Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

The rest was lost in the tumult.

Merrily closed her eyes.

FULL OF BREATHLESS excitement and bad, gassy cider, Jane looked up.

Looked up in hope and then began to scream. The figure rearing up in the clearing, the shape hiding the moon was not Colette. Was far too big to be Colette.

She shrank back against the Apple Tree Man, let go of the neck of The Wine of Angels, the bottle rolling away, sloshing cider over her jeans. Her lips went soggy and a whimper began in her throat. Please, she was trying to say. Please, I’m drunk.

The figure didn’t move. If it was the police, there’d have been a powerful torchbeam in her face. She was pushing herself back so hard that a spiky piece of bark was stabbing into the top of her head, the pain brutally assuring her that this was not a dream.

‘Jane Watkins.’ The voice was sorrowful. And male. And local.

‘Oh God,’ Jane said. Her head was all fogged up. She knew the voice, couldn’t identify it.

‘What you doing yere, Jane Watkins?’

Whoever it was, he knew the orchard too well to need a torch.

‘This is not in the best of taste, I’d say.’

‘Oh God!’ Jane sat up. ‘It’s you.’ The last time they’d met, she’d rushed up to him in a panic in the market place, and he’d put his big hands on her shoulders and said yes, all right, he’d go into the orchard after Colette and see what he could do, and his eyes had looked sort of rangy and fearless under his Paul Weller fringe, but even then she hadn’t held out any great hopes of everything being all right.

‘Two things,’ Lloyd Powell said. ‘One, you’re too young to be drinking that ole pop. Two, this is where my grandfather died and if he’s looking down now he’s gonner be disgusted, he is.’

‘Sorry, Lloyd. I really didn’t mean to be disrespectful’

‘I thought better of you, I really did, young lady. But you en’t such a lady, after all, are you? Look at you ... You stink of it. Disgraceful’

‘I let the bottle go and it all came out.’

She struggled to her feet, stumbling about a bit, which she hadn’t expected; The Wine of Angels had been so foul she hadn’t really thought it would have any effect.

‘I dunno at all,’ Lloyd said. ‘Just look at the state of you.’

Jane gritted her teeth. He might look cool and hunky, but he was just like his dad, all strait-laced and backbone of the community and no sense of humour at all.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t hear an explanation.’

Oh sure. Well, actually, Lloyd I was conducting a mystical experiment, on the lines indicated by Mrs Leather, to try and bring Colette back from the Land of Faerie, which isn’t as stupid as it sounds, if people like you had ever taken the trouble to listen to Miss Devenish, we’re simply talking about a parallel dimension, and I know it exists because I think I’ve been there, although I don’t remember a thing, it was a kind of trance state, and all right, it was a long shot, but ...

Oh, sure.

‘Come on, Jane. We better get you back to your mother before something happens to you.’

Jane stood up straight. Well, almost. She pushed her hair back behind her ears, bits of bark and stuff dropping out.

‘I can get myself back, thank you.’

‘Oh aye? And how am I gonner feel, something happens to you or you goes off like your friend? Though heaven only knows why a decent girl would want a friend like that. Looking at you now, mind, I’m not sure you’re a decent girl after all.’

Jane dragged an angry breath between her closed teeth. You could only stand so much of this. ‘Look. I’m sorry for trespassing in your precious orchard. I’m sorry for resting under your grandad’s tree. And, most of all, I’m sorry for drinking your disgusting cider. I shall go.’

‘And I said ...’ Lloyd stood up right in front of her, about a foot taller and nearly twice as heavy, ‘that I will take you home, miss. Come on. Pick up that bottle – litter, that is.’

‘I wasn’t going to leave it. I care for the countryside.’

‘Oh aye,’ Lloyd said. ‘All you incomers care for the country.’

‘And all you farmers are just so smug. You always think that whatever you do’s got to be right because you’ve been doing it for centuries or whatever.’

Jane bent and picked up the bottle. There was another one somewhere, but what would he think if he saw she’d brought two of the things? Probably that she was expecting a bloke. She stuck the empty bottle under her arm and turned back towards the church. But Lloyd was in front of her again, spreading out his long arms like an official police barrier.

‘No, you don’t. Not that way, Miss Watkins. Got my truck over the other side, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s stupid! It’s only a few minutes’ walk back to the churchyard.’

‘You’re going back in the truck and that’s final. I wanner keep my eye on you, make sure you goes in the right door.’

She was furious. But she was also a bit drunk. Damn Lloyd Powell. Damn Lloyd and damn Rod and damn bloody old Edgar who was too gaga to point his gun in the right direction.

Feeling really sullen, sickeningly bloody teenage, she let Lloyd steer her out of the clearing in the opposite direction to the way she’d come in, towards the farm entrance to the orchard which was out near the ‘new’ road. She noticed he never touched her, just put out his arms like barriers. The Powells were such puritans. Or could it even be that it was like with Lol, and Lloyd was afraid of teenage girls? Guys could be so strange.

‘I didn’t think there’d be anybody around tonight,’ she said when they picked up the rough path through the apple trees, still floury with yellowing blossom against the treacly sky. ‘I thought you’d be in church with everybody else.’

Lloyd snorted. With an unexpected venom, he said, ‘Why’d I wanner to listen to the ramblings of some poncy, posing little queer who thinks he can rewrite other people’s history?’

It wasn’t clear whether he was talking about Stefan or Richard Coffey. Nothing was too clear, actually. She’d deliberately drunk too much, hoping to disconnect her mind, and she’d succeeded. Hazey Jane again.

‘We supposed to sit around and allow that?’

‘It’s only a play, Lloyd. Nobody’s saying it’s true.’

‘En’t they?’

‘No.’

‘All you know, miss. All you know.’

As they emerged, quite suddenly, at the roadside, Jane said, resentfully, ‘You’d be surprised what I know.’

Lloyd stopped. His famous white truck was parked by the kerb without lights. He got out his keys, unlocked the passenger door. ‘All right.’ There was a kind of resignation in his voice. He held open the door. ‘You better get in.’

Standing on the footplate, hauling herself up, she got dizzy, stumbled again and clutched at the side-panel to stop herself falling off.

In the back of the truck, the pink moon shone out of dead eyes.

Mumford and his colleague took Stefan away. Nobody in the church attempted to follow them except for Annie Howe. Merrily caught her arm as she walked down from the chancel.

‘Excuse me, Inspector. Do I have to disturb the bishop and ask him to disturb the Chief Constable or do I get to hear an explanation?’

Annie Howe half-turned in irritation. And then – the woman of the hour who could afford to be magnanimous – she relaxed, comfortably resigned.

‘Ms Watkins ... I really am very, very sorry. But it did seem inappropriate at the time to tell you what we were doing. Besides which, we didn’t, at that stage, have what I would have considered sufficient evidence, so I actually hadn’t yet decided precisely how I wanted to handle it. It was what you might call an ongoing situation. Sorry.’