Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

No, it was all real. It was quiet up there now, but the noise she’d heard from the drawing room had been real. And it wasn’t a mouse, it wasn’t a squirrel, it wasn’t a bird in the eaves, it wasn’t ...

Real. What was real? Was a minister of the Church obliged to consult a psychiatrist these days to find out?

Another small bump.

Slowly, holding back her breath, Merrily picked up the poker.

Closer, this time. Certainly not at the top of the house. She looked at the scullery door, which was never opened. The so-called scullery was a narrow room, probably something connected with the dairy in centuries past. They’d found no use for it as yet, never went in.

She lifted the metal latch and went through, wrinkling her nose as her hair mingled with greasy cobwebs. At the far end, another door opened on to a small, square hall. She found a switch and a dangling economy bulb sputtered on, curled-up white tubes like some frozen bodily organ sending shadows up walls already going black with damp. The absence of oak beams in here suggested it was a Victorian addition. Opposite her was the second back door, still boarded up.

Except it wasn’t. The boards had been prised away; they were leaning against a wall, rusty nails sticking out of them. This was recent. Very recent. Jane. The separate door to the Apartment, soon to have an illuminated bell and a dinky little nameplate: Ms Jane Watkins. The door leading up, via the disused back stairs that you would forget were even here.

The stairs came out at a black, wooden door. Her fingers found a hole to lift the latch. Of course, she knew where the stairs came out, but it seemed strange seeing it from this angle, the dim, first-floor passage with all the doors, all of them locked now, since the Sean dream, and the keys taken out and thrown into an ashtray in the kitchen.

Padding past the locked doors, she arrived at the top of the main stairs, the oak-balustraded landing with its window full of pale, night sky. She stood at the foot of the second stairway to Jane’s apartment. Why was she doing this? Despite the unsealing of the second back door, she knew there was nobody up there. Nobody real. Why was she putting herself through this?

Because I’m a priest, and priests are not supposed to be scared because they know that the strength and certainty of their faith protects them from the evil that walks by night ... don’t they just?

Oh really ... Jane came up here all the time, for heaven’s sake. Jane skipped up here, never a thought, with books and boxes and cans of variously coloured paint and brushes and CDs, to be locked away in her secret study.

It’s me. It only happens to me.

I’m a sick woman.

She thought.

Before registering that one of the doors on the landing was already half-open and a shadow-figure was watching her from the threshold.

Jane knew it was going wrong when she saw Mark and this unknown older guy in the unlit doorway of the computer shop, Marches Media.

Or maybe wrong was the way it was supposed to go. A party ain’t a party without tension.

Maybe this party was going exactly the way Colette had planned ... the plan hardening up when she learned she was being double-crossed by her parents. Actually, Jane didn’t see what was so wrong with having a sixteenth birthday cake. And if the Cassidys wanted to share the moment – well, they had paid for everything. And let her use their precious restaurant.

Maybe Colette was going just a bit over the top.

Jane watched from the cobbles, leaning against one of the oaken uprights of the market cross. With a low-burning excitement, because it was obvious what was going on down there in the shadowed doorway of Marches Media: the mousy Mark and the older guy were busy dealing drugs.

And no shortage of customers. The nice boys from good families. Going in one after another, schoolkids at the tuck-shop. Not all the guests, but enough of them to put the market square well into orbit. This would be a good, safe pitch – rich kids at a posh party in a select restaurant in a picture-postcard village encircled by hills and woodland and with no resident police. Profitable, too. Most of these guys would have no idea of current street prices.

Not that Jane did. It was just cool to watch from the shadows and speculate about these things.

She was on her own now. The craven Quentin had made a swift escape, car keys in hand, a couple of other vehicles also puttering pusillanimously away from the square. She saw Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes watching Colette, keeping a respectful distance. A heavy chick.

She and Dr Samedi were at the back of his Transit van, one rear door open. Dr Samedi backing out, arms full of something black, the size and shape of a child’s coffin. ‘Oh yes!’ Colette cried. ‘Yes, yes yes!’

Dr Samedi was still unhappy and wouldn’t let go of whatever it was. But tonight you didn’t argue with Colette; she wrapped her arms around the black thing, wrestling with poor Jeff, until they both sprang back and the black box was in Colette’s arms now.

Lloyd Powell was watching from the foot of the Black Swan steps. Mr Responsible, Jane thought. He might seem cool now, with that rangy Paul Weller look and his white pick-up truck, but Lloyd would turn, as the years went by, into his father, get elected on to the council. By which time Rod would have shrunken into Edgar, half-baked and not to be trusted with a shotgun. It was the depressing side of country life; they all seemed to know their place in the Pattern and the Pattern didn’t change.

People like Colette fascinated them because they were part of a different pattern, Jane thought. But there was no meaningful overlap. She was thinking what a really profound philosophical concept this was, when it all began.

‘All right!’

A voice crackling into the night. Dr Samedi had materialized under swathes of bunting put up for tomorrow’s festival launch. He held an old-fashioned trumpet loud hailer. His top hat was back on.

‘How you doin’? Sweatin’? Yeah!’

A few cheers. Dean Wall’s familiar whoop.

‘All right!’ Dr Samedi raised the white loud hailer up over his head. A signal, obviously. Because, at that moment, the perfectly preserved medieval market square of rural Ledwardine just ... well, just erupted.

The black thing, like a small coffin, had proclaimed itself, in the way it knew best, as a huge ghetto-blaster with about eight speakers. It was sitting on the roof of the van now, pumping tumultuous drum and bass into the square at this unbelievable volume, and Colette Cassidy was bouncing up and down beside the van and screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes !’

A circle of people rapidly formed around her, everybody moving in a way it was hard not to when the big, black beat was everywhere and loud enough to pop up all the cobbles on the square. Oh my God, Jane thought, they’ll hear this in the centre of Hereford.

‘Welcome, ma friends ...’

Dr Samedi’s phoney West Indian drawl had been processed by the primitive megaphone into a deep and eerie croak.

‘ Wel-come ... to ... de ... carn-i-valf

The ceiling light was blurred and swirling.

She was waking up. She’d been asleep. Dreamed it all. Again. Oh my God.

It was not possible. Hadn’t she heated her hands on the Aga, gripped the poker until it hurt, bashed her knee so hard the pain had given her a headache? Proving beyond all doubt that she was awake?

The light above her was in a warm, orange shade. Jane’s shade. Taken with her from Birmingham to Liverpool to Ledwardine ...

To the third floor.

She was in Jane’s bedroom, in the Apartment. Lying on Jane’s bed. She didn’t remember coming here. Why would she come in here, lie down on Jane’s bed? Fear streaked through her and she struggled to sit up and looked into a blank, grey, oval face with dark slits for eyes.