Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘I have to go out again,’ she said.

Jane stood at the window, watching bloody Mum cross the bloody square, heading towards the bloody church, where bloody else, the pious cow?

She walked experimentally around the room. She didn’t fall down. Legs felt like her own legs again. She felt good. She hadn’t been bluffing, hadn’t been taking the piss. She’d had a good night’s sleep.

She shrugged.

She had a swift shower, towelled her hair and got dressed.

She still felt fine.

She padded down the oak staircase and out into the square without, thank God, meeting anyone who might accuse her of having a drink problem. The only problem was she couldn’t recall very much of what had happened. The last she remembered with any clarity was being on the right track for losing her virginity to bloody Dean Wall or one of his spotty mates in the church porch.

Colette had got them out of that, although she couldn’t quite remember how.

Good old Colette.

Jane slipped into the cobbled alley. Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was closed after the Sunday lunch crowd. There was no sign of Colette. Jane wandered down to Ledwardine Lore, which was also closed. She stood at the window, looking in at all the apple curios. It seemed like months since she’d gone in there and the very odd but quite nice Lol Robinson had asked her to mind the store because of the guy he wanted to avoid. Weird. And then there was the story of Wil Williams who’d hanged himself and was buried in the orchard.

The orchard! Jane pressed her forehead into the cool glass, Colette’s voice drawling in her head.

Old Edgar Powell, the headless farmer. All aglow and hovering about nine inches off the ground.

Oh God, yes. She remembered running away from the Wall gang and then she was lying in some grass under branches and

... gappy old grin. Eyes like grey holes ... these very branches ... Look up, Janey ....

Colette was taunting her, just like she’d taunted the boys. Colette’s voice harsh and sly. Sassy, superior Colette.

Look up.

And had she? Had she looked up, with Colette and then Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes and somebody called Mark coming out of the bushes to stand around and laugh themselves sick?

Good old Colette? Bollocks.

Feeling really hot and embarrassed now, she glared resentfully at the shuttered facade of Cassidy’s Country Kitchen, seriously bloody glad now that Colette wasn’t there. In fact, she never, never, never wanted to see that bitch again.

She turned and ran out of the alley and into the square and stood there panting, confusion giving way to a sense of being horribly stupid and, worst of all, really, really young.

Luckily it was Sunday. Soporific Sunday afternoon, and nobody to laugh at her humiliation. Even the Black Swan closed its bars on Sunday afternoons, and there were only a couple of cars parked on the square. Jane stood in the middle of the road, at the top of Church Street, staring at her shadow on the cobbles.

Wondering how she could ever have felt at home here.

The yellow Toyota sports car came out of nowhere – well, in fact, out of Great Barn Street, which linked Church Street to the B-road to Hereford – and had to swerve to avoid splattering Jane all over the market cross.

Brakes went on, a window glided down. ‘Tired of life, are we, darlin’?’

Jane sniffed, put on a smile. ‘Sorry.’

‘Ah ...’ She saw a beard enclosing a very white smile. ‘It’s you again.’

It was the man from the shop. The man who was not dealing drugs, who accidentally crushed fairies and frightened Lol. Yellow Toyota – of course.

He said, ‘So you don’t know anyone called Lol Robinson, huh?’

‘Oh,’ Jane said. ‘Well, I do now. I just didn’t know his name at the time. I’m quite new around here. I know who he is now.’

‘I described him to you, sweetheart, and it still meant nothing. How do you ...? Oh, never mind. Would I be chancing my arm if I were to ask you where Blackberry Lane is?’

‘It’s up there. See that funny little building in the square? Just go up the side, to the left, and it’s this really narrow little lane. You’ll have to go a lot slower than you did when you came round that corner or you’ll wind up under a tractor or something.’

‘Thanks.’

The window went up; Jane watched the car move off. She hadn’t really wanted to help him, but he would have found out anyway. She supposed Lol lived up there, and now he’d get a nasty surprise.

He had a breakdown. Actually, he used to be a sort of pop star, way back. Well, very minor. I mean, like, tiny.

She’d forgotten that. And Colette saying Lol was megasad. And ... and ...

And she’d seen him again. She’d been in his arms. Carried in his arms. Oh God, he’d brought her home last night!

And now she’d shopped him to this bastard.

The Reverend Mum was right, as usual. She’d got pissed and left a trail of disaster. She had a lot of apologizing to do.

A WISPY BREEZE plucking at her poncho, Miss Devenish climbed, without much effort, to the top of the knoll. With her back to the sun, the big hat pulled down, she loomed over Merrily like some ancient warrior chieftain.

‘You’re never alone in the countryside, Mrs Watkins. It’s the most intimate place. The poet Traherne knew that. When he walked out here, Traherne knew he was inside the mind of God.’

Below them, nearly a mile away down the long, wooded valley, the village of Ledwardine lay like an antique sundial in an old and luxuriant garden.

‘The core of the apple,’ Miss Devenish said. ‘The orb. Traherne was always talking about orbs and spheres. Understanding that he was at the very centre of creation.’

‘Suppose he’d lived in some filthy city.’ Merrily looked down on the lushness of it all. ‘Or a desert somewhere.’

‘Wouldn’t have mattered. The man was a natural visionary. He instinctively picked up the pattern, the design. Before Wordsworth, before Blake, he stood here and he saw. ’

Merrily sat down on the edge of the green knoll, her legs dangling over a mini-cliff of rich, red soil. ‘How do you know he stood precisely here?’

‘I don’t.’ Miss Devenish smiled enigmatically. ‘And yet I do. He would’ve walked here with his friend Williams, to see the best view of the village.’

Because of the hedges, freshly greened, you couldn’t see the roads; you couldn’t see the cars and vans and tractors, only hear their buzzing.

‘So much country,’ Merrily mused. ‘Even inside the village.’

‘Still, thank God, an organic community. In spite of the best efforts of those who’d turn it into a museum full of horse-brasses and warming pans. And supposedly authentic ceremonies’ – darkness entered Miss Devenish’s voice – ‘which belong elsewhere.’

Merrily looked towards the church. The sandstone steeple stood proud, like the gnomon of the sundial, but the graves were all hidden by trees and bushes. The churchyard, more egg-shaped than circular, was partly enclosed by the orchard which, from here, had a deceptive density. Had the church once been entirely surrounded by apple trees?

‘Indeed. The heart, Mrs Watkins. And the blood it pumped was cider.’

Along the hidden road, a heavy lorry rumbled, the landscape seemed to tremble and her mind replayed the deepened voice of Dermot Child. Auld ciderrrrrrrrrrr ...

‘Yes.’ Merrily pulled herself together. ‘And talking of cider ...’

‘I can’t tell you what happened to the child.’ The old girl scrambled gracelessly down from the top of the knoll and came to sit beside Merrily. ‘And if I tell you what I think might have happened, I’m afraid our embryonic relationship might well be aborted.’