Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

Enjoying himself again. Trying to work his way up to another arm around the waist. She’d have to do something, couldn’t put up with months, years of this. She could deal with it. Would deal with it. If she could just find Jane.

‘Also feels threatened,’ Dermot said. ‘Mostly by the Cassidys because they want her shop to extend their restaurant. Well, partly that and partly because Caroline feels the Devenish emporium’s cheap and tacky and not in keeping with the sophisticated image they’re after. Every so often they’ll make the old girl an offer. How she can afford to keep refusing is beyond me, because that little shop’s doing next to nothing.’

‘That’s sad.’ Merrily moved as far away from him as she could get without falling off the damned step. ‘Jane went in there today, she—’

She stopped because she didn’t want to explain why Jane had gone to the shop and also because James Bull-Davies had kicked over a litterbin.

‘Fuckers!’ he roared. ‘Bloody fuckers? ’

He slipped and went down on one knee.

‘Fuckers,’ he said in a normal voice. Then laughed, picking himself up.

Evidently unaware of Merrily and Dermot Child, he leaned against the metal lamp-post beside the market cross and peered down Church Street, where the lights of a vehicle had appeared. The litterbin was still rolling along the cobbles.

‘Perhaps I should go down and talk to him,’ Merrily said. ‘This is my job, isn’t it?’

‘For what my opinion’s worth, Vicar, I’d seriously advise against it. He won’t be terribly civil, even if he recognizes you, and he won’t thank you for it in the morning.’

The vehicle stopped on the square, engine rattling. It was an old and muddy blue Land Rover. Alison Kinnersley jumped down. She wore tight jeans and a black shirt; her blonde hair shone like a brass helmet in the fake gaslight.

‘Come on then, my lord.’ She stood relaxed, legs apart, on the cobbles, the Land Rover snorting behind her like the stallion she rode around the village. ‘Let’s go home.’

Bull-Davies didn’t move from his lamp-post. ‘You whore. Who told you?’

‘Powell called.’

‘Good old saintly bloody Powell. Thought I saw his head come round the pub door.’

‘Let’s go home, Squire.’

‘Do you demand it?’ Bull-Davies grinned savagely. ‘D’you demand it, mistress?’

God, Merrily thought, she’s got him locked into some pathetic Brontë-esque sex play.

Alison seemed to shrug. Her breasts rather than her shoulders. Merrily felt Dermot Child quiver, and she shuddered and wanted to be almost anywhere else. But she also wanted to find Jane, and if Alison and James didn’t take their games home, she was going down there anyway.

‘Do it here, hey, my slinky, slinky whore?’ Bull-Davies rasped hoarsely. ‘Shag ourselves senseless on the bloody cobbles? Give the prissy bastards a show? Dent someone’s shiny Merc with your lovely arse?’

‘James, you’re pretty senseless already,’ Alison said coolly. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to get in before I leave you to sleep it off in the gutter.’

‘Whore.’ Bull-Davies detached himself from the lamppost.

‘Get in the truck, James. There’s a good boy. We have your reputation to look after.’ Alison sounding as if she knew they had an audience, of which James remained oblivious.

‘Reputation? Wassat going to be worth when that scented arse-bandit shafts me? You tell me, mistress. You bloody tell me.’

He walked unsteadily towards the Land Rover, mumbling morosely to the cobbles about the little, shirt-lifting, socialist scum, squatting at the bottom of the drive with his odious catamite.

‘You sold it, darling,’ Alison said wearily, as though they’d gone through all this many times before. ‘It isn’t yours any more.’

‘Man’s a piece of shit.’

‘Whatever. Do get in, Jamie.’

The Land Rover door was slammed. The chassis groaned, the engine spluttered and gagged and the battered vehicle was reversed, illegally, into the alley leading to Cassidy’s Country Kitchen and Ledwardine Lore.

‘Well,’ Dermot said after a moment. ‘I did warn you, didn’t I? The way it would go.’

But Merrily wasn’t listening; she was already stumbling down the steps.

Through the dirty wool of exhaust in the diesel-stinking air, she could see them bringing Jane along Church Street.

‘AND IT’S A really terrifying situation to be in. I mean, you know, what on earth do we do? How can we – ordinary, fallible human beings – even contemplate making a decision which we know is going – whichever way we turn – to offend somebody?’

Pause. Merrily took a step back from the edge of the pulpit. She felt awful. The light sizzled harshly in the stained-glass windows, yellows and reds glaring out, florid and sickly. Something they never told you at college: you needed to be fit for this job.

‘What’s the first thing we usually do? We panic, of course. We just want to run away. That’s always the first instinct, isn’t it? Why me? What have I done to get landed with this one?’

You always asked them questions. You were conversational about it. Just having a chat. OK, I’m up here, you’re down there, but we’re all in the same boat really. Sometimes, you found yourself hoping one of them would stand up, join in, help you out a bit. Yeah, I take your point, Vicar, but the way I see it ... God knew, she could use some help from the punters: maybe she should hold a parish referendum: Wil Williams – Yes or No?

Coward’s way out. She swallowed. Her mouth felt like a sandpit. It was a warm, sunny, good-to-be-alive morning. She felt cold in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten, hardly slept.

‘But you know, in your heart of hearts, that running away isn’t the answer to anything ... ever. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to it.’

Pitching her voice at the rafters; she knew what they meant about the warm acoustic. She’d never needed it more.

Packed house, of course. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Sod’s Law. They were all here this morning. The twenty or so regulars, including Councillor Garrod Powell and his son Lloyd, both of them sober, dark-suited, expressionless, deeply local. Plus the occasionals – a resentful-looking Gomer Parry with his comfortable wife, Minnie. And Miss Lucy Devenish, who, according to Ted, would often walk out if the hymns were tuneless or the sermon insufficiently compelling.

Also the very occasionals, like Terrence and Caroline Cassidy (‘Sunday’s such a busy day, now – lunches and dinners, which effectively rules out both services, but we do often pop in during the week for a few minutes of quiet time ’).

In addition, the never-seen-here-befores: Richard Coffey in a light brown velvet suit, with his wafery friend Stefan Alder, flop-haired and sulky-eyed, in jeans.

And the totally unexpected-under-the-circumstances: James Bull-Davies, frozen-faced and solitary in the old family pew. Well. Merrily leaned over the pulpit, hands clasped. This one’s for you ... Jamie.

‘So what do you do? The pressure’s building up. You’re starting to feel a bit beleaguered.’

Two messages had been on the answering machine she’d fixed up in the room; must have come in while she was out there trying to locate Jane. Terrence Cassidy: ‘Perhaps we could arrange a small chat, Merrily. Would you call me?’ Councillor Garrod Powell: ‘A word or two might be in order, Vicar, if you can spare the time. I’ll be in church as usual tomorrow.’

Bull-Davies wasn’t looking at her. He had his arms folded and his legs stretched out as far as they would go in the confining space between pews. He faced the door which led to the belfry. Just about the last place he’d want to go if the inside of his head was in the condition it deserved to be after last night.