more an ancient monument than your friend Mr Parry.’

‘You’re just … you’re just a scumbag and a…’

All the names she wanted to spit at him, but that would just be abuse and childish, like the sad underage drivers you saw howling wanker at the traffic cops in all those cheap TV documentaries.

‘Why do you—’ She stared up at him, and then turned quickly away, feeling tear-pressure. ‘Why do you have to do this?’

‘I’ll remind you one more time,’ Pierce said, ‘that you’re on a development site and you’re not wearing protective clothing. If you don’t go, I’ll be calling the police to have you removed, and we’ll see how good that looks in the papers. Now be a good girl and let Mr Murray finish the preparation of his ground.’

‘ Preparation? He hasn’t even got planning permission yet, even if it’s as good as a done deal. This is just sick, mindless … peevish … destruction. Why do you have to do this? ’

‘Because of you , you stupid little—’ Pierce’s face coming at her, dark with evening-stubble. ‘What do you think all this fencing cost, to keep those cranks out? Eh? What if they come back tomorrow and there’s even more of them? What then?’

‘Well, good…’

‘No. Not good, Jane. Bad for all of us. Costly. So, to forestall the possibility of further public disturbance, Mr Murray took the entirely sensible decision to remove what our county archaeologists have formally confirmed was never there in the first place . And invited me, as the local representative, to come along and observe that no regulations were breached, and that’s what I’m doing. That’s it. All right?’

He turned away, adjusting his hard hat. He was wearing a khaki-coloured shirt and cargo trousers, like he was in the SAS or something, on a special high-risk mission.

‘So he invited you , is it?’ Gomer said.

‘I gotter say everything twice for you, is it, Mr Parry?’

‘Sure you din’t invite yourself? Strikes me this is just the sorter thing you’d think of all by yourself, that’s all.’

Lyndon Pierce didn’t reply.

‘Because, like, all you care about,’ Jane said, ‘is protecting your corrupt schemes and the bungs you’re getting from the guy who’s flogging his land to the supermarket firm, and the bungs you’re probably getting from the developers of the luxury, executive …’

Pierce turned slowly. Too late to stop now.

‘You’re just … totally fucking bent . Just like your dad. With your crap Marbella-style villa and your naff swimming pool and your … You couldn’t lie straight in bed .’

Gomer said quietly, ‘Janie…’

‘Right…’

Pierce turning to Gomer, the lamp under his face, uplighting it, the way kids did to turn themselves into monsters.

‘Now, I want you to remember this, Mr Parry. First off, I don’t give a fig what this nasty little girl says, on account she’s too young to think of any of it for herself—’

‘Like fuck she is!’

‘Janie—’

‘So I’m holding you solely responsible for that actionable shite. Even though nothing you say counts for a thing round yere and never did. Never did, ole man.’

Jane kept quiet. Stopped breathing.

Because Pierce had lost it. His accent had broken through again, and his language had broken down. Gomer went silent, too. This was, like, confirmation. Well, wasn’t it?

Pierce shone his hand-lamp from Gomer’s face to Jane’s face and back again.

‘You’re halfway senile, Mr Parry. You and your bloody plant hire . You don’t even know what bloody plant hire means. You’re a joke, ole man. You en’t even safe to climb into one of them no more.’ Pierce jerking a thumb at the JCB, his words coming faster. ‘And everybody knows … everybody knows you always got it in for farmers like Gerry, does their own drainage rather than paying good money, out of pity, to a clapped-out ole fart like you for half a fuckin’ job.’

Gomer didn’t say anything, but something tightened in his neck and he went rigid, the lamplight swirling like liquid in his glasses. For a terrified couple of seconds, Jane thought, Oh Christ, he’s having a stroke .

Wanting to kill Pierce and only dimly aware of the JCB’s engine revving up, until Pierce turned to the meadow, his hard-hat tipping back as his arm came up like the arm of some petty Roman-emperor figure.

‘You wanner watch?’ he said. ‘All right, you watch .’

‘No!’ Jane screamed. ‘ No! ’

Pierce brought his arm down, a chopping motion.

On the other side of Coleman’s Meadow the big digger rocked, its blade lowering. And then it began to roll on its caterpillars towards the last, pathetic piece of old straight track.

‘Oughter be in an old folks’ home, you ought, Parry,’ Pierce said as he walked away. ‘I should think about that, I were you.’

He’d been blocking the long view of Cole Hill, which never entirely faded away on summer nights. A lick of moon had risen behind it like a candle on a coffin. Down below, the last four or five metres of track made a perfect shadow.

‘Stop him! Please stop him!’ Jane arching forward, screaming at Pierce’s back. ‘You shit !’

He was gone. He’d walked casually away into the orchard, and all there was left was the yellow lights and the roaring, and Jane looked back at Gomer. But Gomer wasn’t moving, he was just standing there, a bit bent now, like one of the old, dying apple trees in the derelict orchard behind him.

It was almost over.

Jane was on her own. She’d failed. She’d mishandled everything, through immaturity, her eagerness to do something, be somebody. She couldn’t live with that.

She was only half aware of running blindly towards the digger’s bobbing lights. Running out, sobbing, into the meadow, where the ruined ley carried what remained of the ancestry of an historic village.

Oh, not historic in the sense of having kings or dukes living there or battles fought on its soil. More important than that.

She heard a shout from behind her, glanced over her shoulder and saw Gomer stumbling after her, and she shouted back at him, ‘ No …’ But he was already slipping sideways into a new-made trench, sinking down on his knees, and her heart lurched and she desperately wanted to go rushing back to help him, but she was too far now, too far gone.

And convinced, despite the savaging of the meadow, that she could still see the mystic line, glowing and alive and fresh with the clean, crisp scent of apples … sharp with the cool, dry tang of the cider … hardened by the hooves of Hereford cattle with hides the colour of the soil … marked out by the shadow of the church, where the bells had called generations of farm workers to prayer … still walked by the sombre shades of Alfred Watkins and his distinguished musical associate and the spirit…