Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

Her stomach lurched at the thought of that and she pressed her hands down on it and belched. This cider was so much gassier. And it wasn’t working. She’d drunk masses of the stuff, or it felt like it, and yet she didn’t seem to be particularly drunk. Certainly didn’t feel at all happy. All the optimism was long gone, the feeling that Ledwardine was her real, preordained home, that she could really function here, help Mum make a go of it, have some laughs with Colette – maybe find some cool guys together – help Lol get himself straightened out and organized and recording again, work with Lucy on re-establishing the natural way of things, become more aware of the orb.

The orchard smelled damp and mouldy. She was sure it hadn’t been like this before. She tried to remember the moment they’d both flopped down under the Apple Tree Man, but she couldn’t. Her only memory was of saying she was dying and then Colette’s voice, so cool, so smokey, so sassy, coiling out of the ground beside her.

You ain’t felt nothin’yet, honeychile.

Those really prophetic words. Like she really knew the score. But it was just some scam to scare Jane. Colette hadn’t known a thing. Not then. And afterwards was far too cool to think she had anything to learn from a weird old bat like Lucy Devenish. But she’d hated to feel she’d been left behind by anybody. She had to be the leader, and on the night of her party she’d impulsively led some kind of raiding party on the orchard, determined to break through to whatever it was Jane had accessed. Bust into what Lucy called the orb, find the contact.

And had vanished.

Search was made for her and she appeared to her friends from time to time, but when they spoke to her she immediately disappeared.

Jane took another swig of the awful Wine of Angels and slumped back with her hair against the knobbly bark of the Apple Tree Man, still clutching the big bottle by its neck. She closed her eyes, lay very still and tried again. She imagined Colette in a land of lights, separated from the orchard by a billowing night mist. The point being that Colette was nobody special in this place; she was learning that there were higher forces and inner structures and that most of the things she thought were really cool were actually quite trivial and insignificant.

It was time for her to return, chastened.

‘Colette,’ Jane whispered. ‘You hear me, you dumb slag? It’s me. I’ve come back. I’ve come to fetch you.’

There was an answering rustle of leaves from somewhere beyond the edge of the clearing. It was probably a fox or a badger, but in her mind Jane turned it into Colette.

She had a clear picture of Colette strolling through the orchard. She could see the nose stud and the red plastic windcheater open over the daring black dress.

The rustling came closer. If she opened her eyes now, she would see ... She was getting shivery vibrations at the back of her neck, remembered Dr Samedi:’... and de drummin’ begin, feel de drummin’ inside, fingers dancin’, dancin’, dancin’up an’ downyo spine ...’

Colette. Colette was coming. She was coming back. The urge to open her eyes was overpowering.

But she didn’t. She mustn’t. The moment must be absolutely right.

She must be very quickly seized, without speaking, or she would never come back.

She heard breathing. It wasn’t a fox or a badger, it was her old friend Colette Cassidy, and she’d stop in the clearing, the cynical cow, and she’d go, Aw, Janey, you’re not still here? This is just so sad. And then they’d both crease up laughing.

Come on, lady.

She concentrated on keeping her eyes squeezed tight, tight shut and holding her breath, and putting everything she had into the image of Colette, summoning this incredible detail: a light sheen of sweat on the forehead overhung by a wing of hair, a blob of mascara on the end of an eyelash, the weird red moon glinting in the nose-stud, a slick of crimson lipstick on her avaricious little teeth when she smiled.

She heard Colette’s voice calling to her across the nights.

Look up. For me. Just look up, once. And then we’ll go.

Jane looked up.

GOMER SAID, ‘DON’T suppose Lucy kept the odd bottle about the place? Helps you think better, it do, my experience. Well, not better, mabbe, but a bit wilder, like. You gotter think wild to get your brain round this kinder business.’

He certainly looked wild tonight. Lol recalled them watching the little guy troop past the shop one afternoon and Lucy saying Gomer Parry was an object lesson on the dangers of retirement. Not the man he used to be. Not the man he was a year ago.

Tonight though, Gomer’s springy white hair was on end like a lavatory brush and his eyes looked hot enough to melt the wire frames of his glasses.

‘No accident?’ Lol said, going through to the kitchen. ‘You sure of that?’

‘Course I en’t,’ Gomer snapped. ‘All I’m sayin’, see, is I’ve used bloody hedge trimmers with more power than that little bike. And it never got much stick from Lucy Devenish. You know Lucy, it makes no sense.’

‘They’re calling it a freak accident.’

‘Freak accident my arse,’ said Gomer. ‘Lucy seen a ewe amblin’ out the hedge, she’d just pull over and wait for the ole thing to get across. This is a country woman, born, bred and what you like, through and through. That woman could sense a sheep from fifty yards. But you try tellin’ that to one o’ these bloody inquests. It’ll be Edgar Powell all over again. Accidental bloody death!’

‘If it wasn’t an accident, what was it?’

‘Suspicious is what it was.’

‘You think somebody killed Lucy?’

‘That’s a wild question,’ Gomer said. ‘But it’s gotter be asked, see. Gotter be asked. En’t nobody else gonner ask it, are they? All right then, it’s n’more than a feelin’. En’t never gonner be no evidence now, coppers’ve made up their minds. Open and shut. Shut for ever, like a lot o’ stuff in this village. But when the wind’s in the right direction ...’

Pulling his tobacco tin from his jacket pocket, Gomer got going furiously on a roll-up.

‘Put it this way, boy. You don’t dig out two thousand cesspits in thirty years without learnin’ what shit smells like. I know the vicar’s taken a few shovel-loads she en’t deservin’ of, and we had a bit of a chat about tonight and ’er says, do me a favour, you go round and talk to Mister Lol Robinson about this and anythin’ else that’s on your mind, give him summat to think about ‘stead o’ worryin’ about the colour of the moon, like.’

‘She said that?’

‘Give or take. So yere I am.’

‘Well,’ Lol brought the presentation case of The Wine of Angels into the living room. ‘I’m glad to see you, Gomer. I’ve been sitting here getting nowhere fast.’

‘We can pool what we got, mabbe. I told you that about Lucy, see, ‘cause I know you and ’er was friends ...’

Lol nodded. Point taken. Resolve strengthened. He put down The Wine of Angels box, the only bottles he could find in the house. Gomer sniffed.

‘No thank you, boy. Once was enough.’

‘Looks like a present to Lucy from the festival committee.’

‘Er was mabbe keepin’ it to donate to the Christmas raffle.’

Lol observed that two bottles appeared to have been drunk already.

‘Impossible,’ Gomer said. ‘Nobody’d ever drink a second. Wine of Angels? Balls. Must be fifteen year back, Rod Powell, he calls me in to dig out a couple hundred yards o’ drainage ditch. Well, Edgar’d made a few barrels of Pharisees Red cider, strictly for their own consumption, like, and it was a hot day, see, and they gives me a jugful and, by God, that weren’t the kind o’ cider you forgets. And this’ – Gomer brandished a bottle with some contempt – ‘en’t it.’