Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘Then let me get out. I’ll walk home. I can see you’ve got a lot on your mind.’

‘I’ve told you to stop that.’

Lloyd looked up from the wheel, his face severe but kind of bland, like his dad’s. Like being moved by anything was a weakness genetically eradicated in the Powells centuries ago.

‘You think we’re stupid. You think you can soft-talk me and I’ll let you go and you’ll toddle off back to your mother and tell her all about what the bad Powells done to poor Miss Devenish.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jane lied desperately. ‘I know you wouldn’t do anything to Lucy. Just let me go home, Lloyd. I’m a bit pissed and everything, and I probably won’t remember a thing in the morning. Just let me go back to the orchard and I’ll find my own way home, all right?’

‘Why’d you do that?’ He leaned back, curious now. ‘Why’d you take that bottle of cider into the orchard?’

‘Couldn’t very well drink it at home, could I? And that was where Colette and I came on—’

‘Why there? Why under that tree?’

‘I don’t know. Colette—’

‘Colette, Colette, Colette!’ He slammed a fist into the wheel. ‘That little slapper! You want me, don’t you? Don’t you, Lloydie? Piece of rubbish. Piercing her body, advertising herself. And they paid for that to go to the Cathedral School.’

Jane said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Right.’ Lloyd leaned on his door. A second later he was opening hers from the outside. ‘Out.’

She didn’t want to get out. She wondered if she could slide across and somehow start the truck and ...

Lloyd gripped her arm above the elbow and squeezed on the muscle until she screamed in pain.

‘ Out ’

Outside, there were hulking buildings without lights. Barns and sheds. The air smelled of working farm.

‘Go on then, Jane.’

She struggled out on legs that felt like foam rubber and stood shivering in a stiffened rut made by tractor wheels. The raspberry moon shone out of a bitter chocolate sky. She did want to heave now, but she wouldn’t, not in front of him. Not to order, like a prisoner.

I’m a prisoner.

‘You wanner be sick, be sick.’

‘It’s gone off.’ She looked around for somewhere to run, but they were in a kind of stockade, fencing topped by barbed wire.

‘You en’t leaving now, Jane. Don’t get ideas. And don’t try and fool me with any ole crap about you don’t understand. I’m gonner tell you, so you will understand. Only fair, that is. Lucy Devenish, see, she come up to talk to Father about Colonel Bull-Davies and his ole man, thinking as Father could help her clarify a few points.’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Jane said hopelessly. ‘Honestly. Can’t you—’

‘No I bloody can’t! Too soft-hearted, that’s my trouble. I can feel sorry, see, but it don’t get you nowhere. The little fluffy lamb’s still gotter be killed, the ole sow’s still gonner wind up hanging by her back legs, it’s the way of the world. And some you en’t sorry for, like the fox. When the ole fox starts rootin’ around, he’s gotter go. Fast. Bang. ’

Lloyd clapped his big hands.

‘And that was the way Lucy Devenish went. Clean and neat and efficient.’

‘No!’ Jane threw her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t want to know!’

‘Father driving the truck, he pulls in front of the little bike, I tumbles out the ole dead ewe ... smack. Happens in a twinkling. She don’t know a thing. Takes off like an owl from a branch. Dead before she hit the ground, wouldn’t surprise me. Their hearts en’t too strong, that age. Efficient, that was.’

‘Efficient? You’re completely insane!’

‘She wouldn’t’ve suffered anyway,’ Lloyd said reassuringly. ‘We’d just’ve banged her ole head one more time on the tarmac. We can be humane, see, when we need to be. Ole Lucy, she was a nuisance, no question, got these funny ideas and she couldn’t leave well alone and she got Father in a right state the stuff she was comin’ out with, but’ – he shrugged – ‘she was still one of us. So when she’s in the way, when she’s gotter go, then it’s done humanely.’

He nodded and smacked the side of the truck. His clean-cut face shining in the moonlight with pride at a job well done. He straightened up, stood with his hands on his hips and contemplated Jane.

‘And then there’s you,’ he said.

‘I suppose I’m in the way, too.’

Momentarily astonished at how calm her voice sounded now there was no need to pretend any more, now that there was nowhere to run and nobody to hear her screams. She looked up at the pink moon, and it occurred to her that this could be the last moon she would ever see. She felt full of hate and terror, but hazy too. Hazey Jane cursing the night. But remote from it all, somehow, because people like Lloyd just couldn’t be, not in the modern world.

‘I can’t make up my mind, see,’ Lloyd said, ‘what you are. A fox or a lamb. Or even a badger. You ever been on a badger-dig?’

‘No! That’s disgusting—’

‘Illegal now, mind. But it goes on. It has to go on, see, else how we gonner keep ’em down? Had him near enough wiped out in these parts once, ole brock, pesky ole bugger, but the conservationists, who know best, see, from their offices in London and them places, they lets the badger back to spread tuberculosis through our herds. Badgers coming back as fast as townies in their holiday cottages, and they said we couldn’t touch ’em.’

‘That was never proved,’ Jane said, clutching at another conversational straw. ‘Tuberculosis.’

‘Never proved. Arseholes, it wasn’t. All I’m saying, badger on my land, he goes down, and if I can have a bit of fun with him before he goes, where’s the harm there? He’s dead anyway at the end. What difference is half an hour gonner make?’

‘Not badger baiting? ’ Jane said faintly.

‘Aye, if you wanner call it that. Feller from up north, he brings his terriers once in a while. Ole brock, he gets dug out, we throws him to the dogs. It’s a bit of fun. It’s cheap. Nobody gets harmed, ‘cept the badger and that’s his fault for being a badger. And the dogs sometimes, but we stitch ’em up, no problem.’

‘That’s despicable. ’

‘Why?’ His face puckered slightly in genuine puzzlement. ‘You don’t look at things the right way round. A savage bastard, he is, the badger when he gets going. Or if it’s a female with young. Or any kind of female. Asking for it. Daring you to do it.’ Lloyd leaned against his white truck, arms folded. ‘Asking for it,’ he repeated. He looked up at the moon. In a parody of a wheedling, posh, female voice, he said, ‘ You want me, don’t you, Lloydie? ’

Turned to Jane. ‘They all want you, see, women. Bit of a catch, a farmer, always was. You get stuck with the wrong one, mind, she’s hard to dislodge, so you gotter get it right. Drummed into me from early on, this was. You gotter get it right!

She didn’t know what he was saying.

‘Gotter get it ... right. ’ He hacked a heel into one of the truck’s back tyres. ‘Meantimes,’ he said, ‘you does a bit of badger-baiting, kind of thing. Come along, Jane, I’ll show you the ole cider house.’

AS EACH NAME was written down by DC Thomas, the person was allowed to go. Few had. There was, perhaps, a sense that this electric night was not yet over.

The laborious procedure at least had given Merrily time to assemble her thoughts. After Gomer had told her about Hannah Snell and the rest, they had gone back outside, Gomer to report back to Lol and find Jane.