Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

And he can feel the freshly washed hair of a girl called Tracy Cooke in his eyes and mouth in a dingy hotel bedroom and he can see Karl Windling’s yellow grin as he pushes Tracy over onto Lol’s arm and goes down on her.

I’m gonner hurt you, gonner hurt you real bad, you hear me, Jane ...

Jane?

‘Where is she?’ Lloyd’s screaming, his hard face up close. ‘What you done with her? I’m gonner tear your other eye out, mister!’

Lol’s hand comes up with the bottle in it. The empty bottle he found rolling around in the back of the truck. The bottle coming up and striking Lloyd on the point of the chin with a small click.

Lloyd stumbling and spitting a little blood.

‘Right then.’ Rubbing his jaw once. ‘You done it now, boy.’

Lol swaying, hearing the words of Thomas Traherne.

...to love all persons in all ages, all angels, all worlds, is divine and heavenly ...To love all ...

Lloyd comes for Lol.

Karl Windling says, And you ... you’re just ... I mean, who’d notice? Who’d give a shit? Who’d put flowers on your grave.

Lol, with both hands smashing the bottle into the side of Lloyd’s head, whispers, ‘Jane?’

There is no reply. Lloyd is on his knees. The bottle falling to the gravel and rolling over, its label lit by the moon.

The Wine of Angels.

Tears are the wine of angels. Traherne sighs. The best to quench the devil’s fires.

You’d’ve thought it would be all over the road, but it was very neat. From the bank, Gomer was looking down on it, the moon so warm and bright you could see everything. Very neat indeed, the car looking like it had taken a bite out of the bed of the lorry, like the car roof was its upper lip, clamped down.

‘No, you don’t,’ Gomer said, putting out an arm to bar the vicar’s path. ‘Call me sexist, Vicar, but this is gonner be no sight for you. You stay in this yere field. I’ll go down and check this out first, see.’

He slithered down to the mangled wire fence, stepped over it and through the gap the Jeep had torn out of the hedge. Lit himself a ciggy then went to look under the deck of the lorry, where the bonnet of the Escort was barely visible. The end of the deck had gone through the wind-screen like a wide-bladed stone chisel.

Gomer bent his head, sniffed, then straightened up and wiped his hands on his trousers.

The lorry driver was down from his cab. He’d thrown up in the road. He wore a baseball cap and a big earring.

‘Well, well,’ Gomer said. ‘Jeremy Selby.’

‘Gomer?’

‘Bit late for a consignment o’ cider.’

‘Going down Southampton way. Bit of a rock festival’

‘Ar,’ Gomer said. ‘Best place for it. All be too stoned to taste the ole muck.’

‘It was so bloody quick, Gomer. Couldn’t believe it. He was right on my arse, then it just come running out the hedge, I didn’t know what it was at first, just slammed on, you know, instinctively, it was a really big one, all white.’

‘Hang on, get a hold, boy.’ Gomer extracted the ciggy. ‘What did? What exactly come runnin’ out the hedge?’

‘Bloody great sheep. White as a bloody polar bear.’

‘Ar.’ Gomer walked round to the front of the lorry. No sign of a sheep. Naturally. Gomer nodded, ambled back. ‘Where’d it go, then, Jeremy?’

‘Fuck knows. It was here one second, gone the next. I swear to God, Gomer, it—’

‘All right, boy.’ Gomer patted him on the shoulder. ‘If the coppers asks, I’ll say I seen it too. You rung ’em?’

‘On my mobile.’

They both stepped into the road. It was dead quiet.

‘Poor bugger,’ Jeremy said. ‘I suppose there really is no ...’

‘What, with half of him in the front, half in the back and his head—’

‘All right! Christ, I’m still shaking. Don’t suppose you recognize the car?’

‘Oh aye. Rod Powell, that is. Was.’

‘You what?’ Jeremy Selby snatched off his baseball cap in horror. ‘I just killed Councillor Powell? ’

‘Ar.’ Gomer’s beam was a bright gash in the night as he stuck out his hand. ‘Put it there, pal.’

It was a cawing sound, like a nightbird, sporadic but coming closer.

‘... ane ...? ane ...’

Merrily stood in the pink ploughed field exactly where Gomer had left her, not looking where he’d told her not to look. It was as though all her muscles had seized up. She felt raw and frozen and unable to think clearly. She saw a large hole in her cashmere sweater, just below the elbow. She could throw it away now.

Something was standing about fifteen yards up the field. It cawed again.

‘J ... ane?’

Merrily looked up. ‘Lol? Is it Lol? ’

‘...’errily? Sorry, I can’t ... glasses gone.’

He stumbled down a furrow. Before he fell into her arms she saw his face was full of blood and his mouth was up on one side. One eye was closed.

They crushed each other and Merrily began to cry. ‘Oh, Lol, what have they done to you?’ She felt his blood on her face. He looked like his cat had. She remembered waking up by the fire, seeing him looking down at her, closing her eyes again, content. She closed her eyes now and the night swirled around her, not pink but deep blue. She couldn’t understand that when everything told her it should be black, streaked with red.

‘Lol, boy!’

Merrily blinked. Gomer stood a few feet away.

‘Take it easy,’ Gomer said. ‘Everybody take it easy.’

The night became real and hard-edged. Memories battered Merrily. A flame of fear enveloped her. She stared into Gomer’s terrifying face, with the white spikes of hair and the core of fire in his teeth.

‘Bloody useless, you are, Lol, boy,’ Gomer said. ‘Wouldn’t find an elephant in your own backyard. ‘Er just comes walkin’ out the orchard, cool as you like, through the ole gate.’

Merrily swam upwards through the blue.

‘Flower?’

Next to tough, wiry old Gomer, she was looking very small and young and fragile. Her face was as white as bread. Her eyes were on the move, still travelling back.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Lol said.

Breaking away from Merrily to let Jane in, he looked up.

Through a single, watering, blood-blurred, short-sighted eye, he saw a curious cloud formation above the moon, a dark cloud hanging there making a curving V-shape. So that the moon, for a long, undying moment, was like a big, red apple.

He heard Jane saying,

‘Mum ... where have you been since yesterday?’

H.L. McCready and Partners,

Solicitors,

Apex House,

King Street,

Hereford

3 June

The Revd M. Watkins,

The Vicarage,

Ledwardine,

Herefordshire

Dear Mrs Watkins,

I shall be writing to you more formally about this matter in due course but felt I should give you informal advance warning of something which, until now, has been subject to a degree of secrecy. I am sure that, were she alive, the police would be more than interested to talk to Miss Devenish in the light of recent events! In the circumstances, one can only mutter about there being more things in heaven and earth ...

First, may I say how pleased I have been to learn that you and your daughter are fully recovered from what must have been a most disturbing night. I doubt if Ledwardine has weathered a more eventful period in its lengthy history.

But to business. Many people, no doubt, will be wondering who is to receive the bulk of Miss Devenish’s legacy, which will amount principally to the proceeds of the sale of her house and shop, both highly desirable properties in a much sought-after village. In January this year, Miss Devenish placed before me a proposal which I confess I greeted with some dismay. It was her intention that all the money should be left in trust to the Diocese of Hereford for the purchase of the orchard immediately adjacent to the Parish Church whenever it might come on the market, the land to remain as an orchard in perpetuity.