Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

Please God .

She lit the cigarette.

‘Let’s have the worst, then.’

‘I’m telling you this in case we run into him. Heroics are inadvisable. Louis will kill anything. Example: when the hounds start to slow up in the chase, they get shot, a side of hunting seldom advertised. Louis would volunteer to do it. For other hunts as well, which made him popular with kennel men, who mainly dislike that side of it. There’s more, of course, mostly hearsay. Essentially, people who love to kill will find or create a need for it. Justification. What it tells me is that killing Wicklow, after Louis justified it to himself, would have been an act done in a frenzy of pure excitement.’

‘You understand that feeling?’

‘I understand the rush you get when you convince yourself that, in the great scheme of things, it’s not only justified but necessary. When you know that a difficult situation can only be resolved by an act of swift, efficient, intense and quite colossal violence.’

‘And to a woman?’

‘No,’ Spicer said. ‘No, I could never see that far.’

Merrily thought, irrationally, of Lyndon Pierce and the blue tits: tiny, mean, cowardly violence, with no risk to self.

For the Devereaux boys, something far bigger. A war.

But Winnie ?

‘Sometimes it’s a fine line, Merrily. Luckily, in the armed forces, especially the more hands-on areas, there’s also a very thick line, and it’s called training.’

‘And without that?’

‘Without training there’s no efficiency and no safe judgement. In this instance, we’re looking at a perceived justification gone wild.’

‘Your daughter had a relationship with Louis.’

‘Wouldn’t hear a word against him. Well, he’s a charming boy. OK, he was arrested for attacking an MP’s minder during a pro-hunt protest – well, a lot of strong feelings at the time. OK, he went to pieces when the ban went through – poor boy, his life dismantled. Goes off to the city at weekends to work off his frustrations … nicked for possession of coke, gets a caution. Well, he was chastened by that. And look how he’s changed.’

Merrily was thinking about the five minutes or less she’d spent in the company of Louis Devereaux: posh, educated, good-looking, flirtatious.

‘He was one of the reasons you wanted Emily out of Wychehill?’

‘He was one of the reasons I wanted Winnie out of Wychehill.’

‘So stopping them using the church—’

‘Partly.’

‘Syd…’ Merrily gulping smoke. ‘I still don’t know why they did this. Wicklow, yes, an invader from the hated cities. But Winnie … I’m not getting it.’

Syd swerved into the Ledbury road under the ramparts of Herefordshire Beacon.

‘Take too long, Merrily, and I’m still not totally sure of my facts. And your bloke’s out there. And he doesn’t know what else is, does he?’

At first, seeing the curious white clouds in the northern sky, Lol had thought for a moment that time itself, at Whiteleafed Oak, was unreliable and this was the dawn. But the visible landmarks had told him the lights were in the wrong part of the sky; these were just unusually pale clouds over the southern Malverns, gassy, white and luminous, as if they were chemically producing their own glow.

It lit up the valley like a vast sports stadium, and Lol was starting to see the pattern … the structure.

This much was not fantasy: Tim Loste was working on a piece of music, in the dramatized, semi-operatic style of The Dream of Gerontius . And it was about Gerontius. Or rather, about the spiritual and emotional challenges, for Elgar, of composing what was regarded as his greatest work: orchestrating a metaphysical world.

But it was also about Loste’s own links with both Gerontius and Elgar. Some perceived by Loste, some perceived – or constructed – by Winnie Sparke. Bizarre. But art was allowed – even expected – to be bizarre.

‘When you came to Wychehill, it was as if you were entering a different world. Elgar’s world. And Winnie’s your guardian angel. That really came to you in a dream?’

Tim’s eyes widened. There was enough light now to see that they were not yet normal. Like an owl’s eyes.

‘Had a horrible, ghastly dream. Dreamed that Winnie was bleeding. I heard her screaming her heart out. I saw … the shadows of demons. But I couldn’t do anything. Why couldn’t I do anything?’

Lol looked at the stains on Tim’s singlet.

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know. Last night? Gha … ghastly.’ He stared at Lol, his eyes still too wide. ‘Look, I don’t … How do you know all this about me?’

‘Just know people who’ve worked with you. Whose lives you’ve changed.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I think I … wanted to learn. I’m a musician. Of sorts.’

‘Yes.’ Tim seemed to accept that, his mind veering off again. ‘Used to walk the hills night after night. Listening to G along the path.’

‘ Gerontius .’

‘Wanting to die because I knew I was never going to be as good as that. I was engaged, and she wanted us to go to London – chance of a teaching job with some conducting, on the side, with a jolly decent choir. But Winnie was on the scene by then, said I mustn’t leave Elgar. Got the ring thrown back at me. Pretty bad times at work. All got too much. Kept on listening to G, over and over. Got drunk. Embraced death.’

‘But then Winnie told you that you didn’t have to die. She rescued you. You called her the guardian angel.’

‘She said the journey could be accomplished in this life through the use of symbolism. With great art as a byproduct.’

‘What’s it going to be called?’

Tim looked blank for a moment. The white clouds were like pillows on the lumpy mattress of the hills.

‘ Mr Phoebus ,’ he said at last. ‘ Mr Phoebus and the Whiteleafed Oak .’

‘I like it. It’s a wonderful title.’

‘Winnie’s doing a book, too. All about me and Elgar.’

‘Elgar’s biographer, Kennedy, says Elgar scored Gerontius in a kind of trance,’ Lol said.

‘Yes. Composing G, he said he could look out from Birchwood and see the soul rise. Tremendous emotional experience. State of near-ecstasy when he’d finished it. That was the summer he’d learned to ride a bike. In his element, laughing and joking … and then…’ Tim’s chin sank into his chest.

‘Then it all went wrong.’

‘First performance in Birmingham … complete disaster. Chorus was under-rehearsed and performed badly. The chorus master had died suddenly and the man they brought in to replace him wasn’t up to the job. All went to pieces. Elgar was suicidal.’

‘ Actually suicidal?’

‘It brought on the most dreadful depression. I wish I were dead , he kept saying. He wrote, I’ve always said God was against art . Swore he’d never again attempt to write religious music. Closed his mind against the spiritual. ’Course, in later years G would be beautifully performed, its genius exalted, but in the early days…’

‘Elgar thought it was cursed? Why?’

‘Because he thought God was punishing him for overreaching his … mere humanity. For daring to approach … to approach God, I suppose. Head-on.’

‘You mean through the music.’

‘After the soul has withstood the torments of the demons, after his encounter with the Angel of the Agony, as he approaches judgement … he’s given one glimpse – sudden, cataclysmic – of the Holiest.’

‘God.’

‘A glimpse of God, yes.’

‘And Elgar had to convey that in music.’

‘Couldn’t do it,’ Tim said. ‘Or wouldn’t. Shied away from it. As a Catholic, he was afraid it might be approaching blasphemy. Anyway, thought he’d finished – I’ve put my heart’s blood into the score , he said, and sent the manuscript to his publishers. Thought he’d got away with it, but his friend there – friend and confidant – August Jaeger, accused him of bottling it, running scared of the big moment. Jaeger’s saying, you’re not doing enough with this. You’re not showing us God … you’re not giving us the moment. Pushing him. And Elgar, the timid Catholic, going, Can’t. Not humanly possible, almost blasphemous to try to convey in music the ultimate blinding light .’