Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘I suppose.’

‘Get much hassle?’

‘Bit. You?’

‘They do the motions. Uh ...’ Colette proffered the bag. ‘I got you this.’

‘Oh.’ She took the bag, surprised. It felt like a CD.

‘You were asking about Lol Robinson. That’s his last album, reissued. Well, his band, from way back. One of the guys at school bought one after she read in some magazine how this guy out of Radiohead likes them. When I saw what it was called, I thought you’d ... Anyway, it was the last copy.’

‘Oh. Wow.’ This was unexpectedly touching. ‘That’s amazing. I mean ... thanks.’

‘It was only mid-price,’ Colette said. ‘Don’t take it out of the bag, or people’ll think we’re really sad. Listen, I’m having this kind of a birthday party. My sixteenth. Friday after next. Just guys from school and one or two marginally cool people. And Dr Samedi – this DJ, who’s like really cool. Dr Samedi’s Mojomix? Heavy voodoo, Taney.’

‘Sounds excellent,’ Jane said. ‘Where’s it going to be?’

‘They’re letting me have the restaurant. Big gesture. They’ve promised to go out and stay out.’

‘Are they mad?’

‘Well, Barry the manager’ll be in charge, but he’s relatively OK. Also, it’s got to be invitation only, no riffraff, no lowlife.’ Colette smiled cynically.

‘Cool,’ Jane said. ‘If I tell Mum it’s at the Country Kitchen, no problem.’

‘Good,’ Colette said. ‘Listen. I mean, thanks for not grassing me up about what happened. Like, it was pretty shitty of me, all that Edgar Powell stuff. I was feeling moderately pissed off by then, with those tossers and everything. So, like, thanks.’

‘No problem.’

‘So you gonna tell me?’

‘Huh?’

‘What happened. Weird scenes, Janey. I thought you’d gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Like dead. Then suddenly opening your eyes, rambling about these kind of little lights. And then you’ve like, gone again. Coma-stuff.’

Jane felt strange. She looked behind Colette and along Old Barn Street. There was a couple of women with a pram heading down from the Market Cross, no one else in sight. She felt strange, like she wasn’t here at all.

Colette’s eyes flashed. ‘Oh, come on, Janey. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. Don’t shit me.’

‘I don’t.’

‘What did Devenish say then?’

‘She just brought me back. She was just like ... cool about it. I don’t even know how she came to be there.’

‘Lol phoned her. Any crisis, he calls Lucy. She’s like his therapist, poor little sod. He was really shit scared. Wouldn’t go in that big, old orchard in the dark without Lucy to protect him. Well, he wouldn’t go in with me. I think he’s even scared of me. You imagine that?’

Jane didn’t say anything. Colette was trying to recapture ground, saying Lol was scared of her. She decided not to tell Colette about what she’d heard under Lol’s window. Maybe the person to tell was Miss Devenish. Really needed to see the old girl, like soon.

‘I don’t know why the fuck I bothered,’ Colette said bitterly.

On the way back to the chip shop, Jane took the CD out of its paper bag. When she saw what it was called, she gasped.

‘People don’t understand. Think we’re simply stuff-shirted shits. Hunting, shooting and fishing, lording it over the peasants.’

James Bull-Davies stood up straight and still very much the army officer.

‘We merely serve,’ he said. ‘We serve our country. We serve the countryside. Wasn’t for us, the traditional landowners, place just wouldn’t look the same, wouldn’t have the same atmosphere, the same beauty, the same harmony. We’re the stewards. The custodians. We don’t have power. We have responsibility.’

It sounded very noble. It didn’t, however, sound like the man who liked to call his mistress a slinky whore while she called him My Lord. Unless, of course, that was all down to Alison and her feminine wiles, bringing out the feudalist in him.

‘I’m an army man. Understand the army. Well-oiled machine. Puts human relations, dealing with people, into some form of order. You know who you are, what you are. Most chaps like me, when they come out, go on calling themselves Colonel, as though they still have some sort of authority, as though the commoners should salute. Look in the local phone book: Colonel this, Colonel that. Pointless. Meaningless affectation. No time for it. I’m Mr Bull-Davies, now. James, to chaps I wish I’d had in the army, knock off some of the damn pretentions.’

Like Terrence Cassidy, presumably. Merrily smiled to herself.

‘I’ve no illusions.’ James paced the kitchen. ‘Wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did, wasn’t expecting the old man to keel over for another twenty years. But no getting out of it. When the time comes, you have to shoulder the responsibility and that’s that. No arguments. And you become someone else. In the army you’re what you are. No complications. Here – no getting away from it – you’re what your family is. What your family was. You have a responsibility not only to the living – the living people, the living countryside – but also to the dead. You see where I’m heading, Mrs Watkins?’

Merrily stirred the tea in the pot. ‘Army-strength?’

‘Not too strong. Civilian now. Do you know what Cassidy said to me? Came to see me yesterday. Dithering. “But, James,” he said, “this was a long time ago. ” You credit that? Man’s an arsehole. Shows the state of Britain that the rural economy’s now increasingly reliant on specimens like this – bloody caterers.’

His eyes met Merrily’s for the first time. They were pale blue and showed a surprising insecurity.

‘I’m sorry if I speak crudely. You’re ... Well. Never minced words with Hayden.’

‘My last parish was in a rundown part of Liverpool,’ Merrily said. ‘The only soldiers were squaddies back from Iraq. They tended to be the more refined parishioners.’

James barked a laugh.

‘I do understand,’ Merrily said, ‘that three centuries, in the history of a rural family like yours, is not so very long.’

‘I said to him’ – James’s lower lip jutted and curled – ‘Cassidy, I said, you’ve been here about two minutes. In the past three centuries, your family – what anyone can trace of it – has probably lived in a couple of dozen different houses in God knows how many different towns. However many generations it goes back, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, this is my family. In my village. How could I possibly condone some fatuous little pageant’ – he spat out the word like a pip – ‘which seeks to demean and ridicule my heritage? Yes, the local magistrate was Thomas Bull. Yes, he was one of the party who confronted Wil Williams. Yes, he was there when they found the body. And yes, he believed the evidence. Yes, he was convinced Williams was in league with the devil and should die for it. He was a man of his time. Homosexuality doesn’t come into it, and I won’t have his memory soiled by some sordid little queer in the name of so-called art and a few dozen visiting trendies paying London prices for fancy fodder at Cassidy’s Country bloody Kitchen.’

He came up to Merrily. The stove was hot against her bottom, but she didn’t move.

‘Went along with the wassailing fiasco last winter because that was at least an attempt at reinstating a tradition. But this festival’s in danger of going the wrong way and dragging my village along with it. Realize there’s going to be some change. Even if I disagree with it. Recognize that your presence here’s part of that change.’