Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

Merrily screamed and squirmed away. Hurled herself back against the headboard, slamming it into the wall behind.

‘It’s OK!’

The grey face was printed on a jumper, a sweatshirt. Over it was a real face behind glasses. The real face looked scared.

‘No ... look ... hey ...’ he said. ‘I’m harmless.’

She looked down, registering that she was fully dressed, the bed unrumpled.

‘Mrs Watkins ... I’m really, really sorry.’

‘Christ.’

‘I thought you might need a cup of tea ...’

One of her cups coming at her, on one of her saucers. She didn’t move.

‘What are you doing? What are you doing in ...’

Aware that, even in her fear, she couldn’t say, What are you doing in my house? It wasn’t. It was the vicarage. It was huge and alien and maybe this man lived here, too, in some derelict attic room, coming and going by the forgotten back stairs. Part of the mad, sporadic nightmare. Oh God, get me out of here.

‘I’m a kind of ... friend of Jane’s.’ He was very untogether; big, unsteady eyes behind the glasses. Like a scared version of the alien on his sweater.

‘Where is she?’

‘She went to a party. See, what happened, we met in the street, I needed to take a look at my cat, and she just like brought me up here, you know? Jane says, you know, Bring her inside, we’ll have a look at her. Obviously I didn’t realize she meant ... her room. Believe me, there is no way I’d’ve come up here.’

‘Cat,’ Merrily said.

‘Somebody gave her a kicking. We brought her up here and then she got away. We must’ve touched her in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I don’t do things like this.’

She accepted the tea with numb relief. ‘You’ve got an injured cat somewhere in the house? Wandering around, making bumping noises maybe.’

‘Probably.’

Merrily could hear heavy music coming through the trees from the square, insistent as a road drill. This wasn’t going to endear the Cassidys to their neighbours. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said. ‘I need a cigarette.’

It wasn’t long before they started coming out of their homes, gathering in small groups. You could see pyjama bottoms sticking out of trouser turn-ups, one woman in an actual hairnet. Big torches, walking sticks.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ a man shouted. Not a local voice. A sort of retired colonel voice.

The music was turned up even higher. Maybe fifty people dancing. Someone grabbed hold of Jane’s arm, tried to pull her into the crush of quivering bodies.

It was Colette. ‘Aw, come on, Janey. Get your shit together. Stuff the Reverend Mumsy. Like she’s in any position to complain.’

‘You’re disturbing the peace!’ The man’s voice rose again. ‘This is noise pollution. If you don’t turn that racket off and go away now, at once, I’m going to call the police! Do you hear me?’

Jane let herself be dragged in, knowing they were all on borrowed time. If Barry hadn’t rung the police already, quite a few people were surely doing it right now; you looked up and you could see small, furious faces peering out of dark windows, could imagine outraged fingers stiffly prodding out 999. Anticipating it, Mark and his friend had already disappeared from the Marches Media doorway. But whatever they’d been selling was taking effect: all around her, open mouths and too-bright eyes.

‘We comin’ out,’ rapped Dr Samedi. ‘We comin’ back. We gonna turn, gonna turn de whole sky black. ’ But he no longer sounded in control.

A boy pushed past Jane, having come out of the antique shop doorway, zipping up his jeans. ‘Did you see that?’ a woman yelped. ‘That yob’s just urinated in there!’

‘You hear me?’ the man shouted. ‘I’m calling the police!’

‘Oh, do fuck off, grandad!’ replied a girl with an equally posh voice, and there were wild peals of laughter and somebody turned the music up even higher, so that even Dr Samedi was drowned out.

But they were on borrowed time and Jane wasn’t unhappy about that because she needed to get back and find out about Lol. Lol who’d come over very weird when she’d taken him up the back stairs and he’d found himself in her room. Backing off, shaking his head, saying this was a mistake. His agitation picked up by Ethel, the cat, squirming out of his arms and disappearing into the bowels of the vicarage.

Lol was in trouble. He couldn’t go home because Karl was in there and Lol, for reasons Jane still couldn’t quite put together, was scared of Karl. And was also – for reasons even more obscure – scared of her. He’d seemed relieved to pack her off to the party, to hide out there alone in the part of the house where Mum was banned. He wouldn’t be there when she got home, he said. He’d wait until Ethel reappeared and then he’d go. She’d left him her secret key to lock the small back door behind him; he’d leave it, he said, with Lucy.

But what if Karl was still in the cottage when he got back? Where would Lol go then?

One idea had occurred to Jane. Maybe she could get a few of the guys from the party – rugby-player types – to go over to Lol’s place and force that bastard out of there. But the state they were in now, how could you even explain to them what was needed? By the time they made it to Blackberry Lane they’d have forgotten why they were going.

Chaos. Nothing more unstable than well-brought-up kids on the loose in some place they and their parents weren’t known.

The music stopped.

The silence was deafening. Beyond the hollow roaring in her ears, Jane heard the sound of car engines.

‘OK.’ Colette’s voice over the loud hailer. ‘Listen up. It’s probably the filth, yeah? We’re moving on. Don’t worry, no cars required. Follow me ... or Janey. Where’s Janey? She knows.’

It wasn’t the police. The car that turned on to the edge of the square was a Volvo like Mum’s, only about ten years younger. Both front doors opened at once.

The Cassidys.

‘Janey,’ Colette called out. ‘OK?’ And then the loud hailer was silent.

Jane didn’t move. What was Colette saying to her? She knows. What? She slipped back under the market cross as Terrence Cassidy appeared on the cobbles, panting. ‘Colette! Where are you? Please—’ and was almost pulled off his feet by the stampede from the square.

‘Colette!’

Mrs Cassidy was less circumspect. ‘The unutterable little bitch. I knew something like this would—’

‘Colette,’ Terrence implored. ‘Where are you. Why are you doing this to us?’

‘It’s ‘cause you’re such a wanker, mate,’ Dean Wall confided chattily over his shoulder and cackled and followed the others.

The music had resumed, from the top of Church Street, booming off into the churchyard. Jane’s shoulder brushed against a poster tacked to one of the pillars of the market cross, bold black and yellow lettering inside a big red apple, LEDWARDINE SUMMER FESTIVAL: OFFICIAL OPENING, SATURDAY, MAY 23. MARKET SQUARE 2.00 p.m. BE THERE!

‘Bloody hell!’

Jane found Dr Samedi next to her, the loud hailer dangling limply from his hand. Back in Midlands mode.

‘Can y’ believe it? She’s buggered off with my flamin’ box. Bloody rich kids. I hate bloody rich kids, I do. Gimme ghetto any day of the week.’

‘Sorry, Jeff. She’s hard to stop when she gets going.’

‘That don’t help me, does it?’

And suddenly, Jane knew where Colette was taking them.

‘Oh no.’ She looked around for help, but the Cassidys had rushed into their restaurant, presumably to assess the damage and take it out on Barry. Even the locals were melting away – wherever the mob was heading, it was at least out of their earshot, away from their backyards, so what did they care?