Phil Rickman - Remains of an Altar

Tim’s deceptively warlike face glowing now with sweat in the unnatural night whiteness.

‘And this, you see … in my own work, this is Elgar’s most agonized solo. We agreed, Winnie and I, that it should contain elements of foreboding … perhaps a premonition of that disastrous first performance in Birmingham.’

‘Nice touch,’ Lol said.

‘Jaeger was joshing him, knew exactly how to handle the poor chap. He said something like, Of course, conveying the full glory of God, that would take a Wagner …’

Lol nodded. Elgar’s major influence had been Wagner.

‘So Elgar goes back? To try again?’

‘Looks like muso-banter to us now, Jaeger winding Elgar up. But it would have cut him to the quick. Yes, of course he went back.’

‘Back here. To Whiteleafed Oak?’

‘Where else?’

‘And … what happened?’

‘On a basic level, I suppose you’d say he … simply restructured some chords to manufacture a climactic moment. This short series of swiping chords, and then … Do you know G?’

‘To a point.’

Certainly this point. The Guardian Angel had warned the soul that the momentary vision would blow him away with its power. When it finally happened, it was barely flagged-up and it went through your spine, that single chord, every time you heard it, like a razor-edged, shining scythe.

‘You see, my job here … I have to capture the moment it came to Elgar. Or Mr Phoebus fails.’

‘That’s why you’re here?’

‘Have to catch the moment, and more.’

‘More?’

‘No good just copying Elgar, Dan. You have to try to take it further or what’s the point?’

‘Further than Elgar?’

‘Winnie believes that whatever happened to him was so personal and terrifying that he was still afraid to orchestrate the full intensity of it. Clearly, the build-up to that one frightening, revelatory slashing chord was enough to convince Jaeger. Winnie – God knows, Dan, I’m not the bravest chap on the block either – but Winnie believes I can widen the crack in the door.’

‘That’s…’ Lol stepped back. ‘That’s a big thing, Tim.’

‘The biggest.’

‘That’s what the preparation’s all been about? Those three simultaneous choirs in the three churches?’

‘Yes. And the…’

‘She’s not without ambition, is she, Winnie?’

‘And the exercises. The meditation and the visualization. Endless. And the need for Elgar to be part of it. I just couldn’t hack it at first. Too much of an ordinary bloke, Dan.’

Tim sighed, sat down on the grass.

‘There was a girl. On a bike. Legs pumping up and down. For a while we … No! ’ His voice going shrill and transatlantic. ‘ Don’t you realize you will never have a chance like this again? You gonna throw it all away? ’

‘Winnie.’

‘I owe her so much, you see. Saved my life. Made my life.’

Lol said nothing. Tim blotted the sweat from around his eyes with the heel of his palm.

‘Yes, we had a practice, in the three churches. Would have been wonderful to have the three cathedrals, hundreds of choristers, but even Winnie’s energy doesn’t extend that far.’

‘And did you come here – to Whiteleafed Oak – when the choirs were in the three churches?’

‘No, I was at Wychehill, then drove to Little Malvern. It was a run-through. Only a run-through.’

‘Did Winnie think it was going to be just a run-through?’

‘Dan, I was scared . Quite often scared. Gerontius has always scared me. You think it’s easy to live with something so … cosmically huge? Day in, day out? And the nights. Tried to psych myself up, on the quiet. Booze wasn’t doing it. I even went up the hill one night, scored a few – not my thing at all, normally – few grams of coke off— They said I’d killed him, did you know that?’

Lol nodded.

‘I was scared, Dan. This hallowed place. I don’t know. Is it hallowed? Are we fed – still – by the old choirs? Help me.’

‘Would be good to think so.’

And Lol saw it all now. The psychology of it. She said the journey could be accomplished in this life through the use of symbolism. With great art as a by-product .

All it needed was for Tim to believe in it strongly enough, through months of meditation, visualization, conditioning, and the magic would happen.

‘Are you frightened?’ Lol said.

Tim covered his face with his hands for a moment and then tore them away and looked all around at the strange, blanched landscape, a winter landscape in the heat of June. Looked up into the northern sky where the white, gaseous clouds hung like smothered lamps over the southern Malverns.

‘A great orchestral slash of light, Dan. His one shattering glimpse of God. And Gerontius sings … worshipful submission as a kind of triumph…’

Tim stepping away from the tree, raising his arms, releasing this vast torn and piercing tenor.

‘ Take me awayyyyyyyyyy! ’

Tim sank to his knees, kept his eyes down.

‘Think it’s time for you to bugger off, Dan.’

‘You need to be alone for this?’

‘Otherwise there’s no courage required,’ Tim said. ‘Is there?’

‘Suppose not.

‘What are you going to do?’

Tim placed a hand on his chest, over the stained singlet.

‘All happens in here.’

‘Right.’ Lol turned and walked away from the oak. ‘Just … be careful.’

Tim grinned.

After a few paces, Lol looked over his shoulder to see what he knew he was going to see: what the combination of the moon and those northern clouds had done to the leaves of the oak.

59

Life-Force

A painfully slow and twisting half-mile short of Whiteleafed Oak, Syd Spicer asked Merrily to feel under her seat for a small leather case.

‘Night glasses. High-tech.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We all loved our gadgets, the Hereford boys.’

‘The Hereford boys.’ She found the case. ‘Look, there’s something I should’ve mentioned, but with Winnie—’

Merrily gripped the sides of her seat. Every time she thought of the name, she saw the breathless mouth, the unseeing eyes. The body ripped up like old clothes. A woman who was sometimes a life-force and sometimes a vampire.

‘We can see this place from some distance, right?’

‘Reasonably well. But there’s lots of cover when you get there. Dells, copses.’

Within a minute, a small green area came up in the headlights. A display case for local notices.

‘This the village?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the five-barred gate?’

‘End of that little lane, but you can’t get … I mean you’ll just block the track.’

‘I’ll pull in here, then. Close your door quietly when you get out.’

At the five-barred gate, Spicer pointed ahead of them. He was still wearing his thin black gloves.

‘Know what that is?’

‘Shiny white clouds. Weird.’

‘Noctilucent clouds. Quite rare. Sometimes caused by chemicals, sometimes natural. Second night this week we’ve had them. Maybe a good thing, maybe not, but something to be aware of. What were you going to tell me back there?’

‘When you mentioned the Hereford boys … I don’t know whether you heard this on the news. A former SAS man’s been shot. In Hereford.’

Spicer kept on looking over the gate, but he’d gone still.

‘A security consultant,’ Merrily said.

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Malcolm France.’

He went on watching the bright clouds.

‘Bliss – the detective I know – called me about it. His records had been stolen, but they found out from the bank that he’d once been paid two hundred and fifty pounds. By Winnie Sparke. Syd…’