Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

Spicer no longer had the shotgun with him, just a bunch of keys on a ring. Merrily followed them, hanging back, trying to filter out what was most important: primarily that, if Spicer was correct and Loste hadn’t murdered Winnie or Wicklow, Lol was in no direct danger at Whiteleafed Oak. It was something.

Spicer had followed Hugo to the top of some stone steps going down. Curving. No handrail. Fluorescent lights were stammering on. Hugo – couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen – was stumbling in front of Spicer without argument, his head bent, his body occasionally twitching in pain. Merrily staying well back, a hand on the wall on either side. Not trusting Spicer, not by a long way.

The cellars at the bottom had strip lights at crazy angles on the low ceilings. There were several rooms and Spicer checked them all before motioning the boy into a square and windowless cell where wooden crates and cardboard boxes were stacked.

‘Can I ask you to do something, Merrily? Could I ask you to go back to the car and, if Mr Devereaux or Louis or both should happen to appear in their new Land Rover – or, indeed, if anyone appears in anything – drive out past them and blow the horn, once.’

‘And what will you be doing?’

‘I’ll be talking to my friend Hugo, and if he helps me, as I’m sure he will, I’ll join you in a very short time.’

‘Why have you taken off your collar?’

‘I was hot. I swear to you before God that I’m doing the best I can to spare lives, prevent violence. I might be proved wrong, and that’s my responsibility— No! ’

Hugo had been edging towards the door.

‘Don’t, son,’ Spicer said wearily. ‘Please. I can hurt you very badly in a very short time, and if you insist on making me prove it we’ll both be very upset. No shame in this. In your place I’d cooperate fully because I’d realize the situation was seriously weighted against me. We understanding one another, Hugo?’

Hugo’s narrow face was white under the striplight, except for eyes which looked hot and red. His cheek was grazed and flecked with grit from where he’d fallen outside.

Spicer said, ‘I’m sure Mrs Watkins would be more inclined to do what I’m suggesting if she thought you weren’t going to get hurt.’

‘Fuck off,’ Hugo said.

It had never sounded feebler.

‘Man’s world, eh, Hugo?’ Spicer said. ‘Was that what it felt like when you were dealing with Winnie? That wasn’t like Wicklow, was it? Wait in the cave or somewhere out of sight, then a quick bang on the head and the rest is just … well, just basic butchery, piece of cake for a country boy. Done some slaughtering, have we? Pigs, maybe? Enjoy that, did we? Made us feel like a big, grown man? Power of life and death?’

Hugo sniffed hard, wouldn’t look at Spicer.

Spicer said, ‘Maybe Wicklow was even easier than pigs.’

He glanced at Merrily. She didn’t move, avoiding eye contact. In the blueish, gassy light, Spicer’s face was flat, like his voice.

‘But when they’re in front of you, facing you full on, and they know it’s coming and they’re fighting to stay alive, that’s not so easy, is it?’

He took a step towards Hugo, who edged himself into a corner, stumbling over a crate.

‘I mean, that is unbelievably more difficult. Even when it’s two of you, hard boys against one little woman.’

Merrily’s mouth was suddenly dry.

‘Amazing how long the life stays in them, isn’t it?’ Syd Spicer said. ‘You slash and you slash and they’re all over the place – wouldn’t have believed it, would you, how much life there is to deal with when they’re determined to keep it. Hacking it away, bit by bit, but it still clings on, and you start to panic, too, and she’s screaming and crying and flailing and spitting just to hold on to that precious God-given gift of life. So precious to her and so cheap to you, up to now. And maybe this is when you realize for the first time what a huge item life is. But you can’t stop now, and you just keep slash—’

‘Stop it! Fuck you … ! ’ Hugo running at him, face red and wet and twisted. ‘ Just —’

Syd Spicer sidestepped and tipped him almost gently to the stone flags. He said over his shoulder, ‘ Would you do that, Merrily? Wait in the car. Keep a lookout?’

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t think so.’

57

Difficult Times in Old England

‘The line,’ Lol said. ‘The line from here, from Whiteleafed Oak through all the hilltops and Wychehill Church … how does Winnie see that? An energy line or a … spirit path?’

There was silence, except for an owl somewhere. Lol was thinking about Jane and Coleman’s Meadow.

‘Where the dead can travel,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to help you to remember.’

Tim began to rock backwards and forwards, his bulk alternately blocking out the moon and then exposing it. He’d gone soft and rambling again.

‘Exercises to do.’

‘Winnie gave you exercises?’

‘Breathing and meditation. Pretty hard at first, but I kept on. I persevered and then it … I had to visualize him walking. And Mr Phoebus. We had a photo enlarged to life-size and put it in the hall, so it looked as if he was there, waiting to … to ride out.’

‘And you visualized this…’

‘Yes. Sometimes, when I was walking the hills at night, I … felt I was able to hear what he could hear … the hidden themes in the whistling of the wind. I’d just start walking, and he’d bring me here. Come along, young ’un . He loved to come to Whiteleafed Oak. One of his favourite walks when he lived at Birchwood. When he was working on G—, on Gerontius . When his mind was hovering between life and death and … whatever comes. He was walking this path in his dreams. And he still does.’

‘Yes. So you visualized Elgar…’

‘Coming along the path, to and from Whiteleafed Oak. Or along the road with Mr Phoebus.’

‘To Wychehill Church.’

‘Or the other way.’

‘So, earlier on, when you were whistling the Cello Concerto … ?’

‘Sometimes, when you do it properly, all the way … it’s as if there are two of you whistling it. It’s … very weird. And thrilling.’

Lol succumbed to a small shiver.

‘And is that where you walk … along the spirit path, from hilltop to hilltop, by the Iron Age sites and the monastic chapels and shrines, from Wychehill … to the Beacon … Hangman’s Hill … Midsummer Hill … Whiteleafed Oak.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the way you came tonight?’

Tim’s face contorted.

‘To escape from the demons.’

‘I’m sorry … ?’

‘Just when you think you’ve come through it all, the demons are there.’ Tim swung round. ‘It’s the price you have to pay.’

‘For what?’

‘For daring to reach for the Highest. You have to get past the demons first.’

‘And who are the demons?’

Tim stood up, moved to the open front of the barn, holding on to one of the supporting uprights, began to beat his head against it.

In the end, Merrily had agreed to go out and move the car out of the yard into a space suggested by Spicer behind one of the barns. She’d just had to get out of there.

She took the opportunity to try again to get through to Lol: voicemail . Jane: voicemail . Gomer: endless ringing in an empty bungalow. And now it was late, getting on for eleven, surely. She didn’t try Bliss again.

As she stood in the yard, breathing in the soft, sweet summer air, a different countryside lay revealed. The moon was high now, and white and hard, less of a security lamp than a hunting tool. Owl sounds flickered through the woodland, a screen for shadowy slaughter. Owls hunting, talons out. Jets of blood and small lives taken, big lives too, and God looking diplomatically away, supervising the sunrise in another hemisphere.