Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘Sort of. My grandfather had a farm about six miles away. Mansell Lacy.’

‘Jolly good. Who was your grandfather?’

‘Charlie Watkins?’

‘Didn’t know him personally, but there are many Watkinses in the area. My God ...’ Miss Devenish was gazing over Merrily’s left shoulder. ‘Just look at that little whore with Bull-Davies. She’ll have his cock out in a minute.’

‘Huh?’

‘Alison Kinnersley. A destroyer, I suspect.’

Merrily risked a glance. Bull-Davies was talking to some of the other guys with guns. Alison Kinnersley was standing behind him, keeping her hands warm in his trouser pockets.

‘That poor boy.’

‘James Bull-Davies?’

‘Good heavens, no. Kinnersley’s boyfriend. Former boyfriend. Not the Bull. The Bulls can look after themselves. Trouble is, they want to look after everyone else. But it goes wrong. Never trust the Bulls, my dear. Remember that. Remember poor Will.’

‘Sorry?’

‘OK! Listen, everybody!’

James Bull-Davies had disentangled himself from Alison. He reached up, snapped a lump of brittle, dead branch from the Apple Tree Man and banged it on the cider cask, like a chairman’s gavel.

‘We’re going to do it. Had a brief chat with the chaps here. Seven of us brought shotguns along, and if we’re talking about old traditions, well, I rather suspect there must be one about it being bad luck to take one’s weapon home without loosing orf a single shot. Miss Devenish – apologies, but we’re going to do it.’

Miss Devenish stiffened as the shotgun men gathered in a semicircle around the tree, shuffling cartridges from their pockets.

‘Something we have to sing or something, is there, Terrence?’ boomed Bull-Davies.

‘I have it here, James. It’s a sort of chant. If you say it after me ...’

‘OK. Orf you go then. Stand back, everybody. Well back.’

There was silence, everyone waiting.

Miss Devenish said loudly, ‘Well, I’ve done all I can. If you wish to disturb the dead, go ahead.’

Her voice still rang in the hard air as she turned away. Bull-Davies shrugged as he accepted the folklore book, cleared his throat and began to read.

‘Hail to thee, old apple tree!’

‘ Hail to thee, old apple tree, ’ the shooters chanted, gruffly self-conscious.

‘And let thy branches fruitful be ...’

‘ And let thy branches ... ’

‘Going to cause offence.’ Miss Devenish had a prominent hooked nose; it twitched. ‘Can’t anyone see that? Deep offence.’

Merrily shook her head, tired of all this. It wasn’t as if they were going to shoot any animals; just blast a few pounds of shot into the air through branches that were probably mostly already dead.

‘Why did he have to break off that branch? Showing his contempt, you see. For the tree and all that dwells there.’

‘Well,’ said Merrily, ‘there’s nothing dwelling in there now, is there?’

Miss Devenish pulled the wide brim of her hat down over her ears as the gunmen chanted.

‘... armsful, hatsful, cartsful of apples ...

Huzzah!

Huzzah!

Huzzah! ’

And shouldered their shotguns. Merrily thought, unnerved for a second, of a firing squad, as Miss Devenish turned away and the night went whump, whump, whump, whump-ump-ump, and the air was full of cordite farts.

Merrily was aware of a fine spray on her face. Probably particles of ice from the shocked branches, but it felt warm, like the poor old Apple Tree Man was weeping.

When the shooting stopped, there was a touch of anticlimax. Obviously the book didn’t say what you did afterwards.

‘Er ... well done, chaps,’ James Bull-Davies said halfheartedly.

A few villagers clapped in a desultory sort of way. Caroline Cassidy came out from behind a tree and sniffed.

‘We haven’t got a single picture of this, have we? As for the BBC ... I shall write and complain.’

Merrily was aware of a silence growing in the clearing, the sort of silence that was like a balloon being blown up, and up and up, until ...

The half-scream, half-retch from only yards away was more penetrating than any bang, and it came as Caroline Cassidy’s features went as flaccid as a rubber clown-mask, lips sagging, eyes staring, and she cried, ‘What’s that on your face ?’

In the middle of the scream – it had come from Alison Kinnersley – Merrily had put a hand to her face and felt wetness, and now she held up her hand to the light and it was smeared dark red.

‘I say, look, get ... get back ...’ The voice of James Bull-Davies pitched schoolboy-high.

‘Bloody Nora,’ Gomer Parry said hoarsely.

Merrily saw black drips on Garrod Powell’s cap-shaded cheeks. A smear around Lloyd’s mouth like badly applied lipstick. Spots on Gomer’s glasses. Blotches on his wife’s earmuffs, hanging around her neck like headphones.

Caroline Cassidy teetered back in her thigh-boots, making an ugly snuffling noise, and Merrily saw the worst and went stiff with the shock.

Between the Powells, at the foot of the stricken old tree, what looked like a milk churn in an overcoat was pumping out dark fluid, black milk.

A scarf of cold tightened around Merrily’s throat.

‘What’s the matter?’ Terrence Cassidy’s cultured tones rising ludicrously out of the clearing, like something out of Noel Coward. ‘What’s happened? I don’t understand. For heaven’s sake, all we wanted to ...’

Gomer Parry looked up at Cassidy through his red glasses and spat out his cigarette. ‘Somebody better call the police, I reckon.’

Merrily had found a handkerchief and was numbly wiping the blood from her face. Unable to pull her gaze away from the horror inside the collar of Edgar’s overcoat, knowing that most of his head would be in the tree, hanging like some garish leftover Christmas bauble amid tinselly, frosted twigs.

She crumpled the handkerchief. Her face was still wet. It felt like some horrific baptism.

And, hearing Miss Devenish whispering, ‘ I knew it, I knew it, ’ she knew she would have to look up into the tree.

MERRILY HAD A recurring dream. She’d read somewhere that it was really quite a common dream, with obvious symbolism.

By recurring ... well, she’d have it maybe once every few months, or the gaps might be even longer nowadays.

There was a period, not long before Sean died, when it came almost nightly. Or even, in that intense and suffocating period, twice or three times the same night – she’d close her eyes and the dream would be waiting there like an empty train by a deserted platform. Sometimes it was merely puzzling, sometimes it seemed to open up exciting possibilities. Occasionally, it was very frightening and she awoke shredded with dread.

What happened ... she was in a house. Not always the same house, but it was her own house, and she’d lived there quite some time without realizing. Or sometimes she’d just forgotten, she’d gone on living there, possibly for years, without registering that the house had ... a third floor.

It was clear that she’d lived quite comfortably in this house, which was often bright and pleasant, and that she must have passed the extra staircase thousands of times, either unaware of it or because there was simply no reason to go up there.

In the dream, however, she had to go up. With varying amounts of anticipation or cold dread. Because something up there had made its presence known to her.