Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

Atrocities?

‘But he was the minister of ... this church?’

He didn’t reply. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten she was here. He was staring through the window, into the mews, where Colette Cassidy still stood in her doorway and a bearded man was strolling by. The man looked at Colette’s legs.

‘This church,’ Jane said. ‘You mean the village church? Excuse me?’

‘Oh, shit.’

The shop guy folded his fingers together and squeezed hard. It was difficult to be sure in this light, but Jane thought he’d gone pale. He looked at her.

‘Look ... You on your own?’

‘Well ...’

She felt uncomfortable, found herself backing instinctively towards the door.

‘What I mean ... you’re not with that bloke out there?’

‘What?’

The bearded man was standing in the middle of the mews, about fifteen feet away. He wore jeans and a denim shirt and those dark glasses that went all the way round. He had his hands in his pockets and was gazing at the shop window. He seemed a quite ordinary tourist-type, perhaps waiting for his wife.

‘Why would you think I should know him? I’ve never even seen him before.’

The shop man had his glasses back on. He didn’t look cool any more. He sort of ... jittered. He bit his lip.

‘Yeah. Right. OK. Do me a favour, er ...?’

‘Jane.’

‘Jane.’ He shook his head, in a wry you-have-to-laugh kind of way. Then the hunted look was back. ‘Jane, could I ask you to mind the store?’

‘Right,’ said little Gomer Parry through his cigarette. ‘That bit, that’s all yours, Vicar, see.’

She’d given up correcting people when they called her vicar. You couldn’t really have people calling you Priest-in-Charge anyway, could you?

Gomer was pointing to a small meadow, about two acres, Merrily reckoned, sloping gently from one end of the churchyard down to the river.

‘Now, what we done the past couple o’ years,’ Gomer said, ‘is we mowed ‘im, end of July roundabout, then we sells the bales to Powell. We could sell the ole grass standing, let Powell cut it ’isself, but bein’ as how I got the gear, where’s the point in loppin’ off the profits? Plus, Gomer Parry Agricultural and Plant Hire, we does a tidy job.’

‘And what do you charge, Gomer?’

‘Aye, well,’ Gomer Parry said. ‘Bloody retired, en’t I? Can’t charge nothing no more, see.’

As Minnie, his wife of four years, never neglected to remind people, Gomer Parry Plant Hire, in the literal sense, was no more. Which Merrily reckoned accounted for Gomer’s general air of depression.

‘But the running costs,’ she said. ‘The maintenance of all that machinery ...’

‘Ah, does it good to get the ole things up and turnin’. All it is now is just a’ – Gomer struggled to cough up the contemptible word – ‘ hobby. ’

She felt sorry for him. Apparently, Minnie had refused to marry him unless he promised to pass on the operational side of the business to his nephew, Nev, and move these twenty miles back over the English border. But as he kept on telling you, he was only sixty-eight. What was sixty-eight in the Age of Power Steering?

Could it really be that Minnie hadn’t realized that Plant Hire was part of his name, part of who he was?

‘Mabbe you could mention me to the Ole Feller sometime,’ Gomer said. ‘In passing, like.’

‘Old ...? Oh. Right.’ Merrily nodded. ‘I’m sure He does notice these things.’

‘All respect, see, but the way I sees it, it’s a better thing all round if I’m out yere getting to grips with God’s good earth than inside that ole church throwing everybody off key with my deplorable bloody singing.’

‘Mmm,’ Merrily said dubiously. ‘We’ll, er, maybe go into that argument in more detail sometime.’

‘I never argues with the clergy,’ Gomer said, putting the lid on that one. ‘Now, your ditches. As I kept pointin’ out to the Reverend Hayden, them ditches is in a mess. En’t been cleared in my time back yere, which is four years come October, and there’s all kinds o’ shit down there.’

Gomer led Merrily along a crooked avenue of eighteenth-century graves to where the churchyard met the Powell orchard. It was a raised, circular churchyard, partly bordered by a bramble-covered ditch about four feet deep.

‘Get rid o’ this lot, no big problem, Vicar. However, wise not to widen the ditch this side, on account some of these ole graves’ve slipped and slid a bit over the centuries like, and you goes into that bit o’ bank you never quite knows what’s gonner tumble out, you get my meaning.’

‘Oh.’

Merrily imagined ancient bones rattling into the shovel of Gomer’s JCB.

‘As for the other side ... Well, who knows, Vicar, who knows?’

‘Who knows what?’

She hitched up her cassock to bend down and peer into the ditch. A rich, musty smell rose up. She looked across to the other side; the nearest apple tree was a good twenty yards away. Further into the tangly orchard, she was sure she recognized the twisted boughs of the Apple Tree Man and couldn’t suppress a shudder.

Gomer followed her gaze.

‘They won’t do that again, Vicar.’

‘The wassailing? No, I suppose not.’

‘Funny thing, though ... You wanner see the buds on ‘im now.’

‘On the ...?’

Merrily looked at Gomer. Those ridiculous, little round glasses and the often-unlit cigarette, like a baby’s dummy, made it hard to take him seriously.

‘Gonner be ablaze with blossom in a week or two, that ole bugger. You’d’ve sworn he’d given up. Makes you think, don’t it?’

She was chilled.

‘I think I’d rather not think. What did you mean just now when you said who knows? About the other side of the ditch.’

‘Ah. Well. You gotter ask yourself why the ole orchard’s still there, see. Rod Powell, he en’t a man to keep a worthless bit o’ scrub without there’s a reason for it. Well, a cider apple’s no use for nothin’ but cider, specially them stunted little buggers, and the Powells en’t made but their own in half a century. Rest of the farm’s beef and’ – Gomer growled – ‘battery chickens.’

Merrily, who also disapproved of battery chickens, kept quiet.

‘So you gotter ask yourself, Vicar, why’s he keep that ole orchard?’

‘Sentiment?’ Before the word was out, Merrily felt embarrassed.

‘Superstition.’ Gomer tapped his nose. ‘Them as don’t believe superstition counts for much in the countryside no more en’t never lived yere. Powells put in a bunch of new trees down the bottom end, to please that Cassidy, but Edgar wouldn’t grub up this bit, nor even scrat around too much in there, on account of he knows and all his family knows that there’s ...’

Gomer paused, took off his flat cap. Wild white hair erected itself.

‘... the First Unhallowed Ground.’

Merrily thought she understood, but she wasn’t sure.

‘You dig up decently buried bones, see, well, that’s one thing. You just puts ’em straight back. But any bones the other side o’ that ditch ... Now don’t get me wrong, Vicar, I’m not saying I goes for this ole toffee, I’m just telling you the kind of superstition you’ll encounter if you sticks around these parts ... But the bones t’other side, them’s the ones you don’t wanner be diggin’ up, you get my meaning.’

On the other side of a curtain behind the counter was an iron spiral staircase leading up into what seemed like complete darkness, apparently a loft without a window. Jane stuck her head through the curtain.

‘OK, Lol. He’s gone.’

‘You sure?’

The voice was hollow with – Jane was amazed and thrilled – actual, real fear. It made her think again about the little crunch before the man had left.