Phil Rickman - The Wine of Angels

Alison tossed back her hair.

‘People like you, Lol, into all this progressive sixties music, forget that it was still quite primitive then, in country areas. You didn’t ruffle the hawk’s feathers.’

‘What do you think happened to her?’

‘I used to think she was given money to go abroad. But now I know they hadn’t got that kind of money. No way. And this is the country. What do you do with nuisances in the country? What do you do with the dog that’s worrying your sheep? What do you do with the badgers you’re convinced are spreading tuberculosis to your cows, even though badgers are officially protected? What do you do with the woman who’s threatening to expose you to the county?’

‘Was she?’

‘No way. She probably just asked for a few thousand quid. Perhaps he was worried she’d be into him for money for the rest of his life, but I can’t imagine she’d have even thought of that. She just went to ask for a bit of help.’

‘Lucy said she was naive. Kind of innocent.’

‘Which would’ve made it even easier for him.’

‘Easier?’

‘To get rid of her. The way people always did in the countryside. With pests.’

‘That’s ...’

‘More difficult than it used to be. But not that much more difficult. I knew it as soon as I came here.’

‘With me?’

‘No ... years earlier. Ten years ago. With a couple of girl friends. Camping holiday. It had been gnawing at me more and more. The number of times I found this place on the maps, circled it and circled it until the biro went through the paper. Then, when Gran died ... I mean, she died hard. She was working well into her seventies, cleaning people’s houses so I could stay on at school, go to university. She died hard and she died full of regrets and remorse – with no reason, whatever, she was a saint, my gran. She died when I was in my final year and I dropped out at once and I got a job and I thought, those fucking rich, smug bastards, they killed my mother and they killed my grandmother, and I ... I just wanted ... ’

She was hunched up now, gripping the sides of her chair with both hands. A side of her she’d never before let him see. She tossed back her hair again, getting herself together.

‘So we were on this camping holiday, Julie, Donna – mates from college. I made sure we came here, never told them why. Yeah, it would be twelve years ago, the year after I dropped out. It was a good summer, we hired mountain bikes. I had the route all marked out on the OS map, and when we came to Upper Hall, there he was, the good and great John Bull-Davies, overseeing the haymaking. Sitting on the edge of the bottom meadow in his linen jacket, with his fat bum on a shooting stick. John Bull-fucking-Davies.’

‘How did you know it was him?’

‘I didn’t. At first. I walked over on my own and asked for directions to Canon Pyon. It was very hot, and I was wearing shorts and a skimpy top and sweating profusely, and he said I looked awfully hot and I could probably do with something long and cool. Always remember that. Something long and cool. He leered. Must’ve been in his sixties. Then he saw the other two waiting for me down by the field gate. Too many. Too awkward. So he gave me the directions to Canon Pyon.’

‘You think he’d really have made a play for you, with all the blokes at work in the field?’

‘Absolutely. Probably wanted them to see. The old squire as potent as ever he was. They’ve always fucked who they liked. It was the way. Their right. Droit de seigneur. Before I went back to the bikes, I stood there and looked at him. Full in the face. Memorizing every little, poxy detail. Been a good-looking guy in his time. I stood and I kept on looking at him, until even he became uncomfortable and turned away. Then, that night, in a pub – in this pub, actually – I stared at myself in the mirror and I was nearly sick with disgust.’

The coffee came, and Lol paid for it. It was a different waitress, who clearly recognized Alison, so Lol said, ‘Oh, and Auntie Doris sends her love, by the way.’

Alison poured the coffee with a steady hand.

Cramp in her left leg awoke her.

She’d fallen asleep in the middle of her attempted prayer, head in a curled arm on the duvet. The arm was numb. She was cold. She needed to pee.

She struggled upright, rubbing at the cramped calf. There was no sound from above or from below. What time was it? She groped for the alarm clock, peered at its luminous hands.

Nearly half-twelve. Sunday. The Sabbath. The Working Day. Holy Communion. Morning service. An unusually full church. What would the vicar look like? How would she behave? Would she be pale and penitent? Would she have crimson eyes and drool? However the vicar looked, there’d be enough material for a whole week’s gossip.

The efficient Ted would have rung back while she and Jane were at the lodge, and, on getting no reply, gone ahead and summoned the trusty, retired minister from Pembridge. Making long-term plans, no doubt, to distance himself: a discreet word here, an expression of concern there. Did my best for her, but the traumas of the past, you know. My fault, should have realized her nerves were simply not up to it, parish this size ... all the pressure ...

Pressure on her bladder. Merrily slid her feet into her sandals, found the sweater at the bottom of the bed and pulled it on over her nightdress. Shuffled to the door, aching with weariness, feeling old and beaten, worn out, done in.

For several minutes after she’d finished, she sat there on the lavatory, bowed over, her face in her hands. Her nerves were shot. It made her ashamed. Dozens of people in the village had real, solid, frightening problems – serious illness, recent bereavement, job loss, the prospect of a house being repossessed because they couldn’t meet the mortgage, and, of course, the extreme and constant anxiety and fear when a daughter has disappeared. Compared with all of this, her own problems were meaningless, ephemeral, fatuous.

Merrily washed her hands and face in cold water.

Go back to bed, forget it. Don’t think about tomorrow night either, or how you’re going to organize it; if it’s meant to happen, it will; if it isn’t, let it go, let the original decision stand, no Wil Williams in the church, thank you. Thank you and, if necessary, goodbye. She pulled the bathroom door closed behind her.

Something rushed at her from the blackness. In a vivid instant, she had the clear impression of a hard nucleus of bitter cold, rolling along the lightless passage like a soiled, grey snowball, rapidly gathering momentum, frigidity.

She shrank away, flattened herself against the bathroom door, turned her head into the wall.

The cold hit her. It stank of misery. It wrapped itself around her, a frigid winding sheet. She couldn’t breathe.

She squirmed. Wake up. Lips pulled tight around a prayer: 0 God, yea, though I walk through the darkness of the soul, though my heart is weak ...

At the end of the passage, a light hung over the stairs.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake ...

The light was a lean, vertical smear. It wasn’t much, promised no warmth, but she reached out for it, her hands groping for the stair-rail on the landing.

Should she try to run downstairs? She looked down. She tried to call down to Lol, who might not even be there. There was no easier name to say, but she couldn’t say it. ‘L ... L ...’ Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and all that emerged was a sound like an owl-hoot, weak and lonely, and looking down the stairs was like looking down an endless, cold, black well.

The only way was up.

She looked up, just as the light flared over the stairs, like a small, contained area of sheet lightning behind cloud and she was briefly caught in its periphery, which sent a jagged shock into her still-tightened chest, and she stumbled in panic, fell forward on to the stairs into a clinging, damp vapour, dense with particles of fleeing light, and the wooden stairs under her were very rough and the air around her cold. Cold for January, desperately cold for May. She pulled herself up and was nearly pulled down again because her heart was so packed with pain.